Chapter 28

Clang!

The heavy square blade of the shovel bounced off the lopsided head of the Doomstalker.

It was an old-fashioned wooden-handled coal shovel, the kind people in the midwest used to load up their coal-burning furnaces. Brian took his best baseball grip on the handle and swung it again.

Clang!

Another direct hit on the side of the terrible Doomstalker head. And again no effect.

The Doomstalker smiled, a ghastly grimace of jagged teeth and blackened gums. He reached for Brian. The talons wriggled, each with a life of its own.

The coal shovel crumbled into dust in the boy's hands.

Riiiing.

"What the hell?"

Kettering sat up in the sofa bed, blinking away the remnants of the dream. Charity Moline stirred beside him.

"That's the telephone," she said.

"Right."

"Aren't you going to answer it?"

Shreds of the dream still clung to him like wisps of fiberglass. "Let the machine get it."

Riiiing.

"It sounds important."

"Balls."

Kettering swung his feet out of bed and, sitting, reached for the telephone.

"Mr. Kettering?"

"Um."

"This is Tricia at Good Shepherd."

It took him a moment to clear away the dream and remember what the hell the Good Shepherd was. And why didn't anybody have last names anymore?

"Yeah," he said. "Hello."

"I'm sorry to have to tell you that your sister is in bad shape."

"I know that."

"What I mean, Mr. Kettering, is that she's taken a turn for the worse."

"Yes?"

"Massive circulatory collapse."

"What does that mean?"

Tricia's voice turned unprofessionally snappish. "It means she's going to die."

"What's being done?"

"We're keeping her comfortable. That's as much as we can do."

"Yes, I see. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Good. She's asked for you."

"She what?"

"She wants to see you."

"Jessica said that? My sister spoke?"

"Mr. Kettering, at a time like this I am not inclined to make things up."

"My sister hasn't spoken for thirty years."

"Well, she spoke this morning. I think you'd better hurry if you want to see her."

"I will. Uh, thank you, Miss ..."

"Tricia."

"Tricia."

Kettering hung up the phone. He turned to see Charity sitting up in bed watching him quizzically.

"Your sister?" she said.

"She's dying."

"I'm sorry, Brian."

"They say she spoke. She asked to see me."

Charity swung out of the bed in a single fluid motion. "Well, let's get up there."

***

The morning was cold and gray and thick with mist when Kettering and Charity Moline arrived on the grounds of the Good Shepherd Convalescent Home. The Topatopa Mountains were invisible in the gray murk, and today no one strolled the paths through the chilly grounds.

Inside the main building residents were being led back to their rooms after breakfast. There was a gray emptiness in the faces and a hint of puzzlement in the dim eyes that brought a pang of precognition to Kettering.

"It's hell to get old," Charity said softly.

"Yeah. The one incurable illness. The one sin society will not forgive."

They were greeted at the desk by the same gray-haired nurse with sad eyes who had met them here last time. Like the weather outside, she was melancholy and vaguely damp.

"I'm glad you came quickly," she said to Kettering. Her eyes flicked sideways at Charity.

"Miss Moline is a friend of the family," Kettering said, then was angry with himself for feeling he had to explain.

"I remember," said the nurse. "She was here with you last time."

She accompanied them as far as Jessica's room. "I'm afraid your sister doesn't have much time."

"I was told she spoke," Kettering said. "Asked for me."

"Yes. It was about three o'clock this morning when she had the attack. At first no one could understand what she was saying, her vocal cords had been unused for so long. When she made herself understood, we called you."

"What exactly did she say?"

"Your name. Your name and one more thing."

"What was that?"

"It was hard to make out, but it sounded something like 'baby.'"

Kettering and Charity exchanged a look as they reached the door to Jessica's room. The nurse opened the door for them.

"You go ahead," Charity said. "I'll wait."

"You might be able to help."

"No. If your sister has something to tell you, it might inhibit her if a stranger is there. I'll wait."

Kettering nodded. Charity gave his hand a squeeze, and he went into the room.

The curtain had been drawn to close off the middle bed. Jessica's two roommates looked at Kettering, then quickly looked away. The nurse pulled the curtain back on the overhead rail, and Kettering approached his sister.

Jessica looked smaller than the last time he had seen her. Near the head of the bed a cathode-ray tube monitored her heartbeat with spiky green blips on a black background. An IV tube was taped to a vein in the back of her hand.

With the bed cranked to a semisitting position, Jessica looked like a little girl with the covers pulled up to her chin. A very old little girl. The unlined flesh of her face was a gray color that matched the wedge of sky visible through the window. The outline of the skull was sharp beneath the skin.

The biggest difference in Jessica from the last time was her eyes. They were bright and feverish. And they looked directly at him.

The nurse moved off to a corner of the room while brother and sister faced each other.

"Hi, Jessie," he said.

The seconds ticked by with no sound from the woman on the bed other than her ragged breathing. Then the colorless lips twitched and rolled over the yellow teeth. Her tongue peeked out like a shy nocturnal animal. A rasping, creaking sound like old rusty hinges came from Jessica's mouth.

Kettering moved closer to the bed. He put his face down beside his sister's. Her breath was shallow and smelled heavily of medication.

"Br ... Bri ... Brian."

"I'm here, Jessie."

"Find it ... Brian."

"Tell me, Jessie. Find what?"

"Find ... the ... baby."

"Your baby."

"Yes. Danger."

"From the baby?"

The bony chest rose and fell. A little color returned to Jessica's face. When she spoke again her voice was a little smoother.

"It's not a baby."

"Yes, I know. He'd be grown up now."

"Not a natural baby. Not then ... not now. Find it, Brian."

"Where Jessie? Where can I find him?"

The woman in the bed rolled her head from side to side. Her eyes blinked rapidly, and for a moment Kettering thought he was going to lose her right there. The nurse took a step toward the bed.

"What is it, Jessie?" he said. "What can I do?"

"No!" The sudden strength in her voice startled him. The nurse stopped, looking alarmed.

"I don't understand you," Kettering said.

"The baby. Not ... not a boy."

"What? What are you saying?"

Jessica drew several more rattling breaths before she spoke again.

"My baby was not a boy."

Kettering stared at her.

"Not a boy," she repeated. "My baby was ... female."

"But - "

Kettering got no further as Jessica threw her head back against the pillow. Her mouth gaped open and she screamed. A terrible, broken, agonized scream to make up for thirty years of silence.

The nurse rushed to the bedside as Kettering stepped back, his hands moving anxiously, uselessly.

Jessica's scream died. Her face collapsed in on itself, her head fell to one side.

The Murse threw back the covers and thumped on Jessica's frail chest. The monitoring equipment subsided to a high-pitched beeeeeep.

Feeling helpless, Kettering stepped back away from the bed. At a sound from the doorway he turned to see Charity standing there. Her face was white, her eyes staring.

"The scream," she said. "What happened?"

Kettering could only shake his head.

An Oriental in a white jacket rushed into the room closely followed by another nurse. They brushed past Charity and Kettering and joined the gray-haired nurse at the bedside.

After a moment the gray-haired nurse stepped back. She turned to face Kettering. Her eyes told him the story.

"She's gone?" he said.

The nurse nodded. "It's good you got here in time."

"Sure." Kettering's jaw tightened. "In time."

***

Kettering was silent as he drove west from Ojai, then down the Ventura Freeway toward Los Angeles. Charity Moline let her hand rest lightly on his thigh. Every few miles she looked over at him.

"Stupid," he said as they rolled through the hills north of the San Fernando Valley. "I have been so fucking stupid."

Charity gazed out the window and said nothing.

"Elemental law of detection - do not assume facts not in evidence. I have assumed for thirty years that my sister gave birth to a boy. I've been looking for a thirty-year-old man who would be that boy today. Doomstalker. Now I find out it was a girl."

"You couldn't have known," Charity said. "All the records back in your hometown were destroyed. Nobody remembered. All you had was a name."

"Dorcas," Kettering said through his teeth.

"And that could as well be a girl as a boy. It sounds Greek. You couldn't have known."

"That's the problem," Kettering said. "I didn't know. But I went barging ahead just as though I did. I rousted Enzo DuLac all over the lot because I thought he might be it. I wanted him to be it. He's the right age, but it turns out he's the wrong gender."

"But when you've seen it ... didn't you tell me it looked like a man?"

"I was assuming again. It's big, it's humanoid, it's powerful. You want to call it something, so you call it 'he.' It's only an image, anyway. An evil, ugly image, but sexless. Whatever part of the Doomstalker is mortal lives in the child born to my sister. The female child."

Kettering slowed the car. He turned in the seat and looked at Charity.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"The woman at Harmony Village."

"Zoara Sol," he said.

"What are you going to do?"

"Go after her."

"Aren't you doing it again? Making an unjustified assumption?"

"Maybe. I don't think so. She fits."

"There's something else you ought to think about."

"I'm listening."

"Say you do go after this woman and you confront her, and say she does turn out to be your Doomstalker. What do you do then? You've seen what you're up against by what it did to Al Diaz and to your wife. Do you think you can handle that?"

"I'll have to."

"But maybe not with your bare fists. Or your gun either."

"Meaning?"

"Remember what we were talking about last night?"

"About my father."

"And the weapon he used."

"But I don't remember."

"Maybe you will under hypnosis. You said you were ready to try."

They drove on a mile in silence before Kettering spoke again.

"Let's do it."