The Reality Conspiracy (6 page)

"You're doing a fine job, Karen. Just fine," he whispered without taking his eyes from the screen. "Now, ssshhh."

"Who am I talking to?" Karen's voice came from the television.

The little girl's hands were on the collar of her blouse. She pulled it away from her throat as if it were choking her. The strange voice deepened more, almost to a growl, "Noonie's dead, and P-Man's dead, and Brussel's dead. Now there's me; there's just me. I'm in here all alone."

Again the coarse giggle came from the child's throat, but her face was not smiling, her lips didn't move.

Karen saw herself enter the frame of the video screen. She knelt down in front of the little girl, who was now thrashing in the chair, pulling at her collar until the button popped open at the top.

Karen tried to take Lucy's hand. "You're all right, Lucy, you're all right. You can calm down now, honey, you—"

Abruptly the child pulled her hand away. "Lucy's dead; now I'm in her head."

"No, I don't want to talk to you. Let me talk to Lucy!"

"Lucy's done and you're no fun." Again the half-growl, half-giggle. Lucy's body thrashed and squirmed.

Karen watched herself on the screen; clearly agitated, approaching panic. Now she had grabbed the little girl and was shaking her, holding her by the upper arms! "Lucy, listen to me: you're okay. You're fine and safe. It's me, Lucy, Dr. Karen. Please come and see me."

The muscles of Lucy's face contorted, rippled. It looked as if fat worms were crawling beneath her skin. The flesh actually stretched. The lips rolled back over her teeth, appearing to retract into her gums.

"Lucy, can you hear me?"

"Dr. Karen . . . ?"

"Yes, Lucy, It's me." Karen's voice was eager, expectant. "Come out, honey. You'll be safe out here with me."

Lucy straight-armed Karen, shoved her mightily. She toppled backward and sat on the floor just outside the video frame. Karen watched herself scrambling to get back up, trying to stop Lucy from ripping open the front of her blouse.

Too late! The child's hands, now gnarled, looking almost like claws, grabbed her small, newly developing breasts, their tiny hard nipples tumid with bright blood.

"You want my tit," the child rasped, "you eat my shit."

Lucy's talonlike hands scraped her chest and stomach. Bright welts, some of them bleeding, crisscrossed her torso.

Karen's image froze. Now red-faced, nearly frantic, she had locked up. She sat there on the screen immobile and useless.

Lucy stood up on the chair, her face out of camera range, screaming.

The recording of Karen's speech was almost inaudible. "Lucy, listen to me. I'm going to clap my hands three times and you're going to wake up. Do you hear me Lucy? Do you understand? Answer me."

The sweet, frightened voice of a child: "Yes, I hear."

Karen clapped her hands, once, twice, three times.

Lucy flopped back into the seat, again within range of the camera. Now clapping her own hands as if applauding, she laughed crazily. "Wake up. Lucy."

Her eyes were still closed.

Then more softly, "Wake up, honey."

"No, noooo, he won't let me. He's holding me."

"Who is? Who's holding you?"

"He is, he won't let me wake up."

"Who, Lucy? P-Man?"

"No, it's . . ."

Again, Lucy began to squirm. Her fingernails bit into the aims of the recliner, puncturing, tearing the material. Then, alter a moment, her body became still. Only her head moved. It roiled around as if her neck muscles had turned to rubber. Slowly, deliberately, her slack mouth twisted into a sneering grin. Her tongue squeezed from between taut lips like foul organic waste extruding from a fleshy orifice. Her eyes widened, then her pale cheeks seemed to shift upward as, impossibly, her brow descended, pinching her eye sockets into narrow black slits.

The cheeks flattened; the jaw thrust forward.

Now the growling seemed to come from far away, getting louder, as if some dreadful beast within her were coming closer and closer, almost in view.

"Who are you?" Karen demanded, her voice cracking. "Tell me your name."

"Nahumich."

"Who?"

"Estheruth."

"Darn it, what are you talking about? Let me speak to Lucy. I want to speak to Lucy. Now."

With slow, precisely enunciated syllables, the twisted, sneering face said in Lucy's faint voice, "Lucy is dead. I'm here instead."

"Who's here? Who are you?"

Karen looked away from the TV screen, embarrassed to see herself lose control. Her video image screamed at the frightened little girl, "Malachisaiah."'

""Tell me—"

"EZRAMOS!" The child-thing exploded into a roar of belligerent bawdy laughter—

"Who!" Karen was shaking the child. "Who? WHO?"

"You know me, you whore. We've met before." The squinting eyes looked into the video lens. As if speaking directly to Karen and Gudhausen, the voice growled, "My name is Splitfoot."

Montreal, Quebec

F
ather William J. Sullivan looked down at the tiny man in the hospital bed.

He looks like a corpse
, Sullivan thought as an unfamiliar tremor of dread coursed along his spine. But no, that wasn't exactly right: the man wasn't exactly . . . dead.

A more apt but equally horrific image crystallized in Sullivan's memory. Yes, the old man looked more like one of those fragile Jewish prisoners who had stared out at him from behind the barbed-wire fence at Treblinka. In those days the whole world had been wrestled from the siege of evil. But evil had left its mark. God, so many pitiful, wasted souls. They had looked like woeful, big-eyed skeletons. Sullivan—not yet twenty years old at the time—remembered thinking,
How in God's name can they stand up? How can they walk?

But in one way, perhaps, those liberated prisoners were better off: the old priest in the bed couldn't move at all. There would be no escape, nor could he be rescued from the forces that bound him.

Resting on his side, curled tightly in a fetal position, the withered priest's arms crossed at the wrists. The fingers of both hands had tightened into firm little knots that pressed against his collarbone. Beneath his fists, the skin of his chest looked raw and red: it glistened with salve.

For a moment Sullivan was lost in thought. As if hypnotized, he watched bubbles of clear liquid dropping one by one from the IV bag—nourishment and moisture.

Motion caught his eye. The nun, Sister Elise, tugged the gray sheet over the old man's shoulders. Sullivan spotted the vivid red bedsore before it was concealed.
Such things are unavoidable
, he thought, but it made him sad.

He looked at the old man's eyes; one open, the other closed. Hoping for a sign—any small indication of awareness—Sullivan bent down to look directly into that single open eye. It seemed to be covered with a milky film. As Sullivan's head moved closer, the pupil didn't widen. The eyelid didn't flutter. Sullivan knew he could touch that eye, put his finger directly on the iris, and the old man wouldn't know.

He drew back, wrestling with a moment of atavistic revulsion. Though he had read the chart, read it over and over, he just hadn't understood. He had completely failed to prepare himself for the old priest's condition.

Seeing the reality of it now, he realized that empathy was beyond him. The old man—Father Mosely—couldn't be hurt, couldn't be helped. He felt nothing, thought nothing, had no aspirations, experienced no emotions. An irritating phrase from Sullivan's childhood intruded: nobody's home upstairs.

The skin of the old priest's face was almost translucent. It looked like candle wax. Father Sullivan realized that pale skin could be sliced, indeed major surgery could be done without anesthesia, and the old man would never know.

Sullivan shuddered, taking a deep breath through his nose in an effort not to cry. As he inhaled, the odor of urine, diseased flesh, and of some pungent antiseptic solution, struck him as a nauseating breeze.

"He was my teacher," Sullivan said. Then, needlessly, "It was a Catholic school."

The little nun looked up at him and nodded.

"That was in the early forties. He seemed an old man even then." Sullivan stroked the patient's wispy hair. It felt strange, like a spider web.

"As bitter as I was in those days, I never objected to calling him Father." He paused, thinking back, remembering. "Father Mosely was the closest thing I ever had to a real father. Sounds maudlin, doesn't it?"

The little nun smiled, but there was confusion in her eyes. It occurred to Sullivan that she wasn't understanding him. This time he spoke to her in French. "How long has he been here?"

"How long? Ten years. Almost ten years with us."

"And all the time, just like this?"

"Just as you see him, Father. Not alive, not dead."

"A coma?"

"Yes, always the coma. He is a very old man, yet he does not die."

Sullivan touched one of the priest's hands, thinking he would take it in his own, hold it for a while. The gnarled lingers would not open, the elbow joints would not flex.
Stiff as a corpse
, Sullivan thought.

"Do you know what caused it, Sister?"

She would not meet his eyes. "Perhaps it is better if you talk with Father LeClair about this."

"This is not simple curiosity, Sister."

"Yes, I know. But didn't Father LeClair's letter explain all these things?"

"Sister—"

"I know, I know. It is not for me to question. My apology, Father."

"Well then . . . ?"

"The lay doctors say it is the result of a . . . a stroke."

"Go on."

"But Father LeClair, he says . . . he says . . . Please, Father, I cannot!"

Sullivan took a long slow breath, trying to control his impatience. "Of course. It is I who should apologize. I'm being rude and insensitive. Please forgive me, Sister Elise."

She dropped her eyes, folded her hands In front of her, as if praying.

Father Sullivan continued: "Perhaps you will be good enough to go and see if Father LeClair will speak to me now. I'll stay here. I'd like to spend a few moments with Father Mosely."

The little nun scurried from the room. Father Sullivan was alone with the old priest.

Boston, Massachusetts

I
t all happened so fast.

And every time it was just the same. He'd nod, close his eyes just for a minute, and he'd be there.

Soaring.

Free of the earth. Part of the sky.

The engine sound, the roar, ascending the scale until it became high-pitched and insect-shrill.

Far below, the compression of the bombs—blasting bamboo into splinters and men into mud—was the rhythmic pulse of his own heart. And he soared.

Clouds crowded the sides of his plane. He was a scissors cutting through cotton, a knife plunging through snow.

And as he slipped along the ethereal corridor, he saw the faces flashing by, faces fabricated from the filmy material of clouds. White faces, ghost faces.

Smiling.

And he knew them, knew them all. These were the ones he had rescued. These were the souls his bombs had liberated from the sweltering hell of the jungle. Now they rose to take their places in the mansions of the Lord. American faces. Asian faces. All ascending because of him.

He was their savior.

The engines whined in his ears as he sped along the white tunnel, soaring toward the brilliant yellow opening at the end.

The beautiful golden light.

And if he could make it all the way, if he could just complete the journey one more time, he'd look upon the face of God—

The phone rang.

He opened his eyes.

The dream had lasted the duration of a blink.