Janie gripped Sarin by the shoulders and shook him. “What do you mean Caroline’s not dead?” Her eyes were wild with disbelief.
Sarin recoiled, frightened by her sudden explosion of anger. He was confused; he’d been certain she would be pleased to hear what he’d told her. He repeated himself, hoping she would not react so violently. “She’s not dead.” His own voice sounded distant to him, as if he had drifted off somewhere. “There’s something I’m supposed to do, but I can’t remember.… I’m so tired.…”
But by then Janie was at Caroline’s bed, with her head pressed against Caroline’s chest.
“There’s a heartbeat!” Janie took Caroline’s nearly black hand in her own and searched the wrist for a pulse. Thin and thready, it was still there, beating on with a determination Janie would not have thought possible in a body so ravaged by disease.
“Mr. Sarin,” Janie cried, “I’m going to need some things. I’ll need some towels, a pan of hot water, strong soap, and a sharp scissors—”
Before she had finished her list, he interrupted her. “They won’t help.”
She stopped short. “What do you mean, they won’t help? I’m a doctor, and I know what I’m talking about—”
He looked straight at her; Janie could see that he was beginning to come out of his haze. She was astonished at how sharp his stare felt as it burned into her.
“There is nothing you can do to save her. That was supposed to be my job, and I was going about it when my dog died.…” He looked down at the animal in his arms, and fresh tears welled up in his eyes.
“I don’t understand …” Janie said.
Sarin set the dog’s body back on the floor and stroked his head one more time. He rose up unsteadily, with Bruce helping him, and began to explain.
“All my life I’ve been preparing for this moment. It’s been foretold for over six hundred years that a day would come when the scourge would rise up from the ground again and attempt to reclaim the world.” He furrowed his brow. “That was why I couldn’t let you take the soil … I knew it would come to this.…”
Visions of that night came swimming into Janie’s head when she and Caroline had surreptitiously dug up a tube of dirt from the field outside. Feelings of dread, the sense that they were being watched, all the memories returned. She thought, Why didn’t I pay more attention?
“Oh, my God … this is all my fault. I knew it …” she moaned.
Sarin bumbled on, trying to make her understand. “Since that time—oh, dear, my mother told me—there’s been someone in this cottage, watching over this field … she was one of them … someone was always making sure the souls of the departed were not disturbed.”
“The departed?” she said. “I don’t understand—what departed?”
“There was to be another time …” he said, “another time … we’ve been waiting for it, and now it’s come … oh, dear.…”
“What do you mean ‘we’? We who?” she asked, stunned by what he was telling her.
Her questions were confusing him. They were coming too fast for him, he couldn’t seem to make his mind work properly anymore. He began to mumble almost incoherently, and he saw with great fear that the woman was growing more agitated.
Then he remembered. The book.
“Wait,” he said, “I think I can show you.…”
He went to the bedroom; she followed. He picked up the crumbling, musty manuscript, and handed it reverently to Janie.
She turned the pages quickly, trying to make sense of the ancient scribblings, prompting him to say, “Take care with it, please. It was given to me by my mother.” He took the book back and gently turned pages until he came to a specific place. “There,” he said. “Look at these.” He handed the book back to her.
As Janie leafed through the brown ancient pages, he told her the story. His voice grew calmer as he spoke and he seemed more sure of himself. “The last one is my mother. And the one before her is her mother, and before that is my grandmother’s mother. And so on back to the time when the vigil first began.”
The last three images were photographs. Every one before that was either a drawing or a painting, some simple and almost childlike, some exquisitely fine in their rendition. And beneath each one was the name “Sarah.” The very last one, in black and white, showed Sarin’s own mother as a young woman. She was shading her eyes from the sun and smiling; she wore a dress from the 1930s and she was holding a small child in her arms—no doubt Robert Sarin himself.
No men at all, except Sarin, Janie thought.
She began to think Sarin could read her thoughts when he said, “Every one of these women, from the very first, has been ready to give her own life to keep the scourge at bay. They have guarded the secrets of the cure for the time when it would be needed. My own mother died a bitter woman. She was desperate for it to be in her time; she never had a daughter, only me.…”
Janie placed a hand on his arm, stopping him. “The secrets of a cure …?”
He seemed disturbed by her interruption; he’d been reciting the explanation, Janie realized. He may not even understand what he’s telling me, she thought.
He took the book from her hands and went to the very beginning. “See?” He pointed at a page. “Once there was a physician. A very long time ago. This was his book. And what he learned from the very first Sarah he used to work a cure. He wrote everything down and it’s been passed on. Yes, every one taught the next how—”
Again she interrupted him. “Then you know how to cure Caroline.”
He acted surprised that she hadn’t known. “Indeed!” he said, his voice growing more excited. “I was about that very business when I discovered the dog. Look here … it’s all in the book!” His tone grew dark and uncertain, and he spoke in the voice of a worried child. “When I found him I knew it had come back and taken him to keep me from attending to my duties, like it was defending itself by distracting me.”
Janie felt her voice tremble as she asked the next question. “Is it too late?”
Sarin’s head dropped in abject humiliation. “I can’t say … I’m so ashamed. It’s all I’ve ever been trained to do, and I fear I may have failed.”
Janie slowly realized that Caroline’s fate lay entirely in the hands of this very simple man, who had apparently never been entirely right, even before his great age had impaired him further. She felt a discomforting mix of sympathy and rage toward this poor soul. She was sad that he’d lived such a limited life, and angry that he had not managed to do the one thing that he seemed to think would give his life meaning and purpose. Be careful with him, she warned herself—Caroline needs him to survive. She said gently, “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself; you haven’t finished trying! You must go back in there!”
“I can’t,” he said. It was still the voice of a child.
What she needed to do became clear to her. She took him firmly by the shoulders and raised herself up to her full height. Calling on painful memories, she summoned up her most commanding, maternal voice and firmly said, “You must. I’m telling you that you must.”
He stared back at the younger woman who had just commanded him to do what he thought he couldn’t, and said, “All right. I’ll try, but it may be too late.”
She grabbed Sarin by the arm and led him firmly back to the room where Bruce was still watching Caroline. “Bruce!” she said, her voice agitated, “Sarin knows a—”
He cut her off with a sharp wave of his hand. “Shhh!” he said. “Look!” He pointed at Caroline.
Her eyes were open. They followed Janie’s movement as she drew closer to the bedside.
“Caroline? Can you hear me?”
“I don’t think she can,” Bruce said. “I’ve been talking to her while you and Sarin were looking at the book, and she hasn’t responded. She seems to be in some kind of trance.”
Janie looked at Sarin. “Do you know what this means?”
Trembling, the old man approached the bedside. “I think it means that we’d better get to work.”