The House of Thunder (18 page)
She still hadn’t seen the woman.
Susan looked at the curtained bed. There was not even the slightest movement or noise from behind it.
At the moment, she did not want to be alone, so she said, “Mrs. Seiffert?”
There was no response.
She considered getting out of bed, going over there, and seeing if Mrs. Seiffert was all right. For reasons she could not explain, however, she was afraid to open that curtain.
8
Susan tried to follow doctor’s orders. She picked up a book and read for a few minutes, but she couldn’t get interested in the story. She switched on the TV, but she couldn’t find a program that held her attention. The only thing that engaged her interest was the mystery of the four look-alikes, the puzzle of their purpose. What did they intend to do to her? In spite of McGee’s advice, she spent a large part of the morning thinking about Harch and the other three, worrying.
Clear evidence of an unnatural fixation, obsession, psychological illness or brain dysfunction, she thought. I say I don’t believe in elaborate fantasies. I say I don’t believe in the occult. And yet I believe these four are real, including the two who are dead. It makes no sense.
But she worried anyway, and she looked forward with unalloyed dread to the prospect of being taken from her room for therapy. Not that she felt safe in her room. She didn’t. But at least her room was known territory. She didn’t want to go downstairs. She recalled the way Jellicoe ... the way Dennis Bradley had said it: “We’re here to take
you
downstairs.” It had an ominous sound.
you
downstairs.” It had an ominous sound.
Downstairs.
Feeling guilty about ignoring much of McGee’s advice, Susan made a point of eating everything she was served for lunch, which was what he had told her to do.
The condemned woman ate a hearty last meal, she thought with gallows humor. Then, angry with herself, she thought: Dammit, stop this! Get your act together, Thorton.
Just as she finished eating, the phone rang. It was a call from a couple of her fellow workers at Milestone. She didn’t remember them, but she tried to be pleasant, tried to think of them as friends. It was nevertheless an awkward and disturbing conversation, and she was relieved when they finally hung up.
An hour after lunch, two orderlies came with a wheeled stretcher. Neither of them even faintly resembled any of the four fraternity men.
The first was a burly, fiftyish man with a beer gut. He had thick graying hair and a gray mustache. “Hi ya, gorgeous. You ordered a taxi?”
The second man was about thirty-five. He was bald and had a smooth, open, almost childlike face. He said, “We’re here to take you away from all this.”
“I was expecting a limousine,” she said.
“Hey, sweetheart, what d’ya think this is?” the older one asked. He swept his open hand across the wheeled stretcher as if he were presenting an elegant motor coach. “Look at those classic lines!” He slapped the stretcher’s three-inch foam mattress. “Look at that upholstery. Nothing but the best, the finest.”
The bald one said, “Is there any other mode of transportation, other than a limousine, in which you could ride lying down?”
“With a chauffeur,” said the older one, putting down the rail on her bed.
“With two chauffeurs,” the bald one said, pushing the stretcher against the side of her bed. “I’m Phil. The other gent is Elmer Murphy.”
“They call me Murf.”
“They call him worse than that.”
Although she was still afraid of being taken downstairs, into unknown territory, Susan was amused by their patter. Their friendliness, their efforts to make her feel at ease, and her determination not to disappoint McGee gave her sufficient courage to slide off the bed and onto the stretcher. Looking up at them, she said, “Are you two always like this?”
“Like what?” Murf asked.
“She means charming,” Phil said, slipping a small, somewhat hard pillow under her head.
“Oh, yeah,” Murf said. “We’re always charming.”
“Cary Grant has nothing on us.”
“It’s just something we were born with.”
Phil said, “If you look under ‘charm’ in the dictionary—”
“—you’ll see our faces,” Murf finished for him.
They put a thin blanket over her, put one strap across her to keep the blanket in place, and wheeled her into the hall.
Downstairs.
To keep from thinking about where she was going, Susan said, “Why this contraption? Why not a wheelchair?”
“We can’t deal with patients in wheelchairs,” Phil said.
“They’re too mobile,” Murf said.
“Americans love mobility.”
“They hate to sit still.”
Phil said, “If we leave a patient alone in a wheelchair for just ten seconds—”
“—he’s halfway to Mesopotamia by the time we get back,” Murf finished.
They were at the elevators. Murf pushed the white button labeled Down.
“Lovely place,” Phil said as the doors opened wide.
“What?” Murf said. “This elevator? Lovely?”
“No,” Phil said. “Mesopotamia.”
“You been there, huh?”
“That’s where I spend my winters.”
“Ya know, I don’t think there is a Mesopotamia any more.”
“Better not let the Mesopotamians hear you say that,” Phil warned him.
They kept up their chatter in the elevator and all the way along the first-floor hall into the Physical Therapy Department, which was in one of the building’s short wings. There, they turned her over to Mrs. Florence Atkinson, the specially trained therapist who was in charge of the hospital’s PT program.
Florence Atkinson was a small, dark, birdlike woman, brimming with energy and enthusiasm. She guided Susan through half an hour of exercises, using a variety of machines and modified gym equipment that gave a workout to every muscle group. There was nothing in the least strenuous about it; a healthy person would have found it all laughably easy. “For your first couple of visits,” Mrs. Atkinson said, “we’ll concentrate primarily on passive exercise.” But at the end of the half hour, Susan was exhausted and achy. Following the exercise period, she was given a massage that made her feel as if she were a loose collection of disjointed bones and ligaments that God had neglected to assemble into human form. After the massage, there was a session in the whirlpool. The hot, swirling water leeched the remaining tension out of her, so that she felt not just loose but liquid. Best of all, she was allowed to take a shower in a stall that was equipped with a seat and handrails for invalids. The glorious feeling and scent of soap, hot water, and steam was so wonderful, so exquisite, that merely taking a bath seemed deliciously sinful.
Florence Atkinson dried Susan’s shaggy blond hair with an electric blower while she sat in front of a dressing table mirror. It was the first time she had looked in a mirror in more than a day, and she was delighted to see that the bags under her eyes were entirely gone. The skin around her eyes was still a bit on the bluish side, but not much, and she actually had a touch of rosy color in her cheeks. The thin scar on her forehead was less red and swollen than it had been yesterday morning, when the bandages had come off, and she had no difficulty believing that it really would be all but invisible when it was entirely healed.
In her green pajamas again, she got onto the wheeled stretcher, and Mrs. Atkinson pushed her into the PT Department’s waiting room. “Phil and Murf will be around for you in a few minutes.”
“They can take their time. I feel like I’m floating on a warm, blue ocean. I could lay here forever,” she said, wondering how on earth she could ever have been so afraid of being brought downstairs to PT.
She stared at the acoustic-tile ceiling for a minute or two, finding outlines of objects in the pattern of dots: a giraffe, a sailboat, a palm tree. Drowsy, she closed her eyes and yawned.
“She looks too satisfied, Phil.”
“Yes, she does, Murf”
She opened her eyes and smiled up at them.
“Got to be careful about pampering the patients too much,” Phil said.
“Massages, whirlpools, chauffeurs ...”
“Pretty soon, she’ll be wanting breakfast in bed.”
“What is this, Phil, a hospital or a country club?”
“Sometimes I wonder, Murf.”
“Well, if it isn’t the Laurel and Hardy of Willawauk Hospital,” Susan said.
They wheeled her out of the PT waiting room.
Murf said, “Laurel and Hardy? No, we think of ourselves more as the Bob and Ray of Willawauk.”
They turned the corner into the long main hall. The hard pillow raised Susan’s head just enough so she could see that the corridor was deserted. It was the first time she’d seen an empty hallway in the bustling hospital.
“Bob and Ray?” Phil said to Murf. “Speak for yourself. Me, I think I’m the Robert Redford of Willawauk.”
“Robert Redford doesn’t need a toupee.”
“Neither do I.”
“Right. You need an entire bearskin rug to cover that dome.”
They had reached the elevators.
“You’re being cruel, Murf.”
“Just helping you face reality, Phil.”
Murf pushed the white button labeled Up.
Phil said, “Well, Miss Thorton, I hope you’ve enjoyed your little trip.”
“Immensely,” she said.
“Good,” Murf said. “And we guarantee you that the next part of it will be interesting.”
“Very interesting,” Phil agreed.
The elevator doors opened behind her.
They pushed her inside but didn’t follow.
There were other people already in there. Four of them. Harch, Quince, Jellicoe, Parker. Harch and Quince were wearing pajamas and robes; they were standing at her left side. Jellicoe and Parker, in hospital whites, were at her right.
Shocked, disbelieving, she raised her head, looked out at Murf and Phil, who were standing in the elevator alcove on the first floor, staring in at her, smiling. They waved goodbye.
The doors closed. The lift started up.
Ernest Harch punched a button on the control panel, and they stopped between floors. He looked down at her. His frosty gray eyes were like circles of dirty ice, and they transmitted a chill to the heart of her.
Harch said, “Hello, bitch. Imagine meeting you here.”
Jellicoe giggled. It was a burbling, chortling, piggish sound that matched his piggish face.
“No,” she said numbly.
“Not going to scream?” Parker asked, grinning like a naughty, freckle-faced altar boy.
“We had hoped for a scream,” Quince said, his long face looking even longer from her perspective.
“Too surprised to scream,” Jellicoe said, and he giggled again.
She closed her eyes and did what Jeffrey McGee had suggested. She told herself that they were not real. She told herself that they couldn’t hurt her. She told herself that they were just phantoms, the stuff of daydreams or, rather, daymares. Not real.
Someone put a hand on her throat.
Heart pounding, she opened her eyes. ,It was Harch. He squeezed lightly, and the feel of her flesh in his grip apparently pleased him, for he laughed softly.
Susan put both of her hands on his, tried to pull it away. Couldn’t. He was strong.
“Don’t worry, bitch,” he said. “I won’t kill you.”
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