by William Hawk
I pondered. Grace would need some head support when she was in the upright position. So I cut a piece of plywood in the shape of someone’s back and head. I then connected it to the wheelchair, along with a pillow, the U-shaped type that are used to support your head when you fly in an airplane. But I still needed to find a way to secure her to the chair. I spotted a roll of duct tape on the workbench. Then I stopped myself—that would be too sticky, too noisy, too painful, too…icky. There had to be something else around here. Looking through the cabinets and shelves, I found four large rolls of Velcro. Two were self-adhesive and two could be sewn on. That would do perfectly.
When I was finished, I remembered one more thing. I went over to my father’s electrician’s tool chest and rummaged around until I found an insulated wire crimper. It was to cut Grace’s monitors in case Miss Camilla could not disable them.
Now, if Miss Camilla had done her job with the mannequin, everything should ready.
Miss Camilla had done her job, and when we arrived at the hospital the next evening, I drove Cy’s truck into a parking spot far from the entrance, well out of view. I pulled the wheelchair from the back bed and opened it. Miss Camilla assembled the mannequin, which we’d dressed in a heavy shawl that covered its face.
Miss Camilla took a final look and adjusted the mannequin’s limbs. “It’s more like this. Old people in wheelchairs don’t have the strength to keep their wrists on their lap.”
“Are we ready?” I asked.
“Absolutely.”
We pushed the fake person in the wheelchair into the hospital. A greeter asked if we were checking in. “No,” said Miss Camilla, “we’re visiting a patient. Is that you, Lucy?”
The greeter broke out into a big smile. “Miss Camilla! We sure do miss you around here!”
It went on like that as we moved through the hospital, strangers in scrubs stopping to chat with their former coworker. Miss Camilla had apparently been very popular.
We entered Cy’s floor and spotted a nurse at her station. Not the same nurse I had spoken to before, which I was good with, but she recognized Miss Camilla right away.
Well, well! Don’t you look good, baby!”
They embraced.
“I’m just getting off,” said the nurse. “You caught me at a bad time.”
“We’re here visiting Cy. This is Cy’s mother, but she doesn’t like to talk, so we’re just gonna keep on going.”
“Welcome, Mrs. Kennedy,” said the nurse loudly.
I bent over and in a loud voice said, “The nurse says hello, Mrs. Kennedy.” I put my ear down by her mouth, pretended to listen, then shook my head. “She has some laryngitis.”
Without any hesitation, we moved down the hall. The nurse glanced at us now and then but was too busy packing up to really pay much attention. Miss Camilla pretended to offer the mannequin a drink of water. It looked just real enough to fool anybody who was watching.
When we got down to Cy’s room, he was waiting for us on the bed. “I’d love to meet my mother,” he said.
“Here she is.” I rapped the mannequin on the head with my knuckles. He laughed. “And this is Miss Camilla. She’s helping me.”
“Pleasure,” he said.
“Okay, let’s get up to the third floor. Ready for a leisurely stroll?”
“You bet.”
The three of us pushed the wheelchair into the hallway, into the elevator, and rode it to the third floor.
“She doesn’t talk much, does she,” said Cy.
“Like mother, like son,” I said. “You even forgot to tell me you were going to try to enter the cave.”
We went out into the hallway. It was deserted at this time of night.
I wheeled the mannequin into Grace’s room and shut the door. “Quickly now,” I said.
Miss Camilla disabled and disconnected the monitoring equipment as Cy and I lifted the mannequin out of the chair and moved to the bed. Grace was stretched out there, same as before. As we lifted her body, she felt oddly light—as though there was something inside of her that was definitely ethereal.
We gently propped Grace in the chair. I used the U-shaped pillow and Velcro to secure her. Then we took the clothing off the mannequin and dressed her in it. Time was ticking by. We needed to get back out in the hallway as soon as possible.
Then we were finished. As long as no one looked too closely, she could pass for Grandma Kennedy.
Doubling our speed, we put the mannequin in the bed, covered it, turned its face away from the door, and arranged everything to look like an actual person was lying there. Our hopes were that we would be long gone before anyone noticed—and that they would not associate us with Grace’s disappearance. As long as nobody saw us go in to or out of her room, we should be good. The camera view was obscured at both entrances to the rooms, so we knew we had a fighting chance.
We rolled Grace into the hallway and back toward the nurse’s station and the elevators. The nurse would get a full-on view of our kidnapping victim as we approached, so I obscured Grandma Kennedy’s face by bending over and acting like she was saying something to me.
We piled into the elevator, and it seemed like forever until the doors closed. The descent in the elevator felt like it took an hour. As soon as the doors opened to the second floor, Cy got off.
I waved at him, then jabbed the button marked L. The elevator descended again, and when the doors opened this time, I pushed Grace across the lobby floor and out the front door.
“Slow down, William—you’re going to hurt her,” said Miss Camilla.
I was starting to panic, since part of me knew that we could be easily arrested for this crime. Without delay, we rolled across the parking lot to the truck. We opened the back gate and lifted Grace from the wheelchair and laid her in the bed in the back. We secured her head and then placed the cinder blocks along her body so she wouldn’t roll. We covered her with blankets, tucking them carefully around her body. She would be invisible to passing cars, though trucks could look down and see her. I folded the wheelchair and put it at her feet.
Then I got behind the steering wheel and started the truck and drove the forty-five minutes in silence back to the neighborhood. Miss Camilla kept an eye on the girl in the back.
We arrived in our neighborhood, my stomach an absolute wreck. As usual, I parked several blocks away. We reassembled the wheelchair and put Grace in it, and then I left Miss Camilla to wheel her around the block. I would cut through the backyards under cover of night.
It worked perfectly. Twenty minutes later, I sneaked in the back gate and was in the basement. Miss Camilla was tending to Grace, who was stretched out on the sofa.
You’re safe now, I communicated to her.
Grace responded. Thank you.
For the rest of the evening, I sat with Grace. She was like a princess, to look at her, with that long hair and upturned nose. How could someone in a coma appear so perfect?
She was quite agitated, though, and her thoughts were not as smooth as before. I couldn’t quite understand her communication. It was apparent that in telepathic discussion, if one of the participants is unsettled, it is very difficult to make a coherent connection.
Finally, her thoughts began to smooth out and I could make sense of them. He wants me dead, and he is nearby.
Who? I asked.
Him.
I don’t understand.
You will. Soon.
Can I help you wake up?
No. I want to stay in this hidden state. As long as my consciousness is not exposed to the world he cannot find me.
What does he want from you? I asked.
He has been trying to destroy me since before I was even born.
I thought about that one for a while. These sort of reveals told me that the nature of evil was longer, deeper and more entrenched than humans would like to admit. That there has always been evil in this world, always will be evil in this world, and that our task is to simply fight it—continually, eternall
y.
William, you must be careful. If he gets too close to you, he will know I have communicated with you. My energy leaves a trail and anybody that stays in close contact with me is in danger.
I let go of Grace’s hand and stepped away from the sofa. I wanted to know more, but it now became very clear why she was trying to hide things from me. Part of me questioned my own sanity, whether she truly was in danger—or if she was just a girl in a coma, and I was a lunatic, and the events of the recent past as I remembered them where just the false reality of a madman.
All I knew is that I couldn’t figure out my next step until she woke up.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was still too dangerous for me to park the car or be seen in front of my family’s house, but with the police presence gone, it was probably okay for me to stick my head slightly out of my shell.
And the only person who I trusted enough to contact was Arthur.
I knew that he had his hip-hop dance class on Thursdays. I spent a lot of time making fun of his silly moves. Still, I’d never taken dance classes, so I had to admire his gumption. And girls were always surprised when this monkey-armed guy started grinding away in the middle of a school dance.
So I took the truck on Thursday night and parked it outside the dance studio, which was at the end of a strip mall. I waited behind the wheel with my sunglasses and baseball cap on, feeling like a celebrity trying to avoid the paparazzi, which must be better than what I was hiding from.
At last he came out of the dance studio, dressed in black sweatpants. Smiling, I rolled down the window and made a short, low whistle.
Arthur looked over. It took a couple of seconds, but he recognized me. He turned and ran up to the truck.
“Dude!” he said. “Is it you?”
“In the flesh,” I said.
“I honestly thought you were dead,” he said. Then his face fell. “You know about…”
I cut him off. “Yeah, yeah. Get in. I need your help.”
He slid into the passenger seat and stared at me as though I were a phantom. It made me feel a little special, as though I’d survived something that other people hadn’t. Which I had, of course.
“They think you did it,” he said.
“I know. That’s why I’m like this. You don’t think I did, right?”
“Seriously? You can’t even step on an ant.”
I put the truck in gear and pulled out onto the road. “Where are we going?” Arthur said, wiping his forehead on his sleeve.
“Nowhere. I just have a few things to tell you.”
“Like where you’ve been?” His eyes were popping out of his skull.
It took almost fifteen minutes to tell him everything. When I finished, Arthur sat in silence.
“Whoa,” he finally said. “Either you’ve been trippin’ on some bad stuff, or you’re crazy, or we both are.”
“I know. So, I’m approaching you for one reason.”
“What’s that?”
I looked at him. “I need help finishing the helmets.”
His eyes flashed. “Count me in.”
Later that night, I sat on my father’s workbench, cradling one helmet in my arm. Next to me, Arthur was studying the circuitry on the helmet.
“Your dad was really creative,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Look at this.” He pointed out a jumble of wires. “I never would’ve thought to arrange it like that.” He looked up at me, but I had no idea what he was referring to. “What is the purpose of these things?”
“I told you, somebody showed them to me in a vision.”
Arthur stared at me, uncomprehendingly, as though a dog had just walked by on its rear legs, smoking a cigar, which would be appropriate here. “You can’t be serious.”
“And think about this—I feel like it was from some advanced civilization or space brother I don’t know.”
“Whoa,” he said.
“So this is real, and I think that these helmets will be the things that can get me in touch with others in the spirit realm.”
“The other side,” he said. Then he whoo-whooed like a ghost.
“Exactly. But it’s different than you think.”
“Why?”
“Sometimes you’re just a C.A. 1, but some people are C.A. 2, and a few people are C.A. 3, except the ones that go evil, and they get dropped to C.A. 0…”
Arthur’s mouth had dropped open. He held up a hand, stopping me mid-sentence. “William, could I just work on the helmet? I am already confused enough, dude.”
I stopped talking. If he wasn’t ready to swallow this much information yet, I wouldn’t force-feed it to him.
We blacked out the windows and put towels along the cracks at the edges of the garage door to block the light.
I watched Arthur get going on the helmet. As his hands worked on the circuitry, he said, “So I was trying to understand how someone could speak with the spiritual realm using modern technology.”
“What did you do?”
“I went on YouTube and learned about all the paranormal technology. Those devices don’t use anything too weird. It gave me a lot of ideas.” He went on to explain exactly how paranormal science will someday be viewed as an extension of regular science.
Then he pulled out my father’s soldering iron and put on my father’s protective mask. I turned around, partly to protect my eyes, but also because they were misting up. Every day now, flashes of anger and sadness and grief came over me, and I would cry or just check out. I hadn’t even gone upstairs into my parents’ bedroom. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I wiped the tears and stood by and waited to assist Arthur.
Four hours later, Arthur displayed the helmets for my inspection. They seemed to be finished. “Remember,” he said, “this is just my best guess.”
Tucking them underneath our arms, we left the garage workshop and crept across the street under cover of night.
I wondered how much longer I was going to have to skulk around like a thief. This event, this awakening of mine, should have had me giddy with happiness, but the loss of my family and the horrible thought of going to prison weighed on me like nothing I’d known.
We ran into the basement through the back door. Grace was lying on the mattress on the floor, the same mattress that we’d used in Cy’s truck, since Miss Camilla and I had decided that it was too dangerous to place her on the sofa, because she could roll off and hurt herself.
“Grace, Arthur. Arthur, Grace,” I said.
“She’s beautiful.”
“She’s out of your league,” I cautioned. “She’s a special life form.”
“That’s what they all tell me. So if you’ve spoken with her telepathically before, why don’t you just keep doing that?”
“Because she always comes to me. I don’t seem good at the other way around. And it can be a little weird, kind of garbled sometimes. I want to be able to start the conversation, and I want to make it clear. Now help me.”
We put one helmet on her head, then the second one on mine. Arthur adjusted some of the wiring on mine. “Ready to go.” He’d installed an on-off button on the right side of each helmet. “I’ll push hers, you push yours.”
“One, two, three,” I said.
We pushed the buttons simultaneously. I spoke in my mind and waited for something—a light, a buzz, a sense of clarity, a voice.
Nothing.
“It’s not working,” I said.
Arthur tried a few more configurations over the next two hours. Miss Camilla even came down to offer her input. The results were the same. I took the helmet off my head and looked despondent.
“I did my best,” said Arthur, removing the one from Grace’s head and setting it on the floor next to mine. “Sorry, man. This is above my pay grade.”
“There must be something else about these helmets that we don’t know,” I said.
Miss Camilla shouted down the stairs, her voice tense. “William, y
ou have to hide yourself! We got company.”
I ran to the foot of the stairs and looked up. She was distraught. “Who is it?”
“The police chief,” she said.
The Chief. Julia’s father. I felt panic rising inside of me. Fortunately, Miss Camilla and I had already formulated a plan for this—and it involved a long piece of hollow metal that was standing in the basement.
The water heater. It was lying horizontally in the far corner, in the unfinished portion of the basement, next to the sump pump. The water heater had broken less than two weeks ago, and when she’d bought a new one, Miss Camilla insisted on keeping the old one. She was a packrat like that, I had learned. Nothing ever escaped her. I guessed that she might’ve had a lot taken away from her in the past.
“Crap,” said Arthur.
“You’re in no danger,” I said. “You’re not wanted by the police, but the two of us are. Help me load Grace into the heater.”
He looked over at the thing. “There?”
“She fits. We already did a trial run the other day. Hurry.”
We picked her up and loaded her feet first into the heater. Then we made sure the open end was facing away from the stairwell.
“What about you?” he said.
“It’s cheesy, but I’m hiding in the closet.”
Again, this was part of the plan. There was a large closet near the stairs, with a false door inside it. Miss Camilla said she’d had the house for years before she had found it, that maybe someone had stashed money in there or something.
I could hear the man’s voice upstairs, coming closer. I went over and opened the door. Inside were all of Miss Camilla’s caftans. I pushed through them, found the secret door, and slipped inside.
“Okay,” I whispered to Arthur.
“Okay,” Arthur echoed, and I heard the closet door close.
I was surrounded by complete darkness. I listened for the conversation upstairs, which was now quite muffled and indistinct, but when I focused I could make it out.
“May I look around down there?” the chief’s voice said.