marginally louder than before, she whispered,
“What is that?”
To Hal it sounded like a flute. The unseen flautist produced no
discernible melody, but the flow of notes was haunting nonetheless.
They reentered the hall as the music stopped again, and just as a draft
swept along the corridor.
“Someone’s left a window open-or probably a stairway door,” the nurse
said quietly but pointedly:
“Not me,” Hal assured her.
Janet Soto stepped out of the room across the hall just as the blustery
draft abruptly died. She frowned at them, shrugged, then headed toward
the next room on her side.
The flute warbled softly. The draft struck up again, stronger than
before, and beneath the astringent odors of the hospital, Hal thought he
detected a faint scent of smoke.
Leaving Grace Fulgham to her search, Hal hurried toward the far end of
the corridor. He intended to check the door at the head of the
emergency stairs, to make sure that he hadn’t left it open.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the door to Pollard’s room beginning
to swing shut, and he realized that the draft must be coming from in
there. He pushed through the door before it could close, and saw Frank
sitting up in bed, looking confused and frightened.
The draft and flute had given way to stillness, silence.
“Where did you go?” Hal asked, approaching the bed.
“Fireflies,” Pollard said, apparently dazed. His hair was spiked and
tangled, and his round face was pale.
“Fireflies?”
“Fireflies in a windstorm,” Pollard said.
Then he vanished. One second he was sitting in bed, as real and solid
as anyone Hal had ever known, and the next second he was gone as
inexplicably and neatly as a ghost abandoning a haunt. A brief hiss,
like air escaping from a punctured tire accompanied his departure.
Hal swayed as if he had been stricken. For a moment his heart seemed to
seize up, and he was paralyzed by surprise when Nurse Fulgham stepped
into the doorway.
“No sign of him in any of the rooms off this corridor. He might’ve gone
up to another floor-don’t you think?”
“Uh….”
“Before we check out the rest of this level, maybe I’d better call
security and get them moving on a search of the entire hospital. Mr.
Yamataka?” Hal glanced at her, then back at the empty bed.
“Uh.
yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea. He might wander off to.
God knows where.” Nurse Fulgham hurried away.
Weak-kneed, Hal went to the door, closed it, put his back against it,
and stared at the bed across the room. After a while he said,
“Are you there, Frank?” He received no answer. He had not expected
one. Frank Pollard had not turned invisible; he had gone somewhere,
some how.
Not sure as to why he was less wonder struck than frightened of what he
had seen, Hal hesitantly crossed the room to the bed. He gingerly
touched the stainless-steel railing, as if he thought that Pollard’s
vanishing act had tapped some elemental force leaving a deadly residual
current in the bed. But no spark crackled under his fingertips; the
metal was cool and smooth He waited, wondering how soon Pollard would
reappear wondering if he ought to call Bobby now or wait until Pollard
materialized, wondering if the man would materialize again disappear
forever.
For the first time in memory, Hal Yamataka was gripped by indecision; he
was ordinarily quick to think and quick to act, but he had never come
face to face with the supernatural before.
The only thing he knew for sure was that he must not allow Fulgham or
anyone on the floor, or anyone else in the hospital to find out what had
really happened.
Pollard was caught up in a phenomenon, afraid that word of it would
spread quickly from the hospital staff to the press. Protecting a
client’s privacy was always of Dakota & Dakota’s prime objectives, but
in this case it was even more important than usual. Bobby and Julie had
said that someone was hunting for Pollard, evidently with violent
intentions; therefore, keeping the press out of the case might be
essential if the client was to survive.