A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  Suddenly he was very hot. Terribly hot. His skin felt like it was on fire. He looked down at his bare arms and watched the skin turn red, rise up in blisters, burst open. He felt as if he were being boiled alive.

  . . . boiled . . .

  His lobster! The kitchen was only a few feet away. They’d be cooking it now—dropping it live into a pot of boiling water!

  Screaming with the pain, he leaped up from the table and ran for the door.

  Outside . . . coolness. He leaned against the outer wall of Memison’s, gasping and sweating, oblivious to the stares of the passers-by but too well aware of their curiosity.

  “Howard, are you going crazy?” It was Lydia. She had followed him out.

  “Didn’t you see me? I was burning up in there!” He looked down at his arms. The skin was perfect, unblemished.

  “All I saw was my brother acting like a crazy man!”

  He felt her concern, her fear for him, and her embarrassment because of him.

  “When they started boiling my lobster, they started boiling me! I could feel myself being boiled alive!”

  “Howard, this has got to stop!”

  “Damn right it does.” He pushed himself off the wall and began walking down the street, back to his condo. “I’ve got some thinking to do. See you.”

  Lydia was having her first cup of coffee when Howard called the next morning.

  “Can I come over, Sis?” His voice was hoarse, strained. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Sure, Howie. Is it the arm again?”

  “Yeah! Feels like it’s being crushed!”

  Crushed. That rang a bell somewhere in the back of her mind. “Come right over. I’ll leave the door unlocked. If I’m not here, make yourself at home. I’ll be back soon. I’ve got an errand to run.”

  She hung up, pulled on jeans and a blouse, and hurried down to the Monroe Public Library. A crushed arm . . . she remembered something about that, something to do with the Soundview Condos.

  It took her awhile, but she finally tracked it down in a microfilm spool of the Monroe Express from two years ago last summer . . .

  Howard looked like hell. He looked distracted. He wasn’t paying attention.

  “Listen to me, Howard! It happened two years ago! They were pouring the basement slab in your section of condos. As the cement truck was backing up, a construction worker slipped in some mud and the truck’s rear wheels rolled right over his arm. Crushed it so bad even Columbia Presbyterian couldn’t save it.”

  He looked at her dully. “So?”

  “So don’t you see? You’re not just tuned in to the feelings and sensations of people and even lobsters and bugs around you. You’re picking up the residuals of old pains and hurts.”

  “Is that why it’s so noisy in here?”

  “Noisy?”

  “Yeah. Emotional noise. This place is crowded, I mean jammed with emotions, some faint, some strong, some up, some down, some really mean ones. So confusing.”

  Lydia remembered that these garden apartments had been put up shortly after the war—World War II. If Howard could actually feel forty-plus years of emotion—

  “I wish they’d go away and let me sleep. I’d give anything for just a moment’s peace.”

  Lydia went to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and found the bottle of Valium her doctor had prescribed for her when she was divorcing Harry. She shook two of the yellow tablets into her palm and gave them to Howard with a cup of water.

  “Take these and go lie down on my bed. They’ll help you sleep.”

  He did as he was told and shuffled off to the next room, moving like a zombie. Lydia’s heart went out to him. She called a friend and begged her to take the steno job she had lined up for this afternoon, then settled down to watch over her big brother.

  He slept fitfully through the day. Around dark she took a shower to ease her tension-knotted muscles. It helped some. Wrapped in her terrycloth robe, she returned to the kitchen and found him standing there looking worse than ever.

  “I can’t stand it!” he said in a voice that sounded as if it were going to break into a million jagged pieces. “It’s making me crazy. It’s even in my dreams! All those feelings! I’m going nuts!”

  His wild eyes frightened her. “Just calm down, Howie. I’ll make you something to eat and then we can—”

  “I’ve gotta get outta here! I can’t take it any longer!”

  He started for the door. Lydia tried to stop him.

  “Howard—”

  He pushed her aside. “Got to get out?”

  By the time she threw on enough clothing to follow him, he was nowhere to be seen.

  The night was alive with fear and joy and lust and pain and pleasure and love, emotionally and physically strobing Howard with heat and light. He needed relief, he needed quiet, he needed peace.

  And there, up ahead, he saw it . . . a cool and dark place . . . almost empty of emotions, of feeling of any sort.

  He headed for it.

  She got the call the next morning.

  “Are you Lydia Chambers, sister of Howard Weinstein?” said an official sounding voice. Oh, God!

  “Yes.”

  “Would you come down to the Crosby Marina, please, ma’am?”

  “Oh, no! He’s not—”

  “He’s okay,” the voice said quickly. “Physically, at least.”

  Lt. Donaldson drove her out to the buoy in a Marine Police outboard. Howard sat in a rowboat tied to the bobbing red channel marker in the center of Monroe Harbor.

  “Seems he stole the boat last night,” said the lieutenant, who had curly blond hair and looked to be in his mid-thirties. “But he seems to have gone off the deep end. He won’t untie from the buoy and he starts screaming and swinging an oar at anyone who comes near. He asked for you.”

  He cut the engine and let the outboard drift toward Howard and the rowboat.

  “Tell them to leave me alone, Sis!” Howard said when they got to within a couple of dozen feet of him.

  He looked wild—unshaven, his clothes smudged and wrinkled, his hair standing up at crazy angles. And in his eyes, a dangerous, cornered look.

  He looks insane,she thought.

  “Come ashore, Howard,” she said, trying to exude friendliness and calm confidence. “Come home now.”

  “I can’t, Sis! You can explain it to them. Make them understand. This is the only place where it’s quiet, where I can find peace. Oh, I know the fish are eating and being eaten below, but it’s sporadic and it’s far away and I can handle that. I just can’t be in town anymore!”

  Lt. Donaldson whispered out of the side of his mouth. “He’s been talking crazy like that since we found him out here this morning.”

  Lydia wondered what she could tell the lieutenant: That her brother wasn’t crazy, that he was suffering from a curse? Start talking like that and they’d be measuring her for a straightjacket, too.

  “You can’t stay out here, Howard.”

  “I have to. There’s a gull’s nest in the buoy and the little birds were hungry this morning and it made me hungry, too. But then the mother came and fed them and now their bellies are full and they’re content” . . . he began to sob . . . “and so am I and I just want to stay here near them where it’s quiet and peaceful.”

  She heard the lieutenant growl. “All right. That does it!”

  He stood up and signaled to shore. Another larger boat roared out from the marina. There were men in white jackets aboard, and they were carrying something that looked like a net.

  “He’ll be asleep for a while yet, Mrs. Chambers,” said Dr. Gold. “We had to inject him with a pretty stiff dose of Thorazine to quiet him down.”

  It had been horrifying to watch them throw a net over her own brother and haul him into the bigger boat like a giant fish, but there had been no other way. Howard would have died out on the water if they had left him there.

  She had spent most of the morning signing papers and answering countles
s questions on Howard’s medical and emotional history, family history, current stresses and strains. She had told Dr. Gold everything, including Howard’s receiving the hand in the mail two days ago. God, was it only two days ago? Everything . . . except the part about feeling the pain and emotion of other people . . . and animals and even insects. She couldn’t bring herself to risk trying to explain that to Dr. Gold. He might think she was sharing her brother’s psychosis.

  “When can he leave?” she asked.

  “Not for twenty-eight days at least. That’s how long he’s committed. Don’t worry too much. This appears to be an acute psychosis precipitated by that grisly incident with the severed hand. We’ll start his psychotherapy immediately, find an appropriate medication, and do what we can to get him on his psychological feet again as soon as possible. I think he’ll do just fine.”

  Lydia wasn’t too sure of that, but all she could do was hope. At least the Monroe Neuropsychiatric Institute was brand new. It had opened only last winter. She had heard about it, but since she never came to this part of town, she hadn’t seen it until now. It seemed pleasant enough. And since most of the patients here were probably sedated to some degree, their emotions wouldn’t be too strong. Maybe Howard had a chance here.

  Dr. Gold walked her to the door.

  “In a way it’s sort of ironic that your brother should wind up here.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, he’s one of the limited partners that developed this little hospital. All of the limited partners got a certified historic rehabilitation tax credit for investing, one of the few goodies remaining after tax overhaul.”

  “Rehabilitation?” A warning bell sounded in a far corner of her mind. “You mean it isn’t a new building?”

  “Oh, my goodness, no. We’ve cleaned it up to look spanking new, but in reality it’s a hundred and fifty years old.”

  “A hundred and fifty—”

  “Yes. It was abandoned for such a long time. I understand it was being used for dogfights before we took it over. Even used it as a place to train young fighting pit bulls. Trained them with kittens. A sick, sick—” He stared at her. “Are you all right?”

  “Dogfights?” Oh, God, what would that do to Howard? Wouldn’t the residual from something like that send him right up the wall?

  “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

  “I’m okay,” she said, steeling herself to ask the next question. “What was the building originally?”

  “Originally? Why I thought everybody knew that, but I guess you’re too young to remember. Up until the late 1960s it was the Monroe Slaughterhouse. One of the busiest in the—”

  He stopped as the sound came down the hall—a long, hoarse, agonized scream that echoed off the freshly painted walls and tore into Lydia’s soul.

  Howard was awake.

  BUCKETS

  “My, aren’t you an early bird!”

  Dr. Edward Cantrell looked down at the doe-eyed child in the five-and-dime Princess Leia costume on his front doorstep and tried to guess her age. A beautiful child of about seven or eight, with flaxen hair and scrawny little shoulders drawn up as if she were afraid of him, as if he might bite her. It occurred to him that today was Wednesday and it was not yet noon. Why wasn’t she in school? Never mind. It was Halloween and it was none of his business why she was getting a jump on the rest of the kids in the trick-or-treat routine.

  “Are you looking for a treat?” he asked her.

  She nodded slowly, shyly.

  “Okay! You got it!” He went to the bowl behind him on the hall table and picked out a big Snickers. Then he added a dime to the package. It had become a Halloween tradition over the years that Dr. Cantrell’s place was where you got dimes when you trick-or-treated.

  He thrust his hand through the open space where the screen used to be. He liked to remove the storm door screen on Halloween; it saved him the inconvenience of repeatedly opening the door against the kids pressing against it for their treats; and besides, he worried about one of the little ones being pushed backward off the front steps. A lawsuit could easily follow something like that.

  The little girl lifted her silver bucket.

  He took a closer look. No, not silver—shiny stainless steel, reflecting the dull gray overcast sky. It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t place it at the moment. Strange sort of thing to be collecting Halloween treats in. Probably some new fad. Whatever became of the old pillowcase or the shopping bag, or even the plastic jack-o’-lantern?

  He poised his hand over the bucket, then let the candy bar and dime drop. They landed with a soft squish.

  Not exactly the sound he had expected. He leaned forward to see what else was in the bucket but the child had swung around and was making her way down the steps.

  Out on the sidewalk, some hundred feet away along the maple-lined driveway, two older children waited for her. A stainless-steel bucket dangled from each of their hands.

  Cantrell shivered as he closed the front door. There was a new chill in the air. Maybe he should put on a sweater. But what color? He checked himself over in the hall mirror. Not bad for a guy looking fifty-two in the eye. That was Erica’s doing. Trading in the old wife for a new model twenty years younger had had a rejuvenating effect on him. Also, it made him work at staying young looking—like three trips a week to the Short Hills Nautilus Club and watching his diet. He decided to forgo the sweater for now.

  He almost made it back to his recliner and the unfinished New York Times when the front bell rang again. Sighing resignedly, he turned and went back to the front door. He didn’t mind tending to the trick-or-treaters, but he wished Erica were here to share door duty. Why did she have to pick today for her monthly spending spree in Manhattan? He knew she loved Bloomingdale’s—in fact, she had once told him that after she died she wanted her ashes placed in an urn in the lingerie department there—but she could have waited until tomorrow.

  It was two boys this time, both about eleven, both made up like punkers with orange and green spiked hair, ripped clothes, and crude tattoos, obviously done with a Bic instead of a real tattooer’s pen. They stood restlessly in the chill breeze, shifting from one foot to the other, looking up and down the block, stainless-steel buckets in hand.

  He threw up his hands. “Whoa! Tough guys, eh? I’d better not mess around with the likes of—!”

  One of the boys glanced at him briefly, and in his eyes Cantrell caught a flash of such rage and hatred—not just for him, but also for the whole world—that his voice dried away to a whisper. And then the look was gone as if it had never been and the boy was just another kid again. He hastily grabbed a pair of Three Musketeers and two dimes, leaned through the opening in the door, and dropped one of each into their buckets.

  The one on the right went squish and the one on the left went plop.

  He managed to catch just a glimpse of the bottom of the bucket on the right as the kid turned. He couldn’t tell what was in there, but it was red.

  He was glad to see them go. Surly pair, he thought. Not a word out of either of them. And what was in the bottom of that bucket? Didn’t look like any candy he knew, and he considered himself an expert on candy. He patted the belly that he had been trying to flatten for months. More than an expert—an aficionado of candy.

  Further speculation was forestalled by a call from Monroe Community Hospital. One of his postpartum patients needed a laxative. He okayed a couple of ounces of milk of mag. Then the nurse double-checked his pre-op orders on the hysterectomy tomorrow.

  He managed to suffer through it all with dignity. It was Wednesday and he always took Wednesdays off. Jeff Sewell was supposed to be taking his calls today, but all the floors at the hospital had the Cantrell home phone number and they habitually tried here first before they went hunting for whoever was covering him.

  He was used to it. He had learned ages ago that there was no such thing as a day off in Ob-Gyn.

  The bell rang again, and for half a seco
nd Cantrell found himself hesitant to answer it. He shrugged off the reluctance and pulled open the door.

  Two mothers and two children. He sucked in his gut when he recognized the mothers as longtime patients.

  This is more like it!

  “Hi, Dr. Cantrell!” the red-haired woman said with a big smile. She put a hand atop the red-haired child’s head. “You remember Shana, don’t you? You delivered her five years ago next month.”

  “I remember you, Gloria,” he said, noting her flash of pleasure at having her first name remembered. He never forgot a face. “But Shana here looks a little bit different from when I last saw her.”

  As both women laughed, he scanned his mind for the other’s name. Then it came to him:

  “Yours looks a little bigger, too, Diane.”

  “She sure does. What do you say to Dr. Cantrell, Susan?”

  The child mumbled something that sounded like “Ricky Meat” and held up an orange plastic jack-o’-lantern with a black plastic strap.

  “That’s what I like to see!” he said. “A real Halloween treat holder. Better than those stainless-steel buckets the other kids have been carrying!”

  Gloria and Diane looked at each other. “Stainless-steel buckets?”

  “Can you believe it?” he said as he got the two little girls each a Milky Way and a dime. “My first three Halloween customers this morning carried steel buckets for their treats. Never seen anything like it.”

  “Neither have we,” Diane said.

  “You haven’t? You should have passed a couple of boys out on the street.”

  “No. We’re the only ones around.”

  Strange. But maybe they had cut back to the street through the trees as this group entered the driveway.

  He dropped identical candy and coins into the identical jack-o’-lanterns and heard them strike the other treats with a reassuring rustle.

  He watched the retreating forms of the two young mothers and their two happy kids until they were out of sight. This is the way Halloween should be, he thought. Much better than strange hostile kids with metal buckets.

  And just as he completed the thought, he saw three small white-sheeted forms of indeterminate age and sex round the hedge and head up the driveway. Each had a shiny metal bucket in hand.