Death Falls. Todd Ritter

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СКАЧАТЬ her eyes sting in addition to being bleary. It didn’t matter. She could navigate the room with her eyes closed, which is exactly what she did. The memories of hundreds of similar trips guided her—rocking chair to the right, dresser to the left, don’t stub your toe on the toy chest. Once she reached the crib, Maggie opened her eyes.

      The crib was empty.

      The crying, however, continued.

      Maggie heard it, loud and fearful. She rotated in the center of the room, looking for a possible explanation. Had the baby somehow escaped the crib and crawled into the closet? The dresser? Another room?

      It was only after two more twirls that Maggie’s sleep-addled mind caught up with her spinning body. When it did, she realized the source of the crying wasn’t in the nursery at all. It was coming from downstairs and had been the entire time. Only now it sounded more urgent, more frightened.

      Maggie left the nursery and clomped down the stairs. At the bottom, she expected to see Ken reclining in the living-room La-Z-Boy, the baby wriggling in his arms. Instead, the chair was occupied by Ruth Clark, whose spindly arms struggled to stay wrapped around the writhing child.

      Ruth, who was only sixty but looked at least a decade older, lived down the street. She and Maggie were friends, but not friendly enough for Ruth to be in her house, holding her child, at almost eleven o’clock at night. Yet there she was, trying to hush the baby in the gray glow of the television.

      “Ruth? What’s going on?” Blinking in confusion, Maggie noted what her neighbor was wearing—a nightgown stuffed into threadbare trousers, flip-flops on her feet. She had dressed in a hurry. “Where’s Ken?”

      “You were asleep,” Ruth said with forced cheer. “So he asked me to come over and keep an eye on the baby. He had to step out for a minute.”

      “Why?”

      Ruth stayed silent as she pressed the baby into Maggie’s arms. He had been wrapped tightly in a blanket, which covered everything but his face. Whether it was Ken’s doing or Ruth’s, Maggie didn’t know. Either way, it was a bad move on such a muggy night. Both the baby and the blanket were drenched with cold sweat, which explained the bawling.

      The crying softened once Maggie settled onto the couch and loosened the blanket. Ruth sat next to her, uncomfortably close. She was hovering, Maggie realized. And watchful.

      “Did Ken say where he was going?”

      Ruth’s reply—“He didn’t”—was rushed and unconvincing.

      “What about when he’d be back?”

      “Soon.”

      “I’ll wait up for him. You don’t need to stick around.”

      “I think I should stay.”

      Maggie didn’t have the energy to protest, not that Ruth would have allowed it. The finality of her tone made it clear she intended to stay. With nothing left to say or do, Maggie stared at the television.

      What she saw astounded her.

      The screen was mostly a grainy blur—fizzy patches of black and gray. Then an image took shape through the haze. It was a figure in a bulky uniform, looking like a ghost against a background of endless darkness. The figure was on a ladder, hopping downward rung by rung.

      It paused at the bottom. It placed a foot onto the ground. It spoke.

      “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

      “Sweet Lord,” Ruth said. “He’s really standing on it.”

      He was Neil Armstrong. It was the moon. And Ruth was correct—the astronaut was standing on its surface just as easily as Maggie now sat in her living room.

      Eyes fixed on the TV, she immediately thought of Charlie. Nine years older than the baby, he had been moon crazy the past year. Earlier that afternoon, when Apollo 11 actually touched down on the moon’s surface, Charlie had cheered, jumped, and cried until he made himself sick.

      He would want to see this, Maggie knew. History was taking place.

      “I’m going to wake Charlie.”

      Ruth trailed her to the stairs. “Maggie, wait!”

      Maggie didn’t stop, continuing up the stairs with rushed purpose. At the top, her bare feet made slapping sounds on the hardwood floor as she moved down the hall to Charlie’s bedroom. Ruth remained downstairs, calling up to her.

      “Please come back! Charlie’s not there!”

      Maggie stopped, hand against the closed bedroom door. “What do you mean?”

      “Come back downstairs,” Ruth said. “I’ll explain.”

      Maggie did the opposite, pushing into the room instead. The streetlight outside the window cast a rectangle of light that stretched across the floor. Just like in the nursery, she didn’t need it. She knew every inch of the bedroom, from the telescope in the corner to the model rockets lined up on the bookshelf.

      The window was open, letting in a rainy breeze that dampened the curtains. Beneath it was Charlie’s bed, draped in a comforter dotted with moons, stars, and planets. Holding the baby with one arm, Maggie used her free hand to lift the comforter and whip it away.

      The bed, much like the baby’s crib earlier, was empty.

      “Please come downstairs.” Ruth now stood in the doorway, breath heavy, face pinched.

      “Where is he? Did Ken take him somewhere?”

      Ruth moved into the room and tried to clasp her hand. Maggie yanked it away. “Answer me, Ruth. Where is my son?”

      “He’s missing.”

      “I don’t understand.”

      But Maggie did. She understood quite well as she shuffled backward and plopped onto the empty bed. The bed that should have contained Charlie. Her boy. Whose whereabouts were now unknown.

      “Is that where Ken went? To look for him?”

      “He called the police,” Ruth said. “Then he woke me and Mort.”

      Mort was Ruth’s husband. Maggie presumed he was also looking for Charlie, along with the police and God knows who else. Apparently everyone but her knew her son was gone.

      “Why didn’t you tell me?”

      “Ken didn’t think you’d wake up. And if you did, he knew you’d be worried.”

      Damn right she was worried. Her body might have been motionless on her son’s bed, but her mind was a whirling dervish of fears and bad thoughts. Where was Charlie? How long had he been gone? Was it too late to find him? When Maggie’s brain settled down, her body started up again. She rose from the bed and stomped past Ruth into the hallway.

      “I have to look for him,” she said. “I have to find him.”

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