"So the next day Amos felt confident enough to go out and feed….with consequences….No, he did not kill her, but he abandoned her uncohnscious on the snow, and she was found with hypothermia. Which was NOT feeding unobtrusively." Danny sighed. "We were lucky that at about the same time the woman's sister was admitted to the hospital with burns. The coincidence was too great for Dr. Lawson, so he got to the sheriff about it."
"We did not see Dr. Lawson's counterpart nor the sheriff in the show."
"Of course not, why pay the salaries of two more actors when you can make do with what you have with only a little rewriting? In any case, Lawson will probably show up. He was a big part of what happened to Amos".
As they talked, Flynn Eagleton joined them without saying a word. Yes. He wanted to see it, though it was painful to relieve it. He was not proud of his part of it, and the memory still stung…
He listened absently as his mind went back to the decision he made of approaching Ann Rathbone… to clear his name… but why? Talking to Beverly had energized him, made him realize of all the open possibilities. Why linger in the past? But he thought it was important so he had knocked at the door.
-0-
Ann received him coolly, almost impersonally. He tried to remain cool, too. He just wanted one thing of her…
"I want custody of Charlie, you understand. Any association with you would be a weapon in my former sister-in-law's hand. And she will use it.
"I understand. I just wanted you to tell how it was at the accident"
She shook her head, and as she did so he felt something stir inside him. Like a fire being lit again. He looked at her and old feelings began to surface.
'You future is with Beverly" he head some voice in his mind, but it was drowned.
He wanted Ann… He wanted her in his arms, as he did when she was Louis's wife, and it felt that he had beaten Louis, the rich kid for once…
-0-
He had been such a fool…
Next to him, the others talked, oblivious to his presence.
"How about the woman's sister, the one that was burned? Did Amos have to do with it?"
"No, It was unrelated. But it was lucky because Lawson and the sheriff thought there was a connection. And the next day there would be the same. A young man admitted with burns during the day, and a woman left unconscious with hypothermia, convincing Lawson and the sheriff that there was a pattern:
"A pattern that did not exist"
"Which was lucky for Amos. I told him that he could not leave them lying in the cold. If he could influence their minds so that they forgot him, he could also make sure that they got someplace warm. He said that it had been stupid of him, but he was so happy that he could control himself when feeding that other things slipped his mind."
"How about those who were burned What had happened to them?
"We will get to it… as it was, they were unconscious and could not tell what had happened to them. Eventually they did, when it was all over. So Lawson and the Sheriff groped for answers."
-0-
"It is a pattern, all right" Dr. Lawson told the sheriff " Walter, we have one who burns, and one to freezes. It is as if the heat taken from one goes to the other. "
"How about this, whoever or whatever burns them, loses heat, and has to steal it from someone else. I know that is sounds spooky, and fantastic, but there are weird things out there."
"Yes, it sounds weird, all right. But still it is a pattern.
"And both of us know that a pattern means something. So, let's assume that there is something to this crazy theory So how do we go about investigating it? Did any of the victims remember anything?"
"The ones that were burned are still unconscious. And the frozen ones have some memory of being grabbed, and then nothing…"
"So even if it is true, we would not know where to start."
"I took some samples from both the burn victims and the freezing ones, and sent them to Dr. Mattox."
"Is he a specialist?"
"She is a biochemist. Doing reserach into the chemical underpinnings of mental diseases. She's quite sharp and she found answers for me more than once"
"Well, that is something, but it might not be enough. We are dealing with something we do not believe in, and thus cannot grasp.:
"I know someone who can.. An old classmate who actually studies these things… Yes, think that I will give Ernest Cole a call"
-0-
Flynn kept remembering. How he became more and more attracted to Beverly – and she to him. How he began to see a happy future of him… if only he could let go of the past…But the he saw Ann, and even at a distance he was again the poor boy Louis Benchley condescended to, that Leonore used to play lady of the manor with… and he saw again the prison cell….
She had mentioned that she was fighting for custody of Charlie, and that he should keep a respectable distance… but it proved so hard. He came close to her in the corridor, and impulsively he had seized her and kissed her.
"We must not" she told him.
"I know… but afterwards.."
He had said that…how could he have done it?
And then the confrontation with Louis…
-0-
"She is still my wife, you adulterer."
"And you are a murderer and a perjurer."
"I am not..."
"Do you deny that it was you who ran that man down with the car and that you lied on the stand saying that I was the driver?"
"Well, you deserved it for cheating on me with my wife."
"And you paid Sam Evans to perjure himself?'
"Yeah, I did. So what? You will never prove it."
-0-
Louis did not know that I had taped him. And would have used it if… if other things would not have come up… Would Leonore then have allowed Ann to take Charlie? And what would have happened then…
He did not want to think about it any more
…
Danny was cheered by the news that Amos had fed safely and that the woman had remained under shelter, a bit confused, but no more.
"So now you can feed with no problems, with no hospital and no police. Then after this dies down, .you can come in as the long lost relative as we planned. Then we can really fix this place, not just the couple of rooms that I did as a test."
"You want to do it?"
"Refurbishing an old place is a good way to start a career. I do not intend to be a handyman forever. And if helping you makes it possible, so be it."
"And you do not worry that I might hurt someone?'
"Sometimes, but you are getting it right. I think that you will be careful from now on."
-0-
"And it should have been except, except that the next time that Amos went out, he met someone…"
-0-
It was easy, Amos thought. The young woman was finishing work, closing the shop. He kept to the shadows, trying not to be too impatient. Impatience only caused accidents. He did not want any accidents, nothing involving police or hospitals… nothing that would show up in the newspaper… He wanted to come in as a long lost relative, the descendant of that Amos Benchley who had been disowned and shipped off to England by his enraged uncle, Jacob Benchley, and there should be no outcry, no manhunt going on when he introduced himself.
He saw the woman's nametag, Wendy. He could see the throat and the veins running under it… and he senses something else. A strange feeling.
Wendy came close to where he was. He stepped in front of her, fixing her with his eyes. There had been a moment of fear, and then he commanded her to relax.
It was a quick bite and the sharp taste that flooded his mouth
And then the memories came… All that he had once had, all that he had lost….And when he looked at Wendy he sense that the memories came from her…
That she shared his memories…
"Genevieve!"