by Ronald Malfi
Ten minutes later and he was helping his mother up the stairs. She complained that her leg was tender, that it got bad with the cold weather, and he promised he’d take a look at it when he got home.
“You’re going out?” she said.
“I need to stop by the hospital for a while,” he told her. “I won’t be long.”
“Baaah,” she said, exasperated. “Marie is sick?”
“She doesn’t feel well. Let her stay in bed. Don’t disturb her, Mamma.”
Moments later, he stood in the upstairs hallway peeking into his bedroom. His wife had fallen asleep on the bed, one of the children’s books splayed open across her lap. He pushed the door open, mindful not to wake her with its creaking, and crept into the room like a ghost. Saddling up to the bed, he brushed his wife’s hair from her face. His hands were still shaking. His fingers looked pale and felt cold. From being outside, he told himself.
He removed the book from her lap, glanced at its pages (some nursery rhyme about Simple Simon and the Pie Man), and placed it on the night table with the rest of them.
“Soon, we’ll forget all about this,” he promised her. “Soon, it’ll just be you and me and baby makes three and none of this will even matter. It’ll all be like some horrible, horrible dream.”
Downstairs, he dug through his medical case in search of his office address book, thumbed through the pages until he came across Joshua Cavey’s number, and went for the phone. It rang just as his fingers closed around it.
How’s that for psychic powers? he thought dryly.
“Hello?”
“Doc, it’s Josh.”
Psychic powers, indeed. “Jesus,” he muttered, “I was just about to call you.”
“I need to talk with you.”
“We need to talk,” Carlos corrected. “My wife…” He lowered his voice. “My wife hasn’t gotten out of bed for two days. Josh, what the hell happened in that apartment?”
“That’s all part of it.”
“Part of what? What are you talking about?”
Josh sounded out of breath. “Can you meet me?”
“Yes.”
“The diner across from Nellie’s building,” Josh said. “In an hour.”
Carlos brought the library book with him and tossed it on the table as Josh, stepping into the diner and out of the cold, approached.
“Sit down,” Carlos told him. The anger in his voice was quite clear; it was enough to cause Josh to pause while removing his coat. Josh sat down across from the doctor, folding his coat across his lap, his eyes jogging between the library book to Carlos’s eyes as if watching a tennis match.
“Calm down,” Josh said.
“Fuck you and to hell with calming down. It’s been two days and my wife hasn’t said more than five sentences to me, all because of…Christ, I don’t even know, whatever the hell happened up there in that apartment…”
“Take it easy,” Josh insisted. Though the place was empty, his eyes darted around the diner as if embarrassed that someone might overhear. “You’re pissed and you’re scared, all right, fine…but don’t lose sight of the fact that it was your idea to drag your wife into this in the first place.”
“You shit…”
“No,” Josh said, shaking his head, “no, I’m sorry. Stop. Let’s start this over. Nothing happened—this isn’t anyone’s fault.”
“Nothing happened? Where the hell were you?”
“Nothing serious, is what I mean.” Josh rubbed his hands together, cupped them, blew into them to get the feeling back. “It seems bad, but it’s not. It’s okay.”
Carlos studied the kid, as if to mentally extract any knowledge about the situation he possessed that Carlos, himself, did not. He wished he were angrier; instead, his anger was diluted by confusion and frustration and the bitter ineffectiveness of his own ministrations thus far.
“When we spoke at the hospital you said you really didn’t know this woman all that well,” Carlos said. “So what’s the deal? How the hell do you know so much about her now, about what she can do, and about these powers or abilities or whatever the hell you want to call them?”
“Because she told me.”
“She just came out and told you whatever the hell—”
Josh shook his head. “This thing goes pretty fucking deep. And man, I don’t know how much you’d be willing to believe and…well, Christ, I don’t even know how much I believe…”
“Try me.”
Josh closed his eyes, rubbed color back into his face. It occurred to Carlos that Josh had most likely rehearsed what he was about to say, that he’d struggled to understand it at some point himself. Perhaps the words he was about to hear were really coming directly from Nellie Worthridge.
“About your wife,” Josh said. “Nellie said to tell you that she’ll be fine. It’s shock, that’s all. Remember when Nellie first touched you? The things you saw, the things you remembered? Well, it was like that with your wife, only amplified, like, a zillion times over, you get it? You asked her to search for information on your unborn son, Doc, and that’s apparently not an easy task, even for someone like Nellie, with Nellie’s powers. She said she had to dive deep and overturn a lot of mental stones, peek inside a lot of mental closets. Real detective shit, right? Your wife is just in shock from what she saw, from what Nellie showed her when she opened those closets, in order to feel out the essence of your son.”
Carlos shook his head. “I felt…it was like the room was electrically charged. I could feel some current running up through my arms, through my body. I could taste it. It curdled my stomach.” His voice jumped up a notch. “You know this too! I saw you. You felt it. I saw you against the wall. You could hardly move, just like me.”
“Normal,” Josh said, his voice impossibly calm. “That’s normal.”
“How can you even say that? How is that possible?”
“It happened when she did it with you,” Josh said. “That’s why I left the room. The more power she uses, the stronger those around her can feel it. It comes off her in waves. When she dips into the heads of those women she plays cards with, it’s like using a double-A battery. With you, it was like charging up to a car battery. And with your wife, it was like being hooked up to some sort of nuclear generator or something. Einstein wasn’t no slouch; it’s all relative.”
“So my wife…?”
“She’ll be fine. Nellie said she’s still charged up, that’s all. Residual current from that nuclear generator, right? You were probably pretty damn shaken for a while after she hopped inside your head. I know I was.”
“She did you, too?” For some reason, the notion seemed absurd.
“Point is,” Josh went on, “your wife will be fine.”
“And my son?” It was the reason he’d gotten Marie involved in the first place, and he’d almost forgotten about it. How could he ever forget something like that?
Josh took his gaze to the table. “She couldn’t tell,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
Josh rolled his shoulders. His knee was bouncing beneath the table, causing the tabletop to rock. “She couldn’t find anything. It doesn’t always work and she couldn’t find anything out about your son, couldn’t feel him. She tried.”
“Tried. Goddamn…” He brought his hands up to his face, rubbed his tired eyelids. He could feel his hands trembling against the skin of his face. He wondered what he looked like to Josh, and what the boy thought of him. “So this all happened for nothing…”
“She tried,” Josh reiterated. “I’m sorry.”
Carlos sighed. He felt an insane laugh threaten his throat. “Well,” he said. “Okay then. Well-well-well-well-well. And you wanted to meet me, put my mind at ease about my wife? How very noble. Your mother must spin circles.”
“Actually, I wanted to see you because I need your help.”
The doctor grabbed his book, slid it across the table, and dumped it into his lap. He was ready to leave.
“I
have a good friend who’s in a lot of trouble,” Josh said quickly. “Her name is Kelly. She went upstate to her family home about a month ago and I haven’t heard from her since. Which isn’t bad in and of itself…but Nellie’s been having these dreams, getting these bad feelings. Sometimes she fades out in the middle of the day, just closes her eyes and she’s gone, and I know she’s searching for Kelly with her mind, that she can feel something’s wrong with her…”
“What’s wrong?”
Josh frowned and brought his eyes down, almost ashamed to meet Carlos’s own. “I don’t know. I mean, I can’t tell…and Nellie isn’t sure…but it’s something. We both feel it, and Nellie much stronger than me.”
“I don’t understand. What do you need from me?”
“You saw what happened to Nellie after the trance with your wife. She almost died. In fact, she’d be dead right now if you hadn’t saved her. It weakened her, took all her strength. She’s been getting weaker each time she goes into one of these fugues. I’m just afraid that if she goes too deep after Kelly that she won’t wake up again, that she’ll die. And I think Kelly’s in some kind of danger.”
The tiny bell over the top of the shop door rang; upon hearing this, Josh jumped in his seat and slid around to stare in the direction of the sound, suddenly nervous. A man pushed in through the door, bundled in winter clothes, and waddled up to the counter to order some pastries.
He’s just a scared kid, Carlos thought, that’s all. Nothing magical or supernatural or even special here. Just a scared kid sitting here talking about ghosts with an even more scared kid. We’re in the same club, you and I, Josh. Hell of a membership fee, isn’t it?
“You’re asking me to stand guard in the room while Nellie goes into another one of those trances, and to pump her back to life in case she happens to have heart failure in the process? And all this because you think your girlfriend might be in some sort of trouble somewhere? Josh, this is getting insane…”
“I know what it sounds like,” he said, “but I don’t have another choice. She tried to help you, she really did, so can’t you help us now?”
“Josh—”
“I’m asking.”
“I understand…”
“Kellow,” Josh said.
Carlos felt something turn over in his head. “What?”
“Kellow. You remember that word you told me Nellie was saying over and over again in her sleep? That word you recorded?”
The man at the counter coughed loudly into his hands, did a half-turn to examine himself in the reflection of the diner’s bank of windows, and turned back to face the counter again.
“Yes,” Carlos heard himself say, “I remember.”
“That’s Kelly’s real last name. I didn’t know that until Nellie told me. Nellie felt it—it came to her during one of these trances.”
Kellow, Carlos thought. What a goddamn mystery.
“She said that name right around the time she said those things about my son. Do you think there might be a connection? That maybe…” But his words died off. It was too nonsensical, too full of bullshit. In fact, in retrospect, he was amazed that the thought even crossed his mind to begin with. How in the world could the possible death of his unborn son be related to what some girl in upstate New York was doing?
Like a flash of lightning inside his head, the image of the young girl on the wooded hillside filled Carlos’s mind. The sheer power of the vision caused his entire body to tremble, and he grasped the corners of the table to keep himself still.
“Jesus,” he muttered, “I think I saw her. I think…God, I think I saw her there…”
“Saw who? Kelly?” Josh’s voice sounded very far away. Behind him, Carlos watched as the man in the winter garb gathered his pastries from the counter, paid the cashier, and exited the store. “You saw Kelly?”
“When I touched Nellie’s arm,” he said. He felt himself become detached, knew that his eyes were unfocused and looking past Josh now, through Josh. “I had this vision of a young woman standing on this hillside, surrounded by these trees, and this sense of…of urgency, like something bad was about to happen, only I didn’t know exactly what it was. I didn’t know what I was seeing. But now I think I do. Somehow…”
“You saw her? She was all right? You…how did…you saw her?”
Carlos snapped forward, his eyes refocused. A film of sweat coated his forehead, the palms of his hands. “Jesus,” he whispered.
“Nellie’s powers are strong,” Josh said. “Sometimes, it’s like…I think I can feel it too, even when I’m not with her. You know? Like I dream about what she sees and what she knows when I’m asleep.”
“Your friend,” Carlos said. “Why do you think she’s in trouble? What has Nellie felt?”
“I don’t know. Nothing specific. She can’t tell. It’s all just a jumble of feelings, of emotions, all coming at her at once. And half the time I think she’s just as scared and confused as me. And then, like I said, she isn’t getting stronger. She keeps this up and she’s going to die.”
Kellow, Carlos thought again, recalling the day at the hospital when the old woman began mumbling the word in her sleep. For some reason I knew it was a name.
Josh sighed, leaned back in his seat. “I don’t know about your son,” he said, “so I’m not going to lie to you. There may be some bizarre connection between your son and what’s happening with Kelly, but that’s just a feeling. Or coincidence. I’m not going to make you believe that just so you’ll help me.”
“That’s just impossible…”
“Yeah, well, I’ve had to realign my own concept of the world lately. I’m sure you have, too. About a month ago I wouldn’t have thought people like Nellie Worthridge even existed.”
Carlos found himself slowly nodding. His eyes trailed down to the book on his lap. Was it possible that this was all some horrible, horrible dream? That he’d wake up any minute, sweating and shaking, and utter a frightened laugh for dreaming such a morbid and purely ridiculous dream? Again, he felt that same maniacal laughter threaten to bubble up through his body and explode from his throat. His lips played with a terrified smile.
Look at me, he thought. I’m going insane.
Josh led him into the darkness of Nellie’s apartment. Even at night, all the shades were drawn against the lights of the city. The apartment lights were all off except for a small kitchen nightlight plugged into the wall beneath a row of cabinets. Darkness. To Carlos, this more than anything suggested the old woman’s imminent death. Like some wounded forest creature, she was barring herself from the rest of the world, walling herself up in seclusion. It was something human beings, like many other animals, did instinctively when faced with the sudden prospect of their own fleeting mortality. In fact, the entire apartment suggested an ancient crypt or mausoleum: stagnant and unused, from which all essence of life was being slowly drained over a long period of time.
“She’s still in bed,” Josh half-whispered. “Go ahead.”
Carlos paused in the darkness, uncertain of his next move. He looked back over his shoulder at Josh, but Josh had vanished into the small kitchenette.
I can still feel it, he thought. It’s still here, floating in the air—that charge of electricity, that swelling and deflation of the atmosphere, as if the entire room is breathing. It lingers.
Silently, he crept down the narrow hallway, the fingers of his extended right hand tracing the wall for support. As he progressed down the hall, he could feel the apartment’s electrical charge intensify. Nellie was its source; the closer he drew to her, the stronger the vibration.
At the end of the hallway, Nellie’s bedroom door stood half-open. Carlos paused just outside it, catching his breath, his mind reeling with the images from two nights ago. He pictured his wife slumped against the back of her chair while Nellie’s talon-like hand gripped at her belly. He thought of Marie now, and for the past two days, dumbstruck from shock and sleeping in bed amidst a scattering of children’s fairy tales.
He pushed the door open and stepped inside. Immediately struck by the heat, he recoiled, bringing a reflexive hand up to his forehead. It was a dry heat, issuing in rolling waves from across the bedroom, as if the old woman’s body had somehow become some living, breathing generator.
In the gloom, he could make out Nellie’s form huddled in bed. He gasped. She was a skeleton, her skin completely rotted away, her eyes two black pits in the center of gray bone. But no—it was only the darkness playing with his mind. As he stepped closer, her features fell into place, withered and parched as they were. He could even hear her low, raspy breathing now—a sound not unlike the scrape of a rake dragged along a gravel driveway.
“Nellie?” Should he even wake her?
“Carlito,” he heard her mutter. Her voice startled him; she wasn’t asleep after all. “Come.”
He moved closer to the side of the bed. A strip of sodium light from the street passed through the space between the curtain and the window, illuminating the side of the old woman’s face. She’s a corpse, Carlos thought. At least, she soon will be. Her eyes had sunk deep into her head, their lids paper thin and half-closed, while her ears lay flat against the sides of her head. This close, the sound of her respiration was grating.
“Don’t be scared for your wife,” the old woman said. Surprisingly, she spoke with little difficulty. “What happened is part of a process, an old process. You didn’t need to intervene; she would have been fine.”
He blurted an apology.
Nellie smiled weakly. “I am sorry, but I could not see…anything about the baby.”
