LITMIR.BIZ

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all right. It’s quite all right,” Allison assured her. But it wasn’t. She didn’t know how to make this better for Todd.

      She could only be glad that—as far as she knew—the ransacking of the attic’s office space had not been divulged to the media.

      “What do the doctors say?” Tyler was asking.

      “So far they can’t identify the physiological cause,” Rose Litton said. “Not yet, at any rate, but they’re doing a lot of tests. Early this morning, while he was still in bed at the hotel, Artie jerked up, screamed—and fell into a coma. It was as if he saw something in his sleep…or in his dreams. They believe he might have ingested some kind of hallucinogenic, which made him see something that terrified him, although they can’t tell what it is or how this might have happened. They just don’t know.”

      Allison touched Todd’s chin to get him to look up at her. “The doctors here are the best. They’ll find out what’s wrong with your father,” she promised again.

      “Who are you?” Rose Litton asked, frowning at Tyler. “Forgive me—that’s rude. I just knew the nurse had called the police station, asking about a way for Todd to see Ms. Leigh.”

      “Not rude at all,” Tyler said, reaching into his jacket and producing his credentials.

      “Special Agent?” Rose Litton read, her voice worried.

      “I’m here to discover what went on at the house,” he told her. “Please, don’t be alarmed. We don’t suspect any kind of true toxin. Allison would be ill, too, if there had been, and so could a hundred-plus other people who were in the house yesterday. I’m not a doctor, but I do know there are many reasons for a coma, and the doctors here will get to the root of it.” He hunkered down. “Did you see what happened? Perhaps, earlier, your father knocked his head? Was he agitated, stressed out about anything?”

      Todd shook his head. Jimmy stood and came over to join them. “No, my dad doesn’t get stressed,” Jimmy said. “He’s a good guy. He yells sometimes, but not much. We had fun after we left the house. We went to a tavern for supper and Dad was okay when we went to bed.”

      Todd nodded vigorously. “Yeah, he was fine. He let us watch TV for a while in the hotel. Then we fell asleep and woke up because Dad screamed. He just screamed in the middle of the night. We were scared ’cause Dad never screams and suddenly he did.” He looked proud for a minute. “My dad is really brave. It had to be something awful, a monster like Beast Bradley, to make my dad scream like that.”

      “Thank you,” Tyler said gravely. He stood again. “You know, sometimes we have monsters in our minds, in our imaginations. I’ll go speak with one of the docs,” he said. “In the meantime, you shouldn’t worry.” He smiled at Rose and set his hand on Todd’s head. “Excuse me. I’ll be back.”

      He left them, and Allison felt more awkward than ever.

      She tried to smile at Rose. “It’s great that you could be here.”

      “I’m only over in Hershey,” Rose said. “Not far at all. And I’m glad to be with the boys.” Her expression was pained, her eyes on Allison. Her silence seemed to say a lot.

      I don’t know what’s the matter with Todd. He’s convinced it’s something from the Tarleton-Dandridge House. I hope you can reassure him….

      The realization that this might have been a bad time to bother Allison seemed to come back to her.

      “I really am so sorry!” Rose said. “You lost someone last night. Tragically. It’s…it’s all over the news. And they’re making it sound—” she glanced at the boys “—like a…well, paranormal event.”

      Allison nodded. “Of course. People love ghost stories.”

      “There is a ghost,” Todd insisted.

      Jimmy gasped. “We saw that a tour guide died at the house. It was on the TV news when we got back. My parents were worried. They hoped it wasn’t you!” he told Allison. “Dad turned the news off. He says we’ll get to know enough about the real world when we’re older.” He frowned. “I’m sorry. I mean, I’m glad it wasn’t you, but I’m sorry about your friend.”

      Todd took her hand and squeezed it. They were sorry, but Julian was an abstraction to them, a news story, while their father was lying here in a no-man’s-land. “Yeah, we’re really sorry,” he said.

      “Thank you. I’m the one who found him, and it was heartbreaking for me. I’m going to miss him very much. But, Todd, like I was telling you, bad things just happen sometimes, even to good people. Listen, you have to trust the doctors here, and you can’t get upset about the house or believe you have a ghost with you. Okay?”

      He looked at her stubbornly. “The ghost likes you. You can talk to him. You can get him to leave my dad alone.”

      As Allison struggled for speech, Rose Litton shrugged apologetically.

      “All of us, every one of us, will do whatever we can for your dad, okay, Todd?” Allison finally said.

      Todd whispered a solemn “Thank you.”

      A moment later, Tyler returned. He offered Todd an encouraging smile. “They’ll keep at it, young man. Meanwhile, you stay calm and help your mom and little brother.”

      Todd nodded. He studied Tyler, and then apparently decided to trust him.

      “I will. I’m going to help my mom and my family,” Todd said. “Please, help her, though,” he said, glancing over at Allison. “The ghost likes her.”

      Rose moved closer to Allison. “I am so sorry,” she said again. “He was just crying and going crazy, and the idea that you might talk to him was the only thing that worked.”

      “We’ll do everything we can from our end, Todd,” Tyler said.

      Allison noticed that the boy seemed to respond to him. He nodded. “I can reach you if I need to, right?”

      “We’ll be here,” Tyler promised firmly. “I’ll even give you my personal cell number. You can call me anytime.”

      Todd gestured at Allison. “She doesn’t understand,” he said. “But she can help us, and you can help her. Please?”

      “I’ll do whatever I can, buddy.”

      He wrote down his cell number and handed it to the boy, then took Allison’s arm to lead her from the hospital. She steeled herself not to wrench her arm out of his grasp.

      When they exited, she moved away from him. “That was wrong,” she told him.

      “What was?”

      “You made that poor boy think we could help him by convincing a ghost to leave his dad alone!”

      “I didn’t say that.”

      “But you believe they exist!”

      They’d reached his car. He leaned against the roof, looking over at her as she waited by the passenger door.

      “I went in and spoke with Mr. Dixon’s doctors. There is absolutely nothing physiological causing his problem—nothing they can discover. Of course, they’re still testing. And he may come out of it himself. One of the theories his primary physician has is that he put himself in the coma to avoid some horrible fact or illusion he’d seen in his own mind. Whether you want to believe I’m a quack or not, you have to admit that the power of the human mind can be incredible. Maybe if we look into this and find something to say to the kid, the family or even Mr. Dixon himself, we can reverse the situation.”

      “If we can find something?”

      “You know the history and the house better than anyone else.”

      Allison lowered her eyes, remembering the way she’d felt when Todd was in the house yesterday, so convinced that something evil

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