“It’s brain damage,” Sarah said. “Has to be.”
“If it is, then there aren’t any gross effects.”
A hand dropped to her shoulder. Leaning her head back, she saw Geoff standing over her, the rims of his glasses glittering in the fluorescent light. “You were right,” he said, “she’s a freak.”
Sarah looked at the woman on the video monitor. She was a stirring beauty, there was no doubt of it. But she was also this other thing, what Geoff called a freak.
The needles swung wildly across the graph paper. Sarah remembered the hippocampus from her studies. It is one of the deepest brain areas. When it is stimulated electrically, patients sometimes relive their past in every detail, as if it were happening again. It is the seat of ancient senses, the most hidden country of the mind. It is perhaps the place where the unconscious stores the remembrances by which we are ruled. Certainly dragons march there, and deep creatures crawl. When it is destroyed by injury or disease, the victim’s past disappears and he lives forever in that disoriented state that is felt upon waking from a particularly terrible nightmare.
The graphs hissed in the silent room. Geoff dropped a yellow sheet of paper on the desk space before the computer console, his new workup on the blood.
“The woman must literally be reliving her life,” Tom said. “It must be a thousand times more vivid than a normal dream.”
“I hope it’s been a nice life.” Geoff was fingering his workup sheet.
“It hasn’t,” Sarah said. She knew that it was true.
7
JOHN SAW DIM PATTERNS against his closed eyelids. He could not tell exactly when he had become conscious, but he knew that he had ceased to dream in the past few minutes and returned to the agony of his body.
What a fool he had been to stand over her like that, savoring his victory, waiting for her to awaken. But he had wanted her to know.
He could still hear the carbon steel blade of the cleaver ringing on the slates.
He had to move! He longed to stretch out, to feel fresh movement in his joints. Panic started again, but he quelled it. He felt his tomb’s walls and low ceiling, touched the mud beneath the puddle of water he was in. And he heard that dripping, steady, echoing, as if it were in a larger space.
He shouted. Also an echo. He took a deep breath. The air was fresh and cool. In such a small space as this even a few minutes would have made the air heavy.
Unless there was an opening.
He couldn’t turn around, there wasn’t enough room. His feet rubbed along solid stone, however. Plunging his fingers as deep into the mud as they would go also brought no results — until he clawed at the place where the wall before his face met the water. Here there was no mud.
A current went under the stone, through an opening about eight inches deep. Perhaps he could push himself under. He leaned down as far as he could without immersing his face in the water and waved his hand in the opening. He could not feel a surface to the water, but he could feel a distinct flow. If he stretched his arms full length and pushed with his feet he could get his head and shoulders through the opening. There was no guarantee that he would reach an air pocket but even drowning seemed like a relief compared to this.
He plunged his face into the water, pressing himself as far into the mud as he could, found purchase with his feet, and shoved. In order to get through he had to turn his head to one side. Water poured in his nose, seared his throat and lungs. He screwed his eyes shut, fighting the impulse to gag, and shoved and kicked and twisted. Pressed tightly between the mud bottom and the stone, his head pounded. The ear that was scraping against the stone felt as if it were on fire. He realized that it was being torn off, so tight was the space.
The mud seeped between his lips, poured into his mouth. He began to need air. Helpless, he convulsed, felt a rush of bubbles pour from nose and mouth, gagged. Somewhere far behind him his feet were kicking, drumming impotently in the shallow water. His hands, stretched before him, clutched water.
Then his ear stopped hurting. He could lift his head! More frantic jerking and his eyes were out of the water. He pushed against the mud, heard bones crack as he pulled his legs up under him, heaved again and again.
Bright red flashes filled his eyes, his mind began to wander. The withering sensation of air hunger coursed through his body. He felt himself urinating, a hot stream in the freezing water.
His struggles were becoming more sporadic. The pain was giving way to a kind of release, a relaxed drifting. He hungered for the peace that seemed to lie just beyond the last of his struggles.
He remembered Miriam, saw her face glowing before him, her lips parted, teasing him to passion.
Mocking his love.
He couldn’t let her win! She had lied to him from the beginning. For weeks after their first encounter she had come to him nightly with her evil little kit and sat stroking his head as her blood ran into his veins and the fever raged. It nearly killed him, but he recovered. And when he did he was a new man, impervious to sickness, ageless, with new needs and an extraordinary new lover to fulfill them.
He also had a new hunger. It had taken him years to get used to it, to reach a point where his moral revulsion was at least equaled by his sense of acceptance. At first the hunger had propelled him, wild with need, through the streets of London.
She had caused that.
Finally he had learned, bitter and desperate and trapped, to satisfy the demands of his hunger.
She had taught him how.
He had to reach her!
A last frantic heave brought him clear of the water and he sucked in air at last. He could hear his heart clattering, feel exhaustion in every muscle and bone. For how long he did not know, he lay where he had fallen, his head and arms entangled in a thick mass of roots, his legs still in the muddy water.
But he was free of Miriam’s tomb.
Free. An image of the steel box waiting for him in the attic flashed in his mind. He gasped air, coughed, spat froth from his lungs. A cold steel box in a stack of such boxes.
And in each — one of his predecessors.
She had always said that he was her only one.
Now that he saw the truth, he was horrified by the sheer coldness of the creature, the depths of its indifference, the extent of its power. Some of those boxes were old! The thing itself must be ancient, some dreadful exponent of Satan himself. He no longer thought of it as male or female. It chose to call itself “Miriam” but that was doubtless only a matter of convenience.
John’s hands clutched up among the roots, seeking some further passage out of the prison. Everything that he believed about Miriam had proved to be false. All that she had told him was a monstrous lie.
One among many. Miriam had been doing this since the beginning of time.
He had to break the chain of destruction in some way. His revenge was due him a thousand times over. The very earth around him seemed to seethe with the restless souls of those he had killed in service to his own immortality.
Indeed. The 180-odd years he had lived seemed only a moment now that the end was near. Certainly there were no eternity. If he had known that he was only delaying the inevitable he would never have wasted the lives of others. “Or so I tell myself,” he said aloud.
Something brushed past him. He remembered the awful sense of movement in the attic. Clawing frantically at the roots that surrounded him, he screamed. This was a wet, stinking grave if ever there was one. It wasn’t quite as confining as the stone chamber, but it was just as deadly in the long run. He pushed at the roots, trying to progress toward the surface. His mind contracted to a single thought: hurt Miriam. If possible, destroy Miriam. If not, then die trying.
In his final effort, at least, there would be some small nobility. He was the last of a great line, after all, who had fought in many a noble war. There had been brave men among his forefathers. He would remember them now. His hand reached ancient, sodden brick, the vaulting of their old tunnel to the E
ast River. So that’s where it had put him. He pulled the bricks down easily. The mortar was rotten, the bricks themselves crumbling.
Suddenly, he found that he could stand to full height, even raise his arms above his head.
It took him a few seconds to realize that he had broken through into the old tunnel, not out of it. The echoing water was much louder, so loud that he could hear it even with his injured ear. His hands clutched mud, flailed, found a curved brick ceiling a few feet above. It was rank, the great roots twining everywhere. Waving his hands ahead of him in the total blackness, he began to move forward.
After ten steps the tunnel ended in a jumble of bricks and concrete chunks. Roots formed a slick forest. Above the dripping there rose another sound.
Was it the tide, perhaps? Their house was not far from the East River. Then it hit him all at once — he was hearing traffic on the FDR Drive.
This old escape tunnel was built back when the recently formed New York City Police Department seemed a threat. It had been covered over with the construction of the highway thirty years ago. That slate she had lifted was the door to the tunnel.
He began to claw at the dirt. Not so far above must lie the garden. Maybe it wasn’t over yet, maybe he would get another chance after all. Roots tore at his fingers, scraping them raw. Only by digging around them and pressing himself up between their strands could he make progress. He worked with the furious strength of rage. He must not fail now. When he felt this same strength surge in the bodies of his victims he knew they were at wit’s end.
There came a blaze of light. John recoiled — had he shorted some kind of buried electrical cable? As his eyes grew used to the brilliance he also found he was covered with flat flakes of a pink material. For a moment he was utterly confused, then he smelled the flowers.
He lifted his head into Miriam’s garden, right into the midst of her treasured roses. They were her own special hybrids, created over God knew how many years of patient grafting. Some blossoms were enormous, others tiny. Some plants bore thorns, others none. And they ranged in shade from delicate pink to deep red. Most of the thorns were strictly ornamental, soft to the touch. Five of the larger blossoms at high summer would fill a substantial vase, and the fragrance would cover a dozen rooms.
Only his face and one arm were worked out of the earth. The house was invisible behind him, but he could feel its menacing presence. He hoped she wouldn’t so much as glance out a window — Miriam had the eyes of a falcon.
The roots clutched at him, impeding every movement. He was tiring quickly now that the rush of panic had ended. His heart bounded raggedly along and his lungs bubbled.
It was a triumph when both arms lay among the rose bushes and he could press against the ground. Inch by inch he freed himself. At last his hips jerked through the final impediment and he pulled himself out. He lay beneath the sky of morning, feeling the hunger rising yet again, barely able to move, save only to tear blossoms from their branches. When he was done he rested, then pulled himself to his feet. The house stood in its garden, somber to John’s eyes. He looked high to its roof, to the tiny window of the room where Miriam kept her dead.
There was something he could do there, if he dared, if he could bear it. The house was silent. Taunting. Daring him to enter. He would, when the moment was right. If she captured him first he would lose his revenge forever. And if she did not? Then it would not matter.
The whole clinic was electrified with the news of Miriam Blaylock. By six-thirty A.M. a stunned, hollow-eyed crowd was huddled around Tom and Sarah, watching the monitors. At seven Sarah pressed a button that sounded chimes in the sleep cubicle. Miriam had been awake but motionless for two hours; her sleep had lasted exactly six. She stirred, stretched luxuriously, and opened her eyes. She looked directly into the monitor. Sarah was surprised, it was one of the gentlest, most beautiful expressions she had ever seen. “I’m awake,” said the rich voice.
The whole group stirred. Sarah knew that the others felt as she did. “I’m gonna get on the horn,” Tom said. “I’d better get things moving.” He headed toward his office to call specialists — geneticist, physiological biologist, cellular biologist, psychiatrist, and half a dozen others.
It hadn’t taken long for them to realize that they were in the presence of a potentially marvelous discovery. The gross abnormalities of the blood and the completely alien brain function left no room for doubt: Mariam Blaylock was not a member of the species Homo sapiens.
Sarah’s intense reaction to her was partly explained. There must have been some awareness on an unconscious level and a corresponding attempt to compensate. The unconscious reaction to a living, intelligent being of an unknown species was itself unknown. Now that the alienness lay uncovered, the woman — female creature — seemed subtly less threatening. Unknowns were the familiar ground of Sarah’s work, and Miriam was a confluence of unknowns. Although an extraterrestrial origin could not be ruled out, it seemed unlikely in view of the physical similarity between Miriam and a human being.
In spite of her position as a scientist, Sarah could not shake the feeling that she was in the grip of some enormous mechanism of fate, something pulling her toward some destiny, and that it was not blind at all, but rather entirely aware of her smallest response.
“Good morning, Mrs. Blaylock,” she said into the intercom. “Would you care for some breakfast?”
“No, thank you. I’ll eat later.”
“Coffee, then?”
She sat fully up in bed, shook her head no. “Come tell me, Doctor, what you’ve learned. Can you help me?” Suddenly even through the filter of the TV monitor, the eyes were fierce.
Sarah felt no further reticence. She marched right to the cubicle. It was warm and smelled of Miriam’s sweetness. “May I call you Miriam?” Sarah sat on the edge of the bed trying to feel neatly enclosed in herself. “We learned a great deal. You’re a unique person.”
Miriam said nothing. A tiny doubt crossed Sarah’s mind. Of course Miriam herself knew what she was. She must. So they had assumed.
“Did you sleep well?”
She looked surprised. “Don’t you know?”
They both laughed. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you remember a dream. A particularly vivid one.”
Miriam’s face grew solemn. She drew herself up, dangling her legs over the side of the bed. They were beautiful, outlined under her nightgown. “Yes, I had a vivid dream.”
“I’d like to know about it. The information will be very helpful.”
Miriam glanced at her, said nothing. That look stabbed Sarah deeply. She felt in her own heart a glint of Miriam’s pain. The thought came that someone ought to take Miriam in her arms and hug away that loneliness. It would be a noble thing to do, a bridge across worlds.
Sarah opened her arms, turning toward Miriam with invitation, oblivious to the gleaming lens of the video camera attached to a corner of the ceiling. Miriam clung, it struck her, as a child. “There, there,” Sarah said through feelings of awkwardness. She wasn’t really very good at this sort of thing.
Miriam sobbed, quickly cut it off. Sarah stroked her soft blond hair, made soothing sounds in her ear.
The loneliness was palpable, as real as an odor. When Sarah felt her stir she released her grip. Miriam sat back against the wall, took Sarah’s hand in hers, and kissed her fingers.
Now Sarah did think of the monitor. Embarrassed, she withdrew her hand. “Perhaps we’ll talk again after you’ve dressed,” she said as calmly as she could. “I’ll beep you when I’ve turned off the video.” She tried to smile. “You’re allowed to get dressed in private.”
Miriam seemed about to say something but Sarah did not wait to hear it. She was not at all sure why the creature seemed to compel such intimacy, but this was not the time to probe further. She retreated to the observation room, determined to be more careful in the future. Other patients were being awakened and the group around Miriam’s monitor was smaller. Phyllis Rockler and Charlie Humphries had a
rrived, however. They were talking heatedly with Geoff Williams, who waved his now-wrinkled sheet of blood component statistics as he spoke. When Sarah reappeared Geoff called out that Tom had gotten his core group together and a meeting was scheduled in the conference room.
Sarah followed standard procedure in killing Miriam Blaylock’s monitor during her dressing period. Mrs. Blaylock would have to be processed further by a resident. Sarah and Tom both had to attend the core conference. “Just don’t let her get out of here,” Sarah said to the eager kid who was assigned to the job. “She’s precious. Precious. I want the standard post-observation interview right off the form. Then stall her. Say we need her here for another twenty-four hours.” When she left for the conference the resident was scribbling on a clipboard. For an instant she allowed herself a privilege reserved for the successful, delighting in the fact that he was obviously a couple of years older than she. Life on a fast track had its compensations.
Sarah walked into a packed room. People looked disheveled, bleary-eyed. She wondered what Tom had said to pour so many senior men out of bed so early. Tom sat playing with an unlit cigar, which disappeared as she entered. She took the chair that Charlie and Phyllis had saved for her. Around the table were twelve people ranging in age from thirty to seventy. Hutch sat straight, his lips a thin line, his face frozen in a manufactured expression of curiosity. Underneath it Sarah sensed something else. Their eyes met and his sadness surprised her. So Tom’s assault was progressing. Hutch had not called this meeting, he was here by invitation only.
“OK,” Tom said, “thank you very much for your time, Doctors. I’m sorry to get you out of bed so early in the morning. I must say, however, I think you’ll be glad I did once we review the record. Just briefly, the subject in question is named Miriam Blaylock. She appears in excellent physical condition, aged thirty years, and she has received a working diagnosis of night terrors. That diagnosis has been revised to include grossly anomalous brain function.”
“Doctor —” It was Hutch.
The Hunger Page 16
