Dreamland (23 page)

“No,” she said, and she meant it. Somehow, she would find a way to stay. “But I'm running out of time to help you.”

Connor moved back to the window. “I don't know anything.” His voice crept higher. “I've told Kate a million times. I don't remember.”

Dea thought of the men with no faces, and the ragged pant of their breathing, like deformed animals. “You said you never got a look at the guys who did it,” she prompted him.

“That's right. First I was sleeping. Then I was . . . hiding.” He spat the word out as if it were poisoned.

“You weren't hiding the whole time,” Dea pointed out. “You crawled to the door. You peeked into the hall.”

“Yeah, but just for a second.” He shook his head. “Besides, they were wearing ski masks. All I could really see was a pair of mouths.”

So that was where they had come from, the monsters with faces made of mangled flesh, and mouths to taste their prey: from Connor's distorted childhood memory of his mother's killers.

Give them faces
, her mother had said.
They'll lose their power.

“Take me through it again,” Dea said. “From the beginning.”

Connor swallowed back a sigh. “The first thing that woke me was the shot,” he said, in the voice of a kid reciting multiplication tables. Dea wondered how many times he had been forced
to go through the same story. “Then my brother started crying. I freaked out and crawled into the closet. I heard a few . . . thuds. Wet sounding, like—”

“That's okay,” Dea said quickly. “What next?”

Connor winced, as if the memory were hurting him physically. “There was another shot. That's when they . . . when they got my brother. I crawled to the door. I looked out and saw two men moving toward me. One of them—I could have sworn one of them saw me. I wet my pants. They left. The end.”

“And you didn't hear anything before that first shot?” she said. “They broke a window, didn't they?”

Connor nodded. “I didn't hear it, though. Nothing until the shot.” He pressed a hand to his eyes, as if gripped by a sudden headache. “Wait. That's not true. I was awake before that. They must have been talking to my mom. . . . I could hear their voices through the wall.”

Dea's heartbeat quickened. “Do you remember what they were saying?”

Connor shook his head. “I wasn't really listening. At first, I wasn't frightened. But then I heard my mom start saying ‘no, please, no.'” Connor's voice cracked. “Then a bang. People always say gunshots sound like firecrackers but I knew—even then I knew what it was. TV, you know?” He managed an approximation of a smile. “Even then I wasn't that scared. I didn't understand. I didn't connect the gun to my mom. But then Jacob started crying. He started screaming. And my mom was begging for her life. Then I knew.” He looked down at his hands, gripped tightly in his lap. Dea could see the individual bones of his knuckles.

“Where was your dad?”

“Business trip.” Connor cleared his throat. “That's why everyone thought I did it. The gun was his, you know. Whenever he was out of town, my mom kept it in her bedside table. So how did the killers know it was there? It must have been someone she knew.”

Dea felt the idea, the knowledge, massing on the edges of her consciousness, a wave about to break.
The vast majority of women are killed by their partners. Or by their ex-partners.

“You said at first you weren't frightened,” she said slowly. “Why?”

“I don't know.” He hesitated. “I think at first I thought my dad must have come home early from his trip. I just heard the voices and assumed . . .” He trailed off, shrugging.

“And you didn't hear them break in through the window.”

Connor frowned. “I already told you that.”

“Okay.” Dea wiped her palms on her jeans. Even though it was cold, she felt sticky all over—nervousness, probably, and guilt. “Isn't it possible they broke the window
afterward?
To make it look like a break-in?”

Connor stared at her. “The front door was locked.”

“Maybe,” Dea said carefully, “someone else had a key.”

She was worried he'd get angry. But he just shook his head. “No way. My uncle looked at pretty much everyone who'd ever been in the apartment—plumbers and friends and even our goddamn cleaning lady. If there was anything to find, he'd have found it.”

The wave had broken, leaving the idea, the association, glittering and solid in Dea's mind. The dream of a woman enfolded by a giant cockroach; Connor mistaking the killer's voice for his
father's. She wanted to be wrong.

She said, “Your uncle and your mom were . . . close?”

“Very close,” Connor said immediately. “Roach loved my mom almost as much as . . .” Then, abruptly, he trailed off. His whole face changed—in a split second, he turned guarded, as if someone had drawn a curtain across his eyes. “No,” he said. “No. I know what you're thinking. And the answer is no.”

Dea swallowed. There was a bad taste in her mouth. “He knew where she kept the gun. He probably had a key.” Connor didn't correct her, so she knew she was right. “You weren't scared when you first woke up. You thought it was your dad talking. I bet—I bet your uncle and your dad sound alike.”

“No.”
Connor practically shouted it. He turned a full circle, like an animal trapped in a pen, desperate and confused. “No. Jesus, Dea. Don't you understand? He's family—he's practically the only family I have left. He
helped
us, he loved my mother, he—” Connor was out of breath, as if the words had left him physically exhausted. “Why are you doing this?” Connor's face had gone totally white. His eyes looked like twin holes. “Why are you doing this?”

Dea pressed her palms flat against her thighs, as if she could press the feeling of guilt out through them. “For the truth,” she said. “For you.”

“I won't do it.” Connor backed up, as if afraid Dea might physically leap into his mind. “I won't let you do it.”

“Connor,” Dea took a step toward him.

“I said no, okay?” He looked as if he were about to be sick. He repeated, a little quieter, “I said no.”

For a minute they stood there, staring at each other.

“Okay,” Dea said finally. She held up both hands. “Okay.”

Connor visibly relaxed. He turned partly away from her. He was so beautiful in the winter light. He looked almost insubstantial, like something she had imagined.

“I'm scared,” he said, in a raw voice.

She came close to him. Her heart was fluttering like wings. She put a hand on his arm, reassured by the feel of him. “I'm scared, too.”

He turned to face her. In that second there was nothing but him: his eyes and lips and the small scar on his chin, like a tiny moon. They were suspended together in space, in a bright white room that spoke of newness, and Dea allowed herself to believe—just for a moment—that they could stay like this forever and be happy. She put her hands on his chest and felt his heartbeat, a skimming rhythm under her fingers. Blood and bone, valves and shutters—all so easily broken, damaged, dissolved.

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.

I love you
, she thought.

And:
I'm sorry.

For a half second, he didn't respond. She closed her eyes and thought her way toward the soft darkness of his mind but instead felt a barrier, a rapid confusion of images that rose up like a wall. Then he let go, relaxing against her, breathing deep into her, exploring her mouth with his tongue. And she felt an inner relaxation, too—so faint, so quick, it was barely perceptible. There was a split-second gap, a fraction of a fraction of a second when the curtain parted and she felt a pull, strong as a current, toward the other side.

She pushed. Or she let go of her body and leapt. Distantly, she heard Connor cry out.

Already the curtain was closing, and for a moment she was in smothering darkness, floundering without a body, without any boundaries. She felt a sudden blast of cold wind; she fought
toward the image of a winter skyline, a city blanketed in snow. With no hands, no fists or fingers, she reached out.

The darkness released her. The pressure on her chest released. Her breath was sharp and painful in her throat. The sky above her was a strange, bruised purple in the twilight, slashed like a wound above the buildings.

Across a street piled with old snow and trash, Christmas lights were blinking in the window of the deli.

She'd done it.

She was walking Connor's memory.

She didn't have much time.

Connor wanted her out. That much was clear. The air felt thick, almost syrupy, despite the cold—it was as if she were moving against a tremendous pressure, fighting just to be there. Even her body was responding slowly, as if she were a puzzle that needed to be reassembled after every step. She crossed the street with difficulty, her breath rasping in her throat. She was an infection; the memory was attacking her on all sides, exhausting her, rendering her weak.

She went, half limping, down the street. Connor's memory was significantly different from his dream. It was much darker; the snow had obviously fallen several days earlier, and was streaked yellow and gray. But the picture was badly melded, confused—in places the snow was piled high, in places it simply vanished. It was a city wrapped in the thick haze of a child's sleep, its details sketched in only afterward, in retrospect, a composite image of previous nights and other snows. Dea guessed it was well after midnight: all the apartments were dark.

She stopped to catch her breath, ducking into a darkened
doorway. She didn't want to think about how she would find the strength to fight the monsters when they came—when they finally showed themselves as men. She was being gripped by an invisible hand, squeezed on all sides; she felt that at any second she might be expelled into reality, simply popped back into the real world like a cork out of a bottle. But she wouldn't leave.

Not until she knew for sure.

Not until she gave them faces.

She would have to pick whether to watch the alley that ran along the back of Connor's apartment building or whether she should stay here, and keep her eye on the front entrance. The police believed the killers had come through the back window; they had certainly left that way. But if Dea was right, if her instincts were right, the killers had come through the front door and only made it look like a break-in later.

She stayed where she was, dragging breaths in and out, fighting to stay awake, to stay in. There was one way in which the memory and the dream were identical: she had no sense of time. It seemed to her both that she stood there for an eternity—feeling her lungs flutter against the pressure in her chest, wondering whether she had made the wrong choice and should circle around to the alley, whether she was wrong in general—and also that only a minute passed before there was a shift. The memory contracted like a heart. Everything went still, even stiller than it had been before. Dea spotted a light coming on quickly in an upstairs window; just as quickly, it was extinguished.

But it was enough. The truth hit her quickly, all at once.

The killer was already inside.

When Connor dreamed, he imagined the men approaching, sliding through the hallways, seeping up the stairs.

But in his memory, they had simply appeared. Connor was sleeping; when he woke, there they were.

She ran. Her progress was painfully slow. She had to fight for each step, each breath. She could hear her breath rasping in her ears, sharp and foreign, and every footstep sent a shudder through the sidewalk, as though the whole memory trembled at her intrusion. She was winded even before she reached the alley. She forced herself to go on, through air that felt like oil, and darkness that felt like weight.

She counted apartment buildings as she ran past them, looking for the wooden stairs stitched up the back of Connor's building. It was still quiet. There were no screams yet, but she wasn't sure there would be. Connor had never said that his mother had screamed—only that she had talked, and then begged.

More proof. She would have screamed, first and immediately. Unless . . .

Unless she knew them.

Up the stairs, her breath ragged in her throat, the wood giving way like mud, sucking her shoes down before spitting them out.

Then she was on the landing. Window closed, door locked, a trash bag heaped next to a shovel in the remains of an old snow.

She drew an elbow back and jabbed it once, hard, against the window. She heard a sound like a gunshot—or maybe it
was
a gunshot?—and the world blinked. Then she was thrown backward, as if by a giant hand.

For a second, everything was darkness and she felt herself
being pushed out, felt the heavy lines of her real body and heard Connor shouting at her to
stop, stop
.

For one long moment, she was split. She was Dea, lying on her back on a porch in the snow. She was Dea, gasping for breath in Connor's arms, her body stone-heavy, useless and abandoned.

She was neither and she was both.

Wood. Snow. Cold. She reached out, she pulled, she hauled herself back into his memory, leaving her body behind.

She stood up, shaken, steadying herself on the porch railing. A web of cracks extended across the windowpane where she had struck it, but the glass was still intact. She was changing things, screwing up the memory; and the memory was fighting back.
Connor
was fighting back.

She grabbed the shovel and used the handle to tap the glass. One, two, three times—nauseous, feeling the impact all the way to her teeth. But at last she succeeded, and the glass shattered inward, landing on the floor with a faint tinkling. Dea paused, holding her breath, half expecting the monsters to come roaring out through the broken window and leap for her throat. But nothing happened. The house was dark and still. She heard no baby crying, no footsteps, no arguments. It was terrible to enter an apartment so quiet. She was totally disoriented, and couldn't plan for what she would find.

She shimmied through the window, feeling a little bit like she was moving down into the soft dampness of an animal's throat. Her feet crunched on the glass where she landed, and she paused in a crouch, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dark, scanning every shadow for hidden movement. She was in the kitchen, and she was alone. Pale squares of moonlight fell on
the tile floors. The refrigerator door was cluttered with magnets and Christmas cards, like a paper skin, and there was a high chair drawn up to the table, and a baby bib still lying, folded, on a countertop. She fought down an overwhelming sense of grief.

How easily, she thought, the ends could destroy even perfect beginnings. And just for a second, she wondered whether she could be happy living alongside her mother in a world where death didn't come for everyone; where there were no seasons and no endings.

She stood up and moved as quietly as she could around the kitchen, opening drawers until she found what she wanted: a paring knife, sharp and small and easily concealed. She curled her fist around the handle and slid out into the hall. It was hot, and the air smelled of pine needles, carpet cleaner, and something sweet she couldn't identify. It was so quiet. Had she missed them? Had the men come and vanished already?

A small part of her wished it. She didn't know if she was ready to face them. But she knew, instinctively, that they were there with her, hidden in the darkness of the apartment somewhere. They soured the air with their breathing; they made ripples in the darkness, like stones in water. Her whole body was on alert.

She no longer knew whether her heart was beating. Her chest was so tight with terror, she could barely take a breath. She inched forward, leaving the moonlight behind, in darkness so thick it felt weighty, like a blanket, gripping her knife.

Something creaked. She froze. Her hand was shaking when she raised the knife.

One of the doors on her right opened a few inches. Framed
in the gap was the white, wide-eyed face of a six-year-old Connor, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly, his expression twisted with terror.

“Shhh,” she whispered. “It's all right. It's okay.” Connor stayed where he was, staring, moving his mouth as if he was trying to scream. She couldn't stand to see him; she couldn't stand to have him watch. “Go back inside.” She reached out and closed the door softly.

She moved on, forcing her way, doubled forward like a person fighting against a strong wind. The door of Connor's mother's bedroom was also open a crack. Dea stood for a second or for an eternity, afraid to enter and afraid to turn back. At last she pushed open the door and stepped inside, drawing a breath sharply against the sudden odor of sweat and blood. A scream rose in her throat and lodged there.

It was done. It had happened. In the corner, the lamp was shattered into pieces, and there was a huddled mass of darkness in the crib. She couldn't bring herself to go any closer. She coughed, her stomach rolling into her throat. Tears sprang to her eyes.

Connor's mom was still in bed. The covers were drawn up to the pillows, so Dea could see nothing but the vague shape of her, the swell of her body under the comforter.

She couldn't help it. She was drawn forward, as though by an external force. Without considering what she was doing—and what she would see—she reached out and flipped back the covers. She stifled a cry.

The bed was empty, except for two pillows, roughly massed together in the shape of a woman.

“You bitch.”

She spun around at the sound of the voice—but slowly, too slowly, so that by the time she reacted he had already had time to push her backward onto the bed, immobilizing her under his weight. He was gripping her wrists so tightly, she couldn't begin to make use of the knife.

This time, his face wasn't made of sticky darkness. She could just make out his features, distorted by the mask—the flat plane of his nose, the cruel set of his lips, hooded eyes. The other one was standing by the door, shifting impatiently, foot to foot.

“Come on,” said the second man. “Get it over with.”

The man on top of Dea leaned into her, so heavy she could barely breathe. She could smell his breath, sour, faintly alcoholic. She turned her head away from him, gasping into the sheets.

“Did you really think I'd sit back and let you ruin everything?” He spat. “Huh? Did you?”

“Hurry up. The kid'll wake up.”

“Please,” Dea choked out. “Please don't do this.” She realized, with a swinging sense of terror, of vertigo, that she was playing the part of Connor's mom: she was saying the right lines, she'd been forced into the right position. The memory was making her play the role of the murder victim. Her fingers were numb; she felt her grip relax on the knife.

He was going to kill her. Right here, right now.

“
Now
you'll beg?” He spat out. “That's funny. That's really funny.” He forced his lips to her ear. She cried out. She tried to kick. But he was lying on top of her, flattening her, squeezing the air from her chest. He was too heavy and far, far too strong. She felt the stubble of his facial hair chafing her cheek.
She wanted to die. She wanted to live. She wanted out. “I told you,” he whispered. “I told you I'd never let you go.”

Words he had spoken to Connor's mother, years ago: words Connor, hiding, terrified, pressing his ear to the wall, had heard and buried.

Dea felt a hot surge of rage. “Get off of me.” She whipped her head around and felt a blast of pain as their skulls collided with a crack. Spots of color floated across her vision. He cried out and jerked back but just for an instant. Before she could raise the knife, he had lunged for her again. She took a breath and screamed. He released her left wrist and grabbed hold of her throat. She choked on her own saliva. The scream died in her throat as he squeezed. She tried to swallow and couldn't. She tried to breathe and couldn't.