Something squirmed in my stomach.
How to explain my feeling at that moment? It was as if an oppressive fog had crept into my room. Dark and swirling and filled with portent. I looked over my shoulder. Nothing, of course. Everything remained the same. My queen bed with its large blue pillows—the bed I now slept in by myself since Jeff died. The old wallpaper we’d been meaning to replace for years. My long dresser against the far wall. Jeff’s near the corner—now filled with my clothes. The pound-pound of Mom’s music still filtered from her bedroom.
And yet . . . something.
Would I see some horrible picture on this video that I would forever try to rid from my mind?
Really, Hannah. Some imagination.
I opened the file.
Chapter 4
I leaned forward in my desk chair, eyes focused on the monitor, waiting for the flash drive to load. A rattley car passed by on the street, and somewhere a dog barked. These sounds I half registered above Mom’s music.
On my screen a rectangular box appeared. In it . . . what? Looked like a huge piece of machinery. Garish green and silver, with various pipes and hoses, and two identical beige panels.
The usual start arrow sat in the middle of this picture. I took a breath—and clicked it. The video began in silence, as if it were being filmed with audio off. The machine just sat there. Then it shook. Small black pieces began to fall off it. I couldn’t tell what they were. The machine rocked a second time—and more pieces fell. At the third shaking, white, black, then gray steam began pouring out. In a few seconds steam obliterated the machine.
What was this?
The scene changed to a somewhat blurred picture. I saw the side of a building, and next to it, toward the top of the video, giant steel legs of a massive tower. Other steel girders with round parts filled the picture. What were they? The video wasn’t clear enough to tell. In the back of my mind the array of steel felt familiar. A large black tank sat on the ground, with a fat pipe bending from one end toward the sky.
In the next second, black smoke spewed from that pipe. White smoke billowed up from some other area, but I couldn’t see where. Equipment in the foreground blocked my view. The black smoke stopped, but the white kept spewing until the building and half the legs of the tower disappeared.
The video ended, the last frame freezing on my screen. It had taken one minute, five seconds.
Frowning, I eased back in my chair. What did any of this mean?
I watched it again, trying to separate the details.
How was the first piece of equipment related to the second scene? That first machinery had looked like it was breaking apart, causing steam to rush out. Was that machinery connected to the black tank I later saw? But the green and silver equipment was nowhere in that second scene. So if they were connected—how?
Why would Morton give this to me?
I folded my arms. Maybe he hadn’t. Mom could have invented the whole scenario based on seeing the man’s hand pull at my coat. Just as she’d extrapolated on his words to invent his long-lost “daughter.”
But then—where would the flash drive have come from? And I had felt Morton’s hand fingering my left pocket.
I enlarged the video to full screen and watched it a third time. And a fourth. Each time the array of steel in the second scene seemed familiar. But I couldn’t put my finger on it, and the picture remained too blurry.
In Mom’s room Lady Gaga played on. I hoped Mom had forgotten about the flash drive and its “pictures of Morton’s daughter.”
One more time I watched the video, memorizing its sequences. Still I had no idea what it was.
“Don’t tell anyone.”
More strangeness trickled through me. I needed to ask Morton about this. Maybe we could visit him in the hospital in a few hours. He would be stabilized by then.
I glanced around at the digital clock on my nightstand. Almost 3:00.
Mom’s music stopped.
I sighed relief into the blessed silence. She’d be tired from all the dancing. Time for her nap.
Giving up on the video, I unplugged the flash drive from my computer. I’d return it to Morton. Or at least find out to whom I should mail it. As long as it remained in my possession, his pleas would haunt me. I didn’t want to do whatever he so needed. Didn’t I have enough to handle in my life? I wanted to be rid of this . . . whatever it was. All of it.
I set the flash drive on my desk.
In the kitchen I pulled my phone book from a drawer. Would the yellow pages have a listing for the Moss Beach hospital, where they’d taken Morton? That area was far outside the white pages coverage. I stared at my tile counter, trying to remember the hospital’s name.
Coastside.
I flipped to the yellow pages and checked. No listing.