—and he slapped his palm up to his mouth and felt the pills fly back in there and he chased them with water and swallowed, felt them slide down his esophagus and he gulped from the glass until it was empty.
“You’re going to thank me,” Cawley said.
Chuck was beside him again and he handed Teddy a handkerchief and Teddy wiped his forehead with it and then his mouth and then he dropped it to the floor.
Cawley said, “Help me get him up, Marshal.”
They lifted Teddy out of the chair and turned him and he could see a black door in front of him.
“Don’t tell anyone,” Cawley said, “but there’s a room through there where I steal my naps sometimes. Oh, okay, once a day. We’re going to put you in there, Marshal, and you’ll sleep this off. Two hours from now, you’ll be fit as a fiddle.”
Teddy saw his hands draping off their shoulders. They looked funny—his hands hanging like that just over his sternum. And the thumbs, they both had that optical illusion on them. What the fuck was it? He wished he could scratch the skin, but Cawley was opening the door now, and Teddy took one last look at the smudges on both thumbs.
Black smudges.
Shoe polish, he thought as they led him into the dark room.
How the hell did I get shoe polish on my thumbs?
12
THEY WERE THE worst dreams he’d ever had.
They began with Teddy walking through the streets of Hull, streets he had walked countless times from childhood to manhood. He passed his old schoolhouse. He passed the small variety store where he’d bought gum and cream sodas. He passed the Dickerson house and the Pakaski house, the Murrays, the Boyds, the Vernons, the Constantines. But no one was home. No one was anywhere. It was empty, the entire town. And dead quiet. He couldn’t even hear the ocean, and you could always hear the ocean in Hull.
It was terrible—his town, and everyone gone. He sat down on the seawall along Ocean Avenue and searched the empty beach and he sat and waited but no one came. They were all dead, he realized, long dead and long gone. He was a ghost, come back through the centuries to his ghost town. It wasn’t here any longer. He wasn’t here any longer. There was no here.
He found himself in a great marble hall next, and it was filled with people and gurneys and red IV bags and he immediately felt better. No matter where this was, he wasn’t alone. Three children—two boys and a girl— crossed in front of him. All three wore hospital smocks, and the girl was afraid. She clutched her brothers’ hands. She said, “She’s here. She’ll find us.”
Andrew Laeddis leaned in and lit Teddy’s cigarette. “Hey, no hard feelings, right, buddy?”
Laeddis was a grim specimen of humanity—a gnarled cord of a body, a gangly head with a jutting chin that was twice as long as it should have been, misshapen teeth, sprouts of blond hair on a scabby, pink skull—but Teddy was glad to see him. He was the only one he knew in the room.
“Got me a bottle,” Laeddis said, “if you want to have a toot later.” He winked at Teddy and clapped his back and turned into Chuck and that seemed perfectly normal.
“We’ve gotta go,” Chuck said. “Clock’s ticking away here, my friend.”
Teddy said, “My town’s empty. Not a soul.”
And he broke into a run because there she was, Rachel Solando, shrieking as she ran through the ballroom with a cleaver. Before Teddy could reach her, she’d tackled the three children, and the cleaver went up and down and up and down, and Teddy froze, oddly fascinated, knowing there was nothing he could do at this point, those kids were dead.
Rachel looked up at him. Her face and neck were speckled with blood. She said, “Give me a hand.”
Teddy said, “What? I could get in trouble.”
She said, “Give me a hand and I’ll be Dolores. I’ll be your wife. She’ll come back to you.”
So he said, “Sure, you bet,” and helped her. They lifted all three children at once somehow and carried them out through the back door and down to the lake and they carried them into the water. They didn’t throw them. They were gentle. They lay them on the water and the children sank. One of the boys rose back up, a hand flailing, and Rachel said, “It’s okay. He can’t swim.”
They stood on the shore and watched the boy sink, and she put her arm around Teddy’s waist and said, “You’ll be my Jim. I’ll be your Dolores. We’ll make new babies.”
That seemed a perfectly just solution, and Teddy wondered why he’d never thought of it before.
He followed her back into Ashecliffe and they met up with Chuck and the three of them walked down a long corridor that stretched for a mile. Teddy told Chuck: “She’s taking me to Dolores. I’m going home, buddy.”
“That’s great!” Chuck said. “I’m glad. I’m never getting off this island.”
“No?”
“No, but it’s okay, boss. It really is. I belong here. This is my home.”
Teddy said, “My home is Rachel.”
“Dolores, you mean.”
“Right, right. What did I say?”
“You said Rachel.”
“Oh. Sorry about that. You really think you belong here?”
Chuck nodded. “I’ve never left. I’m never going to leave. I mean, look at my hands, boss.”
Teddy looked at them. They looked perfectly fine to him. He said as much.
Chuck shook his head. “They don’t fit. Sometimes the fingers turn into mice.”
“Well, then I’m glad you’re home.”
“Thanks, boss.” He slapped his back and turned into Cawley and Rachel had somehow gotten far ahead of them and Teddy started walking double-time.
Cawley said, “You can’t love a woman who killed her children.”
“I can,” Teddy said, walking faster. “You just don’t understand.”
“What?” Cawley wasn’t moving his legs, but he was keeping pace with Teddy just the same, gliding. “What don’t I understand?”
“I can’t be alone. I can’t face that. Not in this fucking world. I need her. She’s my Dolores.”
“She’s Rachel.”
“I know that. But we’ve got a deal. She’ll be my Dolores. I’ll be her Jim. It’s a good deal.”
“Uh-oh,” Cawley said.
The three children came running back down the corridor toward them. They were soaking wet and they were screaming their little heads off.
“What kind of mother does that?” Cawley said.
Teddy watched the children run in place. They’d gotten past him and Cawley, and then the air changed or something because they ran and ran but never moved forward.
“Kills her kids?” Cawley said.
“She didn’t mean to,” Teddy said. “She’s just scared.”
“Like me?” Cawley said, but he wasn’t Cawley anymore. He was Peter Breene. “She’s scared, so she kills her kids and that makes it okay?”
“No. I mean, yes. I don’t like you, Peter.”
“What’re you going to do about it?”
Teddy placed his service revolver to Peter’s temple.
“You know how many people I’ve executed?” Teddy said, and there were tears streaming down his face.
“Well, don’t,” Peter said. “Please.”
Teddy pulled the trigger, saw the bullet come out the other side of Breene’s head, and the three kids had watched the whole thing and they were screaming like crazy now and Peter Breene said, “Dammit,” and leaned
