Liam felt as if he was in that netherworld that exists between asleep and awake, the place where dreams occur. He heard his name being spoken. He was being called by Carol. But where was she? He couldn't see her. But he heard her, her voice faint, as if far away. There, there it is again, louder this time! Where is she? Where am I? With effort, he opened his eyes and looked around and he remembered. Again, even more loudly, he heard her calling his name. Slowly it dawned through his as-if-drugged consciousness that Carol was outside the boiler room, at the door.
"CAROL?" he cried.
"LIAM! IT'S ME, CAROL! CAN YOU HEAR ME?"
He tried to get up off the floor, but his body felt like it weighed a ton. He crawled to the door with great effort and, leaning his perspiring head against its cool metal, he called back.
"YES!"
"TELL ME ABOUT THE ROOM! DESCRIBE IT TO ME!"
“IT’S BIG…AND TALL."
"WHATS IN THERE?"
Liam looked around. "PIPES. ON THE CEILING."
"WHAT ELSE?"
"A BIG BOX THINGY. THE BOILER, I GUESS."
“HOW FAR AWAY FROM YOU? WHERE IS IT IN THE ROOM?"
His fuzzy brain couldn't figure out why she was asking all these questions. Silly girl, I’m in here, she's out there, and there's a locked door in between us. What difference does it make? he wondered. But to just hear her voice was like a tonic, so he'd keep talking to her.
"AGAINST THE BACK WALL. MAYBE TWENTY FEET!"
He closed his eyes. All the effort of yelling was making him sleepy again.
"I'd say more like twenty five feet," Carol said.
“How would she know that from out there?” he wondered out loud.
"Because I'm in here, silly!"
Believing himself in a dream, but really not sure, he opened one eye and saw Carol kneeling beside him.
"Carol? Is that really you?" he asked unbelievingly.
"Well, some part of me anyway. The rest of me is on the other side of the door. But yes, Liam, I'm here with you."
"You…cast yourself...with me?"
"Apparently so. I just imagined what it was like in here and…well…here I am. Now, tell me what's happened!"
Summoning what strength he had left to think clearly, he explained what had happened, and what Specks had told him.
"Those...those...oh, are they gonna pay for this!" she promised. She noticed Liam had started to drift off, but before he was fully gone she told him to hang in there, she'd be back with help.
"Don't go," he mumbled.
"Just for a little while, Love, but I'll be back soon".
He managed to open his eyes again, only to see Carol wasn't there. It was a nice dream, while it lasted, he thought, just as he fell asleep.
He awoke. Opening his eyes, he saw he was in his own bed. He was completely spent, and every fiber of his being felt weary. Slowly he sat up and wondered what had happened. He could remember everything, but only as if it had been a dream, as if it had been an out-of-body experience, not real. Good God! Have I had a fever, or something? he wondered. He pulled himself erect and stumbled down the hall. He could hear his dad’s voice. As he entered the living room, his father stopped talking. He saw his family, and Carol…and her dad. When Carol looked up and saw him, she leapt up, ran over to him, kissed him on the lips and hugged him, tightly, long enough for him to feel her warmth as she pressed against him, stirring his emotions. He wondered if he wasn’t still dreaming.
"Oh, Liam," was all she said.
She led him to the sofa and sat him down, with herself next to him, so close he could still feel the heat of her body. It felt good. It gave him strength.
“What happened? Have I been sick?”
"No, son, but you have suffered quite an ordeal!" his father said, continuing to tell him everything that had happened. As his father talked, it all came rushing back to him, all except for the last forty-eight hours that he'd slept since they got him out of that room and into his bed.
"What about Specks and Johnson?"
Carol's father answered. "Once they found you’d got out of the boiler room Johnson simply disappeared. But we're looking for him, he won't get far, we've got Circles everywhere feeling him out. If he ever tries to vision, or attempt to do what he did to you to another, we'll find him. Specks we've caught. The man's too dim witted. He actually thought he could stay at the school! Don't worry, you'll never see or hear from him again, nor will anyone outside of St. Elizabeth's mental hospital in D.C.".
Liam's mother looked over at him and with a smile, said, "You really need to thank Carol. She's the one who saved you. She's the one who was really watching out for you".
"That’s okay, isn't that what a Watcher is supposed to do?" Carol said, with a blush.
Everyone laughed, and his mother declared that he needed more rest. As everyone stood to say goodbye to Carol and her dad, Carol again gave him a great big hug and a kiss on the cheek before letting him go and walking to the door.
Her dad came over to him and shook his hand, telling him how proud he was to know him, for successfully discovering the mystery about what was happening at the school. "You really are quite a Sherlock, aren't you?" Then, before he let go of his handshake, he pulled Liam up close and whispered in his ear, "The next time you're that close to my daughter you'd better have more clothes on!"
Liam gave him a questioning look and, following the man's eyes down his torso, realized he was only wearing his boxers, and felt warmth in his cheeks as he began to blush.
His mother, oblivious to what was being said, saw the blush and misinterpreted it as feverish fatigue. She said to him, “Off to bed with you now."
As he turned to leave, Carol's father gave him a wink and said, "Pleasant dreams!"
Liam smiled shyly and turned, and made his way to his bedroom, still a bit exhausted. He felt guilty; he knew it was his own stupidity that had got him caught and almost killed. And the trouble he’d brought everyone into! He laid down on his bed and knew he’d have no problem going to sleep again but, before he allowed himself to, he performed his nightly ritual where his last thoughts always gave him peace. Regardless of what he did that he knew was wrong during the day, or if he felt wronged by someone, at night as he lay in bed he forgave himself and forgave them. He refused to beat himself up over his sins of omission or commission, or carry a grudge against someone else for theirs — deliberate or not — for more than a day. That way, every morning was a new beginning. He had believed in this and practiced this nightly absolution long before he read that Malcolm Forbes once said, “Keeping score of scores and scars, getting even and one-upping, always makes you less than you are”. In Liam’s mind he didn’t need to be less, he wanted to be more.
Chapter Seventeen: A New Year
“If you stick with a vision, it may not all work, but some of it will be absolute genius.”