The Horses of the Night

by Michael Cadnum

  At last she said, “There’s someone I want you to talk to.”

  When she did not immediately continue, I urged her. “Please tell me.”

  “You’ll be angry.”

  I laughed. “Impossible.”

  “You will, Strater. You’ll think I’ve been working behind your back.”

  “Have you been?”

  She paused. Nona rarely needed to be encouraged to share her thoughts. I opened my hands to say: please go on.

  “I shared your story with someone I know—someone who understands such things.”

  For some reason I decided to be just a little bit difficult. “Such things as what?”

  She waved her hand: you know.

  I did not want to remember the hallucinations, or whatever they had been. I sipped my coffee. “Who is this remarkable individual?”

  “His name is Victor Valfort.”

  “I’ve seen his books. He was one of your teachers.”

  “Something of a magician, too.”

  “In the sense of ‘artifice’?”

  “He uses hypnotherapy. He is an adept, if I can use that word, in dealing with the trance state. He’s been very successful at curing what used to be called hysterical symptoms.”

  “But it’s been two or three weeks since I had any sort of vision.” I tried to give the word vision a certain spin as I said it, as though having a hallucination was like having a cramp, or a spell of dizziness. I did not convince myself. I know I did not convince Nona.

  Her voice was low. She toyed with her spoon. “I study dying. How it happens, and what it means to the psyche as people—especially children—approach it. I can help children. I don’t know how to help you.”

  “And this man does.” It was not a question.

  “He’s in Paris.”

  “When will he be here?”

  “I’m suggesting that you go see him.”

  “You must be joking. You’ve seen all my appointments. I’m too busy.” I lowered my voice. “I’m all right now. Look at me—everything’s fine.”

  “Your symptoms are probably situational,” she began. “They will return when the conditions that caused them return. Right now you’re satisfied. Things are going well. In a crisis, your body chemistry will change. And your visions will come back.”

  “You have it all figured out.”

  “I knew you’d be angry.”

  “I’m not angry. It’s just that I think there’s no emergency.”

  “I don’t want to say anything that might hurt your feelings,” she said.

  “Such as?”

  “I think there’s something inside you. Buried. Some secret, or series of secrets.”

  I did not quite understand why her comments made me feel so tense. I glanced over at Fern. His radio was plugged into his ear, a black coiled wire out of his jacket collar that he kept adjusting. His eyes met mine. I tried to read his expression. Was there something wrong?

  I watched the candle flame, its untrembling blade tapering to a long, golden needle. The candlelight on Nona’s skin made her look like a woman shaped from oldest Egyptian gold. Her face was the mask of a Sybil. “I want you to promise to go see him,” she said.

  “I love Paris. When I get the chance—”

  Her hand was on mine now, squeezing. “Soon. Please.”

  My laugh was easy, relaxed. “I think I’m beginning to feel jealous of this magus.”

  “There’s no reason to.”

  “He certainly made a strong impression on you. Nona, look at me. I’m reliable. Steady. Sane.”

  “It’s called denial, Strater. Sooner or later, the hallucinations will come back.”

  31

  The night was calm. There were low clouds overhead, and a light drizzle. Some of the taller buildings seemed to vanish in the mist.

  Fern slid into the front seat, started the car, and the Mercedes floated into the traffic. The armored vehicle moved at a stately pace.

  “I have a good deal of faith in Dr. Valfort,” said Nona. “But I think you should be forewarned.”

  I had not agreed to see him. She was pursuing the subject. I chuckled, hoping to feel as good-humored as I sounded. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. He’s not one of those physicians who study the psyche because he’s completely mad.”

  “He has very strong opinions.”

  “That’s the warning?” I could not stand the friction between us, so leaned to her ear and kissed the soft, invisible down of her earlobe.

  “Maybe we can take the trip together,” I said.

  “Promise?”

  Denial. Maybe Nona was right. “Put on some music for us, Fern,” I said, and he seemed quite happy to steer what must have sounded like a troubled conversation into steadier water under the temperate strains of Telemann.

  We were another couple enjoying a San Francisco evening, sedated by music, and I forgot all but the moment, the gliding movement of the car, the jewels of the headlights. Sometimes there was drizzle on the windshield. Fog crept lower, closing over the tops of telephone poles and trees.

  “‘The darkness which is not art,’” said Nona.

  The lights of the traffic flowed over her, the shifting shadows of buildings, the rippling spill of headlights followed by the falling shaft of yet another shadow.

  I recognized the quote, vaguely. I asked her to repeat what she had said.

  “It’s one of your own phrases, Strater. From that article you wrote for Design Quarterly. You said that we are the ones who discover light, and music, all the ingenuity we use to make life an experience that we can endure. But beyond us always is the darkness that isn’t art, the Void.”

  “That’s a nice, cheerful line of thought to take at a time like this.” But I was a little disturbed. I was forgetting my work, my thoughts. Even now I had trouble recognizing the quote as my own.

  I patted the back of Fern’s seat. It was a more solid than usual piece of equipment, and I sensed that it, too, was armored, plated like the seat of a fighter pilot. “Let’s slip on down to the Marina,” I said.

  “You got it,” said Fern, his jaw working a wad of gum.

  We surmounted a hill, at an intersection I did not recognize, and fog was suddenly dense, ragged, swirling. It would break only to show a dash of distant lights, a glimpse of parked cars, and then it closed again.

  Slow. Beyond our control. Deliberate. The evening a video of itself that we reviewed from a point far in the future. The fog lifted. A car swept into the lane ahead of us. It was a dark shape, its chrome bright. The car squealed sideways. It blocked the street.

  Fern stepped on the accelerator, then slammed on the brakes as the car jockeyed to a new position, wedging us in. Fern worked the Mercedes into reverse, and backed up, driving fast.

  I turned to look and could see nothing. Beyond the car windows was an absence, a blank. There was nothing out there, only fog.

  And then there was a dark shape, a car rolling toward us down the hill, its headlights dead. Fern stood on the brake.

  “Keep going,” I said.

  That was the rule we had all learned. Keep moving. Don’t stop, ever.

  No hurry. Plenty of time. Fern looked at me for an instant that began to unfold into several seconds. He said, “Hang on.”

  He stared down the hill, his jaw working at the gum. He jerked the Mercedes into drive, and the big car accelerated. There was a feeling like joy at the sensation of speed. And there was another feeling: nausea and ice.

  We crunched into the dark shape before us, our own car lurching to one side as the tires howled. Fern gunned the engine, and both cars churned down the hill with a smell of sulfur from the rubber. Then Fern yanked the transmission into reverse, and shook off the crumpled hulk before us.

  Our car was slammed from behind, rocked from back to front, all of us thrown.

  Fern fumbled at the glove compartment. It would not open. Fog shrouded us. A wind stirred the blank wall of drizzle, and the fog broke into tatters,
into streamers and spinning wheels of vapor. We could see again.

  But the street had changed. There was movement, people in the dark. Cars were rolling into place on the sidewalks. Car doors opened. Figures were hurrying toward us, black-garbed men with dark stockings or ski masks pulled over their faces.

  Hurry, but with a certain lethargy. There were heavy thuds, chassis-shaking blows. I threw myself over Nona, taking her in my arms. Gunshots, I registered, my intellect gathering in the data while my body was rigid, nearly unable to move.

  Shotguns. Fern pounded the dash, fumbled at the glove compartment. The door would not open.

  Nona and I sat up, bracing ourselves. I wanted to say something to encourage Fern, but when I opened my mouth I could not make a sound.

  Fern pumped the accelerator, and we slammed back and forth, our vision blurred, Fern wrestling the car into one position after another, trying to run down men who escaped only by leaping walls or their own crumpled cars. But the Mercedes listed. It was faltering, the stink of scorched rubber burning our nostrils.

  We were slammed from behind again, and this time something had us. Fern floored the accelerator, and we dragged the wreck of a vehicle behind us, only to crumple into a car that blocked the hill.

  A car struck us from the side. The Mercedes rocked far to the right, then fell back. Our bodies were flung, wrenched, half-tumbled, seatbelts cinching hard around our waists.

  The music had continued until that last collision, a harpsichord’s spindly sound dashed into silence.

  The glove compartment had fallen open with the last crash. Fern reached into it. He had a pistol in one hand, and was wrenching at the steering wheel with the other, powering the engine. The car skidded, shrieked, shimmying in place, going nowhere.

  “Stay in the car,” he barked.

  There were sounds from the car roof, dull thuds. They were on top of the car now, these dark figures. The butt of a shotgun or a rifle struck the window beside me, and the glass did not shatter.

  Fern’s handgun was big, a .45 automatic he had praised for its “swamp-grade stopping power.” Fern levered the door open, and was outside.

  The big pistol made a wham that rendered one half of my head numb, and deafened me. Fern braced himself against the car and fired again. Fern kept firing, hanging onto the gun with both hands.

  And then he was gone.

  Down. Fern was down, and the car door was open.

  But surely that was a false impression of what had happened. Surely Fern was not hurt.

  There was a subtle vibration. The engine block creaked. The car began to moan. The windshield shivered, and spidered, fragments like chalk, like bone fragments, bursting inward. The car was buckling, forced back upon itself. The doors were jammed within their frames, and the windows exploded.

  One of the cars pressed the car door shut. We were in a fortress, and the fortress was beginning to cave in. The cars around us were pressing in, crushing the big, armored vehicle. The car trembled, durable enough to take the punishment only for awhile. The cars around us were big, too, and when the Mercedes would not crumple the cars methodically rammed its bulk.

  The seatbelts would not unbuckle. The straps cinched us tighter, restraining us, squeezing the air from our bodies.

  Nona was tight-lipped but calm as I contorted my way out of the grip of my seatbelt, without being able to work the catch. I helped her out of her harness.

  Free.

  We were out of the car.

  Chemically tainted steam exhaled from under the curling hood. Gasoline rained from the tank onto the asphalt. The structure of the car was strong, but very gradually the car squeezed back upon itself, steel whining, crying out, metal popping loose and whistling past us.

  32

  We both saw it at once: beside the battered, steaming Mercedes there was a figure on the ground, in the green water that trickled from the radiator. It was a man in a suit, and as Nona and I hurried toward it, it was clear that the man we knelt beside was Fern.

  His head was crushed, black and glistening remains streaming onto the street. Nona lingered with a physician’s urge to attend, to make right.

  Arms grappled for me. Figures had Nona. I struggled, freed one arm, and lashed out with my fist.

  It was the leisure of it all, the ease with which it all took place, that amazed and sickened me. It was a game, surely. No one was really going to be hurt. Fern’s injury was sham, and the police would be here soon.

  They held Louisville Sluggers. The labels on the bats were clearly visible in the unreal light, black tattoos on the flesh of the wood. Men stood ahead of us, beside the steaming hulk of the Mercedes.

  They had Nona. She was crying out.

  I registered this as I wrestled with the arms that held me, grappled me in place, a grip on the back of my head, in a knot of my hair, forcing me to watch.

  I fought, kicking, twisting. I wrenched my shoulders, and I was free. One of them crouched before me, his bat in his fists. The man took two quick, sideways steps and lifted the bat to strike my skull.

  My right fist caught his mouth, a sharp slither of tooth and lip behind the black nylon mask. He exhaled hot breath upon my fist. He gathered himself to strike. I charged him, knocking him down. Someone else’s bat whistled through the air, and caught my arm.

  There was a wet crack. I staggered, wallowing in a world that was suddenly sideways, lopsided, aswim and quaking. The pain was so great it wasn’t even pain, a neurological white noise.

  They’re hurting Nona.

  This time when they grappled with me, they held me harder, and there was no way I could work free. The hand at the back of my head, the hand digging into my scalp, searing my skull, forced me to look on.

  Nona was on the ground. She was hurt.

  The men worked hard, kicking, beating with bats aimed carefully, stabbing blows, work so quick that I could not associate it with Nona, except for the thought, wending through my semiconscious.

  They are killing her.

  I prayed, as I had prayed in the surf. Make me strong.

  I had no thought for myself. I called out for Nona, again and again. They worked her expertly, twisting her one way and then another with their blows, shifting the angle of my body so I could watch as they took their time, like figures engaged in ritual slaughter.

  Part Four

  33

  Whenever I opened my eyes, Rick was there, his hands clasped, his face taking on a smile when he knew that I was looking. But I always saw the look that had preceded the smile.

  Above me was a white, dead expanse—acoustical tile, with the holes in rows. I did not have to ask where I was. The familiar walls surrounded me, with that thick, glossy paint, paint so shiny passing people cast not only shadows but dim reflections. I recognized this place. I was in the Medical Center, a few floors from Nona’s children, and from her office.

  “You’re looking good,” Rick would say, and my eyes would roll back to him.

  There was one thought that returned again and again, amidst my morphine-coddled sleep: not dead.

  Nona can’t be dead.

  I felt the insistence, the denial, working against what my rational mind knew had to be true. Remember, I told myself: the sloppy crunch of the blows.

  The sickening, ugly sound of the bats.

  It’s better not to know. It’s always better. That way you can pretend that everything is the way you want it to be.

  Whatever you do: Don’t ask the question.

  I couldn’t wait any longer.

  I braced myself, and stared up at the ceiling. “How is Nona?” I asked.

  But my words had been soundless, airy nothings. I tried again as Rick knelt close. This time my words were audible.

  “They won’t tell me,” he said.

  I tried to sit up.

  “They won’t say anything about her,” he said. “When I ask they just give me that look—that doctor look.”

  The opiate was too strong, the pleasant l
ucidity lifting me, and yet pulling me from what I had to know, needed to know.

  “But I’m sure everything will be okay,” said Rick.

  Meaning: He wasn’t sure at all.

  I was alone.

  I grasped for the call button and missed. I took a moment to catch my breath, and this time I closed my hand around it and depressed the button.

  The male nurse who fussed over me said, “Don’t worry about her. You’re looking fine.” He was a big man, overweight, panting as he tucked in the sheets.

  Fine, I repeated to myself. The word was a steel blade, the sound of meat sliced. Fine. It was the sour echo of the word lie. I had suffered a serious concussion, and such patients need peace. You might even lie to a person like myself to keep that patient calm.

  “How is Nona Lyle?” I asked.

  The television was on to a news program, a handsome, silent woman giving voice to some information about Europe, I gathered, as the map of that continent spread into focus behind her.

  The nurse gave me a smile. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

  “I need to see Nona.”

  He pinned me to the bed as I struggled.

  My own family had been furtive when it came to injury and sickness. If one of us had ever been shot we would have stumbled home, and in answer to an inquiry about our health would have respond, “I’m fine, thanks.” There had always been that formality about our home, a calm that was both benign and maddening.

  I made an interesting discovery as I let myself relax, pretending to surrender the effort: I was not critically hurt. My arm was weak, badly bruised. I was stiff and ached all over. But I was not a wreck.

  As soon as the nurse reached the door, I worked my way to the edge of the bed. I sat up, posed dizzily, and stood.

  I was attached to various apparatus, tangled in transparent cords that reached into every limb, into one nostril and down my throat. When I lifted an arm a bag of saline solution swayed and a pole threatened to fall.

  As a tennis player, Barry Montague was gifted with a brilliant serve. His weakness had always been the quick strategy of the game. I had usually found him easy to work out of position, a victim of the well-timed counterstroke.