Phantom (22 page)

When Ned's breathing returned to normal and
he felt ready to move on, he stood up and adjusted the knapsack on
his back. The wooden cross was still hooked through his belt loop,
but Ned noticed that it had been bent slightly out of shape. The
fall on the stairs had done it, probably. He fixed it.

Now to the other wing on this floor. The
first couple of rooms on either side were empty. As Ned came back
into the corridor, he caught a glimpse of something moving at the
far end of the wing. A brief shadow, and then it was gone. Into one
of the last rooms. Maybe it was nothing, but there was only one way
to find out. Ned couldn't take the risk of wandering in and out of
all the intervening rooms while something might be sneaking up on
him. Slowly, but with determination, he walked down the middle of
the long corridor toward the point where he thought he had seen the
movement. He unsheathed his small hunting knife and held it ready
at his right side.

Ned thought of his mother again. What if she
really were in trouble—like that night years ago in the Washington
apartment? She could be sick now, lying on the floor, and this time
she'd be alone. Ned's father was at work. There was no one else at
the house to help her or to call the doctor. Ned had heard of
people having premonitions, or telepathic flashes in emergencies,
and he wondered if he had experienced something like that. He tried
to dismiss it as just another trick, but it continued to prey on
his mind. What if she had cried out to him in a moment of crisis?
Perhaps this trip to the spa was the real trick, the point of which
was to get Ned out of the house and away so that his mother would
be left alone and vulnerable.

No, please, no.

And if that were the case, then he would be
playing a direct part in his mother's—

No, no, no!

Ned reached the end of the corridor, but he
was hardly aware of the fact. Visions of his mother filled his head
once more. She had fallen, in the kitchen maybe, or the living
room, or on the cold bathroom tiles. Absurd voices came from the
radio, competing with the steady whirr of the air conditioners. She
was on the floor. She was rigid. Her teeth were locked together and
a few beads of saliva gathered on her lips—her lips, which were a
bright, hideous purple. Her face was white, turning pale blue, a
blanched photograph of a person. Her eyelids here half shut and all
that could be seen of her eyes was a blind, glassy sheen. She was
not breathing.

Mommy!

Ned could see it all with alarming clarity,
but there was nothing he could do. He had been removed, drawn away
by the demon to a safe, useless distance. He walked leadenly into
the last room. He went to the open window overlooking the back
gardens. His mother was dead now. He knew it. He had lost her. He
had given her away. He had let her be taken without a struggle.

Ned stepped onto the wide window ledge. The
wrought-iron grille sagged a fraction of an inch as it took his
weight. There was nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. His
mother was dead. He looked at the knife in his hand. The blade
gleamed in the sunlight. It was a beautiful day. But his mother was
dead. The wild foliage of the gardens, a brilliant metallic green,
rolled gently in the breeze like rippling water, cool and inviting.
Ned looked at the knife again. The sun was harsh and the glare off
the blade pained his eyes, but it was irresistible. There was
something in it. His mother's face, ringed by a dazzling
corona.

Mommy!

He held the knife out and up at eye level,
and it was as if he held a bar of living fire in his hand. But now
the image of his mother was pulling away from him, drifting down
toward the green depths of the gardens.

Don't leave me, take me with you.

Anguish and loss battered him, but in that
instant Ned knew he could still be with his mother forever. He had
one last chance. He could fly—yes—he would swoop down from this
perch and dive into that wonderful water garden after her. He had
failed her, let her go, and now this was the only way he could put
things right. Dead but together. The only way. Infinity.

Mommy, here I am ....

The grille lurched another inch or two on
the right side, enough to throw Ned against the window frame. The
knife fell from his outstretched hand and tumbled down through the
air like a miniature jet in flame-out. It clattered noisily on the
wrought iron, dropped through and plummeted to the ground far
below. Ned jumped back into the room. It was an act of sheer body
instinct, an organism recoiling from danger.

He retreated another step. The blue of sky
and the green of garden that filled the window were changing. As he
stood there, watching, they became darker, merging together until
they seemed to turn into a deep black cloud. The sun was gone;
there was nothing but inky blackness. Now it came right to the
window, and the first wispy tendrils snaked into the room, licking
across the walls and floor.

Ned backed out of the room and slammed the
door shut as he left. Okay, it's okay, he told himself. There's
nothing for me here. He hurried along the corridor and came back
out into the welcome daylight on the landing.

Ned found it difficult to
think at all about what had happened. What had saved him? Not a
guardian angel, not the cross in his belt, and definitely not any
display of self-control on his part. Luck, if anything. He felt
subdued now, and yet he wanted to believe that this escape was one
more sign that he was destined to survive. He wanted to believe—but
how could he? How could any person overcome a force, a power so
great that it was able to toy with the mind and senses? Maybe
that's exactly what it is, he considered. I'm being toyed with,
directed, steered, haunted, brought to the brink, and then pushed
back for a temporary stay of execution.
It
can take me any time it wants.
Well, get as much sport out of me as you can, Ned thought bitterly.
He was filled with anger and hatred, and the dreadful frustration
of having nothing to strike back at. Don't let me be taken meek and
mild, frozen like a scarecrow.

Ned descended the stairs to the next
landing. He was tired, but now he was only one floor above ground
level. At least if he went out a window here he had a little less
chance of killing himself. Good news, he thought. Ha ha. The rooms
he had seen above had looked very much like living quarters for the
spa's guests. Here, perhaps, he would find offices, consulting
rooms, work rooms, a dining area—and whatever else.

He entered one of the corridors, but stopped
after he had gone only a few paces. He heard a noise. It was vague
and distant, and yet there was something decidedly familiar about
it. Ned walked on a short distance and then stopped again. It was
growing—a humming, droning sound. He looked around but saw nothing.
The noise wasn't coming from this corridor, nor from the landing.
It was farther away. The corridor on the other side, the opposite
wing. Ned wondered if he should go there at once, or carry on in
the direction he was going and try to ignore the sound. But how
could you ignore anything in this place? Before he could make up
his mind, a number of tiny black specks floated into his field of
vision. At first he thought he was seeing things, that it was yet
another trick of the eyes, but then he knew they were real. Their
number increased rapidly. The buzzing was louder, ugly and
insistent. They were flying out of the other corridor and into the
open space of the landing. Bees, hornets, wasps—Ned didn't have to
know which to know that he was in trouble. They sounded mean and
angry. He fought back the impulse to run for the stairs. It was
already too late for that; they would catch him for sure. There
were too many on the landing, and dozens more joining them every
second. It was not a thick, dense swarm, but a loose, swirling
cloud. A giant squadron of unguided missiles, circling, cruising,
looking for a target.

This was the awful buzzing noise he had
heard those many times at home, but now it had taken on a new, more
frightening dimension. Now it could be fatal. No question of
poisonous or nonpoisonous; bees killed, pure and simple.

Ned moved gingerly, but it had the effect of
a galvanic shock. The bees responded at once and started pouring
into the corridor, right at Ned. Even as he ran he had the terrible
feeling that he had finally made the one mistake he wouldn't be
able to put right. They would have him trapped in this wing. He
glanced back over his shoulder just once—the bees, like a hot,
expanding gas, billowed towards him. The noise drowned out his
thoughts now. The end of the corridor was in sight—what would he do
there?— but seemed to get no closer. The air turned into a heavy
soup, and then into a kind of jelly, even more resistant to his
body. The harder Ned struggled to run against it, the slower his
progress. The bees were almost on him.

Never mind running.

Get out of the corridor!

Ned flung himself against a door, crashing
it open. In the room he spun around quickly and banged the door
shut. He saw some old rags on the floor—something about them
bothered him, but there was no time to think. He grabbed a long
piece of cloth and crammed it into the space beneath the door. He
poked and pushed until the crack was tightly blocked up.

Now the smell hit him. It was sweet, too
sweet. There shouldn't be much of any smell here, Ned thought, not
with a wide open window. The sound of the bees distracted him
again. There were tiny patting noises on the other side of the
door, as if the insects were actually hurling themselves against
the wood. The buzz was fierce, and as relentless as a tornado. Ned
checked the latch and the cloth again, to make sure there was no
way the bees could get into the room.

He turned to look again at that pile of
rags. They had obviously been there for years. Old blankets. Army
green once, now just dingy and ratty. There were a few other things
on the floor too, objects that Ned was aware of but couldn't focus
on. They were not important. He was drawn to those green rags. They
were important.

Ned peeled back the top layer of
blanket.

Beneath it was a corpse, thin as a pressed
flower.

The skin was translucent yellowing leather,
stretched taut over delicate skeletal bones.

Ned reeled back, screaming, gagging as vomit
burned his throat. The room spun around him like a demented
carousel. The buzzing snarl cut jaggedly into his brain, and the
floor jumped up to kiss him as he blacked out.

The corpse was his mother.

* * *

20. The Spa (2)

—
Child.

A voice out of darkness.

—
Child.

An echo of a whisper.

—
Come with me
now.

Urgent, but fading. A flurry of leaves lost
on a nightwind.

Fear woke Ned. His eyes fluttered open
anxiously. The side of his face was on a grimy floor. His head
throbbed painfully. He remembered: the bees ... the room ... the
rags ... and the corpse. The noise of the bees had not gone away.
Ned wondered how he could still be there and still be alive. Why
hadn't he been taken? A moment ago he had heard a voice. Not so
much heard, exactly, as felt, inside his head. But now it was gone.
A dream? Just end it all, please, Ned wished in despair. The reason
I came here was to get it over with one way or another. So take me
now.

Maybe it was ending. Maybe
the resolution was that he would survive. He had escaped everything
so far. By this time, however, it was impossible to boost his
morale with such thoughts. Much as he would like to, Ned couldn't
think himself into believing that he had a chance to win. Not on
his own, and probably not at all. This was no phosphorescent
balloon, to be punctured by an enterprising junior sleuth. I live
because
it
lets me
live. No other reason. He was caught in the rhythm of some titanic
force from another world or dimension. No amount of will or effort
on Ned's part would influence it or overcome it. He was a leaf on a
vast river, going whichever way it took him.

Stop thinking like that, Ned chastised
himself. This place will tie your mind in knots if you let it.
Concentrate: one step at a time. You're still alive, that's all
that counts. He sat up. The throbbing in his head got worse. He
fished the little first aid kit out of his knapsack and took two
aspirin, washed down with a large gulp of water from his canteen.
The water was good, it had a cold, metallic flavor, but it left an
aftertaste in his mouth that became unpleasant. No, it wasn't the
water—Ned remembered now that he had almost thrown up earlier. He
tried to spit out the bad taste, but that was only a slight
improvement. The smell in the air was what made it worse, he
realized. That terrible, lingering death-stink. Ned spun around and
saw the ragged blankets and the corpse again. Still there. No
trick. Very real.

His mind struggled to keep control of
itself. No matter how bad it gets, Ned reminded himself, you have
to try to see it through and make sense of it. He was afraid to
stand up and take a close look at the corpse, but he forced
rational arguments on himself. That couldn't be his mother. Even if
she were in trouble, even if she had died (no, no!), she wouldn't
be here and in this condition. It cannot be. So: it must be someone
else. Also: it couldn't harm him. The dead are dead. They don't
hurt people (do they?). Maybe that wasn't a proven point, but it
was buttressed by something else: surely, if the corpse were going
to do anything to Ned it would have done so already. It didn't
occur to the boy that he was dealing with the situation in the
natural, logical way that would have pleased his father. He drove
himself to keep thinking, to come up with a reasonable
explanation.