WARNING: Not quite smut but serious m/f making out, non-con m/m, blood n' gore.
The events of the last few days had taught Henry one thing, if nothing else: that under the right set of circumstances, it is possible to move out of one’s apartment in less than an hour.
The "Escape" ending would lead one to believe that everything's going to be all right. It isn't.
”Five! This is five! Ignore the siren!
Even if you leave this room, you can never leave this room!”
--Stephen King, “1408”
Part One
Yesterday, after he’d escaped, Henry had staggered down to the parking lot and crawled into his car. He’d fully intended to go find a hotel room then and there. The thought of expending what little energy he had left on the search for temporary lodging made his head spin, but the thought of spending any amount of time unconscious in that apartment was utterly unbearable. By the time he managed to find the right key to stick in the ignition, he was too exhausted even to turn it and start the car, let alone actually drive anywhere. If it'd been an automatic and all he'd have to think about was "brake on the left, gas on the right," it might have been manageable. A stick, despite the fact that he'd driven them since he was fifteen and could normally work this one in his sleep? Forget it.
He did the only thing he could do then. He laid the seat back and passed out.
Eighteen hours later, he woke up, found the nearly-empty pack of cigarettes he’d left on the passenger seat five days ago, and chain-smoked the lot. The bad news: he was stiff and sore all over, and he had a hell of a headache and a hell of a crick in his neck to match it. The good news: his brain had been as exhausted as his body--too much so to bother throwing any dreams at him.
It took another four hours--and a trip around the corner for a fresh pack of cigarettes, a cup of black coffee, and a bear claw he ate two bites of--for Henry to muster up the courage to go back to the room.
The events of the last few days had taught Henry one thing, if nothing else: that under the right set of circumstances, it is possible to move out of one’s apartment in less than an hour.
The windows still wouldn’t open--they never had. For a moment, Henry seriously considered breaking the damn things out. He settled for leaving the door open. It was bad enough that he was about to bail on his lease. He didn’t need any nasty notes about property damage on his rental history.
Everything he couldn’t live without--which amounted to his wallet, his clothes, his family pictures, his briefcase and its cargo of the standard Important Papers, his scrapbooks, a handful of CDs from the "favorite" stack, a handful of CDs from the "really obscure and hard to find" stack, and his cameras--went into boxes and bags and from there, into the trunk and back seat of his car. After three cigarettes’ worth of debate, he took the diary--only because he couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else finding it and reading what had been written there over the last few days, and he decided to shred it or burn it or throw it into the first large body of water he came to.
Henry would have taken some of the stuff in the bathroom--razor, comb, toothbrush, maybe a towel or two--but his stomach squirmed alarmingly when he touched the doorknob.
He didn’t even bother with the laundry room.
All of the furniture stayed, regardless of whether it had come with the room or been bought later. For one thing, it would have taken too long to call for a moving van and have it hauled out. For another... even though he knew perfectly well that it was just his imagination, he could still smell the ghosts of blood and rot in the upholstery, and all the Febreze in the world wouldn't have gotten it out.
The TV and the stereo stayed. Too much trouble to unhook those and haul them down to the car. He’d replace them when he got settled elsewhere. And hopefully, the replacements would never decide to randomly turn themselves on in the middle of the night. The food--if one could call a bottle of wine, a pickle jar with one pickle therein, a box of cereal containing three flakes and half a cup of crumbs, a quarter-full bottle of Absolut Vanilla, and a few assorted condiments “food--” stayed.
Above all, everything with the slightest connection to Silent Hill stayed. The photos. The newspaper clippings. The postcards. The scrapbook pages. Even the shoes.
Especially the goddamned shoes.
With the packing and loading seen to, Henry took care of a few last details. He pushed the keys that were still in his pocket under Sunderland’s door with a note explaining that he’d found them in the hallway. He felt a little guilty about the lie, but it was that or the truth, and Henry certainly didn’t feel up to the “I stole your key from the guy that stole it from you and helped myself to your master keys, and uh, please don’t ask me what happened to that umbilical cord” angle.
He emptied his mailbox of a week's worth of circulars, junk mail, magazines, bills, and what looked like one check from some regional magazine or another he'd sold some shots to and another check from one of the stock photo agencies. That brightened his mood a little. At least now he had some spare change to throw down on a bed and a chair or two for whatever new place he ended up in.
He jotted off a brief note to the landlord to the effect that he had moved out and stuck it in the night drop along with his keys. He knew the terms of his lease required thirty days notice before he moved and he did not care. He knew failure to give such notice would result in the loss of his security deposit and a "this asshole broke his lease" note that would stay on his rental history forever and ever.
He didn’t care about that either.
He thought about jotting off a “hi, I moved out” note to stick under Eileen’s door and then thought better of it. He’d just go tell her in person. Besides, although the Hotel South Ashfield was out of the question for a number of reasons, there were still no fewer than eight perfectly good Holiday Inns and Super 8s and La Quintas and so on in town. He’d still be close by. Not exactly next door, no (and Henry made a mental note to suggest Eileen get out of that hellhole as well), but it wasn’t like he was running off to Hartford or Toronto or Tijuana or the North Pole or the moon or anything.
Not yet, anyway.
“So when are you moving? ...you are moving, right?”
Henry couldn’t help but sputter out an incredulous laugh at that. Eileen might as well have asked if he intended to breathe sometime soon. “I already did. I just grabbed my clothes and stuff and threw them in the car and left. I, uh... I think I’m just going to find a hotel or something for now, until...” He glanced up at Eileen, then at the flowers he’d brought her, then up at the perfectly normal daylight streaming through the perfectly normal window, and tried very hard not to think about the things he’d seen in these very hospital rooms--to his surprise, he found it easy to forget them. At least, he did here in this room, with Eileen safe and alive in front of him and her fingers twined loosely with his. “...I don’t know if I can stay here. In Ashfield, I mean. I don’t know where I’d go, and who knows, maybe in a week or two I’ll decide I’m okay with it after all, but...”
“I know. I don’t blame you.” Eileen gave Henry’s hand one reassuring squeeze, and he returned it. “...I hear Brahms is nice.”
That earned her another little sputtery laugh. “Brahms, huh? I don’t know. It’s still a little too close to Silent Hill. ...Derry? I’ve been there. It’s not bad.”
Eileen pulled a face. “You’ve never read a single Stephen King novel in your entire life, have you?”
Henry thought about that for a minute, and then he pulled a face. “...maybe not Derry. What about New York or somethi--what?”
“Not New York City.”
“Why not?”
“Have you ever been to New York City?”
“Well, no, but--”
“Henry, you wouldn’t last a week. You’re too nice. They eat nice guys for breakfast in New York City.”
“Ah.” Henry grinned a little. “You think I’m a nice guy? Where’d you get that idea?”
Now it was Eileen’s turn to laugh incredulously. “Hello? For one thing, you could and should be driving around looking for a room with a bed to pass out in right now, but you came to see me instead. And you brought me those.” Eileen pointed at the flowers... and grinned right back at Henry. “...and I guess the whole saving my life thing was kind of sweet too. So, no. No Big Apple for you.”
“Okay, upstate then.” Henry laughed a little. “I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.” He shrugged, and Eileen squeezed his hand again.
“Well, it’s not like you have to figure it out right now. You should probably, y’know, sleep first.” Eileen’s hand slipped out of Henry’s; before he could really register the loss, it was reaching up to brush his hair back from his forehead. “In a bed. Not in your car again. You look like hell.” And before Henry could say anything to that, she kissed him. Right on the mouth.
“Mm!?” Henry’s eyes snapped wide open. Well, I’m sure as hell awake now, he thought crazily. No, he certainly hadn’t expected that. It wasn’t exactly what one would call passionate, but it was no mere peck on the cheek, either. “...mmm.” His hand hovered stupidly in the air for a moment; once the initial surprise wore off, it rose and lit on Eileen’s shoulder, and his eyes drifted shut.
He whimpered, just a little, when Eileen drew back; one last tiny brush of her lips against his made the loss a bit more bearable. “...I didn’t know you smoked,” she whispered, and it didn’t sound disapproving at all--if anything, she seemed amused by that discovery.
“I, uh... don’t, much...” Henry opened his eyes and tried to blink them back into focus. “...or I didn’t much, till this morning... what was that for?”
Eileen didn’t answer that right away. She reached up and swept Henry’s bangs back out of his eyes again; before they could fall back into place, she rested her forehead against his. “When things started getting really bad, I’d start thinking ‘that’s it, I can’t take any more of this’ ...and then I’d look at you.” Her fingertips brushed over Henry’s cheek, and he made that little whimpering noise again. He also sorely wished he’d had the courage to open the bathroom door and at least shave before he fled. “You just... stayed so calm. I don’t know how you did it--God, I don’t know how anyone could have done it. But seeing you like that... it helped me stay calm too.”
If Henry were the blushing type, he would have done so. But he wasn’t. The closest he came to that was a shrug and a faint sheepish smile. “It’s not... it’s just the way I am.”
Eileen kissed him again. “Then that was for just being the way you are.” She squeezed his shoulder and gave him a gentle little push toward the door. “Go on. Call me when you find a room. I’ll come see you whenever they let me out of here.”
Moving into a temporary new place took a bit longer than moving out of the old place had.
Henry tried the Holiday Inn first, simply because it was the closest hotel whose view did not include South Ashfield Heights and its surrounding areas. It was cheap, it was clean, and most importantly, it had windows that opened. It seemed like a fine place to stay. Or at least, it did until the clerk handed him the key. Henry took one look at it, felt the blood drain from his face, handed the key back, and apologetically requested a different room.
The clerk handed him another key. The room number it bore was even worse.
So much for the Holiday Inn.
The Super 8’s windows did not open. The La Quinta’s windows did open, but they had no available smoking-allowed rooms.
Another interesting lesson the last few days had taught Henry: a half-pack-a-day smoker, if trapped in his apartment for five days after forgetting his cigarettes in his car and then placed under extreme duress, can and will mutate into an insatiable chain-smoking nicotine fiend upon release. Henry finished off the pack he’d just bought that morning as he pulled into the La Quinta’s parking lot. After he left the La Quinta, despite the unpleasant scratchy feeling that was beginning to surface in the back of his throat, Henry broke down and did something he’d never done before, not once in his entire smoking life.
He bought a carton.
The Sunrise Inn had windows that opened and available smoking-allowed rooms. The key Henry received bore no ominous room numbers. And it was farthest from South Ashfield Heights. The rates were a tad steeper, yes, but these small comforts were well worth the extra twenty dollars a day.
Henry left most of his stuff in the car, save for a single change of clothes. He’d go back for more later if he needed to. Right now, he needed something to eat. And maybe a nap. And definitely a shower. Not necessarily in that order.
But first, Henry opened the windows. Then he called Eileen’s apartment and left a message on her answering machine to let her know where he’d ended up.
The bathroom, like the rest of the room, was tiny--barely three square feet of floor space remained unclaimed by the sink, the shower, or the toilet--but like the rest of the room, it was clean and well-lit, and most importantly the walls bore no suspicious cracks or stains or holes.
Henry turned the shower on as hot as he could bear and let it pound on the back of his neck for nearly an hour, until the heat and the driving spray worked the crick in his neck loose and eased most of the stiffness and soreness out of his muscles. At some point, the water went lukewarm for half a second. Henry blinked his eyes open and wondered if he had single-handedly consumed the entire building’s ready supply of hot water. Between that, the possibility that he might well fall asleep if he stayed in much longer, and the distinct rubbery sensation that had crept into his legs, he decided it would probably be a good idea to shut off the water, get dressed, and eat something.
He didn’t particularly want to eat, although he knew he needed to. He'd sacrificed his last two eggs to appease a roaring hangover the fourth morning he was trapped in the apartment and he'd had nothing but water, coffee, and two bites of bear claw since, but his stomach refused to take any serious interest in anything he thought of. Also, he wasn’t terribly thrilled with the idea of getting back in his car and driving around until he found something that sounded good.
He ended up ordering a pizza. Four more cigarettes disappeared in the half hour between the call and the delivery. When the pizza arrived, Henry ate one slice willingly, forced himself to eat a second when that failed to take the wobbly feeling out of his legs, and then put the rest in the room’s tiny fridge.
There was nothing worth watching on any of the seventy channels the room’s TV picked up, but Henry turned it on and left it on anyway just so there would be something to listen to besides dead silence and his mental soundtrack of the last few days. He stacked both of the pillows on one side of the bed, stretched out on his back on top of the blankets, and stared at the screen without really seeing it as he opened another pack of cigarettes. The voice of reason and common sense told Henry that smoking in bed was not a smart thing to do. He did it anyway.
He got up once to close the window, only because it had started to rain heavily and the wind was blowing it in. At least four times, he swallowed back the urge to get up and open them again, just a crack, just to make sure they still would open. They would Of course they would.
...wouldn't they?
Henry got out of bed, pushed the window up half an inch, pushed it down again, lay down on the bed again, and felt stupid. Relieved. But stupid.
The eleven o’ clock news came on. Henry dimly heard the words "woods near Silent Hill" through a light haze of drowsiness, opened his eyes halfway, shuddered, and turned the TV off. Then he ground out his seventh cigarette from that pack in the ashtray on the nightstand and switched the lamp off.
And of course, now that the room was dark and silent, he was no longer sleepy.
He tried to clear every conscious thought out of his head and concentrate on the sound of rain pattering on the window. It didn’t work very well. The rain sounded like a clock that was ticking far too fast.
He tried to think about Eileen’s lips, soft and warm and alive, against his.
This worked a little better.
Part Two
The room was still dark when Henry woke up. He blinked his eyes open, rubbed clumsily at them, and swallowed, wincing at the grainy clicking noise this produced. His tongue peeled away from the roof of his mouth. It felt like a sponge being peeled off a half-dried coat of paint.
Henry shut his eyes and sighed. Of course. He’d had nothing to drink but a lot of vodka, some coffee, and the occasional quick glass of metallic-tasting tap water for the last week. The vodka had been an extremely stupid idea and had done more harm than good on a number of levels, he'd run out of coffee the fourth night he was trapped in the room, and the water--well, he stopped drinking the water after his kitchen sink once decided to produce hot and cold running blood. Of course he was dehydrated.
Smoking damn near three packs in one day probably hadn’t helped, either. He made a mental note to go out and get some Gatorade or something in the morning. For now, he hauled himself out of bed, staggered drowsily to the bathroom, filled the plastic cup that came with the room with slightly less metallic-tasting tap water, drained it in three gulps, and repeated the process three times.
That was a little better. His tongue still had that unpleasant dry-sponge feeling, but at least he no longer felt like he was trying to swallow around a lump of sand.
Henry took the pizza out of the little fridge, opened the box, and stared at it for a moment. It hadn’t looked all that appealing fresh--not that anything else would have either, but it looked even less appealing cold. The cold pizza went back into the fridge untouched.
The rain had stopped in the short time Henry had slept, and he thought about opening the windows again. Before he could do that, someone knocked on the door.
According to the digital clock permanently attached to the nightstand, it was a little after three in the morning. Three in the morning, and there was someone knocking on the door. Henry swallowed and found that his throat had gone uncomfortably dry again. That, and now there was a cold, crawly feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Another knock.
There was a peephole in the door, of course. Henry didn’t particularly trust them anymore. Not after the last thing he’d seen through the one in his apartment--
Stop it, Henry told himself. He turned the lamp on, walked the four steps to the door, took a deep breath, and took a look out the peephole.
What... how... never mind.
Henry let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, unlocked the door, and opened it. “Eileen!?”
”Hi.” Eileen gave him a little sheepish smile. “I, uh...guess I should have called first.”
“No, no, come in. It’s okay.” Oh God was it ever okay. Henry stepped aside to let Eileen in, then he shut and locked the door again. “What are you doing here? I mean, not that I’m not glad to see you, but I thought--”
“They let me out of the hospital tonight...and then I got home and I couldn’t sleep.” Just like she’d done when Henry had sat down on the edge of her hospital bed, Eileen reached out for his hand, and he took it gladly. “And then I finally remembered to check my machine--”
“--and you got my message and came running out here to the other side of town at three in the morning when you should be--”
“--resting. I know. But...” Eileen looked away and shivered, just a little. “I can’t. Not now. Not there.” She looked back at Henry. “Speaking of people who should be resting, I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“It’s okay,” Henry said again. “I wasn’t asleep. I think I passed out around one or one-thirty, and then I couldn’t stay asleep. And I probably wouldn’t have slept at all if I hadn’t...”
Hadn’t what?
Spent an hour mentally replaying a thirty-second kiss?
Henry shook his head and opened his mouth to say “Nothing” or “Never mind” or something equally lame. It didn’t come out. Something about the look Eileen was giving him made it impossible for Henry to brush the subject off or change it or lie about it.
That look was also making it damn near impossible for him to put together a coherent string of words to finish his sentence. So he closed his mouth.
Leaned down a little.
Kissed her. Just once.
“...if I hadn’t had that to think about.”
Okay, maybe not just once. Or maybe this time Eileen kissed him. It was kind of hard to tell by that point. After that, as far as Henry was concerned, it ceased to matter who started it. The only things that mattered to him now were the small hand he held against his chest and the other small hand curling over the back of his neck under the collar of his shirt and the little finger tracing absently along the line where the neck of his T-shirt gave way to skin and the warmth of Eileen’s lips against his own. Henry decided that things could stay just like this, that they could go no further, and he would be happy with that for the rest of his life.
Then the tip of Eileen’s tongue dabbed tentatively at his, and he changed his mind. She did it again, and this time it wasn't tentative at all. Henry made some little noise in the back of his throat, soft and faintly tinged with desperation, and did it back. And kept doing it. They both did. Eileen's fingers splayed out over the front of Henry's shirt, and his heart raced beneath them; her other hand slid down Henry's back, and a slight tug at his waist hinted that she'd found a belt loop to hang on to. That drew another of those soft little noises from Henry, and he let go of her hand and wrapped that arm around her shoulders and his other arm around her waist and suddenly he never wanted to let go, never wanted to stop kissing her--
--until he had to breathe.
Henry dropped his forehead to Eileen's shoulder and gasped in a few breaths, quiet but quick and a little ragged around the edges. Even then he didn't quite stop; he turned his head a little and nuzzled the side of Eileen's neck, and she murmured something soft and pleased and did the same for him, stroking his hair back while he caught his breath.
Then her lips trailed up to his ear, and he forgot all about breathing. His own, anyway; hers was impossible to forget about, warm and soft in his ear, a little ticklish--a little beyond ticklish--and then her lower lip brushed against his earlobe and the tip of her tongue traced its way up from there and oh God did she have any idea what she was doing? ...okay, she knew what she was doing, yes, there was no question about that, but did she have any idea what she was doing to him!? Henry realized that if she drew much closer, she'd find out exactly what she was doing to him, and he swallowed hard. His fingers twitched against the small of her back--they seemed to be trying to pull her that close, and didn't much care what their owner had to say about it--and he squeezed his eyes shut and whimpered. And then her teeth--oh God her teeth closed ever so gently on his earlobe, and her fingers slipped into the back pocket of his jeans, and Henry let out a tiny groan and shivered and wanted--
He wanted--
He needed--
No.
No, Henry told himself, swallowing hard again and clenching his jaw. He was not going to do this, he was not going to do it, he was not. It was another of those things that went under the heading of Just The Way He Was, he'd never been one to think with his dick before, never, he'd always taken pride in that, and damn it, he was not going to do it now. Not to Eileen. No.
"Eileen--" Her name came out half-croaked; Henry cleared his throat and lifted his head from her shoulder, taking his ear out of easy reach in the process. Both of his hands came up to rest on Eileen's shoulders, taking on the delicate task of holding her back without looking like he was pushing her away. "I--I have to stop."
Eileen's lips ghosted over the side of Henry's neck when she whispered his name. His neck was a little more sensitive than most, yes, but lips and tongue and breath there just made him shiver instead of turning his bones to water and his thoughts to static like they did when applied to his ears. "It's okay," she whispered, and she touched a tiny kiss to a spot just under his jaw.
At first, Henry thought she meant it was okay if he stopped... and then a touch of her tongue to that same spot made him realize what she really meant. Henry stepped on that thought and pinned it down before it could run wild. "I have to stop now," he said, a little more firmly, as much to himself as to Eileen. More to himself. "...or I won't be able to stop at all--"
"Henry." Eileen caught his face between her hands and shut him up in the most direct way possible--with a kiss. Henry whimpered into it, and his fingers twitched on her shoulders as she drew back just enough to talk. "It's okay. I need this too." And then she pulled him down close again, close enough to whisper "don't stop" right into his ear.
Henry's fingers twitched again and he opened his mouth, unsure of what would come out of it.
Nothing did, nothing but a rush of breath and a low groan.
And then nothing else could come out of it because it was on Eileen's, and this time it was deep and desperate and hungry, and the firm no Henry kept repeating to himself gave way to please and from there to a whirling blur of white noise that occasionally tried to coalesce into something that sounded like yes. He felt Eileen's fingers trail down the middle of his chest, pause, tug, move a little lower, and repeat the process. By the time Henry realized what she was doing and that maybe he should help, his shirt hung unbuttoned and open and Eileen's splayed fingers were sliding up over his chest, warmth melting through the thin cotton of his T-shirt in their wake. All that was left for Henry to do was will himself to take his hands off Eileen's shoulders long enough to get his unbuttoned shirt the rest of the way off. He pulled one arm free and wrapped it around Eileen again, burying that hand in her hair. Gravity mostly took care of the rest, and a quick shake of his hand left the shirt pooled on the floor. For a moment, Henry thought about removing some more clothing, either his or Eileen's, it didn't really matter at that point, and then her arms wrapped tight around his waist and suddenly she was pressed close against him, that close, and it became impossible for Henry to think about anything at all. His fingers twitched once more, harder, and Henry gave up and let them do what they wanted. They went to Eileen's hips, pulled them tight against his, and stopped there, trembling faintly as Henry abruptly dropped his head to her shoulder again. His throat worked soundlessly; he produced no noise aside from a short series of broken gasps until Eileen's fingers threaded into his hair and stroked it back.
"Don't stop," she whispered again, hot against his neck. "Henry... please don't stop."
"I'm--I won't--I--" Henry swallowed hard again and shook his head. His voice was deserting him and fast; whatever he was going to say, it needed to be quick and it needed to count.
"...bed," he finally choked out, and followed that with a short breathless laugh.
Eileen echoed the little laugh, just as breathlessly. "...yeah." Her arms tightened briefly around Henry's waist, then loosened a little, just enough for them to shamble the four steps to the bed. Henry's legs promptly gave out there, and he sat down hard, pulling Eileen down with him. Once he got his legs to work long enough to haul them up onto the mattress and stretch out on his back, his arm went around Eileen's waist and he pulled her onto him.
Again the thought of shedding clothing tried to form in Henry's mind; again he decided he couldn't be bothered to let go of Eileen long enough, again Eileen demonstrated that she couldn't be bothered with that small detail either, and again she did so in the most direct manner she could. She shifted atop him and one thigh wedged itself between Henry's, and there was no question of whether or not she knew what that did to him. He tried to hold still, to concentrate on kissing her lips and her neck and her shoulders and to keep his hands and his attention above the waist for now. But Eileen shifted again, pushing up on her hands and arching her back and pressing her thigh forward, and there was no way Henry could keep still under her after that.
If he couldn't hold still, Henry reasoned, he could at least go slow.
Yes. This much he could do.
Had to do, because he couldn't stand the thought of this coming to an end anytime soon. The curves and planes of their bodies fit together as if they had been machined to do just that, from the soft swell of her breasts in his cupped hands to the harder swell of his erection against her hip, and while this might happen again--if it were up to Henry it would most definitely happen again, and at least for the time being it appeared that Eileen would not object to that--it would never happen quite like this again, and rushing through it was simply not an option.
Quite suddenly, their clothed state ceased to be a hindrance at all--in fact, it actually heightened the sensations. Filtered through Henry's T-shirt, Eileen's hands spread a diffuse, lingering warmth over his chest and his shoulders, and occasionally they would catch and drag the soft cotton a short way over the skin beneath. When her fingers or her lips touched bare skin--the backs of his hands, his forearms, the hollow of his throat and yes, his ears--the presence of clothing covering the rest of him just made those spots that much more sensitive. And then there was the heat, the near-unbearable heat generated by two layers of denim rubbing against one another, and it was that heat that finally made moving slowly impossible--that and the rising pitch and volume of the little moans Eileen loosed as she ground her hips down against his thigh, every one of those delirious, delicious little noises drawing a softer echo from Henry's throat and a sympathetic twitch against Eileen's hip. Even then, Henry fought to keep some semblance of control over the rhythm, but his hands betrayed him and clamped onto Eileen's hips, pulling them down against his faster and harder until Henry squeezed his eyes shut and craned his head back against the pillows and gasped out something that might have been Eileen's name, and somewhere in the back of his mind it occurred to him that he was going to come in the only clean pair of jeans he'd brought in from the car and he didn't care.
Some movement, some precise combination of angle and pressure and friction, drew forth a particularly emphatic noise from Eileen. Although that same combination made it temporarily impossible for Henry to open his eyes again just then he was silently thanking all that was holy that neither of them had bothered to turn out the lights. He didn't need input from his eyes to tell him what was happening; he could feel Eileen grinding down hard against his thigh and shivering against him and arching forward into his hands, he could hear her breath catching in her throat and freeing itself on little whimpery wails, and that told him all he needed to know about what was happening. Still, there was much to be said for being able to watch it happen--truth be told, he liked watching this almost as much
watching
as actually doing it, sometimes more so, and as long as he was being honest with himself he figured he might as well admit that way in the back of his mind where things he was too busy or distracted or ashamed to actively think about were relegated, he'd thought about this a lot lately
always watching
at great length and in detail, about what he might see in this situation
always watching you
about what kind of faces Eileen would make when she
I'm always watching you
Something wasn't right.
Quiet now. Too quiet. Too suddenly so.
Too heavy.
"I'm always watching you."
Henry's eyes snapped open.
His mouth opened just as something flashed cold and sharp across his throat, and whatever he was going to say came out as a bewildered choking noise and a spray of blood.
Maybe she was never really here at all, Henry thought crazily. Maybe all this time it was--
He gagged as that thought reached its logical conclusion. A different reflex triggered then, and his shoulders jerked upwards, as if he were trying to sit up. Walter effortlessly shoved him back down with a hand planted firmly in the middle of his chest, shoved him down so hard that Henry could hear two of his ribs snap. He tried to scream and choked instead.
Trapped. Henry was trapped, pinned to the bed from the waist up by Walter's hand on his chest, pinned to the bed from the waist down by Walter's hip. Trapped, and bleeding to death. His eyes flicked to the nightstand, and he saw the phone. There was hope. He might not be able to talk, but he could knock the receiver off the hook, and maybe he could punch the right numbers, and the 911 operator would hear and trace the call and send help--
And then Henry looked beyond the nightstand, beyond Walter's other hand and the dripping knife held therein, and he saw the rotting wallpaper peeling away from the bloody walls like dead skin and the chains crisscrossing the door, and he knew nobody would hear a thing.
The knife thumped gently onto the pillow next to Henry's head, leaving Walter's hand free to thread into his hair. Henry shut his eyes tight in anticipation of the yank that was sure to follow.
It never came.
Instead, Walter simply stroked Henry's hair back, combing sweat and blood through it. The touch was surprisingly--and sickeningly--gentle, and Henry decided the pain he'd braced for would have been far, far easier to deal with. He tried to flinch back, to jerk his head away from those fingers, but his range of motion was too limited for him to do much aside from twitch and certainly too limited to dislodge Walter's fingers from his hair.
"I'm sorry," Walter murmured, and although his voice actually did sort of sound sorry, his eyes were decidedly not."I know I interrupted you." That faint smile he'd always worn broadened, just the tiniest bit. "It's all right, Henry. Go ahead. I won't deny you that."
Wouldn't deny him what? What the hell was he talking about--
Oh God.
Oh God.
Henry's eyes snapped wide open, staring at nothing, and he made a tiny strangled clicking sound that might have been a whimper as it hit him. Shock and fear had clouded Henry's mind such that he'd failed to notice that he was still completely and painfully hard, and in his panic and terror he'd forgotten what he'd been doing just moments before...
"Uh g--" Oh God--
But his body hadn't forgotten. It hadn't forgotten at all and even worse, it didn't care who the thigh wedged between his belonged to, it didn't care that the hip trapping him against the mattress and pressing down hard and hot and completely motionless against his cock belonged to Walter Goddamn Sullivan and by the time Henry realized that his body was about to do the worst thing it could possibly do to him--
"Uh gk n--" Oh God please no--
--it was too late.
It was too late and he was coming, he was coming hard, against his will, against Walter's hip, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He shuddered violently, his hips jerking upwards against Walter's in helpless, convulsive thrusts, his shoulders jerking upwards a few inches before Walter shoved him back down again and snapped another rib or two, and what normally would have been yelps and groans came out as wet gagging noises and the occasional weak spray of blood.
Fortunately for what remained of Henry's sanity, his climax, powerful as it was, didn't take long to run its course. When it was over, Henry squeezed his eyes shut and tried to breathe without much success. His lungs screamed for air; they got nothing but blood and sent it back up. His heart hammered uselessly in his chest, accomplishing nothing aside from sending more blood pouring down his neck and onto his shirt and the bed.
How much blood did the average adult male hold? Something like eight pints? Ten? How much had he already lost? The sheets were soaked, the pillow was soaked, Henry's T-shirt was soaked and clung wetly to him from his shoulders to halfway down his chest--how much more would he have to lose before he could just pass out and die and not have to bear witness to whatever else Walter planned on doing with him?
Walter's hand still pinned Henry to the bed from the waist up; his hip still pinned Henry to the bed from the waist down, and although Henry couldn't bring himself to open his eyes again, he could feel Walter staring down at him, smiling that mad, empty smile of his.
"She misses you, you know." It took Henry a moment to realize which "she" Walter meant. He shuddered when it came to him. "She cried when you left. She's still crying. You can hear her, can't you?"
He could. The knife bit into his throat again, slower this time, more deliberate, in a pattern of curves and lines.
"But it's all right." One curve, one horizontal line. "It's all right now." One vertical line, then another. One curve, one horizontal line. "I'm going to take you back, and everything will be all right." One final vertical line.
Almost over. Surely it was almost over--
Then something splashed onto the blood-soaked sheet somewhere near Henry's right shoulder (and oh God if there was enough blood there to splash then surely he wouldn't have to endure much more of this), and he heard a faint clicking noise somewhere below his waist--
--then something cold and metallic forced itself into his mouth. And it wasn't the knife.
Now Henry's eyes snapped open, and while he couldn't make them focus enough to see anything but a pair of gray blurs, he knew all the same. He could taste steel and oil and gunpowder and his own blood. The barrel lay dead and heavy on his tongue and the muzzle pushed relentlessly against the back of his throat, and Henry gagged weakly--that, it seemed, was all the fight left in him.
There was another soft click--Walter's finger tightening on the trigger.
"I'm sorry it had to come to this," Walter murmured, and this time he really did sound sorry. "But you shouldn't have left her."
He pulled the trigger--
--and with a short, strangled noise that was not quite a scream, Henry shot bolt upright in his bed--alone, wild-eyed and gasping--and with his T-shirt soaked and clinging to his chest. He swiped one trembling hand over his neck and found it wet.
Oh Jesus--
Henry's hand dropped away from this throat, and he forced himself to look at it.
It was slick with sweat. Not blood.
He let out a shaky breath and flopped bonelessly back against the mattress until he could convince his legs to carry him to the bathroom.
Once he did so, he flipped on the light, caught a glimpse of his reflection in the tiny mirror over the sink, and let out a nervous laugh.
God, I really do look like hell, he thought as he cranked the tap marked "C" all the way open. He caught cool water in his cupped hands and splashed it over his face, rinsing the sweat away, then he ducked his head right under the stream and let it pour over the back of his head until he felt somewhat human again.
With his dripping head bowed over the sink, Henry shut the water off and reached out blindly to his right, groping along the bar until he found a towel. He pulled it down, draped it over his head, and dried himself off. That done, he slung the towel back over the bar and glanced up at the mirror again, and the back of his head was splattered across the rotting wallpaper behind him and his mouth hung open and blood dripped sluggishly from his chin onto the front of his shirt and more blood poured down his shirt from the numbers carved into his throat and the deep slash that underlined them--
The noise Henry made when he awoke this time was still not quite a scream, but it was closer.
Get up, he told himself, even as he sat paralyzed aside from the hands that knotted themselves into the blanket, staring at the wall. "Get up," he told himself again, this time out loud. "Get up." He tried to swing his legs over the edge of the bed and get his feet onto the floor, and they almost complied.
Then he thought of the way Cynthia's ghost (that's enough) had crawled at him in the subway, low to the ground, (stop it) certainly low enough that it could have crawled under the bed (stop it) and was waiting for his feet to touch the floor so its hair could whip out (stop it) and snare his ankles and pull and (STOP IT)
Henry shoved the thought out of his mind and clenched his jaw hard. "Get. The hell. UP."
This time, his legs cooperated, even if they did make him hop from the bed halfway to the bathroom on the first step, and even if he didn't quite dare look back.
He turned on the light and took a good look at himself in the mirror. His reflection was as it should have been.
He closed his eyes.
Counted to ten.
Opened his eyes.
His reflection was still alive and well--wild-eyed, sweaty, and disturbingly pale, but alive.
Fairly sure that he really was awake this time, Henry leaned heavily on the sink, forcing himself to breathe deeply and slowly until his heart stopped racing and his hands stopped trembling. He was okay. A little weak and shaky, and damned thirsty, but okay.
He drew two cups of tap water, gulped them down, and checked the mirror one more time. Still alive. Definitely awake.
Henry padded back to bed, turned the lamp on, and lit a cigarette. It took three tries--partly because he couldn't seem to hold the lighter steady, partly because the lighter was running dry and produced little more than a quarter-inch wisp of flame. There had been a book of matches in the ashtray when he first came in; if he had to, he'd make do with those until morning. Which, according to the alarm clock permanently attached to the nightstand, would not arrive for another six hours, and sleeping through any of those six hours would be impossible now.
There was even less worth watching on any of the seventy channels now. The local stations had gone to test patterns, and many of the cable channels had gone to infomercials.
Henry ground his cigarette out and reached over to the nightstand again. His hand lit briefly on the receiver of the phone, started to move on to his cigarettes, and returned to the phone. After some internal debate, he picked it up and dialed a number.
Four rings. A click. The telltale background hiss that always preceded the canned greeting of an answering machine. Eileen's voice: "hi, blah blah not home, blah blah message, blah blah beep--seriously, you know what to do with this thing."
And finally, the beep.
Henry was certain this was one of the most ridiculous things he'd ever done. It was well past three in the morning, and while Eileen slept the sleep of the righteous (and mildly pain-medicated) at St. Jerome's, he was talking to her answering machine. But of course he couldn't call her in her hospital room, not at this ungodly hour, and there was nobody else to talk to, certainly nobody else who'd gone through the things Henry and Eileen had and survived them--that left the machine. And surely it would reach its time limit and hang up on him before he could say anything stupid.
But it never did, and Henry kept talking to it, being careful to pause and clear his throat or something whenever his voice started to betray him and waver or crack, then continue once he got it under control. And then he reached a point where throat-clearing simply wasn't enough.
Instead, he lit another cigarette and took a long, deep drag off it. It stung a little in the back of his throat, and he thought of oil and gunpowder.
Henry choked out an apology and stumbled out of bed, slamming the phone down so Eileen wouldn't have to hear him throw up.
Part Three
Okay. Note to self: wherever you're going to stay for now, make sure it's on the ground floor.
Eileen plopped her bag of coming-home-from-the-hospital stuff right on the floor and limped straight to the kitchen in search of something milder than the contents of the doggie bag the pharmacy had sent her home with. A hurt leg and a third-floor walkup were not a good combination, and by the time she got to her front door it seemed like she'd turned into one gigantic walking ache. Still, she had things to do, and spending the next six hours minimum zonked out on painkillers was not on the list. There was a bottle of Advil in the kitchen last time she'd looked; it would do until she followed Henry's example and packed up whatever she couldn't live without and got the happy hell out of this building. There would be plenty of time for flying the friendly skies of Percocet or whatever after that.
Once Eileen took care of that, she glanced over at the answering machine. The little "you've got messages" light was blinking merrily, as was a bright red number "5" on the little LED thingy. She poked the "play" button and hobbled to the couch to have a little sit-down and listen to her messages while she waited for the Advil to kick in.
"Saturday. Nine. Forty. Three. PM," said the machine. It then rattled off the first message--from the friend whose party she'd missed.
"Eileen? Eileen, are you--Jesus, would you turn that down!?--okay, please pick up the phone and tell me this crazy stuff we just heard on the radio is, like, not about your building and not about you and you're still going through your closet trying to find something to wear. Please? ...oh my God--" Click.
Oh crap, they'd mentioned it on the radio. Which meant that her next of kin would surely have been called. Which meant at least one of the four remaining messages was going to be--
"Saturday. Ten. Fifty. PM."
"Honey, it's Mom, I just tried to come see you at the hospital but they gave me some baloney about 'no visitors right now blah blah blah--' "
"Hi, Mom," Eileen sighed, wishing that Advil would hurry up and work.
"--so I'll probably see you before you get this, but--oh, honey, I told you that place was a pit."
"Yes, Mom, it's a--"
"--festering pit."
"Yes, Mom, we've been over the festering--"
"Promise me you're going to move out. I'll help you. I'll pay for the moving van. I'll hire a forty-piece band. I'll bribe that cute neighbor of yours to help--"
"Mom!"
"Just move out of there. Love you bye." Click.
Well, that was a promise she'd have no trouble keeping, that was for sure.
"Sunday. Three. Eighteen. PM."
"Hi...Eileen? It's Henry..." Calm, cool, and collected as ever. "I, uh... didn't want to wake you up or anything, and it's not like you can really go anywhere right now, so I figured I'd just leave you a message--"
"Oh crap--" The pen nearest the phone suddenly decided not to work. Aches and pains forgotten, Eileen scrambled back to the kitchen and ransacked the designated Pens-And-Misc. drawer for a pinch hitter.
"--I'm at the Sunrise Inn. The one on the corner of Dean and Chambers by the Waffle House and stuff? Anyway, I'm in room, uh--"
Ah, there was a pen. That was the good news. The bad news: she'd missed the room number.
"--can call first if you want, but I'm probably not going anywhere anytime soon, so..." A pause, then: "...uh, don't, y'know, kill yourself running over here or anything. Take care of yourself first, okay? Um... anyway..." Another pause. Eileen could practically hear him debating whether or not to slip a "love you" or some such in there, and she decided it was one of the cutest things she'd ever heard. Or, well, not heard.
He didn't. At least, not this time. "...bye." Click.
She replayed the message once to catch the room number (137--oh, bless him, he'd gotten a room on the ground floor! Eileen made a mental note to give Henry the biggest hug ever for that whether he'd meant to do it or not). Then she replayed it again because she'd managed to miss the phone number. Unknown to her conscious mind, her subconscious took this opportunity to add yet another item to its steadily-growing list of Nice Things She'd Never Really Noticed About Henry. No. 28: gorgeous eyes. No. 29: soft hands. And now No. 30: v. sexy voice.
Sunday, Six O Two PM was her boss. Don't worry about coming in this week, we've got it covered, stay home and take it easy, see you next Monday, bye, click. Stay home? Pft. Right. More like find a home, because she wasn't spending one more night in this--
"Monday. Three. Twenty. Seven. AM."
...what? When!?
Eileen gave the machine a very odd look. It wouldn't be the first time the machine threw a fit and lost its temporal bearings, no. It had done so before, it would do so again, and perhaps a trip to Best Buy for a replacement was in order. Still, its announcement of the alleged time this last message was left gave Eileen a sudden and serious case of the creeping willies.
Who would have called her at all, let alone bothered to leave a message, at half past three in the morning? It had to be a wrong number. Or a heavy breather. Or someone wanting to know if her refrigerator was running. Or--
"Uh... hi, Eileen... it's Henry."
--or none of the above.
To the casual listener, still calm, cool, and collected. Eileen was far from the casual listener, though, and right away she could tell there was something not quite right about that tone. It sounded--well, it sounded the same way the makeup on a dead body in its Sunday best and laid in a pretty casket looked, plastered on to bring some semblance of life and normalcy to--okay, that wasn't the most pleasant analogy, no, but it fit. And it was every bit as unnerving.
"I'm, uh... really sorry about this, and I know it's late, but I just... I need to... I don't know, vent or something." A pause. "...don't worry, I'm okay, it's just... I, uh..." Another, longer pause, followed by Henry clearing his throat. "I just woke up, and I don't think I'm going to get back to sleep anytime soon, and I don't think I want to after..." Deep breath. "I, uh... I had this nightmare... well, it wasn't at first, but then it... um... it..." Long pause. "...you know what, let's just say it got bad and leave it at that. But it...it just felt... so real. Like all the other stuff that happened. It still does. I keep thinking any minute now I'm going to wake up in 302 again and that scares the hell out of me. And it's not just the nightmare. I'm--"
Henry cleared his throat again; when he picked up his train of thought, he did so in that same flat forced calm tone. Eileen wasn't buying it. Not for a second. No, she didn't know Henry all that well, that much was true enough. She knew a guy fighting to keep his cool when she heard one, though, and Henry was fighting like hell.
"I'm getting all weird about stupid stuff. Like the windows. I drove around all day looking for a hotel and I kept passing them up because the windows didn't open. That's the first thing I did before I called you this afternoon. I opened the windows, and then it started pouring down rain and I had to close them, and I keep wanting to go over and make sure they'll open again. And the room numbers. The first place I went to gave me 302, so I asked for another room. You know what they gave me? 1121. Yeah. ...well, I guess it could have been worse, at least none of them had enough floors to have a 2121..."
Fighting like hell, and losing ground fast.
"...or they didn't have any rooms I could smoke in... like I said, I didn't smoke much till this morning. Now I can't stop. I keep thinking about this line from Blair Witch. The one about 'as long as we're still smoking we're still alive' or something like that." A short, soft, and completely humorless laugh. "Blair Witch. God. Talk about getting weird about stupid stuff... I feel like I should be--I don't know, sitting on a log eating a dead leaf or something..." He shut up and cleared his throat again. "...sorry, I'm babbling. I just--It's really late and I'm really tired and I'm scared to go back to sleep and I should be starving but I'm not hungry at all and I want it to stop raining so I can open the damn windows again and I--"
Pause.
"I--"
Longer pause. Then Henry's voice went beyond "calm" and way off into "deadpan." Forget about pancake and rouge on the dead body--this was closing the casket, shoving it in the ground, and filling in the grave, and God was that ever not the right thing to be thinking about, but if the pine box fit...
"You know how scuba divers have to come up slow, and if they just bolt for the surface they get sick--something about the pressure making the nitrogen bubble up in their blood or something? I've never been diving, and I've never seen it--I just read about it somewhere, but--that's what my head feels like, okay? I kept it together while all that stuff was going on, I was okay then, but now that all the pressure's off it's like it's all hitting me at once and I keep freaking out over stupid stuff and I--I feel like I'm losing my goddamn mind--"
There was another pause, much longer. "...hang on..." A soft rustle and the scratch-click of a lighter. Twice. Three times. "...dammit--sorry." Four times. Then a long, deep shaky breath--presumably a mighty drag off the cigarette he'd just taken four tries to light. "...sorry. I just--"
His voice didn't trail off that time, it just stopped. Like he'd choked on the words (which really wasn't so far from the truth). "I--" There was a quiet but strange sound there, like a particularly loud swallow or half a hiccup or something. "--ohgod--I'msorryIgotta--"
Click.
The door slammed.
"End of messages," said the machine, oblivious to the absence of human ears.
A sudden burst of knocking on the door startled Henry out of a dream that was, if not exactly pleasant, at least only mildly creepy. Something about the Gideon's Bible stashed in the nightstand drawer starting not with In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth but with In the beginning, people had nothing, and the medallion he still had in his pocket bearing the inscription Mater Dei, Filia Dei on its back. Weird. Yes. But strange scriptures and random flashbacks to high school Latin weren't going to hurt him. He could deal with--
The knocking resumed and crescendoed into pounding. Henry lifted his head from the pillows, shook it a bit to clear out the cobwebs, and blinked fuzzily at the door. He tried to will his legs to move so that he could answer the damn thing, and his legs told him where and how far to stick it. Henry decided he didn't blame them a bit, made some undecipherable drowsy mumbling noise, and flopped his head back down onto the pillow.
He'd almost gone back to sleep in spite of the ungodly racket at the door when said ungodly racket suddenly stopped. There was a second or two of silence... and then a voice.
"Henry?" Another few seconds of silence, then another volley of knocking. "Henry, I know you're here, please open the door..."
Now much more awake, Henry lifted his head from the pillow and blinked at the door again. His legs decided they weren't that tired, and now they were more than willing to get him upright and walking. ...okay, upright and staggering, but they still got him to the door. His fingers weren't quite as awake as his legs and for a moment, they couldn't remember how to work the locks, let alone whether they needed to turn the little knob to the left or to the right to undo the deadbolt. At least he'd left the useless little chain thing undone (and even now, when Henry was half-asleep and not thinking about these things on a conscious level, the concept of door + chain, however tiny and frail a chain it might be, still made his skin crawl for the barest fraction of a second).
The rain from the previous night had stopped, and the clouds that had brought it were gone. Now the sun hung unobstructed in just the right position to aim straight at Henry's unprepared eyes when he opened the door. Before they could adjust, a very relieved Eileen threw her arms around his neck.
"...muh!?" Henry's arms wrapped loosely around her waist, more out of reflex than any conscious decision; his conscious mind was still trying to wake the rest of the way up and figure out what could have brought this on.
"God, Henry--" Eileen's hand curled over the back of Henry's head, and he gratefully hid his sun-lanced and aching eyes against her shoulder. "Don't scare me like that!"
"Like wha--" Henry lifted his head a little and tried to open his eyes again. It was good to see the sun, of course it was, but did it have to be pointing this way?
..and now that he thought about it, didn't his room face west?
"...what time is it?"
"Little after four, but--"
"Ugh." Henry gave up and dropped his head back to Eileen's shoulder. "...didn't sleep much last night, I guess."
"Uh, yeah, I know. You told me."
Henry lifted his head up again and blinked. "...I did?"
"You don't remember?" Eileen fixed him with what he'd later remember was the same look she'd pinned him with in the hospital when he'd started stammering about holes and other worlds and people getting killed, that distinct is he just messing with me, or is he batshit insane? look. "Henry, you called my machine at three in the morning--"
What the hell was I doing up at three in the morning? Henry asked himself, frowning as he tried to account for the hours. He remembered checking in roughly twelve hours prior to that and calling Eileen's machine to tell her so... shower... pizza... bed and TV... eleven o' clock news... lights out...
The nightmare.
The message.
Oh man.
Henry made some noise--part sigh, part groan, not so sleepy, and hid his face against Eileen's shoulder. Yeah. Definitely one of the most ridiculous things he'd ever done. Maybe the most ridiculous. It was probably a good thing that he barely remembered two words of whatever he'd unloaded at the poor machine, and, in turn, at Eileen. His arms tightened a little around Eileen's waist, and hers tightened around his shoulders. "I'm sorry."
Eileen let out a warm sigh against Henry's shoulder. "It's okay." He didn't think it possible for her to hold him any tighter, but she managed it. "It's okay. I just--you sounded like--and then you just hung up like that--I thought you were going to--to do something stupid--"
It didn't take Henry long to figure out exactly what level of stupidity she meant by that, and the realization wrenched a wince and a groan out of him. "No. No." He lifted his head from Eileen's shoulder again, forcing his eyes open despite their protests and the piercing sunlight so Eileen could see them. The look in hers hurt more than a hundred blazing suns could have hoped to. "Never--I just--I don't know what I was thinking, it was just that nightmare on top of everything else--oh Jesus, Eileen, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to--"
That was all he could say, because Eileen had given his lips something else to do.
Shutting me up with a kiss, Henry thought, now that he was awake enough to remember some of the finer details. Just like in that dream--
Which led him to thinking about what he and Eileen had done after that.
Which in turn led him to thinking about what Walter had done to him after that.
Quickly, Henry swallowed back that train of thought and the panic it threatened to stir up. Down that road lay madness, and damned if he was going to freak out again, goddamned if he was going to freak out right here in front of Eileen while she was ferchrissakes kissing him--
He must have made some tiny sound, or twitched back just the slightest bit, or otherwise telegraphed that momentary panic, because Eileen drew back much sooner than he normally would have liked, studying his face with no small measure of concern.
"That bad?" she finally asked him, very quietly.
Henry opened his mouth to answer that with an offhanded "nah, not really" or some such. It wouldn't come out. Nothing else would, either, and it was then that he realized what had given him away.
He was shaking.
Not violently, but still noticeably, and it wasn't just his hands or just his knees. He was shaking all over, like there was some kind of low-grade electric current running through him
(don't go there, Henry warned himself, don't even start, not here, not now, do not go there)
and before he could derail that train of thought, the image reminded him of other things he didn't want to think about. Like the smell of ozone (stop it) and burning hair (stop it) and cooking flesh (STOP IT) and the more Henry tried not to think about that, the more he did think about it.
Which did nothing to help him get his voice back, even less to help him get the shaking under control, and everything to answer Eileen's question in the affirmative.
Embarrassed by his loss of control in front of Eileen, not caring how minor or understandable that loss of control really was, he simply gave up and nodded. He'd never in his life been so frustrated or so ashamed of himself, and he'd never wanted so badly to cry. He didn't, because--well, because he didn't cry, file that under Just The Way He Was. Instead, he huffed out a sharp, hot sigh against Eileen's shoulder and shivered even harder.
Eileen let out a softer sigh of her own and reached up to stroke the back of Henry's head. An exercise in futility if she was actually trying to tame his bed-snarled hair, but just fine for calming frayed nerves, even if only for the moment. "Want to tell me?"
Henry shook his head; with his eyes hidden against Eileen's shoulder, it was more like a snuggle. "You really don't want to know."
"That's not what I asked you." Eileen's stroking fingers nudged at Henry's forehead, guiding it up off her shoulder, making him look her in the eye. "You were strong for me... it's the least I can do for you." She let go of Henry and gently unwrapped his arms from around her waist, taking hold of both his hands in the process and leading him back inside. "C'mon."
The only seat roomy enough for two was the bed, and although the thought of sitting there with Eileen next to him made Henry nervous on a number of levels, it was that or the floor. So there he sat, with his elbows on his knees and his eyes on the floor and Eileen's warm hand stroking his back, trying to figure out where to start, trying not to think about what he might end up telling her. After a few interminably awkward minutes of silence he told her everything.
Everything.
Everything.
Not that he didn't try to water some of it down or leave some of it out entirely. It was as if Eileen could tell he was about to pull a crop-and-retouch on some part or another, and no matter how long he stalled or how deftly he tried to tiptoe around it, she wouldn't let him. Every time he tried, her hand stilled on his back until he relented and told her.
That half-full bottle of vanilla vodka that had been in his freezer untouched for months, the one he took down to a quarter-full the third night he was trapped in the apartment, slamming down double shots that hit his nearly-empty stomach like napalm in a horribly failed attempt to keep the recurring nightmare at bay, for example. Cynthia's promise of "special favors," not too long before she died in his arms. The other hole, the one in the living room, the fear that he himself might have carved it out on that third night, what he had seen through it, and what he'd had the decency to make his eyes look away from but couldn't stop that spot in the back of his mind from filling in.
Why Eileen didn't give him a piece of her mind for that last one, or slap him, or just get up and leave was beyond him, but she didn't. In fact, not five minutes later, he was lying on his back with his legs hanging over the foot of the bed, his head in her lap, and one of her hands stroking his hair back from his forehead while her other hand held his. And though he still left out as many brutal details of the murders as he could get away with, the warmth and comfort of that position made it easier for him to talk about all the things he didn't like to think about.
But oh God, he didn't want to tell her anything about the latest nightmare. Especially not the very un-nightmare-like beginning. And especially considering the fact that the thigh he was currently using as a pillow was the very one that had been pressed between his in that dream.
He stammered his way through a brief and heavily abridged version of the transition from "just kissing" to "really kissing," but he just couldn't go any farther than that. It was enough of a miracle that Eileen hadn't gone off on him when he'd told her about that one vision through the hole, the one where he'd unwittingly caught her in the process of removing the towel she was wearing to change into her party clothes, the one he looked away from in a hurry once he realized what was going on. Surely she would give him that piece of her mind (at the very least) if he told her exactly how his brain had chosen to exhume the thoughts that had put in his head, the ones he'd tried so hard to bury.
Sure enough, before Henry could muster up the courage to describe the transition from "really kissing" to "bed," Eileen stopped him. If she was about to kill him, she'd certainly picked a strange way to shut him up; two soft fingertips pressed to his lips weren't exactly a standard precursor to murder.
"Okay," she said, very softly. "Is this part going where I think it's going?"
Henry swallowed hard and nodded, shutting his eyes and bracing for whatever was going to follow that silent confession. "...we, uh, still had our clothes on, if that helps..." He was fairly sure that was the lamest thing that had ever come out of his mouth, quite sure that Eileen really was going to shove his head out of her lap, slap him, and leave, and dead certain that he wouldn't blame her a bit if she did any or all of the above.
Eileen let out a long sigh, and Henry flinched, just the slightest bit. "Okay," she said again, not quite as softly. "For one thing--Henry, relax. It's okay."
Henry's eyes snapped open, wide and a little bewildered.
What!?
"Anyway. For one thing, you have, like, no control over what you dream about." Henry started to say something; Eileen shushed him with another gentle press of fingertips to his lips. "So if you think I'm going to be mad about it, you can stop worrying. It's not your fault."
"But I--the hole--I was--" Henry stammered; that rated Eileen's whole hand over his mouth.
"Are you that sure you made that hole? I mean, you said something about a note on the wall with it. Did it look like your handwriting?"
Henry frowned a little. "Not really--but--it was scratched on the wall, in this little cramped space, and if I was drunk enough to not remember any of it in the morning--"
"--then you were probably too drunk to move a heavy piece of furniture out of the way, chip at the wall with a screwdriver or whatever for a couple of hours, scratch a perfectly legible note on the wall next to it, and then move that heavy piece of furniture back before you passed out, don't you think?"
Well, when she put it that way...
"You didn't do it." Eileen patted Henry's forehead, and then put that hand back over his mouth when he tried to say something to that. "When we were there before... when we saw it like it was when Joseph lived there... it was there."
Henry's eyes widened a little. "Are you sure?"
"Well, I mean, you'll have to take my word for it. It's not like we could go back and look even if we wanted to, which I sure as hell don't. But you didn't do it. Whatever drunken tunnel-digging might have gone on in there, you weren't in on it. You just--you just found it. That's all."
Henry let out a sigh of relief that was as profound as it was short-lived, because however the hole had come to exist in his living room wall, he'd still used it. "...but--I saw you--"
"And that? That was an accident. If you're being honest with me, and I think you are, it's not like you camped out and waited for it or anything. You said you didn't mean to see that, and you said you looked away, and I believe you. As for thinking about it--" Eileen shook her head and breathed out an incredulous little laugh. "Jesus, Henry, give me some credit here, okay? I understand. You were going through stuff that'd drive most people crazy. Like, certifiable, funny farm, padded-room-and-straitjacket insane. You think I'm going to blame you for having a nice thought pop into your head once in a while? Besides... if it'd been the other way around?" Maybe it was just Henry's imagination, but for a second, it looked like she might be blushing a little. "I totally would have kept thinking about it. Uh. Anyway. My point is, maybe I don't know you all that well, but you've been nothing less than a perfect gentleman to me, I don't think you're a pervert, in fact I think you're even more of a perfect gentleman for being so honest about all this, and I'm sorry I interrupted you, but I just thought you needed to know that and I'm going to shut up and let you finish now."
Eileen shut up, and Henry finished.
The actual nightmare had been the hardest to think about, but after those kind words from Eileen it was strangely easy to talk about. Still, there was one detail he had to leave out. Maybe sometime in the future, if and when their relationship progressed to a point where they could comfortably talk about that sort of thing he'd tell her, but not now. Fortunately, Eileen let him get away with that one small omission.
Then there was nothing left to tell. And as Eileen bent down and kissed his forehead, Henry slowly began to grasp the significance of what he'd just done. He'd told Eileen the whole story--well, almost the whole story, minus the parts she'd seen for herself and that one other part, but close enough, and he'd gotten through it. If he could talk about it without freaking out too much, then he could think about it without freaking out too much. And if he could think about it without freaking out...
Well, maybe that meant he wasn't losing his mind after all.
If nothing else, at least he'd stopped shivering. That, and he--
There was a noise there, not terribly loud, but loud enough to disrupt Henry's train of thought. A very familiar and distinctive noise.
Eileen's hand abruptly stilled on his forehead again--she must have heard it too. It was nearly dark outside now, but just enough light pushed through the curtains for Henry to open his eyes and see the nearly comical expression of bewilderment on Eileen's face.
"...was that your stomach!?"
Henry flopped an arm over his eyes, breathed out a soft, embarrassed laugh, and nodded.
Eileen patted his forehead and sighed out a laugh of her own. "Henry..." She reached over and clicked the lamp on. "Where's the phone book?"
Two weeks ago, Henry never would have believed that the combination of Spongebob Squarepants reruns and ludicrous quantities of Chinese food had such amazing restorative properties. Sure, there'd be a few crumbs in the bed later, but it was a small price to pay. He might not be completely okay yet, and probably wouldn't be completely okay for a long time, but he was certainly better.
Having Eileen snuggled against his side with her head on his shoulder didn't hurt, either.
"So... wait." Henry paused to scrape the last few grains of fried rice and the last dab of the best General Tso's sauce ever out of one styrofoam box. A similar box that had once contained the best pepper steak ever lay empty on the floor in front of the nightstand. Stacked on top of that was yet another styrofoam box that had once contained the best pork dumplings ever If they'd delivered shoe leather it probably would have been the best ever too, as long as they put sauce and random vegetables in with it and served it with fried rice. "They're underwater, right? Like, at the bottom of the ocean?"
"Riiiight..." Eileen offered him another styrofoam box. "Fried stuff, sir?"
The selection of "fried stuff" included, among other things, egg rolls, sweet-and-sour chicken, and those little cream cheese puff things. Henry transferred one of each to his box; the cheese puff and the chicken barely hit foam before they got inhaled. "Thanks. ...how are they blowing soap bubbles at the bottom of the ocean?"
Eileen picked through the fried stuff herself, found a shrimp, and dipped it in sweet-and-sour. "Someone hasn't been paying attention." She ate her shrimp, dropped the tail into Henry's empty General Tso's box, and feigned a great pained sigh. "It's the technique. You know, go like this, spin around, stop--"
"Oh, God." Henry squinched his eyes shut and took a bite of egg roll, which he nearly choked on when Eileen got to the "pelvic thrust wooooo wooooooo" part. "Okay. Okay. I--oh, hell--" He dissolved into silent but incapacitating laughter, covering his eyes and shaking his head. Eileen continued, poking through the fried stuff and sounding very pleased to have gotten that reaction out of him.
"Then they bring it around town. Bring it aroooouuuund tooooown. Then they do this, then this, and this, pardon me--" Here, she paused to eat a cheese puff thing. "Mmm. I love these things. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Then that, then this and that--and voila, bubbles. ...or there's the short answer." Eileen beamed up at him. "Cartoon physics."
Henry cleared his throat and tried to compose himself, though he still didn't quite stop snickering. "Right. I'm sorry I asked. Um..." He eyed the box of fried stuff. "Could you pass the--"
"Here, why don't you just keep it over there--" Eileen took away the empty container and set the whole box of fried stuff in Henry's lap. "--because I cannot eat another bite." Henry held up a fortune cookie and quirked an eyebrow. "...except for that. Gimme."
"Yes, ma'am." Henry passed her the cookie with a little grin and turned his attention to the fried stuff, packing away bits of chicken and pork and cheese puff things like popcorn as Eileen unwrapped her cookie and cracked it open.
She pulled the little slip of paper out, uncrinkled it, and snickered a bit. "'You are an artistic person--let your colors show...'" She ate one half of the cookie. "...in bed."
"What!?" Henry dropped the other half of his egg roll into the box. Crumbs and a couple of cheese puff things skittered out of its way on impact. "It does not say that. ...does it?"
"What, you've never heard of that?" Eileen settled back against his side and ate the other half of her cookie. "Sticking 'in bed' on the end of the fortune?"
Henry sputtered out a laugh and shook his head. "No...never heard of that."
"God, that's how we always read them in my family." Eileen nudged the remaining fortune cookie at Henry. "Here. Do yours."
"Nuh-uh. That's dessert," Henry protested, though he couldn't quite stop the beginning of a grin. "And I'm not finished yet." As if to illustrate, he picked up his egg roll and pretended to ignore the cookie.
"Okay, so you finish that egg roll, then you eat the cookie, and then you have a really big snack of fried stuff."
How could he argue with that logic? "Okay. Okay." Henry rolled his eyes (and chuckled a little), put the butt end of his egg roll down, and unwrapped his cookie.
He made a great show of breaking it in half, pointedly not looking at the fortune, and eating the cookie in very small pieces, and Eileen rewarded him with her own rolling of eyes and giggle. "Henry."
"What? You can't read the fortune until you eat the cookie." Henry popped another bit of cookie into his mouth and tried very hard not to laugh.
"You're just stalling--"
"Well, that's how we did it in my family, and it's my cookie. So there." And, okay, maybe he was stalling a little, which was silly. How perverted could a fortune cookie possibly be, even with that particular phrase appended to its pearl of wisdom? It couldn't be that bad, could it? Of course not. He finished off his cookie and took a look at the fortune.
Okay, maybe it could be that bad.
He took another look at the fortune... then he folded the fortune up and shook his head. "Uh... no."
"Oh, come on--" Eileen made a not-too-serious grab for the fortune, and Henry held it just out of reach for a few moments--then he cleared his throat, handed it over, and suddenly became very, very interested in a Toys 'R Us commercial as Eileen looked it over. "Uh..." One hand went to her mouth to stifle a fresh crop of giggles, and Henry braced for the inevitable. "'You will soon receive a pleasant surprise...' in b--oh, jeez, this is--Henry, you're blushing."
"No I'm not." Henry very pointedly did not take his eyes off the TV, though he did swallow a little louder than was strictly necessary. "I don't blush. I just--got a Thai pepper or something in that chicken."
Eileen spluttered out an incredulous laugh. "Oh, right. A Thai pepper with a ten-minute delay--" She sighed and shook her head. "...okay, no, I'm stopping. I'm sorry. I know you're kind of shy about that stuff." She draped her arm across Henry's stomach and laid her head against his shoulder again, perhaps as a peace offering. "But if it's okay with you, I really don't want to stop the cuddly stuff."
Henry rested his (still warm and still quite red) cheek against her forehead and wrapped his arm around her shoulders with a little laugh. "No, I'm fine with the cuddly stuff." After a moment's thought, he leaned his head down and brushed one soft kiss against Eileen's lips. "...and the kissing stuff. Give me a couple of months on the other stuff."
"Mmm. I am totally okay with that." Eileen craned up and returned that little kiss. "Like I said. Perfect gentleman." She snuggled against Henry's shoulder again. "I just noticed something."
Henry closed up the box of fried stuff and carefully added it to the stack on the floor, trying to do so without jostling Eileen around too much. "Hm?"
"You haven't had a single cigarette since I got here. I don't mind, y'know."
For a moment, Henry actually considered it, going so far as to reach over to the nightstand and lay fingers on the pack--after all, under normal circumstances, he usually did have one after he ate. Then he thought of the last cigarette he'd had, the night before... ugh.
Henry shook his head. "Thanks, but no. I think I've had enough of that for now." His hand still hovered over the pack of cigarettes, and he started to pull it back. Then he reconsidered and poked the "power" button on the TV remote--and yawned hugely. God, he couldn't possibly be sleepy, could he? It seemed like he'd done nothing but sleep for the last two days--granted, he hadn't slept all that well last night, and he hadn't so much slept as passed out in the car the day before--but still. Food coma, perhaps. That was it. Food coma and nice warm Eileen snuggled against him. Who needed warm milk and honey when you had that?"You, uh... don't have to work or anything tomorrow, do you?"
"Nope." Food-and-cuddle coma appeared to be contagious; Eileen seemed to be melting into a happy boneless puddle next to him. "They gave me the week off. You?"
"Nah. I kind of make my own hours." Henry thought of the cameras he'd left in the car and wondered if maybe he should get up and bring them in before someone decided to ransack his car, and he decided he couldn't be bothered at the moment. He'd deal with it in the morning. "I was just thinking... I mean, if it's too soon for this, I understand, but I'd, uh... really like you to stay." He cleared his throat. "I'll sleep on the floor if you--"
"No you won't." Eileen's arm tightened around his waist. "You can stay right here. If I can trust you with my life, I think I can trust you in bed."
Henry laughed, just a little, as he turned the lamp off. He couldn't help but think of fortune cookies.
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3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."
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