Zod Wallop (7 page)

“Raymond! Helen!” he shouted. “I want you to help me.”

One wire here, above the right breast
. “Raymond, take this wire and hold it here, down here on her left side. That’s right.” Harry looked into Raymond’s eyes and saw fear, as though blue were the color of fear, and something even more troubling, a wild, absolute trust. Raymond would let Harry Gainesborough do what he pleased, because it was unfathomable to Raymond that the creator of
Zod Wallop
was capable of error.

Raymond stood holding the peeled-back lamp cord in hands sheathed in latex, disposable dishwashing gloves.
Budget doctors
, Harry thought, regarding his own gloved hands, his own spliced wire.
Hand me the brain, Igor
.

You’ll kill her
, the dark water said.

No
, Harry thought, pulling away from that voice.
I don’t have time for that
.

He spoke to Raymond, surprising himself with the steadiness of his voice. “When Helen pushes the plug in, Emily is going to jump. Keep the contact, Raymond. I’ll be the one to break the contact. Okay?”

Raymond nodded.

“Are you ready, Helen?”

Helen looked up from where she was crouched by the sideboard. She looked like she might say something, but she simply nodded her head.

“Now,” Harry said.

Emily twisted on the bed, tortured into momentary levitation, her pale bright body pitifully exposed as the robe fell back, her frail rib cage gleaming through the flesh like some sad icon of martyrdom. An electric whip crack, the ultimate bug zapper, sounded in Harry’s ear, and a portion of the sheet was smoking. A red welt gleamed on Emily’s chest—and no doubt a similar scar marked the site of Raymond’s wire—while the air was charged with the blue, hot odor of overheated train sets.

Harry pressed his ear to the girl’s chest. Her heart was out of control, spinning until it toppled. He had failed.

“Again,” Harry shouted. And when Raymond hesitated, Harry shouted, “There’s no time.”

He nodded to Helen, crouched on the floor, and, with a knifelike thrust, she found the receptacle again.

This time they were spared the puppet agonies of the girl, for as the electricity crackled through her frame and began to animate her, the lights went out; the power died. The room fell into the waiting night. The hum of the refrigerator, unheard until that moment, died and silence fed on it.

Harry leaned forward, rested his head on the girl’s chest with a sense of intense despair, rested there as though she might comfort him. He could hear no heart beat. And then he heard it, that sweet, slow cycle of a washing machine, that lub dub, lub dub that seemed as leisurely as the measured flight of some large bird. And more incredible than the sound of her heart were the words she spoke in his ear. “We don’t have much time,” she said, “They are coming.”

T
HE
E
MERGENCY
R
OOM
was harshly lit and smelled like stale cigarettes and disinfectant. Harry sat in a metal folding chair and watched a small, wizened woman in a white uniform type on what had to be one of the first typewriters ever made. She typed gingerly, while a cigarette smoked in her mouth. It was obvious that the typewriter was the source of much disappointment and grief in her life. “Ahhhhhh,” she would say after hitting a key. “Bah.” She would shake her head sadly.

The emergency room would have been empty were it not for Harry and his companions. Harry’s companions, however, furnished the room with more than enough fidgety life.

Raymond Story loomed over Harry. “I think we should get Emily and leave,” Raymond said.

Harry could see the girl, Rene, who had donned round dark glasses, now hunched owl-like on a bench on the other side of the room. She leaned forward as though preparing to take flight. The large, unhappy young man named Allan was looking out the plate-glass window at the lighted parking lot.

“Raymond,” Harry said. “We have to see if Emily is really okay. I’m sure…”

“She’s okay, she’s okay,” Raymond said, bouncing slightly on his toes. “She’s okay for now. But they are coming. Didn’t you hear her? They are coming. This was a bad idea coming to the hospital. We don’t need a hospital. They will find us here.”

“Who are they, Raymond?”

Raymond turned abruptly and marched to the receptionist’s desk. “We’ve got to go,” he said. “I need to get my wife and go.”

The receptionist looked up at Raymond, crushed her cigarette in an ashtray, and said, “This ain’t 7-Eleven. This is not easy come, easy go. This is a hospital, young man. You just sit down and wait. The doctor will see your wife just as soon as he can.”

Harry got out of his chair—surprised by the pain in his legs—and joined Raymond at the desk.

“It has been two hours,” Harry said. “Is there a problem of some sort? There don’t seem to be any other patients.”

“No problem, sir,” the woman said. “It takes time to torture the truth from a stubborn child.”

“I beg your pardon?” Harry stepped back, as though from a blow.

The receptionist was eyeing him with hard, bright eyes.

She sighed. “I said it takes time to get a resident down from the floors. They have other things to do, you know.”

Harry turned. Raymond was gone.

It takes time to torture the truth from a stubborn child
. Lord Draining had said that, had said it while apologizing to the Closet Police for certain delays.

Harry went back and sat down. He felt ill, overheated. The room was empty now, no Raymond, no Rene, no large, brooding giant. Where had they gone? He would have to find them. He felt an obligation here. He was the adult, the man in charge. The light in the room made a hissing noise, and as the receptionist bent over her typewriter again, she seemed, briefly, to undergo a transformation. Her flesh seemed mottled, iridescent, as though the light glittered on beaded scales, and her humped back seemed to sprout twin, knobby spines—for all the world like a feeding Swamp Grendel.

Oxygen deprivation
, Harry thought.
I was underwater too long. It has done something to my brain. I need to…I need…

“What do you need, Dearie?” the Gorelord asked, and he grinned, revealing his red company teeth. “Ask anything, and you can have it. But don’t ask the price. That’s bad manners. Don’t ask what it costs.” The Gorelord giggled, which is a sound that cannot be described but is as memorable as a root canal.

Harry got up and moved down the hall. There was a telephone in the hall, and he came upon it as a drowning man comes upon a floating spar, the last vestige of the ship that has gone down. He clung to it, feeling his legs liquify.

I need to call Helen
, he thought. She had wanted to come, but Harry had seen no reason for her presence. “We’ve got enough of a crowd,” he had said. “Raymond’s parents will be coming. Get some rest.” Now he wished she had come. Unflappable, wonderfully skeptical Helen. Thank God for the practical people in this world, those whose minds remained intact, whose hearts were brave, whose manner in the face of the irrational was one of gruff impatience. Losing your mind. Bah. We’ll have none of that.

Harry put a quarter in the phone and heard it make that satisfying, elaborate rattle that wakes the forces of technology. He dialed his number and listened to the phone ring. It rang once, twice, three times. It was ringing as Harry saw the receptionist get up and move toward him, coming around the desk.

Harry felt an impulse to bolt, to hang up the phone and run.

Helen answered the phone.

“Helen, it’s me, Harry.“

“Harry. Listen, the boy’s mother is here with me. Not Raymond. The other boy, Allan.” Harry heard Helen shouting, “Mrs. Tate! Mrs. Tate!” Then, “Well, she must have gone out for a breath of air. She has asthma, poor dear, and it’s worse when she’s upset.”

The receptionist had come out from behind the desk. It was a curious uniform she wore, the skirt came to the floor and trailed behind her and seemed oddly wet at the hem, and you might—if you were imaginative, if you had just suffered some physical assault on your nervous system—you might think that she moved with too undulant a motion, not the proper sort of motion for a biped, and if you were really nuts, if you were inclined to hallucinate the contents of grim, terrifying children’s books, you might think that she moved the way a Swamp Grendel moved, gliding on its plated belly, leaving a silver trail.

On the phone, Helen was speaking. “...came as quick as she could.” Again, the phone echoed thinly as Helen put it down and shouted. “Mrs. Tate! Mrs. Tate!” Clatter of the phone being picked up again. “I’m sure she’ll be right back. She’s terribly upset. She’s afraid her son may hurt someone. You don’t think he really is dangerous, do you? I mean, be careful, Harry, these are people who have escaped from a mental institution, after all.”

“Helen—” Harry said.

The receptionist had reached Harry.

“I’ve got to go,” Harry told Helen, and he hung up the phone. He was losing his mind, no doubt about it. Where did this sense of suffocating menace come from? When, exactly, had his mind begun to crumble? It was...

It was when he had thought, in the dark, that poor Emily had spoken
.

The receptionist reached out and touched Harry’s shoulder. He did not look at her hand, but it did not feel like it had the requisite number of fingers. It would have three fingers, this hand, and a sucker on the palm, a sucker with rasping, lamprey teeth.

“Mr. Gainesborough,” she said, “there is a call for you on my line.”

Her voice was disapproving, but nothing more. She was a tired, querulous old woman with an exalted opinion of her office and its authority. Following her back to the desk, it was clear that she had legs. Nothing unusual there. Most receptionists have legs.

Harry took the receiver. “Hello,” he said.

“I’m calling from the second floor!” Raymond’s voice was an octave higher than usual. “We’ve got Emily. She is safe, praise Blodkin. We are taking the service elevator to the basement and we will rendezvous with you shortly. Go to the restroom. You will find that I have already prepared a means of exit. Once you are outside, follow the wall to your left, and if my reckoning is right, we will meet shortly. Blodkin willing.”

The restroom floor glittered with shattered glass, and the metal chair that had no doubt shattered it now sat upright beneath the window, its aspect commanding and peremptory. “Hurry” it said.

Harry stood on the chair and hoisted himself through the hollowed window and into the night. Shards of glass, shaped like teeth, still edged the window and gave Harry the unsettling sensation of being swallowed. The blackness of the world he was entering did nothing to allay his fears, but he reassured himself that soon he would be safe in the company of his peers: escaped lunatics.

G
ABRIEL
A
LLAN
-T
ATE
stood in the humid, enfolding darkness, opened her mouth wide, and filled her lungs with the obstinate air.

It was black out and any kind of horrid insect, or a bat, a rabid, shrieking bat, could bite her. A scorpion could rush out from under a cinder block and sting her. Her lungs felt as though they had been stapled flat, and any sort of venomous bite would activate her allergies and crush the last hope of a breath from her. This was all Allan’s fault. She adjusted her dress, tottered on her heels, wiped a hand over her forehead. She leaned against the cabin’s wall, supporting herself with one white-gloved hand. 
What a day. What a day
. 

When she pushed open the door, the old woman was on the phone shouting, “Harry? Hello. Harry?”

The woman, whose name was Helen, turned and saw Gabriel and said, “He had to hang up.” Gabriel walked to the couch and sat down. She fished in her purse, found the inhaler, and brought it to her mouth.

With a sigh, Helen Kurtis hung up the phone and walked over to her visitor.

Gabriel replaced the inhaler in her purse and leaned her head back so that she stared for a moment at the ceiling. She sighed.

“Poor dear,” Helen said.

Gabriel looked at her hostess and smiled wanly, thinking,
God, one of these good aunt types
. Gabriel hated their take-charge sympathy, as though the world were a pillow that you could fluff into shape. The world was a concrete pillow, and you had better not fluff it if you had just done your nails.

“Feeling a little better?” Helen said. “Why don’t I make us some tea?” Without waiting for an answer, she went to the sink and began running water. “I did tell Harry that you were here. I’m sure they will all be along shortly.”

“I hope,” Gabriel said, “you cautioned him against telling Allan.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t have an opportunity. But I think Harry might come to that conclusion on his own. He’s a very intuitive man, very sweet.”

“I’m so glad to hear that,” Gabriel said. “I wish I had more intuition myself. I have no idea what my own son thinks, you know. He’s a complete mystery. Perhaps he communicates with that crazy boy who has him in thrall, but he certainly doesn’t tell his own mother a thing. Not a thing.” Shockingly, a sob escaped Gabriel’s lips and she thrust her face into her hands as tears darted from her eyes.