The Horses of the Night

by Michael Cadnum

  The pursuers were closer. There were voices, gasps. Far-off doors were flung open, a metallic thunder.

  I pushed. The barrier gave way, barely. It was unlocked, but it stuck. I slammed into it with all my weight. It burst open with a steel chuckle, scraping the crushed rock that had somehow worked its way under the door.

  My feet crunched gravel.

  Everything was quiet, open. There was freedom—air, sky. I was on the roof.

  So you understand at last.

  Her steps did not stir the crushed rock of the roof. She hovered there, as though a wrinkle of skin, a shrink-wrap sheath over the earth, kept her from touching the fragments of stone.

  She was indistinct, then, and just as quickly distinct, a source of pain now as well as light, as though the early symptoms of petit mal seizure had blossomed into hallucination.

  I was panting hard, unafraid. “It’s all a matter of cost, isn’t it? It’s all a matter of what a person is worth.”

  Her voice was the sizzle of surf on sand, the flutter of wing. “Nothing more. But, Stratton—you still don’t understand what I am.”

  “What you are? What difference does it make what you are? I know what you can do.”

  I took no pleasure, anticipating what I had to do. And yet I was sure of myself. I had that clarity of vision that comes from having no choice. I ran.

  Did I hear that voice in me, that source of light, calling me, telling me to go no farther?

  This was the sort of roof that should have been a garden, a landscape away from the tumult in the building below it. Instead, it was another waste. The roof in the dark was a disorienting desert. Vents brayed and vibrated, big metal hoods and domes. The smell in the air was like the clean, starchy smell vented from a laundromat.

  I stumbled, and recovered my stride. There was a walkway across the gravel, flat slabs of cinderblock set as steppingstones across the rough gray mesa. I followed this path, running easily.

  It was all a business, all a carnival, a noisy flea market, a brawling auction. I had guessed the secret. I climbed the dull, rough-surfaced edge of the roof, a low wall.

  For her. To bring her back. I was paying a life for a life, and in the blathering stock exchange of souls I had guessed right.

  54

  As I fell forward, something hooked my throat.

  A force tugged me back, and upward. The pressure increased. Something had my arm, a warm, bruising grip. Then something had my other arm, grasping, squeezing.

  “I have him!” I recognized Barry’s gasp.

  I was dragged back. Gravel scraped the heels of my shoes. Arms held me.

  There were voices, commands. These were people—nothing supernatural. People! I wanted to laugh. Human strength was nothing. The grasp of three men was not enough to keep me there. I climbed to my feet encumbered by their weight, but barely slowed by it.

  They could not stop me.

  Barry fell away, the exertion having spent him, sending him sprawling over the stones at my feet. Two more orderlies joined the men who held me, and they tried to wrest me off my feet, back to the roof’s surface where they could pin me. I could escape them easily, I was certain, but Barry’s eyes made me hesitate.

  His eyes beseeched me, and his hands clenched my pantlegs. “For God’s sake, Stratton, please!”

  His voice switched off a current in me.

  I relaxed, and with something like instinctive understanding, the men released me. I backed away. I fell to my knees.

  More figures joined us, and they played the nervous beams of flashlights into my face, around the metal vents on the lunar wilderness of the roof.

  I saw what Barry was, at that moment. Not simply the harried, work-wasted man. Not simply the man who could play a capable game of tennis. He believed in saving lives. Medicine was not a moneymaking career for him. He was a friend.

  I gazed through the twitching pools of light cast by the flashlights. There was Rick, beside a vent that resembled the great head of a robot. Rick was watching, and I did not recognize the expression in his eyes.

  All I could think was: Nona.

  Had to help Nona.

  The two men were talking. I sat in a chair, gazing at the floor. I was trapped. Outside the door was a very large orderly who kept looking in as though to make sure all was well. Barry had given me a shot, a syringe of what I imagined was Thorazine, in the muscle of my thigh. I could feel no effect from it, but perhaps that in itself was a result of the chemical. If the patient wonders if the drug is taking effect he is already calmer than he was.

  Trapped. Can’t help Nona.

  Gradually the drug made me feel thick-tongued, mildly concussed. I stood, and both men froze.

  The best scheme was to try to seem completely peaceful. I would express regret at having caused such a fuss. I spoke as calmly as I could. I took a deep breath and managed to clear my head. “Don’t you see how ridiculous this is?”

  “Sit down,” said Barry, “or I’ll have you put into restraints.”

  This formal way of putting it made “restraints” sound old-fashioned and grim, something out of Bedlam and the most remote gulag.

  There was a flash of anger inside me. I did my best to disguise it. “You’d be overreacting,” I said.

  “Hardly.”

  “There’s no reason for me to be here.”

  Even now there was a measure of caution in the way Barry treated me. I was, after all, Stratton Fields. “Please sit down,” said Barry. “You make me very nervous.”

  “I’m not even trembling. Look at my hands. Steady.” I looked over at Rick. “Have you ever seen steadier hands?”

  “Maybe you should sit down, Strater,” said Rick, with iron in his voice. “You’re giving Barry a nervous breakdown.”

  I sat once again, and knitted my fingers together. “Penning me up here will do no good. It’s not necessary. I suffered a fit of anguish.” I deliberately used a phrase I thought Barry would respond to.

  It almost worked. I could see Barry revolving “anguish” in his mind. “A fit of suicidal anguish,” he corrected me. “And now you’re entirely recovered—is that what you want me to think?”

  I lifted my eyebrows: Why not?

  Barry made a tight little smile: We both knew “why not.”

  We sat in an examination room. A long table was against one wall, and rumpled white paper covered it. There was a small desk, with a writing tablet taped into place, a spray of paper-wrapped thermometers and a tablet of prescription forms.

  For a moment I could think only: I’ve lost Nona.

  Barry looked very tired. It was an hour after our struggle on the roof. It occurred to me that Barry had been virtually living at the hospital. “I’m not just a physician in this case. We’re friends. Maybe that blurred my judgment.”

  “This wasn’t hard to understand,” said Rick. “Stratton thought Nona was …” He fumbled for a word and couldn’t find one. “He couldn’t go on.”

  “I can understand it.” Barry’s voice was breathy, torn. “But I can’t let it pass.”

  “Release him to me. I’ll take care of him,” said Rick.

  Barry shook his head. Someone happening upon us would have thought that Barry was the distraught mental patient, and that Rick and I were soothing counselors. “I’ve sent for someone who knows your family. I wouldn’t do it unless I thought Stratton was an emergency case. I admire your family. I admire you, Stratton. I’m scared, Rick. I think he’s really got problems.”

  “He’s upset,” said Rick.

  “There’s family history we have to consider.”

  Rick made a snort. “What do you know about our family?”

  “You have to face facts. The time has come.”

  Rick laughed, a jeer. “Christ, Barry. Listen to yourself. Do you realize how stupid you sound? ‘Face facts.’ You sound like a small mind, a little greeting-card intellect. We’ve suffered year after year in the public eye. I have too much champagne or scrape a fender on Tayl
or Street it’s in the paper. In the gossip column, Barry.” His voice had hardened, and Rick was on his feet. “People like us are expected to live like public monuments. Elegant, civilized. We can’t have careers, like your kind of person. We have to say the right thing, stand in the right places, like famous, boring public buildings.”

  His voice was gaining power. “‘Face facts.’ Your sort of person can go around uttering trite phrases like that while my brother—my brother, a man I love—is suffering from years of having to be a gentleman in a world of people made of plastic and stapled together with wise little phrases like ‘the time has come.’”

  I had never heard my brother speak with such feeling, not since boyhood. “And you think that this hospital, which my family helped build with its own money, is going to be a prison for Stratton Fields? Do you think I’m going to stand around while you put my brother in ‘restraints’?” He said the last word with something of Barry’s nervous manner.

  “How will you stop me?” said Barry.

  “You ordinary people,” said Rick quietly.

  “Are you going to get your family attorney on the phone? What’s he going to say? Do you think he’s going to talk me into letting Stratton go? I’m right, Rick. You’re wrong. Stratton’s my patient.”

  “I won’t let it happen.” Rick’s voice was quiet and fierce. “I won’t let your kind of ordinary person abuse one of us. We’ve never allowed that. We never will.”

  Barry was blanched, and Rick glanced at me and laughed unsteadily. “I’ve let my feelings show at last. That’s not our usual habit. I’ve given a little speech, haven’t I? Barry will think the two of us ought to stay here together. I wonder, do they actually have rubber mats on the walls, like in a gym. We can wrestle. You were always pretty good at wrestling.”

  The frankness with which Rick had spoken could not be withdrawn, and I saw that Barry was struck by Rick’s manner. I recognized Rick’s anger. It was an anger we shared, but I had never realized how furious Rick was.

  “It won’t work,” said Barry quietly. “I have a legal responsibility.” There was a weakness in his voice, however. He was not certain he could wage a battle against the forces of law and public opinion Rick and I could muster.

  I could see Rick readying a response.

  “I’ll stay,” I said.

  Both men looked at me.

  “I’ll stay—if that’s what Barry advises. He’s my doctor. Not that I agree with you, Barry. I agree with Rick, my eloquent brother. However—under protest—I will submit myself to whatever you have in mind. For a day or two.”

  This bit of diplomacy quieted the two men, and I could sense Barry’s gratitude. Rick, however, met my eye with something like a merry glance of his own. And winked.

  We would pretend to cooperate. We would placate Barry. After all, why damage an old friendship beyond repair? But in our own way, in a convenient moment, we would do exactly what we wanted to do.

  It was hardly a surprise to see a nurse in the doorway. Rick’s voice must have carried through the door. “There’s someone here to see you, Dr. Montague.”

  Barry opened his hand as if to say: We’re in the middle of a crisis here. He looked at me with a touch of weary humor, as if to say: I can’t get a moment’s peace.

  But the nurse stepped inside and whispered into Barry’s ear.

  “Good heavens!” said Barry. “Here?”

  The nurse whispered something else, and Barry stood.

  55

  How impossible it is to understand this surface that springs from nowhere, this moment-to-moment. What falls is neither the sparrow nor the night, because those things only appear to descend, called by weight or the roll of earth toward the planet’s core. What falls is what we dreamed of, prayed for, and were always certain would happen in just this way.

  Dr. Valfort entered the room briskly. He adjusted his necktie and gave me a knowing smile. I was not as surprised as I should have been. I thought: of course.

  Valfort looked for a moment at Rick. I knew that during my hypnotherapy I must have said some interesting things about my family.

  Barry was beginning introductions, but Valfort lifted a hand. “I should have flown out on the same plane with Stratton. I was jealous. I sulked.”

  “I am very happy to see you,” I said.

  “I am a man of moods, and I apologize. Marie scolded me. I realized my responsibilities. Here I am.”

  Barry continued to struggle through introductions, and Valfort shook hands all around, but there was an undertone of impatience to his voice. He looked rumpled, but jet lag agreed with him, softening the hawklike glance. “Stratton will understand what I have done. He and I are aware of Nona’s needs.”

  “We’ll be able to make some real progress,” said Barry. “And the staff will be delighted to meet with you—”

  Valfort spoke sharply. “The staff here is not interesting to me. I did not come here to ‘make progress.’ Nona Lyle has a history of hysterical trances, something that you will not find in her records, but which first encouraged her to study the mind. Please don’t interrupt me, Dr. Montague. I have examined Nona Lyle already. I do beg your pardon. I took a liberty.”

  Barry looked pleased, but reserved. “I’m delighted. I look forward to your conclusions.”

  Valfort silenced Barry with a wave of his hand. Valfort stepped before me, and although he spoke to Barry and Rick his eyes were on mine. “Stratton made an important decision tonight, I am told.”

  “Decision?” said Barry.

  “They tell me that you tried to take your life tonight, Stratton.”

  I acknowledged, with a nod more than a word, that this was true.

  “Did you think that you could exchange your life for hers?”

  My voice was husky. “Yes.”

  He closed his eyes, then slowly opened them. “It doesn’t work that way. The Powers we enjoin cannot do good. They give us good fortune only through harm. Surely you know that by now.”

  “And yet—here you are.”

  There was real warmth, and real sadness, in Valfort’s eyes. “You will misunderstand what I have been able to do,” he said.

  “It will be an honor to work with you, Doctor,” said Barry.

  Valfort studied Barry without a further word for a moment. “Dr. Lyle is very weak. In addition to her emotional trauma there was the physical drain of the probably unnecessary surgery.”

  Barry worked to control his temper. “You are late arriving to help us. We’re glad to see you. Of course. Distinguished and colorful. International. Perhaps when you have taken time to review every step we considered—”

  “Time is not important, although you are wasting mine. Dr. Lyle is conscious. She is asking to speak with Stratton.”

  As I strode with Valfort through the corridors of the hospital I was elated. The institutional colors of the walls and the floors were bright and the air was sweet.

  He squeezed himself before me, blocking my way. “I have not given permission,” he said.

  I ignored him, squeezing by. He walked fast to keep up with me. “I’m not at all certain what you will do.”

  “What sort of person do you think I am?”

  “I know one or two things about you, Mr. Fields. That’s why I am worried.” But he seemed to make a decision, relaxing his expression slightly. “Don’t say anything that would trouble her,” Valfort was saying.

  I reassured him. The thought was outrageous. I would do nothing to hurt Nona in any way. Besides, I didn’t want to stand there talking.

  Valfort took my arm and turned me to face him. I was irritated, tugging myself away, not wanting to waste time with argument.

  But there was something urgent in his manner. He held me with one hand, a firm grip on my shoulder. His dignified, weathered face was right before me, his eyes earnest.

  “I know you,” he said.

  Two white-clothed attendants had appeared, one on either side of me.

  “I know w
hat you think must have happened, Mr. Fields,” he was saying. “You think that you have saved Nona by using your powers. This is your belief. But what has happened is not an evil miracle. It is a matter of medicine. Of flesh and blood. If you see her return to life as a pact with your Powers then this is a very bad thing. It would be better for Nona to have stayed as she was.”

  I stiffened. “How can you say that?” I tore myself away from him.

  He took my arm again. “I know what you think you are capable of doing. I know what you think you are.”

  My voice was a hard whisper. “I want to see Nona.”

  He gave a quiet laugh with little humor. “A man without a soul has nothing to bargain with.”

  His words angered me, but they also stirred my doubt. Of course, I was forced to remind myself, the Powers would not have been at all interested in returning Nona to me. And what madness had possessed me all along? A man does not win his lover’s life through suicide.

  He perceived the sort of inner questions I was experiencing. “I want to save her life,” he said.

  “So do I.”

  “Please think of me as a friend. A difficult friend, but a real one. You do not live in the same world the rest of us inhabit.”

  The very slight effort it took him to choose the right words in English gave his communication greater weight. “You must hate me,” I said.

  “Do not hurt her, Mr. Fields.”

  I could hardly speak. “I can’t possibly hurt her.”

  “I hope what you are saying is true.”

  I wanted to joke, to turn aside his words with a laugh. But I could not. Perhaps I did not know my own nature after all.

  She was asleep.

  It was so simple—sleep had her now, not unconsciousness. Her skin had a hint of rose, of the old liveliness I recalled.

  I can’t wake her, I told myself. I will stand here and watch. I will stay here, in this vigil, without tiring.

  She stirred. Her lips parted. Her eyes searched behind their lids. How did this body before me hold within its flesh the spirit of the woman I loved? All the maps wither. The stars vanish. At a time like this there is no north, no south.