He did. He chased after her, across the damp sand. The sound of the waves ahead of them was very loud, crashing in the dark. He could sense them more than see the ocean, a glimmer of liquid that spoke a volume deeper than time. Amanda angled down toward the surf and then ran beside it, the waves high above her, crashing into the sand. At any moment, a wave might sweep over them and take them into the sea.
He ran behind her. She was daring him, and daring the sea. Hislungs ached. He was not in the same shape he had been twenty years before, when Martha King first called him from Brightwood in the deep of the night, and he remembered picking up the phone, saying, “Yes?”
For you, I will always say yes.
The shape ahead of him was growing distant. Amanda was getting away. He could not see in the dark and was afraid of the sneaker waves. The sound of the ocean was distracting him. A huge wave suddenly crashed over the sand, flooding his boots, and he found himself running away from the sea as much as following her.
Ahead, in the slashing rain, her back disappeared, and only the ocean was left, roaring at him and sending fingers of doom searching for him.
Amanda made it to the hotel, panting and soaking wet. Her shoes were like clumps of sand. Rivulets ran from them as she ran across the parking lot to her room and, with shaking hands, unlocked her door.
She slammed it shut behind her, trembling.
She looked out the window. She saw nothing, besides rain blowing across the nearly empty lot. The only cars parked were hers and Charlie’s truck. The front office was dark, all the lights off. She peered farther into town. Everything looked dark.
She scrambled for her phone, wet in her pocket. The service was out. The hotel phone was out too. She didn’t want to chance going outside for help. The man could be there, waiting with his knife. Shaking, she dragged a chair under the doorknob. She had seen it done on television. Then she went and sat on the floor, against the bed. She held the phone in her hand, praying for service.
Morning did not come for a very long time.
“Morning, miss.”
It was Charlie, outside her door. “Lost power last night. You okay?”
Amanda peered outside. The day seemed unnaturally bright. She checked her phone. It was back on. She shut the door without answering and called Larry.
“Larry, I’m scared,” she said.
22
Martha went running from her car. She was fumbling the keys in her panic. The building rose above her. The night watchman had gotten up for his rounds, then fallen back to sleep at his desk, snoring with his chin on his chest. There was a circle of damp on his blue shirt.
She let herself in quietly, fear coursing through her. She made her way quickly down the treatment ward. Halfway there, she saw she had put on old sneakers.You know why, a voice whispered to her.
“Please, God, make it not true,” she whispered to herself, stealing down the dark hall, with its closed, empty isolation rooms. “Please. I will give you anything if he is okay. Please, God,” she prayed like a child.
She unlocked the therapy room door, slammed on the lights. A single bulb in a wire cage illuminated the room.
The rug was still rolled up on the floor. It was clear from the shape what was inside it.
Please, God, let him still be alive.
Martha King fell to her knees. She put her hands on the cold, rough fabric of the rug. For some reason, for the first time, she noticed the sticker on the underside. It saidWaterproof weave.She had ordered this rug because it looked tough. Her mind was full of jumbled maudlin thoughts.
She tugged at the ends of the tape and peeled him open, as if he were a rotting grape. He had thin hair for a child. His eyes were closed. There was a purple rim around his mouth, and a glaze of vomit.
She knew exactly what the medical examiner would say.
Death by asphyxiation. Death by terror.
Murder.
There was a small chance they might say it was an accident. But not if the authorities went digging into the Axis Treatment Center, and what had happened there. It would be the end of her career, the end to her life, and, more important, the end to a groundbreaking therapeutic method.
Martha touched the dead boy. Gently, she pulled him out of the rug, and she held him in her lap—she was still wearing her overcoat—and rocked him against her ample chest. She held him with tenderness and with love, because in her mind, it was all just a mistake. A big, terrible, awful, never-to-be-repeated mistake. The poor boy had been left alone.
He still deserved therapy. He still needed holding time.
Martha held him, rocking him, weeping a little, and eventually her tears ceased, and she started to think of what she needed to do, to protect herself and her future patients.
