The door to the study was open, the desk lamp illuminating the nearby hallway. She walked into the study and quickly scanned the room. Her father was not there. She turned out the lamp and moved toward the stairs.
“Dad?” she called again, but still no response. His car was in the driveway, so he had to be home. He was probably in bed already. Gloria started up the stairs, moved down the hallway, and stopped abruptly.
What the ...?
The light was on in Laura’s old room. Strange. No one had been in that room in years—except Laura during her occasional visits and the maid. Gloria crept down the hall, reached the doorway, and peeked inside.
She suddenly felt very cold.
Her father sat on the edge of Laura’s bed, his back facing the door. His head was slumped into his hands in obvious anguish. The sight shocked Gloria. She had never seen her father look so small, so vulnerable.
“Dad?” she ventured.
She heard a sniffle as he raised his head. He still did not turn and face her. “Gloria, I’m . . . I’m glad you’re home.”
Glad she was home. Those words. There was a time she would imagine Armageddon easier than imagining her father saying those words to her.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Dr. James Ayars did not respond right away, his shoulders rising and lowering with each breath. “I have some bad news.”
Gloria had known terror in her thirty years, most self- inflicted. Once, when she had dropped some bad LSD at a West Coast party, her mind had conjured up horrors that almost made her jump out of a tenth-floor window. She remembered that fear now, the way her heart had raced in her chest. And then there was another time—
“Mommy! Mommy!”
“Gloria, get out of here! Get out of here now!”
—when she had known terror, but she had been so young then. A little girl. She remembered nothing about it, except—
Blood. So much blood.
—what she saw in the dreams.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Laura just called from Australia,” he began slowly, his strength ebbing away with each word. “David’s dead. He got caught up in some powerful current and drowned.”
Despair swept through Gloria. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be. Not David. Not the only man her sister had ever loved. Not the only man who had ever treated Gloria like a person, the only true friend she had ever had.
She broke down then and ran to her father on frail legs, the tears already starting to pour down her face.
It just couldn’t be.
T.C. sat next to Laura on the plane. She had barely spoken since he had delivered the news, asking only one question: “When can I see the body?”
T.C. had hoped she would not ask that question. “There’s no need,” he had said gently.
“But I want—”
“No, you don’t.”
T.C. had taken care of the rest of the details quickly. He knew that David had no real family to contact. His only living relative was Stan, his piece-of-shit brother whom none of them had seen for more than a decade and who would probably applaud David’s death. No need to contact that scumbag. T.C. had also been busy making sure the press did not hassle Laura too much. He knew that once Laura returned to Boston, the press vultures would be all over her, wanting to know the tiniest tidbit of how it felt to have your heart ripped out of your chest. He decided the best thing would be to hide Laura in Serita’s apartment for a little while, but T.C. knew from past experience that the press could be denied for only so long.
He turned toward her. He had been searching his brain, desperately trying to think of a way of easing some of her pain. His eyes watched her, concentrated on her every movement as if they would give him a clue as to what he should do. It was a useless exercise and T.C. knew it.
Damn you for doing this to her, David. Damn you.
He also knew what Laura was thinking under the haze of anguish because he was one of the few people who knew the truth about David and his affliction. He had witnessed its awesome effects firsthand. He had seen it nearly kill his best friend.
But Laura had put that all in the past, thank God. Somehow, she had sought and eventually destroyed the evil specter that had tormented David Baskin for a good portion of his life. But still, they were haunted by the fear that the specter would one day return. Was the specter truly dead, they wondered, or like some Godzilla sequel was he just hiding, regaining his strength, preparing to one day attack with a vengeance that would destroy David once and for all?
And the more immediate question that T.C. knew Laura was asking herself: Had the creature paralyzed David’s body in a wave of unbearable agony while he tried to handle the treacherous waters? If she had stayed with him, could she have done something to protect her beloved David from the cruel creature within?
T.C. reached out and patted her hand. He wanted to tell her to stop thinking such thoughts. He wanted to tell her that David had not had another attack. He wanted to tell her that there was nothing Laura could have done to change what had happened.
But of course, he could not tell Laura any of those things. She would never just accept his word. She would demand to know how he knew so much about David’s drowning.
And that was something he could never tell her.
DR. James Ayars had seriously considered canceling all his appointments for the day. It was something he had not done in more than twenty years, not allowing himself to become ill during that entire time period. He had always prided himself on being punctual. Every Monday through Friday—save his three weeks of vacation each year—began with hospital rounds at seven thirty in the morning, followed by his first office appointment at nine, his last one at four thirty, another quick visit to the patients in the hospital, and then back to his home on the outskirts of Boston. If a day was to be missed for personal reasons, he gave his patients and staff at least two months’ notice.
There had been very few deviations from this routine during the last two decades, but the phone call he had received from Laura yesterday was as much a cause for deviation as anything he had experienced during that time. It had left him saddened, confused, so much so that even a man as disciplined as he considered not going in to work. He had just wanted to stay in bed and deal with the harsh blows.
In the end, he had realized that staying at home would serve no purpose. It would only leave him time to brood when what he needed was to keep his mind and soul busy. He had called Gloria’s psychiatrist—even with her enormous improvement, Gloria still needed therapy—and told her what had happened. Her psychiatrist had wanted to see Gloria right away.