Pieces of Hate Read Free Page B

before. She assumed that was where the headache had come from.
    She’d asked herself question after question, more often than not talking aloud to herself. Had she dreamed it? If so, why didn’t she remember getting tired and pulling into the ditch to take a nap? She knew she hadn’t done that — it had simply been a convincing lie for the benefit of the patrolman — so it was unlikely she would remember doing something she hadn’t done. She didn’t even remember going to sleep; one second, she’d been trying to get away from those creatures reaching for her in the car, and the next, she was waking up just after dawn to a cop peering into her window. So, if she hadn’t gone to sleep and dreamed it, what the hell had happened?
    There was, of course, one glaringly obvious explanation, but she tried to resist even considering it. She had visions of sharing that particular explanation with someone in confidence, then going to the grocery store a few days later to see herself on the cover of the Weekly World News beneath the headline: ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE ATTACKED BY U.F.O. ALIENS! — Probed Rectally Then Impregnated By Elvis!
    But could she honestly attribute it to anything else?
    She’d heard several stories of so-called U.F.O. abductees. They seldom remembered what had happened to them at first. It usually came back to them later, either spontaneously or with the help of hypnosis.
    But what else could possibly explain that huge flying thing? Or the creatures that had floated out of it and come for her?
    Even there, under the hot, steaming shower, Margaret shuddered at the memory of those eyes, those faces without noses or mouths or ears, those long arms and oversized, bony-fingered hands.
    She lifted her face to the water and scrubbed it, as if to wash the memory away.
    But was it really a memory?
    If that was indeed what had happened to her, Margaret decided she would tell no one. If that was the case, she never wanted to remember what had happened to her during those hours of what had seemed like sleep, and she vowed to herself, there in the shower, that she would never do anything that might allow any deeply hidden memories to rise to the surface of her consciousness like some long lost, bloated corpse . . .
     
    4
     
    Having followed the directions given her by the old woman at the information desk, Margaret arrived at 4-East — the east wing of the fourth floor of the Sisters of Mercy Hospital — and froze. She stared with dread at the door of room 406 — Lynda’s room — as she walked toward it slowly. She stayed on the opposite side of the corridor, close to the wall, and her hands trembled with nervousness. She stood across the corridor from the door for a long time, holding her clutch purse tightly in both hands in front of her.
    As she stared at that door, images of childhood flashed through Margaret’s mind, bitter and hurtful images that had been burned deep into her memory permanently. She knew that once she stepped through that door, she would be facing a sick and dying woman, and she would have to let go of that bitterness. She found the fact that it had not yet left her rather disturbing, and she was suddenly not quite sure that she could pull it off. But it was too late now.
    “May I help you?”
    Margaret started and turned to the young nun who was smiling at her with sparkling eyes slightly magnified by thick round glasses. The corridors of Sisters of Mercy Hospital were crawling with nuns like her, the new, modernized variety with white cowls on their heads, light blue smocks and skirts, and white stockings with sensible white nurse’s shoes.
    “I’m sorry?” Margaret blurted, momentarily confused.
    “You look lost. Can I help you find someone?”
    “Oh, no. I’ve found her. Thank you.”
    “Certainly.” Still smiling, the nun turned and walked away.
    Turning to the door of Lynda’s room again, Margaret took a deep breath, digging her fingernails into her purse. She lifted her