Irrational Fears

by Spencer, William Browning

  Anita shook her head. Jack saw figures behind her, running down the hall. Anita must have sensed them too; she turned, shouted something that Jack couldn’t make out, and then turned back. “You’ve got to stop him. He will kill a lot of people if you don’t. And more will die as a consequence of what he does tonight. He calls it the Unraveling.” The white gauze encircling her neck was soaked red now. “Give Ezra a message from me.”

  Jack listened, distracted by the approaching figures, afraid of interrupting. Anita said what she had to say. “You understand?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Take me to Ezra,” she said.

  “How do I take—?”

  “Break the mirror. Then take a piece of it with you. Any piece.”

  “Do it now! You don’t want to see this—” Jack had assumed the figures coming down the hall were orderlies, and so they were, but they were Ezra’s perception of orderlies, dead-eyed, monstrous golems, heartless, rotting things who had refused to restore Anita to life, had, in Ezra’s damaged perception, killed her again. These were the creatures that now reached Anita, sought her with their clawed and crippled hands.

  Anita’s scream was clipped short as she turned, yanking her palm from the mirror. Ed Tilman staggered back, moaning, and Martin shouted, “Stand back!” and Jack moved clear too and the rifle coughed and the mirror burst into a thousand ragged, silver shards.

  The fire that had destroyed the mansion had been thorough. When Jack came up into the basement, the night sky loomed over him. They climbed the concrete stairs and began moving rapidly back up the hill toward the carnival lights, the tents.

  Tilman stopped, punched a number on the phone, spoke into the mouthpiece, “Tilman here. I talked to a soldier about a package. Yes. I want you to evacuate the Bad Trip ride. I want you to send the payload down on one of the cars. That’s right. Rig it to activate remotely. After the bomb is onboard and it’s on its way, give it fourteen minutes and twelve seconds of travel time. Then stop the car—cut the power if you have to. It will be in place then. Let me know when it is, then keep your finger on the button and wait for my command. Good. Well, I hope so too.” The phone made a small beep as Tilman turned it off.

  Tilman smiled at Jack and Martin. “We are going to pull the carpet out from under Dorian Greenway’s monster machines. With any luck, the explosion won’t blow the rest of us to Hell. If it does...” Tilman shrugged, winced with pain.

  “Are you all right?” Jack asked.

  Tilman had tugged the black glove back on, but he was holding that arm as though it were broken. “You are asking that question a lot. You get any positive responses? I feel like a man who has been turned inside out and dropped in a nest of fire ants. My mind isn’t too good either, like right now everything is sort of leaking colors; the sky’s like a finger painting by an untalented chimpanzee. Other than that, I feel fine.”

  They squeezed their way into the crowded tent. The contestants were still up on stage. The judges sat at a long table off to the left. This critical panel consisted of two gray-haired ladies, a young man whose good looks suggested that he might be a celebrity (Jack didn’t recognize him; television, Jack assumed), best-selling author John Mahler in a monk’s hooded robe, and—my God!—Ezra Coldwell, propped in a wheelchair, his head lolling to the side. The small silver box had been removed from his temple, leaving a rectangular, purple bruise. The man looked like he might already be dead— and imperfectly stuffed by some incompetent hobbyist.

  Dorian Greenway sat at the head of this table, smiling beatifically, his white-gloved hands folded in front of him.

  Jack followed Martin and Tilman as they skillfully pushed through the crowd, moving toward the left side of the stage. Huge screens were mounted on scaffolding behind the contestants, so that their young and radiant faces, captured by video cameras, could be translated into full-color fifty-foot icons for the crowd to gawk at.

  One of the judges was leaning into a mike, asking a question. “Contestant number two, Rosalind, what would you say if you were at a party and someone offered you a beer?”

  Rosalind smiled. “I’d say, ‘No thank you, I’m a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, not to mention NA and OA, and I don’t drink.’ I would then relate my story (how it was, what happened, and how it is now). I would try to share this experience in a positive, engaging manner, taking no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. I would note that I was not speaking for AA, but only presenting my personal path to recovery.”

  “Thank you,” the judge said. “How about you, contestant number three... ah... Kerry? How would you handle this situation.”

  “Does it matter what kind of beer it is?” Kerry asked. “I mean, if it’s one of those lite fuckers, I’m not even tempted.”

  “Let’s assume it’s your favorite beer,” the judge said.

  Kerry folded her arms, frowned deeply as though trying to remember who Millard Filmore’s vice president was, then smiled. “I’d scream and run out of the room.”

  The room applauded.

  Oh, Kerry, Jack thought, you don’t want to win this competition. As with every recent event he could think of, he had a bad feeling about this.

  The contestants were excused while the judges entered into final deliberation. Kerry and the others were ushered backstage, and punk rockers Freddy and the Unfortunates shouted out a song whose only lyrics, as far as Jack could tell, were, Don’t be breaking my An-no-nim-mity.

  While the rock band played, Tilman, Martin, and Jack managed to wend their way to the edge of the stage. The large, wide-bellied, black -shirted motorcycle guys who frequent any live event in their crowd-control capacity were guarding the wooden stairs. Tilman ducked under the skirt of the raised platform. “Come on,” he said.

  Martin and Jack followed. Jack saw that Martin was still cradling the rifle. Jack tried to stay out of the line of fire.

  It was dark under the stage, and cold, the night air leaking in from somewhere in back. Thick cables snaked off in every direction. The rock band shook the boards.

  Jack scrambled forward. I’m really tired, he thought. Then he remembered that he had once read a self-help book that urged its readers never to say they were tired. Jack couldn’t remember why the author was adamant about this; perhaps the author found it personally irritating, or had had a spouse or girlfriend who dodged sex by professing fatigue. Who knows?

  Still, I’m really tired, Jack thought.

  They crawled out from under the platform. The wall of canvas behind them bellied inward as a cold wind pressed against it.

  Crouching beside Martin and Tilman, Jack slowly raised his head until his eyes were above the platform’s edge. A skinny, bearded guy was fiddling with an instrument panel. The rock band had ceased to play, and the five contestants were poised behind the red curtain, their bodies eloquent with youthful anticipation as they awaited some signal. In their white bathing suits, they were, Jack thought, a fit subject for a modern Degas.

  A burst of applause, and they ran back onto the stage.

  Great! Jack thought. As usual, his timing was less than impeccable. He had hoped to spirit Kerry away before this occurred.

  He scuttled to the right, found a break in the curtain, and peered out.

  Dorian Greenway walked to the lectern, nodded to the girls who had taken seats in folding chairs on the right side of the stage, and said, “I know you are all eager to learn who this year’s Whole Addiction Expo Sobriety Queen is. The answer is right here.” Dorian held up the envelope. “But before we tell you, I’ve asked a man many of you know to say a few words. It seems fitting that he should present tonight’s award. He’s a man who knows more about sobriety than most. He’s a man who has been sober for sixty-eight years! That’s longer than A A has been around, folks!”

  Dorian paused dramatically while the crowd—always obliging when cued properly—murmured to themselves, amazed and delighted.

  “I will tell you the truth. Hubert Henslow and I have had our differences.
I was younger then. I was a little difficult, a little skeptical of the wisdom of my elders. Some of you younger members can probably relate.” Dorian paused for laughter, which was sparse. “Hubert and I still don’t agree on everything, but I knew it would be wrong not to let him have his say. You won’t find too many people who can put sixty-eight years of sobriety on their recovery resume. Please welcome the presenter of this year’s Whole Addiction Expo Sobriety Queen award, Mr. Hubert Henslow.”

  Dorian left the envelope on the lectern and moved quickly back to the judges’ table as the audience applauded enthusiastically and Hubert, who had been seated in the front row, climbed the stairs and walked across the stage. Years of telling his story at AA speaker meetings had made Hubert comfortable in front of audiences. Jack, studying the man’s profile from the side, found something too self-pleased in the toothy smile.

  Jack instantly reprimanded himself. Give the guy a break.

  The timing of the speech, however, was bad. Like many old people, Hubert had no feel for the present’s mood (inhabiting a rough-and-ready time when opinions were delivered with force and hurt feelings were considered a natural consequence of human interaction). Hubert did seem unaware of two pertinent facts: I. A fundamentalist AA terrorist group was bombing more liberal-minded meetings, thus generating some ill-feeling, and 2. The audience gathered in front of him had come to the Whole Addiction Expo because they were, for the most part, of an eclectic spiritual temperament.

  “I’m Hubert, and I’m an alcoholic!” he shouted. “If you can’t hear me in the back, just holler. I was in a hospital recently—can’t remember why, but I feel fine now—and the first thing I did when I got out was go to an AA meeting. Fact is, first thing I remember is sitting in a meeting. I love meetings—old-fashioned AA. The new stuff...” He waved his arm in the air, a dramatic gesture of dismissal. “Bells and whistles, folks! A lot of damned bells and whistles! The fancier a thing gets, the more apt it is to break. And what do we say in AA? We say, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Say it with me, IF IT AIN’T BROKE, DON’T FIX IT!” Hubert scowled, leaned forward. “All this New Age bullshit has been around forever. Ask them holy men and self-appointed self-helpers, and they will be glad to tell you that. You got your ancient wisdom that was around when Jesus was in diapers. That’s fine. There’s nothing like wisdom with a pedigree. But here’s the thing. Ain’t none of that wisdom knocked the bottle out of an alcoholic’s hand and set him on his feet. None of it. All them long years. No. Some old stockbroker, drunk and down on his luck, had to do that, get another drunk and puzzle it out, get a bunch of drunks and sit around in the kitchen drinking coffee and talking a lot of shit that you just know you wouldn’t have wanted to hear. But somebody had to do it. So it gets done, and they put it in a book called Alcoholics Anonymous, the Big Book, and before you know it, you got all these sonsofbitches saying Yessir, that’s the way to do it, old AA. It’s a grand old program, and they know how to make it grander. They can supercharge it. They got a book or a videotape or a weekend course that will get you enlightened or on the road to getting enlightened or just more comfortable with being an asshole, I don’t know.” Hubert paused dramatically. “They say, AA’s fine, but we got other issues, too.’ Well, I expect only the dead don’t have issues, and I can’t speak with any authority on that. What I can...”

  There were many topics that Hubert did feel qualified to address, and he addressed a number of them.

  Jack could sense that the crowd was getting restless, even hostile. Didn’t the old man hear them hiss when he referred to John Bradshaw and Scott Peck as a couple of grandiose assholes?

  But Hubert just kept on, oblivious, cheerful. He told a joke about a drunken priest and another about a drunken rabbi. He referred to women as “gals,” gays as “queers.” He was not endearing himself to this crowd— primarily young—who seemed incapable of placing him in his proper historical context.

  The crowd was turning ugly. “Old fart!” someone shouted. “Step Nazi!” someone else shouted. “Bleeding deacon!”

  Something else was occurring, something that the crowd, distracted, may not have noticed. The ground was shaking.

  At first Jack had thought the tremor was communicating itself to him through the platform he leaned against. Then he noticed that his knees, sunk into the dirt, were buzzing too.

  He glanced at Tilman, saw that the man was aware of this phenomenon and not pleased. Tilman was speaking into the cell phone. “How are we doing?”

  Tilman listened, said, “All right.” Tilman looked up, saw Jack studying him, and said, “It’s on its way. It’s been traveling for ten minutes, so we’ve got another four before it’s in place.” Tilman spoke into the phone again: “We got some tremors here. What’s the power source doing?” There was a long pause here while Tilman sucked on an invisible lemon. “Jeez. Has it peaked yet? Look, I’m just going to hang here, keep the line open. I may want you to blow it as soon as it’s in place.”

  Several fights had broken out in the audience. There were some who agreed with Hubert and were defending his right to speak his mind. The fat guys in black were attempting to restore order, moving with surprising agility, shoving, bellowing with back-off authority.

  Hubert was winding down. He snatched the envelope from the lectern. “I know, I know, you’d rather look at a pretty girl than listen to an old man. That shows you got your priorities straight.” He tore the envelope open, squinted at what was written therein—predictably hamming it up some— and said, turning to look at the seated girls, “Every one of you is a winner, having achieved the status of finalist in the Whole Addiction Expo Sobriety Queen competition. Acknowledging your accomplishment, the sponsors of this contest have seen fit to dispense with the categories of second, third and fourth, delineations that seem to shave this honor too close. We are here only to award one prize, the title of Miss Sobriety Queen 1998. That award goes to...” Hubert paused dramatically, looked down again as though making sure he had it right, looked up and shouted, “Miss Sobriety Queen 1998, Kerry Beckett!”

  The rock band launched into a raucous rendition of “You Are My Sunshine” and Kerry, beaming, ran across the stage and hugged Hubert, who hugged her back (his left hand, in Jack’s opinion, resting a little too familiarly on her waist).

  One of the gray-haired ladies got up and rocked across the stage, unsteady on high heels, a painful grin inspired by the weight of so many eyes. She was carrying a blue ribbon and a crown.

  Hubert took the ribbon and draped it over Kerry’s shoulders, then lifted the crown and placed it on her shaved head. “You Are My Sunshine” rose in volume, a dismal rendition that revealed what many had suspected, that the artlessness that characterized the music of Freddy and the Unfortunates was genuine and not some clever, self-mocking pose.

  The floor seemed to be undulating now. Jack looked up and saw that the bright vaulted ceiling of canvas was tearing, long ribbons of blue whipping in a hurricane wind.

  The black night shone through, and sinuous columns of gray fog, smoke perhaps, drifted down, as though the sky were burning, smoke sinking rather than rising, lethargic tentacles, heavier than air.

  Jack heard the sound of hideous machines. He turned and saw Tilman, crouched low and shouting into the cell phone. Jack could not hear what the old man shouted, but he knew the words had to be the only sensible ones: “Blow it! Blow it!”

  Hubert was holding up his arms, shouting, attempting to calm the throng, his expression and gesture as old as the first caveman’s (exhorting his comrades not to panic as the volcano erupted)—and just as effective, oil on flames. The crowd was screaming as the smoke settled on them, took shape, became white, mottled serpents with their heads whipping about, jaws flashing.

  Hubert waved his arms. Jack heard a sharp explosion, saw Hubert stagger back, blink up at the glaring lights. The old man clutched his shoulder, slumped forward onto his knees, keeled over sideways. Kerry screamed. A second bullet blew splinters into the air
next to Kerry’s left foot, and she turned, running.

  Two explosions—so close together that they amplified each other— barked in Jack’s ear, and he turned, saw Martin crouched and firing, the rifle aimed high and toward the back of the crowd.

  Jack saw someone pitch forward from a platform near the tent’s ceiling. Rifle and man, separated, fell at the same speed, lost in shadows and smoke.

  “Gotcha, you sonofabitch,” Martin muttered, standing.

  Jack climbed up on the stage, blinked at Hubert’s prone figure. The gold sobriety crown lay next to him, rocking slightly on the floorboards. Kerry was gone. Jack’s frenzied eye searched the crowd.

  Later, when his memory would reconstruct the scene, it seemed obvious that the ghost serpents were invisible to the people below, but that may have been the mind taking editorial liberties with the past, revising with new knowledge. The snakes were swarming, all sizes, from foot-long, ether-wriggling creatures to monstrous, barrel-bodied leviathans whose full length was lost in coils and shadow. Serpent was a word the mind settled on, an imperfect fit. These creatures seemed to be made of rope-like veins, their eyes small and animate with malice, their teeth a mouthful of needles licked by a dozen barbed tongues.

  Jack watched as one of the serpents bit a black-garbed biker on the elbow. He screamed, turned, and grabbed the man behind him by the throat.

  In retrospect, it was clear. The crowd was being goaded, whipped to a fury of blind hatred.

  “Hate,” a young, bearded boy said later, looking at the interviewing cameras as though he were seeing the world with a new, uneasy awareness. “Like hate flooding into a vein, you know—a dirty rush. I never got that expression ‘seeing red,’ but now I do. I wanted to kill somebody.”