Second Child: A Novel

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 1 xa0 When Polly MacIver awoke just before dawn that morning, she had not the slightest presentiment that she was about to die. As her mind swam lazily in the ebbing tide of sleep, she found herself giggling silently at the memory of the dream that had just roused her. It had been Thanksgiving Day in the dream, and the house was filled with people. Some of them were familiar to her. Tom was sprawled out on the floor, his big frame stretched in front of the fireplace as he studied a chessboard on which Teri had apparently trapped his queen. Teri herself was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, grinning impudently at her father’s predicament. There were others scattered around the living room—more, indeed, than Polly would have thought the room could hold. But the dream had had a logic of its own, and it hadn’t seemed to matter how many people, strange and familiar, had come in—the room seemed magically to expand for them. It was a happy occasion filled with good cheer until Polly had gone to the kitchen to inspect the dinner. There, disaster awaited her. She must have turned the oven too high, for curls of smoke were drifting up from the corners of the door. But as she bent over to open the oven door, she was not concerned, for exactly the same thing had happened too many times before. For Polly, cooking was an art she had never come close to mastering. She opened the door and, sure enough, thick smoke poured out into the kitchen, engulfing her, then rolling on through the small dining room and into the living room, where the coughing of her guests and the impatient yowl of her daughter finally jarred her awake. xa0 The memory of the dream began to fade from her mind, and Polly stretched languidly, then rolled over to snuggle against the warmth of Tom’s body. Outside, a summer storm was building, and just as she was about to drift back into sleep, a bolt of lightning slashed through the faint grayness of dawn, instantly followed by a thunderclap that jerked her fully awake. She sat straight up in bed, gasping in shock at the sharp retort. xa0 Instantly, she was seized by a fit of coughing as smoke filled her lungs. xa0 Her eyes widened with sudden fear. The smoke was real, not a vestige of the dream. xa0 A split second later she heard the crackling of flames. xa0 Throwing the covers back, Polly grabbed her husband’s shoulder and shook him violently. “Tom! Tom!” xa0 With what seemed like agonizing slowness, Tom rolled over, moaned, then reached out to her. She twisted away from him, fumbling for the lamp on her nightstand before she found the switch. xa0 Nothing happened. xa0 “Tom!” she screamed, her voice rising with the panic building inside her. “Wake up! The house is on fire!” xa0 Tom came awake, instantly rising and shoving his arms into the sleeves of his bathrobe. xa0 Polly, wearing nothing but her thin nylon negligee, ran to the door and grasped the knob, only to jerk her hand reflexively away from its searing heat. “Teri!” she moaned, her voice breaking as she spoke her daughter’s name. “Oh, God, Tom. We have to get Teri out.” xa0 But Tom was already pushing her aside. Wrapped in one of the wool blankets from the bed, he covered the brass doorknob with one of its corners before trying to turn it. Finally he pulled the door open an inch. xa0 Smoke poured through the gap, a penetrating cloud of searing fog that reached toward them with angry fingers, clutching at them, trying to draw them into its suffocating grasp. xa0 Buried in the formless body of smoke was the glowing soul of the fire itself. Polly instinctively shrank away from the monster that had engulfed her home, and when Tom spoke to her, his shouted words seemed to echo dimly from afar. xa0 “I’ll get Teri. Go out the window!” xa0 Frozen with terror, Polly saw the door open wider; a split second later her husband disappeared into the maw of the beast that had invaded her home. xa0 The door slammed shut. xa0 Polly wanted to go after him, to follow Tom into the fire, to hold on to him as they went after her daughter. Without thinking, she moved toward the door, but then his words resounded in her mind. xa0 “Go out the window!” xa0 A helpless moan strangling in her throat, she dragged herself across the room to the window and pulled it open. She breathed the fresh air outside, then looked down. xa0 Fifteen feet below her lay the concrete driveway that connected the street in front to the garage behind the house. There was no ledge, no tree, not even a drainpipe to hang on to. If she jumped, surely she would break her legs. xa0 She shrank back from the window and turned to the door once more. She had started across the smoke-filled room when her foot touched something soft. xa0 The bedspread, lying in a heap at the foot of the bed. She snatched it up, wrapping it around her body, then, like Tom a few minutes earlier, used one of its corners to protect her fingers from the searing heat of the door. Drawing her breath in slowly, filtering the smoke through the thick padding of the spread, she filled her lungs with air. xa0 At last, battling with the fear that threatened to overwhelm her, she pulled the door open. xa0 The fire in the hall, instantly sucking in the fresh air from the open window, rose up in front of her, its crackle building into a vicious roar. xa0 Time seemed to slow down, each second dragging itself out for an eternity. xa0 Flames reached out to her, and Polly was helpless to pull herself away as panic clasped her in its paralyzing grip. She felt the burning heat against her face, even felt the blisters begin to form wherever her skin was exposed. xa0 She heard a strange, soft sound, like the sizzling of oil in a hot skillet, and instinctively reached up to touch her hair. xa0 Her hair was gone, devoured by the hungry fire, and she stared blankly for a moment at the ashy residue on her fingertips. What had been a thick mass of dark blond hair only a moment ago was now only an oddly greasy smudge on the blistered skin of her hand. xa0 Her mind began closing down, rejecting what she saw, denying the searing heat that all but overwhelmed her. xa0 She staggered backward, the bedspread tangling around her feet as if it had joined forces with the fire to destroy her. xa0 Faintly, as if in the distance somewhere impossibly far beyond the confines of the house, she heard Tom’s voice, calling out to Teri. xa0 She heard vague thumpings, as if he might be pounding on a door somewhere. xa0 Then nothing. xa0 Nothing but the hiss and chatter of the flames, dancing before her, hypnotizing her. xa0 Backing away, stumbling and tripping, she retreated from the fury of the fire. xa0 She bumped into something, something hard and ungiving, and though her eyes remained fixed on the inferno that was already invading the bedroom, her hand groped behind her. xa0 And felt nothing. xa0 Panic seized her again, for suddenly the familiar space of the bedroom seemed to vanish, leaving her alone with the consuming flames. xa0 Slowly, her mind assembling information piece by piece, she realized that she had reached the open window. xa0 Whimpering, she sat down on the ledge and began to swing her legs through the gap between the sill and the open casement; her right leg first, then her left. xa0 At last she was able to turn her back on the fire. Gripping the window frame, she stared out into the faintly graying dawn for a moment, then let her gaze shift downward toward the concrete below. xa0 She steeled herself, and clinging to the bedspread, let herself slip over the ledge. xa0 Just as she began to drop away from the window, the corner of the bedspread still inside the room caught on something. Polly felt the pull, found herself unreasonably speculating on what might have snagged it. xa0 The handle of the radiator? xa0 A stray nail that had worked loose from the floor molding? xa0 Falling! Suddenly she was upside down, slipping out of the shroud of the bedspread. xa0 Her fingers grasped at the material; it slipped away as if coated with oil. xa0 She dropped toward the concrete headfirst, only beginning to raise her arms to break her fall as her skull crashed against the driveway. xa0 She felt nothing; no pain at all. xa0 There was only a momentary sense of surprise, and a small cracking sound from within her neck as her vertebrae shattered and crushed her spinal cord. xa0 It had been no more than three minutes since she had awakened, laughing quietly, from her dream. xa0 Now the quiet laughter was over, and Polly MacIver was dead. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. John Saul ’s first novel, Suffer the Children , was an immediate million-copy bestseller. His other bestselling suspense novels include Perfect Nightmare , Black Creek Crossing , and The Presence. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling serial thriller The Blackstone Chronicles , initially published in six installments but now available in one complete volume. Saul divides his time between Seattle and Hawaii. --This text refers to the paperback edition.