1:35AM, page 6
“Nate, I—”
“Don’t. Don’t even try to give me a sob story. I’m not your father. Whatever you have going on that made you do what you did tonight is something you need to work out on your own, outside this diner. You’re a good worker when you’re here and focused, but I can’t afford the liability risks of you acting like this.” He rubbed his beard. “I’ll have someone bring you your last check tomorrow.”
Delilah stood in front of Nate’s scarred old desk and looked at all its neat little piles. She turned. She wasn’t going to beg for the job.
As she left the diner, she wasn’t even thinking about the job. She was thinking about Ella.
Every night was getting worse. How was she going to get through another 1:35 a.m.?
When Richard had asked Delilah to move out of his parents’ guesthouse, she’d had no place to go, so she’d gone to Harper. Harper welcomed her with open arms, but unfortunately, Harper lived in a house with ten other struggling actors. All Harper had to offer was half of a double bed–size mattress on the floor of what once was a massive walk-in closet (massive for a closet, not so much for a place to sleep). Harper loved her “retreat.” She got the bed, and she got to organize all her clothes on the racks and shelves of the closet. Delilah hated the tiny space. It gave her claustrophobia. Plus, Harper snored and talked in her sleep. Delilah had only stayed with Harper three days before getting her apartment with the money Richard had given her.
So it said a lot about her state of mind that she called Harper when she got home from work and asked if she could stay with Harper for a few nights.
“Sure thing,” Harper said. “We’ll have a slumber party. You won’t even know 1:35 a.m. has come and gone.”
Delilah wanted to believe that was true. She tried to believe it.
Harper was performing that evening, as she did six evenings a week, so she left Delilah in the care of one of her housemates, a funky guy named Rudolph, who spent the afternoon and evening teaching Delilah the card game he’d created. She never did fully understand it, but she had to admit it was entertaining. Rudolph was funny and nice, too.
By the time Harper got home about 12:30 a.m., Delilah was surprisingly relaxed.
“Okay,” Harper said, dragging Delilah away from a disappointed Rudolph. “You don’t get to keep her as a pet, Rudy,” she chastised.
He stuck out his lower lip, then grinned at Delilah as Delilah followed Harper to the second floor of the house.
“I have munchies,” Harper said. “The salty kind. Guaranteed to keep away snarky high-tech dolls.”
Delilah’s stomach did a somersault at the word doll.
Harper led Delilah into her “bedroom,” threw several bags and boxes of chips and crackers on the mattress, and then said, “I need to go wash off the face paint. Be right back.”
Delilah sat on the mattress, opened a box of cheese crackers, and nibbled on one. Her stomach continued to do gymnastics.
When Harper returned, she entertained Delilah with stories about that evening’s performance. “So first, Manny forgot his line, and then he said my line,” Harper said as she tore into a bag of barbecue potato chips. “Imbecile. I had to think fast. So I kissed him.”
“Was that in character?”
“My character’s a bit of a doodlebug. So pretty much anything is in character.”
Delilah looked at her watch. It was 12:55 a.m.
“Hey, did you just look at your watch?” Harper grabbed Delilah’s arm. “Gimme that.”
Delilah didn’t resist when Harper took off Delilah’s watch and stuffed it under a pillow. She didn’t need it anyway. She’d know when 1:35 a.m. came.
“No watch. No 1:35 a.m.” Harper wiped her hands in a “that’s that” gesture.
Delilah wanted it to be that easy.
But it wasn’t. She knew exactly when 1:35 a.m. rolled around. She knew because suddenly, a voice said, “It’s time.”
Delilah jumped up and hit her head on the rack above the bed.
“What’re you doing?” Harper asked at the same time Delilah ducked her head under the rack and said, “Did you do that?”
Then they both spoke at the same time again. “What do you mean?” Delilah said. “Do what?” Harper said.
They both stopped. Delilah could still hear Gerald’s voice in her ear repeating, “It’s time” in a receding echo.
Delilah looked down at Harper. “Do you hear that?”
Harper frowned up at Delilah. “I don’t hear anything except Raul’s oldies music and the movie Kate and Julia are watching downstairs.”
“You didn’t just mimic Gerald?”
“I’m sitting right here in front of you. I’m eating potato chips. How could I have mimicked Gerald?” Harper popped a chip into her mouth with deliberate emphasis. She chewed loudly.
Delilah shook her head. She realized she was shivering. She had to clench her teeth together to keep them from chattering.
“Then you must have Ella.”
“What?”
Delilah’s neck was starting to hurt from her contorted position under the closet rack. And her legs felt weak. She sank onto the bed.
“You know what Gerald sounds like.”
“So?”
“So you could program Ella to sound like him, record yourself mimicking him or something.”
Harper shoved aside the chips bag and leaned toward Delilah. “I want to be sure I’m understanding what you’re saying.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re saying I took your wacky doll and somehow got her to work, and I recorded my impression of Gerald on the doll so it could play that for you. That’s what you’re saying?”
Delilah shook her head.
“No?” Harper asked. “Then what are you saying?”
“That is what I’m saying. I’m just—”
“You’re just crazy is what you’re just. I don’t have the stupid doll. I never saw the stupid doll. If I had seen the doll and had taken the doll, I sure wouldn’t have recorded something on it to scare you. Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know.” Delilah looked at her hands. She felt a little stupid. Why would Harper do that?
Then she remembered the voice she heard. But who else could have done it?
“You tell me,” Delilah said. “Why did you do it?”
“I didn’t do it!” Harper shouted.
Delilah flinched. Then she whispered, “But there’s no other explanation.”
Harper stared at Delilah. “Jeez. Del. You’re losing it, girl.” She shoved the junk food off the bed and curled up on her side with her back to Delilah. “I’m going to sleep.”
“I wish I could.”
“You could,” Harper said. “Just get out of your head.”
“It’s not me. It’s Ella.”
Harper sighed, then started breathing deeply and evenly.
“Must be nice,” Delilah muttered.
The next day, Delilah spent most of the day hanging out with Harper and her housemates. Because she didn’t fall asleep until almost 7:00 a.m. and Harper woke her when she got up at about 10 a.m., Delilah was fuzzy with sleep deprivation. She felt like someone had stuffed her brain with cotton candy.
When she got up, Harper seemed either to have forgotten Delilah’s accusations or forgiven them. She didn’t say anything about what had happened between them, and she was her usual vivacious self all day. Delilah decided not to say anything else about Ella. She also decided, though, that she wasn’t staying here tonight. She’d leave while Harper was at the theater.
She didn’t know until she walked out to her car at 4:35 p.m. where she was going to go. It came to her in a flash of brilliant insight. She’d go to a motel, a motel on the other side of town. Ella wouldn’t be able to find her there. Delilah didn’t think anyone else, like Harper, would find her there, either. She wasn’t going to use an assumed name or anything, but Harper didn’t process things in the sort of organized way that she’d think to do a search of motels and find out if her friend was staying there.
So at 6:15 p.m., after Delilah ate a burger and fries at a fast-food place, she checked into the Bed4U Motel on the outskirts of the scruffier side of town. The quality level of the hotel was evident in both its name and the fact that its fading sign announced “A bed and a TV in every room.”
“Talk about luxury,” Delilah said when she parked her car over weeds growing through cracks in the time-worn asphalt.
The price was right, though. Trying not to breathe in smells of bleach and stewed cabbage in the hotel’s small, brown lobby, Delilah paid for three nights. She was happy that the total barely made a dent in the credit limit on her one credit card. She was also happy that she got a room at the far end of the long, low building in the back, away from the traffic. The heavy woman behind the desk wasn’t interested in Delilah at all. She was too busy watching a documentary about spiders on an old TV mounted on the wall next to the check-in counter.
The old hotel room was surprisingly neat and clean. Done in the same ugly brown tones Delilah had found in the lobby, the room wouldn’t win any beauty prizes, but it smelled fresh, and everything worked. The bed was even comfortable.
Because the only other surfaces in the room suitable for sitting were a couple of straight-backed cloth-covered chairs, Delilah plopped on the bed as soon as she bolted the door and set her stuff on the low bureau across from the bed. She was pleased to discover the motel was pretty well insulated. The traffic on the busy road in front of the motel was just a distant shhh, and Delilah couldn’t hear anything else. She’d thought she might watch some TV when she got in the room, but she was so tired she risked lying back on the pillow. Tense, expecting the usual panic attack symptoms, she was thrilled when she felt nothing but exhaustion.
She closed her eyes.
And sleep took her from the motel room into the promise … or portent … of her dreams.
The sound crept through her sleep like a spider crawling through her synapses and leaving silken trails along her neuropathways. It was a scuffing sound, like something scooting over a rough surface.
Her mind couldn’t make enough sense of it to integrate it into her dream about riding horses. So the horse in her dream threw her off, and she came face-to-face with the spider.
She screamed. And the scream slung her back into consciousness
Delilah’s eyes opened, and she realized she was still screaming. She pressed her lips together and bit her tongue. She wanted to get up and run, but she couldn’t. She was paralyzed.
Wait. Was she awake?
She thought she was.
Above her something crawled on the roof. It made a similar sound to the one in her dream, but this sound was worse. It wasn’t just the sound of some spider going about its business. This was a strategic sound. It started. It stopped. It moved here. It moved there. It was a searching sound, a seeking sound. It was the sound of something with an objective.
And Delilah knew she was the objective.
Ella had found Delilah. She was looking for a way into the motel room.
Whining like a kitten being hunted by a coyote, Delilah struggled to free her limbs from whatever force held her immobile. But she was still pinned to the bed. The only thing she could do was move her head. So she turned her head and looked at the digital clock on the bedside table. It read, of course, 1:35 a.m.
As soon as Delilah saw the time, she discovered she could move. She thrashed free of the bedspread, which she’d managed to wrap around herself in her sleep. She jumped from the bed and crouched against the wall by the door, her gaze riveted on the ceiling.
Flashing dark-red light from a neon sign next door to the motel splayed across the ceiling like blood spatter. It was sporadically illuminated by the flickering fluorescent lamps that lit up the motel walkways and parking lot.
This meant Delilah could see what she needed to see. Nothing was coming through the ceiling. But that didn’t comfort her. Ella had other ways to get into the room. And even if she didn’t get into the room, the very fact that she was outside the room, on the roof, meant that Delilah’s brief respite was over.
There was no getting away from Ella.
Delilah began rocking back and forth like a child. And she hummed until daylight broke. She didn’t know what she was humming at first, but then she recognized the tune. She was humming the old lullaby her mom used to sing to her when she was little.
Even though Delilah had paid for three nights, she left the motel room about noon the next day. There was no point in staying. She couldn’t sleep. She wasn’t safe there.
She was pretty sure she wasn’t safe anywhere, but Delilah figured being mobile wasn’t a bad idea. This assumed, though, that Ella’s circuits hadn’t noted the make, model, color, and maybe even the license plate of Delilah’s car. Ella had, after all, ridden to the apartment in the car. She probably had left some sort of tracker in it. Delilah’s travels were no doubt a pointless waste of time and gasoline.
But what else could Delilah do?
So she drove.
She drove all afternoon and all evening. She drove all over the city, exploring neighborhoods she hadn’t known existed. She gazed longingly at big family homes and children playing in the park. She cruised the shopping district, remembering what it was like to be able to buy whatever she wanted, and also remembering how little pleasure that had given her. She’d never wanted things. She’d wanted love.
When the sun started going down a little after six, Delilah realized she was being stupid. Very stupid. Why was she staying in the city? Why not get out of town, drive out into the country. Wouldn’t it be harder for Ella to reach her there?
Delilah turned at a busy corner and pointed her car toward the freeway.
Then she immediately turned again, looping back into the neighborhood she’d just left.
Maybe she wasn’t being stupid after all. What if the city was helping to keep her safe? What if Ella would be free to do whatever she wanted to do to Delilah if they were away from a populated area?
Besides, in the country, it was dark. Very dark. Delilah had only one small flashlight. She didn’t think she could stand facing 1:35 a.m. in the pitch dark. No. She’d stay in town.
But where?
Pulling into the drive-through of a fast-food burrito place, Delilah bought a chicken-and-rice burrito with sour cream. Weirdly, even though she was so scared she was probably just one more shock from full-blown hysteria, she still had her appetite. Maybe her body knew she needed nutrition to handle what was coming her way.
Delilah ate her burrito at a drive-in movie theater she discovered on the west edge of the city. She’d had no idea it was there. She was happy to find it, though. It kept her awake until nearly midnight. That’s when the last movie—a chase-scene-heavy action flick—ended, and Delilah had to join the ragged line of cars straggling out of the drive-in. That’s when she had to decide where she should be when 1:35 a.m. came around.
She’d thought about parking her car behind a dark building or in a quiet neighborhood near an unoccupied house. But did she really want to make it that easy for Ella to get to her?
No. It would be better if she was driving around at 1:35 a.m. She’d never tried that before. Maybe that was the trick.
So as her limbs got more jittery, and her breath came faster, and her lungs got tighter, Delilah drove closer and closer to the city center. She wanted to be where people still meandered down the sidewalks and bright lights turned night into day.
At 1:33 a.m., Delilah had an even more inspired idea. She’d drive onto one of the big bridges. Surely Ella couldn’t get to her there, especially since the decision to hit the on-ramp to the bridge was as spontaneous as you could get.
Even though it was the middle of the night, at least a dozen cars were on the bridge. Delilah’s hands sweated, and she repositioned them on the steering wheel. She blinked several times to clear her vision, which was becoming blurry. She concentrated on the road and forced herself not to look at her dashboard digital clock.
But she knew when 1:35 a.m. arrived.
She knew because that’s when she heard her passenger door unlock and unlatch. Gasping and losing control of the car for an instant, Delilah turned the wheel to get back in her lane. The whooshing sound of wind coming through the open passenger door hit her just before she heard the passenger door slam closed again. She glanced to her right, her whole body charged with terror. She fully expected to see Ella sitting in the car next to her.
But nothing was there.
All she saw in her car was a bag of fast-food trash, her purse, and her flashlight.
Almost across the bridge, she put her gaze back on the road. Then something hit the roof of her car with a thunk.
Delilah screamed and jammed her foot onto the accelerator. Her car scooted forward, and she pulled out to pass a minivan, barely missing its back bumper. She then jerked her car back into the right lane so she could take the first exit off the bridge.
Driving like a madwoman, Delilah careened onto the industrial road running parallel to the river and pulled over when she reached a boarded-up factory. Her car skidded to a stop, spraying gravel.
Delilah had the engine off and was out of the car the minute the vehicle stopped moving. She didn’t bother to lock it up. She just grabbed her purse and her flashlight, slammed the driver’s door behind her, and ran.
She ran toward the river, behind the factory. Her feet crackling over crumbling concrete and trash, she ran until she was hidden from the road. Her car was no longer in sight, either.
Delilah could still see where she was going because the factory, though empty, was well lit. She stopped running and looked around.
She had no idea where she was, but she didn’t feel safe. Where would she ever feel safe again?
Turning in a full circle, she scanned her surroundings. Maybe if she could hide from Ella now, the doll wouldn’t find her later.
