More Than Life Itself (3 page)

He'd been hoping the final round of tests would give the staff at the hospital the information they needed to devise a treatment, but he knew now that his hope had been misguided. They were in over their heads, and were no longer being anything but obvious about it.

He'd run out of options.

Soon Jessica would run out of time.

He collapsed into a nearby recliner and stared at the photos in the semi-darkness, wishing for days gone by and for happier times.

Dawn's early light kissed the windows before he wandered off to bed, still seeking the same answers he'd been seeking for weeks.

Sunday Evening

Sam stood with his back to his daughter's bed, staring out of the window into the darkness beyond without really seeing anything. Lightning flashed, momentarily illuminating his features and reflecting in the tears that streaked down his face.

The anger and fury of the storm matched the turmoil in his soul.

This isn't right
, he thought, and not for the first time.
She's so young, so pure. No-one deserves this, least of all she.
His hands clenched into fists, his arms trembling with the strain of holding back his emotions. He wanted to run around the room and smash things; destroy the equipment that so emotionlessly foretold the failure of Jessica's physical body, shatter the bottles of pills that she'd been required to take for what seemed like years now, scream at the top of his lungs to release all the pain and anguish that had built up inside since first hearing of her illness.

But he stood by the window, motionless, so as not to awaken her.

The latest tests had been devastating. The slide that had started Thursday afternoon hadn't stopped. In less than thirty-six hours, the disease had spread at a tremendous rate. Her liver, kidneys, and left lung had all suddenly failed. The medical team had managed to get her stabilised and onto life support, but that was the best they had been able to do. The doctor's words from earlier that afternoon seemed to haunt the darkness around Sam.

I'm sorry, Mr Dalton. The disease has intensified its attack, and it's only a matter of time now. There's nothing more that I can do.

His final statement still hung in the air of the room three hours later, like a leech sustaining itself on Sam's misery, sucking its very essence from the pain and despair in his soul.

Outside, the rain thundered against the glass, phantom fingers rapping at the windows, reaching for his little girl.

He knew that science had run its course. The doctors could do no more for her. So, too, had religion failed; he'd learned that in the months following Denise's death.

No, if he was going to save her, he would have to take the hard road, the dark road.

In that moment, he made his decision.

He refused to give her over to that darkness.

He would fight.

No matter what the cost.

Turning away from the windows, he moved swiftly to her side. They'd doped her up several hours earlier and she lay still in her bed, her eyes closed and her chest rising and falling slowly. If her respiration got any worse, a breathing tube was going to be necessary. Despite knowing she couldn't see, hear or feel him over the medication, Sam took her hand and gave it a small squeeze.

"Don't worry, baby, Daddy will fix it. Daddy will fix everything."

***

He took the stairs two at a time, his footfalls echoing in the empty space. He fled through the door at the bottom and emerged into the alley behind the children's wing. Within moments of leaving the sanctuary of the hospital walls, he was soaked through to the skin, the rain pummelling down around him, but he barely noticed, intent as he was on his mission.

The night streets seemed darker, more mysterious than they did during the day, but he didn't care. He strode east, retracing his steps as best he could, not caring who or what he might encounter on the way.

Perhaps it was that very sense of disregard that saved him, for he managed to travel the entire distance without once being accosted by any of the street folk he passed on his way. Predators can sense their own; the weaker always avoid challenging the strong. Tonight, Sam Dalton deserved to be in their midst, for he had become one of them.

No longer a victim.

No longer easy prey.

When a man loses all he lives for, he is no longer afraid of dying. The denizens of the night sensed this and gave Sam a wide berth as he marched past.

It took him fifteen minutes to return to that little park he'd been in on Thursday morning. Once there, he started rousting the sleeping homeless as he found them, dragging them out of their blankets to get a look at their faces, searching for the man who'd spoken to him that day.

He'd been at it for a while, had covered half the park, when a man thrust a knife at his throat in the mistaken belief that Sam was trying to rob him of his meagre possessions. Sam shoved himself backward, away from the glistening blade, and ended up on his ass, defenceless.

Luckily for him, his assailant was more interested in escaping than finishing off his opponent, and he left Sam lying there in the dirt as he rushed off into the darkness.

Sam climbed to his feet and was brushing himself off when a voice spoke from almost directly behind him.

"Looking for me?"

Sam whirled around, his hands raised to protect himself, only to find one of the very men he'd just finished checking a few moments ago standing behind him, this time with empty, bleeding sockets where his eyes had previously been. Sam didn't know how it happened, this sudden assimilation of a person's form, but the wave of frigid cold that rolled off the man let him know this was undoubtedly the same being he'd encountered several days before.

He didn't bother with introductions. "I want to save my daughter."

The other man laughed, a deep, mocking laugh. "The prodigal son returns, I see."

"Cut the bullshit. You said you knew how to save my daughter. I'm willing to do whatever it takes. Just tell me how." Sam paused, then continued, "She doesn't have much time left."

Those eyeless sockets bored into him, prying, hunting, searching his thoughts, invading his mind, reading the Braille engraved on his very soul.

Sam stood his ground, determined to be found worthy under this hideous onslaught.

Apparently he succeeded, for a package was abruptly thrust into his hands; the same square-shaped object wrapped in dark cloth and tied with twine that he'd been offered before. This time, Sam accepted it. It felt like a book or maybe a videotape. Sam moved to open it.

"No!" the other said. "Not here. Once opened, time will become even more precious to you than it is now. Break the seal only when you are ready."

Sam looked up and met the man's gaze. "This is all I need?"

Again the laugh. "That, plus a little more. But you'll discover that soon enough."

A distant cry reached his ears from elsewhere in the park, and Sam looked over in that direction, suddenly afraid of what else might be out there in the darkness. When he turned back, his visitor was gone.

***

Sam returned to the hospital, but went directly to the garage and his car rather than returning to Jessica's room. He knew he'd need some privacy, and home seemed the best place to get it.

The fifteen minute ride seemed to take hours, and more than once he cast an anxious glance at the small package riding on the seat next to him. He wanted to tear it open, to discover just how it could help his daughter, but prudence kept him from doing so; the warning had been quite explicit.

Once home, he parked in the garage and entered directly into the kitchen.

Turning on the overhead light, he moved directly to the table and examined his prize. Very quickly he could see that untying it was going to take some time. Unwilling to try and wrestle with the knot, Sam grabbed a knife from a nearby drawer and simply cut the twine in half. He carefully removed the cloth, to find another parcel inside. This one was smaller, about the size of a thick book, and wrapped in newspaper remnants held together by a thick dollop of red wax. Some kind of seal had been pressed into the wax, writing of some kind, but Sam was unable to decipher the language, never mind the words.

After a moment of trying, he gave up and cut the wax from the paper instead

He unfolded the newspaper to discover his first guess was correct; it was a book.

It was old, that much was immediately obvious. Yellowed pages, the dry, musty smell of old parchment, a weathered cover of some kind of leathery material with more than its fair share of cracks.

He reached out to trace one crack with a finger.

The book shifted beneath his touch, as if trying to escape.

Sam yanked his hand back in surprise.

He stared at it with sick fascination, the way one stared at the victim of a bad accident; disgust and horror combining with a deep seated need to see, to understand, to know just how bad it really was.

Slowly, tentatively, he reached out again.

This time, the cover yielded slightly to his touch but didn't pull away. It still didn't feel right, though. Unlike any other book he'd ever touched, this one was warm, pliable, like a living thing.

He half expected to hear it breathing.

Horrified, yet strangely entranced and fascinated at the same time, Sam gently pulled the cover open.

The pages came apart like soggy newspaper, and the room was filled with the stench of things long left to rot. Sam was reminded of the time he'd found the remains of the household cat after it had been clawed open by an angry raccoon, its organs left splayed out to bake in the morning sunlight.

Holding his breath, he glanced at the title page.

The words written there were gibberish.

Meaningless.

What the hell?

Nose wrinkled in disgust, he bent closer in an effort to see them better, to try and decipher the script. Maybe he just wasn't seeing it clearly …

Up close, with the reek of the text filling his nostrils and turning his stomach, the words suddenly swam into focus.

Sam began to read.

***

Three hours later he was finished.

The book was horrible, disgusting … and utterly captivating. It outlined a secret ritual that ancient Coptic priests had used to save those inflicted with what they saw as supernatural ailments and strange, unearthly diseases. Diseases surprisingly like the one that was eating Jessica alive, minute by minute, hour by hour.

The ritual itself was straightforward. Seven murders corresponding to seven major bodily systems - the circulatory system, the digestive system, the respiratory system, the nervous system, the endocrine system, the muscular system, and the skeletal system. A major organ or bodily part was to be harvested from each victim and ingested by the patient. The entire sequence had to be completed within seven days, with the patient ingesting one offering every twenty four hour period, and each victim had to be killed in a different fashion than the one before.

By the end of the week, the patient would be cured.

The rational, scientific side of him wanted to laugh. No way in hell could this ever work. The ritual was bullshit, pure and simple. Modern science had long ago replaced the various superstitious practices that had been used to "heal" people in earlier eras. Gone were the days of leeching, bleeding, drilling holes in the skull and other horrific measures that had been utilised in the name of medicine. This was the 21st Century, not the 13th.

And yet …

And yet the other side, the wretched, reckless, desperate side, said: "What if?"

What if it was true? What if the ritual worked? What if he could save Jessica's life?

Thoughts of how he'd come by the book pushed at him, lending credence to the ritual contained therein. It wasn't every day you received a book of ritual magick from an eyeless street prophet who came and went like the wind. If he could do that, he could certainly deliver a ritual that actually worked, couldn't he?

The very idea was blasphemy, but still he paused, considering it, such was his desire to keep his little girl from Death's cold and unloving hands. Anything was worth it, anything at all, even the life of a stranger, wasn't it?

He glanced back down at page where the ritual was laid out.

Check that.
The lives of seven strangers.

He had reached the point of desperation. Sam knew it. Otherwise, he never would have run out into the rain on a will-'o-the-wisp's chance of actually learning something useful from a homeless street prophet who stank worse than last week's garbage. But could he slaughter seven innocent people in cold blood on the crazy off-chance that this ridiculous ritual could help his daughter?

Time stretched, but then he had his answer.

No.

No, he couldn't.

And just like that, Sam Dalton gave in to despair, just as he had done following the death of his wife. Like an alcoholic drawn to the bottle, Sam was drawn to this darkest of human emotions, and he felt it settle over his shoulders like a well-worn coat. "Fuck!" he cried, hurling the book across the room in anger.

He stomped around the room cursing and screaming, trying to release the hostility that lurked just beneath the surface of his skin like a balloon waiting to explode, but even that didn't help.

There was only one thing left to do, he decided.

Time to get blind, roaring drunk, while he could still afford to do so.

He retreated to the kitchen, savagely kicking an end table aside as he moved past, but once again fate stepped in.

Both the liquor cabinet and the refrigerator were empty.

Unable to find even a single bottle of beer anywhere in the house, he grabbed his coat and stalked down the street, headed for the nearest bar.

***

"Is this seat taken?"

Sam turned to find a woman standing nearby, indicating the seat next to him. She was dressed in jeans and a tight fitting shirt, her blonde hair spilling down across her shoulders. Without waiting for an answer, she set herself down onto the stool next to him and signalled the bartender.