Chapter Two of The Shasta Caper is now posted at blogger.

"Samuel!" Jimbo's alarmed voice shouted.

The sound of frightened people all around.

He opened his eyes just as paramedics came rushing in and the sound of sirens grew louder and louder. Several policemen rushed in as well.

The tall woman was gone.

Samuel was laying on the floor of Denny's, bruises all over his face and arms, cuts and scrapes as well, as if he had narrowly escaped death.

Jimbo put a hand on Samuel's chest. "I thought we had lost you."

"Not my time to go just yet." Samuel said, groaning as he tried to sit up. He couldn't. His back was as bruised as the front of him.

"You look like an avalanche rolled over you."

Samuel shut his eyes. "One did." He muttered, before he lost consciousness.

Chapter Two

"Hey there bright eyes!" Greeted Sambo to Samuel as he awoke in a hospital bed, with an intravenous line running into his right arm and a gorgeous Nurse with bright red hair standing behind Jimbo, who held out a fan of flowers...a mix of daisies and carnations to Samuel.

"Thought you could use a little cheering up. On two fronts." Jimbo said with a wink.

The Nurse came around Jimbo and took the flowers, then slid them neatly into an already filled vase of water next to Samuel's bed. "My name's Nurse Red. I'll be serving you tonight."

"And me tomorrow." Jimbo joked.

She turned around and scowled at him. "Do all Texans have the manner of pigs?"

"No. Usually, it's more like steer." He chided.

She shook her pretty hair about in resignation and looked at Samuel. "He never stops, does he?"

"Not usually." Samuel said with a thin smile. It hurt to smile. It shouldnt' have, but it did."

"Good. Because I haven't had an exciting date in a  year at least." She said, then gave Jimbo a shy smile. 

He gave her a friendly look, then shook his head. "Sorry, Red, this man's my date until he gets out of this dump."

She laughed. "If your friend is even half as funny and...wierd as you, I'm going to sign up for the night shift tomorrow too."

Jimbo stopped her on the way out. "Could you bring us a fizzy of some kind?"

"For your friend?"

"No me. I'm dry as a donkey's butt in a desert storm." He laughed.

She shook her head and looked back at Samuel. "I'll bring you some water too."

Samuel nodded at her. His mouth was parched. He tried to sit up, but every bone in his body felt like it had been slammed against a brick wall.

Jimbo sat in a comfy chair next to the bed and looked across at Samuel. "Want an extra pillow or anything, Nurse Jane said she could snatch a couple extras for you."

Samuel grinned, though it killed him. "Nurse Red. Nurse Jane. How many nurses do you know here already?"

Jimbo swept his hands out, indicating all of them.

Samuel shook his head, which was a mistake. A thunderstorm of aches blasted behind his eyes. He shut them quickly, hoping that would help. Usually, it did, but something had happened that he had never experienced before. He had been slammed by a psychic backwash. In occult terms it meant that the woman he had touched had amplified...by mistake?...the energies flowing into his mind at the time and almost blown every fuse in his body.

"Who was that woman?"

"Nurse Red."

"No...the one in Denny's." He squeaked between his dry lips.

"Here we go." Nurse Red said, interrupting whatever Jimbo was about to say next. She slipped 

between them and helped Samuel sit up, by pressing a floor pedal which caused the back of his body to rise slowly until he was in a seated position. She pulled a tray from the side of the bed over his lap, then set down a tall Perrier, a glass of ice and a lemon.

"Thanks." Samuel managed, though again with a squeak.

She expertly pressed the lemon until its juices flowed into glass of ice, then popped the metal cap of the Perrier between her thumb and forefinger and expertly tossed the contents into the glass. "There you go." She said, then grabbed inside her nurse blouse and came out with a straw. She plucked its paper off and shoved it into the glass, then slid it closer to Samuel's grip.

He lifted the liquid and began sipping. At first cautiously and painfully, then as he drank more, he could feel his skin relaxing and his throat stretching as well. "Thanks!" He croaked.

Jimbo smiled at Nurse Red. "You really gotta show me how to do that cap popper thing, girl."

"What? Not all Texans know how to open a bottle?"

"Oh, we know how to do that, just not the way you do."

She laughed. "I'm sure you'd like to show me exactly how they do, wouldn't you?"

Jimbo actually blushed. 

"I know. After your friend is better."

She leaned close to Samuel, giving him a sudden thrill of air across his right ear. "Don't keepme waiting."

She laughed, then left the room. She leaned back in, catching the shocked look on both men's faces. "Ring the buzzer on your left if you need anything. I'm here until Midnight." Which she said to Jimbo at the end.

She exited fully.

Jimbo whistled.

Samuel tried to, but he couldn't, though his toes felt as if they were curled into knots.

"Whatever made that gal, must have come straight from heaven."

"Or hell." Samuel quipped.

They both laughed.

Jimbo clapped a hand on Samuel's left arm. Samuel winced.

"Sorry. Still hurts?"

"Like I was run over by a freight train."

Jimbo looked very solemn for a moment, then sighed. "Her mane was Lady Maranka, first class lady, part oriental, part British. Hence the title. She comes from a long descendancy of psychics, starting from Houdini."

"No." Samuel said. "Really?"

"Oh yeah. But you know that's all a load of crap, don't you? Harry was just an ordinary guy with a huge talent and imagination to match. Not an ounce of occult blood in his veins."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that." Samuel warned and then he explained what had happened to him and what he had seen.

He could tell Jimbo wasn't buying all of it, but like the good friend he was, even if he didn't believe everything that Samuel told him, he always gave it a benefit of the doubt, which more than likely had saved his life more than once on the various adventures the two had together over the years.

Jimbo listened to the description of the avalanche killing Chindra and Sati, and then he sat straight up as if listening to something. "You hear that?"

"Hear what?" Samuel asked, suddenly worried that maybe they were at the center of some kind of psychic twister. It didn't happen often, but Samuel's powers tended to drag them into situations and places where the paranormal forces were stronger than usual and sometimes, just downright 

dangerous and destructive.

He tried to tune into it with his senses, but he got  nothing.

"I'm sorry, Jimbo. Nothing."

Jimbo got up and paced the room, as if trying to tune into the sound. 

Samuel got more worried. His body suddenly forgot that it had almost died in a paranormal avalanche and that every bone in his body  hurt like the devil.

First sign something was wrong was the overhead TV went static. 

The lights in the room flickered off and on.

Sparks of electricity shot from the plugs in the room and danced across the floor about Jimbo's feet.

The temperature in the room dropped a good fifty degrees. His breath came out in a thick mist. The water in his glass turned to ice and began to snap and crackle like frozen water breaking. The glass exploded in his hand.

The window beside his bed flung open and a freezing wind blasted inside.

Fingers of ice began to draw themselves across the floor and up the sidewalls to the ceiling, where they began to form icicles dangling down.

Jimbo drew back next to Samuel, pulling out his Texas Lady...a firearm that held thirty two bullets, all of them silver tipped, hollow point and ready to tear the heart out of any beast or man willing to get in their way.

Then they heard Nurse Red scream at the top of her lungs.