The Night Parade(17)

“Jesus Christ,” David said, too stunned to show emotion.

“Go home,” Deke said, turning around. “You shouldn’t be here.” He ambled down the darkened hallway toward his bedroom, his hands dangling limply at his sides, the canvas of his broad, pallid back speckled with pimples and reddish striations. Like a ghost fading into a fog bank, Deke Carmody vanished into the darkness at the far end of the hallway.

David stood there in the living room for perhaps thirty seconds, listening to the grunting sounds of Deke climbing into his bed. Almost instantly the man began snoring.

David went to one of the windows and untied the curtains. They fell away from the pane, only to reveal a series of carpentry nails that had been pounded into the sill. The sight caused a thick lump to form at the back of David’s throat. He went to the next window, untied the curtains, and found a similar display of carpentry nails there, too.

Go home. You shouldn’t be here.

David returned to the bathroom, hung the towel back on the hook, and was about to turn and leave when he happened to glance down into the toilet. What he saw there caused him to freeze—and not solely in a halt of his movements, but he could literally feel his entire body suddenly grow cold.

The toilet bowl was filled with blood.

Not just a little bit, and not the superficial hue of a flesh wound or a nosebleed diluted in water. The blood in the bowl was the startling Christmas red of arterial blood, and as David stared at it, he thought he could see small clumps of fibrous material in it. There were spatters on the seat and some reddish spray down the side of the toilet tank. A few bright stars stood out sharply on the ecru tiles. One particular spill had been smeared by David’s own shoe, most likely when he had first come in here to get the towel; he had inadvertently left a shoe print of blood on the pale green bath mat. His gaze levitated until he saw splotches of blood in the sink, too. Crimson droplets littered the countertop. The mirror was speckled with red teardrops.

How had he missed all this just moments ago? Had he been so focused on helping Deke that he had just overlooked it all? Given the condition of the bathroom, it seemed impossible.

He wanted to wash his face and hands—just looking at all that blood, not to mention the blackish clumps floating in it, made him feel unclean—but he wouldn’t touch this sink. Instead, he went down the hall, into the kitchen, and scrubbed himself at the kitchen sink, where there was nothing more ominous than dirty dishes and empty glasses in the basin.

He considered going against Deke’s wishes and calling 911 after all. He could request paramedics come out and take a look at Deke. Would they examine the blood, too? Deke hadn’t looked hurt—he certainly hadn’t been bleeding from anywhere that David could see—but that blood had come from somewhere.

In the end, he decided not to call. Instead, he checked in on Deke before leaving the house. The big man lay like a beached whale on his mattress, one pasty leg dangling over the side of the bed. His snores were immense, thunderous rumblings. For a moment, David considered flipping on the lights . . . but he feared what that light might reveal of Deke’s bedroom. Before he could chase the thought away, he imagined Deke sprawled out across a mattress sodden and black with blood, carpentry nails driven into the hardwood floor like booby traps.

“Deke?” It came out in a whisper.

Deke’s only response was a guttural snort.

“Okay,” David said. “Good night.”

He left the house, thumbing the lock on the side door before pulling it closed behind him. The hunger he’d felt for hours had fled, leaving in its wake a sickening hollowness. He knew that when he went to sleep that night, he would see that bloody stew floating in Deke’s toilet behind his eyelids. All of a sudden, the thing with the geese seemed trivial.

When he got home, Kathy met him in the foyer. In a pair of gold silk pajamas and her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she was already made up for bed.

“Where’ve you been?”

“I stopped at Deke Carmody’s house,” he said, stepping out of his shoes. “I caught him wandering around outside in his underwear.”

“What?”

She followed him into the bedroom, and he told her what had happened as he undressed. Once he finished, he said, “What do you think? Should I call someone? Paramedics?”

“Maybe it’s cancer.”

“What is?”

“All the blood,” Kathy said. “He could be sick.”

“Maybe. But what about the other stuff? The condition of his house and the nails in the windowsills?”

“Early stages of dementia?” Kathy suggested.

“Since when?”

“It’s just a guess.”

“I don’t feel good about this. Not at all. I should call an ambulance or something.”

“If he asked you not to call, then you should respect that.”

He considered this for perhaps five seconds.

Kathy said, “Maybe he’s going through some medical issue and doesn’t want anyone to know. You just happened to find him—”

“Standing outside in his underwear, yeah,” David finished.

“Does he have any family that you know of? Someone we could call?”

“I have no idea. Even if I knew that he did, I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with anyone.”