Mark watched the patient. He had a sheet pulled up to his chin, eyes closed. A white cloth hung from a stand, masking the room beyond the patient’s forehead. Mark could see shadowy motions on the cloth, betraying movement beyond it.
A dark stain, the size of a coin, appeared on the hanging linen. Mark watched as the stain grew, dripping slowly downward, burning bright red. The patient’s eyes moved beneath his closed eyelids, then opened, staring off into space. Mark jumped back when the patient’s mouth opened in silent agony. Then the patient’s eyes swung down, staring, boring right through Mark.
Beyond the hanging linen a figure rose… a doctor, also wearing a surgical mask. He clutched a bloody scalpel. He looked straight at Mark, then pointed the scalpel in his direction. Mark could hear the doctor say something.
The nurse turned in the direction the doctor was pointing. She stared right into Mark’s eyes.
Mark was frozen in place, unable to move as long as the nurse stared at him from behind her glasses. Mark heard the doctor talking again. The nurse turned to the bellows machine and switched it off. The patient heaved for air. Deep, struggling, futile breaths.
The doctor moved from behind the patient, shifting the scalpel to his other hand, the one closest to Mark.
Mark still couldn’t move. He watched as the doctor slowly approached, blood dripping from the scalpel down his gloved hand.
The patient gurgled a last breath, jolting Mark from his trance. He turned and ran back down the hallway. He heard footsteps slap the ground behind him. He raced through the inner door and crashed into the closed outer door. Mark pushed against the door, but the now howling wind outside held the door tightly shut. Mark struggled, pushing with all his might. The footsteps behind him grew closer. The door behind him slammed shut. He glanced back, saw the doctor closing the short distance between them, scalpel raised high. Mark gave the door in front of him a final, desperate shove.
The door gave way, slamming open into the windswept, raining, darkening night.
Young Mark ran into the darkness, lightning flashing through the rain. He headed for a line of trees and glanced back. The doctor was now running, almost on top of him. Mark crashed into the trees. He slipped, tripped over downed branches, then fell. Face first. He rolled over onto his back, holding his arms over his face as the shadow of his pursuer towered over him. Mark opened his eyes and found he was…
…lying face up in the grass near the sidewalk.
Mark picked himself up and brushed himself off. He looked down at the bottle in his hand, brought it to his lips and poured the remaining liquid down his throat, then tossed the empty bottle into a nearby alley. The lights of the hotel appeared ahead. He staggered forward.
Dr. Drexel stepped into the conference room and closed the door behind her. She checked the room. The others were all there.
The elder, balding Dr. Winston Fraze sat on the far side of the conference table, near the large video display. Dr. Elizabeth Ermil sat in a wheelchair near Dr. Fraze. Her thinning, gray hair draped loosely across her shoulders. Both Fraze and Ermil were well into their seventies. Sitting at the head of the conference table was Dr. Hans Drexel, whose unkempt mustache dripped into his mouth. Still spry for his age, Hans had mostly black hair with a single grey streak near the middle of his brow which ran all the way to the back of his head. He hopped up when Natalie came in. “We’ve been waiting for you, dear.”
Natalie turned the lock on the door. She met Hans with a hug.
After they embraced, Hans returned to his seat at the head of the table, and Natalie took a chair at his right, across from the other two doctors. “I really did hope we would be able to close down before this happened,” Natalie said.
“We all knew it could happen,” Dr. Fraze said.
“It had to happen, eventually.” Dr. Ermil agreed.
Dr. Natalie Drexel picked up a remote and pushed a button. The video monitor jumped to life. It showed her office from an upper corner perspective, video from a surveillance camera that recorded all transactions in her office. In this view, Mark sat across from her desk while Ellen could be seen running the camera behind Mark. The audio was turned off.
“That’s him?” Dr. Fraze asked.
“Yes,” Natalie said. “Mark Wilcox. A reporter from Chicago.”
“He suffers,” Dr. Fraze said.
“His eyes. They’re tired,” Dr. Ermil agreed.
“Yes. He blacked out earlier. He’s not sleeping, I prescribed Temazepam.”
Hans Drexel pointed his finger. “He looks familiar. I had a patient once… a case of severe depression. Suicidal.”
“Temazepam is contraindicated for those suffering from depression,” Dr. Fraze said.
“Or to anyone who abuses alcohol. His hands shake…” Dr. Ermil added.
“We’ll have to do something,” Dr. Hans Drexel said. “You can see that he is almost at the darkest edge.”
“Your daughter may have done enough already,” Dr. Fraze said.
The address Alicia had provided Mark led to a spot just south of Xenia. He had dropped Ellen off at the hotel, but he wasn’t ready to call it a day. He had decided to drive out here and check the place out. Now that he was here, he wasn’t sure this had been all that good of an idea.
It was big, he thought. Much bigger than he had expected. A short, rock wall bordered the place. He drove several hundred feet before he came to the entrance. He stopped the car and sat there, considering whether or not to go inside. ”Ah, what the hell,” he said and pulled onto the narrow road that ran through a gap in the rock wall.
On either side were fields of white, marble markers. As he slowly drove along, he noticed many of the markers were very old. They were small, some crumbling and wind-worn along their former, well-defined edges. Interspersed were larger markers, more modern than those that surrounded them. Some must have cost a small fortune, with portraitures of their memorialized occupants. He topped a hill and saw that the fields of markers went well into the distance.
He stopped his rental car in the road and got out. He wandered through the graveyard, reading the names and dates on the markers. The oldest he saw was one of the small ones, in honor of one Adolphus Reed, dated 1806–1879. Adjacent was apparently his wife, Nathalie, who had lived a few years beyond her beloved and didn’t pass until 1886.
One of the larger markers simply said ‘Easterline’, and was surrounded by dozens of old, and new, markers all bearing the Easterline surname. A family plot.
Mark scanned the fields of stones. It was easy to wonder about the lives, and trials, of those buried in this massive cemetery. How would he ever find Jackie’s final resting place? The cemetery was massive.