by William Hawk
I turned to face my house. It was ringed with yellow crime-scene tape. All the lights were off.
I trembled. My knees went weak. What had happened here? The idea that my family could be dead was simply not something I could believe. There had to have been some kind of mistake, some incorrect identification of victims, something. What would I do without them? This was what real terror was, not some slasher movie that made murder a kind of entertainment.
I found my house key in my pocket, went around to the side of the house, ducked under the tape, and put the key in the side door. It opened like usual. I slipped inside the house.
It was dark and cold. There was dried-up food on the kitchen counter. I felt my way to the garage and found my father’s flashlight and carefully began shining it around the house. I didn’t dare turn on a lamp.
Then I saw it.
An enormous bloodstain on the living room carpet. There was a trail of blood that went from the front door to where the phone was kept in the kitchen. Another trail of blood led upstairs. I dropped to my knees, shaking, cold, in shock.
Then I heard a sound from the side door. I crawled behind the sofa.
“William?” said a woman’s voice. It seemed familiar.
A silhouette against the darkness came into view. I squinted my eyes but stayed silent.
“Is that you?” she said.
I finally recognized her. It was Miss Camilla, my neighbor from across the street. She was wearing one of her strange outfits. But I wasn’t sure if I should reveal myself, so I didn’t move.
“Honey baby,” she said, “I know you’re here. I just want to tell you that there was a terrible event.”
I knew what she was about to say before she said it, but I said it anyway. “What?”
“I’m sorry. Your family is dead.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I let out a muffled whimper and slumped against the wall. I felt that something in me changed at that moment—and it didn’t have anything to do with Change Agents or First Activations or Great Spirits or ten civilizations. Any remnant of the carefree teenager who I’d once been had now evaporated. I was completely alone. What would I do? Where would I go? How would I face the world without my mother’s strength and my father’s guidance? And my brother, he had been just a kid, like me. Someone had taken everything from him.
Miss Camilla must’ve heard me, because the next thing I knew she was crouched at my side, putting her arm around me.
“I’m not going to ask you where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing, but you gotta know something. The police are looking everywhere for you.”
I tried to focus. “They are after me for attacking Julia’s cousin.”
“No. Not that.” Her tone told me more than her words did.
The cops couldn’t think that.
“Are they saying I did it? How could they think that?”
She nodded.
I was numb. Everybody thought I had killed my own family?
“Where did they take them?”
“Who?”
“The bodies.”
She spoke softly. “I don’t know where, but they took them out last night.”
“I didn’t do this,” I said, burying my head in my hands.
Miss Camilla softened. “I know you didn’t.”
I lifted my head. “How do you know? Apparently, the world is looking for me!”
“Because I saw the one who did,” she said.
I looked at her. She offered her hand. “Stand up. Let’s go to my house, and I’ll tell you more.”
I had no place to go, no one to take care of me. Except this neighbor in a purple muumuu, Miss Camilla.
“Okay,” I said.
We went out of my house by the side door and closed it and stole quickly across the darkened street. She hustled me around the rear of the house, away from any prying eyes that might be watching the front door. She quietly lifted one of the slanted bulkhead doors that led into her basement and gestured for me to enter. I gingerly went down the steps into the darkness.
She followed behind me and closed the doors, then locked them using a padlock. I stood there waiting for her, smelling some kind of spices and feeling the warmth of the place, in such contrast to my house, now a cold place of death and horror.
Then she lit a hurricane lamp and carried it into the middle of the room. It was beautifully decorated, with a pair of sofas, a small table, and a vintage turntable near the wall. There were long pieces of flowing fabrics everywhere—cast over the lamp shades, cascading down from bookshelves, pooled in the crevices of the sofa.
It wasn’t just a basement; it was a refuge from the world.
“You’re going to stay here,” she said. “I can’t let you upstairs because there have been officials coming in and out since yesterday. I think it’s all finished, but you never know.”
I sat down on the sofa and put my head in my hands. Miss Camilla’s fingertips touching me lightly on the shoulders as she walked out of the room. She came back a few minutes later with a tray bearing a teapot, two mugs, and a tray of cookies.
She sat down opposite me in a club chair, poured the tea, sat back and regarded me. I knew that I looked horrible.
“Your parents didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.
I took a teacup with trembling hands. “Then who did it? And why?”
“A young man, about your age. He showed up on your front porch wearing a navy-blue banker’s suit. He rang the doorbell. And they let him inside. Very unusual to see a young man in such an outfit nowadays.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“Because I like to watch what happens in this neighborhood, as you well know. It’s my neighborhood, and it’s my right.” She paused. “I’ve also seen what your father has been doing in his garage workshop. Those helmets.” She looked at me as if I should know what that meant.
My ears pricked up. “My dad wasn’t working on any helmets.”
“Sure he was. He’s been going gung-ho on’em for the last month. I’ve been watching him out there, every night.”
That made me think. First that he was gone, but second that he had been working on the idea that I’d given him. Maybe it was his way of trying to connect with me during the last month.
I sighed. “What do you think I should do about my parents? Should I let the authorities know that I wasn’t here?”
“Well, they said you were up for that assault charge…”
My fingers gripped my teacup. “Who said that?”
“The anchorman on the news. He said it yesterday.”
There was no way that I could turn myself in to the police, not if they were intent on pinning this on me. Which meant something else.
“I’m not going to be able to bury my parents,” I said.
She didn’t say anything to that. I felt myself losing control. The teacup dropped from my hands and fell onto the carpet and spilled. Miss Camilla didn’t move. She knew just how I was feeling.
“There are no words,” she said, “to express how you’re feeling. It’s going to take you a long time to come to grips with it.”
I looked up at her with tear-stained cheeks, and then the anger in me began to flare. “I can find him. I will find him. And I will find out why he did this. And I will take revenge.”
Standing in the shower later that night, crying, I washed off the accumulated dirt of all those weeks in the cabin. I couldn’t, however, wash off the stain of the knowledge that my parents were dead. The pain would never come off.
Miss Camilla had brought me food, but I couldn’t eat. I felt dissociated from my body. I toweled off and went to lay on the basement sofa, my new home. I fell asleep, which was surprising. This night, though, it seemed that something was drawing me out of consciousness.
My body has taken on a kind of transparent state. I sense everything around me, though I’m not sure how, since I don’t have eyes, ears or fingers.
I find myself trav
eling through a material that appears to be a rock, soil or mineral formation. This most definitely is a different world from what I had experienced in any other dream or vision. Drifting along, my essence eventually reaches the interior of this place, and the sense of traveling through some sort of material ends. For a moment, there is nothing but pitch black. Normally that could cause me to panic, but not here. Images form in my mind, perhaps via a chemical reaction, perhaps via a sonar imprint. It feels a lot like waves arriving onto the shore—when the wave first splashes against your toe, it has little impact. Step farther out into the surf, and the impact increases significantly. When you get out to waist-deep water, a wave can easily knock you over.
This is what I experience. This consciousness is vast in numbers, a multitude of beings, but still has a degree of independence. I use the word independence loosely as I never detect individuality. The farther I go into their world, the stronger they become in aggregate.
Then the temperament of the beings changes. They grow nasty and aggressive. I feel myself drowning under a wave of what seems like liquid evil. If I had lungs, I would be suffering horribly. As it is, the experience leaves an awful, bitter taste in my mouth.
Then the process works backward. With every wave, the sense of evil recedes from me. Finally, it is not touching me anymore. I watch as it disappears.
The following morning, I was sitting cross-legged on the floor. Next to me was a breakfast of ham and eggs. I couldn’t eat it. Miss Camilla was sitting in the same club chair, looking at me. She was wearing a yellow caftan, the first time I’d seen her in that.
“So, this is my new home,” I said.
“Yes, for now. Did you sleep at all?”
“Only a little,” I said.
I clutched my head. “I have to figure out what to do about… everything.”
She nodded. “Can I ask something?”
“What?”
Miss Camilla leaned forward. “Now, I’m not asking—well, okay, maybe I am. Just where have you been for the last month?”
I sighed and leaned back on the sofa, shutting my eyes and holding my arms over my head. Then I took a deep breath and told her my whole story, starting with the birthday and proceeding through everything.
When I finished, she was looking at me with new eyes. “So, you’re one of those people.”
“What people?”
“You’re touched.”
“I don’t know about that, but I can hear that girl Grace speaking to me. That’s why I have to do something—wake her up, get her out. She’s the key to everything.”
“I used to work in that hospital,” said Miss Camilla.
That pricked my attention. “What did you do?”
“I was a nurse. I was on the staff for more than twenty years.”
I felt every nerve in my body sharpen. “Could you get her out of there?”
“What do you mean? Would we check her out?”
“No,” I said, “I mean steal her. She’s in a coma.”
Miss Camilla blanched at that, sinking back a little farther in her chair. “I suppose so. I only retired last year, and I don’t think they would’ve changed procedures yet.”
“How could we do it?”
She leaned forward and put her fingertips together. I’d never seen her so purposeful. “Well, you’d start by visiting when the nurses are distracted, which is when they’re changing shifts.”
“Would it be easy to do?”
“Oh my goodness, yes. As long as a patient isn’t coding, nurses are always chatting.”
As we put together the seeds of a plan, I began to feel excited. I was taking charge of the mystery that my life had become.
Sure that every car behind me was a cop car, I returned to the hospital the next day. First, I went to see Cy.
He was sitting up in bed. Before him was a big tray of institutional-style grub, crusty meatloaf and mushy peas, and he was shoveling the food into his mouth as fast as he could. It appeared that he had turned the corner, health-wise, certainly appetite-wise.
He waved at me with his fork. “How, paleface. Me Cy.” Then he grinned hugely.
I was astonished. He’d never cracked a joke like that before. The change in the old man’s behavior was remarkable, and it was apparent that his experience with the glowing light in the cavern was liberating. I was happy for him, almost to the point of forgetting the sorrow of the loss of my family, almost.
“You almost starved yourself to death,” I said.
“It was worth it,” he said, chewing. “The stuff I learned … I got the Proof.”
He was about to explain more when a young, portly doctor came into his room. In his hand was a tablet, which was apparently how they handled charts here. I watched his finger scroll through the pages. “Looking better, Mr. Kennedy,” he said in a Middle Eastern accent, “looking better.”
“Thank you,” said Cy.
I glanced at the old man. “Your last name is Kennedy?”
“Yeah.”
I laughed, a forced, nervous laugh, I realized, as laughing for real seemed out of the question with what had happened to my family. “You could have given me a hundred guesses, I never would’ve thought Kennedy.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Our last name used to be Tailfeather. My dad got tired of being teased so he changed it to Kennedy. I decided to leave it the same to honor my father.”
The doctor, who had been listening to our exchange with a smile on his face, put down the tablet. “We will keep you under observation for a couple more days and then release you if everything checks out.”
“Thanks,” Cy said.
“Make sure you don’t eat too much,” he warned.
He walked out of the room. I waited until the door closed, then turned to Cy. “You’re welcome for saving your life.” I smiled.
“Did I forget to thank you?” He caught my eye. “So, did you see if she was out of her coma yet?”
“Who?”
“Grace.”
My jaw dropped. “How did you know that she was here?”
“Because I felt it when you touched her in her room two days ago. It was like throwing a switch. Any C.A. 2 could feel it. You were connected in the spirit realm, and that touch connected you in this one. Besides, she and I have some prior connection, you know.”
“What? How?”
“Another time. Go to her.”
“I came here to steal her,” I admitted. “I have a plan and even a helper. Grace has been calling me for weeks.”
“She has a very strong presence,” he said. “The energy that surrounds her is phenomenal.” He motioned to the third floor. “I can feel it from here. But I think she knows the power doesn’t come from her. She is just the caretaker of that power. As it was given to her, she freely gives it to others.”
That was a lot to chew on, so I pulled the conversation back to the mundane. “I’m using your truck,” I said, “so when they discharge you you’ll have to find your own ride.”
“They said that won’t happen for a few more days. You want to show me where Grace is?”
“You feel strong enough to walk?”
“Maybe, but I might need a hand.”
I held out an elbow. Cy pulled himself very slowly out of bed. Together we went out into the hall and upstairs to the third floor. We made our way down the mostly empty corridor toward Grace’s room. The door to her room was closed, but through the window in the door I could see that she was still lying in bed. Someone had changed her clothing and brushed her hair.
Cy looked pained. “I hope your plan works. From what I overheard the nurses saying, there was a Jane Doe in a coma on the third floor who’s going to be institutionalized this weekend if her family can’t be located. Are there any other unidentified girls in a coma up here?”
“I’m guessing not,” I said.
“Then this is your only shot.”
We both looked at her one more time. I put one hand on the narrow window in the
door.
You’re here.
I closed my eyes. I’m going to rescue you.
Hurry.
It’s almost ready.
The communication ended. I pulled myself away from the door and noticed Cy looking at me. “So what did she say?”
“She’s waiting for me to rescue her.”
“It sounds like a fairy tale.”
I could see why he would say that, except that the princess was in a coma and speaking to me telepathically.
“It kind of is—and you’re going to help.”
He grinned. “I can’t wait to hear how. Just make sure I don’t have to run anywhere.”
“You won’t.”
Together, we shuffled back downstairs to his room.
That night, I sneaked into my home again—no more cop cars to watch out for—and entered my father’s workshop. It was a creepy feeling, moving around among all of his bits and pieces of projects, the odds and ends of an endlessly inventive mind. I still could not believe that he was gone. I expected him to walk in, to grin at me, to get to work on his toys. But it was just beginning to sink it that he would not be back, ever, nor would my mother and brother, and something in me wanted to die, too.
I steadied myself, blinked, got my bearings again.
Over to the left I saw the helmets. I was shocked. Miss Camilla was right. My father had been trying to build helmets almost exactly the way that I had described them—a pair of antennae, a band of circuitry above the brow. It nearly made me cry. He believed in me! He had taken what most fathers would have dismissed as his kid’s wacky dream, and he ran with it and made it a reality. I always knew that I had scored by having him as a father; now I knew it more than ever with his passing, and with his gift to me, even in death.
But I did not come for the helmets. I was here to look for ways to help transport Grace to a new location. Breaking someone out of a hospital who was in a coma carried a whole host of weird problems that needed to be addressed. For one, we needed a wheelchair, and Miss Camilla had an extra one in her home, something her mother had used.