Resonance, J. B. Everett [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

dawned.

 

Until her scream shattered his eardrums.

 

She looked at him like he was Satan incarnate.

 

And screamed again.

 

Then he watched in abject horror as her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out.

 

“What the hell?” Landerly shoved him out of the way, the strength in his arms surprising but unnecessary.

 

Jordan was as stable as a wet noodle and shuffled easily to the side, sliding into the chair, barely looking up as Landerly’s voice cut through him again. “What did you do to her?”

 

Glad to know you’re so certain that I did it, old man. But he didn’t speak, only shrugged and wondered if Landerly was right.

 

This time it was Landerly tapping her hand and her face. None too gently from Jordan’s viewpoint, but maybe she wouldn’t scream and pass out when she saw him. He could see the twitches as she came around again. And he sent up a silent prayer of thanks, to a God he was no longer sure was there, that she hadn’t slipped right back under.

 

He heard her voice as though it came from under glass, “Doctor Landerly?”

 

“We’re here.” Landerly motioned behind him for Jordan to get up and join him at the bedside.

 

Again the soft lilt of confusion, “But you’re dead.”

 

Landerly thumped his chest, and Jordan would have laughed had he had it in him. “Nope, alive and hale.”

 

“Jordan?”

 

He stepped up. “I’m here.”

 

Her breath whooshed out of her, “Oh thank God,” as she launched herself into his arms. Her face pressed into his neck, the scent of her permeating his senses, her soft breasts pressed to him as she wrapped herself around him.

 

His hand stroked at her hair. Even as he realized he was giving himself away to Landerly there was nothing he could do to stop it. But he ruined it anyway. “Why did you scream?”

 

She pulled back, untangling herself from him, taking the warmth with her. “You were dead.”

 

“Hmm?” He heard Landerly’s voice on top of his own.

 

“You were both on the ‘deceased’ list.” Her face looked so earnest. “From several days ago.”

 

“You must have dreamed it. We both woke up several days ago.”

 

Her head shook, in the stilted manner of someone denying, not to the world but to themselves. “I didn’t dream it.” Her eyes bored into him, and he felt as though they could see straight through to whatever was behind him. “Becky Sorenson took me to the mortuary.”

 

He started to point out that Becky had died, that Jillian had been there, but she spoke again, cutting off his thoughts, again chilling him to the bone. “I saw your body.”

 

“Pinch me!” Jillian held her arm out. She looked to Landerly, “that does work, right? If I feel the pain I’m not dreaming?”

 

Landerly actually reached out and took what felt like a good bite out of her arm. “Ow!”

 

Jordan looked at the two of them like they’d gone mad, and Jillian felt the chill wrap around her heart again. Her voice was barely a whisper as she pushed it out. “Don’t look at me like that. I can’t be crazy. You were dead.”

 

“But I’m not.” He shrugged. “I woke up the day after you did… the first time.”

 

Click. Another gear snapped into place.

 

“Oh shit!”

 

Landerly’s eyes snapped to her. He’d probably never heard her swear before, but she didn’t care. It was falling into place. “That’s it!”

 

Both men raised their eyebrows, identical expressions on very different faces. Her tongue fluttered in her mouth, trying to form words for the abstracts in her brain. “That’s what Becky said. She said she woke up at the same time we saw her die.”

 

“Okay. But she’s really dead.” Jordan squeezed her fingers.

 

Only just then realizing that he had been holding her hand, Jillian yanked it away as though it burned. In essence it did. This man, who had become her best friend, maybe by default, clearly didn’t believe her.

 

“None of them are dead!” She wanted to shake them, make them believe. But her brain rolled over and took charge. She had to tell them first.

 

“Sit!”

 

Both men scrambled to obey the authority in her voice. Jordan politely gave Landerly the chair, and hoisted himself onto the counter. When she looked to the gurney, expecting to find it empty, she started.

 

David was laid out there, as still as the desert night, and trussed up like a turkey.

 

But after a thought it made sense.

 

David, comatose here, was still with Becky, wherever that was.

 

She smiled, because when he came around, he’d corroborate her story. And she started by telling the two men that.

 

“David will corroborate what?” It was Landerly, interrupting before she even started.

 

She pinned him with a glare. “Everything. No more questions until I finish.”

 

She explained that she had seen people who were deceased here. That those that were alive here, were dead there. “Gary Winchell. He’s a tech. He’s dead, right?”

 

Jordan shrugged at her, still not putting together all the pieces she was feeding them.

 

She pointed to the open flap of the tent, at the white coats scurrying by. “Well, send a tech to check the ‘deceased’ list. Because I x-rayed him head to toe this morning.”

 

Jordan hopped to his feet and obediently sent for the lists.

 

“I hadn’t met him until this morning. But ask around. He was a skateboarder. He’s broken every major bone in his body. Two tib-fibs on his right leg. Left collarbone, twice in the same spot.

 

. .” Her voice failed her again. With her eyes she pleaded with Jordan. “How would I know that otherwise?

 

You’ve been around me the whole time, how else did I learn that?”

 

His gaze was steady. “To be perfectly scientific, Jillian, I haven’t been around you all the time. You were off with David a lot.”

 

But just then, an out of breath tech arrived with the local binder. Jordan flipped through, stopping at Gary Winchell, and handing the book over to Landerly.

 

His voice was uncertain as he probed. “So everyone who’s dead here, is alive … there?”

 

Her shoulders sagged. “No.” The admission sounded small and hollow even to her own ears. She hated the holes in her story, wished that it all sewed up neatly and precisely. “They lost most of their elderly, too.” Her head snapped up. “And Leon Peppersmith. He’s dead there too.”

 

Her jaw hurt, and she realized she was clenching it. “People are waking up there at precisely the times they die here, and dying there at precisely the times they wake up here.” She was repeating herself and getting nowhere. “David was out the whole time. He was awake here, breaking his leg, while he was comatose there.

 

He only woke up there about nine last night.”

 

The two men looked to each other with a sharp movement.

 

“That’s when he went under again, isn’t it?” Her excitement sharpened in her bones.

 

It was Jordan who spoke, and she could tell he tempered his response, not wanting to give in, to validate her too much. “I discovered he had slipped under shortly after nine.”

 

Her voice softened. “He didn’t fall down the stairs there. Because he didn’t wake up until yesterday. So his leg isn’t broken, his shoulder never dislocated. I was trying-we were trying to figure out how he healed so quickly, but I realize now that he didn’t. He was just never injured.”

 

Click.

 

“Leon Peppersmith!”

 

Jordan again stepped into the ring. “But he did that here. So why would he have that head injury there?”

 

“We were all here. But here isn’t here.”

 

Oh, hell. She wasn’t making any sense now. But she plowed ahead and tried again to untangle what she was thinking and saying. “We were all here. We all went under, and things shifted. Making two parts. Some people woke up on one side and some on the other.”

 

Jordan leaned toward her. “So there are two earths?”

 

“Yes!”

 

“Jillian, that all sounds very … Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

 

She let out a frustrated breath.

 

“Fine! Let me tell you who I met there. They’ll all be in your little ‘deceased’ list.” She jabbed her finger at it.

 

“Lucy Whitman.” For a moment she pronounced the name, feeling triumphant, but then she shook her head. “That doesn’t count, I saw her name on the list before I went under. I could have conjured her.”

 

She thought again. “The coroner is a Dr. Whitman. He’s Lucy’s Dad right?”

 

Jordan nodded. Of course he would know that.

 

But she kept talking. “He’s an older man with gray hair.”

 

But who wasn’t? She saw the question mirrored in Jordan’s eyes, so she did a better job.

 

“He had male pattern baldness, and piercing blue eyes. He has the same smile as Lucy’s. He’s about five feet six inches tall, short for a man. He’s medium build, mild clubbing of his fingers, and has a thick gold wedding band on his left hand, no other jewelry… Oh, and silver glasses.”

 

She sat there on the edge of her gurney, feet dangling, feeling very self-satisfied.

 

Jordan nodded. He looked to Landerly. “She did describe the man to a T.”

 

Jillian looked over her shoulder. “And David is there … right now, he and Becky are probably wondering what happened to me, why I went back under.”

 

Landerly steepled his fingers, not talking, not looking at her, letting his brain digest. It was Jordan who leaned forward and questioned her. “Do you really believe all this?”

 

She nodded slowly, turning her lips inward, as though that might hold back the tears that threatened. “If I don’t believe it, then I have to accept that I’m crazy.”

 

“You may have dreamed it all.” He shrugged.

 

She nodded again, acceptance not coming easily. “Then I may very well be dreaming you now.”

 

His smile was quick and steady, “I assure you I am quite alive.” He stood, stretching, his movement proclaiming him finished with his part of the conversation. “You aren’t dreaming this.”

 

“That’s what they told me, too.” A small laugh burbled out of her, but she stopped it before it bloomed into hysteria. Tears pushed at the back of her eyes. “I don’t think I’m dreaming.”

 

Jordan nodded. “It’s a shame we didn’t put an EEG on you.” His hands rested on his hips as he paced slowly.

 

Her eyes opened, wide and clear, as she looked up. “But we can put one on David right now.”

 

Landerly nodded. “If he is dreaming …”

 

She shook her head vehemently, “It doesn’t prove anything one way or the other. I know. But if he isn’t …” She let out the sigh that had fought to escape. “When he wakes up he’ll tell you all the same things I did, then you’ll know he didn’t dream it. I’ll even leave the room so you can question him separately.”

 

Landerly’s voice was smooth and modulated. “You seem very sure of yourself.”

 

“I am.” Holding out her hands, palm up, she played her last card. “If he doesn’t corroborate everything, then you can lock me up.”

 

In unspoken agreement, Jordan left to fetch an EEG, and Landerly stood, putting too much weight on the cane to get out of the chair. His fingers quickly probed along her jawline. She almost laughed, thinking that a massive infection would explain some serious hallucinating on her part. But she could tell he didn’t find any enlarged lymph nodes. He took her blood pressure, and listened to her heartbeat, and let out a tiny chuckle.

 

“What?” As she asked it, she noticed his eyes had changed from calculating and scientific to human and warm.

 

“Abellard was right. You are textbook.”

 

She only nodded. Of course she was textbook. Humans varied, everyone deviated from the norm in some way or other. But not her, and this whole mess was just another convincing factor that she was less than human in some way.

 

“You pass all the physical inspections, so I’m going back to the records tent. You and Abellard get something to eat and bring me some when you finish. Maybe you can help us find the sorting factor.”

“Sorting factor?”

 

He turned back. “Why those people died - or lived.”

 

She couldn’t raise her voice, couldn’t find the energy to be loud and forceful to this man. But she just as much could not let him walk