Dreamland (11 page)

“Thank you.” Dea could have hugged her, except the woman definitely didn't seem like the type who hugged. She stepped inside, grateful to be out of the rain. Her socks were soaked, and her hair dripped down her back. The woman stayed by the door, tapping a foot, keeping her eye on Dea like she might try to steal something. “Not even supposed to be here myself,” she was saying. “Left my cell phone on Friday, been hunting around for it all weekend . . .”

Dea squeaked over to her mom's post office box. Her fingers were raw and clumsy from the cold, and it took her a minute to work her key in the lock, and another second before she could summon the courage to open it. She didn't know what she wanted more: for the money to be missing, or not.

“Course now the damn thing's dead, don't know why they can't make a phone last longer than a hour, seems like they can do just about everything else nowadays . . .”

It was all there—envelopes full of cash, neatly rubber banded together. Dea felt a surge of triumph—Miriam hadn't run, after all—followed by a wave of dizziness. That meant she'd been forced or nabbed or stuffed in some psycho's trunk.

She angled her body so she was blocking the contents of the mailbox from view, then stuffed an envelope of cash in the waistband of her jeans, concealing it behind her T-shirt. That would be five hundred dollars at least, enough to get her through a few weeks on her own.
On her own
. She felt sick; she'd never before
considered just how very alone she was without her mom.

“You get everything you need?” the woman asked, as Dea crossed her arms and headed back out into the storm.

“Yeah,” Dea said, even though it was a lie—she had nothing, knew nothing, understood nothing. She was sure of only one thing: whether or not her mom was a liar, and a thief, and maybe even a crackpot, she hadn't gone away on her own or because she wanted to. She hadn't left Dea behind.

Back in the VW, Dea checked to see whether the cop was still waiting for her. He was, of course. She was gripped by a total-body fury. The police were supposed to help, but they wouldn't. They would do nothing.

She took a hard right out of the lot, pressing hard on the gas, without knowing where she was going—she had the sudden, vengeful urge to waste the cop's time, to lead him out into nowhere while he tooled behind her in his truck, trying to look inconspicuous. She would drive and drive and he would have to follow her until nowhere.

She took her next left at the last moment and he barely made the turn. She gunned the accelerator, speeding hard through sheets of water, the windshield wipers dancing frantically across the glass. Fuck him. She took another right and the tires skidded on the road; the wheel jerked under her hands and she overcorrected, nearly plunged into a ditch, then managed to bring the car into the right lane. She was driving crazily, dangerously, but she didn't care. The truck was still on her ass, closing the distance now, no longer worried about staying in the background.

She went faster. Water planed out from her wheels, and the sky looked like it was coming down, like something you'd see
in a dream just as it started to dissolve. Thank God the roads were empty. She could hardly see twenty feet in front of her, even with the brights on: just wetness coasting across pitted dirt lanes, and wind lashing the fields into the ground. Left. Then another right. She had no idea where she was. She'd left the town of Marborough behind. There was nothing out here but muddy tracks of grass and dirt, big burnt-looking trees and some straggly evergreens, sagging toward the earth, and rain, and more rain.

Another right. She pivoted quickly in her seat, taking her eyes off the road, to check whether the cop was still following her. She didn't see him. Maybe she'd managed to leave him behind.

She turned back to the road and then it happened. She was moving through a sheet of rain; and then the rain began to change, to flow differently, to
solidify
. The water rose and joined and twisted into a shape. She slammed on the brakes, but it was too late.

The water wasn't water anymore, but two figures walking toward her. Even though they had no faces, she could tell they were smiling.

She screamed and wrenched the wheel to the right. The car jumped the gutter and plunged into the field. The wheel jerked out of her hands. She bit down on her tongue and tasted blood. Then the black arms of the trees reached out to embrace her, and she moved into the dark.

When Dea woke up, she was staring at the high, round Cyclops-eye of a single light fixture, fitted in a blank white ceiling. Her throat was raw, as if it had been scrubbed with a Brillo pad. The air was filled with a quiet mechanical hum, and from some distance came the echo of voices and the beeping of hidden machinery.

A hospital. Obviously, a hospital.

She tried to sit up but couldn't make it far. She was constrained by multicolored tubes running to and from her wrists, pumping blood out and liquid in. Two needles were threaded into the veins on her hand, distorting the skin slightly. She felt
faint twinges of pain in her neck and shoulders when she moved. But she could move her legs and wiggle her toes. She wasn't in a body cast. She could breathe.

So: she wasn't dying, she wasn't paralyzed, she wasn't even injured, at least not that she could see.

She remembered, then, the story her mom used to tell her, of a pregnant woman lying in a hospital bed and dreaming of another pregnant woman—Dea didn't recall the details. It was some kind of fairy tale, but Dea didn't remember whether it had a happy ending.

Thinking of her mother, she felt a rush of panic. All at once, the accident came back to her: the drive through the sluicing rain, the cop in his truck, the water spinning out from beneath her wheels . . .

The monsters.

She'd seen them. Here. In the real world. It was impossible. But she knew that she hadn't been dreaming.

The hidden beeping grew more urgent, faster. Dea fumbled with the needles threaded under her skin. She needed to go home. She should have stayed home, like the cops had instructed her to do. Maybe—maybe—her mom had even come back by now. But the second she had the thought, she dismissed it. If her mom had reappeared, she'd be sitting next to Dea's bed. She'd have brought a blanket from home, and Dea's favorite slippers, and autumn leaves gathered from the yard and arranged neatly in a wreath; she'd have slung a sweatshirt over the big mirror hanging above the sink, or tried to dismount it from the wall.

She hadn't been here, which meant: still missing.

She pried out one of the needles and felt a quick stab of pain.
Blood beaded immediately on her hand, and she wiped it carelessly on the white sheet. Before she could go after the second needle, however, the door opened and a nurse came bustling in—
bustling
was the only way to describe it—looking so cheerfully and resolutely competent that Dea's heart sank.

“Well, good morning, little lady.” The nurse crossed to the window and pulled aside the curtains. Dea blinked in the unexpected light. The sun was high and bright, the sky a radiant blue. She must have been out for a long time—a full day, maybe more. “Or good afternoon, I guess I should say. How're you feeling?” She didn't wait for Dea to reply, but instead took up her hand and quickly, with no wasted movements, blotted the blood from her hand with a cotton swab and replaced the IV, working the needle back and forth to get it into the vein. Dea had to look away. “Got to be careful to keep the fluids flowing. How's the pain? Three? Four?” This while fiddling with the IV bag, adjusting doses, spinning dials with her thick fingers. “That better? Good, good. You hungry at all?”

There was an untouched tray next to Dea's bed: chicken in a lumpy white sauce, some disintegrating peas and carrots, and a small carton of orange juice. Dea felt briefly disappointed there was no Jell-O. In movies, there always was. But she couldn't have eaten anyway.

“No? Well, maybe in a little while.” The nurse had a square, friendly face that reminded Dea of a bulldog. Her name tag read Donna Sue, which seemed like a name she might have made up to keep her patients at ease while she was busy sticking needles in their arms and probing their asses. “You want me to turn on the TV for you?”

Dea shook her head. Donna was acting like she was going to be stuck there. “How long was I sleeping?”

“Hold.” Donna Sue stuck a thermometer under Dea's tongue and counted to three, then withdrew it and checked the meter. “Temperature's normal, that's good.” She made a note on Dea's chart, then looked up. Her eyes were watery blue, and her lashes so thick with mascara that little clumps of black were gathered under her eyes. “Little less than twenty-four hours. You were plain conked out. Lucky as stars, though, sweetheart. Not a broken bone in your body. No concussion either.”

“So . . .” Dea swallowed. “Can I go home soon?”

Donna Sue laughed, as if Dea had made a joke. She placed a hand on Dea's foot as she moved back toward the door. “I'll tell Dr. Chaudhary you're awake,” she said. “She'll be in to see you in just a few. Sit tight, okay, hon?” As if Dea could do anything else.

The nurse had left her chart near the sink. Dea was curious about what it said, but not sufficiently curious to try to maneuver out of bed still hooked to an IV. She considered disentangling herself from the needles and making a run for it. She knew that's what her mom would have done.
Get out of Dodge, slip through the cracks, blink and you'll miss us.
But she didn't see where that would get her: her mom was still missing, the cops were probably tearing her house apart, and she had nowhere to go. She could hardly show up at Gollum's and ask to be adopted. Maybe, if she was lucky, they could find her a place in their horse barn.

She felt a pulse of alarm when she remembered Toby. Would someone feed him? Was he okay?

She would speak to the doctor; she would explain that the crash was an accident, sign whatever needed to get signed, and get the hell out of there. Then she'd worry about what to do next.

She didn't wait long. There was a soft knock, more warning than request. Before Dea could respond, the door swung open. Dr. Chaudhary was young, Indian, and a soap-opera-star kind of pretty. Dea was all too aware of the thin paper gown she was wearing; the bruises on her arms; the medicinal, foul taste in her mouth.

“Odea?” Dr. Chaudhary said, glancing at Dea's chart. She spoke softly, pronouncing Odea's name in a curious singsong. Maybe she hadn't been raised in Indiana. Maybe she'd been raised in New York, or Bangladesh, or London. The idea gave Odea a curious lift of hope. Maybe she could help. “You gave us all quite a scare.”

Dr. Chaudhary sat in a chair next to Dea's bed. Drawing the chart into her lap, she flipped forward to a blank page. “Why don't you tell me what you remember?”

“About the accident?” Dea asked. Dr. Chaudhary nodded. Dea remembered those faceless men made of ribbons of wet and dark, and closed her eyes, thinking of Connor instead. But that hurt almost as much. “Not a lot,” she said finally. “It was raining. I must have lost control of the car.”

“Mmm-hmm.” The doctor nodded and scribbled something on the chart, as though Dea had made an interesting point.

“The nurse—”

“Donna.”

“Yeah. Donna said I'm doing okay.” Dea sat up a little straighter, trying not to look at the blood seeping through the
tubes in her hand, feeling a little bit like an insect in a web. “She said I didn't break anything.”

“You didn't. You were very lucky.”

“She said that, too.” For the first time it occurred to Dea: she could have died. Was that what the monsters had intended? She dismissed the thought. She wouldn't think about them. She couldn't. Monsters weren't real. They lived in dreams and fears and nightmare-places. “When can I go home?”

Dr. Chaudhary didn't even look up. Dea couldn't imagine that what she had said justified so many notes, and wished she knew what Dr. Chaudhary was writing about her. “Home,” she repeated. Finally the doctor did look up. Her eyes were the clear brown of maple syrup. “I've heard that your mother is having . . . difficulties. How does that make you feel?”

“Who told you that?” Dea said sharply, before realizing: the cops. Of course. Someone must have pulled her from the car, called 9-1-1, gotten her to the emergency room. Maybe it was the guy in the truck, or even Briggs. She didn't like to think of people putting their hands on her when she was unconscious.

“Are you frightened, Odea?” It was becoming annoying, how Dr. Chaudhary didn't answer her directly. “Are you feeling angry at the police? Are you angry about being here?”

“I'm not
angry
.” Dea wished she weren't stuck in a bed; it made her feel small. Young. “Look, I just want to go home.”

“We can't let you go until we're sure you're all right,” Dr. Chaudhary said gently. Dea knew she was trying to be nice but didn't care.

“Nothing's broken. I don't have a fever. I'm fine. Just take my pulse or do whatever you need to do.” But even as she said the
words, the anxiety, the worry, yawned big in her stomach. She realized that Dr. Chaudhary hadn't examined her at all, hadn't checked her head for bruises or flashed a light in her eyes or made her stick out her tongue and say
ahhh
.

“Odea”—Dr. Chaudhary pronounced her name very carefully, as if it were made of glass and might shatter in her mouth—“it's my job to make sure that you won't try to hurt yourself again.”

Dea felt the words like a full-body slap. She went hot, then cold. She should have known Dr. Chaudhary was a shrink. No wonder she was so good at dodging questions.

Dea swallowed.
“I wasn't—I wasn't trying to hurt myself.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Dr. Chaudhary inclined her head, but obviously didn't believe her. In some ways, Dea couldn't blame her. Dea's mom had vanished, she'd been visited by the cops, and less than an hour later she'd hydroplaned her car off the road, driving batshit fast in the middle of nowhere.

And Dea couldn't explain why. If she said she'd only been trying to avoid the men with no faces, Dr. Chaudhary would probably have her locked up forever.

“Please.” Panic was pulling at Dea from all sides. She felt like she was drowning in thin air—in the clean, bright room, drowning in sheets and wires. “It was an accident, I told you. I—I would never kill myself.” She choked a little on the words.

Dr. Chaudhary began taking notes again. “Have you ever thought about dying, Odea?”

“I mean, I've
thought
about it . . .” Dr. Chaudhary wrote something down and Dea quickly added, “But everyone thinks about it. Don't they?”

Dr. Chaudhary looked up, sighing. “No,” she said bluntly.

Dea didn't believe that. Sometimes she thought about getting splattered by a semitruck or falling out of an airplane or getting crushed by an AC unit tumbling off a roof—stupid stuff, improbable stuff, just because it was interesting to think about how thin the seconds were between alive and not. “I've never
wanted
to die,” she said. It was true. No matter how lonely she had been, in whatever bleak, dust-blown place she and her mom had ended up, she had never wanted to die. Only to find a place, any place, where at last, she belonged.

“I'm very glad to hear that,” Dr. Chaudhary said with finality. She stashed the pen at the top of the clipboard and jogged the sheath of papers together neatly. “We just want to keep you safe.”

Dea felt a surge of hope. “So does that mean I can go home?” she said.

“No.” Dr. Chaudhary smiled in a way meant to convey kindness and patience and pity all at once. “The fact is, you
did
almost die. We're going to keep you here for a few days. I'll speak to you again tomorrow.”

“You can't do that.” Dea struggled to sit up as Dr. Chaudhary stood and began to make her way toward the door. “You can't keep me here if I don't want to stay.”

Dr. Chaudhary turned with one hand on the door. “Yes, we can,” she said softly. To her credit, she sounded almost regretful.

“But—”

“Don't get agitated, Odea. Just try to get some rest, okay?” And she left the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

When Donna Sue announced a visitor, Dea hoped for a brief moment that it would be Connor. Instead, it was Gollum, dressed as always in a Windbreaker several sizes too large for her, clutching a collection of water-warped women's magazines from several months earlier. Dea bit her lip to keep from crying. She'd never been so happy to see anyone in her life.

“In case you got bored,” Gollum said, setting the magazines down on Dea's bedside table. “Or were curious about the best lipstick colors for last spring.”

“How did you know I was here?” Dea asked, her throat raw.

“Are you kidding?” Gollum sat down in the chair Dr. Chaudhary had vacated and drew her knees to her chest. Her sneakers were green. Dea knew she was doing her best to seem easy, casual. “No one's talking about anything else.”

Dea groaned. That meant Connor had heard, of course. Even if she did make it out of the hospital—even if her mom did return—she didn't see how she could ever face anyone in Fielding again. They would
have
to move.

Gollum fiddled with the bottom of her Windbreaker, where the hem was torn. “You want to talk about what happened?”

Dea sat up a little. “You don't believe I tried to kill myself, do you?
Gollum?
” she pressed, when Gollum didn't immediately answer.

“No, no,” Gollum said quickly. Her face was red, which made her hair look practically white.

“Good,” Dea said firmly. “Because it was an accident.”

Gollum made a face as if she were trying to swallow a hot pepper. She clearly wanted to ask more questions—Dea was sure Gollum had heard that her mom had disappeared—but let
it drop. “So how long do you have to be here?” she asked.

“Don't know.” Even thinking about it made her feel panicky again. “Only a few days, I hope.” She took a deep breath and, before she could stop herself, blurted: “Have you talked to Connor?”

Gollum adjusted her glasses with the knuckle of one finger. “Tried to,” she said. “He wasn't in school yesterday, and his phone was off.” She made the hot-pepper face again. “There's some woman poking around doing research about . . .
you know
. His mom and brother and the murders and stuff. She's like a graduate student or something. Supposedly she's writing a book about it.”