The Shadow's Touch Page 10

  I nodded, and she left.

  The orderly soon returned with a glass of water that I downed with one breath. As soon as I exhaled, another hiccup ambushed me. I grimaced and held the glass out to Tom the orderly.

  “Can I have another one?”

  He took the cup and left the room without comment.

  Anderson continued squatting next to Holly where she lay on the couch. Still balanced back on his feet, he said to me, “Finn, tell me what you’ve been holding back.”

  His attention focused entirely on me. Even though is head was below mine, it was no less daunting.

  I ’ ll Share Mine…

  While my diaphragm continued to spasm, I marshaled my thoughts.

  “This is going to be hard for you to (hic) accept. I’m still having (hic) trouble with it. A little over a week ago, my dad (hic) was injured and dying in my mom’s arms. I (hic) could see that something was wrong with his aura, so I (hic) Looked into him. It’s not looking, per se, but (hic) I could see what was happening inside (hic) of him. I had, I mean something had, (hic) damaged his body, and his aura (hic) was almost gone. I could tell that (hic) his body was shutting down; he (hic) was dying. I couldn’t (hic) accept that, so I Looked inside of him.”

  Tom returned with three more glasses of water and earned my undying gratitude. After I quickly downed all three, my diaphragm stopped its slow, rhythmic revolt, and feeling slightly waterlogged, I continued.

  “I Looked as deep as I could, and I saw that his cells were dying. I didn’t know what to do, so I Looked into my own body to see what I Looked like. There, I found this flame that seemed to come from everywhere. I have no idea what it actually is. I’d never seen it before, but once I saw it, I could sense it and feel it and control it. I took that flame and pushed it into his body. I willed everything within me to go and light him up again. I didn’t know I was hurting him, but it seemed to be helping, so I kept it up until I had nothing left to give. Then, I passed out.”

  Anderson’s laser gaze didn’t stray from me once. It made it hard to concentrate.

  “Doc, can you look somewhere else?”

  He looked confused, but said, “certainly” and turned his gaze to Holly.

  It was a small victory, but I gratefully took it. I recovered my place in the story.

  “Ever since then, I have to, sort of, give him a boost every day. He… he doesn’t seem to have his own aura anymore, so I give him some of mine… I think. Sometimes it seems like I blew out his life force or something. I don’t know what the aura I see is, and I honestly don’t know what I did or what I’m doing. I’m just trying to keep my dad alive.”

  When I finished I got a different reaction than I had expected. He just crouched there and stared off into infinity.

  I waited a couple of minutes and finally ventured, “Doc?”

  He broke out of his reverie. “Thank you, Finn. Everything makes sense now.”

  “Could you possibly share what makes sense to you? Because nothing makes sense to me anymore.”

  “I’ve known about these cases for a long time Finn. The first patient I met with this condition was a large black man I had to deal with as an intern. The first time I met him, he terrified me. I thought he was a terribly bad person, and I knew he was just waiting for the right time to attack. It really shook me and caused me a lot of soul searching. I’d never suffered from any sort of racial bigotry as far as I knew, but this made me re-examine my feelings. In the end, it didn’t matter, I tried to withdraw from his treatment. I felt like a complete failure.”

  That startled me. I couldn’t conceive of Anderson being anything other than a granite mountain of self-confidence.

  He gently reached over and ran his fingers through Holly’s hair. “Fortunately, my sponsor, a truly wise doctor named Denise Cane, didn’t give me a choice. Either I worked with him, or I was out of the program. I almost quit, but somehow found the courage to sit down with him once.

  “I discovered that he was a kind and gentle man who was suffering terribly. Before his affliction, he’d been a grade school math teacher. He was always grateful when someone spent any time with him and just listened. I was utterly shamed. Since that day, I’ve met dozens of patients like him. They are the hardest hit with schizophrenia and the hardest to treat, but they aren’t evil. I’ve always thought I’d been given a gift. I was chosen to help these people. Gradually over the years with failure after failure, I’d begun to lose hope…”

  Anderson grew silent. There was a real human being behind those merciless laser eyes. Who knew? I searched for something to say.

  I didn’t need to. He continued. “But now, here you are and you’ve validated that there is something unique about these people. You’ve given me hope that they can be saved.”

  He still balanced with his butt on his heels, looking pensively at the vulnerable little girl. I wondered if he would be able to walk when he stood up.

  He focused back on me. “You must help these people, Finn.”

  Spring disagreed. No you don’t!

  A small, irritated part of me agreed with Spring. I so didn’t need this. I didn’t want to be responsible for someone else’s life. I could barely manage my own. “I don’t know, Doc. Look what I did to my dad. I can’t take that chance with Holly.”

  “From what you told me, it sounded like what happened to your dad was the result of chance and lack of time. It sounds like he’d be dead if you hadn’t acted. Now, thanks to you, he still has a chance to live a full and meaningful life. You could do that for Holly, too. Can you at least look at her and tell me if she seems to be getting worse?”

  Crap, I hate it when he’s reasonable. I did as he asked. I put my hand on her arm and Listened and Looked. As before, I wasn’t exactly listening or seeing, it was something internal. Quickly, I noted that she was physically weak, and her aura—thin and tattered—seemed like it could be blown out with a gentle breeze. Yet, her body didn’t seem to be shutting down as my father’s body had. She was still generating a flame of life, although weakly. I relayed what I sensed.

  “Has she gotten worse?”

  I shook my head and said, “I don’t think so, but it is hard to tell.”

  “Good. Finn, we can take our time and move gently and methodically in our attempts to help her. We also don’t know that she won’t heal on her own and wake up tomorrow.”

  That thought calmed me a little, although my self-doubt kept screaming at me. I shoved the doubt away and locked it up with the grief and the guilt. I’d deal with them later. For me, those feelings didn’t go gentle into that good night, and I couldn’t think with them hanging around.

  How could I get out of this? “What are you going to tell her parents?”

  With little expression Anderson said, “Holly’s parents abandoned her to an orphanage, undoubtedly because they couldn’t deal with her condition. She’s got no one but us to help her.”

  Well, that certainly squashed any idea I had of walking away from this. I took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, I’ll do what I can.”

  “Excellent! While we’re doing that, you can work with some of our other shadow-ridden patients as well.”

  The panic that I thought was locked away broke free with a vengeance. I suddenly wanted sprint from the room.

  I managed to spit out, “Oh, no! I didn’t say anything about helping anyone else. Look, I almost got this little girl killed. For all I know, she’ll never recover. I’m not going to take that chance with someone else.”

  Anderson turned his Gaze-o-Doom on me at full power. “Finn, these people have no other hope,” he growled. “Therapy offers little help and the standard drugs offer none. Their lives are a continuous torment. In you, I finally have a possible weapon against their demons.

  “You can’t turn them down. You have a moral obligation to use your god-given gifts to help them. I’m not asking you to try to rip the shadows off them again. I just want you to work with them and try different approaches to s
ee if there is something we can do. Maybe we can teach them to rid themselves of the shadows. Think what it would mean for these people.”

  I just couldn’t argue against his emotional logic. I considered myself one of the good guys. Now, if I didn’t help them, I’d feel like I was betraying my own morality. At that instant, and not for the first, nor the last time, I hated my morality. In the end, it won and I was doomed.

  Anderson focused his blue-eyed death gaze on me one last time and said, “Thank you, Finn. You did a noble thing here, even if it didn’t turn out as we had expected. For the first time, I feel that there’s hope for my patients.”

  Crap. These guys were doomed, too.

  Fear and Loathing at Shady Oaks

  I made one last attempt to sense any shadows lurking about, then I left Dr. Anderson with Holly and went in search of my parents. What I’d done to the little girl still shook me. What would happen if the shadow came back? I hoped that maybe these things just died if they were detached from someone. I don’t know why hopes keep springing eternal in me. They’re just going to be slashed down in the prime of their youth.

  I stopped for some candy bars, which I wolfed down as I headed to my dad’s room. I’d have to eat something healthier to satisfy Spring later.

  Dad sat slumped on the edge of the bed, and my mother had her arm around him.

  “Hey, Dad, what are you doing back here?” I asked.

  He didn’t respond, but my mom did. “Finn, your father’s decided to stay here for a few more days.”

  “What, why?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll fill you in when we go home.”

  “… Okay, I guess. Dad, do you want me to top you off before I go?”

  That got the first response out of him since I’d arrived. Anger simmered in his eyes, “No, I don’t!”

  I backed away from the emotional force of his words and said, “Okay, no problem, Dad.”

  Mom shooed me out of the room so she could get Dad ready for bed. We were to meet out in the commons. Once there, I sat on one of the comfy chairs that faced the entrance.

  I sat staring at my hands in my lap, letting the exhaustion claim me while my mind tried to make sense of all the emotions ripping through me. For once, Spring didn’t seem eager to break my silence. I was there for some time before I was startled from my reverie.

  “Finn! What are you doing here? My dad’ll have a cow if he knows you stopped by to see Jen.”

  I looked up and saw Gregg hobbling toward me from one of the several hallways that lead to the common area. As he came nearer, he passed in front of one of the windows that opened onto the front lawn. That was when a movement in the window caught my eye.

  Outside the window, Erik Parmely was peering in at me. He saw me recognize him. He smirked and pointed his finger through the window at me as if it were a pistol. He gave me an evil smile full of anticipation and hunger, and winked as he pretended to pull the trigger.

  Being the cool, collected, man of action I was, I screamed. I’d like to think it was a manly scream… ahem. Anyway, I gave my best manly scream and tried to jump out of the comfy chair. Let me tell you something, those chairs were not designed to exit quickly. I ended up doing an awkward scramble before I could stand. Of course, Gregg froze at my reaction, until I started pointing at the window and shouting about Erik.

  This being my life, by the time Gregg turned to look, there was nothing there.

  Gregg turned back to me with annoyance. “Calm down girly-boy! What the hell are you trying to do, kill me?”

  “No, Gregg! I saw him! Erick Parmely was looking in through the window. He was looking in at me!” To properly convey the gravity of this, I added, “He’s the snake who killed Chester!”

  Gregg laughed. “Whoa, who’s been toasting your Wheaties, boy?”

  Before I could answer, my mom ran into the room with a couple of orderlies. “Finn, I heard you yell. What’s happened?”

  When I told her that I had just seen Erik, she just pulled her phone out to call the cops.

  “Mom, there’s no signal here. I tried earlier and…”

  I stopped when she said, “Hello? Can I speak to the duty officer, please?”

  Sheesh!

  When my mom reported that we had sighted Erik Parmely near Shady Oaks, she got the officer’s full attention. He promised to send a couple of cars over right away. We didn’t get many killers running loose in Newark, and they seemed to take it fairly seriously.

  “Finn, stay here,” said my mom. “I’m going to go talk to Dr. Anderson about this.”

  “Okay, Mom.” I grabbed Gregg’s arm and hauled him into a little side cubby, away from the direct sight of the window.

  “Gregg, this sounds crazy, I know, but do you remember the skull we found at the dig? The spiky one that freaked me out so badly?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Well, I saw it at my uncle’s shop and looked at it with my second sight. There was some kind of blackness around it, as if it had been dipped in evil. The blackness was trapped in the skull, just like in my dream about the fight with Wendigota. It scared the crap out of me. Anyway, there was a break-in at the rock shop last night—”

  “Wait, you saw it?”

  That was an odd question. “No, I wasn’t there. The break-in happened last—”

  “No, you twit. This blackness in the skull.”

  “Oh, yeah, I did. And get this, some of the patients have this black slime around them too, they—”

  “Holy shit Finn! Do you know what this means?”

  “Well, we aren’t quite sure what this stuff—”

  “Finn! Jen attacked a patient this morning. She said this guy was an agent of the shadows who were going to destroy the earth. They’ve got her strapped down!”

  “My god Gregg, this means that she—”

  “I’ve got to go see her.” Gregg spun on his crutches and headed out.

  I had to swallow my annoyance at the constant interruptions, before I hurried after him. “Do you think maybe one of these shadows has infected her?”

  He just shook his head and kept going.

  “Gregg, what are you going to tell Jen?”

  That stopped him. He leaned on his crutches, looking down at his legs. “Ah, hell. You’re right. What am I going to say to her? ‘Hey, you’re not crazy. Finn sees them too’?”

  Actually, that sounded like a good start to me.

  Gregg backed against the wall and rested his head on the paneling. “She was asleep when I left. What are we supposed to do with any of this?” He gave me a puzzled frown. “What did Erik break?”

  I stripped a couple gears matching his change of topic. “Uh, he broke the skull and the shadow’s gone.” That brought back my latest Erik sighting. I blurted it all out before he could interrupt me again. “And he took the snake whistle and now people are seeing a giant snake, it’s killing people, and he hates me.”

  He eyed me askance. “So Erik broke the skull, and it turned him into a snake?”

  I leaned back against the opposite wall and grimaced as well. “No, the shadow locked in the skull possessed him, and the snake whistle turns him into a big-ass snake.”

  Gregg just stared at me until I had to defend my conclusion.

  “Well maybe… I don’t know, but don’t you think it’s odd that the moment he gets those two artifacts he goes on a killing rampage, kills his dad, and a giant snake kills Chester who just recently ratted out Erik about their attack on me?”

  “Just about anything makes more sense than this shit,” said Gregg. “But who the hell knows anymore?”

  I worried that Gregg wouldn’t get it. He paused in thought for a few moments, and I was just relaxing when he shattered my illusions of understanding.

  “Okay, if he’s out there, let’s grab a couple of bats, track him down, and pound his ass into the ground!”

  “Arr! Gregg, didn’t you hear me? He has a gun! He shot his dad in the face with it, then he shot at me and m
y Uncle, and he may be able to turn into a twenty-five-foot viper!”

  He looked like he finally got it, but I needed to make sure. “Gregg, we can’t go out there!”

  “So, what then? You just want to hide in here till tomorrow?”

  He obviously didn’t expect me to nod and say, “Yes!”—but I did.

  “Come on Finn! I’ve got to get home. I’ve got my dad’s car. I’ll bet you scared Erik away when you saw him.”

  I was about sneer at that theory when a patient in a white robe passed us in the hall. I stopped, pulled in my legs, and watched her as she calmly walked by. When she was out of earshot, I said, “Gregg, I need to see Jen.”

  “She’s probably asleep, Finn.”

  “That’s okay. I just want to check to see if one of these shadows has infected her. Herr Doktor says people with these shadows get paranoid. Perhaps that’s what happened to her. If so, maybe I can help her.”

  “I thought you just said you almost killed this little girl when you peeled one off her.”

  “Well, I don’t know how to help yet, but at least it would tell us what’s going on. We’ve got to go see her. I can tell right away if she’s got one of these shadows attached to her.”

  “Finn, you have become a freaky mo-fo.”

  Spring asked, What does that mean?

  It means I’m a totally gnarly dude.

  Awesome!

  I forced my attention back to Gregg. “We totally need to go see her.”

  He raised his eyebrows. I blushed and then shooed him on his way.

  When we got to her room, I followed him nervously and saw Jen for the first time since the battle of the oak. Gregg stood to the side and watched me. Her normally mocha skin had faded to a gray-brown, and purple and black bruises covered her face. One of her arms was in a cast. The straps holding her down made my stomach churn.

  She deserves worse.

  Spring, please she’s not herself. I’m sure, all other things being equal, she would have loved to meet you.

  You think so?

  Yes, go check for yourself.

  Okay. Memories of Jen started flowing through the back of my mind: Jen in her soccer gear; Jen sitting on my lap on our way to Frankies; Jen sitting across the gaming table totally caught up in my world.