The Orchard (18 page)

he watched her shoulders broaden, her neck slightly lengthen, her hair break free into a cloud about her head;

he watched tendrils of steam lift from her soles and curl up her spine to slip over her shoulders.

She came toward him, and he met her in the center of the room, the solitary candle behind her not giving her a shadow.

“Paula,” he said.

And she spat in his face.

it’s raining

He took the seat of the chair Gary had broken a hundred years ago and turned it over, tipped the candle he was holding until a thick puddle of wax gathered on the wood bottom. He held the candle in it until the wax hardened, then placed the seat in front of the door.

When he was sure it wouldn’t tip, he walked into the office and checked the old man again, his lips in a spare smile when he was satisfied the man was alive, still breathing.

Paula was gone.

She had run into the auditorium, and he hadn’t chased her to bring her back; she was still altering her appearance out of the wallflower mold, and he didn’t want to know what she would look like at the end.

it’s pouring

The dark was still gathering, and the cold turned his breath to a dead white fog.

You’re out there, he thought to the village beyond the dark; goddamnit, I know you’re out there.

He sat beside the candle and crossed his legs, pulling his jacket over his shoulders in hope of some warmth.

the old man is snoring

Ginny was wrong—this wasn’t some test of experimental drugs some idiot had put in the soda or candy.

Gary was wrong—this wasn’t a macabre way to get at his fool money.

he hit his head

And Katherine was wrong, and she was too terribly right—it wasn’t a dream that belonged to any of them. If it was true, it belonged to the old man sleeping now in Callum’s office; and if Paula was right, the hardest part of dreaming didn’t come until the end.

All he could do now was wait, and watch the storm, and wonder without answers why the others had been discarded, one by one, why he had been left to live the last hour of dream time, the dreadful hour at the end before the dreamer awoke.

and he went to bed

He sat then, and he waited, and he tried not to think that maybe he was wrong too.

That maybe it wasn’t the old man, that it was him after all.

The candle went out.

Rain ticked against the glass.

And he would not close his eyes when the dark swept around him and he could no longer hear the old man in the office.

He would not close his eyes.

“I am here,” he said softly to the rain and took a breath. “I am awake. I am.”

and he won’t get up till morning

Part Four

Screaming, in the Dark

E
vening comes rapidly when the year begins to die—when the leaves have all turned and the grass bows against the wind and there’s no memory of spring despite the gold left behind by the sun in its setting.

Evening comes, not with shadows but a slow killing of the light … and when the light has gone, the trees grow larger and streets become tunnels and porches on old houses no longer hold the swings and the rockers and the warm summer calls to come away, come and sit, and watch for a while.

And when the sidewalks are empty and the cars have all been parked and the only sign of movement is a leaf scratching at the curb, there are the sounds, the nightsounds, the last sounds before the end—of wings dark over rooftops, of footsteps soft around the corner, of something clearing its throat behind the hedge near the streetlamp where white becomes a cage and the shadows seldom move.

There are stars.

There is a moon.

There are late August wishes and early June dreams that slip out of time and float into the cold that turns dew to frost and hardens the pavement, gives echoes blade edges and makes children’s laughter seem too close to screams.

In the evening; never morning.

When the year begins to die.

The hospital on King Street faces south toward the woods that flank the Station solidly no matter how many streets are made. It is three stories high, tinted windows and brick; a double row of evergreens reaches above the roof, keeping a year-round screen between the hospital and all its neighbors. All the patients’ rooms are ranged along the outside walls, to give them views of green; all the floors except the basement are divided left to right by a long central corridor that, like the others, is tiled and painted in the warmest earth tones, to keep voices and anxieties down and to give visitors the impression the building is much larger than it looks from the curb.

It is seldom full.

It is always fully staffed.

But in spite of the equipment more advanced than most cities, and in spite of the residents, who usually smiled and were usually relaxed and were usually better trained than their counterparts on the outside, Michael suspected that dungeons and medieval prisons were a lot like this: a window you could see through, but too far away to reach even with mighty efforts—a deliberate reminder that freedom was out there and you were still in here, even if your doctor was a genius and your nurse a beauty queen; something to lie on, uncomfortable and hard—a thinly padded rack sadistically designed to put crooks in your back and scabs on your heels and a giggling mad desire to throw yourself on the floor where at least you could sleep without waking slick with sweat; the food in small portions less than fit for human consumption; and the captain of the guards out patrolling the halls, left free by the king to torture the inmates.

No wonder the Bastille had been stormed during the best of the revolution; no wonder they screamed when someone mentioned the Bloody Tower.

On the other hand, he could be dead.

With a sigh for the dubious blessings of mortality, he clasped his hands behind his head, wriggled his buttocks vigorously in a reminder not to get bedsores, and stared glumly at his left leg, invisible in a great white cast putting a dent in the bed. And at his right leg, tucked under the sheet but swollen twice its size from the bandages wrapped around his calf. He twitched the muscles to be sure they still worked, then shifted his gaze to the ceiling.

Brother, he thought glumly.

Softly tan, like the walls; restful perhaps, but without the game-playing flaws he could turn into
twisted faces and monsters. Boring. Soporific. As
bad as the small television on the wall across the room. The remote-control unit was on the bedtable, but he seldom used it anymore. He hated the game shows. He didn’t understand the soap operas. And it seemed that every time someone ran a large piece of equipment somewhere in the building, the picture broke up into colorful, painful static.

Another look at his leg, and he glared at the toes poking through the end of the cast. He wiggled them. He wished someone would come in and tickle them. He wished someone would come in and tickle his side, or under his arms. He wished someone would come in and put a bullet through his head.

One week in this bed and, according to his doctor, probably another week more.

“This,” he said aloud, “is boring!”

The varnished pine door to the hallway was propped open, and a nurse stepped in the moment he opened his mouth. She grinned and shook her head in mock despair, and wheeled a small cart to his side, picked up his left hand, and curled her fingers around his wrist.

“You really don’t have the right attitude, Mr. Kolle,” she scolded lightly with a glance at the gold-framed watch pinned to her chest.

“My attitude,” he said, “is rotten because I am bored, Janey. I am bored out of my mind and I want to go home.”

She dropped the wrist, picked up an electronic thermometer unit from the cart, and gestured to him. He opened his mouth, and they waited until the unit beeped.

“You dip that in garlic, right?” he said, licking his lips and grimacing.

“Just for you, Mike, just for you.”

His next sigh was world-weary as she checked the cast and thumped it with a knuckle, then moved to his right, flipped over the sheet and checked the bandages for loosening. He guessed her to be a good decade younger than he, her hair blonde, her face round, with a height that couldn’t have been much above five feet. She worked with a minimum of excess motion and not another word, long fingers deft and delicate, and he could have wept with joy when, as she walked around the foot of the bed, she tickled his toes.

At the cart she checked for medication, found none was required and started out. At the threshold she paused, snapping her fingers. “I forgot. You’ll be happy to know you won’t be so horribly bored from now on. You’re going to have company.”

He looked to the empty bed by the window. “Nuts.”

“I thought you’d be pleased. Someone to talk to.”

“Probably an old man who’s just had his gallbladder ripped out, or his kidneys reprocessed.”

“No,” she said, and seemed to think twice before finishing. “As a matter of fact, it’s a kid.”

“A what?”

“A kid. From the upstairs ward. There’s been …” She smiled and shrugged. “He’ll be down later. I’ll be back to see how you guys get along.”

“Thanks,” he said sourly. “I know one lousy fairy tale, I don’t like sports, and I haven’t the slightest idea who has the number one record, country or rock. Wonderful.”

“Sports?” she said. “You don’t like sports?”

He looked mournfully at his leg, cleanly broken in two places, the other one with calf muscles nearly torn to shreds. “Not anymore.”

She laughed, and surprised him by blowing him a kiss. He tried to lean forward to watch her progress down the hall, but she was gone in an eye’s blink, and he lay back, smiling.

It was a cliché, he supposed, that patients fall in love with either their doctors or their nurses, and once the hospital stay is over, they drift apart, shadows swallowed by the night; but in this case he had a feeling he was putting the lie to the saw. He didn’t love Janey, he adored her; he waited impatiently for each visit on her rounds—for the beginning of each shift when she came to kiss him good morning, for the end of the shift when she kissed him goodnight. He fantasized how they might make love with him trussed and cast; he fantasized taking her home when he was better and showing her how he could make her a hell of a lot happier than she was right now.

Especially since, behind that smile, behind the wide blue eyes, he could see the apprehension.

They were all that way these past few days. The halls were less filled with chatter; the rattle and clatter of supply carts muffled and less hurried. Even the announcements over the PA system seemed more subdued.

He hadn’t noticed it at first. He had been too busy fighting through the drugs in his system, struggling out of postoperative recovery to feel the dull and constant throbbing in his newly set leg, the knife jabs that made him pray for a cast on the right one as well.

He was no hero, never wanted to be one; stoics were people who needed very long vacations. So he took every drop of medicine they prescribed for him, and the sleeping pills that seldom worked because he couldn’t lie on his back, and he had to. For the first time in years he wept—at the pain, and the helplessness he couldn’t relieve. The fall, and the snap of his bones, had terrified him, but only when he had realized what had happened; then he was furious at himself for being so stupid. For walking up to the Jasper house as if he were the police and had every right. The butler had opened the door, saw him on the porch and glared. Michael introduced himself. The butler turned away and a new man took his place. A large man. A very large man with hate in his eyes and damned strong hands that had picked him up and tossed him over the railing.

There were shrubs, but he’d missed them, pin-wheeling in midair and landing just wrong.

He winced at the memory—of the flight and the fall.

It was stupid, incredibly stupid, and he should have known those people would be touchy about reporters, but here in the hospital, listening to the quiet nightsounds, the whispers, smelling the antiseptic and hearing footfalls without seeing who was coming to his door …