“We all did.” Marta paused. “Robby needed to pick up some stuff.”
I do remember, however, that at this point I was heading toward Robby’s door.
“Pick up some stuff for what?” I asked.
“He said he was going to spend the night at a friend’s.”
“What friend?”
“Ashton, I think.” She paused. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure he said Ashton.”
(Before walking into the room I murmured something that neither I nor Marta Kauffman could recall on November eighteenth but was, according to the writer: “Why would Robby have to pick up stuff if Ashton lives next door?”)
“Bret, it’s no big deal. It was just some clothes. He was in his room for ten minutes. Nadine Allen’s picking them up from the mall, and he should be back at their place by four—”
“Can you give me his cell number?”
Marta sighed—which pissed me off, I recall that flicker of rage—and gave it to me.
“I’m coming right back to the hotel,” I said. “I’ll see you guys in about twenty minutes.”
“Do you want to talk to Sarah—”
After hanging up on Marta, I dialed Robby’s number.
I waited by his door. There was no answer.
But I wasn’t worried and I didn’t leave a message.
Why would I?
He was at the Fortinbras Mall with friends and they were watching a movie and he had diligently turned off the phone once it began (a scenario impossibly distant from what actually happened that day) and then I would see him back at the hotel, and even though we were not checking out of the Four Seasons and returning to the house (that was never going to be an option), Robby could still spend the night at the Allens’ (even though at that moment I had a shivery premonition about this being a school night) and Jayne would come back on Wednesday and our lives would move on as they were supposed to ever since I had accepted Jayne’s offer and moved to Midland County in July. I thought expectantly about the upcoming holidays even while I stared at the gnawed, cracked door in front of me.
(I don’t remember actually opening the door to Robby’s room but—for some reason—I do remember the first thing that came to my mind when I walked in. It was something Robby had told me when he was pointing out things in the night sky at that picnic in Horatio Park over the summer:
The room was still in the same state it was left in on Wednesday night when we fled the house. An unmade bed, the dead computer, an opened closet.
I moved slowly to the window and looked out onto Elsinore Lane.
Another quiet Sunday, and everything felt okay with the world.
I stood in the room for a long time, taking inventory.
What I had not done: I had not turned around.
I had walked straight into the room. I had stood there. I had contemplated my son and his motives. I did not see what was behind me.
At first I didn’t understand. It took a moment to grasp.
When I turned around I saw scrawled across the giant photomural of the deserted skate park, in massive red lettering:
D I ss a pE AR
HE r e
I breathed in but did not start panicking immediately.
I wasn’t panicking because something on the floor caught my eye and momentarily replaced the panic with curiosity.
It was sitting next to the open door, off to the side.
As I neared it I thought I was looking at a large bowl made from chewed-up newspaper scraps (it was) that someone had placed two black rocks in.
I assumed it was an art project of some kind.
But the black stones were wet. They were glistening.
And as I stood above the bowl, looking down into it, I realized what it actually was.
It was a nest.
And in the nest the black oval objects were not stones.
I knew immediately what they were.
They were eggs.
There was another nest next to the closet door. (And another one was later found in the guest room.)
I flashed on something Miller had warned me about.
Miller had said that fumigation was necessary so nothing living would be left in the house once the cleansing began.
That was why the house had to be fumigated: the spirits, the demons, would try to find anything living to enter so they could “continue their existence.”
A question: What if a doll had hidden itself and waited?
What if the Terby had hidden itself in the house?
What if it had survived the exterminators?
What if something else had entered it?
The connection between the doll and the nests was sane and immediate.
I remember rushing out of the room and tumbling down the staircase, gripping the railing so I wouldn’t fall.
When I hit the foyer I started dialing Robby’s number.
Again, I don’t remember this exactly, but as I waited to leave a message, I think that was when I noticed Victor.
Because of Victor, again I didn’t leave a message for Robby.
(But if I had called a third time—as any number of people did later—I would have been told that the cell phone had been deactivated.)
Victor was lying in a fetal position, shivering, on the marble floor of the foyer.
The grinning dog that had excitedly loped toward me minutes ago did not exist.
He was whimpering.
When he heard me approach he looked up with sad, glassy eyes and continued to shake.
“Victor?” I whispered.
The dog licked my hand as I crouched down to soothe him.
The sound of his tongue lapping the dry skin of my hand was suddenly overtaken by wet noises coming from behind the dog.
Victor vomited without lifting his head.
I slowly stood upright and walked around to his backside, where the wet noises were coming from.
When I lifted the dog’s tail I tried leaping out of my mind.
The dog’s anus was stretched into a diameter that was perhaps ten inches across.
The bottom half of the Terby was hanging out of the dog and slowly disappearing into the cavity, undulating itself so it could slide in with more ease.
I was frozen.
I remember instinctively reaching forward as the talons of the doll disappeared, causing the dog’s body to bulge and then settle.
Victor quietly vomited again.
Everything stayed still for one brief moment.
And then the dog began convulsing.
I was already slowly backing away from the dog.
