Choke: 2 (Pillage Trilogy (Pillogy)) (2 page)

The ball pushed me up against the wall, lifting me off my feet and scraping me up the wall. It expanded tightly against my chest and face. My head was forced to the side and crammed flat against the wall. I wanted to yell, “I’m sorry,” to Kate, but the moment didn’t seem right, and my lungs were completely compressed.

The ball expanded even further, stealing any room for my lungs to expand. I was stuck to the wall, my feet inches from the floor. Velvet was pushing into my nose and the ball was smothering me.

I tried to kick and hit, but my arms and legs were pinned against the wall. My vision was nothing but a fading smudge, as bits of my life drifted across my mind like the fluid on the back of my eyelids. I could see my father, Aeron, and Millie. I could see two Kates, the happy one and one that was going to wring my neck if and when we survived.

“I thought this would be fun,” I yelled, unable to fully move my mouth. “I’m going to die.”

There was no air, and the pressure was so painful I could feel my blood being squeezed from the top half of my body and down into my toes. The air compressor was squealing
and hissing so loudly that if a genie had appeared and granted me three wishes, at least one of them would be that I could close my ears.

I should have at least closed my eyes.

Just when I thought I was going to die from suffocation, a noise unlike any I had heard before—and I had heard dragons fighting and towns being torn apart—ripped through my head. Wind raced over me and I could feel a tremendous pain in my head as I flew backward and into a misty, blinding darkness.

Illustration from page 1 of
The Grim Knot

CHAPTER 2

I could hear the sound of slow, heavy rain hitting against a roof above me—it sounded like fat water balloons exploding in slow motion. My eyes were shut and my head felt like a heavy brick of clay. I could hear someone or something shuffling around me.

I strained and opened my left eye.

Just so you know, I’m never happy to wake up. I’m even less happy about it when I wake up with tubes sticking out of my arms and a large woman with a thick moustache and floppy ears is standing over me saying, “Awake are you?” She sounded like Yoda. Her breath was the smell of old cleaning spray and vinegar. I probably would have thought she was a witch if it weren’t for the words “Nurse Agatha” stitched across the white hat she was wearing over her gray hair. She pushed a button on the side of my bed and the top half rose so that I was sort of halfway sitting.

I moaned.

“Children like you fill the beds of those who really need it,” she carped.

I shifted in my bed, opened my right eye, and looked down the long dreary hall. There were at least fifty beds lining the wall, and all of them were empty.

“What about all those beds?” I mumbled.

“Don’t be smart,” Nurse Agatha snipped while writing something down on a clipboard.

I was going to ask her if she wanted me to be dumb, but I could tell she wasn’t in the mood for levity. I let my tired eyes roll over my surroundings. The hospital hall was made of stone walls and a glass ceiling with white metal veins holding the glass panels in place. Green ivy covered the edges. At the end of the row of beds there was a large desk with papers on it and a big yellow call button sticking out of the wall above it. On the other side were the double doors.

I turned my head to the left and saw a small potted plant with three red blooms in a clay pot on the table next to my bed. It looked like a mini bush with large delicate flowers. Partly hidden in the leaves was a small card stuck in the tines of a tiny plastic pitchfork that poked into the dirt. The card said, “Get well,” in Millie’s handwriting. The plant was the only spot of color in the whole room.

“Where is everyone?”

“If you mean your . . . relatives, I’m sure they’ll be here soon.”

The long silver hairs beneath Nurse Agatha’s nose made me feel even sicker than I did.

“We’ll notify them of your consciousness,” she added.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t be telling me thanks,” she scolded. “If you were my child I would have you locked up.”

“Thanks,” I said again, although with considerably less enthusiasm. “So Kate’s all right?”

Nurse Agatha nodded her head. “No thanks to you, blowing up buildings like a criminal. You know I went to Calloway years ago. I took shop in that very shed.”

“That school must be old,” I said weakly, not really thinking about what I was saying.

“The campus deserves your respect,” she continued. “All four walls of the shed were blown open. It was completely ruined. Three students were injured by flying bricks and the field is a mess. You’re fortunate you didn’t kill someone.”

I didn’t feel very fortunate.

“I didn’t mean to ruin everything,” I said honestly. “I thought it was just a big ball. I didn’t know it would grow so huge.”

Nurse Agatha shook her head and walked to the end of my bed and put both of her hands on her hips. She had on a stiff, white dress covered by an even stiffer white apron. Her arms were flabby and when she moved they jiggled like soft rubber snakes. She looked straight at me, her old eyes burning through me like hot pokers. “You kids walk the streets of Kingsplot and chew your gum and light your matches and leave things worse for those who walk behind.”

“Light our matches?” I asked, confused.

“You know what I mean,” she snipped. “Don’t sass me with your spoiled mouth.”

I pictured my mouth being a big, rotten, mushy orange.

“Had I married and had children, they would have known discipline,” she went on. “They’d know order.”

“Lucky pretend kids,” I said sarcastically.

“Bah,” she said as if she were trying out for the part of Scrooge.

“Is it still Tuesday?” I asked, sitting up.

“If you mean next Tuesday it is,” she groused.

“I’ve been asleep for a week?” I asked, sitting up even faster. My head swam and I could feel myself tipping toward her. She pushed me back as if I were a bothersome stranger leaning into her on the subway.

I lay back down. “What about Kate?”

“She’s fine,” Agatha said smugly. “She received only a few bruises and cuts. You’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

I tried to smile.

“I know about you,” Nurse Agatha growled.

“You must know only the bad things,” I said. I figured if she knew anything good she wouldn’t be treating me so poorly.

“Is there anything else to know?” She smiled a cruel smile and breathed out. Her vinegar breath settled over me like a sticky cobweb. She looked at her clipboard intently. “You’re the product of money and greed. You’re the child who brought those . . . beasts to our peaceful town. You come from a family that’s both bonkers and bewitched, and you have brought even me more trouble than I need.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Are you reading that off a chart?”

She slammed the clipboard down on the bed. “Fun is what you think you are. Well, I, for one, won’t smile as long as you are roaming our streets.”

I wondered if she had actually ever smiled at anytime or anywhere.

She pulled out a syringe and set it on the small table by my bed. The needle looked at least four inches long and as thick as a pencil.

“What’s . . . ?”

She smiled. I wanted to point out that she had lied about never smiling at me, but I was distracted by the fact that she was dabbing rubbing alcohol on a cotton swab.

Her grin spread.

“Can’t you put that stuff into my IV?” I asked with concern.

“Tough guy like you can handle the needle.”

“Wait, I’m not really that tough,” I tried. “Can’t we wait
for . . .”

Nurse Agatha was suddenly in the mood for action. She grabbed my left arm, jammed up my left sleeve, rubbed alcohol on me as if I were the world’s most stubborn stain, and then picked up the syringe and shoved the needle into my arm before I could properly scream. As she pushed the needle in, I could feel my eyeballs rolling to the back of my head. She withdrew the needle, slapped—and I mean slapped—a Band-Aid onto my arm, yanked down my sleeve, and smiled again. For the record, her smile didn’t make her any more attractive; her face kind of looked like a big, soft melon that too many people had stuck their fingers into.

“What was that for?” I complained.

“Just in case,” she said.

“You don’t like me, do you?”

“Here at Bleeding Heart Memorial we care for all our patients,” she answered. “But, no. Ring the bell over there on the wall once if there’s an emergency.”

“I didn’t mean to blow it up,” I tried to tell her again. “I thought it was just a big ball.”

Nurse Agatha walked off. Well, it was more like she creaked off, her bones making a horrible clicking noise as she moved.

I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. When I opened them, it was still raining, and the light in the room hadn’t shifted much. I looked up at the ivy outside the glass ceiling. I focused on it and tried to get it to move, but it didn’t. Ever since the last dragon had been killed, my ability to make things grow had been spotty at best. I had spent a number of days in back of the manor helping Thomas manicure the overgrown gardens. But my ability had not shown up at all. In fact, weeds seemed to resist my pulling them out, and any pruning I did turned out ugly and sad. In the last few weeks it almost seemed as if the plants and trees were out to get me. I kept tripping over roots that weren’t there before and finding large bits of dirty lettuce in some of my food. My father said there was nothing to worry about, and that it was all in my mind. But when I reminded him that that same mind had gotten me into a lot of trouble in the past, he said just to keep an eye on anything green.

I looked over to see the potted plant Millie had sent me.

It wasn’t there.

“That’s weird.”

I looked around, figuring that Nurse Agatha had moved it. I couldn’t see it anywhere.

“She stole my plant,” I complained to myself. “What kind of nurse steals her patient’s plant?”

I flopped back down against my pillow, closed my eyes, and sighed. I wanted to go home. My head hurt a little, but other than that I felt fine, and I didn’t want to spend another day here. I could hear Nurse Agatha coming back, her feet scraping against the floor.

“Did you come to return my plant?” I asked, keeping my eyes closed.

There was some more grating sounds, but no answer.

“I’m trying to meditate,” I said sarcastically.

There was no reply. I opened my eyes and looked around. Nobody was there, the hall was empty and the sound of rain plinking off the glass above was the only noise I could hear. I closed my eyes again and tried to breathe easier. Click, click.

My eyelids sprang open. A machine next to my bed whirled and whizzed for a few seconds and then shuttered. I looked across the large room and wished the bell for me to ring for help was closer.

“It’s just the noises of an old hospital,” I whispered, trying to comfort myself. I closed my eyes and was just about to drift off again when I heard more clicking. I kept my eyes shut, reminding myself that it was just some old machine or vent.

Click, scrape.

The scraping noise was even less comforting. I wished I were knocked out or that I had some earplugs. I pretended the hospital had a helper dog and that he was the one making the noise. While I was busy pretending with my eyes closed, I felt a tug on my blanket. I was so surprised that I didn’t react fast enough. The blanket was pulled down and off the edge of my bed.

“Nurse!” I yelled, sitting up. “Nurse!”

I looked at my bare legs. I glanced around the long, narrow room. I was alone. I made fun of myself for acting like such a baby. The blanket had obviously just slipped down off my bed.

“Stupid blanket.”

I threw my legs over the side of the bed and sat up. The plastic tubing connected to my right arm was long enough for me to move a little. The room flashed bright from a bolt of lightning. It was followed directly by the roar of thunder.

“Perfect.”

The rain began to fall with greater force upon the glass ceiling. Lightning flashed again, and the lights in the hospital flickered out.

“Perfect,” I complained. “What a lovely hospital.”

The whole scene was now colored in gray, cloudy twilight. I stood up and walked to the edge of the hospital bed to get my blanket. It was sitting on the floor in a bunched-up pile. I pulled it up and climbed back into the bed. I thought about going over to the bell and ringing it, but in all honesty I really didn’t want to see Nurse Agatha again.

As I laid down, lightning flashed, followed directly by a heavy crack of thunder. I tried to remember if buildings with glass and metal roofs were safe during a lightning storm. I told myself that glass was probably like rubber and lightning couldn’t hurt it. It wasn’t the truth, but it made me feel a little better.

Scrape, click, scrape.

My blanket began to slide down me again as my heart did likewise. This time I grabbed the blanket and pulled it back up and under my chin.

It slid some more.

I jerked it up, but there was resistance. I figured it was just snagged on part of the bed. I yanked harder, and it yanked back. I should have taken a moment to realize that something wasn’t right, but instead I just kept pulling. The only thing I could think of was that my blanket was caught in part of the bed’s electrical system. The blanket pulled back, causing me to sit up. I wrapped my hands around my end of it and leaned backward. I was playing tug-of-war with my blanket and losing. I heaved, and the blanket hoed. I was wrenched up and forward, my body falling face-first onto the end of the bed. I could see the white tile floor. I could also see that I was completely wrong about my blanket having been caught in the electrical part of my bed. There was something green and growling down below.