Page 37 of Whispers in the Dark
Alex hesitated only briefly, watching Charlotte press a trembling hand to her lips. Her other hand securely wrapped around the grip of a Glock 42.
“Charlotte, move,” he urged.
As they burst onto the back porch, both of them skidded to a halt. Noah and Ethan stood on either side of the shell of a man crumpled against the steps as if he had simply collapsed there. He wore a sweatsuit, clean but old, hanging off his gaunt frame like rags. His hands, skeletal and trembling, clutched at his chest with weak, jerky motions. His wrists showed scarring and bloody ligature marks. His skin was ghostly pale, almost translucent, and his lips were tinged an alarming shade of blue. Each breath he took was a shallow, rattling gasp.
Charlotte swallowed hard. “Jesus Christ…”
Ethan covered him in his coat. “I called for an ambulance.”
Alex crouched beside the man, feeling for a pulse at his throat. It was there but faint, weak. “He’s hypothermic. He won’t last long in this cold.”
The man’s eyelids fluttered, a faint moan escaping his cracked lips. He tried to say something, but the words barely formed.
Charlotte leaned in, brushing damp, matted strands of gray hair from his forehead. “Sir, can you hear me? What’s your name?”
His lips parted, but only a ragged exhale came out. His eyes, bloodshot and glassy, locked onto Charlotte’s for a fleeting second before rolling back.
Alex tried again, “Can you tell me your name?” His mind raced. Who the hell is he? How did he end up here—alone, freezing to death on Charlotte’s porch?
Charlotte exhaled shakily. “Oh, dear God.” She pulled the picture attached to his chest free. “Henry, is that you? It’s Charlotte Everhart.”
The man’s eyes fluttered under the closed lids. A guttural “Char…” fell from his lips.
Alex glanced at her, his jaw tightening.
A wailof sirens split the frozen night air. Flashing red and blue lights bounced off the porch columns as the ambulance skidded to a halt. Charlotte barely registered the crunch of boots on ice as two paramedics rushed up the back steps, medical bags in hand. Everything felt distant, yet crushingly real—too much to process all at once. The man, if he was the man in the photo, Henry, lay crumpled at her feet, barely clinging to life, his ragged breaths weakening by the second.
Alex stepped back as one of the medics, a woman with a tight blonde ponytail, crouched beside the man and pressed two fingers against his throat. “Pulse is thready,” she confirmed, voice crisp with urgency. “Severe hypothermia. Let’s move.”
Her partner, a heavyset man with graying stubble, unzipped a thermal blanket and wrapped it around the man’s frail body. “Sir, can you hear me?” he called, peeling back an eyelid with his gloved fingers. The man didn’t respond. “GCS is 4. He needs warmed IV fluids and oxygen—now.”
Charlotte swallowed, stepping back as they worked, the world blurring around her. Ethan hovered nearby, jaw tight, while Noah murmured something into his phone. The ambulance doors swung open with a metallic clang, and the paramedics lifted the man onto a stretcher, strapping him in with swift efficiency.
“We’re going with him,” Alex said, his voice brooking no argument as he climbed in. Charlotte followed. She wasn’t leaving Henry alone. Not again.
The doors slammed shut, and the ambulance lurched forward. The rhythmic, slow beeping of the monitor filled the small space, each beep a reminder of how close they were to losing him. The paramedic—Amy, her name tag read—adjusted the oxygen mask over Henry’s face while her partner, Jeff, struggled to insert an IV into the pale skin of his arm. A bag of warm saline hung from a hook, the tubing snaking down to his vein.
“BP’s crashing,” Jeff muttered, adjusting the flow. “Let’s get him on heated high-flow oxygen. I’m trying to get a second line.” He worked on the other arm. He opened the patient’s clenched hand. “What’s this?” He found a note.
Charlotte took the note as the medic said, “We’re doing what we can, but he’s critical. This is bad.”
She already knew that. But hearing it aloud twisted something deep in her chest. Charlotte’s gaze flicked to Alex, whose hands were clenched into fists. He knew it too.
Then she read the note:
We knew you didn’t forget. They hid him well.
She already felt guilty. The note did its job. Alex took it from her tight grip and reached for Charlotte’s hand. “Who is he?”
“He was a young corporal in the Waverly County PD. He was promoted the same day I made detective. He went missing in 1993, about a year before Ward. He disappeared from his home. No signs of a struggle. All his belongings were present, his oatmeal breakfast on the table.” She took a shuddering breath. “Alex, he looks like one of Ward’s zombies. Where has he been for over thirty years?”
The moment the ambulance screeched to a stop, the doors flew open. A team of doctors and nurses in blue scrubs flooded toward them.
“Fifties male, severe hypothermia, non-responsive,” Amy rattled off as they transferred him to a hospital gurney. “Core temp’s in the low eighties; BP’s unstable. We started warm fluids and O2 en route. We couldn’t get a second line.”
Charlotte barely registered the hospital’s fluorescent glare or the antiseptic tang of disinfectant as they wheeled him down the hall. Then she saw Paul Kaldor, Noah’s brother and the emergency medicine attending, step into their path.
His sharp gaze flicked over the patient, already assessing. “Get him on the Bair Hugger and push warmed saline. I need a central line kit, now. Full trauma panel, Foley with warm saline, NG tube with warm saline. Let’s get his temp up before his organs start shutting down for good.” He barked orders with practiced precision, barely glancing at Charlotte and Alex. “What the hell happened?”
