by AJ Steiger
His shoulders slump, and he chuckles hoarsely. “Strong. Yeah, I guess that’s how I wanted you to see it.” He shakes his head and gives me the most mirthless smile I’ve ever seen. “The truth is, I’ve been cheating.”
“Cheating?”
He lowers his head and splays his long fingers over his scalp, cradling his head in his hands. “I’ve been getting my own memories erased.”
My eyes widen. “After every client?”
“Not every client. Just the really bad ones.”
The words leave me dazed, baffled. It never even occurred to me that we could choose to forget our own Mindwalking experiences, that we could erase the things we see in others’ minds. Memory modification is not something to be done lightly; there’s always some risk. The idea of going through it multiple times is mind-boggling. “They let you do that?”
“It’s not encouraged. But it’s possible. I did it the first time out of sheer desperation, and then it sort of turned into a habit. Not that I remember much now, but apparently I kept going back to Dr. Swan. Kept begging him. I asked him not to tell anyone, so he didn’t.” His mouth twists in a bitter smile. “Everyone thought I was so resilient. They were all so impressed by how many tough clients I could take on without cracking.” He lets out a hollow laugh. “Of course, I should’ve known it couldn’t go on forever. Last time, when I went in to get my head cleaned out, he told me that I had to stop. That if I kept doing this, I’d damage myself. There’s only so many times you can modify a person’s memories before his brain turns to mush. So now I’m stuck with it.” He stares at the wall, as if he can’t bring himself to look at me. “It felt like being ripped open.”
“Ian …” The words die in my throat. What can I possibly say?
He meets my eyes. “You’ve never erased any of the memories, have you? From the immersion sessions, I mean.”
“No.” My voice sounds very small. I sit on the edge of the bed, clutching the compact.
He presses the heels of his hands against his closed eyelids. “I don’t know how you can take it. How you can live with all that pain, day after day.”
I swallow, my throat tight. “I couldn’t, though. The first time I went through what you did, I ended up in the psych ward for a week.”
“But you recovered. You went back on the job. I—I don’t know if I can keep doing it, Lain. Look at me.” He lowers his hands and watches them tremble. “Look what I’ve become. I can’t sleep. Can’t eat. My grades are already slipping. My life’s falling apart.”
I tuck the compact into my coat pocket, rise from the bed, walk over to him, and take his hands in mine. “Have you told anyone?” I ask. “Your mother, at least?”
His Adam’s apple bobs up and down. “I can’t tell her. She—she’s in this special, weeklong intensive therapy program. After they caught her dipping into some of the drugs at work, they scanned her, and she came up a Two. If she can’t get her Type back up, she’ll lose her job, and she’s already got a lot of debt and other stuff that I didn’t know about until now.” Tears glint at the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to us.”
“Oh, Ian.” Everything inside me aches. All this time, I’ve been so worried about Steven, I’ve barely thought about what Ian’s going through. I just assumed he’d be okay, the way he always is. “I’m sorry.”
He squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m scared, Lain.”
I put my arms around him.
He starts to tense up, then goes limp against me. “I must seem so pathetic to you,” he whispers. “So weak.”
“You’re not weak.” I tighten my embrace. “It’s all right. You can let go.”
His chest hitches once, twice. Then he lets out a sound somewhere between a moan and a sob, the sound of a dying animal. He crumples to the floor, like his legs have been cut out from under him. We both go down.
The door bangs open. Steven stands there, his eyes wild. “Lain, I heard—” He freezes. I sit in the corner, rocking Ian back and forth as he cries softly against my shoulder.
Steven and I are silent during the ride home. He doesn’t ask about what happened, and I don’t tell him. My shirt is still wet with Ian’s tears, and it occurs to me that in the span of twenty-four hours, two boys have broken down in my arms. I’m starting to wonder if my body emits some pheromone that attracts emotionally damaged males.
Once Ian got ahold of himself, we talked some more. He told me not to worry, that he’d be okay, that he and his mom had some money in savings and it would be enough to float them until she found another job. He claimed, too, that he’d work on getting his own mental state under control. That he was just tired, just overwhelmed. I don’t know whether to believe him.
I pull out the compact and flip it open. “Here it is.”
“This is Lucid?” Steven picks up the blue bunny pill. “What do these pictures mean?”
“I guess that’s how they mark the different dosages. Ian said to start with the bunny.”
“What else did he say?”
“That it might make you hallucinate.”
“So how will we know if what we’re seeing is a memory or a hallucination?”
“I asked Ian the same question. He didn’t have an answer.” I give Steven a tiny smile. “But if the giant purple hummingbirds chasing you start to sparkle, it’s probably a safe bet that you’re hallucinating.” I try to ignore the tightness in my stomach, the way my heart is trying to crack through my ribs. “Have you ever taken something like this before?”
“No. I may be a pill popper, but I tend to stay away from psychedelics. The inside of my head is not a fun place to be.”
My doubts flare up again. “You know, this could be dangerous. Ian said there was a study, and one of the subjects tried to jump off a building.”
“Then as long as we stay away from tall buildings, we should be fine.”
I give him a skeptical look.
He smiles grimly. “We’ve come this far.” His fingers curl around the pill. His pulse drums visibly in his throat. “I’m not turning back now.”
“There might be other ways,” I say.
“Like what?”
I don’t have an answer for that. And I know that he’s right—if we’re going to search for the truth on our own, we have to be willing to take risks. Nothing about this is safe or accepted. There is no procedure to follow.
What have I gotten us into?
Once we get to my house, we head down to the basement. The Gate is waiting, the two padded leather chairs spotlighted by overhead fixtures. Suddenly, I’m cold to my core. I have no idea what will happen once he takes that pill. Logic tries to assure me that nothing can be worse than the horrors I’ve already seen in his mind, but my gut insists that, yes, it can and will get worse.
He settles into the chair, slides his helmet into place, and buckles the strap with his right hand. His left is still curled tightly around the blue bunny. The other two capsules are nestled in the black, round compact inside my coat pocket. He looks up and cracks a weak smile. “Ready to go down the rabbit hole?”
My hand rests on the Gate’s hard drive. It hums beneath my palm, warm as a living thing. “Are you sure about this?”
Steven uncurls his fingers, revealing the pill in his moist palm. His hand trembles. “You’ll be with me the whole time, right?”
“Yes.” I settle into my chair. “And since I won’t be under the Lucid’s influence myself—at least, not directly—I should be able to provide some guidance and rationality.”
“Let’s hope that’s how it works.” He tosses the pill into his mouth.
I slip my helmet on. The foam molds itself to my scalp as I prop my feet up on the footrest and switch on the Gate. I look over at Steven. He smiles again, a tiny, closed-lipped smile. It’s brave, scared, determined, and fragile. It makes me ache.
Electric tingles spread over my scalp, down my spine, and through my skin. The connection opens. Steven licks his lips, and I feel the
rasp of a dry tongue passing over dry flesh. His pulse drums in my throat.
“I think that stuff is kicking in,” he says. “I feel like I’m sinking. Or floating.”
I feel it, too—a strange weightlessness, as if I’m underwater or in zero gravity. Steven’s breathing echoes in my ears. The darkness behind my visor is solid and complete, enfolding me like a cocoon of black silk. I can no longer feel the chair against my back and legs. I seem to be falling in slow motion, sinking through the floor, through the ground. When I wiggle my toes, trying to anchor myself in my own body, the movement seems curiously disconnected, as if my toes independently decided to wiggle, then tricked me into thinking it was my idea.
“This is weird,” Steven mutters.
“It’s all in our heads. There’s no danger.” I’m not sure which of us I’m trying to convince.
The space around us and between us seems to stretch like taffy. I gulp.
“I feel like you’re drifting away,” he says.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I sense him reaching across the space between us, his hand grasping at thin air. I reach out, too. My fingers touch his, grip, squeeze.
I sink into a dense gray fog. Floating. Drifting. Nothing to hold on to, no way to orient myself. Panic flutters in my chest. Breathe. I keep sinking.
Deeper and deeper.
Down and down.
I’m half running, half stumbling down a shadowed hallway that blurs and tilts. Panting, I round a corner. I shove a door open and lurch inside, then slam the door and wedge a chair under the knob. My heart knocks against my ribs.
Footsteps echo down the hallway. “Where do you think you’re running to?” a voice calls. It sounds, somehow, like two voices speaking at once. “Where can you possibly go?”
I tremble. Sweat plasters my shirt to my back.
“If only you could understand,” the double voice says. “These fears are all in your head. We only want to help you.”
There’s a bed in the corner of the room. I crawl under it and curl up in the dark space. My ragged breathing fills the silence. The smell of dust and mothballs itches in my nose. A few inches from my face, a fat black spider crouches, rolling up a cockroach in its web. The cockroach is still moving, legs wiggling feebly.
The footsteps stop outside the door. There’s a click as the man tries the lock. “Steven,” says the double voice. One is deep and rough, one higher. “Let me in.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and hold my breath. There’s a tickle on my face. Another spider, crawling across my cheek. I don’t move.
The knob jiggles. There’s a thump and the door creaks open. “The treatments are necessary,” the voices say. “Whether you believe me or not, that is a fact. Now, you can come with me and make this a lot easier on yourself. Or you can continue to run and hide and simply postpone the inevitable.”
The footsteps come closer. Thud, thud, thud. Still holding my breath, I open my eyes a crack and see a pair of shiny black shoes. Then the figure leans down, and there’s a face. It wavers and blurs. Two faces, one on top of the other.
“I want to go home,” I whisper.
“This is your home, Steven. St. Mary’s is your home.”
A hand reaches toward me, and I bite it. The man cries out and yanks his hand back. Blood falls to the floor in fat red drops, like paint. I scramble out from under the bed and bolt for the door. A hand seizes my arm and drags me back. I scream. A needle pricks my arm, and suddenly, I’m sinking. I try to fight it, but the darkness grabs me and pulls me down.
I come up slowly, through layers and layers. For a while—maybe minutes, maybe years—I float, bobbing up and down like a balloon. I plunge into a dark vault of screams. Then I sail through a clear white mist. Silver knives slide through the mist. They’re all around me, flashing. A forest of knives.
I see things crumbling, falling apart. Machines disintegrating, dolls being ripped in half, stuffing falling out. Someone stabs a pair of scissors into a rag doll’s head and twists the blade around. Snip. The doll’s head falls off.
Voices drift through the haze.
“We’ve got to stop. If we keep going, he’ll end up like the others.”
“Turning weak on me now?”
“Weak? Is it weak to admit that we’ve made some mistakes?”
“What are we supposed to do, let him go?”
The voices are arguing. Barking and growling, as if the men have started to turn into dogs.
I can’t remember my name. Why can’t I remember?
I plunge down. Shadows and earth fold around me. Then I’m burrowing upward through the ground like a mole, scratching at loose soil and tiny rocks. I can’t breathe. Dirt fills my mouth and nose. My head is a hive crawling with bees, and when I move too fast, they get angry and start to sting me. I feel their stingers now, jabbing into the swollen, tender meat behind my eyes. But I have to keep digging, or the wolves in the white coats will catch me. Their howls fill my ears. My own ragged breathing almost drowns them out, but they’re getting closer. I feel them.
The wolves like to pick me apart. Their teeth are steel needles. Their eyes are so bright, I can’t look at them.
You need us, they call.
But I won’t listen to their lies anymore.
I break through and gasp in the cold, clean air. I stumble on numb legs. The floor lurches up and scrapes my palms, but I push myself to my feet. I’m running through gray empty halls filled with cobwebs. Crows circle overhead, laughing at me. Ha! Ha ha ha!
Little flashes of light shine through the gray.
It’s cold. So cold and bright and open.
I stagger through a white world, feet burning. My head is a red swamp of pain, my tongue a scrap of gritty meat. Dark shapes loom around me, clawing the sky with sharp-tipped fingers. The ground stings my feet, cold-hot and piercing.
A brown thing watches from a nearby branch. Words like ears and tail and fur float up out of the darkness. The thing makes a sound. Chk-chk-chk.
I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am. But I’m free. The wolves can’t reach me here.
I stumble and blink. The ground beneath my feet is no longer cold and white, but smooth and black. A long strip of the black stuff runs in both directions, cutting the whiteness in half. Perplexed, I rub a toe against the blackness. My feet are bare, narrow and pale.
Two bright beams cut through the dark. I raise my head and stare, hypnotized, mouth open. The brightness fills my head. It hurts. I fling my hands up in front of my eyes as a razor-edged screech splits the air. Deep voices are shouting. I can’t understand the words. Big hands grip my wrists and pry my hands away from my eyes, and I stare up into a brown lined face beneath a knitted red cap.
The deep voice says something. I almost understand. But I can’t put the pieces together.
“—happened—your parents?—can you—your name—”
Name. Shouldn’t I have a name? I reach for it, but it slips away. Tears of frustration prick the corners of my eyes. I look up at the sky, at the bright thing shining down from the darkness, and my mouth forms a word. “Moon.”
The faces gape at me in bewilderment.
“Moon,” I repeat. “Moon.” It is all I have, all I can give them. “Moon. Moon.”
I want them to smile, to be proud of me for remembering. Instead, they look upset. Warm tears pool in my eyes and spill down my cheeks.
The men exchange glances. Then one of them says something in a gentle tone. “—get you home.”
Home. Where is home? Do I have one?
Hands nudge me toward a big red thing. Car, I think. Words are starting to trickle back. The black things are trees. The white stuff is snow.
I shut my eyes and try to pry the memories from the darkness. There’s a flicker. Something—a face, the mouth and nose covered by a white mask, and a white-gloved hand holding a bloodstained thing that whirs and buzzes.
“I don’t want it in me,” I say.
On
e man pulls off his knitted cap, scratches his head of woolly hair, and says something that ends with “—hurt?”
“I don’t want it in me.” My breathing quickens. The men’s gloved hands reach out to me, but I recoil, breathing fast.
One of the men has something in his hand. The word phone surfaces from the foggy darkness in my skull. The man punches a series of buttons, and more words pour out of his mouth, too fast to understand.
My vision blurs. My knees give out, and I sink to the road, clutching my head in both hands. “I don’t want it in me.” I press my hands to my face, then lower them. Tears drip into my palms. They are not clear, but cloudy red. I am crying blood.
The world disappears in a swirl of brown and white, and I spiral down into blackness.
I come back to myself little by little. My body tingles. I flex my fingers and toes.
My brain feels swollen and tender, too big for my skull. I’m afraid to move very quickly, afraid my head will crack open and the contents will slosh out onto the floor. My thoughts are in pieces. I have no idea what I just saw or what it all means. I retain images, fragments, like puzzle pieces. But the edges won’t line up.
I tug the helmet off and set it aside.
Beside me, Steven stares at the ceiling, his eyes wide and unfocused.
“Steven?” My voice emerges hoarse and faint, a croak. “Are you all right?”
Slowly, his head turns toward me. For a few seconds, he doesn’t respond. “Define all right.”
If he can make wisecracks, he’s probably okay. More or less.
I sit up, and a lancet of pain slides through my head. Red stars explode on my retinas. I groan. Is this what a hangover feels like? If so, then I never want to touch a drop of alcohol as long as I live. I place a hand against my sweat-drenched brow and try to cling to what I saw, but it’s already slipping away. Images flash across the backs of my eyes—the snowy woods, the shadowed hallway, the man’s shiny black shoes. When I try to recall his face, another lancet of pain slips between my ears.