The Unseen

CHAPTER SIXTY

The hospital was small and pretty—if a hospital could be called pretty—with light, airy open spaces, and arches, and views of rolling hills and fields out the windows.

Laurel knew the views well. She had been there for nearly a week.

The intake doctor in the emergency room, Madsen, had been suspicious but competent. He started Brendan and Katrina and Tyler on IV fluids, and stood with Laurel to take their reports. Katrina was still conscious; Brendan was not.

Laurel and Tyler recounted as little as possible: a break-in at the house they were renting while the two of them had been out, returning to find the house ravaged and Katrina and Brendan in the condition they were in, no idea what happened to them, leaving the house with them, frightened out of their wits. Dr. Madsen listened and watched them and wrote, without speaking.

Then Brendan, Katrina and Tyler were taken on gurneys into the hospital, and Laurel sat down to wait.

Brendan came out of his catatonia on the fourth day. Laurel was not sure how, but when Dr. Madsen was taking Brendan’s intake report, Laurel had said on impulse, “There’s a history of schizophrenia in the family.” Her heart beat faster at the chance she was taking, and the doctor looked at her sharply, but after a moment said, “Interesting,” and made a note on Brendan’s chart.

They let her see him on the sixth day. She had not left the hospital for any of that time.

He was pale and thin, tubes snaking from his arms, but his eyes were clear as he looked at her from the hospital bed, and the range of emotions on his face was painful to see. His voice rasped as he said, immediately:

“Tyler… Katrina…”

“Conscious. Recovering,” Laurel said, standing in the doorway. And she added silently, Thank God, thank God. “Faster than you, actually. They’re young. I visit them and they… they’re starting to talk. I’ll be there when they do.”

Brendan looked as if ten years had dropped from him. Then slowly his face tightened. “And Anton?”

Laurel’s eyes clouded; she felt a range of emotions she could not name. “The police went to the house.” Laurel had emphasized the possible danger to the cops, the destruction she and Tyler had seen. But she had not gone with them—not that they would have allowed it—but she was certain in the core of her that they were safer without her. She was afraid to activate the house.

Folger House had been empty. The great room was in chaos, but a chaos still attributable to the random destruction of a criminal, though Laurel had wondered more than a few times what the police had made of that inexplicable scattering of rocks. There was no one else in the house—living, dead, or otherwise.

Brendan stared at her, stupefied. “But where…”

She lifted her hands. She had no idea. Did he revive and get out somehow? Did the house—or whatever was in it—take him? She remembered the horrible screaming at the end….

“The police said there was no trace,” she answered.

“And there’s no record at all, is there? The cameras…” Brendan asked, and added quickly, “Don’t take that the wrong way. I just meant…” He stopped, swallowed hard. “There’s a lot I don’t remember, and what I do…”

She knew what he was going to say. She’d heard it from Tyler and Katrina, and when Brendan spoke he sounded as young as they were, lost and groping.

“Did it really happen? I… don’t know what’s real anymore.”

“I have no idea,” she said simply.

He nodded, looking faintly ill.

“There was nothing left,” she said. “The hidden cameras in the great room and system in the attic—they burned. Electrical fire, the police said.” Only the electricity had been off for a day. “Completely destroyed.”

Brendan closed his eyes… then opened them and looked at her.

“Why did you even bother to take me out? Why not just leave me? It was what I deserved.”

She looked away from him and said slowly, “I know what it is to be out of your mind. I’ve spent some time there myself.” She looked out the window, and found with faint surprise that the thought of Matt didn’t cut her heart open anymore.

“I was lost for a long time. I came out of it.” She looked at him briefly. “I believe people can change.”

He bowed his head. “I swear. I…” He looked up, and there was real pain in his face. “It was never supposed to be about hurting you.”

She nodded, abstractly. “The thing is, I knew. I knew about—someone else, and I knew about you.” She stopped. “I need to trust when I know.”

“Mickey.” Brendan said softly, and despite everything, she felt it in her heart. “What will you do now?”

“I have no idea,” she said again. “I doubt either of us will have a job by the end of the week, but…” She thought of Uncle Morgan. “Somehow that doesn’t seem so important anymore. There are other things I need to do.”

He looked at her probingly. And then she smiled, with a tremor, and quoted softly. “‘How can we not devote our lives to pursuing that question—of whether a thing like this could happen, and how?’”

And she looked away from him, out the window at the sun, the sky, and the rolling hills.