Sukie was sitting up in bed eating a bowl of Cheerios when Nathan and Aarif and Kavita came in to see her. Her face was still flushed but all of the blisters and the scarlet searing had melted away. She looked as if she were suffering from nothing worse than a bad case of sunburn.
Braydon was sitting beside her. He had shaved and showered and changed into a clean blue button-down shirt and he was so delighted that he couldn’t keep still.
‘How are you feeling, Sukie?’ asked Nathan, sitting down on the opposite side of the bed.
Sukie smiled and said, ‘Great, thanks.’
Braydon said, ‘Doctor Berman told me what you did, Professor Underhill.’
‘Well, maybe he shouldn’t have. We used your daughter as a guinea pig and we didn’t ask your permission.’
‘I might have said no,’ Braydon told him. ‘In fact, I probably would have said no. But look at her now. I don’t know how to thank you. I mean, bless you – all of you, from the bottom of my heart.’
Kavita said, ‘You should know that Professor Underhill tested the procedure on himself, before he tried it on your daughter. He deliberately burned his own hand, very badly, but when we injected him with the stem cells from the phoenix, his hand was healed in only twenty-four hours. In fact, in less than that. That was what persuaded us that it was probably safe to go ahead.’
‘So far as I’m concerned, it’s a miracle,’ said Braydon. ‘But I’ve learned something else, too. Every kid needs two parents, their father and their mother, and no matter how much their parents might have grown to hate each other, they need to talk, even if they talk with clenched teeth. A child’s happiness is worth infinitely more than any of that adult-bickering shit.’
He turned around and took hold of Sukie’s hand. ‘Do you know something, sweetheart? You’re more to me than all of the treasure in the world. And look at you now. These people have saved your life. You’ll never have to hide your face or put up with people staring at you like you’re some kind of freak.’
Nathan said, ‘Braydon – is it OK if I ask Sukie a couple of questions about her nightmares?’
Braydon frowned at him. ‘Her nightmares? Why would you want to do that? I mean, why is that relevant, in any way at all?’
‘You want me to be frank with you? You’ve told us that Sukie has been having nightmares for years about these Spooglies, right?’
‘Yes,’ said Braydon, suspiciously. ‘But I don’t understand why you’re asking me this.’
‘I’m asking you, Braydon, because Sukie has been repeatedly having very vivid nightmares ever since she arrived here in the ICU, and because yesterday a young man was killed in my house by something which bore a distinct resemblance to one of her Spooglies.’
‘What? What are you talking about? The Spooglies … they’re just something out of her imagination.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Nathan. ‘I think that they could be real, and that they’re coming to life, and your Sukie can sense them. She can feel them, Braydon, these Spooglies of hers. For some reason, her mind is tuned in to the Spooglies’ wavelength, just like some dogs can hear whistles that are totally inaudible to the rest of us.’
‘Say, what? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’
‘I know it’s difficult to get your head round it. But I have strong reasons to believe that Sukie’s Spooglies are very much like the phoenix I created. Mythical creatures that have been extinct for hundreds of years, but which have now been revived.’
‘Revived? Revived by who? And what the hell for?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ said Nathan. He wasn’t going to tell Braydon about Theodor Zauber and his efforts to turn his gargoyles back into flesh and blood. Not yet, anyhow. It was difficult enough for him to grasp the concept that his daughter’s burns had been healed by a firebird that Nathan and his assistants had recreated from a classical legend.
‘OK …’ said Braydon, with obvious reluctance. ‘But don’t do nothing to upset her. Otherwise, that’s it, I’m pulling the plug.’
Nathan shuffled his chair a little closer to the side of Sukie’s bed. ‘Sukie,’ he said, ‘is it OK if I ask you some questions about the Spooglies? You won’t be upset, will you?’
‘I guess not,’ said Sukie, shyly.
‘When you dream about them, are they always flying in the sky?’
‘Most of the time.’
‘Do you ever see them anyplace else, like in a building, or a house?’
Sukie nodded. ‘I never used to. But I do now. Sometimes, not always.’
‘I see. What kind of a building is it, do you know?’
Sukie shook her head. ‘They’re all down in the cellar. It’s dark down there but I can see their eyes shining. Their eyes are green, like green lights. And I can hear them making a noise like katydids, like chirp-chirp-chirp and shuffle-shuffle-shuffle and sometimes they scream.’
‘Wow. Do you know how many Spooglies there are, down in that cellar? Like twenty, maybe, or thirty?’
‘I can’t see them very well because it’s so dark but more than a hundred I think.’
‘More than a hundred? That’s an awful lot of Spooglies, isn’t it? Do you have any idea where this cellar might be?’
Without hesitation, Sukie pointed to the right-hand corner of her room, next to the door. ‘They’re over there.’
‘What do you mean, sweetheart?’ Braydon asked her. ‘Do you mean they’re here, someplace in the hospital?’
‘Uhnh-hunh. They’re over there, but a long way away.’
‘How do you know that, Sukie?’ Nathan asked her.
‘Because that’s where they are. I can feel them. I can hear them. They’re over there and they’re waiting to fly. They want to fly now but they’re not allowed to, not yet, and that’s why they’re going chirp-chirp-chirp and shuffle-shuffle-shuffle and screaming.’
‘Do you know why they’re not allowed to? Is somebody telling them that they can’t?’
‘I don’t know. It’s too scary. When they fly it’s going to be horrible and people are going to get torn to bits and pieces.’
Sukie was gradually growing more and more distressed. She was twisting her blanket in both hands and Braydon took her cereal bowl away in case she jolted her bed-table and spilled it.
‘When they fly there’s going to be hundreds of them and nobody will be able to get away and they’ll be everywhere! And they’ll be screaming, and so will we! And there’s going to be bits and pieces of people all over, like arms and legs and bodies and heads!’
Sukie was panting now, and her voice rose higher and higher. Braydon said sharply, ‘That’s enough, sweetheart! That’s it! No more talking about Spooglies, OK? They’re only a bad dream, that’s all.’
‘But, Daddy, they’re not!’ Sukie protested, and her eyes filled up with tears. ‘They’re real! The Spooglies are real, and they’re over there! I know they are! I can feel them! I can hear them!’
Nathan laid his hand on Sukie’s arm and said, ‘It’s OK, Sukie. I’m sorry if I upset you. You’ve been very, very helpful. If the Spooglies are real, I can tell you this: my friends and I will find out where they are and make sure that they never ever get to fly, and never hurt anybody. And we’re also going to make sure that you never have nightmares about them, ever again.’
Sukie sniffed, and nodded. Braydon held her close to him and said to Nathan, ‘Maybe you and your people had better leave now. Don’t think that I’m not grateful for what you’ve done, because I am. But all this stuff about Spooglies …’
‘I understand,’ Nathan told him. ‘But I’d like you to know that Sukie may have saved some lives here today. Not just two or three lives, but maybe hundreds.’
‘Please,’ said Braydon. ‘Just go.’
*
Outside the hospital, Aarif said, ‘You believed her, that little girl? You believe that the gargoyles are really there, in some cellar, in the direction in which she was pointing?’
‘ Yes,’ said Nathan, ‘I do.’
‘But what is the use of knowing the direction if we do not know how far it is, this cellar? She was pointing – what – to the south-west. She could have been pointing to the next street, or she could have been pointing toward Maryland, or West Virginia, or even further. How can we tell?’
‘That’s a problem I’ll have to work on,’ said Nathan. ‘Meanwhile, why don’t you two go back to the lab and check up on Torchy? I need to get home and sort out my house.’
Kavita said, ‘I am so sorry about what happened to Denver’s friend. Do you really think it was a gargoyle that killed him?’
‘I’m sure of it. Theodor Zauber is trying to frighten me into working with him, and I have to admit that he’s not far away from succeeding. That’s why I want to try and find where he’s stored all of the gargoyles he bought from the Eastern State Penitentiary.’
‘What will you do, if you can find them?’
‘What do you think? Smash them to pieces, before they smash us to pieces.’