Chapter Five: Voices Down the Corridor
Toby opens my car door and helps me out when we roll to a stop in
front of a very large manor house that's a black, hulking mass
against the navy night. It is perched precariously on the edge of a
cliff, so that there's nothing but empty sky behind it. Clouds are
again boiling up on the horizon and cool purple brilliance shimmers
across them as lightning returns.
In a moment, the front door creaks open reluctantly, and a rectangle
of yellow light pours onto the ground before it. I see no one there
who might have opened it and my skin ripples with chills.
"This place looks like the Hotel California," I observe aloud to no
one in particular.
Sam, who has come around the car to see if he can help Toby get me
inside, mutters in response, "I was thinking the Bates Motel."
I glare at him, not appreciating the thought at all but thinking he
may have it right. Shivering, I say, "I like mine better."
"Would you shut up now?" Toby mutters and I see that Ernie is coming
around the car. I check just to be doubly sure that Ernie has no
hook for a hand. Ernie smiles at us and opens the trunk, swinging
two carry-on bags across his shoulder while Josh grabs the other
two.
I think that I could care less if Ernie is a murderer this moment,
because my foot has gotten progressively worse, and even with almost
all my weight supported between Sam and Toby, I'm in a lot of pain.
I try to focus on other things as we make our halting way into the
house. The few lamps I see don't push the shadows all the way back
into the corners. The house smells old and musty, and most of the
furniture in the den we pass through is covered in plastic. It looks
as if this was once a grand place.
Long, long ago.
A white cat with eyes so pale they nearly match its fur sits on the
stairway, head thrust through the railing. It's nearly eye-level
with me as I hobble by, and it stares me down as I move past it. I
find that I don't want to turn my back on the cat.
Ernie leads us into a large dining room. There are probably ten
tables for four, with all the chairs hanging upside-down from the
tabletops. Ernie hastens to pull the chairs off one table, and
motions me into the first one.
I collapse into it gratefully and don't protest when Toby lifts my
foot and eases it onto another chair.
"Good evening, poor dears." A voice that doesn't belong to Ernie and
that doesn't belong to us floats into the room on a draft that
chills the back of my neck. The sound is pitched high and airy, yet
it seems to fill the room to the rafters.
A moment later a tall woman with hair as white as lightning comes
in. She is probably in her seventies or eighties, but she moves with
the easy grace of an eighteen-year-old. She's wearing a silk dinner
dress, her hair pulled neatly off her neck in a bun, her lips
reddened, eyelashes lengthened.
I know she's had time to prepare for us since Josh and Sam first
arrived but I'm unnerved because it's almost like she was expecting
us all along.
"You are most welcome," she says directly to me with a smile. "We're
so glad you've stopped by. My name is Rose. This is my son, Ernie."
"It's good to be here," Sam smiles, sitting down heavily across the
table from me.
"Yes, you're kind to take us in so late at night," I say, hoping to
get on their good side. I look at quiet Ernie and his mother and
think of Psycho, and damn Sam for bringing up the Bates Motel in the
first place.
"Not at all," Rose says in her strangely lyrical but empty
voice. "It's so unusual for us to have guests in the off season. How
about some coffee to warm you up. Perhaps a drink? Brandy? Wine?"
"Do you happen to have any aspirin? My friend here thinks she's
broken her toes, and we're going to need to have a look soon," Toby
murmurs and I wince, wishing he'd forget about the looking at my
toes part.
"My dear Claudia Jean," Rose says and I leap upright in my chair so
quickly that my boot slips off the other one and my heel comes
crashing to the floor. Blue lights of pain explode in front of my
eyes, and with effort, I don't throw up.
"How did you know my name?" I gasp.
"We do get CNN out here," Rose says and laughs at my terror. I
suspect she knows every thought that has run through my head since I
got here. "I'll bring an aspirin to you, my dear. It's a pleasure
to have you all here. I voted for President Bartlet, you know."
"Oh, well, um..thanks?" I say, because the boys don't look
interested in conversation.
"Yes, of course. I'll just go fetch the aspirin."
"If I could just maybe get a glass of wine? I don't want an aspirin."
Josh and Sam ask for coffee, Toby requests Brandy and a pair of good
scissors.
Rose tugs Ernie along behind her and in a moment we are alone in the
dining room. So Ernie is Rose's son…that would make her closer to
ninety, I guess.
"Why won't you take anything?" Josh wonders.
"I don't like to take drugs for just every little thing. You get
immune and you know, stuff."
"So you're drinking wine instead. Because there's not really a
chance you get immune by drinking too much of it for just every
little thing," Sam reasons.
I start to reply but Toby stands up and moves closer to my foot,
which I've returned gingerly to the chair. "How do these shoes come
off?" he wonders, leaning over my foot and looking on both sides of
the boot.
"Well, Toby, I wrinkle my nose and cross my arms and nod my head and
poof! Want to see?"
"CJ," he snaps, draws a deep breath, and takes the high road. "Is
there a zipper or something? Or do you just pull them off?"
"I don't like the way a zipper looks on a pair of shoes. Shoes
aren't supposed to have zippers," I assert.
"So, no. You just pull it on and off, then."
"Yes."
"That's what I thought. CJ, I want you to prepare yourself for this.
We're going to have to cut the shoe off your foot."
"Like Hell you are," I say without missing a beat, glaring at Toby
with my best, I'm-so- serious-that-I-may-kill-you-just-for-
suggesting-it look.
"CJ, the shoe has to come off," Sam agrees, coming to Toby's
aid...at least in spirit. He's standing a good distance from me.
"Over my dead, rotting body." Perhaps I'm not being reasonable here.
Perhaps I don't give a damn. "It isn't so bad. Let's just pull it
off. Come on, it'll be fine."
"Don't be ridiculous, CJ. It's a pair of shoes."
I gasp indignantly. "You may have on just a pair of shoes, Tobias.
But let me tell you a little story about CJ Cregg. These shoes are
Cole Haan's. They are Italian, tumbled grain calfskin leather. In
Camel. The last pair in Washington, D.C. Leather
lining, sock cushioning. I looked for them for three weeks. Tried on
every pair of boots in every department store there is. These fit me
like no other."
Toby nods. "That's all very nice, and somewhere, far, far away, I'm
sure there's someone who cares. We're still going to have to cut the
shoe."
"I paid $300 for these boots!" I nearly shout and my voice threads
down the hallway and comes back in a panicked echo.
"You're the biggest moron I've ever come across," Toby replies.
"We are not cutting these boots off. No way. Josh, come here. I want
you to pull it off."
"I told you. I'm running out of lives, CJ," Josh says, backing away
from me. I've lost some of my power over Josh now that he knows I
can't give chase.
I try a different tactic with Sam. Pleading. The damsel in
distress. "Sam, please. I'm asking you to help me out here. Just
slide it right off. I love these shoes. It would break my heart to
ruin them."
Sam seems to be pondering it. Sam is no stranger to good clothes.
Sucker. He gives Toby an uncertain glance, and in return, Toby
glares down at me, cheek dipping in and out. I hear his teeth
grinding together.
Finally, he throws up his hands and motions Sam over. "Go ahead.
Pull it off. Pull her whole damned foot off if you want to. Then you
know what we're going to call you, CJ?"
"I do not," I say.
"Peg Leg Cregg."
He isn't able to say it with an entirely straight face, and Sam and
Josh both give off startled barks of laughter. I have to admit that
even I crack a smile.
Sam approaches and I lean back in the chair and grasp the back legs
of it to keep my hands at my side and clamp my teeth tightly. He
hesitates, one hand closed around the heel of the boot, the other at
the back of my ankle.
"You sure?" he says.
"Do it quickly," I advise, and clench my teeth again. "Don' worry
about hurting me. I'm tough."
He yanks.
I scream.
And scream. And scream. Loudly. Which causes him to cry out and jump
back, releasing my foot, which for the second time, slips from the
chair and bounces off the hardwood floor of the dining room.
I double over in the chair, tears streaming down my face. I'm
furious.
"You twisted bastard!" I accuse Sam through my tears, and see that
he looks near to them himself. "You sick, sadistic f--."
"Um, CJ," Josh interrupts me.
"But you said…you told me to do it quickly." Sam defends himself
"And what the Hell made you think you'd be able to pull off my boot
at all? I have broken bones, Sam! Broken bones!"
"You're an idiot," Toby growls and I look over to him to thank him
for his support in berating Sam, and then realize that he's talking
to me.
*
"Well, it's really quite obvious," I sigh a few moments after Rose
and Ernie's return and after I down a glass of wine in three
swallows and gratefully accept a refill. "We're going to have to cut
it off."
"You think?" Josh mutters sarcastically.
"Hey Ernie, how about those scissors?" Toby asks with a smile that
has me thinking maybe Sam's not the sadistic one at all.
"Oh, dear, we forgot the scissors. Ernie, go get the scissors," Rose
instructs her son and flits around me like a nervous bird as Ernie
leaves the room. She begins prattling on about the grand old days
when movie stars stayed at her hotel in the summer and how this is
nearly as big a deal.
"Ernie's father was a movie star," she says dreamily as she pats her
hair and I feel a little pang of sorrow for her, living here alone,
dressed for dinner, and still probably looking for a man who used
her once when she was too young to know better and never looked back
again.
"Ernie sure is quiet," Sam murmurs.
"Ernie's mute," Rose says, and looks at Sam like he'd have to be a
simpleton to miss it.
I am startled and I look to Sam who's staring back at me. How odd
that we were discussing if we'd rather be deaf or mute earlier in
the evening. This night gets more and more bizarre.
Especially when Ernie returns with some deadly looking gardening
tool. Not so much scissors as shears and I think that he's probably
going to kills us with them. I'm a little relieved when Toby takes
them with authority.
He's going to enjoy this, I know.
I can't look. It's a little like getting a shot at the hospital and
thinking that if you don't watch the needle go in, it will somehow
hurt less.
I hear the soft groaning protest of the leather as it splits against
the blades. I wince although I know without doubt that Toby is not
going to let the shears anywhere near my skin. I think I would
rather have him lay me open to the bone than to have to let him cut
these boots. These beautiful, expensive, comfortable, warm boots
that were so damn hard to find.
Inch by inch, I feel a release of pressure against my calf, down to
my ankle. There is, for a moment, increased tension against my toes
and then the leather pulls away across the top of my foot and in a
moment, Toby lifts the boot straight up off my toes and I hear
the "thump" as it hits the floor.
"Time of Death..." Josh begins, but stops abruptly when I turn my
glare onto him.
Toby is now pulling at my sock, cutting that away too. The socks did
not cost $300, so I watch him do this. When he gets to the top of my
foot, the dark brown cotton falls away from skin that is not the
pale, winter color of my ankle but rather a dark, angry black
already. The colors mutate as he gets closer to my toes, which are
bulging inside of the shredded sock, obviously several times their
normal size. Black, furious red, yellowish green, and finally deep,
royal purple. My first two toes are grotesquely swollen, bent rather
sickeningly in ways they shouldn't be.
Behind me, Sam hisses in sympathy as Toby drops the sock beside the
boot, which I still haven't been able to bring myself to look at.
"Damn, CJ," Josh murmurs. "I bet that hurts."
"I bet you're right," I say quietly and look at Toby, whose worry
is evident on his face.
He turns to Ernie. "Do you maybe have a first aid kit? Some gauze,
something we could splint these toes with? And she'll take that
aspirin now. Maybe Advil if you have it. She's on her third glass of
wine."
I'm glad Toby asked for the painkiller, because I wouldn't have. But
somehow seeing my toes has made them hurt about ten times worse. I'm
reminded of when I was little. I could have been dropped off the
roof of our house, and I wouldn't have shed one tear if there was no
blood. But let a cat scratch me, and I would howl for hours.
He sits down heavily beside me as Ernie leaves the room again. Sam
puts another glass of wine in my hand, and I take full-mouthed
swallows, letting the wine roll under my tongue and up against my
cheeks, trying to take pleasure from it and to distract myself with
the drinking of it.
Ernie returns once again in his ghost-like fashion, and I numbly
swallow two Advil tablets with my white wine. The wine seems to be
dulling everything but the throbbing of my toes. My head is starting
to fall back, too heavy for my neck and my hands are now hanging
open at the sides of the chair. Swallowing takes a grand effort and
my eyes burn with weariness.
From a great, great distance I hear Toby say, "I'm going to try to
splint your toes, now, CJ. This may hurt a little."
"I'm sure it will," I say, then whisper, "I'm so cold." And I am. My
teeth are chattering just a little bit, because I'm too weary to try
and stop them.
I hear Rose's voice, and strangely, it sounds as if she's standing
right beside me, although I know she's positioned primly at the
other side of the table. "Ernie, a blanket. And why don't you
prepare her room for her? Build a fire."
"Her clothes are wet. We might want to find her a change of clothes
and put those in the dryer," Sam suggests.
"This sweater is dry clean only," I murmur, or at least I think I
do. I may or may not have said the words aloud. They continue as if
I hadn't spoken, so I think maybe I just thought I said something.
Toby instructs Josh to look in my carry-on for a change of clothes.
I hear Josh's soft snort of amusement a few moments later and hear
Sam ask what's funny.
"The only thing she has in her carry-on is—wait for it—more
underwear and a pair of heels."
"I don't…you've got to be kidding me," Toby sighs, and although my
eyes are closed and my head tilted so far back on my neck that it's
becoming difficult to breathe, I can picture him shaking his
head. "Look in my bag. I've got a sweatshirt, I think. She can sleep
in that."
Josh asks for a phone and calls Leo. From Josh's end of the
conversation, I can tell that Leo thought the check-in was long
overdue. "I'm sorry to wake you…no, we didn't get any service. We
had a flat tire on the coast…Sam is why we're on the coast. Well,
no, we're fine…except that CJ's broken two toes. Well, trust me when
I say that you don't want to know how. It's a long, long story.
Yeah, we'll find a tire tomorrow or call the rental car company or
something. We'll be in San Francisco by lunch time. Is he feeling
better? Good." Josh voice fills the quiet room as Toby works, and I
gather by the time he hangs up that we still have our jobs, if for
no other reason than so Leo can make us regret this whole night even
more.
As if that were possible.
I think there are tears seeping from under my closed lashes by the
time Toby's finished with my toes. He was as careful as possible,
and when he couldn't be gentle, I felt the apology in his hesitation
and in easy touches at my ankle with fingers callused by hours
holding pens and stroking keyboards.
"Okay, that'll do until we can get her to a real doctor," he says. I
realize that at some point a blanket was dropped around my shoulders
and that I'm not shivering anymore. I'm walking the edge of sleep,
where every sound blends itself between dreams and wakefulness.
"Ernie, take Miss Cregg to her room, please. Mr. Ziegler, if you'd
like to carry her things perhaps?" It's that high clear voice that
doesn't go at all with the willowy body it lives in. "I'll follow
and help her change into something dry."
I nearly fall back into consciousness as I am suddenly lifted from
the chair, more effortlessly than I thought I could have ever been
lifted. I don't open my eyes, but I think it's Ernie, and then
realize that I know it's Ernie, because the men I'm currently
travelling with aren't accustomed to carrying anything heavier than
a pen.
My inhibitions are far enough gone where I don't really mind being
toted around, and I honestly don't think I could walk—or rather limp—
to my room, assisted or not.
I open my eyes at one point, and I am started to see Silent Ernie
staring back at me, smiling softly. I look over his shoulder and
notice the strange white cat following at a distance, staring at me.
Toby, Josh and Sam are walking ahead, and beyond them Rose leads us
slowly through the hallways.
We climb stairs that creak ominously, and I notice what's strange. I
see no lights. The hall is aglow with soft yellow light,
illuminating the faces of the strangers imprisoned in gilt frames to
either side of me. But I cannot see one light fixture. It's as if
the light is being thrown from the walls themselves.
I blink and try to clear my vision, but the same dreamy, blurred
surroundings meet my tired eyes upon reexamination.
Rose shows Josh and Sam where they will be staying and leaves them
there, finally coming to a halt in front of a large door. Shadows
flicker out into the hallway when the room is opened and I look
around in amazement as I'm carried in. It's probably larger than my
entire apartment. The bed is canopied, with dark, dark red velvet
drapes tied back to reveal heavy quilts turned down to white linens.
There is a red blaze in the fireplace, throwing angry, angled
shadows onto all the walls. Above our heads is a grand chandelier,
and although there is no electricity in the room, the crystal
absorbs the firelight and throws it back at us in a million facets.
When Ernie sits me on the bed gently, I feel like I could sink
forever into it.
"Ernie, you can leave us. Mr. Ziegler, perhaps you'll step outside
while I help Miss Cregg change?"
I hear the door click closed a few minutes later. My eyes are
growing heavy again, the low light lulling my lashes further and
further down, until the room is just a narrow slit of dark orange
light.
I am as listless as a young child dragged out of bed by a mother
trying to get her ready for school. I feel not the first whisper of
hands upon me as my damp sweater is pulled over my head, but
suddenly the cool air of the room assaults me, raising chills for
only a moment before the soft comfort of an oversized sweatshirt
covers me.
"Now, Dear," Rose croons, "You are going to need to help me get
those jeans off."
I do, my cold, clumsy fingers fumbling with the button and zipper.
Rose then helps me guide the legs of the pants over my foot and
manages to keep the material or anything else from coming into
contact with my toes, which are splinted with broken pencils and
swathed in gauze.
I still don't feel her touch me once, and yet I don't know why,
because she is right here with me.
She helps me under the covers, lifting the heavy quilts and then the
sheet from my foot as I cry out with the pain the weight of it
causes my toes. She tucks the blankets securely around my shoulders
and good foot and leaves just one corner turned back.
"Sleep well."
I don't hear her leave. The dim slit of firelight that is the room
disappears completely as I fall hard over the edge into sleep.
*
I am in a place devoid of any light at all. The blackness seems to
seep in through my pores and I ache everywhere. My mind is
struggling to wrap around some form of thought, to find an anchor to
keep me from drifting endlessly across the darkness.
A slow sort of consciousness of something outside of the nothingness
dawns upon me. Sound. Voices. Voices pleading, voices crying out in
desperation, in terror, in pain. Voices of a different language than
my own, but I understand them. I understand not the words but the
meaning, and I am completely undone by my knowledge.
"CJ. Wake up. It's all right."
My eyes fly open and I jerk upright, and nearly embed my nose into
Toby's forehead. He's perched on the side of my bed, one arm to
either side of me as he leans down, speaking in a soft voice. I look
around and am further confused by the surroundings I recognize only
vaguely from when I was carried into the room.
"What are you doing here?" I croak out, voice roughened by both
sleep and the wine I had earlier.
"I don't know…I thought you might be startled if you woke up in the
middle of the night here. You were pretty much knocked out when
Ernie brought you in here."
"So you've been here the whole time?" I wonder. "Did I cry out?"
He reaches a hand out, sweeps a thumb under my cheek and then holds
it up for my inspection. The firelight glistens off the teardrop as
it slides down toward the heel of his hand. I reach up to touch my
cheeks myself, and my own fingers come away damp.
"No, you didn't cry out. Not out loud, at least," he says. "I was on
the sofa over there. You were restless. I didn't realize for a while
that you were crying. But I wanted to shake you out of wherever it
was you'd gone to."
I flinch at the mention of where I'd gone to, remembering all too
well that dark, dark place.
"CJ…has this been happening much recently?"
"Has what been happening much?"
"The dreams. The waking up."
"No," I lie and know that he sees that I'm not telling the truth.
The truth is that the longest stretch of sleep I've had without
disturbing dreams since the arms deal with Qumar was in the car
tonight.
He sighs impatiently, and decides not to call my bluff directly.
Instead, he murmurs, "don't you think it might help if you talked to
me about whatever it is going on with you?"
I feel tears coming up again, and deny both them and Toby as I shake
my head hard. Despite myself, I feel one escape from the corner of
my eye and it tickles down my cheekbone and into my ear. I stare
past Toby to the canopy above me.
"CJ, I have to ask you again. What happened in Qumar?" Toby
whispers, and he reaches up to touch my cheek briefly, steering my
eyes towards his. In the dying fire, his eyes are pools of blackness
and I can't read anything in them.
The truth comes surging forth, then ebbs. The truth that I've held
in for so long that I soon realize I don't have the words. My vocal
chords ache with it, but my lips just can't move around the memory
that's voice has for too long been a language I can't speak.
More tears are coming and I'm furious at him for it, and I try to
turn away but heat stabs through my toes up my shin bone, and Toby
puts a hand on my shoulder and whispers, "okay, I'm sorry. You don't
need to talk about it tonight. You need to rest."
It's a reprieve, though a temporary one, and I'm stilled by it more
than his hands.
"Do you want me to go?" he wonders, removing his hands from me and
folding them in his lap.
I shake my head because my own silence is choking me. He can't hear
the voices I hear, but I am suddenly afraid to be alone in the
darkness with them again. When he moves to return to his sofa, I
reach a hand out, and my fingers wrap around his wrist.
He understands, or I think he does, and he comes around the other
side of the bed, easing himself down upon it. There is an expanse of
white sheet and red quilt between us, but I can feel his warmth
there, and the comfort of his weight nearby. I am aware of my bare
legs beneath the sheet. I am aware of my heart…and, as a result, of
my toes…throbbing with left over unease from my dream and from the
confrontation with him afterwards. I am aware that beside me, Toby
is barely breathing.
I reach out and touch his arm briefly before snatching my hand back
to my side of the bed, and I am also aware that he is the anchor
I've found in the darkness.
