“I just met them all last night, and they told me—well, quite frankly, they told me a rather strange story.”
“That sounds like the nuns I remember,” Jean said with a wry smile. “They’re good people, but they’re a little—out of touch. Daniel thought they were very holy, but when I knew them as a student, they sometimes seemed a bit too weird for me.”
“I can well understand,” Fish said as they got in the car. “Do you mind if I tell you the story? I’m wondering how much of it is grounded in reality.”
As they drove to get some breakfast at a local restaurant, Fish related the tale he had been told. He could tell from Jean’s stunned and mystified expression that she had never heard this story before.
“I don’t know what to make of all this,” she said slowly. “It’s just beyond bizarre.”
“Did your husband ever tell you about the woman at the christening party?”
“No, not at all. I certainly didn’t see her. It’s too strange. If someone had come to our baby’s christening and made threats like that, I think Dan would have told me.”
“Well, maybe he didn’t want to unnecessarily distress you. The sisters also said that Dan thought that his mother’s death soon afterwards was connected to the threat. Did he mention anything along those lines to you?”
Again, she shook her head, almost angrily. “No. Of course he was devastated by his mother’s death—we all were. It was very sudden. Maybe, if those threats were actually made, when he was grieving, he might have seen a connection that wasn’t there. I don’t doubt that Sister Maria would have seen it as part of some kind of conspiracy against him. She’s always been a little crazy that way. But it doesn’t mean it happened.”
“And you moved to New Jersey...?” Fish prodded.
“Because I graduated from college that month. We had talked about doing that, to be close to my family and so that he could find a better job. And we did. There’s no mystery about it.” Jean set her jaw, tears running down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m not being very charitable to those poor old nuns. I just don’t have any patience for wild theories right now.”
“I can understand,” Fish said quietly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Jean wiped tears from her eyes. “Even supposing this were all true? I don’t think this had anything to do with Rose tripping and falling from a hayloft two days ago. Can it help her now? Can it bring her back? No. Then I don’t even want to think about it. Even if it was the devil’s plan, or whatever it is they said.”
Fish understood. “That’s exactly how I felt,” he said. Then added, “I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“No, no, don’t be sorry,” Jean said with a sigh. “Poor crazy old nuns. They mean well, I know they do.”
They followed Bear and Blanche’s car to the restaurant. When they got out of the car, Blanche saw her mother’s face and came over to her right away. “You all right, Mom?”
“I’m fine. I just got a little out of temper, that’s all.”
Blanche glanced at Fish, who was about to say something to change the subject, when Jean added, “You can tell them, Fish. I don’t mind.”
Inside the restaurant, crowded with Sunday brunch-goers, Jean went to find a restroom while Fish told Bear and Blanche the story.
Bear whistled. “And Jean didn’t know anything about this? That is odd.”
“Actually, not very,” Fish said, glancing to make sure that Jean was still far away. “Assuming that any of it is true, if I had been a father in Dan’s position, I probably wouldn’t have told my wife either.”
“Really? Why not?” Blanche asked.
“Because there was no proof that anything would happen. Why tell her something so revolting that would only make her worried and afraid, maybe all for nothing? Your dad’s actions at least make perfect sense to me. I wouldn’t have said anything to my wife, but I would have watched everyone in my care like a hawk. And I would have gotten my medical care elsewhere. And as soon as something happened, I would have gotten out of there as fast as possible.”
Bear nodded. He glanced at his young wife. “I’m afraid I would probably do something similar, Blanche,” he said to her.
“I can understand that,” she said, her eyes clouding over. “When his mom died, Dad must have felt terrible.” She was silent for a few minutes.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about this, Blanche, do you?” Fish asked her after a while.
“No,” she said. “Except for the first part.”
“What part?”
“The part about Dad not wanting us to go to Mercy College, or to ever move back to this area. We never even came to visit.” She looked at Fish again, her blue eyes worried. “I once asked him why he didn’t want me to go to Mercy College, and all he would say was, ‘Because Rose does everything you do, and if you went, she might go too.’”
Now, that was an odd statement to make. Fish chewed his lip thoughtfully. “Then there’s at least that in the nuns’ favor,” he said, but felt the relentless heaviness returning. “Well, it’s something to keep in mind, at any rate. But as your mom said, what good does it do any of us now?”
Hers
Dizzily, Rose woke from the paralyzing dream some time later to find herself still in her mental prison. I was just projecting what happened to me onto my dream world, she thought. I can’t move in the real world, so therefore I dreamed about being immobilized by a brown snake. Because Fish and I talked about snakes, and because Donna had tied me to the throne after play practice. That’s all it was.
Still, the feeling of the dream was very real. I have to get out of here, she told herself. I have to wake up. But I can’t remember how to wake up. I need help. But who can wake me?
HIS
“I still think you’ve overstepped your bounds, Murray,” a sharp voice aroused Fish from his nap. He had excused himself from Rose’s room to go back to the family conference room. Like all of them, he was exhausted, but he didn’t want to go to sleep. Just a few minutes to close his eyes was what he needed.
Now he was aware, listening by the half open door as the two doctors argued outside.
“Why do you want her to stay here, Pros?” the quiet voice of Dr. Murray asked.
“Because we can give her better medical care here, that’s why!” Dr. Prosser hissed. “I don’t see why you have to be so darn generous all of a sudden with your facility.”
“You’d rather she stay here at two thousand dollars a day, wouldn’t you?”
“Don’t throw up money motives at me. We both have them. So what’s your reason?”
“I feel sorry for the girl, and for her family,” Dr. Murray said. “I met her before the accident, remember? So are you going to keep blocking the transfer, or can we resolve this amicably?”
“Don’t you trust us here, Murray?”
There was a short, harsh laugh. “Let’s not go there, shall we?”
“Listen, you’re nothing but a consulting physician at this hospital, Murray. I don’t like your attitude, and I don’t mind telling you so.” Dr. Prosser was clearly frustrated. “But all right. You got your transfer.”
The doctors moved away, and Fish strained to hear their conversation but soon they were out of his earshot.
Despite his professed disbelief in the nuns’ story, he was suddenly very relieved that Rose was able to leave Robert Graves Memorial Hospital so soon.
After a tracheotomy to allow her to be fitted with a breathing tube in her throat, Rose was transferred to Graceton Hall. Jean and Blanche were staying long enough to see her settled.
“I wish I could stay,” Jean repeated plaintively as they paced the long halls of Graceton, a handsome Victorian building whose atmosphere was much more pleasant than the hospital’s. “It’s so frustrating to have to leave her like this. I feel like I’m abandoning her.”
“Are you sure we can’t help you stay?” Blanche said. “Bear said we
could—”
“
No, not yet,” Jean said, shaking her head. “Let’s just see what happens with Rose. But I just hate the thought of her lying here alone, without any of us.”
Fish had been walking slightly behind the two women. Now he spoke up for the first time in a while. “Jean, how often would you be able to visit Rose if you lived down here?”
“I’d come every day after work,” Jean said. “We have to keep talking with her and interacting with her. If there’s any hope for her at all, she’ll need that.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do,” he said. “I’ll visit her.”
Jean and Blanche both stopped walking and looked at him.
“Are you sure?” Jean asked tentatively. “It’s got to be at least an hour away for you...”
He shrugged. “I can break my lease and move closer. But it’s not far for me now. I can make it here in about a half hour to forty minutes, depending on traffic. Look, I’ll be happy to do it. Especially if it will ease your mind.”
Jean blinked, and unexpectedly smiled. “Thank you, Fish,” she said at last. “That would help. More than you know.”
“Then consider it settled,” he said easily.
15
...And this sleep extended all over the palace where the princess lay...
Hers
Rose was floating in the darkness. Everything was a mist. Somewhere, she stood on the cold stone floor of a castle, a white gown drifting about her ankles. When she moved, it was as though she moved through water. Down the hallways she went, looking this way and that, but all she could see were dark closed doors and luminous tapestries on the walls, depicting tree branches and moonlight.
How long had she been walking here? It seemed years. Nothing was stirring except herself, as she made ripples in the water and her bare feet stuck slightly to the floors she couldn’t feel. It was pleasing to walk. She had been lying still for a long, long time, but suddenly she was able to free herself from the trailing tendrils that webbed her in, and go walking. She shouldn’t have been able to move, but here she was, walking.
Then out of the darkness, a rectangle of blue light, and with it, confusion and disorientation. She found herself turned and walking back down the corridor where she had come, compelled forward into the darkness.
She was falling down, horizontal, her face pressed into a pillow, her body prone, but not still. Somewhere, there was a prick of skin breaking, and she saw a shining line, so small that it barely left a mark. Just the smallest red dot of blood. Barely visible. The ripples in the darkness widened into larger orbits, drops of water.
She turned her head to the moonlight, and the moon swelled before her eyes, hurting her with its light. She closed her lids.
Now she disappeared into the darkness and became a spirit in prison once more.
HIS
Fish drove back to his apartment that night, after nearly six of the worst days in his life, mentally exhausted. The whole situation—the accident, rushing Rose to the hospital, helping the family, arranging to visit Rose at Graceton Hall—was still unreal to him. Not to mention the nuns’ bizarre story…
Wearily he entered his apartment, and found, as he expected, piled-up mail, and an answering machine full of messages. He had spoken to Dr. Anschlung, but to no one else from school during the whole time he had been gone.
Shutting himself off from the world, he made a cup of hot milk, drank it, put himself to bed, and was dead to the world for several hours at least.
The next morning, he woke up, made coffee, and began sorting through the mail. Then he began listening to the phone messages.
One telemarketer. Delete. One message from a classmate he had invited to go rock climbing, saying that he couldn’t come. Fish had figured as much when the guy hadn’t shown. Delete. Then Rose’s voice came on the answering machine, jolting him into full awareness.
“Hello? Fish, this is Rose. I wanted to call you because...I’m at the mall in Meyerstown, and Donna is here, following me around. Right now I don’t see her...but, well, you’re not there, so I can’t ask you what I should do. I guess I’ll just try to get out and go home. I’ll give you a call later on. Bye.”
He was stilled, then caught himself as another message from a telemarketer came on. He deleted it impatiently, and ran through the other, irrelevant, messages quickly before replaying Rose’s message again.
“...Donna is here, following me around...”
A fury swiftly overtook him, followed by a cold and deliberate plan of action. He picked up the phone book and flipped through it. He knew from the dean that Donna Stetter lived in Meyerstown. Soon he found the address, grabbed his keys and cell phone and stormed out to his car.
He drove his car in grim determination down the winding streets, his heartbeat taking on the pulse of a nightmare. This small Pennsylvanian town was mostly derelict, its Main Street buildings vacant, its houses run-down. Only the gas station and drug store looked cared for, and their presence hardly added any beauty to the surroundings. The streets were short and interrupted by hills and ridges of mountainside, cutting off numbers and dog-legging the names of roads.
It was nearly impossible to find the address, but at last he found it—a worn-out house with three cars in the driveway and a garage bursting with junk. He checked the address again, and then got out of the car, slamming the door behind him harder than he meant to.
“Is this the Stetter’s house?” he asked the woman who came to the door. He could hear the TV in the background.
“Yes—” the woman said uncertainly. She was heavily made up but still wearing pajamas.
“Is Donna home?” he continued brusquely.
“Let me see. I’ll get her. She hasn’t been doing too well. Let me see if she’s here—” the woman turned back inside and called. After a few moments, he heard her call again, louder, this time. Her voice echoed in the house. He listened. He could hear the TV—it must be two TVs on—one soap opera and one sports game.
“I guess she’s not here.” The woman reappeared at last, looking nervous.
“Are you her mother?”
“No. Let me get her father for you.” She disappeared into the innards of the house again, and he heard her talking, and a man’s voice answering.
A man in his undershirt and jeans came to the door. Fish could tell by the resemblance that he was Donna’s father. He had her features, but his eyes were weaker, more tired.
“I’m Donna’s father.”
“I’m the brother-in-law of Rose Brier. She’s the girl Donna and her friend attacked earlier this semester.”
“Uh huh,” the man said cautiously.
“Did you know that Rose was in an accident last week? She fell from the loft of a barn and has been in a coma ever since.”
“No,” the man said. “I didn’t know. I don’t think Donna knows either. She hasn’t been back to school since break. She’s been sick.”
“Oh, she knows,” Fish said grimly. “I saw her sneaking around the hospital the night Rose was brought in. The reason I’m here is that I just found a message on my answering machine from Rose, from the day of the accident. Shortly before she fell, she had called me from a mall, saying that Donna was following her.”
The man’s mouth fell open, and he looked terribly afraid.
“Where’s your daughter now?”
“She’s out with her friends.”
“Not so sick then, is she? What was she doing this past Saturday?”
“She might have been out at the mall—”
“How long was she gone?” Fish cut in.
“I’m not sure—I had to work that day. She came back in that night.”
“When she goes out, do you know where she is?”
The father and his wife looked at each other. “She goes over to her friends’ house, or they go to the mall. She’s been taking her medication and doing fine, as far as I can tell.”
“How old is she?”
“Nineteen.”
“Then she’s responsib
le for her own actions,” Fish said coolly. “I want to talk to Donna, and believe me, I’m not the only person who’s going to want to talk to her.”
The father seemed to have grasped the gravity of the situation fully. “You can’t be serious. You’re saying Donna—?”
“Made threats against Rose Brier, and wrote a note threatening her life, which is in the hands of the college dean. Then Donna was stalking her at a mall on the day that Rose was gravely injured. I can promise you that I’m going to the police with the information I have.”
Just then a car pulled up to the driveway. Fish turned, and saw Donna getting out of the car. She was wearing a black jacket and dark glasses and was carrying a shopping bag, with her usual brazen air. But when she recognized Fish, her look changed significantly. She closed the door carefully and moved away from the car, her face frozen in an unreadable expression.
Fish walked towards her, and heard her father trailing after him. He kept his eyes on Donna the whole time. He sensed her fear, and utilized it quietly. Stopping right in front of her, he bored her with his eyes.
“What did you do to Rose?”
“What?” Donna said.
“I saw you at the hospital on the day she was injured. How did you know she was there?”
“Someone from school told me she was hurt,” Donna said defensively. “I felt bad, so I went to see her.”
“Had you seen her at all that day?”
“No.”
“Liar,” Fish said coolly, a slight smile on his face. “Liar, Donna. You can’t lie like you do and expect to get away with it forever.” He waited, but she tossed her head and looked down at him.