Now
“SHHH … SHHH … SHHH …,” Teddy shushed his mother, who lay now with her eyes closed on the bed, hands folded, and fingers interlaced on her frail chest.
Teddy stood from his chair and put his lips next to her ear. “Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry. Go to sleep, little baby. Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry. Go to sleep, little baby.”
He waited, listened to his mother’s silent breathing. Never had he felt such power, such utter authority. The voice—his own voice—sounded inside his head … the deep sleep … That’s what this was. That’s what he’d just done to his mother. With his words alone, with his whispered lullaby, he’d sent his mother to Lalaland.
And something told him it could not be so easily undone. Because things were starting to make sense now. Put the world to sleep, Teddy …
“Mr. Lullaby,” he said aloud, into the room, loving the sound of it.
… put them all to sleep …
He watched his mother’s face from inches away.
… put enough of them over there …
The way her eyes barely moved behind closed lids.
… so that you can open all the doors to here …
The tiny intakes and out pushes of air at her nostrils.
… and then let all of Lalaland in …
All the age lines and wrinkles, the freckles and the pores and tiny little hairs.
… let it all start blooming …
Aside from the subtle rise and fall of her chest, she slept so deeply anyone else might have thought her dead.
The door to the suite opened. The click-clack of high-heeled shoes entered the room, approached him from behind. Teddy turned, faced Brandy. He opened his arms to her and said, “She told you?”
Brandy gazed up at him. “Yes.”
“We need to open the hotel doors and let them all out.”
She tiptoed, kissed his lips. “I already did.”
Excerpt from Detective Harrington’s notes
July 17, 1969
Harrod’s Reach
ONE OF THESE days I’m going to close the tunnel for good. Dynamite would do the trick to bring it all down upon itself, and maybe then I’ll get a good night’s sleep. But nothing troubles me more than pulling an out-of-towner out of the tunnel, especially a child. The locals know better. And the kids should have, but oh how that tunnel is a temptress, and if ifs and buts were coconuts, well, I don’t know how the rest of it goes, but at roughly 10:30 this morning, I was called to yet another emergency inside the tunnel. Belinda Lomax, age 11 (and granddaughter to the talent singing last night at the Beehive), was invited by some local children to play down by the tunnel. During a game of In-One-Out-One (started in the late eighteen hundreds after the disappearance of Connie Brine, when, legend claims, in the fall of 1868, she ran in one side of the tunnel and never came out the other), Belinda Lomax entered the tunnel and didn’t come back out the other side. The kids waited, and then, in a panic, hurried for help. Thirty minutes later, I found Belinda Lomax passed out in the middle of the tunnel. She awoke after I picked her up. I could tell how terrified she was by how hard she clung to my neck. She asked why I was crying. I told her it was because I found her. But in my head, I was thinking about the previous fall, in October of ’68, when kids claimed Bret Jones entered one end and never came out the other, and that he was never found. The little girl then said, “Did you see it?” I said, “See what, dear?” And she said, “That place. It’s a painting.” At which point I rested her head on my shoulder and told her I’d get her right back to her grandfather.