Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(16)

Maybe he had been inside that drainpipe forever. Maybe he was a character in a play by Beckett and what he thought of as his memory was merely seepage from his creator’s brain.

He pulled the collar of the dirty jacket tight around his neck, then tucked both hands into the side pockets. And only then saw that he was wearing a jacket and knew it wasn’t his. He had no idea where it had come from or when he had put it on. It felt too loose across his chest and shoulders, was the jacket of a bigger man. An old, quilted jacket, dark green, stained with dark blotches that smelled of motor oil, with long tears in both sleeves through which the dirty white batting showed. Small patches of dried clay marked the front, the sleeves, every surface he could see. He sniffed a patch of dirt; it reminded him of the cave. But the memory of the cave was itself uncertain, dreamlike, and unreal. When had he been in a cave? And why?

What was not dreamlike was the heavy, deep ache in his chest, the feeling of grief that made his head feel swollen, made every breath feel like a bruise. He wanted desperately to weep, he wanted that comfort. But he was not sure why.

Now and then, a vehicle rumbled down the asphalt road, and when it passed atop him, Huston reflexively hunched his shoulders and lowered his head. Afterward, he smiled to himself because he recognized the uselessness of that posture. Part of him was helpless to resist the urge to take a defensive posture, and part of him could not help being amused by it.

He sat with both legs stretched over the stream now, bare feet braced against the other side, knees bent just enough to keep them from locking up with stiffness. He kept his wet shoes and socks cradled in his lap. The smell of wet leather and sodden, sweaty cotton was somehow comforting—the end of a morning run, just another part of his daily routine. He would rest for a few minutes and then head for the shower, get dressed for his eleven o’clock class. What day is this? he wondered. If it’s Monday, I teach Contemporary Lit. If it’s Tuesday, the Craft of Fiction.

But he could not hold the truth at bay for long. It came back with the speed and suddenness of a bullet, it roared through the pipe and slammed into him, left him sitting there shivering and sobbing, convulsing with grief. “My babies,” he moaned. “My sweet, darling babies…” But the pain was too much and it took him under; it made him sink into sleep, doubled over with his arms hooked around his knees.

After a while, his arms slipped apart and he awoke with a start, gasping for breath. The air was dim now, gray and damp, and the first image to flash through his brain was of the knife going into Davy’s chest. He shrieked with pain then, had no power to contain it. His cry bounced off the concrete, split in half, and shot down both sides of the pipe, echoed and echoed and pounded like a hammer at his brain.

For a while, he could only sob and gasp for breath. Eventually, the part of him that stood apart, detached, said that he was useless like this. He could accomplish nothing as long as the pain controlled him. He would have to get back to thinking of himself as a character in one of his stories and not as Thomas Huston, not as the man whose family had been butchered, the man whose life no longer existed, a mere body shot full of poison now, a corpse deprived of death. He knew this and was even able to marvel at this apparent division in his psyche, this dissociative split that allowed him to experience his pain while also regarding it from a distance.

He was both a fiction and the truth. The stronger of the two was truth, however, and the truth sickened him and hollowed him out. He felt hollowed out by hunger too and knew he would have to eat soon, even though the thought of food was nauseating. Water, on the other hand, was not a problem. The area was as wet as Alaskan taiga, soaked by hundreds of small ponds and swamps and streams. Before leaving the last stream, Huston had cupped its waters to his mouth. He remembered doing that. The water was so cold that it burned his throat and made him dizzy. Even so, he had gulped one mouthful after another, had filled his stomach with it. But he would have to find food of some kind soon. And now that his body temperature had been compromised, he would have to find a better place to gather his strength and make his plans.

He thought about trying to work his way to Oniontown and the O’Patchens, but Oniontown was at least twenty miles away, and Ed O’Patchen would be likely to shoot him on sight. Huston still had his wallet, his debit and credit cards and probably a little cash, but all of that belonged to another life, a life eradicated, an eviscerated life.

He could not go on living, he knew that much. But he had one thing to do before he could stop. He thought of the men and women he worked with and the students he taught, and he did not believe he could trust any of them to help him. They claimed to love and admire him, but that was yesterday or the day before, that was part of an expired dream.

Was there no one he could trust?

There was Nathan, yes, but no, Huston would not involve him in this. Let him have his own life. He had struggles of his own.

So there was only Annabel. Only Annabel who would understand. Only Annabel who would know. She might not want to help him, but maybe she would. She owed him that much. He had helped her when she’d needed it, and not lightly but with sadness in both their hearts, and he believed she would help him too. It was all sad business now. No business but the saddest. He had to try Annabel.

He did not know how to contact her except at work, and she did not work except on weekends, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. How many days until Thursday?

Some things remained quite clear to him. Other things he saw as if viewed in the pieces of a shattered mirror. This jacket, for example, seemed to have no beginning. Where had it come from?