Phantoms

been so glad to hear anything as she was to hear his voice.
    “Just a scratch,” he said.
    “Now you sound like Tal,” she said, laughing through her tears. “Is Timmy okay?”
    “Kale was going to kill him. If I hadn’t been here…”
    “This is Kale?”
    “Yeah.”
    Jenny wiped her eyes with her sleeves and examined Bryce’s shoulder. The bullet had passed through, in the front and out the back. There was no reason to think it had fragmented, but she intended to order X-rays anyway. The wound was bleeding freely, although it wasn’t spurting, and she directed the nurse to stanch the flow with gauze pads soaked in boric acid.
    He was going to be all right.
    Sure of Bryce’s condition, Jenny turned to the man on the floor. He was in more serious condition. The nurse had torn open his jacket and shirt; he’d been shot in the chest. He coughed, and bright blood sputtered over his lips.
    Jenny sent the nurse for a stretcher and put in an emergency call for a surgeon. Then she noticed Kale was running a fever. His forehead was hot, face flushed. When she took his wrist to check his pulse, she saw it was covered with fiery red spots. She pushed up his sleeve and found the spots extended halfway up his arm. They were on his other wrist, too. None on his face or neck. She had noticed pale red marks on his chest but had mistaken them for blood. Looking again, more closely than before, she saw they were like the spots on his wrists.
    Measles? No. Something else. Something worse than measles.
    The nurse returned with two orderlies and a wheeled stretcher, and Jenny said, “We’ll have to quarantine this floor. And the one above. We’ve got some disease here, and I’m not entirely sure what it is.”
     
    After X-rays and after his wound had been dressed, Bryce was put in a room down the hall from Timmy. The ache in his shoulder got worse, not better, as the shocked nerves began to regain their function. He refused painkillers, intending to keep a clear head until he knew what had happened and why.
    Jenny came to see him half an hour after he was put to bed. She looked exhausted, yet her weariness didn’t diminish her beauty. The sight of her was all the medicine he needed.
    “How’s Kale?” he asked.
    “The bullet didn’t damage his heart. It collapsed one lung, nicked an artery. Ordinarily, the prognosis would be fair. But he’s not only got surgery to recuperate from; he’s also got to deal with a case of Rocky Mountain spotted fever.”
    Bryce blinked. “Spotted fever?”
    “There’re two cigarette burns on his right calf, or rather the scars of two burns, where he got rid of the ticks. Wood ticks transmit the disease. Judging from the look of the scars, I’d say he was bitten five or six days ago, which is just about the incubation period for spotted fever. The symptoms must’ve hit him within the past several hours. He must’ve been dizzy, chilled, weak in the joints…”
    “That’s why his aim was so bad!” Bryce said. “He fired three times at close range and only winged me once.”
    “You’d better thank God for sending that tick up his pants leg.”
    He thought about that and said, “It almost does seem like an act of God, doesn’t it? But what were he and Terr up to? Why’d they risk coming here with guns? I can understand Kale might want to kill me and even Timmy. But why Tal and you and Lisa?”
    “You’re not going to believe this,” she said. “Since last Tuesday morning, Kale’s been keeping a written record of what he calls ‘The Events After the Epiphany.’ It seems that Kale and Terr made a bargain with the Devil.”
     
    Four o’clock Monday morning, only six days after the epiphany of which Kale had written, he died in the county hospital. Before he passed out of this life, he opened his eyes, stared wildly at a nurse, then looked past her, saw something that terrified him, something the nurse couldn’t see. He somehow found the strength to raise his hands, as if trying to protect himself, and he cried out; it was a thin, death-rattle scream. When the nurse tried to calm him, he said, “But this isn’t my destiny.” And then he was gone.
     
    On October 31, more than six weeks after the events in Snowfield, Tal Whitman and Paula Thorne (the nurse he’d been dating) held a Halloween costume party at Tal’s house in Santa Mira. Bryce went as a cowboy. Jenny was a cowgirl. Lisa was dressed as a witch, with a tall pointed hat and lots of black