Black plastic garbage bags were bunched on the pavement, attended by bloated flies. She sank herself among the bags, merging into their creases. Something wet and sticky seeped along the pavement underneath. Her own smell—caked mud, moist vegetation, moss—mingled with the stench of the garbage. She reached into an open bag and scooped detritus over herself—a flattened milk carton, tin cans specked with coffee grounds, eggshell remnants, a blackened banana peel. She found two paper plates stuck together and pulled them apart to reveal a brown paste. It was full of squirming maggots. They writhed, danced, celebrated. They celebrate your death, Martha.
Martha’s chest spasmed.
Control yourself, Lovie. If you retch, they’ll find you.
She dry-heaved.
Don’t fight the garbage, Martha. Accept it. Become part of it. Become of it. You are nothing. You are garbage.
She relaxed, accepted the foulness, sank into it, vanished. Her spasms slowed.
Around the corner, demons chanted: You kill, to die. You kill, to die. You kill, to die. She also could hear the squawk of radios, voices, footsteps in the alley. A loudspeaker was moving along the main street, projecting messages. Some of the messages were incomprehensible, but all were about her, the terrible danger she had brought.
Things were crawling on Martha’s skin—the tickle of footpads, the writhe of segmented bodies. She resisted the urge to move, to scratch. Instead, she focused on the sounds of the street, the messages, the chanting.
Evacuation order…she kept hearing that phrase in the din, and she liked the sound of it, the idea of it. If she could only stay still and hide long enough, there would be no one left to find her.
She heard the EMT voices get closer. Footsteps in the alley approached the Dumpster, paused, moved on. “I’m going to check down by the waterfront,” someone said. The footsteps and voices receded, heading in different directions. A quiet, understated rumble of thunder was the last thing she heard before sinking into an exhausted oblivion.
—
Martha was in the marsh again. This time it was high tide. She was in the water now, being swept along by a river current. She was floating on her back, like a raft or log, and above her the sky was gray and turbulent. The sky was sobbing, hurling thousands of teardrops, dissolving the boundaries between air and water. She was swept along, knowing she had no other choice. The water had plans for her.
The river tumbled into the ocean and she was swept out to sea, subsumed by sea foam, rolled under the waves and carried into twilight depths, sinking toward murky structures of coral and stone.
On the floor of the ocean she saw a car—her parents’ old Saturn. Martha could see the pale faces of her parents through the front windshield. She swam toward them.
The car was full of seawater. Inside, her parents’ faces bobbed like mushrooms, hair billowing around their faces.
Her father was banging his fist against the window, pointing at the door handle. He opened his mouth and made a garbled sound, bubbles escaping. He banged on the window again, pointing. Martha grabbed the handle and yanked. The door was stuck. Floating, she braced her feet against the door and pulled with all her strength. The car shifted. She looked down and saw a chasm opening on the seafloor, releasing an orange glow. Her father opened his mouth again, saying something she couldn’t understand. She jerked again and again. Her father kept banging. The fissure widened and the Saturn tumbled into the vortex, dragging her along.
She was lost in an upward surge of bubbles. Then the bubbles cleared, and she found she was floating again, suspended, no longer in seawater, but in something thicker, some biotic fluid. It had a dark reddish tint. She heard a dull hum that was both inside her head and outside of her.
She had lost the car, her parents were gone, and she was floating in a glowing red cavern, crisscrossed with great tubes, like blood vessels. Amoebae floated through the vitreous fluid, dozens of them, wheeling and drifting.
One of the amoebae landed on a vessel. It bent its translucent ectoplasm into an L shape. Martha thought it was looking at her…or would be looking at her, if it had a face.
“There isn’t anyone coming here, you know,” the amoeba said, crossing its pseudopodia. “You have to help yourself.”
“How? I don’t even know where I am. I can’t do anything sensible.”
“No, you can’t. You need help.” The amoeba wrinkled a dark, jellied mass near its top. Martha thought it might be an eye. But amoebae don’t have eyes, she remembered. What was that part called? The contractile vacuole.
“But who can help me?” Martha asked. “They all want to put me away. There’s no one I can count on. No one.”
“No one at all? Think hard.”
The amoeba’s upper region contracted into a different shape. Cilia clustered around its chin, or where its chin would be, offering her a clue.
“Yes, that’s right. Think of your friends. Who can you trust?”
With that, the amoeba oozed back into an amorphous shape and rolled forward, peeling itself from the vessel. “Who can you trust?” it repeated as it rejoined the others, which were drifting like snowflakes toward the impenetrable murk below.
There was a loud BOOM, a thunderclap, and Martha surged upward, rushed violently toward the surface.
Martha woke to see a river of water streaming across the pavement, carrying bits of debris: cigarette butts, leaves, pine straw. Her skin was wet and she smelled ozone in the air. Above her, the gray metal canister of a transformer smoked. Wind howled in the alley, and the wires connected to the transformer swung and twanged. The streetlights were out. It’s the transformer, she thought. The transformer had blown. The light was darker now, gray, not quite night.
The rain beat down, drumming on the Dumpster lid, tapping on the dark green plastic around her head. An eave above the Dumpster poured out water in a gush.
The image of Vince, from the dream, lingered in her mind like a bulwark amid the chaos. His office phone number, burned into memory, marched through her head. Maybe that’s what the amoeba meant—the answer is within. If she could find a phone, she would call him, and he would take her someplace safe and dry, someplace warm, and they would talk. She would explain what really happened, about Lydia’s murder, and he would believe her. She listened to her own thoughts inside her head. The demon chants had disappeared, replaced by the hissing and drumming of the rain. She had a chance, an opening. Yes, yes.
Martha grasped the edge of the Dumpster and pulled herself to her feet. Her wet clothes stuck to her body, and she was shivering. She stepped around the corner and headed back out toward the main street.
She reached the sidewalk, held on to the masonry, and glanced up and down the dull gray waterfront, looking for someone she might borrow change from to make the call, but River Street was deserted. No one in sight—not even a car. CLOSEDsigns hung in the shop windows, many of which were crisscrossed with tape or boarded up with plywood.
The rain pattered steadily on the cobblestone street and prickled her skin. She started down the sidewalk. This is a tourist area, she thought. There must be phones somewhere….
She rested against the wall of a T-shirt shop, sheltered from the rain by a canvas awning. Behind the taped glass, a T-shirt read GEORGIA: SQUEEZE MY PEACHES. She shifted her weight to rest against the sill, and heard something crackle beneath her feet.
She hopped backward, leaned against the wall, and picked two small shards of glass from the bottom of her foot. The dots of blood mingled with the rainwater and flowed through the creases in her sole.
She looked up and saw the source of the glass fragments. Broken triangles hung like dinosaur teeth inside the window to a second-story office. They dangled from tape strips.
Looking at the sidewalk, Martha noticed larger pieces of glass in front of the shattered doorway to a store. The sign above the storefront read MITCHELL’S CAMERA & ELECTRONICS. The door stood partway open, the jamb busted. Splintered wood. The shelves behind the window were dish
eveled and empty, the display merchandise gone. Security cords dangled like umbilical cords.
She limped around the broken glass and entered, stepping out of the rain. She ignored the chaos at the front of the store and looked around, staying focused on her single, shining idea.
Martha stepped over a toppled rack and worked her way through the debris. The store was small and crowded with merchandise, much of it in disarray. In back was a long counter with a hinged leaf and a sign that said EMPLOYEES ONLY. Behind the counter, attached to the wall, Martha saw what she was looking for—a plastic wall phone.
As she went behind the counter, a desk chair swiveled around to face her. Its occupant sat with his hands behind his head. Smoke curled out of his nostrils. Dragon breath.
Oh bugger! You think that’s gonna work? In this weather? You’re off your nut, woman.
Martha stepped past Lenny, ignoring him, holding on to the counter to steady herself, and went straight for the phone. It’s only rain, Martha thought. Not much wind, at least not yet. Maybe the phone lines are intact.
She lifted the handset from its cradle and placed it to her ear. Silence.
Lenny burst out in croaking laughs. All that work, cut yer feet up an everythin’, for a brown bread phone. Are you ever going to get anything right?
Martha struggled to hang on to her concentration, her tenuous thread of purpose. Don’t give up. Focus. Think. Her leg was killing her, and she noticed that her field of vision was shrinking, turning into a circle that blurred and darkened at the edges. In the center of that circle, the phone itself. Along the side of the phone, a series of plastic buttons, with labels. The next-to-last button had a handwritten label—OUTSIDE LINE. She pressed that button. A red LED came on. The handset emitted a dial tone.
But you can’t remember the number, can you, Lovie?
Simple. Of course I can remember it. She dialed “1,” then with a shaking finger, punched in the area code for Vince’s office.
Ten, nine, eight, Lenny rambled on. Four, eight, seven…let’s see, what was your childhood phone number? Two-two-seven…
Martha lost her place…did she dial the eight yet?
Nine, two, three, now I’ve got to wee…seven, eight, ten, you’re going to the pen.
Martha ignored Lenny’s stream of babble and punched the last two digits. The phone at the other end rang. Yes. Sometimes, between sessions, Vince answered the phone himself. Martha gripped the phone cord in her fingers. Please let it be you, Vince. On the second ring, a female voice answered.
“Hello?” It was an unknown voice, an older woman, not the familiar voice of Vince’s receptionist. “Hello? May I help you?”
“Dr. Trauger…” Martha started. Her voice came out thin and hoarse.
“Hello? Could you speak up, please?”
“This…Dr. Trauger’s office?”
“This is his answering service. Dr. Trauger will be on administrative leave through August fifth.”
Two-four-six-eight, who do we appreciate?
“Shut up, Lenny—”
“I beg your pardon?” The woman’s voice was impatient. “Would you like to leave a message?”
“Did you say admin—”
“I’m sorry?”
All for the green team, stand up and holler! Lenny sprang up between Martha and the wall, shouted in her face, his breath smelling of stale beer and tobacco. She spun away from him and fumbled the phone.
“SHUT UP, LENNY. STOP IT.” The phone clattered against the wall. The handset dangled from its cord, making cricketlike chirps.
See? There’s no one to help you, Lovie. No one at all.
Martha heard the sound of the rain through the broken door, hissing like a giant steak on a griddle. The air outside was full of rain, more rain than it could hold. She felt herself surrendering, sliding toward the linoleum, her circle of vision turning into a tunnel. But the child, she thought. What about that poor child…?
Martha closed her eyes and looked inward, traveled deep inside, back to that place where she had first seen the shape in the cloth sack. And she found her way to the dark shed and it was still hanging there, suspended in a faint ray of sunlight, under a stir of dust motes—the tumescent sack, weighed down by the child’s form.
Don’t give up, Martha told the child, transmitting her thoughts. It’s all right. I can’t help you now. I’m so sorry. I know you were counting on me. But don’t give up. Someone will get there, I know they will.
The shape was silent, unresponsive. Martha’s eyes popped open. “No—”
Lenny was standing over her now, his sallow face tilted forward. The rain was still hissing outside, and the tarnished cross dangled from his earlobe. Like I already told you…you’re too late, Lovie.
“No no no.” Martha wanted to get to her feet, to move, to run, but her limbs wouldn’t respond.
I’m all you’ve got left, Lenny said, moving closer, eyes full of hunger. Now it’s just you and me.
Chapter 27
Vince paced on the redwood deck. No escape from the self. No diversions except for long walks, his journal, and his bungled attempts at woodcarving. His supervisor at the Emory clinic had assured him that this was the fastest path to healing, but it was proving to be more of an ordeal than he had bargained for. Not that he had a choice in the matter.
The wind stirred through tall pines beyond the deck railing of the cottage. The surface of Lake Claire was dark gray and choppy today, a Jungian mirror of his own mental condition. But the weather was not caused by his mood, it was a consequence of Carlos, an Atlantic hurricane swirling off the Georgia coast more than three hundred miles away. That much he’d gleaned from his morning half hour of NPR news, his one sliver of connection with the outside world.
Vince sat, blew away the wood shavings, and inspected his work. After an hour or more of obsessive whittling with his knife, the eye he’d been trying to fashion out of a wood knot was beginning to resemble a small volcano. Earlier, he’d thought he could see some marvelous potential in the driftwood, perhaps the shape of a great whale breaching the surf.
You just gotta find the secret in the wood, his father would always say. Don’t force it. Listen to what the wood is trying to tell you.
He sliced and sawed around the remaining bit of branch that protruded from the knot. The nodule of branch popped out, leaving a grotesque cavity. Not eyelike at all. He put the knife down on the glass table and stood.
A sudden breeze stirred the pine needles in the surrounding trees and blew most of the wood shavings off the table. A distant, noncommittal rumble of thunder. Vince turned, opened the sliding door, and went into the cottage.
Several of his father’s folk-art wood sculptures peered at him from different places in the room. The one Vince called “Buckley,” all teeth, leered from the coffee table. “Malcolm” watched from the mantel, his shy, comical face emerging. Always emerging. Malcolm was a fixture in Vince’s office—a favorite of many of his patients. Vince had brought him to the cottage as a kind of mascot during his two-week sabbatical.
He craved the normalizing routines, the affirmation of work. Email. Escapes, avoidances. Anything. He wondered how his patients were doing. He walked over to the mantel, placed his hand on his Android. Just one call, just to check in.
Vince pulled his hand away from the device and placed his chin on the wood surface, touched his forehead against the cool mirror that ran the length of the fireplace. You will get over this. You will recover. No one can blame you. The disease is still so mysterious, so little understood, so unpredictable….
But would he ever regain his confidence, the one quality his ability to heal others depended upon? More doubtful was the future of the Village, the career development center for the mentally ill, a program he had established and staked his career on. Would it ever recover from the bad publicity?
It didn’t help that Vince had gone on the local TV affiliate just three months ago to gab about his doctrine of accelerated normalization. A jo
b, gainful employment, that was the best therapy, Vince had said on camera. He had believed it then, and he still believed it, passionately. And favorable publicity was essential to reverse stereotypes about the mentally ill. They were no more prone to violence than any other segment of society—less so than average, in fact.
Then a case like Martha came along. The exception, the rare schizophrenic who turned to violence. The media pounced on such stories like jackals. Such incidents lingered in the public mind like urban legends, setting back years of good work.
Unquestionably, Martha had relapsed. That much was clear from the testimony of her landlady and other tenants about her hysteria and delusions. God knows what had really happened in that little town, what hallucinations had compelled Martha. She may have believed the woman she killed was some kind of monster, perhaps an alien in human form who needed to be destroyed. Maybe Martha thought she was saving the world.
But…there was nothing in Martha’s case history to suggest a potential for violent behavior. With her intelligence, focus, and determination, Martha had been a model case. He’d prescribed a regime of antipsychotics and sent her back out into the world to do good work, to become a productive and independent member of society, with monthly checkups. He’d even published a brief about her in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
A month later, the whole shining edifice of his doctrine had crumbled. Two people were dead—the old woman and Martha herself. Or was she? Vince’s thoughts turned once again to a review of the painful, undisputed facts of the case:
An old woman, Martha’s employer, was dead. Garroted with a drapery cord.
Martha was at the woman’s house on the night of the murder.
There was little sign of struggle. The assailant was someone the woman knew and trusted.
When police arrived, the house was locked from the inside. No sign of forced entry.
Particularly galling was the fact that Martha’s body hadn’t been found. She fled, was shot in the leg, and escaped. The trail of blood led to a canal. And then, what? The area had rapid tidal surges, so her body was swept out and might never be found. At least, that was what the local authorities would have you believe. But they had to find her, because if they didn’t, Vince knew he would never find closure. His mind would never let go of the notion that she might still be alive out there, somewhere. Needing him.
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