Beth looked completely confused by what her imaginary friend seemed to be telling her. She wrinkled up her nose and said, “Huh. I never heard that word before.” She asked the empty air to her right. “How do you say it again?” She listened and eventually nodded. She told Oscar that she was going to have to go slowly and sound out the words. “Paul Eeee,” she said before struggling on the next work. “Ex-CLU-SHEN.” She went on, sounding proud of herself, “principle. I know that word.”
Oscar was extremely surprised at her correct answer but he surmised that she could have come across that somewhere and had no real appreciation of the meaning. “That’s kinda true,” he told her. “But that doesn’t really explain it.”
“Ugh, fine,” she said, turning back to Mister Smiler. “He wants to know more,” she told him. Beth nodded as she was fed information. “I don’t know what any of this means,” she said to Oscar, “but Mister Smiler says to tell you that two ilectrons.” She paused after the mispronunciation. “Two E-lectrons can’t have the same spin and be in the same spot at the same time. He says it’s something called a wave function.” Beth stared across the room to a startled Oscar, asking him, “Did that make sense? I didn’t know what I was saying.”
“That’s about right from what I understand,” Oscar said, taking a deep breath and shifting from one buttock to another. “I’m going to change the subject back to you for a minute. Is that OK?”
Beth tilted her head in an uneasy nod. “Umm kay,” she said.
“I know you were really young when you went to live with your mom and dad. Do you remember anything from before they adopted you?”
“Um,” she rolled her eyes up to think about it. “Umm mmm,” she shook her head no. She added, “When I ask Mister Smiler about it, he won’t tell me.”
“Does he say why he won’t tell you?”
“He says that I’m a little kid in this fold. He says the secrets will hurt me real bad. Mister Smiler says he worries that some secrets can even kill kids.”
Beth looked in Mister Smiler’s direction. He was telling her something apparently. Oscar asked her what it was.
“He says you’re going to protect me.”
“I don’t understand,” Oscar said, sitting forward in his chair. “Protect you from what?”
“I don’t know,” Beth responded as she threw up her little hands. The question seemed to really frustrate her. “Whatever it is. I don’t know what it is.” Her face started to redden and her mouth opened to breathe. “Mister Smiler won’t tell me.”
…
While Beth worked on a coloring book in the waiting room, Oscar spoke to the Bardos. As he explained the situation, they both weren’t surprised. They also didn’t seem to display the usual tension Oscar would expect from the parents of a sick child. The Bardos just kept nodding like they understood her condition better than Oscar.
“Perhaps childhood onset schizophrenia,” interrupted Eva Bardo. “Have you considered that?”
“Well, no,” said Oscar. “That’s a very serious diagnosis to make and I certainly don’t think we’re there yet.”
“What sorts of medications should we use to combat this?” She asked.
“Well, as I said before, I don’t think we’re at that point yet. She’s six and I don’t think it’s time for serious mind-altering drugs. Let’s try to understand what’s creating this symptomology. I want to understand what happened.”
Lorne and Eva Bardo exchanged an uneasy look that meant they knew the discussion was turning to her stabbing. “I understand,” she said. “I’m willing to discuss it.”
“You can just start by telling me what you remember about that night.”
She wiped a wisp of perfectly kept black hair from her face. “I remember my daughter plunging a knife into my stomach.”
Lorne put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry to make you go into this, Misses Bardo. I know you probably went through this with the police. But there are some things that don’t make sense to me about that night.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lorne with some defensiveness. “I don’t think I understand what you mean, Doctor Loste.”
“I apologize for asking this but what exactly did Beth stab you with?”
“A knife,” Eva Bardo answered. “A kitchen knife.”
“Where did it happen?”
“My bedroom. I was in my bed.”
“How many times were you stabbed?”
The Bardos both shocked at the question. “Doctor Loste,” said Eva, “I don’t know how this pertains to my daughter’s therapy.”
“I think it does,” said Oscar. “It says something about your daughters state of mind, her motivation.”
“Well then she stabbed me just once if that has any bearing.”
The answer sent Oscar’s left eyebrow up a degree. “Thank goodness,” he said. “It must have been a very large kitchen knife. For stabbing you just once, Beth seems to have suffered from some very serious and keep cuts to both hands. Looking at them, it seemed like it had to be something that had two sharp edges. A kitchen knife just has one cutting edge.”
“I don’t understand your point,” Eva said. “I’m sorry. You’re asking me to discuss the worst thing that’s ever happened in my family and you want your answers down to the finest detail. I’m sorry, Doctor Loste. I’m neither a cutlery expert nor a medical examiner. All I know is that I want all this to stop.”
…
Chapter 3
Gorgonorphan
A few evenings later, on his way home, Oscar stopped by the massive twenty-four hour drug store on First Street. The bright white fluorescent oasis in the center of the black grid of city could have doubled for a casino. Sixty hertz of electric hum saturated the entire parking lot, which was bustling for the hour. The area was filled with characters out of place in the light, like nocturnal insects forced to contend with the sun for a few uncomfortable moments for a reward.
Half of the cars in the parking lot were occupied with dozy, half-conscious pharmacy customers. They apparently couldn’t wait until they got home to consume their doctor-prescribed opiates and barbiturates. While Oscar walked toward the door, he could see the drowsy and contented expressions behind the windshields.
When he got inside, he found a long line of impatient customers for the pharmacy. The air contained the nervous static electricity of addicts and hints of their flop sweat. Oscar didn’t look down on them the way some working and well-to-do people would. They were foreboding reminders to him, road signs for a dangerous curve ahead.
He picked up all four of the remaining gorgonorphan bottles from the shelf. The red logo on the dented box hit his eyes like a beam of light from the hope diamond. He didn’t have to chase after a doctor or wait with the dregs in the pharmacy line for his drug of choice.
It always seemed peculiar to him that the drug store could barely keep the over-the-counter syrup stocked. Oscar found himself there nearly every other weekday, picking up extra on Friday to carry him for the weekend, and they were always running low. Maybe there were others like him, other quiet syrup fans, he thought.
He stood in the checkout line at the register, holding the bottles in his hands so tightly that the labels were getting moist from his palm sweat. The line was moving way too slowly, he thought.
“You should try mixing it with a little brandy,” whispered a voice in front of him.
“Excuse me,” Oscar said to the emaciated and hunched-over old man in the line in front of him.
The man turned around, saying, “I see you’re stocking up.”
His shoulders and arms barely contained sufficient muscle to support his canvas shopping bag. Four bottles of gorgonorphan sat at the top of the bag. The skin on the old man’s face looked so thin and nearly diaphanous that it threatened to split down his cheek. The old man’s eyes had no lost life, however. They were wild, nearly teeming with an insane vitality.
The old man glanced down at the co
ugh syrup bottle in Oscar’s hands. He looked up and gave Oscar an approving smile. “It’s OK,” the man said. “I’m a fellow fan, as you can see.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on, partner. I can see it in your face. I’m an old man and I’ve learned a few things about people.”
“I got this cough that’s been keeping me up. Stuff puts me right out at night.”
“Cough,” the man cocked an eyebrow, “sure. That’s how I discovered it at first too.” The old man leaned into Oscar, saying, “Let me ask you. How much have you tried? I got up to a half bottle a few nights ago and let me tell you, partner, I wasn’t ready.”
“I’m sorry,” Oscar told the man, “I’m not sure what you mean. I just use it to help me with my cough and my sleep.”
The old man’s smiled oozed wider. “Come on, partner,” he said. “I can tell when I see a fellow head.” He leaned in closer, saying, “We’re connected, man.”
“Are we?”
The old man looked around to see if anyone was listening. “You may not have gotten there yet but you will. Has the sky opened for you?”
“Has the sky opened? I don’t even know what that means. I suppose I’ve seen a few weird colors. Medicines can have side effects like that.”
“Side effects,” the man said, rolling his eyes. “I hear that’s why they’re taking it off the market.”
“I didn’t know that,” Oscar said with clear anxiety in his voice. “They’re not doing that right away or anything?”
The old man was nearly laughing at Oscar’s transparency. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’ll probably take a little while. Of course,” he added, “there will always be ways to get it. You can’t hold back the people from what they want. Shit, I mean what they need.”
The drugstore line was moving and it was nearly time for Oscar to check out. He felt a last-minute need to indulge the old man and himself with a question. “What do you think the hallucinations are? What do you think they mean?”
The man looked at Oscar like an oaf that didn’t get it at all. “Hallucinations,” he said, scoffing. Then, just before he got to the cashier, the old man started to quietly mumble some kind of song. At first, it was difficult to make out the words. Then it was clear. “Give yourself to the black river of fate. Enter the uncreated night. You gotta give yourself to the black river of fate. Boy, you gotta enter the uncreated night.”
“What does that mean?” Oscar asked him “What are you talking about?”
Just before he walked away, the old man said one last thing. He laughed, answering, “I don’t know what it means. Not yet I don’t.”
…
Oscar’s car headlights made lonely bright trails on the top deck of his building’s parking garage when he pulled in. The ten-story parking garage was nearly empty due to lack of tenants in the black hole tower and it was more or less falling apart. Rain had worn holes through the concrete and penetrated straight through the ten levels. Wind would sail through and play the building like a pipe organ, emitting drones and short bursts of screaming. The long, winding climb up the barely-lit ramp always felt like an adventure. On clear days, Oscar could spot his bedroom window at the peak of the tower, just below the $ in Bail Bond$.
His bright white drugstore bag sat on the passenger seat. While keeping the bottled tucked in the bag, he unscrewed the top and emptied perhaps a third of a bottle down his throat. What did the old man mean, he thought, about the sky opening up? It was a strange thing to say.
Oscar wasn’t the only one on the top deck of the garage. A number of homeless people had made a ramshackle shelter of shower curtains and shopping carts. He was used to the squatters and they generally left him alone. That night, there were three of them outside their tent cooking something on a tin can fire. They didn’t take much notice of his car.
He leaned back in his seat, looking up at the tawdry sodium-yellow glow of the Bail Bond$ sign. Then he finished the rest of the bottle, holding the bottle in his mouth until the fall of the last drip of gorgonorphan.
Oscar slid his closed his eyes as the molecules of gorgonorphan jammed and squeezed their way into his bloodstream and tissues. It started as a warm flush in his fingers and toes. He began to sweat, the cold beads running down his skin like rats from a fire. His body went from numb to limp like a fresh corpse. A warm bright light shone red through his eyelids. Even with his eyes shut, the glare was so intense that almost hurt.
When he opened his eyes, the night sky was spectacular exhibition of shooting stars, collisions of glowing asteroids and distant white and purple explosions. Oscar’s windshield was a planetarium show of some foreign, violent galaxy, a place still hot from the big bang. It was all happening behind the Philadelphia skyline, complete with the BailBond$ Tower.
A white light started to build in the far sky behind the tower. Oscar saw the rise of a bizarre sun, an alien star. Instead of a single point of light, it was a white-hot swarm of them, swirling around to a center blacker than the darkest cave imaginable. The celestial eye climbed to the top of the sky until it was blinding. Then it receded down the opposite path in the sky.
His body jerked back to life and he realized he was looking at the usual murky Philadelphia night sky. It was as though all the color had drained back out of the world. He said to himself, “I guess you could call that the sky opening up.”
He spilled out of his car on wobbly legs. His heart was still racing from the experience. The homeless crowd was still there, smoking something on the other side of the parking deck. It took him a moment to realize that someone had joined them.
Oscar saw the black opal eyes first. The same man in the mask from the courtyard, this time in a different but equally exquisite suit, was crouched like a gargoyle on the cement parking garage wall. He stared at Oscar, and just like their last encounter, he raised a white-glove and pointed right at him.
Still quivery and unbalanced on his feet, Oscar tried to run after him. The effort looked worse than drunken and more like someone that had just gotten up and run out during anesthesia. He nearly collapsed on the way over to the masked man.
“I want to talk to you!” He shouted. “Are you following me around or something?”
The man’s polished shoes dropped to the ground and he headed for the stairwell. By the time Oscar got to the stairs, he was too winded and dizzy to follow him down. He remembered the group of homeless. They were only twenty feet or so away, so they had to have seen the man crouched there.
When Oscar approached them, they looked at him like he was in worse shape than any of them.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he started to ask, “but you did you happen to see a weird guy over there, crouched on the wall?”
They all laughed, slapping at their knees and hooting. “You look pretty fuckin’ weird to me,” one of them said. “Be more specific.”
“Wearing a mask.”
They all laughed even harder. “Nah,” said one of the men in the midst of packing a pipe with something that looked like brown sugar. “The only weird guy we’ve seen up here tonight is you.” He held up the packed pipe in his grimy hand, telling Oscar, “I’d offer you a hit, boy, but you looked like your ass is already cooked.”
“I don’t suppose you saw anything else strange besides me, maybe something in the sky.”
The man took a hit of the pipe, exhaling and coughing at the same time. “Motherfucker,” he said, “I’m thinking you came down in something in the sky.” The comment sent him and his associates into an uproar.
...
A few days later, Oscar’s patient, Dale McSorley, came in for his regular twice-per-week visit. The police sergeant looked like he had been having a difficult day. His hands were shaking when Oscar greeted him and he seemed to be catching his breath.
“Damn it, Doctor Loste,” he said as soon as he sat down. “It’s been one of those weeks from hell. My brother got in a fight tonight and got picked up by a nei
ghboring jurisdiction. I had to go down there and deal with it. It was damn embarrassing. This shit literally just happened. He’s actually waiting outside in the truck. My brother doesn’t like waiting rooms.”
“You’re not responsible for what Arnie does, Dale.”
“Yeah, but I couldn’t just let him sit in there. I’m the only one he’s got. You understand? You got family, right?”
“No. I don’t.”
Dale was surprised at the answer and there was a stunned moment in the conversation. “That patient last week,” he said, changing the subject. “The one that had you sweating bullets. Did that go all right?”
“I can’t really talk about it, Dale. The same way I protect your privacy, I have to do the same with my other patients.”
“I understand, but you just seem so upset about it. Every time I bring it up, your face goes pale. You say I look on edge and you’re right. But you, you can’t fool me. You look way more freaked out than I do. You’re seeing that same patient again, aren’t you?”
“Come on, Dale.”
“I knew it. You don’t even have to say anything. I know you’ll talk to me when you’re ready.”
“Let’s get back to your brother, Arnie. His arrest must have had an impact on him.”
“That crazy bastard. I don’t think so. He’s genetically programmed not to learn from his mistakes. It’s actually amazing when you see him in action. I think it’s his epilepsy to be honest. He’s been having seizures for years. Some of them have been pretty wild and I swear they affect his personality. He refuses to keep up with his medications. Says it makes him feel like a retard.”
“Do you think you could get him to come in here for a session?”
“He doesn’t have the highest opinion of shrinks. Says you guys just delight in fucking with people’s heads. That a lot of you are more fucked up than the folks you’re treating.”
“He isn’t exactly wrong but that doesn’t mean the therapy process can’t sometimes help. Do you think it’s helped you at all with your anxiety?”
Enter the Uncreated Night Page 3