The Awakening (34 page)

Megan smiled. “I never thought of Andy as dangerous himself. Just scary.”

“What things do to the mind is scary,” Mike said. “Don't let him get under your skin.”

His hand remained on hers. Both their heads were lowered.

“Did you order my coffee?”

Megan's head jerked up at the sound of her husband's voice. Inadvertently, she jerked her hand back. She didn't know why in hell she felt guilty when she looked up.

“Finn. You made it. Yes, I ordered the coffee—the waitress said she'd bring it as soon as she saw you so that it wouldn't get cold.”

She thought his smile looked a little forced, but he acted casually.

“Thanks. Hi, Mike.”

“Hey, Finn, good to see you.”

Mike offered him a hand across the table. Finn shook it, and sat in the chair at the end of the table.

“Where are your friends?” she asked.

“Reading,” he said, giving her another smile and glancing at Mike. He didn't want to say too much in front of a third party, she realized, and dropped it, despite the fact that she was dying of curiosity and still feeling somewhat left out.

“I have some friends in from New Orleans,” Finn said to Mike. “A woman who does travel books, guides, things like that. So . . . they're off, happily exploring Salem. How was lunch?”

“Good,” Mike said. “Seems like a place that will make it. Some here do, and some don't.”

“Like everywhere in the world,” Finn said agreeably.

The waitress brought his coffee. Finn thanked her and brought the cup to his lips, but then paused, looking out the glass window to the street.

“What?”

“I don't believe it.”

“What?”

Mike was staring at him, too.

Finn shrugged. “There's Mr. Fallon, walking around with a big bag. He's been doing some tourist shopping, I guess.”

Mike swung around to look out the window, too. It was true. Fallon was standing in front of one of the shops with a big sign that advertised itself as a witchcraft store.

“Who'd have thunk, huh?” Mike said dryly.

“So everyone gets into it a little bit,” Megan murmured.

“Not everyone,” Mike said. “But, hey, most people who come here do so for the history—and the fun of it. Moms buy their daughters all kinds of jewelry in those shops, and some of them carry beautiful little Victorian dolls and things like that. Cute books, and oils—lots and lots of people get into the scented oils, whether they believe that they do anything or not. I had a lady in the museum one day who had bags full of mortars and pestles—and not for witchcraft. She needed them because she had five kids and found out they were great for science projects.”

“The commercial world is the commercial world, right?” Finn said.

“Oh, yeah. And it's okay. One of the haunted houses is run by a really great guy. He starts off his little bit by telling the kids that it's all just for fun, and the entire ‘scare' factor is done by someone running around in front of them in the darkness, making things bang and bob out. But if anyone gets really scared, he just stops and escorts them out. Fear is usually in the mind,” he said, offering Megan an awkward little smile again.

“Fear can be real and sensible, too,” Finn said flatly. “Megan, did you tell him that you were attacked in the parking lot last night?”

Mike stared at her hard. Funny, she had said so much, but nothing about that. Maybe because she was still smarting from what Morwenna had said.
Could she say for sure that anyone else had been there? Anyone other than Finn?

She looked at her husband in the light of day. She'd known him to be angry at times, temperamental, determined, impatient, passionate . . . and tender. She couldn't look into his eyes and believe that he didn't love her, almost too fiercely, at times.

She gritted her teeth, absolutely determined to shake off the unease that Morwenna had awakened in her.

Her husband might be many things, but not a demon.

“I was stalked, more than anything. I wasn't hurt, but Finn did get into a tussle with whoever it was.”

Mike looked sharply at Finn. “You went to the police, right?”

“We didn't actually have to go to the police; a cop who comes in all the time was there. They're going to set up more security at the place.”

“You've got to be really careful,” Mike said gravely. He looked at Megan, and seemed uneasy. “You know . . . they haven't caught that guy who killed the girl in Boston. And we're awful damned close here.”

“A murderer who struck in Boston almost a month ago could be anywhere in the country now,” Finn said, “but that's beside the point. Every young woman out there has to be extremely careful because at any given time, there's more than one psycopath in the world, preying upon the vulnerable, which usually means children and young women.”

“I'm careful,” Megan said.

“You really shouldn't go anywhere alone,” Mike said. “Anywhere. There's strength in numbers, you know.”

“I'm careful,” Megan said. She didn't know why, but she felt as if Mike were warning her about Finn as well—he didn't suggest that she cling to her husband at all times, but rather seemed to suggest that she needed lots of numbers around her.

“There,” Mike said, “look, they've got it on the television again.”

There was a TV set over the bar, set to a local news station. The volume had been low, but a young bartender had a remote in her hand, and she clicked the volume higher. The newscaster was repeating words they had just exchanged, warning that people needed to be extra safe this Halloween, and saying that the police in Boston had no new leads on the murder committed there.

As they watched, she went on in a slightly dramatic tone to mention a more local situation.

“An apparent hit and run has our local police searching for the perpetrator of what may prove to be a deadly accident. Mr. Andrew Markham, local storyteller, was found on an embankment off US1 this mid morning by a banker on his way to work. Police believe that he was struck and that the driver paused long enough to drag him off the road, but that he was then deserted by the offender. The driver might well be guilty now of manslaughter for leaving the man to die. As yet, no news has been given out as to what type vehicle may be involved. Mr. Markham was brought to the hospital in critical condition, and remains in a coma as of this newscast. Anyone with any possible clue or information is asked to call the police or our crime stoppers number. Sadly, the doctors doubt if Mr. Markham will survive his injuries. Police are imploring the public for any information, however slight, they may have.”

The news being the news, the young woman went on in a cheerful voice to give a list of the activities available for children in the following two days.

Mike, Finn, and Megan all stared at one another.

“The poor old bugger!” Mike said.

Megan knew the blood had drained from her face.

There had been no accidental hit and run, she was certain.

Andy had been struck on purpose. Mike, despite Finn's presence, covered her hand again. “He's an old man. He was walking where he shouldn't have been walking.”

Finn was staring at her.

She'd never told him about her morning excursion with Andy.

Ridiculous.

She looked her husband in the eye. “I'd like to go to the hospital, Finn. And see Andy.”

Finn frowned. His eyes seemed guarded. “Megan, the old fellow scared you to pieces the first night we got here with all his tales. We barely know the man.”

“If he's in a coma, they're not going to let you in,” Mike pointed out.

“That may be true,” Megan said.

She still believed that Andy Markham was in a hospital because of her.

Or because of what he knew. Which still came back to her. He had tried to warn her.

She stared hard at her husband, praying she wasn't going to be afraid just to be in a car with him. And yet, if he absolutely refused her . . .

“Finn, I'd like to go to the hospital.”

He hesitated. Too long, she thought. Then he said, “Sure, Megan, we'll go. But I think Mike is right. They're not going to let us in.”

“Take me anyway.”

“I don't suppose it would hurt if you just went by.”

“We'll get the check,” Finn said, and rose.

“Finn, even if we're just sent away, I'd like to go by.”

“As you wish, Megan. As you wish.”

At the information desk, as Finn expected, they were told that no one except immediate family could see Andy Markham.

Megan was distressed, and looked at Finn. “Maybe we could at least buy flowers and leave them for him.”

The woman on volunteer duty at the desk was middle-aged with short, curly red hair and a gaunt but sympathetic-looking face. She cleared her throat and told them. “I'm sorry. They won't allow flowers in the intensive care unit. Perhaps if you come back in a few days, he'll be better, and in a regular room.”

“What are they calling his condition right now?” Finn asked.

“Critical but stable.”

As Finn watched Megan, he knew she was certain that Andy Markham was never going to get any better.

“Perhaps we could buy a card and write a get well note in it,” Finn said.

Megan glanced at him with a quick smile of appreciation. “We'll do that,” she said softly, though again, he was certain his wife believed Andy would never read the note. Still, it was something that could be done.

“I'll go buy a card in the little gift shop, and be right back,” he said, and turned to leave Megan by the desk.

The shop was small. It took him only a minute to find an appropriate card. When he returned to the desk, however, Megan was gone.

Panic seized him. It felt as if skeletal fingers of iron were wrapping around his heart. For a moment, he couldn't breathe. Then, controlling himself seemed the greatest effort he'd ever made. His fingers nearly bit through the counter when he leaned against it to ask the redhead at the information desk, “Where is my wife?”

He must have concealed his fear with greater effect than he had imagined, for she didn't scream or shout for the police. She frowned, as if aware of his underlying tension, and answered him as pleasantly as she could. “Martha came by for her.”

“Martha? You know Martha? You do mean my wife's Aunt Martha?”

“I know Martha, of course—it's a small town. Most residents come here with their aches, pains, and accidents. Martha is friends with most of the doctors—and she volunteers here as well.” She looked as if she didn't want to say more to him—as if the hospital was engaging in policies that might not be quite fair—but then she sighed and explained, “Martha may be the closest thing to next-of-kin old Andy has. They're not related, but they've known one another for years. Bickered as much as anything, but Martha came in as soon as she heard about Andy, and the doctors believe a friendly voice can sometimes break into the mind of a person in a coma. So . . . Martha took your wife up for just a second.”

Finn exhaled, staring at her. “He's not going to make it, is he?”

“I'm not the doctor,” she said softly. He was surprised, especially in his present mood, that she seemed to look into his eyes and be willing, despite herself, to talk to him. She shook her head and told him, “Andy's an old, old man. He received some terrible injuries. Being thrown by a speeding car . . . it's kind of like being beaten by a dozen lead pipes, you know. Anyway, it's all in the hands of God, now.”

“Thank you,” Finn told her.

She smiled at last. “Take a seat in the lounge there. She won't be but a minute. My friend Dorcas is the nurse in charge of Andy's room—no one will be in there for more than a minute or two, I assure you. I'd tell you to go on up, but Dorcas would be risking her job if any more people tried to get in, especially if Andy does . . . well, you know. If things don't go well for Andy.”

“I understand,” Finn said, and he did. But he leaned against the counter idly, and when a visitor came in to ask for directions to the maternity ward, he carefully gazed over the counter. He was glad to see that the computer screen was drawn to a list of room numbers.

He pretended to push away from the counter, take a seat, and glance at a magazine. But as soon as the redhead's attention was taken again by a new visitor, he stood and headed for the elevators.

 

 

Efficiency was the order of the day in Dorcas Brandt's arena of care. Megan found herself suited up in a matter of minutes—Andy didn't have any kind of a contagious disease, but apparently at his age and in his condition, pneumonia could be the final straw. Masked and gowned, she entered the room with Martha and Dorcas.

Martha, a glaze of tears about her eyes, was still silent as she came by Andy's bedside.

Andy was a maze of tubes. Thin, almost transparent little lines helped him to breathe. An IV brought sustenance into his veins and kept him hydrated. A monitor watched his heart. Both of his eyes were blackened, or so sunken that they appeared to be so. Amazingly, he had suffered no broken bones—he had simply been bruised from head to toe and knocked unconscious. He had never come to, but had sunk into the coma, despite every effort made to revive him in the emergency room. But his heart was still beating, and his lungs were working on their own. And, Dorcas had assured Megan, there was plenty of activity going on in old Andy's mind.

He looked like hell.

There were stitches running across the top of his forehead; his white hair had been shaved away from that area of his skull. His cheeks were cadaverous.

“Andy, you silly fool, what were you doing out on the road like that!” Martha said softly. She glanced at Dorcas, who nodded to her. Martha gently took his hand. “Andy, you've got to wake up, let us know you're all right.”

There was no movement from Andy. Not a flicker of his eyelids.

Martha stroked a finger down the too apparent vein in his hand, then moved over to whisper to Dorcas at the rear of the room. Megan moved forward. She bit lightly into her lower lip because she felt a sting in her eyes as well—if she'd never met the man, she would have been moved by his condition.

“Andy, you're a fighter. And they need you around here, you know,” she murmured. Feeling somewhat inadequate—and something of a fraud, she certainly wasn't a lifelong friend—she took his hand as she had seen Martha do.

“Come on, Andy, you've got to make it.”

She felt the slightest flinch against her fingers, where he touched her hand. Her eyes were drawn there, as if she could thereby verify the movement. Nothing. But when she glanced toward his face again, her breath caught in a sudden wheeze; her heart seemed to stop. His eyes were open. They stared at her, and somehow
beyond
her. He seemed to be looking at something beyond the room.

He moved his lips.

She couldn't hear his words.

She moved closer against him, and heard what didn't even sound like a voice, more like a mechanical rasp.

Megan dropped his hand, her jaw working as she backed away from the bed.

“Martha! Martha . . . Dorcas. He's moving, he's speaking!” she said. She turned to the women.

Both instantly ceased their whispered conversation and hurried over to the bed.

“There—” Megan began.

There. Andy's eyes were closed. His lips were closed as well. He lay just as he had lain.

Dorcas opened one of Andy's eyes and checked it with her pin light flashlight, drawn from her nurse's scrubs pocket. She opened the other, checked his pulse, and stared at the monitors that surrounded the bed.

After a moment, she shook her head, and stared at Megan hard.

“No, dear, he couldn't have spoken. And if he moved, I'm afraid it was a simple reflex. His condition is completely unchanged.” She stared at Megan as if wondering if she were a hopeful idiot, or someone trying to create havoc for an unknown reason.

“But . . . I saw his eyes open. I saw his lips move. I heard him,” she insisted.

Martha set a hand on her shoulder. “What did he say, dear?”

“He said—”

Megan hesitated. With Dorcas staring at her—and with whatever reputation she might have already gained in town with her nightmare screaming—she wasn't going to tell the truth. Or what she believed to be the truth. Looking at Andy now, it did appear as if he'd never moved. Frankly, he looked as if he were already dead. Those parched lips couldn't have formed words.

Very afraid, she still hesitated.

“I don't know what he said,” she lied. “I only know that he spoke.”

“Who the hell is that?” Dorcas demanded, looking past Megan, and more than a little irritated by now.

Megan swung around. Finn was outside in the hallway, staring through the glass windows. He was looking at Andy and didn't see Dorcas, and then Martha, and herself, staring out at him.

“My husband.”

“Doesn't anyone understand the concept of a
waiting
room?” Dorcas demanded. She was a gaunt woman herself. Her white shoes seemed huge against her skinny ankles. She was tall, though, and despite her fragile-looking frame and the fact that she had to be nearing sixty, she had the appearance and demeanor of a woman who was tough as nails.

Dorcas looked back at Andy again, shaking her head with sympathy and concern. She gazed at Megan again. “You just want him to be okay,” she said with greater patience. “You want him to speak. Sometimes, we imagine things. In fact, when interns start in the morgue, they're often convinced that we've made mistakes in the wards, because the body . . . the body is filled with so many gases, and death brings on changes that create reflex action. Sorry,” she said wincing. “I really didn't mean to mention the word morgue. Andy may make it. But he's got to get through tonight. Please, let's go on out. Your husband is making me nervous. He looks like a giant transformer or something, about to meld through the glass.”

Megan tried to smile. She couldn't.

They didn't believe that Andy had spoken.

She knew that he had. At least, she thought she knew that he had. She was amazed she wasn't shaking outwardly because it seemed that every fiber within her was trembling. She had fought down a moment of sheer terror, and now wondered if what was happening meant she was losing her mind, of if she was the target of a truly evil entity. Either way, she was in serious trouble.

Dorcas was urging her out of the room. She went. She nearly crashed into Finn just outside the door.

“You all right?” he asked her.

In the strange hospital light, it appeared that there was a strange gleam in his eyes. A niggling thought tore into her mind. Andy had been staring not at her, but
beyond
her. Out the glass windows. Where Finn had probably already been standing.

She braced herself and fought the insanity in her mind. She loved him. What was love? Faith, trust. They had learned that lesson. But love might well be defined as insanity as well, wanting someone so badly, that the truth didn't matter, as long as it could be denied. Morwenna had warned her about Finn, Finn had been a creature in her nightmares, Finn had been in Boston most probably on the night when a terrible murder had been committed.

Finn had saved her from an attack last night.

From an invisible attacker.

Stop!
she urged herself.

Finn didn't even understand what was going on himself.

“Megan?” he said.

Martha came out behind her. Megan didn't have to reply right away. “Finn, dear, how are you?” She stood on her toes, giving him a kiss on the cheek, which he returned.

“Martha, how are you? I'm so sorry. I didn't realize you and Andy were such good old friends,” he told her sympathetically.

“Oh, actually, we're good old bickering enemies,” Martha said wryly. “But we've both been around forever, so . . . of course, I care for the old coot!”

Finn nodded, looking at Megan again.

“Martha, now, you and your family are cluttering up the ICU halls,” Dorcas said firmly.

“Yes, yes, we're gone. And thanks, Dorcas. Come along, children,” she said, and slipped her right arm through Finn's, her left through Megan's. “Dorcas has been patient enough.”

“How's he doing?” Finn asked as they walked to the elevators.

“Holding on, anyway,” Martha said. “Megan thought he said something, but when Dorcas checked his vitals, there was no change whatsoever. What did you think he said, dear?”

Megan shook her head.

“Dorcas was right. I must have imagined that he opened his eyes . . . that he spoke.”

“But said what?” Finn inquired that time.

Was he worried that Andy might have said something that could have implicated him . . .?

In what?

“I really don't know. Just a mumble. Maybe my name,” Megan said with what she hoped was an offhand shrug.

Finn was frowning as he stared down at her.

It was crazy.

A little pinging noise indicated the arrival of the elevator. A woman in a wheelchair cradled a brand new baby while her husband and friends stood around her bearing balloons announcing that the newborn was a boy.

The three of them congratulated the new mother, and the elevator reached the bottom floor. As they exited, Finn set his arm around Megan's shoulders. She somehow suppressed a shudder. Again, she thought that she was crazy. Her husband would never want to hurt her. How could she even begin to believe such a thing—over and over!—when they could share time such as they had last night? And how could she believe that she loved him so deeply when she could suspect him of evil?