Tommy Nightmare (Jenny Pox #2) (30 page)

“This way,” Jenny said. She walked him out to
the car, and this time he was willing to sit inside it. Jenny
hurried to close his door and run around to the driver's side.

“I ain't seen Miriam...” he whispered as
Jenny started the car. “I ain't seen Miriam since...”

“Just settle down,” Jenny said. He was
squirming and fidgeting in his seat as they backed out of the
driveway.

“Miriam... Miriam...” he whispered. Jenny
stepped on the gas. It was twenty-five minutes to the county
hospital, if you obeyed the speed limit, which she didn't plan to
do.

The longer they drove, the more agitated her
dad became. He started slapping at the window by his head. “Where
we going?” he demanded.

“I told you. The hospital.”

“Aw, no.” He pulled at the door handle, and
the passenger door opened. The road outside flew past at sixty
miles an hour. He lifted one foot from the floor, clearly intending
to step out of the moving car.

“Daddy, no!” Jenny grabbed him and pulled him
back. The forward motion of the car closed the door. Jenny wished
she had automatic locks, or that she'd locked the door or put on
his seatbelt before starting the car. Or that her dad hadn't gone
completely crazy in the first place.

He stared at the car door, looking puzzled.
Fortunately, he didn't make another attempt to open it.

The county hospital was a single-story brick
building. Jenny pulled into a parking spot near the front door
labeled EMERGENCY ONLY. She ran to open his door.

“Come on, Dad.” She held out a hand to him.
“We're here.”

His eyes narrowed with suspicion at he stared
at the hospital. “Where we at?”

“We're just going to the hospital for a
minute, and then we'll go back home.”

“I don't like this. Where's my daughter?”

“She's coming,” Jenny said.

“You better call her.”

He pushed himself out of the car and began to
stumble across the parking lot, away from the hospital.

“No, this way.” Jenny took his arm and turned
him around. The brown piece of paper fluttered on his shirt like a
child's bib. Jenny tore it away and stuffed it in her jeans
pocket.

The clear doors to the emergency room slid
apart automatically as Jenny walked him in. The bright fluorescent
lights gave the hospital an unreal, washed-out look.

Jenny brought her dad to the front desk,
where a bored nurse looked up from a portable TV.

“Yes?” the nurse asked.

“Hi,” Jenny said. “This is my dad.”

Jenny's dad stood beside her, fidgeting and
looking around the waiting room, but not doing anything obvious to
indicate his confused state.

“Yes?” the nurse asked.

“He's really off,” Jenny said. “Like not
making any sense.”

“Sir?” the nurse said. “Are you feeling
okay?”

“Huh?” He had troubled focusing on her—his
head kept moving around. “Just looking for my wife.”

“She's been dead eighteen years,” Jenny
whispered to the nurse. “Almost nineteen.”

“Is he on medication?” The nurse looked her
dad up and down with a hint of disgust. “Or drugs? Alcohol?”

“Nothing like that,” Jenny said. “I don’t
know what’s wrong with him.”

The nurse nodded and handed her a stack of
forms on a clipboard. “Fill these out. We'll need your insurance
information.”

“Um...” Jenny said.

“You do have insurance, don't you?”

“Maybe. Dad, let me see your wallet.”

Her dad stared at a framed photograph on the
wall, which showed a decrepit old general store with a prominent
Coca-Cola sign. He seemed lost inside it. Jenny poked his arm.

“Huh?” he asked.

“Your wallet.” Jenny held out her hand. “Give
me your wallet.”

“Oh. Okay.” He took his wallet out and held
it in her general direction. Jenny took it from his hand.

“You gonna give that back, right?” he
asked.

“Yes, Dad.” She flipped through the wallet
for a minute. “I can't find anything about health insurance.”

“Indigent,” the nurse sighed. “Go have a seat
and fill out those forms. Someone will see you when they're
available.”

“Okay, thanks.” Jenny led her dad to the row
of hard plastic seats in the waiting room. She couldn't make him
sit, so she let him stand where he was, gawking at everything.

Jenny filled in all the information she
could, looking up frequently to make sure he hadn't wandered off.
He was trembling and shuffling his feet around, but he seemed a bit
calmer now.

After fifteen minutes, she returned the
clipboard of forms to the nurse.

“Have a seat,” the nurse said. She seemed a
lot colder now, having determined that Jenny's dad might be poor
and uninsured.

Jenny sat. She reached into the pocket where
she'd put her dad's cell phone. The crumpled brown paper was on top
of it, so she had to pull that out first. She'd been in such a
panic that she hadn't really looked at it.

Now she unfolded it.

SETH DIES TONIGHT.

YOU KNOW WHO.

It was Ashleigh's opposite, Jenny thought. He
must have inflicted a massive dose of fear on her dad.

The gray eye was one clue, and so were the
words “You Know Who.” That was what everyone called the villain,
Lord Voldemort, in the
Harry Potter
books. Ashleigh's first
big campaign, when she was a sophomore in high school, was to get
Harry Potter
banned from all the school libraries in the
county, on the grounds that it promoted witchcraft to children. The
whole thing had just been a big power trip for Ashleigh.

Jenny dialed Seth, but it went straight to
voice mail again, so she tried Darcy’s cell phone, though she was a
little unsure about the last digit of Darcy’s number.

“
Guten tag!
” Darcy’s voice answered.
“You’ve reached Darcy. Leave a message, okay? I will definitely
call you back.”

The phone beeped.

“Darcy, it’s Jenny, it’s an emergency. Y’all
might be in danger, and I need to talk to Seth right now. Please,
please call me back right away.”

She hung up the phone. A nurse was
approaching, so Jenny shoved the nightmare boy’s note back in her
pocket.

“Mr. Morton?” the nurse said.

Jenny’s dad just looked at the picture of the
Coca-Cola sign.

“That’s him,” Jenny said.

The nurse put a hand on his arm and he
jumped.

“Mr. Morton, we need to go this way,” the
nurse said. She led him toward a pair of double doors that said
STAFF AND PATIENTS ONLY.

‘Where are we going?” He started to shake
again. He looked back over his shoulder at Jenny. “Where are we
going? Where are we going?”

“You’re gonna be okay, Dad.” Jenny’s voice
broke when she said “Dad,” and she looked down at the floor to hide
the renewed rush of tears behind her long black hair.

Jenny raised the cell phone to her face
again.

“You ain’t supposed to use those in here!”
the front desk nurse shouted. “Take it outside.”

“Okay, sorry.” Jenny walked to the double
doors.

“Can afford a nice, fancy cell phone, can’t
be bothered to buy insurance,” the nurse muttered. The clear
Plexiglas doors closed behind Jenny.

Jenny didn’t know how her dad’s boxy,
paint-stained old phone could be considered “nice” or “fancy,” but
she had much more important things to do than argue with some
stupid nurse.

She tried Seth again, and then Darcy. Nobody
answered.

Jenny found June’s number in her dad’s phone
and called her instead. June had been dating her dad for a few
months now, and she was the only person Jenny knew to call for
help.

“Hi, sugar!” June said. In the background,
someone shouted an order for two scrambled eggs and raisin
toast.

“It’s me, Jenny.”

“Well, hello, sweet potato.”

“Do you know if my dad has any, like, health
insurance?”

“Oh, good Lord, what’s happened?”

“He’s had some kind of…I’m at the hospital,
and—”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s just had some kind of…nervous breakdown
thing.”

“Are you at Eldritch County Hospital?”

“Yes.”

“My shift’s almost over. I’ll be there in
ten, fifteen, twenty minutes.”

“Wow, thanks,” Jenny said. “Actually, I have
a whole other emergency with Seth, and I have to go find him. So I
might not be here.”

“What’s happening with Seth?”

“That’s a long story.”

“Well, honey, they ain’t gonna let me in to
see him. Only kin.”

“Shit. Tell them you’re engaged. And I’ll
tell them you’re engaged, too. Maybe that will work.”

“I guess I do have my ring from my first
marriage,” June said. “I’ll put that on and give it a try. I’ll be
there in ten, fifteen, twenty—”

“Thanks, June.”

Jenny tried calling Seth and Darcy again. She
paced in front of the hospital for half a minute, then tried
another time. Nobody was answering. She ran back inside to the
front desk nurse, who was opening a little jar of fingernail
polish.

“Any news on my dad?”

The nurse sighed. “We’ll tell you when
there’s something to tell you.”

“Okay, well, I have to go. My dad’s fiancé is
coming to check on him.”

“Whatever.”

“I’ll try to find if there’s any insurance
stuff, too.”

“Sure you will.” The nurse began painting her
fingernails.

Jenny ran out to her car and cranked it up,
but then she sat for a minute. She didn’t like the idea of leaving
town when her dad was like this, before she even knew whether the
hospital would really be able to help. Maybe they could sedate him,
but he would probably still have nightmares.

It was also obvious that Ashleigh’s opposite
was setting a trap for her. Jenny’s dad was just a warning—he was
threatening to kill Seth. She felt stupid walking right into it,
but the guy did seem like a person capable of murder. And Seth had
no idea he was coming—unless the guy had already gotten to
Seth.

She took a deep breath and put the car in
reverse. She would have to drive all the way to Charleston, and she
couldn’t even remember the name of the hotel where they were
staying. She hoped somebody was answering their phone by the time
she got there.

Jenny sped past a Palmetto Bug gas station,
towards Highway 63 and the Atlantic Ocean. She felt like the ground
had opened beneath her and she was falling fast, and there was
nobody left to catch her.

“Dude, at the Sig Alph house last weekend,
they had sixty pounds of crayfish, six kegs of Heiney, and we ate
all
that shit,” Wooly said. “It was off the chain,
gang.”

“This is pretty good,” Ashleigh said. They
were sitting on the sidewalk curb—Ashleigh, Seth, Wooly and the
other two Grayson boys, Steven Hunter and Adam Branderford
(“Skunker” and “Aces,” as far as Wooly was concerned). Everyone had
a Styrofoam bowl of Frogmore stew, which they’d bought from an old
lady at a wooden festival booth.

“This ain’t shit,” Wooly said. “My uncle
makes a mean lowcountry boil. Fat shrimp he catches himself on his
boat, hot sausage, corn, potatoes, Old Bay, splash in some
Tabasco—bam. That’s eating like a motherfucking
king
,
S-dog.”

“Those are the same ingredients here, too,”
Seth said. He wasn’t liking the
S-dog
nickname Wooly kept
trying to apply to him. He poked a shrimp with his spoon. “Those
are the basic ingredients of any boil, aren’t they?”

“Man, there’s ingredients, and then there’s
fucking
ingredients
, you know what I’m saying?” Wooly
said.

Darcy’s cell phone rang inside the big canvas
purse. Ashleigh pulled it out. It was Tommy, using a prepaid cell
phone he’d bought with cash at a convenience store, if he’d
followed instructions correctly.

“Oh, criminy,” Ashleigh said. She was getting
sick of playing Darcy all the time. Being that girl was almost as
annoying as hanging out with her. “That’s my parents. ‘Scuse.”

She heaved herself up, and Seth jumped up to
help her stand. Ashleigh squeezed his hand, charming him with her
love. “Thank you, Seth.”

“Anytime.” He beamed at her as she walked
away. Sucker.

She found a narrow, relatively uncrowded
alley where the buildings tamped down the noise from the band. The
phone had gone to voicemail by this point, so Ashleigh called Tommy
back.

“She took him to the hospital,” Tommy said.
“She just now got him inside. He’s all fucked up.”

“Good,” Ashleigh said. “And she saw the
note?”

“Definitely.”

“Perfect. Her next move will be to get in her
car and drive to Charleston to save her poor little boyfriend.
She’s going to be wary, though. She’s not too stupid. Where are you
now?”

“Palmetto Bug gas station. It’s across from
the hospital parking lot.”

“Get out of there! You don’t want her to see
you, or she’ll come after you instead of down here.”

“She already left the hospital. She didn’t
see me.” Tommy said.

“She already left?” Ashleigh snapped. “That
means she’s on her way
here
, Tommy. And she’ll drive crazy
fast to get to Seth. So get moving, because I need you here
first.”

“I’m on my way.”

Ashleigh hung up. Now it was time for the
risky part.

She’d planted the seed first thing Monday,
sending Neesha’s pictures of Jenny over to that CDC doctor. She’d
worried that the government would react too quickly, but they
hadn’t. She wanted the information to flow around to prime the
pump, but she didn’t want them acting just yet. Now, she just hoped
they didn’t move too slowly.

Heather heard the landline ring, but she
didn’t move to answer it. That was what husbands and voicemail were
for, on a Saturday night when she was watching
Top Chef
on
TiVo.

Then it stopped ringing abruptly, and she
heard Tricia in the kitchen, screaming, “Hi! Hi! Hi!”