The clown’s mouth was wide open. Painted tears fell from red eyes. During the day, the ride might not seem so sinister. Madison pursed her lips. Her throat felt dry.
The three held hands, Madison in the middle, and walked under the row of spiky and ragged teeth. They opened a door and stepped into a room. As the door behind them closed, darkness consumed them.
“Now what?” Neal said.
“We find a way out,” Katie said.
“How about the door we just came through,” Neal said. “There’s no handle. I can’t find a knob.”
“We’re not going back,” Madison said. “Feel along the walls. There must be a way out, some way to move forward.”
“I found it,” Madison said. She kicked at a hole in the wall and traced the opening with the toe of her boot. “It’s a doggie doorway on the ground.”
Chapter 3
Madison opened her eyes. The room was still dimly lit. It was still dark outside. She wished she knew how long she’d been in the hospital, even how long it had been since the last time she’d opened her eyes.
Her father, Adam, was asleep in a chair by the window. He wore a blue Rochester Fire Department shirt. The oblong emblem was over his heart. He always looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days. The prickly hair was thickest on his chin and sideburns. He kept his dark hair short on the sides and back, and a little long and slicked back on top. They had the same Windex-blue eyes. He might be forty, but he was in better shape than most men half his age. When he wasn’t on EMS or fire calls, he worked out at gym at the firehouse. She loved visiting him there. She knew everyone in his company and they treated her like family.
There was a small, white plastic cup on the wheeled bed tray by her bed. She leaned forward, reached a corner, and pulled the table closer. There was a small amount of water in the cup, more than likely melted ice chips. She drank it.
It did little to quench her thirst. She tipped the cup over her mouth and tapped the bottom. She wanted every drop.
She noticed the fire coursing through her veins had subsided some. It was still there, pumping through her, but was far more tolerable.
Running an arm across her forehead, she moved the gathered beads of sweat.
Where was her mother?
What had happened to Neal and Katie?
“Dad,” she said. Her voice sounded gravely. She touched fingertips to the bandages around her throat. “Dad?”
She hated waking him. He worked twelve-hour shifts. It was different from her mother pulling doubles at the diner because he worked trick shifts, sometimes from morning until night, other times from night until morning. He never knew if he should be eating a cheeseburger or a three-egg omelet.
She looked around on the bed and winced. She kept a hand on the bandage. It felt like her head had been sewn back onto her body. If she moved around too much or too fast, she feared it might topple off her neck and into her lap.
The control to call the nurse was by her knee. She leaned forward and pulled on the bedspread to bring it closer. She hit the button and waited.
With all the commotion she thought she’d made, she had not disturbed her father.
There was a light knock on the room door before it was pushed open. A man walked in. He wore blue scrubs and had a stethoscope around his neck. “I see you are up,” he said.
“I’m thirsty.” Madison pointed to her neck. “I’m so dry.”
The nurse popped a protective sleeve onto an electric thermometer. “Open for me. Keep it under your tongue.”
She closed her lips on the thermometer.
He looked at a box that collected her temperature and arched an eyebrow when the box beeped, signaling the end of the test. “Open,” he said.
When he’d removed the thermometer, she said, “How high is my fever?”
“We’re going to try again. It was ninety-four point three.”
Ninety-eight point six was normal. “I did just drink some cold water.”
“How long ago?”
“Just now, when I called you. It wasn’t much,” she said.
“It was enough. Makes sense,” he said. “Hold out your arm.”
The nurse wrapped a blood pressure cuff over her bicep, spun the valve with his thumb, and pumped the bulb quickly to inflate the cuff. He used his other hand to put on his stethoscope and set the diaphragm onto her wrist. When he released the valve he watched the needle on the dial wind down as the cuff deflated. He tapped the dial, and blew into the diaphragm.
“Bad?”
“Broken,” he said. “Not you. The equipment. We’ll test it later. Now you can have juice or water. Which would you like?”
“Water would be perfect.”
“Okay, I’ll be right back,” he said. “Is there anything else you need?”
“No, but thank you.”
“Okay. I’m going to let the doctor know you’re awake, and you seem pretty healthy. He may stop in to see you in a few minutes, alright?”
She nodded.
“Are you in any pain?” he said.
“Just feel like I’m on fire, and my mouth is so dry.”
The nurse smiled. “I will pass that along.”
“Thank you,” she said.
The nurse left the room.
Her father was awake.
“Was I too loud?” Madison said.
“Loud? You should have woken me the second you got up. I’ve been worried sick. Almost asked to be admitted. Wanted them to bring in another hospital bed, and put it right next to yours,” he said, getting up out of his chair and walking over to her. He reached for her hand. He said, “You’re so cold.”
“I feel hot. Very hot.”
“You probably still have a fever,” he said.
“Dad, what happened to me?” Madison stared into her father’s eyes. He rarely talked about things he did and saw at work. Fire departments didn’t just respond to alarm calls and to house fires. They went to car accidents and on nearly as many EMS runs as an ambulance did. Many of his company’s runs made the news. They have cut people out of crushed vehicles, pulled bodies from burning buildings, performed rope rescues along the gorge, delivered babies, and there were even YouTube videos of her father performing CPR in the middle of the road on a man who collapsed while having a heart attack.
“I was hoping you remembered. Your mother found you on the front lawn when she returned home from work. It was raining, and you were unconscious,” he said. “She called nine-one-one for an ambulance, and then she called me.”
She wondered where the nurse was with her water. “What happened to my neck?”
“It was cut pretty bad. They stitched it up.” He clasped one of her hands in his. “Doctor said it will heal. There shouldn’t be much of a scar.”
A scar around her neck? “How did it happen?”
“They didn’t know. You don’t remember anything?”
She shook her head. Tears brimmed along the bottom of her eyelids.
“It’s okay, honey. It’s alright,” he said, and leaned over the bed. He pressed her head to his chest and hugged her tight.
“What happened to Neal and Katie? Are they okay?”
“They’re fine. They were here most of the day yesterday.”
“Yesterday? How long have I been in here?”
Her father let her out of the embrace, but held onto her shoulders. “Honey, you’ve been here. . .it’s been three nights.”
The flowers, the fruit, the cookies and cards. She’d noticed them before. She never gave the gifts much thought.
He tried to hide something. It was in his eyes. She could always read him, his moods, when there was something he didn’t want her to know.
“What else?” she said. Her skin tingled, and she rolled her finger into her palms. “Dad?”
He slowly shook his head as he lowered it. “We almost lost you. We. . .I didn’t know if you were going to make it. I beat the ambulance here. When they wheeled you into emergency your skin was
blue, your pulse was faint. You’d lost a lot of blood.”
It was hard not to keep touching the bandages.
“You didn’t wake up. It wasn’t until yesterday that you opened your eyes. That was the first time. It was the first time the doctor told us that he felt confident that you’d pull through. Until that moment, until your eyes opened ten hours ago, we didn’t know. We just didn’t know.”
# # #
Neal sat in a chair by the bed. He looked like he might cry.
“I appreciate you coming up to see me,” Madison said. Neal hated hospitals because of the germs. He swore he got sick anytime he went to one.
Neal nodded, but couldn’t look her in the eyes.
“What is it? Neal, talk to me,” she said.
He shook his head. “This is my fault. I should have stayed with you.”
Madison sat up in bed. “You remember what happened to me?”
He shook his head again. “You asked for my coat. You didn’t want to go in to your house yet, your mother wasn’t home. You told me there was no way you were going in there alone with Oliver. And I let you. I gave you my hoodie, and I left you there, standing outside in the rain.”
She wasn’t upset with him for leaving her. “And then what happened?”
“I left, Maddy. I drove away.”
“But after that?”
“You were attacked. I don’t know what happened. I just know I shouldn’t have left you alone. I can never forgive myself for that. You didn’t want to go in the house, and I left. I should have stayed. I should have stayed, and I didn’t.”
Madison reached for him. He pulled back.
“I’m not mad at you, Neal. I can’t remember it, but I bet you offered to stay, and I bet I told you I was fine and to just leave.” She was reaching, but it sounded like something she’d of said.
“You did, but I shouldn’t have listened.”
“If you stayed, after I told you to leave, I’d of been pissed. You know it.” She wanted to make him feel better, but was more concerned about filling in the holes. The idea that she was attacked and had no memory of it was unsettling. “Where was Katie?”
“We dropped her off first,” he said. “You don’t remember anything?”
“I feel like bits and pieces keep coming into my head. Snapshots of us at the carnival, on the rides. I remember going into the Funhouse, sort of.”
“That was bad. Scariest thing I’d ever been in. I have no idea why we went in there,” he said.
“What did we do after?”
“We left.”
“That was it? We didn’t ride any other rides?” she said.
“It was late. The midway was closing down. The rain, the cold. The place was dead. We were like the last ones out of there.” Neal stood up. “Do you want anything? The nurse told me you needed to eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said. It wasn’t exactly true. Her stomach felt empty, hollow. She looked at the food brought in on trays, but just couldn’t get herself to eat. Madison held up an arm showing an I.V. needle taped in place near her wrist, and the tube running up to a drip bag. “They’re still feeding me intravenously. Yum, yum.”
“She’s been up here.”
“Who?”
“Katie,” Neal said.
“My father told me.”
“She wanted to come with me today, too. She had to work, though.”
“I’ll call her later,” Madison said. Her phone was charged on the nightstand by her bed. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
“Check the drawers there,” Madison said. “My pendant…”
“This?” Neal held the gold necklace up.
Madison smiled as she took it from his hand and tried to secure the lock in place once it was around her neck. “A hand?”
She held up her hair and tilted her head. Neal fastened the clasp. “How’s that?”
She touched the pendant. “Better.”
“From your grandmother?”
Norma. Madison had never met her. She nodded.
“It is beautiful. Does it open? Is anything inside?”
“No. It looks like it should open though,” she said. Holding the pendant in her fingers she turned it over. There were no seams. It didn’t open. Not bigger than a quarter, it was flat on one side and rounded like an egg on the other. The surface was opal and smooth with raised white gold stripes that formed a ring of intertwined circles all over it.
“I’m so glad you’re not sleeping!” It was Madison’s mother. She held a plate covered in aluminum foil. “Neal, how are you?”
“Good, Mrs. Young.”
“Miss.”
Neal stood up.
“Don’t go.” Madison mouthed the words, and shook her head side to side.
Neal pleaded with his eyes. He looked like he was about to concede.
Madison smelled beer.
“Brought ya a stuffed animal!” Oliver walked into the room. He wasn’t drunk, but he wasn’t sober either. She saw bloodshot eyes and smelled alcohol from across the room. She wanted to vomit. What did her mother see in this man?
“I’ve got homework, or I’d stay,” Neal said.
Madison knew it was a lie. She hated Ollie. Her stomach felt hot, not like acid indigestion, but as if a small fire burned inside her gut. It could be from his beer and Brut aftershave. “I understand.”
“I’ll text ya.”
“You better,” Madison said.
They hugged.
“Drive safe,” Nancy Young said. Her blue eyes reminded Madison of the ocean in the Caribbean. They sparkled, smiled. Madison saw no reason for them to shine. She was surprised her mother’s eyes weren’t coated over in a milky film, as if she were a zombie.
“I will, Mrs. Young.”
“Miss.”
“Good-bye, Maddy. I’ll stop up tomorrow, too. If you want anything, I mean anything, just text me, okay? I’ll get it on my way up.” Neal turned around, lifted his hoodie off the back of the chair. “Bye, Miss Young.”
Neal left without a word to Oliver.
“I don’t know about that punk,” Oliver said. Only some of his shirt was tucked in. Grease stains smeared the front, as if he chose to use the shirt over choosing a napkin. Staring after Neal, he said, “He reminds me of Eddie Haskell. Thank you, Mrs. Cleaver. Yes, Mrs. Cleaver.”
Madison had no idea who Eddie Haskell or Mrs. Cleaver were, but didn’t ask. She didn’t want to encourage conversation. The man wanted to argue, which was nothing new. It was why he’d called Neal a punk. He wanted to get a rise out of her. His tactics didn’t work. Once she learned ignoring the fat loaf pissed him off twice as much as losing an argument because he sucked at wit, ignoring him was what she did.
Her mother set the wrapped plate down on the nightstand and shrugged out of her coat. She smelled like french fries and dish soap. Her long dark hair was up in a bun.
“You come from work?” she said. Madison didn’t know how many hours her mother worked; more than sixty, maybe as many as eighty hours a week. She knew her father gave child support every week, too. Supporting Oliver and his drinking and eating habits was the problem. The guy was expensive.
“I brought a change of clothes with me. Oliver picked me up, and we came right here. I brought you a cowboy burger, fries, and coleslaw.”
“The doctor said I could eat that?”
“The doctor didn’t say nothin’,” Oliver said. “We know hospital food is crap. Figured you’d like this over a bland sandwich and Jell-O.”
She hated that he was right. The thought of eating hospital food did not sit well with her.
“I wish you would have called before coming up,” Madison said. She hated to do this, but she saw no other way around it.
Nancy, who just sat in the chair next to the bed, said, “Why is that, honey? Did you need something else?”
“No. I’m just tired.” It was a lie. She felt wide-awake. Aside from a burning sensation under her skin, th
at subsided more and more each minute, she felt amazing.
“Like you want to sleep?”
“I can barely keep my eyes open,” she said.
“I didn’t see you telling your black friend to leave,” Oliver said.
Madison opened her mouth to yell at him.
“Ollie!” Nancy said. “You rest. That’s fine. Ollie and I haven’t had dinner yet. We can run out and get something to eat, and then come back later. How does that sound?”
Madison wished she wasn’t tethered to an I.V. She wanted to climb out of bed and kick Oliver in the nuts. She wasn’t going to be able to take it much longer.
She used to feel bad pushing her mother away. They’d been close at one point. The men she dated were the reason. It wasn’t a secret. They’d even discussed it. Madison wanted her mother to be happy. She wasn’t interested in manipulating their relationship. Nancy’s choice in men was the issue. “That sounds okay.”
Nancy lowered her eyes, looked over at Oliver, and said, “We’ll just come back in a few hours.”
“We just got here,” he said.
Nancy stood up and put her jacket back on. “You get some rest, sweetie.”
“I will,” Madison said. She kept her eyes focused on her mother’s face. Seeing the pain, hurt, and disappointment in those eyes was better than what she picked up peripherally from Oliver. She felt certain he was silently snarling at her.
“Do you want to eat what I brought?”
“I will. As soon as I wake up,” she said.
Nancy walked toward the doorway.
“Mom?”
She stopped and looked back, hopeful.
“Could you close the curtains, and turn off the lights?” The sunlight bothered her eyes. The fluorescents didn’t help any, either.
“Of course,” Nancy said.
“I’ll get the curtains,” Oliver said.
Nancy shut off the lights, waved, and left the room.
Madison stared at Oliver as he crossed over from the windows. He didn’t hide how he felt. He ground his teeth and punched a fist into his palm, the threat apparent.
Young Blood: The Nightbreed Saga: Book 1 Page 3