And, of course, something happened, because something always does.
And what happens isn’t always a good thing. In this case what happened was a noise, a sort of pop sound accompanied by a hiss. The hiss was uttered by the Gorelord himself, and was an expression of shock and dismay.
The pop was uttered by the Frozen Princess’ toe as it came into contact with the stone floor. Her icicle toe shattered, blown into a glitter of dust. Pop, pop, pop. The other toes went. Pop.
“Ahhhhh,” the spectators murmured. It was a sound that rose toward hysteria as the Princess’ legs exploded, one immediately after the other, two ear-clobbering slams. Then arms. Then, with a howl, her head. Her torso spun end over end, bouncing across the stone floor and coming to rest against the wall in a scandalous manner but remaining miraculously intact so that the same small, lewd boy, escaping his aunt, approached warily.
And then the last of the Frozen Princess blew, lifting the boy up and out a window, as though his exit had been choreographed, and creating a dark hole in the floor.
And everyone came and peered in the hole and could not see the bottom but felt dizzy and reckless, as though they might plunge into its upside-down night. Quickly, they backed away.
The Room of Screams was empty and night was upon the castle and everyone was saying that it was a shame about the Frozen Princess but that perhaps it was for the best (a common attitude toward the misfortune of others).
This was the hour when sleep is so heavy and time so slow and the night so long that the drowsing heart ponders whether it should take another beat and finally thinks, oh, why not?, and it’s always that close, just a shrug in the uncertain dark. It was then that something crawled out of the hole. If you had been there you would not have heard it coming. But you would have felt it. There is a part of the brain born to sense the approach of such things. This part of the brain is very old. It has always been there because it has always been acquainted with the thing that came out of the hole after the Frozen Princess went off. In the old days, this part of the brain contained a powerful, deadly poison, and, on sensing the presence of the Abyss Dweller, it flooded the body with oblivion.
If you had been there, turned away from the hole, just admiring a new rack or gouging tool, humming softly, glad that the Room of Screams wasn’t something a man (or woman) of your class had to fear…that part of your brain would have sensed it.
“Die!” it would shout, and it would discover then, sad appendix to intelligence, that this modern world had made a mistake. It was now an obsolete organ, and it had no lethal poison, no killing tricks.
You would realize, with acid panic, that you couldn’t die. You would realize you were in Big Trouble.
Harry watched Emily descend. No one else in the room moved; even the Ember people had ceased their wanton play in Raymond’s hair and were watching.
Something bad was going to happen, and it was inevitable.
Harry rose up, shouting, his whole body shaking.
He dove toward Emily and caught her in his arms and the chill that was within her entered him, like an Arctic sea, brutal and implacable. He fell backward, Emily following him to the floor.
And he saw her face, her glazed eyes, saw blood on her lips and saw, on her shoulder, the disembodied hand, resting like a glass spider. The flesh under the proprietary clasp of ice fingers was blue. Harry reached for the hand to pry it loose, and it leapt up and caught him by the throat, and his head was instantly severed, or so it seemed, perched on a marble pillar, and he could not breathe and the room flickered in gray light. He saw the room’s ceiling, its familiar acoustical tiles, and the face of Mitford floated into view, filled with concern. The psychologist was wearing a suit. His face seemed oddly naked, and Harry realized that the tattooed stitches that outlined his lips were gone.
Mitford was saying something, reaching for Harry. He was jostled from view by Raymond, who bent close to Harry and seemed to be shouting, although Harry could hear nothing. The Ember people had fled Raymond’s hair, and Raymond was wearing one of the hospital’s gray sweatshirts. He was holding a styrofoam cup, lurching forward with it, the black, steaming liquid spilling out, small pinpricks of pain splattering Harry’s cheeks.
Harry’s throat was suddenly released. His body came alive, his throat a smoldering column of pain. Sound rushed in: shouts, screams, a door slamming, glass breaking. Mitford was wrestling with Raymond. Allan clutched them both and brought them to the floor. Harry was jerked around by the pain, flopping like a fish, and he saw Emily, lying very still, her head sideways on the floor and she saw him and light bloomed in her eyes.
Her smile reassured him, and he drifted into the darkness without fear.
The brace they used to keep his head immobile during the healing sometimes seemed to contribute to the pain, as though his shoulders were in a vise. He floated in a lotus dream of drugs, and people came and went in the fogged window of his perception. He remembered Raymond standing at the foot of the bed, sobbing, saying he was sorry. And he remembered telling Raymond not to apologize. “You saved my life,” Harry whispered. Harry was certain that this was the case, although he did not try to explain what that meant, certainly not to Mitford who interpreted what had transpired in mundane terms: Emily had had an epileptic fit and Raymond, in his zeal to be of assistance, had accidentally poured a scalding cup of coffee on Harry. This did not explain Emily’s being dragged off the ground by a ghostly hand, nor did it address the matter of transformation (i.e. group therapy turning into Blackwater Castle’s Room of Screams).
One explanation for the events might, Harry knew, be hallucination, but if so, it was a communal delusion, obviously shared by Raymond, Emily, Rene, and Allan. Harry also suspected that Mitford had seen more than he would admit.
“Tell me about Zod Wallop,” Mitford said. He tossed a glossy copy of the book on the bedcovers.
Harry shrugged. “It’s my most successful children’s book.”
“And your last.”
“Yes.”
“Why’s that?”
“I didn’t feel like writing any more books.”
“Because your daughter died. And yet this book was written after your daughter died.” The psychologist tapped the picture book and sat down on the edge of the bed. Harry, propped up by pillows in the bed, his head gripped by an intricate orthopedic device, felt trapped.
“I want to call Helen Kurtis,” Harry said. “And I want to call my ex-wife.”
Mitford nodded. “Yes, I understand. We have had this conversation before, Harry. As soon as your condition has stabilized, you can talk to whomever you wish. You can leave here, for that matter.”
“Why can’t I leave right now? You can’t hold me prisoner,” Harry said.
Mitford assumed a hurt, rueful expression. “Of course not. I’m not your enemy, Harry. We can keep you here, however, for your own good. You might think of yourself as a man who has been exposed to a deadly virus and is being quarantined. You and your companions at Harwood Psychiatric were exposed to a drug that seems to have certain communicable properties.”
“Those are not my companions,” Harry said. “I was in Harwood Psychiatric for depression, and at that time I met Raymond Story. I had never met Emily or Rene or Allan until Raymond showed up at my doorstep.”
“Exactly,” Mitford said, slapping his thighs. “That’s what’s so fascinating. You and your friends have established a sort of gestalt—I’m sure you know the word—which seems independent of physical contact. Emily and Rene and Allan all visited Harwood while you were there, though. And Raymond knew you all.”
The psychologist seemed profoundly pleased with himself.
“So what?” Harry said.
“Marlin Tate administered Ecknazine to all of you, that’s what.”
“I’m afraid I’m still not following you. What does that have to do with anything? It seems to me that the only thing we have in common is legitimate grounds for a whopping big lawsuit.”
Mitford waved his hand. “I’m sure Dr. Blaine would be willing to compensate you all beyond the dreams of the most litigious lawyer. It’s not a lawsuit you have in common; it’s Zod Wallop.”
“Zod Wallop?”
The psychologist nodded.
Harry sighed. “Zod Wallop is a children’s book that Raymond has some odd notions about,” he said, speaking slowly now, cautiously. “He seems to have convinced both Rene and Allan of the reality of his delusions, but I don’t see what their gullibility—they are mental patients, after all—has to do with your so-called gestalt.”
Mitford stood up and walked to the wall where he studied a painting of a barn that appeared to be under siege by swallows or bats. He turned, walked back to the bed and, leaning close enough for Harry to smell the alcohol on his breath, studied Harry’s immobilized head with a sort of clinical madness burning in his eyes, a greedy look, a fat-child-eyeing-a-cookie jar look.
“There are two Zod Wallops, aren’t there?”
A strange, irrational fear stilled Harry’s heart. He found he was holding his breath; he exhaled slowly.
“Two Zod Wallops,” the psychologist continued. “And in the first of them, created while you were a resident of Harwood Psychiatric, the drawings are of hospital staff and patients. These caricatures are quite recognizable and include Rene and Emily and Allan, people you had not met at the time of the book’s creation. We do not have the book itself, but we have obtained excellent photos of its contents, and there is no denying the likenesses. My own employer is a prominent character in the book.”
The Gorelord, Harry thought.
“It could all be an elaborate hoax,” Mitford continued. “But the question then is: to what purpose?”
Harry was silent. What purpose, indeed.
“It’s an ugly book,” Mitford said, causing Harry to slowly rotate his upper body to regard the shrink with new interest. Mitford was frowning, musing to himself. “Not something you’d want a child to see, at all. Not an uplifting message. I mean…” He turned and regarded Harry with bafflement. “What is it saying, after all? That it is better not to live? Really.” He shrugged, turned, and walked toward the door. A hand on the doorknob, he muttered to himself. “I don’t have children,” he said. “But if I did, I can tell you I wouldn’t read them Zod Wallop. Not that ugly first book with its relentless gore and despair, and not the second either. In some ways, the second is creepier, sicker…once one has read the first one. I mean, once you know… you can’t help thinking the second’s all sunny lies, now can you? You don’t believe for a second that things will really work out. Lydia stopping the river of stone with a kiss…I don’t buy it. You can’t help thinking there’s a missing page, something ugly like one of those pop-up corpses at the end of a horror movie. It’s an uneasy feeling…” Mitford’s voice died away and he looked up, smiled wanly (but at nothing in particular; he certainly wasn’t seeing Harry), and left, closing the door softly as he went.
An uneasy feeling. Harry knew just what he meant.
Mitford smiled at the secretary, a succulent charmer named Rachel, who didn’t return his smile, seemed to have to squint just to register his existence, and who said, “Go on in. He’s waiting.”
Mitford pushed the door open and entered the big, carpeted office. CEO Blaine sat behind the black desk in a brown sweater that looked like something dogs might have fought over. He smiled, showing his toothless gums. Blaine liked to go toothless in the office, and Mitford was used to the sight but he could never entirely shake a sense of unreality. It was as though some old wino had slipped into the plush intelligence center of GroMel. Surely the corpse of GroMel’s true founder, some dapper, well-tailored Harvard prodigy, was stuffed under the desk or leaking its life’s blood into the executive bedroom’s jacuzzi.
But no, in fact this wizened derelict with the oddly sheeplike countenance, the deceptive blankness of eye and gaping red-lipped mouth, this feeble old codger in need of a shave and a haircut, this was the mastermind behind GroMel.
Blaine stood up. “Well Mitford, any progress?”
There was no chair to sit in, just miles of gray carpet and in the far corner some sort of green rubber plant. There were no windows. “Newark’s not going anywhere,” Blaine had told the architect. “I don’t need to keep an eye on it.”
Mitford turned as the door to the executive bedroom opened. Dr. Gloria Gill walked over to the desk and leaned against it. She was a stocky woman with a round face, short-cropped hair like a skullcap, and a wardrobe consisting entirely of black sweaters, black dresses, and black stockings. Mitford guessed that something sexual existed between Blaine and this woman, although Mitford didn’t like to think about it. Given a choice between sex with Gloria Gill or the Pillsbury Doughboy, Mitford figured he would spend the morning after showering off flour.
“Well,” Mitford said, “I think the videotape of Emily Engel floating in the air could be called progress. We have actual, physical evidence of psychokinetic phenomena.”
“I was thinking,” Blaine said, his voice deceptively sleepy, “more in terms of progress toward recovering the Ecknazine formula.” He coughed then, inhaled with a thin whistling noise, and said, “Gloria, the oxygen.” The woman came to his side, fiddled with something behind the desk, and then walked behind him. She fitted the transparent mask over his nose and mouth, patted his shoulder, and returned to the side of the desk.
Blaine closed his eyes, breathed deeply for a moment—his Adam’s apple bobbing as though he were gulping air—and then removed the mask and smiled. “I smoked two packs of unfiltered cigarettes every day for forty-seven years,” he said. “I don’t recommend it if you plan on growing old.”
Mitford nodded. “Are you all right?”
Blaine slapped his hands on the desk. “As right as acid rain!” he shouted. Dr. Gill, standing by the desk like an honor guard, laughed soundlessly, the only indications of her mirth being a rocking motion and closed eyes.
Blaine said, “The Ecknazine. If we can regain the formula, we can have subjects aplenty. It’s the formula we want.”
“Yes, of course,” Mitford said. “Unfortunately, I haven’t discovered anything about the chemical nature of the drug. What I am able to study is the group dynamic, the result. It’s fascinating. Gainesborough’s children’s book, this Zod Wallop, seems to serve as a sort of fulcrum for the psychokinetic effects, and if—”
Gloria Gill snorted loudly. “Waste of time.”
Mitford worked at a smile. He hated this Gill woman, one of those brain-dicing bitches who thought everything was synapses and serotonin levels.
Blaine looked at the woman and smiled. He said, “Dr. Gill believes the time for this therapy fishing is over. She’s already run a battery of tests. More radical and intrusive procedures are now in order. Her early workup suggests that at least one of the subjects, the Engel girl, may, as a result perhaps of her impaired condition, still contain traces of the original drug. If that’s the case, then extracting such trace elements would seem to be our best plan of attack. Dr. Gill suggests we start immediately. I’m inclined to agree with her.”
Mitford had known it would come to this. “If we lose these subjects, we lose everything,” Mitford said. “We lose any knowledge they might have that could lead us directly to a cache of the drug. I believe there may be several other subjects, and we will never find them if we submit this group to procedures that render them useless.”
“We don’t have all the time in the world,” the woman said. “All traces of the drug may be lost if we don’t act now.”
“A month,” Mitford said. “Give me another month.”
“A week,” Blaine said. “We’ll give you a week.”
“I can’t—”
Blaine stood up. “You will excuse me now. I have to move my bowels.” He strode quickly across the floor into the executive bedroom. It was clear that the conversation was at an end.
Gloria Gill smiled at Mitford. “Just tell them
to talk fast,” she said. “Tell them to feel the feelings while the feeling’s good.”
Chapter 17
THIRTY-SEVEN DAYS HAD passed since Harry’s disappearance. Helen Kurtis sat at her desk and pored over a legal pad, seeking Harry’s trail in her notes. Arbus was asleep behind her on the bed. He was wearing pajamas with clowns (Helen had discovered an unlooked-for maternal side that manifested itself in purchasing these tiny outfits).
The monkey reassured her, somehow. He was alive and there was nothing in his manner or character—he was something of a pleasure-seeker, cheerful, unreflective—that indicated he had suffered any trauma. Surely, if the others were dead, he would show it somehow, the horror would look out of his eyes.
The logic of this was, she knew, threadbare. But it was strengthened by her own conviction that she would have felt the loss of Harry if he were dead.
As it was, she only felt confused, old, ineffectual.
She had hired a private investigator who had, she assumed, bribed someone at Harwood Psychiatric Institute and so produced the brief biographies of Harry’s companions.
Paul Allan, son of the stunning Gabriel Allan-Tate, was a young man whose anger had set him at odds with authorities. Had his mother been poor, he probably would have been consigned to juvenile homes and jails, but his anger was identified as pathology thanks to his mother’s wealth. Harwood Psychiatric was his frequent refuge after outbreaks of rage and physical violence.
Rene Gold was addicted to alcohol and drugs and, according to her father, sex. In the write-up that Helen perused, her father was quoted as saying, “She’s the Devil’s work. She’ll put anything inside her, either end.”
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