temper,” she said contritely. “I know you’ve done everything you can.”
“No need to be sorry, Mrs. Reese. We understand. We’ll give you some privacy. Take all the time you need.”
The peanut gallery left the room, including a burly security guard, who scratched his thigh with his nightstick and looked at her like she was a ripe pi?ata. When she was alone, she kissed her son’s hot sweaty forehead and whispered in his ear so no one—not even the hissing lady—could hear.
“Christopher, I’ll get you out of there. I promise,” she said.
Chapter 67
Ambrose opened his eyes. For a moment, he couldn’t remember where he was. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he had. Several times. Why the hell was he sleeping so much? Of course, he was used to taking catnaps. That was normal for a man his age. But this Rip Van Winkle shit was ridiculous. The last thing he remembered was sleeping all the way through the Christmas Pageant. He woke up a few hours later for dinner. But when he arrived in the dining room, nobody was there. The clock read 2:17 a.m. And somehow, the calendar on the wall had one additional X, taking away an entire day.
Ambrose had slept for thirty-six hours.
“Good morning, Mr. Olson,” a voice said. “Welcome back from the dead.”
Ambrose turned to find the night nurse adding another X to the calendar.
Make that sixty.
“Good morning,” he said. “I seem to have missed dinner.”
“And breakfast. And lunch. And dinner again,” she joked. “No worry. We put a mirror under your nose to make sure. I’ll fix you a plate. Why don’t you get warm in the parlor?”
The nurse fixed him a bowl of leftover beef stew and brought it to him in his favorite chair in front of the parlor TV, all the while chatting away with the Shady Pines gossip, starting with the Christmas Pageant. It seemed Ambrose had missed quite a show. In addition to the usual favorites of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” this year’s pageant must have been sponsored by a new children’s division of the WWE. There was an epic brawl that ended with Kate Reese’s son being attacked by Mrs. Keizer. The boy’s nose bled really badly, and his mother took him to the hospital, but that wasn’t the half of it.
“What happened next?” he asked.
“Mrs. Keizer…she stopped forgetting,” she said in her broken English.
“What do you mean?”
“She no have Alzheimer’s anymore. It is a Christmas miracle.”
Or was it?
He ignored the thought and the wind outside as he opened his brother’s diary.
June 7th
We dissected frogs in school today. I put my hand on the frog and I felt that strange itchy feeling again. The teacher said the frog must have only been sleeping because it woke up right there on the table. I pretended that was true, but when I left the tree house yesterday, I saw a bird on the trail going back home. It was dead on the ground. It had a broken wing and a snake was eating it. I chased the snake away and picked up the bird. I closed my eyes and had that itchy feeling from the imaginary side. I brought the bird back to life. It made my nose bleed real bad. It terrified me. Because I know the power on the imaginary side equals pain on the real side. You can’t have one without the other. So, the more things I make live, the more I am going to die. So, when my nose bleeds, it’s the world’s blood.
A chill ran down Ambrose’s spine. He thought of the nurse’s story of Christopher’s nose bleeding after he touched Mrs. Keizer, just like David’s nose bled after he touched the dead bird. Ambrose made a mental note to call Mrs. Reese in the morning, then went back to the diary. But he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He felt like he was being drugged. As if something didn’t want him to read. It reminded him of the time his buddies threw a pill into his whiskey and laughed when he threw off his clothes and stole a jeep. That time, he woke up to the sergeant’s wrath and a month of KP duty.
This time, he woke up to terror.
Ambrose heard a noise outside. The beef stew was cold and uneaten in front of him. An hour had passed. The TV was still on and turned to the local news. Talking about the flu