by T S Paul
“They’re everywhere! Nurse! Bring me a gun, I have to stop them! They want to eat me!”
Affecting a smile, the pretty blond bombshell stepped into the room. “Hello, I’m nurse Christine.”
Forty-five writhed on the bed as if possessed. The former military man had been in the hospital for years, unable to handle the outside world. Ever since he’d left the battlefields of what remained of Europe, he’d felt that anything and everything was out to get him. This week it was small rodents. “They’re coming for me and this time they plan to eat me!”
Smiling for real now, Christine approached forty-five’s bed. Catching the man’s eyes, she whispered, “Share your pain with me.”
Shaking with nervous energy coupled with terror, Eugene Morse, forty-five’s real name, shook his head back and forth. He tried to stare only at the ceiling, but he couldn’t avoid the pretty nurse’s eyes. The faint green gleam they now embraced trapped him like the mice he feared.
“Share everything with me, Eugene,” Christine murmured as she took his hand in hers. Eyes much brighter now, her brow wrinkled in concentration as she forced herself upon him.
“I…” All his willpower gone, Eugene let go as his soul streamed out of his body like water from a hose.
“Mmm. Nice, so much more satisfying than the doctor. You, my friend, are a welcome sight. Too bad it’s a one-time thing. Humans are so fragile that way,” Christine remarked even as she pulled all but a trace of Eugene out. “Think of this as a cure.”
Eugene slowly blinked as his strength left him completely. It hurt to do anything other than breathe, and that was much harder than before. Choking, he managed to whisper a single word. “Why?”
“The Horde was supposed to win but you and your people stopped us. Next time will be so very different,” Christine explained with a smile. Pleased with his struggles, she scanned what was left of him. “Hurry up and die, won’t you?”
The former military leader could only sigh as his doom walked out. His family past and present were in his thoughts as he slipped into a coma.
“You look pleased with yourself, Christine,” Dr. Norton remarked as he finally caught up to her. He’d gotten bogged down with med requests.
“Just enjoying my job. It can be fulfilling sometimes,” Christine answered. Stepping closer to the man, she intentionally brushed up against him, running her hands across his body. Keeping her voice low, she whispered into his ear, “We should pick up where we left off.”
Norton shifted uncomfortably as he felt a tightening in his groin. “Shift change is in less than an hour. We don’t have time for this.”
Christine circled his ear with her tongue. “I thought you liked to live dangerously?”
“Not at work I don’t. Christine, this has to stop!” Norton whispered back.
Sliding her hands down the front of his pants Christine smiled. “Are you sure about that? Someone’s more than a bit naughty now.”
Yanking her hands away from his body, Norton glared at the very forward nurse. “Stop it!” he demanded. Glancing both ways down the hallway, he yanked her into the closest room, closing the door behind them.
“So forceful. Do you want to do it here or back in your office?” Christine cooed.
“Damn it, Christine, we can’t do this anymore. They all know!” Norton half yelled.
Checking the patient in the bed to see if he was conscious, she turned back to the good doctor. “Of course they know. You haven’t been very secret about our adventures together.”
“This stops now. Everything that I am depends on this job. I have plans for the future,” Norton explained.
Christine’s eyes flashed bright green for a split second. “Your future is what I say it is, doctor. I have proof of our little escapades, enough that will turn the heads of all the hospital administrators and even the press if it were to come out. You belong to me now.”
Norton snorted, “I’m a well-respected doctor. Who’d believe you?”
Raising her hand, Christine traced the shape of Norton’s face. Her eyes flashing green again, she replied with a cruel smile. “If they knew my power, everyone.”
Doctor Norton recoiled from her, but she gripped his arm much harder. “I own you, body and soul. Did you truly think there wouldn’t be any consequences?”
Pain the likes of which he’d never known radiated from where Christine held him. Grimacing in pain, he looked into her eyes but only evil resided there now.
“Possession is nine tenths of the law after all,” Christine answered to his unasked question. “Welcome to the Horde.”
Looking at the two of them I could only shake my head and give Chris a nudge. “So much for talking to him.”
“What did you expect? She’s got him wrapped around her finger pretty tight. The higher ups won’t do squat and you know it,” he said to me, not even bothering to look up from his paperwork.
“It just burns my biscuits is all. She gets away with not working and we, we have to do double or triple the work. I swear this pile gets bigger and bigger,” I replied, waving at all the files.
Chris laughed. “You say that every night.”
“Because it’s true,” I replied. As I stared at the files my mind started going over all the ways I could get rid of Christine and or Dr. Norton.
This was a hospital and accidents do happen. Staring off into space, I thought back to some of my favorites. Grandmother was still at the very top of that list.
“You can forget about your mother getting out of prison. There was a riot last week and she got twenty more years added to her sentence.” My grandmother just dropped that bomb on me at dinner. The sound of my silverware hitting the plate was the only sound at the table. “How?”
The Church Lady smiled at me triumphantly. “She got what she deserved. Criminal behavior such as hers deserves punishment.”
I blinked at her, not comprehending what she was getting at. I’d been trapped here in this house for five years. My mother was supposed to be released this very year; Grandfather kept me informed of the date. Now she wasn’t?
“Is there a reason I’m just now hearing of this?” Grandfather asked.
Grandmother glanced in his direction. All she did was stare at her husband for a long moment before speaking. “She tarnished our name. Why should we care about a little whore?”
“Don’t call her that!” I shouted. “She’s my mother.”
“Demon spawn is what she is and if you ever shout at me like that again you can join her in prison,” Grandmother growled. Standing, the church lady left the room.
“Grandfather…” I held out my hands to the man I thought my co-conspirator against her.
“Let me call my lawyer and see what’s what,” Grandfather stated as he too left the table.
Looking down at the congealed mess that was once my dinner, I started to cry. I was never going to see my mom ever again and it was all my fault!
Tell the truth, don’t tell the truth. Those were the things I kept repeating over and over and over again. For years now, I’d studied the law surrounding mom’s case. The local librarians were very helpful. If…If evidence was presented that could prove her innocence, she would be released. In a perfect world, that is. But other than my word, I had nothing. The knife was clean and gone. My clothes from that night had been soaked in bleach, hand-scrubbed, and hung up to dry. All done hours before Bear arrested her.
“Damn it, if only…” if only I’d known what not to do then. Maybe it might not have turned out so bad. Pushing away from the table, I threw my napkin on top of my plate. I knew I should stay and help Frances, but Grandfather had the answers I needed.
The office and library were Grandmother’s domain, so naturally they were the first place I looked for Grandfather. Since this concerned my mother, I thought they might be discussing it. But both rooms were silent and dark. Grandmother, as usual, was in her bedroom watching the idiot box. Sometime before I arrived on the scene, they had stopped s
haring a bed and now lived at opposite sides of the house.
Like a ghost, I slipped past her room and down the hall. Peering out a rear window, I could see lights on in the garage.
“...you’re supposed to keep me in the loop here, George. It’s what I’m paying you for!” Grandfather growled into the phone. He was gripping the receiver so tightly his fingers were white. “What happened at the hearing?”
I didn’t go in the front door, but slipped around to the rear and peeked in. This was the first time in five years I’d ever heard Grandfather raise his voice.
“No, No, don’t give me that bullshit! She’s your client and a member of this family. Leaving her to rot is criminal!” Grandfather yelled into the phone. Whatever the voice on the other end was saying, it wasn’t good. Grandfather could give ghosts a scare, his face was so white. “Listen to me, you sanctimonious son of a bitch. You better file those papers in the morning or so help me God it will be the very last thing you do for this family!”
Pacing back and forth, Grandfather nodded a couple of times, then suddenly stopped. Holding the phone up in front of his face, he yelled, “I don’t care what she said! You work for me! Do your job or I’ll find someone to do it for you. Understand?”
Letting his hands drop to his sides, Grandfather dropped the phone then brought both hands up to his face. I could hear the sobs as he allowed himself to cry.
I pulled my head back out and sat down against the door. Whatever just happened didn’t sound good.
“Gen, I know you’re there, you can come inside,” Grandfather commented.
Rolling over onto my knees I half crawled half stumbled to my feet into the garage. Looking up at Grandfather, I could see just the ghost of a smile at my antics. “Sorry,” I said.
He sighed. “No need for you to be sorry, kid. Your grandmother did this, just so you know.” Motioning to the dropped phone, he explained. “That was George, my lawyer. Your mother was involved in what the prison is calling a riot. Several inmates got into a fight over something that spread into the kitchen where she works. Everyone in the room was implicated, whether they fought or not. George, when he was informed of it, notified your grandmother.”
I nodded. So it really was her fault, then.
Looking at my expression, he nodded. “Right. She sat on it. I won’t try and defend her to you, Gen. She’s just not the woman I fell in love with anymore.”
“Why stay with her so long, then?” I blurted out, covering my face even as I said it.
“Security...Familiarity…I don’t know. We’re stuck with her now, though,” he replied sadly.
“Can’t you divorce her or something?” In for a penny, in for a pound. What would he do, punish me for asking?
Grandfather snorted and half laughed at my question. “Good one. She would cut me off at the knees. She practically runs the town, in case you haven’t figured that one out yet. I’d have to go to Raleigh to do it. Not an option, young one. She might take it all out on you, and that is something I will not allow.”
Standing a bit straighter, I replied, “I can take care of myself.”
“Yes you can,” he pointed towards the house. “But that woman in there gives new meaning to the word terror. This is my fight, but thank you. Can you sneak back inside on your own?”
I gave him a big hug and slipped out the back and into the house. Like before, it was deathly still inside.
Ever so faintly I could hear Grandmother’s distinctive snore as I carefully climbed the stairs to the attic. My night wasn’t over. If Grandfather couldn’t do anything to her, then it was up to me.
Over the past year or so, my attic fort had grown. I’d acquired a table and a chair, as well as planning boards and other materials. Even after helping to clean and organize it, the barn still held many secrets. Old camping supplies gave up a nice Coleman lantern, as well as sleeping bags I could use to muffle the floor. Unless you stood directly next to it, you wouldn’t have found it.
The fear of being caught kept my notes short and in a code of my own making. Two columns stood out, though. I had labeled them “Ways to Go” and “Task Difficulty.” Fire was the at the top of the list, but I’d given it a ten for difficulty. To get her that way, I’d have to sacrifice the house and I was still living in it. Plus, Grandfather might try and save her still. Grandmother didn’t drive. There was a hired man for that. In my eyes, he was an innocent and not acceptable collateral for her death. Poison was too random and pushing her down the stairs was too violent, even for me. Plus she might survive it. I was up half the night plotting but couldn’t come up with a single thing.
“You need to get more sleep Gen. You look a fright,” Frances remarked as she stirred the pot of porridge on the stove. School was at seven and the bus picked up at six thirty. I’d finally crawled into bed around four.
Rubbing my eyes, I tried to smile at the old Were woman. “My momma’s never getting out of jail.”
Frances listened as I recounted what I’d heard last night. She could only nod in response. After a long moment, she started to speak. “Things change child, and sometimes we cannot control the outcome. My people put their trust in humanity, and you see how that worked out. Your grandmother is a hard woman, but she has to be to survive in man’s world. Keep that in mind before you lay too much in judgement against her.”
Her words followed me out the door to the stoop to wait for the bus. There had to be at least some spark of decency in the woman, since she did take me in, but I sure didn’t see it. Frances had been working here for longer than I was alive. I shook my head at the consequences. I would still find a way to make her go.
“Crawk!”
Looking up, I spotted one of the two large crows that recently had begun nesting in the barn. They seemed to follow me everywhere I went, fouling the ground with their droppings.
“Shoo!” I shouted and motioned at the bird.
“Crawk!” Launching itself from the tree, the bird flapped its way down to the ground. Strutting like a fancy dressed man on a Sunday night, the bird all but stalked me down the sidewalk.
“Stupid bird,” I muttered as I looked for something to chuck at it, but the groundskeeper had beaten me to everything already.
“Scared of a black chicken, Vogel?”
Inwardly I groaned. Tommy Perkins lived down the block and he used my stoop as a pick-up spot as well. His father was the town’s attorney. “It’s just a bird.”
“Maybe you ought to tell it to visit your mom the jailbird then,” Tommy pointed out.
Holding up my fist I warned him, “Take it back. You know I’ll do it!”
Waving his hands in front of his face, he quickly apologized to me. “Sorry, I was just funning.”
“No you weren’t. I will break it next time, remember that,” I raised my fist again.
That was something else that had changed over the past couple of years. I stopped letting the other kids walk all over me at school. I couldn’t do much to the ones bigger than me, but those my own age and younger were scared of me now. All it took was punching out a couple of bullies, Tommy included. Girls weren’t supposed to fight boys, but the new headmaster looked the other way once Grandmother got involved. She wanted me at that school and it didn’t make a damn bit of difference to her, no matter what I did.
“Who’s the new kid?” I asked Tommy as we both climbed into the school bus.
“Brown something. His parents bought the old Crenshaw place down the street. My sister said he has the plague,” Tommy remarked offhandedly. He was always a little shit, not caring about anyone’s feelings.
“What are you talking about?” I asked him, peering at the back of the kid’s head.
Tommy held up his hands. “Truth to God. Sarah told me he has to take injections all the time. She said the nurse at school had to take a special class. How bad are you if the teachers have to have schooling?”
I punched him in shoulder as hard as I could. “Idiot. If he was sick, they’d ha
ve him in the hospital. What’s really wrong with him?”
Tommy rubbed his shoulder but only shrugged at me.
Torrance Brown was his name and he didn’t have the plague. He had something called diabetes.
“It’s something you can get if your pancreas doesn’t work right,” Torrance explained. “My doctor says if I don’t get the shots every day, I could die.”
Shots. Just the word made me wince. I couldn’t imagine getting more than one every day on purpose.
“...it’s crazy. They have to sterilize the syringe and cut a new needle for it and everything. I can sort of do it myself. They had me practice on an orange. But the nurse has to do it at school for me,” he went on. A large group of us had caught up with him during lunch. “...rabbit food is all I get. Mom says I have to watch my sugar intake. Does this look like sugar to you?”
Torrance held up a couple of carrot sticks to our group. He started to explain about what carbohydrates were, but I tuned him out. School had actually gotten fun since Mr. Meyer left us. My grades had even improved. Sheriff Bear and the rest of the town accepted the theory that he’d accidentally burned to death and that faulty wiring was the cause. I’d almost forgotten to remove the gas can and the bleach bottles after he’d passed out. The house went up like a dried-out bunch of flowers. But gasoline and pitch will do that.
“How do you know how much to take?” Tommy asked the new kid.
Brown whipped out these funny looking slips of paper. “I have to pee on these.”
Just about everyone, including me, made an “eww” sound.
“They tell me how much sugar is in my body, then I take the shot. I have to be careful, though. Too much can kill you by driving your body into hypoglycemia,” Brown explained to the group.
My ears perked up at the words, “kill you.” Pulling out a pencil, I made note of the word hypoglycemia. Maybe it was the thing I was searching for.