Phantom (3 page)

These guys are truck drivers, Michael
thought in despair. They've probably been doing this for years and
they probably mean well, but they don't know a damn thing. They
might as well be here to collect a load of old newspapers. What did
they handle most of the time-gunshot wounds, stabbings, drunks?
They might well know what to do with those cases. But asthma?
Forget it.

"She needs oxygen," Michael heard himself
say. "At least give her that."

The ambulance men exchanged glances, then
nods, and one of them went out to get an oxygen tank.

"I don't know if it'll do any good," the one
who remained said. "But we'll give it a try." He looked at the
inhaler again, as fascinated as a man who has just discovered a
whole new life form.

"Don't you have a set procedure for dealing
with asthma attacks?" Michael asked.

"Too many pops," the man muttered.

Ned's eyes were on his
mother's. She looked like a trapped animal, eyes ricocheting around
in their skull sockets, breath coming in short, husky grunts. It
seemed like she was a hundred million miles away.
They
have her, Ned
thought. She's here, but they have her.

The other uniformed man came back into the
hallway with a long metal tank and a plastic face mask.

"Mrs. Covington, we're gonna give you some
nice fresh air now, okay dear? Just relax and breathe it all in
nice and deep."

Before the mask reached her face Linda was
squirming and thrashing, twisting her head away and striking out at
the three men around her.

"Aw Jesus Christ, this is not like anybody
with asthma that I ever seen. What the hell has been going on
around here?" the ambulance man asked accusingly.

Michael ground his teeth like someone trying
to bite through a two-by-four. Something was pushing harder,
closer. Something ugly. The thought formed: irreversible brain
damage.

"She needs oxygen," Michael said furiously.
"She has had a severe asthma attack and her brain is starved of
oxygen. Now give it to her."

Michael jumped on his wife and pinned her
arms to her sides. One of the ambulance men held her head while the
other one slapped the mask to her face and turned on the oxygen,
Linda writhed in agony and shrieked like a grievously wounded
beast. They wrestled to keep her in place for a long minute, two.
She roared and brayed and howled, and finally wailed with
diminishing strength, She looked like one of the earth's dying
creatures at the end of the world. When it was all over she
subsided on the floor. Her face was streaked, her hair and
nightgown drenched with sweat. She was a heap of bones in a flimsy
bag of skin. Only Linda's eyes were still alive, racing
feverishly.

"I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay." The words
rattled off her tongue in a rush. "I'm tired, I'm so tired."

"I bet you are," one of the ambulance men
said with a smile. "I'm tired, too."

"Linda, honey!" Michael exclaimed. He could
hardly believe that she might actually come out of It.

''I'm tired, so tired," she repeated. .

"Sure you are, honey,” Michael said. "You're
going to be all right, but you have to go to see the doctor
now."

"Okay, but not yet," Linda said wearily. "I
want to rest here for a little while."

"You rest, honey, that's right. We'll move
you."

"No, don't move me yet." A hand fluttered
weakly. "In just a few minutes ... " Her eyes closed.

"Lookit that, she's asleep," one of the
ambulance men said after a minute.

"Wish I were," the other remarked.

At last they were able to shift Linda into
the wheelchair and fasten a restraining belt around her. They were
ready to go.

"Do you want to come with us?"

"Yes—oh, no, I can't," Michael said. "We
have a child sleeping in there." He gestured towards Ned's room,
without noticing that the door was open a crack.

"Just as well," one of the ambulance men
said. "Nothing you could do at the hospital anyhow."

"Get some rest now," the other advised. "You
can see her later."

Michael was smiling as he stood by the door
and watched them go, which seemed strange to Ned. True, his mother
hadn't flown away or disappeared, but she was gone all the same.
How could his father look so happy?

Michael walked into the living room and
wrote down the name of the hospital and ward the ambulance men had
given him. He was to phone in a couple of hours and find out what
the situation was. Now he collapsed on the sofa. He brushed his
hair back and noticed that it was damp and matted. Quite a
wrestling match for a while there, he thought. Thank God she's all
right ... if she is all right.

What would have happened if he hadn't heard
the sound of the inhaler and then Linda falling to the floor? What
if he hadn't dragged himself from sleep to go and see what was the
matter? Would she have died there on the floor, head sticking out
of the bathroom, a corpse waiting for him or Ned to—

Ned!

Dear God, I hope he slept through it,
Michael prayed. It was hard to move from the sofa, but he went to
check on his son. He knew that Ned's door was always left open a
crack, but in all the commotion he hadn't thought to shut it or
make sure the boy was sound asleep.

"Oh, no," he whispered to himself. Ned was
still standing on his spot, staring sadly ahead. One hand held his
penis through his pajamas. "Hey, what're you doing up?" Michael
forced his voice to come as close to normal as possible. "Do you
have to go pee, Ned?" He scooped his son up in his arms.

"No." So tiny and forlorn.

"Well, you should be in bed sleeping. It's
the middle of the night." Michael carried the boy across the room
and set him down on the bed. He brushed the fine light hair away
from Ned's face. "Are you sure you don't have to go pee?"

"Yes." A little waver. Perhaps close to
crying.

"Okay, how about sleep then?" Michael hugged
Ned. "You know, the Hulk has to get his sleep, otherwise he won't
be strong in the morning."

"No, I don't want to."

"Are you all right, Ned?"

"Where's my mommy?"

There it was.

"Mommy got sick, Ned. She had to go see the
doctor, but she's going to be just fine, and tomorrow you and I
will go see her. Okay?"

"But where is she?'

"Gone to see the doctor."

"But I want her."

"Hey, come on, Ned. I told you we'd see her
in a little while. You want your mommy to get better, don't
you?"

"Yes."

"Well, she has to go to the doctor to get
better, and we have to get some sleep so we'll be wide awake when
we go to see Mommy later."

"But I want to see her."

"So do I, Ned, but the most important thing
right now is that she go to the doctor. You love Mommy and I love
Mommy, and she loves us. We all love each other, but Mommy has to
go to the doctor now. You don't see me crying about it, do
you?"

"No." How could a four-year-old make a word
sound so stony?

"We should both be happy that Mommy can go
to the doctor and get better, right?"

"I want my—"

"I'd really like to sleep here and cuddle
with you, Ned. Is that all right? Can I do that? Then we'll get up
and go see our mommy in the morning. Is that oi5ay? Can I sleep
here with you?"

Finally: "Okay."

"Okay, good. Come on now, give me a big
cuddle." Ned hugged Michael's neck but there was no strength in his
arms. Michael pulled the blankets up over them and held his son
close. The gray light in the window made him wonder how much time
had passed. It seemed like hours since that first dreadful sight of
Linda on the floor, but it probably hadn't been very long at all.
The images that filled his mind were too vivid—he had to lose them
in sleep, if that was possible.

Ned clung tightly to him, which was a good
sign. Michael couldn't bear to think about how much the boy might
have seen. And Linda, dear Linda .... What the hell had happened to
her? She had asthma, yes, but she had never had an attack even
remotely as serious as this one was. What had caused it? She used
her inhaler three or four times a day, a little more on especially
dry days, but that was it.

Now this. She had been hysterical,
delirious. Off the goddamn wall, with that kicking and punching and
ungodly screaming. The ambulance men thought she was doing drugs,
that's for sure, and not just the inhaler. It hurt him to recall
how they had taken in the view when, in Linda's thrashing about,
her nightgown had jumped up her thighs. And the way they had looked
at Michael, as if he had done something and it was all his fault
that she was in such a state.

Michael sighed deeply. The boy seemed all
right. Whatever he had witnessed earlier, he was clinging to his
father now and breathing with the even rhythms of sleep. It'll all
seem like a bad dream to him when the sun comes up, Michael
thought. Kids are tough.

Linda had to be okay. Everything was just
starting to go well for them in Washington. Our lives are just
beginning, he thought, she has got to be okay. And Ned too. Let
this not be a trauma, let there be no mental scars. Let there ...
Michael fell asleep.

Ned was close to sleep, but his mind hadn't
let go completely yet. Snug in his father's embrace, he felt safe
and comfortable. One of the rules was that if you were with either
or both of your parents nothing, but nothing, could happen to you.
If only he could sleep with them every night—but, no, they didn't
allow it. Ned couldn't understand. It was as if they were actually
looking for trouble.

What had happened before—he couldn't think
about that now. He was too weak and tired. Besides, it didn't
matter. His mother would come back, or she wouldn't. It made no
difference as far as the real problem was concerned. Ned knew what
had happened. A phantom had come and turned his mother into a
raving mad dog of a person. Even if she survived somehow and came
home again, the point had been made. The line had been crossed. Day
and night were mixed, once and forever.

That was just a demonstration.

If they could do that to your mother, just
think what they could do to you ....

* * *

1. Lynnhaven

It wasn't much of a town anymore. You could
ride the old Coast Turnpike every day and hardly notice Lynnhaven.
Those who did take a look invariably described it as sleepy. Local
pundits often used the word "coma," while the Town Clerk was fond
of saying that Lynnhaven was in a period of transition. If so, it
had been going on for thirty or forty years. Lynnhaven was not so
much a town as a fishing village, and even the fishing activity was
residual now. More and more of the young people regarded fishing
and crabbing as hard, poor-paying work at a time when better
opportunities could be found elsewhere. If Lynnhaven had a future
it was probably in the direction of light industry, tract homes,
condos, shopping plazas and fast food chains, but the new era had
not yet arrived. Lynnhaven was a forgotten pocket of a community,
waiting half-heartedly to be rediscovered.

There were other towns up and down the
shore, larger and suburbanized, so the rest of the world began
nearby and Lynnhaven didn't really seem like an isolated or remote
place. But inland, on the other side of the low hills, the earth
was an expanse of undeveloped, uninviting woods and swamps that
stretched for miles. Lynnhaven was merely one of the smaller and
less conspicuous stops along the Chesapeake from Annapolis to
Norfolk.

In the old days, before the Depression and
scandal shut down the spa, Lynnhaven had a population of ten
thousand, but it had dwindled down to a third of that now. The
Sherwood family was dead and gone, their spa nothing more than a
ruin on the hill. Housing was no problem in Lynnhaven; a number of
fine white clapboard homes stood vacant and shuttered, ready for
new buyers. There wasn't a wharf along Polidori Street that didn't
need some repair work or general sprucing up, but no one bothered;
there didn't seem to be much point. It was a place of flaked paint
and driftwood grays, and if it had long since stopped taking itself
seriously, well, maybe life was a little easier for that.

The spa on the hill had been Lynnhaven's
claim to fame back in the Twenties. The Sherwood family, who built
it, brought relative prosperity to the town for a few years. Local
old-timers who could still remember something of those days tended
to regard the spa as a folly or a sucker-farm that had sprung up in
their midst and then, in the manner of such things, collapsed. The
money had been nice, but too many years had passed for Lynnhaven to
feel anything more than indifference to the dim memory buried in
the tumbledown estate high on the edge of town.

Lynnhaven was neither gloomy nor unpleasant.
Some people even thought that its slightly shabby, slightly
run-down appearance made it quaint and pretty. But the town didn't
have a good beach or much of anything else to draw tourists. Those
who did pass through Lynnhaven usually continued on their way after
cruising the few central streets.

Blair's Market still sold bottles of
Lynnhaven Water, but they moved very slowly. The mineral content,
which included sulpher in strength, may have been good for one's
health, but it left something to be desired in the flavor
department. Chief among the other stores in town were a couple of
boat and tackle shops, a vintage Western Auto, Mae's Candy, which
specialized in undistinguished saltwater taffy, and Marine
Antiques, which was open whatever odd hours suited its proprietor,
Monroe Tillotson.

Two of the town's larger and more elegant
homes had been converted to boarding houses, providing inexpensive
accommodation for some of Lynnhaven's solitary folk-widows and
widowers, spinsters and bachelors, people without relatives or
money enough to live anywhere else. They survived on Social
Security and miscellaneous jobs. Everyone knew Miss Merrion, for
instance, who had a room at Laurel House. She sold magazine
subscriptions and stuffed envelopes for a company a thousand miles
away in Minneapolis.