Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

The silver head made a small, reluctant nod.

"Did Dr. Ambrose see him when he was like this?"

"Some of it. He saw the spinal curvature and the confusion about his arm and spine. The lack of sensation in his right arm."

Cree thought about that. It was always hard to tell what Mason perceived and what conclusions he'd drawn, but usually he knew more than he let on and had devious reasons for doing what he did. Mason's Machiavellian approach to manipulating people infuriated her-it was his way of viewing every living person as a test subject, a lab rat. If she found out he was keeping some insight to himself in this case, Cree decided, she'd shove him off Sandia Peak herself.

The phone rang and startled them both. Lynn snatched it up.

"Hi, Joseph! Yes. Yes. No, worse. Can you? Good." Lynn glanced up at the slatted window, and the corners of her mouth tightened with disapproval. "Well, she's upset, but she's doing all right so far-she's in there with him now. Dr. Black sustained a head injury. No, one of the horses. Not too bad, mainly a scalp cut. We're holding the fort. Just get here soon, please?"

She put the receiver down. "Joseph's on his way. He'll be here in about an hour." Relief was evident on her face-obviously, both women put a great deal of trust in Dr. Tsosie.

They waited. Two-fifteen. Tommy was fast asleep and Julieta had dropped off at last, head tipped back against the wall, mouth open; her light snores came through the monitor. Lynn Pierce was at her desk, wearily occupied with some paperwork. Cree was bleary and numb and was fighting off sleep herself when a movement from the ward room startled her.

Tommy's right hand had begun to move. First it swung slowly side to side on the wrist, like the head of a snake. The fingers played lightly on the blanket at Tommy's thigh, as if feeling the texture of the fabric. Then the arm bent, drawing the hand up along Tommy's side. When it encountered the edge of the folded-back sheet, it paused as the fingers deftly explored. In another instant, the hand was at Tommy's head. When it touched his hair, it pulled back suddenly as if the feel of his bristles startled it. It came back again tentatively, found his ear, traced the curve of it.

Cree watched, spellbound, horrified. The arm and hand clearly belonged to someone other than Tommy. Some blind being, trying to make sense of invisible surroundings.

Tommy groaned in his sleep and moved his head away from the probing fingers, but in another moment his whole body arched and suddenly he sat up and swung his feet off the bed. His eyes opened, rolled wildly, and then found Julieta. They burned at her from beneath his dark brows.

He began to lean forward, the feral gaze intensifying. Cree felt a sudden sense of alarm as the ceiling lights, relatively stable for some time, began to strobe and stutter, and then she watched in stunned horror as Tommy seemed to brace himself. Before she could move, he had propelled himself off the bed toward Julieta with a deep, guttural grunt.

Lynn Pierce's chair skated away as she jumped up. Tommy fell halfway across the room but continued writhing toward Julieta, his gaze still fixed on her. She had awakened and now sat in her chair, her expression a mix of shock and concern as the lights blinked on and off, steadied, fluttered again. The doubled Tommy clawed his way toward her in a series of aborted lunges, face contorted, and still Julieta didn't move.

By the time Cree and Lynn made it into the ward room, Julieta had broken from her paralysis and was crouching at Tommy's side. As she leaned toward him, he rolled and raked at her face with one hand. And then his body went into convulsions again, everything flailing and battering. Lynn and Cree threw themselves on him, holding back the savage clawing and the pumping legs. Julieta fell back, two streaks of red across her cheek near her eye. Lynn's face was held hard as a skull as she subdued the bucking body.

What are you? Cree's thoughts screamed. Who are you? But the effort to hold Tommy down brought back the pain, blinding big mallet blows to her forehead. She couldn't think, could hardly see.

Looking down into his face as she held the twisting shoulders, Cree saw a difference in his eyes. One pupil was a great, dilated black hole, the other much smaller. As she looked down his right eye fixed her, held steady despite the tossing of his head. And with what looked like great effort, the eye winced itself shut. It opened again, still staring straight at her, and did it once more.

Maybe it was purely accidental, some fluke of his chaotic movements, but she couldn't escape the feeling it had been a wink. Had to be. Was it lascivious, taunting, pleading, threatening? She couldn't guess. But she could swear it had been a kind of communication-a signal from something living inside Tommy's skull.

Julieta tightened her legs around the big barrel of Spence's body as she urged him into a full gallop. The ground jolted and rolled away, and the cold rush of early-morning air gave her the feeling of being airborne. The black gelding was a powerful horse, smart with his feet, and now she goaded him to his utmost. His rhythmic lunging and the pumping bellows of his breathing soothed the painful nerve deep inside her. A welcome narcotic.

"Take me away, Spence," she called to him. "Fly me away."

The sun hadn't yet broken the top of the mesa and the world was raw and fresh as she bucketed west from the rear corral gate. A wide track of disturbed ground showed that horses had been this way not long ago-Shurley's bunch, no doubt. The gray stallion and his mares must have visited Spence and the girls last night. From the deep bite of hoofs and wide scatter of soil, she could tell they'd left in a hurry.

Tommy's breathing had returned to normal by the time Joseph had arrived and inspected him. There'd been nothing for him to see but a very sleepy fifteen-year-old, understandably surly at being poked and prodded in the middle of the night. Once he was certain Tommy was stable, Joseph had checked Cree Black, looking for signs of concussion. Finally, he had come to Julieta to lightly touch the scrapes on her cheek, his eyes making it clear he was ministering not to the physical injury but to the deeper hurt she'd suffered from the assault. Julieta had left the infirmary at around four, leaving Joseph to spend what remained of the night in the bed next to Tommy's, and had gone back to her quarters.

Where of course sleep had been impossible. She was as tense as a bowstring, charged with hysterical energy and fear and need. When Joseph had walked her out to the infirmary's porch and the night had wrapped around them, she'd experienced an almost overwhelming urge to grab him, envelop his mouth with hers, tell him to take her back to her room and make love to her until the world got real again and there was warmth and safety somewhere and some things were certain and it was okay.

But of course she didn't. She went alone to the dark of her room, where the nightmare of Tommy kept at her. After an hour or so she gave up and sought the only little remedy she could think of. She dressed again, went out to the corral. The wind had died and the night was full of a waiting feeling, the stillness before dawn. Spence had been skittish at first, but she'd tempted him with an apple and spent a long time gently stroking him, and eventually he'd calmed down enough to accept the saddle. The sky had paled to slate gray by the time she swung herself onto him. She didn't look back once as the school dwindled and disappeared from view.

A mile out, the track of Shurley's horses veered to the southwest, but she reined Spence to the right, heading north along a little ridge in the undulating plain. She let him open up, find his own speed. He responded as if he needed this, too, this wild flight away from what had happened.