Now
MADDY DIDN’T WANT to let on how tired she was.
Maybe her parents had been right about one thing. Too much too soon. And the recent run of emotional events since leaving Charleston four days ago had only exacerbated things. Since her last memory dump inside the Atlanta hotel, she’d been going nonstop. She’d slept little. Eaten little. Hydrated little. Her body felt weak. And now, after running through half the list of coma patients, she was exhausted.
Turned out Archie was a wizard at tracking people, citing decades of experience researching as a history professor. Gideon had jokingly asked if he was a professional stalker. Archie hadn’t laughed. Maddy got the vibe Gideon and his father were tolerating each other just because the situation called for cooperation—and Archie Dupree had delivered.
Maddy and Archie and Gideon had gathered around the kitchen island to work.
Archie researched the names, cross-referenced events, one depressing newspaper story after another, until he’d begun to compile and narrow down and pinpoint. One by one, with Archie’s fingers click-clacking across the laptop he’d brought with him into the kitchen, he called out the cities and states and countries in which their subjects most likely lived. From cities all over the country. All over the world. One from Ireland. One from Spain. One from Mexico. Another from Italy. The rest were from right here in the States, although very few of them were within a hundred miles of Harrod’s Reach, which prompted Maddy to say, “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”
But their hunch had proven correct. They’d assumed the names were coma patients, and it turned out that every one of them was. Or had been. Out of the list of fourteen names they’d compiled, two had died suddenly in their hospital beds within the past month. One mother she’d spoken to believed someone had entered the Shreveport, Louisiana, hospital and killed her boy as he lay in bed, because he’d showed no signs of a decline. Maddy had taken that one and, politely as she could, offered condolences and eased out of the phone call, knowing nothing else to say but I’m sorry, I’m so sorry … But unless she had another memory dump, or unless Jax suddenly recalled the names he’d previously been unable to remember or write down, they were left with this list of twelve.
Eight if you left out the four from foreign countries.
And of those eight, Maddy had spoken to four, either family members or caregivers for their subjects. Gideon had spoken to three. The eighth, Helen Gathers, from Seattle, they were unable to get hold of.
She and Gideon had given the families their best pitch, with the video of Sully and Amy gripping hands being their main hook. Leaving out the urgency of why they needed these patients together—because truthfully, they didn’t yet know—they stuck to the shock factor of not only their two subjects showing life, but Maddy herself fully coming out of her coma. And while six of the seven they’d contacted were emotionally moved by the video they’d seen of Sully and Amy, the calls were awkward, full of confusion and lack of trust. Not like the cathartic moment she’d had with Tammy and Amy Shimp inside their Tulsa home. But, as she’d told Gideon and Archie before they’d begun, All we need is one.
And the one they got. A fifteen-year-old girl named Lauren Betts from Springfield, Missouri, who’d been comatose for eight months after a car wreck on the way to a high school basketball game. Lauren’s mom had been skeptical at first, even angered, until Gideon had sent the video. Mrs. Betts watched the video, started crying, and hung up without any response. Fearing he’d lost her, Gideon had been about to strike her name off the list when his cell phone rang, and it was her calling back, composed now, and asking for their address. They were gathering what they needed to transport their daughter so they could leave right away.
Gideon ended the call and hugged Maddy. Maybe this wasn’t the right time to feel a charge from the touch of another human being, but it was there even after Gideon let go, and she hoped like hell she wasn’t blushing.
“Hot damn.” Archie Dupree closed his laptop with a pop and patted Gideon on the shoulder. “One out of fourteen isn’t bad.”
As odds went, Maddy thought, it was horrible, but with what they were asking of these strangers, one out of fourteen was a good start. And if one showed up and something else happened here to give credence to their cause, then they’d have more to double back and show the others some mounting evidence. Maddy wasn’t about to say it now and break the sudden upbeat mood in the kitchen, but they needed more than three. She couldn’t recall everything from when she’d been there—Lalaland, yes, that’s what it had been called—but she knew enough to justify the feelings of anxiety and dread she’d carried since awakening from her coma a month ago.
This was real. It was bad. And something was coming.
Even though she’d yet to see this Harrod’s Reach tunnel, she’d learned enough from Gideon over the past hour to know that whatever was coming through there was from Lalaland. Because that’s what Lalaland was, the land of colorful deception, the land of wrong, the land of make-believe, the land where if you could think it, you could make it so, the land of Mr.…
Maddy went light-headed.
She braced herself against the island and tried to play it off like she was closing her eyes for a moment of rest. Right before she’d closed her eyes, she’d seen the warm look on Gideon’s face when his father patted his shoulder. She could tell that simple show of physical affection was not commonplace, and perhaps not so simple. Like Gideon had been waiting years for that pat on the shoulder, and here she was breaking up the moment with a dizzy spell. Not a memory dump like she’d had in Atlanta, but something. Crumbs, residue, more names … Not names like the ones she’d written down in Atlanta, but names that were horrifying.
Mr. Dreams …
The Nightmare Man …
Right before blacking out, she verbalized the one that struck the most fear in her: “Mr. Lullaby …”