The Unwanted

by John Saul

  As the cat nuzzled her, her eyes were suddenly drawn to the person in the park—the person wearing the torn green jacket—and she suddenly knew who it was.

  Rosemary.

  But how had she known? She watched the figure carefully, squinting against the sun, but the distance was too far. Even though she knew who it was—knew it—she couldn’t distinguish her stepmother’s features. Finally, when Rosemary had limped out of the park, clutching her injured arm with one hand and holding the other to her bleeding face, Cassie had turned away and gone into the cabin.

  Immediately a sense of peace had come over her. She settled herself into the chair by the window, rocking gently, cuddling Sumi in her lap.

  The cat had looked up at her, and their eyes met. Then, as her fingers rubbed at the cat’s fur, she felt a tingling sensation on her skin and vague images began to form in her mind.

  She had a sense of being surrounded by something like seaweed, and all around her there was nothing but a swirling green cloud. She concentrated, and slowly the flickering images began to come into focus.

  Not seaweed. Grass.

  The grasses of the marsh, but larger, towering over her head, as they seemed to the night of her vision of Miranda’s death. She had the sensation of being in the marsh herself, but not on any of the paths. Instead she was close to the ground, threading her way through the tangle, moving quickly and smoothly, almost as if her feet weren’t touching the soggy earth at all.

  The tingling in her fingers grew stronger, and the vision in her mind suddenly changed. She was out of the marsh now, gliding over a thick carpet of coarse grass, and around her immense trees, much larger than she’d ever seen before, towered overhead. A little bit ahead of her she saw a form lying on the ground and heard the rasping sounds of labored breathing. But there was something strange about the breathing, and as she concentrated even harder, she realized that it sounded amplified.

  Indeed, everything was being amplified.

  She could actually hear the sounds of the blades of grass as they rubbed against each other beneath her, and a few yards away she heard a soft rustling sound which she instantly knew was a mouse searching in a thicket for food.

  Then the form lying on the grass moved and looked up.

  It was Rosemary, her face bleeding from a deep gash on her right cheek. Her left hand was still clamped over the cuts on her right arm and tears were flowing from her eyes.

  Now Cassie understood what was happening.

  I’m seeing it. I’m seeing it all through Sumi’s eyes, just as he saw it a few minutes ago.…

  Slowly the vision dissolved and her mind cleared. Once again she was looking into Sumi’s glowing golden eyes, and as the tingling faded from her fingers, she felt once more the soft warmth of his fur.

  “You told me, didn’t you?” she said softly. “When you jumped up into my arms, that’s the first thing you did.”

  As if he understood her words, the cat began purring agreeably, and nestled deeper into her lap. Then his eyes closed, his ears flicked a couple of times, and he went to sleep.

  Ever since, Cassie had been sitting by the window, trying to decide what it meant.

  Maybe it wasn’t Rosemary at all. Maybe she had only imagined the whole thing. But she knew she hadn’t, knew that what she’d felt emanating from the memory of the cat into her fingers and then up into her own mind had been the truth.

  So that was what Miranda had been talking about, that was the gift she’d given her. She could communicate with Sumi. She could see what the cat saw, and hear what it heard.

  Instantly she knew that the dream she’d had the night Miranda died was no dream at all. Sumi had actually seen Miranda die, and then come back home and shown it to her. So there had been someone out there that night.

  Someone who had killed Miranda.

  But who? And why?

  And then, unbidden, another memory came back to her.

  Eric staring at her on the beach.

  In her mind she melded his image with the one she’d seen in Sumi’s memory, then rejected it.

  It couldn’t be right. It simply couldn’t!

  She squeezed her eyes shut and tried once again to visualize the figure as it bent over Miranda, but she could not make it out. Though she tried with every ounce of concentration she could bring to bear, the face eluded her as though her inner vision had been blocked.

  Tears flooding her eyes, she looked down at Sumi once more. Could he do the same thing? Could he see what she saw, and feel what she felt? Could he really understand her?

  Deep in her soul she felt that he could. There was some kind of bond between them, and yesterday, when she had imagined Sumi attacking Mr. Simms, the cat had understood and carried out her wishes.

  But she hadn’t really meant to hurt Mr. Simms, had she?

  She searched in the deep recesses of her mind, and after a while found a cold black place that was filled with anger—and she knew that there, where all her darkest demons dwelt, was a part of her that could easily have killed Mr. Simms yesterday if it had been given a chance.

  But everyone had a place like that. It was where you hid your worst hatreds away, concealing them from yourself as well as everyone else, and you didn’t do anything about them. You put them away there, and kept them under control, and after a while you forgot about them.

  That was the part of herself she’d been exploring yesterday when Sumi had attacked the teacher. But somehow the cat had understood her anger and acted upon it.

  Was that what Sumi was? Some kind of weapon her very mind could use to strike back?

  As if in answer to her unspoken question, the cat stirred in her lap and its pink tongue came out to lick gently at her fingers.

  Then what was Kiska, the ghostly white hawk that perched constantly on the rooftop?

  But she already knew the answer to that.

  He was her guardian, there to protect her, to drive off anyone or anything that threatened her.

  But why had he attacked Rosemary? What had Rosemary wanted? Perhaps she hadn’t wanted anything, and the bird would attack anyone unless Cassie herself told him not to.

  And she could have.

  She’d sensed it while she was on the beach, known that if she pointed up at the bird and told it to go back to the rooftop, it would have obeyed her instantly.

  But she hadn’t.

  Instead she’d let it attack.

  But she hadn’t known who it was, she told herself. She hadn’t known who it was or what the person wanted. And besides, Kiska wasn’t really her bird. He just lived there, didn’t he? It wasn’t her fault he’d attacked. And what if she hadn’t been there? Then there wouldn’t have been anybody to stop him.

  But she was there, and she hadn’t stopped him.

  She shivered slightly. From now on, she knew, she would have to be very careful. She couldn’t allow herself ever again to get as angry as she had been at Mr. Simms, couldn’t allow herself to imagine hurting anyone else.

  Slowly she began to understand Miranda’s words. ‘Don’t let them hurt you. You must never let them hurt you.’ She couldn’t let anyone hurt her anymore, because if she did, she might be tempted to release the demons in that dark place in her mind, and along with the demons, the animals that understood her darkest fantasies.…

  Something glinted in the sun beyond the window, and the flash of light in her eye brought Cassie out of her reverie. Turning, she looked out at the marsh and recognized Gene Templeton making his way toward the cabin through the reeds. With each step the sun flashed off the reflective lenses of his sunglasses, and Cassie blinked against the sudden glare. Cradling Sumi in her right arm, she got out of the chair and went closer to the window. She could see that the police chief was carrying something, but for a second she didn’t realize what it was. Then she recognized the object.

  A rifle.

  She gasped as she realized what it must mean, and hurried to the front door. As she opened it she heard a quick rustlin
g of wings, and realized that Kiska had already taken off from his perch. She stepped out onto the front porch and looked up, shading her eyes against the sun.

  The bird was spiraling upward in what Cassie knew was a first preparation for an attack.

  Gene Templeton stopped short when the white hawk suddenly lifted off the rooftop and raised the rifle to his shoulder. He put his eye to the telescopic sight and a moment later found his target. But the bird was circling rapidly, and he knew that until it reached altitude and started toward him, he wouldn’t be able to hold the gun on target long enough to get a shot. Only when the bird chose a direction and he could gauge its speed closely enough to determine how far to lead it, could he risk taking a shot, for he knew that if he missed on the first one, he wouldn’t get a second chance. His attention riveted on the bird, he didn’t see the cabin door open and Cassie step out onto the low porch.

  Cassie herself wasn’t sure what to do. Should she summon the bird back to the roof, or just let him go? But what if he went after the policeman? Her mind in turmoil, she watched anxiously as the hawk reached the apex of its climb and leveled off. And then she realized that he was going to be all right.

  Kiska knew what was going to happen and was flying the other way. She let out a sigh of relief.

  The target steady in the sight, Templeton carefully lined up the cross hairs. In the magnification of the lens the bird loomed large, its wings beating steadily, the muscles of its back working rhythmically. It was flying almost directly away from him, and Templeton realized he needn’t lead it at all.

  Simply line it up and squeeze the trigger.

  Slowly, carefully, he steadied the gun and gently began to apply pressure to the trigger.

  A sharp report exploded from the barrel and the stock of the gun recoiled into his shoulder. In the sky the bird jerked and a few feathers seemed to pop away from it. Templeton quickly put his eye to the sight again and found the target.

  It was tumbling through the air now, a red stain spreading through its feathers.

  Then, as he watched the bird fall toward the ground, a piercing scream rent the quiet that had followed the gunshot.

  Cassie, still standing on the porch, heard the gun’s report and saw Kiska suddenly tumble in the sky. But the scream that erupted from her throat was not one of fury, but of pain, for at the moment the bullet had struck the white hawk, a searing pain had shot through her back and into her chest. As Sumi yowled in sudden alarm and leaped out of her arms, Cassie’s knees buckled and she sank down onto the porch, then rolled off the single step and onto the ground itself. The pain burned within her, and her hands clutched at her breast as if attempting to close a wound.

  Templeton, startled by the scream, let the rifle drop away from his shoulder and looked at the cabin just as Cassie collapsed to the ground.

  “What the hell …?” Templeton whispered under his breath, already breaking into a lumbering run. What had happened? He couldn’t have shot her—he’d only fired a single shell, and he’d seen the bullet hit the bird. And even if he’d fired twice, he couldn’t have shot that wildly. He couldn’t have!

  He burst out of the marsh and pounded up the low hill, then dropped onto the ground next to the writhing girl. Her face was twisted into a mask of pain and low moans bubbled out of her lips.

  “It’s all right, Cassie,” Templeton told her. “It’s all right. I’m here!”

  Setting the rifle aside, he grasped her wrists to pull her hands away from the wound she was clutching. She fought against him, twisting away, trying to escape his grip, but he was much too strong for her. At last she let her arms relax slightly, and her hands came away from her chest.

  Nothing.

  No blood, no hole where a bullet might have passed through the man’s white shirt she was wearing, nothing at all.

  Still whimpering, she rolled over and Templeton was able to examine her back as well.

  It, too, showed no signs of any kind of wound.

  And yet there was no question the girl was in terrible pain, for her eyes had glazed over with shock and she was still moaning softly.

  He ran his hands over her limbs, looking for broken bones, but found none. Finally, leaving the rifle where it lay, he picked her up and started back through the marsh, toward the squad car.

  Cassie lay in the hospital bed, staring out the window at the setting sun. The pain still throbbed in her chest, and she knew that no matter what the doctor said, she wasn’t imagining it.

  “But something must have happened to her,” she heard her father insisting through the open door to the hall. “You heard what Gene said. She was in shock, for Christ’s sake!”

  “I know what Gene said,” Samuels replied patiently, “but I also know that I’ve examined her and I can’t find anything wrong. Nothing at all. No marks, no cuts, nothing. I’ve looked at the X rays at least five times, and there’s no internal damage either. If you want to, we can go over them again. The only thing I can tell you is that she’s not hurt.”

  “Then what happened?” Keith asked. “Gene claims he shot the bird—though what the hell he was doing out there with a gun when Cassie was out there, too, is something that’s beyond me—but he can’t find the bird. He says he saw it drop, and knows where it came down. But it’s not there. So how do we know he shot it at all?”

  Samuels shrugged, but when he spoke, his voice clearly revealed that he was running out of patience. “Fine. He didn’t shoot it. Frankly, I don’t really give a damn about the hawk, but his not finding it doesn’t prove a thing either. By the time he got back, a raccoon could have gotten it. But he didn’t shoot Cassie. You don’t shoot someone and not leave a wound, It’s a physical impossibility.”

  Keith’s eyes narrowed angrily. “So you’re telling me Cassie’s faking, is that it?”

  The doctor licked his lips and shook his head. “I’m not telling you that at all. In fact I’m sure her pain is quite real. But that doesn’t mean a bullet caused it.”

  “Then what did?” Keith asked, his voice icy.

  “A hysterical response. She saw the bird get shot, and she felt the pain herself.”

  “That’s your answer to everything this week, isn’t it?” Keith asked, making no attempt to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “Isn’t that pretty much what you had to say about Harold Simms?”

  Samuels’s eyes glinted darkly but he kept his anger under control. “All I can do is tell you my diagnosis,” he said evenly. “If you want a second opinion, I’ll be more than happy to refer you to someone. But frankly, I think any other doctor will agree with me. There just aren’t any wounds.” Noticing the open door to Cassie’s room, he reached out and closed it, then lowered his voice. “If you want my opinion, Keith, I think you might want to have her talk to a psychiatrist. After everything she’s been through in the last couple of weeks, she’s got to be in a lot of emotional pain. What we’re seeing today could be symptomatic of that.”

  Keith’s brows arched. “So we send her off to Eastbury along with Simms, and don’t deal with it, right? Sorry, Paul, I don’t work that way, not with my own daughter.” Before the doctor could say anything else, Keith turned away and let himself into Cassie’s room, closing the door behind him.

  “Hi, Punkin,” he said gently, forcing a smile. “How’re you feeling?”

  Cassie looked at him suspiciously. Why had they closed the door a minute ago? What were they saying that they didn’t want her to hear? But she already knew.

  They were talking about whether she was crazy or not. But she knew she wasn’t.

  But if they decided she was …

  “I’m okay,” she said softly, struggling not to let the pain in her chest show on her face. “I just—I don’t know what happened, Daddy. But I’m all right now. Really I am. Can—can I go home?”

  Keith frowned. “Are you sure you feel well enough?”

  Cassie nodded. “It’s almost gone,” she said, though the pain still felt like a hot poker had been stabbed
into her. Then her eyes met her father’s. “How’s Rosemary?” she asked. “Is she all right?”

  Keith nodded. “Dr. Samuels says it’s not bad at all.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cassie said. “If I’d known it was her, I wouldn’t have let Kiska do it.”

  “Let him do it? What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t know who it was,” Cassie explained. “If I’d known, I would have told him to leave her alone. Really I would.”

  Keith grinned crookedly. “Honey, you can’t tell a hawk what to do. Not unless you’ve been training him for years. And even then you can’t always stop them from attacking. It wasn’t your fault. Anyway, none of it matters anymore. The hawk’s dead.”

  Cassie shook her head. “Mr. Templeton shot him, but he’s not dead.”

  The grin faded from Keith’s face and his eyes darkened. “He isn’t?” he asked. “How do you know that?”

  Cassie hesitated, then shrugged. “I just know, that’s all.”

  She wasn’t about to tell her father that during the hours she had spent in the hospital, she’d figured out what was happening to her. It sounded too crazy.

  But she knew that the pain in her chest wasn’t her pain at all.

  It was Kiska’s pain, and it was being transmitted to her.

  But it was all right, and she could bear it, for she knew what the pain meant.

  It meant that Kiska was alive somewhere. He was injured, but he was alive.

  If he was dead, she wouldn’t still be feeling the pain, for it would have died with him.

  Now she had to conceal the pain until he got well and came back to her.