Page 56 of Poe: Nevermore

Frost and I would both be confined to the hospital for two weeks. There was no avoiding an overnight this time. Mrs. Frost would be in the psychiatric ward at least that long and Ryan would be transferred there once he was completely stable, likely that evening.

I called the restaurant and explained that I had been critically injured and would not be back to work for several weeks. After that, the first person I asked for was Justin. He had just been released a few days prior but scarcely left the hospital anyway because he was watching over Frost so closely. When he came, he carefully avoided looking at my gauze-covered legs and pulled a chair up next to me. As an extended stay patient, I had been granted my own room this time and the nurse left it, closing the door behind her discreetly.

Justin didn’t ask how I was. There was something very dark and very pained in his eyes, as if he already knew all that was in my head. “Do you think I killed them?” I asked him, my voice still filled with the smoke.

He did not answer for a long time, but his eyes began to water and he looked away, his hands clenched into fists around each other. “I don’t know who did this, Poe, but curse or no curse, it wasn’t you.”

I watched him for awhile emptily, then whispered, “I disagree.”

He looked at me again, misery and age alive in his countenance. “I was wrong to warn you about Frost. There was nothing you could’ve done to change his feelings or to prevent this. I don’t understand this curse, but somewhere out there there is someone horrible enough to burn that house and kill those sweet girls. The curse didn’t create that person. It just created their target.”

“I don’t know if that’s any better,” I said.

Justin looked down at his hands and sighed. “Why did you want to see me, Poe? It couldn’t have been for this.”

“It was for everything else.” He met my gaze and held it this time as I told him what I wanted. “I need you to help me. First of all, is my foster-father still in jail?”

“Yes.”

“I need you to have him released and tell me how to get a restraining order.”

Justin frowned at me in confusion. “Why in God’s name would you want to do that?”

I sighed inwardly and tried to stifle the pain and misery in my head. “Please. Frost and I talked about it; there is a good reason, just please do it?”

I didn’t know if he believed me or would actually follow through, but after some arguing, he agreed, assuring me that I would be dead before I was one yard outside the hospital. I answered sharply that that was why I needed him to get me a restraining order. But Mr. Aaron was unfortunately not the only reason I needed Justin’s help. I had single-handedly destroyed a family, no matter what he said. My ties to them had caused their annihilation. The least I could do was contain the situation and keep it from becoming, impossible though it seemed, even more tragic. “I know the hospital has all the Frosts under very close surveillance, but none of them have any desire to live right now and the arsonist is probably still after them. There was gasoline throughout the top two floors of the house at least. The attic was the focus and starting point, but no one was supposed to get out of there.”

Justin nodded numbly. His eyes were staring at the bars on my hospital bed, but the blackness in them seemed miles deep and I wondered what he was really seeing. Another larger part of me decided I was glad I didn’t know, remembering that the Frosts had taken him in as a child, that he had grown up with those little girls just like Frost. His fists were clenched so tightly on the arms of his chair that I thought surely there would be dents in the plastic when he left. His facial muscles were so tight that once the corner of his mouth twitched. It was like watching someone burn.

Neither of us said any more. It wasn’t necessary. We were not so very different and that was the first time I saw just how close the internal resemblance was. The shared guilt, grief, and ancient pain we carried was almost tangible in that hospital room and for the first time, Justin let me see that his eyes were as many thousands of years old as mine.

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The first night, the nurses had to sedate me to keep me calm. I refused to sleep and the sedatives were apparently more humane an approach than strapping me down. The second night, they checked my records. After that, they sedated me like that every night and at least one nurse always sat with me. Sometimes Justin or Liz sat with me too, because they knew why I needed someone, but we never spoke.

It was two days later that Liz came to see me. She said nothing at first, merely held out a narrow white envelope in her hand. It was addressed to the hospital, with my name as the intended recipient. She had left it sealed, but when I had read it through enough times to memorize it, I handed it to her and let the black, angry letters burn on my retinas for several minutes more.

You have made a very serious mistake. I only wish I could’ve seen the fire’s gleam off that scar on your skinny neck.

Until we meet again,

A

Part Four

“…And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted- nevermore!”

SEVENTEEN

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