SUNDAY, 2:57 A.M.
David had talked Toria into letting him sleep with her in her bed. Xander knew it had nothing to do with providing better protection for her, as David had said. He just hated sleeping on the floor.
Xander didn’t mind it. He had his pillow and his blankets. The area rug beside Toria’s bed took the edge off the wood floor’s hardness and chilliness. He lay there now, considering the pattern of shadows the trees in the moonlight cast on Toria’s ceiling. So different from the ones in his and David’s room. For one thing, they were much less distinct, washed out by Toria’s night-light.
Again, he thought about The Shining, how the house had made Jack Nicholson go crazy. What if it could happen to a whole family? What if none of this was real and they were all going crazy? Seeing things, hearing things, experiencing things. With Toria seeing the man—claiming to see the man —it was like each member of the family was slowly getting pulled in.
Xander didn’t like this train of thought. It was his exhaustion talking. He made his mind think of something else.
David and Toria had fallen asleep quickly. The rhythm of their breathing was not quite in sync with each other. Toria’s was a little faster and a lot quieter. Together, they sounded like distant waves breaking against a beach. Xander listened, thinking of that beach. His eyelids grew heavy. He rolled over to his left side. He adjusted his shoulder, trying to find a comfortable position. Across the room, illuminated by the Princess Fiona light, Wuzzy stared at him.
Stupid bear.
His eyes closed and he was back on the beach. He could almost feel wet sand squishing between his toes.
In the next second, he pushed himself up, fully awake.
The alarm in his head had been so loud he was surprised it hadn’t woken David and Toria. But there they were, shoulder to shoulder, the blankets over their chests rising and falling, almost in unison.
Wuzzy, he thought.
He stepped quietly to the bear and picked it up. Then, to the open doorway. He leaned through and peered down the hall.
Dad was there, at the junction of the two hallways. Sitting on boxes, leaning back against the wall. He was fewer than fifteen feet from the master bedroom door. Mom was probably asleep inside. Twenty feet down the other hall was the false wall, beyond which the big man presumably dwelt. Dad clutched an aluminum bat in both hands. The business end rested against his shoulder. He spotted Xander and nodded.
“Bathroom,” Xander whispered. He wasn’t sure Dad heard him way down there, but his father nodded as though he had. Holding the bear, Xander walked to the bathroom, turned on the light, shut and locked the door.
At the small of Wuzzy’s back was a panel of controls at the small of his back. The On/Off switch was in the On position. Xander had suspected it would be, since it seemed to capture everything the family said. Toria would play back the funniest, most embarrassing, or most irritating sound bites. The bear stored half a dozen snippets at a time. Each could be up to several minutes long, Xander thought. He did know it was sound-activated and would fill its memory chips in sequence: first, memory chip number one, then two, and so on. After number six, it returned to memory chip number one. It would replace what was on that chip with a new sound. A pressure-sensitive switch in Wuzzy’s right paw caused it to play back the most recent recordings. That’s how Toria had driven him crazy on the trip from Pasadena to Pinedale. Now, Xander changed Wuzzy’s setting from Record to Playback.
Xander squeezed Wuzzy’s paw. The bear whispered, “Bathroom,” in Xander’s voice. Dad may not have heard, but Wuzzy had. Xander hoped he hadn’t recorded over what he was looking for. He gave the paw two quick squeezes—the first returned the playback head to the beginning of the current memory chip (“bathroom”); the second brought it to the previous memory chip.
His own voice again: “Good night, guys.” It was louder than he had expected. He scrambled to turn on the water. It helped mask the rest of the recording:
David answering, “Night.”
Toria sweetly saying, “Good night, Xander. Thanks for watching over me.”
David again: “I am too.”
Toria: “Thank you, David.”
Xander heard the rustle of bedding, the squeak of a spring in Toria’s mattress, a bang—and he remembered bringing his head down against the night table as he settled in. Hearing it made his head hurt again, and he felt the bump on the back of his head.
Two more quick squeezes of Wuzzy’s paw: Xander, David, and Toria talking.
Two more: Mom and Dad saying good-night.
Again: Dad explaining that Xander and David would sleep in Toria’s room.
Xander was becoming concerned that Wuzzy had already erased the recording he was most interested in. Or . . . he remembered what had happened when David took the camcorder over: nothing but static. He hoped for something better now.
Again: His sister screaming. Pounding footsteps. Xander saying, “Toria, it’s me! Xander!”
Again: Toria saying, “Who is it?” Sounding sleepy. He scrunched his brow in concentration. He held Wuzzy close to his ear. There was a creaking sound—the bedspring—followed by another. Xander thought it was a floorboard. Toria started to call again: “Who—”
A deep, rumbling voice said: “Sas ehei na erthete na paiksei. ”
Xander’s stomach tightened into a knot. Toria started screaming. Xander quickly flipped the Off button.
Xander set the bear on the counter and took a step away from it. Wuzzy appeared as sweet and innocent as a little girl in a Sunday dress, but the deep-throated voice it had recorded and shared was sinister. He did not know how he knew it, he just knew.
Toria had not been dreaming. The family was not going crazy. Their problem was different. It was much, much worse.