Digging relentlessly with a tool ill suited for the purpose drove her to exhaustion. Exhaustion drove her to sleep. Sleep drove her to dreams.
They were there. She knew they were, somewhere just out of her reach, but within talon touch to her own skin. She shriveled back into the darkness, something brushing against her hair, grabbing at her face.
She started to scream, remembered that screaming only meant longer in the closet, and clamped her lips closed. It was just a dress. A stupid dress. That was all. It hung longer than the other clothes and when she'd drawn back deeper into the corner, it had passed over her face. That was all. A stupid dress.
Cut it out, Eva, she told herself. Ordered herself.
Why was she here? Why couldn't she go back to sweet Mrs. Calendar's home where the food was warm and the hands were gentle and there were no closets with little girls trapped inside them for perceived wrongs?
Oh yeah. Mrs. Calendar was over her quota. Eva was only 11. She wasn't sure what a quota was even though she had looked up the word. But it must be an evil word because it was the reason she was taken away and placed instead with the Malones. Mrs. Malone was okay, but she was a little woman who reminded Eva of a mouse, all turned inside on herself, afraid of her big husband.
Eva was afraid of Mr. Malone too. Oh, he never raised a hand to her, but any time he got angry, which was often, he put her in the closet, turned off the light in the room and left her there until he remembered to take her out or Mrs. Malone came to get her for supper. And she was afraid of the closet too, with its darkness, its huddled shapes, darkness within darkness. Little shifts and shivers of noise that her imagination took and ran away with.
She was afraid of the closet...
Eva startled awake, wrapped her arms around herself and moaned in the aftermath of the nightmare, rocking herself, seeking comfort in the darkness.
"Okay," she said out loud, if only for the sake of a human voice, "Okay, we'll start again."
She picked up the pipe and started gouging at the dirt again.
It wasn't bad enough that his patients were dying.
No, the NIH had to send the great Stephen Connor to save them all.
xxxXXXxxx
No one knew what was killing them yet, Dr. George Portman thought with a sour twist of humor as he drained his third glass of Kentucky Rye.
And Stephen's inability to come up with the right answers, instantly and in true golden boy fashion... well, it was simply too good to be true. Fat lot of good it does you to have all the resources of the NIH behind you now, right, Stevo.
Ah, you're enjoying this entirely too much, George, he told himself, feeling the booze washing around in his belly, clouding over his mind like a blanket of alien influence right out of the X-Files.
Buzz, buzz, the doctor's got a buzz. That would never do. Not even here in his own home. No, the town was too small, too tightly knit. If nothing else, somebody's dog would see him staggering around in his underwear and take out an ad in the Henryville Times. Now that was funny.
"I didn't care about the job, Connor, no problem, you just go ahead and take it. I'll go be a pill pusher in Henryville. You've heard of if, haven't you? Right next door to nothing. The wife... oh, she ran off with some jerk from Indianapolis. Couldn't take the scaled down living or the loss of prestige. Oh, yeah, Stephen, there was a loss of prestige. Big big loss."
He stumbled across the room, snagged the bottle by the neck and poured another three fingers. Damn, he was going to have alcohol poisoning if he kept this up. No problem. He just happened to know a doctor. And if the doc couldn't handle it, someone would call in the entire NIH special SWAT team to bail him out. After all, he wasn't good enough for them once, why shouldn't they be better than him this time?
He'd show them, he decided drunkenly, and he sat back in the recliner and sipped on the rye.
xxxXXXxxx
"You know you don't have to babysit me."
Frank wasn't put off by the note of irritation in Natalie's voice. "Can't I have a cup of coffee with a friend?"
She sighed, gave him a wan smile and touched his arm gently. "Of course you can. Did Stephen put you up to this?"
"What do you think?" he countered with a smile of his own. "Yes, he asked me to keep an eye on you, but, Natalie, you're my friend, too. I want to be sure you're okay."
Put her hand on his sleeve. "I'm sorry, Frank."
Pouring coffee, Frank asked with what he hoped was nonchalance. "What do you think of this Dr. Portman?"
Holding out her own cup to be filled, Natalie shrugged. "He seems fine. Small town doctor from a big town background. Seems to be fitting in with the locals from all I can see. They like him. He's conscientious. Why?"
It was Frank's turn to shrug. "Just wondered."
"Come on, Frank," she countered, "You wouldn't have brought it up for no reason. Tell me. I have noticed that there's tension between him and Stephen. What's that about?"
"It's more like what he has against me AND Stephen," Frank said with a laugh. "Although he's got a lot more reason to hate Stephen than me."
They doctored their coffee, Frank with sugar–he was tired, needed the kick--Natalie with cream and headed for the nearest small table in the deserted hospital break room.
"We were all three in the same unit when we were SEALS. Neither of us have heard a word from him since... well, since the NIH chair meeting that named the team heads." Frank shook his head. "Didn't expect to find him down here when we got the call. It had been a long time since we'd heard from him before that too. Not like he kept in touch.
"When we were in the SEALS, Stephen was promoted to team leader over George and that didn't go over very well as you can imagine. Seemed like Stephen was always trumping him while we were in the service together. George gave every appearance of taking it well, but you know how that little muscle in your jaw twitches when you get angry or frustrated, well, George twitched.
"But the real problem between Stephen and George came up when they were both up for the head of our team in the NIH. George wanted it, and he wanted it bad. Pinned all his hopes on getting it. Then at almost the last minute Stephen was brought in seemingly from out of nowhere, and he got the position instead. George seemed to take it well as usual, but he left the NIH altogether shortly after that, moved down here. His wife left him, I can only speculate on the reasons for that. The rest you can see. He seems to tolerate us just fine..."
"But that little muscle in his jaw..." Natalie put in with a smile.
"Twitches," Frank finished.
"Right."
She sipped at the lukewarm coffee for a moment, before saying, "Stephen hasn't had much to say to me lately."
"Hasn't had much to say to any of us, seems like to me. I've noticed. I think he doesn't like any of this. Being here. Being around George. Not getting a leg up on this disease. I'm beginning to think he doesn't like us very much either at the moment."
"Oh, don't be ridiculous," she said with a laugh, but there was concern in her voice. Connor had been scarce around the lab since they'd arrived here, but she just put it down to the fact that things weren't going well in the tests and he had to have gotten caught up in the investigation like he always did. Stephen could forget to eat if he was working. But it seemed to be more than that. Or maybe she was just a little paranoid because of the charms. Thinking they had come from Stephen at first. Even going so far as to not mention the second one to the police until Frank had come to her about it.
"Where is he anyway," she asked with what she hoped was casualness.
Frank hesitated, and she looked up sharply at that. Frank didn't hesitate. Frank acted, he spoke, he didn't waffle.
"Is something wrong with him?"
"No, no," he assured her. "He's fine, he's just... look, Nat..."
Oh no, she put the coffee down carefully because whatever it was it wasn't going to be good.
"Tell me."
"They found Eva's car last night. It was parked on the side of the road. No sign of an accident or anything else, so don't panic, but she wasn't in it and we haven't heard from her."
"Oh my God." Natalie's hand went to her mouth, the fear she'd felt trapped in the car rushing back like a black wave. "No."
"Natalie." Frank laid a hand on her arm. "I'm not going to lie and say it looks good, but there's no sign that anything violent happened there. Stephen went with the police to look for her. That's where he is now."
xxxXXXxxx
Thunder was rumbling its way across the horizon, a stiff breeze twisting the treetops. No telling for sure how far away the storm was, but Stephen didn't want Eva out alone in it. It was bad enough that she'd been missing this long and no one knew.
One of his was in danger, maybe hurt, and he hadn't even been on top of it enough to realize that she was missing in the first place. Eva could take care of herself, he wasn't negating her abilities, but there was a whole lot of nothing between where the little compact car she'd rented was found and anyone who could help if she'd had trouble. The car didn't give the appearance of trouble except that the driver's side door was open and that was enough. No one, especially Eva, would wander off and leave their car open to the elements or anyone who might come along and decide they'd like a ride.
She was either in trouble or hurt or lost.
He didn't like any of those options.
Bloodhounds were a sorry looking excuse for a dog, looking more like old men who should be sitting around a pot-bellied stove telling tales of their misspent youth, but they were they were very good at what they did. Their eerie hark-hark-hark was all around him now as the sheriff and his men searched the thick underbrush looking for her. The look in the sheriff's eye told Connor right away that they might be looking for her body, but he refused to accept that until he actually came across proof he couldn't debate.
They had to find her soon. It was getting chilled and dark and the wind was picking up with each step deeper into the woods they took, wind driven branches snatching at him like fingers plucking at his body. He pushed his way through the dense undergrowth and felt the first fat plops of rain against his coat.
xxxXXXxxx
Finally.
A clod of wood and dirt fell in on her at the same time, hitting her full in the face and Eva spluttered and sputtered and coughed it away. But her heart gave a lurch when she saw that there was now enough area exposed that she could get her hands around the rotting boards and pull. With their foundation dug away, they gave easily and she fell backward into the root cellar with two boards landing on top of her.
Not bothering to try to clear any of the dirt off, she scrambled to her feet and tugged at another board then a fourth. When there was enough room she shinnied her way out through the opening and breathed fresh air.
Landing on her back in thick grass, she lay there a moment, dragging in air, breathless from her labors and the excitement of her success. The first raindrops hit her full in the face. It only took her a moment to realize that whoever had put her there could still be around, watching, listening, expecting exactly this. Not about to wait for him, she scrambled to her feet and, after a moment to try to orient herself, began running in the direction that she thought the road might be.
Five minutes of being whiplashed by thick branches and pelted by heavier rain in the darkening woods, she heard the strange baying that could mean only one thing. Bloodhounds.
But that could mean two things...
Either help was only a few steps away or the man who had kidnapped her was searching for her with dogs.
She dodged behind a tree until the first pair of hounds came into view, then fell to her knees in relief.
xxxXXXxxx
The wind had picked up and brought with it the start of a storm, one that looked like it was going to settle in for a while. George set the bottle down, looked at the amount he'd poured into his glass, then picked it up and poured a little more. Too bad Connor wasn't here, he thought. They could drink to the past.
As if answering his thought, someone knocked sharply on the front door.
The rain had just started, not really rain yet, just a few fat droplets hitting the window with a plop barely noticeable over the wind. He wasn't expecting anyone, so maybe he really could have that drink with Stephen if that was him at the door. He'd been thinking. Thinking and drinking. Drinking and thinking.
Yeah, he was pretty drunk, but he'd come to some conclusions. He'd been harboring resentments better left dead. He hadn't seen the man in years, it was pretty ridiculous to still hold things against him that he couldn't have controlled. Besides, other than losing Elizabeth–and that was going to happen one way or the other–this hadn't been such a bad thing. He'd been happy here in his own little town. He was respected, his opinion counted, his staff looked up to him, from the other physicians all the way down to the janitor. Just the morning, Jack–what was his last name? the guy who did the cleaning–geez, he was just about invisible, wasn't he, his thoughts rambled, it was a surprise when he'd heard the man speak that morning–just that morning, Jack had told him how important he was to so many people. It was just the janitor, but, still it felt good.
He snorted. Now he was down to looking for approval from the guy who emptied the wastebaskets.
The knock repeated at the door.
Oh, yeah, the door.
Stephen, it should be Stephen, and they could have a drink, ease old wounds, mend the rift. Yeah, it would be Stephen and he'd be able to exorcize theghosts of the past. That would be nice. He took another quick gulp from the glass, felt it burn its way down his throat and made his wobbly way to the door.
"Oh, hi," he said, and barely felt the knife slip into his belly, then jerk upwards. His eyes were wide, gaping holes of confusion as he slid to the floor in a wash of his own blood.