The Third Floor Part 28

She got a towel out of the cabinet, set it on the toilet seat.

"He's older. He's got short dark hair, and he's taller."

"Do you know how old?"

"He said he was--" he stopped and looked up--thinking? Or talking to Adam?--and said, "twelve."

She handed him the towel and he took it and stood up. She unplugged the drain. Joey made a clumsy attempt to dry his head and Liz had to take the towel from him to do it. When he was standing on the rug, dried and slipping into clean underwear, Liz forced herself to ask, "Do you know what's going on up there, Joe?"

"Uh-huh."

She waited, but he didn't continue. She had to ask, "What? What are they doing up there?"

"They just want to get out."

"Who?"

"All of them."

"The children? Adam?"

"Not Adam. Adam's down here now."

"Where?"

He didn't say anything, but he stared at her and his eyes weren't his and the face, mostly Joey's, showed signs of someone else in the slopes and tones and the way he held it. She looked at the birthmark under his chin, the ragged run of pink flesh that everyone mistook for a scar. ("The nail cut his throat and he died.") Then she hugged him and felt herself beginning to cry for the six-year-old boy she'd fallen in love with and who was now only partly here anymore.

Chapter Sixteen.

Jack spent that week conducting tours through the department. With Fett Tech in desperate need of customers, they'd invited busloads of people to take a look at their plant in the hopes of winning them over. Jack cringed every time a new group walked through the doors, knowing every second he spent with these people--showing them where the wave solder was, explaining to them that the dope room was for doping compound that went into the junction boxes and some of the cables to make them waterproof--would be time spent letting everything else fall to the side.

How many calls from Aurora was he missing? Not that he didn't enjoy the break from them, but he knew that just because they couldn't get hold of him wouldn't negate their need for box loads of parts sent next day air.

And what about all their other customers? Were their parts supposed to be put on hold, too, just to explain how an intercom is rewired to a bunch of people who probably aren't even that interested? Of course not. And with the hours cut to thirty-six, that didn't leave them a h.e.l.l of a lot of time to do any catching up.

But G.o.d forbid any of that matter. Got to get the potential customers through here before dealing with the ones we've already got, right? He couldn't believe he'd ever been impressed with the way things ran here. Those few months ago seemed like years, already.

Someone asked why it was called a "Y" cable.

Jack pointed out the configuration of the a.s.sembly, how three separate cables ran from a center box in the form of a "Y", and he wanted to wrap the thing around the moron's neck until he stopped being so stupid.

Liz spent the week going through The Outsider's Guide to Angel Hill, wondering at all the weird c.r.a.p that had gone on here. She wondered how much of it was authentic and how much hearsay.

On Thursday, she called Arthur Miller personally--the bookstore name and phone number was printed on the back cover--and asked him about her house.

"You live in that house?" was his initial response.

"Yes," Liz said. "We moved here a couple months ago. My husband bought your book and it's very interesting--." He chuckled and thanked her. "--but what I'm wondering is, has anything other than the Dengler thing happened here? Do you know anything about anyone who lived here before or since?"

"Well, the second part's easy," he said. "No one's lived there since Milo Dengler. Just about everyone in town knows the house and knows what happened there. Your case, someone from out of town, is about the only way they were going to unload that place."

I'm not surprised, she thought.

"And what about before? Do you know anything about the first people to live here?"

"Yes," he said. "Some. I know the first occupant was a preacher named Keeper. He and his wife and their children--he had twins, boy and a girl--lived there. Why a preacher with only two kids needs that a big a house, I don't know, but I do know that when the kids was in their teens, Keeper found 'em upstairs together."

Yes, Joey had already told her that.

"Story goes he kicked 'em right out and never saw them again. Now, the story also says the kids were sharing a bedroom upstairs, one more thing I don't get, but that's the story. I mean, even a preacher has to know better than to put two repressed teenagers together."

"But they were brother and sister. Worse, twins," Liz said.

"I'm not saying it was normal, that's just the story. I'm only saying, there are a lot of rooms in that house. Surely those kids could have had separate rooms."

Liz moved away from the phone for a second and listened. Joey was in his room.

"But the preacher kept that extra room for guests, as I hear it."

"There's lots of rooms here," Liz said.

"There's more now," Arthur Miller said. "At first, the bottom floor was a stable. The Keepers only lived on the top two floors. I believe there's a room on the second floor he used as a study. And the bedrooms were upstairs. Well he came up for bed one night, heard 'em in there, and when he looked in to tell them to go to sleep, he found 'em doing stuff no parent ever wants to see their kids doing."

"What happened?" Liz asked.

"He kicked 'em out. Told 'em the devil had no place in his house and he gathered up their clothes, tossed 'em out the window, and that was that. They were gone."

"What happened to them?"

"I don't know," Arthur Miller said. "So far, no one's got a story for that. And since it was almost a hundred years ago, I doubt anyone will."

"And what about after the Keepers? Anything happen with the people who lived here after that?"

"Nothing I've heard of. The Keepers lived there another twenty or so years before the preacher died. I think his wife sold the house and moved away. I don't know, maybe she died, too. It was years before the Denglers moved in, surely someone else lived there in that time, but if they did, nothing happened to call attention. The Denglers were there for a while before . . . it happened."

Liz got off the phone with Arthur Miller with only minimal new knowledge. She wasn't even sure what she was looking for in the first place.

All work on the house had ceased, but she still went upstairs once in a while. She'd sit on the top landing, staring at the spot Milo Dengler had hung from, and daring him to reappear. Her courage came from looking at Joey, wondering where he was going and what would happen when he was gone. She'd watched the air in front of her, expecting to see him form from nothing, but he never appeared.

The girl moved through the room a time or two. And when Liz went downstairs, the noises on the third floor started again. During the night, the thumps and giggles coming down the stairs were almost every few minutes. How Jack could sleep through it, she didn't know.

She'd watch Jack sometimes when he came home from work, wondering if he was going to see the changes in Joey yet, wondering what he would say if he did.

He'll see sooner or later, she thought. He has to. Eventually it's not going to be something he can deny or rationalize away.

But will it be too late by then?

I don't know.

But he hadn't noticed yet.

How could he not? Was he blind, or stupid?

After the night in the bathroom, she never questioned Joey again about what was happening. She saw herself as knowing too much already. She could barely sleep and her appet.i.te was gone. She told herself she had to deal with this and get on with her life because if she really was pregnant, she had more than just herself to think about.

But I have to think about Joey, too.

And you're not going to do him any good if you ruin yourself.

She'd try to take naps in the afternoons, but she could rarely sleep. She'd try to force food down her throat, but after a few bites, she felt she would puke if she swallowed any more.

During the long hot afternoons while Jack was at work, she'd start to feel helpless, knowing something was happening but neither knowing what it was, nor what she would be able to do if it happened right now. Despite the many rooms and three separate floors, the walls of the house began to close in. She'd go outside, but even then the feeling of something inside the house watching her remained. And if not that, the Angel Hill summer sun beating down would drive her back inside.

She wanted to blame most of her discomfort to the house and everything in it, but that nagging in the back of her head finally became too loud and she decided she couldn't avoid thinking about it any longer. Adam had told Joey something that Liz hadn't even admitted to herself yet. So finally she'd gone to the store alone, and when she came home, already stuffed into her back pocket with her shirt draped over it had been a pregnancy test. After seeing the results, she put the test back into the box, but the box in the bathroom trash can and changed the bag right then. It wasn't full, but she just wasn't ready to tell Jack yet that they were going to have a baby. There was something about it, something about Adam knowing before she knew that made her uncomfortable.

But even after seeing the results, knowing it was true, she knew she could only attribute some of her problems to the baby. There was still the matter of the house and that feeling that something big was coming.

The entire week following her conversation with Joey in the bathroom became one long series of hours stretching into forever with no purpose and no end.

Once, she wished for whatever it was to just hurry up so she could eventually move on from it and lead a normal life again. And then she looked at Joey, so different now, and prayed for it to hold off a while longer.

Finally the weekend came and Liz breathed a small sigh of relief. Whatever was coming, hadn't yet.

On Sat.u.r.day she woke up and that expectant feeling in the bottom of her stomach had lifted. Maybe whatever it was had decided it wasn't time yet. Jack said he was going to Charley's for an hour or two and when he got back they'd go to a movie maybe and then to eat.

Liz lay on the couch, exhausted from a night of waking up at every sound, wondering when the lot of them would thump down the stairs, toward the bedroom, coming for Liz, or for Joey. She had lit a cigarette, then remembered she couldn't smoke anymore. She wanted to lean up and stub it out in the ashtray, but she was so tired.

While she floated away, she kept an ear out for Joey in his room.

Since they'd moved in, Liz knew he'd grown at least three inches, and added at least twenty pounds. It was all she could do to keep him in clothes that fit. His face had thinned. His voice was deeper--not p.u.b.erty-deeper, but not the high tones of a child anymore, either.

The birthmark under his chin was also a deeper red. This scared her the most.

Once during the week, she wanted to hit Jack in the head with anything hard to knock realization into him. How could he not see the change? He had to see it. Maybe he just wasn't letting himself see it consciously. Because then he'd have to admit something was happening and that would disrupt his perfect ordered world.

Still, he had to see it. He had to. He had to see that his six-year-old son looked more like a twelve-year-old boy he'd never met. There were still traces of Joe Kitch, but they were buried beneath the mask of Adam.

And if not for Liz having spent ninety-five percent of last night wide awake and listening, she'd take him outside right now, away from this house for five minutes. Maybe she would have driven Jack to Charley's and then taken Joey shopping or something. She would have done anything else besides lie on the couch and let the nothing of the house put her to sleep.

She would. If she weren't so d.a.m.ned exhausted.

But the rhythmic rush of the air conditioner in the bedroom across the hall, and the sunlight falling through the window to warm her shoulders, lulled her into the dark.

Jack pulled Lily from her case, wiped off her body, and sat across from Charley on a small stool in the Clark garage. He slung the strap over his shoulder and went down the strings, checking to see they were in tune.

Charley had tuned his before Jack arrived. While he waited for Jack, he asked, "So your wife still p.i.s.sed?"

"I don't know," Jack said. "I don't think she's so much p.i.s.sed now as she's just annoyed. It's not like a temper anymore--she's just on edge, I guess."

"About what?"

"I don't know," Jack lied. He knew exactly what was bothering Liz. She hadn't mentioned ghosts since Monday, but he knew it was on her mind. It was in the way she jumped sometimes when the air conditioner kicked on, or when the phone rang with one of its stupid prank calls. Jack made another mental note to himself to call the phone company and get the number changed just as soon as work quieted a bit and he could think. No, Liz hadn't said anything, but he knew she was thinking about it.

Was she at home now mad at him for going off to "play with himself"? She hadn't seemed mad when he left, but over two years with Liz told him she didn't have to act mad to be fuming. She knew how to hide it, and then when she let it go, watch out.

But she really did seem fine. And anyway, he was only going to be here an hour, maybe a little more. And they were going to spend the entire evening out together.

"So what's it gonna be today?" Charley asked.

"I'm thinking some--" and he played a Texas blues lick, something he'd heard on a Stevie Ray Vaughan record once, or at least an imitation of it.

Joey'd heard them talking to him all day. He could hear their voices floating down from the third floor and vibrating into his brain. He sat on the floor in his room with an army man forgotten in his hand, staring at the wall, into it, and on past, seeing only shadow. When his legs began to move and his body to stand, his brain was still focused on that dark. When his hands reached into the toy box in his closet and dug down, searching, and finally pulling free the rag doll, the plastic softball, the toy truck they'd left him, his brain saw only dark. When his feet moved him toward the door, into the hall, and up the first step, his mind was dark.

Adam looked down at the toys in his hands, clutched them tight in his fingers, and climbed.

Liz had dreams of Houston. She was coming home from work and when she walked in the door, she knew something was wrong. It was nothing apparent at first, because Alex hadn't taken much, just his clothes, a dozen or so CDs, and whatever knickknacks and whatnots he'd brought to the marriage. She sat on the couch, put her feet up, and sighed. She didn't notice the sheet of yellow paper taped to the television screen for a good ten minutes. But when she did notice it, she knew exactly what it was and she knew exactly what that feeling was, she knew what was wrong.

Her actions were in slow motion. She crossed the room with syrup-soaked feet, reached for the note with a reluctant arm, and pulled it from the screen with fragile fingers. Her chest expanded and sank in exaggerated motions as she read.

Wake up, Liz, because Joey's gone now and Adam is going upstairs and you have to wake up. Dengler is up there waiting for him. You have to WAKE UP!

She frowned. That's not what the note said. It had said he didn't see the marriage going anywhere, that he wasn't happy and he didn't think it fair to her to stick around just for her sake because he'd resent her sooner or later and he still cared about her enough not to put her through that.

She looked at it again. Her fingers shook because she remembered what it had said and she remembered how she'd reacted to it.

Liz! Wake up! The birthmark is bleeding and Jack won't make it in time. Wake up!

No, this was all wrong. She remembered it. And this wasn't how it happened. What was wrong? Why couldn't she see it? There was something. What? She looked at it again.

Joey is gone. Adam is here. Joey is gone. Adam is here.

Why was that familiar? Adam? Joey? She couldn't remember and it kept changing and she'd just come home to find her husband gone. But this wasn't how it happened. She looked around and noticed, now that she looked, what was missing from the apartment. Alex was gone. Joey was gone. Adam was here?

Joey!

She remembered and she looked at the note again. This time it had stayed the same.

Joey is gone. Adam is here. Joey is gone. Adam is here.

Christ! What did it mean Joey was gone? And Adam is here? Where's here? What did it mean? Where was Jack? She didn't even know Jack yet. Alex had just moved out and she wouldn't meet Jack for another few years.

She dropped the note. It floated to the floor and vanished before it hit. She went for the door to find Joey, but the door was gone and she ran from one wall to the next searching for the way out. Then she heard a piano. Someone was playing in another room. She went into the bedroom--the only other room aside from the kitchen which opened from the living room, and the bathroom which was way too small for a piano--and found the little girl. Sarah. Her back was to Liz and she sat facing an upright piano, her fingers doing scales back and forth.