The Last Night Read online

  They parted as he approached.

  And then, all at once, he could see Kyra Metheny.

  The first thing John thought upon seeing the girl wasn’t about her at all. Instead, he found himself transported in his memory to a place and time he couldn’t identify.

  There was a road in this remembered place, too, a straight stretch of new, tarry-smelling blacktop, two vivid yellow lines running down its middle, but all around was nothing but openness, green fields, blue sky. The crayon-bright colors of childhood. And on the grass off to the side of the road, a black cat, its spine twisted back on itself into a revoltingly inorganic L.

  He saw small hands reach out, touch the cat, which was dying and unable to do anything besides warn him away with a wet, gurgling hiss. Blood bubbles grew from its nostrils and popped on the cat’s nose. In this vision, John saw spatter from the blood bubbles land on the cat’s eyeballs and he thought, this can’t be made up. I could never make up anything like that.

  From behind him, a hand on his shoulder, a woman’s voice. Careful, Johnny. Laying his hands on the cat, feeling the blood-soaked fur beneath his hands, the twisted, crumpled spine, the—

  “Mr. Barron!”

  Kristy Levinworth stood in front of him. She was crying, but seemed to be the only student capable of normal movement. He felt her cold hand slip around his and let her lead him forward.

  “Help her,” John heard Kristy whisper. “Oh, please fucking do something. You have to do fucking something.”

  John pulled free of her and knelt beside Kyra.

  The girl lay half in the road, half on the curb. Her right shoe, John saw, was missing. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a Nike running shoe dangling from the branch of a spindly sapling fifteen feet away. It was an image he’d remember on and off for the rest of his life, always completely out of context. One of Kyra’s eyes was open, and John saw it fix on him, drift away, then fix on him again. There was no other movement in her body, and it wasn’t hard to see the reason why.

  The left side of Kyra’s head had collapsed inward like a sinkhole, and blood dribbled like thick red ink from her nose and mouth and one of her ears. Her left eye seemed to be missing, and John wondered whether it had come out, or if it had sunken back into her skull somewhere. It didn’t matter. The damage had been done.

  Something pinkish-gray—part of her brain, John knew, but wouldn’t let himself totally comprehend—was smeared on her cheek like a chunk of congealed oatmeal. From the position in which she was lying, her hips rotated almost completely around from the angle of her shoulders, John could tell that her back was broken. In fact, from the way she looked, John would have been surprised to hear that any of her bones had been spared. More than anything else, she looked like a human-sized version of the Raggedy Ann dolls his mother had collected. Limp limbs twisted into all sorts of impossible angles, her bones little more than splinters and white dust wrapped in bruised meat.

  “Hey there, sweetie,” John said, trying to find another smile like the one he’d given Davey but failing this time. “Everything’s going to be okay. There’s an ambulance coming. It’ll be here any second. Just stay with me, alright?”

  One of Kyra’s hands was lying on her stomach, and John started to reach for it. She probably wouldn’t be able to feel anything, but who knew? She deserved any mercy he could bestow on her.

  Just as he was about to take her hand in his own, he stopped.

  Careful, Johnny, he heard his mother say from somewhere in the past. Around him, he felt something building in the air, in his head, in his body, an energy he didn’t recognize or understand. It was coming from everywhere, flowing into him the way light flows into a black hole. This is it, he thought, and felt a rush of certainty and fear plow through the center of his body like a bullet.

  John took Kyra’s cold, still hand.

  There was a moment of growing warmth, almost frictive, in his head, like hands rubbing rapidly together. And then a star exploded white and blue and hot behind his eyes.

  John sucked in air to scream and then everything was gone.

  Chapter 2

  John woke up in a dark room.

  From off to his right side, beeping, rhythmic and low. A little further away, voices, muted by distance, words indistinct. He lay still, listening, waiting for his eyes to adapt to the darkness. It was hard to keep them open, though, and they kept drifting closed again. His head hurt and his throat was dry. He felt something crammed down his throat and began to panic, tried to calm himself.

  After a little while, a louder voice sounded over an intercom, still far away, but he could make out the words.

  “Doctor Nelson to Oncology. Doctor Nelson to Oncology.”

  A hospital. Of course. He was lying in a hospital bed, and the beeping was the sound of an EEG. Somehow, this knowledge relaxed him, and he felt himself drifting back off.

  * * *

  He prowled the streets, looking at men and women walking and talking and laughing.

  Later, a man named Brett with blond hair and a patchy five-day beard sat beside him at a bar that smelled of smoke and stale beer and, faintly, urine. When Brett smiled, there were black gaps where his teeth were missing. An old, ragged scar ran from his temple to his cheek. A fighter. This revelation did not concern John; he simply filed it away for later reference.

  Somewhere dark then. An alley maybe; the smell was awful, like decomposing fish and feces. Brett pressing against him, searching for his mouth with his own lips. There was a throbbing pressure on John’s thigh and he knew it was the man’s erection.

  “Come on, just a little,” Brett said, laughing. “You’ll like it, I promise.”

  And then a scream, a man’s—Brett’s—and a warm, salty, pulsating flood over his hand and in his mouth, his nose, his throat.

  From far off, soothing words, over and over. “John, it’s just a dream. Just a dream.”

  * * *

  Sometime later, he found himself sitting up, still unable to see other than vague impressions of light. He knew he was awake, that he looked awake and was acting as though he was awake, but whatever it was that made him him was trapped somewhere behind a wall of glass, like a cop staring into an interrogation room through a one-sided mirror.

  The back of the bed had been raised, and a nurse with curly black hair and an unpleasant scowl was feeding him something sweet that tasted of brown sugar and maple syrup.

  Oatmeal. Oh, Christ.

  The nurse tried to put more of the crud into his mouth, but suddenly it tasted not sweet, but fleshy and sour, like blood and spoiled milk.

  “No,” he tried to say, but his mouth wouldn’t work and all he could do was lock his jaws in refusal.

  “Come on now, John,” she said, and not in a nice voice. “Eat up like a good boy.” John felt his jaws pried open, more of the brain-tasting oatmeal shoved into his mouth, and then he was throwing up, muscles contracting as what little sustenance in his stomach made its way back up into the world. Fingers poked into his mouth and shoveled it out, and that nasty voice said, “Thanks a pantload.”

  * * *

  He was looking at Monica Rourke, his best student. She wore faded jeans torn in both knees and an oversized Denton basketball sweatshirt. She sat in the chair beside his bed reading a book. A Separate Peace. John wondered what Finny and Gene were up to.

  “Hey, Mon,” John said.

  The book flew out of Monica’s hands like a startled bird and she screamed breathlessly, then put her hand over her mouth and looked at John, laughing nervously.

  “You’re awake,” she said, looking around the room, as if for assistance.

  “It would appear so,” John said. “Is there any water around here? My throat’s killing me.”

  “Let me get someone.” Monica was up and out the door in a spasm of herky-jerky movement. A moment later a doctor and a nurse trailed her back into the room.

  The doctor, an older woman with white hair and startling blue eyes, smiled at Jo
hn, then turned to Monica and said, “Give us a minute, okay? I just need him for a second, then you can come back in. Cool?”

  “Sure.” Monica looked once more at John, then left quietly.

  “Sweet girl,” the doctor said. “She’s been here a lot.”

  “My best student.”

  “Your parents have been here, too. They were so exhausted that a couple of days ago I had to send them to a hotel, but they’re being called. The hotel’s just a few minutes away.”

  The nurse came around the side of the bed with a glass of water. He poked the straw into John’s mouth, saying, “Slowly now. You’ve been intubated for the past several days, so your throat’s going to be sore.”

  John sipped from the straw, shuddering as the glacial water cooled his parched throat. He was still sucking when the nurse pulled the straw away.

  “How’s that?” the doctor asked.

  John nodded. “Better.”

  “I’m Doctor Barnes. I’ve been treating you since you were admitted last week.”

  That took John from the side. “Last week? You’re kidding me.”

  Barnes sat down in the chair Monica had occupied before, leaned back, and crossed her legs. “Things were pretty touch and go there for a while, John. How much do you remember of what happened?”

  John thought for a moment before he spoke. “Kyra Metheny.” His voice was a dry croak; he felt like he could drink a gallon of water and still want more.

  Barnes nodded; her hands were folded neatly on one knee. “That’s right. Do you remember what happened while you were with Kyra?”

  “The last thing I remember is taking her hand. We were waiting for the ambulance to get there, and I knew she probably wouldn’t be able to feel anything…I knew she was dying, but I just thought that maybe if I held her hand…God, that poor girl.”

  “So you don’t remember what happened after—” Barnes paused for a moment, then said, “Well, after?”

  “No, nothing. What are you talking about?”

  Dr. Barnes stood up, came to John and rested her hand on his shoulder. “John, what I’m going to tell you is going to come as a shock, so I want you to prepare yourself, all right?”

  John nodded, but found that he did not want to hear what she was going to say.

  “Kyra Metheny did not die that afternoon. In fact,” Barnes paused to smile and shrug, “she’s been back at school the last two days.”

  Chapter 3

  Amelia Island, Florida

  Rose was cutting it close.

  A few minutes after five A.M., and the sky over the Atlantic was streaked with orange and pink. Soon the visions would start, and not long after that… Best not to think about after that. Just get inside.

  Dangerous, Rose thought. Stupid.

  After making a cursory examination of the house from afar to make sure there were no cars in the driveway or lights in the windows, she entered through the basement door.

  It had taken her hours and hours of wandering along the beach to find the empty vacation home, but she’d known that sooner or later she’d find one that suited her purposes; she always did.

  The key, true to the custom of rich people the world over, had been secreted away beneath a terra cotta flower pot on the deck in back of the house, and there was no alarm system in place to defend against would-be burglars. Not that Rose was a burglar; far from it.

  She was just another animal looking for a warm place to sleep.

  Rose had no idea how many houses she’d turned into temporary dens, as she would this one. Dozens? At least. Hundreds? Maybe.

  Once or twice she’d had owners come home on her, but her luck had remained amazingly constant over the years. The owners of this particular house, she knew, weren’t due home for several weeks. On a desk calendar in the study upstairs, a month and a half was marked off in red pen: HAWAII—DOGS AT KENNEL THROUGH APRIL 28. There was always the chance one of their children would come home from college—from financial documents on the desk in the study, she knew there was a son at Kenyon, a daughter at Haverford—but these kinds of kids didn’t come home for Spring Break. They went to Cabo or the Caribbean. Barring something completely unexpected, Rose thought she was secure here for the time being.

  Closing the door behind her, Rose pulled the queen-sized box spring in front of it, blocking the only window in this room of the basement. She crossed the gray cement floor to the mattress she’d dragged down from one of the bedrooms in the empty house above and collapsed unceremoniously onto her makeshift bed.

  The mattress was covered with a multi-colored patchwork quilt, one of the few items Rose traveled with. Years ago, she had taken it from a foster home, but she could no longer remember which one. There had been so many. She pulled the blanket over herself, exhausted from her night. It wasn’t cool enough for the blanket, but it always made her feel better to be under it.

  Rose felt herself begin to slip away. In minutes, she would be asleep, or what passed for sleep, anyway.

  But not yet.

  Even now, worn down to the point of emotional and mental numbness, Rose saw the baby.

  The baby.

  Girl or boy? It was impossible for Rose to tell. She’d only started seeing it a couple of weeks ago, at around the same time the visions had started and the dreams had intensified. The child was olive-skinned, like Rose, and crowned with a head of fine blond hair. Its eyes were a brilliant blue, intelligent, aware. Its arms held out to her.

  She wanted to hold the child, to cradle it to her body, to inhale its smell.

  Seeing the infant behind her closed eyelids, Rose curled into a fetal tuck and imagined the baby nestled against her cheek, the soft wind of its breath against her hair…

  When she fell asleep, she was smiling.

  * * *

  By eight-thirty that evening, Rose was back out again. She’d slept fitfully the past several days, her normally undisturbed rest sullied by the goddamned dreams, and her head still ached, even though she’d woken more than an hour ago.

  She’d always had strange dreams, but there had never been pain before. That had started with the dream about the dead girl on the street, eight or ten nights ago, and the pain had been the worst on that night, but even as it faded, it continued, and that concerned Rose.

  She had no idea where the dreams came from, but they wore her out and made her feel threatened and disgusted in a way she didn’t understand. Seeing the girl lying in the street, her head crushed in, taking her pale hand, and then the burst of warmth. The last thing in the world she wanted to do after one of the dreams was go out, but her need left her no choice. And the need was bad tonight. Already, she could feel the hunger working in her guts, in her brain, making her weak. Making her vulnerable.

  As a general rule, Rose traveled light. Whatever material items she accrued during her tenure in a certain place, she left behind when she decided it was time to move. It kept her from getting too comfortable in any one location, reminded her of what she was: a nomad. A Bedouin traveling the American wasteland.

  Tonight, she’d scrounged around in the small pile near her bed and picked out a pair of tight-fitting blue jeans and a simple brown and maroon peasant blouse. On her feet she wore thong sandals.

  She’d lifted the entire outfit from a Wal-Mart in Jacksonville, along with razors for her legs, deodorant, and several pairs of underwear. It was a routine she’d repeated who knew how many times as she traveled up and down the east coast, through the Midwest, down into the southern states.

  Even without the benefit of a mirror, she knew she looked good in the clothes. Her body was lean and tight, her skin tanned and flawless. She never worried much about what she wore, just made sure to leave as little as possible to the imagination. The peasant blouse fulfilled that function perfectly, allowing what she knew was a generous view of her cleavage.

  She wore no make-up, but she never did. Her features were more striking when left alone. Her eyes were dark, her hair a lustrous black, as wer
e her fine eyebrows, which arched inquisitively and narrowed to sharp points near her temples. Another reason Rose rarely looked in the mirror was that doing so always shocked her. She looked so little like what she actually was. Recently, she even found herself avoiding windows in which she might see her reflection.

  Like so many things in her life, she didn’t know why she despised seeing herself, but the compulsion to avoid her reflection was undeniable and strong. As with the visions of the baby, it worried her, not only because this newfound discomfort threatened to disrupt her normal pattern, but also because it meant that inside of her, in whatever passed for her soul, something had changed, and that change was an affront.

  Growing accustomed to a way of life like hers was no easy task; doing so required nothing less than the sacrifice of one’s morality, of one’s very humanity. But she had done so, because she had no choice, and although some of the things she’d had to do in the intervening years had made her sick with guilt, she had done what she had to do. It was, she figured, a pre-condition of her survival to act in ways that would drive a normal man or woman mad in hours.

  It took her about twenty minutes to walk from the beach house to The Birdcage, a high-class strip joint just over the bridge to the mainland. As she approached, she saw that even though it was still early, business was hopping.

  The large lot was almost full, and not with broken-down jalopies and the rusty pick-ups owned by the Mexican migrant orange-pickers. Instead, the cars parked outside The Birdcage were BMWs, Mercedes, and Jags. Rich husbands from the Island getting away from wifey for a few hours of fun with their fellow deviants.

  Encouraging, but no guarantee, as Rose had learned the night before when she’d prowled the crowd until even the after-hours bunch had shuffled off to bed. Still, it was a new night. Anything was possible. More than that, she needed something to happen tonight. If it didn’t she was going to be in some serious trouble.