Dead Lines. Greg Bear
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in here. He took blankets from the hall closet and reluctantly settled on the couch. The window looked slantwise across the Bay at San Francisco, framed by two willow trees farther down the road. It was a beautiful view.
‘Jesus Christ, Phil,’ Peter said. ‘If you come back, I’ll punch you. I swear to God I’ll punch you right in the face. You should have told me you were sick.’
He was so tired. Against all his intellectual rigors, all his best intentions, he was still hoping to find Phil somewhere in the house. Hoping to grab one last minute together. ‘Where are you, buddy?’
He finished the cold coffee. Caffeine had little effect on him, but he doubted he would be getting much sleep tonight. ‘Come on, Phil,’ he cajoled, his voice like a small bird in the big living room. ‘One more time. Show up and give me a heart attack. Don’t ditch me.’
Peter leaned back and pulled up a small wool blanket. He kept rolling around on the old cushions, pushing his legs out as his knees felt antsy. Sleep came, but it was uneven. Finally, awake again and bladder full, he got up, stumbled around the boxes, and walked down the long hall. Never afraid of the dark. Never have been. Empty dark. He touched his way along the wall to the bathroom door and turned right.
A small plug-in nightlight illuminated a claw-foot tub, a round-mouthed porcelain toilet, and a standalone corner sink that must have dated from the teens or twenties. He lifted the toilet lid, unzipped his pants, and peed. Sighed at the relief from the sharp incentive nag. Not as bad as some his age, but still. Jiggled the stream around with childish intent, roiling the water. The little things we do when facing the big things, the imponderables. Peter softly sang a Doors song, ‘This is … the end … beautiful friend.’
His stream finally faltered and he shook loose a few drops, harder to get the last dribble out, a small indignity, meaningless in the face of that awesome and final one. ‘My only friend … the end.’
Something passed the open door, black against a lesser dark. Peter’s last squirt splashed on the floor. Half asleep, he stared in dismay at the puddle, zipped quickly, then bent to dab it up with a folded piece of toilet paper.
What?
Glancing left, he lowered the lid. His fingers slipped and the lid fell with a loud clatter on the ceramic bowl. Crap. Tell the world.
He poked his head through the doorway and looked up and down the hall. His eyes were playing tricks. He wished Lydia, somebody, anybody, would pop out and go, ‘Boo!’ just to show him how ridiculous he looked and sounded. How much he was betraying his vows to be skeptical.
He might be doing it again, deceiving himself, hoping beyond hope, beyond the material world, and if it kept on this way, sliding into this painful, hopeful retreat from the rational, he knew where it could all lead: straight into another case of Wild Turkey.
Trying to find the one who did it. Asking for Daniella. One last conversation with my daughter, oh my God.
Something moved again in the hall, making not so much a distinct sound as a change in the volume of air. Now Peter was sure. Someone had come into the house while he was sleeping – not Phil of course; a burglar. He reached into his pants pocket, feeling for the knife he sometimes kept there, and did not find it. It must have slipped out in the car or on the couch.
He pushed open the bathroom door with a, this time, deliberate bang and stepped into the hall, looking both ways. Dark left, dark right. ‘Whoever you are, get the hell out,’ he called, hands clenched.
Peter had no tolerance for burglars. He had been robbed often enough – the house four times, his car three times. People who stole deserved no mercy as far as he was concerned.
He found an antique button switch and pushed it. The hall light came on. Empty. The door at the end of the hall, leading into Phil’s bedroom, was open just a crack. He stood for a moment, listening.
Someone crying. The sound could have come from outside, from another house. But there were no houses close enough, not here at the end of Hidden Dreams Drive. Peter could feel heat rising again behind his eyes, steamy. Tropical. Such a weird sensation.
He realized he was making little hiccupping gulps as he finished his walk toward the end of the hall, Phil’s bedroom. The door’s closing had been blocked by wire hangers hooked over the top. He was astonished by how clearly he saw everything in the light of the hall fixture: wallpaper pastel flowers in diamond patterns, dark-stained baseboards, antique oak floor, worn oriental-design runner rucked up and curling on one side, boxes on the left stacked almost to the ceiling, WEIRD TALES 1943-48, the bedroom door and the hangers again, the darkness beyond the crack.
It sounded like a woman crying, soft, silky sobs, voice like dusty honey. Not Phil, then, of course, and probably not a burglar. A lost little girl, maybe. Some out-of-it doper marching around late at night. Peter forced his breath to slow. Maybe it was someone Phil knew, a lover come back to pick up her toothbrush, her underwear, her jewelry, as unlikely as that might be – Phil had kept so much to himself.
Peter assumed a fencer’s position in the hall, En garde. ‘I’m out here, and I won’t hurt you,’ he said, hand outstretched. ‘Don’t be afraid. It’s okay.’ He knew, could feel it as a tangible fact, that the bedroom was empty, but he could still hear the sobbing through the door.
Slender lines of darkness gathered in the periphery of his vision like smeared ink. As he tried to focus, they blended into corner shadows like wisps of spider web. Still, outside his direct gaze, the smudged lines flashed toward the bedroom door, wriggling like dark, blurry eels anxious to get in.
I’m having a stroke, just like Phil.
But he did not feel ill. Physically he was fine; it was the house, the bedroom, that was not fine. It was the bedroom that was crying.
Peter was not a coward. He knew that about himself. He could feel fear and still act, but what he felt now was not fear; it was an unwillingness to learn, and that was very different. Some things that you discover – infidelity, the death of loved ones – you cannot turn back from. What you suddenly know changes you, chops you up into little pieces.
He did not want to learn what was in the bedroom.
Still, he poked the door open with a stiff finger. He leaned slowly into the bedroom and fumbled to push the button switch.
The ceiling fixture slowly glowed to sterile yellow brightness. Shadows fled across the bedroom like little cyclones of soot. Peter grabbed the door jamb.
A woman stood at the foot of Phil’s bed. She had buried her face in grey hands, but Peter could tell who she was by the dark comma of bobbed hair and the honey-silk quality of her weeping. ‘My God,’ he said, and his shoulders slumped. He let out his breath and started to smile. ‘Lydia. You scared me.’
The woman’s hands dropped. She turned, head cocked, listening; slowly turned and listened some more, as if to far-off and unpleasant music.
All of a sudden, through his relief, Peter’s tongue moved involuntarily, and he bit into it. His head exploded in pain. Eyes watering, gasping, he felt vulnerable and very, very foolish. Through his tears, he saw that the woman’s face was like a flat sheet of mother-of-pearl. Her eyes opened to quizzical hollows. Less than solid, she resembled a paper doll frayed by careless snipping. Peter could actually see her edges ripple. Trying to back out, he thumped against the door, closing it, and for an instant felt something tug at his head, his throbbing tongue, his nerves.
Her blank and empty eyes vibrated. They seemed to point not quite in his direction, but through and beyond him. The image filled out like a balloon, assuming a counterfeit and temporary solidity.
Not Lydia. But it looks like her.
The image moved its lips. As if pushing through gelatin, the sound arrived late at his ears. ‘Phil, how could you do this, how could you just die?’ came the high-pitched silken wail, only a little louder than the buzzing of a fly.
The