“I’m talking big grandmothers,” he said.
“Not frail little old ladies. Big, fat, solid grandmothers, six at a
time.”
“That is impressive.”
“Damn right. Though it’d help if I had a tire iron.”
She laughed, and he grinned.
But they could not forget where they were going or why, and their smiles
faded to a pair of matching frowns. They drove in silence. The thump
of the windshield wipers, which ought to have lulled Bobby to sleep,
kept him awake instead.
Finally Julie said, “You think Frank actually vanished in front of Hal’s
eyes, the way he says?”
“I’ve never known Hal to lie or give in to hysteria.”
“Me neither.”
She turned left at the next corner. A few blocks ahead, beyond
billowing curtains of rain, the lights of the hospital appeared to pulse
and flicker and stream like an iridescent liquid, which made it look
every bit was miragelike as a phantom oasis shimmering behind veils of
heat rising from desert sands.
WHEN THEY entered the room, Hal was standing at the foot of the bed,
which was largely concealed by the privacy curtain. He looked like a
guy who had not only seen a ghost, but had embraced it and kissed it on
its cold, damp, putrescent lips.
“Thank God, you’re here.” He looked past them, into the hall.
“The head nurse wants to call the cops, file a missing person-”
“We’ve dealt with that,” Bobby said.
“Dr. Freeborn talked to her by phone, and we’ve signed a release
absolving the hospital.”
“Good.” Gesturing toward the open door, Hal said, “We’ll want to keep
this as private as we can.”
After closing the door, Julie joined them at the foot of the bed.
Bobby noted the missing railing and broken hinges.
“What’s this?”
Hal swallowed hard. “He was holding the railing when he vanished… and
it went with him. I didn’t mention it on the phone, ’cause I figured
you already thought I was nuts, this would confirm it.”
“Tell us now,” Julie said quietly.
They were all talking softly, for otherwise Nurse Fulgham was certain to
stop by and remind them that most of the patients on the floor were
sleeping.
When Hal finished his story, Bobby said, “The flute, the peculiar
breeze… that’s what Frank told us he heard shortly after he regained
consciousness that night in the alleyway, somehow he knew it meant
someone was coming.” Some of the dirt that Hal had observed on Frank’s
pajamas after his second reappearance, was on the bed sheets. Julie
plucked up a pinch of it.
“Not dirt exactly.” Bobby examined the grains on her fingertips.
“Black sand.”
To Hal, Julie said, “Frank hasn’t reappeared since he left with the
railing?”
“No.”
“And when was that?”
“A couple of minutes after two o’clock. Maybe two-oh-t two-oh-three,
something like that.”
“About an hour and twenty minutes ago,” Bobby said.
They stood in silence, staring at the mountings from which the bed
railing had been torn.
Outside, a squall of wind that rained against the window with sufficient
force to make it so like out-of-season Halloween pranksters pitching
hands full of dried corn.
Finally Bobby looked at Julie.
“What do we do now?” She blinked.
“Don’t ask me. This is the first case I’ve worked on that involves
witchcraft.”
“Witchcraft?” Hal said nervously.
“Just a figure of speech,” Julie assured him.
Maybe, Bobby thought. He said, “We’ve got to assume he’ll come back
before morning, perhaps a couple of times, sooner or later he’ll stay
put. This must be what happens every night when he sleeps; this is the
traveling he doesn’t remember when he wakes up.”
“Traveling,” Julie said. Under the circumstances, that ordinary word
seemed as exotic and full of mystery as any in the language.
CAREFUL NOT to wake the patients, they borrowed two additional chairs
from other rooms along the corridor. Hal sat tensely just inside the
closed door of room 638, in a position to prevent any of the hospital
staff from walking in unimpeded. Julie sat at the foot of the bed, and
Bobby stationed himself at the side of it nearest the window, where the
railing was still in place.
They waited.
From her chair, Julie only had to turn her head slightly to look across