The Blood Talisman

by Kim Culpepper

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Commander Fortner asked forcibly.

  “I’m dying out here. I need the strength,” Johnson replied.

  Fortner released his hand and Johnson wiped up the drops of blood that had escaped him earlier. He lifted his fingers up to his mouth and began licking them.

  “You disgust me, Johnson. Clean yourself up and go check on the other two idiots.”

  “Yes sir,” Johnson said sarcastically.

  Fortner turned towards Jacobs and leaned over, hovering inches above Jacobs’s face. “You have no idea what you have found yourself in the middle of,” he whispered.

  Chapter 2

  “Here you go,” Amalia said as she handed the brooding blonde sitting on her sofa a steaming hot cup of black coffee. They had talked about everyone in the neighborhood at least once and had circled back around to her own happenings. “Selene, I really appreciate you keeping me company, but I’m fine. I have actually grown accustomed to being alone. Since Alex left, I’ve read fifteen novels and watched hundreds of movies. I stay busy. My mind doesn’t wander,” she explained, as she flipped her long brown hair off of her shoulders and twirled it into a ball atop her head. She let it go with a slip of the hand and it fell gently back down.

  “I know. I miss having our girls’ nights out. I don’t have anyone to be my second wheel at clubs with. It’s rather discouraging. Nobody wants to talk with one girl. Two or more is always approachable.”

  “I’m sorry, but I promised Alex that I wouldn’t get into trouble while he’s gone and I keep my promises. Besides, we’re married now. It’s not like it used to be.”

  “Have you heard from him?” Selene asked as she picked up a picture that sat just over from her on an end table. The photo showed Alex smiling at Amalia as she snapped the selfie of them both. Selene rubbed her finger smoothly over the picture frame and sat it back down carefully onto the table.

  “I know you’ve always had a thing for him, and I swear, if anything were to ever happen to me that y’all would end up together.”

  “Am I that obvious?” Selene said, with a breathy chuckle.

  Amalia raised her brown eyebrows at her and smiled. “I’ve always thought it was sweet. Never been jealous.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “I didn’t mean any harm. I know Alex. He’s very committed and takes his marriage vows seriously. He grew up here in the Bible belt and he would never do anything to compromise our relationship or our marriage.”

  “Yes, yes. I know. He has morals.” Selene said, making fun of Amalia’s response.

  “You’re so bad.”

  “Since I still can’t corrupt you enough to go out with me, I guess I will go home and be bored and boring. I swear, this whole marriage thing has really got you both on the straight and narrow.”

  “Like it wouldn’t do the same to you?”

  “True.” Selene gave Amalia a friendly hug and stopped at the door before she left. “Keep me updated on when he’ll be home, okay?”

  “I will,” Amalia promised as she pushed her playfully out the door.

  She leaned her back to the door and smiled. She clung to her happy thoughts of Alex and wondered if he did the same to thoughts of her.

  Chapter 3

  Alex had been unconscious for five days, but finally he could sense the lights from his hospital room gleaming down through his eyelids. He wanted to open his eyes, but feared what he might look like after what he had been through, even though he barely remembered his encounter with the wolf. He wanted to know where he was since he no longer felt the torturous heat of the desert.

  The creature that had attacked him consumed his dreams like an obsession. He continually imagined himself being the creature, devouring whatever came into sight. People and animals alike were claimed as victims by his animalistic instincts. His longing to return to Amalia was now swamped by unwanted, constant nightmares of the beast.

  He peeled one eye barely open, rolling it towards what seemed to be a teal and brown chair looming in the distance. When he didn’t feel the presence of anyone in the room with him, he opened both eyes. He heard the beeping of a monitor next to him. The beats began to get louder and faster as he roused. There was a crème curtain covering his small hospital room that waved slightly against the hum of the air conditioning. He squinted down at his feet. They were bare and clean.

  The voices outside of his room grew and the beep of his monitor became louder and faster still. He tried to lift his head up to speak but no words came out. Alex reached up to the round stickers on his chest that were attached to the incredibly loud monitor that was now beeping almost out of control. He yanked the stickers off, much to his dismay since a few chest hairs came with them. A nurse came rushing into his cubicle.

  “No sir, Mr. Jacobs. You can’t take those off, they monitorin’ your heart, sir,” cried the large black woman as she attempted to put them back onto Alex’s chest.

  He grabbed one of her chubby arms firmly. The nurse looked surprised and scared at the same time. He stared at his fist, grasping the smooth dark skin. He glanced at his fingernails, which had grown into sharp points. Snatching his hand off the startled woman, he held it out in front of his face. The nails were fine. He figured that he’d imagined they were claws due to all of the disturbing creature dreams he’d been having the past couple of days. He gave a long sigh of relief and the nurse looked at him in confusion.

  “Are you ok, Mr. Jacobs?” she asked with true worry in her voice.

  “Yes, please get me the doctor.”

  “Ye… yes sir.”

  Alex threw his head back with concern and uncertainty on his face. He could hear the nurse outside talking to a deep-voiced man. His hearing was coming and going. His body seemed to be out of his control. At times he thought he might be able to hear a pin drop from the nurses’ station outside. Then his hearing cut off completely, as if he were going deaf.

  They were talking about him. He attempted to concentrate to try and hear what they were discussing.

  “Dr. Jackson, your patient don’t want his heart monitor on.”

  “Katrina, I will take a look at him and see if it can come off. Don’t take it personally. This patient is my responsibility. I will see what I can do, ok?” the doctor comforted her.

  “Yes sir, Dr. Jackson,” Nurse Katrina said.

  Alex heard thundering footsteps approaching his room and put his hands over his ears. One hand was more like a cat paw covered in white bandages and gauze.

  Someone pulled the curtain of his room open. It was then Alex realized his hearing was back to normal.

  “Alex Jacobs, I’m Dr. Jackson and I’ve been looking after you since you got flown back here to the States.”

  The short and skinny man with glasses offered his hand for Alex to grasp.

  Alex stared at the hand with short fingers. It didn’t look like a hand that had done much manual labor in life, nor had it ever gone without some sort of manicure. Alex switched his eyes up to Dr. Jackson’s face. He didn’t seem to have slept in a week and his beard was starting to become unmanageable. His hands obviously didn’t match his face.

  “You took quite the beating from a wild animal out there in Afghanistan, and I know you probably don’t remember much from being in a coma for the past few days, but we have therapy options here for you to think about. Therapy should help you to regain your memory.”

  “I don’t need help, Doc, ‘cause I remember everything that happened to me.”

  Dr. Jackson seemed worried about the sudden revelation of the return of his memory. He sneered at Alex almost as if to say, “You know nothing of your condition.”

  “Well, let me listen to your heart and we’ll go from there.”

  Dr. Jackson leaned over with his stethoscope in his ears. He placed the dial lightly onto Alex’s chest. Alex gasped briefly from the coldness of it. He noticed that Dr. Jackson’s smell matched his looks. Sleep wasn’t the only thing that h
e had been deprived of: showers too. There was silence in the room as Dr. Jackson took a deep breath with a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Katrina, the heart monitor can definitely come off but I want to schedule a time for Mr. Jacobs to meet with the resident psychiatrist to help him regain his thought processes and memory.”

  “I told you, I remember everything and I want to go home to my wife.”

  “Mr. Jacobs, I think that the military is going to want you to stay so that they can monitor your condition.” Dr. Jackson turned to sit on Alex’s hospital bed and looked up at Nurse Katrina. “Can you give us a moment, Katrina?”

  “Uh-huh,” Nurse Katrina mumbled as she left the room, humming some unknown tune. She pulled the curtain to Jake’s room closed behind her.

  Dr. Jackson put his short, manicured hand on Alex’s leg. “Mr. Jacobs, your employers want to keep you here because if you remember what you say you remember, then I think you know why they want you to stay.”

  “What, because I got bit by a werewolf out in the desert and they’re scared I might turn into the thing that bit me?”

  “You really do remember, don’t you?”

  “I remember every detail, but I feel fine. It’s been days since this happened and nothing has changed yet.”

  “I’m merely following orders, Mr. Jacobs. Don’t make this difficult on me or yourself. If you try to leave, we’ll have to restrain you and that’s not something I like to do to people… in your condition.”

  Alex rolled his eyes and thought about how he was going to get out of this one. Dr. Jackson patted him on the leg and withdrew his hand.

  “Mr. Jacobs, your best option is to see the therapist and try to regain your memory. Do you catch what I’m saying to you?”

  He wondered if the manicured doctor was trying to hint that seeing the therapist was a good way for him to escape or was it just a ploy to get him to stay.

  “If I see the therapist, will I get to see my wife?”

  “Visits with your wife will come with time. We can’t rush this thing until we know that you are one hundred percent okay. The army will want to know if you are confused by what you have experienced. In other words, you shouldn’t know what happened to you and our psychiatrist will help you to remember that.”

  “Okay, whatever gets me to my wife fastest. Schedule whatever you need that gets me back to her, okay?”

  Dr. Jackson nodded his head in agreement and walked casually out of the room.

  Alex laid his head back against his pillow and closed his eyes. He thought about Dr. Jackson’s suggestion to stay and to comply, but he didn’t feel like obeying. Alex had always been an obedient rule follower but that seemed to have changed. He began to devise a plan to get out of the hospital.

  He was also aware of a change in his body since his injury, but he couldn’t pinpoint what or why. He moved his legs off of the side of the bed and sat straight up for the first time in what Dr. Jackson referred to as days. He was barefooted and only had green hospital scrub pants on. He touched the cold cemented hospital floor with his bare feet. He looked over to search for any type of shoe, but found none. He really hated to be barefoot.

  His legs felt like jelly but he managed to stand on them. He took one step at a time. He felt the blood pumping violently through his veins like a well-oiled machine.

  It was quiet outside at the nurses’ station. He couldn’t hear voices, only fingers tapping on a keyboard. Dr. Jackson and the nurses must have moved on to the other rooms. He peeked round his curtain. The nurse at the station had her back to him. There was a soldier struggling to walk down the hall but no one else was to be seen.

  He noticed daylight coming from a room up the hall. The door was open and he could see in. There appeared to be vending machines inside. He kept focusing as his vision blinked in and out. He rubbed his eyes and continued to focus harder. He could see two people in the room watching TV and eating. He peered harder to see the window. The light flooding in through it was almost unbearable. His view was interrupted by the barely walking soldier, who was now returning to what must be his hospital room. He could hear the soldier’s heartbeat. It was thumping rapidly, as if he were doing manual labor. The blood in the struggling soldier’s veins pulsed in time with every beat of his heart.

  Alex felt the anger well up inside him: anger at what had happened to him because he was confused by it. Anger at what might be in store for him and anger at little things. He was even angry at the very blood pumping loudly from the hobbling soldier. He was just plain angry.

  Alex’s senses felt so out of order. He walked back over to his hospital bed and sat down on it, puzzled and upset. He missed Amalia so much and he would to do anything to get out of the hospital.

  The phone at the nurses’ station rang. He listened to hear if the nurse would say the name of the hospital.

  “Fourth-floor nurses’ station,” the nurse answered as Alex rolled his eyes and sighed.

  Suddenly his eyes turned to the little gray phone in his room. Maybe he could call Amalia and tell her to come to him. He walked over and picked up the phone.

  ‘To dial the nurses’ station, simply pick the phone up,’ a sticker below the phone handle instructed. There were no numbers and there was no rotary. It was simply a base, a cord, and a handle. He immediately felt like a prisoner at the hospital, unable to communicate with the outside world. He picked up the phone and waited patiently for the nurse to answer.

  “Fourth-floor nurses’ station,” the nurse said.

  “What hospital is this?” Alex whispered into the phone.

  “Sir, this is Blearney General Hospital.”

  “In what state?”

  “Duh, this is Texas, sir. Any other strange questions you wanna ask?” the nurse responded.

  Alex hung the phone up immediately. He realized he was only a couple of states away from Amalia. He wouldn’t have cared if he’d been in Washington State: he was going to get to Amalia, no matter what it took.

  He was annoyed by the station nurse’s sarcasm and started to feel hungry. But this was not like any other hunger he had ever experienced before. It was almost debilitating and the flashes of the dreams he’d had earlier were beginning to invade his mind again and he grabbed his head in pain. The walls of the small hospital room were starting to close in on him and the window down the hall called to him. The window’s call echoed in his mind, like a taunting child. Everything else became insignificant.

  His mind shifted onto a single track: Amalia.

  He felt his heart begin to beat faster and faster. He needed to get the rush of anger and rage out of himself. He had to do something, and quickly. He didn’t like the feeling of being trapped like a caged animal, and his head was beginning to ache unbearably. He thought about the window. It was a chance of freedom. Only walls and a few unimportant people stood in his way.

  He walked to the entrance to his cubicle, and stared out into the hallway towards the window in the vending machine room, the curtain shielding only half of his body.

  Suddenly everything became clearer and more in focus. He began to realize that, ultimately, he was in control of his body. He would choose when to leave this prison, not those defenseless drones. He could sense every living soul in the hospital. He could hear them breathe. He could hear every gnat flapping its wings and smell every scent, however weak. He took one step but it felt like fifty and he was immediately at the window in the vending machine room. He crashed through it and jumped down what seemed to be only a few steps, but in fact he had actually been up a few stories.

  The hospital sounds were leaving him slowly. They faded into the distance. The last sound he heard was Dr. Jackson yelling at a nurse to sound the alarm for an escapee. Then everything fell to the silence of a dry Texas night.

  Alex kept running until he was in the woods behind the hospital. He could still hear the alarms, but could no longer see anyone as he had run four miles away from the building in only minutes. It felt like
a dream, and he thought that it had to be. How else would he have gotten where he was in such a short time span?

  The momentary confusion and wonderment was quickly erased by the pain in his head, and the hunger within. He had to have food but he had no money, didn’t know where exactly he was, and didn’t know what was happening to him. He needed Amalia because she could help him cope and make everything okay. He had to find a way to get to her, and he wasn’t going to let anything or anyone stop him.

  He started to track through the woods in Blearney. It was dark and quiet. The dirt and fallen leaves crackled beneath his feet as he trampled through the dark trees. Jake looked up at the crescent moon and wondered if Amalia was looking at it too. He felt really weak and unable to exert much energy after his escape, and his stomach rumbled with hunger.

  It began to rain light raindrops. The dirt beneath his feet quickly turned to mud and coated his green scrub pants. The cool Texas rain was refreshing in contrast with the warm night. He looked up towards the sky, closed his eyes, and let the rain hit his face. The tiny drops streamed the sweat and dust slowly off of his face. He needed to find a phone and call Amalia, but for this moment he enjoyed the feeling of being back in the States and away from the danger and the heat that the desert had tortured him with for months. He took in the elements of nature around him, and he let it surround him with comfort. He could see and hear everything more clearly as his mind was emptied of worry and grief. Anger still loomed within him, but for now he could contain it.

  He heard a phone ringing in the distance and pricked up his ears to listen more closely. The ringing stopped and someone answered. Alex began to race towards what he thought might be a cell phone and people. He stepped in mud puddles and pushed past trees and through shrubs to get to her, his Amalia.