by null
The comment made the redhead chuckle, a diversion she greatly needed. Even bitter humor, she told herself, was better than none. Using the moment to rein in her terror, to get her fear at least under some minimal amount of control, she took several deep breaths, telling herself that if Knight thought everything was all right, then it must be so. Then, working to bring her curiosity to the fore, placing her faith in her new boss instead of in the self-preservation fears urging her to run for her life, the young woman mumbled;
“Besides, anyone who thinks I’m going to start running across a graveyard, in the dark, in three-inch spikes no less, has got another thing coming.”
As she continued to observe, Knight’s journey finally came to an end. As he drew within arm’s reach of the wraith, the thing began moving once more, advancing in a forward motion. Bridget’s one hand shot out involuntarily in surprise, the other hanging on to the gravestone tenaciously as the specter moved in to envelop the professor’s entire body. Covering him like a great transparent cocoon, the specter began to swirl, changing shape and form, sliding across Knight’s body in a motion that seemed half dance, half some manner of communication.
The ghostly form writhed and swirled, beginning to move faster and faster over the professor, under his arms, between his legs, across his chest, racing in between his fingers, under his clothing, rippling his hair as it breezed about each individual follicle. Finally, as Bridget continued to watch, Knight finally made some reaction to his intercourse with the spectral presence. His body began to jerk, to spasm, not uncontrollably, but in a fashion unnatural enough to bring forth a rush of concern within the young woman.
The professor had assured her that such meetings were rarely violent or dangerous, but had not guaranteed it. As she reviewed his words in her head, she realized he had said a number of things meant to calm and reassure her, but he had never firmly stated that nothing could go wrong.
It’s doing something to him, thought Bridget. Clinging to the tombstone, her brain tore itself apart trying to think of what she might be able to do to help, but she could not think of anything. She knew nothing of ghosts, not about communicating with them, combating them, dismissing or summoning or feeding them—nothing! Tears gathering in her eyes, her mind throbbed with shame, but there was no way available to her to assist Knight. If the professor had been wrong to go out to meet the thing, what could she do? He was the magician. He was the one explaining everything to her.
Is that who you are, Bridget Elkins?
The voice sounding in her mind startled the young woman. For a moment she froze, not able to grasp her conscience’s meaning.
Crippled by fear—useless?
Then she realized the man struggling a handful of yards in front of her had done nothing since their first meeting other than befriend and protect her. If he was now in danger from having once more put her safety before his own, what was she doing still kneeling in the dirt?
Filled with a sudden resolve, Bridget threw herself to her feet and, with no plan in mind other than trying to help another human being, she launched herself at Knight and the specter.
“Here comes Scully,” she muttered, managing to cover slightly under half the ground between them before the sky was shattered by a monstrous peal of thunder, followed by a darkly colored shaft of lightning that struck the professor, dissipating the specter and sending both Knight and his assistant hurtling through the air.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Professor, for God’s sake—speak to me!”
Bridget had recovered first. Such made sense, of course, since she had received only the barest edges of the explosive blast that had knocked Knight end over end. His body had come to rest badly against a sizable gravestone, one that halted his trajectory both violently and instantaneously.
Considering the force with which he had struck the quite solid granite, his assistant was certain he would need medical attention.
Pushing herself back up onto her feet, she had raced to his side, working as gently as she could to untangle his limbs and then gently rearrange him into a more comfortable position.
“Come on, boss—say something. Anything. This is no time for one of your pranks.”
Bridget fought the ever-tightening strands of terror working to fasten themselves to her mind. She remembered enough of her high school health classes to know it was dangerous to move any accident victim. But Knight had landed in such an awkward heap, his face buried against the ground under his own weight, that if she did not at least straighten him out it was possible he might suffocate before anything else could happen to him. The young woman did so slowly, taking care not to unduly jostle his neck or spine. She took great care also while checking his arms and legs for possible breaks, watching his face as she gently ran her hands over each limb as well as his rib cage.
The professor’s expression did not change as she did so, showing no indication that he was in any localized pain that might indicate a break or even a fracture. His assistant considered that a fortunate turn of events but struggled with what she might do next. The young woman had felt Knight’s chest, put her ear to his nostrils. She knew he was breathing regularly. Raising his eyelids, she said a silent prayer of thanks as she noted that his eyes had not rolled upward into his head.
He’s alive, she told herself, making a checklist both to keep herself calm and to see if by doing so she might think of anything else useful to which she could be attending. He’s breathing. He’s not broken, or at least, if he is he’s not broken severely. His pulse is steady. And his clothing and skin don’t seem to be burned very badly, either. Staring for a moment, she then asked aloud;
“Are you in shock?”
Taking one of Knight’s hands, she rubbed it vigorously, doing her best to warm it, to try to force the unconscious man’s mind to react to stimulation. After she began to feel his flesh heating, she took his other hand, then did the same with it.
“Come on, Professor,” she whispered, talking as she rubbed, words spilling out of her, hoping to both reach some part of Knight’s mind as well as bolster her own failing nerves. “It’s dark and it’s cold and for all I know that thunder and lightning are going to be followed by rain. Rain and more ghosts and then what? The walking dead? Mummies? Vampires?” Having said the last bit in jest, Bridget suddenly blinked hard, exclaiming loudly;
“Jesus, coffins everywhere. You maniac, did you really have to bring me to a cemetery for this?”
“Well … ,” Knight suddenly responded, the single word almost lost in a hacking cough, his voice weak and distant, “it did … seem like a good idea … at the time.”
Bridget let out a cry of sheer delight, squeezing the professor’s fingers so sharply his eyes opened as he yelped in pain. Letting the hand she had been rubbing drop to his chest, she grabbed him in an awkward rush and hugged him to herself, shouting as she did;
“You’re alive—you’re all right!”
“Listen to me… .” Knight’s voice came to her as if through a tunnel, the tone of it hollow and distant. “I believe myself to be essentially unharmed—”
“Oh, thank God—”
The professor waved one hand feebly, cutting Bridget off. His voice reduced to a hiss, he told her;
“I appreciate the concern … but I’m not certain how long I may be able to remain conscious. I think … at the very least, it is probably best we get ourselves back, back into my car.”
Gasping down a lungful of air, Knight whispered the answer to which pocket held his keys, then threw all the effort he could muster into forcing himself up and off the ground. Even with Bridget’s help he did not have an easy time regaining his footing. Leaning on his assistant, he struggled to stay upright as the two of them made their way back to his car. As they neared his vehicle, the professor whispered;
“You can drive—yes?”
“Everyone outside New York City can drive,” Bridget assured him. Propping him against the passenger side of the car, she held Knigh
t upright with one hand while getting the front door open with the other. After that she helped the professor slide into the front seat, managed to get him safely strapped into place, then closed his door, ran around to the other side, and did the same for herself. Once behind the wheel, she quickly familiarized herself with his controls, finding the lights, locking the doors, getting the heater turned on, and so forth.
“Good,” Knight mumbled absently. “Good. Oh, and … one more thing …”
Bridget waited for Knight to complete his thought. When he did not, she glanced over to find him gently snoring. Knowing he could not be allowed to sleep in his condition, the redhead tugged at his arm, first gently, then with force. When he swam back to consciousness for a moment, she snapped;
“Professor, you can’t go to sleep. You know that. You have to stay awake—right?” When Knight agreed with her assessment, his assistant asked him;
“All right, then. Now, think back. Just before you passed out, you said there was one more thing you wanted to say—do you remember what that was?”
“Yes, I do. Thank you for reminding me.” The professor swallowed hard, coughing once more as he did so. Finding his voice with a minimum of effort, he fixed Bridget with as focused a stare as he could manage, then told her sharply;
“No hospital … no doctors.”
The redhead immediately questioned him on the point, but Knight put her off, promising to explain once he had recovered. So pitifully weak were his responses, the young woman had no choice but to stop arguing the point—at least for the moment.
Deciding the most important thing would be to get the professor to his home and make him comfortable, the young woman finally put the car into drive and began moving forward. As she did so, however, it finally dawned on the redhead that she had been ignoring the big picture to focus on the details. Yes, of course, she admitted to herself, making certain the professor was alive, that he could be moved, et cetera, was certainly important. But, she had so focused on his condition she had momentarily forgotten what exactly it had been that had forced that condition upon him.
Yes, she told herself, there’s the little matter of your shining playmate, and then thunder and lightning out of a clear sky. Oh, yes sir, Professor Knight—
Unfortunately, most of her mind had to continue to pay attention to the immediate. She needed to keep Knight conscious, not only because keeping his brain active would greatly increase his chances of making a full recovery but also because she did not even know how to drive back to the sprawling cemetery’s main gate house without directions from him, let alone all the way back to wherever in the “greatest city in the world” his home was located.
I’m going to get you home in one piece, she thought, yes indeed. We’re going to make it, all the way, safe and sound. And then, if you think you’ve done some explaining already, mister, you ain’t ’splained nuthin’ yet.
Questioning Knight as to which way to turn at an intersection, Bridget threw all her focus into not only keeping her boss awake and functioning but also driving without running off the ill-lit road or hitting anything. And, as she did, on the now-forgotten hilltop behind them, strands of shattered energy began to pull themselves together once more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Professor Piers Knight proved to be a great deal heavier than his assistant would have thought possible. The drive from Green-Wood to his home had not proved terribly difficult for the young woman. Somehow the professor had managed to both keep himself conscious and give Bridget understandable directions. On top of that, the traffic had been unexplainably light for so early in the evening. Having heard horror stories of the highway nightmares that routinely snarled the streets of New York City, remembering all too well the soul-draining purgatory that was the Chicago City Loop, the redhead had been greatly relieved to only have to find her way through a strange city, in the dark, forcing her passenger to stay awake long enough to give her directions.
Once they arrived at her passenger’s brownstone, however, all the energy seemed to simply drain out of the man. To her credit, this did not cause Bridget to panic. She believed she understood what had happened. Knight had marshaled his strength, forced his body to keep going by telling himself all he had to do was stay awake long enough to make it to his home. He had given himself a task, then thrown every ounce of will he had behind the singular idea of getting it done. Once he had accomplished this one stated task, however, his body had then shut down.
Bridget likened his feat to pulling an all-nighter. She had seen it happen plenty of times—students promising themselves they could sleep only after they studied for twenty or thirty straight hours and then took the exam for which they had been studying. She remembered classmates doing such on a regular basis, hurling all their effort into making it through to the point where they completed their test. Some even garnered high marks doing such, but they also often ended up falling asleep in their classroom at the end of the exam.
“All right, Professor,” Bridget said, staring down at him through the passenger-side window of his car once she had it safely stored within his garage, “I guess we have to do this the hard way.”
Intelligently, Bridget first went through Knight’s home from the garage to the living room, opening all the doors and turning on all the lights. Returning to the garage, she managed without a great deal of difficulty to open his door without letting him slide out and onto the floor. Getting an arm under his shoulder, she then hoisted him out of the car and began the exhausting procedure of half-dragging, half-carrying him to his living room.
Bridget Elkins was a tall, strong young woman. She exercised, ate a proper diet, and worked hard to stay fit. When she first began tugging on Knight to remove him from the front seat, the redhead had not anticipated getting him inside to be that great a production. As she attempted to lift the professor out of the car, however, she found him almost impossibly heavy.
“Jesus, Knight,” she cursed, struggling to get the man upright, “you got rocks in your pockets?”
Up the trio of steps out of the garage, into the kitchen, down the hallway, with each step the professor seemed to grow heavier. By the time she reached the doorway to his living room, Bridget was more dragging him along than carrying him, his feet catching the hallway’s long throw rug as they moved. Bunching around his feet, the rug began slowing them down even further. Worse, it threatened to overturn the hallway’s small, three-legged half-circle area table. Bridget caught the disaster in the making just in time, seconds before the stand’s display of carved stone pieces was sent hurtling to the floor.
“You know,” growled Bridget, perspiration dripping down her forehead by this point, “maybe you’ve got too much ‘dust-collecting junk’ in this house, after all.”
Kicking the professor’s feet free from their entanglement, Bridget threw all her remaining strength into lifting her burden up and over the bunched rug and then hurriedly dragging him into the living room. Unable to lower Knight to the couch, she instead simply fell with him, pushing the professor’s unconscious body onto the piece of furniture while she came to rest on the floor next to it. Seeing that she had managed to drop him on his back rather than his face, Bridget considered her struggles a job well done and simply collapsed next to the couch, not interested in anything else at that moment other than catching her breath.
After only a few minutes she got herself up onto her knees so she might check on Knight’s condition. The redhead did not know exactly what she could do for the professor, but she did decide not to try to second-guess him. He was completely unconscious at that point, and Bridget could see no amount of slapping or shouting was going to awaken him once more. Yes, she knew to allow him to remain unconscious was dangerous, but he was the one who had insisted she not take him to a hospital, not call any doctors.
All right, fine, she thought. As she stared down at her patient, her brow wrinkled with concern as she asked herself, Hell, maybe you’re right. Nothing else about you make
s sense—why not this? Even so, where exactly does that leave me?
Placing her hand to Knight’s forehead, she checked to see if he felt warm. As best she could tell, he had no fever. As she bent low to listen to his breathing, that seemed regular to the young woman as well. Looking his face and hands over in the light, she saw that what burns he had sustained were superficial. His clothing seemed to have suffered the effects of the oddly singular lightning bolt far more than he had himself.
Lightning, she wondered, as if everything else we’ve been through wasn’t enough. Worse yet, I don’t know if that bolt was just a coincidence, or another attack on him, or … maybe it was his way of getting rid of the ghost.
Knowing she had no way of solving such questions on her own, Bridget decided all she could do at that point was attempt to make the professor more comfortable. Setting about to do what she could in that department, she first got a pillow under his head, then removed his shoes. Thinking it could not hurt, she then removed his socks as well. Next she loosened his tie, then decided she might as well take it off completely and unfasten the top couple of buttons of his shirt as well. As she did, something caught her eye that caused her to undo a third button, and then a fourth. And a fifth.
“Oh my God …”
Pulling Knight’s shirt free from his pants, she stared in a sort of fascinated horror at his chest. It was decorated with several quite terrible scars, ones so ragged and vicious the young woman could not imagine what might have caused them. The one she first noticed, the worst of them by far, was a monstrous gash that ran from his right shoulder diagonally down across his chest to finally disappear behind the left-hand side of his waistband. It was accompanied by two others—ones running parallel down either side of the first. Both of these were minor in comparison, but taken together with the central one they created a picture of an injury so devastating it was a wonder Knight could have possibly survived it.
