by Roy Freirich
A pause, the soft clicking of typing. “Can I get your name and location and the best number to reach you?”
He gives it all again, carefully polite. “I hope to hear back soon. Thanks.” He adds hopelessly, “Suzanne,” and clicks off.
Why should it be otherwise? From their point of view, he’s got people with trouble sleeping, and two deaths with no real proof of a connection. If he were them, he might hesitate too, before hanging his ass on a limb and spending hard-won funding to send a team.
Paula, of course, is suddenly there somehow, as if materialized. “Sam, people are getting anxious. What have we got here?”
He gives another wan smile, all he has. “Not as much as I’d hoped. I’m on it.”
He would retreat down the short hall to his office to gather scattering thoughts—if not to flee—but in the waiting area, behind Paula, a woman in a plastic chair tilts her head back, closes her eyes, jaws widening, nose wrinkling as she yawns.
Beside her, a little girl swings her feet back and forth, flip-flops scuffing the lino, and she, too, pauses to tilt her head back and yawn.
Sam stares.
A weathered local, another charter owner, no doubt, joins in, shaking his head with a sigh.
Sam’s jaws ache to open, too, but he stops. An unformed thought, forming.
Yawning.
He moves, driven quickly to the desktop computer in the back hallway nook to pull up the browser and search before he even sits and leans in, the words returning to him from the grad school lecture everyone tittered at:
Mass Psychogenic Illness.
No pathogen required, behavior communicable as any virus. No toxin needed, just our suggestible selves. Yawning. Laughter. Delusion. Hysteria.
He leans closer, typing, clickety clickety, searching with eyes scanning rapidly back and forth, back and forth, like a dreamer’s in REM sleep, as hits appear, underlined blue links:
“War of the Worlds radio broadcast, hysteria . . .”
“Virgin Mary Sightings, Corado, Peru”
“Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic . . .”
“Chupacabra Panic Spreads, Quezon, Puerto Rico”
“Motor Hysteria in Nunneries”
“Tourette’s Symptoms Outbreak, LeRoy, NY”
“St. John’s Dance”
He clicks the last, reads on, remembering it as the Choreomania, or “Dancing Mania” phenomena from a grad school seminar. Odd, inexplicable cases, in Aachen and Strasbourg, hundreds of years apart, of thousands dancing erratically and uncontrollably. Otherwise known as St. Vitus’s Dance.
Click. Tanganyika Laughing Epidemic. The afflicted were girls, villages apart, laughing for as long as a week, some finally hospitalized. He pictures them: long, thin, dark arms reaching for solace, their choked gasping, panicked eyes. Sent from their school to their homes, where calm seemed restored, until other villages in the area reported more children afflicted, and then siblings, parents, neighbors, until the cases numbered near a thousand. One must have begun it, certainly, but investigators never identified exactly whom.
Click. The incident in LeRoy, NY, most recently, presented multiplying localized cases of Tourette’s syndrome, with subjects babbling gibberish, cursing, convulsing. Again, as in all these cases: no discernible physical etiology. Social media, or suggestibility? Academics debated, as they will.
How much easier, after all, to cause lost sleep than to cause these extreme physical symptoms? Need the suggestion even be conscious? Can’t the wakeful wake the sleeping? In this age of anxiety, of constant and instant stimuli, why can’t a tipping point be reached, Circadian rhythms falter?
He leans back, exhaling, relieved to have a precedent and a diagnosis, and one that confirms what he already knows: in the end, the cumulative effects of deprivation always prevail—eyelids grow heavy, heads nod, sounds and sights fade, and off we drift.
Sleep, of course, will defeat sleeplessness. It has never not.
#
Linda Habst’s son is a tweaker now, and why not? He’s had all the gateway stuff, come home late from school or a night at the movies with his homie posse stinking of pot smoke and giggling like a girl, and who else could have drained the Smirnoff level below the mark she lightly penciled?
Now he sits on the futon in his room for the week, his hair dirty and his teeth yellow, his skin bad and his eyes wide and glazed as he stares into his laptop screen, playing his interactive Internet multi-roleplaying game (another addiction, right there!) World of Witchcraft (or Warlock?) for like the forty-third hour in a row.
“Kev, honey? How about a sandwich?”
The gaze he lifts to hers is cold and depthless, which says one thing and one thing only, plain as day: pure crystal Methedrine drug abuse, the scourge of young America.
Or LSD, for sure, if not “roofers,” the rave-party date drug these kids eat like Pez. She’ll search his backpack again, check the balled socks in his underwear drawer, buy the urine-testing kit. She will find and destroy it—whatever powder or pill has sent her son spiraling further and further beyond her reach, forever, into the unbearable agony of so much frantic despair, and loneliness too.
“You asked me three minutes ago. Go to sleep already, Mom.”
−−−
Glass television screens are sturdier than Marion Holk-Menges ever suspected. A swung broom handle only scratches the one in their rental unit, and a second blow only leaves a hint of spiderweb cracks across its black surface. The metal stem of the patio umbrella, though, produces a satisfying thick crunch of smashed glass, and flying gleaming bits.
In his boxers, Pete, her husband of eighteen years, circles the room, hands fluttering, “What are you doing? It’s off, it’s been off!”
Marion doesn’t pause, battering the set with the patio umbrella in a slow, halting rhythm, “I can . . . still . . . hear it!”
−−−
Kenneth Balk has secretly watched a few of those reality shows about hoarders and even recorded an episode on his digital set top box because it somehow scared and fascinated him at the same time, so he’s been meaning to strap and dolly the old Frigidaire from behind his bungalow around front and call Pritchett Hauling to take the damn thing away, even though let’s face it, they’re the only game on the island and know it; it’s extortion, plain and simple.
But tonight an idea comes, but then it disappears before he can remember it (he’s a little foggy after however many all-nighters and now the ocean and the crickets out in the salt marsh are just nonstop in a whole new way), but then the idea returns and kind of expands into a question, a simple one that seems more and more urgent until finally he wants to open and close the Frigidaire door behind him to find the answer:
How quiet is it inside?
−−−
A weekend fisherman’s ear has been burning inside, as if something has crawled into it and is stinging him before it dies and explodes into putrefying bits of pestilent insect. Clinic doctor guy said no, but it’s a green fly, has to be—he’s looked it up, they can do that; they’re always in a cloud around the chum bucket, tickling the sweat on his forehead when he guts and scales the day’s blues and flounder, biting and leaving welts until he can free a hand to smash the fuckers into smears.
After too many nights in a row lying still and pretending to ignore the maddening, prickling sensation in his ear, maybe it’s not the best idea in the world, but it’s all he’s got: his house key isn’t long enough to really to get in there, so maybe this fishhook, straightened with pliers, can reach.
−−−
Against the southerly beaches of Carratuck, the moonlit sea pauses and sighs and lifts itself, before falling back, and lifting again.
9
At just past eleven, the night seems to press in against the bedroom window, deep and barely illumined by some far neighbor’s deck lights. Chief wonders bri
efly where Jan is, and what’s keeping her, but he’s not sorry for a few minutes alone.
He sits at her vanity in his boxers, typing quickly and quietly into his laptop. The Homeland Security website is easy navigating, and the Board of Supervisors-mandated seminar on the mainland now seems a pretty silly use of the taxpayers’ dime, since pointing and clicking pretty much cover it.
Click. “Office of Domestic Preparedness.” Click. “Emergency Responder Guidelines.”
He leans forward here, scrolling and scanning.
AWARENESS LEVEL GUIDELINES FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS
I. The law enforcement officer should:
1. Identify what hazardous or WMD materials are present in an emergency incident or event.
2. Be familiar with the means of delivery of WMD agents or materials. Know locations that could become targets for persons using WMD agents or materials.
3. Recognize unusual trends or characteristics that might indicate an incident or event involving hazardous materials or WMD agents.
Well, thanks, everybody, but it turns out there’s some actual deduction required here, working backwards from “unusual trends.” Too many people are sleepless for it to be coincidental, check, but that leads right back to “means of delivery,” which is not kids dumping No-Doz in the water supply, you’d need a truckload. Something stronger? Carlson’s patients are showing nothing in their blood. Something brand new, as yet undetectable? Lots of know-how required there, which begs the next question: what kind of strategic significance does Carratuck Island have for anybody who might possibly have means and motive? Why not your lone wolf, an active shooter or a Unabomber type, essentially, but with some new weapon? More likely a group of some kind, organized and more capable, with some shared, insane agenda.
News stories come back to him: subsonics in the Cuban Embassy, diplomatic staff practically driven mad. Sarin gas in the Tokyo subway.
He grabs his cell, thumbs through his recent outgoings, clicks the one again and listens to the DWP’s emergency voice menu, sighing and pressing keys until he hears the beep and leaves his second message requesting a call back.
The day has drained him—an overdose of too much inexplicable ugliness to dwell on, especially flat-out burnt from no sleep as he is.
Some off odor from somewhere reaches him, an earthy funk, sharper than low tide and drying mud and rotting clams. What is it? The septic tank out in the yard? How many years has it got?
The beach is one lane over, the surf muffled, but still the low breadth of the sound like some vast breathing thing never does go away. What would it be like if it did? Everyone curious and then awed, wandering from their beds out into the night to see the moon shining on miles of kelp-strewn mud and gleaming rock, fish flopping stiffly, eyes rolling. Time to run, of course, before it all comes rushing back in a towering, filthy wave of death and debris, but run where?
His cell buzzes beside his little laptop, pulling him back, and he grabs it and clicks through to hear his Linda’s bright, untroubled voice, bell-like: “Hi, Dad!”
The world fades, so suddenly, so completely, as if nothing else exists but his daughter’s words in his ear, in a pretty spot-on imitation of the Wicked Witch of the West: “I’m melllll-ting!”
“What’s wrong with your AC?”
“August, Manhattan, Dad. Need I say more? It’s wheezing and dripping. It’s trying. Me too. All of the above.”
He thinks to invite her out, but the thought turns on itself, darkening, as too much comes back to him. Way too much to be sorted out before she sets foot back here.
“Do you need another unit?” This one wasn’t cheap: a portable, wheeled job with a ribbed, plastic flex hose and a window kit.
“Nahh. I just needed to complain. To whom better? Whom better to?”
“I answer to either. Either.” The second choice with a long “i.” “Potato, tomato,” he adds, riffing.
They laugh. He loves being laughed at by her. It’s their joke, that he’s hopelessly popular-culture ignorant and cheerfully unfashionable. He invents malapropisms and plans their use, carefully straight-faced: “Pokeyman,” “iSongs,” “Netfix.”
“Tell Mom I’ll be out first weekend in September, after the hordes clear out.”
He thinks fast, unwilling to let her go. “Didja see that kid sing on The Choice?”
“Gotta go, Chief. Be cool.”
“You okay? It’s late, you staying up too late?”
“Yes.” To which? “Later, Dad.”
“Peas.” He listens another beat. “Hello?” She’s already gone, of course. He hangs up, staring off in daze of fondness.
Some off odor out of nowhere suddenly hits him. The septic tank out back? How long has it got?
“Jan?” His voice rings off the hardwood floors and windowpane.
He stands, head cocked and listening, padding slowly in his boxers to the doorway.
Jan’s on the sofa in her plaid robe and white sweat socks, glass of pale Chard on the coffee table, bent over her own laptop, another item that needs an upgrade.
“Didn’t you hear me? Jan?”
Her eyes seem to focus again, and her face seems thinner, drawn, annoyed, as her gaze finds his.
“What?”
“What are you doing? Aren’t you coming in?”
Her words seem rushed, the question oddly urgent: “Did you know you can arrange your favorite places in folders? And put those inside other folders?”
“Jan?” he asks her.
But she has already returned her gaze to the bright screen in her lap. “Hmmm?”
10
Tonight Cort has snuck out to join Tay in the doorway of a rickety boat shed and share another skinny from his stash. They’ve both turned their cell alerts down, though agreed to remind each other to stay in the game—romantic as it isn’t to have to tweet every fifteen minutes. Part of her secretly hoped he would suggest they quit, anyway, but half his surf posse has already joined, and now he’s into it typical guy-style, to “school those morons.”
Shadowy light reaches them faintly, from a far house’s perimeter lights, and she stares at his shy sideways smile and sleepy eyes as he fills his lungs and turns to her, smoke curling, index fingertip to thumb-tip, offering.
“Oh no,” Cort mock-demurs, “I couldn’t possibly.” She takes a half-hit, already seeing the darkness pixelated with color, and continues her story: “So Mom was staring at the TV like she never saw one before. So weird. So I climbed out my window, Rapunzel but without all the hair. Ground floor, too. So . . . nothing like Rapunzel. Like I was saying.”
They laugh. They are always laughing, it seems, and through her half-lowered lids she is always dazed by the whiteness of his teeth.
“What will you say if she finds out you’re gone?”
“Couldn’t sleep, walk on the beach, don’t want to answer a lot of questions about it, like these.”
“Yeah, that makes . . . no sense.”
“I know, right? It’s perfect.”
When did he lean in and kiss her? She can’t remember now, because her eyes are closed and she has devoted herself so completely to the warm give of his lips, the sweet pressure, the wanting that is beyond and bigger than her and pushes her against him, gently at first, and then pulling, a hand behind him, until they are gripping at each other, almost as if struggling, which they are, aren’t they? Against everything cruel and loveless and stupid—those voices disappearing, the polished cinder block hallways of bullies and boredom; the cookie-cutter, split-level half-million-dollar prisons ruled by parents heartbroken and stunned at their own sudden age, so bitterly jealous of theirs, enough to punish and deny and demean out of spite.
This is payback, sweet for every diss, all the stony turned-away faces and the muffled giggles behind her in homeroom and science from Madison and her crew of spoiled princ
esses, unable to settle on the verdict: geek or slut, virgin or whore, all we can ever be because of boys.
All of it, so over. She is seen now, held in hard tight arms with his leanness against the length of her, by half-shut eyes even in this dark, seen as somebody maybe even beautiful, as smart and funny enough to make him laugh, finally and forever seen.
There’s no nagging voice on her cell phone, or in her ears, but suddenly in her memory and imagination one grows louder, unwanted, fading, then back again, asking not what girl is she, but what boy is he? One who will brag to his friends about what base he got to, how soon, how sweet it was that the dumb cunt let him feel her up and put her hand on his dick, over his jams, but still? Or the one who will shake his head at what a prude she turned out to be, because even now she is pulling back her head to part her lips from his, gasping, afraid, “Ohhh . . . hey . . .”
“What? What’s wrong now?” He’s annoyed, the edge of a whine in his voice.
She pulls back. “Is this it? Why I’m here? All you want?”
“Why are you here, if that’s what you think?”
When did he become this guy? The same one all over again, hurt because she doesn’t trust him enough to give a blowjob on their second date?
She backs away, angry now. “Wait, that’s not fair. It’s normal to wonder.”
“And it’s normal to want each other.”
“But is that all it’s about?” It’s a war inside, suspicion spreading like a virus versus what she really knows, or would if she had an hour of sleep. She almost knows better.