‘Keep it closed!’ the girl cried, and she squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip so hard that she drew a small spot of blood.
Laura reached into the kneehole and consolingly put one hand on her daughter’s arm. ‘Honey, what are you talking about? I’ll help you keep it closed if you’ll only tell me what you’re talking about.’
‘The d-d-door,’ the girl said.
‘What door?’
‘The door!’
‘The door to the tank?’
‘It’s coming open, it’s coming open!’
‘No,’ Laura said sharply. ‘Listen to me. You have to listen to me and accept what I tell you. The door isn’t coming open. It’s shut. Tightly shut. Look at it. See? It’s not even ajar, not even open a little crack.’
‘Not even a crack,’ the girl said, and now there was no doubt that some part of her could hear Laura and respond, even though she continued to gaze through Laura and even though she remained, for the most part, in some other reality of her own making.
‘Not even a crack,’ Laura repeated, greatly relieved to be exerting some control at last.
The girl calmed a little. She was trembling, and her face was still lined with fear, but she was not biting her lip anymore. A crimson thread of blood sewed a curved seam down her chin.
Laura said, ‘Now, honey, the door is closed, and it’s going to stay closed, and nothing on the other side will be able to open it, because I’ve put a new lock on it, a heavy dead-bolt lock. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ the girl said weakly, doubtfully.
‘Look at the door. There’s a big shiny new lock on it. Do you see the new lock?’
‘Yes,’ Melanie said, more confident this time.
‘A big brass lock. Enormous.’
‘Yes.’
‘Enormous and strong. Absolutely nothing in the world could break through that lock.’
‘Nothing,’ the girl agreed.
‘Good. Very good. Now … even though the door can’t be opened, I’d like to know what’s on the other side of it.’
The girl said nothing.
‘Honey? Remember the strong lock. You’re safe now. So tell me what’s on the other side of the door.’
Melanie’s small white hands pulled and patted the empty air under the desk, as though she were attempting to draw a picture of something.
‘What’s on the other side of the door?’ Laura asked again. The hands moved ceaselessly. The girl made wordless, frustrated sounds.
‘Tell me, honey.’
‘The door…’
‘Where does the door lead?’
‘The door…’
‘What kind of room is on the other side?’
‘The door to…’
‘To where?’
‘The door … to … December,’ Melanie said. Her fear broke under the crushing weight of many other emotions — misery, despair, grief, loneliness, frustration — all of which were audible in the wordless sounds that she made and in her uncontrollable sobbing. Then: ‘Mommy? Mommy?’
‘I’m right here, baby,’ Laura said, startled to hear her daughter calling for her.
‘Mommy?’
‘Right here. Come to me, baby. Come out from under there.’
Weeping, the girl did not come but cried, again, ‘Mommy?’ She seemed to think she was alone, far from Laura’s consoling embrace, though in fact they were only inches apart. ‘Oh, Mommy! Mommy!’
Staring into the shadowy recess beneath the desk, watching her little girl weep and gibber, reaching back in there, touching the child, Laura shared some of Melanie’s feelings, especially grief and frustration, but she was also filled with a powerful curiosity. The door to December?
‘Mama?’
‘Here. Right here.’
They were so close yet they remained separated by an immense and mysterious gulf.
17
Luther Williams was a young black pathologist working for the LAPD. He dressed as though he were the ghost of Sammy Davis, Jr. — leisure suits and too much jewelry — but was as articulate and amusing as Thomas Sowell, the black sociologist. Luther was an admirer of Sowell and of other sociologists and economists in the burgeoning conservative movement within the black intellectual community, and could quote from their books at length. Too great a length. Several times, he had lectured Dan on pragmatic politics and had expounded upon the virtues of free-market economics as a mechanism for lifting the poor out of poverty. He was such a fine pathologist, with such a sensitive eye for the anomalous details that were important in forensic medicine, that it was almost worth tolerating his tedious political dissections in order to obtain the information he collected from his dissections of the flesh. Almost.