The Awakening of Dr. Brown

fog.

Joanna, don’t you dawdle, you get that milk and hurry right on back, now, you hear? I’m depending on you. Promise me, now.

I will, Momma. I’ll come right back, I promise…

Smells drifted up from the floor below-the familiar smells of mildew, human waste and decay…and a cooking smell, acrid and pervasive. Somebody was burning dinner. Something made a rustling sound in the trash that had collected in the corners of the stairs. Shuddering, she drew her feet closer. Somewhere a baby began to cry.

Waves of revulsion washed through her, leaving her weak and hollow. She drew deep, strengthening breaths- and coughed. The burned cooking smell from downstairs was stronger.

Bracing one hand on a wall so coated with grime that the graffiti hardly stood out at all, she rose stiffly to her feet and lifted her eyes to stare upward into the shadowy stairwell. One more floor to go.

The third floor. That was where the boy, Michael, lived. Lived with his aunt, now that his mother was dead. She’d go there…knock on his door…and tell him what? That she was sorry? She didn’t know. She hadn’t thought that far. It was just that…she could feel his hand creeping into hers, like a baby animal snuggling close to its mother for comfort. She could see the sadness in his strange golden eyes as he looked up at her…

Momma, why do I always have to be the one to go? Why can’t Jonathan?

Joanna, you know your brother’s not as strong as you are. Doctor says he has to be careful not to get too tired…

I don’t care! I get tired, too. I have to work all the time. I always have to watch Chrissy, and I never get to play. I hate her! I hate Jonathon. And I hate you!

A tear rolled down her cheek. She brushed it away as she plodded, one step after another up the stairs, but others followed. Finally, halfway between the second floor and the third she paused to mop at her face with the hem of her shirt. But for some reason, her eyes just kept burning. She sniffed-hard-and erupted into violent coughing. The smell-the burning food smell-was so strong it was choking her.

No-not a food smell. Smoke.

Smoke was drifting up the stairwell, reaching with ghostly tentacles, spreading like fake, stage fog, the kind that comes from dry ice. She could hear something now, too-a faint, far-off crackling sound.

Fear came first. It spiked through her like a lance, pinioning her to the spot. Paralyzed, unable to breathe, she closed her eyes tightly and clamped her hands over her ears, trying to shut out the screams. Momma! Jonathan…Chrissy! Where are you? Momma!

But the screams were inside her own head.

She never knew how she’d come to be there, but suddenly she was running down a hallway, hammering on doors with her fists and screaming, “Fire! Fire-get out! You have to get out!” Screaming until her throat was raw. Screaming and banging until doors opened to angry faces…slowly comprehending faces… frightened faces. And in the midst of that chaos, her mind was rejecting it all, insisting with the adamance of a stubborn child, No-no, this can’t be happening. It can’t be happening, not to me!

Angrily now she herded them down the hallway toward the stairs-children and old people, some half-dressed, some crying…some too dazed to even be scared. Inwardly raging, she felt almost glad to have an excuse to scream at someone, a reason to vent her fury at the Fates who would play such a cruel joke on her. Not me! Why is this happening again…to me?

The understanding came to her gently, more like a sunrise than a thunderclap. The screams and shouts and poundings faded and she entered a strange kind of calm, almost like a dream. Of course you, Joanna. Of course you.

In the dream she heard whispers, voices from the past. Doveman’s voice, saying, “…Look in the place where I was when I lost it.” She’d come full circle, Joanna had. The Fates had brought her back to the place where she’d lost herself, twenty-five years before. For reasons she couldn’t begin to understand, she was being given another chance. A chance to find Joanna.

On the second floor the smoke was thicker. Doors were opening even before she got to them, people finally roused by the commotion, coming out to see what was going on and meeting with the black, choking cloud.

“Get down!” Joanna screamed at them. “Stay low, but hurry! Get out! Run!”

Down the stairs she went, elbowing people aside, stumbling, half falling, lungs screaming for air. It was her nightmare come to life-the blackness and choking smoke…the colors of fire, flames licking up a door frame, hissing across the ceiling…and a strange keening sound that she realized finally was coming from her own throat.

From somewhere nearby she heard glass breaking. People were all around her, pushing past her, some crying and choking, others eerily silent, all running, running for the front door and the clean clear air outside. She kept trying to make headway in the opposite direction, certain there must be someone else left inside, certain that only she could save them. But as in her nightmare, no matter how hard she tried, her legs would not propel her forward. She felt herself being carried along with the crowd, helpless as a leaf in a torrent.

Then she was outside, moving like a sleepwalker through the crowd of people that had gathered in the street…dark shapes with shocked faces, eyes staring past her at the smoke that had begun to billow from broken windows. Somewhere in the distance sirens wailed, getting louder, coming nearer. Someone clutched at her arm and she jerked around, startled and uncomprehending.

A woman stood there, arms wrapped protectively around the baby clinging in terror to her neck. The woman was shouting at her, her face contorted with anguish and fear, screaming words Joanna couldn’t hear. The noise and the wailing of the sirens filled her ears, filled all the space inside her head. Clapping her hands over her hears, she bent her head close to the woman’s and shouted, “What?”

“It’s Michael! I can’t find Michael! I don’t know what happened to him-I thought he was right there. Oh, Lord- Oh, Jesus…I don’t what I’ll do if anything happens to him. First his momma and now…”

Michael. The little boy whose mother had died. The child she and Ethan had spent the day with Saturday, in the park. The child who had stood in front of his mother’s apartment and gazed up at her with lost, golden eyes. She remembered the feel of his small hand stealing into hers, felt it so vividly she looked down and was surprised not to see him there.

She clutched the woman with both hands just as the sirens yelped and died, so her voice grated loud in the comparative silence. “You think he’s still in there?”

The woman’s head bobbed frantically. “He mighta went to his old place-I know he had the key. He’d do that sometimes, when he was missin’ his momma bad. It’s the first one you come to, right at the top-”

But Joanna was already running, pushing through the crowd with her panther’s stride, making for the cracked concrete steps that would take her back into the burning building. Back into Hell. Back into her own half-forgotten past.

Ethan unbuckled his seat belt and hitched himself forward. “What’s going on? Why are we stopping?”

Tom Applegate shrugged. “Can’t see, sir. An emergency of some sort-they’ve got the street blocked off.”

“Some kind of mess up ahead,” Rupert Dove muttered, tapping his gnarled fingers on one bony knee.

Ethan demanded harshly, “Can’t we get through some other way?” Urgency jumped and twitched in all his muscles; he felt a tightness in his chest and a churning in his belly he couldn’t explain, except that he knew he had to see Joanna-or Phoenix, or whomever she decided she wanted to be; it no longer mattered to him, and he wanted, needed, to tell her that-now.

Tom lifted a hand from the steering wheel in a gesture of helplessness. His eyes met Ethan’s in the rearview mirror-steady, uncompromising but not without compassion. Staring back at him, Ethan knew what he had to do. Without a moment’s hesitation, he reached for the door handle.

“You ain’t goin’ without me,” Rupert Dove wheezed as he pushed his own door open. Ethan heard the old man’s raspy breathing close behind him as he wove his way between idling cars, wading across the streams of headlights and through clouds of engine exhaust. Just as he reached the sidewalk, Tom Applegate pushed past him, swearing, to take his customary place in the lead. Behind them in the clogged street, horns began to bleat futilely.

Two blocks farther on they found the street filled with fire engines and police and EMS vehicles. Beyond the police barricades shadowy figures were going efficiently about their business in a world turned chaotic, moving quickly, shouting orders, wrestling equipment, or bending quietly over silent shapes huddled on stoops and curbs.