Authors: Patricia Wallace
Forty-One
The nurse handed Cheryl a clipboard. “Read this. It says, in a nutshell, that you are signing yourself out of the hospital against medical advice. It releases the hospital and your doctor from responsibility if you go home and collapse or something.”
“Something?”
“You never know,” the nurse said. “If you still want to go through with it, sign here.” She pointed to a line on the printed form.
Cheryl scanned the sheet quickly, then accepted the pen the nurse held out to her, and scribbled her name. She gave both back to the nurse. “Thank you.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” The nurse signed on the witness line, glanced at her watch, then wrote down the time and date. She stuck the pen in her pocket, then tore the pink copy of the tri-colored form free, and handed it to Cheryl. “There you are; you’re free to go. Good luck, Miss Appleton.”
“I’m going to need it,” Cheryl said.
As he’d promised, Noah Houston was waiting for her in front of the hospital in a sleek-looking sports car.
How in the world was she going to contort her aching, stiff body into that low-slung seat?
Houston got out of the car and came running up the stairs with an open umbrella as she was making her way down, wincing with every jarring step.
“How are you?” he asked, taking her arm.
“I feel like Frankenstein’s monster. Put a couple bolts in my neck and I think I’ve got a career.”
“Feeling pretty stiff?”
“You could say that.” Her knee and ankle joints seemed to be fused, and her muscles felt tight, stinging from the effort.
“Well, that’s to be expected.”
“Maybe you expected it, but wait until you have to tie me to the fender of your car to get me home.”
He laughed. “We’ll get you inside.”
“If we do,” she said doubtfully, “we may never get me out again.”
“Leave it to me. Remember, doctors know a lot about anatomy.”
His own was pretty great, Cheryl noted, and then felt her color begin to rise.
“You’re over-exerting yourself,” he said, “your face is flushed. Lean on me.”
Cheryl was more than happy to do as the doctor ordered.
Houston was as good as his word. Somehow he manipulated her bruised and protesting limbs into the car, although they both got rained on in the process. He even fastened her seatbelt for her.
Maybe there was something to be said for being incapacitated.
As difficult as it had been, she had to admit that when they drove away from the hospital, she felt better than she had a right to feel.
Except for the cold lump in the pit of her stomach.
“Are you scared?” he asked.
“You read my mind.” She rubbed her hands together to warm them. Her fingers were so cold they ached. “I told you I’m a coward.”
“I don’t believe that.” He glanced at her. “You’re here.”
She took a breath and held it, then released it in a sigh. “I’m here, but I still don’t know if what we’re doing is the right thing.”
“It is.”
For a moment, the only sound was that of the windshield wipers. In the distance, lightning flashed, followed by a roll of thunder.
The weather was appropriate, she thought. All that was missing was the eerie music.
“Noah, do you know what’ll happen to you if you . . . if you do what you’re planning?”
“I do,” Houston said and nodded. “I’ll turn myself in to the police and they’ll arrest me. Eventually, I’ll go to jail.”
“Will you lose your license to practice medicine?”
“I imagine so.” He smiled faintly. “The medical establishment tends to take a dim view of doctors who commit felonies. But it doesn’t matter.”
“How can you say that? I mean, I don’t know you very well, and maybe it’s none of my business, but what you’re doing—make that what
we’re
doing—is going to ruin your life.”
“I accept that.”
“I don’t.” She watched his hands as he turned the steering wheel and they even looked like a doctor’s hands to her, strong and capable.
A killer’s hands?
“Isn’t there another way?” she asked, feeling a little desperate now that the time was near.
“We’ve been over this before.”
In fact, they’d discussed it at length, long past the time when visiting hours were over. “Doctor’s privilege,” he’d said then.
He was willing, it seemed, to give all of that up. Privilege, prestige, the respect afforded to professionals who’d sacrificed years of their lives in the service to others.
He might wind up sacrificing his life as well; California had reinstated the death penalty in 1972 and although no one had yet been executed, the gas chamber was ready and waiting.
“We could go to the police,” she said, “and tell them everything we know.”
“They wouldn’t believe us.”
“You don’t know that.” They were nearing the street where she lived, and suddenly it seemed urgent that she convince him they were making a mistake. “You told me you’ve kept a record of all the things you’ve found out, names and dates of the kids who she’s hurt—”
“Who
I
say she’s hurt. I can’t prove any of it.”
“What about Sarah Lassiter? She told you she thinks Jill is a witch. And Kevin, you could talk to him. I’m sure there are other kids—”
“Do you think if I marched into the sheriff’s office with a gang of kids and told them a story about witches and goblins they’d believe me?”
“But—”
“Even if they did, even if the sheriff believes in the bogeyman and we managed to convince them, what do you think they’d do?”
Cheryl was silent.
“Nothing,” he answered for her. “She’s seven years old. I can’t see anyone filing a complaint charging her with assault—”
“I’d do it.”
“Then the school board and your principal really would insist on having your head examined.”
She knew he was right.
“The point I’m making,” he cautioned, “is that asking the law to handle it won’t work. The legal system doesn’t recognize that a power like Jill’s could exist. If they did anything at all, they’d investigate. We haven’t time to wait for the wheels of justice to turn.”
They pulled into her drive and he killed the engine. With the wipers off, the windshield was sheeted by rain.
Cheryl frowned. “It’s a high price you’re paying,” she said quietly.
“Look, if you’d rather not go through with this, tell me. I’ll understand.”
“It isn’t that.” She blinked. “Well, actually, it is that, but it doesn’t seem as though either one of us has a choice.”
“All you have to do is make the call and leave the rest to me.”
It sounded so simple. Why did she have the feeling it was not?
The nurse had helped her get dressed at the hospital and she hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to change her clothes. By the time she’d struggled into a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck sweater, she was damp with perspiration and short of breath.
Even a simple thing like tying her shoelaces became a major project. She knotted both laces so they wouldn’t come undone at an inopportune moment.
“Like when I’m running for my life,” she said, gingerly getting to her feet. “At zero miles per hour.”
She found Noah in her dining room, sitting at the table with an array of medical supplies before him. He was holding a small bottle with a gray rubber seal and as she watched he plunged a needle through the seal.
He held the bottle upside down and retracted the plunger on the syringe.
The barrel of the syringe slowly began to fill with a clear liquid.
Cheryl bit her lip. “Is that it?”
“Yes.” Noah hadn’t taken his eyes from the bottle.
“Will it work?”
“It should.”
“If it doesn’t?”
“Then we punt.”
And run like hell, she thought, which means I’m going to be shit out of luck.
“I have something for you, too,” he said. He withdrew the needle, capped it with a little blue plastic sheath, and put it on the table.
“You mean like those drugs they give race horses so they can run faster? Or at all?”
“No.” He tore two squares off a narrow sheet of individually bubble-packed tablets.
“What is it?”
“Valium.”
“Why are you giving me these?” she asked as he put them in her hand.
“So you won’t be nervous.”
“You’d better give me more.”
And then the time had come for her to make the call. Noah dialed the number she’d found in her records and handed her the phone.
Forty-Two
Jill had been listening for the phone, and when it rang she unfolded her legs from beneath her and crawled off the bed.
“I’ll get that if you want,” Katy offered, looking up from her book.
“No. It’s for me.”
The storm seemed to have stalled overhead, blocking whatever daylight was left, and the hall was dim, but six years in this house had prepared her to walk through it in darkness.
She preferred it.
Jill reached the kitchen as the phone rang for the fifth time. She waited until it had rung twice more, and then lifted the receiver.
“Hello, Miss Appleton,” she said. “I thought you’d be calling.”
“Jill?”
“Yes.”
“How did you—”
“Know it was you? I know a lot of things, Miss Appleton.”
There was silence at the other end.
Jill smiled.
“Is your mother home?” her teacher asked after a minute had passed.
“My mother? Why would you want to talk to my mother? I’m not in any trouble at school, am I?” she said, and laughed softly.
“No, no trouble. I just wondered—”
“If I’m alone?”
“Are you?”
“You know, I really don’t think I should answer you,” Jill said. “Maybe you’re not Miss Appleton at all. Maybe I made a mistake just now, and you only
sound
like Miss Appleton.”
“Jill . . .”
“Maybe you’re one of those sick people they’re always warning little kids about. ‘Don’t ever tell anyone who calls that you’re home alone,’” she mimicked. “Are you sick, Miss Appleton?”
“You know it’s me.”
“Maybe you’re planning to come to my house and break in. Maybe you want to kill me.”
Jill heard the gasp from her teacher and was pleased. “Is that it? Am I right? Do you want to kill me, Miss Appleton?”
“I don’t know why you’re saying these things, but I wish you’d stop.”
“I can’t stop.”
“Yes, you can.”
Jill heard a difference in her tone and realized that Miss Appleton was using her teacher’s voice. She wondered why; it had had little effect on the kids in school. What made her think it would work now?
“I have to go, Miss Appleton.”
“Jill—”
“I have a lot to do.”
“No, wait—”
Jill smiled again at the panic she heard. “I’ll be expecting you,” she said.
She hung up.
After a moment of reflection, she extended a finger and touched the phone. Within seconds, thick black smoke began to pour out around the edges where it rested against the wall.
She really didn’t want to be disturbed by any more calls.
“What’s going on?”
Jill turned to see Katy standing in the doorway. Her cousin, barefooted, had come into the kitchen without her having heard. Or perhaps her own preoccupation had been a factor.
Either way, it was an unacceptable lapse. She would have to make sure it didn’t happen again.
“Something the matter with the phone?”
Jill glanced at it. The smoke had cleared, but the plastic casing had warped from the heat, and the wall was sooty behind it.
“We had a little fire,” she said.
“Is it out?”
“For now.”
Katy gave her a wide-eyed look. “What’s wrong with you? You sound strange.”
Jill only returned her gaze.
“I think you’d better lie down again,” Katy said, and then her eyes darted back to the phone. “I was thinking, I should call your mom.”
“No. You should leave.”
“What?”
“If you leave now, you won’t be hurt.”
“Jill,” Katy said, her hands on her hips, “you’re acting very weird.”
“I have no desire to see you injured,” she said, and was vaguely surprised to find that she meant it.
“What are you talking about?”
“Get out, Katy Wright, while you can.”
For the first time, there was a hint of uncertainty in the other girl’s eyes. Jill could feel the pressures inside begin to mount, and she knew that before too many more minutes passed she would no longer be able to control her own impulses.
“Please,” Jill said. It wasn’t a word she used often.
“But . . . it’s raining.”
Jill held out her right hand, the palm up. “Watch,” she commanded.
She took a quick breath and exhaled a thin stream of black. At first the Source resembled nothing more than a puff of smoke, except that it remained hovering above her hand. But gradually, by force of will, she transformed it into a shape.
A tree.
It had three dimensions, but no substance, and it was possible to see through it. The detail was impressive, down to the scarring of the trunk and leaves which seemed to move in response to the wind.
The tree was a holographic representation of a tree across the road.
Jill raised her hand, bringing it closer to her face, and studied what she’d created.
“How did you do that?” Katy breathed.
“It doesn’t matter. Do you see?”
Katy nodded.
“Go to the window and look out.”
Katy nearly skidded across the floor as she ran to the window. “Oh!”
“Yes?”
When she turned, her face showed her amazement. “It’s the same tree.”
“Watch that one,” Jill ordered.
With obvious reluctance, Katy looked out the window again.
Jill brought her left hand up, circled it over the shape and then touched the image with her index finger. The tree burst into flames.
Even from where she was standing, she could see the glow as the real tree did the same.
“Shit!” Katy said, and then covered her mouth with both hands.
“I want you to go now.”
“That wasn’t a trick, was it?” Katy’s eyes were bright. “You did it for real.”
She inclined her head.
“And the other stuff? It isn’t a magic box.”
“No.”
“What else can you do?”
Jill had no time to listen to any more of this. “Do what you wish.”
They were coming, and she had to be done before they got here.
She left the kitchen for the front room. She sat down on the floor, closed her eyes, and released all of the Source from her lungs.
For seven years, she had been the Keeper of the Source, but now her life-task was done. There was some satisfaction in that . . .
Carefully, she began to shape the Source into a replica of the town of Winslow.
It took more effort that she had anticipated, and her body was shivering by the time she was done. There was a pain in her abdomen, a twisting, pulling pain that made her gasp.
She brushed a hand across her forehead which was damp with sweat.
Time was up, and there was nothing—no one—to stop her.