Blood Lines

to read them. Sudden deaths in public places… makes sense to check the tabloid first .
    It took her less than ten minutes to find the first article. Two inches square on the bottom right-hand corner of page twenty-two, it would have been easy to miss except for the headline. "BOY DIES MYSTERIOUSLY ON SUBWAY."
    The body had been removed from the University Subway line at Osgoode Station, Queen Street, and had been pronounced dead on arrival at Sick Children's Hospital. Cause of death, heart failure. Osgoode was three stops south of Museum. The date was October 20th. The time, nine forty-five. Only hours after Dr. Rax had died and everyone began declaring that the coffin was and always had been empty.
    Vicki's hands closed into fists and her fingers punched through the newsprint. The boy had been twelve years old.
    Teeth clenched, she clipped the article, then slowly and methodically ripped the paper into a thousand tiny pieces.
    It was almost three a.m. before she found the second death buried in a story about child care facilities under investigation. On Thursday, October 22nd, a three-year-old had plunged off the top of a play structure at the Sunnyview Co-op Daycare and, according to the autopsy, had been dead before hitting the ground. Only one long block along Bloor Street separated the Sunnyview Co-op Daycare from the museum.
    Tuesday afternoon, after seeing Henry safely into the day and catching a few hours of sleep, Vicki stood with one hand resting on the chain link fence that surrounded the Daycare Center where the second child had died. Not much of a barrier , she thought, rubbing at a wire pebbled with rust. Not when you add a reanimated evil to all the other dangers of the city . Although the sky was gray and heavy with moisture, no rain fell and the playground seethed with small people. Here, half a dozen assaulted a tower made of wood and tires and rope while its four defenders shrieked defiance. There, two used the empty cement wading pool as the perfect racetrack. Here, one squatted in rapt contemplation of a puddle. There, three argued the rights of a slide. And through it all, in the spaces between the scenes where Vicki's limited vision couldn't take her, children ran and jumped and played.
    There should be one more . She followed the fence up the driveway and, lips tight, entered the building.
    '… all right, the death of a child under her care might drive the rest of the day out of her mind-I'll give her that, I've seen it happen before-but it's the way she didn't remember things, Henry. It just didn't ring true."
    Henry looked up from the pair of clippings, his face expressionless. "So what do you think happened?"
    'She was in the playground, not ten feet from where the child fell. I think she saw it. I think she saw it and it wiped the memory from her mind, just like it did at the museum."
    'By it you mean…?"

    'The mummy, Henry." Vicki finished stamping down another length of the living room and whirled around to start back. "I mean the goddamned mummy!"
    'Don't you think you're jumping to conclusions?" He asked the question as neutrally as he could, but even so, it brought her shoulders up and her brows down.
    'What the hell do you mean?"
    'I mean, children die. For all sorts of reasons. It's sad and it's horrible, but it happens. I was the only one of my mother's children to make it out of early childhood."
    'That was the fifteenth century!"
    'And in this century children have stopped dying?"
    She sighed and her shoulders dropped. "No. Of course not. But Henry…" A half dozen quick strides took her across the room to his chair where she dropped to her knees and laid her hands over his. "… these two were taken by the mummy. I know that. I don't know how I know it, but I know. Look, cops are trained to observe. We, they, do it all the time, everywhere. They may not consciously recognize everything they see or hear as important, but the subconscious is constantly filtering information until all the bits and pieces add up to a whole." She tightened her grip and lifted her eyes to meet his. "I know the mummy took out these two kids."
    He held her gaze until her eyes began to water. She felt naked, vulnerable-worth the price if he believed her.
    'Perhaps," Henry said thoughtfully at last, finally allowing her to look away, "there are those few who take observing one step further, who can see to the truth…"
    'Oh, Christ, Henry." She retrieved the newspaper clippings and stood. "Don't give