WEDNESDAY, OCT. 24
I rolled over on the bed, feeling like I had the worst
hangover of my life.
“Good
morning.” Dr. Reid pulled the last of the electrodes off my chest. “It looks
like you had a good night’s sleep.”
“Uhh . . .”
I sat up. “What time is it?”
“It’s just
8:30. We got a good read off of you.” He smiled. “How did you sleep?”
“Uh, fine.”
I fumbled for my jeans. “Can I get dressed now?”
“Of
course.” Reid tapped some buttons on the wall and pulled a flash drive from a
USB port. “Take your time. We’ll be in touch.”
“Dr. Reid?”
I was already looking for Rachel on my phone. Three messages.
He paused.
“Yes?”
“What’s
seshai?”
He blinked.
“Why do you ask? I don’t know.”
I was a
reporter before I was a private detective, so I’m pretty good at spotting lies.
Reid knew the word.
I just shook
my head. “Just something from a dream.”
Then I got
dressed. I didn’t quite run out the door, but I wasn’t sauntering either.
I sat in my
Honda, catching my breath and checked my phone. Six messages, all from Rachel. I
erased Rachel’s messages before calling home. “Hi. It’s me.”
“You
asshole!” Rachel’s voice stormed my ear. “You said you were going to stay there
half an hour! I hope you got a good night’s sleep, because I haven’t gotten
any! By the way, everyone dies! Even Nick Fury and—okay, I may have watched Infinity
War without you, but you said—”
“Shut up.”
I started the car. “I’m coming home. I don’t know what happened, but . . . I
need you.” I twisted the key.
“I’ll be
right here. Jerk.”
Back home I staggered into the kitchen for a bottle of water
and collapsed on a chair, rubbing my temples. Rachel stalked in from the office
wearing a T-shirt and green panties, which, okay, did distract me from my
headache a bit. “What the hell happened?”
“I didn’t
take the sedative, but I fell asleep anyway. Maybe it was the sleep machine.” I
gulped some more water.
“Yeah, Gary
dropped ours off right after you left. It’s in the office.” She bent over me.
“Hold still.”
I closed my
eyes and felt her fingers on my forehead and temples. My skull and my heart
were pounding.
Then Rachel
sighed. “You idiot.”
“It’s
there? They called it . . . the seshai.”
“Something’s
there.” She wiped her hands on her T-shirt. “Not as strong as I felt in
Russell. The what?”
“It called itself the seshai. It
talked to me. Damn it.” I wanted a beer. And a bottle of Tylenol. And more
beer. Probably not a good combination at 9:30 in the morning.
“Now what?” She sat down across the
table. “I can’t take much more of this, Tom.”
“Yeah.” In the past year I’d been
turned into a vampire, infected myself with flesh-eating fungus, and now this.
Maybe it wasn’t too late to apply to McDonald’s. “Sorry.”
Rachel stood up and sighed again. “That
pill was nothing. The numbers didn’t match up to anything I could find.” She
stretched. “I’m going to take a shower. Try not to have a stroke before I’m
done.”
Maybe the water was the sedative,
not the pill. Or the Nyx machine. “Sorry.”
She kissed the top of my head. “Get
some rest.”
I snorted. “Thanks.”
While Rachel showered I tried to look up every possibly
spelling of “seshai” on the internet. Mostly I found variations on sushi and
sashimi, which only made me hungry despite my blinding headache.
I found a
bottle of Tylenol in my desk and gulped a handful down dry. Then I drank the
rest of my water and made my way to the kitchen for more.
Rachel came
out of the bedroom, fresh and clean in jeans and boots and a sweater. “Feeling
any better?” She slugged my shoulder. “Jerk.”
I couldn’t
blame her. “I’m going to take a shower too. Then—”
Then my
phone buzzed in my pocket. It was the Reid Sleep Clinic. “Mr. Jurgen? This is
Dr. Usher. At the clinic? Can you come in today? As soon as possible?”
Uh-oh. “Is
there a problem?” I switched the phone to speaker to Rachel could hear him.
Maybe she’d pick something up from his voice.
“No
problem. We’d just like to discuss your results.”
That seemed
. . . quick. I glanced at Rachel. “Uh . . . is this about the seshai?”
A short
pause. “What’s that?”
Rachel
smiled and jabbed a finger at my phone. He knows, she mouthed without
words.
Yeah. Even
without psychic powers, I could pick that up in his voice. “Just something I
heard in a dream last night. I’ll be there in an hour.”
Terri escorted Rachel and me down the hall. “In here.” She
seemed nervous as she knocked at a door. A nameplate on the wall read DR.
ASHTON REID.
Inside Reid sat behind a broad desk, with
Usher next to him, staring at a laptop screen.
“So what’s
going on?” Rachel and I sat down. I looked from one doctor to the other. “You
said this would take a few days.”
“Your data
indicated a need for immediate intervention.” Reid smiled at Rachel. “And you
are?”
“Rachel.”
She stood up and smiled, holding out a hand. “Nice to meet you.” They shook.
She shot me
a glance and a nod. Yup. He had the seshai too.
“What kind of intervention?” I didn’t
have to pretend to be nervous. “Am I going to have to get hooked up to that
machine again? Because I had the worst hangover of my life this morning.”
“Maybe you
should get one of those sleep machines you told me about.” Rachel nudged my
shoulder. “Might help with your snoring.”
Reid nodded. “We can show you a
line of them. You don’t have to get the most expensive model, of course. We
mostly keep it for—”
“Oh, let’s cut the crap.” Usher
shoved his laptop to one side. “We know who you are, Tom. Why you’re here. It
all came out in the readings.”
Okay. They’d scanned my brain for
12 hours last night. I hoped they hadn’t picked up my adolescent fantasies
about Justine Bateman on Family Ties. Or that dream about Rachel in a
chain mail bikini. Or . . .
I shook my
head. “Fine. I’m not just a consultant, I’m a detective.” I tossed my business
card on the desk. “Jolene Beckham hired me to find out why her boyfriend,
Russell Lenehan—one of your patients?—was getting up and leaving the house at
night. I don’t have all the answers yet, but Russell’s dead. And it’s inside my
head.” I tapped my ear. “So I’d like to know what’s going on. What are the
seshai?”
Usher and Reid exchanged a glance. As if they were communicating silently with each other.
Usher and Reid exchanged a glance. As if they were communicating silently with each other.
“They’re . . . from another
dimension,” Reid said.
“Are they
demons?” I’ve encountered more than my fair share of demons, Not with 100
percent success, but still . . .
Reid shook
his head. “Not demons. They don’t mean any harm.”
“Then why
is Russell Lenehan dead? And Dale Kirkpatrick?”
“You need
to come to the clinic at least once a week to refresh the energy,” Usher said.
“The sleep machine every night, too.”
“Otherwise
the seshai begins . . . eating your brain.” Reid shrugged.
Oh hell.
I’d taken Russell’s Nyx. Did that mean I’d contributed to his death?
“You should
tell people,” Rachel said. “I mean, that they need the machine every single
night, at least.”
And how the
hell was I supposed to sleepwalk my way out to Oak Park once a week? Or
sleep-drive? I wanted to start throwing things.
“I was just
trying different techniques for better sleep.” Reid crossed his arms. “I looked
into meditation, drugs, sound therapy . . . I reviewed all the literature, and
I tested everything on myself. The seshai—made their way into my through one of
the Nyx machines that Dr. Usher developed. I contacted him, and we opened the
clinic.”
“To infect
more people with the seshai?” He might have been talking about a coffee shop.
“It’s what
every organism wants.” Usher tapped a pen on the desk. “To survive and
reproduce. They can’t do that in their original dimension anymore. As long as
our patients—”
“What about
the naked thing in the park?” Rachel stomped a foot on the carpet. “Where that
woman died?”
“They need
to come close every once in a while.” Usher glanced at Reid. “We’re together
every day, but others—”
Reid
smiled. “Not naked, of course.” I hid a shudder at the mental image.
“—have to
come into contact with each other.” He folded his hands. “If you use the
machine often enough throughout the day, you may not have to do any of that. I
don’t know what happened to that woman. Maybe it was just her time.”
“So Dale
Kirkpatrick really was a patient here.” Russell said he’d seen her, but I still
hadn’t been sure.
Usher
nodded. “She came to us—”
“Tom, some
of our patients are from Chicago or the other suburbs.” Reid was trying to
sound reassuring. “We can manage this together with regular appointments and—”
Wait a
minute. “Why you telling us all this?” They were like Bond villains, about
to launch their evil scheme because they thought we couldn’t stop them—
Except
they’d already done it.
“To stop you from poking around our
clinic.” Usher tapped a pen on the desk. “Look, Tom, I hate to make threats,
but the seshai won’t let you attack or endanger them. You’re better off just
coming back here regularly—”
“Or they’ll kill him?” Rachel stood
up. “You might have a right to survive and reproduce, but that’s not a right to
rape people’s brains. Come on, Tom.” She grabbed my hand. “We’re done here. For
now.”
I had more questions for them, but
I could tell she needed to leave right away. Maybe because she’d been exposed
to too many seshai at once. I stood up. “Yeah. This isn’t over.”
We stalked through the waiting
room. I didn’t make a follow-up appointment with Terri. I resisted the urge to
shout at the waiting patients: “They're here already! You're next! You're next,
you’re next!” But I restrained myself, if only because most of them wouldn’t realize
I was quoting from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and if any did,
they’d think I was joking. Or crazy.
Out in the Honda I gripped the
steering wheel with trembling fingers. “You know, I don’t think you’ve ever
been so hot as you were just then in there. Except that one time on the beach—”
Rachel punched my arm. “Nobody
messes with my boyfriend. Now shut up and drive.”
Still exhausted, I slept for most of the afternoon with the
Nyx in the background. I missed a Skype appointment with a client, and I had to
call another to say that I wouldn’t be tailing his wife tomorrow. Both were
reasonably understanding, but I knew I couldn’t get away with ducking clients
for too long. Seshai or no seshai. I’d have to do some work while I figured
this out.
Rachel made
spaghetti with alfredo sauce for dinner. We drank some beers. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” I
rubbed my head. “I think.”
“So what
are we going to do?” She twirled some pasta on her fork.
“Hell if I
know.” I sipped some beer. “We could firebomb the place.”
“That
wouldn’t help you. Or any of the others.”
“It might
stop the seshai from getting any further.”
“I don’t care about that.” She put
her fork down. “Well, I do care about it, but I care about you more. Jerk.”
“Yeah, I’m at the top of my to-do list
too. Along with you.”
Rachel opened another beer. “Want
to watch TV and think about it?”
We were watching Infinity War after dinner. Rachel
tried to restrain herself from spoilers. We were both a little distracted.
“Wait!” I
pointed at the screen. “Is he really dead?”
She punched
my arm. “Shut up and watch the movie.”
Then my
phone buzzed. Unknown number. Maybe a telemarketer. But sometimes unknown
callers are the best kind. “Sorry. Just a second . . .” Racherl paused the
movie. “Hello, Tom Jurgen speaking.”
“Mr.
Jurgen? It’s Terri Smith, from the Reid Clinic?” She was whispering. “I’m
supposed to call you Friday about setting up your next appointment. But . . . I
need to talk to you. Alone. I get off work at 10:30.”
I sat up.
“About what?”
“I think
you already know? There’s a coffee shop.” She gave me an address. “Bring your
girlfriend.”
