Neuropath

by R. Scott Bakker

  At least that's what Thomas told himself at first.

  He laid in bed all day, transcript pages scattered about, before he realized what he already knew.

  Nora fucked Neil because Neil was stronger.

  He had been a failure as a husband. As a man. And now he was a failure as a father as well.

  Good God, Frankie…

  Things couldn't get any more real.

  August 27th, 1.09 p.m.

  Thomas blinked. Both in shock and against the sunlight. When the doorbell rang, his thoughts had leapt to Sam and to the promise of information.

  'Hi, Tommy,' Nora said, wincing and smiling beneath her sunglasses. She wore a black skirt and a pearl blouse, like she was dressed for a funeral. 'I was nearby so I thought I'd take a chance and see if Ripley wanted to come home early.'

  Thomas wanted to slap her. She had always played little games, but more so after their divorce. 'Seeing what the kids wanted' meant unilaterally changing the plan to suit her schedule. 'Bring them home' meant bringing them to their real home. This shit was bad enough at the best of times. How could she do it now?

  Thomas glared at her.

  'Where is she?' Nora said, peering around him. 'Ripley!'

  'She's still at Mia's,' Thomas explained. 'You want me to go get her?'

  She bit her lip. 'No, no, that's okay. I'll come back later… when I said I would.'

  Two tears streaked from beneath the black lenses. Thomas was struck breathless by remorse.

  Always so hard on her.

  'Don't be silly,' he said. 'People in Europe are dying because of all our driving. I gotta get her things together anyway, so ah…' He shrugged. 'Why don't you come in?'

  Just please-please don't mention our boy!

  She wiped her eyes, then wordlessly stepped past him into the living room.

  He was struck, quite against his will, by the differences between her and Sam. Nora was dark where Sam was sunny, mother-soft where Sam was still school-girl tight. What troubled him wasn't the comparison—both were beautiful in their own way—it was the comparing.

  Nothing should be normal.

  'Would you like a coffee?'

  She nodded, taking off her sunglasses. Her eyes were red, smeared with mascara.

  'You remember how I like it?' she asked.

  'Two sugars, sub-Saharan black,' he said with phony mirth. 'Do you remember mine?'

  'One sugar, Scandinavian white,' she said, smiling—or trying to, anyway.

  The joke brought a pang to his throat. It was one of those running gags that couples use to seal the finer cracks of their intimacy. Stupidity made everything smooth.

  She lingered at the kitchen entrance while he poured the water, leaning precisely where Sam had leaned the night she'd asked him to drive with her to Washington.

  So far so good, he thought. Pretenses intact.

  'Oh!' Nora exclaimed. 'Where's her album? You know, the photos we gave her from when Bart was a puppy?'

  'In the office, I think,' Thomas said. 'On one of the shelves. Do you think that's a good idea?'

  She was already halfway into the living room. 'I dunno, Tommy. I thought that…' He lost the rest of what she said to the gurgle of the coffeemaker.

  He found her still in the office a few moments afterward. She was standing before his Earth poster, with British Columbia and Alaska rearing blue-green over her right shoulder. She was staring at the small photo-album, her eyes obviously overmatched by what they saw. She glanced at him, then closed the album. She set it down on the desk, almost reverently.

  'Nora?'

  She leaned against the poster and crumpled, not to the ground, but in a direction not described by space. Her sunglasses fell from her fingers.

  'I forgot,' she said. She gestured weakly at the album. 'Forgot th-that there were pictures of… pictures of…'

  She started weeping.

  Thomas clutched her in his arms without realizing he'd crossed the room. She shuddered, sobbed.

  'Oh, Tommy,' she gasped. 'Pleeaase-pleease-pleease…'

  'Shhh… All we can do is wait, sweetheart. Be strong for Ripley.'

  'Ripley,' she sighed, breathing deeply. 'Ripley…' as if she were the only mantra, the only prayer she had left.

  He brushed tear-soaked hair from her face, stared into her anguished, vulnerable eyes. She seemed so open, so derelict and exposed. So true.

  They kissed. Slow, soft, and yet swollen with promise. She tasted like mint.

  Her lips became desperate, even violent. Her hands searched his back. She pressed against him. He clutched her right breast, felt her sigh into his mouth.

  He pressed his left hand up her skirt, between her thighs, against warm, powdery cotton. She gasped. She undid his fly, began tugging on his cock with cold hands.

  He pulled her panties aside and pressed himself against her heat. She hooked a leg around his thigh, then suddenly, shockingly, he was moving inside her. No, something whispered inside of him, far too late.

  She cried out, smeared his cheek with wet lips. He thrust harder. 'Ungh,' she moaned. 'Ungh…'

  He'd forgotten that this was what she had felt like—tender, yielding center, clawing legs and arms. Insatiable mouth.

  'Upstairs,' she gasped.

  He withdrew. Things were moving too fast anyway. He wanted to enjoy her, cherish and remember her. He wanted to make her come the way Neil had made her come.

  Thomas scooped her in his arms, carried her down the hall to the stairs. She watched him with swollen eyes. 'I missed you, Tommy,' she whispered.

  They undressed slowly, the memory of heat and hardness still thick between them. Then she stood before him, older, but glorious still. How could such a woman…

  He pressed her down onto the bed. Tears streamed from her eyes.

  'I want my little boy back,' she murmured. 'My little baby.'

  Lyrics from a different song.

  Thomas stared at her, horror-stricken all over again. She rolled onto her side, and he curled naked behind her. He pressed himself between her legs, but not inside. He held her as she wept. Combed her hair with his fingers.

  They lay in silence for some time, skin growing slick against the heat of skin. A crease in the pillow bit into his cheek, but he did not move. The pain was like a pin, a place to focus, something to hold him here, pressed against the shuddering body of his ex-wife.

  Frankie was their boy, the bond that no amount of bitterness could break. The miracle was easily forgotten, and when it was remembered, it so often seemed absurd. A man spilling hot into his wife, the biology of blood and slurry, and then life, another dumbfounded soul breaching the surface of the black, the all-encompassing black.

  Despite Sam and his feeling of dawning regret, it seemed right that he hold Nora like this. Like coming full circle.

  'I always loved this duvet,' Nora said vaguely, running her fingers over the floral patterns.

  Adolescent shouts filtered through the windows. The afternoon light possessed a peculiar copper cast. The air was sticky and smelled of guilt.

  His gut turned to sand. Her words from the transcript wheeled unbidden through his mind.

  'He wasn't Neil…'

  Something savage rattled through him. Suddenly, inexplicably, it seemed he knew, with Old Testament certainty, that she was to blame. Not him. Not the father who slept while his son was stolen.

  He found himself asking, 'Why, Nora?'

  She pressed free of his arms and turned toward him. Her look was hard, almost vicious in its intensity.

  But her voice was calm—the pedestrian tone she used to describe grocery lists and co-workers. 'I want you to kill him, Thomas. Promise me you'll kill him.'

  Neil. Destroyer of worlds.

  Thomas watched Nora from the front door. She put Ripley's things into her Nissan, then after a shy wave, walked across to Mia's to get Ripley. She wanted to 'Say hi to the old fag,' she had said, making Thomas wince. For some strange reason she always insisted she could u
se the term because she was a woman.

  Thomas had told her to give Ripley his love. He didn't feel strong enough to say goodbye.

  Out of habit, he flipped the mailbox lid on his way in, fishing out assorted bills and what looked like yet another garbage BD from AOL—why wouldn't they just die? But the lack of flash and color on the case caught his attention. He pulled it out and froze.

  In dark blue marker, someone had written

  GOODBOOK

  across the transparent plastic. The Blue-ray flashed like a knife beneath.

  Thomas backed through the door, hands shaking.

  No-no-no-no-no-no…

  Thoughts of Frankie flooded his eyes with tears.

  Please, God… Please!

  He stumbled on a mat. The envelopes tumbled to the ground.

  Not my boy…

  The BD felt at once insubstantial and like an impossible weight. He raced to the kitchen, yanked the silverware drawer so hard it popped its rollers. Knives, forks, spoons scattered across the floor, making patterns like an augur's knuckle-bones. Thomas clutched a steak knife in a trembling hand, began sawing at the tape.

  Evidence! Evidence! something within him cried.

  He stopped. Ran a hand through his hair. Dashed to the phone.

  'Logan,' the voice on the other end answered.

  'Sam! He sent a Blue-ray to me. Another fucking BD.'

  'Tom? Slow down. What are you talking about?'

  'Jesus-jesus, what if it's him, Sam?' No-no-no-no-no-no… 'Sam? What if it's him?'

  Not my boy, please…

  He stared at the thing: quicksilver reflecting a stranger's anguished face.

  'Listen closely, Tom. Do not, under any circumstances, touch that disc. Do you understand me? You could—'

  'What if it's him, Sam?' Thomas whispered.

  He hung up, dropped the phone on the couch, scrambled across the living room rug. He cut through the remaining tape while crouching before his Blue-ray player. The phone trilled continuously, but for some reason it was nearly inaudible. An unearthly calm had possessed him.

  Kneeling beneath the TV, he worked the remote control with numb fingers.

  The phone stopped ringing. Shallow breaths. The disc whirred in its chilly womb.

  The screen flickered to life.

  The couch felt hard, like stainless steel—like a coroner's table.

  'Tom?' someone asked gently.

  Sam.

  He pulled his hands from his face. Sam knelt over him, her eyes filled with tears. Gerard seemed to tower behind her, his expression somewhere between stern detachment and… Just what was his expression?

  'Was it him, Tom?' Sam asked. 'Was it Frankie?'

  He shuddered, exhaled, feeling something like twin incisions across both his lungs. How much more could he take? Should get my blood pressure checked, he thought inanely.

  'Tom?' Almost a whisper.

  'No,' he croaked.

  Not yet.

  He could remember Neil chiding him during exams. 'Your working memory isn't designed for multitasking, you fucking idiot. It's not as advanced as Windows. You gotta do. One. Thing. Ata. Time.'

  'The televangelist,' he explained. 'Jackie Forrest.'

  Then my boy.

  Tears spilled down Sam's cheeks. She glanced nervously at Gerard, who remained stone-faced. How many rules had she broken, Thomas found himself wondering, by sleeping with him? Certainly fewer than by falling in love.

  'What do we do?' Sam asked, sounding curiously helpless.

  Gerard scowled. 'Wait for Atta,' he said. 'What else?'

  Agent Atta wasn't long in arriving. The August heat seemed to roll in with her—not the brightness, just the heat.

  'Tell me you didn't play it.'

  Thomas was sitting on the couch, Sam at his side. Agent Gerard stood from his seat at the foot of the stairs, scratching the back of his head.

  Thomas looked to his palms instead of the SAC. 'What would you do, Agent Atta? What would you do?'

  'You seem to be saying that an awful lot, professor,' Atta replied. 'Where is it?'

  'Still in the machine,' Gerard said.

  'Zarba,' Atta muttered, kneeling at the base of the broad screen. Her holster swung into view, gun-metal heavy. The light of the screen flashed across her sweaty cheeks, then the panel framed her in luminous black. Shapes seemed to float in and out of focus, as though they watched things battling beneath black satin sheets. There was a quick glimpse—a shadowy sack of some kind, cement or something—but Thomas was certain he'd glimpsed the name of some kind of farm-supply outlet.

  'There… Did you see it? The name on that bag?'

  'We'll have it checked out,' Atta said, unimpressed.

  Thomas looked to Sam, scowling.

  'The webcast with Halasz had the same kind of glimpses,' she explained. 'Specialty labels, products from what seemed to be non-franchise outlets. But when we checked them out, they came from places all over the country. The bastard's playing with us, professor. Throwing us manufactured leads to dilute our resources.'

  More and more shapes resolved and vanished in the gloom. The image bobbed, as though the camera probed the bowels of some deep-sea wreck. Thomas found himself every bit as anxious as he had been on his first viewing. For some reason, knowing he wouldn't see Frankie made it seem even worse.

  Though if he had…

  None of this is real. Just things and people in a head that's all in my head…

  The frame abruptly stabilized. Peering, Thomas saw what seemed to be a chain-link kennel. A kennel in a basement littered with defunct possessions. A human shambled through the murky interior, apparently oblivious to the watching camera-eye. 'Halleluiah,' hissed from the speakers, as though surfacing from white noise. The figure stumbled backward, then drunkenly fell to its knees. It was weeping now. 'Halleluiah.'

  Light splashed the scene, as sudden and bright as a prison-guard ambush. The figure whirled toward the camera. Thomas heard himself sob—the way he had when he first realized that it wasn't Frankie…

  … but Jackie Forrest, hands out, as though fending away paparazzi. His scalp had been bandaged, like Halasz. Silver braces bracketed his head, fixed with what seemed hardware-store screws. 'You,' he spat in indignation. 'You can't hurt me! I know where I'm going! I have seen!'

  HOW HAVE YOU SEEN?

  The question apparently shocked the preacher. For a moment, anger and terror warred over his expression.

  'I walk by faith!' He wiped his jowls, smiled manically. 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for,' he exclaimed in the wavering baritone that so many preachers reserve for biblical quotations, 'the evidence of sights unseen!'

  SO BELIEF WITHOUT EVIDENCE IS EVIDENCE?

  'You'll never know, you son-of-a-bitch!' Jackie snarled.

  'Not until you writhe in the fires of hell! Then your agon—!'

  AGONY? YOU MEAN LIKE THIS?

  Spit exploded from Jackie's mouth. He went rigid, bent back like a coat-hanger, then fell thrashing onto the floor. Feces and urine darkened his shift. His shriek was choked into gagging by vomit.

  Jackie went slack. 'You sum'bitch,' he sobbed. 'You sum'bitch.'

  CALL ON HIM.

  Jackie curled into a fetal position. 'Pleasssse!' he hissed.

  HIM. CALL ON HIM.

  'Pleaaasse, Gawwd!' he bawled.'PLEEAAASSSE!'

  A moment of grovelling silence, then the evangelist jumped, as though surprised by someone tapping his shoulder. He glanced around wildly, then slowly turned his face in the direction of the camera's light. He wiped his nose along his forearm, oblivious to shit smeared across it.

  DO YOU SEE?

  'H-how?' the trembling lips asked. 'H-ho-how is this possible?'

  IS IT GOD?

  The face crumpled then went blank. 'Y-yessss!' he gasped. 'I can't see… but I feeeel him… here… so very close…'

  HOW CAN YOU BE CERTAIN?

  'This is beyond your puny questions… beyond…'

&nb
sp; The evangelist's face floated across the screen, greasy and bloated in the glaring light. Surgical steel gleamed. Blood trailed from the screws. His expression had become plaintive in a wheedling, ingratiating way that Thomas found difficult to look at. Plaintive and joyous.

  'I knew it… I always knew it!'

  A deep shuddering gasp. Fluttering eyelids. A voice capsized by rapture.

  'Sweet Jeeeesusss! Haaaw, praise-praise-praise

  'Bullshit,' Gerard murmured, only to be silenced by Agent Atta's fierce scowl.

  'Forgive me… Haaaw, please-pleas—'

  'It just, goes on like this,' Thomas said over the cooing preacher. 'On and on, until the BD runs out.'

  '—I didn't mean to… Nooooo… Nooooooooo…'

  The air had become unbreathably thick.

  'That can't be real,' Gerard said after a moment. He sounded frightened.

  'What can't be real?' Thomas asked.

  'He can't make somebody see God.'

  Thomas shrugged. 'Why not? That's the whole point: experience, all experience, is simply a matter of neural circuitry. Why not religious experience? In fact, these experiences are pretty pedestrian for neuroscientists—among the first to be artificially stimulated.'

  Gerard looked unconvinced. No, not unconvinced, unwilling. He had been able to shrug off what had happened to Powski and Halasz, but not this. He must be born again, Thomas realized, the proud owner of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

  But if revelation were simply a matter of wiring…

  'It's gotta be some kind of trick,' Gerard said. 'Are you telling me he could do that to you, me, anyone,'

  Thomas nodded. A frantic edge had crept into the agent's tone.

  'Easy, Gerard,' Atta said. 'As far as his argument goes, our only concern—our one and only concern—is how we can use it to stop the lunatic bastard. Copy?'

  Gerard looked at her with dull incomprehension, the look of a man jarred past the point of copying. 'But if it's all just in our heads, then… then…'

  'Then what?' Atta asked.

  'Then he's right, isn't he?'

  Atta rubbed the back of her neck. 'Professor?'

  Thomas looked away.

  'I could use some help here, professor.'