Phantoms

He snapped his eyes open, gasping.

What had happened to all the pets in Snowfield?

The utility room, off the lobby.

Windowless, lightless.

The monotonous ping of water dropping into the metal sink had stopped. But there wasn't silence now. Something moved in the darkness. It made a soft, wet, stealthy sound as it crept around the pitch-black room.

Not yet ready to sleep, Jenny went into the cafeteria, poured a cup of coffee, and joined the sheriff at a corner table.

“Lisa sleeping?” he asked.

“Like a rock.”

“How're you holding up? This must be hard on you. All your neighbors, friends…”

“It's hard to grieve properly,” she said, “I'm just sort of numb. If I let myself react to every death that's had an effect on me, I'd be a blubbering mess. So I've just let my emotions go numb.”

“It's a normal, healthy response. That's how we're all dealing with it.” They drank some coffee, chatted a bit. Then:

“Married?” he asked.

“No. You?”

“Was.”

“Divorced?”

“She died.”

“Oh, Christ, of course. I read about it. I'm sorry. A year ago, wasn't it? A traffic accident?”

“A runaway truck.”

She was looking into his eyes, and she thought they clouded and became less blue than they had been. “How's your son doing?”

“He's still in a coma. I don't think he'll ever come out of it.”

“I'm sorry, Bryce. I really am.”

He folded his hands around his mug and stared down at the coffee. “With Timmy like he is, it'll be a blessing, really, when he just finally lets go. I was numb about it for a while. I couldn't feel anything, not just emotionally but physically, as well. At one point I cut my finger while I was slicing an orange, and I bled all over the damned kitchen and even ate a few bloody sections of the orange before I noticed that something was wrong. Even then I never felt any pain. Lately, I've been coming around to an understanding, to an acceptance.” He looked up and met Jenny's eyes, “Strangely enough, since I've been here in Snowfield, the grayness has gone away.”

“Grayness?”

“For a long time, the color has been leeched out of everything. It's all been gray. But tonight — just the opposite. Tonight, there's been so much excitement, so much tension, so much fear, that everything has seemed extraordinarily vivid.”

Then Jenny spoke of her mother's death, of the surprisingly powerful effect it had had on her, despite the twelve years of partial estrangement that should have softened the blow.

Again, Jenny was impressed by Bryce Hammond's ability to make her feel at ease. They seemed to have known each other for years.

She even found herself telling him about the mistakes she had made in her eighteenth and nineteenth years, about her naive and stubbornly wrongheaded behavior that had grievously hurt her parents. Toward the end of her first year in college, she had met a man who had captivated her. He was a graduate student — Campbell Hudson; she called him Cam — five years her senior. His attentiveness, charm, and passionate pursuit of her had swept her away. Until then, she had led a sheltered life; she had never tied herself down to one steady boyfriend, had never really dated heavily at all. She was an easy target. Having fallen for Cam Hudson, she then became not only his lover but his rapt student and disciple and, very nearly, his devoted slave.

“I can't see you subjugating yourself to anyone,” Bryce said.

“I was young.”

“Always an acceptable excuse.”

She had moved in with Cam, taking insufficient measures to conceal her sinning from her mother and father; and sinning was how they saw it. Later, she decided — rather, she allowed Cam to decide for her — that she would drop out of college and work — as a waitress, helping pay his bills until he was finished with his master's and doctoral work.

Once trapped in Cam Hudson's self-serving scenario, she gradually found him less attentive and less charming than he had once been. She learned he had a violent temper. Then her father died while she was still with Cam, and at the funeral she sensed that her mother blamed her for his untimely passing. Within a month of the day that her father was consigned to the grave, she learned she was pregnant. She had been pregnant when he'd died. Cam was furious and insisted on a quick abortion. She asked for a day to consider, but he became enraged at even a twenty-four-hour delay. He beat her so severely that she had a miscarriage. It was over then. The foolishness was over. She grew up suddenly — although her abrupt coming of age was too late to please her father.

“Since then,” she told Bryce, “I've spent my life working hard — maybe too hard — to prove to my mother that I was sorry and that I was, after all, worthy of her love. I've worked weekends, turned down countless party invitations, skipped most vacations for the past twelve years, all in the name of bettering myself. I didn't go home as often as I should have done. I couldn't face my mother. I could see the accusation in her eyes. And then tonight, from Lisa, I learned the most amazing thing.”

“Your mother never blamed you,” Bryce said, displaying that uncanny sensitivity and perception that she had seen in him before.

“Yes!” Jenny said, “She never held anything against me.”

“She was probably even proud of you.”

“Yes, again! She never blamed me for Dad's death. It was me doing all the blaming. The accusation I thought I saw in her eyes was only a reflection of my own guilty feelings.” Jenny laughed softly and sourly, shaking her head. “It'd be funny if it wasn't so damned sad.”

In Bryce Hammond’s eyes, she saw the sympathy and understanding for which she had been searching ever since her father's funeral.

He said, “We're a lot alike in some ways, you and I. I think we both have martyr complexes.”

“No more,” she said, “Life's too short. That's something that's been brought home to me tonight. From now on I'm going to live, really live — if Snowfield will let me.”

“We'll get through this,” he said.

“I wish I could feel sure of that.”

Bryce said, “You know, having something to look forward to will help us make it. So how about giving me something to look forward to?”

“Huh?”

“A date.” He leaned forward. His thick, sandy hair fell into his eyes, “Gervasio's Restaurant in Santa Mira. Minestrone. Scampi in garlic butter. Some good veal or maybe a steak. A side dish of pasta. They make a wonderful vermicelli all pesto. Good wine.”

She grinned. “I'd love it.”

“I forgot to mention the garlic bread.”

“Oh, I love garlic bread.”

“Zabaglione for dessert.”

“They'll have to carry us out,” she said.

“We'll arrange for wheelbarrows.”

They chatted for a couple of minutes, relieving tension, and then both of them were finally ready to sleep.

Ping.

In the dark utility room where Stu Wargle's body lay on a table, water had begun to drop into the metal sink again.

Ping.