Migrators (37 page)

Liz squeezed Alan’s hand.

The doctor pushed away from his counter. “I know the urge to act is overwhelming, but trust me, the course of action I’m suggesting is lightning-fast. We will have done well to catch Joe’s problem this early.”

“Have you ever seen this type of problem before?” Alan asked.

Dr. Wilford nodded. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“And the patient?”

Dr. Wilford shook his head. “We didn’t act fast enough. That’s not going to happen this time. Take him home, keep an eye on him, and check his temperature every four hours. Let me know if you see any change. My staff will give you a number you can call day or night.”

X • X • X • X • X

Liz held her tongue all the way back to the hotel and let Alan do the talking. He calmly told Joe that they would be going to Portland for more tests on Friday, and hopefully the doctors would figure everything out. Meanwhile, they had half of Wednesday and all of Thursday to kill. Alan put Joe to bed and sat in the chair, looking at his son sleep.
 

Alan heard Liz pacing in the adjoining room. He wondered if they had downstairs neighbors. He wondered if anyone had complained to the front desk about the crazy stomping coming from room 220.
 

When Joe’s breathing evened out—even asleep he still looked troubled—Alan limped to the door and shut it most of the way behind himself.

“Liz, you have to stop pacing,” Alan said.
 

She was walking a tight line, back and forth, between the bed and the TV.

“I can’t, Alan.”

“I know how you feel. Why don’t you go down to the gym and use the elliptical or something? Don’t they have an indoor pool there? Maybe you can do some laps.”

“One, I don’t have gym clothes or a bathing suit. Two, I put my head in there the other day—the chlorine would kill me. You know my eyes can’t deal with that.”

“Then go for a run. Do anything except fill up this room with your nervous energy, please?”

“Fine,” she said. She picked up her key card and walked to the door. “But didn’t I suggest he had a tumor weeks ago?”

“Liz,” Alan said. “What good does it do us…”

Liz cut him off by closing the door quietly. It was clear that she wanted to slam it.

Alan stretched out on the bed. He turned the TV on but muted the sound. The announcer talked while charts flipped by over her shoulder. The market was up. Somehow the people of the world kept moving through their irrelevant lives while something might be growing inside Joe’s head. Alan couldn’t fathom it. He couldn’t wrap his brain around the concept.

It felt like cancer kept coming up. It was October’s recurring theme.

Alan set a timer on his phone for four hours. He would need to check Joe’s temperature again then. With that done, he drifted off to fitful sleep. The day they’d spent at the doctor’s office had been exhausting, but his mind wouldn’t stopping spinning. Alan spent the night in a endless pattern of napping, taking Joe’s temperature, and staring at Liz. Ever since she’d returned, she’d done nothing but sit at the little desk and read information about Joe’s possible illness. Alan knew that she would be an expert on the subject by the time Friday finally arrived, but she would insufferable for most of Thursday.

He drifted back to sleep.

O
CTOBER
31

A
LAN
WOKE
on Thursday morning when Liz came in to the room holding a tray of food.

“Is it time to take his temperature?” Alan asked.

“No,” Liz said. “But I thought he might be hungry when he wakes up, so I got us some food from the breakfast buffet.”

Alan nodded. He rubbed his eyes. He’d spent the night on top of the covers. Liz had spent the night at the desk, but she looked better rested than he felt. She moved to the door to Joe’s room and pulled it open enough to look through.

“Don’t wake him up,” Alan said. He looked at his timer. “We have to check his temp again in ninety minutes.”

Liz winked at him. She went into Joe’s room and closed the door.

Alan swung his feet to the floor.

Inspiration came to him in flashes of bright white light exploding in his brain. He closed his eyes. Alan reached for his phone.

“Hello?” Bob answered the phone.

“Bob, you remember that book we read?”

There was silence on the line.

“Bob?”

“Yeah?”

“In that book—did you get the sense that anyone could do that process, or that it had to be done by one of the women in that lineage?”

“Well,” Bob said, “one of them thought it could be anyone. I think it was Marie. She seemed to think that with the right process anyone could tame the… you know.”

“So why not anyone?” Alan asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What did Sophie call cancer?” Alan asked.

“Sophie—well all of them in the book—called cancer ‘demons.’ If someone had cancer they would say they had demons in their blood. If the women of that family had any inherent skill above their training, it was the ability to spot cancer. They’re like cancer-sniffing dogs. What are you working on, Alan? Why all these questions about the book?”

“Bob, Joe has cancer,” Alan said.

“What?”

“It’s not one-hundred percent, but we’re pretty sure he has brain cancer. At the beginning of the school year, Polly told him that he had demons in him. I think she knew it back then. He’s supposed to go to Portland on Friday for an MRI.”

“Oh, shit, Alan. I’m sorry to hear that,” Bob said. “If there’s anything I can do.”

“Do you mean it?” Alan asked.

“Of course, why? Can I help with something?” Bob asked.

“Yes,” Alan said. “Come to my hotel and help me teach my wife the process. If the Prescott clan can do it, then Liz can. She can learn anything. We’ll give her a crash course and then she can perform the process tonight.”

X • X • X • X • X

In the generic hotel room of American Suites, with Joe watching TV in the adjoining room, Bob and Liz sat in the chairs. Alan sat on the edge of the bed.

They’d been talking for the better part of an hour. To tell the story, Alan started all the way back with Joe’s first school confrontation with Polly. He condensed six weeks down into a brief outline. Liz simply listened. Bob told the parts of the story he’d witnessed, and he described what he understood from the diary. Liz crossed her legs and bounced her foot. Alan finished with his proposal—they would perform the procedure the Prescott women had documented. If it worked as described, the process would draw the migrators to remove Joe’s cancer.

Liz looked between Alan and Bob.

“Do you two want some time to discuss?” Bob asked.

“No,” Liz said. She turned to her husband. “This is quite the leap, Alan. It’s not like you.”

“I won’t deny it—I’m grasping at straws. I’m looking for a miracle,” Alan said.

“You think this has a chance?” Liz asked.

Alan nodded. “Yes.”

“Let me see the book,” Liz said.

X • X • X • X • X

Alan went back to the farmhouse first. He drove his little Toyota into the barn and parked it. Under his jacket, he was sweating with nervous energy. He walked out through the barn door and regarded the house. The sun had set over the trees and the light was soft and thick in the dooryard. The house was dark. It was a nice evening for trick or treating, but they wouldn’t get any kids in this neighborhood. As long as they left the house dark, they shouldn’t need to worry about unexpected visitors.

Bob pulled up the drive. He parked his SUV to the side, in front of the Cook House.

Alan walked around to the passenger’s door.

“You want to give me a ride down the road? I want to retrieve the truck from the woods,” Alan said.

“Hop in,” Bob said. “I heard a rumor over at Christy’s this morning.”

Bob turned around and then turned left at the end of the driveway.

“What did you hear?” Alan asked.

“Apparently there are a lot of Prescotts missing from town lately,” Bob said.

“Really?”

“Seems like they’ve found compelling reasons to move away.”

“Huh. That’s interesting. I’ll get the truck, then use that to move wood for the fire,” Alan said.

“What do you want me to do?” Bob asked.

“After I get the truck, we’ll meet back here and then we’ll stick together. We have a lot to do. Pull over here. The truck’s up that road.”

Alan got out and limped up the logging road. The muddy trail of the big green truck was still visible. He stepped over a tree that had fallen down in the storm.
 

The truck will probably be smashed,
he thought.

He was wrong. The truck stood at a weird angle—its left wheels were higher than the right—but it looked fine. Alan climbed into the cab and it started right up. He backed up to the tree and then jumped out to hook up a rope between the tree and the rear bumper. The truck pulled the tree out of the way easily. Alan backed down the trail to the road. Bob was waiting to make sure he was okay. Alan waved and then led the way back to the house.

Bob parked out of the way and Alan waved him to the truck.

“I want to collect the wood for the fire before it gets too dark,” Alan said. Bob climbed into the cab.

Out back, across the bumpy field, Alan and Joe had stacked a bunch of wood. The tarp looked tattered, but the wood underneath was mostly dry. Alan and Bob loaded it into the truck.

“Are you concerned about next year?” Bob asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you do this process this year, do you think that those things will seek out Liz next fall also?”

Alan stopped with a big chunk of wood in his hands.
 

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Alan said. “I’m pretty focused on getting Joe fixed up.”

“Understandable,” Bob said.

“The diary strongly suggested that the migrators were called by the bones of the old practitioners. I’m going to tear up the floor of the attic and get rid of any bones I find.”

“Huh,” Bob said. He picked up another log and loaded it into the truck.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No—please tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Well,” Bob said, “there’s a lot of missing details here. The Prescott women passed this process down from generation to generation through that ceremony that you witnessed. And then, when it went from mother to daughter, the mother died. Can Liz survive without the passing down ceremony?”

“You remember your idea about this whole thing?” Alan asked.

“Which?”
 

“You said that maybe they built all the ceremonies as window dressing around a hard nugget of fact. Well maybe the process itself works without all that craziness about passing it down from mother to daughter in an elaborate ceremony. In fact, that’s why I’m willing to give this a try at all. If it doesn’t work—nothing shows up and Joe is still sick—then we haven’t lost anything but some effort. There’s no danger to Liz because she’s not part of the Prescott clan and she didn’t have the elaborate ceremony to move the power to her. But, if that’s all window dressing, then maybe all we need is the science behind calling the creatures. The fire, the blood, the borax, the water—if those things work, then we have a chance at a miracle.”

By the time Alan finished, Bob was nodding.

“I get it,” Bob said. “You’re picking the low-risk parts of the legend à la carte. You’re hoping to find the root of the mechanism.”

“Exactly,” Alan said. “Let’s head back. The bed is almost riding on the tires.”

Alan drove the truck slowly across the field. Unloading next to the Cook House took only a fraction of the time compared to loading. They stacked the wood on top of a bunch of kindling wood that Alan pulled from the shed. When they finished, Alan led the way back to Bob’s SUV.

“Let’s get that borax spread,” Alan said.

They had boxes of the white powder. Alan had signed up for a membership at the warehouse store just so he could buy the quantity he needed. They each grabbed several boxes and started making a line around the house and barn.

“Leave a gap right along here,” Alan said. He indicated a path from the bulkhead to the Cook House.
 

Around the back side of the barn, they had already used more than half of the boxes.

“We need to go lighter,” Alan said. “I have to spread some on the stairs from the cellar.”

When they’d finished, the borax powder formed a nearly unbroken line around the perimeter of the house and barn. The only gap was where the lines tucked into the house on either side of the bulkhead. From the cellar bulkhead, you could only move in a straight path directly to the bonfire without crossing the line of borax. With the last box, Alan dusted the inside stairs that led up to the first floor. Just looking at the damp treads made his foot ache.

“There’s a little left in this box,” Bob said. “You want me to add it to the cellar stairs?”

“No,” Alan said. “Do me a favor and dust the front porch, just in case.”

“No problem,” Bob said.

We have fire and mineral,
Alan thought.
Now I need blood.

Alan pulled the cooler from the back of Bob’s SUV. He set it down in the borax path where it crossed the driveway. After talking with Liz that morning, Alan and Bob had left her to study as they’d gone around to collect the materials they needed for the process. The blood was the hardest thing to find. They’d called butcher shops only to find that most only stocked blood for special orders. People would call weeks ahead before they were going to make blood pudding or blood sausage, but the stuff coagulated too readily for the shops to keep any on hand. They’d finally gotten lucky—one shop had just butchered a cow and and the blood wasn’t spoken for. Alan and Bob drove over there to collect the fetid bags. They’d sealed them in the cooler to keep the smell from invading Bob’s SUV.

Alan opened the cooler.

The odor was deep and ripe. Alan pulled one of the bags. The blood was already beginning to clot up. Alan cut the corner and began drizzling a path from the cellar to the bonfire.