Charles Grant - The Pet

“Nothing! I don’t understand. I don’t know what you mean.”

Norman grunted with the effort to open his hands, and dropped onto the couch. “Neither do I, son,” he said wearily. “Jesus, neither do I. This is …” A forearm wiped hard over his face, a hand plucked at his shirtfront. “Your mother is going to be all right. She’s … like Naugle said, she’s in shock.”

Don peered through the door panes. “Did she say anything?”

Norman shook his head. “About who did it? No. Verona’s in there now, hoping she’ll come around soon. But she isn’t going to. Naugle says it’s going to take a while.”

“Verona? The police?”

Norman leaned forward and picked up a magazine, flipped the pages and dropped it. “Yep. Why not?” He laughed bitterly. “I have drinks with the mayor and we’re talking … well, we’re talking, and the next thing I know your mother is in here and Verona is calling me from the school because Hedley—”

Don fumbled to a chair. “Mr. Hedley?”

“When it rains, it pours, and don’t you ever forget it,” he said in disgust. “D’Amato found him in the auditorium after the game. His body was on the stage, hidden in the wings.” Then he slammed his palms to the table, looked up and glared. “This is crazy! What other town gets rid of one madman and immediately replaces him with another?” He looked around the room helplessly. “It’s nuts. It doesn’t make any sense. Jesus Christ, you try to protect your family, your future, and what help do you get, huh? You don’t get any, that’s what. You get shit is what you get.”

Don pushed out of the chair.

Norman looked up at him, eyes dark with rage. “If I find out Pratt had anything to do with this, I’ll kill him, you hear me?”

“Brian doesn’t kill people,” Don said, almost shouting. “How can you—”

“It could have been an accident.”

“What?”

“Sure. The prick could have … well, it could have been something that went wrong, you know.”

“Dad—”

Norman wasn’t listening. “Damned Falcone. Can you believe it, right in my own house? It’s crazy.” He nodded, agreeing with himself. “It’s goddamn crazy!”

Don moved to the door and pushed it open.

“Where are you going!”

“Air,” he said. “I need some air.”

“Your mother’s in there. Don’t you care that your mother’s in there? We have to be here when she wakes up.”

“All I need is a little air,” he said, and let the door swing shut behind him, let his feet take him across the corridor to the elevator. He pressed the button. He watched the doors slide open in balky stages. He stepped in just as Sergeant Verona left his mother’s room. The detective raised a finger for him to wait a minute, but Don let the doors close and sagged against the rear wall.

He gave the doors a slightly skewed grin.

In a way it was kind of funny. His father was right in blaming him for what happened, but for all the wrong reasons. But that he was blaming him in the first place wasn’t funny at all.

The cage thumped to a halt, the doors opened, and he blinked at the lower floor’s glare as he followed a short hall into the main lobby. A man ran a polisher over the floors, the machine humming softly; a young woman at the reception desk was reading a book and smoking. Neither of them looked at him as he crossed the gleaming floor, and he could see no police or security guards on duty either at the reception desk or at the revolving doors as he pushed through to the outside.

Cold; it was cold, and he leaned his head back to drink the night air.

“There you are!”

He started and half-turned to retreat inside when, suddenly, Tracey was there and her arms were around him.

“I told Mother to go to hell,” she said, half-laughing, half-crying. “She said I had to stay home and I told her to go to hell. God, am I gonna get killed when I get back.”

Hesitantly his arms went around her; gratefully he lowered his face to rest against her hair. He didn’t care if anyone was watching, but he would have killed the first person who tried to break them up.

Another hug and she said, “C’mon, I want to talk to you.” She took his arm and guided him along the arc of the circular drive leading on and off the hospital grounds. To the right was the visitors’ parking lot, empty and barely lighted by three-foot pillars at the corners, and they crossed it without speaking, Don only once looking up at the building to see if he could pick out his mother’s room.

At the far, darkest side they found a concrete bench under a half-dozen skeletal cherry trees and sat down, staring across the empty blacktop to the brick posts that marked the hospital’s entrance. Across the street there were houses as black as the near-leafless trees that marked the edge of the sidewalk. No cars passed. No horns sounded. It was a hospital zone, and no celebrations were wanted.

“How’s your mother?” she asked then, covering his hand with one of hers.

Haltingly, pausing frequently to clear his throat and stretch his neck to shake loose the obstructions he found there, he explained what the police had told him and what his father had said about Mr. Hedley. Then he told her what he knew had really happened, what they wouldn’t believe even if his mother had seen it and could talk.

“But I didn’t do it!” he added heatedly, his insistence almost begging. “Trace, you know me, I wouldn’t wish my own mother …” He remembered. Suddenly, like a sharp elbow in the stomach, he remembered.

“Don?”

“My father wanted to know if it was one of my friends.”

“What? I don’t believe it.”

“I’m not lying, Trace. He wanted to know if I’d said or done something to good old Brian to make this happen.”

“He couldn’t have been serious. I mean, he’s worried and all, Don. He’s not thinking straight.”

He wasn’t sure, and was no longer sure he cared. “He was with the mayor, can you believe it? He was having drinks with the mayor while my mother almost died!”

“Mr. Falcone did,” she reminded him softly.

“I know.” He turned to her urgently. “And you know why she didn’t die?”

Tracey shook her head, changed her mind, and nodded. “The park.”

He leaned back and looked up at the sky, wondering what had happened to the rain, what had happened to the thunder. It had been all figured out, and now it was all changed. Even in his own world the Rules didn’t stay the same.

“But they do,” she said, and he blinked before realizing he had spoken aloud. “That … that thing, Don. It’s yours.”

“But I didn’t tell it to kill—”

“I know, I know,” she said. “I know, but it’s more than you think.”

His eyes closed slowly; he was tired. Ashamed because suddenly he was so tired all he wanted to do was curl up in her lap and fall asleep.

“I shouldn’t believe any of this anyway,” she said quietly, as if talking to herself. “It’s not possible. I know what I saw, and I know what you said, but it’s still not possible.”

“It is,” he said, watching stinging colors swirl across his eyelids. “Jesus, it is.”

“I thought about it all the way home, and all the way over here. I thought about you making me see things that weren’t really there. Like one of your stories. And I thought about how I wanted to help you so much that I’d even see King Kong if you told me to.”

Her breath came in harsh pants; he didn’t open his eyes.

“I thought about it, but Don, I saw it. So … so I thought about it like it was real, and what you said about it — it isn’t right, Don. It isn’t right.”

His head swiveled slowly. “It wants to help me, don’t you understand that? It came because I needed help, and it helps me. But I swear to god I didn’t say anything about—”