Just Believe

Just Believe

By

Anne Manning

© copyright September 2005, Anne
Manning

Published by New Concepts
Publishing

Smashwords Edition

Cover art by Kat Richards, © copyright
September 2005

ISBN 1-58608-633-2

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All
characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and
not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or
events is merely coincidence.

Chapter One

Erin is in the psychiatric
ward.

That's what her mother had said.
Annabelle didn't let herself think about it. Not yet. She didn't
have enough information to start going off the deep end. One of us
has to stay calm, she thought. Here she was, at the University of
North Carolina Medical Center, after driving from Raleigh-Durham
Airport through a storm-darkened day which matched her mood. The
huge building stood cold and spare. People came here for help, yet
it seemed to Annabelle a heartless place. She pulled her too-light
windbreaker around her to ward off the wind and dashed for the
automatic doors.

People littered the area like discarded
candy wrappers. The buzz of whispered conversations filled the air.
Skirting the oversized potted palms, Annabelle approached the
information desk sprawled in the middle of the lobby.

The elderly volunteer looked up from a
supermarket tabloid. The Weekly Investigator, Annabelle noted with
approval.

"May I help you?" the volunteer
asked.

"My sister, Erin Tinker, is a patient.
Can you tell me where to find her?"

"Certainly. How's that spelled?" The
woman bent her blue hair toward the computer screen in front of
her, hunting and pecking the last name, T-I-N-K-E-R. Instead of the
six strokes it usually took, with all the backspacing and
correcting it took more like twenty. Finally, the woman looked
up.

"I'll need some identification, please.
A driver's license will do."

Annabelle breathed a sigh. Here it
came, she thought, as she pulled her wallet from her jacket pocket.
After a moment's digging, she handed over her driver's
license.

"Umm, let's see, Miss Tinker." The
volunteer glanced up, her old eyes twinkling.

Okay, okay, get it over with. Annabelle
pasted a smile she hoped was tolerant on her lips.

"Annabelle Tinker? That's just so
darling! How imaginative. You aren't a fairy in disguise, are you?"
The old woman gave the license back.

"No," Annabelle said, wishing for the
millionth time Walt Disney had never learned to draw.

"Here's your pass, dear. Clip it to
your blouse while you're in the hospital. That way the brute squad
won't toss you out." The woman smiled and waved her hand toward the
back of the lobby. "Take that elevator right there to the eleventh
floor, and when you get off turn right. Your sister's in Room
1135."

"Thank you." Annabelle took the pass
and turned toward the elevators. Eleventh floor? Were they crazy
putting crazy people on the eleventh floor? What if someone tried
to jump?

She squashed the concern. It was none
of her business if they put the psych ward on the roof. She had all
she could handle taking care of her mother and sister.

The elevator's electronic voice
announced the eleventh floor and Annabelle got off, turning right
as the receptionist had instructed.

"Darling, oh, I'm so glad you're
here!"

Annabelle looked toward the voice and
saw her mother coming, histrionic sails billowing.

"Mom, what happened?" She hid a wince
as she realized she'd blurted out the wrong question, an open-ended
one which would give her mother the opportunity to go on...and
on...and on. Immediately, she tried to remedy the mistake by
focusing her mother on the present.

"Why is Erin here in the psych ward?"
She laid her arm around her mother's shoulders and led her to a
couch in an out-of-the-way lounge, where they sat down, allowing
her mother to draw a big breath.

Tamping down her impatience, Annabelle
tried to remember it hadn't been that long since Dad died. Mom
needed time to get used to being alone and taking care of herself.
Now this.

"I don't know," Susan Tinker finally
said. "Erin and Lucas left the house on Saturday night to go to a
movie. The next thing I knew, it was four in the morning, and the
police were banging on the door." She shivered and Annabelle hugged
her closer. "Oh, I wish your Dad were alive! He'd know what to
do."

Annabelle bit her tongue.

"Mrs. Tinker?" A tiny young woman
wearing a long white coat over green hospital scrubs stood beside
them. "Erin wants to see you."

"Oh, thank you, Dr. Duncan. Is it all
right if we go in?"

"Of course, Mom," Annabelle said, more
sharply than she'd wanted.

"Just a moment, please." The doctor, a
redheaded sprite of a thing, with wire-rimmed glasses on her
upturned pixie nose and the small, delicate features Annabelle had
always wished for, sat down beside Annabelle's mother. "I do want
to warn you to be prepared for some pretty wild things. Erin has
apparently had some sort of shock. Frankly, I'd have to diagnose
her as delusional based on my preliminary examination."

Finally! Annabelle sat up, energized.
Data. Facts. Evidence. Something concrete to grab on to.

"What makes you say she's delusional,
Doctor?" At the doctor's questioning look, Annabelle gave a tight
smile and added, "I'm Erin's sister, Annabelle."

"Ms. Tinker, nice to meet you." Dr.
Duncan smiled sadly, offering her hand. "I'll let you hear it in
Erin's own words. Let me caution you, though. Don't argue with her.
Go along with her if you think you can be convincing. Sometimes
these cases become worse when they think they're being patronized.
We don't want to upset her further by making her think we don't
believe her. It could lead her to paranoid fantasies of
persecution, which could result in more aggressive
behavior."

"Oh," Susan moaned.

"Come on, Mom," Annabelle said, setting
her hand under her mother's elbow and helping her to her feet.
"Thank you, Dr. Duncan."

Dr. Duncan smiled and nodded. "It's
that room there."

Annabelle tried to return the smile and
led her mother toward the room.

"I can't, Annabelle."

"Yes, you can. Erin needs
us."

She pushed open the door, and then
pushed her mother through.

"Annabelle." Erin sat up, arms
reaching.

Releasing her mother, Annabelle
practically ran to her sister's bedside, wrapping Erin in a
hug.

"Oh, honey, what on earth
happened?"

"You won't believe me. Nobody believes
me."

Annabelle remembered the doctor's
warnings. "Try me."

Erin glanced up, then over at her
mother. "Mom, can you listen now?"

Erin's tone forced Annabelle to study
her more closely. She was calm. Her eyes were clear. There was
nothing of a cloudy, crazed look in them. Her hands were steady as
she reached forward for her mother to come closer.

Their mother was the one who needed a
sedative, but she did come to the side of the bed to sit in the
ugly, brown plastic armchair. Annabelle moved its tattered twin
beside it, but, instead of sitting, she grasped Erin's outstretched
hand in her own.

"All right, sweetheart," their mother
said, her voice slow and loud, as though talking to a small, rather
backward child. "Tell me."

Eyes rolling upward, Erin sighed. "Mom,
I'm nuts, not deaf." She shared a smile with Annabelle before
adding, "At least, they think I'm nuts after they heard what I told
them."

"What did you tell them?" Annabelle
asked.

With a big breath, Erin sat up and
gripped Annabelle's hand. "He disappeared. Poof. Gone."

"Who?"

"Lucas. We were parked at the lake,
making out in the back seat of his car and--"

"Oh, Lord!" Her mother hid her face in
her hands.

"Please, Mom, not now. I know I was
stupid, but--"

"You mean he ran out on you?" Annabelle
asked, her temper rising at the man's irresponsible
behavior.

"No!" Erin snapped her lips shut. "No,"
she said more calmly. "He disappeared. He, ah, well, we..." She
sighed. "He, you know, was finishing."

"Oh, God."

Erin ignored her mother. She leaned
toward Annabelle, eyes wistful. "It was wonderful. But when
he...you know...this bright, shiny, filmy radiance flashed behind
him, and I screamed. Then his eyes got all wide, and he...you know.
Then he disappeared." She sat up closer. "Vanished. Poof. There was
a pinpoint of light flittering around like a firefly, and then it
flew away."

Erin grew quiet, her gaze focused
somewhere far off. Annabelle watched, a prickly feeling increasing
as Erin's brow furrowed.

"It was space aliens. It must have
been," Erin announced.

Annabelle fell backwards into the chair
behind her. It was worse than she'd thought. Her sister was
certifiable. Was there any treatment?

Erin frowned and stared at the door.
"She was listening."

"Who?" Annabelle glanced
around.

"Dr. Duncan. Didn't you see the door
close?"

Annabelle was getting more worried by
the minute. "I think looking in on you is part of her
job."

"No. She's spying on me. She's one of
them," Erin insisted.

"One of who?"

"The aliens. Haven't you been
listening?"

"Honey," Annabelle said, taking Erin's
hand, "there aren't any space aliens. Lucas didn't
disappear."

"Then where is he?"

How could she tell her poor, sick
sister her lover had taken a powder?

Boys never changed. And Granny had been
so right. They never buy the cow if they can get the ice cream for
nothing.

"I know what you think. You think he
got what he wanted and took off," Erin said, correctly reading
Annabelle's mind. "He didn't. We're going to get married. He loves
me. He said so. He showed me he did. Something took him away, and
nobody believes me, and nobody is looking for him, and what if they
do awful things to him?" Erin's voice had grown louder and more
strident. "I've got to find him! He needs me!" She tore the covers
off and threw her legs over the opposite side of the bed. Before
either Annabelle or her mother could react, Erin was out the
door.

"Erin! Come back!" Annabelle flew down
the hall after her sister, but was too late to stop the two large,
burly men under Dr. Duncan's quiet direction from grabbing Erin's
arms and legs and carrying her back to her room.

"Let me go! Let me go! I have to find
him! I have to find him! Let me go!" Erin kicked and screamed and
fought, using teeth and nails and feet.

The two men carried her as though she
weighed nothing. They ignored her cries and the hysterical bucking
of her body as she hung from her arms and legs between
them.

"Get her in bed and wait there for me."
After giving these directions, the pixie-like doctor turned to the
Tinker women. "You'll have to leave while we get her sedated." She
gestured toward the waiting area and started off down the
hall.

Annabelle followed her. "Doctor, what
happened? She was so calm."

Dr. Duncan stopped and turned. "What
did she do, exactly?"

"She was telling me what happened to
her boyfriend."

"What did she say? Her exact words if
you can remember them."

Annabelle struggled to bring the
picture to her memory: Erin lying in the bed, animated and funny,
but worried about Lucas. "She said they--" A warmth flashed over
her cheeks. She felt she was betraying a confidence, yet the doctor
had to have the information she needed to treat Erin. "They had sex
in his car by the lake."