Black as Night: A Fairy Tale Retold (45 page)

Hurriedly he threw Nora’s arm over his shoulder, pulled her into a fireman’s carry, and raced for his life down the ramp and off to the side. He saw the headlights and they blinded him momentarily. The car wasn’t stopping. It was speeding towards him in fury.

He reached the bottom of the ramp and scrambled over the concrete barrier, tumbling onto the ground three feet below with Nora on top of him. The white car screamed past him with rage, but couldn’t touch him.

Stumbling to his feet, he stooped to pick up Nora again, hoping against hope that the fall hadn’t hurt her worse. “Matt?” he shouted. Now he was on the road beneath the parkway, even less traveled, where similar dangers awaited him.

Shouldering Nora, he tried to figure out the quickest way to safety. He heard the whine of the white car once again, and staggered in the opposite direction. Bonnie would be making another circuit of the cloverleaf, looking for a way to get off and crush him. And this back road would be an ideal place to do it.

He started back towards busier town streets, lurching beneath his burden. Tires squealed. He had unwittingly stepped out into traffic.
Careful!
he said to himself, and hurried unsteadily across the road, making another car shriek to a stop to avoid him. He heard what he was certain was the sound of an illegal U-turn. There was a blinding sweep of headlights.

Then the car swerved aside and pulled to a stop beside him. It was white. He blinked, and recognized a familiar battered Toyota. Inside were Brother George and Matt.

“Get inside, quick!” the older brother rasped.

Leon tumbled Nora inside the car, Matt grabbing her shoulders and pulling her in. Leon squeezed in and slammed the door. The Toyota roared to life and sped away from the deadly cloverleaf.

“You okay, Leon?” Brother George asked. “What happened to Nora?”

Leon was too winded to reply. For a few minutes he looked this way and that way, trying to see if the white car was following them.

But it wasn’t. He didn’t see it again.

III

God, help me
, Bear begged.
Please help Blanche. Please protect her
. He worked feverishly at his bonds, until his wrists were hot, wet, and stinging, but to no avail. At last he realized it was useless. He thought of shouting for help, but who would hear him? Fish and Rose might have come to the house, but they would be locked outside on the street, unable to get in. Did Fish have a key? Bear doubted it—his brother didn’t hold onto things like old keys. They might be standing outside the house right now, trying to decide what to do. They might even suppose he had just gone home and leave. Bear’s heart sank.

There was only his father—could he possibly hear him? And if he heard, could he come? Would he come?

As desperate as his situation was, he balked at the thought of doing it. But what other choice did he have? He gritted his teeth and made himself move, yanking his ankles upwards, gritting his teeth against the pain. The settee was heavy, but he could pull it inch by inch from the wall. Jerking and dragging this burden bit by bit behind him, he forced himself across the carpet over to the door. At last he put his mouth down to the crack. Swallowing and wetting his lips, he barked hoarsely, “Dad! Dad! Help!”

There was no answer. He roared with all his might, “Dad!”

Dizzy with the effort, he leaned his head back, feeling desolation overwhelm him. Elaine would come back, and he would die here, in this suffocating nightmare of a house, unheard. Unseen. Would his dad even know his son had been here?

“Dad!” he screamed again, and closed his eyes with the pain that heaved up in his chest.
I’m like a kid, a crying, sobbing little baby, crying out for his dad
, he thought. And it was probably just a pointless prelude to despair.

As he waited, the minutes passing, he thought for a moment that he heard a noise.

A faint, scrabbling scraping noise. Like a mouse creeping over the carpet.

He lifted his head and tried to hear through the ringing in his ears. Minutes went by.

There it was again. “Dad?” he tried again, and his voice was more like a croak than a human sound.

“Arthur? Is that you?” a voice came outside the door, as though from far away.

“Yes,” Bear whispered. Then he cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said again, hardly believing what he was hearing.

“I heard you calling.”

“I need your help,” Bear hesitated over what to say had happened. A fear suddenly rose up in him, of what Elaine might have told his father. He could imagine her going to the bedroom with some lie before she left. “Your oldest son was here, robbing our home. I had to call the police to come and get him.”

And Dad would believe her. He had always believed her.

Yet, Dad was outside the door right now.

“Are you all right? Why are you here?” his dad was saying.

Bear was fast fighting more and more despair welling up in him.
He’ll never believe you. You’ll never get him to trust you again. Especially not after you’ve neglected him for so long…
After all, a man as intelligent and sophisticated as his father couldn’t even accept that Elaine was responsible for his shoddy medical care. How much less likely was he to believe this twisted stratagem of Elaine’s? He had lived years under her spell.

“Dad, I—” he started, and then heard himself saying, “We need to help Blanche. She’s in trouble.”

There was a pause. Then his dad spoke. “Where did Elaine take her?”

“To the highway. She said she was going to run over her.” Bear’s words slowed as he felt anew the crushing weight of all the previous times he had accused Elaine to no avail. Years of pain and hopelessness welled up inside him as he remembered the humiliation of his father incredulously refusing to believe that Elaine would try to seduce a high school boy. Now the stakes had only gotten higher. Who was his dad going to side with—Blanche or Elaine?

Bear waited for his answer, his heart numb.

“Okay. I haven’t been doing too well lately, but I’ll try to get the door open.”

“Thanks, Dad,” he said, swallowing again. He heard more soft scraping noises. Then he added, “It might be locked.”

“I think I can get it,” said his father.

Bear heard hands fumbling with the lock, heard a knob turn, a click, and the door swung open.

He had expected to look up and see his father looking down at him, but to his amazement, his father was crouched on the floor, holding onto the doorjamb with one hand, while the other hung lifelessly down, both hands creviced like a skeleton’s. His skin was translucent, and his eyes hollowed. There was no way a man in his condition could stand upright. Bear realized that his father must have crawled down the hallway to get to him.

“Arthur,” his father said, his voice husky. “Who did this to you?”

Bear shifted onto his side and blinked. “Elaine,” he finally managed to say.

IV

It was night.

Night, inevitable night, had come upon her.

Even as she succumbed, falling through deeper and deeper layers of unconsciousness, she struggled to understand what had happened.
How it had happened
.

Another flash, this time more like delirium. She was with the old lady, back in the corridor of her old high school. It was red outside the windows.

The hallway was spinning around her as she tried to get to her feet.

“Where are you going to run to, Blanche? The enemy’s inside you now. You can’t escape.”

Blanche staggered down the hallway, and Elaine followed, laughing. The sound began to melt away into music that sounded like one of Bear’s piano pieces played backwards. There were ants climbing all over her leg. Blanche’s hands were shaking, but she tried to brush them off.

Then all of a sudden she came upon the corpse of what looked like the body of a dead horse, lying in its own blood. Elaine was standing on it, wearing red high-heeled shoes and grinding her teeth. There was something in her hands, something long, white, sharp, and twisted. Her voice spoke again. “I’ve got one last message for you, Blanche. It’s a life lesson, and I never want you to forget it. You can wait forever, and the prince will never show up. He’s not coming, Blanche. He never does. Your trust was in vain. You were better off alone.”

She was smiling at Blanche, but then her smile slithered off her face and down her arm, a red worm. It was coming towards Blanche. It stretched itself around her bare leg and began to suck. Elaine began floating up to the ceiling in a dance, waving her arms, her shoes shrieking. The unicorn’s horn fell and shattered to the floor. The windows began to slide down the walls. Blanche tried again to walk, but Elaine was everywhere, blocking her wherever she tried to go. “I’m going to make you into a lamppost,” Elaine said to her, and began to twist her around and around, and Blanche felt herself becoming stiffer and colder, like iron. Then slowly the world began to crystallize around her, like glass.

I’m turning into glass
, Blanche thought, and then sank into silence. Only the sirens outside kept screaming. Or was it still Elaine’s shoes, screaming as she ran, ran away?

Who could find her now, in this darkness?

V

After circling around to leave word with Charley for Father Bernard, Brother George had driven back to the Bronx to take the unconscious girl to the Catholic hospital nearest the friars.

As soon as he and Matt had laid her down on the hospital gurney, the nurses had swarmed around her, taking her pulse, checking her vital signs, and hooking up an IV. A nurse came with a clipboard, and Leon gave her as much information as he could.

“Do you know why she’s unconscious?” one nurse asked.

“I know she has a heart problem of some kind,” Leon said hesitantly.

“Check for digoxin in her system,” Brother George cut in suddenly. “I have an idea that she might have been dosed with it.”

The medical people immediately pulled the gurney into a curtained-off cubicle to hook her up to a heart monitor. Waiting and praying, the three friars stood outside.

After some time, a doctor came out. He recognized the friars and came over to them at once. “She’s having life-threatening arrhythmia,” he said, and explained, “Her heartbeat’s abnormal, and, combined with low blood pressure, it doesn’t look as though her brain’s getting enough oxygen and glucose. It seems like she’s gone into a coma.”

“Are you checking for digoxin?” Brother George asked.

The doctor nodded. “Normally we’d try cardioversion—electrical shocking—in this case, but because of the possibility of digoxin, we’re putting her on heart-protective meds instead. Her life is in danger. Do you know why she was taking digoxin?”

Brother George shook his head. “All I know is that this afternoon she gave me a bottle that contained digoxin pills. She said she thought someone she knew was being poisoned with them. A man with a brain tumor. When I said it might make him sick, make him go into a coma, she was upset and hurried off. I warned her to get help, but—” he paused, and his voice dropped. “I don’t know what happened after she left.”

“Is that why you went looking for her?” Leon asked, after the doctor had made some notes and hurried on his way.

The older brother nodded. “I asked Father Francis if I could take the car and go looking for her. Just like you, I was driving around the 96
^th
Street station.”

“Then I saw him, flagged him down and sent him after you,” Matt said.

“George, this sick friend of hers with the brain tumor—did she tell you his name?” Leon pressed.

Brother George shook his head. “I don’t even know Nora’s last name. Do you?”

The two novices each shook their heads. “We don’t know a lot about her, do we?”

Leon looked at the curtain behind him, where he could see the shadows of the medical personnel still working on the comatose girl. “Nora, I wish you had told us more,” he whispered.

VI

It took Bear’s father a long time to cut the knots on Bear’s wrists, which had gotten tighter during his exertions. It was an excruciating process, and his dad only had one hand with which to use Elaine’s desk knife. By the time his dad had tugged the last cord free, Bear’s clenched jaw ached from the effort not to cry out. He had thought at times that his father would wear out or give up, but apparently the state of Bear’s wrists was so terrible that his father’s anger kept him going. “What kind of monster did this to you?” he said over and over again as he worked at the knots.

Bear kept repeating, rather lamely, “I did most of it myself, trying to get free.” His father didn’t seem to register the fact that Elaine could have done such a thing, which didn’t surprise Bear.

When his hands were free, Bear had to admit that they looked pretty awful—the skin all around both wrists was lacerated and bleeding.

“Thanks, Dad,” he said.

His dad was pale, but his one working eye was concerned as he tilted his head over his son’s hands, “We need to get something for those cuts, Arthur.”