by Mary Eicher
Artemis shoved him back hard. He scowled and charged forward. Artemis stepped to one side and punched him just above the kidney as he passed, slamming him into the doorjamb. Stunned and enraged, Uberdorf swung his fist. The two men waiting in the car got out and slammed the car doors. Regaining his composure, Uberdorf held up his hand, signaling the men to stay back. He caught the door she was closing and pushed it open. Artemis responded with a laugh as she swung around and kneed him in the groin followed by a round kick that sent him sprawling. She grabbed him by the back of his belt, lifted him to his feet, and tossed him five feet down the walkway.
Uberdorf closed his hand around the brass weapon in his pocket. The desire to screw this woman morphed into the need to cause her pain. He rose stiffly and squared his body to attack.
Artemis stood legs apart and arms raised at her chest. She looked like a goddamn ninja to the enraged Uberdorf, but it was her eyes that caused him real fear. The blue eyes had darkened to black and flecks of light flashed as she grinned at him, daring him to continue the challenge. He sank back on his knees and lowered his head, listening to her laugh as she stepped into the house and slammed the door.
She threw the deadbolt home and leaned against the wall to catch her breath. She remembered the monk she had punched across from the café months earlier.
“I could get used to this,” she said. She picked up her cell phone but decided not to call the police. Uberdorf was a popular figure. She had recognized him at the coffee shop. She didn’t need the hassle, and she felt certain the hypocrite wouldn’t be back. Bullies never returned. She sat on the sofa and took a deep breath. This new world had a violent edge to it.
“This just keeps getting better,” she said and decided to make herself something stronger than coffee.
*
The RV rolled to a stop near the stairway to the beach. The party was already under way. The teenagers could hear their friends cavorting in the sand far below. Smoke mixed with salty sea air wafted toward them. They piled out of the aging vehicle, grabbed a pair of beer-laden coolers, and jogged down the stairs, whooping as they went.
“How did you get the RV?” a pretty little blonde asked Maurice when he reached the bottom of the stairs. She was dressed only in a bikini but was clearly too full of alcohol to feel the chill in the air. He had seen her around at school. She was cute and popular and everything he could ask for if he could invent a girlfriend. He accompanied her to the large bonfire, stopping to grab a drink from a keg on the way.
“They took my father yesterday,” Maurice said.
“Who did?” the blonde asked, her attention momentarily taken by someone else.
He took a swallow of beer and waited for her to look back at him.
“The Harbinger got him at work, and they took him straight from there. They said his boss called them. They said the camp is in New Mexico somewhere. I’m taking the RV to go get him.”
He chugged the rest of his drink and drew the sleeve of his jacket across his eyes. It wouldn’t do to cry, but it was dark, and he doubted his friends could see. He wanted to hold it together. That’s why he had come to the party, to spend a few hours forgetting that his life had taken a direct turn into nowhere.
“That’s a bummer,” the girl said, sitting down next to him in the sand. “You think they’ll let him come home if he makes it for three days? They let people come home if they like only had a migraine or something.”
Maurice leaned over and kissed her.
“Hey!” she yelled, throwing the contents of her cup in his face.
Strong hands grabbed him by the hair and pulled him off the ground. Then a fist landed under his chin. When he awoke, the beach was empty, and his RV was gone. His head hurt, but he didn’t hear bells. He just heard his own voice telling him he was an idiot. The girl had a boyfriend, a fact he had unfortunately not remembered. He didn’t even know why he had kissed her. He got up and started walking the ten miles to town.
*
The classroom was a chaos of energy and sound. The children were making masterpieces with tempura paint and Popsicle sticks. They shared their creations and their opinions with laughter and pride. Their teacher let them enjoy the project while she reviewed her notes for the afternoon. They were supposed to practice their letters, but she decided to read a story first. Then they could practice their printing and end the day with a song they were learning. First, she had to get them to put away the art materials.
Noticing the room was weirdly quiet, she looked up and saw the children sitting at the reading circle awaiting her. The art projects were neatly lined up on the shelves at the back of the room and the paint was put away. Her jaw dropped in surprise. They were waiting for her to start the story. She picked up the slender book and went to join them.
“I told you,” a little red-haired girl said to her best friend.
“And what story is she going to read?” her friend asked.
“A new one. It’s about stone soup.”
The teacher read the story and led a discussion about what the story meant. They answered her questions and talked about how the soldiers had tricked the townspeople. They found the idea funny. The teacher thought her class rather clever. They were ready when the buzzer sounded, and they lined up to walk to the pickup area and await their parents. The red-haired girl dawdled along the way.
“Come on, Elise,” the teacher urged her, but the child took her time.
The teacher greeted the girl’s mother, who was twenty minutes late. “Not to worry.” The teacher smiled. “Elise told me you’d be a little late today.”
The mother looked surprised. She’d been held up in traffic, and her daughter couldn’t have possibly known. “When did she tell you that?”
“Yesterday.”
Chapter Seventeen
“I think you should have called the police,” Lucy said as they walked. “You could have been hurt.”
“Not likely.” Artemis shrugged. “Uberdorf didn’t put up much of a fight.”
It was a gloomy afternoon. The sky was gray, and the air had a hint of humidity, but early November meant winter rains were still at least a month away. They reached the movie theatre and, after searching the marquee, found nothing that really caught their fancy. They decided against wasting an afternoon watching something they didn’t particularly want to see. Besides, the purpose of the meeting was to talk.
Artemis drew in a long, somber breath, fearing the day was veering toward disaster. She realized she shouldn’t have suggested an outdoor venue in the first place. But Lucy’s phone call had taken her by surprise, and when Lucy had said she wanted to get together, Artemis had ceased thinking logically. The mall was the first thing that had come to mind.
Lucy shook her head. “I should probably go home, Temmie. It’s not safe to be out these days, even this early in the day, and I haven’t left Angie with my mother since…” She put her hand to her forehead and sighed.
They began walking back to Lucy’s car. Artemis dawdled to consider the shops that lined the sprawling shopping center. She needed time to think of another place for them to spend a few hours together. Taking Lucy to her house was out of the question. Lucy had asked to see her in a neutral place. And they wouldn’t be able to really talk at Lucy’s, so she needed to think of a new venue to discuss the rift between them. She stopped walking and summoned her courage.
“Listen, you don’t have to go home yet. Let’s get a coffee somewhere and talk. You said you wanted to talk.”
In response Lucy walked past the parking lot and went to one of the benches studding the long mall. Artemis followed and sat down beside her.
“I’ve been cruel, Temmie, and I’m sorry.” Lucy appeared vulnerable as she spoke. Her voice was soft, and her eyes shone with regret. “I was so afraid I was being punished for loving you. And I projected that onto you. I made you guilty because I couldn’t bear my own guilt. I couldn’t deal with what was happening to my little girl.” Lucy pulled her sweater
tightly around her and, after a long pause, managed a tentative smile. “The truth is what happened to Angie is not your fault. It’s not my fault either. Like you said, sometimes children just get sick.”
There were a thousand things Artemis wanted to say. Words ran through her mind in a jumble, but her attention was focused on Lucy; the way she looked, the color of her eyes, the way her hair framed her pretty face. “I understand…I—”
“No.” Lucy pressed her fingers against Artemis’s lips. “Please, let me finish. I know you love Angie, and you can spend as much time with her as you want, Temmie. She adores you. There’s no denying how good you are for her.”
Lucy’s touch felt so good it almost hurt. Artemis sat perfectly still and stared at Lucy, who turned her head away before continuing.
“I hurt you just as you were finally getting over Cab’s death. I was stupid and afraid.”
“The whole world has been afraid for some time now, Lucy,” Artemis told her. “So many things have changed. Everyone is confused.”
“Not as much as I was.” Lucy sighed. “The truth is I love you. I will always love you.”
Lucy continued to talk but Artemis didn’t hear anything beyond “I love you.” Her heart raced as relief flooded through her. Then her face flushed, and she grinned. She put her hand on the side of Lucy’s face before taking her in her arms. Their lips came together in an eager kiss—the kind of kiss that heals wounds. They clung together, starved for each other, hungry for the closeness that had been lost.
“I love you, Lucy,” Artemis said when at last they took a breath. She stroked Lucy’s hair and lifted one of her hands to her lips. “Do you want to come back to my place?”
Lucy smiled. “Yes, but not just yet. I want to be your friend again first.”
Artemis arched an eyebrow. “You can be my lover without having to be my friend,” she teased and then smiled. “I never stopped considering you my friend, Lucy.”
They joined hands and headed to the car. “So, when do you want to go to Hawaii?” Lucy asked as they walked.
Artemis thought for a moment. “Why don’t we let Angie decide? She’ll know when she is ready.”
Two men in monk robes watched from their pickup truck. When the women started to kiss, Jerry wiggled his fingers toward them and made like he was looking at a ghost.
“I see gay people,” he said in a poor imitation of the kid in The Sixth Sense.
They hooted when the affectionate scene grew passionate and laughed at what their boss would think when they told him he’d been beat up by a lesbian. The object of his lust was never going to find him her type.
“Uberdorf’s not going to like that,” Jerry noted, and his partner agreed. “I’m not going to bring it up. He told us to watch her, not find out if she’s available.”
“She’s way not available.” The second man chuckled. “Even if Uberdorf wears his dress.”
Chortling, they started the truck and waited for the women to drive off. They followed at a distance as the car went to a new address instead of the dark-haired woman’s house. They jotted down the new address and killed the engine, suspecting they were going to spend a few boring hours waiting for their quarry to emerge.
*
Dr. Fielding put on his lab coat, grabbed a file, and stepped into the waiting room. There were two volunteers; a calm middle-aged female in a dark-blue dress and a twenty-one-year-old male who was sweating profusely. The woman was holding the young man’s hand and reassuring him in a soft, motherly voice. The woman was black, and the man had pale-blond hair. Fielding read the names on the folders and decided to see the obviously distressed male first.
“James?” he called, and the young man stood up and walked toward him.
“So, what’s going to happen to me?” James asked nervously. “It isn’t going to hurt, is it?”
“No, nothing like that,” Fielding reassured him. “We’re just going to take a picture of your brain.”
His assistant took James into the scanning room, and Fielding browsed the file while he waited for the results. He had examined nearly forty people and found nothing definitive. The left frontal lobe showed a small differential from the norm in some of the scans, but without information that preceded their claiming to hear the Harbinger, it was impossible to be completely certain.
Fielding removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He disagreed with the way the National Institute of Health was handling this. They were late to start anything, and now they were chasing ghosts. There was no evidence of infection. There was no evidence of anything. Still the people died within three days after hearing the bells. He hadn’t believed it even when the phenomenon showed up in Lake Isabella. And he still held a tenuous belief that the whole Harbinger thing was some sort of hoax. But the people died. As a scientist, he stood by the principal of cause and effect even if he couldn’t explain the cause and couldn’t refute the effect.
James was brought to his office for the interview after the scan. He sat in a chair and looked around the room, avoiding looking at Fielding. He was no longer sweating, but he looked ready to bolt.
“So, did you find anything?” he asked with a slight laugh. “Can you fix me? I don’t want to die.”
Fielding kept his eyes on the file. “Can’t blame you for that, James. Thank you for coming to us so quickly. It says here you heard the Harbinger last night. Is that correct?”
The man nodded. “But I’d been drinking, and I was feeling kind of sick anyway. Maybe it wasn’t the Harbinger. If it wasn’t, do I still get the hundred and fifty dollars?”
He was in his second year at the same college where several other posers had come from in the past week. Fielding understood what was going on. Apparently, word was out about the financial inducement offered to volunteers which wasn’t making his job any easier.
“Yes,” Fielding assured him. “You do. And no, we didn’t find anything. So, you can relax.”
He reviewed the answers on the questionnaire James had filled out. Then he handed him an envelope with the money and saw him to the door.
“We have your contact information, correct?”
“Yeah, my roommate’s number. I’ll check in for the next three days like you asked. But you can reach him if I forget or…or something.”
James had not heard bells last night or any other. He simply wanted the easy money. But he worried that he had poked the bear. He might have invited the Harbinger by lying about it. He stuffed the envelope in his jacket and left, but he wouldn’t shake the nervous feeling in the next three days or in long days beyond that.
Fielding opened the door to the waiting room and called, “Henrietta.”
She rose nonchalantly and followed him to the scan room. She was a heavyset woman with salt-and-pepper hair and serene brown eyes. She chatted as they walked, remarking on how clean the place was. She had been a house cleaner until recently and appreciated the work it took to make everything look the way it did. He had seen this before. Some of the volunteers were belligerent or nervous like the kid he’d just interviewed. Some volunteered to avoid having to go to one of the detention camps. Volunteers were given waivers by the government. And some were like Henrietta. He let her talk. He knew she was in day three.
Her demeanor affirmed that she had heard the Harbinger two days ago. She was calm as she was given the scan and almost tranquil when she came to his office. She confirmed the information on the questionnaire and her landlord’s phone number. He handed her an envelope and walked her to the door. She turned and studied him for a moment.
“The only hard part of this is the headache,” she told him. “And the first day when the shock kicks in. But today I feel at peace. I don’t believe you will find what you’re looking for by scanning our heads. To me this is about the heart. The Harbinger is a gift, not an illness.”
Fielding pushed his glasses higher on his nose. “We are not sure what it is.”
“My one regret was not having more children,” she s
aid as they reached the door. Then she burst into a hearty laugh. “What am I jawing about? We had three, Syd and me. They all turned out just fine. We got a teacher and a plumber and a cook. And seven grandkids still working their way up.” She took a hanky from her purse and wiped her eyes. “I’m going home to a big party now. I was afraid they were going to take this hard, so I told them ‘let’s celebrate today’ and they are doing it for me. That’s how they are—always listening to their mama. It’s a blessing knowing they are all going to be just fine.”
Fielding pushed his glasses further up his nose. He didn’t quite know what to say. He looked to see if anyone was waiting for her in the lobby.
“Do you need someone to take you home?”
“I have my car.”
“You shouldn’t drive now,” he reminded her. “The rules were quite clear on that.”
She shook her head. “I know. But I haven’t far to go, and I have time.”
Fielding thanked her for volunteering and took her hand. “Goodbye, Henrietta. It’s been a true pleasure to meet you.”
“Thank you.” She smiled.
He went back to his office to pore over the tests results, looking for anything that would explain the Harbinger. He found nothing. He never expected to find anything. If it was an illness or an alien agent of some sort, it left no footprints. Fielding had not learned a thing since that day in Lake Isabella other than the fact the Harbinger was real. He sent a report to that effect to his management and then packed up his papers and headed home early to end another disappointing week.
*
There was a celebration when Angie saw her mother and Artemis walk in holding hands. Claire thanked God and went to make hot chocolate. After dinner, Angie had Artemis and her mother take turns reading books to her and then gave them each a kiss and went to bed without an argument. Angie’s gait was steady enough for her to walk solo, and her happiness nearly floated her above the floor.