False Memory (10 page)

19

When Martie drove into the garage, she was disappointed to see that Dusty’s van wasn’t there. Because his work would have been rained out, she had hoped to find him at home.

In the kitchen, a ceramic-tomato magnet held a brief note to the refrigerator door:
Oh, Beautiful One. I’ll be home by 5:00. We’ll go out for dinner. Love you even more than I love tacos. Dusty.

She used the half bath—and not until she was washing her hands did she realize the mirror was missing from the door of the medicine cabinet. All that remained was a tiny splinter of silvered glass wedged in the lower right-hand corner of the metal frame.

Evidently, Dusty had accidentally broken it. Except for the one small sliver stuck in the frame, he’d done a thorough job of cleaning up the debris.

If broken mirrors meant bad luck, this was the worst of all possible days to shatter one.

Although she had no lunch left to lose, she still felt queasy. She filled a glass with ice and ginger ale. Something cold and sweet usually settled her stomach.

Wherever he had gone, Dusty must have taken Valet with him. In reality, their house was small and cozy, but at the moment it seemed big and cold—and lonely.

Martie sat at the breakfast table by the rainwashed window to sip the ginger ale, trying to decide if she preferred to go out this evening or stay home. Over dinner—assuming she could eat—she intended to share the unsettling events of the day with Dusty, and she worried about being overheard by a waitress or by other diners. Besides, she didn’t want to be out in public if she suffered another episode.

On the other hand, if they stayed home, she didn’t trust herself to cook dinner….

She raised her eyes from the ginger ale to the rack of knives on the wall near the sink.

The ice cubes rattled against the drinking glass clutched in her right hand.

The shiny stainless-steel blades of the cutlery appeared to be radiant, as though they were not merely reflecting light but also generating it.

Letting go of the glass, blotting her hand on her jeans, Martie looked away from the knife rack. But at once her eyes were drawn to it again.

She knew that she was not capable of doing violence to others, except to protect herself, those she loved, and the innocent. She doubted that she was capable of harming herself, either.

Nevertheless, the sight of the knives so agitated her that she couldn’t remain seated. She rose, stood in indecision, went into the dining room and then into the living room, moving about restlessly, with no purpose except to put some distance between herself and the knife rack.

After rearranging bibelots that didn’t need to be rearranged, adjusting a lampshade that was not crooked, and smoothing pillows that were not rumpled, Martie went into the foyer and opened the front door. She stepped across the threshold, onto the porch.

Her heart knocked so hard she shook from its blows. Each pulse pushed such a tide through her arteries that her vision throbbed with the heavy surge of blood.

She went to the head of the porch steps. Her legs were weak and shaky. She put one hand against a porch post.

To get farther from the knife rack, she’d have to walk out into the storm, which had diminished from a downpour to a heavy drizzle. Wherever she went, however, in any corner of the world, in good and bad weather, in sunshine and in darkness, she would encounter pointed things, sharp things, jagged things, instruments and utensils and tools that could be used for wicked purposes.

She had to steady her nerves, slow her racing mind, push out these strange thoughts. Calm down.

God help me.

She tried taking slow, deep breaths. Instead, her breathing became more rapid, ragged.

When she closed her eyes, seeking inner peace, she found only turmoil, a vertiginous darkness.

She wasn’t going to be able to regain control of herself until she found the courage to return to the kitchen and confront the thing that had triggered this anxiety attack. The knives. She had to deal with the knives, and quickly, before this steadily growing anxiety swelled into outright panic.

The knives.

Reluctantly, she turned away from the porch steps. She went to the open front door.

Beyond the threshold, the foyer was a forbidding space. This was her much-loved little home, a place where she’d been happier than ever before in her life, yet now it was almost as unfamiliar to her as a stranger’s house.

The knives.

She went inside, hesitated, and closed the door behind her.

20

Although Skeet’s hands were badly irritated, they were not as raw-looking as they had been a few minutes ago, and they were not scalded. Tom Wong treated them with a cortisone cream.

Because of Skeet’s eerie detachment and his continued failure to respond to questions, Tom drew a blood sample for drug testing. Upon checking into New Life, Skeet had submitted to a strip search for controlled substances, and none had been found either in his clothing or secreted in any body cavities.

“It could be a delayed secondary reaction to whatever he pumped into himself this morning,” Tom suggested as he left with the blood sample.

During the past few years, through the worst of his periodic phases of addiction, Skeet had exhibited more peculiar behavior than Donald Duck on PCP, but Dusty had never before seen anything like this semi-catatonic glaze.

Valet enjoyed no furniture privileges at home, but he seemed to be so troubled by Skeet’s condition that he forgot the rules and curled up on the armchair.

Fully understanding the retriever’s distress, Dusty left Valet undisturbed. He sat on the edge of the bed, beside his brother.

Skeet lay flat on his back now, head propped on a stack of three pillows. He stared at the ceiling. In the light of the nightstand lamp, his face was as placid as that of a meditating yogi.

Remembering the apparent urgency and emotion with which the name had been scrawled on the notepad, Dusty murmured, “Dr. Yen Lo.”

Although still in a state of disengagement from the world around him, Skeet spoke for the first time since Dusty had initially mentioned that name when they had been in the adjacent bathroom. “I’m listening,” he said, which was precisely what he had said before.

“Listening to what?”

“Listening to what?”

“What’re you doing?”

“What am I doing?” Skeet asked.

“I asked what you were listening to.”

“You.”

“Yeah. Okay, so tell me who’s Dr. Yen Lo.”

“You.”

“Me? I’m your brother. Remember?”

“Is that what you want me to say?”

Frowning, Dusty said, “Well, it’s the truth, isn’t it?”

Although his face remained slack, expressionless, Skeet said, “Is it the truth? I’m confused.”

“Join the club.”

“What club do you want me to join?” Skeet asked with apparent seriousness.

“Skeet?”

“Hmmm?”

Dusty hesitated, wondering just how detached from reality the kid might be. “Do you know where you are?”

“Where am I?”

“So you don’t know?”

“Do I?”

“Can’t you look around?”

“Can I?”

“Is this an Abbott and Costello routine?”

“Is it?”

Frustrated, Dusty said, “Look around.”

Immediately, Skeet raised his head off the pillows and surveyed the room.

“I’m sure you know where you are,” Dusty said.

“New Life Clinic.”

Skeet lowered his head onto the pillows once more. His eyes were again directed at the ceiling, and after a moment, they did something odd.

Not quite certain what he had seen, Dusty leaned closer to his brother, to look more directly at his face.

In the slant of the lamplight, Skeet’s right eye was golden, and his left was a darker honey-brown, which gave him an unsettling aspect, as if two personalities were staring out of the same skull.

This trick of light was not, however, the thing that had caught Dusty’s attention. He waited for almost a minute before he saw it again: Skeet’s eyes jiggled rapidly back and forth for a few seconds, then settled once more into a steady stare.

“Yes, New Life Clinic,” Dusty belatedly confirmed. “And you know why you’re here.”

“Flush the poisons out of the system.”

“That’s right. But have you taken something since you checked in, did you sneak drugs in here somehow?”

Skeet sighed. “What do you want me to say?”

The kid’s eyes jiggled. Dusty mentally counted off seconds. Five. Then Skeet blinked, and his gaze steadied.

“What do you want me to say?” he repeated.

“Just tell the truth,” Dusty encouraged. “Tell me if you snuck drugs in here.”

“No.”

“Then what’s wrong with you?”

“What do you want to be wrong with me?”

“Damn it, Skeet!”

The faintest frown creased the kid’s forehead. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”

“The way
what
is supposed to be?”

“This.” Tension lines tweaked the corners of Skeet’s mouth. “You aren’t following the rules.”

“What rules?”

Skeet’s slack hands curled and tightened into half-formed fists.

His eyes jiggled again, side to side, this time while also rolling back in his head. Seven seconds.

REM. Rapid eye movement. According to psychologists, such movements of the closed eyes indicated that a sleeper was dreaming.

Skeet’s eyes weren’t closed, and though he was in some peculiar state, he wasn’t asleep.

Dusty said, “Help me, Skeet. I’m not on the same page. What rules are we talking about? Tell me how the rules work.”

Skeet didn’t at once reply. Gradually the frown lines in his brow melted away. His skin became smooth and as pellucid as clarified butter, until it appeared as though the white of bone shone through. His stare remained fixed on the ceiling.

His eyes jiggled, and when the REM ceased, he spoke at last in a voice untouched by tension but also less flat than before. A whisper: “Clear cascades.”

For all the sense they made, those two words might have been chosen at random, like two lettered Ping-Pong balls expelled from a bingo hopper.

“Clear cascades,” Dusty said. When his brother didn’t respond, he pressed: “I need more help, kid.”

“Into the waves scatter,” Skeet whispered.

Dusty turned his head toward a noise behind him.

Valet had gotten down from the armchair. The dog padded out of the room, into the hallway, where he turned and stood with his ears pricked, tail tucked, staring warily in at them from the threshold, as though he had been spooked.

Into the waves scatter.

More bingo balls.

A small snowflake moth, with delicate patterns of piercing along the edges of its fragile white wings, had landed on Skeet’s upturned right hand. As the moth crawled across his palm, his fingers didn’t twitch; there was no indication that he could feel the insect. His lips were parted, jaw slack. His breathing was so shallow that his chest didn’t rise and fall. His eyes jiggled again; but when that quiet seizure ended, Skeet could have passed for a dead man.

“Clear cascades,” Dusty said. “Into the waves scatter. Does this mean anything, kid?”

“Does it? You asked me to tell you how the rules work.”

“Those are the rules?” Dusty asked.

Skeet’s eyes twitched for a few seconds. Then: “You know the rules.”

“Pretend I don’t.”

“Those are two of them.”

“Two of the rules.”

“Yes.”

“Not quite as straightforward as the rules of poker.”

Skeet said nothing.

Though it all sounded like sheer gibberish, the ramblings of a drug-soaked mind, Dusty had the uncanny conviction that this strange conversation had real—if hidden—meaning and that it was leading toward a disturbing revelation.

Watching his brother closely, he said, “Tell me how many rules there are.”

“You know,” Skeet said.

“Pretend I don’t.”

“Three.”

“What’s the third rule?”

“What’s the third rule? Blue pine needles.”

Clear cascades. Into the waves scatter. Blue pine needles.

Valet, who rarely barked, who growled more rarely still, now stood at the open door, peering in from the hallway, and issued a low, menacing grumble. His hackles were raised as dramatically as those of a cartoon dog encountering a cartoon ghost. Although Dusty couldn’t identify, with certainty, the cause of Valet’s displeasure, it seemed to be poor Skeet.

After brooding for a minute or so, Dusty said, “Explain these rules to me, Skeet. Tell me what they mean.”

“I am the waves.”

“Okay,” Dusty said, although this made less sense to him than if, in the tradition of the Beatles’ psychedelic-era lyrics, Skeet had claimed,
I am the walrus.

“You’re the clear cascades,” Skeet continued.

“Of course,” Dusty said, merely to encourage him.

“And the needles are missions.”

“Missions.”

“Yes.”

“All this makes sense to you?”

“Does it?”

“Apparently it does.”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Skeet was silent.

“Who is Dr. Yen Lo?” Dusty asked.

“Who is Dr. Yen Lo?” A pause. “You.”

“I thought I was the clear cascades.”

“They’re one and the same.”

“But I’m not Yen Lo.”

Frown lines reappeared in Skeet’s forehead. His hands, which had fallen slack, once more curled slowly into half-formed fists. The delicate snowflake moth flew out from among the pale clutching fingers.

After watching another REM seizure, Dusty said, “Skeet, are you awake?”

After a hesitation, the kid replied, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if you’re awake. So…you must be asleep.”

“No.”

“If you’re not asleep and you’re not sure if you’re awake—then what are you?”

“What am I?”

“That was my question.”

“I’m listening.”

“There you go again.”

“Where?”

“Where what?”

“Where should I go?” Skeet asked.

Dusty had lost the gut feeling that this conversation was full of profound if mysterious meaning and that they were approaching a revelation that would suddenly make sense of it all. Though unique and extremely peculiar, it now seemed as irrational and depressing as numerous other discussions they’d had when Skeet had been brain-bruised from a self-inflicted drug bludgeoning.

“Where should I go?” Skeet inquired again.

“Ah, give me a break and go to sleep,” Dusty said irritably.

Obediently, Skeet closed his eyes. Peace descended upon his face, and his half-clenched hands relaxed. Immediately, his breathing settled into a shallow, slow, easy rhythm. He snored softly.

“What the hell happened here?” Dusty wondered aloud. He cupped his right hand around the back of his neck, to warm and smooth away a sudden stippling of gooseflesh. His hand had gone cold, however, and it pressed the chill deeper, into his spine.

With hackles no longer raised, sniffing quizzically, peering into shadowy corners and under the bed, as if in search of someone or something, Valet returned from the hall. Whatever spooked him had now departed.

Apparently, Skeet had gone to sleep because he had been told to do so. But surely it wasn’t possible to fall asleep on command, in an instant.

“Skeet?”

Dusty put a hand on his brother’s shoulder and shook him gently, then less gently.

Skeet didn’t respond. He continued to snore softly. His eyelids twitched as his eyes jiggled beneath them. REM. He was without a doubt in a dream state this time.

Lifting Skeet’s right hand, Dusty pressed two fingers against the radial artery in his brother’s wrist. The kid’s pulse was strong and regular but slow. Dusty timed it. Forty-eight beats per minute. That rate seemed worrisomely slow, even for a sleeper.

Skeet was in a dream state, all right.
Deep
in a dream state.