The Night Listener and Others

by Chet Williamson

  “You sound like you did when you tried to talk me into doing acid in college. Then, if you’ll recall the precious sensations, I had to hold you all night while you cried and told me to watch out for the blue willies. What the hell were the blue willies?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Well, I’m sure Dr. Wagner could remind you.”

  Michael’s wife came up to them. “All right, what are you two up to?” She put an arm around each one, kissing them both soundly.

  “Michael is giving me hell again, Maggie,” Peter said.

  “Oh, your treatment…”

  “It’s not a treatment,” Peter protested.

  “Sure it is,” said Michael. “Fight reality with a checkup and a check. A big one.”

  “Michael, it is reality.”

  “No, Peter. This is reality. Here and now. That was reality.”

  Peter turned to Maggie.

  “Don’t get me in this argument,” she said.

  Peter nodded. “I never could talk him into anything, could I? Where’s Jennifer?”

  “Upstairs,” said Maggie. “I think she was going to be sick.”

  Peter tried to smile. “We all have our ways of escaping from reality, huh? But what’s yours, Michael?” Peter turned and disappeared into the crowd.

  “You shouldn’t be so hard on him,” Maggie said, taking her arm from Michael’s shoulder.

  “I can’t approve of what he’s doing.”

  “He seems to be getting something out of it.”

  “Oh yes. An alcoholic wife.”

  “Michael…”

  “They’re lies. He’s lying to himself, Maggie. He’s found one moment of triumph that’s become the core of his life, filled with seeds, and he goes back time after time to get one more.”

  “It’s his choice. What can you do?”

  “I could expose it.”

  “Why?”

  “It would sell, for one thing. And the other thing is that it makes me angry to see my friend throwing away his money and his life to dreams.”

  There was that and more, enough to make Michael Lindstrom decide to do an exposé on temporal revisualization, to make him call Dr. Paul Wagner’s Park Avenue office for an appointment, to make him lie when he met the doctor, expressing admiration for his work and acknowledging Wagner’s compliments toward Michael’s own writing with a grace and gratitude he could not feel. He told Wagner that he wished to do a first-person article on the procedure, and asked for Wagner’s cooperation.

  Wagner gave a smile of practiced sincerity. “There’s no pledge of secrecy, Mr. Lindstrom. I’ll be happy to have you as a patient, and you can tell as much or as little as you like. Do you…have a certain time in mind that you wish to revisit?”

  Michael chuckled. “You make it sound so simple. ‘Step into my time machine and let’s go.’”

  “Hardly that. But it is quite simple, really. When you know how.”

  “How?”

  “Drugs—harmless, government-approved drugs—and hypnosis. It’s in your mind, Mr. Lindstrom. It’s really all in there.”

  “This sounds awfully sixtyish—Timothy Leary stuff.”

  Wagner shrugged. “Styles change. The mind doesn’t.”

  “It’s just very hard to believe,” said Michael with a penitent’s smile, “that it’s all still there…in as much detail as I’ve heard about.”

  “It’s there,” Wagner said plainly. “Things you didn’t even know you’d seen. You’ll scarcely believe it. But you’ll be there. And so will everything else. Just as it was.”

  “I assume it’s very expensive.”

  “And I assume your publisher will pay for it, so that needn’t worry you.”

  Michael smiled wryly, thinking it best not to appear too innocent, too trusting. “You doctors.”

  “Or doctors’ wives,” Wagner said, his smile showing his teeth for the first time. They looked white, and bright, and young, like the rest of him. “Now. Suppose you tell me.”

  Michael pursed his lips, looked at Wagner, looked down at his hands in his lap, and back up again. “A woman,” he lied. “A woman I once knew.”

  “A lover?”

  “Must you know that?”

  “I should.”

  “No. Not a lover. Though I loved her. And I think she loved me. I was young, in college. It was before I met my wife. It was our second, maybe third date, I can’t remember. But we were walking on the beach. With no one else around. We must have walked for miles without seeing a soul. And we didn’t say a word. Not all the way. Then, when the beach ended…”

  “Ended?”

  “Isn’t that strange,” said Michael, “but that’s how I remember it. It just ended. A cliff, a sea-wall, I don’t know.”

  “You will,” Wagner said quietly. “What happened next?”

  “I held her. I kissed her. Nothing more. And we walked back. And that day I felt happier, more at peace with myself than I’ve been before or since.”

  “What happened? Between the two of you?”

  “She died. Three weeks later. Swimming alone on that same beach. Drowned. A young boy saw her go down. They never found her body.”

  Wagner nodded slowly. “What was her name?”

  “Anne.” Beautiful Annabel Lee. In her tomb by the side of the sea. Michael laughed inside at the lie, the false Anne, the seaside and walk he had never known. “And that,” he said aloud, “is the moment I want to reclaim.”

  “One thing, Mr. Lindstrom,” said Wagner with a frown. “What brought you here? Your desire to see and be with this girl again? Or your desire for a story.”

  “Both. Combined business and pleasure trip.”

  Wagner looked at him for so long that Michael grew uncomfortable. Finally he spoke. “Ready then?”

  “Now?”

  “It doesn’t take long. A matter of minutes.”

  “That’s not much for the money.”

  “It will seem far longer, I promise. But first I’ll have to ask you to sign this,” and he handed Michael a piece of paper and a pen from a desk drawer. “It simply releases me from any legal actions stemming from a psychological complaint. I remain liable, however, for any adverse physical reaction.” Michael read it and signed.

  Wagner stood and walked to a metal cabinet that contrasted starkly with the tasteful opulence of the room’s other furnishings. He returned to Michael’s side bearing a tray on which lay an unmarked vial, a syringe, an alcohol swab, and a Band-Aid. “Do you mind needles?” Michael shook his head, shrugged off his jacket, and rolled up his right sleeve. Wagner inserted the syringe in the vial and drew out a cc of thick, milky fluid.

  “What is that?” Michael asked.

  “Ah. My secret,” Wagner replied, wiping the skin over Michael’s biceps with the swab. “Safer than aspirin as far as side effects. This’ll sting a bit.”

  The needle slid into Michael’s arm, and he looked away. “There,” said Wagner. “All there is to it. You’ll begin to feel drowsy in a minute or so.”

  “Do I lie down?” asked Michael, looking in vain for a couch.

  “No. Sitting is fine. You won’t be aware of your body. Now just relax.”

  Within seconds, Michael felt a lethargy steal over him, as when he would fall asleep on trains. He closed his eyes. He didn’t hear Wagner speaking, could not remember later if Wagner had said anything at all.

  The beach appeared slowly, but with such a sense of reality that he felt as if he were awakening from a dream. It was real, it was true, and the wet sand was cool where his bare feet pressed it down. Wind, blowing from a gray sky, ruffled the sleeves of his jacket and played with his hair. The smell of the sea was fresh and strong, and the hand he was holding was warm.

  He turned—not his dream-self, he thought, but he —and looked at her, and knew that he had never seen her before, but knew that she was here, was real, and that no one would ever be able to take her place. She gazed back at him with deep, thoughtful eyes that had
owned him always, then turned her face out to the sea so that the breeze took her hair and made it shimmer like a curtain of obsidian rain.

  Had he wanted to speak, he could not have. His knowledge would have choked him. But his voice and thoughts, those of fifty-year-old Michael Lindstrom, were imprisoned within the young body, with whose flesh he saw, and touched, and heard. His consciousness rode above, like a hawk over a storm, observed all, felt, but could not express the feeling. They walked on through the cool day, over the wet sand, and from time to time he would look at her, kiss her cheek or her lips, and when he looked ahead, or down at the sand, he prayed to himself to turn his head, to look at her again, to never look away, never leave her alone, because then she would not vanish, not leave him, not be claimed by the sea.

  It was a cliff at the end of the beach. That which he had not remembered, which had never existed, was there now, tall and gray, its lower flanks gleaming with salt spray. He and Anne (Anne ) watched the waves caress the rock, moved to where beach and sea and cliff all met, then sat in the sand and held each other. Michael shivered as the chill crept over his buttocks and touched the base of his spine. He hugged Anne tighter, thinking, tighter still never let go never, and he wanted to crush her to him, make them inseparable for always, but his young arms would not obey old desires.

  After too short a time they rose and walked back, back the way they had come. It seemed to Michael that they ran where he would have crawled. He could feel Anne’s arm around him, could feel the wind cool on his flesh, could feel Anne’s hair, black as the sea’s depth, brush his cheek , whisper at his ear, and then another reality impinged—

  —a reality of a three-piece suit, a leather chair beneath him, his hands resting on its arms, and Dr. Wagner beside him, gazing into his face with a loving concern.

  “Welcome back,” Wagner said softly.

  Michael could not speak. He felt as though he had been wrenched in time and place, experienced sudden confusion that approached panic before he remembered what he had done, why he was there. He looked at his right hand, and was surprised when he found Anne’s hand missing. He spread his fingers apart, examined them, looked down at his shod feet. He could still feel the sand. “It was all a lie,” he said huskily. “None of it was true.”

  “You saw it,” said Wagner. “You were there. Weren’t you?”

  “There was no there to be!” Michael said with an anger that startled and unmanned him. He knew that he should have felt smug, triumphant. He felt neither.

  “You were lying then,” the doctor said. “I suspected you were.”

  “Did you?”

  “Annabel Lee, wasn’t that it?” Wagner smiled gently. “A fairly simple allusion.”

  “If you knew it was a lie, why did you do it? Let me take it?”

  “Mr. Lindstrom, half of what my patients want to relive are lies. They never happened. At least not as grandly as most of them remember. But if that’s what they want, that’s what they can have. At last.”

  “But that’s…a fraud…”

  “Not really. The rooms are inside. I just provide the key.”

  “For such simple things? My friend, and his home run?”

  “Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was only a single, maybe even only a walk. That doesn’t matter. Now it’s a home run. Not many of us have those perfect moment. Not even one. Life can be very sad when one has to pretend to remember happiness.”

  “You sell dreams,” Michael said.

  “No.” Wagner’s face was expressionless, his tone flat. “I sell the heart’s desire. Sometimes what was, but more often what should have been.”

  Michael held up an admonishing finger, then saw it tremble, and lowered it guiltily. “I’m going to…to tell about this,” he said, his lower lip quivering. “This cannot, should not happen.”

  “If you feel you must, you may,” Wagner said calmly. “I’m not sure what exactly you’ve found that you consider worthy of exposing, but you’re welcome to whatever it is. Just one thing—think about it for a day or two. Before you start writing. And ask yourself if your knowledge will make any difference to those who come to me. Ask yourself if they don’t already know what you know.

  “And ask yourself too, if the truth be known, whether people will stop coming to see me, or whether more will start to come.”

  Michael tried to stop shaking. “Why do you do this?”

  “Because I can. Because it helps to ease the pain.”

  “What if I don’t want my pain eased?” Michael flared. “Or what if I have no pain?”

  “Then you shouldn’t have come here. I am, after all, a doctor. My purpose is healing.”

  Michael made no reply.

  “If you have no more questions, there are other patients I must see.”

  Michael stood up. “This is not…the last of this,” he said, before he moved to the door.

  “No,” Dr. Wagner said. “I don’t suppose it is.”

  Maggie was in the kitchen when Michael Lindstrom arrived home. When he embraced her, her bare arms felt rough and leathery, her hair was the texture of straw against his cheek. Her smile was stiff and unfriendly, a stranger’s smile, and her voice, as she tried to draw out his secrets over dinner, was cawing, strident. He stayed up late that night, and drank more than was customary for him.

  The following day, when Dr. Wagner was told by his receptionist that Michael Lindstrom had made a second appointment, he was not surprised. The doctor prided himself on his ability to recognize deep pain, pain that would be long in healing, healing that would leave scars as deep as the pain that had made them necessary.

  The Pack

  They didn’t remember rising. They were just dead one minute, up and around the next. Those whose noses were crushed were the lucky ones. They couldn’t smell the others, and they couldn’t smell themselves. That was the worst of it for those whose were still working.

  Rusty’s nose worked just fine, and the stench annoyed him. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to get it out of his nostrils, ever be able to scent game again. The leader ought to be able to scent the pack’s prey. And he was the leader, there was no doubt of that. He was the biggest, for one thing. A mutt, to be sure, but there was a lot of German shepherd in him, and his thin, taut frame indicated that either a Great Dane or a Doberman had participated in a train pulled on his mother or grandmothers. He was also in the best condition of the motley crew gathered around him, which wasn’t saying a whole hell of a lot.

  Jesus, Rusty thought, they looked like shit. Fluffy in particular, one of the few he knew. He had humped her damn near every time she’d been in heat, but had never connected well enough to impregnate her. She was a mutt too, a small, yellow, long-haired bitch who had always carried her tail up and waving, as if to advertise the availability of her hindquarters, grotesquely large and swollen by the compression of her stomach where the 4x4 had mashed her. Her rear had had no choice but to split apart, and what Rusty remembered as tight and hot organs had given whelp to strands of dirt-caked gut on which she sat, resting her unbroken forepaws on a thick loop of her intestine. Rowdy was the only other he knew, an old, old dog who had been dead a long, long time. He’d been run over many times, left to be simmered by hot summer rains and fried in the skillet of high-noon asphalt. He lay on the grass more like a well-used welcome mat than a dog. It seemed that only the hemisphere of his skull had not been flattened, and dry, puckered little things that Rusty figured were eyes watched him from that mass of fur and splintered bone, and waited for him to offer a plan.

  For a plan was what was needed. There had to be a purpose in what had happened, in what had drawn them all here together.

  A plan. Rusty shivered at the thought. And then he shivered again at the thought of thought. His mental processes seemed so complex now, and he could tell that those of the others were similar. There had been such simplicity before awakening—looks and growls and barks and motions that indicated all the necessities of canine existenc
e:

  Play!

  Eat!

  Shit!

  Roll in it!

  Fuck!

  But now there was far more than could be communicated by You smell my asshole, I’ll smell yours. Now there was memory and subtlety and, at long last, understanding of everything Rusty had seen and heard while he lived with the people who had called themselves his family. He knew what family was now, understood it. Males who fucked, bitches who whelped, them and the pups living together, enslaving the dogs, making them trade their freedom for food from cans (vomitous horsemeat shaped like a fat cylinder, the rings of the lid impressed upon the first bite), making them give up the heritage of the pack for a stroke once or twice a day, walk on the end of a leash, an occasional flight of liberty when a bitch in heat might be fucked, a pile of dung might be rolled in, a wounded rabbit tormented and eventually killed.

  And what response from the humans when these joy were over? A newspaper on the nose, the end of a leash on the hindquarters, stinging the anus, burning the balls. Torture, pure and simple. And then at last, after a lifetime of cowering and cringing and tail-wagging and licking the hand of the goddamned male and his bitch and their pups, after years of that, when the only thing you want to do is lie and rest, then the final visit to the Great Devil in his white coat, the spurt of the needle, the ultimate injection, oh yes, he knew, he’d lain by the fireplace many times while the “family” watched that show on the television (television—Christ, he even knew its name now! And Christ, he could even curse like the humans had!). He had seen the actor pretend to be the vet and kill the dogs with sorrow on his pasty, blotchy face, and Rusty’s “family” had watched too, snuffling, the bitch wiping away tears and the male blinking, pretending his own tears weren’t there, when all the time they knew that when Rusty got old and tired, they’d take him to the real Great Devil as soon as he sneezed, or puked on the carpet, or shit in the house.