The medical center was swarming with people. Miriam rode to the twelfth floor in a jammed elevator, trying not to inhale their scent. Unfortunately, the waiting room of the Sleep Research Center was also crowded. The smell and feel of so much human flesh was unnerving.
Nevertheless, she waited with the others, thumbing through a well-worn copy of Book Digest. Ten became eleven, then eleven-thirty.
“Blaylock,” intoned the receptionist, at last. “Desk three, please.” This was the only facility of its kind in the city. The crowding and impersonality of it indicated that there ought to be more. Miriam was interviewed by a pleasant young man in shirtsleeves who took her name and asked her to describe her problem.
She knew what the effect would be when she mentioned the intensity of her “nightmares.” He looked at her with renewed interest. Most of their cases must be common insomnia, cured by teaching the patient how to cope with stress.
Medicine knows night terrors of adulthood as one of mankind’s most frightening problems. Miriam could have quoted Sarah Roberts: “These terrors arise from the primordial depths and induce in the sufferer perhaps the most intense fear that a human being can know. In quality and intensity they are to nightmares as a typhoon might be to a spring shower.”
“How often have you been having these . . . troubles, Mrs. Blaylock?” The interviewer’s voice was calm but his eyes regarded her sharply.
“All my life.” How pitiful that every word was true. The vividness of the experiences she had during Sleep were probably even worse than night terrors. But she had long ago learned to endure them. They went with Sleep and therefore must cleanse the soul.
“When was the last one?”
“Last night.” She watched his face flicker at that. This was working well. Mrs. Night Terrors Blaylock was going to become a priority case, she suspected.
Now his voice dropped and he leaned closer to her. “Can you describe it?”
“The ocean was chasing me.” It had just popped into her head, but she thought it a lovely night terror for the spur of the moment. Much nicer than the one she had planned, about hands choking her.
“The ocean?”
“Huge, towering black waves that stretch up forever. Roaring and crashing over me and I’m in the sand, I’m running, I can hear it over my shoulder, it comes right up the dunes, nothing’s going to stop it. You can see a shark cruising in the waves. Everything smells horrible, like it had all gone rotten.” Goose-flesh had broken out all over her body as she talked. Her hands were grasping the edge of the table. She was surprised at the intensity of her feeling. It ceased to be an act. Had she ever experienced such a dream? Perhaps it was behind the dreams she remembered, perhaps there was something in her, coiled like a snake, spitting out recollections so monstrous that her mind dared not touch them directly.
The worst of it was something she didn’t tell the shiny young doctor: she was indeed the woman running from the ocean. But she was also the shark.
5
JOHN WAS RUNNING through the early morning, running like a slowed-down movie past the blooming flowers, the tulip trees with their buds, and the new-sprouted grass of Central Park. His hunger made him feel as if a living thing were moving in his stomach. His eyes bulged, his mouth opened wide as he ran. He must be hideous in his flapping raincoat and dirty blue suit, with the fingernails of a demon and the face of a corpse. People shrank from him, children shouted alarm. He felt like a hermit who had been knocked out of his hiding place by a wrecker’s ball.
His heart skipped and thuttered. Pain shot down his shoulder. He staggered. Then the beat started again: food, foodfood, food, FOODFOODFOOD! He coughed, running along the Bridle Path, lurching past Cleopatra’s Needle, finally plunging into the shrubbery beside the path.
He could go no farther, his breath was fire, his heartbeat a confused rattle. This place was redolent of hot, strong flesh. Every few minutes another jogger passed. He listened to one, a big man breathing easily. Too strong. Then another — lighter but still not tired enough. His victim would have to be practically exhausted, just at the end of a long hard run. Yesterday little Alice had nearly gotten the better of him. Today he was even weaker. In his extremity he began to recollect an almost forgotten time of his life, which he now saw as the best time — before he met Miriam. He remembered the grassy slope at Hadley where he and Priscilla lay intoxicated with the smell of the heather on windy spring days. The clouds rolled madly down the sky. God, what wonderful times! He was ceasing to love the drama and speed of this age, and to cherish the quieter time before. Even old Hadley was gone now, the ruined house rebuilt and turned into an orphanage by the strange populist state that had followed the Empire.
Without warning, a cough burst out of him. He found himself pitching backward, almost losing consciousness. Above him he saw the sky through a tulip tree. And the clouds in it were the same! The same as that day at Hadley! “Oh, Johnny, my pladies awa’,” Priscilla had cried, “awa’ with the win’!” And there bouncing across the heather went her fluffy plaid skirt. How he had run! Run in the wind and the kind land, run for that plaid with all the might of his young years.
Another cough, not his own. He struggled up, heard it again. Thud-thud on the gravel, thud-thud, thud-thud. Here came a girl who had put on a little extra during the winter, jiggling along in a purple sweat suit, gasping like a tophorse at a coach stop.
He connected with her right side as she jogged past. She let out a surprisingly shrill scream for one so heavy.
A pack of crows took flight, their voices echoing in the sky. The wind tossed the trees and the clouds scudded past. John grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, jammed his scalpel in until he felt the “pop” as it penetrated the pectoral muscle. He fell on her, clasping his hands behind her neck, adhering to her with desperate energy. She staggered and flounced and shrieked for help. Pain flashed through his joints as she struggled, but he had a good hold. He placed his mouth over the wound and sucked with every last whisper of energy. Slowly the life oozed into him. As her movements weakened, his became stronger and more assured. She grew lighter and he expanded in size, filling his slack clothes, gaining pinkness in his cheeks and sharpness in his eyes. Her screaming lowered to a hoarse rumble, then a growl, finally a rasp across a dry and withering tongue, past lips become strips of leather. The skin sank to the bones and the lips cracked away from the teeth. After a moment the girl’s jaw snapped open, her gums contracting. Her hands had become black claws, the flesh tight and splitting on the bones. The eyeballs sank into their sockets, collapsing in on themselves.
John jumped away from her. Stiff and light, she toppled to the ground like a papier-mâché toy. He was bloated and flushed, his eyes ablaze. He pounded his temples in an ecstasy of relief. Snarling with his victory, he snatched the remnant up and threw it high into a tree where it caught and fluttered in the wind.
He gnashed his teeth, he was far from satisfied. Without the Sleep, his body demanded ever more energy. The longer he remained awake the more he needed.
“I’ll never need more than I can get,” he said aloud, testing to see if the softness of youth had returned to his voice.
What a delightful surprise that was! He hadn’t sounded like that in days. “O mistress mine,” he sang, listening to the sweet smooth tones, “O mistress mine, where are you roaming? O stay and hear, your true love’s coming!” And then he laughed, rich and deep and full, and ran with a firm step down the path after stronger, better, even more enriching prey.
Behind him shouts were rising, feet thundering past Cleopatra’s Needle. (Miriam always laughed to see that thing here, occupying such a place of honor. She said that the Egyptians had considered it the worst obelisk in Heliopolis.) Young men were bearing down on him. On the roadway to his right a scooter cop stopped and got off his machine, looking with a frown in the direction of the shouts. He began to trot up a low hill to the scene of the crime. John moved toward him, down the same hill.
With
the strength he had gained it was just possible to take the strapping young policeman. As they were passing each other he slammed his fist into the side of the man’s head, sending him reeling, his cigarette flying from his mouth and his cap sailing into a bed of begonias. He made quick work of the struggling, cursing man. In another twenty seconds he was fitting the remnant back onto the scooter. The devil take caution, let them figure this one out. He could see the headlines: COP TURNS TO MUMMY; RADIUM DIAL WATCH TO BLAME?
Now he felt really wonderful. He might as well be flying above the roadway, above the lawns, above the trees — flying and free.
Others only thought they were alive. They never knew this! His heart was beating perfectly. If he looked at a building he could hear the sounds behind the windows. People talking, TVs going, vacuum cleaners roaring. And he could hear the clouds like a great song, not meant for the ears of man.
Sirens were rising to the north and the south. A patrol car came blazing up the roadway.
John spent the rest of the morning in the Metropolitan Museum, lingering for hours in the costume exhibit, looking at the bustled dresses and frock coats, remembering his own time, so utterly lost and far away.
It was a relief when the interview was completed. Miriam was beginning to feel a need for Sleep. She returned to the house in her rented limousine. A test — called a polysomnogram — was scheduled for tonight. And Sarah Roberts would surely be there. Must be there. Night terrors indeed. If they knew the real depths of fear they would not be able to live. Mankind was in the bland middle of the emotional spectrum. Miriam lived at the extremes.
She was let out of the car.“I’ll need you again at six-thirty,”she said as she went up the front steps. The Sleep was coming upon her, right on schedule. She heard a faint tinkling from inside the house. The telephone. She fumbled with her keys and rushed in. A bad moment to take a call. Her time awake was now limited.
“Miriam?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Bob.”
For a moment she was blank. Then it came back. They hadn’t seen the Cavenders for months. “Oh, hi! It’s been a long time. I hardly recognized you.”
“Miriam, we’ve lost Alice.”
She doubled up as if she had been hit in the stomach. Then she straightened and took a deep breath. “How long?”
“Since yesterday when she left for your place.”
“She never came here, so far as I know.”
“Amy saw her go in.”
“She came in here?” Miriam’s mind turned to John, to the — no. No matter what state he was in, he would never do that.
“She usually comes home for lunch after she sees you. Yesterday she didn’t.”
A trembling shock coursed through her. “She’s not here.”
Not in the hallway, not in the music room. Oh, don’t let it be, not in the furnace.
Don’t hurt me this much, John, please!
“I know that. I just wanted you to be on the alert.” He paused. There were a series of stifled grunts, the sobs of a man who doesn’t know how to cry. “On the alert,” he said again.“I’ll call you with any news.”The line clicked, the cutting of the wire of life. The phone slipped from Miriam’s hand, banged on the oak floor. She closed her eyes. Snarling pain gripped her temples. Ice-cold air seemed to enclose her. She craned her neck like a woman seeking to rise from the bottom of the sea.
She ran her hands along the fabric of her suit, bowed her head. When her clock tolled one, she looked, startled, at its ancient face.
Impulses raced through her mind: kill John, kill herself. She rejected them both as beneath her. He was helpless in his actions, driven by forces beyond his control. And she had no intention of voluntarily giving up life.
Bit by bit she regained her composure. There came into her heart a new feeling toward John. His suffering mattered less to her, his potential for destruction more.
How dare he take Alice. She belonged to Miriam, not to him. Rage blazed up in her. It was lucky for him that he was not home. At this moment she would have faced knives, guns, tearing claws to get at him.
Yet he had given her all of himself that he could give. For love of her he was paying an exorbitant price. He was losing much more than life, facing an end more terrible than even the worst death. She could not let herself hate the damnable creature.
She was alone again.
In all the world there was not one friendly soul, not one being with whom she could share anything.
She ran into the library, the place where she habitually did her planning and thinking. “ALICE!” With a moan she yanked the heavy drapes closed and sank into her desk chair. The only sound in the room was the steady tinkle of the old Roman water clock.
Her whole future had been planted in Alice. The possibility of losing the girl had simply never occurred to her. Oh, what plans she had made!
She had always loved her life with joyous intensity. Over the years she had ruthlessly blotted out every memory of her family, had shaken off all the tragedies, and pressed ahead. She had seen humanity rising out of the muck, had learned to respect it as the rest of her species never could, had come to anticipate the future with zest, especially now that overtones of barbarism were re-entering human culture.
In one mad instant John had taken the future away.
Tears she would not allow, even for an extinguished love. She and Alice were made to be together. And now instead there was this pit. A black pit. The room around her was cold. The paneling, grown rich with years, frowned ominously, making the dark even blacker.
She opened the curtains. It was such a bright day, the storms of dawn blown on their way. Her petunias were thriving, choking the window box with at least a hundred blossoms.
She found that she could not bear to look at the street, it could not seem more empty. She shook herself — the Sleep demanded her.
She didn’t want it now, not after this. It doomed her to terrible dreams, she was sure of it. How could she bear this! She groaned and ran out of the room. Her body was slowing down, her eyes growing heavy. Where could she go? Not the attic, not enough time to get all the way to the top of the house.
The floor waved beneath her feet. She couldn’t Sleep here! But it was intractable, nothing would stop her. In moments she wouldn’t be able to lift her arms. She thought of the basement. It might still be possible to make it down.
With long, shaking steps she went to the door. There was a place, uncomfortable but safe, that John had hopefully forgotten that led to the secret tunnel they had built to the East River. Years ago it had been destroyed by the FDR Drive but the basement entrance and the section under the garden still remained. She hoped she could find the right stone in the basement floor.
By the time she got there the world around her had receded as if to the end of a long corridor. She knew that she was still moving but she was absolutely out of contact with her body. Her hands felt the slate floor of the basement, pushing for the slight looseness that would tell her she had found the place.
Looseness — somewhere . . . she felt something hard and cold hit her. Hard and cold and wet . . . she had fallen to the floor. Sleep came, and dream . . .
The lamp was bobbing, flashing in her eyes with the roll of the ship. As it creaked, water spurted in between the planks.“Father?” The lamp shook wildly and then fell to the floor, plunging the little cabin into green half-darkness. What was happening? When she had gone to bed the sky had been clear, the wind just strong enough to snap the sail.
What was that horrible shrieking?
She got up and wrapped a cloak around her silk tunic. “Fa-a-ther!” The ship began shaking from side to side as if it were being worried by a sea monster. Miriam staggered to the cabin door, pushed it open.
Wake up! You’re in danger!
The door . . . was so hard, so hard — but she pushed it open and struggled out into the raging green hell of the storm.
The voice of the wind mixed with the deep thun
der of the waves. Perhaps twenty feet overhead great clouds seethed. There was no mast, no sail, only a deck strewn with tangles of rigging and bits of red sailcoth. Sailors, naked, lashed together, staggered here and there on what task she did not know.“FAAATHER!”
Powerful arms grabbed her from behind. He took her to his bosom, pressed his mouth against her ear. “This ship is doomed,” he said, “we’ve got to save ourselves, my daughter.”
“The others —”
“The other ships made landfall in Crete. A great disaster has occurred. I did not foresee it. An island has exploded. I think it must have been Thera. You must go to Rome now, leave the east alone. Greece will be in ruins —”
“Father, please help me, save me!” She clung to him with her legs and arms and sobbed into the wrenching wind.
His head turned. “It’s coming,” he said. She felt it rather than heard it, a deep pulsing throb like the heart of a giant. At first there was nothing to see in the black mist, then, far up in the sky, a white line appeared. Her father’s arm clutched her until she could hardly breathe. His face terrified her, it was wretched with anger, his lips twisted into a grimace, his eyes glaring horribly.
“Father, is that a wave?”
He only clutched her more tightly.
The ship began to rise, its prow lifting higher and higher. There commenced a great fusillade of explosions as the hemp lashings that held it together snapped and the boards sprung straight. The hiss of water rose from the hold, and with it the hideous screaming of the oar-slaves. Sailors threw themselves to the deck. Behind them, on the low forecastle, the captain was staggering about trying to organize another sacrifice to Nereus, god of storms.
The ship rose higher. It felt as if it had taken wing. Behind them the surface of the sea shook and boiled. Before them the great black leviathan bore on.
“We must jump! We’ll have to swim.”
He dragged her to the side. She had swum only in the Nile, never in an ocean. And this — it would swallow them!
The Hunger Page 12
