"Our gift to you, my queen," Al said, panting.
Linda writhed on the mattress as fire exploded deep inside her.
The queen howled her approval, snorted, and slid back into the shadows beyond the gate.
The crowd dispersed as Linda was lifted from the bed and carried away.
In her unconscious state, she dreamed of a blasted village full of corpses and an army of lizard-men preparing for war. The sky hung low over the smoking remains of twisted bodies and steaming quagmires of blood. The queen circled overhead, gliding on thermal updrafts, surveying her realm with eyes that burned like phosphorus.
Somewhere in the dark, a baby's cries pierced the veil.
***
Linda grabbed her cell phone from the nightstand and answered it without opening her eyes. Her head throbbed in time with her heartbeat.
"Linda? My God, where the hell have you been? I've been calling you for three goddamn days?"
"Mom? What? Three days? What are you talking about?"
She pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at the display. There were dozens of messages and over eighty missed calls.
"I must have called you a hundred times, Linda! Why aren't you answering your phone?"
"I'm sorry. I must have overslept..."
"For three fucking days?"
It was only the second time in her life that Linda had heard her mother use such language. The only other time was when Linda was just a child and her father had come home after a two-day drinking binge with his work buddies. If her mother was cussing, there was something serious going on.
"Mom, please, slow down. What's wrong?"
"It's your father..."
The tone of her mother's voice made her sit up in bed. The room was spinning and her stomach clenched at Carol's unfinished sentence.
"What happened?"
Her mother inhaled a wet breath and choked it back. "He had a heart attack, Linda. A heart attack at fifty-eight! Jesus Christ, how is that possible?"
"Mom, calm down. Where are you?"
"He was just laying there in the garage... his face was blue..."
"Mom!" Linda shouted. "Where are you?"
"We're at Regional," she replied. "He's not doing so good. He still hasn't woken up."
"Just hang tight. I'll be there as soon as I can."
"Please hurry... I don't know how long..."
Carol broke into sobs and pulled the phone away from her face before disconnecting the call, leaving Linda completely blindsided and feeling like she had to throw up.
Three days, she thought. I couldn't have possibly slept for three days.
Her mother's words hadn't yet sunk in. Her father was a healthy man for his age. He didn't smoke, he no longer drank more than a few beers when watching football on Sunday afternoons, he was active and carried very little extra weight. How could he have a heart attack?
Linda dressed as quickly as possible and stumbled into the bathroom where she stood motionless, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She looked as if she'd aged ten years in the past two weeks. The lines around her mouth were deeper, the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes more pronounced. She spotted several strands of gray hair she'd never noticed before.
What is happening to me?
She rubbed her stomach to soothe her nausea and pulled her hand away with a hiss. Her tummy had grown noticeably bigger, but it wasn't just the soft midsection of someone who had let themselves go, but rather a tight, hard bump.
"What the fuck is this?" she asked her reflection.
She didn't have time to ponder the condition; she had to get to the hospital.
Besides, she hadn't slept with anyone since... when? Since Christian, but that was months ago.
Months ago.
"Jesus Christ," she said. "You can't be serious."
Would that timeline work? Was it possible that Christian had knocked her up right before she left him?
She ran back to the bedroom and put on a baggy sweatshirt. If this turned out to be what she thought it was, she couldn't let her mother see it. Not now. Not ever.
Something swirled in the back of her mind, a memory she couldn't quite grasp.
A shadowy vision of Al Sterling looming over her as his face became that of one of Hell's forgotten.
She shook it off, grabbed her keys, and left the Blackridge.
Her father was what mattered right now.
Chapter 15
To say Linda hated hospitals was a gross understatement.
Everything about them - from the supposedly soothing colors, to the smell of disinfectant, to the looks on the faces of those sitting in the waiting room expecting news about a loved one - made her uneasy. She'd watched her grandmother wither away in Scranton Regional, watched her gasp her last breath in a room that felt more like a prison cell. Now, ten years later, she could still navigate through the building as if she'd never left.
She fucking hated every inch of it.
Her mother was waiting for her in the lobby, face red and hair disheveled. Linda was fairly certain she hadn't slept in days based on the distant stare in her bloodshot eyes.
"Oh, Linda, thank God you're here," she said as she embraced her.
"Where is Dad? Can we see him?"
"Upstairs," she replied. "They tried to kick me out more than once, but I'm not going anywhere."
"Mom, you should have gone home and gotten some rest. You look worn out."
"I'm fine. Besides, your father wouldn't have left me if the shoe was on the other foot."
Linda allowed her mother to take her hand and lead her to the elevator. It was all too familiar: the sound of distant heart monitors, the anguished cries of families praying for a miracle, the smell... that awful smell of death disguised by pungent cleaning products. They didn't speak as the elevator doors opened into the second-floor lobby and Linda was pulled along like a dog on a leash. She welcomed it. Linda knew that if she had to make this trip alone, she wouldn't have been able to go through with it.
When Carol stopped at a door and paused, Linda took a deep breath and followed her inside with one eye closed.
"Honey," her mother said, "look who came to see you."
Linda felt the blood drain from her face as she saw her father lying in bed, hooked up to dozens of wires and tubes and machines that monitored his heart rate and brain activity. He looked like one of the futuristic robots in the science fiction movies he loved so much.
"Oh, Mom, I can't do this."
"Yes, you can, dear. Let him know you're here."
Linda shuffled to the side of the bed and looked down at a man she barely recognized. She felt like the same little girl who had sneaked into her parents' bedroom hundreds of times, ready to pounce and wake her father with laughter and kisses, but this was much different. There was no laughter here, only the pervading sense of dread and the need to muster enough willpower not to break down and cry on the spot.
"Hi, Daddy," she said.
The pale doppelganger remained motionless as air was forced into his lungs through a ventilator.
"How are you, Daddy?"
He's fucking great, Linda! He's ready to jump out of bed and dance a jig!
"Mom..."
Linda reached out and clutched Carol's blouse. Age has nothing to do with how much a child needs their parents. Scratched knees may be long in the past, but still, Linda needed her mother to kiss her tears away and tell her it would be okay. She wanted to cry but the tears wouldn't come. Somehow, that was worse.
"He's going to be just fine," Carol said. "He's a fighter, you know that."
"How can he fight something like this?"
"He's strong. He'll get through it."
Linda wanted to believe her, but the words fell flat.
"What the hell happened?" Linda asked. "He was fine last time I saw him."
"He was working in the garage... I don't know how long he was out there. I didn't check on him. You know how he is when he's working on something
. He likes to be left alone. If I would have gone out there sooner..."
"No, Mom, don't do that. It's not your fault. How could you have known something was wrong?"
"He was... restless. For days he wasn't sleeping right. He kept getting up to check the lock on the front door like he was afraid someone was going to get in. He said he saw something outside, but when I asked about it, he wouldn't explain."
"Saw something? What could he have possibly seen that would scare him like that?"
"I don't know. At first, he thought it was Christian prowling around, but after the first few days, I could see he was beginning to get nervous. When he slept, he had awful dreams that woke him in the middle of the night. Dreams about your apartment building."
"The Blackridge? Why would he be dreaming about that?"
"I don't have the answers. Only he knows what was going on his head, and if he wakes up..."
"When he wakes up, Mom."
"Christ, what am I going to do? I haven't been on my own since I was a teenager. I don't know how to live without him."
"You're talking about him like he's already dead!"
"Take a look at him, Linda! He might as well be. He can't breathe on his own. He's shitting into a fucking bag!"
Linda grabbed her mother and hugged her before she could become hysterical. She couldn't understand what it must be like to see your spouse fighting for their life, but she had enough of her own confusion to deal with, enough of her own fear seeing her father being kept alive like a withering houseplant.
"Why don't you go home and get some sleep?" Linda said. "You're not going to be any good for him if you're dead on your feet. I can stay with him for a while if you want."
"I'm afraid to leave him here."
"I know, Mom, but there's nothing you can do. It's out of your hands. If you keep pushing yourself, you're going to wind up in the room next to his, and I can't handle that right now. Please, go home and take a nap. You can come back later."
"You'll stay with him?"
"I'll be right here when you get back. I'll just need to run to the apartment at some point to grab some extra clothes."
Carol nodded and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. She suddenly looked twice her age.
"What's going on with you? I tried calling you for three days. Three days."
"I'm okay," Linda said. "There's been a lot going on lately. I must have just checked out. I'm sorry."
She nodded again, kissed Linda on the cheek, and exited the room without another word.
Linda pulled a chair to her father's bedside and grabbed his hand, being careful not to disturb the plastic clip attached to his index finger.
"I'm here, Dad. I'm not going anywhere. You'll be fine, okay? You have to be."
She thought about what her mother had said, about Thomas having dreams of her apartment and seeing things outside the house. But what? Linda had never seen her father scared in her life, so what could have been so terrifying that he felt the need to keep himself locked inside?
"What was out there?" she asked. "What did you see?"
She absently rubbed her stomach while waiting for a response that wouldn't come.
Answers were in short supply these days.
***
Linda jumped with a start, and for a second had no idea where she was. Once she saw her father's motionless body, it all came flooding back. She'd dozed off soon after her mother had gone home, but without windows in her father's room, it was difficult to know how long she'd been napping. The clock on the wall had stopped at 6:16. Her cell phone was dead. She stood and rolled her neck to work out some of the stiffness. She had a strong urge to urinate.
"I'll be right back, Dad. I have to pee."
Before Linda reached the door, she heard tapping on the small window looking into the hall. Whoever had been trying to get her attention moved aside at the last second, leaving Linda feeling uneasy for no particular reason. She stepped into the hall and looked both ways but there was no one there, no one as far as she could see in either direction. The hospital was silent and empty. Just like the strange dreams she'd had as a child, she found herself alone in a building that should have been bustling with people. Many of the lights had gone out and paper was strewn across the floor. She recalled her time in the Dollar General and shivered.
She rounded the bend at the intersection and stopped as she noticed a young woman bending over an empty gurney. Although she couldn't see her face, she knew immediately who it was.
"Theresa? Is that you? What are you doing here?"
"Hi, Lin." Theresa put a finger over her lips and inched closer. "Christian is here," she said. "Follow me and I'll keep you safe."
"Keep me safe?" Linda said. "We're in a building full of people. What's he going to do?"
"Do you see any people?"
Theresa had a point. Linda hadn't heard so much as a sneeze.
"Where is everyone?" Linda asked.
"Does it matter? Follow me. He's looking for you."
"But my Dad..."
"He's not going anywhere, is he? Christian isn't here for him."
"This is nuts! I don't understand..."
Theresa had already turned and began walking down the intersecting hallway. Linda clutched her purse tightly and followed.
"Theresa, please, hold on. What are you doing here? What's this all about?"
"We don't have time for that," Theresa said over her shoulder. "Didn't you hear me? Christian is looking for you, and he's pissed. He's been wheeling around the hospital for hours trying to find you!"
"Wheeling around? You're not making any sense."
Theresa kept walking.
Linda felt as if this was par for the course. Lately, she'd grown accustomed to other people leading her around and telling her what to do: her parents, Christian, Al Sterling, Audrey, and now Theresa. She didn't know when she'd lost so much control of her own life, or how she'd become so complacent, but it had to end somewhere. She couldn't keep going on like this.
"Theresa! Stop!"
This time, Theresa listened, spinning on her heels and glaring at Linda angrily. "What now?"
"You can't just show up out of the blue and expect me to follow you, especially after how things ended."
"Do you want Christian to find you? Is that it? Was all the bitching and complaining another of your typical cries for attention? Look at me! Feel sorry for me! I'm so sick of it. You're like the annoying younger sibling no one wants around."
"Why are you treating me like this? Is this about Lenny? What did he tell you?"
"This has nothing to do with Lenny. There's so much more going on and you don't even realize it. How did you wake up pregnant, Linda? Can you explain that?"
"What? How the hell do you know about that?"
"The Blackridge has blinded you to the truth, and it's soon going to be too late to do anything about it."
"I don't have to listen to this nonsense."
"No, you certainly don't, but when and if you finally come to your senses, you're going to realize what's going on, and by then there will be no turning back."
Linda spun and walked in the opposite direction. It was clear that Lenny had poisoned the bond between them, but now wasn't the time for silly games, not when her father was lying in a coma nearby.
"This is not my fault..." Linda said, but when she turned, Theresa was gone.
The hall was empty. Too empty. The doors on either side of the hall were closed. The elevators were silent. What few lights were still functioning had grown dim and had begun to flicker. Theresa was the least of her worries.
Finding her way back to her father's room grew more important as the minutes passed, but the more she walked, the more lost she became. She knew the hospital inside and out, but for some reason, nothing felt like it was where it should be. The halls seemed longer than before while others led to dead ends. Some went in a complete circle, bringing her back to the same place she'd started. Every door she tried to open was
locked.
"This is ridiculous," she muttered.
It was more than ridiculous, it was impossible - an endless maze of twisting corridors that all led back to the same dim hall.
The stink from her apartment - that of spoiled meat - had begun to fill the halls, making her stomach churn and her head spin.
"Theresa? Where are you? I'm sorry." Her voice echoed down the empty halls and came back to her, warped and hollow. "Hello? Anybody?"
"I'm here, Linda."
She gasped and turned. It wasn't Theresa's voice, but Christian's.
When she saw him, her blood froze in her veins and she reached out for the wall to steady herself.
"Oh my God! What... what happened to you?"
"Let's call it death by misadventure," Christian said with a grin.
"Your arms! Your legs!"
"Gone. All gone, never to be seen again. You can thank that rotten bastard landlord of yours."
"Al did this to you?"
"Well, how many other old landlords are you fucking?" Christian's wheelchair silently inched forward.
"I'm not fucking anyone, Christian. Stay away from me."
It hadn't dawned on her that his wheelchair had moved on its own. There was nothing left of his arms and legs other than jagged, red flaps of skin that had been hastily sewn shut. Blood leaked from between the stitches and ran sluggishly down his sides where it dripped onto the tile floor. The wheelchair's tires ran through it and created bloody tracks as it approached.
"Stay away from you? I wish I had, Linda, believe me. I wish I'd never met you. You killed me."
"I didn't do anything to you," she shouted. "Get back!"
"All I ever did was love you, but you were too self-absorbed to see that. I would have done anything for you, but instead, you ran off in the night like a common criminal. You thought I wouldn't find you, but I did. I found that shithole apartment building and the people you call your neighbors. They're not human, you know? Soon you won't be either. You're a pawn. Already I can smell the monster growing in your womb. Sour. Corrupt."
"You can't possibly know that," she said. "How can you?"
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