The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,301

Ru-ben.” Another quiet laugh. Theo would have given his life to reach through the wall and smash the speaker’s face. “Forget Ru-ben, Theo. Things did not work out so nicely for Ru-ben. Ru-ben, you might say, is ancient history.” A pause. “So tell me. How you sleeping?”

“What?”

“You heard me. You like that fat lady?”

His breath caught in his chest. “What did you say?”

“The fucking fat lady, Theo. Come on. Work with me here. We’ve all been there. The fat lady inside your head.”

The memory burst inside his brain like a piece of rotten fruit. The dreams. The fat lady in her kitchen. A voice was outside the door and it knew what his dreams were.

“I have to say, I never did like her very much myself,” the voice was saying. “Yakkity yakkity yakkity, all day long. And that stink. What the hell is that?”

Theo swallowed, trying to still his mind. The walls around him seemed closer somehow, squeezing him in. He put his head in his hands.

“I don’t know any fat lady,” Theo managed.

“Oh, sure you don’t. We’ve all been through it. It’s not like you’re the only one. Let me ask you something else.” The voice dropped to a whisper. “You carve her up yet, Theo? With the knife? You get to that part yet?”

A swirl of nausea. His breath caught in his chest. The knife, the knife.

“So you haven’t then. Well, you will. All in time. Trust me, when you get to that part, you’re gonna feel a lot better. That’s kind of a turning point, you could say.”

Theo lifted his face. The slot at the bottom of the door was still open, showing the tip of a single boot, leather so scuffed it looked white.

“Theo, you listening to me in there?”

His eyes fixed on the boot with the force of an idea taking hold. Gingerly he rose from the bed and moved toward the door, stepping around the bowl of soup. He sank into a crouch.

“Are you hearing my words? Because I am talking about some serious re-lief.”

Theo lunged. Too late: his hand grabbed empty air. A bright explosion of pain: something came down hard, hard, on his wrist. A boot heel. It smashed the bones flat, compressing his hand into the floor. Grinding and twisting. His face was shoved against the cold steel of the door.

“Fuck!”

“It hurts, don’t it?”

Spangled motes were dancing in his eyes. He tried to pull his hand away, but the force holding him in place was too strong. He was pinned now, one hand stuck through the slot. But the pain meant something. It meant the voice was real.

“You … go … to … hell.”

The heel twisted again; Theo yelped in agony.

“That’s a good one, Theo. Where did you think you were? Hell is your new address, my friend.”

“I’m not … your friend,” he gasped.

“Oh, maybe not. Maybe not just at the moment. But you will be. Sooner or later, you will be.”

Then, just like that, the pressure on Theo’s hand released—an absence of torment so abrupt it was like pleasure. Theo yanked his arm through the slot and slumped against the wall, breathing hard, cradling his wrist on his lap.

“Because, believe it or not, there are things even worse than me,” the voice said. “Sleep well, Theo.” And then the slot slammed closed.

VIII

THE HAVEN

The isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,

That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again.

—SHAKESPEARE,

The Tempest

FORTY-SEVEN

They had been on the road for hours. With nothing to lie on but the hard metal floor, sleep was all but impossible. It seemed that every time Michael closed his eyes, the truck would hit a bump or swerve one way or the other, sending some part of his body slamming down.

He lifted his head to see a glow of daylight gathering beyond the compartment’s only window, a small porthole of reinforced glass set in the door. His mouth was bone dry; every part of him felt bruised, as if someone had been hitting him with a hammer all night long. He rose to a sitting position, pushing his back against the jostling wall of the compartment, and rubbed the gunk from his eyes. The rest of the group were propped on their packs in various postures of discomfort. Though they were all banged up to some degree, Alicia seemed the worst off. She was facing him, her back