Midnight Voices

CHAPTER 33

Ryan had tried to do what his mother asked — he really had. But the minute she’d left his room he’d started thinking about what might be happening.

What she might be doing.

What she might be finding.

So he hadn’t stayed in bed. Instead he’d gotten up and put on his favorite bathrobe, the one his father had given him — his real father. It was too small; in fact, his arms stuck way out of the sleeves and it felt tight across the shoulders, but he didn’t care. No matter how badly it fit, it was still better than the one Tony had given him before they went to Mustique. After he’d put on the bathrobe he’d gone to his bedroom door and listened, but he couldn’t hear anything. Finally he’d opened the door a crack and peeked out into the hall, and when he was sure there was no one there, he’d told Chloe to stay where she was, and went out to the head of the stairs to peer down to the first floor.

There was light showing under the door to the study — light that drew him like a magnet. But when he got to the door, he hesitated, uncertain what to do next.

Should he knock on the door, and call to his mom? But he was supposed to be in bed, and if she caught him up, she’d be mad at him. And if Tony caught him—

He pressed his ear to the door and listened.

Quiet.

A quiet so deep it made him even more frightened than he already was.

Screwing up his courage, he put his hand on the doorknob. Slowly and carefully, terrified that any noise might give him away, he turned it. After what seemed like forever but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, the latch clicked with a sound so loud that Ryan almost bolted back up the stairs. But when nothing happened he pushed the door open just enough to peep inside.

Empty.

He opened the door a little wider, and slipped into the study. His mother was nowhere to be seen. But then he heard something — the same kind of sounds he’d heard through the wall of his room. But now they were louder. He peered around the study once more and this time saw the open closet door.

Was that where the sounds were coming from?

He started toward the door, but paused when the sounds abruptly stopped. Then, as he was trying to decide what to do, the silence was abruptly broken by a scream.

It was an unearthly scream that slashed deep into Ryan’s mind. Spurred by the howl, he wheeled around, darted through the study door, then raced back up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Coming to the upper landing, he ran to his room, shoved the door closed behind him, and threw himself back onto the bed, clutching Chloe so hard she squealed and tried to wriggle out of his grip. For a long time he sat huddled with the dog, his heart pounding, his breath coming in terrified gasps. The scream echoed in his mind, and no matter how hard he tried to silence it, the horrible sound kept coming back. And somewhere deep inside him, he knew what the source of that scream had been.

His mother.

It had been his mother’s voice he’d heard howling out in a fear and horror far worse even than the terror he was feeling now. But what could she have seen? What could have been in the closet that could have caused her to utter the scream that had burned into his mind?

But even more frightening for Ryan to think about than the scream itself was the force that had cut it off so suddenly that it was almost like he’d imagined the whole thing.

Almost, but not quite.

Now Ryan listened to the silence. A quiet had fallen over the apartment that was almost worse than the scream itself, and far worse than the silence that had followed that terrible moment when his mother had told him to stay where he was, then left him alone.

And even more terrible than the silence was the awful feeling he had deep inside him that his mother was gone. His eyes stung with tears, and he tried to fight them back, but in the end he felt them overflow his eyes and run down his cheeks. “Mom? Please don’t go away. Please don’t leave me.” The whispered words were broken as a wracking sob seized him. As a second sob rose in his throat and Chloe began licking the tears from his cheeks, he heard a new voice, this one rising out of the depths of his memory.

“Crying won’t help, son. You just have to pretend it doesn’t hurt, get up, and keep on playing the game.”

He could still remember the day his father had been watching him playing baseball and had spoken those words. Ryan had tripped on the run from third to home plate, sliding face down onto the hard earth of the park’s ball field, scraping his cheek and bloodying his nose. It had hurt so bad he thought he couldn’t stand it, but then his father had been there, picking him up and setting him back on his feet, wiping the blood away with a handkerchief, and speaking so softly nobody but Ryan could hear him. He’d listened that day, and stopped crying, and ignored the pain in his nose and the stinging of his scraped cheek, and gone back to the game.

And made three runs, too.

So now he listened to his father again, stopped crying, and swung his legs off the bed.

He could hear voices again, but they were different from the ones that came from inside the wall. He went to the door, opened it slightly, and listened.

The voices were louder.

The only one he recognized was Tony’s, and when he couldn’t quite make out the words, he tiptoed down the corridor to the top of the stairs.

“Don’t worry,” he heard Tony saying. “It’ll be all right. Everything will be all right.” Then there was another voice — a woman’s voice — but he couldn’t make out what she was saying. Then Tony’s voice again, louder and sounding like he was getting mad: “Haven’t I always made it all right? Just go home and don’t worry, and let me handle it.”

He heard the sound of the front door closing, then saw Tony’s shadow fall on the foot of the staircase. Whirling around, he scampered back to his room, silently shutting the door, then dashing back to bed, almost forgetting to strip off his bathrobe before getting back under the covers. When the soft rap on the door came, he turned on his side so his back was to the window and none of the light from the street would fall on his face.

He tried to breathe slowly and evenly, the way people did when they were asleep.

He heard a faint click as the door opened, then saw a slight brightening through his closed eyes as the light from the hall spilled into the room.

He felt Chloe stiffen beside him, and heard a low growl rumble in her throat.

He felt more than heard Tony coming over toward the bed.

“Ryan?”

Tony’s voice was soft, which told Ryan that his stepfather wasn’t sure if he was asleep or not. Which meant Tony had neither seen him at the top of the stairs nor heard him running back to his room.

“Are you asleep?” Tony asked, a little louder.

Ryan made himself stretch, yawn, and mumble, “Uhn-hunh,” but didn’t trust himself to roll over and look up at his stepfather.

He felt Tony bend over him, and then Ryan’s nostrils filled with a stench that almost made him throw up. Chloe started to growl, but the sound was suddenly cut off and Ryan felt the dog being lifted off the bed. He had to struggle hard against the instinct to reach for his pet, to pull her out of his stepfather’s arms, but his fear of betraying what he’d seen and heard a little while ago was even stronger. He lay still, giving no sign that he even knew Chloe was gone.

“The morning then,” he heard Tony say, and once more the terrible odor — like rotting meat — washed over him.

“Unh-hunh,” Ryan mumbled again, then snuggled deeper into the bed, pulling the covers over his head.

He waited, hardly daring to breathe, but even more terrified to give himself away by not breathing at all.

Finally the putrefying stench began to weaken, and then the room went dark again as the door closed.

The night — and the terror of his mother’s scream — closed around Ryan.

He had never felt more alone or more frightened in his life. Yet every time he started to cry, he repeated his father’s words once more.

“… just keep on playing the game… ”

The trouble was, he didn’t know exactly what the game was.