Strangewood (35 page)

Then he put voice to it.

"Real?" he asked, his voice barely hiding the
derision he obviously felt. "We are talking about the same lunacy, right? That
whole business about him receiving secret messages from the characters in his
books? I know you're under intense pressure, honey, but please don't tell me
that you actually think . . ."

She erupted then, turning on him in a rage. "I don't
know what to think!" Emily shouted, glaring at him for a moment before
burying her face in her hands, all the energy passing from her in a single
instant.

Joe reached out, grabbed her hands, and pulled them gingerly
away. Emily looked up, unwilling to meet his eyes at first. Finally, she gazed
into the calm gray there, and she saw how much he cared, despite himself. She
knew what a trial it must have been for him to be with her of late. A lot of
guys would have cut and run. But Joe didn't want to go. He wanted to stay with
her. That meant a lot.

"It's crazy, Emmy," he said gently, eyes
imploring. "You know that, right? I'm sorry, but Thomas went off the deep
end, and then he tried to kill himself. That's what happened. If you want to
stay by him until he gets his head back together, that's okay. But don't get
sucked into the asylum. Don't stare too long into the abyss, Emily."

Later, Emily wouldn't be able to recall what exactly had
changed in her at that moment. Perhaps it was the eloquence in Joe's words, the
presence of an English teacher rearing its erudite head. It might merely have
been his tenderness. Whatever the reason, she felt both the sudden need, and
the sudden ability, to share with him the source of her troubled mind.

"Sit down, please," she said, taking him by the
hand. "I want to tell you a story."

She led him to a chair by the window and, though he
hesitated, Joe sat. Emily looked out the window for several long moments, and
then she turned to look at Thomas. Her back was to Joe. That seemed important
for some reason, as though she could pretend that he wasn't there. That she was
speaking only to Thomas, who could not hear her.

"When he was seven years old, Thomas's family moved to
Virginia. His father, Sean, was a career army officer, and they were living on
base at that time. One afternoon, after his father had been gone for several
days, Thomas was playing with several other children just down the street from
his family's home. His mother, Annie, was inside making dinner. Thomas
remembers, even now, that she was making liver that day, and he was desperately
hoping he'd be able to stay out so late that she'd feed his to the dog."

Emily smiled. "He used to say there were times he
didn't mind going to bed without his supper."

She turned to look at Joe now. His face was rapt. The story
was simple enough, but she knew that he could hear in her voice that it was
more than that.

"I'm sure you see where this is going," she said,
and then her eyes drifted out the window as her voice dropped to just above a
whisper. "Or you think you do."

In the corridor, a nurse began to shout. Several pairs of
feet ran past Thomas's room. A phone rang at the nurses' station just down the
hall. Life went on. Death went on. Out the window, the afternoon sun cast long
shadows. In his bed, Thomas Randall didn't move a muscle; didn't even twitch. But
the sensors registering his brain waves continued their impossible analysis.

Joe began to speak, apparently thinking Emily had paused,
expecting him to respond in some way. But the first sound that came from his
mouth was squelched when she went on.

"It was getting late. Thomas was happy his mother
hadn't called him yet for dinner. For liver. Many parents had come home
already, and there were cars parked along the street. The ball they were
playing with sailed out into the road . . ."

That was as far as Emily could go at the moment. She bit her
lip and wiped her eyes and turned to smile at Joe and shrug.

"Happens every day," she said.

Joe looked at her oddly, uncomprehendingly. "Thomas ran
after the ball. He was hit by a car?" Joe surmised. "So . . . what? He's
been in a coma before?"

Emily nodded. "Actually, that's why he had those pills
in the house. He's had seizures off and on for years, ever since that
accident."

"I'm sorry, Em. I don't understand. It's a damn shame,
but like you said, it happens every day. And Thomas obviously recovered." He
shrugged. "I'm not trying to be insensitive, but what does this have to do
with anything?"

The word "nothing" came to Emily's lips, but she
pressed them tight to keep it from escaping. Then she swallowed it back down. These
things were swirling around her head, tearing up her mind with needles for
claws, and she needed to let them out, to share them with someone or she really
would go insane.

She remembered the first time Thomas had told her this
story. They'd been married less than a year, and she'd laughingly related a
run-in she'd had with an old friend who, upon learning she had married the
famed children's author TJ Randall, asked where her husband got his ideas. It
was widely regarded as the dumbest question anyone could ask of a writer
— mainly because none of them had a real answer — and Emily was
aware of the notorious quality the question had.

But Thomas hadn't laughed. Instead, he'd said, very quietly,
"I want to tell you a story." And his story had begun with the words,
"When I was seven years old, my family moved to Virginia."

She'd never forgotten the story. But there were parts of it
she had never quite believed, either.

"The driver of the car was General Sean Randall,"
she said quickly. "Thomas's father."

She saw the pain in Joe's eyes, pain for a little boy he'd
never known, not even as the man that little boy had become, and Emily found
that she loved him a little then. Maybe more than a little. She took the three
steps to the chair where he was sitting and took his hand, leaning against the
wall for support as she continued.

"Thomas's mother hadn't called him for dinner because
she wanted to surprise him. His father was coming home a few days early. It was
dark, and the General was driving a little too fast, looking forward to seeing
his family. At first, he'd thought Thomas was dead. But, obviously, Thomas
wasn't."

They both looked at the prone form of Emily's ex-husband. Joe
muttered, "Obviously," under his breath. Emily smiled thinly, and
quite purposely kept her eyes on Thomas.

"No. He wasn't dead," she repeated. "He was
in Strangewood."

She felt Joe's eyes upon her, but he said nothing. What
could he say, after all, to such a statement?

"With his parents dead, and the doctors who treated him
likely passed on or not long for this world, you're the only person besides
myself who knows this part of the story," Emily admitted. "I
shouldn't even be telling you, but maybe you'll start to understand why all
this is frightening me so much. Why the fact that the doctors can't give me a
single clue as to what's happening to my boy is scaring the hell out of me.

"Thomas spent nearly a month in that coma. When he
recovered, all he could talk about was Strangewood, a wonderful and yet scary
place where he had lived while his body lay in that bed. All the ideas for
those books came from there, don't you understand?

"Why do you think he never wrote anything else?"

As she had expected, it was this last thought that made
Joe's brow crease with denial. It was impossible, that's what he'd say. But it
was true that TJ Randall had never published anything but Strangewood in the
entirety of his career as a writer.

Joe shivered a little, and Emily didn't think he even
noticed it. Then he stood up from the chair, reached for her hands, and pulled
her near to him. Near enough that she could smell his cologne, a sweet manly
scent.

And she thought of that other odor, the wild smell of . . .
of the wood.

"Writers create out of their dreams all the time,
Emily," Joe said. "At seven, in a coma, who's to say what Thomas's
mind whipped up to entertain him. But what you're implying . . ."

"I'm not implying anything."

Joe glanced over at Thomas, and a new understanding began to
dawn on his face. "Wait," he said. "Are you saying you think
that right now, he and Nathan . . ."

"Of course not," Emily snapped, and Joe's
shoulders sagged with relief at the certainty in her voice. "I'm freaking
out, Joe, but I'm not nuts. I'm a rational woman. All I'm saying is, you can
understand how I would find all of this really, really difficult to deal
with."

Joe nodded. "Absolutely. God, what a horrible
story."

"Yeah. But it made him rich."

They both laughed at her irreverence, which was Emily's
intention. She moved into Joe's arms and relaxed there.

"I just need you here with me, to talk to me and tell
me I'm not going nuts, okay?"

"I'm not going anywhere," Joe confirmed.

But his face was lined with thought, a question forming
within him.

"What?" she asked.

"I was just curious what happened to the general. Thomas's
father?" Joe said, the story obviously still haunting him.

Emily felt a chill run through her. She gnawed her lip a
moment and looked over at Thomas again, wishing for nothing more than to hear
his voice and Nathan's voice again.

"Sean came into Thomas's room in uniform one night. The
story goes that he hadn’t waited long enough for Thomas to come around. Convinced
that he'd killed his only child, the General shot himself in the head. The
doctors found his corpse lying across Thomas's comatose body, blood and
everything else sprayed all over the place.

"An hour later," Emily added grimly, "Thomas
woke up from his coma."

* * * * *

On the banks of the Up-River: the burble of the rushing
water, the contented growl of a dancing bear, the rhythmless bonging of a
living bell, and the wild music of a dragon's wings all joined together to
create an extraordinary orchestra of love and anxiety and companionship. It
should have been a horrible cacophony. Instead, it was music.

Brownie and Fiddlestick and Mr. Tinklebum kept to themselves
near the river's edge, though each with an eye out for the return of the sand
crabs. They did not feel it appropriate to interrupt, or even overhear, the
conversation their other companions were having several yards away, nearer to
the trees. Nearer to the wood.

Thomas Randall and the Peanut Butter General embraced
tightly. Though Thomas wept openly, the General did not. Perhaps he could not.

After a time, during which the General told him over and
over that all would be well, Thomas spoke haltingly.

"I'm . . . I'm sorry that you're here," he
confessed, his anguish plain. "I'm sorry I put you here."

Quite firmly, the General replied, "I'm not."

He placed a peanut butter encrusted hand on the shoulder of
Our Boy, "We're together, TJ. That's all that matters."

This use of his hated nickname didn't rouse any objection
from Thomas. It seemed perfectly natural to him. He nodded, pulled himself away
from the General, the peanut butter leaving an oily film behind, and looked up
toward the Bald Mountains.

"You're right," Thomas said. "Let's go get my
son."

Together, they set off toward the west, along the Up-River,
headed for the fortress of the Jackal Lantern.

On Monday morning, Emily sat in her car in the parking lot
of Sentinel Software for nearly fifteen minutes before she managed to get out
of the car and walk inside. More than anything, she needed some stability in
her life at the moment. The only way she could think of to get that was to go
back to work, albeit part time.

She hadn't called first, so when she walked into the warmly
decorated reception area, Bedelia, behind the desk, was wide-eyed. Then her
demeanor changed to such an odd combination of sympathy and genuine pleasure at
her return that Emily could not help but be soothed. She was also relieved to
learn that Arthur Hobbs, Sentinel's CEO, was in the office that day.

First thing, she stopped by Art's office and requested a
meeting later in the day. He had a late morning opening, and she gladly took
it.

When she walked into HR, Lorena was ecstatic.

"Oh my God!" the diminutive dyed redhead
screeched, rushing up to hug Emily. "What are you doing here?"

Emily grinned, unable to help herself. "I work here,
remember?"

Lorena clapped her hands together like a little girl. "Oh,
I'm so glad to have you back," she said in a rush. Then, with a crease in
her brow, she added, "Wait, are you back?"

"I have a meeting with Art at eleven-thirty,"
Emily confirmed. "I'm hoping I can do two or three days at first, split my
time between here and the hospital. I'm not doing anyone any good over there,
and I'd like to get back into the swing of things."

A little human contact couldn't hurt, either
, Emily
thought. And already, that feeling was paying off. Lorena's welcome had
solidified her feeling that this was a good idea indeed. Just what she needed. People
to talk to, to make her feel useful again. It had only been ten days or so
since she'd last been in the office — they probably hadn't even missed
her that much — but the tragedies of the past week had made her feel
aimless, useless. And recently, she had begun to feel vulnerable.

Emily didn't want that. Her mother didn't raise her to be a
victim.

"Can we have lunch?" Lorena asked excitedly. "I
know Sandra and Allis will be thrilled you're back as well."

"Is it okay if we wait until Friday? I'd just like to
sit at my desk for a bit, go through some paperwork, and get reacclimated. That
sort of thing."

Lorena smiled. "You got it." Then she kissed
Emily's cheek and went back to her desk, leaving her boss to get on with the
process of jump-starting her life outside of the hospital.