House of Reckoning

  “Hey, I’m—”

  “Don’t!” Ed commanded. Then, while smashing the man’s head again and again, as if to punctuate every word, he said, “Do. Not. Say. That.” The man’s knees buckled, and Ed let him sink to the ground. “Idiot,” he muttered, barely noticing the blood that began to pool beneath the man’s head. “You don’t know nothin’.”

  Ed stumbled back to his old truck, held on to the door handle while he pulled the keys from his pocket, dropped them, groped in the gutter until he found them, and eventually hauled himself into the cab. After a half-dozen tries he fit the key into the ignition and started the truck.

  “Idiot,” he muttered again, revving the engine. He ground the gears, trying to find reverse, then spit gravel from the tires as he popped the clutch and shot out onto the dark, lonely road that would take him to his equally dark and lonely home.

  Sarah Crane woke up with a start, her heart pounding. The image from the nightmare she’d been having since her mother died was fading rapidly, and all she remembered was that in the dream she was in a house—a huge house—and even though it was filled with people, she couldn’t see or hear them.

  But she knew they were there.

  And they were as lonely and frightened as she was.

  Now she lay still in her bed, her pulse slowly returning to normal as the last images from the nightmare faded away. She was about to turn over and try to go back to sleep when she suddenly had a feeling that something wasn’t right.

  She listened, but heard nothing.

  The house was silent, as silent as the great mansion in her nightmare.

  A clouded moon cast soft shadows across her bed in the stillness. She hugged the worn plush rabbit that had been her nighttime companion for as long as she could remember, and listened again.

  Nothing.

  The house was quiet. Too quiet.

  Her mom used to say that her father could snore the paint off the barn, but tonight Sarah heard no snoring from the next room, nor anything from anywhere else in the house.

  Which meant one thing: he’d gone out drinking at the Fireside.

  Hoping, wishing, even praying that it might not be true, Sarah slipped out of bed and peeked into her parents’ bedroom. But the bed hadn’t been slept in. She crept quietly down the stairs, but even before she got there, she knew she was alone in the house.

  She could actually feel the emptiness.

  The sofa, too, was vacant, the crocheted afghan still stretched cleanly over its back. A dozen beer bottles littered the kitchen table, and a glance out the kitchen window showed her that her father’s truck was not in its usual place in front of the garage.

  Which told her that he was indeed at the Fireside, where he’d gone more and more often, and drinking more and more every time he went. And last time he’d come home drunk, he almost rammed the truck into the barn, and she’d decided that the next time it happened, she would go to the bar and bring him home herself.

  And tonight was “next time.”

  She didn’t have a driver’s license yet but had driven the truck all over the farm since she was ten, so she could certainly drive it the two miles home from the Fireside.

  She pulled on jeans and a sweater, and tried to imagine herself walking into that bar and trying to convince her father that he needed to give her the keys and get into the truck so she could bring him home.

  But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t picture it at all. But her mother had done it, so she would do it, too. And maybe someone there would help her if they weren’t all as drunk as her father.

  Sarah wrapped the wool scarf she’d worn to check the chicken coop and the barn a few hours earlier back around her neck, pulled a thick stocking cap down over her head and ears, put on a heavy jacket and a pair of fleece-lined gloves, and went out into the frosty night.

  She wheeled her bicycle out of the garage and climbed onto it, riding down the long driveway and out onto the quiet road with only the intermittent glow of the moon to light her way.

  She stood up on the pedals and pumped hard, the cold breeze making tears stream from the corners of her eyes, and hoped she’d make it to the Fireside before her face froze.

  As she came around a bend in the road, she saw headlights crest a hill in the distance, then disappear as she dropped into a dip and then pedaled even harder up the small rise beyond. When the headlights appeared again, they were on the wrong side of the road.

  And far closer than they should be.

  Too late, she realized she had not worn the jacket with the reflective stripes that her mom bought for her when she went out at night.

  And the generator for the bike’s headlight had given up last year. She told herself that when she got to the top of the hill, where whoever was coming toward her could at least see her, she’d pull off to the side of the road and let them pass.

  But by the time she crested the hill, it was too late.

  The car was still on the wrong side of the road, and it was careening straight toward her.

  Blinded by the headlights, Sarah swerved her bicycle across the road to get out of the way, but the driver seemed to see her at the same moment and jerked the steering wheel, slewing straight at her.

  She didn’t want to dive into the ditch, but had to get out of the car’s way. She jumped from her bike and pushed it off the road, intending to follow it into the ditch.

  She was a split second too late.

  The driver saw her at the last instant and swerved too hard the other way, overcorrected, and slewed back to the left, tires screaming in protest.

  Sarah, terror freezing her in place, suddenly realized exactly who was hurtling toward her.

  “Daddy?” she whispered.

  The single word still hung in the night air when the truck’s enormous radiator grille slammed into her.

  Chapter Two

  Sarah shivered. She’d been caught outside without a coat, and now the cold seemed to have penetrated to her bones. Then came the sounds, strange beeping noises and something that sounded like squeaking shoes, but very faint, as if they were muffled by a thick fog.

  Yet there was no fog.

  Only the cold of the air and—

  Huge, blinding headlights racing straight toward her!

  She gasped, jerked awake, and a bolt of white-hot lightning struck her in the lower back, shot through her hip, and blazed down her right leg.

  “Sweet pea? You awake?”

  Sarah gasped for breath, searching for something—anything—to drive away the cold and the pain, but everything was wrong. She should be outside, but she wasn’t, and if she wasn’t outside, she should be warm. But she was still freezing. Panic rose up inside her, but just as she was about to scream she saw—and felt—something familiar: the silhouette of her father sitting at her bedside, and his hand holding hers.

  “Cold,” she whispered through chattering teeth.

  “Would you like a warm blanket?” a strange voice said. Sarah turned from her father as a pretty blond nurse checked a bag of something connected to a tube in her arm. She nodded, and turned back to her father. “Wh … wh …”

  “You were in an accident, honey,” her father said, his voice trembling, his features strained. “You’re in the hospital now, but you’re going to be okay.”

  Her father was lying. If the pain in her hips and her leg wasn’t enough to tell her so, his voice and expression left her no doubt. She struggled to sit up, but white-hot agony seared down her side. She shuddered.

  “Can’t you give her something?” she heard her father ask, the fear in his own voice reinforcing her own.

  A new voice spoke, a man this time. “She’s awake? Sarah? Sarah, can you hear me?”

  She made herself nod, too tired even to open her eyes. “I’m Dr. Cassidy, Sarah. We’ll be taking you into Surgery in a few minutes to fix your hip and leg. So you just lie back and relax, and let us take care of you. All right?”

  She opened her eyes as the nurse wrapped a war
m blanket around her and tucked it under her chin. She blinked a couple of times trying to clear the fog, and looked around. She was surrounded by striped curtains, and several people in white coats stood by her bed.

  “You’re in the emergency room, honey,” her father said.

  She barely recognized his sunken, unshaven face. His eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with red, and there was blood all over the front of his shirt. And even from where she lay, she could smell the stale beery odor of his breath.

  A new woman slipped through the curtain. “Mr. Crane? I’m Leila Davis from the business office. I need you to come with me to fill out some paperwork. Do you have your daughter’s insurance card with you?”

  Her father’s wince told Sarah there wasn’t any insurance, but he patted her hand and stood up. “Do you really need to operate?” he asked the doctor, his voice low, as if he hoped she wouldn’t hear.

  But every word slammed into her ears like a death knell.

  “If we don’t, she’ll lose her leg,” the doctor said.

  What was that she was hearing? Lose her leg?

  “Thing is,” her father said, his voice dropping even further and his eyes studying the floor, “we don’t have any insurance.”

  “I can help you apply for Medicaid,” Leila Davis said. “Please come with me.”

  “Don’t leave me!” Sarah cried, the panic she’d fought back only a minute or two ago now gripping her chest. “Not now!”

  “Shhh, honey,” Ed said. “I’m right here.” He sat back down in the little orange plastic chair and held her hand. “I’ll go take care of that later.” He looked at the woman from the business office, who checked her watch and then nodded.

  “Through the double doors and to the right,” she said.

  “Sarah?” It was the pretty blond nurse again. She had a nice smile and there was a little koala bear clipped on her stethoscope that somehow made Sarah feel just the tiniest bit less frightened. “I’m going to give you something that will make your mouth cottony, and you’ll get kind of sleepy. You just relax and take a little nap, okay? Soon we’ll be wheeling you down to the O.R.” The nurse injected something into a tube, and a moment later Sarah felt her eyelids grow heavy.

  Now there was another voice, a heavy voice. “Ed Crane?”

  “Yes?”

  Sarah felt her father’s hand slip out of hers, and when she tried to reach for it, she couldn’t find it. Fighting the heaviness in her lids as hard as she could, she forced her eyes open far enough so she could see her father, standing just out of her reach, facing two men who wore police uniforms instead of white coats.

  “I’m Sheriff Wilson, Mr. Crane,” one of the men said. “This is Deputy Clark. We need you to come with us to the police station, to answer some questions.”

  “Not now,” Ed said. “My daughter—”

  “I’m afraid it has to be now, Mr. Crane,” the sheriff said. He glanced at Sarah for a moment, and she let her eyes drop closed so he’d think she was asleep. “You’re under arrest.”

  “It was an accident,” her father said. “You don’t think I’d run over my own daughter on purpose—”

  Sarah struggled once more against the drugs that were pulling her into blackness. What was going on? What were they talking about?

  She had to get out of bed and talk to them—tell them they were wrong. But she couldn’t—the blackness was wrapping around her now, and the voices—and the last of her strength—were fading away.

  “It’s not about that, Mr. Crane. Mel Willis was found beaten to death in the alley next to the Fireside Tavern, and half a dozen people say you were arguing with him. And from the looks of you, I’d say they’re right.”

  A dream! It had to be another dream! Sarah marshaled the last of her strength and managed to force her eyes open again. Her father’s shoulders were slumped in a way that drained her of hope. A single word drifted from her lips: “Daddy?”

  He turned and gave her a sorrowful look, a look that made a new pain blossom in her chest, and without another word he followed the two men as they moved out through the curtain.

  “Daddy! Daddy, don’t leave me!” she whispered, struggling to get up in spite of the pain that made flashes of searing light edge the darkness that was still swirling around her, drawing her inexorably toward its vortex.

  “Shhh, honey,” the nurse said, gently pushing her back against the pillows. “He’ll be back. He’ll be here when you wake up.”

  But she knew that wasn’t true, and she knew that the nurse knew it, too.

  Nick Dunnigan cracked an eye and looked over at his alarm clock.

  Ten minutes before it would go off and he’d have to get up.

  The toilet flushed in his parents’ bathroom. In a minute his mom would knock lightly on his door as she passed by on her way downstairs to make breakfast.

  Nick squeezed his eyes closed and whispered the litany he had developed over the years. “I’m going to be okay today,” he said into his pillow. “Okay. Please God, let me be okay.” He stopped and listened for the voices in his head.

  They were there, but way off in the distance, whispering just around the edges of his consciousness. And this morning it sounded as if they were talking to one another, and not to him.

  Or maybe they were still quiet because of the double dose of medication his mother had given him last night.

  A shiver ran through Nick as the memory flooded back. The voices had been screaming at him, a cacophony of demons each trying to drown out the others. One voice telling him to do terrible things to innocent little animals, another demanding that he lock all the kids from school inside the church and then set fire to it. And there were others—lots of others—all vying for his attention, all commanding him to do something unthinkable.

  All trying to destroy his mind.

  The soft knock on his door interrupted his thoughts. “’Morning,” she said.

  “‘Morning.”

  Nick shook his head to clear the last vestiges of the memories away, turned off his alarm, and got out of bed.

  The broken keyboard, battered beyond repair, lay on his desk as if he needed further proof of last night’s “episode.”

  And next to it his mother had left the pill bottle. Usually she kept it in the kitchen, high in the cupboard above the refrigerator, as if he were still a little boy who could neither reach nor climb that high, to dispense his medication strictly in accordance with the doctor’s orders.

  But today she’d left it on the desk, and if two pills worked last night, two might work again today.

  Okay, he prayed. I just want to be okay today.

  He dressed carefully, listening to his mother empty the dishwasher in the kitchen. She would want to keep him home today and call the doctor about what happened last night. But he wasn’t going to give her the chance. The more normal he acted, the more normal she would think he was. They didn’t put normal people into psychiatric hospitals. Besides, if he acted normal enough, he might even feel normal.

  He took a pill from the prescription bottle and washed it down. Then he brushed his teeth, combed his hair, smiled at himself in the mirror, grabbed his book bag, and headed downstairs.

  This was going to be a good day—he could feel it.

  Or was it just the medicine kicking in?

  Nick handed the prescription bottle to his mom, who shook one out and set it next to his orange juice, then put the medication back in its place in the cupboard above the fridge. “I think you better stay home today,” she said, just as he’d known she would. “I’m going to call your doctor.”

  Nick swallowed the second pill with the orange juice and spread peanut butter on his toast. “But I’m okay,” he said. “I feel great.”

  His mother turned away from the stove and eyed him appraisingly, her eyes boring into him as if she could actually see the extra pill he’d taken. “Really?”

  “Really,” he insisted, biting into the toast. “No problem.” “No voices?” She turn
ed off the stove and slid two eggs onto a plate.

  Nick shook his head. “None.” He busied himself putting some marmalade on the toast so she wouldn’t see the lie in his eyes. He could still hear them, but he wouldn’t—couldn’t—let her know that. He had to look normal, had to pray that the second pill would carry him through the day.

  “Maybe doubling your medication last night worked,” his mother mused, but he could hear the doubt in her voice.

  He shrugged as if he’d all but forgotten last night. “I’ve gotta go, or I’ll be late.” He pulled his jacket on, picked up his book bag with one hand, and grabbed his peanut-buttered toast with the other.

  Lily Dunnigan wrapped her son in a hug before he could slip out the kitchen door. “I just worry about you, that’s all,” she said as she kissed his cheek.

  “Well, don’t,” he said. “Worry about something else for a change, okay?”

  “Easy for you to say,” she replied, but managed to force a wan smile. “I’m going to call the doctor anyway about doubling your medication.”

  “Whatever,” Nick muttered as he escaped her embrace. “I really gotta go, Mom.”

  “Okay,” she sighed. “Have a good day.”

  “I will,” Nick tossed back as he banged out the kitchen door and into the chilly September morning. I will, he repeated to himself.

  But he was no more than a block from his house when the committee in his head began raising their volume, shouting loud enough to drown out everything else.

  By the time he got to school, they had his full attention.

  Kate Williams drained the last of the cold coffee from her travel mug, dropped the mug into the cup holder between the seats in her car, and turned into the hospital parking lot.

  She would see two new clients here this morning. One was a newborn infant abandoned by his mother—left in a Dumpster like so much garbage but found twenty-four hours later, having somehow survived the ordeal of its first day in the world. The baby would be easy to place: his story was all over the media, and her office had already been flooded with offers of foster homes and half a dozen pleas to adopt him.