Robin Cook - Acceptable Risk

Kim retreated to her own bed. She turned out the light and tried to go to sleep. But it was impossible. Her mind would not turn off, and she could hear Edward as if he were in her room.

After a half hour, Kim got back out of bed and went into the bathroom. She found the old vial of Xanax she’d been saving for years and took one of the pink, boat-shaped pills. She didn’t like the idea of taking the drug, but she thought she needed it; there would be no sleep if she didn’t.

Coming out of the bathroom, she closed both Edward’s door and her own. Getting back into bed, she could still hear Edward but at least it was muffled. Within fifteen minutes she felt a welcome serenity drift over her. A little while later she fell into her own deep sleep.

Friday, September 30, 1994

At nearly three a.m. there was little traffic on the darkened streets of Salem, and Dave Halpern felt as if he owned the world. Since midnight he’d been aimlessly cruising in his ’89 red Chevy Camaro. He’d been to Marblehead twice and even up to Danvers and around through Beverly.

Dave was seventeen and a junior at Salem High. He’d gotten the car thanks to an after-school job at a local McDonald’s and a sizable loan from his parents, and it was the current love of his life. He reveled in the sense of freedom and unadulterated power the car gave him. He also liked the attention it evoked from his friends, particularly Christina McElroy. Christina was a sophomore and had a great body.

Dave checked the dimly illuminated clock set into the center console on the dash. It was just about time for the rendezvous. Turning onto Dearborn Street, where Christina lived, Dave hit the lights and turned off the engine. He slowed and glided to a silent stop beneath the canopy of a large maple.

He didn’t have to wait long. Christina appeared out of the hedges that ran alongside her clapboard house, rushed to the car, and jumped in. The whites of her eyes and teeth glistened in the half-light. She was tremulous with excitement.

She slid across the vinyl seat so that her tightly denimed thigh pressed against Dave’s.

Trying to project an air of insouciance, as if this middle-of-the-night rendezvous were an everyday occurrence, Dave didn’t speak. He merely reached forward and started his machine. But his hand shook and rattled the keys. Fearing he’d given himself away, he cast a furtive look in Christina’s direction. He caught a smile and worried that she thought he wasn’t cool.

When Dave reached the corner he switched on his headlights. Instantly the nightscape lit up, revealing blowing leaves and deep shadows.

“Have any problems?” Dave asked, keeping his mind on the road.

“It was a breeze,” Christina said. “I can’t understand why I was so scared to sneak out of the house. My parents are unconscious. I mean I could have just walked out the front door instead of climbing out the window.”

They drove down a street lined with dark houses.

“Where are we going?” Christina asked nonchalantly.

“You’ll see,” Dave said. “We’ll be there in a sec.”

They were now cruising past the dark, expansive Green-lawn Cemetery. Christina pressed up against Dave and looked over his shoulder into the graveyard with its stubble of headstones.

Dave slowed the car, and Christina sat bolt upright. “We’re not going in there,” she said defiantly.

Dave smiled in the darkness, exposing his own white teeth. “Why not?” he said. Almost as soon as the words left his mouth he pulled the wheel to the left, and the car bumped over the threshold into the cemetery. Dave quickly doused the headlights and slowed to a speed approximating a slow jog. It was hard to see the road beneath the foliage.

“Oh, my God!” Christina said as her head pivoted and her wide eyes scanned the immediate area on both sides of the car. The headstones loomed eerily in the night. Some of them gave off sudden splinters of ambient light from their highly polished surfaces.

Instinctively Christina moved even closer to Dave’s side, with one hand gripping the inside of his thigh. Dave grinned with satisfied contentment.

They rolled to a stop beside a silent, still pond bordered by droopy willows. Dave turned off the engine and locked the doors. “Can’t be too careful,” he said.

“Maybe we should crack the windows,” Christina suggested. “Otherwise it will be an oven in here.”

Dave took the suggestion but voiced the hope that there wouldn’t be any mosquitoes.

The two teenagers eyed each other for a moment of awkward hesitation. Then Dave tentatively leaned toward Christina, and they gently kissed. The contact instantly fueled the fires of their passion, and they fell into a wild, libidinous embrace. Clumsily they groped for each other’s physical secrets as the windows steamed up.

Despite the power of their youthful, teenage hormones, both Dave and Christina sensed a movement of the car that was not of their making. Simultaneously they glanced up from their endeavors and looked out through the misty windshield. What they saw instantly terrified them. Hurling at them through the night air was a pale white specter. Whatever the preternatural creature was, it collided with a jarring impact against the windshield and then rolled off the passenger side of the car.

“What the hell?” Dave yelled as he frantically struggled with his pants, which had worked their way halfway down his thighs.

Christina then shrieked as she battled to fend off a filthy hand that thrust itself through her cracked window and tore away a handful of her hair.

“Holy crap!” Dave yelled as he gave up on his pants to fight a hand that came in through his side. Fingernails sank into the skin of his neck and ripped off a piece of his T-shirt, leaving rivulets of blood to run down his back.

In a panic Dave started the Camaro. Jamming the car in reverse, he shot backward, bouncing over the rocky terrain. Christina screamed again as her head hit the roof of the car. The car slammed into a headstone that snapped off at its base and thudded to the ground.

Dave threw the car into drive and gunned the engine. He wrestled with the wheel as the powerful engine hurled the car forward. Christina ricocheted off the door and was thrown into Dave’s lap. He pushed her away just in time to miss another marble monument.

Dave snapped on the headlights as they careened around a sharp turn in the road that meandered through the cemetery. Christina recovered enough to start crying.

“Who the hell were they?” Dave shouted.

“There were two of them,” Christina managed through her tears.

They reached the street and Dave turned toward town, laying a patch of rubber on the street. Christina’s crying lessened to whimpering with an occasional sob. Turning the rearview mirror in her direction, she inspected the damage to her hair. “My cut’s been ruined,” she cried.

Dave readjusted the mirror and glanced behind them to be certain no one was following. He wiped his neck with his hand and looked at the blood with disbelief.

“What the devil were they wearing?” Dave asked angrily.

“What difference does it make?” Christina cried.

“They were wearing white clothes or something,” Dave said. “Like a couple of ghosts.”

“We never should have gone there,” Christina bawled. “I knew it from the start.”

“Give me a break,” Dave said. “You didn’t know anything.”

“I did,” she said. “You just didn’t ask me.”

“Bull,” Dave said.

“Whoever they were, they must be sick,” Christina said.

“You’re probably right,” Dave said. “Maybe they’re from Danvers State Hospital. But if they are, how do they get all the way down here to Greenlawn Cemetery?”