Jeffery Deaver - Praying for Sleep

“Go to bed?”

“Bed,” she snapped.

Okay, he said. Okay, sure.

Was he being punished or comforted? He didn’t know. Michael pondered this for a few minutes then sat on the toilet, faced with a new dilemma. His mother had dumped his clothes down the laundry chute. Did she want him to apologize naked? He gazed about the room for something he might wear.

Five minutes later Michael opened the door and stepped out into the living room, wearing his mother’s nightgown. “Hello,” he said, trooping up to the guests. “I tried to buy the fucking store. I’m sorry.” Mr. Abernathy or Monroe stopped speaking in midsentence. His wife raised a protective hand to her mouth to stop herself from blurting something regrettable.

But his own mother… Why, she was smiling! Michael was astonished. Though her masked eyes were cold she was smiling at him. “Well, here’s our pretty little soldier boy,” she whispered. “Doesn’t Michael look fashionable?”

“I found it behind the door.”

“Did you now?” she asked, shaking her head.

Michael smiled. Fashionable. He felt pleased with himself and repeated his apology, laughing harshly. “I tried to buy the fucking store!”

The guests, holding the cups that contained tea not coffee and lemon not milk, avoided each other’s eyes. Michael’s mother rose. “I’ve changed my mind, Michael. You look so nice why don’t you go out and play?”

“Outside?” His smile faded.

“Come along. I want you outside.”

“I’d feel funny going outside wearing-”

“No, Michael. Outside.”

“But they might see me.” He began to cry. “Somebody might see me.”

“Now!” she screeched. “Get the fuck outside.”

Then she escorted him by the hand, thrusting him out the front door. Two of the neighborhood girls stared at him as he stood on the doorstep in the pale-blue nightgown. They smiled at first but when he began to stare back, muttering to himself, they grew uncomfortable and went inside. Michael turned back to his own front door. He heard the lock click. He looked obliquely through the dirty glass window and saw his mother’s face, turning away. Michael walked to the willow tree in the backyard and for the rest of the afternoon huddled by himself in a nest of grass similar to the one in which he sat tonight. Looking for snipers and staring at the car.

As he listened to the rustle of this grass, feeling it caress his skin as it had so long ago, Michael Hrubek remembered much of that day. He didn’t, however, remember it with perfect clarity for the very reason that made it so significant in his life-it was his first break with reality, his first psychotic episode. The images of those few hours were altered by his mind and by the intervening years, and were buried beneath other memories, many of which were just as haunting and sorrowful. Tonight, moved by the smell and feel of the grass, he might have delved deeper into that event-as Dr. Richard had been encouraging him to do-but he’d grown so agitated by now that he could wait no longer. Snipers or no, he had to act. He rose and made his way to the road.

The sports car had apparently broken down earlier in the evening. The hood was up and the windows and doors were locked. A red triangular marker sat in the road near the rear fender. Hrubek wondered if its purpose was to help snipers sight on their target. He sailed it into the brush like a Frisbee.

“MG,” he whispered, reading the emblem on the hood. He concluded this meant “My God.” Paying no attention to the inside of the car he walked directly to the trunk. A gift! Look at this. A gift from My God! The rack was locked but he simply grabbed the mountain bicycle in both hands and pulled it free. Bits of metal and plastic from the mountings cascaded around him. He set the bicycle on the ground and caressed the tubes and leather and gears and cables. He felt a chill from the metal and enjoyed this sensation very much. He lowered his head to the handlebar and rubbed his cheek on the chrome.

He took a marker from his pocket and wrote on his forearm: Oh, strANGE aRe the works of GOD. Thank YOU GOD for thIs beautIFul gIFt. Next to these words he drew a picture of a serpent and one of an apple and wrote the name EVE. He licked the name and stepped back, studying his new means of transportation with an uneasy but grateful gaze.

Richard Kohler found himself in an alien world.

He was wearing a wool-blend suit, a silk tie, red-and-green Argyles and a single penny loafer-what other proof did he need, he reflected, that he was no outdoors-man?

Bending forward as far as he dared he pulled his other shoe out of a pool of soupy, methane-laced mud and wiped it on the grass beside him. He stepped back into the wet loafer and continued his journey westward.

Curiously this forest invoked in him a claustrophobia that he’d never felt anywhere else-even in his dark tiny office, where he would often spend fifteen straight hours. His pulse was high, his limbs itched from this fear of confinement and he was having trouble breathing. He also heard noises where no noises should be and his sense of direction was terrible. He was on the verge of admitting to himself that, yes, he was lost. His points of reference-trees, signposts, bushes-were vague and shifty. More often than not, as he walked toward them, they simply vanished; sometimes they turned into grotesque creatures or faces in the process.

Over his shoulder was his ruddy backpack, containing the syringe and drugs, and on his arm was a black London Fog raincoat. He was too hot to wear it and he wondered why on earth he’d brought the coat with him. The radio updates about the impending storm suggested that a helmet and armor would be better protection than gabardine.

Kohler had parked his BMW up the road, a half mile from here, and had made his way through a field into this forest, making slow progress. His leather soles slipped off the damp rocks and he’d fallen twice onto the hard ground. The second time he’d landed on his wrist, nearly spraining it. The vicious thorns of a wild rosebush hooked his pant leg and it took five painful minutes to free himself.

Kohler recognized, though, that he’d been lucky. The nurse who’d alerted him to the escape reported that the young man had run from the hearse in Stinson and had apparently gotten as far as Watertown.

As Kohler had sped in that direction down Route 236, he was certain that he’d sighted Michael in a clearing. The doctor raced to the turnoff, climbed from the car and searched the area. He’d called his patient’s name, pleaded with him to show himself, but received no response. Then the doctor had driven off once more. But he hadn’t gone far. He pulled off onto a side road and waited. Ten minutes later he believed that he’d seen the same figure hurrying on once more.

Kohler had found no sign of Michael since. Hoping he might stumble across him by chance, the psychiatrist had taken to the wilderness again, heading in the direction in which Michael seemed to be headed-west.

Where are you, Michael?

And why are you out here tonight?

Oh, I’ve tried so hard to look into your mind. But it’s as dark as it ever was. It’s as dark as the sky.

He tripped again, on a strand of wire this time, and tore his slacks on a sharp rock, gouging his thigh. He wondered if there was a danger of tetanus. This thought discouraged him-not the risk of disease but the reminder of how much basic medicine he’d forgotten. He wondered if his knowledge of the human brain compensated for the long-forgotten facts of physiology and organic chemistry he once had learned and recited so easily. Then these thoughts faded, for he found the sports car.

There was nothing remarkable about the vehicle itself. He didn’t for a minute think that Michael had lifted the hood and tried to hot-wire it. His patient would be far too frightened at the thought of driving a car to steal one. No, Kohler was intrigued by something else-a small object resting on the ground behind the rear bumper.