up in the slate-pebbled drive, and Laurel felt for a moment as if she were in a painting, in a dream.
Then she dropped to the porch beside Katrina, pulled the girl’s soaked and prone body into her arms. “Do you have car keys?” she shouted at Tyler over the thunder. Tyler shoved his hand into a jean pocket and a look of salvation lit his face as he pulled out the keys.
“Let’s fucking go.” He zapped the doors unlocked.
Katrina was shivering, convulsing in Laurel’s arms. The girl’s eyes suddenly flew open.
“Run,” Katrina whispered. “Run run run run run …”
A wave of terror crashed over Laurel and she hauled Katrina up to standing, ran with her for the car. The sky opened and hail began to pelt down in marble-sized chunks, bouncing whitely off the car.
Laurel pushed Katrina into the backseat of the Maserati and ran back to help Tyler, who was stooping to pick Brendan up by his armpits. Together they dragged him across the gravel to hoist him into the car, both of them straining to lift him, straining not to listen as the house loomed and shrieked and raged behind them. And as lightning cracked across the sky, Tyler gunned the engine of the Maserati and drove like the wind.
CHAPTER SIXTY
The hospital was small and pretty—if a hospital could be called pretty—with light, airy open spaces, and arches, and views of rolling hills and fields out the windows.
Laurel knew the views well. She had been there for nearly a week.
The intake doctor in the emergency room, Madsen, had been suspicious but competent. He started Brendan and Katrina and Tyler on IV fluids, and stood with Laurel to take their reports. Katrina was still conscious; Brendan was not.
Laurel and Tyler recounted as little as possible: a break-in at the house they were renting while the two of them had been out, returning to find the house ravaged and Katrina and Brendan in the condition they were in, no idea what happened to them, leaving the house with them, frightened out of their wits. Dr. Madsen listened and watched them and wrote, without speaking.
Then Brendan, Katrina and Tyler were taken on gurneys into the hospital, and Laurel sat down to wait.
Brendan came out of his catatonia on the fourth day. Laurel was not sure how, but when Dr. Madsen was taking Brendan’s intake report, Laurel had said on impulse, “There’s a history of schizophrenia in the family.” Her heart beat faster at the chance she was taking, and the doctor looked at her sharply, but after a moment said, “Interesting,” and made a note on Brendan’s chart.
They let her see him on the sixth day. She had not left the hospital for any of that time.
He was pale and thin, tubes snaking from his arms, but his eyes were clear as he looked at her from the hospital bed, and the range of emotions on his face was painful to see. His voice rasped as he said, immediately:
“Tyler … Katrina …”
“Conscious. Recovering,” Laurel said, standing in the doorway. And she added silently, Thank God, thank God. “Faster than you, actually. They’re young. I visit them and they … they’re starting to talk. I’ll be there when they do.”
Brendan looked as if ten years had dropped from him. Then slowly his face tightened. “And Anton?”
Laurel’s eyes clouded; she felt a range of emotions she could not name. “The police went to the house.” Laurel had emphasized the possible danger to the cops, the destruction she and Tyler had seen. But she had not gone with them—not that they would have allowed it—but she was certain in the core of her that they were safer without her. She was afraid to activate the house.
Folger House had been empty. The great room was in chaos, but a chaos still attributable to the random destruction of a criminal, though Laurel had wondered more than a few times what the police had made of that inexplicable scattering of rocks. There was no one else in the house—living, dead, or otherwise.
Brendan stared at her, stupefied. “But where …”
She lifted her hands. She had no idea. Did he revive and get out somehow? Did the house—or whatever was in it—take him? She remembered the horrible screaming at the end… .
“The police said there was no trace,” she answered.
“And there’s no record at all, is there? The cameras …” Brendan asked, and added quickly, “Don’t take that the wrong way. I just meant …” He stopped, swallowed hard.