Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 34)
Rating: M for graphic violence and language
Fandom: The Mentalist
Summary: Patrick Jane has lived his life obsessed with the capture of Red John ever since finding his beloved wife and daughter slain by the maniac's hand. Now, 10 years to the day after that horrific night, a young woman appears in Patrick's life, someone who threatens to destroy everything his life has become in the interim... if not his sanity, itself.
Author's Note: Sorry for the delay between chapters. Life is busy. Reviews, like always, are much appreciated. Sorry for the long delay on this chapter. Hopefully I will have the next chapter up in the next few days as a Christmas present. Hopefully.
"Fear is the mind-killer."― Frank Herbert, Dune
"She had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, like when you're swimming and you want to put your feet down on something solid, but the water's deeper than you think and there's nothing there"― Julia Gregson, East of the Sun
"Paranoia is just the bastard child of fear and good sense." (Charlie)
"Poor thing. Let's adopt it, give it a last name and raise it right." (Jace)
"You want to get it a puppy, too?"
"Sure. We'll call it Panic. It and little Paranoia can play together at the park and scare the hell out of all the other kids."
― D.D. Barant, Back from the Undead
Saturday, November 4th, 2013 2:48 pm PST
Jane didn't know what to do. He had no idea where Charlotte was. She could be buried almost anywhere. He had a car, but no idea where to drive that car. That kid Charlotte had been pals with, Elian... where was he now? Jane numbly scanned the burning horizon with shining eyes. They had to get out of here, and soon.
The flames would attract some sort of fire department response, and almost certainly the police, and the police would detain them and ask questions and every minute detained was a minute that Charlotte panicked in the box, a minute of time where her oxygen was running out...
Jane backed the car out into the desert, following nothing in particular, but not willing to go back the way he had come and be stopped by any so-called authority figures. If that happened, and he was detained, Charlotte would surely die. They couldn't help, the police, but they could definitely eat up precious minutes and very well hurt.
She didn't have much time left, Jane knew that, he knew that emotionally as well as intellectually, and the emotional awareness of that fact was almost panic inducing. He tried to keep that thought out of his conscious mind, because if he thought about it for any length of time he would panic, and if he panicked her wouldn't be able to think straight or help his child.
So much of his skill as a mentalist over the years had come from a place of detachment. Panic and anxiety ruined one's ability to think and strategize.
When humans were emotionally distraught, their logical abilities deteriorated, their memory clouded over, they became more impulsive. So it was important to keep Charlotte out of his emotions, right now, keep her sealed off and distant, a piece of a puzzle, no different than any other human who had been in crisis in a situation he had solved with Lisbon over the last 5 or 6 years.
No difference.
Put simply, it was easier to work things out as a mentalist when you weren't emotionally attached to the puzzle pieces.
When people stopped being pieces of a puzzle and became real, then the emotions involved with helping them became real, the terror became real.
Patrick Jane was no sociopath. He could be glib and charming and detached, but at his core, he was a compassionate man. He had cultivated detachment over the years, the way some people cultivated their bonsai trees, the way surgeons trained themselves to look at their patients as biological machines to be fixed. Bring emotion into it, and logic disintegrated.
But he was emotional.
Charlotte was his kid.
Jane couldn't fool himself. His subconscious mind already knew the truth. She was his baby, and he was emotionally distraught, and he had the cold, sweaty palms and the tunnel vision to prove it. Her voice was too raspy, that choked, tortured pleading he had heard over the laptop's speakers, and the amount of oxygen in that coffin was limited.
Charlotte was definitely panicked, which meant she would be taking great, giant breaths and using the oxygen up much more quickly than someone who was able to remain calm. Jane tried to remember a book he had read on torture techniques years ago.
The book had listed how much usable oxygen was in a coffin and how fast that oxygen would run out if a human of different sizes was inside. The math had been sketchy at best and panicking versus calm hadn't been discussed.
"Felix?" Jane called back to the young man he'd brought with him. In the back seat, Felix blinked tiredly and with a profound disorientation created over years under the spell of a sadistic mastermind. He seemed to be coming back from somewhere far, far away. His eyes were robotic, not human, not emotional. Blank and not even fully conscious.
"Huh?"
"Felix, come on, man. You okay? You're okay. Talk to me, Felix," Jane coaxed amiably, grinning too large at the young man. He was adrenaline giddy, almost manic. Felix stared back, eerie and traumatized, a victim of Red John's. Damaged, Jane was pretty sure, for life.
Keep repeating his name, Jane. Help ground him. Keep saying his name.
"Come on, Felix. I need you to talk to me. Talk to me, Felix," Jane tried again. Lisbon was silent and pale in the passenger side, eyes huge with anxiety. The little car kept kicking up dust behind them as they roared into sun-baked no-man's land.
The young man was looking at the burning landscape, now all but gone from view; but the gleam of fire and dark smoke was still visible right on the horizon. Jane's eyes flickered back and forth from the road, Charlotte on the laptop Lisbon was holding, Lisbon's tense, troubled face and Felix in the back seat doing his Invasion of the Body Snatchers impersonation.
"What's going on?" Felix slurred dazedly. "What's burning? Is something burning?"
"Nothing important. Do you know this girl? This girl right here?" Jane tapped the laptop screen where Charlotte was thrashing in black and green-white night vision, her eyes eerie and feral and feline and almost anything but normal human teenage girl.
The sound had been turned down but Jane could still hear her crazed begging for release from her coffin, from her waking nightmare and his gut throbbed with tension and stress. Experiences like this landed people in loony bins for decades... if they were lucky.
These were sanity-shattering little trips into terror. And every fucking second compounded the mental injuries.
"What girl?" Felix said in that same wooden, dazed voice. It was a voice that said Jane could talk to him in a low, gentle whisper for hours and he might- might- come around. It was a voice that suggested he might be useless unless Jane managed to wake him the fuck up, and quick.
"On the computer?" Jane said, more patiently than he felt.
He tapped the screen again, a bit too hard. His finger made a strikingly irritable tink, tink noise against the glare-resistant plastic. Into the wand, Jane said something he hoped would be more or less comforting to Charlotte, but she was repeating the same refrain, for her Daddy to come get her out.
She was drunk, but she was also panicked. And her panic made perfect sense. The drunkeness also made sense and was actually preferable to her being sober in that box.
She was also regressed as Hell.
Jane handed the "wand" to Lisbon and nodded at her.
"You talk to Charlotte, okay, lisbon? For a bit, Lisbon? And I'll work with Felix?"
Lisbon took the wand hurriedly, features strained with tension, nodding too hard. She vibrated with tension and adrenaline, took the wand and... Jane turned back to Felix. His heart hammered without pause against his lungs and ribs, like it was trying to break out of a bony prison.
He had to pay attention to Felix, and run through everything he could remember about Charlotte, about Red John, about everything he had seen and heard since Charlie had come back into his life... and sort it all out, and sort it out quickly. He couldn't do that and talk Charlie down out of her considerable terror at the same time, on virtually no sleep. It was just too much. Lisbon would talk to her. Charlotte probably wouldn't even understand them at this point in her terror.
"Charlotte? Hey, It's Lisbon. We're coming to get you, hold on okay?" Lisbon's voice was calm, but Jane could hear the strain in her words. She was worried as Hell for Charlotte. Jane continued to speed into the desert. He wasn't sure where he was going, but he was driving more or less westward from the Chicken Man's house. Somehow time had dilated into something very much like an acid trip he'd taken as a 14 year old. It was stretched out and eerily long, and yet even in this stretched out, slowed down timescape he couldn't think fast enough.
"Felix, the girl on the laptop? You ever see her before?" Jane said again. Felix craned his head to see. Squinted. He was still miles out in lala land and not fully connecting the words into meaningful ideas in his head. He was fucked up as Hell, and there was no time for it... He could be batshit crazy later. Right now he had to be sane.
"Is that Charlie?" Felix said in his traumatized-robot voice. Jane felt his heart rate increase with excitement. It hummed now, more than independent beats.
"Charlie? Yes. You know Charlie?"
"I'm not supposed to but.. you... you bring her with you sometimes and I heard Elian call her that."
"Elian, right. Charlie's friend. You know Elian?"
"I know Elian," Felix said groggily. "I know all the Chicken Man's babies." He rubbed at his glassy, dilated eyes with his long, spindly, calloused fingers. Pressed hard into the eyeballs, massaged his temples. He was trying to ground himself, Jane was pretty sure of that.
"Oh?" Jane said, trying to get back to Charlotte, knowing full well that he couldn't afford to be careless at this stage in the game. "How do you know the Chicken Man's babies?"
"You know," Felix said drowsily, and blinked into the dying day's light, looking around with the same dissoriented where am I? look on his face. Whether he was dissociated or in some hypnotized Manchurian candidate fugue state was anybody's guess, but it didn't really matter. Jane had access to the young man's subconscious.
The subconcious was like the key files to a computer program. If you were a hacker, you could go in and cause all sorts of chaos. Mentalists were hackers of human psyches, and Patrick Jane was the best human-psyche-hacker around.
If you could put someone into an altered state of consciousness, you could arrogate their free will, reprogram their anima. Red John had done that to this kid, made him an obedient and tortured factotum with his silky voice and laser beam eyes.
"You know."
"I know, I know, but I want you to tell me. How do you know the Chicken Man's babies?"
"I was one of the Chicken Man's babies."
"You were one of the Chicken Man's babies?" Jane asked, hoping for more.
"Yes... yes..." Felix said, and nodded repeatedly. Jane nodded, too. It made perfect sense.
"Is that how you know Elian? You guys both lived together with the Chicken Man?"
"The Chicken Man is a shapeshifter," Felix said, going off script. Jane took in a deep breath and tried to school his expression into one of patient expectation. He could still hear Lisbon, talking as calmly and reassuringly as she could to Charlotte, mostly repeating the same ideas over and over.
Yes, we're coming to get you Charlotte. Yes, your Daddy's with me. Yes, we'll get you out. You're not going to die. Yes, I promise. Hold on, Kiddo.
"You lived with the Chicken Man, Felix?"
"Yes."
"And that is how you know Elian?"
"Yes," Felix said again, nodding, eyes heavy lidded. The young man's pupils were still heavily dilated. The lights were on, but nobody was fucking home.
"Is that how you know Charlie?" Jane prompted gently, louder than he was aiming for. He couldn't rush this, and yet, every second he didn't rush this was a second that Charlotte's mind was breaking.
"Yes," Felix slurred tiredly, and a small line of drool eased out of the corner of his mouth and spilled into his lap. Jane ignored it.
"Tell me everything you know about Charlie, okay? As quickly as you can. Tell me, Felix."
He'd been a street kid 10 years ago, running from an abusive uncle and a silent mother. He'd never known his father. In Mexico city there were a lot of abused and neglected children and very little in the way of child protective services and Felix had known that if he wanted any sort of life worth living, he'd have to get it for himself and not wait for others to help him out.
He'd teamed up with 2 kids from his neighbourhood with dreams of moving to America and they traveled on foot and by hitchhiking, working their way from place to place, living out of the trash, washing tourists' cars for money, begging, shoplifting.
Mostly eating out of the trash, though. Things had gotten so bad that the young Felix had once resorted to killing and eating pigeons and snakes.
Snake meat was surprisingly good, he told Patrick in his far-away dissociated voice. Living off the land was better for the soul than begging in the cities and being ignored and digging through trash, and over time he learned to identify random plants that were edible.
Every time he learned something new, he fell a swell of pride.
He had bad times too, when he'd almost poisoned himself eating berries and cacti, and ended up puking his guts out repeatedly, dizzy and hot and then cold. But over time he learned. He clung to his physical existence tenaciously, even though thoughts of suicide were never far away. Life just felt too hard most of the time, and he was just a boy. Too hard, unfair and his spirit was weak and sad.
The older 2 boys he'd been travelling with had gotten into huffing glue and theft and drifted away out of his life after about a year on the road, but Felix had continued on, eating when he could, sleeping when he could, often cold and thirsty and hungry and sick.
Sometimes churches gave him a cup of soup or some stale tortillas and bread, apples, and occasionally tamarind candies. Sometime soda pop.
He'd do small jobs here and there, anything to stay alive. He met perverts on the road, and angry people who used him for a punching bag more than once. Sometimes when he was exhausted, random beatings would remind him that he was alive, the sting and the smell of his own blood, the diffuse pain of a split lip, the throb of a newly blackened eye... all were dares to keep going.
Life wanted him to give up.
But fuck life.
Fuck fate.
He was going to show all the fuckers.
And life was hard... but he was free.
He was free, now, and not willing to put up with anyone who hurt him repeatedly. He had never been to school and couldn't read or write. He began finding old newspapers in the trash and would copy the letters and slowly taught himself to read some basic words, but it was hard.
It was hard to learn when depression and fear and hunger were always snapping at him for his attention, when giving up felt so incredibly easy. When death felt like a vacation from pain.
Someone on the road told him there were a lot of tourists in Hermosillo so he drifted up there, began to look around for work. He got meals at the local church, and tourists gave him American money in the summer and he'd buy food, lighters, pens. He found abandoned places to live, sometimes slept on the ground just out of town in a thin sleeping bag. And one day he found the Crazy Chicken Man, wandering around and selling little bags of herbs to tourists.
The Crazy Chicken Man had been walking around with a little mutt of a dog and was obviously a shaman of some sort, and he was so eccentric that he made a living for himself because the tourists loved eccentric locals who had good stores they could retell back home in America.
Felix approached him and asked for food and the Chicken Man had asked him if he wanted to live with him and help him sell his dried cactus (some the Chicken Man claimed cured inflammation and cancer in the body, other dried cactus bits caused hallucinations that could lead you on spiritual journeys- he also sold incense he made himself, buffalo sage smudge sticks, ayahuasca and little soapstone carvings and other odds and ends).
Felix had said he would live with him and help sell his wares, and the Chicken Man took him home, let him live in his shack. There were a few other kids there, unwanted human children that had been forgotten and thrown away by their parents and the rest of society.
One boy was clearly blind and also had some disfiguring skin condition. Around the Chicken Man's home were wild animals that looked injured that were recuperating in little wooden boxes stuffed with straw and leaves. There was an old well on the property, lots of candles, kerosene lamps, even some paper and pens.
The Chicken Man technically lived in poverty, but his home was clean and he wasn't a pervert. He taught Felix about spiritual matters, how to be a good person, how to live off the land, how to talk to animals and instructed him in basic English and Spanish, reading and writing and math skills up to about a fifth or sixth grade level. Felix continued selling cacti and herb concoctions to a little store in town that sold the products to tourists, but also wholesale along the sides of roads.
He began to hunt snake meat and sold that too.
The young Felix showed tourists around the area, the wild places and the best places to hunt, to camp and areas with natural hot springs. He squirreled his money away, enough to get a used motorcycle and a tool kit to repair it and made even more money on odd jobs and fixing things in town. It was about this time that Red John found the Chicken Man or the Chicken Man found Red John.
Red John offered quite a lot of money for spiritual help and the guidance of a shaman, and for spells to be cast.
With the money Red John gave him, the Chicken Man got basic plumbing for the bathroom and put in a propane stove and oven. There was no electricity out to his shack in the middle of nowhere, so no refrigerator, but solar lights were added, and the candles were used less.
The Chicken Man could afford medicines and even packaged foods like Oreo cookies. Most of the food was dried or canned. Rice, beans, lentils cooked on the stove were the staple, and home made corn tortillas.
Every so often there was meat. Life was much easier. There was a battery powered radio and it even got stations. An old portable camping television that got three stations and ran on C cell batteries.
Felix was never sure who met who first, but he knew from the beginning that the Chicken Man disliked Red John, even though he took his money.
Some people had donated a big steel shed to the Chicken Man to store his herbs and cactus in, and it was cool inside, better for storing things that would otherwise decay in the heat.
The Chicken Man got some cots and blow-up mattresses. His shed became a haven for anyone who was running from abuse, every diseased child, wounded animal, or creature he found that needed a place to sleep or stay. One day Felix came back and found a wounded wolf cub lying on one of the blow up camping mattresses in the shed.
It was a Mexican gray wolf, the most endangered species of wolf in the world, and being so young it wasn't too scary. It licked the hands of the Chicken Man's "babies" and lived on the property until it healed and grew up and then it went away into the wild, but it stayed close by and was often seen around the property.
The Chicken Man called the wolf his "wild wolf brother" (mi hermano lobo salvaje) and apparently had the ability to call to it with a shrill little bark, and it would come. Other wolves also frequented the property, but the Red Wolf that was Red John was not a welcome guest.
The gray wolf's propinquity to the shed made Felix feel safer, though, like the animal knew Red John was a menace, like it might even be guarding them in its own, wild way.
The Chicken Man realized too late what Red John was, how dark and evil his soul was, and by then it was too late. He'd go off for days into the wild, leaving his "babies" at home with toilet paper, candles, matches, canned goods, firewood.. and he would go into the wild to pray, fast and ask God for help... and to speak to the animals.
All the animals told him Red John would eventually be undone and that a little girl would come who would help to defeat him.
Not long after this revelation- which the Chicken Man claimed he got from an amorphous gray mist which transfigured itself into a lizard- Red John came back but this time he had a young girl with him, a little wispy thing named Charlotte.
And the Chicken Man knew his revelations had been accurate and to stay the course.
He helped Red John when he absolutely had to, because Red John had the ability to kill his babies and destroy things beyond that of a regular mortal, but with every spell he cast the Chicken Man knew he was damning himself.
There didn't seem to be an easy answer and so the Crazy Chicken Man told God that he would help the girl and in exchange for his help, instead of being sentenced to damnation for carrying out spells for Red John, he would leave his Earthly human life and come back as a spirit of the dessert, a shape-shifting creature with a name Felix could not pronounce who would live in the wilderness and keep the area safe from the likes of Red John for a thousand years.
And apparently God had answered him, and from that time the Crazy Chicken Man had become more and more a desert spirit and less and less a human being.
According to Felix, sometimes he was translucent, see-through and...
"Tell me about, Charlotte, Felix. You saw her on the computer. Where is she right now? Do you know where she is right now?" Jane interrupted Felix's history of the Crazy Chicken Man and Red John. Things were taking too long.
"No," Felix slurred, eyes closed. "I don't know where she is now."
"Have you done any jobs for Red John in the last few days... anything involving construction or digging?"
"No..." Felix started, trailing, and his eyebrows furrowed. "But I found workers for him."
"Workers?"
"To put in a septic tank..." Felix said slowly. "In the desert."
"You know who these men are?"
"I found them in a bar downtown. No names. I wasn't supposed to know their names."
Jane swore under his breath. Jane had stopped the car some moments before. He was far away enough from the Chicken Man's that he no longer feared being discovered.
"Felix, Charlotte is buried in the ground and we need to get her out. If we don't get her out very soon, she will die," Jane said recklessly. Such an admission could jolt Felix out of whatever hypnotic trance was in.
But instead, Felix only sighed, irritably.
"She told me about this. A long time ago. Being buried. By that devil."
"She did?" Jane pressed. Felix nodded.
"Red John did this before to her. Near where she saw God in the desert. As lightning. It was to torment her, because he didn't like what she was saying."
Jane's heart skipped a beat at the admission.
"Do you know where this is?" Jane demanded, throwing a hopeful look over at Lisbon.
Lisbon was still talking softly to Charlotte through the little wand device. Charlotte's eyes were closed but Jane could see she was breathing. Her face was pinched, and even though the night vision footage was black and greenish-white, her neck looked swollen and bruised.
Her eyes looked bruised.
Lisbon shot him a worried look.
"I know roughly the area. It is where the Chicken Man took Charlotte one day. To see wolves. It is further from here. Past... you see that mountain there?"
Felix's eyes were open and he was squinting and pointing to a dark rock formation in the distance. Jane nodded.
"Yes, I see it."
"Drive towards it. You will see a small lake. There is vegetation there. It is near there, I think. That is where many of the herbs the Chicken Man picks come from. Fed by that lake. Go there."
Jane started the car back up and floored the gas. He glanced at Lisbon and made a flapping motion with his hand, indicating that Lisbon should hand him the wand. Lisbon handed it to him and he clicked it on.
"Charlotte, it's Patrick," Jane said brightly into the little wand. There was a raspy choking noise that made Jane's guts crawl up into his throat and strangle him. He breathed through a sudden pinhole.
"Charlotte?" Jane tried again, when he didn't get a response.
"Pah-drig?"
"I'm here, Charlie" Jane assured his daughter. More wheezing. She didn't sound good, not at all.
"Hard to breathe," Charlotte gasped out weakly.
Her actual words sounded more like har ta breeth.
There was a crackly quality to her words. Breaking up, like a transmission fading over an old ham radio.
"Okay, I think I know where you are, Charlie. Do you remember the spot where the Chicken Man showed you wolves?"
"Showed me," there was a gasp for breath "showed me his wild... wolf... brother. His wild wolf brother's family. By the...lake."
"Right, and you saw God in the desert around there? Near there?" Jane tried, hoping she understood what he was talking about.
"Into the desert, from the," another gasp. "Lake."
"Is that where Red John took you today? Is that where you are now?"
"Idoanknow," Charlotte gasped out. Her breath wheezed, it crackled. Jane felt his own breath cut off in empathy. He sucked in oxygen and felt a heady vertigo.
"Okay, that's okay. I'll find you. Trust me on that. The area in the desert wher you saw God, can you see the lake from there?"
"Yeah, inna distance," Charlotte chocked out.
"Is there anything near there, any landmarks for us to see?"
"Burnt tree," Charlotte gasped.
"Is that tree still standing?" Jane said. Charlotte sounded on the verge of unconsciousness. "Charlie?"
"Large rock with a face on it," Charlie gasped out. Jane could tell she was struggling to stay conscious.
"Face? Do you mean a face is painted on it? Or drawn?"
"Rock has a face..." Charlotte slurred. "Can't breathe. Can't breathe. No... air... throat...pahdrig..."
"Hold on Charlotte, hold on," Jane said, gunning the engine. He handed the wand back to Lisbon.
They were there about 8 minutes later. The sun was beginning to sink in the sky. It was nearly 3:30 p.m. Jane found the lake easily, scanned the horizon line. Saw what looked like a stone outcropping about two or three miles away, in the desert.
The stone had come together in such a way that Jane thought an imaginative child might be able to see two staring eyes in the side, a jagged nose, a lighter area of what may have been quartz, for a mouth.
Pareidolia at its finest.
Jane drove towards the stone outcropping like a demon, seeing what had at one time been a tree. It was black, withered, destroyed by the plasma of lightning.
A tree that had gone up in flames but hadn't fallen. Jane grinned at the ebony specter of the tree, a crazy, half demented smile of gratitude.
It was still standing, stunted and turned in on itself like an old little beggar. He said a silent thank you to the dead thing. Thank you.
Jane stopped the car and got out in a cloud of dust. Stress had reduced life to a series of strobe-like impressions. Ultra-concentrated, surreal and magnified. Saturated with colour, sound, smells.
Lisbon followed suit.
"CHARLOTTE?!" Jane screamed into the hot, dry afternoon air. He could feel dust in his throat, tickling it. He coughed dutifully. He screamed his daughter's name again, and again, and again until he felt something break in his throat, a small blood vessel.
He would be hoarse tomorrow.
He kept screaming for her.
"Lisbon, did she hear that?" Jane shot at Lisbon, spinning around in a full circle, looking for any place the ground might have been recently disturbed.
Lisbon spoke into the wand, waited for a reply.
"She said she could hear you," Lisbon nodded tensely, smiling like the joker from Batman, too big and slightly insane.
They didn't have shovels. They didn't have maps. Everything had happened so fast that they were unprepared. There was no other reality but this, no way to be prepared. It was what it was.
Jane stumbled 20 steps towards the front of the rock face and screamed Charlotte's name again. Lisbon responded immediately.
"She said you sound closer, now," Lisbon said quickly, loudly. Jane scanned the ground. He saw nothing. Nothing that looked like what they were looking for. He ran up onto the rock outcropping and looked around, a slow 360 degree turn.
His ears were ringing loudly, so loudly.
He screamed her name again, he screamed once again for CHARLOTTE.
Behind the rock face he found an area where the earth looked recently disturbed in the approximate shape of a coffin. Jane laughed giddily and climbed back down off the rock face and went to investigate, calling for Lisbon. She arrived and he handed her the keys.
"Go check the trunk of the car for anything we can use to dig. A shovel, or anything," he handed Lisbon the keys to the car and began to dig furiously, pulling up clumps of dirt with his hand and flinging them aside.
The ground was full of iron and very rocky, but as it had recently been dug up it was much easier for Jane to get at. He tore at the ground at a furious pace. He was like a lycanthrope, insane and digging at the earth, digging for his bones.
Dig, dig, dig, dig, digdigdigdig...
Lisbon hurried back a few minutes later, shaking her head, no.
"There is nothing in the trunk but a car jack and what looks like a tool kit," Lisbon said. She still had the laptop with her.
"Talk to her, Lisbon," Jane said, not stopping for one moment, voice cracking. "Talk to her. Tell her what we are doing. Don't stop talking to her."
Lisbon nodded and began to talk via the wand again. Felix had taken off his work jacket and was clawing at the ground with Jane, digging furiously with his faraway eyes zeroed in on his work.
"Jane, there is no reply," Lisbon said after a minute. Jane didn't even hear the words for a second. His nails were broken on his hands, his knuckles were bleeding freely. He blinked and felt the pain in his hands and then heard Lisbon.
"What?!"
"She's not replying, and I don't see any movement on camera," Lisbon said, showing him the feed on the laptop. Jane felt another surge of panic.
"Help me dig, Lisbon. Felix, dig faster. Dig faster." Terror cut his words short.
All three of them tore at the ground, pulling up handfuls of dirt at a feverish, breakneck pace. It took ten minutes of crazed digging to reach the coffin lid. Jane tore the lid off, tore it open. Charlotte was unconscious, face dark and livid, hands twisted up over top of her chest like claws. Her eyes were slightly open and glassy, and she looked dead.
"Charlotte!" He grabbed her up and out of the coffin, up and out of the damned hole in the ground. Laid her own the rocky iron-red earth and felt for a pulse in her neck, hands ghosting over the carotid, feeling, feeling, face tense with anxiety. Lisbon had taken off with the keys and Jane heard the car start up. She drove it closer to them.
"Lisbon I can't feel a pulse and I don't think she is breathing," Jane said, terrorized. Lisbon had never heard so much emotion in his voice.
"Oh God, oh God, no, no... no this is not happening," Patrick Jane cracked out. His voice broke. He pulled Charlotte's hoody off her, balled it up and put it under her head. Felt again for a pulse. Nothing.
Her lips were cracked and bleeding, her hands coated in dried blood. She stank of hot urine, what might have been shit. She had pissed herself at the very least in her terror. Jane leaned her head back, blew into her mouth. He placed the hell of his hands in the middle of her chest, fingers interlaced. He compressed 2 inches, maybe 2 and a half, watched as her chest completely recoiled, did it again. He did chest compressions at a rate of 100 a minute, and 30 compressions over what was about 18 seconds.
Then he pinched her nose and blew air back into her lungs. He did 30 more compressions and blew again. Then he checked again for a pulse.
There was still nothing.
"Charlotte, you have to be alive. Wake up. Wake up. He is dead. I am here. Wake up," Jane spat out, as he hammered on his chest. He felt a pop, what felt like a snap. Real life chest compressions often broke ribs. He wasn't certain, but he thought he might have broken his daughter's rib.
At least one of them.
Life wasn't like a TV show, it wasn't like ER. Chest compressions were traumatic, and statistically CPR didn't work. It was better than nothing, but the numbers weren't on their side.
Jane did 3 more sets of compressions and rechecked Charlotte's neck for a pulse. Still nothing. His eyes were burning. He had began to sob. He was crying, shaking. Lisbon took over, face edged with fierce determination. Jane had been ebating on Charlotte's chest wildly.
Lisbon breathed into her mouth. Continued the heart massage. Felt something move under her hands and stopped, check the pulse. Waited a moment. It was light, but there was a faint lub. Another lub. lub, lub. A pulse.
"I have something," Lisbon said breathlessly.
"A pulse?" Jane said loudly, so loudly. "She has a pulse?"
"I feel a pulse," Lisbon affirmed and took his hand, positioned it on his daughter's neck so he could feel. It took a moment but she saw in his eyes when he felt it.
He began to sob harder.
She had never seen him sob like this before, wouldn't have thought it possible if someone had asked her if Jane was capable of this depth of emotion.
Yet here he was, sobbing loudly, shaking.
He scooped Charlotte out of the dust and gently arranged her in the backseat, head in his lap.
He tapped her cheek, spoke softly to her as Felix got in the passenger seat and Lisbon got in the driver's and they tore out of the dusty land where his daughter had been buried alive, where she had died, and where she had been revived.
Her face was scarlet, lips livid, and when he pinched her skin he could see how it stood up.
She was struggling for breath, and not conscious, but her pulse was still there, she was still alive, her heart continued to work doggedly, determined to continue, determined not to end and rot.
She was here.
She was physically alive. That was good. Jane was dripping errant tears on her. He wiped at his eyes furiously, wiped her face.
Rocked her slowly, talking about hos brave she was and how proud he was of her and how great her body was, her heart, her lungs.
Such determination. He was so proud. Red John was dead. They would be getting her help. Hold on. Good job. Thank you. Keep breathing.
Wake up, please Charlie.
Look at me.
You are going to be okay Charlie.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Everything is okay now.
Everything is going to be okay now.
That's it, keep breathing. That's it.
Keep breathing.
I'm here.
You're safe now.
Thank you for not dying, Charlie.
That's it.
Good job. That's it, Charlie.
Her skin, which had been so eerily cool, began to warm a bit.
She coughed a croaked, ragged cough. There was blood on her lips. Her eyes fluttered. No real awareness in them. But at least there wasn't any panic.
"Charlie, Charlie.. hi," Jane mumbled gently. He was grinning so hard the corners of his mouth felt like they might tear.
"Keep looking at me, Charlie. Look at me. That's it, that's a girl. Good job."
There was no real recognition in her eyes, the lids were still at half mast, but she was conscious, or semi-conscious, and her heart was lub-a-dub-dubbing and her skin was dry but hot and her broken fingers would heal and her broken rib would heal and the doctors would pump fluids into her and they would go back to the US. And Red John was dead.
And with a little bit of luck, maybe he could fix her mind, and bring her back.
Thank you, Patrick Jane said again, as Lisbon sped like a bat out of Hell towards the hospital.
Thank you, Charlie.