I have no choice. I need air. I crawl back the way I came, back into Gretchen’s room, clambering roughly over Kristen’s prone body to lay my head on the windowsill and drink in the night. A shard of the windowpane gouges my cheek, but I stay where I am, breathing deep and full until my head clears, and I remember the O2 tank I left in the hall upstairs. I stagger out, flounder my way up the steps, and pick it up. I fiddle with the regulator, taking a quick hit as I make my way back to Marcus, and the oxygen hits my brain like an adrenaline firework.
I roll Marcus onto his back and clamp the regulator to his face.
“Breathe,” I say. “Breathe.”
And then I’m moving back into the hall and down once more, wondering vaguely if that delay will cost Brad his life or if he’s dead already. I am lining up to charge the door when a firm hand grips my shoulder and spins me round.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I don’t know what woke me. It wasn’t a sound as such, or not one I consciously recognized when I opened my eyes. For a while I lay in bed, straining my ears to focus, and then there was something: a muffled thud, like someone overturning a soft but heavy chair. It came from below.
I had my little stub of candle in its holder and had borrowed a box of safety matches from the kitchen, the waxed kind that smelled of paraffin. I struck one and lit the candle, then swung my legs out of bed and planted them firmly on the floor. I don’t recall really deciding to do anything, and I think I might have still been half-asleep, just acting without really thinking.
I could have wrapped a towel around myself and stuck my head out into the hall, but I didn’t like the feeling of being naked, or nearly naked, after what had happened to Gretchen. So before I opened the door, I dressed: bra, underwear, a sundress, and sandals. It took me barely longer than the towel would, and I felt somehow secure, like a person ready to face the world. Still, it was a strange decision, and I don’t think I was thinking clearly. My head felt thick, fogged by more than sleep, and my feet were unsteady, as if I was drunk.
I stepped out into the hall and along to the spiral staircase, my candle flame fluttering so the shadows leaped. I thought vaguely of what Marcus had said about Plato’s cave, about taking the shadows for the thing itself, but my brain was too sleepy to do anything with the image. Instead I tiptoed down into the foyer and looked around. The front door looked solidly locked, but it felt strange to be down there alone in the dark, and I couldn’t remember why I had come down.
A sound, I thought. I had heard a sound.
Suddenly I wanted to get this over as soon as possible. I might have gone back up the stairs if the candlelight hadn’t caught the odd flash of green on the ground.
A garden hose, like one I’d seen in the basement. It seemed to be running from the cellar stairs into the living room.
I wasn’t scared, just curious, as if I were still in a dream where things didn’t really make sense but everyone behaved as if they did.
I followed the hose into the living room.
I could tell something was off as soon as I went in. Moonlight came through the great high windows, and I could see something out of place in the middle of the living room carpet—a sprawling, mounded something, like a large dog stretched out and fast asleep. If my eyes had been better I wouldn’t have needed to stoop to see what it was, wouldn’t have had to touch him, to roll him over, feeling the warm wetness on my hands and smelling the sharp, metallic tang of the blood all over him.
“Brad!” I gasped, kneeling beside him.
If I’d had my glasses, I wouldn’t have had to kneel, and I might have noticed the figure I had walked past to get to him, might have sensed them moving behind me before the blow fell. The back of my head flared with sudden agony, and the world went first light, and then very, very dark.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The hand on my shoulder belongs to Melissa. She’s holding a battery-powered lantern and is standing at the top of the stairs, looking perplexed and angry.
“What the hell is going on?” she says. “Did you break something?”
“The windows,” I said. “We have to get this door open.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just help me with this door.”
“It’s locked.”
“Force it!”
She knocks, and I push her aside and charge the door again. This time it shudders in its frame.
“Jan! What the hell!” Melissa exclaims.
I hit the door twice more, my shoulder aching with each lunge, and at last it bursts open. Brad is lying on the bed motionless. It takes me a moment to see the dark stain on the pillow, brownish at the edges but thick and black around his head.
When Melissa sees the hammer she tries to grab it, shouting something, but I shake her off, and the iron head crashes through the window. The room floods with wholesome air, and I stagger out into the hall and slump to the ground while Melissa bellows her disbelief. I know I should get the oxygen tank and share it with the others, but for a moment I don’t have the strength. I can feel the temperature dropping as the night air rushes into the stuffy house, and I just sit there, my back against the wall, breathing it in. I doubt it will save Brad.
Time passes. A minute or two, perhaps, but I’m still not thinking clearly and can’t be sure. But then I hear movement, and I look up to see a shadow in the stairwell. It shifts and turns into Marcus, looking dazed and unsteady.
“Jan?” he says. “What’s going on?”
“The generator,” I say, my head still foggy. “The exhaust was connected to a hose. We all have carbon monoxide poisoning. Keep breathing from the tank. And share it with the others.”
“What?” says Marcus. He looks even less focused than me, though whether that is the corrupted air he has been breathing or the high from the shot of pure oxygen I gave him, I can’t say.
“The tank in your room,” I say. “Get it. Use it.”
“I don’t understand,” says Melissa. She’s more alert than us, having only just come upstairs. Maybe her side of the house wasn’t affected since the hose ran right up the tower stairs.
“Help him,” I say. “Help them all.”
“I can’t tell if they’re breathing,” she says. “Brad’s head is all cut. I can’t tell if it’s bad, but there’s a lot of blood.”
“Give them the oxygen anyway. The ventilation is getting rid of the carbon monoxide from the air, but we have to get it out of their bloodstream.”
“I don’t understand,” says Marcus. “Why won’t they wake up?”
“It’s the gas,” I say vaguely.
“Will they be OK?”
“I don’t know, Marcus.”
“I don’t understand,” he says again.
I just sit and breathe, suddenly too tired to explain.
“Why would anyone connect a hose to the generator?” says Melissa.
“To kill us, Mel,” I reply, exasperation breaking through my weary confusion for a second. “First just to confuse us, disorient us—but now, I think, to kill us. They’ve been pumping low amounts in at night, which is why we’ve been so . . . weird and tired. It makes you unfocused, forgetful. But tonight it’s more and—”
“Why do you know all this?” says Marcus.
It’s an odd question, but I shrug it off.
“I studied this stuff,” I say. “It doesn’t matter. Tonight the dose is way higher.”
“Why?” says Melissa.
“Because someone wants to murder us all in our beds!”
“You weren’t in your bed,” she says. Another odd remark. She seems thoughtful rather than alarmed. Cautious.
“No,” I say. “I was chained in the basement with the generator.”
“What?” says Melissa, incredulous now.
“I don’t understand,” says Marcus woozily. He’s still badly out of it.
“I was chained to a metal ring in the wall of a cell in the basement.”
It sounds preposterous, even in my ears, and I see bafflement settle into Marcus’s face, like something heavy that makes his whole body droop.
“This is crazy,” says Melissa. “You were chained up in a cell? Where?”
“With the generator!” I shout. “I already said.”
“Show me,” says Melissa.
“What?”
“Show me.”
I say nothing.
“It doesn’t matter right now,” I say. “We need to look after—”
“You are saying someone tried to poison us but it doesn’t matter?” says Melissa, aghast. “It does to me. You say you were chained up in the basement. I want to see where.”
I give her a weary look and then something rises in my heart, a mixture of anger and righteous indignation.