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  SACRIFICE

  By John Farris

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2012 / Penny Dreadful, LLC

  Cover design by: David Dodd

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  John Lee Farris (born 1936) is an American writer, known largely for his work in the southern Gothic genre. He was born 1936 in Jefferson City, Missouri, to parents John Linder Farris (1909–1982) and Eleanor Carter Farris (1905–1984). Raised in Tennessee, he graduated from Central High School in Memphis and attended Southwestern College (now Rhodes College) in Memphis. His first wife, Kathleen, was the mother of Julie Marie, John, and Jeff Farris; his second wife, Mary Ann Pasante, was the mother of Peter John ("P.J.") Farris.

  Apart from his vast body of fiction, his work on motion picture screenplays includes adaptations of his own books (i.e., The Fury), original scripts, and adaptations of the works of others (such as Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man). He wrote and directed the film Dear Dead Delilah in 1973. He has had several plays produced off-Broadway, and also paints and writes poetry. At various times he has made his home in New York, southern California and Puerto Rico; he now lives near Atlanta, Georgia.

  Author's Website – Furies & Fiends

  Other John Farris books currently available or coming soon from Crossroad Press:

  All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By

  Catacombs

  Dragonfly

  Fiends

  King Windom

  Minotaur

  Nightfall

  Phantom Nights

  Sacrifice

  Sharp Practice

  Shatter

  Solar Eclipse

  Son of the Endless Night

  Soon She Will Be Gone

  The Axeman Cometh

  The Captors

  The Fury

  The Fury and the Power

  The Fury and the Terror

  The Ransome Women

  Unearthly (formerly titled The Unwanted)

  When Michael Calls

  Wildwood

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  GREG WALKER'S NARRATIVE

  PART ONE

  February, 199-

  I was finishing my laps around the lake about seven o'clock when Doyle Kindor's youngest boy, Ricky Gene, shot me in the head with Doyle's old Colt Woodsman.

  Ricky Gene was only ten, and he shouldn't have had the gun at all without his older brother or Doyle along with him, for safety's sake. As I found out later, Ricky Gene sneaked the Woodsman out of the house to do some target shooting with a couple of his fifth-grade friends.

  The how and why of it weren't important to me, of course; the fact is that a .22 caliber, unjacketed lead bullet went astray and struck me six centimeters from the temple, just above the left eye, penetrating the skull at a slight upward angle, splitting apart on impact with the bone (I have well-calcified bones). Pieces of the bullet then plowed through the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex and Broca's area. One fragment traveled as far as the cerebellum.

  The solid blow to the forehead snapped my head back. I was in stride and on a slight incline; the impact of the little bullet turned me sideways and I lost my footing, fell backward at the water's edge. I didn't lose consciousness. But I was partially paralyzed and unable to get up again. I had uncontrollable spasms down my left side; I couldn't feel my left hand at all.

  Spud Morris, doggedly trying to drop a lot of excess poundage, was trudging along the lakeside path about forty yards behind me. He undoubtedly had heard the little firecracker pops of the Woodsman too, and as soon as he crossed the shelf of limestone that juts out over the weedy cove where the bream are most likely to be biting early in the morning, he saw me and realized what had happened.

  "Greg? Greg, Jesus!"

  I was faceup, lying back on one elbow. I could hear and see Spud okay. At first I didn't know, or want to believe, that I was seriously wounded. I thought I'd run into something in the twilight, like the blunt end of a dead branch protruding from a tree. But Spud, who had done two tours in Vietnam, left no doubt as he knelt beside me.

  "You've been shot, you've been shot!" he said. "Damn careless kids!" Staring at the hole in my head, fear in his eyes, he put a burly arm around me. Sweat dripped from the tip of his nose. Spud tried to catch his breath, and didn't seem to know what to do next. He dabbed at the blood on my left cheek with one of the terrycloth wristbands he always wore when jogging, and raised his head.

  "Hey, you kids! Run, get help quick! Nine-one-one. Nine-one-one. Mr. Walker's shot, he's hurt bad!"

  Spud has a bass voice, and it carried like the baying of a bloodhound across the placid lake to the homes on Thornhill Road. The neighborhood that Caroline and Sharissa and I had moved to not quite two years ago, after a decade of hard work, planning, and a lot of scrimping to make it all possible. We were in our dream house, and now this had to happen.

  The spasms had lessened; I felt inert and cold to the bone, as if I were crystalizing in a snowbank. Maybe it was the way Spud was holding me, but I found it harder to breathe with every passing moment. His face was close to mine, his lips crimped in a concerned smile as he tried to reassure me.

  "Hey, Greg, hey, it's gonna be all right! You're gonna make it, son! Kids have gone for help! You just hang in there!"

  I hung in there, perhaps surprising us both. Spud kept talking, embracing me firmly, telling me tall tales about his golf handicap and his ability to pick stocks that tripled in value—as his wife put it, the only thing that could shut Spud up was an oral contraceptive. Meanwhile, he kept me in a sitting position, something he'd learned dealing with grievously wounded men in his command and which, under the circumstances, was the correct thing to do.

  I was fortunate that the paramedics from the nearby fire station got to me in less than eight minutes. The emergency medical units were something new in Sky Valley. Caroline, my wife, was largely responsible. She had spent three years lobbying the City Council, getting the necessary community support: four thousand signatures on a petition. We have a fine hospital, too, for a city our size.

  One of the medics was cowpoke-thin, with a jutting chin like the joker on a playing card; the other was a gum-chewing, half-pint young woman who didn't look much older than my daughter. I can't imagine that even Mother Teresa had more caring hands. They didn't waste a second. On advice from the trauma center at the hospital, the medics put me on oxygen, sodium pentothol to decrease the brain's metabolism, and lidocaine to reduce intracranial pressure.

  But my brain was rapidly filling with blood. I still didn't feel much pain, and I couldn't feel anything at all on my right side. I was blinking and woozy, the lashes of my left eye sticky from blood and leaked brain tissue, but as they carried me on the wheeled stretcher, still sitting up, around to the other side of the lake, I saw a couple of cops talking to Ricky Gene and his friends. Those kids had the sickest, scaredest faces I've ever seen.

  Unlikely as it seems, I wasn't worried about myself—shock, I suppose—but I felt sorry for Ricky Gene. He was a good boy. It was always "Yes, sir" and "No, ma'am" with Ricky Gene.


  I guess the sodium pentothal took effect quickly, because I was drifting off by then. Spud Morris kept shouting at me as they hurried me to the ambulance. Something about finding Caroline and Sharissa right away. The roof of my mouth was swelling and I couldn't talk, so I wasn't any help there. It was a primary month in Georgia and Caroline was off in another congressional district, ninety miles south, working on Claude Gilley's campaign for the United States Senate. She hadn't expected to be home before ten o'clock. Sharissa, I thought, might still be at the country club playing tennis after her shift as a lifeguard. I assumed she'd arrive at the hospital first. But I didn't want my baby to see me with a hole in my head.

  The traumatized brain always swells from bleeding. Most severe head injury cases arrive at the hospital with no neurological functions, and if they don't get fast, expert treatment, the swelling brain herniates, forcing the brain stem through the bottom of the skull and compressing it to the point where it can no longer function. Then the lungs and the heart stop. Pure oxygen to slow down the heart, regulate the violent pumping of blood to a brain that already holds too much, is the first requirement. Then emergency surgery to relieve internal pressure, suction off the necrotic tissue, all the bone and bullet fragments that can cause trouble later if the patient survives the initial trauma. But only one in ten ever do. After that, the neuro team replaces the bone they removed to get at the brain, and hopes for the best.

  Eighteen hours after the accidental shooting, I came to in the Intensive Care Unit.

  I had shrieking-teakettle sounds in both ears. At first I couldn't make any sense out of being hooked up to a respirator, some monitors, and three drip feeds. A humidified re-breather covered my nose and mouth. I had drains in my head and my left eye, which had swollen shut. My right eye was little more than a slit. I couldn't lift either hand or move my head. The last thing I remembered was dropping the Honda off at Ed Reedy's dealership for an overdue brake job. But that had been more than a week ago.

  The first face I saw was Dr. Jesse Fernando's. Jesse and I used to play racquetball doubles at the Y until his back went out on him. I hadn't seen him in quite a while. He had put on weight, added a chin, some silvery gray at his temples. He was wearing a clean set of O.R. greens.

  "Do you know me, Greg?" he asked. "Just squeeze my right hand once for yes, twice for no."

  I moved my lips, but my tongue wasn't mobile. It filled my mouth like a rubber stopper in a sink. And it was news to me that he was holding my hand.

  "Just squeeze," Jesse said again, not looking hopeful about my ability to do so.

  I had to concentrate, thinking right hand, right hand; thinking created pain, a lot of it, but then I was able to tighten my fingers.

  Jesse looked relieved at this rudimentary communication. There were a couple of nurses at bedside, faces blurred at the limits of my severely restricted vision, checking this, checking that, jotting things down.

  "Caroline and Sharissa are outside," Jesse told me. "I'll let them see you for a few minutes. But I wanted to talk to you first. If that's all right, squeeze my hand again."

  I applied enough pressure to make him smile, incredulously. I didn't know what kind of medication they were giving me, but I needed to tell him that I was feeling a lot of pain. I tried to get at the re-breather with my hand and pull it off my face. Jesse restrained me, said something to one of the nurses I didn't catch: the teakettles were making too much noise.

  "You're in the hospital, Greg. I expect you know that much. I had you in the operating room for five and a half hours. You were shot accidentally in the head . . ." He went on, describing how that little bullet had fragmented and done a lot of damage, shearing an artery, which in turn resulted in a massive blood clot, "But the brain looked good," he said. "Once I cleaned it up. Only one small fracture of the brain floor. So far I don't have any reason to feel discouraged. It's a sizable miracle that you're conscious already. We have every reason to believe you'll pull through."

  Jesse didn't go into paralysis or permanent speech impairment or any of the other expectable consequences at that point; he grasped my right hand reassuringly and smiled and said, "Here's your family."

  I got some idea of how long they'd been waiting from the puffiness and discoloration around Caroline's eyes. By then she probably hadn't slept for forty hours. She couldn't hide her horror or stop crying. Sharissa was trying to be brave, but it was obvious my appearance sickened her. Later she described to me how I'd looked: big turban of bandages, the rest of my face swollen and discolored like a prize eggplant. Her lips were bloodless, the skin ragged from being chewed.

  Bobby Driscoll, the boy she'd been dating exclusively for a year or so, was with her: tall, wide receiver on the football team, smart too—the sort of boy I would've liked for a son, if Caroline and I had been blessed with another child.

  Caroline and Sharissa took turns kissing me and squeezing my right hand. The vision in my right eye, already blurry, was made worse by tears. I tried to smile beneath the re-breather mask, but my lips wouldn't cooperate. Neither of them had much to say, except that they loved me and I shouldn't worry.

  I couldn't worry about anything. I was in twilight by then. Dreaming the dreams of near-death, whatever they may be. I had no recollection, afterward, of the intensely bright, otherworldly light reported by others who have been in my precarious state. There were no figures of old friends calling to me, or angels that glowed like gaslight in a somber haze at the end of a long tunnel.

  There was only a man, a man with a stocky peasant's body, in my near-death dreams. The landscape was clear and sharp-edged. The sun shone painfully bright (so brightly I could not open my eyes all the way) where he stood near the base of a flat-topped pyramid. He was wearing a black suit with a white shirt unbuttoned to the breastbone. I could make out the gleam of a gold chain around his neck, and the cool green of jade in the form of something winged, ancient, chimerical. He had an old-fashioned stem-winder pocket watch in his hands. It gave off sizzling glints in the sun.

  I was fascinated by the timepiece; all of my attention was focused on it. But when I tried to approach the man he raised his head and stopped me with his gaze. His face was flat and seamed, oiled and coppery-dark; his hair shock-white and full as flowery grief. His eyes were starless night, as forbidding as the depths of space. He shook his head slowly, then lowered his eyes and, methodical Timekeeper, continued to wind the watch.

  I only had meant to ask him how late it was. Late for what, I didn't know.

  The next face I saw was that of one of the nurses, a slim mocha-colored girl. I watched her through the slit of my right eye for a while. Her back was to the bed. I reached up and pulled off the re-breather. She heard the hissing of oxygen through the mask, and turned.

  "Guh morning," I said. The steam-whistle noises in my ears had faded. "Or is it . . . morning?"

  She just stared at me, then shook her head. I found out later it was midafternoon, two days after the shooting. The nurse smiled, but she looked shocked. She stopped what she was doing with the tree of drip-feed bottles and quickly went away.

  When she came back there was a doctor with her. He looked very young to me, but he'd already lost half of his hair.

  "Mr. Walker, I'm Dr. Kiddfield. Senior neurological resident here at the hospital. I understand you spoke to Ruby."

  "Sure . . . I did," I said. My voice sounded thick, but at least I was understandable. "Why not?"

  "Well—" he rubbed his high forehead as he consulted my recent trauma history on his clipboard, grimacing a couple of times while he read. "According to this, you suffered significant damage to Broca's area."

  "What . . . does that mean?"

  "Broca's area controls the necessary muscle movements that enable you to pronounce words. There's more to speech than that, but in a nutshell—"

  I went on producing words, although some were garbled.

  "Maybe I'm not hurt . . . bad as everybody thought. I feel pretty good, actually." I rea
ched up with my right hand to rub the stubble on my cheek. It was like someone else's hand—trembling, no strength in it. "Could use a shave," I said.

  Kiddfield watched me, then pored over the information on his chart again. He looked as thoroughly confused as any human being I'd ever seen.

  "I'll be back soon," he said. "I just want to have a good look at your EEGs and, uh, the preliminary CAT scan again."

  That evening, after another CAT scan, I was moved from Intensive Care to a private room.

  Except for a persistent headache and a fluctuating fever, I was steadily improving. I continued to feel very tired and sometimes nauseated. It was an effort to move any part of my body (and impossible to lift my head, which seemed to be huge but insubstantial, like a hot-air balloon). My head was wrapped in bandages from just above the eyebrows; my lips were fat and my swollen left eye, which was still draining, stood out from my face like a piece of hard, unripened fruit. But the swelling had stabilized. As I'd already proved, I could move and guide my right hand; feeling had returned to my right leg as well, although I had no control of it.

  Now I was conscious much of the time, despite the painkillers and what my daughter described as "majorly amounts" of antibiotics. Less than seventy-two hours after I'd been brought to the hospital, I was sitting up for as long as an hour at a time.

  For the next couple of days it seemed as if there was a different doctor in the room every ten minutes. I was the guy who should have been, at the least, brain-dead. I didn't know if my apparent escape from horribly debilitating damage was an inspiration to them, but most seemed skeptical even when they were talking to me, as if I were some sort of hoax perpetrated by Jesse Fernando.