The Waiting by Hunter Shea Page A

to wake up, to join them as they sat out the storm. Maybe something would get through to her.  
    Rain pelted the window with renewed fury.  
    A picture fame fell from the wall. Alice jumped from her chair, the Bible slapping on the floor.  
    “That picture was hung with two screws,” she said, biting back panic.  
    Brian bent to pick it up, the glass cracked over his and Cassandra’s smiling faces.  
    The room went dark.  
     
     
    Cassandra’s life support machine beeped once, more of a high-pitched scream. Then it quieted down as it switched to the battery power.  
    Alice snapped on the palm-sized flashlight she’d kept looped around her wrist.  
    “The storm?” she said.  
    Brian looked out the window again. He saw lights on in Bill/Bob’s house. Other houses in back of them also had their lights.  
    “Just us.” His stomach clenched.  
    Alice lit a candle on the night table.  
    She shrieked when the infusion pump screeched again, this time fading out as the displays went blank. The radio tuned out as well, the volume getting lower and lower until it too was dead.  
    “He’s coming,” Alice said in a trembling whisper.  
    Brian could feel it too, like a rush of air that precedes an oncoming train.  
    “I have to turn the generator on. Stay with Cass, keep talking to her. I’ll be right back.”
    He stepped over the cable he’d run from the generator to the life support machine, grabbed the handle to the door and steadied himself.  
    Be ready for anything on the other side of that door.  
    He jerked it open and was relieved to see a dark, empty hallway. He flicked on his flashlight and ran to the basement. He could hear Alice reading to Cassandra from the Bible.  
    The water was an inch high in the basement. He’d put the generator on a makeshift table made of old cinderblocks by a louvered ventilation window. His finger hit the ON button and nothing happened. He tried it again. Still nothing.  
    Flipping through the manual he kept by the generator, he went through the setup guide to make sure he didn’t do something wrong. But it had worked just fine when he’d tested it this morning.
    With terrible clarity, he realized the generator wouldn’t turn on, no matter what he did.  
    Then Alice screamed.  

Chapter Twenty-Five
    Brian ran up the stairs and rushed back to the bedroom. Several candles had been lit. Alice stood apart from the bed, her eyes wide, terrified, arms locked at her sides.  
    The cream-colored sheet they had draped over Cassandra was being pulled haltingly toward the foot of the bed. Invisible fingers gathered the material, pulling it into a tight bunch as Cass’s atrophied body was revealed inch by inch.  
    Time stopped for Brian. He could no longer hear the storm crashing around the house, or Alice’s helpless cries.  
    He watched as the sheet slipped over Cassandra’s exposed knees. Her pale flesh broke out in goosebumps. She may have been unconscious, but somehow he knew she could feel the violation of her personal space by the unseen hands.  
    He gasped when he looked to her face and saw her hair parting along her pillow, as if someone or some thing was stroking it.  
    Alice’s voice cut through the numbness. “Brian, make it stop.”
    Yes! Do something! Take her from it!
    Brian shook his head, breaking the dull haze that enveloped his brain. He reached down to pull Cassandra to him.  
    The icy barrier chilled him to his bones. It felt as if Cassandra was immersed in the center of a glacier. The cold was so extreme, it burned.  
    Stifling back a cry, he covered her as much as he could with his own body.  
    She trembled beneath him, and at first he thought it was the hurricane shuddering the house again. When he glanced at her face, he saw foam dripping from her anemic lips. Her tremors escalated until she convulsed in a full-on seizure.  
    “Cass! Cass!” Brian screamed.  
    Alice held down Cassandra’s legs while Brian kept her shoulders on the