by Jude Hardin
The bed was full-size, or maybe queen, with a cheap headboard and footboard trying to imitate antique brass. There were several pillows at the head, and Richardson started stripping the cases from them. He knotted the fabric around Pam’s wrists and ankles, then tied the other ends to the metal bars at each end of the bed. Now Pam was splayed out like some sort of laboratory animal ready for dissection.
“You see this, Mr. John Rock?” The words came from Richardson’s mouth, but the voice was that of Lori Lorry. “You come on up here now, and I’ll let her live. Oh, she might have a little speech impediment to deal with, but she’ll be all right.”
John spoke to the entity telepathically: “Lori, you need to go back. Back to the place with the other spirits. It wasn’t your time to be born yet. You’ll get your chance.”
“I’m not Lori,” the voice said.
“I know it’s you,” John said. “I’m not stupid. I know it’s you, and I know you’re trying to trick me into coming up there. You’ll kill Pam, and then you’ll kill me. You need to let it go, Lori. You need to go back with the other spirits. Do it now.”
Richardson raised Pam’s shirt, exposing her white belly. He held the knife like a pencil and cut a midline incision from the bottom of her breastplate to the top of her pubic bone. The pain from the cut woke Pam up, and she started thrashing and barking agonized guttural moans.
“Be quiet,” Richardson said.
Pam moaned again, louder this time.
Richardson reached into the wound with his bare hand and gently pulled out two or three feet of small intestine. It glistened in the harsh incandescent light coming from the bedside lamp. He sawed through one end with the knife, and then the other. Once the length of gut was completely liberated, he stuffed as much as would fit into Pam’s gaping mouth.
“Now maybe you’ll shut the fuck up,” he said.
She thrashed wildly, trying to spit out the length of bowel that had been forced down her throat and draped across her face.
John Rock couldn’t take it anymore. Trap or no trap, he had to do something. He steadied himself with the lamppost, put one foot in front of the other, and headed toward the Hawthorne.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jana Lorry was alone in her hospital room. Her mouth was dry, and she was very, very tired, but otherwise she felt fine. Her mother and father had left earlier, had gone home for the night, and after that there was a period of time Jana couldn’t remember. The nurse said she’d had another seizure, but she didn’t think so. She felt great. She felt normal. She wanted to go home.
She lifted the bedside remote control and pressed the button to summons the nurse.
Jana had never told her parents about the abortion. It would have upset them greatly to know that their little girl, their only child, had gotten knocked-up from a one night stand in a car. And it might have upset them even more to know that their little girl, their only child, had terminated a pregnancy that would have given them identical twin granddaughters.
Jana had even picked out names for the babies: Lori and Tori.
Going ahead with the abortion was, without a doubt, the hardest thing she had ever done, and she had done it alone. She had decided to spare her parents the shame, and herself the endless lectures. Now she wished she had told them. The procedure had been performed months ago, but Jana was still grieving, still wondering if she’d done the right thing. She could have used her parents’ support about now, especially her mom’s. She could have used a shoulder to cry on.
“May I help you?” the nurse said over the intercom.
“Can I see you for a minute?” Jana replied.
“Be right there.”
Condensation had formed on the outside of the cheap little plastic pitcher on Jana’s bedside table, leaving a small puddle on the faux wood surface. Jana poured herself a cup of water and took a drink. Her mouth was so dry. It must have been the medication they were giving her. Dilantin, they called it. Something like that. And Ativan. They’d piggybacked both of the meds into her IV line. The drugs had made her sleepy, she remembered that. Maybe they had caused her blackout period as well.
The nurse walked in. Her name was Victoria.
“Hey, sweetie,” Victoria said. She was in her mid-to-late twenties, tall and slim and pretty. She could have been a model.
“Don’t call me sweetie,” Jana said. “I hate it when people call me that. Am I your sweetie? No, I’m not. You don’t even know me.”
“Sorry. I—”
“And it sounds so condescending. Like you’re talking to a little kid or something. This isn’t the pediatric ward, is it? I’m a grown woman.”
Victoria frowned. “Is there something I can do for you, Ms. Lorry?”
“I want to go home.”
“You can’t go home. The doctor hasn’t discharged you yet.”
“I don’t care. I want to go home.”
Victoria grabbed a towel and wiped up the puddle of water on Jana’s bedside table. “You have an EEG scheduled for in the morning. I told you about that, remember? Why don’t you go ahead and get that done, and then—”
“I want to go home tonight. I’m not a prisoner here, am I? I want you to take this IV out of my arm and give me my clothes.”
“If you insist on leaving the hospital tonight, you’ll have to sign out AMA.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Against medical advice,” Victoria said. “You can do it, but it’s not a very good idea. You’re really not stable yet. And, if you sign out AMA, your insurance won’t even pay for the time you’ve been here already.”
“I don’t care. I want to go home.”
“OK. If you’re sure, I’ll go get the paperwork.”
“I’m sure,” Jana said.
Victoria turned and walked away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
John Rock walked into the lobby of the Hawthorne. The guy at the counter was sitting with his feet propped up, reading a paperback novel. Something called Liquid Fear by Scott Nicholson. He marked his page with a company envelope and stood as John approached.
“Yes sir, may I help you?”
“I’m looking for a man and a woman,” John said.
The guy pushed his eyeglasses up on his greasy nose. “Can you be a little more specific?”
“A black man about six feet tall, and a skinny blond white woman. The man’s name is Richardson. Sergeant Bryan Richardson, of the metro police department. The woman’s name is Pam.”
The guy stabbed at his computer keyboard. “There’s no Bryan Richardson registered here. Do you know the woman’s last name?”
“No.”
“I wish I could help you, sir, but—”
“Look, they’re in a room here somewhere, and he’s killing her. He’s cutting her up with a knife. Understand? It’s probably too late for Pam, but I need to get to Richardson before he hurts anyone else.”
“How do you know all this is happening?” the clerk asked.
“I just know. Can you look and see if anyone registered here is named Pam?”
“Should I call the police?”
“Look for me first,” John said. “Please.”
The guy went back to stabbing at the keys. It took him a couple of minutes, but he finally found a registrant whose first name was Pam.
“Pam Sweet,” he said. “She’s been renting by the week. Of course that’s probably not her real name.”
“What room?”
“Two sixteen. But hey, you can’t just—”
The guy was saying something, but John had already started up the stairs. He followed the signs to room 216, stopped and pounded on the door. Maybe this was all a mistake. Maybe John Rock had finally lost his marbles. Maybe the visions back at the lamppost were just hallucinations, figments of John’s imagination brought on by some kind of post traumatic stress syndrome from what had happened earlier.
Nobody answered the door. John pounded again. He waited about thirty seconds, and
then decided to enter without permission. He stepped back and planted the bottom of his size fourteen Craftsman boot forcefully against the card key entry mechanism. He kicked the door twice with no luck, but on the third try he felt something give. He felt something give and he kicked it again and again and then rammed it with his shoulder. The jamb splintered and lock parts scattered as the door finally flew open.
John walked in. The room was empty. And clean. Nobody was there, and the bed hadn’t been touched.
“Hey, motherfucker, what the hell you doing in my room?”
A black woman stood outside the demolished door. She wore a purple wig and short shorts and a tube top. A black guy wearing sunglasses and diamond earrings stood behind her. The guy had a big wad of gum in his mouth.
“Are you Pam Sweet?” John said.
“Yeah, I’m Pam Sweet. Who the fuck are you?”
“I must have the wrong room. Is there another Pam up here somewhere?”
“Who’s gonna fix my goddamn door?” Pam Sweet said. “That’s what I want to know.”
“I’ll take care of it. Is there another Pam up here?”
“You must be talking about Pammy. Cute little white chick?”
“Yeah, that’s her. Where can I find her?
Pam Sweet crossed her arms and stood there staring at John. It took him a minute to figure out what she wanted. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty dollar bill. It was the last of his money. He handed it to her.
“Room two thirty-seven,” she said. “But you didn’t hear it from me.”
John brushed past her and the guy chewing gum on his way out. He started running down the hall.
“What about my fucking door?” Pam Sweet shouted.
John Rock didn’t look back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Where am I?” Dr. Theodore Bratcher said.
A woman wearing blue surgical scrubs stood beside his bed, fiddling with an EKG monitor. She finally got the alarm to stop wailing. The electronic display blinked a couple of times and then stabilized to a normal cardiac rhythm.
“You’re in PACU,” the woman said. “How you feeling?”
PACU. Post Anesthesia Care Unit. What the fuck?
“Did I have surgery?” Bratcher said. His voice was scratchy and his throat ached, probably from the endotracheal tube they’d used to administer the anesthesia.
“Actually, you had several surgeries,” the woman said. “Are you hurting anywhere?”
Bratcher glanced at her nametag. It said KAREN, PACU, RN, BSN.
“I’m hurting everywhere,” he said. “What the hell happened? Why did I have surgery?”
“Just try to relax, OK? They’ll give you something for pain when you get to the ICU.”
Bratcher looked around. There was a bed to his left, and one to his right. Both empty. He and Karen were alone in the PACU.
Why did he have surgery? He was about to ask Karen again when some very painful memories flooded his consciousness.
The tree man.
Jim Kramer. The guy who’d cut the sycamore in Dr. Bratcher’s front yard. There had been a little argument about the bill, and then Kramer had asked to use the restroom. The next thing Dr. Bratcher knew, he was lying spread eagle on the floor of his theater room with a length of garden hose shoved up his ass. He cursed Kramer and then begged him for mercy, and the last thing he remembered was the feeling that he was being cooked from the inside.
Dr. Bratcher had no idea what had happened after that, but right now he felt lucky to be alive.
More memories trickled in. Before the ordeal with the tree man, Dr. Bratcher had gotten the strangest phone call of his life, a call from some kook who claimed to be a psychic medium. Bratcher remembered the conversation:
“Sometimes entities from the spiritual world speak to me. I don’t invite them, they just come. A very angry and violent one spoke to me earlier. She has already killed several people, and she told me that you’re next. Unless.”
“Unless what?”
“She’s the ghost of an aborted fetus. She wants you to stop.”
“Stop performing abortions?”
“Right.”
“Unbelievable. This is the damnedest thing I’ve ever heard of. I perform a medical procedure for women who choose to have it. There’s nothing wrong with what I do, and there’s nothing illegal about it…”
Then the kook claiming to be a psychic medium—John Rock, that was his name—said that the ghost was there in Dr. Bratcher’s house. Said she was going kill him.
What a crock of shit. It wasn’t a ghost that tried to kill Dr. Theodore Bratcher. It was a psycho tree man pissed off about underestimating the cost of cutting down a sycamore and hauling it away. As always, there was a perfectly rational explanation for what had happened.
“Where’s Jim Kramer?” Bratcher said.
“Who?” Karen said.
“The son of a bitch who did this to me. Did they arrest him? They damn well better have.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Karen said. “But there were some detectives here earlier asking when they might be able to talk to you. I told them to come back tomorrow.”
“Fine. That’s fine. That motherfucker better be behind bars for attempted murder.”
Karen didn’t say anything. She pressed her stethoscope against the top of Dr. Bratcher’s chest. It was cold against his skin.
“What kind of surgery did I have?”
“Shh.”
“I think I have a right to know.”
Karen pursed her lips. She pulled the stethoscope away and sighed. “They had to remove your colon,” she said.
“My colon? The whole thing?”
“I’m afraid so. And your kidneys. They’d been packed in ice, but the damage was too severe to even try re-implanting them.”
Tears welled in Dr. Bratcher’s eyes. “So I’m going to have a colostomy bag, and I’ll be on dialysis,” he said. “For the rest of my life.”
“That’s pretty much the situation,” Karen said. “I’m very, very sorry. If it’s any consolation, you won’t have to suffer with it for long.”
“Huh?”
Karen’s voice had gotten deeper. It seemed to be coming from everywhere, yet nowhere. A lingering effect of the anesthesia, Bratcher thought.
“I have something for you,” Karen said.
She pulled a syringe from her pocket. Dr. Bratcher could see that it had already been loaded with medication.
“What’s that?” Bratcher said.
“Potassium chloride,” Karen said. “Forty milliequivalents. Your serum potassium was critically low. The doctor wanted you to have this.”
She screwed the syringe into one of the ports on Dr. Bratcher’s IV line.
“Wait just a fucking minute,” Bratcher said. “You’re supposed to mix that with a bag of saline and give it over several hours. That much potassium all at once will kill me. What kind of nurse—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Dr. Bratcher watched in horror as she pushed the plunger. He tried to shout, but his voice was hoarse and weak. “No,” he said. “Help. Somebody help me.”
“Remember a patient of yours named Jana Lorry?” Karen said. “Remember those two little girls you ripped from her womb? Well, I’m the second one, the younger of the two. My name’s Tori, and payback’s a bitch.”
“This is not happening,” Dr. Bratcher said. “Oh my god. Please, somebody, help me.”
But there was nobody.
A trail of molten hot agony started at the IV insertion site in Bratcher’s left arm and inched its way toward his heart. As a physician, he knew that the code blue team could still potentially save him if they arrived in time.
This was insane. How did this nurse know about his practice at the clinic, anyway? How did she know about Jana Lorry’s abortion? How did she know about the identical twins Jana had named Lori and Tori minutes before they were properly disposed of? How the fuck did she know an
y of it?”
As Dr. Theodore Bratcher asked himself those questions, the scorching undiluted potassium chloride spread through his chest like lava oozing from a volcano. The last thing he saw, seconds before his heart stopped, was nurse Karen reaching up and switching off the EKG monitor.
He watched as the electronic display faded to black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
John Rock rounded the corner and stopped at room 237. He slipped his backpack off his shoulder, let it rest against the wall by the door. In the distance he heard Pamela Sweet shout, “He went that way.”
John’s cerebral radar was calm now. It had stopped firing flares in his brain. Lori Lorry had been here, he was sure of it, but now she was gone.
“On the ground, motherfucker!”
John turned and saw a uniformed police officer standing about fifteen feet away. The cop’s eyes were focused along the sights of the pistol he had aimed at John’s chest.
“Get on your knees! Hands behind your head!”
John laced his fingers together behind his head and fell to his knees. “I think there’s been a murder here,” he said.
The cop keyed a radio and told someone his location. He approached John from behind, cuffed one wrist and then the other. He made John lie facedown on the filthy carpet. Patted his legs and pockets and upper body. Felt around his waistband and the crack of his ass.
“What’s in the backpack?” the cop said.
“All my worldly possessions. Clothes and stuff.”
“You got a weapon in there?”
“I have a straight razor,” John said.
“You plan on cutting somebody?”
“I use it to shave.”
The cop picked up the pack, looked at it, set it back down. “Why did you kick the door in over there?” he said.
“I thought there was a homicide taking place behind it.”
“What made you think that?”
“Just a hunch,” John said.
The cop kicked John in the left thigh with the toe of his black patent leather shoe. “Let’s try again, smartass. What made you think someone was being killed?”
