Dividing Earth Part 8

"He was wrong. But so were we."

Grady's eyes clouded over. She stared past Mary.

Mary touched her. "Don't go."

"Why?"

"I need you to drive."

Grady's lips slid up, revealing her gap teeth. It was a strange smile. It was a great smile. "Yeah, you were fixing to wreck my pile, weren't you?" she said, opening the door. "b.i.t.c.h. Move over."

The hospital was half-lit. A few floors were completely black, their windows reflecting moon. The only lighted entrance was the Emergency wing. Three orderlies smoked under a broad awning.

Grady parked, asked, "You coming?"

Mary glanced down at her purple pajamas. She really hadn't thought this one through. Moments later, she caught up with Grady, who was a few feet from engaging the orderlies. "Uh, how are we gonna get in at this hour?"

Grady flashed that maverick grin, her eyes lit up, and Mary knew it had already happened.

A heavy-set woman noticed them first. "May I help you?" she asked.

Grady didn't even glance at her. Instead she sped past, colliding with a large man behind her. She grabbed him in a bear hug. "Quinten!" she yelled, pulled back, her hands on his ma.s.sive arms. "How are you?"

"Uh, fine," he said, looking confused.

"Come on!" said Grady, linking her arm in his, leading him toward the electric doors at the end of a brightly lit walkway.

Mary followed, giving the woman a shrug.

Grady continued strolling with Quinten once they were inside. Past two sets of swinging doors, the hall past the ER was eerily silent. She instinctively lowered her voice. "Quint, my boyfriend is here. I haven't seen him since . . . since-" and she choked back a fabulously phony sob.

"Randall?"

Grady nodded.

Quinten shook his head, sighed, and said, "Fourth floor, Room 412."

"Thanks, Quint," said Grady, leaning up to kiss his cheek.

Quinten lifted a finger. "I didn't send you. You're on your own." Quinten shoved past Mary. His steps echoed a moment, then vanished. The strangely distant sounds made by a slow night on the ER found them in bursts.

Grady shot past the elevators opened the door to the stairwell. "Going up?"

"Why the stairs?"

"Shut up and follow," Grady said with a laugh, taking the stairs two at a time, and Mary struggled in pursuit, her steps tapping opposite Grady's. She felt half-dead by the time she found her friend grinning by the door marked: 4. "We gotta be stealthy, a couple of church mice."

"Right, right," said Mary, panting.

Grady opened the door. They slipped onto the floor, both of them looking for any white-coats hovering by the reception desk to their right. A sign on the wall told them to turn left.

Room 412 was the third door on their left. Grady disappeared inside. Slow as always, Mary followed her inside only to skid to a stop.

Grady had her hand on a vinyl drape. She walked it back and the metal rings sang. Light from the hallway splashed off the waves of vinyl.

Mike Randall lay in a bed that was at half mast. An IV pole festooned with bags of clear liquid hovered over him like a wraith. Glucose and antibiotics and G.o.d-knew-what dripped into a long tube attached by a needle to his arm. Gauze curled around his head like a turban. Black patches on his face surrounded burns. There was a white patch over his left eye. He was breathing raggedly.

Grady stepped back as Mary neared him. "Oh G.o.d," moaned Mary, wiping a tear from her eye.

Grady took her by the shoulders, rubbing them.

They jumped when Mike choked, took a harsh breath and coughed. "Who's that?"

Mary leaned over his bedside.

His right eye fluttered. Above it, half an eyebrow arched. He licked his lips. Then his mouth spread wide in a smile. "Hey," he whispered. Light danced like a dying fire in his eyes. He opened his mouth and slowly, almost carefully, spit in Mary's face. "You f.u.c.king wh.o.r.e," he said.

Grady flashed into motion, grabbing the metal IV pole, but Mary caught her by the arm.

Mike grinned at them.

"No," said Mary. "Leave him be."

Part Two: Fate is Convergence.

"The soul makes the body."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"Memory, prophecy and fantasy-the past, the future and the dreaming moment between-are all one country, living one immortal day."

-The Great and Secret Show, Clive Barker.

Chapter Nine: Daniel.

1.

The preacher and the innkeeper rode to the north end of town. After William tied their horses to a sycamore, Durham dismounted. They made their way toward a cabin bathed in moonlight.

The front door swung open and for a moment William imagined the black doorway was a portal of some kind, but then Daniel, whom he'd heard so much about but had never seen, filled the doorway, a large man in every respect. William stopped in his tracks beside the preacher and covered his mouth. His skin p.r.i.c.kled. He wouldn't realize until later why his blood had chilled-he only sensed some connection between this ma.s.sive man who lived on the edge of town and the angular man of G.o.d standing to his right.

The cabin was humble and built of logs. Even from 30 feet or so away William smelled tar, sawdust and vagaries he couldn't place-some sort of alcohol, perhaps. Jutting behind it, a chicken coop housed what he guessed would be food enough for a year. Above it a thread of smoke filtered into the sky. Inside the door, just behind the huge man, books were stacked from the floor to the ceiling.

"It's late," the preacher called out, his normally commanding voice made small by the open s.p.a.ce. Or it might have been deference. William sensed a history between the men, a past he couldn't yet grasp.

Daniel merely smiled.

"Do you not sleep during the Devil's hours?"

"And who's to say that these," said Daniel, gazing into the night sky, "are the devil's hours?"

"They took Our Lord from the garden during these hours, did they not?"

"Our is such a presumptuous word, Reverend," said Daniel, somehow producing a cigar from his trousers. "But then, you are nothing if not presumptuous." He smiled again, stuck the cigar in his mouth. A flame appeared in his palm.

William blinked, shook his head. It was some sort of trick. Had to be. Then the preacher glanced knowingly back at him and said, "Pagans cursed our town this evening."

"Must have been an eventful night." Daniel took a drag, exhaled a stream of smoke.

"Are you mocking me?"

"Heavens, no."

"They asked for you," said Durham, jutting his chin out now, as if he expected the man before him to grow wide eyed and afraid; or as if he desperately wished him to.

But Daniel chuckled, still paying more attention to his cigar than to Durham. "Nothing like a band of curious pagans."

Durham took a step closer and finally Daniel glanced up. His eyes, which had been filled with nothing but contempt, now showed a vague concern. "I warn you . . ." began Durham.

Daniel moved quickly: He spit out his cigar and leapt from the front stoop, landing in the dirt directly before the preacher. Durham stumbled back, collapsing onto his backside.

"Hey now!" yelled William.

Daniel eyed him, raising a finger, and the innkeeper stepped back. Then he turned to Durham. "And you," he whispered. "You should have known better than to come here." Daniel turned, hopped up the steps. "Do what you will, Nathaniel," he said, his back to them.

Then he slammed the door.

William moved to help the preacher, but Durham smacked his hand away. "I swear to the Lord Jesus Christ that man will die by my hand." The preacher turned toward the horses, spit on the ground and glanced up at the moon. "Let's ride," he said.

The innkeeper hesitated.

Durham whirled around, fisted his hands and screamed, "Now!"

2.

Daniel collapsed into his only chair. Before Nathaniel had come, he'd been awakened by dreams of dying livestock and premonitions of the girl. Now, upset and shaking, he clamped his teeth down on another cigar and stared into the fireplace, trying mightily to make sense of his brother's visit. He'd known the girl was coming, but he had begun to believe her parents wouldn't bring her. He'd seen them-seen being, for Daniel, an action best done with closed eyes-checking into the inn, but he'd also seen the way the innkeeper had looked at them over the counter, the way he'd sneered when they'd mentioned his name.

Daniel cupped one hand beneath his cigar, rubbing it like a genie's lamp, and with his other hand he absently fondled the armrest. He stared through the fire, into the black recesses of the hearth. The flames, blue near their origin beneath the log, curled yellow-red over the dying wood. Sparks drifted toward the chimney like lightning bugs. Aside from everything he'd seen, fire had been very much on his mind. His visions were surrounded by flames, his sight a blinding column, around which a conflagration swirled.

"You can stay," Nathaniel had told him when he'd somehow made it here, years ago. Having survived a beating and the water treatment, barely, back in Salem, he had set out to find his half-brother. After seven months of living off the land, he'd arrived in Tempest with nothing but rags hanging from his bones, stinking of the flesh he'd spent getting here. His moccasins had long since shredded; his footsteps left a wake of blood and pus. Near madness, he trudged through the dirt streets, screaming over and over, "I am Marnie Durham's son! Does a man named Nathaniel live among you?"

But the day went white before anyone answered, and he awakened days later in a bed. Then his brother leaned over him, not smiling, his eyes full of an abiding worry, asking if he could survive travel. Nathaniel didn't wait for an answer before hurrying him into the back of the wagon. At the edge of town, he yelled at the horses and they rolled to a stop. Daniel crawled to the edge, pulled aside the curtain at the back of the bed, and immediately let it drop back into place; the sun seared into his eyes like a brand. With a voice like the rustling of ancient parchment, he asked his brother where they were. But Nathaniel didn't say. He only helped him down, then turned, spread his arms against the sky and said, "We'll build the cabin right here."

And so it was. After they completed it, Nathaniel came by every few weeks, his wagon full of supplies; after unloading it, he tipped his hat and rode back to town: he never invited Daniel to return with him, never stepped foot inside the cabin he'd helped build. Nathaniel Durham was ashamed of his half-brother, frightened of the mysterious half of his blood.

Daniel had hoped it might be different, but he wasn't surprised. The red death had taken James Durham two summers before his birth. The next spring, a stranger came to town. He charmed the widow Marnie, then vanished amidst rumors of wizardry. A month later her blood did not come and she and Nathaniel, six at the time, fled their home during the night. The boy never forgave his mother, never forgave the unborn. Of course the unborn would know none of this until it was only history, albeit history that had taken on the quaint air of myth.

"Please, Nathaniel," he whispered, staring past the fire. "Forgive me." He took the pipe from his mouth, placed it at his feet. With a groan he stood, shuffling into the center of the room, thinking of the strange feeling that had come over him lately, the sense that his past was on a collision course with his future.

Daniel leaned back, closed his eyes and saw only fire.

Chapter Ten: Three Pots of Coffee.

1.

Robert Lieber spent all Thursday undergoing an exhaustive battery of tests. Doctor Matt checked on him at lunchtime. They ate at a diner local to the Cancer Center.

Robert was insatiable. He'd weighed in this morning, a weekly habit, and had been light six pounds. Last week he'd been two pounds south of his normal one hundred sixty. To compensate he put away two sandwiches, three bags of chips and two defiantly non-diet sodas while Matt pretended not to notice. They left the diner together and the doctor promised to contact him when the results came in.

The nurses, techs, and doctors were finished with him by six. He drove home in a daze, aching from the needles and patches and the disturbing feeling that he was already a corpse, a ghost perhaps, and that he'd been surrounded all day by angels in white, seraphim readying him for transfer from one plane to the next.

Surprisingly, Veronica wasn't home yet. He checked with his next door neighbor in case she'd left Jennifer with her, but the old woman just shook her head. He nervously crossed the lawn and took the stairs to Jenn's room. He heard her voice and pushed the door open. "Hey, baby."

Jenn was on her bed, surrounded by dolls. It was if she was holding court with old friends. "Hey Daddy," she said, scooting off her mattress. She grabbed a couple of dolls, carried them to her toy chest.

"You okay, honey?"