“No need. I won’t be around too long.”
“I wish you’d stay awhile. You might flop over once again. And not be found this time.”
“I’ll think on it,” Blaine promised.
He lay back on the bed.
The doctor rose and went to the other bed. He bent over it and listened to the breathing. He found a wad of cotton and dabbed it at the lips. He murmured at the man who lay there, then he straightened up.
“Anything you need?” he inquired of Blaine. “You must be getting hungry.”
Blaine nodded. Now that he thought of it, he was.
“No hurry, though,” he said.
“I’ll speak to the kitchen,” said the doctor. “They’ll find something for you.”
He turned about and walked briskly from the room, and Blaine lay listening to his crisp, quick footsteps going down the hall.
And suddenly he knew — or remembered — why he now was safe. The flashing signal light was gone, for the creature of the far star had taken it from him. Now there was no longer need to skulk, no need of hiding out.
He lay there and thought about it and felt a bit more human — although, to tell the truth, he had never felt anything but human. Although now, for the first time, beneath the humanness, he felt the quick, tense straining of new knowledge, of a deep strata of new knowledge that was his to tap.
Across, in the other bed, the mummy wheezed and rasped and slobbered.
“Riley!” whispered Blaine.
There was no break in the breathing, no sign of recognition.
Blaine swung on the bed and thrust out his feet. He sat on the edge of the bed and let his feet down to the floor, and the patterned tile was chill. He stood up, and the scratchy hospital gown hung obscenely around his shanks.
At the other bed, he bent close above the white-swathed thing that lay there.
“Riley! Is it you? Riley, do you hear me?”
The mummy stirred.
The head tried to turn toward him but it couldn’t. The lips moved with an effort. The tongue fought to frame a sound.
“Tell . . .” it said, dragging out the word with the effort of its saying.
It tried again. “Tell Finn,” it said.
There was more to say. Blaine could sense that there was more to say. He waited. The lips moved again, laboriously, and yet again. The tongue writhed heavily inside the slobbering cavern. But there was nothing more.
“Riley!” But there was no answer.
Blaine backed away until the edge of his bed caught him back of the knees and he sat down upon it.
He stayed there, staring at the swathed figure motionless on the bed.
And the fear, he thought, had caught up with the man at last, the fear that he had raced across half a continent. Although, perhaps, not the fear he ran from, but another fear and another danger.
Riley gasped and panted.
And there he lay, thought Blaine, a man who had some piece of information to pass on to a man named Finn. Who was Finn and where? What had he to do with Riley?
Finn?
There had been a Finn.
Once, long ago, he’d known the name of Finn.
Blaine sat stiff and straight upon the bed, remembering what he knew of Finn.
Although it might be a different Finn.
For Lambert Finn had been a Fishhook traveler, too, although he’d disappeared, even as Godfrey Stone had disappeared, but many years before Stone had disappeared, long before Blaine himself had ever come to Fishhook.
And now he was a whispered name, a legend, a chilling character in a chilling story, one of the few Fishhook horror tales.
For, so the story ran, Lambert Finn had come back from the stars one day a screaming maniac!
EIGHTEEN
Blaine lay back upon the bed and stared up at the ceiling. A breeze came sniffing through the window, and leaf shadows from a tree outside played fitfully upon the wall. It must be a stubborn tree, Blaine thought, among the last to lose its leaves, for it was late October now.
He listened to the muffled sounds that came from the hushed corridors beyond the room, and the biting antiseptic smell was still hanging in the air.
He must get out of here, he thought; he must be on his way. But on his way to where? On his way to Pierre, of course — to Pierre and Harriet, if Harriet were there. But Pierre itself was dead end. So far as he might know, there was no purpose in it. So far as he could know, it was just a place to run to.
For he was running still, in blind and desperate flight. He’d been running since that moment when he’d returned from his mission to the stars. And worst of all, running without purpose, running only to be safe, just to get away.
The lack of purpose hurt. It made him an empty thing. It made him a wind-blown striving that had no free will of its own.
He lay there and let the hurt sink in — and the bitterness and wonder, the wonder if it had been wise to run from Fishhook, if it had been the thing to do. Then he remembered Freddy Bates and Freddy’s painted smile and the glitter in his eyes and the gun in Freddy’s pocket. And he knew there was no doubt about it: it had been the thing to do.
But somewhere there must be something he could lay his fingers on, something he could grasp, some shred of hope or promise he could cling to. He must not go on forever floating without purpose. The time must come when he could stop his running, when he could set his feet, when he could look around.
On the bed Riley gasped and wheezed and gurgled and was silent.
There was no sense in staying, Blaine told himself, as the doctor wished. For there was nothing that the doc could find and nothing Blaine could tell him and there was no profit in it for either one of them.
He got off the bed again and walked across the room to the door that more than likely led into a closet.
He opened the door and it was a closet and his clothes hung there. There was no sign of underwear, but his pants and shirt were hanging there and his shoes sat underneath them. His jacket had fallen off the hook and lay in a crumpled heap upon the floor.
He stripped off the hospital gown and reached for his trousers. He stepped into them and cinched them tight about his middle.
He was reaching for the shirt when the stillness struck him — the peaceful, mellow stillness of an autumn afternoon. The peace of yellow leaf and the mellowness of the haze upon the distant hills and the winelike richness of the season.
But the stillness was all wrong.
There should be a gasping and a bubbling from the man upon the bed.
With his shoulders hunched, as if against a blow, Blaine waited for the sound and there was no sound.
He spun around and took a step toward the bed, then halted. For there was no reason for going near the bed. Riley’s swathed body lay still and quiet, and the bubble on the lips was frozen there.
“Doctor!” Blaine yelled, “Doctor!” running to the door, knowing even as he ran and yelled that he was being foolish, that his reaction was irrational.
He reached the door and stopped. He put his hands against the jambs and leaned forward to thrust his head out into the corridor.
The doctor was coming down the hall, hurrying, but not running.
“Doctor,” whispered Blaine.
The doctor reached the door. He put out a hand and pushed Blaine back into the room. He strode over to the bed.
He stooped with his stethoscope placed against the mummy, then stepped back from the bed.
He looked hard at Blaine.
“And you are going where?” he asked.
“He’s dead,” said Blaine. “His breathing stopped and it was a long time—”
“Yes, he’s dead. He never had a chance. Even with gobathian he didn’t have a chance.”
“Gobathian? That was what you used? That was why he was all wrapped up?”
“He was broken,” said the doctor. “Like a toy someone had thrown on the floor and jumped on. He was . . .”