When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and strange.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in the hospital, Frank,” Bobby said.
“It’s all right. You’re where you belong now.”
“Hospital… ” Frank said, savoring the word as if he had just heard
it-and was now pronouncing it-for the first time. He looked around,
obviously bewildered; he still didn’t know where he was.
“Don’t let me slip-” He vanished mid-sentence. A brief hiss accompanied
his abrupt departure, as if the air in the room was escaping through a
puncture in the skin of reality.
“Damn!” Julie said.
“Where were his pajamas?” Hal said.
“What?”
“He was wearing shoes, khaki pants, a shirt and sweater,” Hal said,
“but the last time I saw him, a couple of hours ago, he still had on his
pajamas.” At the far end of the room, the door began to open but bumped
against Hal’s empty chair. Nurse Fulgham poked her head through the
gap. She looked down at the chair, then across the room at Hal and
Julie, then at Bobby, who stepped to the foot of the bed to peer past
his two associates and the half-drawn privacy curtain.
Their astonishment at Frank’s vanishing act must have been ill
concealed, for the woman frowned and said,
“What’s wrong?”
Julie quickly crossed the room as Grace Fulgham slid the chair aside and
opened the door all the way.
“Everything’s fine. We just spoke by phone with our man heading up the
search, and he says they’ve found someone who saw Mr. Pollard earlier
tonight. We know which way he was heading, so now it’s only a matter of
time until we find him.”
“We didn’t expect you’d be here so long,” Fulgham said frowning past
Julie at the curtained bed.
Even through the heavy door, maybe she had heard the faint warble of the
flute that wasn’t a flute.
“Well,” Julie said, “this is the easiest place from which to coordinate
the search.” By standing just inside the door, with Hal’s empty chair
between them, Julie was trying to block the nurse’s advance with out
appearing to do so. If Fulgham got past the curtain, she might notice
the missing railing, the black sand in the bed, a the pillowcase that
was filled with God-knew-what. Questions about any of those things
might be difficult to answer convincingly, and if the nurse remained in
the room too long, she might be there when Frank returned.
Julie said, “I’m sure we haven’t disturbed any of the other patients.
We’ve been very quiet.”
“No, no,” Nurse Fulgham said,
“you haven’t disturbed any one. We just wondered if you might like some
coffee to help keep you awake.”
“Oh.”
Julie turned to look at Hal and Bobby.
“Coffee?’
“No,”
the two men said simultaneously. Then, speaking over each other, Hal
said, “No, thank you,”
and Bobby said, “Very kind of you.”
“I’m wide awake,” Julie said, frantic to be rid of the nurse but trying
to sound casual,
“and Hal doesn’t drink coffee, and Bobby, my husband, can’t handle
caffeine because of prostrate problems.” I’m babbling, she thought.
“Anyway, we’ll be leaving soon now, I’m sure.”
“Well,” the nurse said, “if you change your mind.
After Fulgham left, letting the door close behind her, Bobby whispered,
“Prostate trouble?”
Julie said, “Too much caffeine causes prostate trouble Seemed like a
convincing detail to explain why, with everything going on, you didn’t
want coffee.”
“But I don’t have a prostate problem. Makes me sound like an old fart.”
“I have it,” Hal said.
“And I’m not an old fart.”
“What is this?” Julie said.
“We’re all babbling.” She pushed the chair in front of the door and
returned to the bed, where she picked up the pillowcase-bag that Frank
Pollard had brought from… from where ever he had been
“Careful,” Bobby said.
“Last time Frank mentioned a pillowcase, it was the one he trapped that
insect in.” Julie gingerly set the bag on a chair and watched it
closely.
“Doesn’t seem to be anything squirming around in it.” She started to
untie the knotted cord from the neck of the sack.
Grimacing, Bobby said, “If you let out something big as a house cat,