The Watchers (7 page)

Abby used the last of her strength to prop herself upright in bed and face him directly. “What do you think it was?”

“I don't know for certain. Some kind of strange gifting, I suppose. A variant of what psychics experience. The real ones, that is—if there is such a distinction.”

“But how did that lead to her being kidnapped?”

He sat on the side of her bed and sandwiched her right hand between both of his.

“Because a lot of things don't add up about the night she disappeared. I can't go into all of it, but there seemed to be a forced entry. At first the detectives thought it was her breaking her way out of the house, but when my private investigators looked it over later, it was obvious someone had broken in. Someone very skillful, very adept at hiding his tracks. There was a scuff mark on a wall. Really—I don't want to give you all the reasons. But suffice it to say, they add up in the dozens. And they haven't faded over time. I think these strange sightings of your mother's got her abducted and probably killed.”

“Oh.”

“Are you satisfied now? Do you feel any better?”

“Not really.”

“I didn't think you would. That's why I never told you. And why I didn't want to tell you today.”

She squeezed his hand tightly, because she had heard a rare quaver of emotion in his last few syllables. What would she do without him?

He rose, gave her a weak smile, and walked out.

Abigail sank back into the mattress and let the tears flow. She wasn't sure why she'd held them back—maybe because she'd always prided herself on being Daddy's strong girl, the flinty one who had bounced back from her mother's disappearance with such obvious wholeness that everyone in her world marveled at her resiliency. Perhaps she simply didn't think she had the strength to burden her father with a disclosure of her strange dreams.

But there, just below the surface, lay something far more troubling yet. In the span of a single conversation her personal mystery had just tripled its depth.

Mommy
. . . For her whole life, the subject had been a fairly straightforward, although deeply painful, tale of mental illness and abandonment. A good mother who had lost her mind and tragically left her family forever. In the Southern California of decades past— haven to free spirits, psychedelic drugs, and profound eccentrics—it hadn't proven such an unusual story.

Yet for Abby, it had always been tinged with a hint of doubt she had never wanted to fully wrestle with.

For such an unstable person, Abby's mother had done one thing her daughter had never forgotten.

She had only to close her eyes for the images to rush back. . . .

She was eight years old. It was late evening, and the ranch house in Reseda—two homes removed from the mansion in which she now lived—lay wreathed in shadow. Her bedroom was lit only by her faithful Cinderella table lamp. Her mother's face hovered close, her sandy brown ponytail accented by the single light source. She spoke in the low husky voice she only used at bedtime. But tonight her speech sounded even more laden with emotion than ever before.

“Are you sure, sweetheart? You really know what this prayer means?”

“Yes, Mommy. I want Jesus to come into my heart. I want to live for Him.”

It was something mother and daughter had talked about for weeks, ever since a clear though childlike understanding of spiritual things had clicked into place within her young mind. Years of Bible reading and quiet nighttime talks about God had taken hold and yielded a realization, however rudimentary, that she was prone to sin and needed Him in her life.

Abby remembered every bit of the conversation, especially the sight of one lingering detail—the crystal-like tears that had wandered down the contours of her mother's face while she watched her pray. Puzzled at the display of emotion, Abby had asked her mother why she was crying. At first, her question had only seemed to multiply the tears. Then her mother had cradled her cheek with one hand and spoken in a wavering voice.

“Honey, I'm just so happy to be able to pray this prayer with you, that's all.”

“Well, who else would do it?”

“I don't know, Abby. No one. But I've been away so much the last few years. I'm just overjoyed to be the one sitting here with you.”

“Daddy wouldn't do it. He doesn't even believe in God.”

“Abby . . .”

“Isn't that why he doesn't go to church with us?”

“Sweetie, your father loves you very much. He's a good daddy.”

“Yeah, but he never prays at dinner, and when we do he keeps his eyes open. I've seen him.”

“Really?” she said with a relieved smile. “Well, you must have had your eyes open to see it, didn't you?” And she brushed off the subject with an affectionate squeeze of Abby's forearm.

The weeks that followed became a bewildering time for the little girl. In the aftermath of her prayer, her mother's behavior seemed to split into dual and utterly contradictory paths. When speaking to Abby directly, she had continued to be nurturing and loving. Their bedtime conversations now stretched into the better part of an hour as her mother patiently answered countless questions about God and this newfound faith of hers. Abby had been a precocious little girl, and her ponderings had led her into an unusually deep understanding of what it meant to live out her faith.

Yet whenever her gaze was directed away from the little girl, Abby's mother had transformed into a frightened, jittery woman. Abby retained a vivid memory of her mother's voice, sharp and panicky, ringing out through the house. There were the sounds of doors slamming at odd hours. Her parents' voices rose in anger, the echoes muffled only by closed doors and sheltering walls.

The night of her mother's disappearance had come only a month or two later. Abby had little memory of that fateful night—at least until the worst was over. She awakened to being shaken by her father, his face white and his voice brittle with an edge she had never heard before. He must have told her then, but her sleep-fogged mind had not absorbed the words. It had taken several days, and several repeatings, for the fact to penetrate her mind.

Mommy is gone. They're looking for her, but we don't know if she'll ever come back. Ever . . .

It had taken years for the gloomy tentacles of that grief to dissipate from her life. And still they had a persistent way of returning sometimes, wrought by the most random of provocations, late at night or abroad in her daytime pursuits, sparked by a television commercial or an overheard remark or the sight of a young girl hand in hand with her mommy.

And now, all these years later, to discover that her distant grief, her mother's disappearance, might also be tied to this present business. The thought stole her breath away and set her thoughts tumbling with a fury she felt powerless to stop.

She had an idea of how to calm herself.
Her laptop
. She leaned over to the hospital side table and pulled the computer closer. Ever since her injury she hadn't had the heart to glance at the document she'd been typing right before falling asleep on that fateful night. Her retelling of the strange dream she had lived through.

Her account of exactly what her father had described. A dream where she'd possessed the body of an ancient old woman. A blog entry she'd never found the courage to upload to her MyCorner site. A document whose final paragraph included the words
. . . visitor, you tell me. If you've ever had a dream remotely like this, would you e-mail me and let me know?

Making up her mind, she moved the cursor over a small rectangular box outlining the word
Upload
.

Up to now, she hadn't been sure if it was worth the trouble of posting this latest blog to her site, let alone an announcement of what had happened since: Narbeli's murder and her own mysterious illness. But now, after her father's explosive revelation, everything had changed. Suddenly that final question throbbed with more urgency and meaning than any question she could ever have imagined. She needed to know. She
had
to know. She couldn't leave this world without some closure on this curse that had claimed her mother and now seemed poised to claim her as well.

She clicked to begin the upload of her dream.

Abruptly, she was overwhelmed by a feeling that she'd just set off an atom bomb.

Reply to: Abby Sherman, [email protected] Message received at Server, marked UNREAD

Girl, I'm gonna try my best and get around to what I've e-mailed you about. But give me a second. Right now, all I can do is try and catch my breath. I can hardly keep enough air in my lungs to stay conscious—forget trying to type.

This is crazy. It's not possible.

I'm sure I don't know you. I live in Detroit. No one I know has ever met you. No one I've ever talked to. But even that doesn't matter, 'cause I haven't talked to anyone about this.

YOU DESCRIBED, WORD FOR WORD, A DREAM I HAD LAST WEEK!

Rochelle at MyCorner

P.S. Yeah, I'm as freaked out by it as you are. But no, I don't know anything more about what it means than you seem to. If you find out any more, would you e-mail me back? Please?

[
MyCorner.com
Admin: MESSAGE not read. Recipient's mailbox at 367% capacity]

HOSPITAL

On day twenty-three, Abigail's nurse came to collect the remains of lunch accompanied by another African-American nurse in her late forties. The moment the newcomer walked through the door, Abigail stiffened up in her bed and threw a forearm over her eyes as if trying to shelter her vision from an oppressively bright light source.

“What's the matter?” the new nurse asked, looking around her.

“Don't you see them?” Abby said in a high-pitched voice. “They came in with you.”

The woman turned to Abby's nurse. She lowered her head and raised her eyebrows. An expression which read,
I'm glad I came
.

But Abby's nurse seemed to stiffen with the opposite impression. “Maybe it wasn't such a good idea, you coming with me,” she told the newcomer in a low voice.

“No, no, please—I think it's more important than ever,” the older nurse said, her eyes fixed on Abby.

“Are you okay?” her nurse asked Abby.

“There's nothing wrong with me,” Abby answered. “It's just these bright, white men standing beside her.”

“This isn't going to work,” her nurse said to the other through the side of her mouth. “I need to get a consult.”

“No you don't,” the new nurse said. “I know what this is. Now, Kathy, you've known me for ten years. You know that I know my job. If I only ask you one time to just trust me, this is it.”

“I trust you, Gladys. But that trust isn't worth losing my job over.”

“It won't come to that. I promise.”

The older woman walked forward to Abby's bedside and sat down on a visitor's chair. “Please, Sister. Tell me what these men look like.”

Abby paused for several reasons—not the least of which was the unfamiliar sensation of being called “sister” by an African-American woman.

“Please, won't you tell me?”

Abigail narrowed her eyes and scrutinized the nurse. The woman's tone was neither pleading nor insistent. Just very, very passionate.

“You mean you can't see them?” Abby asked.

The woman turned around, stood, and remained utterly still for a long moment. Then she turned back to Abby.

“I don't have it as strong as I used to, see. These days I can see their glow, mostly. And if I stand real still, I can almost see the edges of their wings against a darker background. It's like any other gift, you know. Comes and goes. It fades a little with age, and neglect. So go ahead—it sounds like you're just awakening to it. It must be powerful with you.”

Abby suddenly felt a strange boldness come over her. She felt compelled to stare right at the apparitions and call them out like one of those last-minute witnesses at a murder trial.

“The one on your right is tallest, and his skin is dark—as black as coal. I say ‘his skin' because every other part of him, his eyes, his smile, his whole countenance, his whole body even, glows so bright I find it hard to look at him straight on.”

“Does he have wings?” the nurse asked, her voice trembling with joy.

“Okay, that's it,” her first nurse interrupted. “Gladys, you need to leave. Or I call security.”

Oblivious to the interruption, Abby squinted and leaned forward. “Why, he
does
have wings,” she said in a breathy, amazed voice. “Although I hadn't even noticed them before! They're huge, and dramatic . . . so beautiful.”

“One, two . . .” the first nurse counted at Gladys in a darkening tone.

Nurse Gladys turned to the woman and looked downward, gathering her determination in one long, loud breath. “Kathy. Please. Two minutes.”

“You've got
one
.”

Gladys now seemed to search the ceiling tiles for inspiration. “Kathy, I know what you're afraid of. I promise you that I'm going to help this poor girl, not hurt her.”

“But you two are talking nonsense. You sound like a couple of girls fantasizing about fairies and pixie dust. Thirty seconds . . .”

Gladys reached out and touched Kathy's forearm, briefly, tentatively, then retreated like someone struck by an electric shock. “How many times have you and I sat in the lounge and whispered stories to each other about the mysteries of life and death we've seen in this place? Do you remember the elderly woman just last week, who popped up in Trauma Three after having been declared dead an hour before? Do you remember the things she said?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“And what about the blind girl who flatlined on the operating table and came back telling you the color of your hair and the number of dust bunnies on the top of the OR supply cabinet and a whole host of things she had no way of seeing?”