Escape the Night (32 page)

Noelle glanced through the windshield, at the road ahead. “We're driving to where it happened, aren't we?”

“Yes.” Peter Carey gazed past her at his uncle's house. “In a moment.”

They would have driven to the garage …

“
It's too dark down there for elephants, Daddy
…”

“What's wrong, Peter?”

“I keep saying something to my father.” He shook his head. “One scrap of absolute, senseless trivia, and then nothing.”

A long moment later, he pulled back onto the road.

By instinct, Carey began turning before he saw the sign marked “Cognewaugh.”

The boy Peter knew the way.

The man Peter Carey accelerated.

In silence, Carey and Noelle sped along the steep and winding grade, past farmhouses and stone fences and bare trees.

The trees would have been green then, in April …

The road dipped suddenly.

Carey did not slow. The drive was making him sick; he imagined the boy Peter laughing …

Peter had asked to go to the reservoir, Phillip once told him, to sail a boat. Carey stepped on the gas.

A sudden uphill grade filled his windshield, curving to the right along a hill which grew steeper, more precipitous …

Carey took the curve and started up the grade. His stomach tensed.

“
Faster, Daddy
…”

At the top flashed an abrupt left curve, covered in ice.

“Peter!”

“
Charles
…”

The car began skidding; hitting the brakes, Carey jerked the wheel toward the skid. The car slid sideways …

“
I'm losing control
…”

Carey whipped the wheel; spitting gravel, the Jaguar lurched to a stop two feet from a hundred-foot deadfall.

“Peter …”

As if in a trance, Peter Carey glided from the car in one fluid movement and then stood, staring down the rocky cliffside.

At its bottom he saw a thick, crooked tree. Its trunk was scorched.

“
Daddy
…”

The man Peter Carey looked away.

Fighting back nausea, he studied the cliff.

It was close to sheer and its rocks the size of boulders; from below they would seem the menacing portent of a landslide. The field beyond, suddenly flat and grassy, stretched to a sudden cul-de-sac of houses. Somehow, Carey knew they had not been there when …

He turned back to the tree.

“
I'll bring him up in a little bit, Peter
…”

Its trunk was scarred and black and stripped of bark …

“
Promise?
”

His father lowered his face to Peter's
…

Scarred and black …

“
Promise
…”

Stripped of bark …

“
Peter!
”

“
Is there some reason, Peter, that you feel guilty for your father's death?
”

Peter Carey sat on a rock, head between his knees, and vomited.

Gravel crunched behind him; he felt Noelle's fingertips on his shoulder.

“I'll drive,” she said softly.

CHAPTER 10

“For a long time I just sat there, staring at my own vomit. On the drive home I could hardly face her: she'd been in fucking El Salvador three weeks, and this maniac takes her straight from the airport to the scene of his parents' death, almost drives her off a cliff, and then pukes.”

“What made you sick, Peter—nearly duplicating the accident?”

“That, and flashbacks—I'm sleeping in a strange bed, and my father is saying goodnight. I keep telling him about Dewey.”

“Yes?”

“Something like, ‘It's too dark down there for elephants, Daddy.'”

“Do you know where ‘there' is?”

“No—it makes no sense to me. But the faster I drove, flashes came that I'd never had before. My father says, ‘Then I'll bring him up in a little bit'; I ask, ‘Promise?'; he answers, ‘Promise'; then I had to brake and Noelle cried out; suddenly my mother is crying, ‘Charles!' and he's screaming, ‘I'm losing control,' and then I got out to look down the hill and in my mind someone turned and shouted, ‘Peter!'”

“And at that point you threw up?”

“Yes, but in the flashback, I don't know where I am. I don't think it's the accident—it feels more like a room, somewhere dark that I can't place.”

Englehardt switched off the cassette and checked his watch.

Seven
P.M
.

He breathed deeply: for twenty minutes he would think without emotion.

Alone in his loft, he considered killing Peter Carey.

He would be free of this mounting tension; Martin had been waiting.

But then he must also murder Phillip, for he did not know how Phillip would react.

His chest tightened.

He could not do that, he told himself—it was too soon. Phillip Carey was his key to Barth, Barth Industries
his
key to power. Barth had not commissioned murder: to murder Phillip would condemn himself to nothingness.

He must suffer what Peter was doing to him, until Barth was in his hands.

His hands were trembling; awkwardly, he turned on the tape …

“Tell me, Peter,
who
is it that shouts at you?”

In the silence, Englehardt stared at his hands, and then Peter answered dully, “I don't know.”

“Could it be the faceless man?”

“I'm not sure—last night, after the nightmare, I called Noelle to see if she was safe. I'm losing control …”

“Like your father?”

“Like I'm crazy.” The words were shot with pain. “Yesterday, with Phillip—for a split second I almost wanted to kill him, to end how scared I've been. It's as if
his
fear's rubbing off on me—sometimes I swear he's going to sell me out, that it's all tied in with the ugly man Noelle saw. But now I don't trust anyone: this morning the doorman wouldn't look at me—even my neighbors seem different, I say something and they stare down at their dog and then scurry off, as if I'm marked …”

“By Phillip?”

“Maybe in my mind: sometimes I don't know the difference between myself and the child Peter, reality or dream. For a moment this morning, I knew I should sprint into the tunnel and kill the faceless man.”

“That's all, Peter.” Levy's voice was taut. “We'll talk tomorrow.”

The tape ended.

Englehardt stared at it.

By instinct, he replayed the last five minutes. Palms pressed tightly together in the attitude of prayer, he listened.

Levy sounded tenser now; the rhythm of his questions was intrusive and too fast …

Englehardt snatched up his telephone and called Martin. “I want all of Levy's notes,” he ordered.

Martin seemed to reflect on this. “I can't be always going back there,” he replied. “That would be dangerous.”

“There's too much Levy isn't telling Peter—before I meet with Barth, I have to find out where he's going. Now is that clear, dammit?”

Softly, Martin answered, “Not quite yet.” He let this linger for a moment, and then hung up.

Tight-lipped, Englehardt slammed down the telephone.

In the van, Martin turned on that day's final tape.

Lips pressed close to the bug that he had planted in her telephone, Noelle Ciano said, “It's me, Peter.”

“Listen, about yesterday …”

“That was yesterday. Today,
I
took some liberties. We're going skiing in Vermont.”

“Vermont.” Carey sounded off-balance. “When?”

“This weekend. I've got Jill Thomson's cabin, near Mount Snow. You need to get away …”

“From myself? How will I do that?”

Martin heard Noelle breathing softly through the mouthpiece. “By taking
me
, Peter. We can ski as much or little as you want.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I like Vermont.” Her voice softened. “Will you come?”

There was no answer. Martin waited with Noelle; then Carey murmured, “I don't want you there alone,” and Martin smiled to himself.

Soon he would be watching her.

Now, at midnight, Martin watched the hospital, waiting for his time.

He hesitated, reluctant; perhaps he was becoming superstitious. He did not like breaking into buildings twice.

Five …

From across the street, he began counting the nurses who arrived in taxis for the midnight shift, passing through the entrance he would take.

Six.

With the seventh, Martin started briskly toward the entrance—a doctor, going to work.

Reaching the tunnel, Charles Carey smiled.

The laughing Peter rushed in deeper; Charles chased him, footsteps echoing in the night. Peter turned, calling “Daddy!”

As Charles reached out for him, his face burst into flames.

There was laughter. The faceless man appeared at the tunnel's mouth; Peter turned but could not move. The stranger's shadow grew larger, closer. Tears streaming down his cheeks, the child Peter walked toward him. Burning, Charles's arms vainly stretched to save him, and then the stranger raised his knife …

As the stranger plunged the knife through Peter's heart, Levy saw his ice-blue eyes …

William Levy awakened screaming.

There were sharp pains in his chest; for a frightened instant he believed that Peter's dream connected the death of Charles Carey to his own. His skin went cold; in his mouth was the sour taste of fear. He fumbled in the dark for his reading lamp, clicked the switch. His breathing eased. The pain subsided: still he felt the pounding of his heart. By reflex, he rose and stumbled to the mirror, smoothing his cowlick. But the black eyes, staring from a face etched by years of thought, were as frightened as those of the freshman he had been, before Charles Carey had become his friend.

Hastily, he dressed and called a taxi.

Martin opened the inner door to Levy's office.

At least he could work quickly: he knew where to find the index.

Jimmying the drawer, he took the index to the cabinets, pried loose the drawer which held the Carey file, and returned.

The file, which had once contained five pages, now felt thick in his hand.

He turned on Levy's desk lamp and spread his notes across the floor.

Kneeling, he took the camera from his bag and methodically began photographing each page, snatching out rolls of film to jam in new ones, pressing the button on page after page until the joints of his knees hurt. Hungrily, he scanned the pages: over and over, Levy had scrawled, “Who is the faceless man?” as if tormented by the heart of Peter's drama.

Neither of them knew the answer.

When they did, Martin was sure, the drama would end swiftly.

In haste, he restored each page to its proper order, threw film and camera in the bag, returned the index to the drawer, switched off the light, and then took the bag and file to the outer office, closing the door behind him. He slid the file into its place, then froze.

There were footsteps in the corridor.

Silently, Martin moved to the outer door, to listen.

Echoing off linoleum, the steps grew louder. Martin crouched; the pounding sound came nearer, closer. They reached the door …

Martin raised his arm.

Like a drumroll, the steps receded down the hall, and died.

Carefully, Martin opened the door and looked out.

Nothing.

He slipped into the corridor, and marched quickly past the darkened offices. His back burned with imagined gunshots.

Sliding through the door marked “Exit,” he took three dim flights to the main reception area.

A few strays loitered on hard plastic chairs like vagrants in a Hogarth print; two nurses conferred behind the reception desk; no one looked up as he passed. More confident, Martin turned, counting off twenty-seven steps, and hit the outer door. Cold air splashed his face …

He stumbled suddenly into a frail man climbing the last few steps. Belatedly, the man looked up; his lined face was abstracted, and when he murmured, “Pardon me,” it was in a voice so indistinct that Martin hardly heard it.

Martin smiled quickly, and headed for the subway.

Levy stopped in his doorway as if it were a stranger's.

His office was meant as a cell where reason lived, unmarred by pictures or shelves of unread books. Now its purity seemed as false as his detachment.

Slowly, he moved to the cabinet and retrieved the Carey file. Sitting, he noted the tremor of his hands: he had left the safety zone.

There were two interpretations of Peter's nightmare, he now saw, perhaps not mutually exclusive. The first was that it symbolized some outside danger: Barth's fixation on the Careys; Levy's own unease with Phillip, which paralleled his sister's; Noelle's sense that she was followed; Peter's fear,
and
Phillip's—all these argued this was so.

Yesterday, as Peter followed the story of his reckless drive with an imagined rush into the tunnel, Levy had scrawled the second interpretation …

“Suicide.”

In his dream, the faceless man was Peter Carey.

The stabbing of Peter as a small boy, Levy feared, meant he wished to harm himself. If this was right, then Levy was morally certain of why: that buried in the weekend Peter chose to forget lurked some reason that he blamed himself for the death of Charles Carey, symbolized by the nightmare of his burning face.

In this interpretation, Noelle Ciano placed him in a tragic whipsaw: Peter Carey, who feared abandonment by those he dared to love, also feared he would destroy them.

One way out was to destroy himself …

Here, Levy also feared his analytic bias: he could not escape the morning he had found his mother.

He closed his eyes, remembering.

He had awakened early, to study. There was no one up yet—his father was traveling again, selling cheap watches to drugstores. Levy wandered to the bathroom in his underwear, to splash water on his face. The door was locked; blood, seeping beneath it, had stained the worn gray carpet. He tried kicking the door down, failed miserably, then remembered the key his mother kept in the linen closet. He unlocked the door. His mother lay in a crimson pool that had painted her hair and fingertips; she resembled a bird who'd crashed into a picture window. He stooped to touch her wrist, saw that it was ripped open. Bile rose to his throat. A scream echoed in the bathroom; turning, he saw Ruth standing in the doorway. Levy was not a physical man: it was the first time he had ever held her. She wept in his arms for an hour. Only then did he call the police. He had felt his mother's death in the coldness of her wrist: her temperature had already dropped.