At Pilgrim Hospital, Chapter Five

A fine steady rain had set in by the time the two space-cars landed and parked on a residential street at the heart of Boston. The cowboy had given Presh his overcoat, and very small and scared she looked beside him, peeking out from the huge thing’s folds with her curls slicked down by the wet. Through his connection with Joe the cowboy remembered Neetra on that snowy day, and smiled.

“We’re here,” he told Presh gently.

Helping her from his passenger-seat he led her round the corner, while Mini-Flash Spiltsville waited out of sight. Something Presh had suspected earlier was in fact quite true, that the pair of them had been keeping close tabs. The cowboy rang a doorbell, and after a little while the hall-light came on, followed by Morag appearing at the door in her pjyamas.

“Joe?” she moaned in a sleepy voice.

“Hi, Morag,” said the cowboy at once, thankful it had worked.

Presh for her part was too exhausted to take much note of one of her other questions being answered. Funny, how two people could have the same name and yet be nothing alike.

“Sorry to disappear so long, then show up in the middle of the night like this asking for a favour,” the cowboy went on. “But you remember Presh here?”

“Hard to forget,” came back Morag's reply.

However, as soon as her visitor had outlined their situation and asked of her what he had to, Morag was nothing but sympathy.

“Oh, come here,” she implored at once, stretching out her hand to Presh. “You poor thing, I read about that other girl just this evening. How awful! You’ll be safe with me. I’ll put you up in my little sister Marie’s room. She won’t need it while she’s away at Brownie camp.”

No-one knew better than the cowboy the way in which this place immediately wrote itself around those events he and his ilk brought into it.

“I owe you one for this,” he earnestly told Morag, who now stood with a protective arm about Presh.

“I’ll think of a way for you to make it up to me,” said Morag with a twinkle in her eye. “Can I go back to bed now?”

As the cowboy rounded the corner again, his confident look was to tell Mini-Flash Spiltsville their troubles tonight at least were over. For Spiltsville however, the heavy way he rested both hands on the door of his rust-hued space-rod told her anything but.

“A native inhabitant, for want of a better phrase, is the best possible shelter for Presh while Schiss-Zazz is only going after girls who came with us from reality,” he commenced. “The problem to concern ourselves with now is that I don’t think either Sonica or Presh was his intended final target. Everybody knows Schiss-Zazz likes to have some fun before going in for the kill. What we need to do now is determine which of the others is…is…”

Spiltsville had waited for his words to trail off thus. Now she moved near, her palms tenderly caressing his back, her cheek upon his sleeve.

“Your engine’s on its last burn like now,” she reminded him. “Any more than you’re doing already and not even the wallpaper’s going to hold that blowout. What we need is a one-way express service out of this freaky burg.”

The rain continued to fall through streetlamp-glow and darkness. Mini-Flash Splitsville had told it as it was, but she and her companion could both have done with a little good news.

That was when a call-box at the end of the lane began to ring.

The cowboy went over, though Splitsville would have preferred to go herself. “Hello?” he said into the handpiece.

Immediately he pressed it closer still, while placing his other hand over his other ear.

“Sorry, you’re going to have to speak up. It must be a bad line. I can barely hear a word you’re…”

Then, slowly, he raised his eyes to look across at Splitsville, and his face was radiant in the booth’s shaft of light. She without hesitation beamed back, raindrops glittering between.

They both knew what this meant.

“It’s for you,” the cowboy grinned.

Gladly Mini-Flash Spiltsville ran to him, squeezed herself in tightly alongside his warm flank, and took the phone.

“Lay it on me, Flashshadow,” said she.

TO BE CONTINUED