Hugo & Rose (27 page)

But this was so much worse than when he believed she had lost her mind. Worse than when he threatened to remove her from her children. It was sadder. Deeper. Like a death. Like she was a ghost in their bed and he a new widower.

He still had not touched her. One cannot touch ghosts.

“I love you, Josh.”

He was quiet for a moment. “That only makes it worse.”

*   *   *

Josh watched Rose later that night as she fell asleep. He sat on the floor opposite their bed.

They had conceived Penny in that bed. Josh thought of that while he watched Rose's chest rise and fall in the dark. The mattress she slept on was witness to hundreds of hours of marital discussion: where they would retire, how much the cable bill was costing, whether or not they could afford private school, whether or not it was worth it if they could.

He loved her so much.

Josh could tell by the sound that she had finally slipped away. He wondered what it was like for her.
Was it like waking up in a new world, suddenly delivered on a new shore? Or was it more gradual than that?

He went over the little he remembered about the dreaming brain from medical school. REM sleep. Theta waves. Josh could see the textbook in which he'd studied these phenomena in his mind. He remembered being exasperated that they even had to cover it. So many more important things to study.

Rose's breathing stopped for a moment. A pause in the rhythm.

Was she with him right now? On the island?

He felt a pain in his chest.
Oh, Rose. My sweet Rose.

Asleep, his wife looked younger. Like she had on the wall.

Rose's eyelids betrayed the movement of her corneas beneath them. She was definitely dreaming.

What about when they are not both asleep? What then? Surely, every time Rose takes a nap, Hugo cannot also be sleeping. And yet she says he is all she dreams about. He is always with her.

His hands hurt from the beating he had given Hugo. Somehow, he had cut his knuckle. It was scabbing over, but the small fan of dried blood was still there. He had probably left stamps of his blood all over Hugo's face and back.

He was lucky the man had not called the police. He was lucky he had not broken his fingers, given the force of the blows he had landed. He was lucky he was not in jail right now, facing the end of his career.

But he did not feel lucky.

 

eighteen

If it had not been for her legs, Rose would have not known she was dreaming. She was loading the dishwasher, moving plates from sink side to the prongs of the trolley basket. It was something she did at least twice a day in her waking life, the never-ending cycle. A volley of plates from the cabinet to the table, from the table to the sink, from the sink to the dishwasher, from the dishwasher to the cabinet. Repeat morning and night, ad infinitum, forever and ever, amen. She was finding a home for one of Penny's sippy cups (
top rack only
) when she caught sight of her legs.

They were bare, her skin honey silk stretched over shapely muscled calves. This could not have been more different from their usual state, pale stubble, with a few bruises of mysterious origin.

She was dreaming.

She was dreaming of
loading her dishwasher.

That's new,
she thought.
A
little mundane and weird … but new.

“Mom?”

She looked up. Josh and the kids stared at her from the table.

“You're here!” she heard herself say. It was so strange to know that she was dreaming and yet to see her family. Apart from her nightmare about Isaac and the brief glimpse she'd had of Penny in Hugo's nightmare, the experience was completely new to her.

Josh grinned. “Of course we're here. This is our home.”

It
was
home. Rose looked around. This was her kitchen and her kitchen table. Her family. Her life.
Her dream.

She laughed. It was wonderful.

“Honey, can you bring over the waffles?” Josh nodded at a platter on the countertop.

Rose was giddy. She was dreaming about having waffles with her family. No monsters. No Castle City. No Hugo. “Of course.”

Her hands were wet from the dishes and she wiped them on her apron.

Apron?

She was indeed wearing one. The fabric of it was busy with brown and yellow marigolds. Yellow piping outlined the edges and the pockets. It looked like something Mrs. Brady would have worn if Alice took the day off.

Rose grabbed the platter and walked to the table. She sat and forked a waffle onto each of the boys' plates. Penny gummed at hers, softening the bread.

Josh took her hand and smiled.

Rose grinned at the touch. Somewhere in her mind, she remembered something about wanting him to touch her. Needing him to touch her. His hand felt good over hers.

“I love you, Rose.”

“I love you, too.”

God, this is good.
Rose was so happy.
This must be what it's like for other people. They dream about their families. About their lives.

Adam's face was sticky with syrup. “Can I have another one, please?”

“Sure, honey.” Rose leaned over to put another waffle on his plate.

When she sat back, Hugo was sitting in Josh's chair.

Rose was startled, but nobody else seemed to register the change. The children kept eating their waffles as if their father had not just been replaced by a stranger. Hugo looked broodily at her kids.

“I don't like this, Rosie.”

His hand was in the same position as Josh's had been, cupped over hers. Rose slid her hand out from beneath it. Some strange cruel trick had been played. Hugo in Josh's chair. Hugo in her husband's place. A spark of anger flared inside of Rose.
He has no right to be there. No claim to it.
Rose felt suddenly as if Hugo had borrowed something without asking. Something deeply personal and beloved. Something she never would have loaned. To anyone.

“Where's Josh, Hugo?”

Hugo scratched his head. Looked away. His face was …

His face is grumpy,
thought Rose,
like a child who isn't getting his way.

Hugo sat back in Josh's chair. The chair the kids called Daddy's place. It was Josh's. Left empty if he wasn't home. A representative in his absence.

“I don't like it here, Rose. I think we should go back to the island.”

Rose suddenly felt very sure that Hugo had
done
something to Josh. Hidden him or hurt him in some way. He was dodging her eyes.

“Hugo, where is he?”

He crossed his arms at his chest, frowning at the kids. “I don't like them. I want it to be just us. It's better when it's just us.”

God, he was so frustrating. Like Isaac and his negotiations. Intentionally slippery and dissembling.

Rose heard a thump on the ceiling. Movement upstairs. It was heavy. A sudden, almost violent drop. She stood. “Did you do something to him?”

Hugo looked up at her, his mouth closed, smug. Bratty.

But he said nothing.

Rose wanted to smack him. She hated it when the boys did this. Lied. Treated her as if she were an idiot. Made her pry information out of them. Made her find the evidence of their wrongdoing.

She shook her head. This wasn't the boys. The boys were still politely eating their waffles. This was Hugo. Hugo, dissembling. Hugo, making her pry.

Another thump sounded upstairs. He glanced at her. Guilty.

“Josh!” Rose broke for the steps, taking them two at a time.

She heard the squeak of Hugo's feet behind her. Following her up the stairs into the hallway.

Rose began opening doors. The bathroom. The boys' room. Penny's. The guest. “Where is he?”

Hugo watched her from the top of the steps. “You're not listening to me. It should only be the two of us.”

Rose turned the knob for her room. “Honey?” The door swung wide into a space that wasn't her own. Her bed, her nightstand, gone, replaced by the boy's bedroom from Hugo's nightmare. The one into which they had fled from the rushing water and those laughing bullies.
Star Wars
sheets. Rock'em Sock'em Robots. Flip-board clock.

But no Josh.

Hugo stepped just behind Rose and she heard his breath stop at the sight of the room's contents. He was nervous. “He's not here, Rosie. Let's go.”

Laughter came bubbling through the open window. Rose moved away from him, toward it. Looking down.

Below was her backyard, Isaac's birthday party in progress. The bouncy castle jerked and swayed. Little boys with water pistols chased one another, serpentine around the trees, screaming with delight. The smell of barbecued meat filled the air.

Josh was standing at the grill, a pair of tongs in his hand. A relief flooded Rose. Hugo hadn't hurt him. Hadn't made her husband disappear.

Rose turned and ran back toward the stairs, passing Hugo on the threshold of the room. She needed to get to Josh. Somehow it felt imperative.

“Rose, we need to find a way to get back to the island,” Hugo said, urgent. His feet clattered on the steps behind her.

“I don't want to go to the island, Hugo. I want to stay here. I want to be with my family.” Even as she said it, she realized it was true. She never wanted to go back to the island. She didn't care what was in Castle City.

“But it's not safe here for us, Rosie.”

“What do you mean?”

Rose reached the bottom of the stairs. Through the window she could see the party in the backyard. Parents with their coffee cups. The balloons waving in the breeze.

There were still three children sitting at her table, eating waffles.

But they were not hers.

Rose stopped short, stunned by the wrongness of it.

Adam, Isaac, and Penny had been replaced by a boy.

Or rather three identical copies of the same boy sat before each of her children's place settings. Eating her children's waffles. Rose stared at them.

“Hugo?”

The boys at the table all looked up at her. “Yes,” they said. In unison.

It was
him
. Or rather
they
were him.

Three Hugos as he had looked when she met him. Hugo as a little boy. Sandy hair. Crooked smile. Chocolate eyes. Three pretty little boys sitting at her kitchen table in place of her children.

The larger version of Hugo stopped just behind her, taking in the sight of the three changelings eating waffles. He wrapped his hand around Rose's arm. She looked at him. Hugo—big Hugo—was frightened, his face pale. The defiant brat from earlier was gone.

What the hell was going on? Hugo replacing Josh. Hugo replacing the children. There was something sinister about it. Wicked.

At the table, the three little Hugos suddenly chorused, “We love you, Rosie.”

“Whatever you're doing you need to stop it.” Rose yanked her arm away from him.

He was stricken. “I'm not doing anything, Rosie.” Shaking his head. “I promise.”

Rose's anger flared. “Where are Isaac and Adam, Hugo? Where is Penny?”

“I don't know. I really don't know. I'd tell you if I could. But I don't know.” He was quivering. More a little boy than the other versions of himself at the table.

Movement behind him on the ceiling drew Rose's eye. A ceiling fan had sprouted where there was none in the reality of her home. It was spinning on its axis. The strong light from outside cast a shadow double on the cottage cheese of the ceiling.

Grown Hugo followed her eyes. Suddenly he snatched her hand and began to haul her toward the back door. “We need to go, now!”

Rose pulled against him and squinted at the fan. Something about it. It was starting to slow in its ellipses. And the shadow …

It was beginning to … coagulate. To join with the actual fan. Shadow blades and wooden blades pulling into one another. Morphing into the motor, stretching out across the ceiling. A familiar shape somehow.

Then, one of the blades sprouted a
tarsal hook.

Rose gasped. The fan suddenly sprang to life, bending upward, animating. The center popped off the ceiling, pull chains swinging, its exhaust screen forming an ad hoc abdomen.

One of the island's Spiders.

It was growing rapidly, its legs stretching. Its carapace creaking with the metamorphosis.

The little Hugos kept eating their waffles, watching the Spider transform. Their faces pleasant. Unworried.

Big Hugo, however, was trying to drag her out the front door. “Come on!”

Through the window Rose could see the party was still going on. All those people. And—

“Josh,” Rose heard herself say.

And suddenly she was running out the back door. Leaving all the Hugos behind her.

She tripped over the threshold and fell face-first into a mound of pink sand. For a moment Rose was terrified that somehow Hugo had transported her back to the island.

But when she looked up, what she saw was somehow two places that had become one.

The pink sand of the island's beaches blanketed a place that was somehow both Rose's backyard
and
the parking lot of the Orange Tastee. Isaac's birthday party was still in progress. Parents were eating cake by parked cars. Someone had placed a party hat on the grinning fiberglass Orange drive-through speaker. The bouncy castle rocked and danced as inside a dozen young Hugos jumped and drank soda from wax paper cups. Rose looked around. All the children had been replaced by little Hugos. A party of one, multiplied.

Rose turned. Through the glass she could see that the Spider was still growing. A single leg bent down and made contact with the floor. She didn't have much time.

Josh was still barbecuing, the grill perched on a dune. His back was to her. Rose felt certain she needed to get him. To get them out of there. She stumbled upright, the sand spraying out from behind her struggling feet. “Josh!”