by Brian Hodge
Ellen’s leg was examined by a bored intern who announced that she’d brushed against nettles and experienced an unusually strong allergic response. She reflected on the futility of telling him what had actually happened. She’d already had Nate Harris laugh in her face, and Bob was on the psycho ward for blurting out his story.
The doctor gave her antihistamine cream. “This’ll keep the itching down. If you’re not better by tomorrow afternoon, come back and we’ll take another look at it. But I’m sure this is a very minor problem. You must have gotten in the nettles running away from the fire. Lucky that was all that happened. You’re all very lucky.”
“You’re sure it couldn’t be anything else?”
Smiling, he shook his curly young head. She read the easy condescension in his face.
She wanted to yell a warning from the rooftops, but what could she say? Hey, my name is Ellen Maas and I think that Oscola’s full of creepy crawlies. Please strap me to a bed beside Bob West.
It sickened her to realize the truth: the enemy had been breathtakingly efficient. There were no hordes of refugees claiming to have witnessed the impossible. Only four people who knew what was happening had gotten away—Loi and Brian and Bob and a very frightened outsider called Ellen Maas. Not even Bob’s children understood the truth.
When she left the treatment area, she found the rest of the emergency facility quiet. Brian and Loi and the boys were gone. Looking around at the sudden emptiness, she felt hurt.
The quiet, the soft voices of the intern and the resident talking together on the nurses’ station, the distant whirr of the air-conditioning system, even the familiar hospital smell, combined to enforce upon her a sense of deep isolation.
She would never return to Oscola, not even to get her belongings, not for any reason whatsoever.
She paid her bill with a MasterCard. There wasn’t any insurance, so the $270 would just eat a little further into her credit limit. It was possible to see a welfare office in the future, if she couldn’t find work somewhere.
“Did the Kellys say where they were going?” she asked the desk clerk.
“No, ma’am. But I don’t think they left the hospital.”
“Was Mrs. Kelly admitted?”
“None of ’em were. But that guy with the truck, he told ’em goodbye. So I figure they’re still here.”
Of course they were, and it was perfectly obvious where they had gone.
She went through the long, echoing corridors to the so-called “Brain/Mind Suite.”
“I’m here to see Lieutenant West,” she told the nurse at the station.
The nurse peered along the hall. “They’re all down there. Two-forty-three. Are you a relative?”
Ellen walked into the open room, confronting a tableau of complex human emotions. Loi and Nancy were standing side by side, Brian was leaning over his friend. The two boys were in a corner, their eyes open wide.
Their father was under restraint, his body wrapped in long, soft hospital-green clothing of a type she’d never seen before. There were lots of belts and straps. It froze her insides to see a human being treated like this. She’d never dreamed that this sort of thing was still done. Shades of Bedlam, with the mad chained to the walls.
“Miss Maas,” Nancy said. “Please—”
“She is with us,” Loi interrupted. “She has great courage. And you need to listen to her.” Their eyes met.
“Thank you,” Ellen said. She turned to the bed, where Bob was straining against his straps, his face gleaming with sweat. The poor man was struggling to get up. Ellen looked to Brian.
“He’s absorbing it. Aren’t you, buddy?”
His voice when it came was a deep, throaty rumble, vastly weaker than Ellen remembered it. “It’s… all of it…” Then he looked to Ellen, a fierce question appearing in his eyes.
“It’s true, Bob. I’ve seen them. You’re not hallucinating.”
“You’re not psychotic, Bobby,” Nancy said. “The things you’re remembering—the things with the arms and all—”
Slowly, it sank in. Deeper and deeper it went. They could see the wonder come into his face, followed by a flicker of relief, a sudden turning of the head, a sigh as if a weight had lifted, then a widening of the eyes—wider, wider—and a great, long, rolling groan mixed of relief and triumph and abject terror.
Followed by sudden silence.
Then his eyes seemed to look into some far distance. “Get me out.”
Ellen began working the straps, then the others joined her, and they all untied him together. When he sat up in bed he wobbled a little, but then he was on his feet, swaying in his hospital gown, going down on one knee as two very excited boys flew into his arms. “You’re gonna be OK, Dad,” Chris said. Joey snuggled against him, burying his face in his father’s chest, drinking his returned power.
“I’m fine, boys, but I don’t think the Yanks are.”
“Yes they are,” Joey said, suddenly coming to life. “They just won six games in a row is all.”
While Loi and Brian and Ellen waited in the hallway, Bob dressed. “I really think we ought to all go to a motel,” Ellen said.
Loi looked at her. “We certainly can’t stay in Oscola.”
“I thought I had some kind of an obligation, but this is beyond that.”
“Yes,” Loi agreed, “our obligation is to survive.” She put her hand on her belly. The pains had faded, but she did not feel strong.
During the fire Loi had seen that Ellen was a very strong, mature woman. Somebody who was cool in the face of the unexpected, who was efficient at times of high danger, was not also an emotional baby. That woman would never try to seduce a married man.
She hadn’t lost Brian, she could see the love in his eyes. But she had certainly lost all her curtains and dishes, her marvelous dresses she’d bought at the Mode O’Day, her pretty furniture.
She’d also lost her collection of books, the mathematics and physics texts she was studying, her poetry, her Great Novels in Outline. She had lost the papers that identified her as a new American and the wife of an important man: her citizenship certificate and her marriage license.
She had lost her beloved Laughing Buddha, that was her luck. She was just a barefoot on the road again.
She had stopped crying years ago. Weakness must never be revealed.
“We gonna go home,” Joey piped as the Wests came out of the room.
Bob hushed his son.
Quietly, the whole group of them went to the far end of the hall and down the back stairs. It wasn’t difficult to leave undetected; the hospital wasn’t guarded.
Now that the moon had set, the sky was filled with stars. Ellen did not like going out into the parking lot where there were only a few cars, did not like being in the dark, under the sky. “What if they’re here?”
“It’s possible,” Brian replied, “but I don’t think so.”
“Well, why not? I mean—”
“They’re apt to be confined to the area of Oscola and Towayda, at least for a while. We’ve seen that they have limits, a sort of range.”
“But they’ll spread?” Bob asked.
They had reached the Wests’ Taurus. “Oh, yes,” Brian replied.
“The bears?” Chris asked.
“It’s not bears,” his mother replied.
“Something else,” Loi added. “We do not know for certain what it is.”
“Look,” Brian said, “there’s almost no chance that we can fight this on our own. And I doubt very much that we can get the evidence we need.”
Ellen looked at him. “Do you realize what you’re saying?”
Brian glanced down at the boys, nodded. Ellen thought she had never seen such sadness in a human face.
“We go to the Ludlum Inn,” Loi said. “Wait until dawn.” She was holding her own shoulders. “I don’t want to stay outside any longer.”
They got into the car, all except Ellen. There wasn’t room for her. She leaned into the driver’s
window.
“I’ll catch up with you,” she said. “Take a cab.”
The car pulled away, leaving Ellen to face the dark and silence alone.
2
She hurried back to the hospital lobby. The car had obviously been jammed, but something about being left behind still hurt.
The corridors were so quiet that she could hear the humming of the fluorescent light fixtures on the ceilings.
So, where was she going to go? Following the others to the Ludlum Inn was one alternative. But she could also rent a car and just start driving.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” The maintenance man stood before her in his blue uniform, his keys in his hand.
“Yes?”
“You can’t stay here at this hour.”
She used the phone in the entryway. When you need something after midnight in a small city like Ludlum you call the cab company. Sure enough, the Tru-Serve dispatcher knew of an all-night car rental. Allomar Texaco was also an Avis station. She took a cab there and soon had wheels again, a green Escort with a complicated stain on the front seat.
She drove out to the Northway, intending to crash at the first motel she found. There was no point in trying the Ludlum Inn. Only well-known locals could get a room there without a reservation. Unlike the higher Adirondacks, the Three Counties were not much of a tourist area, so there was a possibility of getting a room on short notice in the summer season.
Even so, the Suisse Chalet was full, the Rodeway Inn likewise.
She finally found a room at the Days Inn. On the way in she bought a Hershey Bar and a 7-Up from vending machines. She didn’t even like the walk down to the room from the lobby. It was all she could do not to run.
She called the Ludlum Inn, but they hadn’t arrived.
Sitting in the middle of the bed in her ripped jeans and dirty sweatshirt, she ate candy and flipped from channel to channel on the TV, trying to blank her mind. The memories of the past eight hours were not to be touched, not if she wanted to stay sane.
McLaughlin was bellowing on CNBC, tonight’s “Larry King Live” repeating on CNN. “The Brady Bunch” flashed past, followed by a chunk of Fort Apache, followed by a story about a school prayer scandal on Headline News.
It should have been reassuring, but instead it was eerie, like peering into a dead man’s eyes.
Without realizing it, she fell asleep. A soft sound… a tickle along her right arm—and she leaped back against the headboard screaming bloody murder.
She clapped her hands over her mouth, horrified that she’d get thrown out of the motel. There was nothing on her arm, nothing unusual anywhere in the room.
She sighed, drank down the dregs of her 7-Up. It was warm, which surprised her. Then she noticed that she could see the swimming pool.
Incredibly, it was seven-fifteen. She’d slept for three hours. The last thing she remembered, she’d been sitting in the middle of the bed.
She grabbed the phone and called the Ludlum Inn again. This time, they were already gone.
Next she called the Wests’ house. Would the phones in Oscola be working?
Nancy answered.
“This is Ellen.”
“What happened to you?” She spoke off line. “It’s her.”
“I’m sorry, I accidentally fell asleep.”
Brian came on. “We were worried sick.”
“Brian, what in the world are you doing back there? Are you people insane?”
There was a pause. “Look, Ellen, we can’t just turn our backs on this.”
“We have to!”
“I’m gonna try one last time. I didn’t come back for somebody else’s shirts and underwear.”
“Brian, you took those children, your pregnant wife?”
“It’s broad daylight. So far, everything that’s happened has taken place at night.”
“So far.”
“What I’m going to do is look for fragments over near your car, where I did that shooting. And the Wests are packing a few things.”
She should put down the phone right now. She should not say what she was about to say. “I’ll come help you.”
“Ellen—”
“I’ll come,” she repeated as she hung up. She sat on the bed, fumbling in her purse for a cigarette. Lighting it, taking the first drag, she relaxed a little. Then she daubed her tongue on the shoulder of her shirt. Smoking was a nasty habit. It made her taste bad and smell worse. It made her look weak or stupid or both. But she sure as hell was stuck with it, especially now. She took another drag, a long one.
This problem would not blow away with the smoke.
After washing her face she went to check out, stopping in the hall to buy a cup of vending-machine coffee.
Coffee in hand and cigarette in mouth, she passed the restaurant. There were a couple of people in booths, a couple more at the counter. The morning papers stood near the door in stacks, still tied. Outside, crows perched on the motel’s sign, calling to one another. The leaves of an aster quaked in the morning breeze.
Nothing was wrong, nothing at all.
She signed her credit card receipt and went out to the Escort.
Driving back, she watched the road narrow, the woods close in, watched the rolling mountains behind Oscola, thought about what lurked in the shadows, in the depths of the ground, thought of the quietly growing number of empty houses.
She approached Belton Road, the last turnoff before Route 303’s unbroken run to Oscola. This was the point of no return. “What are you?” she asked the humming silence as her car passed through the intersection.
Her foot touched the brake, hesitated, wavered, then pressed harder. Just beyond the intersection, she rolled to a stop. She raised the windows and locked the doors.
She drove fast, alert for the least sign of movement back in the woods. But 303 seemed abandoned. Nobody passed her, she overtook no other cars. She reached River Road, then crossed the bridge onto Mound, then turned onto Queen’s Road at the intersection.
At the Wests’ house, she turned off the engine, got out and went up to the front door. From inside came the familiar smell of cooking bacon.
This was one of those small moments that is really huge, and for once she knew it. She was making a commitment here, a big one.
She knocked.
There had been soft voices inside, which now stopped. “It’s me,” she said through the closed door. She stepped back, suddenly certain that this was a mistake. The door opened a little.
Bob West dragged her inside.
Behind the closed curtains the lights were on. She found herself in a cozy living room. A big photograph of an Adirondack stream hung on the wall above the entertainment system. The room was filled with solid Early American furniture. Some of the pieces were obviously very old. She had seen family antiques like these in everyday use in many Oscola homes.
“Ellen,” Loi said from her place lying on the couch, “welcome.” The smile seemed warm, but Loi’s personality had so many subtle twists and turns, it was impossible to be certain.
“How are you doing, Loi?”
She touched her stomach, smiled. “We are well.”
Ellen looked around for the boys. “Chris?”
“He’s going to be fine,” Nancy said. “There’s still a good bit of pain, though.”
“Burns hurt,” Brian added. He gazed at her. “I’ve got a theory in place.”
She raised her eyebrows, questioning.
“Some of my equations suggested that we could crack a hole in space-time. Somebody must have done it. Built a device and done it.”
“They took my husband’s work, twisted it.”
Bob walked over. His wide, kind face reminded Ellen of her own father. “I remember being in a room full of blue pipes and broken equipment. I was swallowed, for God’s sake. Like Jonah in the whale.” He paused. “Somebody talked to me, tried to get me to see it his way.”
“Who was he?” Ellen asked.
“I remember a tall shape. B
lacker than black. A sense of great dignity and…what I would call evil. Essence of evil.”
Loi sat up. “The demon.”
“Satan,” Nancy added.
Loi gave Bob an appraising look. “Did you feel like you wanted to help him?”
“I don’t know what I felt. If it was Satan—”
“This isn’t about the devil,” Brian snapped. “I’m talking about a derangement of reality on the deepest and most subtle level.”
“I remember him as being… insectoid. When he moved, it was slow and stealthy until right at the end. Then—wham—he was at your throat.”
Nancy went closer to him.
Ellen was fascinated by the idea of just sitting across a table from somebody from another reality, if that was the right way to describe it. “You said he was evil. How could you tell?”
“It radiated from him like a stench. Total contempt, total hate. Like nothing you can imagine.”
Loi, who had gone to the kitchen, put a plate of bacon and eggs on the table with a bang. “We’ve got to eat,” she said.
Brian took some eggs. “Then I’m going out to make the last try at evidence.”
Again, there was that terrible sadness. Poor Brian. Ellen could see how responsible he felt.
Nancy called her boys and they were soon loading plates with food.
Brian stared into his own plate. “We’re pawns. I’m my own pawn. Or the pawn of my own inaction. Ironic.” His voice went low. “My grief over the loss of my first family has placed my second in mortal jeopardy.”
Ellen’s heart went out to him, but it was Loi who tended his sorrow, putting her arms awkwardly around his big shoulders.
A moment later he looked up from his food, stood, and without a word strode out the door.
“Gotta go, baby,” Bob said to Nancy. They kissed and he hurried off behind Brian.
Ellen watched them go in Bob’s sedan, watched it kick up dust at the end of the driveway, then disappear around the comer of the house.
Soon Loi and Nancy began to pack, with Loi cooing over Nancy’s humdrum wardrobe as if it belonged to a princess royal. The boys turned on the television. Ellen went over to the picture window and opened the curtains. She stared as far as she could see down Queen’s Road.