The Color of the Season (3 page)

What happened next was strange and incredible. From that moment on, my life became divided into two halves—everything that happened before the shooting, and everything that happened after.

Chapter Seven

I must have passed out before the ambulance arrived, because I don’t remember any of that. I don’t recall being placed on a stretcher or speeding to the hospital or being wheeled into the ER—which was probably a good thing because with two bullets in me, I would have been in a lot of pain.

When I finally woke up, there was a team of doctors and nurses crowded around me in an operating room and my stomach was sliced open.

I’d never seen so much blood. They were suctioning it into a tube.

At first, I didn’t understand that it was actually
me
on the table. I felt as if I were watching some random operation from over the shoulder of one of the surgeons.

Though I felt sorry for the unfortunate individual on the table. He looked like he was in pretty rough shape.

As the seconds passed, I slowly floated upward until I was hovering close to the ceiling. Only then did I realize that the body on the table was mine and I was not inside it.

Strangely, this didn’t trouble me. I was glad not to be in that ravaged body on the table. The whole situation looked rather gruesome. Especially the sounds—the suction machine collecting a seemingly endless supply of blood, the smoky sizzle from the electro cautery, the repetitive clicks and snaps from instruments opening and closing.

“Spleen is shattered,” one of the surgeons said. “Grab the artery here, put pressure on it until I can clamp it… Another Kelly, please and zero ties. Keep them coming. We’ve got lots more bleeders.”

I didn’t know what any of this meant.

Some kind of alarm went off on one of the beeping monitors and the anaesthetist said, “Doctor”?

I continued to watch with an unemotional curiosity.

“I know, I know,” he replied, digging deeper into my guts. He reached in and clamped down on the artery to my spleen. “Zero tie!” He tied furiously. “Mayos.” He took the scissors and made a few snips, then pulled out my spleen and dropped it into a steel bin. “This should do it, release the clamp…slowly…”

They all watched in anticipation.

Then blood started to stream again. “Shit.”

Another alarm sounded. “We’re losing him!” The anaesthetist’s voice spoke with urgency as he quickly squeezed a bag of blood into my arm.

I hoped, for their sake, they could work out the problem. As for my own, I didn’t really care.

“Get me another six units of PRBCs and FFP.”

A nurse ran out of the room. The heart monitor began to hum in a high-pitched, unbroken tone, and everyone moved about in a panic.

“We need chest compressions now. Clamp what you can to stop the bleeding.”

The charge nurse dropped the chart to the floor, pulled on a pair of gloves and rushed to help. She began pushing on my chest under the sterile drapes.

The surgeon yelled, “More clamps…now!” as the suction machine rose to a crescendo.

I watched the nurse pump on my chest and understood that I was dying. Oddly, I was indifferent to that. Then I felt a presence behind me. Slowly, I turned.

There was a light in the back corner of the OR. I felt the physical sensation of being drawn toward it. None of this seemed out of the ordinary—not even to me, the most spiritually skeptical person in the universe.

The next thing I remember, after moving through some sort of dark, wide tunnel, was being met by a number of people. Though “people” isn’t exactly the right word because they weren’t really human. They seemed to be made of light and shadow, so it was impossible to recognize them in a physical sense, though somehow I understood I was with my paternal grandmother.

There were others as well. I might have known some of them… I suspected I did. They felt familiar and intimate, though I couldn’t seem to articulate in my mind who they were.

Then the vast, open space all around me began to spin like a tornado. I found myself standing in the center of it, reliving every moment of my life from the time I was born, through childhood and adolescence. I felt everything as if it were happening in real time, except that I could reflect upon it and comprehend every ripple effect of every choice and action—with the wisdom and hindsight of a man who has lived his life a thousand times over.

Or so I thought.

Destiny

Chapter Eight

When I was a kid, I lived with my parents and siblings in a modest white bungalow in a small town on the outskirts of Boston. Back then, there were no cell phones or video game devices in the back pocket of every kid, so we spent a lot of time outdoors, playing street hockey and riding our bikes.

My best friend was a boy named Riley James who lived at the bottom of the cul-de-sac in the biggest, most ostentatious house in the neighborhood: a two story brick colonial with intimidating lion statues flanking the gated driveway.

Riley’s dad was a neurosurgeon, so he was hardly ever home, but his mom was really nice. She always invited us in for popsicles and hot dogs in the summer.

Riley had a dog—curiously named Mr. Smith, which always seemed like some kind of alias to me—and a sister named Leah, who was a year and a half older than we were.

We all thought Riley and Leah were insanely rich because they had three televisions, a pool in their backyard, and every February, their parents withdrew them from school to take them to Florida for a week. Riley and Leah came home with enviable golden sun tans and dinky souvenirs for all of us who lived on their street.

For the most part, we were good kids, and our lives were uneventful until, at the age of ten, Riley suggested that he and I take our bikes out to the old Clipper Lake Hotel. It had been abandoned decades earlier and was the subject of much neighborhood gossip.

o0o

“What if your dad finds out where we went?” I carefully mentioned as we peddled fast down the dirt road on our bikes.

“No one will know,” he replied. “Mom’s sick in bed today, and I told her we were biking to Jack’s house, and he promised to cover for us. Leah won’t say anything.”

“Geez, Riley. You told her?” I gritted my teeth with irritation.

“I had to,” he shouted defensively. “She got mad when I took the whole box of soda crackers because she wanted them for Mom.”

“You could have made something up.”

“I know, but I can’t think fast on the spot, and besides, Leah always knows when I’m lying. She has some kind of sixth sense.”

We rounded a bend and peddled over a wooden bridge. “Do you think she’ll rat on us?”

“No way. I promised her a full report, so she’ll keep quiet. She’s kind of in on it when you think about it because she helped me figure out the map.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Your sister can be a hard-liner sometimes, just like your dad. I still remember the day she pushed me into the deep end of the pool at the Y. I didn’t want to jump and she used her whole body to shove me off the diving board.”

Riley laughed. “But you learned how to dive, didn’t you?”

We continued peddling along the dirt road, which was muddy in places because it had been a wet spring. The trees were only just beginning to sprout leaves.

“It’s farther than I thought it would be,” I said. “I just hope we’ll make it home before dark or my mom will freak.”

“Don’t worry,” he assured me. “We will.”

Just then, we saw a large wooden billboard at the edge of the road, barely visible in the overgrown bush. The paint was peeling, but we were able to read the words:

CLIPPER LAKE HOTEL

STRAIGHT AHEAD .5 MILES

A shiver of anticipation rippled up my spine, followed by a sudden compulsion to turn back, which I fought hard to ignore.

Chapter Nine

The Clipper Lake Hotel, nestled on the woodsy shore of a large freshwater lake, had been built in 1902. According to legend, it had dominated the area for decades as the premier summer resort for the wealthy residents of Boston.

It was the kind of place that was given a fresh coat of white paint each year. It boasted a large wraparound veranda with dozens of wicker chairs and tables with chintz cloths. The ladies sipped lemon iced tea and fanned themselves on hot summer afternoons, while the gentlemen ordered brandy and talked about politics in the library. There were a number of small private cottages as well, stretched along the pebbled shoreline.

It was especially popular with honeymooners, but Riley and I had heard from a girl in the eighth grade that when a new owner took over in the 1970s, he installed a bunch of heart-shaped beds and shiny red hot tubs. After that, it lost most of its historic charm, the rates went down, and gradually it became the premier party location for drug users.

Sadly, it shut down in 1986 when one of the guests went on a shooting rampage and killed nine people, including the owner’s wife. Six months later, the owner declared bankruptcy and hung himself from one of the beams in the basement.

It was a dark and tragic tale, but Riley and I were just kids and we couldn’t truly comprehend the reality of it.

In any case, what lured us to the lake that day was something else entirely. We were most fascinated by the stories about the ghosts—because according to rumor, the place was splendidly haunted.

o0o

It was long past noon when we peddled onto the weedy, deserted parking lot. As soon as the building came into view, I hit my brakes and skidded to a halt. Riley did the same.

Together we looked across at the once majestic hotel, now a beastly monstrosity with a sagging roof and rotting gray clapboard. Only the smallest traces of white paint remained as evidence of its former glory.

Off to the side, in the field next to a dilapidated swing set, was a rusted-out, broken-down car with bullet holes in it.

“Wow,” Riley said. “This looks amazing.”

“Are you sure we should go in?” As soon as the words passed my lips, I regretted them.

Riley turned to me with an accusing glare. “Are you chicken?”

“No,” I quickly professed. “I just don’t want to get arrested, that’s all.”

He rolled his eyes. “We won’t get arrested, nimrod. It’s not like the cops ever get called out here. Come on, let’s go.”

Not wanting to appear a coward, I followed Riley to the main entrance, where we got off our bikes and stood them up on their kickstands.

For a brief moment I hoped that the place would be locked up tighter than a state prison and we’d have to settle for peering in the windows, but all the windows had been boarded up long ago, then ripped off by vandals. The ornate, heavy oak entrance doors were knocked off their hinges, so there was nothing but air to keep us out.

“Do you think anyone’s here?” I asked.

“I sure hope not,” Riley replied.

He entered first, stepping over the fallen door, and I followed him into the main lobby.

It was difficult to imagine what it might have looked like in its heyday. Now, the wallpaper was faded and torn away; the walls and ceilings were covered in cobwebs and graffiti; and the spindles on the main staircase railing had been kicked out.

What was most unsettling, however, was the silence of the place. Outside of my own breathing, there were no sounds of humanity, not even the hum of an air conditioner or refrigerator or the faint roar of traffic in the distance. It felt as if we had crossed over into another dimension.

A pigeon fluttered out of a hole in the wall, flapping its wings wildly and flying out through the main door. Riley and I both jumped as the bird sailed past.

“Geez! That scared me!” Riley shouted. “Come on. Let’s go check out some of the rooms. I wonder if they still have beds in them.”

“If they do, they’ll probably be crawling with bugs,” I replied, following him up the stairs. “It smells musty.”

We reached the second floor and started down the long, narrow corridor where more graffiti covered the walls. As we pushed our way through a few more cobwebs, my heart pounded heavily in my chest. I kept expecting something to jump out at me—something far worse than a pigeon.

“No wonder they say it’s haunted,” Riley said. “It’s really creepy. I wonder where the shootings happened.” He peered into the first room we came to with an old bed, no mattress.

“There’s hardly any furniture,” I said. “Everything from the old hotel would be antiques by now, probably worth a lot of money. I wonder if people stole stuff over the years.”

“That’s probably what happened. Or maybe the owners sold it.”

We stepped gingerly over the creaky floorboards and checked out each room on either side of the corridor until we came to the end of the hall.

“This door must have been added later,” Riley said. “It doesn’t look old like everything else.”

“It’s a fire door,” I explained, pushing the handle to open it. “They probably had to add this stairwell when the rules changed about having proper exits.”

“Want to go up a level?” Riley asked.

“Sure.”