Amnesia (40 page)

When the blast first hit, Lissa was pushed down to the floor instinctively by the man sitting at her left, but soon recognized the possibility of injury to those around her. She struggled out from under Drake, saw he still held the phone, but didn’t really take notice, concerned with finding if anyone was hurt.

She checked on Carrie first, and then Jack and Drake—all were okay. She saw that Bill had crawled over to the window, and decided from the lack of a blood trail that he was alright, although she suspected he might cut his hands on the sharp glass. Then she turned to Nancy, and gasped in horror.

Nancy had been standing in front of the sofa, beside the loveseat, when the bomb exploded, having just handed the phone to Drake. She was directly in the path of the glass shards as the windows blew out. She was just turning to return to her husband, exposing her front to the window. She caught the full force of the impact in her chest and face. Blood seeped from the wounds on her face from the raking shards. Her left eye was covered in the red liquid, and Lissa was unsure if her eye would survive or not.

But the worst wounds were in her chest. Six pieces of glass protruded from the light blue blouse she wore, with blood oozing from them. Five of them looked mostly superficial, but the sixth had about four inches sticking out from it, and was bleeding profusely. It appeared to have entered just to the right of her heart, piercing the Superior Vena Cava, the vein that brings deoxygenated blood back from the body to the heart. It would be a miracle if it weren’t fatal.

Lissa ripped the blouse off as far as she could, and grabbed the antimacassar off the side of the sofa and wound it around the wound, careful to not disturb the glass. As it would need to be removed surgically, she sought simply to immobilize it and stop the bleeding. She quickly checked the other wounds, and decided they were indeed superficial, but she left that glass alone to be removed in the ER as well, to allow the objects to help stem the flow of blood.

That done she moved to Nancy’s face, and grabbed another antimacassar to clean off the blood. Luckily the scratches weren’t serious, except for the question about the eye. She decided to let the ER doctors handle those wounds as well, so instead packed cloth around the injury and held everything in place. The woman needed to be in the hospital quickly.

“Get me an ambulance, now!” she shouted.

“Already done,” Jack spoke quietly in her ear. She glanced up and saw the tear streaked face of the police captain directly in front of her. She pushed through professional efficiency seeing that he needed a soft touch.

“I don’t know how bad it is, Jack,” she spoke softly. “The eye and this piece in her chest worry me, but we won’t know until we get her to the hospital where they have the tools necessary to take care of it. She’s still alive, and I intend to keep her that way.”

“I understand,” he said. He looked like he was about to say more, but stopped, swallowing hard.

Drake watched all of this detachedly. Until the final words, when rage erupted inside him. Only then did he realize he still held the phone in his hand. He pulled it up to his ear and shouted into the phone.

“If she dies I’ll make it my personal responsibility to make you pay, Marcuse!”

The man on the other end of the line roared with laughter. “We’ll see about that. So what will it be? You and Brandon at her old apartment in twenty minutes, or shall I just finish the job now? Your choice.”

Drake felt trapped. He knew Marcuse was serious about killing them all. He also knew that if he met with him Marcuse would kill him, and probably Lissa as well. At least he had more of a chance if they were face to face. At least there would be no bombs then. Either way he would probably die. But if he were to save his friends, it wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice.

He recalled his dream from the previous evening, about his concern for Lissa if something happened to him. He looked over at her form, busily caring for the downed woman, and knew he would do anything within his power to save her.

“Fine, I’ll meet with you, but leave Lissa out of it.”

“No deal. It’s the two of you or everyone is dead. You have ten seconds to decide. I’m rather impatient these days, thanks to you and your meddling!”

Drake had no idea if Marcuse was bluffing, but surrounded by the destruction the evil man was capable of spreading, what else could he think? Ten seconds to decide who lives and who dies? At least they had more of a chance if he acquiesced than they would have cornered here.

“Well, what will it be? Five, four, three, two….”

“Alright! Just give me a minute to make sure everyone will be okay.”

“Twenty minutes. At twenty minutes and one second, the rest are dead.”

*
             
             
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*

Drake shut the car door behind Lissa, and then went around to the driver’s side of the Saturn and got in, slamming the door. He started the 10N Quad Coupe, backed away from the smoldering Pontiac in front of him, and pulled out turning the car around. The air was stifling inside the enclosed car, and he rolled the window down until the air conditioner had a chance to start cooling. The heat only added to his fury, and he jammed the accelerator hard as he turned the corner without stopping, missing an oncoming car by inches.

“Pull over Drake,” Lissa requested quietly.

“I’m fine,” he retorted, embarrassed.

“Please pull over for a minute. I need to talk to you about something.”

He glanced over at her, saw the sober look on her face, and mutely pulled the car over to the side, putting it in park, letting the engine idle.

“Drake, this has been the hardest two weeks of my life. I’ve had two cars demolished, a man killed on my front door step, my apartment burned to the ground, and several of my friends seriously injured. But all of that was nothing compared to finding, and falling in love with you.”

She paused, collecting her thoughts, and he was transported back to the scriptures he had read that morning about God giving the gift of love. It was true; it was all of little consequence when compared to that gift so freely given.

“The point I think I’m trying to make is that I love you. I never thought I would ever feel this way about anyone, and I am so glad I do now. And I am completely awestruck that you would be interested in me at all.” Again she paused, taking a deep breath to steady her heart and mind.

“No matter what happens to us now, I needed to make sure you knew that. If somehow we make it through all of this, I want to share my life with you, every single part, no matter how bad it gets.

“That’s all,” she concluded, “I just needed you to know, just in case.”

“And you need to know that I feel the same way,” Drake confided. “I love you more than anything, including life itself. The only thing that scares me is that we won’t have the opportunity to seal that love if Marcuse has his way.” Now he was the one to take a deep breath before forging ahead.

“Lissa, I know this is a really bad time for this, but,” he paused for a moment, looking deep into her accepting, encouraging eyes. “I want to take you to the temple, to seal our love in eternal marriage. I guess this is an awkward way of asking you to marry me, so that we can have the peace of knowing we will always be together. Not for just a few years, but for all eternity. Will you marry me, in the temple, forever?”

For a moment he thought she would just sit there saying nothing, tears forming in her eyes then flowing silently down her face. He wondered if he had really blown it, but then she started to laugh. Startled, he just stared at her.

Suddenly she undid her seatbelt and threw her arms around his neck, holding him as closely as she could in the cramped seat, all the time laughing. Finally, through the tears and laughter she expressed her thoughts.

“You’re right, you have awful timing. But you do have the right words. Of course I will marry you. But first do you mind if we take care of the little issue of Marcuse, so we can take a nice long honeymoon without worrying about him?”

He blushed slightly at the mention of a honeymoon, but he just held her tight, kissing her the way a fiancé should kiss the woman to whom he is engaged. A moment later they separated, and reality returned. He put the car in gear and headed toward their rendezvous with terror.

*
             
             
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*

Maritza
was in a foul mood already this morning. She hated her stint at this awful mansion, and had drunk herself into a stupor the night before. As a result she had a nasty hangover on top of having to work in the gloomy castle, which was always fastidiously clean anyhow. Only the owner never seemed satisfied. He would rant and rave over every tiny thing. “There’s water spots on this faucet,” “the bedding is wrinkled,” and such, even for rooms which was obvious he never entered except for his weekly inspection.

Besides that, there was a creepy feel to the place, like someone was always watching, or perhaps ghosts were following behind you. Throughout the day she always found herself looking over her shoulder to see who was there, then crossing herself when she saw no one. Amongst the other cleaning ladies they always called this “la casa de la muerte” or “the house of death.”

Today had been no exception. She had arrived late but was lucky enough to miss the owner who had already left. She went through the normal routine of changing the sheets, gathering the laundry, and tidying the sole bedroom, and was starting on vacuuming the halls. She had just gotten to the detested library when she heard the chirping.

This was the worst part of the house—the library. It always smelled like someone had been smoking cigars, but there were never any ashes to be found. Sometimes she thought she heard footsteps on the hardwood floors, only to open the door and see no one there. Often she would find the balcony doors thrown open when there was no one there. Then, a few days earlier, she had entered the room to see that all of the books had been pulled off one of the walls, and sent flying across the room to land in a heap against the other wall. Although she never said anything, she thought that a poltergeist had done the deed, and swore she would never enter the room again. Then the chirping began.

It wasn’t the first time she had heard the sound, and believed it was angry ghosts trying to lure her into the room. The last time was just last night. She had been working late because the owner had decided that she needed to redo one of the guestrooms, which had yet to hold a guest, and the kitchen, which the cook had already rendered spotless. Later she heard the owner stomping around upstairs, followed by yelling that she needed to redo the hall. Angrily she had climbed the stairs, only to see footprints that appeared to be made from ash.

Furiously she set to work to clean the long hall once again, muttering epithets and curses under her breath. She had all but determined that she would rather quit than work here again, when the chirping sounded from the library. At first she ignored it as she had before, but it continued to beckon her, taunting her for thinking such things, forcing her to recant her earlier thoughts. As soon as she apologized, again under her breath, the chirping stopped, the angry spirits appeased. From there she went straight home for a good stiff drink.

This morning however, in the bright light of the mid-morning, she heard the sound again. Her anger flooded back through her as she remembered all the nasty things the owner, and of course the angry spirits, had done to her. She decided it was time to face them, regardless of the outcome. She hated this place and its occupant, and decided she would never come back again once she finished her job and got her check. It was time to face her fears straight on.

She opened the door and quickly located the source of the chirping, a tall, narrow table just inside, and approached it warily. She rubbed her moist hands on her jeans, and then pulled open the drawer. There was nothing there. She almost screamed in terror, her worst fears verified—it was the sound of the ghosts mocking her.

She slammed the drawer and started to turn, when her mind registered that something in the drawer had broken when she had banged it. She turned back to the table and pulled open the drawer to assess the extent of damage. Stooping down to see the back of the drawer, she saw that the wood was sitting slightly ajar, with a shadow and a slice of wood behind it. She pushed on the piece and it gave, revealing a secret compartment hiding a ringing cell phone.

Sucking in a gasp of air, finally noticing that she had been holding her breath, she picked up the Motorola flip phone, opened it and hit the send key.

“Hola? Lo siento, no habla ingles.”
The voice on the other end said something in English about “Marcuse” but she didn’t recognize the question. He then asked her for the man of the house, and she simply stated that he was not available. The voice seemed curiously satisfied when she told him whose house it was, but she didn’t understand what he was saying, so ended the call. She put the cell phone and the false wall back where it belonged, and went back to cleaning the house, feeling lighter than she had all week, now knowing the source of her irritation. Perhaps this house wasn’t so haunted after all.