Chiral Mad 3

by Stephen King

  Wash those troubles right down the drain …

  As a result of this erosion and dissociation, Marion had reduced her activities. Though she was still attractive—her shoulder-length black hair streaked with dramatic white highlights, her skin was taut, youthful, her figure still tight for a woman in her late sixties due to walking the stairs of her apartment building almost daily—she felt no need to engage others, merely observe them. Her building, where she and her second husband Eric had moved as her career bloomed in the early 1990s, was now her haven, her cocoon. She watched everything, taking silent delight in her surreptitious voyeurism, and spent more and more time in the comforting nostalgia afforded by the apartment, with its trove of old books, her awards and photo albums, Eric’s collection of miniature cars, and even Patrick’s former bedroom, which carried a certain enigmatic charm, and remained essentially as he left it before he departed in his late twenties.

  Maybe one day I’ll see him again … I hope so. God I miss him.

  She recalled reading an article once that passing through doorways was tied to forgetting what one was doing in the moment; that the scene change from room to room had a way of mentally resetting one’s actions and purpose on an unconscious level; as though the doors of perception actually changed when moving through a portal such as an entryway, even a window. In some ways, the idea comforted her, yet, in others, it was disquieting, as though she was doomed to wander from place to place and lose the context of why she had, or what the purpose of the change really was. To that end, occasionally, a maternal tug compelled her to go inside Patrick’s old room, relax on the bed, and contemplate the lively assortment of his antique marionettes suspended from the ceiling, the brightly painted automatons seated in lifelike tableaux, the wistful hand-carved little manikins resting on the bookshelves and windowsill. As a child, Patrick had been deeply involved in magic and puppetry. His Asperger’s syndrome had limited his interaction with friends at school, but not his interior world. He built several old-style animated dolls that could move and walk, and had developed into quite a ventriloquist. As she regarded the dusty remnants of someone else’s life in Patrick’s room, Marion wondered if there was a certain trade-off to being extraordinary at something—whether an amazing facility with words, exceptional acting talent, visionary artistic ability, or making animated puppets—in that one must lose something at some point: a loved one, a limb, a sense, one’s purpose. She had experienced much over the years, most of it good, but it appeared to be front-loaded, and now she was paying the dues she managed to forego in her youth. Not that she cared anymore, but this certainly seemed to be the case. For example, the paparazzi no longer noticed if she came or went, and she doubted any of the younger ones even knew she had twice been nominated for an Academy Award, or had a brief fling with Jack Nicolson in the debauched heydays of the late ‘70s, when she lived in LA.

  This has become another world, she noted, regarding the sad effigies. And not my world. Now, she felt as though she had become a sort of female version of the Minotaur: Huddled in the center of the old brownstone, the twisting, voracious labyrinth of the City reaching ever farther away from her daily experience or care. The immediate mazes of her mind, her apartment, and her neighborhood had reduced her domain to a few blocks, some great performances captured on celluloid and in her memory, a couple of girlfriends, and the other occupants of her building … the erstwhile art dealer couple who vanished after a shadowy trip to Prague; Mr. Trinity, the musician who remained aloof and strange, practicing his horn seemingly day and night for all these many years; others came and went like ghostly spectators in a T. S. Eliot poem. For a long time, this was her life.

  Until tonight.

  II

  Marion twists the phone cord with her fingers, slumping into the loveseat. In the background, Sinatra gently croons from the record player; the window is open and, seven stories below, the City rumbles outside like a giant cat. Night has fallen, and the afterglow of sunset bleeds eerily red against the horizon. In the distance, an autumnal thunderstorm is gathering power.

  “That’s what the doctor said, Marti.”

  Tears roll down her cheeks as she listens to the voice on the end of the line. Marion leans forward and retrieves her wine glass, lifting the ruby liquid to her lips and taking a few swallows. Swirling the contents to inhale the bouquet before placing it back on the table, she sighs deeply.

  “That’s right. Dr. Williams said it might be why I’ve been more tired the past few months. Also why I wake up standing in the hallway sometimes, or screaming,” she pauses in thought. “The emotional lability part explains the laughing fit I had at the funeral for Pete.”

  She listens again, rubbing her cheeks with her sleeve. Pulling a tissue from the box on the table, she dabs at her light blue eyes.

  “I don’t know … He said this new medication can sometimes slow down the progression. The doctor also explained it might help control the night terrors and the waking hallucinations, like when I thought that guy was following me around reading my thoughts a few weeks ago.” She pauses once more. “No guarantees, of course.”

  More minutes pass as she listens. She takes another sip of wine. Thunder shakes the building. “Listen, I better get off the phone. It’s starting to storm here. I don’t want to get electrocuted. Thank you so much, Marti. And thank you for getting me to go to the doctor … I feel like it can be dealt with. We’ll see. Yes—let’s plan on dinner Friday. Okay. Love you, too. ‘Bye.”

  She places the handset into the cradle, staring at the telephone. A bright flash sears, followed in a few seconds by a deep roll of thunder. Darkness has taken over, the light pollution of the City a shifting pink mix of sodium lamps, headlights, and sheets of rain. The pattering downpour is soothing to her, the smell refreshing, clean. She closes her eyes, comforted by the soothing white noise of the rainstorm merging with the street sounds underneath. Sinatra morosely catalogs the years as she drifts off to sleep.

  A bolt of intense lightning awakens her. The room is coal dark, and she cannot see anything. Even the light pollution is gone: Oh, no … A blackout. She hates blackouts. Marion glances at her watch, squinting to see as her eyes adjust to the gloom: 9:48. Been out about an hour … She stretches, rising to get the flashlight in the pantry.

  Stumbling to the kitchen, she trips on a chair in the den, stubbing her toe. She rummages in the junk drawer in the pantry and finds the light. The beam is weak, yellowy. She shakes the torch and it gets a little brighter, but not much. It’ll do for now, she decides. As she pans the beam around the apartment, the furnishings appear different, similar, but different. Older, perhaps.

  “Trick of the shadows, that’s all …”

  Marion walks to the bathroom, her bladder full. Sitting on the commode, she turns out the light, not wanting to waste the battery. She had neglected to get fresh ones at the store yesterday. She will remedy that tomorrow.

  She goes to her bedroom, hoping to find another flashlight. The lightning slashes again, the intensity of the storm increasing. It is raining even harder now, a deluge. The air is thin, musty, and very cold. In the beam of the light, she can see her breath. She shivers and her skin prickles from the chill. In the bedroom, she sees that the furniture is again arranged differently than she remembered. It looks strange; the bedclothes are unrecognizable. She stumbles again and crashes to the floor, hitting her forehead on the post of the bed.

  “Christ!”

  Marion brings her hand up to her head, and feels a small gash there. It is bleeding, but not heavily. She stands and goes over to the vanity, where she has some first aid items in one of the drawers. Finally, she locates the Band-Aids and iodine. Looking into the mirror, she screams.

  In the mirror, she sees her silhouette, but it is not her. The reflection looks like her, but has no cut on the forehead. It has the same attire, but the movements are off, as though they are delayed, which she knows is impossible.

  “Marion?” The image in the mirror is
speaking, but Marion is not. Her head feels light. Another bolt flashes a bluish cast over the macabre scene. In the mirror, Marion can see that the room is the same, but there is another person behind her: She spins around, holding the flashlight in front of her like a weapon. There is a figure standing there. Looming. It is a man who appears to be in his late forties attired in a dark suit, slim and clean-shaven; his face is vaguely familiar, as though she has met him before, yet too perfect, waxen.

  “Good evening, Mother,” he says. His voice is reedy, halting. “It’s me, Patrick.”

  Marion shrieks again, bringing her hand to her face. “How-how did you get in here? ” She tries to control the timbre of her voice, fails.

  The man’s head deliberately tilts to the side as he stares at her, his milky eyes unblinking in the wan glow of the flashlight.

  Behind her: “The same way I did, Marion,” her sister’s voice coos from the mirror. “Through your dreams. Your fears.”

  Marion quickly turns to face the mirror again. The reflection looks exactly like her, but it is moving independently. In the background, Patrick is still standing with his head cocked to the side, like a puppy trying to sort out where a sound is coming from. He shuffles a few steps forward, stiff, slow, then stops.

  She holds the reflection’s gaze, looking directly into its eyes. “Why are you here? Why is Patrick home? What is happening? ”

  The mirror image laughs quietly, shaking her head. Patrick moves forward once more and stops.

  “Don’t you want us here?” the likeness asks from the other side of the looking glass.

  Marion does not know what to say. She tries to string words together in her mind, but they are jumbled, her thoughts foreign, baroque. She swings the light up into the mirror: The beam does not reflect back, but passes through the image’s body and travels to a point of infinity on the horizon line on the opposite side of the glass. She swallows in incomprehension.

  “I-I must be dreaming now,” Marion says at last. The image responds a few milliseconds later, mimicking the mouth movements, but actually replying: “No. You’re not dreaming now. We are here with you, on this night. We have not abandoned you, Marion, we just had to move on … it was never personal. We just couldn’t stay anymore. You deserve the truth.”

  In the mirror, Patrick moves forward again, and Marion now hears the whine of his internal gears and machinery. The wind blusters against the building as the rain continues. Another lightning flash reveals a few more details of his face: The gaps on either side of his chin where the jaw is configured to articulate when he speaks, the blank, featureless glass eyes that roll in the hollows of the automaton’s head. He pauses once more, now just inches from Marion.

  “We are here to comfort you in this time of great need, Mother. Father will be here soon.”

  Marion closes her eyes, feeling faint. Her heart skips as a crack of thunder fills the space. Lightning flashes through her eyelids, momentarily reddening the scene, as she yields.

  III

  When she is found a few days later, Marion will be on the living room loveseat in a state of relaxation with her eyes closed. She will have a flashlight in her hand, and she will have a cut on her forehead; the blood will be dry.

  The building supervisor will be the one to find her, as he has been watching her movements for days, ever since she came to his unit and explained that her son and sister will be visiting soon, and she wants to introduce them. The supervisor will have found the conversation disturbing, as he remembered when the son died—while visiting family in Australia some years prior—and that her sister, Annette, never returned to the unit they shared after she went to hospice. As far as he understood it, Annette had passed away after a tough battle with cervical cancer. In fact, Marion told him the news herself.

  When the Medical Examiner arrives, she will inspect the premises, and find no signs of foul play, just a well-conditioned older woman in repose. Nothing suspicious will be in the apartment. Going room by room, the M.E.’s team will photograph the scene, and will note that one of the bedrooms has many dummies and puppets decorating it. One particularly impressive figure will be in the woman’s bedroom, facing a large vanity with a shattered mirror; its eye sockets will be empty.

  Upon further inspection at the morgue, the M.E. will discover that the woman has clinical Lewy Body Dementia, and that her eyes, strangely, are milky white—as though they never had pupils or irises. Her body will be cremated; no one will claim the ashes. The case will then be closed, and the apartment emptied.

  Her obituary will sum up Marion’s life in two neat paragraphs.

  REFLECTING

  ON REFLECTIONS

  BRUCE BOSTON

  Mirrors facing mirrors

  cast reflections

  upon reflections,

  fast as the speed of light,

  duplicating reality

  down a tunnel to infinity

  until even the world’s

  most powerful telescopes

  peering down that tunnel

  can distinguish nothing

  more than the fuzzy pinprick

  of a telescope looking back.

  PRAYER

  MORT CASTLE

  THE MAN FLOATS to seeming awareness, though dazed, then descends once more into unconsciousness. His dry lips sometimes make a tiny peh-peh noise, like something you’d hear in the woods late at night without recognizing the source.

  Then he says quite plainly, “Tylenol.”

  They surround you with comfort. Angels.

  No, those who will help you die.

  Are you in pain?

  Should I get you something?

  Do you need something, Mr. Jablonski? Hank?

  It’s all right. You think you’ve said that but you can’t be sure. You open your eyes.

  The priest is here. Nice guy. You’ve spoken with him. Filipino, hardly any accent.

  He’s here to give you Last Rites.

  He’s here for your confession.

  April 16, 2015

  Unit 17

  Hospice of the Comforter

  The airy sunlight suffuses the room.

  The Christ on the crucifix above the bed seems at peace.

  Hank. That’s what he asked to be called when the Comforter took him in. Hank, Henry Jablonski.

  A good man, a good Catholic.

  Hank Jablonski had sense, knew that he would most likely be alone for this—transition—and so he planned wisely and the money saved by years of frugality would take care of his earthly ending and what was left over would go to the church.

  The chaplain of the Comforter, Father Witmer Tortosa, seated at the bedside, has talked with Father Kelso at St. Joseph the Worker, and knows the regard Hank’s parish priest has for this dying man. Hank was working class, bought a house on the GI Bill, married young: Laura, his high school sweetheart. Maybe the last generation to do all right without a college degree: Sold janitorial supplies and washroom cleaning services. Lost his wife to cancer when their only child was eight.

  Mary was the daughter’s name.

  Sad about Mary, tragic, but Hank accepted the will of God.

  Hank Jablonski had faith.

  Hank’s eyes are closed, his face placid, but his lips move.

  Father Witmer Tortosa leans in closer. Hank’s breath is sweet, like flowers.

  “Mr. … Hank?” Though he does not call Hank “my son”—the 33-year-old Father Witmer was ordained only two years ago—he feels the eternal connection of Holy Mother Church, that blessed assurance, that he and this man share.

  They believe.

  In an age of unbelief and disbelief and disdain of belief, they believe.

  They believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

  They believe in salvation.

  They believe in prayer.

  Yes, Father Witmer has sometimes doubted his own personal abilities, sometimes questioned not what God has asked of him, never that, but his own adequacy when he ha
s been summoned to do what a priest must, to ease the fears of the dying, to help them leave this world in a state of grace so that they might dwell forever with the Lord.

  Father Witmer does not doubt: Blessed be the name of the Lord.

  “Hank?” Father Witmer touches Hank Jablonski’s shoulder, not expecting an answer, lucidity.

  “Father Witmer.” Hank’s voice is quiet but does not seem weak or even for that matter old.

  “I am here,” Father Witmer says.

  “There were four Marys,” Hank says. “I don’t believe that was coincidence. I didn’t understand it then and do not fully understand it now. My daughter was Mary. There were other Marys …”

  6:30 AM

  Wednesday September 29, 1982

  Elk Grove Village, Illinois

  She wakes with a scratchy throat and a sniffily nose. She does not want to stay home from school. She likes school.

  Her mom talks sense. She needed to stay home today, really, so she can nip this in the bud and besides, she doesn’t want to infect others.

  You’re not being a friend when you share your viruses, her father says. Stay in your pajamas, kiddo, watch some Love Boat reruns. Drink lots of OJ. Take a Tylenol.

  And she reluctantly says okay and next thing you know, there’s a heavy thump and her father finds her unconscious on the bathroom floor.

  The paramedics are damned good. If there had been a way to save her, they’d have saved her.