The Midnight Ground

by Eric Dontigney

  On the third or fourth day, Laurie came storming into my hospital room. She was a little heavier than I remembered, a little more careworn, and there were bags under her eyes in an ugly shade of blue. Other than that, she looked like the same woman I’d met in Chicago years ago. She was tall for a woman, with long chestnut hair, and spooky dark eyes. She’d disliked me on sight, for reasons she never bothered to articulate. I’d expected some kind of scene from her, but I hadn’t expected it while I was in the middle of getting my bandages changed.

  “I warned you, you bastard,” she said, yanking back the curtain.

  She stopped in her tracks and stared at me. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Between Demon Tucker and his inky master, I was more bruise than man and the bruises were held together with stitches. I’d gotten a lot more banged up than I first thought. There were cuts all over my arms, some on my face, and I doubted my ribs would ever stop hurting. I’d broken a finger somewhere along the way. I supposed it was an indication of how badly I was hurt that I hadn’t even registered those injuries at the time. Laurie’s hand dropped from the curtain and the nurse gave her a baleful glare. Lil made an unfriendly noise from the chair she was curled up in. Laurie looked at the cat and went a ghostly shade of pale.

  “Ma’am, you’ll have to wait until I’m done here,” said the nurse.

  “It’s alright,” I said. “She’s an old friend.”

  Laurie shook her head a little and her cold fury thawed a lot. “I was going to snap your neck, but, but my god, what happened to you? It looks like you got hit by a truck.”

  “Felt like that too. It’s a long story. We should be done here in—” I looked at the nurse, “twenty minutes, do you think?”

  The nurse gave Laurie another poisonous stare. “I expect so.”

  Half an hour later, I was sitting uncomfortably in Helena’s room. Laurie was holding Helena’s hand while the monitors gave off steady beeps and tweets and sounded generally non-alarming. I’d tuned out for a second and made myself pay attention.

  “They say it’s not a coma,” said Laurie. Her voice shook a little. “They say it’s like she’s stuck in some kind of really deep REM sleep.”

  “They can’t wake her up?”

  “They’re afraid to try. They said they could give her stimulants to try to snap her out of it, but since they don’t know what’s causing this, they don’t want to rush into anything. They’ve run about a million scans of her head, and they keep testing her blood for increasingly exotic viruses and parasites. Things she could only have gotten if she was nude diving in Indonesia while simultaneously having sex with a South American pig; that kind of rare. I keep telling them she hasn’t even been out of the country in the last year.”

  She went on like that for a while, dumping days of pent-up grief and frustrations on me because I was there and, in her mind, responsible for Helena’s condition. I wasn’t sure I disagreed. After a while, she wound down and asked the hard question again.

  “What happened?”

  “I need coffee for this,” I said. “Would you mind?”

  “Of course I mind, you asshole.”

  I didn’t rise to the bait. I started to push myself up out of the chair. I needed caffeine. If she wasn’t getting coffee, it was up to me. She apparently replayed the last few seconds of the conversation and looked over at me, struggling to stand up. Her face went a little pink and then a little pale.

  “Sit down,” she said. “I’ll get the coffee. It’s just, it’s really hard not to hate you.”

  “You know,” I said, in a bout of suicidal bravery, “I never did you a wrong turn. Why the hell do you hate me so much?”

  “Other than this?” She said, waving her free hand at Helena’s still form.

  “Yes, other than that. You never liked me. I have no idea why.”

  She fixed her spooky dark eyes on me, and I felt like a bit like a teenager about to be taken to task for something. The muscles in her jaw worked a few times.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I honestly don’t know. From the second I saw you, I just wanted to throttle the life out of you. You’re trouble. When you aren’t busy being trouble, you’re busy getting into it. You’ve left a lot of bodies in your wake.”

  “That isn’t fair,” I said.

  She held up a hand. “I know you didn’t kill most of them. I know you do your best to avoid those kinds of situations, but they’re still dead and there you sit. Battered and bruised, I’ll grant you, but alive. So tell me, why is it that you’re there, alive, conscious to have this conversation, and Helena is lost somewhere. Does that seem right to you? Does that seem fair? What have you ever done to deserve to live more than her?”

  “Not a damn thing that I know of,” I said. “But before you get too far down this it’s-all-Adrian’s-fault line of thinking, you should get that coffee and listen to a story.”

  Laurie got us coffee and she listened to the story. I didn’t tell her everything because I didn’t have the stamina for that, but I told her enough to get an accurate picture. It still took a while. She listened without comment until I wound down.

  “And then you burst into my hospital room to brain me with extreme prejudice,” I finished, a little hoarse from talking for so long.

  She was very quiet. “The whole town?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Helena didn’t do this for me. She did it because a whole lot of people were going to die. She did it because the murder of a fifteen-year-old girl was going to trigger the whole thing. She decided that trying to help those people was more important than her life,” I said. “And she did it over my objections.”

  Laurie gave me a disbelieving look. “You didn’t mention that.”

  “It’s a long story. I edited some to keep it manageable. Hate me because reasons, if you must, but stop acting like I’m a havoc engine that gets people killed.”

  I said that last with enough conviction that someone else might even believe it, even if I wasn’t precisely convinced. I rubbed at an aching spot on the back of my head, winced, and carried on. “I don’t engineer situations to get people hurt. I’m sorry that Helena is in this condition. I’m not sorry that girl and everyone else in this town is alive. Helena wouldn’t be sorry, either.”

  Laurie looked down at Helena’s still form. “No, she wouldn’t be sorry.”

  “Mind if I ask you something?”

  One of her shoulders twitched a little, so I took it as permission.

  “You must have sensed that she was in danger. Frankly, I half-expected you to come charging in here days ago to drag Helena away. Why didn’t you?”

  Laurie’s face was carved bitterness. “She wouldn’t tell me where she was going, because it was you.”

  She didn’t elaborate, so I limped away, because limping is the best you can do with dozens of stitches holding your leg together. As I did, I thought I heard Laurie say something under her breath.

  “It’s always you.”

  I almost turned back, but thought better of it. I left her there to think whatever she wanted to think.

  Abby was a daily presence, bringing food, games, or just being around to break up the monotony of the day. Lil took up semi-permanent residence in Abby’s lap, implicitly declaring Abby one of the special people. She didn’t talk about what happened. I didn’t press her. Some things need to settle for a while. Paul stopped in one afternoon and sat by my bed. He was in regular clothes, but he still had the hospital vibe around him.

  “Patty says you wound up like this saving my girl, again,” commented Paul.

  I shrugged. “It was a crazy day. Lots of people helped her.”

  He looked down at the floor. “Nobody else had to kill a man to help her, though.”

  I thought about telling Paul the truth right then and there, but the old man wouldn’t believe it. He was a good man. He loved his granddaughter enough to attack a man half his age with a fireplace poker. I just knew that his mind wasn’t flexible in the right ways. I fro
wned and nodded. There might still be a way to ease his mind.

  “He’d lost his mind,” I said. “Complete gibbering insanity. He didn’t give me any other options.”

  Paul considered this for a moment and his back straightened a little. He looked at me again. “It was a hell of a thing you did for us. If you ever need anything, and I mean anything, you say the word.”

  “Just keep taking care of Abby. She’s a good kid and that’s all because of you. Between us,” I said conspiratorially, “I think her life will get a lot easier from here on in.”

  He raised a bushy eyebrow at me. “You know something I don’t know?”

  “Call it an intuition.”

  Paul gave me a little smile, then frowned. “Helena still hasn’t woken up from that coma thing they insist isn’t a coma. They have any notion when she’ll come out of it?”

  I loved Paul for saying “when,” and not “if.”

  “No. I’m pretty sure they’ve abandoned all currently known medicine and are scouring science fiction novels for ideas.”

  “She’ll probably come out of it on her own,” Paul suggested, trying to sound optimistic.

  “Probably so,” I agreed.

  Or, I thought, maybe someone will help her along.

  I’d explained to Abby what I thought had happened to Helena. My theory was that she’d managed to avoid the worst of the backlash, but the raw strain of undoing that many bindings taxed her beyond her limits. Her mind acted in self-defense and dropped Helena into a sleep state to give her time to recover. Only, the sleep state was so deep that Helena couldn’t find her way back to the waking world.

  “I think you can help her,” I told Abby.

  The girl looked green around the gills. “I don’t—I want to help. I do! I don’t really understand how it works yet. I don’t want to do something wrong and make her worse.”

  The kid looked miserable. I felt for her. “Abby, I won’t try to make you do it. If you don’t think you should, then that’s the end of the story. But, I don’t think you’ll hurt her. You aren’t trying to rewire her brain or make her think anything she doesn’t already think. You’d be more like a lighthouse.”

  “A lighthouse?”

  “Yeah, lighthouses let ships know where the coast is, so they don’t crash. In this case, though, you’d be helping Helena get close enough to shore to find it on her own. I think she’s just too far out to sea right now.”

  “You really think I won’t hurt her?”

  “As long as you don’t change anything around in there, no, I don’t think you will.”

  Abby proved to be a hell of a lot smarter than I was at fifteen. She thought about it for two days before she decided.

  “I’ll try,” she said. “But I want you to be there. She knows you. She trusts you.”

  I doubted that last part. It seemed a lot more plausible that Abby wanted me there because she trusted me, rather than Helena trusting me. Still, if it got the job done, I’d stand in the corner. “Okay.”

  What I hadn’t accounted for was Laurie. She had some rather pointed thoughts on that matter.

  “Absolutely not,” she said, glaring at me.

  “Why not?”

  Laurie stabbed a finger at Helena’s still form. “Because every time Helena gets involved in some plan of yours, something like this happens!”

  “I’m trying to make it right.”

  “Make it right? You want me to let some child go digging around inside Helena’s head. Use your brain, Hartworth. That’s never going to happen.”

  “That child has endured more pain and suffering than you, me, and Helena combined. That child vaporized a demon that tossed me around like a rag doll. That child…”

  Somewhere along the way, Laurie and I had both forgotten Abby was standing there. We both remembered rather abruptly when she cut us off.

  “Stop it!”

  The words resonated inside my head. If I hadn’t been on painkillers already, I’d probably have needed some after that. Laurie put a hand over her eyes like she’d gotten punched in the face. Abby fixed her gaze on Laurie. There was an audible hum in the air as something passed between the two. Laurie’s hand dropped from her eyes, and she stared at Abby in something between shock and dismay. I have no idea what knowledge or imagery Abby transmitted in that moment, but it put a stop to all the objections.

  From my perspective, it took Abby about fifteen minutes before Helena’s eyes fluttered open. Based on what the two of them told me later, it was a subjective three-year journey. The mind is a strange place.

  It took a while, but the doctors eventually conceded that they had no legitimate medical reason to hold Helena, other than not understanding why she fell into her not-coma or why she came out of it. Abby, Paul, and I went with her to the hospital lobby. There was a lot of hugging and a few tears shed, but it was agreed that Abby would visit with Helena and Laurie over the summer. I considered that a good thing for everyone concerned. I stepped outside with Helena while Laurie fetched the rental car they would take to the nearest airport. She didn’t say anything for a minute, but leaned against my arm.

  “You always did have a flair for the dramatic,” she said. “Thanks for not dying.”

  I smiled. “Thanks for waking up.”

  Helena turned and gave my face a searching look before she hugged me. She was mindful of my cracked ribs, for which I was very grateful. She patted my cheek.

  “I don’t know what you said to her, but I think Laurie hates you even more than she did. So, don’t call.” She glanced through the window at Abby. “Unless you need to.”

  “I won’t.”

  I waved as Helena and Laurie drove off. Once the doctors were sure that my injuries were just painful, rather than inclined to give me a lethal infection, they let me check out. I limped out the front door of the hospital, Lil cradled in one arm, and climbed into Patty’s cruiser.

  “You leaving us?” she asked, as she reached over and scratched Lil’s ears.

  “Are you kidding me? I need to get out of here before this place kills me.”

  She snorted. “You’re such a crybaby, Hartworth. You’ve only had two near-death experiences here.”

  “I’m a weak, tender creature. Easily spooked.”

  “Fair enough. So, before you ride off into the sunset, mind if I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “What did you do to my badge?”

  I blinked in confusion. For about five seconds, I had no earthly idea what she was talking about. In my defense, a lot happened that day. It finally came back to me.

  “Oh, that. I just made it what it already wanted to be.”

  “Which is?”

  “A defensive symbol. I just upped the juice with a basic mirror spell. How did you know?”

  She shrugged. “Magic.”

  I laughed. “Well played.”

  “At the graveyard, right after Helena said she was done, the badge glowed bright blue for a few seconds. I didn’t feel anything, but I thought I’d ask.”

  “Think of it as adding a few extra layers of Kevlar to your bulletproof vest.”

  “Kevlar?”

  “I read up.”

  She snorted. “Sure, now you read up. After you ogle my breasts.”

  “I knew that was going to bite me in the ass.”

  “Do you want to know what color my bra is today?”

  “No.”

  “Liar,” said Patty. “It’s black.”

  “You’re enjoying this aren’t you?”

  “It’s lacy, too.”

  “Should I ask to see it?”

  She frowned at me. “Ribs healed up yet?”

  Gears crashed to a halt in my head. “Um, still mending.”

  “Too bad for you. Ask me next time.”

  Women confound me.

  Chapter 51

  I took my time driving to Seattle. There was no rush, no crisis, just time to kill. So, I killed time on my way. I stopped more often
than I needed to stop. I wandered the occasional roadside attraction. I ate fruits and vegetables from stands along the side of the road. I fed Lil things that I probably shouldn’t have, like bits of fast food hamburgers. She didn’t mind at all.

  I spent a lot of time considering Jeremy Barnes and his suicide. I’d been so rushed and afraid at the time that the wrongness of it didn’t strike me until later. He and I were cut from similar cloth, even if his was a better quality of cloth. It wasn’t that there was no circumstance that would make someone like me commit suicide, but I’d started doubting that putting a bullet in his own head was the way the sheriff would have chosen. If all hope was lost, he was the kind of guy to make a last stand. I wondered if Demon Tucker had gotten into Barnes’ head, the same way he’d tried to get into mine. Lil’s intervention and decades of experience were all that saved me. Barnes hadn’t had the benefit of either of those things. I supposed I’d never know for sure.

  I also thought about Paul and Abby. I’d stopped by before I left to see the work being done on their house. The insurance company had been inclined to declare the house a loss, but Paul pressed his case and they relented. There was something affirming about the buzz of activity around the house. The smell of fresh-cut lumber and the aggravated bellow of the construction crew supervisor suggested normalcy to me.

  Abby came over to hug me. She held on a long time. I suspected she knew that it would be some time before she saw me again—if, that was, she ever did. She looked healthy, the weight going back on faster than I could have imagined, but she also looked haunted. It was to be expected. She’d seen things no one her age, or any age for that matter, should see. She channeled the collective will and power of hundreds of souls. It would leave a mark, probably for life.