December's Thorn Read online

“Are you sure you want to sit right there?” I asked her. “It’s going to spark and pop a bit. Sometimes the embers fly out.”

  “You don’t have a fireplace screen?” She was staring into the fire as if willing it to get hotter faster.

  “No.” I went into the kitchen. “I’m calling the sheriff’s office. This is something he’ll have to take a little more seriously.”

  “Yes” was all she said.

  I dialed. The phone rang. Skidmore answered.

  “All right, look,” I began, “a ten-year-old boy shot out my kitchen window and then threatened to kill my visitor, Dr. Nelson.”

  “Fever?” he said.

  “You have to come out here and see,” I demanded. “I have no kitchen window!”

  “Somebody shot out your whole kitchen window?”

  “No, okay, he shot out one of the panes, but the second bullet busted some of the tiles over the sink. And Dr. Nelson is in mild shock.”

  “Very mild!” she hollered from the living room.

  “Is that Ceri?” His voice betrayed genuine affection. I could actually hear that he was smiling.

  “You know her?” I asked, not bothering to hide my surprise.

  “Dr. Nelson has helped me several times over the years, Fever,” he told me, as if it were something I should have known. “She’s famous. She’s been on television. Don’t you think she looks a little like the young Emmylou Harris?”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “You can’t be serious,” he said loudly.

  “What has she helped you with?” I asked very deliberately.

  “Well, most recently she came to talk to us all about what was happening to you when you were in the coma,” he said very directly. “Before that she helped us figure out some things about Truevine Deveroe, or, Truevine Carter now.”

  Truevine had been a shy young woman who’d lived in the more remote reaches of our community with a pack of wild brothers. Because she’d been strange, and beautiful, she’d been tormented by bullies of both genders—labeled a witch. Of course, it had been mostly teasing, but Truevine did have abilities that had been difficult to explain. She was now happily married to Able Carter and living in Athens, Georgia, with a baby daughter.

  “What about Truevine?” I asked.

  “I took her to the Rhine Center in Durham,” Dr. Nelson answered. “Don’t ask him anything more about her. Tell him about the boy with the gun!”

  “Yes,” I said instantly, “there was a boy with a gun. Dr. Nelson saw him. I’m definitely not imagining this.”

  “Damn, Fever,” Skidmore said, laughing, “you’re a pestilence. Every time I turn around, somebody wants to shoot you.”

  “Actually,” I snapped, “I think the kid was trying to kill Dr. Nelson. He seems to think that she’s my new girlfriend.”

  “Who was he?” Skidmore was instantly more serious.

  “Wait,” I objected, “when it’s me that’s getting shot, it’s a joke, but when it’s Dr. Nelson…”

  “Fever,” he interrupted, “did you know the boy?”

  “No.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He ran away. I chased him and he ran away but he threatened to come back and shoot Dr. Nelson in the head.”

  There was a silent pause.

  “You chased after some crazy boy who had a rifle?” Skidmore asked slowly.

  “Yes.”

  “Lord.” Skid sighed. “How was he dressed?”

  “White,” I answered, “like a snow-season hunting getup.”

  “Any other description?”

  “I couldn’t see much. The snow was really blinding. I couldn’t tell hair color or anything, but I’d judge him to be between ten and twelve years old.”

  “Are you all right?” he said, the sound of his voice sweetening.

  “I’m never going to match these tiles in the kitchen. They’ve been here since before the Flood.”

  “Yes,” he said, “that’s your biggest problem.”

  “My biggest problem is that a strange woman came into my home last night and no one will believe that it happened,” I shot back. “Second, there’s a psychiatrist in my house, shivering in my living room, who’s going to catch on fire if she doesn’t move away from the front of the fireplace. Third, I have to get something to cover the broken part of my kitchen window because it’s cold in here already. Fourth…”

  “Stop,” he said. “Just what does Dr. Nelson have to say about the woman you saw last night?”

  “Why do you want to know that?” I asked him.

  “Fever.” His voice was strained.

  I lowered the receiver. “Dr. Nelson? The sheriff wants to know if I’m crazy or not.”

  “Jury’s still out,” she called affably.

  “You heard?” I asked Skidmore. “So if the woman was here last night, then she and the boy today might be connected.”

  “I doubt it,” he said, “but I am currently not ruling out any possibility.”

  “Well.” I heaved a sigh. “That’s a start.”

  “I’ll be right over. You need me to bring something to cover the window?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  “Right.” He hung up.

  “You took Truevine Deveroe to the Rhine Center?” I asked Dr. Nelson, hanging up my phone and heading back into the living room.

  “Not going to talk about that,” she insisted.

  “My parents took me there when I was little,” I told her, sitting down on the sofa.

  The fire had increased nicely, and was very hot. I still feared that my guest would catch fire, but she seemed content.

  She turned to look at me. “You went there when it was still called the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man. I already know this.”

  “Yes, it was still in that dilapidated old building,” I continued, pretending not to care that she knew about my past, “on Buchanan Avenue.”

  She locked eyes with me. Her face was red from the heat. “Have you seen the new facility on Campus Walk?”

  “No,” I told her.

  She turned back around. “You know the new place was the first building in the world built expressly for parapsychological research.”

  “Yes.” I looked into her eyes.

  “Why do you think your parents took you there?” she asked softly. “To the old building, I mean.”

  “They were afraid of me.”

  She turned back around and stared even more deeply into the fire. “They weren’t afraid of you,” she said gently, “they were afraid of the things you saw, the things you could do.”

  “They were afraid that they might have been responsible for my strangeness,” I told her. “They felt guilty. I’ve always wondered how that affected their relationship.”

  She cleared her throat and began to stand up. “Well,” she said, “this has been quite an afternoon for my little investigation.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said coldly.

  She rubbed her eyes and took a seat in the chair across from me. She’d stopped shivering.

  “So, are you psychic?” she asked casually.

  “No idea,” I told her. “I took lots of tests and did lots of things, most of which I don’t remember very well. My parents never shared any of the ‘findings’ with me.”

  “Never?” She shook her head.

  “Hints and allegations,” I said, smiling. “But never any real information.”

  “You’re not curious?” she asked, leaning forward.

  “Very,” I answered. “I guess I’ve always been a little reticent to— I don’t really want to be any stranger than I already am.”

  “I can certainly understand that.” She smiled.

  “I have to cover the window in the kitchen.” I stood.

  I glanced out the picture window behind Dr. Nelson. I saw something moving in the shadows of the trees beyond the blinding yard. I thought it might be a deer, but it was black. I took a step around the coffee table trying to get a bette
r look.

  “What?” Dr. Nelson asked, turning around to look out the window. “Is he back?”

  “No.” I took a few quick steps to the window.

  The shadows converged, and there was only a sense of movement, an innuendo, an inflection. But for some reason I wheeled around to face Dr. Nelson. I couldn’t tell, at that moment, what had made me remember something important.

  “I think I forgot to mention something to Skidmore and to Lucinda,” I said, and I could hear that my voice sounded hollow. “Something that my visitor told me last night.”

  Dr. Nelson stood. “What is it? What did she say?”

  I turned back around to see if I could make out a black form in the midst of black shadows, a tall woman in a dress and shawl. I couldn’t be certain. My eyes were blinded by the white lawn.

  “She told me,” I answered Dr. Nelson, “that there was a child.”

  7

  I spent the next twenty minutes taping a too-large square of quarter-inch plywood over the hole in my kitchen window, with duct tape. I knew I probably should have left everything alone until Skid could look at the scene, but it was cold.

  Dr. Nelson made several attempts to amplify my notion that the boy who’d shot out my window might be the child my phantom wife had mentioned. When that failed, because I really hadn’t known what to say, she’d made several phone calls. I gathered, though I did my best not to eavesdrop, that she was rearranging her schedule to spend more time with me. When she was finished, my work at the window was done and I called Lucinda to apprise her of the most recent events. I only succeeded in convincing her not to come back to my house after telling her three times that Dr. Nelson and I were all right and that Skidmore was on his way. She insisted that I hand the phone to Dr. Nelson, who confirmed that we were fine, and that there was no need for Lucinda to leave the hospital. After that Dr. Nelson and I sat at the kitchen table and waited for the sheriff to come.

  “It’s a nice kitchen,” she said, taking it in. “Cozy.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “And except for the espresso machine, it’s exactly the same as it was when I was a child. Or was, until somebody shot holes in it.”

  “You think the boy who shot at us might be the child of the woman you saw last night?” she asked again.

  “I don’t know.” I was staring at the wrecked tiles over the sink. “I’ll have to retile the whole thing.”

  “You’re concerned about finding the tiles to replace the ones—the tiles…” but she couldn’t quite seem to discover the perfect way to finish her sentence, for some reason.

  “Don’t you feel a little weird about what Lucinda wants you to do?” I asked her. “I mean, especially after this—shooting event—doesn’t it seem odd for you to be investigating me or examining me or whatever it is you’d call it?”

  “I feel uncomfortable because you don’t want me here,” she said, “and because we’re a little attracted to each other. But I actually do this sort of thing all the time. I think that the sheriff might have mentioned that I’ve worked with him before. In a very official capacity. Lucinda and I have known each other professionally for years. It’s really a little remarkable that you and I have never met. I mean, I’ve certainly heard a lot about you in one way or another over the past several years.”

  I folded my arms. “We’re a little attracted to each other?”

  “Well, I’m a little attracted to you,” she said plainly, “and I’m also a keen observer of human nature, as I may have mentioned, and I can tell how you feel about me.”

  “Do people usually find your observations annoying? I mean when they’re transparent and you see through them, are they irritated?”

  “It’s about fifty-fifty,” she answered cheerfully.

  A car roared into the yard, going too fast for the snow. I craned my neck around the plywood and made out Skidmore’s patrol car.

  “Sheriff’s here,” I said.

  “In the nick of time.” She stood.

  I could hear him slam the car door and stomp up the steps. I made it to the doorway just as he was barging in.

  “You saw one boy?” he asked, a little out of breath.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “One boy?” he asked again impatiently.

  “Yes. Do you want some…”

  “Because there were at least two sets of prints out there in the woods along the road, past your yard,” he told me, taking off his hat.

  “Two sets?” I nodded. “I thought I saw something else. I think it was the woman.”

  I closed the door.

  Skid glanced at Dr. Nelson as she came into the living room.

  “Did you see her?” Skid asked Dr. Nelson. “This woman?”

  “No,” she said, “just the boy. But the boy did ask Fever if I was his girlfriend, and said something about shooting me in the head.”

  “He told me,” Skid said, nodding in my direction. “And neither of you recognized the boy?”

  “Never saw him before in my life,” I said.

  Dr. Nelson shook her head.

  “No better description than what you told me on the phone?” he asked.

  “I only glanced at him for a second,” Dr. Nelson said.

  “He had a gun,” I reminded Skidmore. “I looked at that more than I did at his face.”

  “He might have had blond hair,” Dr. Nelson said.

  “Really?” Skid asked me.

  “I didn’t notice,” I answered. “What about the footprints?”

  “Footprints in the snow,” he said, shaking his head, “are the worst. They deteriorate almost as soon as they’re made, especially when the sun’s this strong. Plus, the two people met up and ran together, so that also tore up the prints.”

  “Doesn’t this give a little credence to my story about the woman visiting my house last night?” I asked them both.

  They both answered as one: “No.”

  “Why not?” I whined.

  “Fever,” Skidmore began, “you’ve been back home for, what? Eight, nine years now? In that time you have found countless dead bodies; dozens of people have tried to kill you. You’ve been nearly killed a half a dozen times, and legally dead twice. You’ve seen ghosts, witches, time travelers, racist murderers, and an albino dwarf! So some wild boy shooting up your house a couple of days before Christmas? That’s just another ordinary day in your life. As for seeing this woman last night, I’ve come to take nearly everything you ever say with about a half a pound of salt.”

  “Add to that,” Dr. Nelson chimed in, “the fact that you’re currently under a psychiatrist’s care, so all of your perceptions are called into question.”

  “That should have happened a long time ago,” Skid agreed.

  “I am not currently under a psychiatrist’s care!” I protested.

  “Like it or not,” Dr. Nelson said, “I am a psychiatrist, and you are a legally verifiable patient of mine. Lucinda Foxe hired me. I’ve been paid; I have a contract. Sorry. Lucinda should have told you that.”

  I stared at both of them for a second, unable to decide how I felt about what she’d said.

  “Lucinda hired you?” I asked, a bit weakly.

  “She should have told you,” Dr. Nelson repeated softly. “Or I should have. I don’t like to use the word hired, but I’m assigned to your case, officially as a follow-up to your hospital care from earlier this year. I’m to ‘assess your competency.’”

  “Did you know about this?” I asked Skidmore.

  He nodded. “Lucinda and I talked about it. It was her suggestion, but I helped her to make the decision awhile back. It was already kind of in the works at the hospital anyway. I’m a little surprised you didn’t know that.”

  I looked back at Dr. Nelson. “You’re not just here to talk with me as a favor to Lucinda.”

  “Look,” Dr. Nelson said, not unsympathetically, “I tried to explain to you that Lucinda has some guilt about your condition. She thinks she might have caused some sort of brain damag
e when she packed you in ice and snow last year to keep you alive. Or to keep you from being completely dead. Apparently you were dead when she got here after you’d been shot. So, no, it’s not just a favor to Lucinda. It’s much more complicated than that, and it’s not just Lucinda. The hospital administration has legal questions about Lucinda’s actions, and there are possible charges pending against her. The hospital lawyers are worried about possible litigation from you. It was all beginning to die down, of course, because it didn’t look like you were going to sue the hospital, and you and Lucinda are about to get married. Lucinda’s probationary period was over. Things were just about back to normal. Then you had this episode last night.”

  “It wasn’t an episode,” I insisted, but a good deal of the fire had gone from my convictions.

  “Fever,” she said sweetly, “you’re a strange man, and you’re in an even stranger place right now, mentally and emotionally speaking. You probably can’t see how very, very odd it is that you called your fiancée in the middle of the night to tell her that your wife was in your living room. I mean, as I understand it, this isn’t even your ordinary weirdness—which has, as I have learned, a fairly wide latitude.”

  “But,” I began.

  “There’s something quite troubling going on with you,” she assured me, “and I can probably help.”

  “But what about this boy, this shooting?” I asked them both.

  “This incident with the boy?” she answered. “It’s what I like to call ancillary madness. When someone like you gets this far into trouble, you become a magnet for all kinds of strange things. Not just you. It happens to lots of people, really. In your case, though, I think it may have been going on with you for quite some time. Even before your coma. You’re a kind of psychic magnet for bizarre events. But the condition has clearly gotten worse since you were in your coma—or, really, since you died. And there we have it. That’s primarily what interests me. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I don’t understand,” I told her, feeling a rising anxiety, like a giant horse about to leap out of my chest.

  “I think you died,” she answered solidly. “I think that when that happened, a certain kind of psychic energy attached itself to you, and you brought it back with you. It acts like a magnet for— for all kinds of things. To make matters worse, or to exaggerate the effects of this energy: I think you’re stuck, right now, between life and death. You see and experience things—and they’re all real to you—but the rest of us can’t see them, or know them, or understand them.”