Sentinel Event

by Samantha Shelby

  The water was frigid and Chester was having difficulty breathing, pressing against the roof of the car in his last desperate seconds, using the buoyant airbag for support.

  It suddenly came to his mind how Rod had told him that it witnessed the first time Aidriel had drowned. Chester realized that Rod could have saved him from drowning also, if only he had listened to it. Now no one was going to save him.

  Letting exhaustion take over, Williams closed his eyes and permitted the water to pull him under, sliding beneath the airbag. He couldn’t get enough momentum to kick out the windows. They were cracked—why wouldn’t they break? All of his wealth and influence meant nothing now, when the only thing he needed was a hammer. He should have listened to Rod; he should have ignored deTarlo. Chester held his breath until it hurt; his breathing instinct took over and he had to exhale. Water rushed into his lungs, and the suffering increased. His air was gone.

  Lying on the embankment above, Ana thought she was flat on her stomach, but couldn’t feel anything to know. Her head was turned toward the road, and she’d heard the semi slam into Chester’s car, then stutter on the blacktop as the driver deployed the brakes, skidding at an angle so his truck blocked both lanes.

  The car had smashed into the water. She could hear Williams screaming her name, and when his voice stopped, she began to involuntarily weep. The semi driver was panicking on the road, and ran over to her, roughly shaking her back. She wanted to shriek for him to leave her alone; that Chester was drowning. But Ana had no control over her body and could only lie there in shock and cry.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the road embraced in a cloud of smoke. Andrei stood in the middle of the street, examining the result of its endeavor to indirectly destroy their car. Like Rubin and Tracy, it was not long of the world. But it had seen what would happen and how the Passers would fall back into place now that those two rebellious spirits were gone; it knew what it had to do, and it had done it.

  Andrei waited until Williams stopped yelling and looked to Ana as the driver ran down the bank into the water to swim toward the submerged vehicle. Satisfied, the last of the rule-breaking Passers turned and walked several steps away before drifting upward and vanishing from the earth.

  CHAPTER 16

  Aidriel was suddenly awakened to his name being uttered; an icy hand rested on his shoulder. His eyes flew open and he looked up in the semidarkness. The Passer of Chester Williams stood over him, apprehensive and urgent.

  “Get up,” Chester said. “They’re coming for you.”

  Instantly wide awake, Aidriel threw off his blanket, dropping his bare feet to the floor and standing. It had been more than a year since the bullet had torn through his leg, and though on days of inclement weather it pained him, Aidriel could still move without assistance.

  When he had awakened in the hospital and learned about the accident that had left Chester dead and deTarlo paralyzed, he had felt an unexplainable remorse. There were some newspaper articles tacked to his wall about it, proclaiming the tragedy of the leading voice in Passerism’s drowning. “PASSERIST CHESTER WILLIAMS KILLED IN TRAGIC AUTO CRASH: PSYCHOLOGIST CRITICISED FOR BLAMING PASSERS,” one blared in bold black letters, while another read, “AMERICAN SENTIENCE MOVEMENT WITHOUT WILLIAMS: HOW A.S.M. IS MOURNING AND MOVING FORWARD.”

  Williams’s friend Fagin McPike had taken over leadership of the organization; he was charismatic but not as gifted as his predecessor. Chester’s only contact with A.S.M. was to keep it at a distance from Aidriel. Williams was survived by a daughter and fiancée, and had not, as far as Aidriel knew, gone to see them since his death. It was depressing.

  There were also articles expounding upon how deTarlo, having survived the crash, was being chastised for blaming the ghosts. The idea of Passers harming anyone was truly ridiculous now, because they never did. From the moment Aidriel had taken control of them, not one had broken the rule, except for Andrei in its efforts to ensure the Passer companion of Aidriel would be a worthy helper.

  As a result, he had not felt the need to test his power of command over the spirits since he returned to his mortal body. Even being in his company so often, Chester had never suggested he try. Perhaps the Paradox of Natural Judgment no longer applied. But Aidriel should have fled like Williams had told him to the first time the ghost came to give him counsel. If he had, perhaps deTarlo wouldn’t have found him when she recovered.

  Chester moved to the door and motioned at the knob; there wasn’t time for Aidriel to take anything. Silently slipping out into the hall, Aidriel glanced about for the nurses or orderlies, but he saw no one and heard nothing but distant classical music. It was well past midnight, and the psych ward was asleep.

  With Williams a step behind him, Aidriel crept down the hallway until he stood outside the closed room with two cardboard name tags next to it. One said “Dreamer Akimos,” his wife’s name.

  Being in such a contained environment as the psych ward had been surprisingly beneficial in the swift courtship and engagement of Aidriel and Dreamer. It had been nothing like she expected when she checked herself in to be near him and then could not get out again. She’d been so angry at first; he’d been resigned. She sulked in her room and wept sorely at Tracy’s betrayal. There was little privacy; everyone heard the sweet nothings he whispered to her or soon heard of them through the gossip circuit. There were no cobwebs to clean or rugs to shake or milkshakes to make, but they made do the best they could when she was happy enough to. They read to each other or argued over facts they couldn’t prove. He called her beautiful, and she called him perfect, and the other patients called the nurses on them when they tried to be alone.

  Chester had watched from a distance as they bounced in and out of psychiatric institutions and the fourth floor of the hospital after attempts at escape caused them injury. Dreamer dreamt of freedom and cried with frustration and at the ups and downs caused by her medication and her long-lasting mourning at the loss of her Passer companion. Aidriel got his hands on a guitar and sang Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” until she smiled again.

  He’d asked her to marry him in the dead of night while her roommate snored a few feet away. Williams’s former assistant smuggled them rings and a small bouquet and the paperwork to make their secret ceremony official. The nurses and doctors Aidriel knew from the ER came to congratulate him and ensured Dreamer’s ID bracelet was updated. Nothing had changed, but Aidriel began to spend hours at the windows, counting the steps in his mind from the front doors to a safe distance from the hospital. The shuttle could take them to the far end of the parking lot, then maybe they’d have a chance.

  Aidriel opened the door to Dreamer’s room and went in without a sound, leaving it open with Chester guarding it. Kara stood by the window dressed in its usual nightgown, gazing down into the street, and it turned to watch. Passers were no longer a foreign sight in hospitals, thanks to Aidriel’s “electromagnetic pulse of change,” as deTarlo referred to it. She liked to talk about him in his presence, as if he were deaf or not there. She’d opened up shop in the hospital and enjoyed the benefits of the popularity of her papers among the psychological field, throwing her commanding weight around whenever a more permanent solution for Aidriel and Dreamer was discussed among her peers. He had known for a while that the time would come when the overbearing woman who called herself his psychologist would have the “remarkable Akimoses” moved to the Bird Cage, which she had weaseled and wormed and fought for nearly a year to pry from the hands of A.S.M. It seemed the time had finally come.

  Dreamer was lying on her side on the bed, dozing under a cloud of sedatives. She was less cooperative with their wardens than he was of late and often had to be restrained with prescription drugs. Aidriel did not attempt to wake her, but gathered her up in his arms, leaving the blanket.

  Chester motioned that it was safe to proceed, but that they needed to hurry. Aidriel darted down the hall toward the double doors before the
elevator with the nurse’s station behind the windows. He slowed and realized he had no plan to continue, but spotted a Passer on the other side that he recognized. It was Matilda. The lock buzzed and he pushed quietly through, smiling in thanks at Tammy the nurse as he passed where she sat. She mouthed, “Take care” but didn’t dare make a sound.

  Aidriel elbowed the elevator button and it immediately opened. Stepping in, still cradling Dreamer and with Kara and Chester a pace behind, he faced forward once more. In his haste to get through, he had pushed one of the double doors open so far it had remained that way. He could see down the hall to the opposite end of the floor, and when the distant lock buzzed, he could observe the people arriving through the other double doors.

  St. Cross was leading the way, dressed in a smartly pressed suit, Rod a step behind him. The police officers and orderlies held the door open for deTarlo to ride through in her motorized wheelchair. The poetic justice had not been lost on St. Cross when he had regained the use of his legs after Ana became confined to the chair, though it had had no affect on their roles of authority. One squeeze of the trigger had cost him his license, and it had only been through begging and flattery that he had managed to convince Dr. deTarlo to include him in her studies, if only so she could access his extensive experience with Aidriel.

  Ana didn’t look far enough down the hall to see the other elevator, but St. Cross did. He spotted the man cradling his wife, both of them dressed in white and barefoot. He was pretty sure Aidriel saw him too, but did not return the shrink’s smile. The elevator hatch closed, and Tammy hurriedly pushed the swinging door shut, the lock humming.

  DeTarlo drove past St. Cross, rudely clipping the back of his leg with her chair in her rush to get to Aidriel’s room. He didn’t bother to tell her it was a waste of time.

  Chester must have warned Aidriel. They’d come for him, but he was gone.

  Samantha Shelby finds imagining and writing are a natural part of her personality, and spends more time in faraway places than in reality. To occupy her hands while she daydreams, she collects blood samples and shelves library books. Her hobbies include sleeping, eating pickles, and collecting magazine articles. She lives in Ohio with her family and beloved West Highland White Terrier.

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