Awake Page 28

  You just told her so much about your visions, and she has so much empathy that she’s convinced herself that she’s seeing them too, he told himself, trying to believe it. But he’d seen her eyes when the Demon had been coming at them back at the pump, and he knew she really had seen it too.

  “Wow, this place really was intended to be the new England, are you looking at the town names? I saw an exit for an Essex a way back, and now we’re going through New London,” Ivy said after fifteen minutes of silence. It was clear she was trying to find something, anything, to keep herself from thinking about the demon.

  “I noticed that we’re going through New London, I didn’t see Essex,” he said.

  “When are we getting food already? We just passed a town!” Stella yelled from the back.

  “Soon. We just have to find a place on the nav,” Ivy said. She pulled it off of the dashboard and looked at Lee. “Should we stop? Maybe we’ve lost it again.”

  Lee hesitated for a moment, then said “I guess we’ve got to eat. Just find a place that doesn’t have all vegetarian food.” He glanced in the mirrors again, nervously, his anxiety returning at the thought of having to stop. There was nothing behind them. “And we’ve got to be in and out.”

  Ivy nodded and messed with the navigator for a few minutes. “Wow, there’s a place a few miles down the road that has really high Zagat ratings.”

  “Sounds good, where is it?”

  “Some town called Mystic. I’m setting the GPS for it.”

  He thought about making some excuse for them to keep driving. He knew that Ben and Stella would see right through it, though. Biting his bottom lip so hard that he could taste blood, he tightened his grip on the steering wheel and drove on, following the drone of the GPS instructions.

  “What kind of place did you find?” Stella asked when they found themselves on the off-ramp for Mystic.

  “An Italian and seafood place. It looks good,” Ivy said.

  “Ugh, do they have any vegetarian dishes?”

  “The blurb said they had salads and pasta, I’m sure you’ll be able to find something. I want to eat some shrimp,” Ivy said.

  “God dammit, you know if I eat too many carbs it goes straight to my ass,” Stella said.

  “Well I said there were salads too,” Ivy said, exasperated.

  “Whatever.”

  Mystic was a quiet, seaside community that exuded a small-town America vibe. The GPS led them down Main Street, where the restaurant was located, and they marveled at the small buildings lining it, most of them painted bright white, with the odd brick building thrown in. Lee didn’t see a single building that was taller than three stories, which was refreshing, after the time they’d spent in skyscraper-dominated New York.

  The restaurant was in a three-story white building with a sign on the front that said The Whaler’s Inn, though the restaurant was a place on the ground floor called Bravo Bravo. “Hey, there’s a parking lot on your side Lee,” Ben said as he looked out the window. “First one I’ve seen since we picked the RV back up in Jersey.” It was silly that Ben seemed excited at seeing something as mundane as a parking lot, though Lee had to admit himself that he hadn’t seen one since New Jersey either.

  He pulled in and parked the rig in the back, not sure if the residents of the surrounding buildings would appreciate an RV taking up the prime territory. Stella and Ben hopped out almost as soon as the vehicle stopped, Ben saying something about how it would be great to get a bit of fresh air.

  Lee unbuckled his seat belt and then sat there, his fear rising up again and freezing him in his chair. Ivy had her door halfway open when she noticed, turned back and put a hand on Lee’s shoulder. “We’re going to be fine, maybe it really was just a shared hallucination. There’s no such thing as monsters,” she said, looking him squarely in the eyes and giving him a sweet smile. “I feel better the further north we get.”

  “You saw it too, though,” he said, not able to think of anything else.

  “I’m sure your explanation was right: I was just so worried about you and what was going on that I started to see the things you were telling me about, because I wanted to be with you,” she said, though he could see in her eyes that she didn’t quite believe it either. “And if anything fishy happens in the restaurant, we’ll bail.”

  “Well, it’s a seafood restaurant…” Lee said.

  “I knew you were going to say that the second I said fishy,” Ivy laughed. “Let’s go before the others think we’re going crazy again,” she said, and exited the vehicle without another word.

  28

  It was humid outside. Lee sucked in a lungful of the muggy salt air through his nose and exhaled it, the smell calming him. Though he usually hated humidity, tonight he felt it refreshing.

  “Hurry up Lee, you’re taking forever and I’m hungry!” Ben yelled from the other side of the RV. Snapping to, he noticed that Ivy had come around to the front of the rig and was looking at him with her head cocked slightly sideways, a ghost of a smirk on her face.

  “The sea air really makes you feel better, doesn’t it?” she asked.

  “It really does,” Lee replied, walking over to her and taking her hand. Together they joined with Ben and Stella.

  “The building looks a bit comely, doesn’t it?” Ben said as they walked across the parking lot, towards the restaurant across the street.

  “It does, but you know how the old saying goes—don’t judge a book by its cover and all,” Lee said. “And besides, look at all the buildings around here,” he swept his arm out, gesturing at them, “they all look like they’re over a century old. It’s beautiful.”

  “Well it just looks old to me. The food here better be as good as Ivy said it was,” Stella pouted.

  “Just try it, before you start bitching already,” Ivy said.

  They crossed the street and Lee held the restaurant’s door open for the others, before following them in.

  “Welcome to Bravo Bravo,” a brunette hostess a little older than the group said as they walked in. She was smiling a broad, welcoming smile, that didn’t look as fake as the ones he’d gotten used to in New York, reminding him again about the things that he had been missing in the city. “I’m Jeanette. Just the four of you this evening?”

  “Yep,” Ben said.

  The hostess grabbed menus from a holder behind her and came out from behind her desk. “If you guys want to follow me, I can get you seated right now.”

  “Wow, good ratings and no wait? There’s no way this would happen in New York,” Ivy said after they were seated and the hostess had gone to put in their drink orders.

  “Well Pizza Suprema never had us waiting, and they had the best food I had our whole time in the city,” Ben said. He gasped suddenly. “Oh shit I forgot! Tell me you got those slices out of your fridge before we checked out, Lee!”

  “I didn’t, don’t you think you would have seen me carrying the box out of the hotel?”

  “Well you could have put them in one of your bags, you really didn’t get them?”

  “No, I didn’t. And who puts pizza in a suitcase?”

  “Ben would have,” Stella said.

  “Damn right I would have, that pizza was amazing! I can’t believe you left it back at the hotel for some maid to throw out. It’s a crime.”

  “We’re in a nice place, quit talking about pizza already,” Ivy rolled her eyes and began studying her menu. “What are you guys thinking of for appetizers? I think the polenta torte looks good.”

  “I don’t even know what that is,” Ben said.

  “I’m not quite sure either, but it apparently involves goat cheese, roast vegetables and pesto.”

  “That sounds good to me,” Lee said. He was starting to relax, his muscles beginning to unknot. Although he’d been anxious and stressed, he hadn’t been aware how much tension he’d been carrying around in his body.

  “Me too. I love pesto,” Ben said, sounding pleasantly surprised.

  “Get
some of the baked mozzarella too,” Stella said.

  “Oh yeah, that looks good too,” Ivy said. “We’ll get that as well, then.”

  The waitress, a statuesque blonde identifying herself as Kate, brought their drinks, and Ivy put in the appetizer order. “I saw you looking at her ass, don’t even think about getting any wise ideas,” Stella said to Ben after the waitress was out of sight. Lee hadn’t seen it, but knowing Ben, and by the guilty look on his face, he almost certainly had been checking out the waitress. Lee couldn’t blame him; he’d snuck a couple of glances himself, even though he was quite happy with Ivy.

  “I was looking at her belt,” Ben said sheepishly.

  “Sure, that was it,” Stella glared at him.

  Ben took a long drink of his beer and put it down. “So are you guys going to let me drive when we leave here? No offense, but you were driving a bit crazy, Lee,” he said, changing the subject.

  Lee knew he couldn’t let anyone else drive but him, he already felt like he was risking it by making this stop. “I’ll let you drive sometime later. I still want to drive for a while, it’s really cool seeing New England.”

  “Well you’re not going to see much of it this late, look outside. It’s completely dark now.”

  “I like night driving, I guess.”

  “Well let’s at least stop at a rest stop or a hotel or something and get some rest. You could drive again in the morning, I think you’d do better that way.”

  “It’s my fucking RV, and I want to drive it through the night, okay?” Lee snapped. Ben’s eyes opened wider, and Lee realized how angry he’d sounded. “Sorry, it’s just that I was looking at the map and if I drive through the night we could be in Maine by the morning. I really want to check it out.”

  “Whatever man, just try and drive a little bit safer, I guess,” Ben said, not looking happy.

  “Maybe you can sit up front with him and be the co-driver, Ben,” Ivy said, trying to soothe the tension between them. “I’d like to relax and watch the TV with Stella for a while.”

  “That’d be cool,” Ben said.

  Lee sighed. “Fine.”

  Ivy leaned over to Lee and whispered, “I just think it would be safer since I was being a bit nutty back there.”

  “Why are you so sure all of a sudden that it’s all a hallucination?” Lee whispered back.

  “Because that’s the only thing that makes sense, and you know it.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Hey, are you guys talking about us?” Stella said. “Quit whispering like a couple of gossips.”

  “We were just figuring out the seating arrangement, calm down,” Ivy said.

  Ben opened his mouth to say something, but then his phone started ringing. “Jeez, you leave your phone on in a nice place like this?” Lee said, gently ribbing Ben.

  “I’ll shut it off,” Ben said, his face turning red as the entire restaurant stopped talking and turned to watch him incredulously. He looked at his phone and frowned. “It’s a Seattle number I don’t recognize, it could be important. I’m going to go to the bathroom to take it,” he said. He got up and hurried off.

  “What the hell is that about, does he have a girlfriend back home or something?” Stella asked Lee petulantly.

  “Not that I know of,” Lee said. Stella gave him a withering look, so he added “No, he doesn’t, I’m sure of it.”

  “It’s probably his family or something, he has a life outside of us,” Ivy said.

  “Not if he knows what’s good for him,” Stella said.

  The girls started chuckling. “Don’t worry, she’s just kidding,” Ivy said.

  “You don’t speak for me!” Stella joked.

  Ben came back. “It was your editor, Lee. Somehow he got my number. He wants you to call him back right away,” he said, and handed Lee his phone

  “What, right this second?” Lee said.

  “That’s what he asked.”

  “This had better be important,” Lee said. He grabbed the phone and walked back to the bathrooms at the rear of the restaurant, hoping that no one would mind if he talked in the bathroom.

  When he got inside the men’s room he flicked open Ben’s phone and dialed the last number that had called. I wonder what Wyatt wants, he thought as he hit the call button. The phone only rang once before Wyatt picked up, “Hey man, it’s Lee. What’s going on?” he asked as soon as Wyatt answered.

  “Where are you at now? I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all day!” Wyatt said.

  “Travelling, we’re in New England right now. How did you get Ben’s number?”

  “You gave it to me back when you broke your phone and didn’t feel like getting a new one for two months, remember? You said Ben would know how to find you.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well what’s up? I’ve got to eat and then get back on the road.”

  “Your doctor keeps calling me. Can’t remember his name, something Jewish. He says you need to get ahold of him or some doctor that you went to in the twin cities?”

  “Do you know what it’s about?”

  “I don’t know, I tried to get that from him, but he said it was private medical information that he could only give you. He said that the other doctor from Minneapolis left a message on your phone about it.”

  “I think I lost my phone. I didn’t see it in any of my bags.”

  “Again? What is it with you and phones?”

  “I don’t keep careful tabs on them, you know how much I hate people being able to call me.”

  “Well what network do you use?” Wyatt asked. Lee told him. “That’s what I thought. I have the same carrier, you just call this one number and enter in your phone number and pin to get your voicemail. Do you have a pen and paper or some way to take the number down?”

  “Yeah,” Lee said, fishing stationary and a pen he’d swiped from the hotel out of his pocket. “How do I know what my pin number is?”

  “How should I know what you set it to when you got the phone? It’s probably whatever you use at the bank though, try that.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s probably it,” Lee said. He took town the number from Wyatt and thanked him.

  “Just call the guy right away, he sounded worried. And call me in a day or two too, I want to know what you’re up to.”

  “Will do,” Lee said, and hung up.

  He dialed the number Wyatt had given him and followed the robotic voice that answered, giving instructions to get to his voicemail. When it asked for his PIN he typed in his bank pin, hoping Wyatt was right.

  Sure enough, it worked. “You have twelve new messages,” the voice said.

  “Fuck,” Lee said.

  He skipped through the messages, most of them from Wyatt asking where Lee was, until he got to the doctor’s message. Feeling his heart fluttering, he played it.

  “Hello Lee this, is Dr. Strauss. I just wanted to let you know that we got the results back from your testing and I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask come back for further tests. Or set some tests up with another doctor, if you’re still travelling.

  “We couldn’t find any of the prions that cause FFI, so we want to find out if it was ours or Dr. Siegel’s error. I want to stress that you could still have the condition, but it’s possible that you were misdiagnosed and your insomnia could be being caused by a different problem. This is still serious either way, call me back at…”

  Lee slapped the phone shut, nearly dropping it. He tried to process everything; wondering if he’d misheard something, he played the message again twice more. Finally, sure he’d heard everything correctly, he closed the phone. What does this mean? he asked himself as he stared blankly at the closed phone.

  Knowing it was a long shot, he opened the phone back up and dialed Dr. Strauss’ office from the number the doctor had left. No one answered, and there wasn’t any number given on the answering machine message to reach the doctor after-hours. “Fucking bastard, what kind of doctor doesn’t leave a number for emergencies,” he muttere
d as he shut the phone again.

  It was infuriating. He would have almost preferred to know right away that he did have the disease than to have to wait. Is it really possible that I just have an extraordinarily bad case of normal insomnia?

  Realizing that the others would probably think he’d disappeared again and come looking for him if he was gone much longer, he put Ben’s phone back in his pocket and returned to the table.

  The hors d'oeuvres were already at the table and mostly eaten. The others stared at him curiously, as Lee slipped back into his chair and grabbed some of the remaining polenta torte and pieces of baked mozzarella, piling them onto his plate.

  “Well?” Ben asked as Lee bit into a piece of baked mozzarella.

  “Well what?” Lee asked.

  “Don’t play dumb, we all want to know what your doctor said.”

  “Come on, maybe he doesn’t want to announce his medical information in the middle of a restaurant,” Ivy sprang to Lee’s defence.

  “It’s fine,” Lee said, chewing over a mouthful of baked mozzarella. “He said that they did a second test to check I had the disease and their tests came back as inconclusive. I guess I have to find another doctor and do some more tests.”

  “That’s amazing! So you might not even have a disease?” Ben said.

  “I definitely still can’t get any sleep, he just said that the tests were inconclusive and that I should do some more. The only thing that’s clear is that one of the two doctors was wrong.”

  “Just think positively,” Ivy said, grinning excitedly and squeezing his thigh. He hadn’t known what to make of the message, but the others were making him feel hopeful about it. Even Stella was smiling.

  “I’ll hope for the best. I’ll try and find a doctor up in Maine or something, I can go when we get there.”

  “What’s that guy in the costume doing over there,” Stella asked suddenly, pointing behind Ivy and Lee. “Are they filming a movie in here or something?”

  Lee spun around at the same time as Ivy, almost smacking heads with her in the process.