Read Online Loss by Jackie Morse Kessler - Free Book Online

Pale Rider.
    They walked briskly through the entrance, the automatic doors swooshing importantly. Inside, Billy was struck by the smell: a combination of antiseptic and ammonia, strong enough to sting his eyes. But beyond that initial stench was something subtler, deeper: a metallic tang, both sharp and yet soothing. It was a comfortable smell, one that made Billy feel at home even though they were in a foreign hospital.
    Blood , he realized as he and Death turned a corner and strode down the hall. Beneath the hospital stench of Spartan cleanliness, he was smelling blood. And it smelled . . . good.
    Great. Now he was turning into a vampire.
    Next to him, Death laughed. It was a rich sound, so completely at odds with the sterility around them. “You’re many things,” said the Pale Rider, chuckling. “But a vampire isn’t one of them.”
    Just as well, Billy decided. If he were a vampire, he’d be the one that got staked first. “So why does it smell so good in here?”
    “Blood is life,” Death replied, as if that answered the question.
    As they walked, Billy noted that the people around them didn’t look at them at all—not the doctors or nurses in their scrubs, not the patients in their seats or lying on the cots lining the hallway, not the people in the waiting areas, staring listlessly at television screens. A cluster of doctors grouped in the middle of the hall, chatting in an animated way in a language Billy couldn’t understand—Greek, he assumed—but rather than steer around them, Death marched straight into them . . . and the doctors sidestepped at the last instant, not pausing in their conversation. Billy stared at the group as he walked past, wondering how they could react to Death’s presence even if they didn’t see him. He decided he really didn’t want to know.
    Soon they were entering a small room. Billy took in the lone hospital bed, the assortment of machines surrounding it, the staleness of the air, and his first thought was, There’s no one here . And then, on the heels of that: There’s a man in the bed.
    He stared at the empty bed, frowning at its clean white sheets. And as he stared, he saw the impression of a man lying in the bed. Billy blinked, and the image vanished.
    “Focus,” Death murmured.
    Billy squinted, and once again he saw the vague image of a man in the narrow hospital bed. As Billy peered, the man’s shape solidified, and now Billy was looking at a man with a ruined face, lying in bed like it was a coffin.
    Recognition slammed into Billy, tightening his gut and locking his knees. He choked out one word, one desperate plea: “No.”
    There, unconscious in the hospital bed, lay the Ice Cream Man.

Chapter 7
    Billy Staggered Back . . .
    . . . as he shook his head, saying, “No” and “no” and “no” again. The man in the bed couldn’t be there. He was nothing more than a lingering terror from childhood. A bogeyman.
    And yet there he was, shrouded from chin to toe in a dingy white blanket.
    Horrified, Billy stared at the Ice Cream Man’s waxy face. The skin, riddled with cold sores and pox, sagged as if overcome by gravity, pooling by the ears and jaw. His lipless white mouth hung open enough for Billy to spy rotted teeth. The eyes, thankfully, were closed, but Billy knew they would be rheumy with pus. Greasy black tendrils of hair fanned along the pillow like an oil-covered starfish.
    “You know him,” said Death. It wasn’t a question.
    Billy swallowed thickly. Oh, he knew the Ice Cream Man, all right. He’d been the central figure in Billy’s recurring nightmare for years. Not trusting his voice, he nodded.
    Death stood at the side of the bed, exactly halfway between the headboard and foot rail. His too-long blond hair curtained over his face, casting his eyes and nose in shadow. His mouth, though, was set in a wide grin, showing too many teeth for Billy’s comfort. “Oh, he’d like that,” Death said with a chuckle. “Ice cream and