The Reality Conspiracy (41 page)

Yet even at his most lethargic he had been able to think. The tranquilizer hadn't stopped his mind from working. Instead it kept his thoughts, no matter how horrible, from bothering him too much. And so he loved this chemical freedom from the torture of his own mind. At the same time, he realized how helpless he was when under sedation, how totally and completely vulnerable.

But he had put the time to good use. He had thought the whole thing through, never recoiling from any of the ugly knowledge. Yes, Father Sullivan seemed like a good and strong man. If something was still hiding in the church, Sullivan should be warned straightaway. None of this cryptic business about looking in the Bible; in all probability Father Mosely's Bible wasn't even there anymore. So how could Sullivan look in it?

Clem had been in a position to help, and he had refused. That's not the way Father Mosely would have liked him to behave. In the beginning, so very long ago, Clem had freely offered to help. Father Mosely had refused. Then, when Clem tried to tell his story, people thought he was lying. And crazy.

How could they know every word of his story was true? What they called symptoms of mental illness were in reality rational behavior. Why couldn't they understand that he didn't like to touch things because he knew all things were infested? All matter was not exactly as we see it.

The easiest thing had been to acquiesce, accept his diagnosis and eventual confinement. In time he had learned to be grateful for his incarceration because he was safer here, locked away from the outside world, confined, protected. Here people kept an eye on him twenty-four hours a day. He'd never have that kind of security anywhere outside. Out there, he would have been on his own. Out there, he was at the mercy of—

For nearly ten years the bad thing had not bothered him. Not really. Except for little reminders. At dinner a fork would twitch in his hand. A bird might perch on the bars of his window and speak to him. Or it would rain inside his room and he'd get in trouble for spilling water.

But now, with Father Sullivan back in the church, suppose the bad thing started up again? Suppose, simply by keeping his silence, Clement Barry had given the new priest and the people of Hobston the Judas kiss?

Soon, as soon as he regained his strength, he knew what he had to do. When the drug wore off he would sneak away, leave the hospital. He would find Father Sullivan and tell him everything. He'd offer to help and he'd hope it wasn't too—

What was that?

With difficulty, Clem lifted his head off the cot and looked around his room. Water dripped in the sink in the corner. A breeze drifted through the open window, brushing his skin like a silk scarf. Air ruffled the clothes in his closet. The arms of his three long-sleeved shirts rose and fell as if they were waving to him.

Tiny specks of white plaster snowed from cracks in the walls and ceiling.

Why should that be?

Clem propped himself on his elbows as the locked door rattled in its frame.

Only the wind, he thought. Only the wind. . . .

But there was also that buzzing in his ears. He must have left his radio on. With a tremendous effort of will he moved his limp legs, heavy as the limbs of a statue. He flopped them over the side of his bed. His stocking feet plopped like dead things onto the cold tile floor.

Groaning, he shifted to an upright position. The effort made him feel like the heaviest man in the world. Somehow he stood.

Five unsteady steps brought him to the radio. Numb fingers found the knob—the radio had been off all along.

Yet, the buzzing grew louder.

He looked at the window. The black horizontal bars seemed to be bubbling. A closer look and he saw hornets, one after another, perching there. The sky beyond was an ebony cloud, as if a million wasps had assembled and were heading his way in an endless swarm.

Clem ran clumsily to the window, slammed it down, crushing tiny black bodies against the sash. They twitched and groped with hairlike legs.

More plaster rained from the ceiling.

The buzzing in his ears grew louder.

When he looked down at the floor he realized he was standing in midair a thousand feet above the distant rocky ground.

Clem gasped and flopped back onto his bed.

He knew what was happening. The thing was messing with him again. He had probably summoned it simply by thinking about it. He had learned, don't think about it. He knew thinking about it only made things worse.

"O-okay." he said in a tense whisper. "Okay, I won't say nothin'. I'll stay right here in my room and I won't say nothin' to the priest. Okay . . . ? Okay . . ."

Something wet, clammy, and invisible dragged across his face. He tried to brush it away, and his hands came away slick with blood.

It's not real
, Clem thought,
it's just trying to scare me
.

Still, he frantically wiped the blood on his pants.

The buzzing in his head turned to a hissing; and the hissing became words, "Sssstupid . . . sssstupid . . . stupid . . . Ssssssss."

Clem slapped his hands to his ears, but it did no good. He tried the floor again. Cautiously. It was an invisible barrier that easily supported his weight high above a shadowy pit seething with red dancing flames. They flicked at him, reached up like serpent tongues.

Without daring to look down, three sprinting steps brought him to the door. He tugged on it, pounded.

But the orderly had locked him in.

He opened his mouth to shout, "Hel—" but something like damp cotton filled it, gagging him. He tried to pull it out, but nothing was there.

Then he noticed the walls.

They were beginning to change. The beige paint was vanishing like mist evaporating from a windowpane. And all of a sudden the walls were gone.

One by one the pieces of furniture in his room fell into the lightless void. His bureau spun away and disappeared. His desk dropped out of sight, its chair flew off into space, and the bed hovered a second and soared off into infinity. Hairbrush, toothpaste, slippers, and a Coke bottle zipped around him like comets.

Clement clung to the solid knob of the invisible door.
It's not real
, he thought,
none of it's real!

In his ten years as a mental patient he had learned much about the deceptions of the mind. And the bad thing did its work in the mind.

Clem saw sweat flying from his face as, frantically, he tried to look around. There was nothing else to see. It was as if he were suspended in space, enclosed in an endless, all-encompassing planetarium where tiny stars surrounded him in the heavens. They were white pinpricks, far away and out of reach.

"
Stop it!
" Clem screamed.

Something moved from behind him, coming into view. It was the wood-framed mirror that had hung over the washbasin. It floated surrealistically in the black infinity until it positioned itself directly in front of him. Clem wanted to swat it away, but he didn't dare let loose of the doorknob clutched in his aching, sweating fists. If he released the doorknob, he knew he would plunge to his death.

Gotta hold on
, he thought.
This isn't real. None of it's real! I can't be in space. I couldn't breathe. I'd explode or something
.

When he saw his face in the mirror, the pain came.

A sloshing sensation, like warm water in his stomach. Only this time it was in his head.

I shouldn't have thought "explode." Oh God, I shouldn't have thought "explode."

His terrified face glared at him from the mirror. He wanted to look away, but right now his face was the only real thing in the universe. The alternative—looking at the blackness and the stars—would bring madness. So he looked at himself, saw the skin of his face redden as if it were blasted by a scorching sun.

Saw the hair of his head and eyebrows singed and falling away like dust.

Saw his irises bleach white, turning his eyeballs into perforated eggshells.

And the pain in his head intensified.

Blood slipped from his nose, his mouth, his eyes. He looked like a painted savage in the mirror. His last articulated thought was that something inside his head has dislodged.

Then—Oh my God—he saw what might have been liquefied brain flowing from his nose and ears.

He screamed. But in space there could be no sound.

"Something
entered people, something chopped, pressed, punctured, had its way with them and if you looked, bad child, it entered you
."

—Maxine Kumin

The Man of Many L's

Excerpt from

The Reality Conspiracy:

An Anecdotal Reconstruction of the Events at Hobston, Vermont

D
r. Lloyd Sparker lived just far enough out of town to enjoy a sense of escape when he went home after work. As a younger man, he used to drive the mile and a half between his office and his house. But now, and ever since his heart attack in '83, he truly believed that exercise was every bit as important as he told his patients it was. So on days when he didn't have to make hospital visits, he walked to and from work.

On Thursday, June thirtieth, his receptionist left at four-thirty. A little after five, Sparker locked the door to the office, checked the potted geraniums on the wide porch railing, and reflected on the events of the day as he started down the sidewalk toward home.

That morning had been oddly quiet at the office. Both appointments had canceled, so he had been free to ponder the
Burlington Free Press
. Surprising how much bad news thirty-five cents will buy, he mused, turning pages to get beyond the story about Beth Damon's death. He flattened the newspaper on his desktop and poured over the details of yesterday's Red Sox game.

Then, out of a deeply ingrained sense of professional obligation, he had flipped through the latest issue of
JAMA
, deferring gratification so he could get to the new
Yankee Magazine
that had arrived in the morning's mail. He was well into a short story by Howard Frank Mosher when the strangest emergency of his four-decade career began.

Over the years Sparker had often seen the disgusting product of solitary sexual experimentation. He had removed greased Alka-Seltzer bottles from vaginas, pulled knotted clotheslines from rectums, and once he'd even had to extract brittle brown pine needles from Dwight Gardner's penis.

In almost every case, people would sit there and innocently insist they had no idea at all how the foreign objects happened to be where they were. Sparker constantly marveled at the randy human animal's capacity for denial.

Today's first patient had been something else again.

Rich and Rena Michaels had brought their daughter Kimberly into the office. The howling nine-year-old girl, dressed in a light summer bathrobe, was wracked with severe abdominal cramps.

"I think something bit her when she was in the pool," Rena Michaels said in a voice thin with restrained panic.

Seeing the blood on Kimberly's leg, Sparker considered an alternative: the girl might be having her first period.

"Aah, aah, aah!" Kimberly gasped, twitching and bucking in her father's arms. Rich carried her into Sparker's examining room and tried to stand her on her feet. "Something's inside me!" she wailed, doubling over, arms locked around her stomach.

Her father lifted her onto the table and Sparker motioned for the agitated young parents to adjourn to the waiting room.

When they had left, he administered an injection of valium and, momentarily, was able to get the girl to lie still on the examining table. Speaking soothingly, he placed a hand on her lower abdomen. He could feel a slight but steady pulsation below the skin and muscle.

The girl moaned, trying to flex into a fetal position.

Sparker waited a moment for the drug to take full effect, then guided her feet into the elevated metal stirrups.

He pulled on his plastic gloves, all the time talking to her soothingly. "Did you put something in there, honey?"