The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  A nurse came in to check on them, and then a long series of nurses and orderlies came, each asking the same questions and each with the same intense curious look on their faces.

  The island was a small, close community and having an entire family brought into the emergency room at the same time, was sure to be a seven-day wonder. The gossip mill must have been going into overdrive, but Gayle didn't have the strength to care. She wanted desperately to ask them about Talitha, but was so afraid of the answer that she couldn't bring herself to do it. However, the longer she went without asking, the greater her anxiety became.

  At some point, Katie came and cuddled up to her mother. She looked pallid, and quickly fell back to sleep with her thumb lodged in her mouth. Willy J was also up; moving about and there was restless energy to him. He kept pacing, stretching, and rubbing his arms as if they were cold. His face was set in stony mask of grim determination that was only broken by a smile for Lisa. She had gone to him when he stirred and they had kissed passionately. So much so, that Gayle became embarrassed and turned away. She stared into the sun, long after they separated.

  No one spoke much and the room filled with an awkward silence. They had apparently been in the hospital for the last eight hours, and now they were all waiting for something to occur, something that would explain the events of the previous night. They also waited for news of Talitha. The subject seemed to be taboo, with no one mentioning her at all.

  The only one who seemed unafraid to talk was Lisa, who doted on all of them, doing whatever was asked of her, and she bustled about, doing the job of two nurses. She didn't jabber on to fill the silences, but spoke respectfully and only when necessary. Though it was clear she wanted to, she asked no questions, and this above all else impressed Gayle.

  Finally a little after 8am, William strode into the room followed by a doctor in blue scrubs and a uniformed Coast Guard officer. Her husband looked haggard and seemed tired to the point of exhaustion. Gayle didn't think he had slept at all, and marveled how he was able to keep going. He had been under the gaze of the demon just as she had and it had left her drained beyond anything she had ever felt before. Ignoring the two men who had come into the room with him, William went to each family member, including Lisa, and kissed them warmly.

  "Are you ok?" he asked Gayle quietly. She knew the bad news was coming and she tried to steel herself for it, but her heart began melting, pouring into stomach, making her feel sick in her anxiety.

  "Yes, how's Talitha?" Just asking was a great strain on her and the one second wait for the answer felt like it aged her a year.

  "She...she's in a coma. I'm so sorry, Honey." He wiped away tears that hadn't been there a moment ago. "She's not doing well. They can't seem to get her body temperature back to normal. I..." he trailed off in uncertainty.

  The doctor walked forward and picking up a chart from her bedside, gave it a quick scan. "I'm Dr Thielsen. Before we get to your daughter, how are you feeling? Are you in much pain?"

  "I'm fine," she lied. "What's wrong with Talitha? Tell me."

  "I will, I promise. But first, wiggle your fingers...good...now the other hand. Now look up plea..."

  "I'm fine, Doctor. Please tell me, will she be ok?"

  "Talitha has had some sort of shock to her system. It's nothing I've ever seen before and it's very strange. We thought at first she was suffering from hypothermia, but she has resisted all of our attempts at active warming and what's worse is that her core temperature is slowly dropping. The cause of both the coma and the thermoregulation problem are still a mystery and I was hoping you could shed some light on it."

  "Me? I—I don't know."

  A demon did it! It was the demon, but how do you say that? How on earth could she explain a monster in the full rational light of day?

  Thielsen continued, "I've already asked your husband these questions, but I need to be thorough. Did Talitha ever faint or lose consciousness before last night?"

  "No," she replied and then panicked at her answer. Maybe she had passed out when Gayle wasn't looking, or when she had been out shopping.

  "Did she ever complain about being too hot or too cold, when everyone else was fine?"

  "No," she answered, but then remembered there was a time at Jones beach: Talitha had said it was really hot, but Gayle hadn't thought so. She was about to tell the doctor this, but he had moved on to another question. This he did repeatedly. He was going too fast for her and right when she thought she knew the correct answer to his last question, he was on to the next one. It got worse when he started asking about different diseases Talitha might have.

  "Did she have Juvenile Diabetes?"

  "No, but she liked Kool-Aid, and that's all about sugar, right?"

  "Sort of. What about Muscular Dystrophy?"

  "No. She did like to read a lot and she wasn't very active, couldn't that mean...." This went on and on. Gayle remembered that Talitha had the Chicken Pox once, and this was the only thing she knew for certain that Talitha had ever suffered from. However, the doctor never asked about it and Gayle had to suppress a weird need to mention it. Her head began to thump badly

  Finally, the doctor stopped with the questions. He looked thoughtful. "I'm sorry I had to put you through all of that, but I needed to rule out the obvious. You see, normally a thermoregulation problem stems from brain trauma, or as a side effect from a disease, but her brain seems perfectly healthy. We have run every test I can think of, but her disorder seems to fall outside of the known literature. There is some blood work that is pending and we'll know soon enough anyway, but do any of you know if she was taking any illegal drugs?"

  "No, she's perfectly clean," Willy J answered. His face was a blank screen. It looked as though, he thought this was happening to someone else and he was only watching it. Gayle didn't know what to think. She felt behind and lost in the conversation and worse, there was something building up in her and she was afraid that she might just explode at any minute.

  "That's what I was worried about." The doctor gave a sharp glance in William's direction. "I would like to have her transferred to Johns Hopkins. They'll be able to do more for her there and I think it would be in her best interest."

  Having experienced the horror of the demon, Gayle hadn't been relieved at hearing that Talitha was in a coma, and knew that it was the fiend keeping her alive in that condition. The thought made her anxiety bloom. "What would they do differently?" she asked.

  "Oh, there are a lot more tests they can run at their facilities that I don't have access to here. This is a very small hospital after all."

  "More tests?" Gayle felt a silly desire to tell him that Talitha was a straight-A student, but pushed the statement down deep. It could only go so deep however, since her head felt like a balloon on the verge of popping.

  "Yes, at a minimum, we need to do more tests on her blood and her cerebral spinal fluids. There are also tests that...." the doctor continued on, telling her about all of the different tests they could run. He spoke calmly, soothingly. However, the term Cerebral Spinal Fluids had stuck in Gayle mind and swirled around it, so that she failed to hear anything else.

  "Cerebral spinal fluids," the doctor said in a voice that commiserated with her pain.

  "Uh-huh," Gayle replied.

  "Cerebral Spinal Fluids." His words, full of understanding.

  "Uh-huh," Gayle said.

  "Mrs. Jern?"

  He had clearly said something that demanded more than an "uh-huh" answer.

  She glanced about and everyone looked at her with blame in their eyes, or perhaps they weren't, she didn't know anymore. She was losing it. Her ability to reason and think rationally began to slip away from her. She felt childish and needy, and recognized in a distant manner that she was becoming hysterical.

  Trying to focus, she asked, "Uh...why? Why are you doing all these tests?"

  The doctor looked around in amazement, but when he failed to see matching looks of incredulity, he explained, "So we can find
what's wrong your daughter. I have to tell you upfront, I don't hold out much hope, especially with the lack of electrical activity in her brain. But, there's still a chance. We need to run these tests to pinpoint the exact cause of the coma, so then we might be able to formulate a treatment plan for her."

  The exact cause was a damned demon!

  Rage exploded in Gayle and she wanted to scream the simple explanation in his face. She hated the doctor and his stupid blue pajamas and all his useless tests. The thread of her sanity was unraveling quickly and deep down she wanted it to unravel—all the way. If it did, she could sleep without care and not feel the tremendous pain over what was happening to Talitha. If it unraveled she could die too, and that would be the end, and she wanted that. But her mind wouldn't unravel and she was stuck somewhere in the middle between sanity and insanity, and that was far worse that either.

  What she did know for certain was that there was going to be no treatment plan. Modern medicine wouldn't be able to stop the demon or end her daughter's tremendous pain.

  "No!" The word was firm, bordering on harshness. "She'll stay here with me. And there will be no more needles or cutting her or any of that worthless crap!" Her body broke down crying, her chest heaving, and her breath hitching badly. William hugged her tightly and when she calmed a bit she asked, "How much...how much time does she have?"

  The doctor was slow to respond. "How much time? We don't even know what's wrong yet. I've been searching through the literature trying to find anything that resembles this, but nothing has come up. I wish I could tell you that..."

  Breaking in Gayle demanded, "How much time?"

  "Like I said, there's no way to know, but her respirations were so dangerously low that we had to put her on a ventilator. If we were to take her off, it could be minutes."

  Was it sane or insane to wish your daughter dead? Was it a sin? Was it moral? The image of Talitha's screaming face slid smoothly into Gayle's mind, and her reasoning, unbalanced already, became precarious.

  "She's in pain. Talitha's in pain, I know it...you know it too, William. We can't k-keep her like this. We have to take her off the ventilator."

  The Commander looked down at the overly clean floors and with a string of barely perceptible nods of his head, he conveyed his reluctant agreement.

  "Well...this isn't..." The doctor seemed at a complete loss at the request. "That's your choice of course. And I wish I could give you more hope. But before we do this..."

  "Not yet! Wait...wait!" Gayle screamed interrupting him; her mind slipped away from her then. The hysteria had been lurking just below the surface, and now it rose up like a great tentacled beast. The doctor was going to kill her daughter, just like that. "Let me get ready! I have to get ready! William! Stop him! Don't touch me! Get off me!" Shrieking, she struggle to rise, but her husband held her down gently. "I'm not ready! You got to stop him William; he's going to kill Talitha!"

  Katie started to cry with little whimpering noises.

  "Mrs. Jern. Mrs. Jern, we won't do anything until you're ready."

  "William, damn it! Let me up! I'm not ready for my baby to die! Stop him...Willy J! Willy J, you stop him right now! I'm your mother and you had better stop him right now or you are in big trouble! Do you hear me!" Her screams shook the glass in the windows. Then just as suddenly as the madness took her, it left, leaving her sobbing, "Willy J, please, please."

  Will looked at Dr Thielsen sheepishly and with tears in his eyes, placed his bandaged hand on the doctor's shoulder and said in a choked whisper, "I...I got him, Mom. You don't have to worry. I won't let him do anything to Talitha."

  She stopped struggling and lay back weeping, "I'm sorry Doctor Thielsen. I know you won't hurt her...I just..." Whatever she was going to say was lost in her tears. She didn't know if she could do this terrible thing: kill her own daughter. But Talitha was trapped and in such pain! Gayle went back and forth with the choice and cried a very long time as the others stood about in a hard silence. She felt embarrassed at her outburst but she figured that going slightly insane might have been the sanest thing to do, under the circumstances.

  Dr Thielsen looked uncomfortable. "If I had better news I think I'd try to talk you out of this. But Talitha's condition is grave and realistically speaking I can't offer much hope. At best we're looking at a deeply embedded tumor in the hypothalamus—a tricky spot under the best of conditions. And with her now so far gone...but there's always hope. Please keep that in mind." The doctor then left them, supposedly to ponder on their decision.

  "Do you want me on guard duty on Tal, Mommy?" Katie asked with great seriousness. Large, fat tears hung on her eyelashes defying gravity as only a little girl's tears can. She had an unbelievably hard look to her eyes and Gayle knew Talitha would be safe with her little sister watching over her. Seeing the little girl's fierce love caused her to blubber some more and she kissed Katie all over her face. The mother in her decided that if for any other reason, she'd try to hold it together for Katie.

  "I love you, Mommy, but I think you put boogers and snots on me." Katie wiped away the sticky mess on her cheeks.

  "Sorry about the boogers, Katie-bunny. I think I want Willy J to stand guard over Talitha." She turned to her son. "Can you do that for me? And can you, maybe hold her hand...if it doesn't, you know." Thinking about Talitha's cold touch and how it had sucked at her life sent a shiver down her back.

  Will wiped away his tears and nodded. He was just about to leave the room when the officer, who had been standing discreetly back, spoke for the first time, "I'm sorry, but I can't let anyone leave until I have interviewed each of you."

  Gayle's anxiety, hysteria and sadness, turned into a nasty icy anger in a second. "William, who is this person and why does he think he can order us about?"

  Chapter 9

  The Death of William

  June 5th 1980

  1

  The night passed in painful slowness and surprising speed.

  William's exhaustion felt like a thick, heavy coat, one of those huge fur ones that the men would wear in the old timey pictures. His exhaustion weighed him down as well as slowed him down and basically made his waking life miserable. However in sleep that same coat was irresistible, warm, and comforting. It was torture to stay awake and when he did, time seemed to stand still, but if he ever closed his eyes, an hour would be gone in a snap. He tried to sit with each of his family members, just in case they would wake, but he did little more than blink stupidly, yawn cavernously, and snore loudly.

  Near 8am the nightshift doctor shook him awake and gave him an update. Though Talitha wasn't doing well, Gayle had finally awakened, and the doctor and he went to her room to see her. William was so out of it mentally that he didn't notice the Coast Guard warrant officer who followed him into the room. He was completely unaware of the man's presence until he asked Will to stay for questioning.

  "My name is Chief Warrant Officer Jeffery Ingstrom," he paused and grimaced slightly at having to do his duty under such sad circumstances. "I'm with the Coast Guard Investigative Services, and I'm the officer in charge of the investigation concerning the events at your home last night. As such, Mrs. Jern, I have to get a brief statement from everyone involved." Ingstrom was normally a neat man, but it was obvious he'd been working throughout the night and his uniform looked slightly disheveled.

  In his exhausted state, William hadn't given the idea of an investigation any thought, and he became suddenly nervous.

  "Do you mind if I go first, Jeff?" William asked, glad that Ingstrom headed up the inquiry. He was a good man and unfortunately, one of the few who were in the Investigative Services. Good man or not there was a danger here that his family might not be aware of. It was unlikely that the military was going to believe a lot of talk about a demon, especially without substantial proof and he wanted to find out first what Ingstrom or his men might have seen before letting loose with the truth. "Can you first tell me if the person who did this was still in the house when you
arrived?" he asked, giving special emphasis on the word person and shooting Gayle a meaningful look.

  "There was no one in the home, sorry Commander. We scoured it from top to bottom and have had patrols everywhere looking for anyone acting in a suspicious manner. That's the main reason I'm here Mrs. Jern, I need a description of the person. Did you get a good look at him?"

  Gayle opened her mouth, seeming on the verge of saying something, when William butted in: "It was dark in the house and the person looked to be dressed up all in black. I would guess at least six feet tall, but it was hard to figure his weight because of the cape or whatever it was that he wore."

  Lisa spoke up suddenly, "Do you mind if I go see Talitha? I wasn't at the house last night and I'm just here visiting...and Mrs. Jern, I'll hold her hand and I won't let anything happen to her."

  "Please do, Lisa. Hold her as long...as long as you are comfortable. Thank you." Gayle's icy look had evaporated and her eyes held warm gratitude for the girl. "That is of course, if it's ok with Officer Ingstrom."

  "Certainly you can, I'm so sorry." Ingstrom nodded to Lisa, who gave both Will and his mother a quick kiss before she slipped from the room. The investigator looked back at William. "A cape? That's extremely odd. Were you able to see his face at all? Was he white, black... "

  "He didn't have a face," Katie interrupted without emotion. "There was a hole where it should've been." She was still snuggled up to her mom, covered very nearly completely in light blue hospital blankets. "That was the scariest part...it didn't have a face."

  Here we go, William thought.

  "Hi there. What's your name?" Ingstrom asked gently.

  Gayle glanced at her husband and he noted the worry in her eyes, but William gave her a short nod, which implied, let Katie talk.

  "Katherine Jern...but it wasn't a man...it was a monster. It was black and smoky and scary."