Pete craned his neck for a better look at the monitor. The blood pressure cuff and all the sensors hung in a limp, swaying bundle from a hook on its side. His arms were bare.
The beeping alarm went to monotone.
“He’s going!” the first paramedic cried. “Hit him!”
The needle wielding paramedic spun around on his stool. He placed the cold, sharp needle point on Pete’s left breast.
“What the hell!” he yelled.
The paramedic drove the needle down in one fast stroke. It pierced him like a frozen dagger. He screamed. The paramedic squeezed the needle’s plunger. Neon goo filled his chest like an injection of dry ice. His heart stopped. He gasped for air.
“Paddles!” shrieked the other paramedic. He was still glued to the data screen. His voice had an ecstatic, high, asylum lilt to it. “We’re losing him! Juice him good.”
The paramedic on the left yanked the needle from Pete’s chest. Pete sucked in a shallow, wheezing breath. The ball of ice in his chest spread within his body. His head swam.
The paramedic raised the two electric paddles. The faces had a wide pattern of sharp points across them, like sandals with crampons.
Pete managed a wheezing, pleading croak.
The paramedic clamped the twin paddles to the sides of Pete’s head. The sharp points scraped skull. Pete’s mouth opened in a silent scream.
“Clear!” the paramedic yelled.
Pete’s senses exploded.
Thousands of volts arced through his head. Every nerve ending sent a simultaneous plea for help. The world burst into bright, white light. His muscles involuntarily spasmed against the gurney restraints. Tendons tore. Blood ran from his nose. He collapsed against the gurney. He’d shit himself.
The ambulance siren died. The vehicle jerked to a halt. The doors flew open and the two paramedics hustled the gurney out and through the hospital doors. A wave of nausea rolled over Pete.
He rolled feet-first down a, dazzling white hallway to two swinging doors. An assortment of patients in hospital gowns lined the hall and watched him pass. Their emotionless faces were pale, drained of life. Their glassy eyes followed his gurney at it sped by.
At the hallway’s end, the paramedics gave the gurney a mighty heave and launched it through the swinging doors. Pete rolled into an operating room and came to an abrupt stop. An array of stainless steel cabinets covered the wall in front of him, and ceiling to floor white curtains partitioned each side of the room. Two enormous spotlights lit the gurney. Pete’s street clothes disappeared and he was naked.
A nurse in teal-green scrubs appeared at his right side. A matching turquoise cap and face mask hid all her features but a pair of piercing blue eyes. She gave Pete a cursory visual examination.
“We’re too late, Doctor,” she said. “This one’s a goner.”
He tried to tell her he was alive. Nothing came out.
The doctor appeared on his left. He wore black scrubs.
“No options then,” he said to the nurse. “Prep for harvest.”
A new wave of horror washed over Pete.
“Right away, Doctor,” the nurse replied.
The doctor turned away to inspect a medieval assortment of surgical tools. The rusty utensils were all in huge proportions. A wide saw blade with jagged irregular teeth. A meat cleaver. Something that looked like a giant corkscrew. A pair of scissors with serrated blades like a set of shark jaws. These things made incursions into the human body, not incisions. Pete’s mind started to buckle under the terror.
The doctor flourished a big, black Magic Marker. He drew a dotted line across Pete’s waist, then another from his belly button to his sternum, like the perforations in the face of single serve cereal boxes, the ones you’re supposed to slit open to make a bowl.
An incoherent scream filled Pete’s head.
The doctor moved to the instrument table. When he turned back around, his surgical cap was gone, replaced by a black leather, peaked officer’s cap. Dangling dreadlocks hung over the ties of the surgical mask. The doctor’s skin turned jet black. He locked his eyes on Pete’s.
“Ready to operate, boy?” he said in a Caribbean accent.
Cauquemere ripped a saw through Pete’s midsection in one violent stroke. Pete’s mind spun in circles. Cauquemere reached down and grabbed a handful of intestines. He yanked them up so Pete could get a close-up view. He felt the radiating warmth of his pulsing organs against his face.
“A beautiful harvest,” Cauquemere said.
Pete woke himself screaming, back on the bus to Philadelphia. All the terror the dream’s paralysis had dammed up inside him escaped in a flooding shriek. Sweat soaked his shirt. Breathless, he fell back into his seat, mentally wasted.
The driver and the little old lady in the flowered hat spun their heads around. They exchanged hushed words. The lady rose and walked down the aisle to Pete. Her bright yellow pants suit perfectly matched her hat. Her frail hands steadied her against the seatbacks with each lurching step. At Pete’s seat, she cocked her head in genuine concern.
“Are you all right, young man?” she said. Her voice had the slight stutter of age.
“I’m fine,” Pete said. He felt his face turning crimson. “I just had a nightmare.”
“Sounded like a dilly,” she said. “You didn’t sleep through your stop, did you?”
Pete looked out the window. A sign showed the bus was still on a New Jersey state road passed by.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I’m going to Philadelphia today.”
“Visiting relatives?”
“No,” Pete said. “Looking up a friend, that’s all.”
The old lady released her grip on the seatback. Her hand moved like a striking cobra to Pete’s neck and collapsed his windpipe. Pete gagged and his vision blurred. The old lady’s green eyes turned brown. He’d just seen those eyes.
The old lady’s lips parted and the voice of Cauquemere came forth.
“See you there.”
Pete startled awake in his bus seat again, alone. His heart ran like a cheetah. In the front of the bus, the old lady in the floral hat stared out the window. The driver casually drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as farmland passed by.
Nightmares. Back to back. Dream within a dream stuff. Holy crap.
Worst of all, he hadn’t known it. All his life, vivid as his visions were, he was always aware they weren’t real. But the hospital vision felt real, every sight, smell, and slash as sharp as real life.
Rayna said Cauquemere could create nightmares so real that people lost their minds in fear. He sure as hell believed that now. How many hell-raisers like that had the poor bastards in Twin Moon City endured before they crossed over?
Cauquemere had Pete’s number now. Outside of the mansion, Pete was fair game. That copper wire and knife trick didn’t seem ridiculous at all anymore. He wasn’t sleeping without that line of defense ever again.
And he sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep on this bus. His dream-induced adrenaline surge would make sure of that.
Chapter Twenty-One
Luck was with Pete when he arrived in Philadelphia. Despite the ticket agent’s look of disbelief when asked where the nearest library was, the man followed up with the right answer. The Independence Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia was about half mile away on 57th Street. He scratched the directions down on some paper anyway.
Philadelphia couldn’t have been more different than Pete’s desolate slice of Atlantic City. Skyscrapers surrounded the low bus station. The streets teemed with people. Scads of tourists hustled by to the historic district. Bustling, bright stores in The Market across the street disgorged animated customers loaded with sacks of goods. Street traffic flowed by in a surging, big city way.
Pete crossed several streets to find the library. He spun around for the return
view several times, always aware that in this world he was always one street away from being lost. The crowd swept him along, a welcoming change from depressing west Atlantic City.
As he walked south on 7th, he saw the library. Its glittering steel façade stood only two stories high, wedged between two brick office buildings like an inviting silver flower growing through a crack in a stone.
Inside on the right, a row of computers lined the wall. The first few had “Card Catalog Access Only” signs on them. He saw the magic words he sought labeling the computers farther down the line for internet access.
Pete took an open terminal. With a deep breath, he touched the mouse. Computers were hit and miss. So much information. So crowded on the screen. Webpages were not designed for people with Visual Processing Disorder.
The black screen sprang to life. He found the Philadelphia Enquirer home page and clicked on the archives link. The page was blessedly uncluttered. He typed in “Estella+Rayna” and hit “Search”.
Two article titles appeared on the screen. The first was from July 26. The title read “Tragedy for Sisters in Downtown Apartment”. Without even reading the second entry, Pete clicked on the first. Paragraphs filled the screen.
TRAGEDY FOR SISTERS IN DOWNTOWN APARTMENT
Neighbors complained to the super that the alarm clock had been beeping in Apartment 206 for hours. When he investigated, he found two sisters the alarm would never awaken.
Police report that Estella Fisher, 20, and her sister Rayna, 18, were lying on the floor of the apartment at 1214 West 17th Street when they arrived. An ambulance rushed both to St. Vincent’s hospital were Estella was pronounced dead. Rayna was admitted to intensive care in a comatose condition.
The investigation is continuing, but police have discounted that the sisters were the victims of a crime. Neither showed signs of trauma. The locked apartment did not show signs of forced entry.
Estella worked at the Four Season Floral Shop where she arranged flowers for delivery. Natalie Ladd, her supervisor, said she had not been to work the last few days.
“She wasn’t looking well,” Ms. Ladd said. “She looked real tired all the time. I asked her if she was sick. She kept saying she was fine. Then the last three days, she didn’t come to work. Didn’t even call.”
Rayna was enrolled as a student at Susquehanna County Community College. She was visiting her sister before starting her first fall semester.
The parents of the two women were not available for comment.
Philadelphia police encourage anyone with information about the two girls to contact the police tip line at 267-555-TIPS. Information can be given anonymously.
Pete imagined what the tiny story must have looked like in the paper, probably less than two inches of text wedged into the “Crime Beat” section. The average reader gave it a few seconds, if they read past the first few sentence at all. Just another faceless tragedy in the news.
But Rayna’s name had a face that went with it. A beautiful, captivating face. Pete fleshed out the story with visions of Estella stalked to the edge of sanity and Rayna’s furiously mixed suicidal concoction, her ticket to follow her sister into the unknown. The tale was more desperate than the Inquirer’s readers would ever know.
Pete hit the “back” icon and returned to find the second article. The title read like a flare rocketing into a pitch black sky.
COMA VICTIM MOVED TO LONG-TERM CARE
Rayna did not die.
At least not then, he thought, to rein in his enthusiasm. The date line on the second article was August 14, three weeks later.
Rayna Fisher, discovered comatose in a locked apartment nearly three weeks ago, today was transferred from St. Vincent’s Hospital to Legacy Hospice in Philadelphia. Doctors expressed doubts that she would ever return to consciousness.
They described her condition as a persistent vegetative state. Her brain still controlled autonomic functions, but tests showed no activity in the part of the mind that controlled higher functions such as speech, thought, or the processing of external stimuli.
Police found Rayna, 18, and her sister Estella, 20, in an apartment on West 17th street on July 25. Rayna was unconscious and her sister was dead. The coroner later concluded that Estella had died of natural causes, a heart attack. The police theorize that Rayna attempted suicide with a mixture of prescription drugs when she found her sister. Paramedics and doctors at St. Vincent’s were able to stabilize her.
Staff at Legacy Hospice said that Rayna could live many years in her condition since her body was young and healthy. Her parents could not be reached for comment.
Pete’s conflicting emotions swirled and sparred. A living Rayna still had some tenuous connection to the corporeal world. Rayna was no longer just a soul lost somewhere between Pete’s mansion and Twin Moon City. She still lived and breathed in the real world.
But on the other hand, that was literally all she was doing. Her body existed on this plane, but nothing else did. Her soul, her consciousness, whatever it was that passed into the Land of Dreams and Nightmares, had gone for good, with no mind to return to, the shell left behind useless as a snake’s shed skin.
No wonder her life force was so vibrant in Twin Moon City. Unlike the others condemned there, she still had a link to the tactile world, a conduit to another source of energy. Perhaps that gave her the survival edge.
Which meant she was still alive here, three months later.
Pete grasped at a straw of hope. Doctors don’t understand comas. People come out of comas without warning. He remembered a firefighter who came to after over ten years. She could make it back if anyone could. There was only one way to validate this optimism.
He had to pay a visit to Legacy Hospice.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The hospice was only a few miles away, a forty minute stroll for most, an unnerving trek for Pete.
Maps being worse than useless, he had the computer chart out the course to Legacy Hospice. He counted the intersections and the changes of direction. Eight blocks, turn right, two blocks, turn left, etc. He wrote down the list. Twin Moon City he could get around, but Philly…
The neighborhood changed as Pete left downtown behind. The skyscrapers gave way to older, three-story brownstones. In contrast to Atlantic City, Philly’s neighborhoods were vibrant and restored, streets clean and houses painted. Smiling people had places to go. Residents walked dogs and pushed kids in strollers. Life was normal.
Pete hash marked the blocks as they passed, always worried that he had missed a street or lost count somewhere. He made his last turn and saw Legacy Hospice.
The stone building was a one-story modern design, painted bright white. Six parking spaces separated the building’s expansive, elevated porch from the street. A ramp connected it to the parking lot. Large windows draped with bright yellow curtains bracketed the polished wood front door. Planters filled with small evergreen bushes lined the porch. Neat white lettering on the wall read:
LEGACY HOSPICE
LOVING LONG-TERM CARE
Pete assumed he’d find a glorified warehouse of the slowly dying, but if this book could be judged by its cover, this might be a good place for Rayna.
If she’s still here. Anything could have happened in the last few months, and none of it would have garnered a mention in the press.
And what was he going to tell the staff if she was there? Something like “Hi, I’m Pete. Rayna and I met on vacation in Twin Moon City.” They’d bounce him back to the curb.
He’d gotten this far. He needed to see her, to attach something tangible to the ethereal Rayna who walked through his dreams. He needed to know that the woman who captivated him in some other world was, at least in some way, part of this one. He mounted the porch steps and hoped for a last minute inspiration.
The reception area lived up to the exterior’s promise. Bright works
of Impressionist art hung on the eggshell walls. A cushioned, light blue carpet covered the floor, not the usual thin, industrial type. Live floor plants bloomed in every corner. A lovely nurse in her thirties sat behind a, light oak desk. The dark blue cardigan over her white uniform had a “Legacy Hospice” logo on the left breast. On the other side was a pin that read “Marilyn Davies, RN”. An engaging smile graced her lips as she greeted Pete.
“Can I help you?” she asked, closing the file she had been inspecting.
“I am here to visit Rayna Fisher,” Pete said.
Nurse Davies nodded with satisfaction.
“How nice,” she said. She slid what looked like a registration book in front of her. “Your name is…”
“Peter Holm.”
“And how do you know Rayna?”
“We went to high school together. I had the day off and wanted to see how she was doing.” One lie mixed with one truth.
Nurse Davies gave a sympathetic nod. She passed the registration book to Pete. He printed his name and home address next to the date and time. She compared it to his driver’s license.
“She’s in room 18,” Nurse Davies said. “I’ll walk you down.”
Pete followed her down the hall.
“Has her condition changed?” Pete said.
“No,” she answered, “not since we admitted her. We don’t expect her to improve. That’s why she’s here instead of a hospital.”
Nurse Davies seemed to sense his disappointment.
“You didn’t expect her to be better, did you?”
“I really didn’t know what to expect,” Pete said.
The nurse turned and gently held his shoulders.
“Peter, our guests here never get better. That’s not our mission. We’re here to make them comfortable, give them an uplifting environment, and meet their daily needs. I hope you can accept that’s what we do.”
Not likely when Rayna was concerned.
“How can you be sure she won’t recover?” he asked.
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