Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (43 page)

I watched the highlights, hoping he would just leave.

“I just came down to say I was sorry it had to be like that. I didn’t like it, tricking you. And to tell you that I still consider you a friend.”

He got up and lingered, watching the TV.

“With friends like you, who needs friends?” I said.

“Okay. I’m not expecting anything from you. You don’t have to. But I wanted to say hi. See you around.”

He finally walked away.

I wished I hadn’t eaten so many chips. I drank a little soda to try and settle my stomach, but it didn’t help.

CHAPTER 25

As I stumbled up the stairs and down the hall to the living room, I stopped. I stepped back, out of view.

It was Nathaniel, walking through the large living room, carrying the vase of withering roses that had been on my nightstand. He hadn’t seen me and disappeared down the hallway that led to the kitchen.

I stayed in the corridor and waited until it was quiet. Then I ran upstairs and closed the door.

Sure enough, fresh roses were on the dresser. Even the bed had been made.

I shuddered.

CHAPTER 26

“You asked me why I do it,” Nathaniel said, tapping his long fingers together. “Why I’m so committed to my research.”

I leaned back in the familiar chair, drinking a Coke. I wasn’t so nervous, not like the first night. The conversations had become routine now.

“I know you don’t yet see the value of my work,” he said. “But I’m confident you will someday. So it’s an important question. A good question.”

“I’ll never see that it’s okay to kill innocent people, Nathaniel. Never.”

He picked up his drink and ran a finger around the rim of the glass. His energy was calm, unaffected.

“I want to share something of my past with you this evening, Abby. I think it will explain who I am and why I am on this path.”

I nodded. I would rather he talk about himself than probe me with more of his questions anyway. The more he talked, the better it was.

“Fine,” I said.

“I was young when I fell in love. Just a bit older than you are now. And I fell hard from the very moment I first saw her. She was a beautiful girl. Elegant. Charming. Full of grace. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, couldn’t eat or sleep. I was completely under her spell. When I was in her presence, I no longer was myself. And for the first time in my life, I felt alive.

“I was fortunate that she felt the same way about me. It was love in its highest form. Real. True. Passionate.

“My father said that I was too young for such a relationship, but I didn’t care. All the threats he made, many of which he kept, couldn’t stop us. We were in love, Abby. And if you have ever been in love like that, you know what I’m talking about. How singular the mind becomes. How nothing else matters.”

I couldn’t help but think of Jesse. I did know what he was talking about.

“Even Benjamin questioned my judgment when I told him of our plans to marry. He didn’t see the need to hurry. But we weren’t going to wait. When you find something like that, you always fear that it will be taken away from you. Even though I was young, I knew that much. You can’t wait.”

A large lump grew in my throat when he said that. That’s what had happened to me. In a flash, in one terrible moment, Jesse had been ripped away from me.

“She was the one person in the entire world who saw me as I was, both the light and the dark. And she loved me anyway. We had a love affair that rivaled many of the great operas. It was as if Puccini had composed the music himself. It was a bond like no other. Rare and beautiful. I would have done anything for her. Lay down my soul for her to walk upon. I was lost in her.”

I took a sip of my drink, finding it hard to swallow, and put it down on the table. I stared at the fire, feeling different than I had just minutes before.

“I realize that perhaps you do not know of the things of which I am speaking. Not yet anyway. And there are few words to describe it. This kind of love I’m speaking about is another world. And if you find yourself in it, you become part of something that is beyond you. And it changes you. Forever.”

He stopped for a moment and looked at me, then down at the ground. It was strange hearing his story. I was feeling more than I wanted to, more than I expected. I was understanding more, too and it had left me confused.

He smiled and looked back over at me.

“I gave everything up to be with her. I didn’t care that my father had disinherited me, had changed his plans for me to join him in the family business. I enrolled in medical school, like my brother, and we lived on very little. It was the happiest time of my life.”

Nathaniel got up quickly, stopping in front of the window. He looked out at the night and was quiet.

“Emma died when I was a resident. With all the powers and procedures and medicines of our modern age at my disposal, I was unable to save her. My world changed in a second, Abby. In that moment the gods cast me out of the light and plunged me into blackest night. An existence filled with utter and unending despair. For years, I was in Hell.”

I stared at him, suddenly seeing him in a new light. I inhaled slowly. The killer sitting opposite me wasn’t just a monster anymore, a cutout caricature. He was someone who had once been touched by love. And destroyed by it.

“But my research has provided me with a way out, back to the world of the living. And you have as well.”

He went over by the fire, resting his arm on the mantle.

“How did Emma die?” I asked.

But he didn’t answer. Or couldn’t. He looked at me for a moment and then turned away, walking out of the room, leaving me alone in the library.

***

Somehow, Nathaniel had made me feel something other than hatred for him. It didn’t change the wrongness of his acts, but it explained what had led him here. What had broken him.

Love and pain.

And I knew something about both of those things.

CHAPTER 27

It was early when I heard the sound of the lock.

“Good morning,” Phil said as he walked in. He stood at the edge of the bed.

“Let’s get going.”

I got up and walked into the bathroom, slamming the door. I knew what he was here for. I could try and make a run for it as we walked downstairs. Or I could stay in the bathroom and refuse to come out. I washed my face, thinking of my options.

“Come on, Abby,” he said, knocking on the door.

I didn’t have a plan. I walked out and stopped. Someone else was now in the room.

“Hello, Abby. I’m Matthew,” he said. “I’ll be your doctor today.”

He was a little older than Phil, and had dark hair and a thin, angular face. A chill shot through my body as I looked at both of them. They were wearing scrubs, with masks dangling under their chins.

“We’ve got to get going,” Phil said, walking behind me and nudging me forward.

I didn’t move.

“Look, Abby, we can do it the easy way or the hard way,” Matthew said. He lifted up his hand and showed me the syringe that he was holding.

“Fine,” I said.

I followed Phil out the door, Matthew close behind. We all walked downstairs, through the kitchen, and out the side door. I looked for Simon, but he wasn’t there.

They led me into the guest house. It was much larger than I thought. The room that we walked into was big and open, with high ceilings and tables set up. There were microscopes and test tubes and various machines and equipment in the corners.

Phil handed me a hospital gown.

“You can change over here behind the curtains,” he said.

I changed slowly. My hands were shaking and my head was dizzy with fear. When I came out, there were a few more people wandering around, including the woman researcher I had seen in my room and in the garden.

She was standing by a machine. She looked over at me for a moment, her eyes large and serious, and smiled.

I tried to smile back. If I survived today, I had to find her and talk to her.

I looked for Simon, but didn’t see him. I wondered what he did for Nathaniel, if he would be helping with the tests today.

I realized where I was now. This wasn’t a guest house for visitors, like I had thought. It was a laboratory. That was why the shades had been pulled down, why I couldn’t see in when I was exploring the grounds. This was where they all worked, and probably where most of them slept, if they even slept. It was why the big house felt empty all the time.

I looked around for Nathaniel, but I didn’t see him.

“Please, sit down, Abby,” Matthew said. I sat in a plastic chair next to a table.

“Like you’ve been told already, there are no sedatives today,” he said. “The tests that we will be conducting are tests that hospitals do all over the country, every day. They are perfectly safe, and are fairly common procedures. You might be in a little discomfort but should be fine afterwards, with no serious complications.”

He patted my back.

“Here, drink this,” he said, opening up a small jar.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’ll help with your stomach.”

My stomach didn’t need any help from him, but he stood over me. As I drank it, someone handed me a plastic bowl and I immediately threw up into it.

“That wasn’t much help,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“We need your stomach to be empty,” Matthew said.

“Hello, Abby,” a familiar voice said.

I looked up and saw Nathaniel walking toward me. He was wearing a white coat and had emerged from the long hall in front of me.

“I wanted to tell you that I will be monitoring the tests carefully throughout the day,” he said.

I looked away. I could care less if he was here or not.

“I trust that you’ve met Matthew here. He will start with a lumbar puncture this morning. This will give us an idea about the conditions of your brain and spinal fluids. There will be a few other tests later, also involving your brain. We should be done by the early afternoon and you will be able to rest afterwards.”

Nathaniel waited for a minute, but I didn’t say anything. Didn’t even look at him. He started walking away.

I bolted from the chair and ran over to the door and outside, feeling the soft rain on my face before someone pulled me back. Two pairs of strong hands came up to me and grabbed my arms and legs. They lifted me up, took me over to a gurney, and strapped me down.

“Let me go!” I screamed. “Let me go!”

“Abby, we’re doing these tests whether you like it or not. If you continue to scream we’ll just tape your mouth closed for the rest of the day,” Matthew said. “Your choice.”

I stopped. There was no use in fighting it. Now I just had to get through it.

***

I was wheeled into a small room down the hallway. They removed the straps and stood over me.

“Lie on your side,” Matthew said.

He took off his mask and leaned in so that his face was close to mine. I tried to hide the terror that had me in a death grip, but I knew I couldn’t. I was wild with fear, worse than any animal. The fear of the unknown mixed with the certainty that there would be pain and then my imagination took it all to another level.

“Please,” I begged. “Just let me go.”

He ignored me.

“The faster we can do this test, the better it will be for you. Let me explain what we’re doing here. I will be putting a needle in your back, right here.”

He pushed down on an already sensitive spot on my back.

“You will need to raise your knees up and bend your head forward. You will have to push into the needle while I insert it into your spine. I’m very fast and good at this. If you do your part, we will be done with it soon. The more you resist however, the longer it will take and the more discomfort you will be in. Understood?”

I nodded. One of the others pushed up my knees as Matthew wiped down a spot on my back with a cold liquid.

“Okay, stay perfectly still,” he instructed. A moment later I felt a terrible pinch in my back. The pain was excruciating. I cried out.

“You’re going to have to stay perfectly still, Abby, or we’ll be here all day,” he said. “Let’s try it again.”

It was impossible. Again I cried, trying by turns not to move and then thrashing my legs. They held me down and the needle kept probing, searching for new levels of agony. The pain was so horrible that once I thought I saw colors again, like a rainbow exploding in my head.

At some point, after countless attempts, Matthew seemed finally satisfied.

“That was one of the hard ones, Abby. But you did it,” he said. “It’s over.”

They strapped me down and let me cry by myself in the small room.

CHAPTER 28

The next part was relatively pain free. Matthew asked me a lot of questions, testing my memory, putting clips on my fingers and writing down the readings off of a machine. He asked me to walk across the room, had me touch my nose with my fingers. He tested my vision and hearing.

When he finished entering the data into a laptop, he walked over to me. I was looking out the window. Someone had opened the blinds and I had a small view of the trees blowing in the wind. I wanted to be outside. Given the chance, I would run out into that freezing water and swim as far as I could. And then I would swim some more.

At that moment I felt more alone than I had ever felt in my life.

“Okay, Abby,” he said. “Just one more test and you’re done for the day.”

He pulled up a chair and sat down next to me.

“The last test will take a few hours. It’s called an angiogram and it will let us see if you have any narrowing or obstruction of an artery or blood vessel in the brain, head, or neck. We are looking to see if the serum has caused any vascular malformations.”

I didn’t care anymore.

He wheeled me into another room. Phil was waiting.