"Get it!" Gage yelled. "Get it-get it-get it!"
Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa. Gage's small bare feet thundering along the hallway runner. He and Ellie were giggling.
Louis looked to his right. Rachel's side of the bed was empty, the covers thrown back. The sun was well up. He glanced at his watch and saw it was nearly eight o'clock. Rachel had let him oversleep... probably on purpose.
Ordinarily this would have irritated him, but this morning it did not. He drew in a deep breath and let it out, content for the moment to lie here with a bar of sunlight slanting in through the window, feeling the unmistakable texture of the real world. Dust-motes danced in the sunlight.
Rachel called upstairs: "Better come down and get your snack and go out for the bus, El!"
"Okay!" The louder clack-clack of her feet. "Here's your car, Gage. I got to go to school."
Gage began to yell indignantly. Although it was garbled-the only clear words being Gage, car, geddit, and Ellie-bus, his text seemed clear enough: Ellie should stay. Public education could go hang for the day.
Rachel's voice again, "Give your dad a shake before you come clown, El."
Ellie came in, her hair done up in a ponytail, wearing her red dress.
"I'm awake, babe," he said. "Go on and get your bus."
"Okay, Daddy." She came over, kissed his slightly scruffy cheek, and bolted for the stairs.
The dream was beginning to fade, to lose its coherence. A 'damn good thing too.
"Gage!" he yelled. "Come give your dad a kiss!"
Gage ignored this. He was following Ellie downstairs as rapidly as he could, yelling "Get it! Get-it-get-it-GET-IT!" at the top of his lungs. Louis caught just a glimpse of his sturdy little kid's body, clad only in diapers and rubber pants.
Rachel called up again, "Louis, was that you? You awake?"
"Yeah," he said, sitting up.
"Told you he was!" Ellie called. "I'm goin. Bye!" The slam of the front door and Gage's outraged bellow punctuated this.
"One egg or two?" Rachel called.
Louis pushed back the blankets and swung his feet out onto the nubs of the hooked rug, ready to tell her he'd skip the eggs, just a bowl of cereal and he'd run... and the words died in his throat.
His feet were filthy with dirt and pine needles.
His heart leaped up in his throat like a crazy jack-in-the-box. Moving fast, eyes bulging, teeth clamped unfeelingly on his tongue, he kicked the covers all the way back. The foot of the bed was littered with needles. The sheets were mucky and dirty.
"Louis?"
He saw a few errant pine needles on his knees, and suddenly he looked at his right arm. There was a scratch there on the bicep, a fresh scratch, exactly where the dead branch had poked him.
in the dream.
I'm going to scream. I can feel it.
And he could too; it was roaring up from inside, nothing but a big cold bullet of fear. Reality shimmered. Reality-the real reality, he thought-was those needles, the filth on the sheets, the bloody scratch on his bare arm.
I'm going to scream and then I'll go crazy and I won't have to worry about it anymore-"Louis?" Rachel was coming up the stairs. "Louis, did you go back to sleep?"
He grappled for himself in those two or three seconds; he fought grimly for himself just as he had done in those moments of roaring confusion after Pascow had been brought into the Medical Center, dying in a blanket. He won. The thought which tipped the scales was that she must not see him this way, his feet muddy and coated with needles, the blankets tossed back onto the floor to reveal the muck-splashed ground sheet.
"I'm awake," he called cheerfully. His tongue was bleeding from the sudden, involuntary bite he had given it. His mind swirled, and somewhere deep inside, away from the action, he wondered if he had always been within touching distance of such mad irrationalities; if everyone was.
"One egg or two?" She had stopped on the second or third riser. Thank God.
"Two," he said, barely aware of what he was saying. "Scrambled."
"Good for you," she said, and went back downstairs again.
He closed his eyes briefly in relief, but in the darkness he saw Pascow's silver eyes. His eyes flew open again. Louis began to move rapidly, putting off any further thought. He jerked the bedclothes off the bed. The blankets were okay.
He separated out the two sheets, balled them up, took them into the hallway, and dumped them down the laundry chute.
Almost running, he entered the bathroom, jerked the shower handle on, and stepped under water so hot it was nearly scalding, unmindful. He washed the dirt from his feet and legs.
He began to feel better, more in control. Drying off, it struck him that this was how murderers must feel when they believe they have gotten rid of all the evidence. He began to laugh. He went on drying himself, but he also went on laughing. He couldn't seem to stop.