Darkness (42 page)

The doctor didn’t seem to have changed a bit. His strong chin was as well-defined now as it was in the picture, and his dark hair, shot through with gray, was unchanged as well.

Barbara paused, thinking.

Back then she had always thought of Dr. Phillips as being much older than she, but now, sixteen years later, they seemed to be closer to the same age.

But how old was he?

She studied the picture, finally getting a magnifying glass from the kitchen drawer.

If she’d had to guess, she’d have said he was around forty-five in the picture, fifty at the oldest.

Which would make him at least sixty-one now. Maybe older.

And yet he still looked forty-five.

She began looking at some of the other men in the group around Phillips.

Carl Anderson was instantly recognizable, for he, like Phillips, hadn’t changed at all in the last sixteen years.

Nor had Fred Childress, or Orrin Hatfield.

She found Judd Duval, lounging on a blanket.

He, too, looked exactly the same then as he did now.

She kept studying the picture, searching for more of the faces that seemed not to have changed in nearly two decades. She looked up as a shadow passed over the album.

Craig, his eyes worried, was looking down at her. “Honey? What is it?”

Barbara smiled wanly. “I couldn’t sleep,” she told him. “So I finally just gave up. Want a cup of coffee?”

Craig shook his head. “What are you looking at?”

“Pictures,” Barbara replied. “I—I just wanted to look at Jenny again. But I couldn’t.”

Craig reached over and closed the album, then pulled her up from the chair and held her close. “Things are going to be all right, honey,” he whispered into her ear. “I know it doesn’t seem like the pain will ever go away right now, but it will. I promise.”

Barbara let him lead her back to the bedroom, but as she tried once more to go to sleep, she knew he was wrong.

The pain of her loss was only going to get worse.

And yet, despite her grief, sleep finally came, and with sleep came dreams.

Dreams of searching for her lost daughters, who were calling out to her in the darkness.

She could hear them clearly, both Jenny and Sharon.

She followed their voices through the darkness, and at last, coming upon a circle of bright light, she found them.

They were together, smiling at her.

But when she ran to gather them in her arms and comfort them, then hold them away to look into their faces, something had changed.

Jenny—her beautiful Jenny—was the same as she had always been, smiling and laughing.

But Sharon had changed.

She wasn’t Sharon at all.

She was Kelly Anderson.

Carl Anderson was awake that night, too, lying in bed, a book open on his lap. He heard a sound, like a door closing, frowned, then put the book aside and got out of bed. Putting on a robe, he went out into the living room, leaving the lights off.

He checked the front door, then moved on to the doors to the patio.

Everything was locked.

So was the kitchen door, and the door to the garage.

At last Carl mounted the stairs to Kelly’s room and stood outside, listening. Hearing nothing, he opened the door a few inches and looked inside.

Kelly was in bed, the sheet covering her. She was lying on her side, facing the door, her eyes closed in sleep.

Carl frowned.

Was she really asleep, or had it been her door he’d heard closing?

He slipped into the room and moved closer to the bed.

Now he could hear the steady rhythm of her breathing.

“Kelly?” he whispered, reaching out to touch her.

As his fingers brushed against her skin, her eyes snapped open. “Grandpa?” she gazed up at him in the dim light and felt a chill of fear. In the dim moonlight he looked different—his eyes sunken, his face older.
“I—I was asleep,” she said quickly, shrinking away from his touch and doing her best to conceal the fright that had seized her.

Carl straightened up. “I thought I heard a door,” he explained. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Kelly forced a smile. “It’s okay. I was just dreaming.” She rolled over as if going back to sleep, and a moment later heard her grandfather leaving the room.

But even after he was gone, the memory of his eyes—the eyes of the man in her dreams—remained etched in her memory.

On the way back to his room Carl paused in the bathroom to relieve his bladder. But as he was about to switch off the light, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

His eyes had sunk into their sockets, and deep wrinkles were etched in his skin.

He gazed at his fingers and saw the beginnings of the telltale liver spots.

He thought quickly. How long had it been since his last shot?

Only a few days!

Then what was wrong?

He hurried back to his room, closed the door, picked up the phone and dialed Warren Phillips’s home number. On the seventh ring Phillips’s answering machine came on, inviting him to leave a message at the tone.

Carl swore softly, but then began speaking. “It’s Carl Anderson. I need another shot right away. Call me as soon as you get in.” He thought a moment, then spoke again. “No, don’t call me. It’ll wake up everyone else in the house, and I can’t let anyone see me until I’ve had my shot. I’ll be there in the morning, before it gets light.”

He hung up the phone and sank down onto the bed.

He looked at the clock.

One-thirty.

Four and a half hours before he could get to Phillips.

He picked up the phone again, redialing the same number. “I don’t think I can wait,” he said into the doctor’s answering machine. “I’ll call every half hour until I get hold of you.”

He lay back on the bed, knowing he wouldn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

23

T
he first faint glimmers of dawn were breaking when Carl Anderson, his hands trembling, reached for the phone one more time. He’d fallen asleep several times during the night, but his sleep had been troubled, for the degeneration taking place within his body kept waking him up.

His joints were stiffening with arthritis, and his lungs felt clogged, his breath coming in deep raling gasps. As he groped for the phone, his trembling fingers failed him and the receiver clattered to the floor. He tried to reach down and pick it up, but flashes of pain in his spine made him lie back on the pillow for a moment, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He waited for the pain to pass, then reached for the cord of the dangling receiver, finally grasping it and pulling it up. At last he was able to pull the phone, too, onto the bed, and laboriously punch in Warren Phillips’s number. Once more the impersonal machine answered.

“I can’t wait any longer,” Carl gasped. “I’m coming over.”

Groaning with the effort, he raised himself into a sitting position and dropped his legs over the edge of the bed, his knees protesting painfully as he forced them to flex. At last he pushed himself up. A wave of dizziness washed over him, forcing him to reach out and steady himself against the night table. He could feel his heart beating raggedly in his chest; the simple effort of getting out of bed had all but exhausted him.

He tried to breathe deeply, but each breath shot needles of pain through him. He fought against the pain, forcing himself to walk slowly to the bathroom, where, his terror mounting, he stared at the unrecognizable image in the mirror.

An old man, far older than Carl Anderson truly was. It was as if all the years kept at bay by the shots Phillips had been giving him over the last decade and a half were now crashing back on him, overwhelming him.

His skin, leathery and slack, hung loosely around his jowls, and his beard, stubbly after the long night, was shot through with gray. The hair on his head was wispy, his scalp showing through everywhere; and his bloodshot eyes, shadowed by dark circles, squinted from their deep sockets, resisting the bright lights around the mirror.

His right hand came up, reaching out, as if by touching the vile image he could erase it.

His nails were cracked, and scabs had formed around his torn cuticles. The liver spots, barely visible only a few hours ago, now blotched his hands with the unhealthy color of old age, and his fingers were gnarled and twisted, distorted by the ravages of the decay that was consuming him.

An unintelligible croak of fear rising in his throat, Carl turned away, lurching back to his bedroom, where he pulled on the same clothes he’d worn the day before.

They bagged on his shriveling frame, the pants
threatening to slide off his bony hips, the shirt hanging in deep folds from his drooping shoulders.

His eyes drifted to the pillow, all but obscured by the hair that had fallen away from his scalp during the night.

He was dying—he could feel it in the weakness that was inexorably spreading through his body.

He picked up his keys from the dresser by the door, then abandoned his bedroom, stumbling through the living room toward the kitchen and the garage beyond. As he climbed into the cab of the pickup truck, groping for the remote control that would open the garage door, he was no longer certain whether the weakness he was feeling came from the degeneration of his body or the fear of death that was overwhelming his mind.

Phillips.

He had to get to Phillips before it was too late.

The garage door behind him ground slowly upward, seeming to take forever before he could finally back the truck out into the street, but at last he was on his way. He shifted the truck into forward, moving quickly off into the brightening light of the summer morning.