"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.
