There was a tentative knock on the door and they turned to see Newton peering in. “Is this a bad time?”
“For once,” Val said, “it’s not. Come in, have a seat. ”
Newton was an awkward man at the best of times and in situations like this was nearly spastic. He perched on the edge of a guest chair with all the skittishness of a high school kid waiting for his prom date.
Crow handed him a juice carton. “You find out anything useful on the Net?”
“Quite a lot, actually, though at this point it might just serve as backstory since you all seem to think this is all over and done with. ” He pulled a thick file of computer printouts out of his briefcase. “Aside from the ton of stuff I downloaded about…” He looked around and then used his two hooked index fingers to simulate fangs and gave Crow a big stage wink as if the pantomime wasn’t enough. “I also e-mailed Dr. Corbiel at U of P. Turns out it isn’t Jonathan Corbiel, it’s Jonatha. No ‘n,’ a woman. Like the singer Jonatha Brooke. ”
“Okay. ”
“We talked on the phone for a couple of hours, and I told her I was doing a book on the haunted history of Pine Deep, yada yada, and asked her if she would be willing to come up here and sit down with us. ”
“Really?” Val asked. “What’d she say?”
“She said she’d love to, though she said she can’t get away until the twenty-ninth because she’s giving midterms. I know it’s a long time to wait, but in the meantime we can still tap her for info via phone and e-mail. ”
“Okay, fair enough. Where are we meeting her?”
“She didn’t really want to drive all the way here, so I compromised and told her we’d meet her halfway. I set it up for the Red Lion Diner in Warrington. ”
“Okay, perfect. ”
2
The nurses came back, this time to change Val’s IV and fuss over her and even though there was nothing they were doing that was actually too private or official enough to warrant kicking Crow out he still somehow found himself in the hallway on the other side of a closed door. Newton gave Crow a CD with his research notes and headed home to get some rest. Crow was slouching down to the solarium to buy a Yoo-hoo when he spotted Mike Sweeney coming out of the ICU wing.
“Hey,” Crow said, “you get lost or something?”
The kid stopped walking and peered at Crow with eyes that seemed at once shocked and dreamy—the pupils were pinpoints, his eyes wide. Crow waved a hand in front of Mike’s eyes, expecting the kid to snap out of his reverie with a sheepish grin. Crow had seen him woolgathering a number of times before, but it took Mike at least thirty seconds to come back to planet Earth. Crow could see the process happen. The boy’s eyes went from blank to confused to shifty and Mike’s rubbery lips congealed into two tight lines.
“Crow?” Mike said in a voice that was unusually hoarse, the way someone sounds after they’ve been yelling.
“Yo, kiddo…what planet were you orbiting?”
“What?”
“You okay? You look like you’re out of it. ”
“Do I?” Mike rubbed his eyes and then looked at his fingers as if expecting to see something on them. What? Grit? Tears?
“Mike,” Crow said slowly, touching the kid on the shoulder. “Are you okay?” He eyed the kid, looking for fresh bruises. Maybe he’d had a run-in with Vic.
“I’m good,” he said. “Just having kind of a weird day. ”
“Bad weird or just weird weird?”
“Pine Deep weird,” Mike said, and when Crow continued to stare at him, he added, “Soon as I’m old enough, man, I am so out of this frigging town. ”
Crow snorted. “Soon as you’re old enough, kiddo, I’ll drive you. ”
3
Mike left the hospital, unchained his bike, and fled onto the back streets of
Pine Deep, whisking down the crooked lanes and shadowed alleys, aware of the tourist crowds thinning as he raced toward the farmlands and the forest. He made the last turn, cutting a sharp left off Alvy Lane onto West Road and headed south, leaving the last of the houses behind and rolling through a countryside that was open and vulnerable.
Though it was mid-October it was a November-colored day. There was green, but it huddled low against the ground as thinning islands of grass in a swelling sea of brown dirt. The treetops had been blown to crooked gray sticks by the constant topwind, and invisible snakes of current leapt off the fields and snapped at him, trying to push his bike over. He kept pedaling, his eyes locked on the center of the road thirty feet ahead, his head fixed forward, and only his peripheral vision took slices of the vista to either side and fed it into that nameless place in his mind that hung suspended between the conscious and subconscious.