10 PROLOGUE
I said this over and over until the vague police shapes let me alone,
until I awoke to find Kevin sitting, dozing beside my bed. I wondered briefly how long he had been there, but it didn’t matter. The important thing was that he was there. I slept again, relieved.
Finally, I awoke feeling able to talk to him coherently and understand what he said. I was almost comfortable except for the strange throbbing of my arm. Of where my arm had been. I moved my head, tried to look at the empty place … the stump.
Then Kevin was standing over me, his hands on my face turning my head toward him.
He didn’t say anything. After a moment, he sat down again, took my hand, and held it.
I felt as though I could have lifted my other hand and touched him. I felt as though I had another hand. I tried again to look, and this time he let me. Somehow, I had to see to be able to accept what I knew was so.
After a moment, I lay back against the pillow and closed my eyes. “Above the elbow,” I said.
“They had to.”
“I know. I’m just trying to get used to it.” I opened my eyes and looked at him. Then I remembered my earlier visitors. “Have I gotten you into trouble?”
“Me?”
“The police were here. They thought you had done this to me.”
“Oh, that. They were sheriff’s deputies. The neighbors called them when you started to scream. They questioned me, detained me for a while—that’s what they call it!—but you convinced them that they might as well let me go.”
“Good. I told them it was an accident. My fault.” “There’s no way a thing like that could be your fault.”
“That’s debatable. But it certainly wasn’t your fault. Are you still in trouble?”
“I don’t think so. They’re sure I did it, but there were no witnesses, and you won’t co-operate. Also, I don’t think they can figure out how I could have hurt you … in the way you were hurt.”
I closed my eyes again remembering the way I had been hurt —
remembering the pain.
“Are you all right?” Kevin asked.
“Yes. Tell me what you told the police.”
PROLOGUE 11
“The truth.” He toyed with my hand for a moment silently. I looked at him, found him watching me.
“If you told those deputies the truth,” I said softly, “you’d still be locked up—in a mental hospital.”
He smiled. “I told as much of the truth as I could. I said I was in the bedroom when I heard you scream. I ran to the living room to see what was wrong, and I found you struggling to free your arm from what seemed to be a hole in the wall. I went to help you. That was when I real- ized your arm wasn’t just stuck, but that, somehow, it had been crushed right into the wall.”
“Not exactly crushed.”
“I know. But that seemed to be a good word to use on them—to show my ignorance. It wasn’t all that inaccurate either. Then they wanted me to tell them how such a thing could happen. I said I didn’t know … kept telling them I didn’t know. And heaven help me, Dana, I don’t know.”
“Neither do I,” I whispered. “Neither do I.”
The River
The trouble began long before June 9, 1976, when I became aware of it, but June 9 is the day I remember. It was my twenty-sixth birthday. It was also the day I met Rufus—the day he called me to him for the first time.
Kevin and I had not planned to do anything to celebrate my birthday. We were both too tired for that. On the day before, we had moved from our apartment in Los Angeles to a house of our own a few miles away in Altadena. The moving was celebration enough for me. We were still unpacking—or rather, I was still unpacking. Kevin had stopped when he got his office in order. Now he was closeted there either loafing or think- ing because I didn’t hear his typewriter. Finally, he came out to the living room where I was sorting books into one of the big bookcases. Fiction only. We had so many books, we had to try to keep them in some kind of order.
“What’s the matter?” I asked him.
“Nothing.” He sat down on the floor near where I was working. “Just struggling with my own perversity. You know, I had half-a-dozen ideas for that Christmas story yesterday during the moving.”
“And none now when there’s time to write them down.”
“Not a one.” He picked up a book, opened it, and turned a few pages. I picked up another book and tapped him on the shoulder with it. When he looked up, surprised, I put a stack of nonfiction down in front of him. He stared at it unhappily.
“Hell, why’d I come out here?”
THE RIVER 13
“To get more ideas. After all, they come to you when you’re busy.” He gave me a look that I knew wasn’t as malevolent as it seemed. He
had the kind of pale, almost colorless eyes that made him seem distant and angry whether he was or not. He used them to intimidate people. Strangers. I grinned at him and went back to work. After a moment, he took the nonfiction to another bookcase and began shelving it.
I bent to push him another box full, then straightened quickly as I began to feel dizzy, nauseated. The room seemed to blur and darken around me. I stayed on my feet for a moment holding on to a bookcase and wondering what was wrong, then finally, I collapsed to my knees. I heard Kevin make a wordless sound of surprise, heard him ask, “What happened?”
I raised my head and discovered that I could not focus on him. “Some- thing is wrong with me,” I gasped.
I heard him move toward me, saw a blur of gray pants and blue shirt. Then, just before he would have touched me, he vanished.
The house, the books, everything vanished. Suddenly, I was outdoors kneeling on the ground beneath trees. I was in a green place. I was at the edge of a woods. Before me was a wide tranquil river, and near the mid- dle of that river was a child splashing, screaming …
Drowning!
I reacted to the child in trouble. Later I could ask questions, try to find out where I was, what had happened. Now I went to help the child.
I ran down to the river, waded into the water fully clothed, and swam quickly to the child. He was unconscious by the time I reached him—a small red- haired boy floating, face down. I turned him over, got a good hold on him so that his head was above water, and towed him in. There was a red-haired woman waiting for us on the shore now. Or rather, she was running back and forth crying on the shore. The moment she saw that I was wading, she ran out, took the boy from me and carried him the rest of the way, feeling and examining him as she did.
“He’s not breathing!” she screamed.
Artificial respiration. I had seen it done, been told about it, but I had never done it. Now was the time to try. The woman was in no condition to do anything useful, and there was no one else in sight. As we reached shore, I snatched the child from her. He was no more than four or five years old, and not very big.
I put him down on his back, tilted his head back, and began mouth-to-
14 KINDRED
mouth resuscitation. I saw his chest move as I breathed into him. Then, suddenly, the woman began beating me.
“You killed my baby!” she screamed. “You killed him!”
I turned and managed to catch her pounding fists. “Stop it!” I shouted, putting all the authority I could into my voice. “He’s alive!” Was he? I couldn’t tell. Please God, let him be alive. “The boy’s alive. Now let me help him.” I pushed her away, glad she was a little smaller than I was, and turned my attention back to her son. Between breaths, I saw her star- ing at me blankly. Then she dropped to her knees beside me, crying.
Moments later, the boy began breathing on his own—breathing and coughing and choking and throwing up and crying for his mother. If he could do all that, he was all right. I sat back from him, feeling light- headed, relieved. I had done it!
“He’s alive!” cried the woman. She grabbed him and nearly smothered him. “Oh, Rufus, baby …”
Rufus. Ugly name to inflict on a reasonably nice-looking little kid. When Rufus saw that it was his mother who held him, he clung to her,
screaming as loudly as he could.
