“Dad trusted you. You sold us out, Jim. You sold us all out. After all that my father did for you!”
“John, forgive me. I had no choice… What . . . what’s going to happen to me?” he pleaded.
“I really don’t know, Jim. Eventually a spirit like you or me will find you. He or she will be good or evil, willing to help or harm you. I don’t know which, and I don’t care.”
“At least show me how to move, so I can get out of this car and garage! “
“Why should I? You can stay and wait, like I had to. Whatever happens will be left to chance, just like you left all our lives to chance.”
“What the hell is this?” Jim looked down as he noticed his thighs had been slowly disappearing into the trunk.
“‘Hell’ could be right, Jim. You may just be going there.”
John turned away and started walking back to the elevator enclosure. He had his answers, but it didn’t make him feel any better.
John turned the corner to where he had left Jennifer and David waiting. Donovan’s screams, audible only to John and Jennifer, followed them into the elevator and were finally cut silent with the closing of the doors.
The elevator slowly rose and then the doors opened onto the lobby of the condominium building. David made straight for one of the couches that was hidden from the receptionist’s view. Jennifer joined him in sitting down while John stood watching over them both. She ran through the conversation that she had overheard in the near-empty garage between John and Donovan, right up to the point where Donovan had described how he was driving up in a van, side door open, mask on, ready to complete the kidnap when he had seen the aftermath of the stabbing and driven off. She told both men that she now remembered the driver looking at her with the hideous, bony grin of a skull, which she now realized must have been the mask Donovan had been wearing.
“So, Donovan,” David said, trying to piece everything together, “tried to use Hardwell to kidnap John. But Hardwell was possessed at that time by Santiago’s spirit…. and you know that because you saw him leave Hardwell when he was arrested.”
Jennifer nodded.
“So, on the night of the stabbing…” David continued thoughtfully, “Hardwell was trying to answer to two masters? Donovan wanted him to kidnap but not harm John, but Santiago’s spirit wanted him to…” his voice faded.
“To kill me, Dad––not John––as the start of his revenge against you.”
“And Santiago must have seemed like a constant voice in Hardwell’s head––telling him to stab you––driving him almost insane! There was no way that Donovan could compete with that and stop Hardwell doing what he had been ordered to do,” John observed.
Jennifer repeated his words for her father’s benefit and added, “At the moment of the stabbing, the pressure must have been intense. It was Santiago’s will against Hardwell’s, yet somehow Hardwell must have won. He may have been weak-minded, but his feelings for me must have been strong enough to make him turn the knife away from me and onto John at the last second.” She paused a moment as she looked at the expression of disbelief on her father’s face. “None of this is your fault, Dad,” she said softly. Then her tone changed. “Enough of this feeling sorry for ourselves! We have to go to the hospital.”
David got to his feet. They all passed through the lobby and onto the street, where they stood outside under the long, gray canopy that extended out over the sidewalk with ‘Kingston Residences’ printed in silver cursive script on its sides.
Jake, the doorman, was, as John had assured them, charming, tipping his hat and offering to hail Jennifer and David a cab, which they willingly accepted. During the twenty-minute journey to Queens Bayview Hospital, they delighted in the fact that for the first time in over two weeks, Jennifer and David were no longer hunted by anyone or anything.
By the time they had made their way up to the ICU, it was nearly 10:20 p.m. Visitors were allowed until 10:00 p.m.
“Are you family?” The duty nurse challenged them at reception.
“No, but––” Jennifer gave the nurse her most charming smile, also glancing at John, who walked straight past with the advantage of being invisible to everyone but her.
“Only family can stay longer past ten under special circumstances. I’m sorry, but as you’re not family, I can’t let you in,” the nurse interrupted.
Jennifer wanted to protest. There was a chance that the greatest moment in her life was about to happen: a chance of being reunited with John, the complete and whole John, both body and spirit, which she was now sure she had fallen in love with.
David calmed her down and made her sit with him. He assured her that they would know soon enough if John’s attempt would be a success, and there was nothing that either of them could do to help make it happen.
Once inside the ICU, John looked in each of the rooms one by one and found his father sitting in the second room on the left. He was sitting facing the bed and had fallen asleep, his face thin and tired from worry.
On the bed was a body with the face partly obscured by a ventilator tube. The body was still, save for the exaggerated and unnaturally precise breathing movements of the chest. It was the body that had carried him for eighteen years, that he had worked hard to make lean and muscled, yet somehow it seemed inexplicably alien.
This is it! John thought. It had all been leading up to this moment. He would soon know if he could return to the living or if he was doomed to eternally walk the earth as a spirit. It was
