Bedtime Story (51 page)

“He
does
like it,” she said, turning back to him. “Don’t you? And watch this.” Dipping one hand into the soapy water she pushed a small wave toward him, and his smile broadened.

I sank to my knees beside her, alongside the bathtub. “When did all that start?” I asked, feeling like my heart might break.

“When he came home.” She shrugged. “He just really likes the bath, I guess.”

I dipped my hand into the tub and pushed some water toward him, watched him smile. I did it over and over again, waiting for him to burst into a giggle, the way he had when he was a baby, but he didn’t. Just that wide smile.

“So does he play for a while?”

“Oh, we’ve already had plenty of playtime,” she said. “We were just getting ready to wash up when you came in.”

“I’ll do that,” I said, reaching for the cloth.

She looked at me, then passed me the cloth. “Are you sure you remember how?” she teased gently as she stood up and slipped behind me.

“I think I remember,” I said. I dipped the cloth into the bathwater.

Jacqui let her hand linger on my shoulder for a moment.

Washing him, the cloth gliding over his pale, slick skin, I couldn’t help but be reminded of bathing him as a baby. He was bigger now, but there were still the same fingers and toes to be washed between, the same ears to get behind, the same bum to scrub.

It almost made me feel happy, to be that close to him again, to be the father he needed. Someone to rinse him off and help him to his feet as the tub drained, someone to pat him dry with a fluffy warm towel as he stood there.

“I laid out some clothes for him on his bed,” Jacqui said.

“That’s gonna be a long walk,” I said. “Are you ready to walk all the way to the living room?” I wrapped the towel around him as best I could, then I took his right hand and lifted it gently. He carefully stepped one
foot over the side and planted it on the floor before lifting the other out of the tub.

I led him into the living room, and sat on the couch while Jacqui finished drying and dressing him.

“Are you hungry?” she asked. She peeled a banana and broke it into smaller chunks, placing them one at a time into his hand. He never looked at her, but when he felt the banana in his hand he would raise it carefully, haltingly, toward his mouth and put the whole piece in, smearing it into the corners of his lips. He chewed impassively, without any change in his expression, no hint of pleasure or distaste. When the banana was done, Jacqui handed him a sippy cup.

“So are you feeling a little better?” she asked. “With a good night’s sleep under your belt?”

“A bit,” I lied, watching David’s hands. The sleep hadn’t helped. It was bathing David, washing him and drying him, that was allowing me to feel even half-human again.

She picked up her coffee cup from the table and took a small sip, staring into its depths. When she looked back at me, she asked, “So what happened in New York?”

I shook my head.

“I know something happened,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like you were last night. You looked like you were going to snap.”

She wasn’t far off.

“I can’t,” I said, finally. “You wouldn’t—”

“There’s nothing you could have done that I wouldn’t understand, Chris.” The look on her face was pretty convincing, though I knew otherwise. “Did you sleep with someone?”

“I didn’t sleep with anyone,” I said, recognizing the inherent falsehood underlying my words. I would have.

“Then what?” she asked. “You can tell me.”

I sighed. My chase was over; she might as well know why I was licking my wounds.

“Okay,” I said, still not sure if this was a good idea. “But you have to hear me out. The whole story. All right?”

She nodded, but there was a slight darkening of her eyes, a wariness.

I leaned forward, put my elbows on my knees. “Have you ever experienced anything that you couldn’t explain?” I began. “Something that you knew was true, but there was no way to make rational sense of it?”

She looked at me sympathetically, and for a moment it seemed like she might answer, that we might find common ground. But she said, “This is about that book, isn’t it?”

I already wanted to take it back, to have kept my surly silence. “Yes,” I said. “It’s about the book.”

She didn’t say anything else, just lifted her hand to indicate that I should go on.

It was easier to tell her everything, from my first suspicions about the book to my fumbling attempts to research it on the Internet to meeting Nora and Sarah. That was when she stood up and started walking slowly around the room, her arms folded tightly across her chest.

Her back was to me when I told her about meeting Marci in the bar, but she didn’t seem to react. Not the way she did when I told her about spending two days in the Hunter Barlow library and about everything I had found there, tightening her grip around the rail of David’s bed.

She leaned over David’s bed for the last part of the story, about Marci that last night, about meeting her back in my room, about her drugging me and stealing the book. I couldn’t face her as I told her about that, staring holes into the coffee table instead.

She kept her silence for the longest time, and when I finally looked up she was staring at me, her face hard, impassive. “Is that it?” she asked, her voice cold.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “That’s everything that happened.”

“No,” she said, standing partway behind the chair, her hand on its back. “I mean,
is that it
? Are you done with that goddamn book?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

“Chris, I understand,” she said. “Something terrible has happened, and it’s easier for you to disappear into some”—she looked for the right word—“fairy tale, rather than facing up to the reality that’s around you. I understand that. I’d like to lose myself in a fairy tale, too, but I don’t
have the luxury of a trip to New York to indulge myself. I was here, looking after our son, while you were spending your days in an old library and picking up women in bars.”

“I didn’t—”

“And you know what’s almost as crazy as you and this damn book? It’s the fact that I don’t care that you picked up some strange woman. Fine. More power to you.” Something in her tone, though, didn’t ring true. “But this, all this nonsense about the book, and magic, it’s got to stop. It’s got to stop
now.”
Her expression was livid, and she couldn’t even look at me now, staring instead out the window behind me.

“The book’s gone,” I said weakly.

“Thank God for that,” she said. “Now maybe things can go back to normal around here.”

“No,” I almost shouted. She looked up at me sharply, as if unable to believe that the word had come out of my mouth. “We can’t ‘get back to normal.’ ” I gestured at David, who hadn’t even flinched as our voices were raised around him. “Does he seem ‘normal’ to you?”

“At least he’s real,” she spat back, her eyes burning.

“You’ve seen it, though. You know that reading to him from that book soothes him, keeps him from having seizures.”

“There are
countless
possible explanations for that. Maybe he’s comforted by hearing the last story he was reading. Maybe he does hear it, but he can’t express that to us. Maybe—”

“Countless
lousy
explanations,” I said, my voice falling, “and you won’t even consider the possibility that I’m right. You won’t even consider what I’ve found. About Pilbream. About that little boy in Seattle. Doesn’t that—?”

“I have to live in the real world, Chris. Someone has to be here, taking care of our son, while you go off on these tangents. Someone has to be
here
, Chris. And whether you’re in New York or upstairs, you’re just not.”

David stepped through the doorway. The room was no bigger than his living room at home, the walls black where the explosion had charred
the slime. The heat from the flames at the centre of the floor was almost unbearable.

We’re going to have to figure it out pretty quick, before this place turns into an oven
.

“Yeah.”

He looked around the room, peering into the corners, trying to find anyplace the Stone might have been hidden.

You know where it is
.

David looked at the burning symbol in the middle of the room, reluctant to accept what he knew to be true. The Sunstone had to be there, hidden in the flames somewhere.

“So do you think we should just wait?” he asked. “It can’t burn forever, right?”

It can if this chamber is built on some sort of underground deposit
, Matt said.
There’s no other fuel for the flames
.

Matt was right: there was no wood or anything in the symbols carved into the floor. The flames seemed to be dancing in the air. Like the gas fireplace in their living room back home. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s exactly the sort of thing Gafilair would do. Have me start a fire that I can’t put out, that I have to get through to get the Sunstone. Which,” he added, for Matt’s benefit, “we all know that I’m destined to get.” As he spoke the words, that niggling thought came back, that sense that there was something wrong with the reasoning.

Right
.

“So all we have to do is use what we have.” He took another look around the chamber for something to put out the flames.

Exactly
.

“Except—” The room was completely empty. No hidden nooks, no shadowy corners. No handprints on the walls. And the flames were getting higher. “We don’t have anything.”

There has to be a way for you to get the Stone
, Matt said, his voice growing desperate as the temperature rose.

And then something clicked within David. He’d been looking at the question all wrong, trying to figure out how to extinguish the flames. Putting out the fire wasn’t the issue—the main thing was to get the Stone.

Where are you going?
Matt called as David stumbled toward the doorway to the antechamber, pulling the strap of the bag over his head as he went.

Outside the door it was cooler, but only slightly. David fell to his knees and fumbled with the buckle of the bag, frantically searching through its contents. The map. The canister. The Stone. There!

He pulled out the small bag that had been in the canister, remembering the cool, numbing feel of the red sand as he had rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.

“You might be right,” he muttered, pulling at the tie. “About me having everything that I need.”

He tugged at the leather thong, which had been knotted and wasn’t coming loose. The knife that Loren had given him cut through the leather with ease.

Careful not to spill any, he poured a small amount of the red sand into the palm of his hand. The moment it touched bare skin, David could feel the cold, like a cough candy in his mouth. It wasn’t sand, though. More like a powdery clay that dissolved in the sweat of his palm, producing a scarlet, sticky mud.

Without hesitating, David began to rub the mud into his face, slathering it on thick. The shock of the cold took his breath away, but he kept rubbing, adding more of the clay to his hands when they started to get dry.

Make sure you get your neck
, Matt advised.
And your ears. And right around your eyes
.

“This had better work,” he said, spreading the mud, shivering.

It will
, Matt said.
It has to
.

There it was again, that sense that there was something wrong with Matt’s theory. David pushed the thought out of his mind. One thing at a time.

Any exposed skin …
Matt urged.

David frantically smeared the mud over his forearms, up to his sleeves, then around his fingers and thumbs, adding more mud until he was coated.

He tried shaking the bag out over his palm again, but nothing came out.

“I hope there was enough,” he said, dropping the leather bag on the floor as he stood up.

Don’t waste any time
, Matt advised.
We don’t know how long that mud will protect you
.

The fire had risen almost to the ceiling, a roaring white-orange jet of light and heat. The air felt like it was singeing his legs and chest, his throat, his lungs; anywhere that the mud covered felt cool.

“So far so good.”

He fought against ebbing waves of heat to cross the room, stepping high over the band of flames that formed the outer ring of the Sunstone symbol.

Within the ring of fire, the heat was making it nearly impossible to breathe. Smoke started to curl off his clothes.

It’s not smoke
, Matt said.
It’s steam. It’s your sweat, evaporating
.

The heat was sapping what little strength he had left.

I don’t know how much longer I can stay in here
, he thought to Matt, keeping his mouth tightly closed.

You’re almost there
.

David dropped to his knees in front of the pillar of flame. It made a roaring noise, like a plane taking off. He could feel a hot sizzling around his head as his hair started to singe.

His eyes stung as he peered into the base of the flame. He forced himself not to close them; he had to be sure …