Zod Wallop (3 page)

“It’s your fucking name, you should get used to it,” the orderly named Baker told him.

“You should get used to me hitting you,” Allan said. 

Allan had been in and out of Harwood Psychiatric since he was thirteen. He had a problem with violence. He was now twenty-three years old.

His mother, Mrs. Gabriel Allan-Tate, came to visit him the day after Raymond Story’s wedding.

“I’m afraid he can’t see visitors right now. He’s in the quiet room,” the nurse told her.

“You are new here,” Mrs. Allan-Tate told the nurse. “No one has told you that I can see my son whenever I wish. The oversight is theirs, not yours. Just get Dr. Lavin on the phone and tell him Gabriel is here to see her son.”

“I’m sorry. Dr. Lavin gave specific instructions that he not—”

“Really,” Mrs. Allan-Tate said. She grabbed the phone, deftly punched four digits, and waited. She tapped the desktop with a long fingernail while the phone rang. “Theo,” she shouted into the receiver, “This is Gabriel. I’m here to see my son. Shake the lead out of your ass and get down here. Yes.” She replaced the receiver. Her breathing was labored, and she took an inhaler from her purse and brought it to her lips.

The nurse, who was indeed new, studied this small, elegant woman with the high white forehead and dark, flashing eyes. Mrs. Gabriel Allan-Tate replaced the inhaler, smiled at the girl, and leaned forward. “I’m a rich patron of the mental-health professions,” she said, and suddenly she giggled, as a child might, and put a hand to her lips.

Dr. Theodore Lavin came bustling through the swinging doors. He would have had to run to reach the lobby this quickly. He was an overweight, red-faced man, presently wheezing from his exertions.

“Gabriel,” he gushed, rushing forward, arms outstretched. “It’s so good to see you.”

“Don’t actually hug me,” Mrs. Allan-Tate said, and Harwood Psychiatric’s director came to an abrupt halt.

Well, well
, the nurse thought, as she watched her boss struggle to regain his composure. The tone of Mrs. Gabriel Allan-Tate’s voice suggested that she was every bit as capable of violence as her troubled son.

When the door to her son’s room closed behind her, Gabriel Allan-Tate stood in the middle of the room and screamed, throwing her head back and emitting a series of shrieks as though auditioning for a horror film.

She stopped abruptly, smiled demurely at her son who sat on the bed regarding her with a steady gaze, and said, “Excuse me, Allan. But quiet rooms just bring the lunatic out in me.”

“That’s a pretty good joke,” her son said, although he did not smile.

Gabriel Allan-Tate sighed, her shoulders sagged, and she came over and sat beside her son on the bed. He stiffened a little when she patted his knee.

“I don’t wish to blame you for this incident, Allan. I wish to file it under high spirits, a lark. I’m told that your companion, this Raymond Story, is a very convincing lunatic. But I believe you could say I have had my fill of your pathological behavior. I will do my duty as a mother, of course, but I will not empathize or attempt to follow whatever convoluted logic you might offer for stealing a van and jeopardizing the lives of your fellow patients. Since your father’s death, I don’t have the energy I once had, so you will just have to excuse me.”

“It would be a waste of time, anyway,” Allan said. Allan’s voice was flat and seemed to shift around inside his chest, like a bored tour guide in a cathedral. Allan was a half-inch under seven feet tall, and he sat straight-backed on the bed, hands on his knees. He was wearing black jeans and a T-shirt that said
THE UNIVERSITY OF LIFE
and had a cartoon picture of a tennis-shoed foot about to step on a dog turd.

“A waste of time,” his mother said, nodding her head slowly. “I don’t know how you can say that. I have found all my dealings with police and mental health professionals wildly enriching. I have learned such a lot about the ways the human brain malfunctions. And it has been especially enlightening to have strangers tell me that my son’s terrible behavior is all my fault. I might have gone through life foolishly assuming that I was a good mother, utterly oblivious to my monstrous nature. I thank God daily for the insight these people—who have never even met me—have so generously offered.”

This speech seemed to cheer Gabriel up, and she leaned forward and kissed her son on the cheek.

Her voice turned gratingly bright. “Where is your friend? Where is little Raymond?”

Allan shook his head from side to side.

His mother stood up. She touched the back of her son’s neck, and his eyes widened, as though her finger were the cold muzzle of a gun.

Gabriel continued, “Dr. Lavin is afraid this Raymond Story will do himself harm if he isn’t found. And that poor, helpless girl. My God, my stomach turns when I think of her fate. The minister who participated in that travesty of a wedding should be—what’s the word?—disbarred, excommunicated, something. Do you suppose this Story will attempt sexual intercourse with that poor, crippled, mindless child? There are limits to where my imagination will go, and I draw the line there. But it is hard not to think—”

Her son interrupted. “Mother,” he said, “it’s not like that at all. You’ve got it all wrong.”

“I’m sure I do,” she said. “Just tell me where they are, Allan, and Dr. Lavin can bring them back here, and they can explain everything.”

“I can’t do that,” Allan said.

“Why not?”

“They’ll kill her,” Allan said, lowering his voice.

Without another word, Mrs. Gabriel Allan-Tate walked to the door. Standing on tiptoe, she knocked on the small, wire mesh window, waited, and, when the door was opened, turned back to her son.

“Allan,” she said, “I told you I was not listening to crazy talk, and I am not. I will visit again when you are more lucid. I might remind you that the only one I know who wants to kill anyone is you. I am sorry to have to be so confrontational, but I want you to reflect on that. It is your own violence that you fear. Dr. Lavin suggested I never bring the subject up, but I am convinced he is wrong. You need an awakening. I suggest you stop worrying about your precious friends and concentrate on your own problems. I suggest you think about how you tried to kill me, your own mother. Twice you tried to kill me, Allan. That’s what you should be thinking about.”

And she left before he could reply, although he had no intention of replying.

And what
, he wondered,
did she mean by twice
? He had tried to kill her once, yes, and he regretted that, was sincerely sorry because he did love her—every bit as much as he hated her. But twice?

Allan closed his eyes tight and thought. It came to him immediately. How could he forget? She talked about it all the time. He had tried to kill her when he was born.

Later that afternoon, the orderly named Baker unlocked the door to the quiet room.

“Hey asshole,” Baker hollered, “Time to stop counting your farts, time to move!” Baker’s bandaged nose gave his voice a muffled-megaphone quality that Allan found comic.

Allan smiled. “You got sinus problems?” he asked.

“Your pal Ray-boy is gonna have finding-his-balls problems,” Baker said. There were dark circles under Baker’s eyes, which contributed to the gloomy-clown look.

Back in his room, Allan lay on his bed and studied the ceiling. He remembered that he was in love, and he got up and went into the dayroom to see if he could find her. Hank and Jason, both of whom had been on the van when Allan commandeered it and drove it to the wedding, waved to Allan from the sofa. They were holding hands—furtively, since such displays of affection were frowned on by the staff and could result in the instant revoking of privileges like television watching.

Hank and Jason weren’t queer—that had been Allan’s first thought—they were just dim-witted and fond of each other. Hank had small, raisinlike eyes in a round face, and when he laughed his body got away from him, arms flapped, his shoulders jumped, his nose was inclined to run. Jason was a thin, acne-scarred boy who didn’t talk much. His pants were always sliding down so that you could see the crack in his ass, and when he did talk he’d say things like “Have a good day,” or “Fine, thanks,” kind of nothing sentences, other people’s cast-off words that he’d picked up.

Allan waved back at them. Rene wasn’t in the room, so Allan walked back down the hall and pushed the door open on the courtyard, and walked out into the late afternoon sunlight and Rene was sitting there, next to the stone gargoyle, on the edge of the goldfish pond. Yesterday’s bathing suit was replaced by pale blue overalls and a yellow tank top.

She looked like she had swallowed the sun, and now light was pouring out of her skin. Most of the trees in the courtyard were leaning toward her.

Allan felt dizzy and oddly angry, which always confused him. He didn’t want to hurt Rene, but sometimes it seemed that the thing he hated hid inside her.

She looked at him and smiled and waved a hand that held a cigarette. He didn’t smile back, but he walked over to her and said, “Hi, Rene.”

“No,” she said, “I’m not high. This is just a regular cigarette.” She laughed. Allan thought of reaching out and touching the tattoo on her upper right arm. It was a red and blue tattoo of a rainbow in the clouds and when he’d asked about it, she’d said, “Cause of my name.” He’d felt stupid because he didn’t get it. “Gold,” she had said. “You know, Rene Gold.” And she could tell he still didn’t get it so she had said, “Like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” stretching the word gold out. Allan had nodded then.

She was smiling today, her mouth displaying small, white perfect teeth. She leaned forward and touched Allan’s arm. She grew serious.

“I saw a Ralewing last night,” she said.

Allan stared back at her, not saying anything. His heart was beating fast.

“I woke up and there it was, on the ceiling,” Rene said. “At first I thought it was a shadow, but then it started flying around the room, real slow, and I could see two little pins of red light—those were its eyes—and I got scared. I thought it would land on my face.” She stopped speaking, her eyes wide.

Allan didn’t like to think of waking in the night with a Ralewing in his room. A Ralewing looked a little like a sting ray, except that it had a head like a snake on a long stalked appendage and could travel the air as easily as it traveled the underground waters of Mal Ganvern. Ralewings ate the faces from people, stole infants, and vomited a volatile fluid that burst into flames. Ralewings were the creatures of Lord Draining, king of the Less-Than.

All this Allan knew from having read
Zod Wallop
every night since Raymond Story had given him the book, but he knew something else, knew it because Raymond had told him. He knew what the Ralewing was looking for. It was looking for the author of
Zod Wallop
; it was looking for Harry Gainesborough, who, Raymond said, had tried to hide in Harwood Psychiatric four years ago but had been discovered by the powers that wanted to destroy him and had fled.

Rene was squeezing Allan’s arm. “It finally went away. It slid under the door, like smoke. But I couldn’t go back to sleep. I had to pee, but I couldn’t even get out of bed.”

“It’s okay,” Allan said. “Raymond is going to come and get us.”

“He better hurry,” Rene said. “Before I woke and saw the Ralewing, I was dreaming. I dreamed that the Cold One was coming.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Allan told her. “It won’t happen.” The Cold One was one of the end-of-the-world creatures created when the two Vile Contenders clashed at the Ocean of Responsibility.

“Sure, just pretend it away,” Rene said. “That’s what everybody does. Until it’s too late.”

“It won’t be too late,” Allan said. “Don’t worry.”

But Allan was worried.

Dinner was announced, and they marched down to the cafeteria where they were fed gravy-flavored sponges that were supposed to be Salisbury steaks. After dinner, Allan went to his room. He took
Zod Wallop
from under his mattress and studied the cover. The man who had written the book had also painted the pictures. The cover was a painting of a vast mountain range, shrouded in clouds. The sky was green. A long, pale yellow ribbon of road ran across a deserted plain. In the foreground, occupying the lower third of the painting, a single figure, a little girl, faced the mountains. Only the back of her head and shoulders were visible. Her hair was brown, long and gleaming, as though it had been washed and combed for hours. There was a red bow in her hair, near her left ear. She held a doll, which peered over her shoulder, smiling at the reader. The painting looked like a luminous photograph, and the doll’s blind gaze was unsettling. The doll appeared to be made out of granite that was cracking. The doll was a cherubic male infant, smiling sweetly. But one of the eyes was shattered, and a blotch of pale green lichen bloomed on the doll’s cheek. The doll’s small fist clutched a withered rose.

Allan intended to read a few pages. The book frightened him, but Raymond said it was important to know the story by heart, to be prepared, and so Allan tried to read it, skipping only those parts that were just too awful—like when Henry Bottle fights the Midnight Machine—but the minute he lay back against the pillow, he fell asleep. He slept on his back, clutching
Zod Wallop
, and he awoke with a sense that the book had grown oddly heavy, making it difficult to breathe.