The Binding (20 page)

Mrs. Godwin looked at him, and a fresh wave of terror crossed her face. “Can there be any other explanation?”

“I think we’ve covered them all.”

“But I was thinking, what if Revelations was wrong?”

“Wrong how?”

She stared into the hands sitting in her lap.

“Mrs. Godwin?”

“What if the dead do come back, but under someone else’s power, Dr. Thayer? What if the last days are here but Jesus isn’t in control?”

Nat’s eyes went wide. That thought had never occurred to him. Yes, what if? He felt dizzy.

“Then I think we’re all in a lot of trouble,” he said finally.

“I believe that we are.”

Nat looked up. Mrs. Godwin’s eyes were filled with that panic you see in old people when their mind begins to go, when the world they knew disappears seemingly overnight and is replaced by something darker and altogether new.

Stephanie Godwin left a few minutes later, with Nat having recommended a visit to her priest at the Anglican church. This had seemed to calm her. Nat walked her to the door, murmured good night, and then walked up to the main level and its long dark hallway, to pace and think.

To the sound of the water fountain motor surging on and then quitting, Nat walked up and down the hallway, gleams of moonlight on the old tiled floor. His mind was foggy, stubbornly so. All that came to him was a black-and-white image, drifting into hazy view at the back of his mind before flitting out of sight. The same one from the other night.

What the hell was it? Some memory of a painting? A photograph maybe? Was it something he’d drawn as a boy? The image felt familiar, and old, but he couldn’t place it.

And what was its connection to the walking dead and Mrs. Godwin?

Nat bit his bottom lip and continued back and forth up the hallway, his heels clicking loudly, rhythmically, on the waxed floor, until his shift at the outreach clinic was over.

No one else came to call that night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

T
he pale brick steps of St. Adolphus School were teeming with kids. John Bailey pulled into the circular driveway twenty feet away behind an old green Suburban and began scanning the smaller children for Charlie. Every day when he picked the boy up, he hoped he’d find him interacting with some other kid, their heads bent over a Transformer or something. An ally, a pal. Someone to share secrets with.

Kids find each other
, he thought.
Someone will find Charlie and see what’s inside of him. So what if he doesn’t talk? Half of what kids do, you don’t even need to talk.

He scanned the roiling mass of schoolboys wrestling and talking and bumping into girls, and there was no Charlie. His gaze went to the right, to the stone banisters flanking the steps, where the older kids were hanging out, too cool to actually watch for their parents’ cars. Nothing. Finally, he arched his neck and looked all the way back.

There. Charlie was sitting alone, near the far banister, staring at the ground. John frowned.
God
, he thought,
can’t he at least make an effort?
He hit the horn, two short bursts, and Charlie’s head came up. John gave him a bright smile, though he didn’t feel it, and the boy came walking over, his shoulders stooped.

Charlie opened the back door, and freezing air came rushing into the car.

“Hey, buddy,” John called. “Jump up here with me.”

Charlie looked at him, then closed the back door and opened the front passenger one. He bundled into the seat and buckled himself in. John sat there, nodding.

“How was school?”

Charlie made a sign with his hand, one of the few they had. The hand tilting left and right. So-so.

“Okay. Do anything fun?”

Charlie shook his head.

“Can I see your folder?”

The school put all his homework and notes to the parents in the same creased yellow-and-black folder every day. Charlie bit his lip, then pulled his backpack from between his feet, unzipped the top, and handed the folder over.

John opened it.

“Sight words today, huh?”

Charlie nodded.

“Okay, we’ll go over those later.” He put the list of words in the facing compartment. “Whoa. What’s this?”

John was staring at a drawing of a black face with orange eyes. It seemed . . . too grown-up. A devil. And those eyes . . . John felt a flutter of worry.

“Huh, buddy?”

Charlie pulled his notebook from his side pocket and began to write.

DRAWING WE DID ON MONDAY

“Yeah, I can see it’s a drawing. Why did Ms. Sena send it home?”

A blue Subaru moved off from in front of John’s car and a Toyota took its place. Charlie was writing.

DON’T KNOW

The woman in the blue Subaru honked her horn. John saw the steps emptying out.

“Okay. So who’s it supposed to be?”

A FRIEND

“No shi— Sorry, I mean, really?
This
guy is your friend?”

The boy nodded.

“Wow. I’d be a little scared of him.”

Charlie looked at him, something strange in his eyes.

“Um, not because he’s black,” John said quickly.
Damn, you had to be so careful with kids.
“You know . . . of course, that’s fine. But I mean . . . who is he?”

Charlie pointed to the drawing. John had to shift around to see the words at the bottom.

THE MAGICIAN

Maybe he was a new comic supervillain, John thought. He couldn’t keep up with them anymore.

“Where’d he come from?”

Charlie didn’t move, just watched the kids jumping and yelling through the corner of the windshield.

“Charlie?”

The boy sighed, then bent to the notebook.

HE WAS AN EXSILE. HE WAS FORCED TO LEAVE HIS HOME.

“Oh,” John said, stumped.
And what the fuck do I say now?
“And he . . . comes to visit you sometimes?”

Charlie’s eyes, so brown and deep, blinked at him. This seemed to indicate
yes
.

“Right, right. And is he a good guy or a bad guy?”

More writing.

DON’T KNOW YET.

“Okay, okay. It’s just a picture, right? Using your imagination. I guess that’s good.”

Charlie nodded. John stared at him for three more beats, then started the car. He waited for a woman with her hand linked to a
squalling five-year-old to clear his bumper before pulling out of the St. Adolphus driveway.

As he sped up, heading for home, he looked over at his boy, slumped in his seat.

Charlie reached for the radio dial. He looked out the passenger window as the pop songs played.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

N
at called in sick to Mass Memorial the next morning. He felt off, and there was too much to do with Becca.

He needed to establish a baseline on the Prescott case. Something definite.

Nat found his cell phone plugged into a wall charger—he had no memory of putting it there, he’d been so tired the night before—and found John’s number.

“Hey.”

“What’s going on?” said John.

“Listen, I’m going to ask you something, and it’s crazy, but don’t give me an argument, okay?”

He heard John sigh on the other end. “You know what? Less and less seems crazy to me these days, buddy. Hit me.”

“I need to get into the morgue.”

Silence on the other end. “I’m coming over,” John said and hung up.

Nat hung up, walked over to his fridge, and poured himself a glass of orange juice. He leaned against the counter and drank the juice, his eyes staring at the pale green backsplash that glowed under his undercabinet lights. His eyes were unfocused.

What the hell
, Nat thought.
How did a suddenly announced desire to go on a tour of the Northam morgue become just a regular thing? What’s next, midnight picnics at the cemetery?

Nat heard a car honk. He looked out the window. There was John, sitting in a beat-up black Crown Vic, a department car.

Nat pulled on his coat and boots and locked the condo as he left. When he got in the car, he slapped John on the shoulder in greeting. John looked over at him. “Hey, bud.”

Nat nodded. Now that he was in the car, he found the words he was about to speak ridiculous.
Let me see the corpse of Chuck Godwin. I want to make sure he isn’t out wandering the streets.

John put the car in reverse.

“Where we going?” Nat said.

“You said the morgue, right? Well, then, it’s the morgue.”

Nat gave John a sharp look. “What the fuck is going on that I don’t know about?”

“You asked me—”

“No, it’s not you. What I mean is, why would I feel compelled to go to the morgue? Jesus, John, what’s happening?”

A fold of flesh under John’s right eye twitched. “I got a wacky report awhile back,” he said.

“ ‘Wacky’? The hell’s that mean?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“About someone who should be dead?”

John grimaced.

“All right,” Nat said. “Who’s yours?”

John frowned. “Margaret Post.”

Nat sucked in a breath, then let it out, staring at the pedestrians in the window as John drove downtown. Normal people leading their normal lives with normal everyday problems. Just a touch of seasonal depression around here, that’s all this was.

“Don’t you want to know who mine is?” Nat finally said.

“Yeah, not really. But I guess I have to ask.”

“Chuck Godwin.”

John swerved to avoid a pothole. “The guy from the car accident?”

“Yeah.”

John shot him a quick glance. “I feel like I just went a little insane right there, just a little bit.”

“How did you hear about . . . God—” He stopped, massaging his forehead with his free hand. “You know what? I don’t even want to know. Let’s just go over there and make sure they’re where they’re supposed to be.”

John flipped the siren switch and blew through three red lights on the way to State Street. They pulled up to the county building, and John threw the Vic into park. He shut off the engine and took a pack of Big Red gum with two sticks left out of his shirt pocket and offered one to Nat. Nat shook his head.

“You’re right that something’s off,” John said. “I’ve been feeling it all week. You ever get the feeling that everyone else is in on some joke, that they’re walking around with their lips pressed tight, but no one wants to tell you?”

Nat stared out the grimy window. He stared at the people passing on the street. A black woman with dreads was walking toward them—must be a Wartham student, Nat thought—hugging her long down coat to her and puffing out large clouds of steam. Her eyes flicked to him as she passed, and Nat stared at her. She looked away quickly and he saw her in the side-view mirror increase her pace.

“I don’t know,” Nat said slowly. “There is such a thing as mass psychosis. These things are like chemicals in the water. They travel underground, unseen. One person says something innocent at an office on a Wednesday morning, and in three hours it’s reached the other side of town and someone susceptible starts imagining there’s something weird going on. And with e-mail, texting . . .” His voice faded away.
I’m not even convincing myself
, he thought. “One way to find out.”

They both got out.

At the morgue door, John rang the bell and a buzzer sounded
loudly in the room beyond. The stainless steel doors were set flush into the wall, separated only by a thin steel molding. Nat thought they looked like the doors on a nuclear silo.

A thin, nervous-looking woman opened the door two inches and looked at them. There was annoyance on her face.

“Hi. I’m Detective Bailey. I called ahead?”

The woman looked him up and down.

“Can I see some ID?” she said.

John stiffened and gave her an extra two seconds of staring time, then pursed his lips and reached inside his blazer. He came out with a worn leather document holder and flipped it open. Nat saw a quick flash of silver.

The woman studied the photo and looked at John, then went back to the picture.

“Are you keeping JFK in there or something?” Nat said.

The woman’s watery eyes swung to him.

“This facility is for authorized personnel only. Who are you?”

“He’s with me,” John said, a little louder than before. “We need to check two bodies.”

The woman pursed her lips before stepping back and let the door slam shut. John looked at Nat, his look saying,
Do you see what I have to put up with all day?
He pushed the door open.

Elizabeth was walking back toward her office, her hands clasped and bloodless by her side.

“Excuse me,” John said.

The woman stopped.

“Margaret Post?”

“She was put ba—” Elizabeth said, turning. “I mean . . . She’s in 12B.”

John looked at her quizzically. “Aren’t you going to open it for us?”

Elizabeth swiveled. “I have a call waiting for me.”

John’s face was slowly going beet red. “Where’s the other one? Godwin?”

“8A. You’ll find gloves over there.”

John began looking for 12B. There was tiny black lettering near the top right corner of the lockers, but the glare of the fluorescents made them difficult to read.

“Why is Margaret Post still here?” Nat said.

“Her parents are missionaries,” John said, bending over to check a number. “They were working in, um, was it Brazil? I don’t know, some South American country, way back in the bush, preaching the Pentecostal Bible to the natives. Took them awhile to get their affairs organized and get back to the States. They’re flying in today, I think. They still keep a house here.”

Nat pointed to the right. “It’s down here, genius.”

John straightened up and followed him.

“The Posts are from here?” said Nat.

“Originally? Yeah.”

“From Northam?”

“Yep, from the Shan.”

Nat found 12B, a middle locker in the stacks of three. He gripped the handle. “I thought she was from somewhere else.”

“She was born down there in Brazil or wherever the fuck. But the parents were originally local. Hang on . . . she might not smell so good.”