“I’m still trying, Chrissy, please.”
“I think,” she said, brushing the hair out of her face so she could look up at him, “I don’t...”
“Don’t what?”
“Care.” She closed her eyes, a smile spreading from ear to ear, exposing bloody gums.
“Chrissy?”
She opened her eyes but they were cloudy and distant, the smile still plastered on her face. Then she laughed, a harsh sound like a hiss as her fingers clenched around Henry’s arm, the broken nails digging into his skin.
“Chrissy isn’t here, please leave a message at the beep,” she said, hissing again with every beep from the machinery attached to her son.
He closed the door behind him, leaving his wife snoring softly, a diseased smile across her prematurely aged face. Frank leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes, and cried. Great heaving sobs wracked his body and he pushed himself up, afraid he’d wake them with his cries. He stumbled to his office, falling into his chair and trying to will himself to sleep.
“Frank,” Chrissy said, the words a million miles away in a dream of happier times; almost, he thought, a moan. “Frank.” His name, so sweet on her supple lips; the honeymoon, the wedding itself. The dream wrapped him in a warm embrace.
“Frank.”
He blinked, and saw a strange room, lit with computer diodes. He blinked again. His office snapped into focus.
She stood in the doorway, whispering his name.
“Frank.”
Her skin was dark in the dim light, a glint of a reflection in her hand. The distant memory of a warm embrace … he looked down, caught the shadow lines of bloody handprints wrapped around his arms.
The chair fell over as he lunged to the light switch.
“Frank,” she said again, as the glare reflected off the scalpel in her hand.
Blood pooled at her feet, dripping in a steady flow from her wrists. Beneath her chin, a hideous gash smiled at him, drooling blood.
“Frank.”
She collapsed to the ground and he fell with her, trying to staunch the bleeding from her neck, her wrists, her beautiful face. Taking off his shirt, he wrapped it around her, tying it like a noose.
“Breathe,” he said, but she was beyond breathing. “Don’t leave me, Chrissy, please.” He kissed her cheek, tasting her blood, unable to focus, rocking her in his arms, screaming her name.
Blood dripped between his fingers, staining the hard wood floor.
“Why, Chrissy?” he asked, his voice raw and strained.
“Save me,” she said before drawing one last breath. And then she was still.
thirty
“There wasn’t time to find a donor,” his father said, still kneeling in a pool of blood.
“So you killed someone,” Justine said, her voice flat and quiet.
“Her name was Sheila. I didn’t even know if she was the right blood type.”
“What went wrong?” Henry asked, taking the last step that separated him from his father. His feet squished in the blood as he knelt beside him.
“I rushed the transplant,” his father said, “I was crying. I loved her; no, I love her. I cut her vocal cords with the scalpel. There was too much blood, and she’d already lost so much.”
Henry rested his hand on his father’s arm and William stared at the contact.
He took a deep breath, then looked up at his son and Justine. “For you, I’d stockpiled blood. I didn’t have any for your mom except my own. I was so weak, and she was dying.”
“You saved her,” Henry said.
“She’s not human anymore, Henry.” His father closed his eyes. “I don’t know what she is now. I’m sorry.”
Henry pulled his hand away, breaking the fragile connection with his father. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. Lightning illuminated the room and he saw tears mixed with the blood on his father’s face. Henry swallowed, struggling to remember the stranger standing next to him. “How did we end up here?” he asked in the silence after the thunder.
William opened his eyes, the faint memory of a smile crossing his face. “Dr. Saville grew up in this house, married some guy named Richard, but it didn’t work out and she moved to Birmingham. When I needed a place to go, she gave me the keys.” The smile grew enough to be seen for just a moment before fading away. “I moved us—the three of us. You were both in comas, unresponsive. I didn’t know if the surgeries had worked, but you were both alive and too many people knew us in Birmingham. So we moved.”
Faint sunlight filtered into the room through thick curtains drawn tight. The ceiling fan was still and the sound of the air-conditioning was drowned out by the hum of the machinery in the room. On the beds, Henry and Chrissy slept on.
The outside light faded as Frank’s eyes fell closed, his last view that of his wife, sleeping peacefully.
The hiss was all around him. Air deflating a balloon, escaping a tire, moaning like wind scratching branches against a window trying to enter the room.
In his dream, a single hand reached off the bed to touch him, to hurt him. To pay back in kind.
Frank blinked. On the bed, Chrissy slept on, the monitors undisturbed. Her left arm, connected to the IV, rested at her side. Her right stretched out toward him. He stared, unable to move, afraid to breathe.
The fingers had uncurled, the entire arm hanging off the bed, the tip of her index finger almost, but not quite, touching his knee. Drawing in a breath, he stretched his hand out, preparing to move her arm back to the bed from where it had fallen. At his touch, her eyes screamed open, wide, frightened.
She hissed, the sound rough, forced through broken vocal cords. Her tongue slid out of her mouth as she rolled her head to the side and a strand of drool fell to the pillow.
“Chrissy!” He scrambled to the side of the bed, checking the monitors, but when he went to touch her, she hissed again. “Shhh,” he said, raising his hand to caress her cheek.
She twisted off the thin mattress, crashing her teeth together hard enough to chip the enamel, straining to bite his fingers.
She thrashed on the bed, threatening to pull the IV out of her arm. Early morning sunlight poured into the room through cracks where the curtains met, a shaft of sunlight illuminating dust motes and falling on Henry’s face. Frank tried to grab hold of Chrissy’s arms, to keep her still, to keep her safe. She struggled against his touch, trying to reach her mouth around to bite him, and she kept attacking him each time she managed to free a hand.
He grabbed hold of her shoulders, his fingers sliding over the scar tissue on her neck, and she bent her head to try to bite him, twisting around. Then she was still, frigid and cold in his grasp, her muscles tight in his grip as she stared at her son.
She hissed, the sound somewhere between a moan and a name: “Henry.” Though it was unrecognizable, Frank heard the name.
“Chrissy?” he asked, releasing the death grip he had on her arms.
With a spasm of her arm she smacked Frank across the chin, following up by biting his shoulder where it drifted too close to her mouth, the teeth puncturing the skin, drawing blood.
Dazed, he stumbled to the IV still taped into her arm and opened wide the morphine drip until her body slumped to the gurney. His blood dripped from her lips and gray hair was clenched in her fists where she’d pulled it out of his head.
“Henry,” she whispered one final time, her eyelids fluttering, exposing crazed eyes. He placed her arms back on the bed before ransacking a closet of odds and ends in order to find leather cuffs to use as restraints.
Searching through his dwindling supplies, he mixed a cocktail of anesthesia, morphine, and benzodiazepine and hooked it up to her IV, sending her into a drug-induced coma.
Frank fell back into his chair, his shoulder bleeding through his shirt, thin trickles of blood sliding down from his scalp. More blood from his arms where her fingernails had raked through his skin.
It failed.
No.
I
failed.
He couldn’t kill her, not Chrissy, not the woman he’d fallen in love with, raised a son with. Not the woman he’d die for, that he’d killed for.
In a cabinet, he found another set of restraints and placed them on Henry’s arms. He sighed, a tear sliding though one of the cuts on his face. The hospital bed scraped the door frame as Frank wheeled it out of the room, the equipment piled high on either side of Henry.
Through the empty kitchen there was a small laundry room, the windows looking out over a large backyard filled with trees. Frank pushed the bed up to the window, tilting Henry’s face so that the sun landed on his skin.
“Welcome to Georgia, Henry,” Frank said, squeezing the limp fingers in his hand. “Saint Simons Island. We live on an island, like we used to talk about, remember?” He wiped his sleeve across his eyes then looked at his son. “There’s a big backyard. You’d have really loved it here, Henry.”
Frank let go of his son’s hand, pulled out a tissue, then blew his nose. “Hey, there’s a squirrel out there too. And a bird feeder. Big trees. Magnolias, I think, big white flowers, and oak trees, draped in moss like in those pictures we used to look at.”
Tears slid down his face and his nose was all stuffed up. “I’m sorry, Henry, I thought it would work.” He sighed. “It should have, I guess. But, it didn’t, not even close. All my fault. I failed. Twice.”
He swallowed, trying to breathe, his eyes so raw it was difficult to focus as the sun warmed the small laundry room.
“I love you, Henry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Frank closed off the IV—cutting the nutrients, ending the morphine drip—and clicked the machines off. Not quite as dramatic as pulling the plug, but the end result would be the same. “I’m sorry,” he said again, watching through his tears as the sun moved across the sky, leaving Henry’s face in shadows.
In the semi-darkness it was difficult to see, the poor light playing tricks on his mind.
Henry drew in a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh.
He blinked. Again, and then turned his face away from the window. Machinery was piled up, surrounding him.
“Breathe, Henry,” someone whispered. “Breathe.”
“Who,” he coughed again, his throat rough and raw, “is Henry?”
He fought to breathe, struggling to raise his hands. Someone pushed a button and the bed inclined, elevating him. Machinery slid down to the foot of the bed.
“Henry,” the person said from the shadows at the foot of his bed. “Son, there was an accident.”
NOAA Alert:
Hurricane Erika Category 4;
Landfall in Saint Mary, GA
Miami, FL—August 29, 2009, 12:43 AM: FOR EMERGENCY RELEASE:
At 12:17 a.m. EDT, Hurricane Erika made landfall in St. Mary’s, Georgia; 31 miles north of Jacksonville, Florida, as a Category Four on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale with maximum sustained winds of 145 mph extending outward to sixty miles from the center and tropical storm force winds extending outward almost 150 miles.
Officials have reported successful evacuations of Amelia Island in Florida as well as Cumberland, Jekyll, St. Simons, and Sea Islands in Georgia.
St. Mary’s, Georgia, in Camden County, population 14,000, is home to the Kings Bay Naval Submarine base.
thirty one
In the flashes of lightning, Henry caught glimpses of his father struggling to breathe. Justine’s arms were warm around him, but he couldn’t stop shivering. His father kept talking, struggling to stand up as words dripped out like individual drops of blood.
“When you woke up I called Dr. Saville,” his father said. “She left Birmingham to try to help you but there was little she could do. Then, a few months ago, I woke Chrissy up. Thought I’d figured it out.”
The hissing was everywhere, thunder and wind buffeting the house. Rain beat against the roof as though they lived under a waterfall.
“What?” Henry asked. “Figured out what?”
“Fix her.” His father gasped, then closed his eyes, collapsing back to the floor as he turned his head to look at Henry. “Didn’t … ” he said. “Didn’t work.”
“Dad?”
“I kissed her. One last time.” A tear fell, mixing with the blood. “Was going to end it, finally.”
“Oh,” Henry said, his hand falling to his side.
William took a deep breath, eyes wide and white in the darkness between lightning strikes. “She bit me. Broke free.” He sighed, turned away. “I tried to find her. You have to believe me. I tried. Left food and medicine out for her, Henry. I tried.”
Henry moved his hand forward to rest on his father’s arm once again.
“Then what happened?” Justine asked.
“Murders. Started a couple days later. I don’t know what she’s doing any longer.” He turned to face his son, fighting to stand up again. “I’m sorry.”
Lightning threw shadows around the room. Outside, a shutter ripped off with the sound of breaking wood. The front door banged open in the wind. They heard it rip away, flying down the hallway to crash against the wall.
“Get out,” William said. “Henry, go!”
“We’re not leaving you.”
Justine slid around him, reaching out a hand to help William stand, tugging on his sleeve.
Thunder rocked the house; for a moment, the hissing stopped. Then, louder than before, it was everywhere, crawling across their skin. Lightning strobed through the rain as the wind pressed in against them, shooting through the open front door.
“Find another way out,” his father said, kicking with shaking legs to slam the bedroom door closed. “Just leave me here.” He reached his hand up to his face, looking at the blood on his fingers. “I waited when I got home for her to come in from the storm. She attacked me.”
“Dad.”
The door to the bedroom crashed back open.
“She’s here! Go!” William thrust himself out of their grip, standing on shaking legs between the doorway and them. He looked back at Henry. “Get out!”
He picked up the floor lamp and then pointed at the window, its broken shutters flapping like wings. “Now!”
“I love you,” Henry said, but the storm drowned out the words.
William shook his head, then turned back to the door, wiping the blood out of his eyes so he could see.
The hissing came closer, carried on the wind, along with rain and leaves and branches freshly ripped off trees and still trailing Spanish moss. William swung the lamp around, threatening his balance.
Glass shattered as Henry battered at the window with the IV stand, clearing a space. Using the shaft, he broke out the jagged pieces from the bottom of the sill, then helped Justine through. Sharp edges cut her fingers and one of the shutters caught her side as she fell to the ground. Henry took one last look at his father then jumped through, breaking the remaining glass with his shoulder and landing hard on his side in a pile of broken branches.
Wind pounded them flat and the trees above them swayed beyond the tipping point, almost touching the ground. Rain hit hard enough to bruise, pounding into them. More branches whipped by, striking exposed skin and drawing thin trails of blood across their faces.
Henry scrambled to Justine, covering her with his body as the storm’s fury washed over them. The remaining shutters beat against the house in time with the thunder.
Rain stormed through the house as William backed up against the wall, swinging the lamp in circles. Between flashes of lightning, Chrissy entered the room, hair flying around her face in the wind.
“Henry?” she asked, the name nothing more than a hiss.
William held the lamp in front of him, the point dipping toward the ground as he ran out of strength to hold it up. In the shadows, he held his arms out to his wife.
“Chrissy.” Blood dripped into his eyes and he swayed with the wind, too weak to fight the pressure of the storm. “I love you.”
His knees buckled, dropping him to the
floor as the lamp clattered away.
thirty two
“We have to go!” Henry screamed into Justine’s ear, the words torn from his mouth by the wind.
Lightning strikes sliced through the night, the thunder rolling in waves over them. The wind carried ozone and sea salt along with the leaves and debris flying past them.
Justine nodded beneath him.
“You okay?” he asked.
Again, she nodded. If she spoke, he couldn’t hear the words.
He squeezed her shoulder, kissed her head beneath him, and fought to stand up in the wind. He braced his feet to stop his slide across the leaf-strewn wet grass and held tightly to her hand. Together they bent over, running close to the ground around to the front of Henry’s house. On the side, the wind lessened, blocked partially by Justine’s home standing tall, dark, and empty above them, and then they were past it, running toward the street.
Gusts blew across the road and a stop sign skittered along the pavement, tumbling end over end. Soaked to the skin, weighed down by their clothes, they ran up the street.
“Henry!”
He looked over at Justine, the tails of her shirt whipping behind her. Hair lay plastered on her face and tiny drops of blood beaded on her arms before being washed away in the rain.
“Where?” She screamed the word, pointing to the intersection in front of them. Water lapped at the edges of the road, almost up to their ankles. Both ways, there was nothing to see. No lights in any direction. Just water, broken trees, and downed power lines dangling into the flood, thankfully not carrying electricity.
The wind battered them and Henry wrapped his arms around her. “We can’t go that way!” he said, straining to be heard.
She stretched up to his ear. “I know!”
“Where?”
“My purse,” she said.
“What?”
“It’s in your house, with my key.”
“Your house?” he asked.
“Key!”
“Break in?”
“Yes!” she screamed in his ear, then grabbed his hand again.
Henry Franks Page 16
