The Red Bandanna by Tom Rinaldi

Author:Tom Rinaldi [Rinaldi, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-08-18T09:35:16+00:00

• • •

Very early Friday morning, long before dawn, Alison was back at her task. The girls were sleeping, she hoped. Her job was to call the city’s hospitals and emergency rooms searching for someone not yet identified, to see if a voice might pick up the line, take the information, deliver the miracle. To hear a nurse or doctor rush back, out of breath and ecstatic, to exclaim, Yes, yes, he’s here. He fits that description. He answers to that name. He’s yours. He’s found.

Getting someone to answer was nearly impossible no matter how many times she dialed, to the point where her fingers grew numb. She knew she was one of thousands making these calls, from kitchens and living rooms, offices and dens, in desperation.

She began to call late, the hours on either side of midnight, and all through the dawn. She’d call from the room downstairs, so as not to disturb the girls and to let Jeff find any traces of sleep that he could. It was nearly three days since the attacks. She stood up from the desk to stretch and walk around the room a few paces, to get away from the mute hammer of the receiver and gather the energy for the next call.

That’s when she felt him. In the room.

“His presence,” she said. It was more than a vision. There was an energy there, a vital field reaching out to her. She wanted to turn around from the desk and look behind her, toward the dark right corner of the room, but she didn’t. To turn and look would be, in her mind, a lack of faith in him. The house was otherwise still and dim. She’d had visions before. This was different. It was not a clear sight, it was a connection, a communication.

“I just knew it was Welles,” she said. “I knew.”

She didn’t hesitate or startle. She spoke directly into the space before her.

“Welles,” she said his name. She waited, but not long. She wanted to acknowledge him. She said the first words inside her.

“Thank you.” She wanted him to know what this gave to her, what the moment contained. She had the phone message he’d left, she could hear the voice and perhaps already knew how she would play it, to hold the sound of him near. The feeling in the room now was different, a force more than a sound.

“If you can do that,” she said, referring to the energy and the field and the feeling, to the connection, “I know you’re okay. You’re not here anymore.”

It was around three A.M. She continued to look straight ahead, her back to the presence.

“I know you’re okay,” she said.

She stood for several long moments as the presence receded, leaving her alone in the silence of the house.

She made a decision, a silent step. Looking at the phone, she turned away. “That’s when I gave up looking,” she said. “Because I knew he was gone.”

• • •

The winds blew gently through the Hudson Valley, rippling the waters, stirring the trees.

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