Ambrose opened his eyes. For a moment, he couldn’t remember where he was. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he had. Several times. Why the hell was he sleeping so much? Of course, he was used to taking catnaps. That was normal for a man his age. But this Rip Van Winkle shit was ridiculous. The last thing he remembered was sleeping all the way through the Christmas Pageant. He woke up a few hours later for dinner. But when he arrived in the dining room, nobody was there. The clock read 2:17 a.m. And somehow, the calendar on the wall had one additional X taking away an entire day.
Ambrose had slept for thirty-six hours.
“Good morning, Mr. Olson,” the voice said. “Welcome back from the dead.”
Ambrose turned to find the night nurse adding another X to the calendar.
Make that sixty.
“Good morning,” he said. “I seemed to have missed dinner.”
“And breakfast. And lunch. And dinner again,” she joked. “No worry. We put a mirror under your nose to make sure. I’ll fix you a plate. Why don’t you get warm in the parlor?”
The nurse fixed him a bowl of leftover beef stew and brought it to him in his favorite chair in front of the parlor TV, all the while chatting away with the Shady Pines gossip, starting with the Christmas Pageant. It seems Ambrose missed quite a show. In addition to the usual favorites of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” this year’s pageant must have been sponsored by a new children’s division of the WWE. There was an epic brawl that ended with Kate Reese’s son being attacked by Mrs. Keizer. The boy’s nose bled really badly, and his mother took him to the hospital, but that wasn’t the half of it.
“What happened next?” he asked.
“Mrs. Keizer…she stopped forgetting,” she said in her broken English.
“What do you mean?”
“She no have Alzheimer’s anymore. It is a Christmas miracle.”
Or was it?
He ignored the thought and the wind outside as he opened his brother’s diary.
We dissected frogs in school today. I put my hand on the frog and I felt that strange itchy feeling again. The teacher said the frog must have only been sleeping because it woke up right there on the table. I pretended that was true, but when I left the tree house yesterday, I saw a bird on the trail going back home. It was dead on the ground. It had a broken wing and a snake was eating it. I chased the snake away and picked up the bird. I closed my eyes and had that itchy feeling from the imaginary side. I brought the bird back to life. It made my nose bleed real bad. It terrified me. Because I know the power on the imaginary side equals pain on the real side. You can’t have one without the other. So, the more things I make live, the more I am going to die. So, when my nose bleeds, it’s the world’s blood.
A chill ran down Ambrose’s spine. He thought of the nurse’s story of Christopher’s nose bleeding after he touched Mrs. Keizer just like David’s nose bled after he touched the dead bird. Ambrose made a mental note to call Mrs. Reese in the morning, then went back to the diary. But he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He felt like he was being drugged. As if something didn’t want him to read. It reminded him of the time his buddies threw a pill into his whiskey and laughed when he threw off his clothes and stole a jeep. That time, he woke up to the sergeant’s wrath and a month of KP duty.
This time, he woke up to terror.
Ambrose heard a noise outside. The beef stew was cold and uneaten in front of him. An hour had passed. The TV was still on and turned to the local news. Talking about the flu epidemic and the rise in violent crime. He looked out through the window and saw deer running down the road. He took a quick breath. Something was here. Something evil. He turned his magnifying glass around and adjusted his bifocals. His eyes were dry and tired, but he had to decipher David’s handwriting. He had to get to the truth.
The soldier is worried about me. I am pushing myself too hard. I am bleeding too much. He says that people on the real side aren’t supposed to have this much power, so I need to slow down. But I can’t. I was walking into school, and I touched Mrs. Henderson’s arm. My brain cooked, and my nose bled. I knew everything about her in 2 seconds. But it was more than the things that happened to her. I knew the things she was going to do someday. I knew she would stab her husband. I could see it over and over again. They were older people, and they were in the kitchen, and the hissing lady made her grab the knife and stab him in the throat. I screamed, and Mrs. Henderson asked what was wrong. I lied because if I told her the truth, she would have put me in a nut house.
Ambrose stopped reading. He knew that name. Henderson. He couldn’t place it. Where did he know the name Henderson? It took him a moment to finally turn to the television, where Sally Wiggins read the local news.
“…the ongoing investigation of Mrs. Beatrice Henderson, who stabbed her husband in the kitchen. She worked at Mill Grove Elementary School as a librarian…”
The hair rose on the old man’s arms. Ambrose turned quickly. He thought he felt someone watching him. But the parlor was empty. He turned back around. He turned the page. The voice was trying to lull him to sleep again. He fought it off and read.
I couldn’t sleep last night because my mind works too hard. I was so restless, I got up and started reading the encyclopedia. I started with the A volume at 10:30 p.m. By 5:30 the next morning, I finished Z. The scariest part was knowing the mistakes the men who wrote the encyclopedia made. It’s funny when people don’t realize knowledge does not end in a particular year. People thought the sun revolved around the earth and that the earth was flat. There was a time before Jesus that people thought Zeus was God. Men were killed for thinking otherwise. They didn’t know the hissing lady was there making them afraid of new knowledge. They didn’t know that she’s always been there making them hate other people for trivial things.
“…sad news out of the Middle East tonight as four Christian missionaries were attacked trying to deliver much-needed food and supplies to the refugees…”
The nose bleeds will not stop. My mother keeps taking me to doctors, but none of them know what’s wrong with me. The soldier and I are trying to figure out a way to tell Ambrose the truth that will make him believe me. I need his help. I need him to fight her if I fail. But he never believes me. He thinks I am talking to myself when I am talking to the soldier. He thinks I am insane.
Ambrose took off his glasses and rubbed his burning eyes. He suddenly felt sleepy, but he slapped himself across the face like he did in the army during guard duty. Nothing was going to stop him from reading this. He felt as if the world depended on it.
I don’t really know where I am anymore. I don’t know what’s real or what’s imaginary, but we can’t wait any longer. The hissing lady is everywhere disguised as the flu. We have to complete the training now before she takes over the tree house. I asked the soldier why the hissing lady wanted it so much, and he explained what it is doing to me. The power that she wants for herself. It was so simple. It explained everything I was going through. I wanted to tell Ambrose what was really happening to me, but I couldn’t have him call me crazy again. So, I waited until he was asleep, and I got into bed with him. I whispered really quietly in his ear just in case the hissing lady was listening.
“Ambrose. I have to tell you something.”
“What?” he said asleep.
“I have to tell you what the tree house does.”
“Fine. Go ahead,” he said in his sleep. “What does the tree house do?”
Ambrose turned the page.
And that’s when it happened.
At first, he didn’t understand. The pages were so blurry that they looked almost grey. He squinted his eyes harder, but there were no more shapes. No more outlines to the letters. He held the magnifying glass up to his eyes. It changed nothing. He took away his bifocals. Nothing again.
He had finally gone blind.
“NURSE!” he yelled out.
Ambrose heard the floor creak near him. Little tiny baby steps. There was only silence. He thought he heard breathing near his ears. He didn’t know what it was, but he could feel it. Something was in here. A little whisper that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
“Who is that?” he said.
There was no response. Only silence. Ambrose called out to the nurse again, and he finally heard her walking down the hallway from the kitchen. He was going to ask her to read the next line.
Until she started coughing with the flu.
“You okay, Mr. Olson?” the nurse asked calmly in her broken English.
There was something in her voice. Something wrong. If Mrs. Reese were working tonight, he knew he could trust her with the diary. But her son Christopher was in the hospital after he touched Mrs. Keizer and his nose bled…
Just like David.
Ambrose knew he needed to get to Kate Reese. He needed to get to the sheriff. Whatever was happening back then was happening right now. And his brother’s diary might be the only clue as to how to stop it.
“You okay, Mr. Olson?” the nurse asked again suspiciously.
The old man held the diary in his arms like his high school coach taught him to hold a football.
As if your life depended on it, boy.
The old man folded his brother’s diary in his lap and did his best to put on a casual voice.
“I need you to take me to the hospital,” he said.
“Why, sir?” she asked.
“Because the clouds have taken my eyes.”