Chapter 3

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At last he pointed a shaky finger at the dark entrance of a side tunnel. "Here," he whispered. Turning into it, she noted the barely controlled shaking and the exhausted, dull look of his eyes, and she let him rest far longer than she had intended. She could only push him so far before he would collapse, and even in his emaciated condition, she wouldn’t be able to move him. Taking the time to look back into the main tunnel, she hoped there would be no one there. All was silent and still. So far, they had made it, but they needed to get much farther away from John Pater’s world.

It was even harder to get him to his feet this time. Vincent was becoming more disoriented with each passing minute. The men must have given him the drug just before she found him. The most important thing right now, aside from being captured, was to find a safe hiding place. "Vincent, is there some place near where we can hide?"

Trying to focus on her voice and not on the insidious, soothing whispers of the drug, he shook his head as if to clear it. "Say again?" he asked.


"A hiding place. We need some place to hide." She could see that he was slipping away from her and almost in a panic, she shoved him, to get him moving. If they were found now . . .

"Don’t shove," he said petulantly. He was regressing deeper and deeper into the drug’s influence, but he answered her question, "There’s a small cave down that way." Vaguely, he waved in the direction that they were going.

"Good. We can rest there for the night. It’s really hidden?"

"Yes. Discovered it . . . when searching for . . . Devin."

"All right, let’s get going." She placed his arm around her shoulders once again, and they blundered on their way. Catherine was about at the end of her strength when Vincent stopped and would move no farther. "Come on, Vincent, we’ve got to keep going."

He shook his head and, leaning wearily against the rock wall, pointed to the wall. "It’s here," he said as he slid down the wall to sprawl, gracelessly, on the sandy floor.

Catherine couldn’t see a thing. He must be mistaken. "I don’t see anything. Are you sure?"

He nodded and crawled to a crack in the wall. "Bring flashlight," he ordered. When she did, she could see that the crack went deeply behind the rock wall, running parallel with it. Taking off her backpack, she slipped through the opening and found a small, dry cave with a sandy floor and water running down one wall into a hole in the floor. "It’s marvelous, Vincent," she said as she emerged into the tunnel. He was almost completely under the influence of the drug, and it was a struggle for her to get him inside. She was afraid that he would not fit through the opening, but he slipped in with ease. He was so thin that she wanted to cry. Next she retrieved her backpack, shoved it inside, then went back to the last junction and carefully rubbed out their footprints.

Vincent had drifted into a state of contentment and peace where nothing could disturb him. He was mumbling to himself, happy for the first time that day. Catherine set about to add water to the dehydrated food she had. Vincent wasn’t interested in eating; he was content. If she hadn’t come to get him, he would have continued to slowly starve to death without a care in the world. Suddenly, she heard hoarse, dark voices calling pleasantly, "Vincent! Oh Vincent, where are you? Come and see what we have for you. You’ll really like it."

Vincent perked up when he heard the voices of his tormenters and, with a smile, started to crawl toward the opening. Shocked, Catherine grabbed hold of him and whispered, commandingly, in his ear, "No! Vincent, you can’t go out there."

He looked at her in confusion. "But they’re my friends. They bring me peace and contentment. Nothing hurts when they leave."


"No, Vincent, they’re your jailers, and they’ve been drugging you for the last two years. They’re not your friends," she said frantically, afraid that the men would hear their voices.

With surprising strength, he pushed her away and continued on his hands and knees to the opening. "Yes, they are," he maintained. Not knowing what else to do, she took his face in her hands and kissed him, long and hard. Every time he tried to say something she kissed him. She stopped when she heard the voices fade into the distance. Vincent turned unbelieving eyes on her. "They’re gone," he whined. "My friends are gone. Now I won’t have any peace. I will hurt and it is all your fault." He sounded like a small child denied his evening ice cream. Pulling away from her, he huddled in a corner with his knees drawn up under his chin.

She ached for him. Even though his connection to her had not been restored, she felt faintly his anguish and pain. It was going to be a serious problem for her to get him to the river and to make sure that he stayed there. But she would cross that bridge when she came to it. Vincent was soon in a drug induced restless sleep as he dreamed his fantasies and illusions. Catherine decided to sleep in front of the opening, just in case he tried to leave. She woke to the sound of weeping. Vincent was coming down from his high and the memories were returning.

Crawling over to him, she placed his head in her lap and gently stroked his dirty, matted mane. "It’ll be all right, my love. We’ll get through this together. Do you want something to eat?"

He shook his head and looked away, pulling his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. He couldn’t look at her; he was so ashamed that she had found him in this condition: a drug addict. He understood Rollie’s fear and shame. Where was his vaunted strength of will? He had lost it somewhere.

"Well, I do," she said cheerfully, hoping to cut through the mantle of misery that surrounded him.

He lay where she left him and, out of the corner of his eye, watched her eat. He had to turn away as he felt his stomach begin to cramp and the nausea start. Where were they going? Oh yes, the river. He wondered if he would make it.

When she came for him, he reluctantly followed her out of the cave, and once again they continued their wobbly way to the river. They never saw or heard one of Paracelsus’ minions again. The farther they traveled the easier Catherine became in her mind but the more Vincent began to suffer the pains of withdrawal. Several times they had to stop as he doubled up from a wrenching pain. Catherine knew that this was going to be hell for him. What she could do for him wasn’t very much. She had some Valium in her backpack, but Peter had told her to save it for the really bad times, and they were yet to come.


At last exhausted and sore from falling, she guided him into a large cavern. The beam of her flashlight bounced off the surface of a wide sluggish river. They had reached the river with no name. From the light of her flashlight, she could see that there was a large, sandy shelf between the cavern wall and the river, and to the right she could see the darker blackness of small caves in the rim of the plateau that ran parallel to the cavern wall. Leaving Vincent to lie on the soft sand, she examined the caves and found that they contained food, blankets, clothing, and candles. Also, there was wood stacked outside the cave with the blankets. He had thought of everything. They would be warm if nothing else. Before returning to Vincent, she lit several of the torches that he had set around the little caves in happier times. She coaxed him up to one of the sleeping caves and had him rest while she emptied her backpack and put what she had brought with the items already there. If she was careful, she had enough to last for a month or more. Now would begin the really hard part.

Her first priority after getting a fire going was to get Vincent to take a bath. She knew that deep down inside him where the drug hadn’t yet reached he would feel more in control of himself. After all, he was basically a very fastidious man and being clean might raise his spirits. He was sitting listlessly by the fire, staring into the heart of the flames. She wondered what he saw there. Getting soap and towels, she persuaded him to follow her to edge of the river. It would be a cold bath she said, but he showed her where there were some warm water springs flowing into the river. She started to help him loosen his clothing, but he stopped her, still uneasy to have her see him unclothed, and asked her to get clean clothes for him. Afraid that he might swim out into the river, she kept a wary eye on him; although if he decided to end his life there, she knew that she could not stop him. He sat on the bank with his feet in the water, staring at the ripples the moving water made around his ankles. He made no move to wash himself.

Trying to be light, Catherine said, "If you don’t get a move on, I’m going to come there and scrub you down. I need a bath myself."

Guiltily, he slipped into the warm water and began to clumsily soap himself. As enough of the drug had left his system and he wasn’t yet into complete withdrawal, he was able to accomplish this small task. But he wasn’t able to wash his hair. Seeing that he needed help, Catherine stripped down to her underwear and stepped into the water beside him. "No, Catherine," he protested as he attempted to leave. She noted with horror that patches of hair had come off with the scrubbing. She wondered if he would lose that magnificent mane of his?

"Nonsense," she replied. "You have nothing to fear from me, my love. I just want to wash your hair for you. I won’t try to take advantage of you; I promise." She hoped the levity would lighten his fear. "Now, dunk your head and I’ll work up a good lather." They went through this routine several times until she was satisfied that his hair was clean. "Now, you can get out," she said with a pat on his head. In his pain and shame, he still seemed like a child to her, and her heart ached even more for him; he was in for a rough time. She hoped that he was strong enough to survive it. Two years of drugs was a long time, and the infrequent meals had weakened him. She turned her head, not wanting to embarrass him, as he struggled onto the sandy bank. "Dry yourself really good, Vincent, and stay by the fire until I’m finished and then I’ll help you with your clothes."

"I can do it by myself, Catherine," he growled. Good, he was exerting his independence. That was a sign that he was coming back to himself, but she would still help him if he needed it.


"Vincent," she called from the river and waited until he had acknowledged her, "I’m going to take my bath now. If you need me, just call."

He nodded his head engrossed in trying to fasten his clothes. Sitting by the fire, he watched her bathe; he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. She was so beautiful, every line of her back was perfect. He took a deep breath. And she loved him. His heart clenched as he thought of the pain he had caused her and still she had forgiven him, he knew it even if she hadn’t said it. He drew in a ragged sigh as she slowly rose and turned to face him, locking eyes with him. Boldly, she stood there, daring him to look away. "This is yours," her stance said, "if you want it," and he knew her to be beauty; there had been precious little of that in the last two years. Ashamed, he finally wrenched his gaze away and curled up into a tight ball of misery. He didn’t deserve her, not after what he had become.

She knew exactly what she was doing when she rose out of the water to stand naked before him. She wanted him to realize that now there was nothing standing between them, nothing to keep them apart. They had reached rock-bottom in their relationship and could only build in the future. But when she saw a single tear slip from his eye, she knew that he didn’t understand yet. And when he curled into a fetal position, she hurriedly wrapped a towel around her and raced to his side. Tentatively, she reached a soft hand to brush the tears from his face. "Vincent?" she softly inquired.

He shook his head. "No, don’t touch me," he mumbled.

"Why not?" she asked. "I love you."

He shook his head again. "Not after what I’ve done, what I’ve become. How can you even bear to be near me?"

His voice was so soft and filled with such misery that she could barely hear him. She laid down on the sand, her head next to his, not caring that she was getting sand in her freshly washed hair. Stroking his hair, she smiled at him, but he tried to twist away from her healing touch. Her heart wept at the futile gesture. "Oh Vincent, it wasn’t your choice. I know that. Of all of us, you are the one hurt the most."

"I betrayed you; I betrayed Father and all those that depended on me to protect them. I don’t even know if they are alive," he cried. The silent tears turned into great shoulder-shaking, gut-wrenching sobs. And she let him weep, let him burrow his great head into the hollow between her neck and shoulder. He needed this: to wash himself clean of the taint of treason that he carried in his heart. She held him to her, whispering that all would be all right, that they’d find Father and the others, that they’d restore his world, and most important of all, that she loved him and would never leave him. At last, the sobs became whimpers, and he slipped into an exhausted sleep. She didn’t know how long they laid there; she didn’t care. He was in her arms and she meant to keep him there. There would be none of this pussyfooting around their love anymore; she was claiming what was hers for all time.


When he awoke, he still seemed to be lucid and rational. She had no idea how long this would last, but she had her own confession to make. "Vincent?" she bent over him, pushing a lock of hair out of his eyes. "Before you move, I have something I need to tell you. You can’t take all the blame for what happened. I share some of the blame, also."

"No," he whispered. "Not you."

"Yes, me," she asserted.

He sat up, staring at her, and leaned back against a boulder that he had placed there long ago when he had first found this cavern. "But, Catherine, you didn’t betray me or our world."

"Didn’t I? I betrayed our love. I should have stayed and fought for it, but like a coward, I fled into the night. If I had stayed, I might have been able to stop Paracelsus. Certainly warned Father over and over that something was not right."

"If he had listened to you."

"Maybe he wouldn’t have, but there are the Helpers I could have turned to. So, don’t you see, you can’t blame only yourself. Even Father shares in the blame. He was so sure that I would bring ruin to his world that he never looked for it to come from his own people. He wouldn’t listen to me. And we were all so complacent. When I look back on those two months before I left, I see all the clues that I missed. I knew deep inside myself that something was wrong, but I was afraid to cause any disturbance. I wanted Father to like me."

Just as she finished talking, Vincent gasped, "I’m going to be sick." Catherine turned her head to give him the privacy he so desperately craved in moments like this but could still hear him retching over the back of the stone he had been leaning against. Ashen-faced, he turned back and fell against the rock. Sliding her arms around his shaking body, she pulled him against her, offering him a drink to wash the bitter taste of bile from his mouth.

Knowing how wretched he felt having her see his weaknesses, she quietly asked, "Do you think you might feel better if you ate something? I have some soup that I can fix. You’ve got to start getting your strength back if you are going to survive going cold turkey."

He shook his head. "I don’t know if I could keep anything down," he answered.

Oh, if only she could take all his pain and confusion away from him. But all she could do was give him her love and what strength she could. "I don’t know what your reaction will be to the withdrawal of this drug. Peter wasn’t able to help me as he never came in contact with anyone who had used this drug, and I didn’t take the time to find out. Somehow, even though you had severed the bond, I could feel you losing strength, and I knew if I didn’t get to you soon it would be too late."

"Peter knows?" he mumbled, ashamed and mortified.


"Yes. He’s the one who told me that there was trouble in the Tunnels. He’d been trying to get in touch with Father for months." She could tell that her mention of Father was painful to the unhappy man beside her as tears slid down his cheeks.

"Paracelsus drove them out and I didn’t care. I didn’t do anything to protect them. He has finally won," he sobbed.

"No, Vincent," she shook him, hard. "You can’t believe that. If you do, you will give up and then he has truly won." He continued to sob in his humiliation.

"I don’t know what will happen, but I will be by your side, giving you all the comfort and strength that I can. Before you get too hard to handle, let’s get you into one of the sleeping caves above." She helped him to his feet, and they blundered their way up to one of the caves. Exhausted, Vincent lay on the bed of blankets that was there, watching Catherine fuss over him.

"I love you, Catherine. I have always loved you regardless of what I may have said." His eyes pleaded with her for understanding.

"I know that now," she answered, "and I have never stopped loving you. Rest, my love, while I fix something for you to eat. We won’t try to force it, just eat a little at a time." She caressed his forehead. "You’ll get better; I know it."

Closing his eyes, he drifted into a semiconscious state, comforted to hear the little noises that she made while heating the food. Then a tingling started in his legs that slowly crept up the length of his body until it reached his head where the tingling turned into discordant chiming and every noise she made seemed to reverberate through his body. "Stop," he cried. "Please stop; it hurts."

Catherine ran into the cave, every sound she made a twisting pain through his head. "What is it?" she exclaimed.

Vincent was writhing on the bed, holding his head. Then just as quickly as it started, it ended. Breathing heavily, he said, "Every sound was like a knife going through my head. But it’s stopped now."

"Oh, love, I’m so sorry. I’ll try to be quiet but there will be some noise."

"No, it’s all right now. It’s gone."

"You’re sure?"

"Yes, I’m sure," he smiled for the first time. She was so concerned for him that she would do anything to help him.


"The soup is almost ready. Will you try some?"

"Yes," he nodded and was surprised that his head was still attached to his body.

In a few minutes she was back with a steaming mug of soup. Raising his head, she carefully fed him a few spoonfuls of soup. When he shook his head indicating that he wanted no more, she finished the mug herself. "Oh, that tasted so good. How did it taste to you?" she asked.

"Strange," he answered. "It’s been so long since I have had any desire for food." Suddenly, he turned pale and gasped, "Sick."

Catherine snatched a bowl that was nearby and held it for him. When he was through, she held a cup of water to his lips. Thirstily he emptied the cup, then turned away, drawing his knees up. "Vincent," Catherine laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "There’s no need for you to feel ashamed. You cared for me when I was hurt, and now it’s my turn to care for you. Remember . . . I love you and nothing you do will disgust me. Remember that, hold it close to your heart . . . believe it. I am here to help you get well. It will be a struggle, but together we will succeed."

He turned incredulous eyes to her, but when he saw the truth in her eyes, he whispered, "I don’t deserve you."

Throwing her arms around him, she said, "You deserve me and whatever happiness you can find."

************

That was the last clearheaded moment Vincent had for some time. Catherine quickly lost all track of time, each moment flowing into another of endless worry and effort. Every minute was concentrated on caring for Vincent. She attended to all his basic needs: feeding him what little she could get down him, keeping him clean, and when he needed distraction reading to him from some books she had found stashed in one of the storage caves. When he was deep in the withdrawal, shivering, shaking, crying from the bone deep pain or the tingling that would start in his toes and work its way up to his head where it tolled and rang with every beat of his heart, these were the times she dreaded more than any other. Then, she would stretch out beside him, molding her body to his and warming him with her heat. Constantly, she reassured him of her love and commitment, that she would never leave him and that he would come through this to health and sobriety. The only time she slept was when he would suddenly drop into an unnatural sleep that lasted maybe a half hour. She was living on coffee and adrenaline.
 
 She awakened from her last bit of snatched sleep to find him staring at her with resigned eyes. "I can’t. I can’t do it anymore. Forgive me. I love you." Closing his eyes, he sighed once and stopped breathing.