Community

by Graham Masterton

  ‘What do you think makes me think that? Tasha’s told me everything. She’s even told me that I’ve allegedly passed away.’

  Catherine said, ‘You’d better come into my consulting room. Brenda – would you page Doctor Hamid for me? Please tell him it’s urgent.’

  They followed Catherine into her consulting room. Catherine sat down behind her desk and said, ‘Please – sit.’ Natasha took a chair but Michael remained standing, with his arms folded.

  ‘So now you know that you’re not really Gregory Merrick?’ asked Catherine.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hope Natasha made it clear to you why we were trying to give you a new identity. We were doing it entirely for your own protection – both physical and psychological.’

  ‘I don’t believe you, Catherine. For some reason which is totally beyond me you’ve been trying to keep me here in Trinity. First of all you try to make me think that I’m this Gregory Merrick character, and when that little stunt doesn’t pan out, you try to make me believe that I’m dead.

  ‘What really makes me angry is that before we had our accident Tasha and I were going to be married, even though you tried to make me believe that I was deluding myself and that I didn’t even know her at all. I love her, and you’ve really upset her. How the hell can you and Doctor Hamid be so goddamned callous? You’re supposed to be doctors. You’re supposed to look after people, not make them feel worse!’

  Catherine remained quite calm. ‘Michael,’ she said, ‘if you knew how much care this clinic has lavished on Natasha over the past few months, you wouldn’t be raging at us like this, you’d be thanking us.’

  ‘But you’re still trying to make me think that I’m dead.’

  At that moment, there was a quick rap at the door and Doctor Hamid came in, with a stethoscope around his neck.

  ‘Oh, you’ve come to listen to my heart, have you?’ Michael challenged him. ‘Just to make absolutely sure that I’m dead.’

  Catherine said, ‘Natasha told him. I was afraid that she would.’

  ‘I love him,’ said Natasha. ‘You couldn’t expect me to keep a secret like that forever.’

  Doctor Hamid went over and stood behind Catherine’s chair. The sunlight shining through the window made him look even darker than ever, with his black hair curled up into two Satanic horns.

  ‘But now you understand, Michael, why we have been trying to keep you here in Trinity. If you leave this vicinity, you will die. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before? If it’s true that I’m dead, which I don’t believe for a moment, why did you tell me all of those lies?’

  ‘Because we wanted you to live a peaceful and happy afterlife, without ever pining for the life you had before, and to which you can never return. Michael Spencer is dead and gone. Gregory Merrick is after-living, here in Trinity, in the benevolent influence of Mount Shasta.’

  ‘What about all of the other residents of Trinity?’ Michael demanded. ‘Are they all dead, too? I keep seeing them outside of Isobel’s house, in the middle of the night, wearing nothing but their nightclothes, and none of them ever leave any footprints in the snow. And all of them seem to be frightened of something.’

  Catherine tapped her forehead. ‘That’s just your own imagination, Michael, adjusting itself to the new reality of afterlife.’

  ‘But Tasha saw them, too. Are you trying to tell me that she’s dead as well?’

  ‘You’re both recovering from appalling mental and physical traumas. It’s quite flush-centered for you to see people and objects that aren’t really there. You’ll find that it passes, in time. It’s simply a form of hallucinosis, such as alcoholics get if they abruptly give up drinking.’

  ‘And what about Jack Barr and Lloyd Hammers? Are they dead? And what the hell happened to them, after I tried to take Tasha away from here? Jack wound up in a wheelchair and Lloyd talked to me like he’d been brainwashed.’

  Catherine gave him a faint smile and shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss other patients with you, Michael.’

  Michael looked down at Tasha, who was biting her thumbnail and looking increasingly unhappy.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘So where do we go from here?’

  ‘Obviously, now you know the truth, there’s no point in us carrying on with our Gregory Merrick therapy. We’ll just have to work on rebuilding your identity as Michael Spencer, so long as you’re prepared to do that. It’s going to be lot harder, and a lot more distressing, but it’s the only way left open to us.’

  Michael said nothing for nearly ten seconds, keeping his eyes on Natasha. She glanced up at him two or three times, and it was obvious that she was very close to tears.

  At last he said, ‘I think what we’re going to do is, we’re going to skip the therapy for today and go back home. We really need to talk this over between us.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Doctor Hamid, ‘but I will need to examine Natasha tomorrow. She needs another brain-scan and she still has a long way to go.’

  Michael opened the door and Natasha stood up and took hold of his arm. As they were leaving, however, Michael turned and said, ‘Tell me, Doctor Hamid – if Natasha and I get married, like we intended – can dead men become fathers?’

  Doctor Hamid lifted both hands, as if to say, who knows? such a thing is in the lap of the gods. But then he said, ‘Physically, there is no reason why not. For a man who is technically dead, Michael, you are in a state of very good health. We have Mount Shasta to thank for that.’

  Michael thought about that, and then left, without asking any more questions, closing the door behind him.

  Natasha said, anxiously, ‘What now?’

  ‘Now we get in the Jeep and go. We can be three hundred miles away by the time it gets dark.’

  ‘You really don’t believe you’re dead, do you?’

  ‘Of course not. Not for a moment. What do they think I am, some kind of retard?’

  ‘But why do you think they’re so anxious to keep you here in Trinity?’

  ‘I have no idea, Tasha, unless it’s to keep Isobel satisfied.’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Natasha, turning away.

  Michael tried to take hold of her hand but she wouldn’t let him. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m really sorry. That was a shitty thing to say. But come on – let’s get out of here. Let’s put all of this behind us. From now on we can forget about Trinity and you can start helping me to remember Michael Spencer.’

  ‘Michael – I’m absolutely terrified that they’re telling us the truth.’

  ‘Here,’ he said.

  He gently held her chin in his hand and lifted her head up and kissed her. At first she kept her eyes open but then she closed them, and when he had finished kissing her she kept them closed, and let out a long, soft breath.

  Kissing her, he knew for certain that he was Michael and she was Tasha and that they had been in love for a very long time.

  They didn’t say any more, but left the lobby hand-in-hand and went out through the doors and down the steps and out through the clinic’s front gates. Henry the security man watched them leave with his iguana-like eyes but again Michael resisted the temptation to say anything to him or give him the finger. He didn’t want anybody at the clinic to have the slightest suspicion that they were going to make another attempt to get away.

  Isobel was still out when they got back to the house. She had left them a note saying ‘Back around 4:00 probably. Help yourselves to cold chicken in the fridge.’

  Michael went into Isobel’s bedroom, opened the closet and pulled out two navy-blue sports bags that he had seen on the bottom shelf. Belle the doll was sitting in there, with her glossy black eyes, staring at him. He picked her up and twisted her head around so that she was facing backward.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘now you really do look like you’re possessed.’

  He handed Natasha one of the sports bags and said, ‘Pack as much as you can as qu
ick as you can.’

  ‘They don’t know we’re going to leave, do they?’

  ‘I have a feeling, that’s all. Catherine has a way of looking at you and telling what you’re thinking. Come on, let’s hustle!’

  They crammed as many of their clothes into the sports bags as they could and zippered them up. Michael took the keys to Isobel’s Jeep off their hook, and then he gave the house a last look around.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Natasha.

  ‘Nothing. Some of the strangest things happened to me here, that’s all.’

  They left the house, closing the front door quietly behind them in case they attracted attention from the neighbors, and climbed into the Jeep – again, closing the doors as quietly as they could.

  Natasha said, ‘You’re still sure about this?’

  ‘When I kissed you, back at the clinic, did I feel like I was dead?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer, but started the engine and shifted the Jeep into gear. He was just about to pull out of the driveway when a flash of reflected sunlight caught his eye. He looked up the slope and saw that the black Escalade was driving down toward them, quite fast. With a crunching slither of ice and snow, it stopped right in front of them, blocking their exit.

  ‘You see?’ said Michael. ‘I told you that Catherine was a mind-reader.’

  The doors of the Escalade opened and the two white-faced security men climbed out. They came walking up the driveway in their dark glasses and their long black overcoats, not hurrying, as if they were weary parents who were telling their children for the umpteenth time not to run off again.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Natasha.

  Michael said, ‘We survived one crash, I’m sure we can make it through another.’

  With that, he shifted the Jeep into reverse, and backed up the driveway with whinnying tires until the rear bumper hit the garage doors. There was a deep boom of sheet-metal, like stage thunder.

  ‘Michael!’ Natasha squealed.

  But Michael shifted back into drive, and stamped on the gas pedal. The two security men realized at once what he was doing, and both of them jumped clear, one of them falling backward into the snow. The Jeep slewed down the driveway, across the sidewalk, and collided with the Escalade, denting its driver’s door so that it was almost bent double, shattering two side windows, and pushing it out into the road at an angle of forty-five degrees.

  The security men shouted and started to run toward them, but Michael immediately backed up again, and they had to retreat, scrabbling up the icy driveway like two frantic skaters. Back in drive, Michael spun the wheel and steered the Jeep around the rear end of the damaged Escalade.

  He headed down the slope toward the community center. He had no idea where the road out of Trinity might be, but he knew it wasn’t the road that was signposted for Route 97 and Weed, and it wasn’t the road that passed by the intersection with Summit View, so maybe by process of elimination it was down this way, and out of Trinity on the other side.

  Natasha twisted around in her seat so that she could see what the two security men were doing. ‘I don’t think they’re coming after us,’ she said. ‘It looks like they can’t get their doors open.’

  As they approached the community center, however, he saw that two people had come out of their house and were walking quickly down their driveway toward the road, waving their arms in the air. He recognized them as the woman in the sludge-green woolen dress who had given him such a hard time when he had knocked on her door, and the young man who had been pointing at him out of her living-room window.

  ‘What the hell are they doing?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Natasha. ‘It looks like they want us to stop.’

  ‘Well screw that. We’re not stopping for nobody, nohow.’

  By the time they had reached the traffic circle outside the community center, however, the woman had stepped right out into the road, still waving her arms. The young man followed her. Michael blasted the Jeep’s horn, twice, and shouted, ‘Get out of the goddamn road!’ even though he knew that they couldn’t hear him.

  The woman was so close now that Michael could see the determined expression on her face. She stopped right in the middle of the road and continued to wave her arms as if she were signaling to a ship at sea.

  Michael slowed down to a crawl. Even when the Jeep’s front grille was less than three feet away from her, the woman didn’t flinch, and kept on waving. Michael brought the Jeep to a halt, almost touching her.

  ‘Get – out – of – the – goddamned road,’ he repeated.

  ‘Michael,’ said Natasha, in a whisper. ‘Look. Look behind us. Look over there.’

  The front doors of all the houses in the street were opening up, and the residents were all coming outside and walking toward them, although none of them were waving. Some of them he recognized, like Walter Kruger and George Kelly and Hedda and Lloyd Hammers, too. Then he saw Katie Thomson, followed closely by her mother Bethany, and the large woman who had appeared at Isobel’s last get-together in a crimson corduroy dress, but whose name he had forgotten.

  Michael turned around. Behind them, the roadway was gradually filling up with more and more residents, so that it was impossible for them to back up. It was like the night when he had seen scores of them standing outside Isobel’s front yard.

  He turned back again. From the front door of George Kelly’s house, he saw Isobel coming out, too. She was too far away for him to be able to see the look on her face, but he could imagine it. Angry and hurt, and deeply puzzled. He had promised to marry her in June, after all.

  ‘How did all of these people know that we were trying to leave?’ asked Natasha.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ said Michael. ‘I don’t see the clinic having the time to contact them all, do you?’

  ‘Oh God, Michael. What are we going to do?’

  The residents had now begun to gather around the Jeep, so close that they could have touched it, and some of them had their hands reaching out, as if they were about to do so, but for some reason were holding off. They simply stood there, staring in through the windows at Michael and Natasha, most of them expressionless, but a few of them frowning, as they had when they pointed at Michael from their living-room windows.

  Michael checked his rear-view mirror. Walking down the slope toward them, with much more determination than they had before, came the two security men, their long black coats flapping. Shit, he thought. Now we’re totally screwed. It wouldn’t have surprised him if they were both armed.

  Natasha said, ‘It’s no good, is it? We’re going to have to stay here.’

  Michael glared through the Jeep’s windshield at the woman standing right in front of him, still waving her arms. He took a deep breath, and then he blasted the horn, again and again. She continued to stand her ground, so he began to inch the vehicle forward, pumping his foot on the brake pedal, until it was actually pressing up against her stomach.

  ‘You can’t,’ said Natasha. ‘Michael, you can’t!’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Michael ignored her. Ever since he had woken up in Trinity-Shasta Clinic, all he had heard was people telling him ‘you can’t.’ But inside of himself, he knew that he was the kind of person who could, and would, and always had done, regardless of the consequences.

  His amnesia had made him cautious and suspicious and careful, even frightened. Without a memory that he could trust, he had felt completely defenseless. But at least he knew his real name now and who he was – even if all the rest of his recollections were broken bits and pieces that didn’t yet fit together. Now he was ready to get the hell away from Trinity and go back to his life in the real world outside, no matter how difficult it turned out to be.

  It could be that Catherine Connor and Doctor Hamid had been telling him the truth, and he was dead, and he couldn’t survive beyond the spiritual influence of Mount Shasta. But maybe that was what his destiny had always been, and he would just hav
e to accept it. Kismet. Nobody lives forever, especially if they’re dead already.

  He used the footbrake to nudge the Jeep forward again and again, so that step by step the woman had to give ground. Each time he nudged it a little harder and a few inches further, until she stopped waving her arms and pressed her hands flat against the radiator grille to save herself from losing her balance and falling over backward.

  There was a loud bang on the passenger door, and then another on Michael’s side, and then another, and another, as the residents of Trinity started to beat against the Jeep with their fists. At the same time, they started to howl – an eerie, high-pitched sound like wolves. They beat harder and harder on the sides of the Jeep until Michael and Natasha were almost deafened.

  Michael glanced in his rear-view mirror again and saw that the two security men were only a few yards away now, and had started to jog. Looking toward the front, he could see the woman’s contorted face as she strained vainly to keep him from advancing any further. And all the time the drumming and the howling grew louder and louder.

  Michael inched forward yet again, and now the crowd screamed at them and started to shake the Jeep violently from side to side. Natasha had to grip both armrests to stop herself from being thrown against the door and hitting her head against the window.

  ‘Michael! They’re going to kill us!’

  Michael blasted the horn just one more time. The woman in front of him stared at him unblinking as if she were daring him to do what he wanted to do. She shouted something at him which he couldn’t hear, but which he was sure was go on, then, if you’ve got the stones!

  One of the security guards shouldered his way through the crowd and appeared beside his window. He made a twisting motion with his wrist to indicate that Michael should switch off the Jeep’s ignition. Michael shook his head, and it was then that the security man reached inside his coat and lifted out a gun.

  For a fraction of a second, Michael had the odd thought: If this man knows that I’m already dead, why is he threatening me with a gun? But then his survival instinct went into overdrive, and he kicked down the gas pedal as hard as he could. The Jeep surged forward with a chorus of screams from its tires, and the woman instantly disappeared from sight like a conjuring trick. Michael could feel her bumping underneath the floor as they ran over her.