Hemlock Bay

Scully.”
    Savich and Sherlock rolled their eyes and followed their boss from the men’s room.
    The boys claimed they’d seen the Ghouls, could speak of nothing else but how Agent Savich had put a bullet right in the middle of one and made them whirl out of the barn. But the boys were so tattered and pathetic, very nearly incoherent, that indeed, they weren’t believed, even by their parents.
    One reporter asked Savich if he’d seen any ghouls and Savich just said, “Excuse me, what did you say?”
    Jimmy Maitland was right. That was the end of it.
    Savich and Sherlock played with Sean for so long that evening that he finally fell asleep in the middle of his favorite finger game, Hide the Camel, a graham cracker smashed in his hand. That night at two o’clock in the morning, the phone rang. Savich picked it up, listened, and said, “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
    He slowly hung up the phone and looked over at his wife, who’d managed to prop herself up on her elbow.
    “It’s my sister, Lily. She’s in the hospital. It doesn’t look good.”

2
    Hemlock Bay, California

    Bright sunlight poured through narrow windows. Her bedroom windows were wider, weren’t they? Surely they were cleaner than this. No, ait, she wasn’t in her bedroom. A vague sort of panic jumped her, then fell away. She didn’t feel much of anything now, just a bit of confusion that surely wasn’t all that important, just a slight ache in her left arm at the IV line.
    IV line?
    That meant she was in a hospital. She was breathing; she could feel the oxygen tickling her nose, the tubes irritating her. But it was reassuring. She was alive. But why shouldn’t she be alive? Why was she surprised?
    Her brain felt numb and empty, and even the emptiness was hazy. Maybe she was dying and that’s why they’d left her alone. Where was Tennyson? Oh, yes, he’d gone to Chicago two days before, some sort of medical thing. She’d been glad to see him go, relieved, just plain solidly relieved that she wouldn’t have to hear his calm, soothing voice that drove her nuts.
    A white-coated man with a bald head, a stethoscope around his neck, came into the room. He leaned down right into her face. “Mrs. Frasier, can you hear me?”
    “Oh, yes. I can even see the hairs in your nose.”
    He straightened, laughed. “Oh, that’s too close then. Now that my nose hairs aren’t in the way, how do you feel? Any pain?”
    “No, I can barely feel my brain. I feel vague and stupid.”
    “That’s because of the morphine. You could be shot in the belly, get enough morphine, and you wouldn’t even be pissed at your mother-in-law. I’m your surgeon, Dr. Ted Larch. Since I had to remove your spleen—and that’s major abdominal surgery—we’ll keep you on a nice, steady dose of morphine until this evening. We’ll begin to lighten up on it after that. Then we’ll get you up to see how you’re doing, get your innards working again.”
    “What else is wrong with me?”
    “Let me give you the short version. First, let me promise you that you’ll be all right. As for having no spleen, nothing bad should happen in the long run because of that. An adult doesn’t really need his spleen. However, you will have all the discomfort of surgery—pain for several days. You’ll have to be careful about when and what you eat, and as I said, we’ll have to get your system working again.
    “You have a concussion, two bruised ribs, some cuts and abrasions, but you’ll live. Nothing that should cause any scarring. You’re doing splendidly, given what happened.”
    “What did happen?”
    Dr. Larch was silent for a moment, his head tilted a bit to one side. Sun was pouring in through the window and gave his bald head a bright shine. He said slowly, studying her face, “You don’t remember?”
    She thought and thought until he lightly touched his fingers to her forearm. “No, don’t try to force it. You’ll just give yourself a headache. What is the last thing you do remember, Mrs. Frasier?”
    Again she thought, and finally she said slowly, “I remember leaving my house in Hemlock Bay. That’s where I live, on Crocodile Bayou Avenue. I remember I was going to drive to Ferndale to deliver some medical slides to a Dr. Baker. I remember I didn’t like driving on 211 when it was nearly dark. That road is scary and those redwoods tower over you and surround you and you start feeling like you’re being buried alive.” She stopped, and he saw