The Third Floor Part 24

She kept her eyes on the table. She stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and let herself be pulled up as Jack led her back to Joey's room.

She stayed in the room with him while Jack went to see about getting him signed out. She kept her back to the wall by the door and didn't look at Joey. He lay in the bed watching television, neither speaking nor looking her way.

The ten minutes Jack was gone seemed like an hour and Liz stood there, dreading a word from Joey because she was suddenly sure the voice that came out wouldn't be his and that would be one more thing in the long list that Jack would choose not to see. She wished sometimes she could just punch Jack in the face, just once, just hard enough to open his eyes to the possibility that not everything in the world fell into his stupid, narrow-minded cla.s.sifications.

Jack came back. "They said they could let him go just as soon as the doctor releases him."

"How long?"

"They're trying to get hold of him now." Jack used the phone to call work. He told Bill Sten where he was and that he'd be back just as soon as he could.

The doctor came in ninety minutes later to look Joey up and down, then said he was good to go and once the paperwork was done, Joey was wheeled to the front door where Jack had the car waiting.

The ride home was quiet and once they reached the house neither Liz nor Joey was eager to get inside. Liz kept her eyes on the third floor windows as she shuffled to the door. Joey kept his eyes down. No one spoke.

Soon after, Jack went back to work. He said he might be a little late in case anything had come up with Aurora while he was gone. He kissed his wife and son, and went out the back door. As soon as the door clicked shut, Liz heard the bathroom door close down the hall.

She suppressed a shudder and sighed.

Joey sat on the couch watching cartoons. Liz knelt next to him and said, "Joey, I want you to tell me if you know what's going on."

Joey stayed focused, but his mouth opened as if he were going to talk.

"I'm sorry I left you alone last night," she said.

"That's okay," Joey said. She wanted to hug him when she recognized the voice as the Joey she'd known the past two years. "You were just scared."

"Yeah," she said. "I guess I was. I'm sorry. Do you know what's happening?"

He shook his head, but didn't say anything. Then he looked at her and asked, "Do you?"

"No," she said. "I don't."

"Something bad?"

"I don't know."

"Bad stuff happens here a lot," he said.

"Does it?"

"Uh-huh. People get hurt here. Are we going to get hurt?"

"No," she said, even though the best she could come to certainty was a strong hope that everything might be okay.

She left Joey where he was and crossed to the bedroom, keeping the corner of her eye on the hall, hoping to G.o.d nothing was coming down the stairs toward her. In the bedroom, she thrust her hand under Jack's side of the mattress, searching, finding the book she knew was there, and pulling it out.

Jack knew something, she knew he did, but he wouldn't tell her. That's okay, she thought he might have gotten it from this book, and if he did, she'd find out what he knew.

She thumbed through it, glancing at the chapter headings, then flipped to the front for a look at the table of contents.

There were three chapters on ghosts, and two were haunted house stories.

Liz turned the book over for another look at the cover, then looked at the back, checking to see if there was any word about how true the stories in here were. The front cover had a banner pasted across the bottom: "TRUE STORIES OF ANGEL HILL ODDITIES". She flipped back to the contents and picked one of the haunted house stories.

She turned to the chapter then scanned down the page. This wasn't her house. This house was in west Angel Hill and was supposedly built on the site of a Civil War battle. Not what she was looking for.

She turned to the other haunted house chapter and read.

It told pretty much the same story Charley Clark had given Jack. Milo Dengler's wife dead from cancer. Four kids. Dengler signs off from work one day and a few days later the police show up. The book didn't say how the police came to be at the Dengler door, but it did tell what they found. Milo Dengler hanging from the rail at the top of the third floor and his three sons and a daughter dead in the corner bedroom.

Liz shuddered, closed the book with her finger between the pages, then turned around, sure there was someone behind her.

Joey was still in the living room. From the bed, she could see Naruto on television.

She turned back to the book, flipping through the pages again, hoping for pictures or names or anything else. She didn't know much more now than she did before. Except that she'd been right when she first wondered if someone had died up there. She would never have guessed it would be so bad, though.

To kill, not only yourself, but also your four kids. She couldn't imagine there was any reasoning behind that good enough to make it even the germ of an idea in anyone's head. But she wasn't him, she told herself, and she didn't know anything more about him than what this book said. For all she knew, the book itself was so much conjecture. Who knew how much truth there was in its pages? But there was a nudge at the back of her skull that said it was true. No matter the motive behind it, this was what had happened.

The book offered nothing more than the story and she closed it, then slid it back under Jack's side of the mattress.

In the hall, she peeked in on Joey who was still sitting quietly, watching cartoons. At the stairs, she saw the bathroom door standing open now and wondered when that had happened. She knew she heard it close when Jack left. As she stood staring at it, the light clicked on, shocking her into action and she quickly went up the first flight of stairs.

At the door, she looked out, saw the mail hadn't come yet--but who was this? Someone was coming up the front walk. Liz stared at her for a second before she recognized her. The woman from the park, the one who lived up the street. What was her name? Liz didn't think she'd ever asked for it.

The woman came up the porch, but before she could knock, Liz opened the door. The woman was startled for a second, but then she saw Liz and smiled.

"Hi," she said. "I'm sorry to barge in, but I saw the ambulance last night and just wanted to make sure everything was alright down here. Do you need anything?"

Liz wondered how much of this was genuine concern and how much was nosy neighbor.

"No," she said. "Everything's fine down here. We just had an accident with my son, but he's okay."

"Oh, I see. Well, you want to be careful with kids in a big house like this," she said. "There's got to be lots of opportunities for them to hurt themselves."

"Yeah, well . . . " Liz said, then trailed off. She stood for a second, wondering how to proceed, then a thought occurred and she said, "Hey, can I ask you something?"

"Oh, sure," the woman said.

"You've lived here, you said, what, ten years? Did you know the people who lived here before? The Denglers?"

"Oh," the woman said. "What a sad story that was, huh? It makes you wonder why they let people like that be parents."

Liz didn't know about all that. From the way the book told the story, it was just one bad thing after another, but up until that point it seemed the Denglers had been a pretty solid family.

"Yeah," Liz said. "I heard about what happened, but I was just wondering if you might know anything about them before all that? I'm curious to know what kind of people they were?"

"They were fine people," the woman said, "until that happened."

"Well, was there--I'm sorry, we're out here on the porch in the heat. Please, come inside."

"Thank you."

Liz led her up to the second floor and gave her a seat.

"You know," she said, "I don't think I ever got your name in the park that day."

"I'm Judy," the woman said, and held out her hand.

"Liz," she said, and offered her own hand.

"Yes, they were good people," Judy started. "At least, I always thought so. I was only beginning to know them when she got sick, but I very much enjoyed their company when I came down here. I didn't know the husband too well, but his wife, and the children, wonderful people. It was a shame and a waste, to lose someone like that."

"Cancer, wasn't it?" Liz asked.

"Yeah. Took her way too fast."

"Tell me about the children."

"You want to talk about a tragedy," Judy said. "What he did to those children, that's a crime against the world. They were the brightest, warmest children you've ever met. The oldest, Adam, he was always the man of the house, what with their father out on the trains all the time. I used to come visit after she got sick, to check in on her, you know, and Adam was always taking care of the younger ones. Getting their lunch, making sure they had clean clothes, all that. He was so grown up for such a young boy."

"And how old was he?" Liz asked.

"I don't know exactly," Judy said. "Young, just getting into his teen years, I think."

Liz was thinking that she hadn't seen this one. She'd seen the man, and two of the children, but none that old. The ones she'd seen had been children.

"And then Sarah," Judy said. "She doted on her big brother. She was pretty young, maybe ten. She used to practice her piano and if I walked my dog past the house at the right time, I could hear her from the sidewalk. Let me see . . . Jason was the eight-year-old, and then Kyle was five, I believe. I mean, they were a terrific family, they had everything in the world going for them. But that cancer, you know, it just swoops in and takes all that away."

"Yeah," Liz said. She wasn't listening anymore, she was thinking about the children. This woman was taking away their anonymity; they were no longer nameless shapes that touched her in the night. She pictured Joey, perfect and sleeping downstairs, and then she imagined having that four times over and what kind of hole does your life have to sink into before you do something so horrible?

She glanced over and Judy's lips were moving, so Liz tuned in.

"--this color, too. It all looks so different, but I really like it. Are you going to open up the house and finish all three floors?"

"I don't really know yet," Liz said. "We've been living on the bottom floor and that works out just fine so far. There's really no reason to move anything up here, other than we've got the s.p.a.ce and we might as well utilize it. But, to be honest, we don't need this much room. I love the house, but sometimes I wish we'd bought a smaller place."

"Yes," Judy said, nodding. "And knowing what happened here can't make it any easier."

"No," Liz confessed. "It doesn't."

Judy looked at her watch.

"Oh, I should be going, I'm going to be late. I just wanted to say h.e.l.lo, and to make sure everything was okay. You know, you see an ambulance down the street where something so awful happened once before . . ."

"Oh, G.o.d no," Liz said. "That's too horrible to even think about."

She walked Judy back to the door and said goodbye, stood there watching as the woman went down the steps to the sidewalk, then turned up the street heading back to her own house.

She locked the front door, then turned and went up to the second floor.

She looked around at all the work she'd done up here, and for what? How could she move up here? And if Jack ever got it into his head that they should use the third floor, what then? She couldn't do it.

She climbed the stairs again, toward the third floor, and her mind asked, What are you doing?

I have to see, she thought. I have to see where it happened.

Why?

I don't know. But I know I have to.

Well, leave me out of it.

Come on. Let's go see.

She rounded the landing and stopped, frozen again.

At the top of the stairs, sitting with her chin in her hands, looking solemnly down at Liz, was the little girl. Sarah? Her hair hung dead and dirty around her shoulders. Her dress was faded and grungy. Her eyes hollow, sunken.

Liz stared back, waiting, wondering what was going to happen.

And for the first time in months, Liz wasn't afraid. She saw the girl now as she was, a victim, not some menacing figure sent to torment her out of the house. She suddenly found herself feeling sympathy for this girl.

Then Sarah's lips parted, mouthing the silent question: why?

Liz felt the lump rise into her throat and she wanted to give a reason, but she didn't know. She would have done anything then to make the girl feel better, but she found herself empty of solutions.

"I don't know," she said back.

The girl stood up and Liz didn't know whether she should stand her ground or run.

The girl took a step back, away from Liz. Liz took a step up, too. The girl moved back another step, and before Liz could follow, Milo Dengler was hanging dead and green beside her, dangling from the top rail and staring at her, his face full of anger. Liz caught him from the corner of her eye and as she turned to look, Dengler lunged toward her, arms out and his mouth open in a roar.

Liz backed away, then leapt to the landing and turned, suddenly aware she couldn't get downstairs without pa.s.sing him, without going under him. What if he dropped from the rail and landed on top of her?

He's a ghost, her mind said.

That doesn't make it any less terrifying.

He can only scare you, he can't hurt you.

I hear a heart attack hurts plenty.

Dengler hung limp above her now, his arms at his sides and his head lolling forward on a broken neck. But his eyes were open and rolled up to stare at her.

She looked up and saw the girl had vanished from the landing. She was alone with the killer and any empathy she'd felt for the girl was replaced by bald fear. And Joey was alone downstairs. Were the others down there with him? Was the man just a distraction to keep her from Joey while the children did something to him?

No, she tried to convince herself. The sorrow in the girl's face had been real. Whatever all this was about, it wasn't something they'd done, but something that was done to them, something they were led into. At least, she hoped.