Page 75 of Going Home in the Dark

Bobby said, “I wonder if a grizzly bear could get rabies. Or what about an elephant?”

“I wouldn’t want to be locked in a room with them when they were foaming at the mouth,” Ernie declared.

Since Bobby first mentioned the third floor and the comatose people, Spencer had been staring at a plate of pumpkin cookies with chocolate chips, as if he didn’t know what they were andwas trying to puzzle out their purpose. In fact, a series of images were falling together in his mind, and he was converting them into words.

Now he said, “Where do you find comatose people? You find them in a hospital. How many floors does County General have? Three. How do you study a human brain? One way is scan it. Where do you find MRI machines and CAT scanners? In a hospital. County General is connected to the Keppelwhite Institute. Among Keppelwhite companies, some develop pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Then there’s Keppelwhite Neotech. I’m pretty sure Alpha and Beta are terms often used in medical research, including in the names of experiments.”

He looked up. Everyone was staring at him as though he had announced that he was not born on this planet.

“What I think we need to do,” Spencer said, “is I think we need to go to the hospital for a look around.”

“When?” Ernie asked.

“Now,” Spencer said.

“Isn’t that a little rash?”

“We can’t play this game according to Hornfly’s rules, on his—their—timetable. We have to show some initiative.”

“We don’t have to show it tonight,” Rebecca said. “We just had a heavy meal.”

“We’re all bloated and groggy,” Ernie said. “It was flavorful, but it was heavy. I won’t describe dinner. We all know what we ate. But already I feel like a nap.”

“Spencer’s right,” Bobby said. “We have to get our butts in gear. Those who nap die. If we don’t act, I expect Hornfly to kill me, if not necessarily tonight or tomorrow night, then a yearfrom now or twenty-one years from now. We need to find him—them—and destroy him if we can.”

“Well,” said Ernie, “I guess if we’ve got to go to County General and poke around, looking for something weird on the third floor, this is a good time for it. Visiting hours will be over by the time we get there. The staff will probably be smaller on a major holiday, maybe not fewer nurses, but fewer everybody else.”

“If you’re all going,” Rebecca said, “then I’m going even though I’m bloated and gaseous and feel like my face is melting.”

“You still look really good,” Spencer said.

Bobby said, “Not that we pay any attention to how you look.”

“You better not. I’m just one of the guys.”

“What I meant,” said Spencer, “is that for someone bloated and gaseous and as haggard as you are, you look alert and healthy.”

Departing the kitchen to fetch the coats they had been wearing on this nippy November day, Bobby raised an issue that might seem peculiar but only reveals that even then he had a career in mind. “If this were a story instead of just real life, would it be better to break the chapter here or all the way after we find whatever there is to find at the hospital?”

“That’s a weird question,” said Ernie. “Thisisreal life.”

“It’s just a thing I wonder about—how life sometimes goes by in long, slower passages and at other times moves ahead more like a series of shorter, quicker chapters. Wouldn’t it be more fun if life was all shorter, quicker episodes? Or when I’m older, will I want it slow?”

As they shrugged into their coats, Spencer said, “I don’t need to go philosophical. Being a nerd takes all the energy I have.”

43As They Prepare to Visit Pastor Larry, the Amigos Recall a Thanksgiving Horror

Part 2

As the three amigos sat in the Genesis, across the street from Saint Mark’s rectory, they remained as still as mannequins, although only for three minutes. As will soon be discovered, events of that fateful, distant Thanksgiving were being spooled into them in a remarkably condensed fashion by a mind of immense power that was almost beyond human comprehension. In three minutes, they vividly recalled the entire holiday when they were fourteen.

So twenty-one years earlier, the four amigos were all together, bloated and gaseous, on a night of wondrous beauty.

They came out of Spencer’s house into a cold stillness through which the first snow of the season fell in skeins as plumb as rain falls on a windless day. Rebecca marveled at the ermine blanket that softened the hard edges of everything on a horizontal plane. Without wind to paste the flakes to the sides of things, nearly all vertical planes remained dark and dry, in stark contrast to the horizontal planes. When she brought this to the attention of the guys, Rebecca further remarked on the fact that tree bark and other rough vertical surfaces captured and held a small percentage ofthe snow directly proportional to the depth of the texture. Being nerds, they had all noticed this detail, but sharing it aloud filled them with a warm sense of camaraderie.

They could almost believe that, in truth, they were the cool kids in town. They were too honest with themselves to entertain that delusion, and it quickly passed.

The hospital was within walking distance of Spencer’s house. Everything in Maple Grove was within walking distance of everything else. No passing traffic disturbed the stillness; the town seemed deserted. When you strolled by the river in the thrall of such a stillness, the sight of white snow falling upon dark water inspired a sense of peace and produced a whisper almost as quiet as a loving spirit sending you blessings through the veil between the living and the dead. On this occasion, the amigos weren’t walking by the river, but it was out there, waiting for them, if they changed directions.

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