The Waiting: A Supernatural Thriller(15)
“Mama.”
Evan froze in the process of pulling the covers up over his son. His lower lip trembled, and he hoped that Shaun would and wouldn’t repeat the word. The boy licked the corner of his mouth and then resumed snoring in barely audible breaths. He swallowed and placed a kiss on Shaun’s forehead.
“Night, buddy, sleep good.”
Evan flicked the baby monitor on beside the bed and crossed the hall to his own room, not bothering to shut either door. With a groan, he tugged his shirt over his head, massaging the spot on his lower back where he’d fallen. His eyes swept the room and landed on the crack in the folding doors of the closet. Knowing that sleep wouldn’t come if he ignored it, he stepped to the closet and drew open the doors.
Several men’s T-shirts and sweaters hung inside.
He knelt and saw a pair of dress shoes on the floor in the corner and a short stack of jeans on the wire shelf off to one side of the space. He stood and snapped the doors shut, leaving the questions to reside within the closet, at least for the night.
After brushing his teeth and checking on Shaun one last time, he lay down within the cool sheets of the bed, too tired to care that he’d changed only Shaun’s bedding earlier that day. Swirling thoughts attempted and failed to amount an attack on his fatigued mind. He turned on Shaun’s receiver and closed his eyes, falling into sleep’s embrace almost at once.
~
Hours later he awoke, the moon having shifted its light enough for him to see the room in which he rested. Evan sat up, his heart thumping from the terror of the fading nightmare, its shape and fear an amalgam of shifting unease hanging above him yet failing to reveal itself fully. His mouth was dry, cracked and parched beyond desert soil.
He swung his feet to the floor and shuffled out of the room, crossed the hallway to the bathroom door, which was closed. Had he left it that way? He nearly paused to consider it, but his thirst pushed him onward, nudging away the concern. His hand gripped the handle, and he opened the door— —and stepped out of the clock, into the basement.
Shaun screamed somewhere above him.
Evan sat up straight in bed. The cry, longing to break free of his throat, dying on his tongue. His eyes widened and sweat rolled down the center of his back as he scanned the room. His room. He was in his room. A nightmare, that’s all it had been. A doozy, but only a dream within a dream.
The monitor beside the bed remained steady while he listened to Shaun rustle beneath his covers. His heaving breath gradually slowed, but the sweat kept rolling off him in waves.
He stood and moved to Shaun’s room, hovering in the doorway for more than a minute before returning to bed. Using his T-shirt from the day before, he toweled off as best he could before lying back down to stare at the ceiling of the unfamiliar room.
After a long time, he closed his eyes, sleep waiting even longer before claiming him for its own. As he drifted, he told himself that the quiet ticking coming from somewhere below was only a dream.
7
The morning dawned bright, with long rays of sun that spread throughout the house and colored the lake gold.
Evan and Shaun rose early and ate a meager breakfast of peanut-butter toast, the whole while Evan vowing to go grocery shopping that afternoon to replenish their supplies. After breakfast, they made their way to the edge of the lake, where Evan lowered the small pontoon into the water from its cradled lift. When he’d successfully started the motor and swept the leaves and other refuse of winter from the decking, he brought Shaun aboard. He buckled him into the seat beside the pilot’s chair, and folded his walker and placed it in the front of the boat.
As they cruised into open water, the morning sunshine, and even Shaun’s delighted laughter, couldn’t fully engross Evan’s thoughts. His head kept turning back to the island growing smaller and smaller behind them, the house no longer visible amongst the trees. The nightmare from the night before replayed in his mind on a sickening loop, and it became more unsettling each time he watched it spool out.
“Dere?” Shaun asked, his finger pointing toward the approaching docks of Collins Outfitters.
“There,” Evan corrected him. “Yes, that’s where we’re going.”
Evan lowered the pontoon’s speed as they neared the dock, and was pleased with himself at parking the craft in an empty spot on the first try without bashing into anything.
“Your old man’s a pirate at heart,” he said, and then cackled in a mock evil voice as he tickled Shaun.
The parking lot was empty, save their minivan, and though Evan looked for Jacob through the windows as they passed, he failed to see the old man within the store.
“We’ll stop in on the way back,” he told Shaun as he buckled him into the backseat.
They drove through the quiet of Mill River, their vehicle seemingly the only one on the road but for a trundling school bus, its yellow paint a shining reflection of the sun. When they arrived at the hospital, Evan unloaded Shaun’s walker, and they made their way inside the glass building. They found the pediatric therapy department without any trouble. A woman with wispy gray hair pulled back tight into a bun met them in the waiting room after Evan checked in with the desk.
“I’m Dr. Doris Netler, pleased to meet you both,” she said, first shaking Evan’s hand and then Shaun’s.
Dr. Netler led them down a short hallway. “I don’t have a lot of time to spare this morning, but I definitely can give you a short tour,” she said over her shoulder.