The Taker Read Free Page B

and down, his face flushing. He feels like he is going to vomit.
    “Don’t call for the policeman. I’ll explain it to you, I swear, just don’t yell for help. Okay?”
    As Luke sways on his feet, it strikes him that the ER has fallensilent. Is there even anyone around to hear him if he did call out? Where is Judy, where is the deputy? It’s as if Sleeping Beauty’s fairy godmother drifted into the ward and cast a spell, putting everyone to sleep. Outside the door to the examination room, it’s dark, lights dimmed as usual for the night shift. The habitual noises—the far-off laugh track of a television program, the metallic ticking from inside the soda vending machine—have disappeared. There is no whir from a floor buffer wending its way laboriously down the empty halls. It’s just Luke and his patient and the muffled sound of the wind beating against the side of the hospital, trying to get in.
    “What was that? How did you do that?” Luke asks, unable to keep the horror from his voice. He slides back onto the stool to keep from dropping to the floor. “ What are you?”
    The last question seems to hit her like a punch to the sternum. She hangs her head, flossy blond curls covering her face. “That—that’s the one thing I can’t tell you. I don’t know what I am anymore. I have no idea.”
    This is impossible. Things like this don’t happen. There is no explanation—what, is she a mutant? Made of synthetic self-healing materials? Is she some kind of monster?
    And yet she looks normal, the doctor thinks, as his heart rate picks up again and blood pounds in his ears. The linoleum tiles start to sway underfoot.
    “We came back—he and I—because we missed the place. We knew everything here would be different—everyone would be gone—but we missed what we once had,” the young woman says wistfully, staring past the doctor, speaking to no one in particular.
    The feeling he had when he first saw her this evening—the tingle, the buzz—arcs between them, thin and electric. He wants to know . “Okay,” he says, shakily, hands on his knees. “This is crazy—but go ahead. I’m listening.”
    She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes momentarily, like she is about to dive underwater. And then she begins.

TWO

    M AINE TERRITORY, 1809
    I ’ll start at the beginning, because that is the part that makes sense to me and which I’ve inscribed in my memory, afraid that otherwise it will be lost in the course of my journey, in the endless unraveling of time.
    My first clear, vivid memory of Jonathan St. Andrew is of a bright Sunday morning in church. He was sitting at the end of his family’s box at the front of the congregation hall. He was fourteen years old at the time and already as tall as any man in the village. Nearly as tall as his father, Charles, the man who had founded our little settlement. Charles St. Andrew was once a dashing militia captain, I was told, but at the time was middle-aged, with a patrician’s soft belly.
    Jonathan wasn’t paying attention to the service, but then again, probably few of us in attendance were. A Sunday service could be counted on to run for four hours—up to eight if the minister fancied himself an elocutionist—so who could honestly say they remained fixed on the preacher’s every word? Jonathan’s mother, Ruth, perhaps, who sat next to him on the plain, upright bench. She came from a lineof Boston theologians and would give Pastor Gilbert a good dressing-down if she felt his service wasn’t rigorous enough. Souls were at stake, and no doubt she felt the souls in this isolated wilderness town, far from civilizing influences, were at particular risk. Gilbert was no fanatic, however, and four hours was generally his limit, so we all knew we would be released soon to the glory of a beautiful afternoon.
    Watching Jonathan was a favorite pastime of the girls in the village, but on that particular Sunday it was Jonathan who was the one watching—he made no