The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

“I’ve been to doctors all over the world,” he told them. Speaking primarily to Rideout now. Rideout still hadn’t said a word, just sat there with the red wattles, his overshaved neck hanging over his buttoned-to-the-neck country preacher shirt. He was wearing big yellow workboots. The heel of one almost touched his black lunchbox. “Teleconferencing would be the easier way to go, given my condition, but of course that doesn’t cut it in cases like mine. So I’ve gone in person, in spite of the pain it causes me. We’ve been everywhere, haven’t we, Kat?”

“Indeed we have,” she said, very slowly continuing to bend the leg. On which he would have been walking by now, if he weren’t such a child about the pain. Such a spoiled baby. On crutches, yes, but walking. And in another year, he would have been able to throw the crutches away. Only in another year he would still be here in this two hundred thousand dollar state-of-the-art hospital bed. And she would still be with him. Still taking his hush-money. How much would be enough? Two million? She told herself that now, but she’d told herself half a million would be enough not so long ago, and had since moved the goalposts. Money was wretched that way.

“We’ve seen specialists in Mexico, Geneva, London, Rome, Paris… where else, Kat?”

“Vienna,” she said. “And San Francisco, of course.”

Newsome snorted. “Doctor there told me I was manufacturing my own pain. ‘To keep from doing the hard work of rehabilitation,’ he said. But he was a Paki. And a queer. A queer Paki, how’s that for a combo?” He gave a brief bark of laughter, then peered at Rideout. “I’m not offending you, am I, Reverend?”

Rideout rotated his head side-to-side in a negative gesture. Twice. Very slowly.

“Good, good. Stop, Kat, that’s enough.”

“A little more,” she coaxed.

“Stop, I said. That’s all I can take.”

She let the leg subside and began to manipulate his left arm. That he allowed. He often told people both of his arms had also been broken, but this wasn’t true. The left one had only been sprained. He also told people he was lucky not to be in a wheelchair, but the all-the-bells-and-whistles hospital bed suggested strongly that this was luck he had no intention of capitalising on in the near future. The all-the-bells-and-whistles hospital bed was his wheelchair. It rolled. He had ridden all over the world in it.

Neuropathic pain, Kat thought. It’s a great mystery. Perhaps insoluble. The drugs no longer work.

“The consensus is that I’m suffering from neuropathic pain.”

And cowardice.

“It’s a great mystery.”

Also a good excuse.

“Perhaps insoluble.”

Especially when you don’t try.

“The drugs no longer work and the doctors can’t help me. That’s why I’ve brought you here, Reverend Rideout. Your references in the matter of… er… healing… are very strong.”

Rideout stood up. Kat hadn’t realised how tall he was. His shadow scared up behind him on the wall even higher. Almost to the ceiling. His eyes, sunken deep in their sockets, regarded Newsome solemnly. He had charisma, of that there could be no doubt. It didn’t surprise her, the charlatans of the world couldn’t get along without it, but she hadn’t realised how much or how strong it was until he got to his feet and towered over them. Jensen was actually craning his neck to see him. There was movement in the corner of Kat’s eye. She looked and saw Melissa standing in the doorway. So now they were all here except for Tonya, the cook.

Outside, the wind rose to a shriek. The glass in the windows rattled.

“I don’t heal,” Rideout said. He was from Arkansas, Kat believed — that was where Newsome’s latest Gulfstream IV had picked him up, at least — but his voice was accentless. And flat.

“No?” Newsome looked disappointed. Petulant. Maybe, Kat thought, a little scared. “I sent a team of investigators, and they assure me that in many cases—”

“I expel.”

Up went the shaggy eyebrows. “I beg your pardon.”

Rideout came to the bed and stood there with his long-fingered hands laced loosely together at the level of his flat crotch. His deep-set eyes looked sombrely down at the man in the bed. “I exterminate the pest from the wounded body it’s feeding on, just as a bug exterminator would exterminate pests — termites, for instance — feeding on a house.”

Now, Kat thought, I have heard absolutely everything. But Newsome was fascinated. Like a kid watching a three-card monte expert on a streetcorner, she thought.

“You’ve been possessed, sir.”

“Yes,” Newsome said. “That’s what it feels like. Especially at night. The nights are… very long.”