Under-Heaven

by Tim Greaton

  "Your friend, Ms. Tracy, is in a coma. He could recover in a day, a week, a month, or maybe not at all. But without consent from a family member we can't treat him or even attempt anything further."

  "Are you saying you would let him die?"

  "No. If his life were threatened, we would have the right to stabilize him—but no more. Daniel Aldridge may never wake, but I see no danger of his dying."

  "You're saying you won't treat him?"

  "In short, Ms. Tracy, that is exactly what I'm saying."

  "Can I see him?"

  "It will probably be another few hours before we move him to the fourth floor. In the meantime, it's best if he doesn't have visitors."

  Jenny got to her feet. She knew she should have thanked the man, or at least have feigned politeness, but this whole event made her incredibly angry. She and Dan were just beginning to make progress. Both seemed to have broken their addictions and the sessions were getting to be more social than business. When she first met him at group therapy, he was just another guy with a problem. But now, having known him and worked with him for these last few months, being close to him had a strong appeal. Recently, she had even sensed he might feel the same way. Now this.

  As she stepped out into the hall, the doctor stopped her. "Could I have the name of his ex-wife?"

  Jenny gave it to him and said, "Better hold a muffle over the phone."

  In the wide, almond-colored hallway, Jenny noticed a blond girl standing quietly against the wall. The little girl's pale hand was gripping the wooden, wheel chair bumper rail. She wore a bright red ribbon in her hair that somehow clashed with her checkered blue and white dress. She looked to be about four years old.

  Jenny smiled as she passed.

  The girl didn't acknowledge her. She just continued to stare with large, blue eyes that sent a chill through Jenny. Without looking back, Jenny hurried toward the commotion of the emergency room. Mr. Callahan was now gone, but two young black men had taken his and Jenny's seat. She waited against a wall, not too far from the woman who was still pounding her fist next to the Coke machine. In a few minutes, the memory of the girl and the unusual chill was forgotten, buried by the myriad noises and sights around her.

  4

  The doctor stepped out of the small waiting room and watched Jennifer Tracy walk down the hall. She was attractive, and charming in an abrasive sort of way. It was surprising to see her with a character like Aldridge, a man who smelled nearly as bad as he looked. Who could figure?

  As he watched her move away, the doctor was shocked to see a blond girl in the hall. No one was allowed in this corridor unless accompanied by authorized personnel. And with Mrs. Giltender (commonly referred to as "The Warden") on duty, it was especially surprising. The blond girl intently watched Jennifer stride toward the emergency room. As soon as she rounded the corner and disappeared, the girl took six measured steps in her direction.

  With each step, Doctor Bryden Reynolds could have sworn her four-year-old body was shrinking. Somewhere into the seventh step, the now tiny, maybe-one-foot-high girl, looked back at him with frighteningly bright blue eyes.

  Bryden Reynolds felt fear crawl up from the pit of his stomach. He tried to force his legs back into the waiting room, to make his arms swing the door closed, but fear held him immobile, helpless.

  The girl glared a moment longer, then turned, took a final step and disappeared.

  5

  In the basement of her small Maine home, Wanda O'Neil, sat before a bench filled with a peculiar array of items. The area was illuminated by two greasy black candles located toward the rear of the dusty work surface. High up in the stone walls of the basement torn strips of mildewed blanket covered the only two squat windows. And though a light fixture hung from a tattered wire in the ceiling, its bulb had been unscrewed.

  In the flickering light, Wanda gazed contentedly at the treasures she had collected so diligently over the past four weeks. Her beloved would be pleased.

  Though she had never spoken a word to Sedge Delorme, before her was a collection of items previously owned by members of his family. To the far left was a blue and chrome Papermate pen. The blue still held its shine, but the chrome finish was severely scratched and worn. Sedge's father had used it every day at the hardware store where he had worked beginning shortly after the depression. He'd had that same pen right up until some twenty-seven years ago when he loaned it to a screw salesman who left town and never returned. Three weeks ago, Wanda found that salesman's daughter eighty-five miles south of Bragdon, in Biddeford. Confused but happy to have the twenty dollars, the divorced housewife sold the pen to Wanda.

  Beside the pen lay a red bandanna that Sedge's mother had worn over her head on the days she worked in the garden. Sedge would have recognized the dull, bleached material instantly because it was the same bandanna he'd used to mop the blood from her dead brow. Though blending well with the faded red cloth, blood stains could still be discerned after these many years.

  Wanda sniffed the rag then returned it to its place amid her collection. She smiled.

  Crowded on the filthy bench surface were dozens of other personal items: a rusty hammer dating back fifteen decades, a moth-eaten doll sewn in the mid-eighteen hundreds, several bits of cloth torn from forgotten outfits of the past, two rings still crusted with the red clay of the ground they had been buried in. And there were many more, some recognizable, some not. The single strand of unity between these items was previous ownership by members of Sedge's lineage.

  Sedge's great grandfather was the only member not represented by an item on the table. But since he had died a natural death during a trip through the southern states, Wanda felt that he had no place on this bench: her gruesome ode to the dead.

  Though most of the items had little or no monetary value, there were two that did. One, used by Sedge's great, great grandfather in the late eighteen hundreds, was a gold pocket watch. The glass face had a semi-circular crack that almost looked like a frown against the surprisingly white background. The gold casing was in reasonably good condition, and the old watch could actually have kept time within one minute a month if Wanda had any interest in winding it. Many a collector would have cried to own this piece. Its value exceeded that of any home in Bragdon—excepting only Albert Shurwood's mansion on Bludgett Pond. The Shurwood mansion, built over the last three generations by the sweat (and, in several cases, blood) of the employees at the Shurwood Shoe Mills, was likely worth a bit more.

  The last and only other item of value on the table had belonged to Sedge's great grandfather. It was a single silver cuff link that he'd worn with its mate only twice: once on his wedding day; and the second time on the day he died. The cuff link's value was historical, you see, for Sedge's great grandfather had received the links in late 1922 as a gift from President Warren Gamaliel Harding.

  But Wanda could not have cared less about the worth of the link or the old watch, as she had no need for currency. She had only one single, painful yearning. Only one desire. And her desire had nothing at all to do with the physical things in this world.

  Wanda touched each object in turn and pondered its tragic past and its most useful future. Only she knew how she had come to learn the origin of these items, and it was a secret she would have been unwilling to share with anyone but her dearly beloved.

  Her arthritis-filled hands continued to fondle and stroke the collection, occasionally picking an item up to examine it more closely in the flickering candle light before setting it carefully down again. She could almost feel the presence of the previous owners, and she could sense their pain.

  The latter lightened her heart and made her smile.

  6

  The trip back to Bragdon was supposed to take only twelve hours. But as things turned out, Sedge had to switch buses three times, and was forced to sleep overnight at one station because he missed the connection with his third and last bus. When he complained, the people at the depot told him that he'd had almost an hour t
o go from one bus to the next. And they had been parked scarcely 300 feet apart. Sedge remembered only a few seconds from the time he left one bus until the time he saw the new one leaving...leaving without him. Either way, his complaints were ignored and he spent the night on a cold steel bench in a frighteningly depressed section of Albany, New York. Fortunately, with his uncombed long hair and his two trash bags of belongings at his side, no one seemed to notice or care about him as they went about their illicit midnight businesses.

  7

  It was seven-thirty the following morning when Sedge staggered up into the bus that would complete the final leg of his homeward journey. Half-way down the length of the aisle he managed to find a seat that offered some privacy from the other twenty or so people that were riding at this early hour. Behind him was one empty seat and behind that sat a single, balding man with a wide, scraggly mustache who appeared to be in his mid-forties. The man wasn't exactly asleep, but Sedge suspected from the glaze on his eyes that he should have been a long time ago. Maybe he had an eternal case of insomnia and rode the bus just so he wouldn't have to be alone.

  There was no one in the seat directly across from Sedge. Three rows in front of him was a pretty, young woman with a girl about four years old. Both were red-heads and both had been asleep—the mother on the aisle-side, leaning inward on the girl; and the little girl on the window-side, leaning outward against her mother—when he had walked past. From the backside the scene looked entirely different: the daughter was too short to be seen above the high back of the seat, and this made the mother's head appear to dangle from her shoulders at an utterly unnatural angle. The sight might have been perversely funny if it hadn't woken buried memories of a birthday past.

  A vivid picture of his mother's broken body slumped against the stone wall of their basement filled Sedge's mind. Her head hung over her shoulder like a tether ball on a string, and blood was splattered across her chin and cheeks as though an open pint of bright red paint had been thrown at her.

  Sedge shook the memory away and covered his eyes with his hands. He was tired and scared. He tried to tell himself it was just a manifestation of his uncertainty of how Bragdon was going to react to his return—

  How could they want me back after what happened? ‘Protect your children, Sedge Delorme has returned!’

  —and he didn't know how he would react to seeing and being in his parents' house again. Would the memories seep out of the very woodwork to drive him over the final lip of sanity; or maybe, possibly, by the grace of a God he had never known, would he finally know peace and feel as though he had a reason to live one more day?

  Like a sickly thin tree bent in an arc by snow and ice, Sedge waited for his own personal thaw to begin. He hoped for a reprieve from the solitary existence he had been forced to lead, for an ending to the pain and death that had pursued him all his life; but he had been hoping these same hopes for so very long now. For him hope was more a tenuous hold on sanity than an actual process of belief. Ultimately, it was despair that accompanied him into a shallow sleep...a sleep in which the lifeless, hazel green eyes of his mother watched over him.

  8

  The oldest of them was only nine and the youngest could barely claim seven, but like the staunchest of adults they stalked their prey through the woods. Occasionally they could hear the snap of a branch or the crunch of dry leaves up ahead, and that is what kept them driving forward.

  Soon, victory would be theirs.

  Jason was ahead of the others. Although he was only the second oldest, turned nine three days ago, he still got the point position at the front. This because he was the heaviest and the tallest of them. Besides he had the largest ego of them all.

  Brian was second in line. The oldest, a ripe old nine and a half, he crept along, eyes intent on the trail ahead. He had always been more serious than the others. Often, people assumed it was an indication of a great intellect, but Sedge knew it was more for Brian's need to concentrate than for lack of it. If not for his attentive manner and unwavering persistence he might well have been below average, but what abilities he did have he seemed to focus solely on one task at a time until it was complete, and that ability to focus had carried him a long ways, indeed.

  "Hold it," Jason whispered harshly, simultaneously holding his palm straight up in a manner mimicked from war movies they'd seen recently. He was scooched down on his haunches, peering from beneath the brilliant orange and yellow leaves of a small oak tree.

  Brian inched up behind him, followed by Sedge, and then by little George, who was the youngest. George brushed a sweaty clump of dark blond hair away from his forehead. He had turned seven last month.

  "What's going on?" Sedge whispered. "Where did she go?"

  She, of course, was referring to their quarry, Shelly. The boys had agreed to let Sedge's sister play today, but only if she would be the enemy. For almost half an hour now, they had been tracking her through the Maine woods, just outside of Bragdon. She seemed to be leading them back toward town now and Sedge guessed they weren't too far from Brian's house where they had all begun.

  "We can't let her win," George whined.

  "She's...she's a girl."

  Sedge nodded. If Shelly managed to get back before they could tag her, one of the boys would have to join her side and the game would continue tomorrow. Imagine, being on the same team as a girl? The thought was too horrifying to contemplate. Somehow they had to get her. Sedge regretted the big lead they had given her. She'd had almost ten minutes head start.

  "Look at this," Jason said. He pointed at the soft ground just ahead.

  Three pairs of eyes followed the direction of his finger.

  "What the heck—" Sedge started to say.

  Jason reached over and clamped a large hand over Sedge's mouth. He placed a finger before his own lips. "Shhhh. She'll know we're here?"

  Sedge pushed the hand away and crept to the edge of the hollow in front of them. He reached out and picked the white sneaker out of the muck. "She can't run without shoes," he said, holding the muddy sneaker up.

  "Why leave a sneaker?" Brian asked.

  "Her footprints..." Jason said, letting the thought drift off.

  The others stood in mutual bafflement. The footprints ended at the sneaker hole. Clearly, she had made her way into the wet area...but then the prints ended. Nothing.

  Sedge considered the possibility of quicksand. He'd never heard of any here in Maine, but the thought was enough to scare him. He stomped out into hollow of fallen leaves and mud. "Shelly!"

  No answer came as cold water and ooze coated his ankles and seeped into his sneakers. Though uncomfortable, Sedge was at least satisfied that she hadn't sunk below the earth. He slogged back out to high ground.

  Jason and George stared incredulously at him. Brian, however, nodded as though he understood Sedge's reasoning.

  "Shelly," Sedge yelled again. He dropped her sneaker to the ground and cupped both hands around his mouth. "Shelly!"

  Jason joined in, his voice louder and harsher than Sedge's. "Quit kidding around, Shelly! Where are you?"

  Brian and George also called her name. Soon, all four of them were traipsing and howling inanely through the woods. Fifteen minutes and four sore throats later found them back at the hollow. "I still don't understand how she got out without prints?" George rasped.

  Brian shook his head. He tapped the scarred Timex he'd been wearing ever since Sedge could remember. "We've only got an hour or so of daylight left."

  Sedge knew he couldn't leave the woods without his sister. He knelt down to more closely examine the three impressions she'd left in the mud. Jason knelt down beside him as the other two fanned out to scan the woods again.

  "We're probably wasting our time, you know."

  "What if something's really wrong, Jason." Sedge stared into the hazel green eyes of his best friend.

  "You can't track an evil spirit," Jason replied. "Especially an evil FEMALE spirit." He grinned…

  Sed
ge feigned a smile, but dread kept him from appreciating the older boy's humor.

  Jason got to his feet. "Don't worry. We'll find her. I'll climb a good tree and get a better view."

  Sedge could hear his friend's Nike sneakers cracking twigs and crinkling leaves long after the larger boy had disappeared into the multi-colored foliage. Meanwhile, he continued to stare down into the final sneaker print. Where had Shelly gone? He didn't believe she could have headed back. One of them would have seen or heard something by now.

  Though Shelly was a year older than him, he still felt responsible. After all, he was the man of the family now. It was his fault for letting her go into the woods alone. He should have teamed up and gone with her.

  As the sounds of the other three receded, an ominous silence settled around Sedge. He felt clammy palms of fear rubbing the flesh at the back of his neck. His scalp tingled with tension and his breath came in shallow gasps, as though his lungs had long forgotten their role.

  Sedge stood and surveyed the deadly silent woods around him. He licked his dry lips and tried to tell himself that he was imagining it, that fear for Shelly was urging his imagination to heights of paranoia. But the truth was, Sedge recognized the eeriness of it all. This was the same way he had felt just before he found his father—

  Hurry!

  His internal voice urged him to find Shelly soon. Find her before something awful happened.

  Sedge raced through the possibilities again. One: she ran through here, dropped a shoe and kept on running, somehow not leaving any other evidence of her passing. Two: she ran through here, lost a shoe and stepped into a portal to another world. Or three: she ran through here, dropped a shoe and was still here.

  Still here? Was it possible that she was giggling only a few feet from him right now?

  Sedge stared at her muddy sneaker. Was it possible she had used a stick to press it into the mud? But if she had, why would she have left it?