Limbo's Child (10 page)

Amanda didn’t normally speak to herself like this at all, but it somehow felt comforting, so she rubbed her nose and stopped crying. “No, they can’t,” she said aloud, her voice firmer than it had been in years.

“They act as if they know everything, but they don’t, do they? They don’t know about your father.”

“Her father?” Amanda had not thought of her father in a long time. Her father and mother had divorced when she was very young. She had loved her father and her father had loved her. He was kind and loving and caring, but the court had awarded custody to her mother instead. She had taken her away from him just out of spite, to deny her father any joy. Her mother moved often, and went through a string of worthless boyfriends always trying to keep her from her father. She used to dream of the day when she would be eighteen and she could get away and live with her dad. He had died of cancer just six months shy of her eighteenth birthday.

“But it didn’t end there, did it, Amanda?” No, it certainly had not. She had left anyway, and never saw her mother again. There were odd jobs and delayed dreams, some community college. Then there was
him
.

“Tell me about
him,
Amanda,” said the voice. She was getting more comfortable with this strange, new personality trait she had developed. He wasn’t all that charming. She had always wondered if her mother’s string of loser boyfriends had impacted her judgment; but he had seemed nice enough and appeared to like her and that was the first thing that had made her feel special since she was a little girl.            

“But you
are
special, Amanda.” This talking to herself wasn’t helping. “Special” was a word grandmothers used when they couldn’t say you were pretty. Not that she had ever had a grandmother.

“Tell me more. Go on.”

They had gotten married. She had put off her own schooling, got two jobs, put him through law school. Then there were the two miscarriages and the diagnosis. Somewhere between the first and second remissions he had run off with her physical therapist. It had never been a great marriage, but the betrayal stung worse than anything.

“How long?”

‘Hmmph. Eleven years. Eleven years wasted with that
loser
.”

“And how long since you were diagnosed?”

“Six.” She said aloud to herself. Six years of chemo, and surgery, and physical therapy. Six years, the last three, alone. Utterly alone, waiting to die. No one wanted her to live anymore, not her doctors, not her ex-husband, not anyone. She craved death herself and yet somehow it never came. She doggedly clung to life, disappointing her doctors, and she was certain, her insurance agent as well.

“But you’re not dead, are you?”

“No,” she thought. She was most definitely
not
dead. Not yet.

“And you will not die, not for a
very
long time.” She had had that thought before too, but that was just wishful thinking, that’s all.

“No, listen to me!!”

Amanda went rigid. That was so sudden and so sharp it didn’t feel like it came from her at all. She turned slowly and looked around the tiny bathroom. There was no one there. She turned and looked back in the mirror. She was different. She had regained some color and she wasn’t yet sure how, but something had changed. She thought about the strange doctor in her dream.

“Perhaps it wasn’t a dream,” came the thought into her head from nowhere.

Perhaps it wasn’t. What was going on?!

“Do you remember what the strange doctor said?”

“Yes, hadn’t the foreign doctor said something about her regaining clarity?” she thought. She certainly was less foggy-headed now.

“There was something else too, wasn’t there?”

“Yes,” she thought to herself, “He had said something about helping others, and about it needing to be my choice.”

“It is
your
choice, Amanda.”

“My choice?” she said aloud, “My choice to do what?”

“To live.”

Those words made her shudder – with fear or hope she couldn’t quite tell.

She looked deep into the mirror. Was it true? Did she really have a choice to live? Was it as simple as that? But how?

“He spoke two words, do you remember them?”

“I…I don’t remember.”

“Try.”

Amanda closed her eyes. Nothing was coming to her. Then she remembered drinking something, and falling back against the bed. Everything was dark and peaceful for a long while, and then, she remembered, he did speak. Two words. Two words only. She thought of the doctors and the years of treatment and how desperately she wanted it to end, and as she did, she could almost hear the words again.

“Amarantha,
come
?” she spoke them uncertainly, but as she did, her whole body felt warm like she was being immersed in hot bath water. She opened her eyes. Her face was there just as before, but it was different. It was her face, but less puffy and pallid. Had the words done that?

“Yes! Again! Say the words again!” came the voice.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, more deeply than she had done in six years. She thought of her worthless, betraying husband and the therapist he ran off with, of the disappointment and hurt of the miscarriages.

“Amarantha, come,” she said it more forcefully this time and when she opened her eyes she gasped in shock. All over her head was black stubble. Her eyebrows were back too. She nearly fell backwards, but caught herself before she stumbled. Then she stood and didn’t waver. She lifted her arms, the soreness was gone, their strength returning. She ran her hands over the miraculous new hair. It wasn’t mousy brown and thin like her hair, it was nearly black and lustrous and thick. She laughed a little. What was happening?! Was she still dreaming? She was suddenly very afraid. She felt like she should go back to bed and lie down.

“No!! Don’t stop!! Say the words again, one more time!!”

That definitely didn’t come from her. There was someone else here, but where?

“Who are you?” she said aloud. She looked around nervously, but no one was there.

“I am your one,
true
friend, Amanda. I will never abandon you. I am your
savior
. You will live, Amanda, and through you, all others will live and no one will fear death again.”         “How?” Amanda gasped.

“A drop of blood is all it takes. But it is your choice, Amanda, I will never force you to do anything you do not want to do, but it must be your choice. A drop of blood and then say the words again.”

Amanda stared at the face in the mirror; it was her face, but different. It was pretty, but sharper somehow. She didn’t know what to think. She was very scared and afraid she was losing her mind, but she knew she didn’t want to stay here and wait to die. Amanda made her choice.

Amanda Tipping ripped the monitors from her body. They made a high-pitched tone in protest. She kicked the cart forcefully away from her. It crashed against the wall so hard its bleating instantly stopped. She yanked the IV from her arm. A single drop of blood emerged from where the needle had come out. She caught the crimson drop on the tip of her finger and held it up to her face to examine it. All the while the voice was uttering encouragement. “Yes!! Say the words!! Say the words again!! I will never leave you. We will be together forever.”

She stood up straight and felt the warmth pouring through her. She looked into the mirror; the hair had grown at least half an inch in the last few minutes. Gone were the dark circles and lines. Gone was any trace of the ravages of the cancer. She felt the disease ebbing, no,
fleeing
from her body. The drop of blood hung pendulously from the tip of her finger, full of promise.

“Together, we will right the wrongs. We will make the crooked pathways straight. We will restore all that was lost to us and
everyone
.”

She looked regal and beautiful. She closed her eyes and shook her head. She thought of her worthless mother and her unfaithful husband her wasted youth and her dead father. All the while the voice continued.

“We will drag the old monster from his citadel and break his many limbs to splinters!! We will live forever. We will conquer DEATH, Amanda!! Together! You and I!! And we will give life to every deserving soul and none shall fear Death again!!” The drop of blood shook and then fell from her fingertip. Amanda took a sharp inhale of breath and watched it fall, fearful it would be lost.

“SAY THE WORDS!!”

Amanda closed her eyes and screamed, “AMARANTHA, COME!!”

The drop never reached the sink but disappeared in the air mid-fall.

The room shook with Amanda’s voice. Amanda slowly opened her eyes. They were no longer warm, brown or clouded. Now they were cold, grey and crystal clear and Amanda knew she would never be alone, or pushed around by anyone else ever again, even as the strangest words came out of her mouth.

“I just knew Lazlo wouldn’t notice a lazy fly on the IV cart. He always missed the small things. Like I would enter
any
dead thing, especially a dead moth.”

She spun away from the mirror and folded her arms elegantly across her chest. As the room filled with stunned nurses and orderlies, Amanda spoke softly. “Now, where has that senile old Necromancer gone off to?”

Chapter Seven
Hunting Hunters

Tim Riggle, the orderly, drove down Highway 95 in his cherry, 1974 limited-edition Spirit of America cream-colored Impala with three corpses in the car. One was in the trunk; two were freshly animated and sitting in the car. Graber, the big one, was snoring in the back seat, sucking in wheezing breaths through his nose and gurgling them out through the large, open head wound above his right eye like a blow-hole, sputtering out little flecks of clotted blood on the custom vinyl interior. The thin corpse, Hokharty, was in the front with Tim looking at a road map of Delaware upside down. The other corpse in the trunk was a woman with dark hair. She was, mercifully, not doing anything unusual for a dead person.

“If this girl is in Harrisburg, why exactly are we heading south again?” Tim asked the seemingly perplexed but unflappable Hokharty.

“The girl is west, but the hunters are south. We need help.” Hokharty didn’t look at Tim. “Only hunters can find what we are looking for.”

“And what exactly
are
we looking for if it isn’t the girl?” Tim asked.

Hokharty just smiled his subtle
toothsome
smile again. Tim was certain he saw a fang this time.

Tim sighed in frustration and gripped the steering wheel tighter. This wasn’t going to be easy – not that getting out of the hospital was a piece of cake. It was hard to tell exactly what had happened from inside the morgue drawer, but apparently Hokharty had done his “turn into the smoke monster” trick and gone down the hall to the custodial closet. There, he found something to suit him and cover up the stab wound in his chest, but Graber wasn’t so simple. Graber was too big for any of the scrubs there and the wound on his head wasn’t exactly easy to cover up. So, they improvised. Graber was placed on a gurney, covered in a sheet, and Tim and Hokharty pushed him down the corridors. Hokharty had insisted on taking the body of the woman and made Tim wrap it carefully in a sheet and place it on the lower rack of the gurney. Hokharty recited some unknown words over the body while faint wisps of red smoke emanated from his mouth. Tim was afraid she was about rise up too, but thankfully nothing happened, so Tim agreed to push the cart while Hokharty followed. It wasn’t easy. Even without the second body, Graber weighed a ton and it was pretty hard going. Graber seemed to exude a pervasive field of inertia, resisting all forward movement.

Along the way, Hokharty made Tim use one of the “
devices,
” Hokharty had called it, to find out the information about the deceased Margaret Holveda Miller’s daughter. Lucia Claire Miller was located in an ICU ward in Harrisburg, stable and expected to recover completely. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t authorized to do this, but he knew several nurses’ pass codes because they had asked him to retrieve something for them while they were busy. The whole time Hokharty’s icy hand never left the back of Tim’s neck. Worse than the grip were the things he said.

He queried Tim on everything: his age, his family, his education, his hopes and aspirations. When he told Hokharty his goal was to one day be a Physician’s Assistant, Hokharty remarked, “Why not be the Physician? Why not the greatest Physician who ever lived? Greater than Hippocrates or Galen or Asclepius himself?” More unnerving was the way he said it, as if he could actually make it happen. And then there was the whole “How would you like to live forever?” thing. Tim was glad he hadn’t brought that up again.

Once they had gotten the information about Lucy Miller off the computer, Hokharty made him push Graber down to the staff locker rooms. Tim scoped it out to make sure they were empty then wheeled Graber in. When Graber got up on his own accord, it spooked Tim all over again, even though he had seen him rise the first time. Tim got changed into his regular clothes. Graber’s hand could open the lockers like a can opener. Eventually, they found clothes for all of them, including some large jeans and a huge sweatshirt for Graber and a leather jacket for Hokharty. Hokharty kept the green scrubs on underneath, however. Neither had any familiarity with zippers, though. Tim had to show Graber how to use it –
that
had been embarrassing. Once Graber had figured out his pants zipper he kept pulling it up…
zip!
And down...
zip!
And up…
zip!
And down…
zip!
Over and over again in child-like wonder until Hokharty had told him to knock it off.

Graber finally found a large, knit cap big enough to pull over his wound. He pulled it down so far it practically covered his eyes, but it didn’t seem to hinder him at all. In fact, neither of them seemed to use their eyes at all. Hokharty had an intense, fixed glare that never wavered, and he seemed to be able to see straight through the back of his own head. The one or two times Tim was close to the door when Hokharty had his back to him, Hokharty would calmly advise him against thinking about fleeing without even turning around. Thankfully, Graber picked up the body of the woman and carried it out. Tim thought about warning them about the surveillance cameras, but then they had enough trouble with the zippers, so he decided to let it pass.

When they got out to the parking lot, Tim thought he could just hand off the keys and be done with them, but of course, neither knew how to drive. So here he was, going…somewhere…on I-95…near Chester…looking for something called a “hunter”…with two dead guys.

“Hurgghl-KKHUTT,” Graber woke up with a start and hocked up a blood clot through his wound that landed on the dash. Tim tried desperately not to shudder. Hokharty turned around and said something in some guttural language that Tim couldn’t understand to Graber. Graber just nodded and said nothing, as usual, and pulled the knit cap low over his face again.

“What? What is it?” Tim could see that Hokharty was looking out the windshield into the distance.

“We’re getting close,” Hokharty said barely above a whisper, “I can sense them.”

“Close? To what?!” Hokharty didn’t answer.

“There. We need to go there.” Hokharty pointed towards a cross street.

Tim couldn’t see an exit. “Fine, but I can’t get off here, I’ll have to go to the next exit and turn around.”

Hokharty furrowed his brow in displeasure but didn’t say anything.

Tim got off on the next exit and started to wind his way through the surface streets according to Hokharty’s directions. Hokharty hardly gave him any notice before abruptly pointing “here!” or “there!” Tim had to wrench the steering wheel a few times, and the tires squealed in protest, but he didn’t slow down. He didn’t want to spend any more time with these corpses than he absolutely had to.

Finally, Hokharty said, “Stop!” and Tim slammed on the brakes at the street corner. Hokharty fixed his impassive stare at a small alleyway and smiled that now-familiar half smile that disappeared in an instant. Tim was
certain
he had seen fangs that time.

“Sooo…now what?” Tim said anxiously.

“We wait. They will come to us.”

“Really?” Tim wasn’t so sure he wanted them to come to him. He had already seen two animated cadavers tonight. He wasn’t sure what kind of things “
hunters
” were, but he had seen enough for one evening.

“Yes, of course,” Hokharty said as if it were obvious, “It’s getting near dawn, and they will be looking for shelter…but not yet.”

“Why not?” Tim asked, curiosity overcoming fear.

“Because they haven’t caught anything all night.” And then Hokharty turned slowly to face Tim. “They are still
hungry
.” And with that, Graber began snorting a low laugh in the back seat, but at least the knit cap, already crusted with gore, caught most of the bloody spatter this time.

Tim leaned over the steering wheel to get a better view through the windshield. He looked at the alleyway but saw nothing. As he sat on an abandoned street corner in a ‘74 Impala with two dead guys who couldn’t even manage zippers, let alone cars, he knew just one thing for certain…all his horror comic books, all of his first-person shooter video games, his DVD collection of zombie movies…they had all
totally
lied to him.