C. Lawrence - Silent Screams

She smiled. "Oh, good. I've never had…that"-(funny how both of them were reluctant to say the word "depression")-"but I've had friends who did. I didn't realize how bad it was until one of them committed suicide."

Lee swallowed once, hard. "How did she-" he began, then realized he didn't want to hear the answer.

"He, actually. Carbon monoxide. Sat in his car in the garage with the engine on. His mother found him."

"How old were you?"

"It was a few years after college."

"Close friend?"

"Close enough that I asked myself for years afterward what I could have done or said to change things. I didn't even know he was depressed-we'd sort of lost touch, I guess. I found out from mutual friends."

"I'm sorry."

She looked out the window and put her right forefinger to her forehead. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. I'm sorry-after what you've been through."

"Well, I am a trained psychologist," he said. "If people can't talk to me, who can they talk to?"

She smiled at his attempt to lighten the conversation.

"What I learned from that was how…irreplaceable everyone is. Once you lose someone, that's it. There's really no replacing them."

"That's true. I just never thought of it exactly that way."

Chuck returned with hamburgers from the coffee shop next door. Lee thought he saw a flicker of irritation on his friend's face when he saw Kathy.

"Hi," Chuck said, "nice to see you again."

"Yes," Kathy replied. "Good to see you too."

Fortunately, Chuck had bought three hamburgers, so they each had one. Lee liked the way Kathy ate, with a hearty, unself-conscious appetite. But as soon as they had finished, Dr. Patel appeared, wagging his stethoscope at them.

"Time to rest," he said sternly, herding Chuck and Kathy out of the room.

"Does he ever sleep?" Kathy whispered to Lee as she kissed him good-bye.

"He's a resident," he whispered back. "They never sleep."

Dr. Patel did one more quick check of Lee's blood pressure and pulse, nodded grimly, muttered something to himself, made a notation on the chart at the foot of the bed, and left the room. Lee lay back on the pillow, feeling an odd sense of contentment. Sleep dragged at his eyelids, and he sank into its dark and welcoming arms.

The church was vast and empty, its dark marbled interior cold as the grave. A chill wind swept over Lee as he walked down the long corridor toward the altar. The pews were empty, but he could hear whispering, tongues slithering over consonants like so many snakes. The click of his heels on the hard stone floors was like a rhythm track underneath the wall of whispering. He couldn't make out what they were saying, but felt that they were talking about him in the dimly lit chapel, illuminated only by flickering votive candles lining the walls. He strained to see them, but saw only rows of empty pews stretching out before him, silent wooden sentinels.

He walked on. The corridor stretched out before him, and the altar seemed to recede as he approached it. The whispering was behind him now, and he strained to make out the words, but the voices blended into a hissing like the sound of raindrops on a tin roof. A single white light shone down upon the altar as he ascended the steps. The whispering got louder, thickening the air like the buzzing of cicadas.

There, on the altar, Laura was waiting for him. She lay on her back, her hands folded over her spotless white communion dress. Her eyes were closed, her face peaceful in death-and there was no doubt in his mind she was as dead as the dried flowers lining the steps of the altar. Lee studied her face, waiting for the roses to bloom in her cheeks once again, to replace the gray pallor of death. Her hair surrounded her pale face like a dark halo, falling in crisp ringlets on her shoulders. Laura had always been proud of her hair-thick, black and shiny as polished river stones.

He felt sadness, but no horror. To his surprise, he also felt relief. He had always known she was dead, but now here was proof, and she was at peace. Instead of a rotting, mangled corpse cast off in a ditch somewhere, exposed to the elements, and eaten by wild creatures, she was perfectly preserved, pristine as a bride, her beauty intact forever. He was glad-glad for her and for his mother, who could now accept the reality of her death.

He bent to kiss her dead cheek, but as he did, her face morphed and changed before his eyes-into Kathy Azarian's face. A fist of fear grabbed his heart, squeezing the breath from his body. He sank to his knees, blind terror wrapping itself around his brain, pressing down on him so that all of his senses began to fade. He struggled to see, to hear, to feel, but a cloud of unknowing draped itself over him, dimming his senses. He tried to cry out, but his vocal cords had turned to dust, dry as the dead flowers surrounding the altar.

He awoke to middle-of-the-night stillness. It took him a few moments to realize where he was. The phones at the nurses' station had stopped ringing, and he heard the soft whirr of machinery from the ICU unit down the hall. He was flooded with an overwhelming sense of relief that his dream was just that: a dream.

The room was dark; the only source of illumination was the light seeping through the smoked glass door panel. The venetian blinds on the window next to his bed were closed, blocking out even the light from the street lamps. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, Lee had a strong sense of a presence in the room with him. He peered into the far corner of the room, where a straight-backed chair sat against the wall. At first glance Lee thought maybe someone had thrown an overcoat across the chair, but then he realized the dark figure on the chair was a person. He thought could just make out a man seated in the shadows-unmoving, as still as if he were made of stone.

He knew who it was.

Lee's hand twitched, and he almost reached for the call button to summon the nurse, but something stopped him. Curiosity, maybe-or perhaps an instinct to submit to whatever fate held in store for him. The figure in the corner sat very still. Lee reached over and pulled the string on the Venetian blinds, letting in light from the street outside. As he did so, a gleam of moonlight reflected off the high, pale forehead. The room was still too dark to get a good look at his face, but he could tell that the man was thin and pale.

Lee ran his tongue over his parched lips. "How did you get in here?" he croaked.

His visitor laughed nervously. "I'm very good at getting into places-but you should know that by now." The voice was young, high pitched, and raspy, and there was a soft wheezing sound when he breathed, as if his lungs were worn and tattered bellows, stiff and dried with age. Lee couldn't resist feeling a sense of triumph. So I was right about the asthma. He also had the feeling he had heard the voice before, but where? In their brief encounter in Hastings, no words had been exchanged between them.

"What do you want?"

"What does anyone want? Money, power, immortality-but I'm not interested in those things."

"What are you interested in?"

"Love. Like the love I feel for God: unconditional love and devotion."

"Is there a difference? Between love and devotion, I mean?"

"I guess it depends on who you are. But there's really no such thing as unconditional love-not in this life, anyway."

"So why are you here?"

His visitor leaned forward in his chair. "To let you know that He tells me to do what I do."

"God, you mean?"

"Yes. It's His work I'm doing."

"Aren't you afraid of getting caught?"

"The righteous cannot afford to feel fear."

"But don't you feel it anyway? To know all those people are out there looking for you?"