Opal had left her body. She knew on one level of her consciousness that she was in her bed at home. That someone, Adam, knocked on her door. She heard him call to her. She wanted to respond. She tried to speak but could not. She hovered somewhere between waking and sleep. This wasn’t a dream. It reminded her of the days she spent in the hospital after the Pie Stop shooting; wandering through a hall of mirrors that her doctors called a coma. She tried to sit up.
Fear overcame her as she realized she could not move.
She was paralyzed.
She pushed again.
In the next instant, she was out, standing up, and looking at herself lying in the bed. She’d slipped free from her body. But not completely: A long smoky rope anchored her to her physical self in the bed. As she moved away, the cord stretched. No vision had been this powerful; no hallucination, if that’s what they were, this lucid. Fascination took over from fear. She was warm, comfortable, and safe. Fler mind was keen. Her senses dialed in, acute and attuned.
She was naked, too.
Her spirit skin looked very pale. Ginger hairs tufted between her legs.
She sensed Wyatt. Saw him in stark relief as he trudged along
the side of the road on his return from the Totem Lodge. He didn’t know she was watching.
She wanted to go to him.
He walked on.
She was no longer in her bedroom. She had the slightest notion of passing through the bedroom. But she encountered no resistance. She glided into another place. Fast, very fast. The sensation of a distance being crossed.
Whiteness surrounded her.
Whiteness? White? Whiteside? Yes, that was the word flashing bold in her brain. What was it? A name? She’d never heard of anywhere around American Rapids called Whiteside. Though she had the distinct impression that was where she was heading. The vision pulled her to Whiteside.
Where was Whiteside?
Through a bleach fog she traveled. Before her, abruptly, was a doorway. She recognized the paint, the color and the surrounding frame, the bricks on either side. It was one of the Rendezvous room doors, but it had no number. Her ears popped as she opened it. Snow-covered hills came into view. Evergreens. She smelled their perfume. Leaning past the threshold, she gazed side to side.
It resembles Minnesota, she thought. She didn’t recognize any landmarks.
A rural area.
Forest. White brilliance of ice and snow. The northern country held beautifully in the deathgrip of winter. She’d traveled miles from her bed in no time. But this place wasn’t the other side of the world. It felt familiar, close-by.
Opal entered. Glided—she couldn’t call this walking—toward a dense copse of trees. Jagged branches reached for her. She wove through them.
The trees parted.
She saw a dilapidated trailer.
And an ambulance that looked like it had driven straight out of the 1970s.
Was this a memory?
Did her vision show her the past?
She melted through the side of the trailer as easily as she had the wall of her house. Her feet touched the floor. Suddenly, she could feel her weight again.
She was naked in the trailer .. . but this was a hospital room.
The antiseptic smells of rubbing alcohol and bandages. Quietness filled with anticipation. Someone had taken great efforts to build a two-bed hospital room inside the trailer. She looked around for a gown or something to cover herself. Because before her were a pair of men—one a patient, and the other she guessed was a medical attendant or male nurse. He wore a white lab coat. The nurse inserted an IV needle into the patient’s arm. She could see the legs of a third person under the sheet tucked into the foot of the second bed.
The nurse partially blocked her view.
Whoever occupied that second bed was large.
Opal kept an arm shielding her bare breasts. She attempted to maneuver around a cart to conceal the lower half of her body. The cart was too near the wall. Using her free hand, she pushed it forward to make more space. The cart’s wheel caught on an unused IV pole. The pole came crashing to the floor. The nurse spun around, raising his hands in a defensive posture. The male patient turned his head right at her. Nowhere to hide. She scrambled to think of what she could possibly say to explain her presence.
She didn’t need to say a word.
The nurse came up to Opal. He was taller than Wyatt, six-four at least. His breath tickled her. He gazed over the crown of her head. She was about to say something when he turned away.
He bent and set the pole back on its pronged feet. His eyes narrowed. He looked around at the baseboard behind her, and then scanned underneath the cart. Frowning, he slid the cart against the wall and went back to his patient.
He couldn’t see her!
The nurse leaned over the bed, checking the needle in the man’s
arm. He taped it. He put the ends of his stethoscope in his ears and listened to the patient’s heart. Checked his blood pressure. Satisfied with his readings, he pressed a button on the bedrail. The head of the bed lowered to a prone position.
Opal had a clear view of the other bed and its occupant.
Something was wrong.
Blurred.
Like Vaseline smeared on a pane of glass.
She saw the bed and the apparatus framing it. The taut sheet at the foot of the bed was clear to her as well. But midway up the mattress, her vision failed. She had a sense of shape. Of mounting size, immensity. And movement: a vague undulation, a squirming beneath the sheet. As if a great deal of pain afflicted the person reclined there.
Or was it someone struggling against restraints?
Opal smelled an awful odor.
Like low tide. Dead fish on a sundrenched windless day. Rot.
She covered her nose and mouth with her hands. She stifled a cough.
The odor worsened: roadkill, backed-up toilets, sulfurous spoiled eggs.
Her eyes watered; an almost chemical burning scoured her throat. Viscid, greasy film condensed out of the air, coating her skin. She rubbed two fingers together—it felt like handling a used garbage bag.
She couldn’t take any more. She stepped toward the blue privacy curtain that separated the interior from the trailer’s door.
The blur moved with her.
How could that be?
She stepped back.
Left, then right. Never taking her sight off the ill-defined bed.
The blur slid along like a movable screen; always maintaining a barrier between her line of vision and the second bed’s occupant.
“What are you afraid of?”
Opal jumped.
The occupant, a third man, had spoken to her.
He whispered in a voice very old. Something impeded his speech. The words were not fully formed. Perhaps he’d suffered a stroke, or had no teeth. He might be wearing an oxygen mask.
Opal considered the possibility that her hearing, like her vision, might also be impaired. Either way, she didn’t respond to his question. She couldn’t. Her words died before they left her lips. Briefly, she wondered if she’d heard him correctly. Perhaps he was talking to the first patient and not. . .
“I asked you a question, Opal Larkin. What are you afraid of?”
He could see her.
He knew who she was.
How could he penetrate the optical mantle when she couldn’t?
“Wondering how I can see you? And you can’t see me?”
He read her thoughts.
While she contemplated this new form of nakedness, a battery of sounds assaulted her ears. First, gases erupted. She didn’t laugh. Next, huge quantities of something dry and grainy —was that sand ?—audibly slipped off the bedside and piled onto the floor.
“See, I’ve had lots and lots of practice,” he wheezed. His throat crackled and he moaned with pleasure. “And you ... have a lovely body.”
Opal reached for the curtain. But it was too far away. She didn’t want to turn around. Didn’t want to look away from the bed, either. She backed up.
The scene remained as it had been: a hospital room with two beds, two patients, and a nurse. The blur floated over the second patient’s features like a pixilated balloon. No further form emerged.
The nurse tended to his business. He crossed Opal’s field of vision. His figure continued to be in perfect focus. The blur emerged from either side of his body as he stepped in front of it. He tore the sterile packaging of a fresh IV needle; tossed the empty wrapper on the sheet. He thrust his arms into the blur. His lab coat sleeves transformed into milky bars of white.
White. White.
The sounds continued. They repeated, following their exact sequence and duration, as if they were being played on a loop. The questions replayed as well.
“What are you afraid off”
“I asked you a question, Opal Larkin. What are you afraid off”
“Wondering how I can see youf And you can’t see mef”
“See, I’ve had lots and lots of practice. And you . .. have a lovely body.”
Opal stood her ground. She waited for the cycle to begin again.
“What are you afraid off”
“Are you Whiteside?” she asked.
The noises stopped.
Silence.
The tableau changed. A leap of seconds into the future—now the nurse stood with his spine rigid, shoulders pressed flush to a wall. He held a black German pistol. The first patient, who she noticed wore dark goggles, stood beside his nurse, leaning on his shoulder for support. There was a problem. The patient with the goggles had ripped the needle from his arm. Blood dripped on the floor, staining his gown. It trailed over to where he slouched, pooling at his feet. Both men’s gazes ricocheted back and forth inside the trailer. They were pallid, breathing open-mouthed, sweating. Expressions of fright contorted their faces.
The blur had disappeared.
Fled, it seemed.
The other patient lay entirely under his sheet.
Opal had been wrong about his size. He wasn’t fat. In fact, the body outlined under the sheet appeared well formed and athletic. Opal watched and counted to sixty. Her confidence was building with each second. The body’s chest did not rise and fall. To be sure, she counted off another minute.
Not a stir.
The confrontation was a victory.
Whoever Whiteside was, calling him out had been sufficient
ill
enough to scare him off. Even in the psychic world, bullies were all talk.
Opal never let herself be bullied.
She’d rather take her chances, stand her ground, and fight.
The body didn’t scare her.
She was glad she’d spoken up. She relaxed. None of these visionary experiences were really real. Were they? She could use them as a type of exercise. To improve herself, and the lives of those around her. If the bullet in her brain gave her these experiences, then why waste them? Her visions might lead her in more positive, self-affirming directions. They gave her inner strength. A depth of understanding denied most of humanity. She should feel proud to have them. They were part of a special talent. She’d never shied away from being a unique individual. She wouldn’t do it now.
The body.
She couldn’t help her curiosity. She needed to see him. The sense of an impending threat had passed. No vision had ever hurt her. Not physically, not permanently. The intensity of a moment ago dissipated. The evil old man’s voyeuristic advantage over her was gone. Opal felt the safety and warmth she’d experienced earlier. She saw the cord that attached to her body, threaded securely through the trailer’s outer shell.
She went to the bed.
She grabbed a top corner of the sheet and pulled it back.
No.
Opal’s knees buckled.
It was her son. It was Adam. He was gaunt. The life drained out of him. His flesh was waxy and cold when she touched his cheek. His eyes fixed on an approaching terror only he could see. Jaws locked open, howling silently.
Adam was dead.
Opal fell backward into oblivion.