Jones, Beverly R Read online

  Now on her knees in the grass, Casey emitted a horrified scream as she watched the man point the gun at the auburn-haired woman and fire as he walked away. Casey choked on her tears and gaped at the woman lying completely still in the grass, as the man calmly continued walking in the direction of the parked cars.

  Screaming and crying pitifully, Casey crawled as quickly as she could over to the injured woman.

  Noticing blood seeping from the woman’s hairline, Casey leaned over her momentarily, then jumped to her feet, without giving thought to the man’s whereabouts. She needed to get to her car and go for help. As Casey ran past the woman’s car to get to her own, she heard an engine idling. She turned and saw the man sitting in the driver’s seat of the car belonging to the auburn-haired woman. He looked in Casey’s direction, wearing a hideous grin, then put the car into gear and fired a shot at her as he began driving away. Already running, Casey dove to the ground just as the bullet whizzed into the open field.

  Lying in the grass, screaming and shaking with such intensity that she no longer had the will to rise again, Casey turned her head toward the retreating car. Still driving along the grassy shoulder where the injured woman lay, the car began to gain speed. Casey never expected what she saw next. Believing there was no horror equal to the one she had just witnessed, she watched as the man drove the car right over the woman as she lay bleeding. Casey buried her face in the grass and sobbed. She heard the engine gunning and tires rasping on pavement as the man continued onto the highway, gaining speed and then disappearing around a curve.

  As shaken as she was with grief and horror, Casey thought again of the woman. Without enough stamina or willpower left to rise to her feet, she began crawling to where the woman lay. As she crawled nearer, the sight of the blood from the bullet wound to the auburn-haired woman’s head and the damage the car had done were too overwhelming to Casey’s already fragile state. As she knelt on all fours, she began to vomit into the grass. She sobbed and wretched and prayed. God, please don’t let her be dead. Please don’t let her be dead.

  Knowing she had to get to her car and go for help, she prayed for strength and fortitude. Still kneeling in the grass, her head still bent, trying to will herself to act, Casey heard the sound of a car approaching on the highway. God, no. Don’t let him come back.

  She raised her head and what she saw brought even more tears – tears of relief. It was Darlene Griffin from the Logan City Café, driving her ’78 Chevy, moving at her usual cautious speed of forty-five miles per hour.

  Chapter 2

  >A faint stream of consciousness flows softly throughout her, meandering toward a mind determined to cling to its oblivion. Her existence remains black, unremarkable. The state of awareness continues its gentle course, however. As slowly as the tide creeping in, it inches its way along. A bleak half-thought whispers within her, as these waters surge toward the shore of her psyche. But her mind halts, suddenly caught somewhere just short of full tide. And so she flounders in this murky surf, unable to complete the flow toward wakefulness. Her eyelids make their own weak attempt at pushing open, but remain closed, as if her wavering mind is the glue that binds them. She resignedly begins to drift back to the easy comfort of the unknown.

  Then suddenly the gentle drift rushes at her, fiercely this time. It pushes at her and floods her subconscious, impelling her to make the effort once again to raise her eyelids. They remain shut. Her half-awakening mind now senses the battle besieging her. This incites a more willful participation as she reaches vainly toward comprehension, straining to re-enter a tangible world. But no matter how she wills her eyelids to open, the muscles binding them remain stoic in their determination to triumph, and so she remains in darkness. Sightless, blind, unmoving.

  Yet all of her other senses have come alive and are vying for her attention. An antiseptic smell consumes her nostrils, permeating the frontal sinus like the putrid stench of the dying. The purring of machinery assaults her auditory canal, blasting the tympanic membrane. Her head throbs from the pulsating pressure at her right temple. She tries to remember what might have brought her here to this painful semi-existence, but the thought is lost to her.

  She feels the cool crispness of a bed sheet beneath her. The sheet feels stiff, like a thin canvas tarp. Her mind acknowledges she could be nowhere else but in a hospital bed with sheets like these.

  There is a faint swoosh to her left near the floor, like the sound of a swinging door being pushed open against smooth tiles. Soft, padding footsteps approach. A small, dainty hand grasps her right wrist, turning her arm slightly until the alien fingers find the pressure point. A nurse? She wants to speak to her, to ask why she’s here, but her voice seems to be as stubborn as her eyelids. God, her head hurts. And she is so tired. Maybe with a little more sleep, she will be able to figure this all out. The dainty hand lowers her right arm back down to the bed, replacing it to its original position. Her head is still hurting.

  Why don’t they give me something for this Godawful headache?

  The soft footsteps begin to retreat. The phantom nurse with the alien fingers. The footsteps stop as a deep, masculine voice says, “What can I do for her?”

  “Just keep talking to her,” replies the nurse.

  “I’m not sure anything I’m saying is helping. I don’t know much about her.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  The soft footsteps begin again, then the swooshing of the door. Silence.

  Then he speaks again in that wonderfully ardent voice, “I want you to know you’re not alone. I’m here.” He clears his throat before continuing. “I know you don’t know me, but you will, I mean, if you’d just wake up. I want to help you. We all do.”

  But I do know you. I’d know your voice anywhere, Jimmy. Why are you saying I don’t know you?

  There is a long pause. She tries once again in vain to open her eyes.

  The male voice continues to elicit a response from her. “Please. Please open your eyes.” He pauses longer still, then his voice falters as he whispers, “I need to thank you. I want so much for you to be all right.”

  Thank me? Why would Jimmy want to thank me? Maybe it’s not Jimmy. But that voice. So like Jimmy’s.

  She is confused, yet comforted, by the familiar, passionate voice. She lies motionless, her body imprisoned by a mind that cannot seem to control it. She wants to open her eyes, to find out who this man is and ask him why she is here. Her will and her ability to act are not in unison.

  She feels herself falling back down into the abyss from which she so recently emerged, the male voice trailing away. She wants desperately to hear the voice again, so deep and strong, reassuring. But she is swimming away from it, as if caught in a swirling eddy of silence.

  Colors and crazy shapes begin to dance in the darkness behind her eyelids. She tries to focus on the shapes as they move about. They begin to take form. She sees a goat. The goat kicks and snorts, its exhalations soon evolving into a mist of steam that now rises from the spout of a rattling teakettle. The teakettle then transforms into the face of a man, unknown, his nose once the teakettle’s spout. She thinks this all looks very funny, these cartoon transformations. The man’s face quickly becomes a dancing daisy, its petals slowly converting into feathers. Feathers that swirl about before molding themselves tightly against a naked, shivering owl. With its proud new coat of feathers, the owl is so vivid now that she can almost hear a distant, melancholy hoot. The owl slowly begins to liquefy, taking on no form at all, dissolving into squiggly lines and contours. She tries to re-focus. She wants to see more of these amusing pictures that entertain her.

  Her wait is not long. A face begins to emerge yet again from the odd erratic pulsing of shapes that dance in the dark. A man’s face. A different face this time. It looms toward her. Closer. His face. Oh, God. Her body jerks at the terror her mind has sensed. The state of semi-consciousness is no longer her friend. The protective arms of sleep reach out and pull her back into the safety of undisc
erning darkness.

  ***

  Jackson rose from his chair and stood beside her bed. He touched her arm gently, anxious that the brief shudder of her body had brought about her awakening. She lay still again, breathing evenly. He returned to the plastic hospital chair in which he had stationed himself for the last three hours. He has been here every day since she came out of surgery five days ago. Early each morning and then again in the evening for as long as the nurses will allow him to stay.

  Now, as he sat and watched her sleep, he studied her even more closely than before, her long, dark auburn hair spilling across a slim neck and wide, thin shoulders, her skin delicately tanned. He cannot seem to move his eyes from that fragile hollow at the base of her throat that pulses in and out as she breathes. She was so beautiful, this strange creature. But who was she? Where did she come from? And why had she been in Logan City that day? There weren’t too many strangers who pass through the tiny town with its one stoplight. It was too far off the beaten path, thirty-six miles from the interstate, in the middle of farm country.

  But he was grateful that she was there. So grateful, because he had already lost so much, and if not for this woman…no, he did not want to think about what the result might have been if she weren’t there.

  “I just want you to know,” he whispered again, “I’m here. You’re not alone.”

  He hoped she heard him. She had stirred briefly before. Perhaps she would be coming around soon. He would stay as long as he could tonight, and if necessary, return tomorrow.

  He wanted desperately for her to regain consciousness, but had to admit he felt uneasy and a bit embarrassed about his seemingly anxious need for her to awaken. Was it because he merely wanted to thank her, or more that he wanted to reassure himself that she was just an ordinary woman, passing through their ordinary little town, and that in a few days’ time, she would be reunited with a life outside of his. The sober part of him wanted her to wake up, tell him what a happy life she led elsewhere and how she couldn’t wait to recover and get back to her loved ones. Then his life could continue as before, her existence only a faint memory.

  Still, he found it difficult to turn his eyes away from her. His gaze settled once again on her long auburn hair, the mass of wispy curls seeming to breathe on their own, resting lightly against her pillow.

  He leaned back in the hard plastic chair and let his eyelids drift shut, intending to rest them for just a moment. The last thought Jackson had before he dozed off was another question, a simple speculation: Would her eyes be as beautiful opened as they were closed?

  Chapter 3

  >She moaned as she shifted her head slightly, her eyes opening slowly, carefully, taking in a world that was as new to her as if she’d just emerged from a cocoon. She lay motionless in the bed, her head beginning to pound at her right temple, as she gazed at the man slumped in the chair beside her. His chin rested on his left shoulder as he slept. The room was nearly dark, the only light coming from a fluorescent bulb above a nearby sink. She recognized that she was in a hospital, but could fathom no reason why. She had no recollection of what had brought her here or how long she’d been here. She was also concerned with the man in the chair. Was he a doctor? No, she didn’t think so. He wore jeans and a blue cotton shirt, the sleeves rolled up slightly at the cuffs. Was she supposed to know him? As if on cue, he shifted in his seat as though trying to find a more comfortable position.

  “Hello,” she said quietly.

  The man’s eyes opened and he flinched. “You’re awake.” He started to rise from his chair, sat back down and stood again. “I’ll get the nurse.” He turned toward the door, then turned back to face her. “How do you feel? Are you all right?”

  “I guess so. My head hurts. Who are you?”

  “Jackson Coley. I’ll get the nurse and be right back.” He hurried out the door into the hospital corridor, the door swishing closed behind him.

  “Well, that explains a lot,” she said to herself as she watched him leave.

  Alone in the hospital room, her thoughts roamed in an attempt to remember explanations of her own. Her mind remained blank. She soon became agitated, frightened. What’s going on? Her head hurt. Jagged thoughts of confusion and terror began to jumble in her mind, none of them making sense. She told herself to try and remain calm, try to remember what could have brought her to this hospital, who this man was.

  She tried to remember anything. Nothing came to her mind except the pain shooting through it. She lifted her right hand and, with fingers gingerly searching for the source of pain, discovered gauze bandages at her right temple. Okay, something’s happened to my head, but it must not be too bad. I’m awake and breathing.

  As her mind was forced to accept her bandaged, aching head, the rest of her body suddenly fought for recognition as well. Oowow, that hurts, she thought, as pain screamed out from beneath the bedcovers. She attempted to raise her left hand in order to lift the sheet and learn the origin of this newly discovered pain. But her hand didn’t move at her command. It was then that she realized her left arm was encased in a plaster cast from elbow to fingertips. As she looked down at her arm, struggling to move it, she caught sight of the bed sheet. Her eyes followed the sheet as it covered her body from her chest to the top of her left thigh, then stopped. The bed sheet was creased and folded to the inside of her thigh to allow her left leg, which was also in a heavy cast, to suspend from cables hooked to some sort of contraption.

  Taking it all in at once, her scream exploded through the hospital room and into the corridor just as the nurse entered through the door, Jackson close behind her.

  “What’s wrong with me? What is this? What’s happened to me? Wha…?” she cried between deep, gulping sobs.

  “It’s okay. You’re all right. You’re all right,” the nurse soothed her as she rushed to her bedside. The nurse gently but firmly pressed her palm on the cast of her patient’s left arm to prevent her from flailing it about, then began smoothing her hair and repeating in calming tones, “You’re all right. Everything’s all right. You’re going to be fine. Just fine.”

  Her sobs altering between frightened whimpers and outrage, she looked at Jackson and choked out, “And what are you doing here? I don’t even know who you are! Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?”

  The nurse turned to Jackson and said, “You’d better wait outside.”

  “Wait outside? You can wait in the freakin’ parking lot for all I care! Wait in the street. Just get away from me! Go and wait for the rest of your life anywhere you want to, because I don’t even know who you are!”

  ≈≈≈

  Twenty minutes later Jackson was still pacing in the hallway, waiting. The doctor had been in with her for a while now. The room was fairly quiet, no screams of fear or protest emanating from within. Jackson was contemplating what he should do next, whether he should go in and talk to her, what he would say. Should he obey her wishes and leave? Come back later, maybe? No, she was frightened. Jackson desperately wanted to reassure her, let her know that he would help her any way he could. No, he wouldn’t leave. He would wait and talk to the doctor and go from there. He leaned against the corridor wall and waited.

  Five minutes later as the doctor emerged from her room, Jackson anxiously went to meet him. “How is she?”

  “She’s fine. Better now,” the doctor said.

  “Did she tell you who she is? Are there family members I can call?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me anything. Just listened while I explained her injuries to her. I assured her that she will recover nicely in time and she seemed satisfied with that, but she wouldn’t answer any personal questions. I’m not sure at this point if she was being purposely evasive or if she even knows the answers.”

  “What do you mean?” Jackson asked curiously.

  “With a head injury like hers, there’s always the possibility that there are certain details she might not remember, some that may be too traumatic to remember. In any case, an
y memory loss would only be temporary. Since the bullet only grazed her temple, she’s actually very lucky.”

  “Yeah, if you don’t consider the fact the bastard ran over her with her own car.”

  “I didn’t go over any of that with her, and I don’t think anyone else should right now, either. Those are details she can learn in time when she’s more emotionally stable.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “I did explain some of the circumstances of the ‘accident’ to her. I told her that she had stopped to help someone in trouble and was subsequently hit by a car and that she suffered a minimal bullet wound to her head from the assailant. She asked for more details then, but I told her I didn’t know, which is the truth. She’s anxious for more answers, so you might want to explain some of the circumstances surrounding her injuries, but keep them to a minimum and don’t expound on the horrific details of what went on at the side of that road right now. As I said, she’s still very emotionally fragile.”

  “I understand,” Jackson assured the doctor. “Did you tell her why I was here? She seemed really upset that she didn’t know who I was.”

  “Yes, I’ve explained to her that you are the brother of the other victim and that your interest is only one of concern. As she can’t seem to remember the accident, she didn’t know there was another victim, and I wasn’t able to supply her with much information leading up to what happened. So, she’d like to talk to you.”

  “Of course,” Jackson said as he shook the doctor’s hand. “Thanks for everything, Dr. Morrison. I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow.”

  As Dr. Morrison walked away down the corridor, Jackson approached the hospital room door, hesitated, then knocked softly.