In the Middle of the Night Read online

  NOVELS BY ROBERT CORMIER

  After the First Death

  Beyond the Chocolate War

  The Bumblebee Flies Anyway

  The Chocolate War

  8 Plus 1

  Fade

  Frenchtown Summer

  Heroes

  I Am the Cheese

  In the Middle of the Night

  The Rag and Bone Shop

  Tenderness

  Tunes for Bears to Dance To

  We All Fall Down

  Published by

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers

  a division of

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  Text copyright © 1995 by Robert Cormier

  Cover illustration copyright © 1995 by Mel Grant

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press, New York, New York 10036.

  The trademark Laurel-Leaf Library® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the US. Patent and Trademark Office.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-53252-7

  RL: 6.1

  v3.1

  TO THE GRANDCHILDREN

  Jennifer Sullivan

  Travis, Darren and Mallory Cormier

  Emily, Claire, Sam and Drew Hayes

  Ellen and Amy Wheeler

  With Love

  Contents

  Cover

  Novels by Robert Cormier

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Three

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part Four

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  Me and my sister. My sister and me. Sustaining each other through the years, although we often argued about what she insists on doing. The telephone calls, for instance. I have allowed them, without approving of them. But now she wants to call the boy, instead of the father.

  I am writing all this down. I have never kept a diary or a journal or anything like that. My thoughts and memories were enough, but now that she has begun to assert herself, I find that it’s necessary to keep a record. Why? For my own good, my own testimony, in case anything happens.

  Stop pretending, she says. You know what’s going to happen.

  I ignore her. I don’t answer.

  Don’t you? she asks.

  Don’t I what? Answering her but not wanting to be drawn into her plans, and knowing that I won’t be able to resist.

  Don’t you know what’s going to happen? Think of what happened to me. I’m the one who went through it all.

  My sister’s name is Louise but everyone always calls her Lulu because she couldn’t pronounce Louise properly when she was a baby. It came out something like Lulu.

  We’ve always spent a lot of time together. Even though she is less than a year older, she treats me as if I am a baby. She used to call me Baby-Boy and still calls me Baby.

  Even as a kid she acted like she was my mother. She loved to touch me. Tickle me or caress me. She would grab and poke and massage me, and this would drive me crazy. I’d begin to giggle, then laugh, and then get sick to my stomach.

  Stop, stop, I’d cry, and she would finally stop and take me in her arms and hold me, kissing my cheeks, wet kisses, sometimes tears in the kisses, and she’d tell me how much she loved me.

  I will take care of you forever, Baby, she’d say. I will never leave you.

  And I believed her.

  We went to live with Aunt Mary after our parents died. Aunt Mary was my mother’s sister. She never married and taught second grade at St. Luke’s Parochial School. She stopped in at St. Luke’s Church next to the school every day after classes. She said three rosaries every night before she went to bed, kneeling on the floor. She ran the household like she ran her classes, a time set aside to do everything. Our time was from seven to eight o’clock. She devoted that hour to Lulu and me, and we devoted it to her. We would read books out loud or put on small plays for her that Lulu made up. The plays were mostly her versions of movies or television shows. Like the final scene in an old movie called Wuthering Heights where she was Cathy dying in bed and I was Heathcliff and had to pick her up after she died and carry her to the window. My legs always buckled when I picked her up and she’d get mad at me and I’d get mad at her because I didn’t want her to die, even in a play. Sometimes she’d switch to comedy because she liked to see Aunt Mary laugh. Aunt Mary did not laugh often and Lulu was delighted when Aunt Mary suddenly yelped with laughter. Mostly she laughed when Lulu presented her version of I Love Lucy. She played Lucy, of course, and I was Ricky Ricardo and she made me practice his accent.

  Aunt Mary was our mother and father and all our aunts and uncles put together. There was no one else in our family but the three of us. Our mother and father died when we were very young. I can’t remember them at all, although Lulu claims she can. Times when I was feeling sad, she’d tell me stories about them. How they loved to dance. How they’d turn on the radio or put a record on the phonograph and dance in the kitchen and float through the rooms in each other’s arms, gliding over the linoleum in the kitchen, almost as if their feet weren’t touching the floor.

  How can you remember that, I asked, if I can’t?

  I guess because I’m brighter than you, she said.

  But you were two years old when they died.

  A smart two-year-old, she said. Know what? I remember popping out. I remember the slap. Right on my bottom. Hurt like hell … And she laughed.

  I never knew whether she was making up stories or not, but I loved to hear her tell about our mother and father dancing through the rooms of the apartment.

  Their favorite song was Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas.” Everybody else played Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” but they put on “Blue Christmas” and danced around the room.

  But “Blue Christmas” is a sad song, I said. Sad words, sad music.

  “White Christmas” isn’t a barrel of laughs, either, she said. Maybe they liked sad songs because they had an inkling about what was going to happen to them.

  I envied Lulu because she remembered so much. And even if she was only pretending, I envied her ability to make it seem real.

  We lived on the second floor below the Denehans and their six children. Eileen Denehan was Lulu’s best friend. I was not best friends with any of the Denehans. They were loud and lively, running all over the place, but none of them liked to read or ever went near the library. Eileen’s brothers—Billy, Kevin, Mickey, Raymond and Tom—played baseball, and Lulu joked that they should take up basketball and have a team of their own. They ignored me and I never looked at them. Anyway, I had Lulu. And Lulu had me. But she also had Eileen. Eileen was the brightest of them all, and the liveliest.

  Like Lulu. They could finish each other’s sentences and they loved ridiculous talking-animal jokes, making them
up, jokes that were funny only to them. Why does a kangaroo say ouch? Answer: Pouch. I think their ridiculous jokes were some kind of code, but I never asked Lulu about that.

  Eileen told us about the big Halloween show at the Globe Theater. Magic acts and singers and dancers and jugglers and one year a man who walked on a wire high above the heads of the kids in the audience. But there are only so many seats, she said. And you have to be impoverished to be eligible for a ticket.

  What’s impoverished? Eileen’s brother Billy asked.

  Poor, Eileen said.

  I know what impoverished means and we’re not impoverished, Lulu said.

  Yes you are, Eileen said in her know-it-all manner, which matched Lulu’s. Which is why they were such good friends.

  My idea of fun isn’t going to a show with a thousand screaming kids, Lulu said.

  Then she saw my face. I liked the idea of seeing a magician perform tricks live onstage and not just in the movies.

  Okay, Lulu said, if we have to be impoverished to see this show, then that’s what we will be.

  Later, in our seven-to-eight time with Aunt Mary, Lulu said: I know we’re not really impoverished, but there’s this Halloween show we’d like to see that Eileen upstairs told us about.

  Oh, I know about that show, Aunt Mary said. It’s a tradition here in Wickburg. Why didn’t I think of it before, having you both go to the show? She began to cry.

  See what you’re missing with an old maid bringing you up? Tears on her cheeks now like small soap bubbles that had burst. You don’t have to be impoverished to go, and you’re both eligible. Because you’re orphans, poor things. Really crying now, her cheeks messy and her nose running. Lulu handed her a Kleenex.

  We were orphans, all right, Lulu and me.

  We were barely two when my mother and father went to the drive-in theater one night. They usually did not go to drive-in theaters because that’s where the horror movies were shown and young couples made out in cars, and wise guys threw popcorn around and drank beer while sitting on the hoods of their cars. But my father was a sentimental one, Aunt Mary said. My mother and father went to a drive-in on their first date and he talked my mother into going again, for old times’ sake. But the wise guys were wiser than ever that night, drunk or maybe high. They gathered around my parents’ car and began to shake it back and forth and bang on the hood and my father put down the windows and swore at them, and finally drove out of there. But the wise guys followed in their cars—two or three of them—and chased them down Route 2, bumping them from behind and cutting in front of them. My father lost control and his car smashed into a tree. Looked like a busted accordion, Lulu said.

  She claimed she remembered the night they went to that drive-in, how my mother wore a blue dress with sequins like she was going to a fancy ball and my father wore a white shirt and his best tie, blue with red stripes. They looked beautiful and happy, Lulu said, and that’s a good thing to remember. But I think she only told me that to make me feel good.

  Anyway, that’s how we became orphans and went to live with Aunt Mary.

  Lulu never liked to ride in buses. She could not stand the smell of exhaust which always seemed to her to seep up through the floor, so it did not matter whether the windows were opened or closed.

  The bus was crowded, everyone but Lulu excited over the prospect of the show at the Globe with a magician who, they said, made people disappear. Everyone was talking at once, and three or four kids were singing some silly song about a duck. Lulu and Eileen and I were crammed together, me in the middle, in one seat. Eileen ignored me as usual, and so did her brothers. They kept running up and down the aisles, paying no attention to the pleas of the driver to please sit down everybody. Eileen could not believe that I had taken a book along, a paperback I had slipped into my pocket and thought nobody had noticed. I always carried a book with me wherever I went.

  When we arrived at the Globe, a huge sign in front of the theater showed an evil-looking magician whose hands dripped with blood. Everybody on the bus, even the Denehans, were awestruck and silent.

  Single file, the bus driver called out, and everyone obeyed. Lulu held my hand even though I was walking behind her.

  Got your coupons? Lulu asked, looking at me over her shoulder. I nodded: coupons for free candy and soda pop—naturally I had them safe in my pocket.

  Inside, Lulu dispatched me to find three good seats while she took my coupons. Chocolate, I told her in case some kind of ice cream was involved.

  I pushed and pulled my way through kids running every which way, yelling and laughing, and found three seats about halfway down from the stage. There would be no possibility of reading my book until Lulu showed up because I had to defend the seats from kids looking for their own seats: These are saved, I said a thousand times.

  The Globe was an old theater, not like those at the shopping center, and kids pointed up at the big chandelier, all frozen glass and gold, reminding me of a stalactite. But the bulbs were not lit and the chandelier hung there, suspended by a wire that looked very thin and threadlike.

  Lulu saw me looking up at the chandelier.

  Don’t be nervous, she said.

  But I couldn’t help being nervous and Lulu could always read my mind.

  That chandelier makes me nervous, too, Eileen said. She looked around and summoned Billy and Kevin. Their cheeks were scarlet and their red hair disheveled from all their activities.

  Find us three seats away from here, Eileen commanded.

  Off they went, pushing and shoving, crowding other kids out of the way. We stood there in the middle of that pandemonium, Lulu and Eileen munching popcorn, their lips wet with butter while my ice cream melted on the cone, oozing over my fingers. They had no napkins, Lulu said, disgusted, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Finally, Billy beckoned us. He had probably used strong-arm tactics, but one way or another he had found us seats three-quarters of the way from the stage, side by side, under the balcony.

  It’s pretty far from the stage, I complained.

  Lulu gave me her patient look.

  We all sat down together.

  Ten minutes later, Lulu was dead.

  And the nightmare began.

  Part One

  The ringing telephone blistered the night, stripping him of sleep, like a bandage torn from flesh. He looked toward the digital clock: 3:18 in vivid scarlet numbers. Instantly alert, he thought: it’s beginning again, but too early—much too early this year.

  The first call usually came sometime in October, a week or two before the anniversary. This, however, was early September, in the final hours of a lingering heat wave. Fans turned lazily in the bedroom windows, fans that did not blur the sound of the telephone, incessant and insistent. Please make it a wrong number, he prayed.

  Raising himself on one elbow, he listened, counting the rings, pausing after each one … six (pause), seven (pause) … and heard his father padding wearily down the hallway. Did not actually hear his father but felt him proceeding slowly, reluctantly, but going all the same.

  The telephone’s ringing ended abruptly.

  He waited, still half-sitting, half-lying, his elbow jammed into the mattress. Perspiration dampened his forehead. He strained to listen, heard nothing. Finally, he got out of bed and walked carefully to the door—his door was always open a crack—and, squinting, saw his father, his white shorts and T-shirt stamped against the darkness, standing with the telephone to his ear, listening. He watched him for long moments, not daring to move.

  His father put down the telephone and stood there, mute and alone and still.

  Denny knew then that it had not been a wrong number. He stared at his father as his father stared at the phone. Sighing softly, Denny turned and made his way back to the bed, eyes getting accustomed to the darkness now, shape and sizes assuming identity—CD player, desk upon which he did his homework, bulletin board—all of it stark, impersonal, like a hotel room. Chilly suddenly, he snapped off th
e window fan.

  He stood at the window, looking out at the quiet street, subdued in shadows, the maple tree across the street like a giant ink blot. The windows of the other apartment buildings were dark. Down the street, a splash of light from the 24-Hour Store. He wondered what kind of person shopped at three o’clock in the morning. Or used a telephone at that hour.

  Back in bed, finally, he tried to relax and bring on sleep. He tossed and turned, the sheet entangling his legs. Thinking of that terrible October date a few weeks away, he vowed that this time he wouldn’t stand by like his father and do nothing. He wasn’t a little kid anymore. He was sixteen. He didn’t know what he would do, but he would do something.

  “I’m not my father,” he muttered into his pillow.

  Sleep took a long time coming.

  I hear her restless in the night, walking the floor, pacing up and down. I don’t move in my bed, pretending I’m asleep. I know what she wants to do. I know that she wants to call him. I hope she doesn’t. But I also know that Halloween is coming and she must call.

  She always stands by my bed before calling. Making sure I’m asleep. I try to make my breathing regular. I fake snoring, not too much because then she’ll know I’m trying to fool her. What I want to say is: Please don’t call. Leave him alone. But it’s futile. Especially this year.

  Last night, she went through the routine again. Pacing up and down, standing at the window looking out, then beside my bed.

  I heard her punching the numbers on the phone. That eerie tune the Touch-Tone plays. I heard her voice. Quiet at first, gentle. Then harsh as she got angry, as she always does.

  Why does he listen? I wonder. Why doesn’t he hang up? Why doesn’t he take the phone off the hook at night? Or have it taken out?

  What does he say to you? I asked her once.

  Nothing, she said. He just listens. But I can almost hear his heart beating.

  Last night was different, though. She did not become angry and her voice was almost tender as she spoke to him.