In the Middle of the Night

  “We stay,” he said.

  Denny dared to do what he had never done before. He put his arm around his father’s shoulder, and felt his father lean against him.

  The telephone continued to ring.

  Now, this moment: what he had been waiting for, standing on the corner, a shadow among other shadows, watching the parade of kids trooping by in the guise of ghosts and pirates and figures from the movies and television, Barney and Aladdin and one small girl in a bulging golden dress over her coat to protect her from the chill of the evening.

  He spotted no one who resembled the monsters from the bus stop, simply because the children passed by in orderly fashion, no pushing or shoving, shepherded by someone older. Barstow was strict about Halloween trick-or-treating. One hour, between 6:00 and 7:00 P.M., and then home to empty all those paper bags of candy.

  Denny glanced at his watch. Almost seven. Breathless, expectant, he checked out cars as they passed, his head swiveling like someone watching a tennis match. The neon lights of the 24-Hour Store down the street danced nervously in the air.

  He had lied to his father about where he was going tonight. Told him that he wanted to take a bus to the library, where a Halloween program in the young adult room was being held. He saw his father wince, as always, at the mention of Halloween. Then, shrugging in resignation, he said: “Have a nice time.” But typically, could not resist adding: “Be careful.” Denny was both dismayed and elated to find out how easy it was to lie.

  Without warning, from his blind side, a car pulled up, headlights sweeping the sidewalk, catching him in its glare. Blinking, he strained to see the driver, but saw only a dark shadow at the wheel. A dim hand beckoned, and he stepped toward the car, an old car, four doors, black, like a car in an old gangster movie. He pulled the door open.

  The small bulb in the ceiling cast a feeble light as Denny slipped inside. Hand trembling with excitement—and nervousness—he closed the door, turned toward the driver and, astonished, saw Dave at the wheel. Without his roof, his skull inflamed, crazy tufts of hair sticking up all over, eyes deep with sadness, tight lips hiding the false teeth.

  “I’m sorry,” Dave said. “I didn’t want this to happen. Lulu’s my sister …” As if he had rehearsed saying these words.

  A scent of perfume came from the backseat, as if someone had opened a fancy magazine. Hands slipped around his eyes, blinding him, soft flesh against his cheek, then that sultry telephone voice in his ear:

  “Hello, Denny. I’m so glad we’re finally getting together.” Then, urgent and commanding: “Drive, Baby, drive.”

  The apartment they entered was cluttered, a confusion of cardboard boxes, clothing piled everywhere, bare walls pockmarked with ugly holes where pictures once hung. A transient look to the place, as if nobody had ever lived there or it was about to be abandoned.

  Denny sensed that Lulu had not accompanied them into the house but he was reluctant to look behind him. She had remained in the backseat during the short drive to the apartment. Her hands had slipped from his eyes to the back of his neck then to his shoulders, touching him lightly.

  Denny had managed to stay calm during the drive, simply because he trusted Dave. He was puzzled, yes, and nervous. Very nervous. His palms were moist, his thoughts in a whirl with a lot of questions—hell, a million questions—but he told himself to take it easy. Dave said nothing, concentrating on driving, his knuckles pale on the steering wheel. Lulu hummed a tune Denny did not recognize.

  Dave now led him through a dark hallway to a closed door. Opening the door, he motioned Denny to step in, not looking at him, eyes downcast.

  The first fingers of apprehension plucked at Denny. He had read somewhere that members of a jury never looked at a defendant when they were bringing in a guilty verdict, and Dave avoided Denny’s eyes as he directed him to sit down in a straight-back kitchen chair. Except for two other identical chairs, the room was unfurnished, an unshaded bulb in the ceiling filling the place with naked light. Denny sat down tentatively on the edge of the seat, and turned, looking for Lulu, who was not to be seen. Finally turning to Dave, he was shocked. In the harsh, merciless light, Dave’s face was red and splotchy, an ugly sore near his mouth, his eyes fevered and bloodshot.

  “The Big One is back, Denny,” he said. “Recess is over and the bell is ringing.”

  A clumping noise caused Denny to turn, and he saw a woman entering the room, leaning on an aluminum walker as she made her way painfully toward him, one deliberate step at a time.

  “Hello again, Denny.”

  That voice. Lulu’s voice. But this could not be Lulu, this woman with legs in steel braces, old, not old like a grandmother, but not young, skin tight on her cheeks, gaunt, disheveled black hair tumbling over her forehead in untidy bangs.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Denny,” she said, the voice still husky but tinged with sarcasm now.

  Denny’s chest tightened; his throat constricted. He knew he had been fooling himself about Lulu, had known that she could not be the girl he had envisioned during those afternoon calls, but he did not expect someone like this—old and disabled, with bitterness pulling at the edges of her lips and a cold glitter in her eyes.

  He looked toward Dave, not so much to see him but to take his eyes away from this woman who was Lulu.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked Dave. “Why am I here?”

  But Dave didn’t answer him, looked at Lulu instead.

  “Let’s not play any games, Lulu. If you have to go through with this, then do it right away.”

  Do what? Denny didn’t really want to know the answer to that question. He just wanted to get out of there. He wasn’t tied down, figured he could get up and leave at any moment. But some instinct told him it would not be as simple as that.

  “Your father,” Lulu said. “That’s why you’re here, Denny.”

  “What about my father?”

  “Your father killed me. When that balcony crashed down. I died at the Globe Theater twenty-five years ago because of him.” Did she say died? “He started that fire and the balcony fell and we died, me and all the others.”

  “My father wasn’t guilty of anything,” Denny said. “He was never arrested. There was no evidence against him.”

  “Cover-up,” she said. “You weren’t there. You didn’t hear the screams. You didn’t feel the pain. You didn’t die the way I did.”

  A madwoman, Denny thought. I’m getting out of this place.

  He made as if to rise from the chair but had no will to do it, his body not responding to his urgency.

  A cold, crafty smile spread across Lulu’s face. Harsh light glinted on the walker as she shuffled toward him.

  “I don’t think you noticed the tiny pinprick in the car, Denny. A small needle in your neck as we drove here. Takes about twenty minutes to do its little job. I’m an expert with needles. You learn a lot spending time in hospitals, and I learned about needles. This was a special one. Keeps your mind alert but puts your body to sleep for a while.”

  She was right. He could not move. Or, rather, had no capacity to move. Wanted to, tried to lift his hands, tried to raise his body from the chair, but none of it suddenly seemed worth the effort.

  “But no pain, Denny. I don’t want you to feel pain. I want your father to feel the pain, the worst pain of all. The pain of losing his son and knowing he was to blame. That’s the worst thing of all, Denny. Outliving your child …”

  He felt doom descending upon him as the meaning of her words became clear. He knew now why he was brought here. For revenge—Lulu’s revenge against his father. He looked at Dave, seeking help, but Dave’s eyes were riveted on his sister, his body fragile, his hands clinging to his own chair, as if he’d fall if he had no support.

  “What are you going to do?” Denny asked, trying to keep his voice normal, trying to hide the panic that streaked through his body, accelerating his heart.

  “I’m going to be kind, Denny. I promised you no pain at all an
d I’ll keep that promise. But I can’t guarantee what happens after that. That’s the sad part—what happens after you die …”

  “What are you talking about?” Dave asked, speaking the exact words Denny wanted to utter.

  “I’m talking about what you’ve always wanted to know, Baby,” she said. “What happened when I died. Now I’ll tell you: My body was still as a stone. No heartbeat. No breath going in and out of my lungs. Dead! Want to hear the rest, Baby?”

  “Yes,” Dave said, rigid against the chair, eyes leaping with fever.

  “Nothing,” she said, voice flat. “Nothing, Baby. That’s the horror of what happened to me. Worse than nothing! Becoming a blank! A terrifying blank! Unable to think and yet aware, knowing that I was a cipher and a zero. And, worst of all, my brain not working, only my awareness alive. That was the horror—knowing that I would be like this forever, for an eternity. No light at the end of the tunnel, Baby. No heaven and no hell. Or maybe that was hell, being a cipher in all that terrible blankness.”

  As she talked, her face became a blank, her eyes unfocused, as if she were not standing there in the room but had gone far away, someplace else. Then, back again: “Finally, it ended and I was trapped under the balcony. Alive again. Thinking. My bowels gave way and I lay there in my stench and my terror until they rescued me. But the terror was not from being trapped in the Globe but trapped in that eternity of nothing …”

  Denny saw tears on Dave’s cheeks, his face a mask of agony, mouth agape, his false teeth like small white bones jutting from his gums.

  She did not acknowledge Dave’s tears. Instead, she looked at Denny with those black eyes: “That’s what your father did to me. To an eleven-year-old girl. Gave me a glimpse of horror, the worst horror of my life, worse even than these useless, helpless legs of mine.”

  A small twitching of his foot and a sudden tingling in his right hand gave Denny hope just when everything had seemed hopeless. His limbs were coming to life again. Maybe he had a chance of escaping this crazy woman, after all.

  Dave reached out to embrace her, but Lulu shrank away from him.

  “There’s nothing out there, Baby. Now you know why I never wanted to tell you what happened. No matter what the priests or the ministers say, or those people talking about near-death experiences …”

  “Maybe it was only a nightmare, Lulu,” Dave said.

  “Poor Baby, always trying to make things easy for me.”

  Denny could wiggle his toes. A cramp in the arch of his left foot was beautiful in its pain, signifying life and energy. His right arm felt as if insects were stinging it.

  “If you want to make things easy for me, Baby, help me do what I have to do,” Lulu was saying to Dave. Then, swiveling toward Denny once more: “Now it’s your turn, Denny. To experience that terrible nothingness. Just a small pinprick and the beginning of sleep. Then nothing. Remember your father did this to you.”

  Denny didn’t know where it came from, but a hypodermic needle suddenly appeared in Dave’s hand. Lulu held out her hand but Dave withheld the needle. “It doesn’t have to be this way, Lulu.”

  “There’s no going back, Baby.” Her hand still extended, palm up, waiting.

  Denny poised himself to leap, placing his hands flat on the chair on each side of his hips. Trying to get up from the chair, he found, to his horror, that he was unable to move his body, despite the surge of strength in his hands and legs. He was still trapped, his body caught in a strange inertia, refusing to obey the commands of his brain.

  As he looked helplessly down at this body that was betraying him, panic in full sway now, he heard Lulu cry out: “What have you done, Baby?”

  Glancing up, he saw Dave withdrawing the needle from Lulu’s neck, saw a small worm of blood against her pale flesh, saw disbelief and horror distorting her face.

  “I love you, Lulu,” Dave said as she threw up her hands, losing her balance, then collapsing against the walker and stumbling over it, her hands grasping wildly for support and finding nothing to cling to. The floor trembled when her body struck it.

  For one terrible moment, silence.

  Still pinned in his chair, he watched as Dave knelt beside Lulu, cradling her in his arms. Bubbles of foam appeared on her lips; her body shook convulsively, then was still.

  “I loved her,” Dave said. “She suffered so much and didn’t mean to be cruel.”

  “She wanted to kill me,” Denny said, nodding at the hypodermic needle on the floor.

  “My fault for letting it happen,” Dave said. “I shouldn’t have let it go as far as I did.” He settled himself on the floor beside Lulu, holding her tenderly. “Get out of here, Denny. Please. Forget about us.”

  “I can’t,” Denny said. Meaning: he couldn’t move and he couldn’t forget.

  “That drug must be wearing off by now. Stand up. Leave this place.”

  “What about you, Dave?”

  Dave didn’t answer, his hand stroking Lulu’s face.

  “What’s going to happen to you?” Denny persisted.

  Dave looked at him for a long, long moment, depths of sadness in his eyes.

  And Denny knew what Dave was going to do.

  “Please go, please leave us.” Dave’s voice now a whisper, weariness in every syllable.

  Denny rose from the chair, robotlike. With movement came an urgency to leave this scene of sickness and death, get away from that demented woman dead on the floor and the ravaged man beside her.

  He stumbled to the door on quivering legs. Bracing himself, he looked back, saw Dave’s sad smile, those gleaming false teeth, saw him fumbling in his pocket.

  “Good-bye, Dave,” he said, closing the door gently behind him.

  Outside, his body surging with strength in the brisk night air, he began to run, wildly and blindly, his heart keeping hectic pace, through the neighborhood streets.

  Out of breath finally, pain clutching his groin, he paused at the telephone cubicle from which he had called Les Albert. After a while, he groped for a quarter in his pocket, placed it in the slot, heard the tumble of the coin in the mechanism, and prepared himself for what he had to say.

  Later, he huddled in a doorway as an ambulance screamed past, a blur of white, followed by a police cruiser, blue lights twisting on its roof. He had not told the police dispatcher his name. Had told her what the police would find at the address he gave. He did not want Dave and Lulu lying abandoned and undiscovered in that apartment for hours or perhaps days.

  He stood on the corner, looking at the neon sign of the 24-Hour Store down the street. The 4 was dark. Although cold, he stood there awhile.

  He did not want to go home.

  But there was no other place to go.

  Maybe that’s what home was supposed to be, he thought, turning into his driveway.

  And you were lucky to have it.

  The monsters were acting up as usual at the bus stop, jostling and elbowing each other, calling out rude remarks to people passing by. A new monster had appeared, a kid no more than ten years old who stood apart from the rest, a sneer on his lips, along with a cigarette. He stood in a sort of half-crouch, revealing small sharp teeth when he inhaled. Denny searched his memory and labeled him Ygor II.

  Looking up the street, he remembered the day—it seemed so long ago—that Dawn Chelmsford had arrived, and he wondered if she might show up again. He hadn’t called her. He didn’t know what he’d do if she appeared. She had become a pale presence in his life. But everything today was pale, like the early frost that had whitened windowpanes this morning.

  Weariness tugged at his bones and muscles, and his eyes burned. He had not slept very much over the weekend. The telephone had rung incessantly. Denny occasionally sat up with his father during the night hours, watching as his father listened patiently, the phone pressed to his ear, the lines in his face getting deeper as the night wore on. He remembered his father’s words, like a prayer: I offer myself up to them.

  Several times, he had want
ed to snatch the telephone from his father’s hands and shout at whoever was at the other end of the line, Leave us alone … you must he some kind of sicko … get a life.

  Some of the weekend calls had been from reporters, to whom his father had repeated his familiar “No Comment.” Curious people walked by the house, craning their necks as their eyes swept the building. Some took pictures. One man wielded a cumbersome camcorder—maybe a TV cameraman.

  Denny had left the apartment twice during the weekend. The first time was to walk by Dave and Lulu’s apartment. The house wore an air of vacancy, the window shades pulled down, advertising circulars strewn on the porch. The Barstow Patriot had carried a story that day on the obituary page. The headline was stark and blunt:

  SUICIDE PACT

  TAKES 2 LIVES

  The story was matter-of-fact, not sensationalized like in the supermarket tabloids. For the first time, he found out Dave’s family name—O’Hearn—astonished that he had never bothered to ask what it was. He shook his head at the sad, sad words: “There are no known survivors.”

  Denny knew it would be a long time before he would forget the events of that night. Forget? He would never forget. How close he had come to dying; the memory still caused his breath to catch. When he closed his eyes, the image of Lulu lying on the floor and Dave embracing her there came alive, like a movie in his mind. But real, not a movie at all.

  Turning away from Dave’s house, he wondered if he would ever tell his parents what happened. Maybe when the anniversary was over, the phone no longer ringing. Or maybe never. Maybe he’d forget it more easily if he never talked about it.

  The second time he left the apartment was to accompany his mother to the early-morning six-thirty mass at St. Martin’s. The church was almost empty. Kneeling in the fragrance of burning candles he thought about Lulu and the blankness. He wondered whether the blankness waited for everyone. He glanced at his mother, saw her praying devoutly, lips moving, eyes downcast. All the priests and nuns believed in heaven and hell and purgatory. Maybe the blankness was hell, as Lulu had suggested. He shuddered as a waft of cold stirred the air. He prayed the old prayers of his childhood—Our Father; Hail Mary, full of grace—the words automatic, but they filled his mind, took his thoughts away from Lulu and the blankness. Maybe the act of praying itself was the answer to the prayer. The thought caught him by surprise. It was something he would have to think about. Meanwhile, he kept on saying the prayers, over and over.