pads, medical tape, hydrogen peroxide, and a couple of old finger-splints I’d hung on to after getting my left hand caught in a car door about a year ago. I laid out everything on the sink’s counter and took a deep breath.
Do it now, before you turn chickenshit.
I gripped the broken fingers with my left hand, released the breath I’d been holding, clenched my teeth, then simultaneously pressed down and pulled out.
The snap! made by the bones as they popped back into place seemed even louder than the shotgun blast; the pain shot up my arm right and hammered directly between my eyes. I dropped to one knee, grabbing the edge of the sink with my left hand to keep from hitting the floor, and tried to hold in the scream.
From under the house, the dog howled as if she’d felt it, as well.
“I’m st-still here, g-girl,” I whispered, trying to pull myself up. I was hit by a wave of pain, dizziness, and nausea, and fell to the floor.
(You’re not going anywhere for a minute or two, pal, so now it’s my turn.)
I couldn’t fight him; not now.
Hell, I could barely move.
(You left the house right after you found Mabel’s body, remember? )
If you say so.
(You figured Beth had taken the rest of the Its to the Keepers’ facility.)
That sounds about right, sure.
(So that’s where you went.)
Whatever.
(This ringing any bells yet?)
If it was, do you think I’d admit it to you?
(Fine, we’ll do it the hard way, then.
Even though it was cooler than usual, the humidity was high that night, and every street you
THREE
drove along was alive with a thin layer of mist that skirled across the beams of your headlights. You were driving through a sea of cotton. A deer darted across the road at one point, followed a few seconds later by two rabbits. Whichever road or street you took, there was always some kind of animal in your peripheral vision; a dog, a cat, a raccoon moving through the bushes and shadows on the curb.
The facility was harder to find at night; the road wasn’t lit at all, and the moon was hiding behind thick stationary clouds as if it were afraid or ashamed to allow its light to reveal too much.
You passed the building and had to turn around. You killed your headlights before turning up the asphalt drive, then pulled over into the shadows. You were going to have to walk the rest of the way.
Have you ever in your life been so anxiously aware of the silences in the night or the sound of your own breathing? Creeping up the drive like some thief casing a target house and nearly jumping out of your skin when a skunk waddled across the drive on its way from one patch of trees to the other. The area around the building was lighted by a sole sodium-vapor light at the edge of the visitors’ parking lot. You spotted Beth’s U-boat parked at the farthest end. On the other side of the building, Keepers’ vans formed the long, segmented shadow-shape of a giant serpent in slumber.
You started toward the entrance doors when another car turned onto the driveway. Because you were still covered in Mabel’s blood (oddly enough, cleaning up before leaving the house never entered your mind), the last thing you needed was to be seen like this. You leapt aside, cowering behind a trash Dumpster as the new-looking Mercedes drove up and parked in front of the entrance.
A man and a woman got out and opened the back doors. The man removed and unfolded a wheelchair while his wife helped a much older and frail-looking woman out of the backseat; once she was situated in the chair, the man reached into the car, removed a pet carrier, and the three of them went inside.
As soon as they were through the doors you ran across the lot toward the U-boat to see if Beth and the remaining Its were still there. Maybe she’d gotten here, parked, then froze as the shock of Mabel’s suicide finally hit. You’d find her sitting there, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly their knuckles would be white.
It was empty.
You took a deep breath and tried unsuccessfully to steady your shaking hands. You thought about the day everyone had piled into the car and brought the other Its out here, the way Whitey had gotten so emotional about the leaving women, how Mabel walked through the selection area in a semi-catatonic daze, and the way you’d found Beth coming out of the room behind the large steel door.
Remember how you suddenly wished that you smoked? A cigarette would’ve helped right then, the feel of it between your fingers, the aroma of the tobacco as it was ignited by the flame, the first deep inhalation… oh, yeah. That would have been nice. Mom liked to smoke. Dad preferred a pipe. You missed them terribly. You missed Whitey and Beth and Mabel, missed the world you’d once known and had taken for granted.
You heard car doors slam, and then you slunk over to the front of the building in time to see the Mercedes’ taillights receding; the driver didn’t even signal or slow as the car reached the road, he just tore out of there with a squeal of tires and burst of exhaust and a sudden, violent leftward skid that he quickly corrected before gunning the engine and speeding away.
Wiping blood and perspiration from your face, you took another deep breath and stepped inside.
An old cat sat in one of the top cages; it was the only animal here, and you were the only person. You stared at the cat and it, in turn, showed its interest in you by yawning.
You knew this animal- recognized it, anyway-but couldn’t place it. It wasn’t one of the Its but, still… where had you seen this disenchanted arthritic bundle of fur and teeth before?
The selection area was dark and closed off by a collapsible, barred security door.
That left only the large steel door on the right.
You peered through its window but could see nothing, then realized this was intentional, that a person could only see through from the other side. You reached down and grabbed the handle. It never occurred to you that this door might be locked; if that had been the case, you might be a much different and happier man now, but it was unlocked and swung open with only a minimum of effort and besides, pal, I’m not doing this to play “What-If?” with you.
The cold draft from behind the door seemed less severe than before, but that was probably because the night itself was cooler and so the contrast in temperatures wasn’t as drastic.
You stood there pondering meteorological conundrums for a few more seconds, anything to not step in and hear that door clunk shut. If you’d followed baseball, you might have reviewed stats for the season. You could have counted the freckles on the back of your hand. Or recited all the lyrics to “American Pie” until the Chevy reached the levy only to find it dry.
“Do it, you fucking coward,” you whispered to yourself.
Three seconds later you stood on the other side listening to the door clunk shut behind you. The sound reverberated with the same cold, metallic finality a lifer must hear every night when the prison bars electronically screech into their magnetized locks.
Once the door has been closed, the animal cannot be retrieved from outside.
You were in a dim corridor whose sides were delineated by a string of ankle-level safety lights that stretched its entire length, then bent around a corner roughly a hundred feet away. The walls on either side were vaguely familiar. You could easily see the boards that had been used as forms for the concrete because several of them had warped before the concrete had set properly; they looked like ghosts trapped in the walls, stuck forever between this world and the one they came from and now wished they had never tried to leave.
Remember where you saw this before? That afternoon in the sub-basement of the hospital? On your way to the Keepers’ lab? Of course you don’t-or won’t. If you did, then I wouldn’t be pestering you with all this, would I?
It doesn’t matter. Here you are, in the facility, and you have to find Beth. She was in here somewhere, she had to be, there was nowhere else she could have gone, so you followed the lights until you turned a corner and
