Fifteen frustrating minutes later he learned by phone that no one was permitted near the boy, not even his parents, as yet. It seemed the boy's condition was far worse than Briggs had allowed. It seemed total isolation was necessary, according to Banaker, if the child was to regain his former strength and identity. According to reports circulating about the Institute, the boy had gone into a kind of walking coma, unable to speak or feed himself. Such a condition was typically brought on when the mind shut down in the face of unacceptable horror and fear.
Abe Stroud felt he understood the child's plight. He placed himself in the boy's position and he experienced the old wounds that had once threatened to lock him away deep within himself to emotionally bleed to death deep inside a silent frame.
Stroud got up suddenly, tossing the covers aside, but when he stood, he found himself in a cold, chilling, and damp circle. He involuntarily shivered and looked around for the vent which was allowing the chill in. But there was no vent and as suddenly as he'd touched on it, the cold spot disappeared. He shivered again and rushed to find a change of clothes, shower, and go into town for breakfast. He meant to be at Banaker's Institute to see the boy one way or another.
He got as far as the front door of the huge manse, where he was stopped by an elderly couple calling themselves the Ashyers who wished to become his house servants. “We served your grandfather in his last years,” said Mrs. Ashyer.
Mr. Ashyer had with him a collection of newspapers--the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, the Springfield Herald and the Andover Sentinel. ”With my compliments, sir,” he said.
“If you will permit, Doctor Stroud, I will see to your breakfast,” said Mrs. Ashyer.
“I ... I don't know what to say,” he replied. “How long were you with my grandfather?”
“Thirteen years. Before us, he had a lovely couple, did everything for the master. We ... we worked for Mr. Gilcrest on his estate--now, in terrible condition. The place fell on hard times.”
“Gilcrest?”
“On Barnstable Road, some distance from here, but within a half day's drive, and if you should want references--well, there is an address I have here you may wish to write, a previous employer, sir.”
Stroud looked into the man's eyes, and then into his wife's. They were the picture of English servants, down to the unremarkable features and clothing, and yet there was a gentle light in their eyes and an aura given off by the pair that defied any doubts he might have about the couple.
“Tell you what. I'll have you on, and we'll see how it works out. But tell me, where've you been all this time? Why'd you wait so long to return to the manse?”
“We were told you'd be selling. We didn't know you'd be settling down here, and although Mrs. Ashyer and I felt as if we knew you--from what your grandfather related--we had no reason to believe otherwise. And with the promise of work upstate...”
“Didn't work out?”
“Afraid not, sir.”
“Their loss, my gain?”
“You might say so, sir.” He was charming and she was as demure and politic a woman as Stroud had ever met.
“You may move your things in. Take whatever rooms you had previously--or bigger ones, if you choose--and we'll see how it goes. God knows I could use the help, and perhaps you can tell me something about my grandfather's last days.”
“Whatever we might,” said Mr. Ashyer. “He was a grand old fellow, your grandfather.”
“Thank you, I've always believed that.”
“We heard about your part in finding the boy,” said Mrs. Ashyer. “When we did ... we knew you were like your grandfather.”
Just the opposite of Briggs's view, he told himself. What could cause such contradictory opinions of a man's memory?
“I'll get right to work on your breakfast, sir,” she said.
“I'll see to having our things brought out,” he said.
Stroud accepted the newspapers and Ashyer's ushering him into a large chair in the den where his grandfather did most of his reading. Ashyer told him to relax and that all would be taken care of.
Stroud turned to the Andover Sentinel first, wishing to see what was written about the discovery of the boy. It was a sketchy piece at best, ending with a statement from Banaker predicting that the boy “would, in time, recover from his listless condition.”
Banaker seemed everywhere. Stroud could rely on his being at every turn. Like gum on the shoe, he thought. It made him suspect the Ashyers now suddenly. Their having just shown up as they had, “infiltrating” the manse. Or was he just being paranoid?
Paranoia had over the years saved a number of lives, however, and, as a former cop, he knew this only too well. A woman might begin to suspect her husband was trying to poison her; a man might begin to wonder about someone he has seen shadowing him; there was enough family related violence to go around to make paranoia a useful trip. But when Mrs. Ashyer called him into the dining room the aroma of her bacon and eggs and coffee melted away Stroud's fears for the moment.
Stroud felt foolish sitting at the enormous table in the huge room dishing up his breakfast alone, however. There was enough room at the table for several football clubs or the men in his platoon in Vietnam. He pictured them all sitting about the table now with him, the ones still alive. As he did so, the empty chairs filled with the likenesses of the dead soldiers he'd fought with as well, and for a moment it was as if they were really in the room.
The spell was broken only when Mrs. Ashyer returned to ask if he would like more coffee or more food.
-7-
“I want to see the boy now!” said Stroud firmly to the nurse who had stopped him at the station moments before at the Banaker Institute.
“I'll handle this, Nurse,” said Pamela Carr who stepped from the portal behind the nurses' station where she'd been reviewing some charts. Under the bright fluorescent lights her skin was as pale as alabaster. The light seemed to irritate her eyes. She wore soft blue dark glasses, offsetting the tinge of blue beneath the skin of her smooth cheeks. She was a tantalizing woman. He felt the instant attraction and fascination with her that he had felt the other night.
“Doctor Stroud,” she said, “I am not surprised to find you here.”
“I came to see the boy.”
“I know that. You don't think that I thought you came to see me?”
She walked a few steps with him to the room where Timmy Meyers lay, according to the nurse on the main floor. She even gently pushed the door open for him to peer inside. But the room was empty.
“Timmy is gone. His parents took him home.”
“But I thought he was in a condition of shock.”
“Yes, well ... even Banaker can argue for reasoning only so much in the face of parental concern. He gave in to Timmy's parents. They wanted him home. Doctor Magaffey convinced them that the boy would do better in familiar surroundings at this point.”
“Magaffey?”
“Banaker was fit to be tied.”
“I'm sure.”
“At any rate, I'm sorry we couldn't have been more helpful to you, Doctor Stroud.” She gave him a coquettishly warbling blink.
He nodded and smiled. “Yes, well--”
“There is an empty room here,” she said, letting the door close behind them, “and an unused bed. Perhaps we ought to ... put it to use?”
She began undoing the buttons of her lab coat. “I'm one of Doctor Banaker's residents. Don't have much time for socializing or small talk. You must appreciate that, being a soldier once.”
She moved toward him, lifting his hand to her breast, pressing it into the silky finery below her top. She was firm and her heart pounded rhythmically. Stroud found her provocative and alluring and bad and a great turn on. He quickly covered her mouth with his own, feeling a power come swelling back at him like that of another man, she was so strong. He was pressed against the bed and she was clawing and climbing over him in animalistic abandon.
“Wait, not here,” he tried to say,
fearful for them both. Should she be found out, she could lose her job; should he be found out, it wouldn't reflect well on the Stroud name so carefully preserved in the community for generations.
“I can't wait ... can't,” she panted, moving over him, nipping at his neck, her lust virtually burning through their clothing and making him burn with it.
“Not here!” he said.
“Here, yes, now!”
“No ... Pamela.”
“No one will disturb us.”
He pushed her away firmly. “I hardly know you. I ... it's not that I don't find you attractive...”
She began a slow strip before him.
“But there're other things to consider.”
“I've been considering your thing for some time.”
Just then the door opened, making them both stare. It was the nurse who'd stopped him in the hallway. She was giggling, but managed to get out her message. “Doctor Banaker's on his way up.”
“Jesus,” moaned Stroud. “Later, Pamela. I'll call and we'll get together in a more private setting. How is that?”
She didn't say a word but her mouth was curled in an angry, frustrated snarl. “Bastard thinks he owns me,” she said.
“Does he have reason to think so?”
“I suppose ... once maybe.”
Stroud straightened himself and rushed from the room before Banaker might make a scene. At the elevator he ran into the big man.
“So, you came to have a look at the boy?” asked Banaker as he stepped off the elevator. At the nurses' station the women were gaggling and whispering like so many witches over a brew. It seemed as if one of them had alerted Banaker to the danger Stroud presented him in respect to Pamela Carr.
Pamela came out of what had been Timmy's room and ducked discretely down another corridor, but the movement was not lost on Banaker.
“Guess I missed the little tyke,” said Stroud. “Understand the parents wanted him to rest at home.”
Banaker nodded, went to the nurses' station, and latched onto a chart lying open there. With a pen he jotted down a few items. “Yes, well, no arguing with a mother over her cub, you know. Despite the fact the boy should have remained in my care for observation another day, perhaps two, they took him home.”
“Do you think he'll soon recover?”
“He has every chance of doing so. He would have a better chance in my care, of course.”
“Of course.”
“As it is, whatever happens ... it's on the heads of his parents.”
“What does that mean, Doctor?”
“That means that with the boy off these premises, he is no longer a concern of mine. They chose to endanger him further, thanks to Magaffey's interference, and so that is that. I am no longer feeling responsible.”
“I see.”
“You see? You see? Really? No, Doctor Stroud, you do not see.”
He stalked off in the direction Pamela had taken. Stroud pushed for the elevator to return, and while waiting he felt uneasy. When he got into the elevator and turned around he saw that six of Banaker's nursing staff were all standing in a state of frozen stares at him. Their eyes bore into him and he felt a shock of vulnerability. The doors closed and the car began to move down, his head disoriented and dizzy from the bizarre exchange.
He then heard the faint whisper in his head, the same muffled, struggling voice that had fought its way from the figure in the wood that morning. It was no longer warning him off. It was wailing, “Baaaaynaaaaakoooooorrrr.”
Stroud hadn't cared for the Institute or Banaker: each reminded him of the V.A. hospital in Chicago--cold, clinical, antiseptic, inhuman. These were the words that leapt readily to mind. Stroud wanted only to get back out into the cold rush of the morning breeze, the light and air, to fill his nostrils and pores with the stuff of life.
He panted to himself, “Got to get out of here.” He felt the old darkness creeping in around him, seeping into the pan of his brain like acrid, spreading grease, seeping through the crack no doubt left unsealed between his skull cap and the portion made of metal now--left unsealed by doctors who were either inept, no good, or interested in experimentation: to see what would happen if they did so.
The creeping dark he was familiar with was like a slow-moving fog that infiltrated on soft paws, stealthily, as if it had a mind and an evil intent. He felt it in every nerve ending, felt it make his skin cold and sweaty, felt it climb to the nape of his neck until he welcomed a dead faint, an old-fashioned blackout, anything but this overwhelming feeling of weakness and fear.
He must find a quiet place, a place where no one could see. It was an ugly affliction he didn't wish to share.
He found a stairwell, not even knowing how he had gotten from the elevator to the enclosure. He didn't feel it when the seizure finally struck and sent him cartwheeling down a half flight of stairs into an uncontrollable jerking and kicking out at his inner demons.
One V.A. medicine man had claimed the seizures would one day kill him. Once or twice, on the job as a cop, his partner covering for him, he came close to dying, but not from the seizures so much as from the bullets that could strike when he was in one of his seizures. He'd learned to detect the early warning signs. He had learned to prepare by placing a plastic wedge--a wedge riddled with his teeth marks now--across his mouth to bite on. He had also learned to go with the seizures; there was no gain in fighting them.
He had learned that the seizures, while unpredictable, were often brought on during extremely stressful situations, or when he was most frustrated. It was one reason to end his career as a police officer.
A V.A. shrink had called his seizures self-induced sadomasochistic behavior, which meant he was fucking himself over for some sick reason having to do with the fact that he had lived when so many of his friends had died. Stroud told the shrink to shove his theories up his Freudian ass, saying at the time, “We both know bloody well that enemy shrapnel, followed by a team of military surgeons working some 'friendly fire' of their own, screwed up my head twice! I've had little say in the matter, much less sadomasochism. You and the U.S. brass are worried about where I might point the finger, whether or not I'll get a good lawyer, so you come in here shoveling shit. I didn't cut myself or beat myself before I entered the service. Why would I begin now?”
That had silenced the psychological approach to the problem, but the seizures had never been silenced.
Typically, when he came out of a seizure, he found he was twisted pretzel fashion; typically, he'd have to unknot his cramped fingers and toes, frozen into gnarls. Sometimes his abdomen was wound round opposite his chest; legs and arms were akimbo. Throughout his seizures he was aware of himself to the degree that his physical pain and contortion were brutal, even sadistic. He often felt that some devil in Satan's army had been given his case file and been told to get Stroud. But the mind was busy with horrors of its own during the seizures--images of past horrors and sometimes images that terrorized but meant nothing to him in and of themselves, as if they were the fragmented fears and terrors of other lives.
But this time it went differently. He felt a power or force not inside him, but around him, holding on, gripping and struggling with his limbs and form. But it was a benevolent power, a reassuring touch. There was an odor along with the touch and it reminded him of his grandfather's pipe smoke.
He saw no one, heard no voice over him, only felt the pressure and force and touch in many directions as hands held his seizure in check, so to speak. It was the oddest sensation of all: this touch, strong and sure, of many.
Then his mind was clear and he was standing--standing! He'd come out of the seizure on his feet! It was not to be believed. He must surely still be in the grip of the seizure, hallucinating. Hallucinating positively rather than negatively for a change. Yet still, it was a hoax concocted by his mind to hang onto his dignity.
But everything he touched was solid and real, including himself, and he was on his own two legs walking down a corridor. It
was a dark corridor but there was a light at the end and from behind the light he heard mirthful people at what sounded like a birthday party. Someone was singing an unfamiliar song, something ages old, Gaelic perhaps, in an ancient tongue for sure. He tried to pick out the words, but other voices drowned out the singer.
Laughter, raucous and bawdy, came from behind the light.
Had the elevator car taken him into the subbasement of the building, opening on a dark and claustrophobic corridor? Perhaps he'd never gotten off, never found that stairwell? He distinctly recalled pushing the lobby button, but maybe someone had called for it at this level first, so he had zipped by the lobby. Maybe.
End of the hall was the light behind the doors of the morgue.
End of the hall there was raucous laughter coming from behind the doors.
This troubled him. It was more than the sick humor of residents tossing livers and spleens. It was a party. No morgue he had ever visited was noisy. Occasionally the coroner's lab was noisy, but never the morgue where death blanketed the walls with its presence.
“Can I help you?” The voice so startled him he almost jumped. Silence swept through the place now as if those behind the doors knew he was here. He turned to face a white-coated younger man with acne over his neck and dark circles under his eyes.
“I seem to have lost my way.”
“Haven't we all?”
“Yes, well ... Doctor ahhhh--”
“Cooper,” he said, looking over his glasses. “Are you here to give blood? The blood drive is over but--”
“No ... well, I mean ... frankly, Doctor Cooper”--Stroud wondered if Cooper was any relation to the boy named Ronnie who'd not been as fortunate as the Meyers boy--”I was just looking for a way out.”
“Stairwell is to your left, elevator's behind you,” he said, the dark eyes shining white in the dim light. He looked like he might well be a drug user, so dark were the circles about his eyes.
“Any relation to the little boy who was lost?” Stroud asked.
The dark eyes glazed over with tears and he clamped down with his teeth in an effort to control the sudden trembling of his chin. “My ... my son. Bastards killed my son ... didn't leave anything behind.”
Vampire Dreams (Bloodscreams #1) Page 7