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“Not too bad,” said Blaine, and actually he felt fine. There didn’t seem to be a thing the matter. “Where did you pick me up?”
The doctor did not answer. He asked another question. “Did anything like this ever happen to you before?”
“Like what?”
“Blacking out,” the doctor. “Falling into coma.”
Blaine rocked his head from side to side upon the pillow. “Not that I recall.”
“Almost,” the doctor said, “as if you were the victim of a spell.”
Blaine laughed. “Witchcraft, doctor?”
The doctor grimaced. “No, I don’t imagine so. But one never knows. The patient sometimes thinks so.”
He crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“I’m Dr. Wetmore,” he told Blaine. “You’ve been here two days. Some boys were hunting rabbits east of town. They found you. You had crawled underneath some willows. They thought that you were dead.”
“And so you hauled me in.”
“The police did. They went out and got you.”
“And what is wrong with me?”
Wetmore shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“I haven’t any money. I can’t pay you, Doctor.”
“That,” the doctor told him, “is not of any moment.”
He sat there, looking at him. “There is one thing, however. There were no papers on you. Do you remember who you are?”
“Sure. I’m Shepherd Blaine.”
“And you live where?”
“Nowhere,” said Blaine. “I just wander around.”
“How did you get to this town?”
“I don’t somehow recall.”
He sat up in bed. “Look, Doctor, how about getting out of here? I’m taking up a bed.”
The doctor shook his head. “I’d like you to stick around. There are several tests—”
“It’ll be a lot of trouble.”
“I’ve never run across a case like yours,” the doctor said. “You’d be doing me a favor. There was nothing wrong with you. Nothing organically, that is. Your heartbeat was retarded. Your breathing a little shallow. Your temperature off a point or two. But otherwise all right, except that you were out. No way of waking you.”
Blaine jerked his head toward the mummy. “He’s in bad shape, isn’t he?”
“Highway accident,” the doctor said.
“That’s a bit unusual. Not many any more.”
“Unusual circumstance,” the doctor explained. “Driving an old truck. Tire blew when he was going fast. One of the curves above the river.”
Blaine looked sharply at the man on the other bed, but there was no way to tell. None of him was showing. His breath went slobbering in and out and there was a rasping to it, but there was no way to tell who he might be.
“I could arrange another room,” the doctor offered.
“No need. I won’t be around too long.”
“I wish you’d stay awhile. You might flop over once again. And not be found this time.”
“I’ll think on it,” Blaine promised.
He lay back on the bed.
The doctor rose and went to the other bed. He bent over it and listened to the breathing. He found a wad of cotton and dabbed it at the lips. He murmured at the man who lay there, then he straightened up.
“Anything you need?” he inquired of Blaine. “You must be getting hungry.”
Blaine nodded. Now that he thought of it, he was.
“No hurry, though,” he said.
“I’ll speak to the kitchen,” said the doctor. “They’ll find something for you.”
He turned about and walked briskly from the room, and Blaine lay listening to his crisp, quick footsteps going down the hall.
And suddenly he knew — or remembered — why he now was safe. The flashing signal light was gone, for the creature of the far star had taken it from him. Now there was no longer need to skulk, no need of hiding out.
He lay there and thought about it and felt a bit more human — although, to tell the truth, he had never felt anything but human. Although now, for the first time, beneath the huma
Across, in the other bed, the mummy wheezed and rasped and slobbered.
“Riley!” whispered Blaine.
There was no break in the breathing, no sign of recognition.
Blaine swung on the bed and thrust out his feet. He sat on the edge of the bed and let his feet down to the floor, and the patterned tile was chill. He stood up, and the scratchy hospital gown hung obscenely around his shanks.
At the other bed, he bent close above the white-swathed thing that lay there.
“Riley! Is it you? Riley, do you hear me?”
The mummy stirred.
The head tried to turn toward him but it couldn’t. The lips moved with an effort. The tongue fought to frame a sound.
“Tell . . .” it said, dragging out the word with the effort of its saying.
It tried again. “Tell Fi
There was more to say. Blaine could sense that there was more to say. He waited. The lips moved again, laboriously, and yet again. The tongue writhed heavily inside the slobbering cavern. But there was nothing more.
“Riley!” But there was no answer.
Blaine backed away until the edge of his bed caught him back of the knees and he sat down upon it.
He stayed there, staring at the swathed figure motionless on the bed.
And the fear, he thought, had caught up with the man at last, the fear that he had raced across half a continent. Although, perhaps, not the fear he ran from, but another fear and another danger.
Riley gasped and panted.
And there he lay, thought Blaine, a man who had some piece of information to pass on to a man named Fi
Fi
There had been a Fi
Once, long ago, he’d known the name of Fi
Blaine sat stiff and straight upon the bed, remembering what he knew of Fi
Although it might be a different Fi
For Lambert Fi
And now he was a whispered name, a legend, a chilling character in a chilling story, one of the few Fishhook horror tales.
For, so the story ran, Lambert Fi
EIGHTEEN
Blaine lay back upon the bed and stared up at the ceiling. A breeze came sniffing through the window, and leaf shadows from a tree outside played fitfully upon the wall. It must be a stubborn tree, Blaine thought, among the last to lose its leaves, for it was late October now.
He listened to the muffled sounds that came from the hushed corridors beyond the room, and the biting antiseptic smell was still hanging in the air.
He must get out of here, he thought; he must be on his way. But on his way to where? On his way to Pierre, of course — to Pierre and Harriet, if Harriet were there. But Pierre itself was dead end. So far as he might know, there was no purpose in it. So far as he could know, it was just a place to run to.
For he was ru
The lack of purpose hurt. It made him an empty thing. It made him a wind-blown striving that had no free will of its own.
He lay there and let the hurt sink in — and the bitterness and wonder, the wonder if it had been wise to run from Fishhook, if it had been the thing to do. Then he remembered Freddy Bates and Freddy’s painted smile and the glitter in his eyes and the gun in Freddy’s pocket. And he knew there was no doubt about it: it had been the thing to do.
But somewhere there must be something he could lay his fingers on, something he could grasp, some shred of hope or promise he could cling to. He must not go on forever floating without purpose. The time must come when he could stop his ru