Irrational Fears

by Spencer, William Browning

  “We have to get going,” Tilman said.

  “Kerry,” Jack said, gripping her by her shoulders and staring into her eyes. “Dorian Greenway is your enemy. He has tampered with your brain. Any feelings of affection you have for him are the product of chemical and psychological tampering.”

  Jack expected instant outrage, perhaps a physical attack. People were loyal to their emotions and did not welcome logic in these matters.

  Kerry said, “Well, sure. I’m not a fool. I know I’ve been tampered with. You should give people more credit. Love is always somebody up to something sneaky, somebody fucking with you.”

  Jack was about to say something more, but Tilman had turned and was walking, briskly, away. “I’ve got to go,” Jack said.

  Kerry waved. “Be careful,” she shouted.

  They found the man waiting for them at the entrance to the Bad Trip ride. He was standing quietly, ignoring the two guys who were fighting, wrestling in the cold. They were drunk. This was, Jack reminded himself, Harken, Virginia, a town where people who were not actively in recovery were generally drunk.

  A well-dressed woman in an expensive gray parka was leaning down, explaining to her equally well-groomed towheaded children—twins?—that the combatants were under the influence of alcohol. “Their judgment is impaired by alcohol,” she said. “They are probably alcoholics. They should not be despised for their behavior. Alcoholism is a disease and not, as people used to think, a moral failing. Jonathan, Michael, can you say al-co-hol4smr

  Neither child attempted to. They fixed their grave blue eyes on the brawlers.

  Suddenly, the two young men stood up, staggered away from each other. “Fuck you!” the one shouted, turning and running down the hill. “Double fuck you!” the other screamed, racing after the first one.

  “There’s those damn prodigal sons,” Ed said.

  Jack nodded, nonplussed. The fighting teens had, indeed, been Monk and Al, both of them looking much the worse for wear.

  “They are going to have to look out for themselves,” Ed muttered, turning toward the waiting agent. “We have more pressing matters.”

  The man in the plaid jacket was big. He held a small computer, the size of a paperback book. He consulted the screen and said, “It’s definitely underground. Southwest of here, maybe two hundred, two hundred and fifty yards.”

  Ed nodded. “Yep. That would be under the house.” Ed frowned. “Soldier, we don’t want whatever is down there to get up to full power. How do we get to it?”

  The man nodded. “It looks like this ride goes down there. I’ve been around once, and it looks to me like you could get off the train near the vomiting gargoyle and you’d be close. There’s a walkway along the tunnel. I saw a door.”

  “What’s this ‘vomiting gargoyle?’” Ed asked.

  “Just that,” the man said. “You’ll see what I mean.”

  “Okay. Jack and I are going to take a look around. In the meantime, I’d like you to rustle up some explosives, something compact but with plenty of punch, and bring it back here. I want it within the hour. Will that present a problem?”

  “No sir,” the man said.

  “Good,” Tilman said. He turned to Jack. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  Tilman snapped the bar in front of them. When the cars began to move, he punched the button on his watch. “I haven’t been on one of these fun-house rides since I was a teenager. Wanda Meeks threw up on my shoes. I didn’t mind. She was pretty as a pinup, and the act was sort of intimate, like a bond between us. I guess almost anything can seem an erotic overture when you’re young and randy.”

  The cars suddenly lurched forward and down a sharp incline, into darkness. People squealed (there was, as always on such rides, a large contingent of young couples). Wind, generated by fans to heighten the effect of speed, fluttered Jack’s hair, nipped at his hands.

  Strobe lights flashed. Jack was in the midst of a party, people bouncing to techno pop. A woman in a tiny black dress moved through the crowd, directly toward Jack, her lips bright red, her hair white-yellow and flashing like neon in the staccato light. She opened her mouth and said (the words amplified by speakers hidden in the tunnel walls), “Try this!” She held out her hand, a pink square of paper. The music picked up the words: Try this try this try this try this.

  The dancing people disappeared into darkness. J ack was at another party, giant faces looming toward him. A man with silver hair was leaning forward, his face the size of a truck, the pores of his flesh like potholes in a bad road. Sentence fragments came from his mouth, cold bits of boring stuff (“deconstruction... paradigm... we see... context... a bias of relevant... my dissertation... feminist studies...”). Very realistic, Jack thought—and containing an insight into the nature of bad hallucinogenic trips. LSD produced the reality break, but the dislocation took an unpleasant turn when the catalyst was—yes, this seemed irrefutable—professional academics, graduate students, professors (people already immersed in a hellish, mind-numbing alternate world). The combination of bad drugs and a suffocating closed system produced temporary psychosis.

  Here we go, Jack thought, as they plummeted into darkness again. He found his heart was beating faster, realized that he was getting a little too caught up in the moment. This is just a ride, he told himself.

  He was in an empty room. It was breathing, the walls expanding and contracting. He was doing that, his breathing. Uh-oh. It stopped. I’m dead.

  No, he wasn’t. But he couldn’t breathe because he was underwater. Fish came in through the windows, fish floated across his lap. And snakes, sea snakes.

  I don’t like this ride.

  Darkness. A blinding light. Lots of balloons. Nope. Not balloons at all. Floating heads. Well, balloon heads. The balloons exploded like glittering Fourth-of-July fireworks.

  The ride seemed to go on and on. They would fly down dark inclines in darkness. Hearty folks were still shrieking and laughing, but there were some who were sobbing.

  They traveled deeper into the earth, through various tunnels. There was the tunnel of tentacles, the tunnel of screams, the tunnel of flashing lights, the tunnel of zombie nuns (or perhaps penguins), the ghastly tunnel of friends (in which huge white faces leaned forward and their amplified voices boomed, IT’S GOING TO BE OKAY OKAY OKAY or, in voices stretched tight with terror, JUST DON’T PANIC PANIC PANIC).

  Finally, the car slowed. Jack had the sense that they were deep within the earth. He could hear the slow drip of water, feel the earth-rock indifference press against his shoulders, the back of his neck.

  There were carvings on the walls, gargoyles, lizard heads, bats. Stone hands, reaching, imploring, sprouted from a chiseled relief of tangled serpents.

  They turned a corner, and Jack saw the giant stone head of a squat and toadlike gargoyle, grinning. Floodlights illuminated it as it leered from high on the wall.

  The ride’s passengers were quiet, subdued as they passed under it.

  It opened its cavernous jaws as they passed, and the air was filled with a mighty retching. The sound sent a queasy, sympathetic shiver through Jack’s flesh. Eels churned in his stomach.

  Green, glowing vomit poured down onto the passengers, who were shrieking now. Jack put his hand up to protect his face from this otherworldly bile, and caught one of the green, luminous crepe paper streamers with his hand. A mass of glowing ribbons covered his feet.

  Everyone was laughing now, the raucous laughter of relief.

  “This is where we get off,” Tilman said, clutching Jacks shoulder. “The old vomiting gargoyle landmark.” Tilman looked at his watch. “Fourteen minutes, twelve seconds,” he said.

  I’m not doing this again, am I? Jack thought as he followed Tilman along the narrow, stone-cobbled walkway. He could hear the laughter of his fellow passengers dwindling, already distant and faintly inhuman, transformed by the subterranean air, the corridors of stone.

  Tilman had turned and was ascending a steep stone stairway. Tiny blue lamps mou
nted on the wall created small orbs of light in the dark.

  Jack would leave one beacon and, pressing the palm of his right hand against the cold, sweating stone wall, begin a halting, laborious climb to the next dwarf moon.

  “Let’s hope it’s not locked,” Tilman said, the words floating down to Jack.

  Apparently it wasn’t. The door unleashed the sound of vast, malevolent machines, the furies of physical law tortured on racks of unreason, inertia defied.

  Jack, remembering, resonating with terror, followed grimly.

  They were in the control room again. There had been no guard at the door this time; they had met no one on the journey here. Ezra Coldwell and the hospital bed he had inhabited were gone. Thick snakes of cable littered the floor. The banks of video monitors presented views of black-and-white corridors and rooms, empty of humanity. Four screens on the top flickered with life, and Jack saw that these were scenes from the world overhead, where the Whole Addiction Expo presented a panorama of activity. On one of the screens, a dance was in progress.

  Kerry was in there somewhere. So were five or six hundred others, a writhing mass of humanity animated by inaudible music.

  Jack noticed that another screen, in the middle of the bottom row, was jumping oddly. It was a shot of an empty corridor, twisting as Jack watched, turning to reveal a row of black, sinister machines, another long corridor. A door was growing larger, curiously familiar, this door... It was opening— there were two people in this room, you could see their backs, one seated in a chair studying a wall of video screeeeee—Jesus!

  Jack dove for the floor, rolled. Ka-pow, ka-pow, ka-pow! Glass shattered. Jack heard Tilman shout, “Christ! It’s us, Martin!”

  Silence. Jack peered up from behind the overturned chair.

  Martin Pendleton stood in the doorway holding the rifle.

  He stared openmouthed at Ed Tilman, turned and blinked his bewilderment at Jack.

  “What the hell are you guys doing here?”

  “We are trying to rescue your sorry ass,” Tilman said. “You might want to stop trying to kill us while we do it.”

  Jack sat in a chair and shook.

  “Gave you a scare, I guess,” Martin said. “Sorry.”

  “If that weapon hadn’t had a video camera mounted on it—or if you’d turned the damned thing off—I’d be dead,” Jack said, pointing to the shattered monitor. “That’s where my head was.”

  “Well, I said I was sorry,” Martin said. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”

  Martin added, in his defense, that he’d been disoriented recently. He and Hubert had been in some sort of strange mental ward, although it was never clear just how they had gotten there in the first place.

  “Hubert and I were looking for Dorian Greenway; next thing I know, we are in a hospital. It’s a bogus hospital, doesn’t feel right. Nobody seems to know anything; the staff doesn’t know your name or your diagnosis, the resident shrink can’t speak English. That was all authentic, nothing out of the ordinary there, but I still had this feeling that the place wasn’t really a hospital. I spent most of my time playing checkers with a crazy shrink; he’d fly into a rage when he lost.”

  “I was in that place, too,” Jack said.

  “Small world,” Martin said.

  “Funny we didn’t see each other.”

  “Probably weren’t supposed to,” Martin said.

  Ed Tilman had come up. “Where’s Hubert?”

  Martin shook his head. “I don’t know. The hospital lights started going on and off. I thought there were generator problems, electrical storms, who knows? Next thing you know, I’m not in my hospital room. Hubert’s gone. So is everyone else. Or maybe it’s just me who’s gone. I’m here. Machines are roaring like Hell. I walk out into the hall, and this rifle is just lying there, propped up against a chair. I remember this place, remember those sonsofbitches kicking me in the head. So I grab the rifle. I’m walking down the corridor, and I hear voices...”

  “Shoot first, ask questions later,” Tilman said.

  Martin glared at Tilman. “I suppose you are perfect.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jack said. He was looking at the video screens again. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have spotted her; the images were too small. But of the five women (all wearing white swimsuits) who were standing on the stage, she was the only bald one.

  “Is there some way to enlarge this?” Jack asked Tilman. “That’s Kerry.”

  Tilman moved to the console. “There should be a remote for the camera,” he said.

  The screen went completely blank, blipped back on and slowly panned across the crowd. Tilman cursed softly, fiddled with the controls. The camera came to rest on the stage again, and the field of vision narrowed as the five contestants grew until they filled the screen.

  Tilman turned a dial, and the young women blurred into fuzzy cybershapes, then snapped back into triumphant focus. Blue ribbons were draped diagonally across their bodies, reminding Jack of the sideways slash within a circle, the symbol of nullity that meant NO (No smoking, No food or drinks, et cetera) and which could have meant, in this context, No thinking what you are thinking regarding these nubile bodies. But it didn’t mean that at all, quite the contrary. So sharp was the picture that Jack was able to read the letters on the ribbons: MISS SOBRIETY QUEEN 1998 FINALIST.

  How the hell had Kerry gotten mixed up in this? And how, for that matter, had she done it so quickly? Granted, she was an alcoholic, an addict, and a teenager and therefore vested with an almost supernatural capacity for mischief, still...

  The emcee stepped in front of the girls. He was holding the mike in one hand. Although the image was soundless, Jack could see that the man was singing, his mouth an O, his right hand stretched out in a corny, theatrical gesture. He wore white face makeup, red lipstick, a top hat, a tuxedo, a large red bow tie.

  Jack recognized Dorian Greenway. Which explained Kerry’s involvement certainly (I remembered I love Dorian).

  “We’ve got to get back—” Jack said. He stopped, distracted by a motion in the full-length mirror on the wall. The yellow lights that outlined the mirror were unlit, several of them broken.

  The mirror was not reflecting the room. It was a window on a long corridor, a hospital corridor with green walls, a brown-tiled floor, much polished from use. The ceiling lights cast yellow pools on the floor.

  Far down the corridor, doors so distant they were the size of a matchbox banged open and a figure came running out of the white glare, running toward Jack, sprinting down the middle of the hallway, bare feet slapping the waxed floor so solidly that Jack’s inner ear supplied the sound of flesh smacking the tiles (in defiance of the mirror’s uncanny silence).

  Jack stumbled toward the mirror as Anita Coldwell, wearing a gray hospital gown, a cloud of white gauze wrapped around her neck, reached the mirror, pressed her entire body against it, and shouted.

  Jack could hear nothing.

  She slapped the palm of her right hand against the glass, shaking her head, furious.

  Jack leaned close, pressed his face against the glass. Nothing. Behind him, the room was filled with the sound of doomsday machines, but the mirror was inviolate, a vacuum sealed against her screams.

  Jack backed up. “I can’t hear you!” he shouted.

  She shook her head, impatient, and slapped her palm against the glass again. Jack was struck by how much the woman resembled Kerry Anita looked younger, wilder in her rage, and the wildness seemed to summon the teenager’s image.

  Jack shook his head. “What?” He had realized, suddenly, that it was not impotent rage that drove her; there was meaning to the slap of her hand against the glass. She was pointing with her other hand; her eyes, alive with purpose, were focused beyond Jack.

  Jack turned, saw Tilman standing there. “What does she want with me?” Tilman asked.

  “I don’t know—”

  But Tilman was moving closer. “Damn, I think I do know,” he said. He pulled the glove from h
is hand and walked toward the mirror. His hand seemed made of glass.

  Anita Coldwell was nodding her head violently (Yes, yes, yes).

  Ed Tilman stood staring in the glass, staring at this beautiful, determined woman. Flecks of blood were melting through the gauze scarf, blooming like tiny wildflowers through snow.

  Anita slapped the palm of her hand against the glass and held it there. There was no possibility of mistaking her expression, or what she wanted of him.

  Ed Tilman raised his glittering, crystal hand. “For the record,” he said, “I’m not happy about this.”

  He pressed his ghost hand against hers, leaning across, right hand to right.

  The glass rippled from their palms. Anita seemed immersed in silvery water. “Jack!” she shouted, the word entering the room like a rock thrown through a plate glass window.

  “Anita are you all right?” Jack shouted.

  “Of course I’m not all right,” Anita shouted back. “I’ve been dead for years. I suppose I’m the good part of Ezra, trying to make amends. It may be too late. Listen!”

  Jack glanced at Tilman’s face, saw that the man’s features were a grimace of pain, the flesh white. His whole body seemed to stretch away from the glass, trembling.

  “Ezra is dying,” Anita said. “When he’s dead, that’s it, game’s over, we’ll never see his like again, with luck. He’s been replaying my death for decades—this, incidentally, is the emergency room part—and somewhere in that obsessive passion play, Dorian has found a way to play his own tricks with reality. It’s as though Ezra is a turbine that Dorian harnesses. Now Ezra is dying and Dorian needs his own ever-repeating horror scene, something to facilitate the changing of the guard. Maybe he is even right. Dorian is crazy, but he is also a genius. With his own version of me, maybe he’ll be able to fire up this creaky engine. I don’t know. How the hell should I know!”