Community

by Graham Masterton

  Isobel sat down beside him on the bed. She reached out and touched his face with her fingertips, as if she were blind, and trying to discover what he looked like.

  ‘You have to, Greg. You know that I couldn’t survive without you.’

  ‘Bill and Margaret Endersby were outside in the yard again last night, along with Jemima and Angela. Tasha was totally freaked out and that’s why she got into bed with me.’

  ‘Just a nightmare, Greg, that’s all.’

  ‘Two people can’t have the same nightmare, Isobel.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, enigmatically, and kissed him.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Breakfast the next morning was silent and uncomfortable. Outside the kitchen window they could see nothing but thick pearly fog. It was a sign that the day would probably be sunny later on, because the snow was evaporating, but at that time of the morning it looked as if the end of the world had arrived, and that zombies would soon come swaying out of the gloom.

  Michael had only a single mug of strong black coffee. He had no appetite for Isobel’s pancakes with maple syrup, although Natasha asked if she could have one. Isobel sat opposite the two of them, looking from one to the other without saying a word, and eating her own pancakes as if she were punishing them, cutting them sharply and noisily with the edge of her fork.

  ‘About last night—’ said Michael.

  Isobel raised her left hand to stop him, and shook her head. ‘I don’t want to talk about last night, Greg. Love is never having to explain yourself.’

  ‘But I swear to God that the Endersbys were out there. And Jemima, and Angela. You wouldn’t make up something like that.’

  Isobel didn’t answer. She finished her pancakes and then she got up and stacked her plate into the dishwasher.

  ‘I probably won’t be here when you two get back from the clinic,’ she said. ‘I’m having lunch with George Kelly and Hedda and Diana Quick.’

  ‘OK,’ said Michael. Long pause. ‘Hope you enjoy it.’

  ‘Thanks for the breakfast,’ said Natasha, who had still only half-finished her pancake. Isobel said, ‘Hm!’ and stalked out of the kitchen.

  After breakfast, Michael and Natasha put on their coats without saying a word and left the house, heading for the clinic. Trinity was always quiet, but in the fog it was utterly silent, and the houses looked as if they were all unoccupied. Even the trees appeared as if they were paralysed.

  Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree.

  Michael took Natasha’s hand. She was wearing thick blue woolen gloves so he couldn’t tell how cold she was.

  He coughed, and then he said, ‘You had some things you wanted to tell me.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she nodded. ‘Like I said last night, I’m not sure that you’re supposed to know any of this, but I really think that you deserve to.’

  Michael said, ‘Listen, Tasha, before you say anything, I’ve made up my mind that you and I need to get the hell out of here – and the sooner the better. Whatever’s going on here, it’s just too weird. Maybe it’s us. Maybe we’re seeing things that aren’t really there. But I think we need a second opinion on that, and the only way that we can get it is to leave. Like, today. As soon as Isobel’s gone off for lunch, we’ll take her Jeep and find our way back to civilization. There has to be a road out of here somewhere.’

  Natasha stopped, and stood still. Her breath smoked in the fog. The silence around them was so complete that Michael could have believed that he had gone deaf.

  ‘We can’t,’ she said. ‘That was what I was going to tell you.’

  ‘Why can’t we? Isobel said the same damn thing to me. You can’t. But she didn’t tell me why.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Natasha, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Doctor Connor and Doctor Hamid should have told you. I don’t know why it has to be me.’

  ‘What? What is it, for Christ’s sake? Do I have some kind of disease? That’s it, isn’t it? I thought it was! Plague? Bird flu? Everybody here in Trinity, we’re all in quarantine. They’re keeping us here to stop us infecting the rest of the country.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Natasha. ‘You’re not infected with anything.’

  ‘Then I’m crazy. My mind’s gone, and I’m imagining all of this. In reality, I’m sitting in a padded cell in some nuthouse somewhere, being fed with a plastic spoon.’

  ‘You’re not crazy, either,’ said Natasha, ‘but your name isn’t Gregory Merrick. You’re not the person that the clinic has been trying to make you believe that you are.’

  ‘Well, hallelujah!’ said Michael. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Doctor Hamid. He gave me a long talk the day before I left the clinic.’

  ‘That’s incredible. That’s really incredible. I never believed for one moment that I was Gregory Merrick. For one thing I never felt like a Gregory – and besides that I know absolutely squat about marine engineering. I never recognized myself in any of those photographs that my pretend sister Sue showed me.’

  He paused while Natasha took a crumpled tissue out of her coat pocket and wiped her eyes. Then he said, ‘So … if I’m not “Gregory Merrick”, who am I?’

  Natasha sniffed and blew her nose. ‘Your real name is Michael Spencer. You’re thirty-one years old and you’re a soil scientist.’

  ‘At last!’ said Michael. He felt as if he were checking his lottery ticket and all his numbers were coming up, one after another. ‘That makes so much sense! I know all of this stuff about erosion and landscape and soil chemicals, but I couldn’t understand how. So where do I live? Where’s my family? What’s my background? I can’t believe this … it all totally fits together. It’s amazing.’

  Although Michael was becoming so excited, Natasha sounded more and more miserable. ‘Your dad and your stepmom live in Madison, Wisconsin,’ she told him. ‘That’s where you grew up.’

  ‘My stepmom? What happened to my mom? Were they divorced?’

  Natasha shook her head. ‘Your mom died when you were seven. She had cancer.’

  Michael suddenly thought of sitting in the back of the car on Fonderlack Trail, feeling so sad that he could cry. That must have been when his mother passed away.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘that makes sense, too. Come on, Tasha, please don’t get so upset. Do I have any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘You have an older sister, Jennie. She’s married and she lives in Wauwatosa. You graduated from the University of Wisconsin and worked for a company in Sheboygan for two years but then you got a job in San Francisco with Kennedy Jenks Consultants. Which is where you met me.’

  Michael wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. Although her dark blue coat was so thick, she still felt painfully thin. ‘Come on, Tasha,’ he told her. ‘Everything’s going to work out fine. I just don’t understand why the clinic wants me to believe that I’m somebody else. What’s the point of it?’

  ‘The point of it is …’ Natasha began, but then she tightly gripped the lapels of his overcoat and pressed her face against his chest and he heard her making a high, keening sound in the back of her throat.

  All he could do was hold her close and wait for her to recover. As the sun rose higher the fog was beginning to shine, and the two of them were surrounded by radiant gold, as if they were standing in Heaven.

  After a few moments Natasha looked up at him and her face was a mess of tears.

  ‘You’re dead,’ she said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You’re dead, Michael. We crashed on the interstate on the way back from seeing my sister in Seattle, and you were killed.’

  One corner of Michael’s mouth began to lift up in a smile, but then he stopped smiling.

  ‘I’m dead. I’m breathing and talking and walking about and eating food and drinking wine and making love, but I’m dead.’

  ‘Yes, Michael, you are. And that’s why you can’t leave Trinity. You can only continue to breathe and talk and everything else so long as you stay here.’

 
; ‘Tasha, I am patently not dead. How can I be dead? That accident was nearly three months ago, and if I was dead, I’d be rotten by now. You wouldn’t be able to get near me, for the smell.’

  ‘It’s the mountain, that’s what Doctor Hamid told me.’

  ‘The mountain? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Mount Shasta. It’s one of the most powerful sources of spiritual energy in the country. Even you told me that, just before we crashed. They built the clinic here, and the community of Trinity here, so that they could use that energy. If you stay close to Mount Shasta, no more than five or six miles away, you can go on living even when you’re dead.’

  ‘Doctor Hamid told you this?’

  ‘Yes,’ Natasha whispered.

  ‘Didn’t it occur to you that Doctor Hamid might be talking a whole lot of horse manure?’

  ‘Why would he invent a story like that?’

  ‘I don’t know. To keep me here, for some reason?’

  ‘Michael … they tried to make you believe that you were Gregory Merrick because they wanted you to forget about Michael Spencer and start a new life. Well … an afterlife, that’s what Doctor Hamid called it.

  ‘He said that the clinic takes people who have died in accidents and uses the spiritual energy that comes from Mount Shasta to keep them conscious and active for as long as they can.’

  Michael said, ‘Tasha … for Christ’s sake … do I look dead? Do I feel dead? How about last night, in bed, did I feel dead then?’

  ‘No, of course not. You’re going to be OK, so long as you stay here, close to Mount Shasta.’

  ‘This is lunacy. I can’t think why Doctor Hamid told you all of this. What did he think you were going to do, keep it a secret and never tell me? Did he seriously think that you were going to believe it? You don’t believe it, do you? Because I don’t fucking believe it.’

  Natasha gave him a helpless shrug. ‘He asked me to help them to convince you that you were Gregory Merrick. He said that you would be more likely to believe it if it came from me. He said that Doctor Connor has been trying to erase all of your memories of being Michael Spencer, but the problem is that you keep remembering things. Like me, for instance.’

  ‘Why do I have to be Gregory Merrick? What’s wrong with being Michael Spencer?’

  ‘Because Michael Spencer is officially dead. His body was flown back to Madison and he was cremated.’

  ‘But whoever they cremated, that wasn’t me. They must have had a body, but who was it? They wouldn’t have cremated an empty casket.’

  ‘I don’t know, Michael. Doctor Hamid only told me that legally you don’t exist any more.’

  Michael didn’t know what to say to her. He could only stand there while the fog faded away and the snowy peaks of Mount Shasta reappeared above the treetops, pristine and aloof. I own you, said the mountain.

  Natasha said, ‘I’m so sorry, Michael. Maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t told you, but I love you so much.’

  ‘You love me even though I’m dead? Jesus! I don’t know whether we’ll have to arrange a wedding or a wake.’

  ‘But so long as we stay here …’

  ‘What? Stuck in this one-horse community for the rest of our lives? That’s if we’re ever going to die. Me – I’m dead already, apparently, but what about you?’

  ‘Michael, I don’t want to lose you. Not ever. I’d rather stay here in Trinity than lose you.’

  ‘So we really can’t leave? Or I can’t leave, anyhow?’

  ‘It’s the energy. Doctor Hamid explained it to me, but I didn’t really understand it. He said that there are centers of spiritual energy in different places all around the world – usually volcanoes, like Vesuvius and Mount Fuji. He said that Mount Shasta is one of the most powerful.’

  ‘And this energy is what’s keeping me alive? Or undead, at least? Jesus, you’re making me feel like a fucking vampire!’

  Natasha said, ‘No, Michael. There’s nothing unholy about it, not like vampires.’

  ‘Oh, great! Thank heaven for small mercies!’

  ‘You probably don’t remember, but you told me yourself that the Modocs believe that one of their gods came down from the sky to live on top of Mount Shasta. If this god thinks that somebody has died too soon he brings them back to life. That’s what Doctor Hamid told me. It’s, like, everybody has been put on this Earth to complete some specific journey, right? And if they die before they’ve completed it …’

  ‘I’m stunned, Tasha. I don’t know what to say to you. How can you believe this crap?’

  ‘The god thing is only a legend, Michael. That was how the Modocs explained how dead people carried on living. But Doctor Hamid says he has scientific evidence that the energy around Mount Shasta can actually do that. Look at you, Michael. You’re dead but you’re standing right here in front of me. If you need proof, go look in the mirror.’

  ‘Tasha, listen to me. I am not fucking dead. If you really believe that I’m dead, how come you got into bed with me last night? I don’t think I’d feel very comfortable about having sex with a dead person, even if it was you.’

  Natasha released her grip on his lapels, and looked up at him, her arms by her sides. ‘I know you’re dead but I’m not scared of you, Michael. Not at all. Those people in the back yard, they scared me, but you don’t. I love you. You might have died but now you’re living an afterlife and I want to share it with you.’

  Michael said, ‘I think we need to get out of this place, right now, before we both go stark raving bananas. Come on – let’s forget about the clinic and go.’

  He held out his hand but Natasha stepped away from him and furiously shook her head. ‘No, Michael. I don’t want to lose you a second time.’

  ‘Nothing will happen to me, Tasha! I’m not dead. I don’t look dead and most of all I don’t feel dead. Now, let’s go!’

  ‘No, Michael. Please.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll go on my own.’

  Natasha burst into tears again – not just sobbing but out-and-out crying. ‘Please, Michael, no! I’m begging you!’

  Michael took a deep breath and then he held her close again. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll make you a deal. We’ll go up to the clinic and we’ll talk to Doctor Connor and Doctor Hamid. You can tell them that I know that I’m supposed to be dead.’

  ‘But I promised Doctor Hamid that I never would tell you, ever.’

  ‘I know you did. But think about it. This is all beginning to sound like a double-bluff. They’ve been having a whole lot of trouble making me believe that I’m Gregory Merrick, right? Because my real memories keep on inconveniently bobbing up. So instead they thought they’d make me believe that I was dead. And the way to make it all sound more plausible was to have you tell me, as if you weren’t supposed to. But don’t you think they kind of overdid it, huh? All of that background detail about Vesuvius and Mount Fuji and the Modocs and Skell?’

  He stopped, and then repeated, ‘Skell. That’s right. That’s the name of the sky god who lives on top of Mount Shasta. Skell. How about me remembering that? Pretty good recall for a dead guy, wouldn’t you say?’

  Natasha said, ‘Can’t we just leave it, and forget it, and carry on living together, the way we always meant to?’

  ‘What – with all of those people staring into our bedrooms in the middle of the night? And sharing a bed with Isobel, even though she’s convinced that she and I are going to be married? We have to get out of here, Tasha. It’s a nightmare, this whole community. It’s like the worst dream you ever had.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Natasha. ‘Maybe it is.’

  ‘What does that mean? What are you trying to say to me?’

  Tasha pulled herself away from him, and took two or three paces up the snowy sidewalk. Because of the sunshine, Michael couldn’t clearly see her face.

  ‘Haven’t you asked yourself, whose dream? If it’s a nightmare, Michael, who’s having it? You or me? Or somebody else altogether?’

  TW
ENTY-THREE

  He caught up with her and grabbed her arm but she twisted it away.

  ‘You’re just like you always were! All you ever think about is you!’

  ‘You’ve just told me I’m dead, for Christ’s sake! Don’t you think I’m entitled for a few moments to think about the implications of that?’

  ‘There are no implications, Michael. You’re dead and that’s it. Well, you were dead, but now you’re alive again, and I still love you, and if we stay here in Trinity we can go on living together. Is that so hard for you to get your head around?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Michael. He waited a few seconds, and then he slapped himself very hard across the face. ‘I felt that,’ he said. ‘I am one hundred per cent not dead.’

  Natasha waited for him patiently and said nothing. Michael turned around and looked at Mount Shasta. Could it really be keeping him alive, that mountain?

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go see Catherine, and Doctor Hamid. Let’s get this whole insane situation sorted out.’

  ‘I’m really nervous,’ said Natasha.

  ‘What do you have to be nervous about? They may be a little peeved that you told me I was dead, but what can they do to you? Nothing. They can’t do much to me, either, if I really am dead. What are they going to do – kill me?’

  They walked up the hill and in through the clinic gates. Henry the security guard watched them as they passed his booth with slitty-eyed suspicion. When they entered the

  shiny marble lobby they found that Doctor Connor was

  already there, wearing a smart cream suit, and talking to the receptionist.

  ‘Ah, Gregory!’ she smiled. ‘And Natasha, too. How have you two been getting along?’

  Michael turned around as if he were looking for someone. Then he turned back to Catherine and said, ‘Oh! You’re talking to me?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Catherine, with a wary tone in her voice.

  ‘But you said “Gregory”. My name isn’t Gregory. It’s Michael.’

  Catherine looked sharply at Natasha. ‘What makes you think that?’