Periphery, page 26
Loretta Wyatt reached the east end of the ward and turned without glancing out the window. “Glad we’re not out there, right Mom?”
Gary noted the smoke haze with indifference. A year ago, he would have reported to the station by now, bunk gear in hand, ready for deployment wherever they needed him. But Gary knew something only a selected few were aware of. The wildfire was of no importance. Let it burn. The vetro offalate would extinguish it once they were here. All they had to do was think the flames into submission. Just as they would think the plaque from his mother’s brain. Be gone! Puff. Such was the power of gods. Why anyone would oppose their return was beyond Gary.
A television at the nurses’ station was showing an aerial view of a vast, white plume rising like steam from a volcanic fissure. Cindy, the nurse on duty, smiled at him as they passed.
“We on high-alert yet?” he asked.
“Don’t think so. But you’d know more than me. Don’t they keep you guys in the loop?”
“They said they would.”
“Then as long as you’re still here, things can’t be that bad.”
“Long as I’m here,” Gary agreed. He liked Cindy. She was young and cute and despite her scrubs, he could tell she had a lithe, sinuous body under there somewhere. After the dust settled he intended to ask her out. New era, new girlfriend. He was fairly certain she would say yes. Women, especially nurses, tended to find his devotion to his mother a turn-on. And if she hesitated, well, he could always ask the vetro to give her a gentle nudge. He knew they could do that, as well. Really, there was almost nothing they couldn’t do.
Except stop John and Andrew Tate on their own.
Gary paused, frowning, as Loretta Wyatt marched on without him. He didn’t like thinking about this part. He much preferred dwelling on his mother’s full recovery, so close now. But something small and terrier-like refused to let go of his doubt. It growled softly at night and whipped its head, teeth sunk deep into a question he could not shake. It was odd such omnipotent beings would concern themselves with the triflings of a few individuals. What could John and Andrew and their cohorts do to prevent the vetro offalate’s inevitable triumph? Gnats. That’s all they were. Not worth their attention.
And yet the vetro had demanded Gary kill his partner. They had even shown him how and when. The motel. The unlocked window. The gun he would find in a box on the top shelf of his mother’s bedroom closet (a .22 revolver he’d had no prior knowledge of). It would have been so easy. With the vetro guiding him, Gary would have been a leaf in an updraft, carried along and deposited in exactly the right place at the right time.
And his response to their demand?
No.
Of course, no. He wasn’t a killer. It wasn’t in his makeup. Gods, however, saw things differently. There was no sentimentality in the vetro offalate. Gary had sensed that from the beginning. They were concerned with the Big Picture. The life of one individual was insignificant. In that regard, they were no different than the god of the Old Testament. He certainly had no problem commanding thousands to slaughter thousands more. He was a Big Picture kind of guy as well. It didn’t bother Gary his gods demanded the shedding of blood. It was simply that he was no Abraham, willing to slit his own son’s throat at the Almighty’s behest. He was composed of weaker stuff.
Gary hastened to the west end of the ward and met his mother on her way back. Falling in step, he draped an arm over her shoulder. “Still can’t keep up with you, Mom. You’re like the Energizer Bunny.”
The vetro offalate had been disappointed by his refusal. That was the word he chose to use—disappointed—although on some unspoken level he knew it would have been more accurate to say enraged. But even enraged wasn’t right. What he had sensed heaving and writing just beyond his awareness, held in check by a titanic effort of restraint, was something beyond the capacity of human comprehension, an apoplectic fury that could burn entire worlds to ash.
So, he had offered an alternative. Gary wouldn’t kill Andrew Tate, but he would remove him as a threat. His new partner was already viewed with suspicion at the fire station. It wouldn’t be hard to push that suspicion into outright animosity. It was only a matter of arranging things. If the vetro could distract certain individuals at the right time, he would be able to assure Tate’s downfall. Once he was tucked safely away in a jail cell, what harm could he do?
Not only had the vetro offalate agreed, they’d shown him exactly how to accomplish this alternative plan. Andrew’s locker combination bloomed in his mind with such clarity Gary was certain he’d be able to recite it on his deathbed. They revealed the panel at the back of Andrew’s locker as well, the recess it concealed. And look here! A bottle of hooch. When Gary discovered Andrew deserved his fate he nearly swooned in relief. His partner was indeed a drunk, just as Sid Langston warned. Putting him behind bars wasn’t a betrayal. It was justice.
The morphine vials had been Gary’s idea. Schedule II narcotics were strictly monitored of course, with daily inventory checks and disposal of unused portions requiring a third-party witness, usually an attending emergency room nurse. In theory, every milliliter of the station’s opiates was documented and accounted for. But when nurses “witnessed” and signed off on Gary disposing Tubex vials he was actually pocketing, it didn’t take long to accumulate a considerable stash. A few changes in the log book, two or three hushed conversations with other EMTs about possible irregularities, a confidential meeting with Captain Hamilton regarding something odd Gary had glimpsed as Andrew fiddled in his locker was all it took.
The night before the surprise inspection he slipped out of his bunk, removed the baggie of vials from his own locker and transfer it to the alcove behind Andrew’s. And what had he felt as he did this? Not anxiety. There was no danger of discovery. The vetro would make sure he was undisturbed. Guilt? Hardly. Shame? When he had written the words, “HOW ABOUT A GAME OF CRAZY TATES?” in lipstick across his partner’s locker he’d experienced a twinge of shame, true, mostly at trying to implicate Clare and Sid for something they had nothing to do with. But he needed to create the illusion he and Andrew were on the same side, united against those plotting his ruin.
What Gary had felt planting the vials was magnanimity. He was, after all, saving the man’s life. If it wasn’t for his intervention, his mercy, his willingness to displease the gods, Andrew Tate would likely have died at the hands of one of the vetro’s more fervent followers. Gary returned to his bunk that night and drifted off to sleep in the afterglow of the most charitable thing he’d ever done in his life.
And now his reward was nearly at hand. He did nothing for himself. It was all for others. It didn’t matter that the multitude soon to be restored to their senses would never know he was the catalyst of their salvation. Well, not much. A little recognition would be nice, but Gary was prepared to live in contented anonymity so long as he and his mother could…
“Gary.”
Loretta Wyatt’s endless parade stopped at the bay window. For the first time in months, she stood motionless in the hallway, staring out at the hazy afternoon. At first, he wasn’t sure if she had actually said his name or if he’d only imagined it, so lost in his own thoughts had he been.
“Mom?”
“Gary.” She turned, her head tilting in that old way she had of making him feel as if he was the one staring up at her instead of the other way around. “Gary, how did I get here?”
It was his mother, not just a flickering afterimage. She was here with him once again, all of her. The vetro offalate had granted his wish early! What glorious creatures!
“Hi, Mom! Welcome back.” He clasped her hand and raised it to his cheek.
“Gary.” She cupped his chin and rubbed her thumb over his lips. “I had such a strange dream. I was in a room and couldn’t find my way out. Every door I opened led back to the same place. I kept opening door after door but I couldn’t find a way out. It was so frustrating.”
“Don’t think about that anymore. You were sick for a little while, but now you’re better. You’ll never be in that room again.”
“You look different, somehow. Older.” With her hand still on his cheek, she glanced around. “Where did you say I was, again?”
“You were sick. Your sickness made you confused. This is a place that takes care of people who are… confused.”
“A home?”
“It was just to keep you safe until you were better.”
“You put me in a home?”
“Mom, that’s all over.”
“But it’s not. I’m still in the room.” Her voice began to fade in an unsettling way, not dropping to a whisper so much as growing distant, receding down a corridor of echoing stone. “I remember a day spent sitting in the sky. Playing cards in the sky. Did that happen? The birds were…”
“Come back, Mom. Look at me. Just keep looking at me.”
Loretta Wyatt turned her face to him and Gary’s breath caught. At the same instant, her hand clamped his jaw hard enough for her nails to draw blood. What he saw in her eyes was terrifying. The old vacancy was gone, replaced by an awareness of blast furnace intensity, so hotly focused he thought he could feel his cheeks beginning to blister.
“We have a new task for you,” the thing wearing his mother’s face said. It spoke the language of the vetro offalate, but such enunciations could not be reproduced by a human larynx. The effort rent flesh and snapped vocal cords.
“Stop,” he pleaded. “Talk in my head.”
The hand clamped around his jaw turned Gary’s head first one way, then the other. He could have broken her grip, pushed her from him, but he didn’t want to hurt her. His mother was still in there, he was certain of it, her consciousness crushed up against the inner lining of her skull.
“Go to this place.” A house and its location were crammed into his mind. “Take the woman and child you find there to this place.” Another image. “When it’s done, call him; tell him to come or they will die.”
“You’re hurting her!” A bloody foam was accumulating in the corners of his mother’s mouth. “You don’t need to do this.”
Loretta Wyatt lips parted in a monstrously inaccurate approximation of a smile, revealing bloody gums.
“Do not fail us again. There will be no further opportunities to prove your worth.”
“Yes, yes. Whatever you want. Just let her go!”
The hand dropped from his face, but the creature before him lingered a moment longer. “One more thing, son.” It drew the last word out, hissing red spittle across his face. “Make sure you bring the gun this time.”
Her right forearm was bleeding again. She’d banged it pulling the big suitcase from the hall closet and now the bandages were blooming scarlet blotches from wrist to elbow. Even after all the years of being good, of resisting the increasingly rare urge to draw blood, the sting of her cuts was still comforting. Soothing, even. Delicious. She considered intentionally banging her left forearm to give her pain the eloquence of symmetry.
It wouldn’t take much. The wounds were deeper than she had intended, deep enough that she should probably drop by an ER to get herself stitched back together. But there was no time. Andy had told her to go and that was exactly what she would do, putting as much distance as possible between Anna and the abominations Grace had beheld in her nightmare. She would run all the way to Alaska if she had to, then hop a boat and sail over the horizon.
And the images that kept rearing behind her eyes, the terrible machines, Anna screaming and struggling, her fingers, her poor little fingers ruined from trying to claw her way from the dastardly creature dragging her by one leg into the center of the room? Would she ever be able to outrun those images? She didn’t think so. The world wasn’t big enough. She would have to learn to live with them somehow. If they lived.
No! That’s what they wanted, the things muttering at the back of her head. They wanted her to despair. To give up. To bury herself under the covers and wait for the end. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. She was leaving, and she was taking Anna with her.
But first.
Grace rapped her left forearm against the closet doorframe. The pristine gauze began to discolor. The pain was clarifying and a surge of renewed purpose propelled her down the hall toward Anna’s bedroom.
She had worn a long-sleeved Cardigan when she dropped by her sister’s house to pick up Anna, hoping to conceal the bandages. It would have worked with her brother, James. James had always been oblivious to nearly all of his younger sisters’ “dramas.” Not so with Deborah. It’s impossible to keep secrets from someone you shared a room with for seventeen years. Knowing what to look for, she had immediately seen the rim of white poking from beneath Grace's cuff.
“Oh, Gracie,” she said, her eyes widening in reproach before closing in exasperation.
“Anna ready?” So much for chit-chat. In a way, she had been relieved. She doubted she would ever be able to engage in small, polite conversation with anyone ever again.
“Hi, Mommy.” Anna’s head appeared from behind her aunt’s leg, a pale balloon floating in the relative darkness of the foyer. She tried to give Grace a smile, but it was a feeble effort that withered as she settled against Deborah’s thigh.
“Is she alright?” Grace sank to her knees and held out her arms.
“Are you?” her sister countered.
Anna nearly collapsed against Grace’s chest. “Don’t start, Deb.”
“We’ve both been feeling a little under the weather,” her sister said, leapfrogging back to Grace’s initial question. “There must be a thing going 'round. Stephen has it, too. He’s upstairs right now with a towel over his eyes.”
“The music can’t be helping.” As her sister spoke, Grace had become aware of the bouff-bouff-bouff of a snare drum pounding down from the second story. She thought it might be Marc Broussard’s “Home,” but she couldn’t be sure. The melody was stuck somewhere between the walls.
“Actually, it does seem to help some. Makes us all feel a little better, doesn’t it Anna?”
Grace felt her daughter’s nod. She was nearly asleep. “It pushes the voices out a little,” she said in a tiny voice.
Pinpricks of pain raced up and down her forearms as her skin erupted in gooseflesh. “What did you say, honey?” She eased her daughter’s head from her shoulder and brushed a strand of brown hair from her eyes.
“She said she’s been hearing voices in her head since this morning.” Deborah made a low coughing sound that was supposed to be a dismissive chuckle. “You know how kids are; don’t get worked up. She probably has a song lyric stuck on repeat.”
“They can’t hear them yet,” Anna whispered in her ear. “The voices are still too small. But I have small ears and I can hear them.”
Grace choked back a sob as she hugged Anna close. Bastards! She’s just a little girl. Leave her the hell alone!
“But it’s making their heads hurt anyway,” Anna continued. “In a little bit, they’ll be louder. Then they’ll hear. Then everybody will hear.”
That had been an hour ago, and now the voices were louder. No, that wasn’t quite right. They weren’t louder. How could something inside your head be loud or soft? What they were, with each passing minute, was closer. More distinct. More… comprehensible. Before long, the jumble of syllables would assemble themselves into understandable words. She didn’t know how she knew this, but she did. And when that happened, she was afraid what remained of her sanity would crumble like old paint over termite damage when a finger punches through to the hollow beneath.
Grace turned into Anna’s room and had a momentary burst of alarm when she didn’t immediately see her. “Anna?”
“Hum.”
“Honey?”
Directed by her daughter’s voice, Grace noticed a tangle of chestnut hair poking from the other side of her bed. Anna was stretched out on the floor, drawing and humming a simple tune, “Frere Jacques,” perhaps, with an odd intensity.
“Anna, I need you to help me pack, okay? We’re going to take a little trip. How would you like to visit Grandma and Grandpa?”
“Hum-hum-HUM. In Virginia? Hum-hum-HUM.”
“Yeah. It’ll be fun.”
“Hum-hum-hum-hum-HUM-hum. Is Daddy going?”
Grace tossed the suitcase on her daughter’s bed and sat next to her on the floor. Crayons were scattered about, along with loose sheets of paper and several completed drawings. “Maybe, when he gets off work. There’s the wildfire, remember? They need everybody to help put it out.”
“Is that why we’re running away? Hum-hum-hum.”
“We’re not running away. It’s a vacation.” Grace brought her head close to her daughter’s and began aligning the finished pictures into rows, seven drawings completed in thirty minutes, hastily scrawled sketches of suburban/pastoral bliss: purple houses topped with squat chimneys spewing curly-cues of smoke, a field of chartreuse flowers smiling under a blue and white sky, a horse, a kite, all bordered in a tangle of swirling loops.
It wasn’t until she slowly exhaled that Grace realized she’d been holding her breath. What had she expected to see? A stick man labeled “Daddy” suspended against a wall? A row of living machines? Mommy sprawled naked on a dark slab, surrounded by collectors, their bulbous heads rendered in spirals of black crayon so forcefully applied the paper had shredded under the assault?
But no. Thank god, no. Anna was still drawing the things little girls were supposed to draw, even if they did seem a little… what? Rushed? Desperate? Intense in the same way she was humming “Frere Jacques” over and over again.
“The artist at work,” Grace said, running her hand over Anna’s hair. “So focused.”
Her daughter was holding a green nub of crayon, filling the border of her latest drawing with doodles resembling a snarl of vines. Just a profusion of random whorls, a little frenetic perhaps, and yet there was something about the overall effect that suggested purpose and intent. The borders were quite interesting, actually, more intriguing than the scenes they framed.
