World War S 1-2

Chapter 4

“Oh, we are so delighted, come inside, please!” chirped the middle-aged woman in a high-pitched voice. “I’m Jill, my husband is Sam, and we feel privileged to have a huge TV-star, like you, visiting our humble home.”

Sue was under the humble roof of the biggest, neatest mansion of the neighbourhood, which was surrounded by land measuring several hectares. There was a swimming pool and a tennis court in the garden. Sue could sense that special superiority, which radiated from these two people and came from the fact that they had no financial problems in the middle of the current economic crisis. They were in Texas, the land of oil. The reserve had already peaked and was racing downhill, riding to depletion, but the machines were still thirsty for fuel. And these people squeezed the last drops out of their oil well instead of investing in new energy.

“Thank you,” said Sue, worried that she did not see any movement in the spiritual world. She wouldn’t have any success today either, though it was obvious that these people had strong roots in the unseen world. “Where can we sit down?”

“Here, in the living room,” said the husband, guiding her eagerly. “Your team has already prepared everything.”

Sue sent a scathing look towards her producer.

“All right. What can I do for you?”

Her hosts looked at her with round eyes. “What are you asking me for? We’ve seen the whole last season, and you already know why you’ve been called into the house when you enter …”

Blah-blah-blah. Spirits of the shadow world, where are you?

“Look, Jill, it differs from one case to another. What you see on TV is the final cut,” said Jim, the producer, from the background. “Let’s start again, OK?”

“All right,” said the woman, becoming friendlier. “Do we need to go back to the door?”

“You don’t need to. We’ll edit the recording.”

Blah-blah … Where are you? It won’t work today …

“What can I do for you?” asked Sue again mechanically.

“Salome, we have the greatest respect for you and your work,” started Jill, sugary. This demure attitude repulsed Sue. She had just lost her inner eye to see the unseen world, otherwise she might have recognised the mighty spirit of vanity standing behind the woman.

“Yes, I understand, thank you,” smiled Sue.

“The question is about my husband’s great-grandfather. Some time ago, he forbade his successors to sell his lands. But the oil wells are dry on that land, and we don’t need it anymore. We would like to ask his opinion about selling it.”

Damn! I’ll have to lie …

“I see, let’s sit down at the table. We may be able to interrogate the spiritual messengers,” suggested Sue off-handedly, but Jim saw the tension behind Sue’s mask. But, at least, he was happy the cameras were rolling.

Sue set her usual tools in place: a notepad, a pen, and a digital voice recorder. The hosts were sitting in front of her with real excitement and expectation in their faces.

I’ll be a complete i***t, thought Sue, like some market fortune-teller. The only thing missing is the crystal ball. Those swindlers, crooks, cheap impostors, who wanted to be my unworthy successors in the last six year, are sneering at me now. The big Salome is ending in failure in view of the whole world.

“So, I sense that your great-grandfather is very relaxed,” bluffed Sue. She pretended to be concentrating on the fragments of messages popping into her mind from the other side. But it didn’t look very convincing. The problem was, she never lied when she was working. “I don’t feel that he would object to the deal.”

The couple gazed stupidly at Sue first, then to the crew. Then each other.

“Oh …” said the great-grandson, Sam, confused. “Is that all?”

Sue looked around like she was trying to find something that could help, anything that could give her some information about the great-grandfather; but she was in a hopeless situation.

“That’s it,” she said finally with a puzzled expression and stood up. “So, good-bye, and all the best with selling the land,” she said, heading to the door in front of the stupefied hosts. She didn’t look back, just pulled the door closed behind her.

“Don’t stop the camera! Come with me. I’ll make this woman’s life miserable! Open a live channel, we’ll broadcast the rest immediately!” Jim told the cameraman and stormed out of the house.

“Look, this was not in our agreement!” he shouted after Sue as he caught up to her near the caravan. “You can’t just close the show with this sentence!”

“Why can’t I? I have been working with you nonstop for five years. You can imagine; I’m tired of it,” Sue broke out.

“OK, I can accept that you got tired of this. But what was that scene in the house just now? Are you just playing us for fools? Have you just been pretending your abilities for all these years? Are you even a real medium?”

Sue had almost stepped into the caravan, but she turned to stone at that last sentence. She felt that those powers she worked for wanted to burst open from inside her, but they couldn’t find the way out. Her eyes were burning, her muscles bulged, and her hand pulled into a fist. Ooh! She could just hit him.

“What do you want?” she asked with lunatic eyes, turning to Jim. “Do you want me to curse you?”

“Do whatever you want, just be spectacular! You’re live now!” smiled Jim, pointing to the cameraman behind him. “You are broadcasting into every home now, and you have to do something without any postproduction.”

Sue felt that Jim was just doing this to boost ratings. He wanted to strain her into some dirty game that she couldn’t play.

“You pitiful, dirty wretch,” she said finally, and closed the door.

She could still hear Jim commentating on the events loudly, turning to the camera; “The Big Silence of the Spiritual World started on Season Six, Episode Six of Medium on Call. And on what day, can you guess? On the sixth of June, which is of course the sixth month of the year. Don’t you find these many sixes too much of a coincidence?”

“Turd …” mumbled Sue and lit a cigarette. She looked into the mirror, where a tortured small girl looked back with red-rimmed eyes. Her face was bloated, her skin had changed colour, mottled with nasty red spots. The stress wanted to find its way out.

Or maybe it was something else, from the deep …

Her mobile ceased her torments when it rang. It was Sidney Grimm, her apprentice.

“Don’t worry, nobody can make a connection with the spirits now,” she consoled Sue. “You’re not the only one. I’ve seen you live, and it wasn’t your best performance.”

“The last one wasn’t a success.”

“No. We can’t give up. Something has happened in the spiritual world, and we have to find out what. All channels got silenced.”

“I don’t care. My family will be happy to have me back.”

“You know very well that you can’t just simply pull out.” Sidney strangely emphasized the last words of the sentence, as if the apprentice was warning her master. Sue had already felt that strange shiver about Sidney that was giving her the creeps now.

“You may be right,” whispered Sue and cut the line.

The film crew had already started packing outside. Sue stayed alone in her caravan-sized empire without any spiritual supporters. And she felt terrible.

2.

John Levi arrived at the hospital looking haggard. If he could, he would have visited the Heartley family tomorrow, but he was too worried about them. He prepared himself for everything; the mother and the boy had very little chance of surviving. John had found them in a state that only his brother Paul’s God could have the power to keep them alive.

“I’m Lieutenant Levi, I’m looking for the family that had a crash an hour ago,” he said at the desk, showing his badge.

“The Heartleys, right?” asked the nurse, looking at the list. “Their doctor, Miss Bond, is coming right now; she’ll be able to give you all the information you need.”

Julie overheard that they were talking about her.

“I’m Dr. Julie Bond. What can I do for you?” she greeted John, raising her hand.

“Nice to meet you, Doctor, I’m Lieutenant John Levi, Jersey County Homicide. I was the officer who found them after the accident. I promised the father that I’d stop by.”

“The situation is not promising. The mother and the son are still in critical condition. The husband had a narrow escape with lighter injuries, but we’re keeping him under observation, because he lost consciousness. You can see him if you like, he’s in the second to last room on the right, at the end of the corridor. He knows everything about his loved ones, so you can speak freely with him.”

John saw the tiredness in Julie’s face. “Hard case,” he said to the woman. It was not so hard to sympathize with her, as he also felt like a suit of old clothes, sticky with the squalor of life.

“I see you’ve already been through some of these.”

“I could tell some stories too, but we would end up in some kind of stupid game—who’s seen more terrible cases. I mostly see the ones you can’t fix.”

“I see,” said Julie, pursing her lips. She found the man, and his intention to visit the injured, nice, even if he wasn’t a traffic cop.

“Did they bring the other driver here?”

“Yes, he’s on the opposite corridor. He has a broken leg, crushed injuries to the chest …”

“And what about his passenger?” asked John, hoping that the paramedics had found the mystical hitchhiker.

“There was no passenger,” smiled Julie. “I have to go. If you want to have a little chat, just hop into the canteen for a coffee later on.”

“All right, I’ll probably do that,” waved John, heading towards the rooms.

John found the man in his room with a plastered leg and a neck brace. He was trying to sit up.

“I’ll help you,” offered the lieutenant, jumping closer. The man grabbed his hand and pulled himself up. He had a strong, confident grip.

“Thank you. You’re the lieutenant from the crash site, aren’t you?” he asked, and they introduced themselves.

“I hope the best for your family.”

“I very much appreciate that,” said Benet Heartley. “Can somebody bring my mother-in-law up here? She walks with difficulty …”

“I’ll send someone for her,” John reacted immediately, giving the address to the centre. “She’ll be here in less than ten minutes.”

“Wonderful. We’ve just been at her place, celebrating my son’s second heart-birthday.”

John looked surprise, so Benet continued.

“You know, exactly five years ago, my son went through a heart transplant. The problem with the heart was from a birth defect, which was unnoticed until he was four. He got his new heart the next year. There were a lot of complications, but he survived. His body didn’t reject the donated heart.”

“He’s a strong guy.”

“He’ll be a great man if he …” he said, his voice choking. “Linda and I …” he started and then stopped again, because he thought about the others who were fighting for their lives at the moment. “I feel so bad that I ran that light.”

“I can come back later, if you don’t want to talk about it now …”

“No, please stay. I need to talk myself hoarse to someone. So, Linda and I always thought that, as unlucky and sick as he was, he would be a very special boy. And so he is; he had a big heart with immense love and caring. I have to admit I see all my weaknesses dissolving and disappearing when I’m with him,” explained Benet, swallowing his tears, “but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell him that.”