Bedtime Story (24 page)

David thought of the book, the pride on his father’s face as he had handed him the birthday gift, the sound of his father’s voice as he read, the feel of the book in his hands as he read the words for himself.

“The book’s not finished,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Matt asked him.

“
To the Four Directions
. This part, in this chamber, with the Sunstone. That’s only, I don’t know, not even halfway through. There has to be a mistake.”

Matt’s features condensed enough to look quizzically at David.

“You don’t kill off the main character halfway through.”

The look remained on Matt’s face.

“My dad, he’s a writer,” David tried to explain. “We talk about this stuff sometimes. A writer wouldn’t just kill off the main character halfway through the book. Nobody would read any further. He’d end up having to start again and again with a new …” Looking around at the shades, gathered in a loose knot around him, David saw that his point seemed to make sense.

“So we shouldn’t have died here,” Matt said slowly.

“Exactly,” David said.

“That means—”

“The story
doesn’t
end here. It goes on. It has to.”

David turned toward the Sunstone, the ruby glimmering like a spot of wet blood on the wall.

“You look like you’re feeling a little better,” Jacqui said when I came back that evening. She was sitting in the chair by the bed, reading a copy of
Maclean’s
she had probably purloined from the nurse’s station. “Did you sleep?”

“A bit,” I lied, setting the book on the bed at David’s feet. “How’s he doing?”

Jacqui’s smile disappeared.

“More of the same,” I said.

“Yeah.” She flipped the magazine onto the table. “The nurses came by to take his vitals and change his IV pack.” She pointed at the bulging new bag of clear fluid. “It’s shift change coming up.”

I was getting to be almost as familiar with the hospital’s routines and schedules as she was. “I thought maybe I would read him a bit of his story.”

She almost smiled as she stood up and edged past the bed.

This was taking a toll on her. Jacqui’s face was hollow and etched with deep lines of worry. She hadn’t been eating, and she looked like she’d lost weight.

“Half an hour?” she said.

“Sure, that’ll be fine.”

I watched her as she walked away, then sat down.

My watch read 7:50. Just about our usual storytime. A little less than twenty-four hours since his last seizure. I studied him carefully. Was he flexing harder, longer, now than he had been earlier in the day? It was impossible to be sure.

“Hey there, sport,” I said as I looked for the page where we had left off. I hadn’t marked it: superstitiously, perhaps, I couldn’t bring myself to move the bookmark from where he had left it in the back of the book.

“It’s about that time,” I continued. “Are you ready for bed? Are you ready for your story?” Observing the rituals, imagining his answers.

I found my place and started to read.

Within seconds I wanted to look up, to check on what effect, if any, the reading was having on him, but I forced myself to keep going, to give him several minutes of pure, uninterrupted listening.

When I finally did look, David was perfectly still, his eyes unmoving, his face loose, his arms limp at his sides. I felt both relieved and vindicated. As I watched, his eyelids sank shut.

“You like that, don’t you?” I asked him. “It does something to you. This book.” I held it up, as if he would be able to see it.

I closed the book and set it on the bed in front of me, then reached for the magazine Jacqui had abandoned on the table. I flipped it open, turned toward the back to the review section.

“I’m sorry about this,” I said quietly. “But I have to check.”

I started to read the review out loud. I wasn’t paying attention to the words at all, and after less than a minute of reading, David’s eyes were flickering, his fists clenching. Slowly, at first, but the motion grew more intense as I watched, his forearms flexing and pushing against the restraints, the muscles in his neck drawing and contracting, his lips pulsing and wavering. His back started to arch, his head jerking from one side to the other.

I threw the magazine back on the table and fumbled for our place in the book. I was out of breath as I read the first few lines, but I slowed and paced myself, calmed my voice.

Within a few lines, David began to settle again. His body seemed to sigh as it sank back into the bed.

By the time Jacqui got back, everything was disturbingly normal: just the two of us enjoying the nightly ritual. She stood silently at the end of the bed as I finished reading.

When I closed the book, she whispered, “How did it go?” as if afraid of waking him.

I gestured vaguely at the bed. I didn’t want to lie to her outright, but I knew that there was no way I could tell her about the book again without it turning into a fight.

“He seems pretty relaxed now,” I said.

David lowered his torch to look at the Sunstone, but he kept a safe distance, wary of it still. His hands shook.

“It doesn’t make any sense for me to be trapped here. For any of us to be trapped here,” he said as he leaned in closer to the wall. There were
carvings, faint, above the silver circle that held the stone. “There’s something there,” he muttered.

“But the Sunstone …” Matt said.

David took a half-step forward, trying to make out the markings.

“David.” Matt sounded frustrated. “What are you going to do?”

He wasn’t sure how to explain it. At best, it was only a guess. “We all got here by reading the same book, right?”

“Right.”

“We’ve got to get back into the story. I think that’s the only way to get out. To go through the book, all the way to the end.”

“For you,” Matt said sadly.

“What?”

“You said ‘we,’ but we can’t. We’ve tried to get out, to escape, but we can’t set foot on the stairs. It’s like there’s a wall holding us in. If you’re right …” He seemed to sigh, and David looked past him at the other shades, hanging limply in the still air. “Only you can get to the end.”

“I’m sorry,” David said quietly.

Matt’s shade turned to look at the others, then back to David. “Maybe if you make it through …”

“If the Queen gets the Sunstone,” David added.

“If you can make it to the end, maybe … maybe it will be a happy ending for all of us.”

David could feel his eyes burning with tears. His voice cracked when he said, “I hope so.”

Pulling into the driveway, Jacqui turned off the engine and sat in the silence. She stared up at the faint glow in the window above the garage. It was well past midnight: was he hard at work, head bent over one of his notebooks, pen in hand? Or had he fallen asleep in his reading chair again, his book falling to his lap, the way it always used to, back when …

Her hands were shaking as she punched the numbers on her cell phone. It took him a couple of rings to answer, and with each passing second she fought the desire to hang up.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, without saying hello.

She imagined the worry on his face.

“No, no. Everything’s fine. David … there were no problems.”

“That’s good.”

Then they both waited in silence. Jacqui imagined that she could see his faint shadow on the curtains, but it was probably a trick of the light.

“I came home,” she said faintly.

“I heard the van.”

“There was nothing … He’s stable, and …” She wasn’t sure if she could actually hear him moving over the line, but a moment later the curtains parted and he was leaning toward the window, cupping one hand against the glass.

“Did I wake you?” she asked. “I wasn’t sure if I should—”

“I was just getting ready for bed.”

“That’s good.” She looked from his window to the front door of the house, then back to his window. It was hard to see his face with the light behind him, but she imagined their eyes meeting. “Do you—Would you like to sleep in the house? Tonight. With me?”

He was silent for so long she wondered if they had been cut off. She almost hoped they had.

“Just to sleep,” she said, rushing in to fill the space between them. “I just—”

“Sure,” he said, with a quiet intimacy and understanding that stirred a deep part of her.

Her hands were shaking harder as she opened the van door.

David bent low, as close as he dared to the Sunstone. In the wavering torchlight, the symbols carved into the wall were difficult to see.

“I can’t quite read it.”

“Let me try,” Matt said, as he drifted past David. “Hold the torch closer.”

Instinctively, David reached out to keep him back. “Matt, don’t.” His hand slid through the grey mist, no more substantial than cold morning fog.

“I think I’ll be all right,” Matt said. “It can’t kill me again, right?”

David extended the torch until it was almost touching the wall. “What does it say?” he asked excitedly.

“Hang on a sec,” Matt said. “It’s pretty faint.”

David leaned in closer, despite himself.

“Okay, it’s like a little poem: