'Right shoulder.'
The nurse bit her lips so hard Cree could have sworn her teeth would come through, but she went on. 'Tommy, open your eyes now. What's this?' She had lifted his limp right arm, bending it at the elbow and so she could hold the limb right in front of him.
He opened his eyes and looked at it as if surprised and dismayed by the object's sudden appearance. 'I don't know.'
Holding the arm out in her right hand, Lynn used her left to stroke the bare skin, elbow to shoulder. 'Keep your eyes open. What's this I'm touching?'
'I don't like it!'
'Don't like what?'
'That thing. The thing you're holding.' He craned away, afraid of it.
'Where's your right arm?'
'I already told you!'
Lynn put the arm down and ran her fingers over the knobs of his side-bowed spine again. 'Here?'
'Yes! I told you!'
'I'm sorry to keep at you. You're doing great. One more thing, and then we'll move on. We're almost done. Okay?'
'Yeah.' He was getting sullen now. He mumbled something in what Cree assumed was Navajo.
'Shut your eyes again, please. I want you to tell me when you feel something.'
When Tommy had winced his eyes shut, she placed his right hand, palm up, on the tabletop. Lynn dabbed alcohol on his fingertips, opened a sterilized lancet, and held his hand against the table as she isolated his ring finger. With one sharp stab, she drove the lancet into the pad of the immobilized finger.
Tommy didn't say anything. Didn't move, didn't even flinch. A fat bead of blood appeared when Lynn pulled the needle away.
She gripped his middle finger and stabbed deep again. 'Feel anything?'
'No.'
Lynn Pierce's chin was quivering as she tossed away the lancet and bandaged the fingers. Tommy stood obediently, shoulders squared but spine as bent as a hitchhiker's thumb. Julieta looked at him with heartbreak in her eyes.
Cree's head was throbbing so hard she couldn't make sense of the shrill alarms going off throughout her body and brain. All she could think was doubleness. Too much at once. The three women looked at each other and at the bent, bare-chested boy, and the only thing Cree could feel clearly was horror at the freakish phenomenon she was witnessing. She could almost see the shape of the compound being that stood before her, a doubled thing like some monstrous, unviable conjoined twins with half-merged bodies, arms and legs misplaced and deformed. The outlandish, pretzeling interpenetration, so unbearably wrong.
Again Cree was conscious of their isolation. Two o'clock in the morning, and beyond this tiny island of unsteady light everything was dark for miles in every direction. Three scared women and one lost boy stood in an abandoned school in the desert. There was something invisible among them. And there was no explanation and no succor anywhere.
The room seemed to waver, and Cree had to sit down. She had no idea what to do. There was a powerful paranormal entity three feet from her, and she couldn't begin to approach it. Whenever she tried, she found the pain in her head in the way, obstructing every sense. Everything else was a blur full of shifting impressions. Doubleness, yes, and that stark sense of isolation. Besides that, all she knew was an almost overpowering need to take Tommy to her, hold him against herself, enfold him, protect him. Her heart, her womb ached with the need. But her enclosing arms wouldn't help. The danger, the enemy, was already inside.
'I'd say a mild concussion,' Lynn told her. 'Lot of blood, but that's typical of a scalp wound. The cut is superficial, you don't even need stitches. You really should go to the hospital for X- rays-we can get one of the maintenance staff to drive you, but I think it can wait until morning if you'd prefer.'
The two of them were sitting in the examination room. The nurse had cleaned and bandaged the wound above Cree's eyebrow and then had carefully checked her eyes and reflexes and balance. Julieta had called Joseph Tsosie at the hospital and was told he'd be paged and would return the call. Through the slats of the blinds over the window into the ward room, they could see Tommy sitting on his bed. Eyes mostly closed, his chest moved in a slight lateral ripple, the left and right almost in sync now, and he kept bending his back to the right and tipping his head, almost as if trying to shake water out of his ear. Julieta sat in a chair against the wall, watching him but clearly fighting sleep.
'How long does it last?'
The nurse followed her gaze. 'Getting longer. The first time, maybe half an hour. Last time, closer to two hours. He's never made it to the hospital when the full symptoms are presenting.'
'Same thing every time?'
'The problem placing his limbs is much worse this time. And the breathing problem-that's new. First time I've observed it, anyway.'
'So it's… progressing.'
The silver head made a small, reluctant nod.
'Did Dr. Ambrose see him when he was like this?'
'Some of it. He saw the spinal curvature and the confusion about his arm and spine. The lack of sensation in his right arm.'
Cree thought about that. It was always hard to tell what Mason perceived and what conclusions he'd drawn, but usually he knew more than he let on and had devious reasons for doing what he did. Mason's Machiavellian approach to manipulating people infuriated her-it was his way of viewing every living person as a test subject, a lab rat. If she found out he was keeping some insight to himself in this case, Cree decided, she'd shove him off Sandia Peak herself.
The phone rang and startled them both. Lynn snatched it up.
'Hi, Joseph! Yes. Yes. No, worse. Can you? Good.' Lynn glanced up at the slatted window, and the corners of her mouth tightened with disapproval. 'Well, she's upset, but she's doing all right so far-she's in there with him now. Dr. Black sustained a head injury. No, one of the horses. Not too bad, mainly a scalp cut. We're holding the fort. Just get here soon, please?'
She put the receiver down. 'Joseph's on his way. He'll be here in about an hour.' Relief was evident on her face-obviously, both women put a great deal of trust in Dr. Tsosie.
They waited. Two-fifteen. Tommy was fast asleep and Julieta had dropped off at last, head tipped back against the wall, mouth open; her light snores came through the monitor. Lynn Pierce was at her desk, wearily occupied with some paperwork. Cree was bleary and numb and was fighting off sleep herself when a movement from the ward room startled her.
Tommy's right hand had begun to move. First it swung slowly side to side on the wrist, like the head of a snake. The fingers played lightly on the blanket at Tommy's thigh, as if feeling the texture of the fabric. Then the arm bent, drawing the hand up along Tommy's side. When it encountered the edge of the folded-back sheet, it paused as the fingers deftly explored. In another instant, the hand was at Tommy's head. When it touched his hair, it pulled back suddenly as if the feel of his bristles startled it. It came back again tentatively, found his ear, traced the curve of it.
Cree watched, spellbound, horrified. The arm and hand clearly belonged to someone other than Tommy. Some blind being, trying to make sense of invisible surroundings.
Tommy groaned in his sleep and moved his head away from the probing fingers, but in another moment his whole body arched and suddenly he sat up and swung his feet off the bed. His eyes opened, rolled wildly, and then found Julieta. They burned at her from beneath his dark brows.
He began to lean forward, the feral gaze intensifying. Cree felt a sudden sense of alarm as the ceiling lights, relatively stable for some time, began to strobe and stutter, and then she watched in stunned horror as Tommy seemed to brace himself. Before she could move, he had propelled himself off the bed toward Julieta with a deep, guttural grunt.
Lynn Pierce's chair skated away as she jumped up. Tommy fell halfway across the room but continued writhing toward Julieta, his gaze still fixed on her. She had awakened and now sat in her chair, her expression a mix
