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Benjy was moaning. The baroness’s words were caught in his ears, Danny could tell. He needed to erase them, keep them from tunneling into the boy’s brain. He started whispering into his hair as they followed the endless hall: It’ll be fine, you’ll see, you’ll grow up and you won’t even remember this stuff, it’ll all be so long ago, just a funny thing you’ll tell your friends and they’ll say: What? No way! And you’ll say: Yeah, it’s true, I promise, that stuff really happened but I was a brave kid and I got through it, I kept my cool because that’s the kind of kid I am….
Howard had left his body completely—he was somewhere else. No, no, please! Please! Oh my God, I can’t breathe. Help!
The room was starting to spin. Danny felt like all the oxygen had run out. The harder he tried to breathe the dizzier he got. The kid stirred in his arms and he thought, I can’t pass out while I’m holding this kid.
Ann: Howard, stop. You’ve got to stop. Stop! We’ve got the kids here and a lot of other people who need to get out.
But Howard couldn’t stop. His body went suddenly rigid, his eyes wide and blind. He clawed at the air and then, in a terrible guttural voice, he screamed Danny’s name, dragging it out so it filled the torture space with one long howl.
Howard: Danny! Danny! Danny help me, please let me out.
Danny please, I’ll do anything—please let me out. I’ll give you anything you want. Wait, Danny, don’t go! Don’t leave me here!
He wasn’t looking at Danny, but everyone else was. Mick and Ann and the graduate students who were still in the room gaped at him in confusion. Each time Howard screamed his name seemed to push Danny’s skull one step closer to exploding. Unbelievably, the kid in his arms was still asleep. Danny noticed himself squeezing Benjy, clutching onto him like the kid was holding him up.
Howard sat on the ground, leaning against the Medusa head spigot where Danny had seen the moving figures back when he was wigging out. His elbows were on his knees, his head on his fists. Something had gone out of Howard. Maybe Howard had gone out of Howard.
Mick was standing near him. Danny couldn’t catch his eye.
Phase Four was when Danny realized that the power was his. Howard was done, Mick was out, which left Danny in the position he’d spent sixteen years waiting for, wishing for, scheming for, groveling for, grabbing and even (when he was really desperate) praying for. The force of getting this reward after so long overwhelmed Danny at first: the pure thrill of it. That lasted maybe thirty seconds, and then the thrill quieted down and Danny realized something he couldn’t quite put a name to. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Howard’s power—more that the whole power thing seemed phony, beside the point, or maybe just old, like it couldn’t help Danny see this world he was looking at.
Eventually Howard lifted up his head. His face looked gray, old. His voice was flat: You did good, Danny. Under there.
Funny answers, stupid answers, answers that are a way of not answering—all these went through Danny’s head: Hey, I needed the exercise or Falling out a window was a tough act to follow but I gave it my best, or It must’ve been those injections the doc gave me, or Thank God for that trail of bread crumbs, or Tell my dad, wouldja?
But what he finally said was: I left you to die.
Howard looked up, squinting at Danny in the sun. But I didn’t die. I got out.
Danny: They found you.
Before that. I escaped with my mind. I got out of there because I wasn’t going to make it otherwise.
How?
I don’t know. I left. I went into a game. Rooms in my head. We can all do it, you know—we’re just out of practice.
The gun came from somewhere on Mick’s ankle. He was unbelievably fast.
Danny tried to lunge with his knife, but he was too late. He’d hardly moved when I fired at his forehead. He was looking at me when the bullet tore through, and I watched the light go out.
Why? That’s a reasonable question. You shoot someone in the head, you should have a reason. And what I’d like to do right now is make you a list, pile up the evidence piece by piece (things like: I actually thought for a second that he was going at Howard with the knife and I knew he’d tell Howard about Ann and me eventually and After fucking up Howard like he did when they were kids, I didn’t think he should get off so easy), so at the end of the list you’d say, Well of course he shot that asshole, and good thing—look at all these reasons! But I don’t have a list. I liked Danny. He reminded me of me.
The stairs went on and on. The water pushed its way into Danny’s ears, his eyes, his lungs. But finally, near the earth’s molten core, the stairs ran out. When Danny looked up, the top of the pool was the size of a dime, a dime of blue sky. And then Danny saw a door (Phase Nine) and opened it. He was in a white hall. The water was gone. The walls were smooth, no windows or doors or decorations. All Danny saw was a gray-blue endpoint that looked like another door, and he walked down the hall toward that. It was a long walk, but when he finally got close to the door he realized it wasn’t a door, it was a window. Danny couldn’t see through it—the glass was foggy or dusty or maybe just warped. But when he got to the window and put his hand against it, the glass suddenly cleared (Phase Ten). I saw him standing there. And he saw me.
Where the fuck did you come from? I said.
Danny smiled. He said: You didn’t really think I was going to leave you alone?
He said: Haven’t you learned that the thing you want to forget most is the one that’ll never leave you?
He said: Let the haunting begin. And then he laughed.
He said: We’re twins. There’s no separating us.
He said: I hope you like to write.
And then he started to talk, whispering in my ear.
Underneath me, Davis lay on his tray with the orange radio pushed up against his head. His eyes were shut. He turned the knobs, listening.
Seth gets to the door and I can see he’s still tweaking but slowing down. He’s been gone two days, which is usually what happens after he finishes a job. For a construction worker he’s emaciated, and without his dentures in there’s not a tooth in his head. And this was a rock star, not just locally but in other states. Onstage he’d take off his shirt and girls would throw their beer to see it run down his chest.
I leaned over Gabby and put my face in her long, heavy hair, which is jet black and smells like apples. There’s a sweetness still in Gabby that Megan lost years ago. Every day I feel like I’m holding myself around that sweetness, trying to protect it.
Our baby, Corey, was red and very small, about the size of a hand. He looked scalded. You could see he shouldn’t be out in the world. Can’t we put him back? I asked that question several times. Isn’t there a way to put him back? No one even answered me.
He had a tight little face, a shrunken face like a mummy dug up after centuries. The pain of thousands of years was in it.
I would sit there, watching him through the glass. He moved like a boiled hand, opening and closing weakly. “We need to turn him,” the nurses would tell me, and I’d move away.
I only took a bump when I couldn’t move or care for the other two without it. I’d think, Just a little one, just enough to get them to school, and I’d take the bump and feel the baby clench up in me.
After Corey died, I was in a psychiatric hospital for months. I just want to die, I’d say, and they’d tell me, You have two girls who need you. And you’re clean, you’ve kicked your habit and your whole life is still ahead of you.
I told my mother, “The doctors say I have to forgive myself or I can’t go on. So I’m trying to do that.” And my mother said, “Forgiving yourself is one thing. Getting God to forgive you is something else.”
I got to my class the first night and there they were: the trash. Looking huge at their desks. Most of them seemed edgy, curious, but not Ray Dobbs. He was lean, with thick dark hair. Handsome. But his blue eyes were dead.
I gave him an assignment: Write a story three pages long. And he came back the next week and read out the vilest shit about fucking his teacher. All of them were howling and I was really scared, knowing if I lost control of the class there’d be no getting it back. And that gave me an adrenaline surge that was the tiniest bit like getting high.
So I started to talk. And as Ray Dobbs listened to me I saw something open up behind his eyes like a camera shutter when the picture shoots. It made goose bumps rise up all over me because I’d done that; I’d made that happen just by talking. It felt intimate, like something physical between us.
After that I could feel Ray watching me. It made me alert, like someone had scrubbed mint all over my skin. I’d walk into that stinking, miserable prison and for the next three hours, a wise and beautiful woman would float out of the wreckage of my life, and her words and thoughts and tiniest movements were precious.