Liz had stayed back to use the bathroom in the break room. He wished the girl was here with him to witness the resident — the thin, mousy thing named Sophie with the clipboard perpetually pressed to her flat chest — standing on the empty bed in the room, preaching. Once again, a small crowd was starting to gather around the door. Tom recognized the mother of the child with the intestinal problems, and the attractive jogger-type he’d seen coming in earlier. They were all listening. Even the cops were tuned in.
“To come in contact with ‘the Element’ in its many forms — to feel the presence of the Element — nervousness, anxiety, desire to flee or fight . . .”
Tom didn’t know what she was talking about. He glanced at the policemen. One cop held a finger to his ear and twirled it. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, this cop. The other, Javitz, looked older, with a goatee framing his thin lips.
Tom looked at the boys around Caleb’s bed, one bed over from the resident’s pulpit. They were looking at her. That was something. To get these guys’ attention it seemed one had to — what? Set oneself on fire? Something like that. Or speak Spanish.
“. . . conflict — pornography, drugs, lying, theft — to come into contact with sin — with what’s behind the sin, powering it, the Element. The Intelligence.”
Tom had heard street preachers before, in his twenty-two years on the job he’d come across a busker or two. Problem was, sane and insane often sounded similar. You had to listen beyond your prejudiced filter. If you went to church with an open mind, you could hear the metaphor in the gospels, or find the logic in the homilies. You could find application to your life and the world around you in the poetry of it, if you had some artistic bent, some flexibility. There were many things a man could find in church, or in the Bible, even a thinking man, so to speak, a man whose job involved evidence and reasonable doubt. You could.
Even Atman was just a term, another symbol, or clue. Not an answer.
However, a waifish, bespectacled resident standing on a hospital bed in the children’s ward wasn’t exactly the same as listening to a worthy sermon in church. She was more like a carnival barker. It was hard medicine to swallow, in other words. But, Tom thought, aside from the young cop’s little gesture, the girl seemed to be doing alright. Even Tom felt drawn in . . . though by what, exactly, he couldn’t quite say. She sounded inspired, not like she was reciting; and the young woman looked the part too. Her eyes were wide, her lips quivering with excitement; it all had a certain gravitational pull. That was what was drawing people in.
“After a while,” she said, “you simply come to know what the forms of the dark Intelligence are, your heart knows, your soul knows; you don’t have to be taught, you only need to be alert, chaste, penitent.”
And with that, she was done. A kind of awkwardness overcame her, and she pushed up her glasses with one bony finger as she looked down, negotiating how to get off the hospital bed.
Tom went over and extended his hand to help her down. She smiled at him like a grande dame of older days. The whole thing felt exotic, as if the room Caleb occupied had become some other place, some other dimension, crazy as it sounded, or host to different dimensions; though perhaps not dimensions, not entirely, not technically, but different consciousnesses. Maybe that was it. There was a charge in the air, not unlike what he’d experienced the night before in Red Rock and on the drive through the middle of the night, or when the Depression-era boys had first shown up on the pediatrics floor. That sense of giddiness was there in the background, of laughter waiting to erupt.
He kicked himself for not having found out where Maddy had gone to rest. He should have kept better tabs on her. He wished she was here.
Tom was suddenly aware that something had changed in the room. Sophie was standing next to him, and he still was holding her delicate hand. He was looking around and so was she. He felt like they were spinning, a little — or no, that wasn’t completely right— it felt like something was spinning around them. Didn’t it? And it seemed brighter in the room — not in a harsh way, not like the fluorescents, garish already, had surged, but things were just more illuminated — the table and two chairs in the corner were crisper, the faces of the boys were brighter, their eyes sparkling like dark jewels . . . but just as Tom was noting all of this, the opposite occurred, and things began to fade.
Tom looked to the entrance. He made out a half-dozen faces, blank and oval, looking in, watching. Tom wondered what they saw.
The room continued to darken and achromatize, as though a cloud had passed over on an otherwise sunny day. It wasn’t depressing, though, Tom thought — he still felt that electric high. He still held the girl’s hand. He felt very close to her now, too. It wasn’t a sexual closeness, but it wasn’t not that either. He looked at the boys around the bed again. Their eyes were glowing.
Caleb was sitting up in the bed. His legs out in front of him, bent at the knees so that his feet nearly touched. His face was a picture of sweetness, with no trace of fear, guile, or darkness. He was looking at the people in the hall.
All eyes were on Caleb. His arms came up at his sides, floating beside him.
Tom felt the hairs standing up on his neck, along his arms, even his legs. He started to see things: a tire swing; Maddy as a child, in her Sunday dress, standing on the porch steps of his family home, over to play after church; a red mailbox; and his long-dead dog, Champ, the black lab.
Tom heard something. He couldn’t quite have described it, not then, and only later was he able to say it was something like the sound of an orchestra tuning up, that coming together of the various instruments, the strings, especially, he guessed, making that one-noise. It was similar to the ringing he’d heard twice before. He felt it running through him and running through Sophie as well, channeling back and forth between the two of them.
And then the child’s mouth opened, and a new sound-vibration was added. It first came in like a soprano’s voice, off the stage somewhere, hidden in the audience or high in the mezzanine. Tom could barely get his mind around it; there was just no start, no stop to anything. No lines.
No boundaries, he thought, and gooseflesh broke out all over him.
Then the child started to rise in the bed.
He began to float in the air, just as the boys had along the route to the hospital.
The child’s bow-like mouth was open, that soprano voice singing soft and sapid, his eyes round and peaceful and seeming to see everything at once. He was levitating ten or twelve inches above the hospital bed. Tom was riveted, and then he had the strangest thought, to smell the air, to see what sort of aroma there was to all of this.
He let his head drop back and inhaled through his nostrils and smelled, well, he could have guessed, or maybe he should have guessed, he smelled the only thing that made sense. He smelled rain and mountain air.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“Investigator, we need to talk.”
And, just like that, it was all gone. Tom’s eyes snapped open — he hadn’t been aware that he’d closed them. He looked at the child — Caleb was sitting there, his posture more relaxed, his body planted on the bed, subject, like all bodies, to the law of gravity.
Somehow the child had managed to stick his red pacifier back in his mouth and was sucking on it, looking a bit tired, twirling his hair with one small, fat hand.
The boys were standing in that same way, looking down at Caleb, only now they seemed a little sheepish, a bit fatigued. Tom looked at Sophie, he let go of her hand and smiled at her. She smiled back, but he saw a lie in that smile and instantly hated it, wishing he could say something.
She turned away, gripping her clipboard against her chest, and gave a wide berth to Sergeant Mahoney, who had interrupted it all, as she left the room. He strode over to Tom.
“Investigator Milliner,” he said with the air of a high-school football star talking to a geek. “Let’s you and I have a talk, what do you think?”
Tom sighed. He absently rub
bed at his shoulder.
“Yeah. Right,” he said. He stuck his hand out. “After you.”
* * *
Tom watched the television in the corner of the cafeteria. Mahoney had wanted to come down for a coffee. His urgency had quickly diffused once he had Tom’s attention.
Tom wished he could have waited for Elizabeth to have returned before he’d left, so he could have told her what had happened. He wished Maddy had been there, too. Now he was downstairs, away from all of them. Away from the incredible, levitating, singing child. Was he losing his mind at last? Tom felt like things were too scattered, like the people involved should have all been together, but weren’t. Now, on his own, he grew worried.
He heard Mahoney jangling his coins in his pocket to pay for the coffee, heard the deep timbre of his cop-voice talking to the cafeteria worker, but Tom kept his attention focused on the television. Other people in the room were watching too. A kid with a UVM sweatshirt and dyed-blonde hair, who had been bent over his phone, looked up at the TV. A woman, with a mesh shopping bag in front of where her enormous boobs rested on the table, was telling her skinny husband to shaddup, so she could pay attention.
Tom felt the attention of the room homing in on the new, flat-screen Sanyo mounted in the corner. He saw another television in the opposite corner, and a group of people were gathered round it, too.
Outside the cafeteria’s glass walls, scattered flakes were still coming down. The ground was mostly bare — it was always a little warmer on the East side of Lake Champlain — and the spring snow wasn’t sticking. In the lobby, Tom saw the security station and the blue glow of a TV there, too, shining on the dark skin of the security guard.
“Okay,” Mahoney said, returning. “Let’s sit down right over here, Milliner.”
Tom held out his hand, just raised it slightly above waist level, and raised a bent index finger, indicating hold on.
“What?” said the sergeant indignantly.
On the screen was a young man whose face looked scrubbed. It was the same reporter from earlier, his tie thrown back over his shoulder. He was standing along the edge of Lake Champlain, which he’d waded into, his pants rolled up around his ankles. Earlier, the same reporter had worn a big smile on his face, his eyebrows jumping and waggling for the camera. That story must have been a recording from the previous day. This was live, the five AM news. It was dark all around the lake. The man was poking into it with a yardstick, and, no longer wore the goofball face. He looked tired and grim.
There was some commotion at a nearby table. Now it was the kid with the UVM sweatshirt who had drawn a small crowd.
Tom walked over. Mahoney followed, his coffee forgotten.
Tom pushed through as politely as he could to get a better look. The kid had his phone out — one of those Smartphone deals. He had a YouTube video playing. The people gathered around the table all leaned in and watched what an amateur videographer had captured only a few hours before, probably using a phone just like this.
“What is that?”
Tom didn’t see who’d spoken. Someone else answered. “The Northern Lights, maybe.”
“No,” said an Asian woman across the table from Tom. “Not Northern Lights. That’s the sun.”
“It can’t be the sun.”
The conversation went around in circles. Tom watched the video, probably captured from someone’s front yard. The sky brightened and rippled with the same iridescent colors he’d seen while driving with Maddy. The video-maker then focused the camera on his wristwatch, the LED display reading 10:45 PM.
“This is no joke,” the scratchy voice said in the recording. “I’m not faking this. It’s almost eleven at night.” He turned the camera back to the sky in time to catch just a blurred dot of something rising into the air. It was followed by another. The camerawork grew shaky, as the kid started chanting “Holy shit, oh my God,” over and over.
“UFOs,” someone at the table said.
Someone else made a scoffing sound and walked away.
Tom became aware of someone breathing down his neck. Mahoney was there right beside him, pressing in. “You saw that coming here?”
Tom had to pull himself away from the group. He felt lightheaded for a moment, like he could faint. He stepped away to the next table and leaned against one of the chair backs, gripping it until his knuckles turned white.
“Milliner?”
Tom shut his eyes. He squeezed the lids together. When he opened them, the cafeteria was a blur. After a moment, tables, chairs, and line servers swam back into focus.
“Yeah,” he said.
Someone turned up the volume on the TV in the corner. Tom turned and looked. The broadcast had turned back to the anchor, who wore a grim expression similar to the reporter’s. There were words ticker-taping across the bottom of the screen, issuing an alert.
Above the anchor’s shoulder, a superimposed graphic declared FLOOD WARNING.
Mahoney stood next to Tom, looking at him. “What’s the matter?”
Tom swallowed. He wanted something to drink. Something strong. “It’s going to happen fast now,” he said.
He turned and looked at Mahoney’s bloodhound eyes. “Is there a gift shop in here?” he asked.
Mahoney’s droopy eyes blinked, uncomprehending.
“Gift shop,” Tom repeated.
Mahoney pointed out of the cafeteria. His lips barely moved when he spoke. “Other end of this floor.”
Tom nodded and walked away, knowing Mahoney now thought he was a crazy son of a bitch after all, but not able to help it, not caring. Life was full of stranger things.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Stranger things, Elizabeth thought, stranger things indeed. She often marveled, though, that people referred to anything in life as “strange,” that we made any distinction in it all. It was quite ridiculous, wasn’t it? What wasn’t strange in life? She had never quite understood it. You took a person, you looked at these things called ears, eyes, a nose — all these holes in a head, holes in a head for God’s sake, a hard shell carrying around a squishy pink control center — and what wasn’t strange? So, she then decided for herself, standing in front of the mirror, removing an eyelash that had gotten folded back against her lens, how about just calling it new. That was all. Just something new.
She thought then, of Caleb, of prosencephalitis, and she felt herself go cold in the abdomen and tingle around the base of her spine and she shivered, thinking of a brain in distress, thinking of a wrinkle in consciousness. She didn’t know why — Jared had told her before that it wasn’t good for chicks to think about “shit like that” — but Liz couldn’t help wonder where the physical ended and the metaphysical began. Or, really, how they coexisted, how they were entwined expressions of the same thing. A brain was the physical manifestation of consciousness — not all consciousness, but one epicenter among many, kind of the jewel in the crown, broadcasting and receiving.
She imagined the whole of consciousness like a sheet, and the brain a rivet, or a button. The sheet then extended to all persons, and all of their minds were these affixed buttons. Until, that was, you got to a troubled mind, perhaps what some would call a “defective” mind, and there the sheet of consciousness was drawn and folded and wrinkled.
“You’re crazy,” she said to her reflection, and dabbed some water on her lips, and pressed them together.
Sitting on the toilet just now, she’d daydreamed about Macmaster Pond, that the water had drained almost to the bottom, where viscous, swampy shoals remained. She’d seen, as she perched there on the porcelain, slumped to one side, something black and slick knifing through the turgid waters. Then the water had started to climb, the surface of the pond had risen to the edge of the banks again, and stayed there for a moment, and she spotted her loon, her guy-loon, his usually beautiful, masculine, free, otherworldly self, bobbing in the center, rising into the sky. Her ass ached by the time she left the toilet stall.
Now she was in front of the m
irror, trying to get herself looking human again.
But the loon hadn’t been the last thing she remembered dreaming, or thinking — had it? No. She had also seen Jared in the vision, if that’s what she could call it. Jared coming into the hospital, Jared walking down the hallway to the room where Caleb was, Jared meaning to take him. And Jared wasn’t soaked from head to toe, like Christopher had been.
No, he was something else
She blinked at herself in the mirror. She leaned forward onto her palms, her arms turning around so that the inside of her elbows stuck out. She stuck her tongue out and hung it there over her chin, examining it for spots, for whiteness. She looked at the inside of her elbows and she thought she could still see the bruises. Maybe nobody else would be able to, but she could see them.
What the hell was wrong with her? Nodding off like that, like she was on methadone, for Christ’s sake. Dropping-out in the middle of taking a shit, no less.
Well, she figured, she was in the best place to be if there was something wrong with her — if she was having some sort of narcotic flashback, or fugue, if that was possible. She was somewhere she could get help, wasn’t she?
Her daydream would not let her go, and she cranked on the faucets and splashed icy cold water on her face that took her breath away.
Jared kept coming, no matter what she did, kept walking down the hallway, perpetually on his way to Caleb’s room, perpetually coming to take him away. Not wet, not streaming with water like Christopher had been, but burning. In her daydream, in her mind, Jared was burning.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Milliner and Mahoney were standing outside, next to a cop wearing a clear poncho over his orange and yellow vest. Rain was pattering on the brim of his hat — in the past few minutes the snowflakes had turned back to liquid for the umpteenth time. Rain, then snow. Snow, then rain. Tom looked up, squinting as drops of rain burst on his nose and sprayed his eyes.
“A unit will be at the South Hero crossing in just a few minutes, Sarge.”
HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down Page 24
