Chapter 10

  At the same moment that Maxwell Stillwater was being loaded into the hospital gurney, his colleague Vincent Peabody was just getting ready to leave the Fellows and Son offices. His headache and muscle pain was still peaking at the worst pain that he had ever felt. He had just taken his eighth aspirin of the day. He had sent his secretary home early for that, he knew he was the talk of the office after the incident with the police.

  Maybe he was coming down with a summer cold, that would be the most logical explanation for why he was feeling the way he was. The symptoms were only worse because of his crazed night of drinking. All he needed was to go home, heat up a can of soup, listen to the Yankees game and go to sleep. A couple days of sleep and he would be right as rain.

  Sliding his notebook into his leather attache case he stood up. Suddenly the world was spinning in reverse. A buzzing was growing in his ears and every inch of his body felt distant and not his own. He needed to grab onto the door to stabilize himself.

  Vincent began vomiting onto the fine, imported carpet of the hallway. A thick yellowish sludge seeped from his mouth as the aroma of his sickness wafted off of him in a great cloud. The smattering of coworkers who were left were on the far side of the office, completely unaware of the Vincent and his struggles.

  Just like Maxwell uptown, once the stream of vomit started the weakness in Vincent's body only grew. He collapsed to the ground without a soul around. In his mind he was back at his childhood home in the Finger Lakes. His face was rippled by the cool breeze as the sun baked the land around him.

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  From the open kitchen window he would hear the sounds of his mom and sister busying themselves with dinner and dessert, his father sitting under the shade of the big oak tree waxing the side of their boat. It was a beautiful memory of a beautiful day.

  He knew this memory, it was from the summer he turned thirteen. He was laying on the shore watching the gentle breeze flutter across the surface of the water. Vincent wanted to lay here forever and to be baked by the giant ball of gas that hung above him. The only sounds were the gentle squeak of wax on the wood of their boat mingling with the singing from the open window.

  Adolescent Vincent stood up and stretched his sun kissed legs and back. The rocks on the shore had been like a massage bed and made him feel revitalized. He picked one of the stones up and skipped it along the lake, watching the methodical bounce as the glistening surface. “Everyday should be just like this one!” He yelled into the sky with excrescence.

  The sky answered.

  A large clap of thunder rippled through the serene landscape, large bolts of lightening cut their way through the sky like hot knives. He looked over his shoulder for his father, his mother, his sister, or even his own confidence. The three of them stood by the backdoor, each with a smile so broad the corners of their mouths were cracked and bleeding. Terror enveloped the young Vincent, except he was not the young Vincent any longer.

  Standing there in the thunderstorm on the shore of the Finger Lakes was the thirty-year old Vincent Peabody. Dressed in his finest suit he was standing watching the clouds and lightening crawl closer. The rain began to fall in large, oblong pellets. Some invisible hand grabbed him and forced his mouth open to the heavens, the water growing bigger and bigger. Rain began to fill his mouth and lungs, he choked against it.

  Back at the offices of Fellow and Sons he lay on the ground. The few workers left in the office frantically think of some solution to help the dying man. Blood began to pour out from his eyes and mouth, its redness staining the carpet. Vincent's body began to have violent convulsions as it went to war with itself. Suddenly he went limp.

  Vincent Peabody was dead.