White Horse

by Alex Adams

  “I don’t think they did.”

  “But you know what? Some of those people talked to me. And they all told me the same stories and described the same symptoms, so I said to myself, That’s weird, because how do all these people in different cities and states have the same thing?”

  My heart plays skipping stones in my chest before stopping for several beats.

  “How do you know?”

  “I told you, I saw the patterns in the paper. Then I got on a bus—lots of buses—and visited a whole bunch of people. My dad said I was crazy and that I should get a job at McDonald’s or someplace, but the grease smells funny, so I got on the bus instead. I talked to this real nice lady in Little Rock and she said both her cat and her husband died and he wanted the cat buried with him but the funeral home wouldn’t do it. Dead is dead, so I think they should have done it, because that’s what he wanted. This lady, she told me that first her husband got real sick and vomited blood all the time. She apologized, because we were in her kitchen eating red velvet cake and she was worried I had a weak stomach. Then she said her husband got all these weird pains in random places in his body, like he was getting jabbed like a voodoo doll. After a couple of weeks he died. She said after the funeral the mortician came over to her and asked if he’d always had a tail. She said yes because she didn’t know what else to say, but then she told me he never had that tail before and they’d been married forty years. Isn’t that strange? You know what else is strange? I saw a whole lot of stones in Little Rock but I couldn’t tell which one was meant to be the little rock.”

  “Why aren’t you in the war?”

  “Special dispensation on account of my condition. Do you know what that means?”

  “I’ve heard it before.”

  He nods, keeps his gaze fixed on the seat ahead. “Asperger’s is what the doctors say I’ve got. It doesn’t mean anything other than I’m different. Different can mean good or it can mean bad, depending on who’s doing the talking.”

  His fingers start to tap. At first I think piano, but the longer I watch, I see number patterns.

  “After I went to Little Rock I went to some other places and then I went home. They’ve got a big library there at the college. Before, I would have just gone to Google but I had to do it the old way, which was a lot of hard work after riding all those buses. I couldn’t use the Internet, but they still have an internal system where you can search for books and journals. You know what? There’s no disease like that. Nothing that makes you sick and then grow a tail. Some of the other dead people grew other weird stuff, too. One kid had two hearts when they cut him open; only, one was growing up in his throat and choked him to death. Some of them just died after all the vomiting, but some grew stuff people shouldn’t have. So I talked to my mom and she said maybe I’d discovered something new, something no one ever heard of, and maybe if I figured out what that was, they’d name it after me. If there’s anybody left to care.” His shoulders slump. The number patterns slow.

  The inside of my head is a radio station turned to static. I believe what he’s saying: the pieces are all there.

  “Why me?”

  “A new disease has to come from somewhere. Have you seen Resident Evil? There was an accident in a laboratory and everyone turned to zombies. I figured maybe this was like that.”

  “That was just a movie.”

  “Nuh-uh. It happens. There are lots of online forums that talk about how it could happen for real. I went to a lot of labs and companies that make medicine and no one would talk to me. They just smiled and gave me pamphlets to read or threatened to throw me out. One guy threatened to have me locked up in an institution. All I wanted was to ask some questions. I think they wouldn’t talk to me because they think I’m different-bad.”

  I shake my head. “They won’t talk to you because what if you’re right?”

  It’s crazy. It should be crazy. But just because something is crazy doesn’t mean it isn’t true. All those dead mice. Jorge. The bones crammed inside the jar. It’s making me want to ask questions. Maybe my paranoia isn’t.

  Ben’s dead. James. Raoul. Two receptionists now. The woman from the bathroom. And the man in Arkansas with the tail—oh God.

  Jesse’s fingers pick up pace, then slow again. His head turns and I think he’s going to look at me, but he stares at my mouth instead. “Will you answer my questions?”

  I want to. But I can’t. I explain about the contract I signed, the confidentiality agreement, so maybe he’ll understand how the business world works when there’s a whole lot of green and reputations at stake. I think it’s going to sink in when he goes back to staring at the chair.

  “You’re scared. I’m scared, too. My mom says it’s okay to be scared because that’s just our brain’s way of telling us to be careful.”

  On the other side of the window, the scenery changes. Two minutes until my stop.

  “I wish I could,” I tell Jesse. He seems like a good kid. I like him. I’d love to help.

  “Please.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t want either of us to get hurt.” Or worse.

  “But my dad will be proud of me if they name the disease after me. I’ll be different-good.”

  The train slows. I tug my bag over one shoulder, hold the strap in place with my opposite hand, shielding myself from his questions. “I’m sorry.”

  The last I see of him is his face pressed against the window as I glance back over my shoulder. He’s looking straight into my guarded soul.

  I go about my business. I clean, talk to the mice, monitor them for signs of imminent death. I do not name them, although the little guy at the end with the bent whiskers is begging for an identity that doesn’t include numbers.

  I watch the mice and wonder if the experiment is larger than this bank of cages.

  My paranoia has its own mind.

  You know you want to, Nick says in my head.

  “Not now.”

  He falls silent. Please don’t let today be the day I see him on the list.

  I pull on slippers with my jeans, throw on a coat. Still, I shiver when the chill slams my body. The two quarters are cold lead weights in my palm. It stings to hold them. They clank into the newspaper dispenser and I use the edge of my sleeve to tug it open.

  The city newspaper is gone; in its place is the United States Times. Jesse flashes into my mind, that kid who just wants to be different-good.

  The stairs fly by two at a time. My apartment door crashes behind me. I grab more quarters and I’m gone again.

  Two by two, I shove them into the other dispensers, the ones that should be holding newspapers from all over the country. I have to see, I have to know if there’s other news out there. But they’re all filled with one publication now: the United States Times. That journalism has been distilled to this dangerous point catapults me into action. I’m doing nothing when I should be doing something.

  Back in my hidey-hole, I dissect the paper. I pick through the pages as a soothsayer might a tangle of entrails, trying to divine a course of action. It’s just a paper. It’s like all the others with its bold title announcing its presence. Nothing about it screams, I killed the competition. I took away your choices overnight. The cover is more of what we’ve been seeing: battles won. Men cheering. Leaders happy with the troops’ success. There are twelve more obituaries than in yesterday’s paper.

  The hall closet looms, its clean white paint darkening as I assign it characteristics it can’t possibly possess: dark, foreboding, dangerous.

  When the phone rings, I leap.

  “We’re showing an alarm at your residence. Do you need assistance?”

  I forgot the alarm. Damn. “No, no, I’m fine. I was carrying … groceries.”

  “Code, please.”

  I give them the code, and the secondary code, and my mother’s maiden name. When they’re satisfied I’m not a doppelgänger, they reset the system and I lock myself in.

  I stand in front of the closet,
hands poised on the handles.

  “I’m ready,” I tell Nick-in-my-head.

  It’s still in there, that carton I stashed, wrapped in its packing-tape straitjacket. Between the fake Christmas tree I keep because I hate hauling a fresh one up the stairs, and building rules state they’re not allowed to ride the elevator anyway, and the box of Bibles I’ve collected over the years from people who thought my soul needed saving. Too superstitious to throw them away, I keep them here to ward away people who’d give me another. The flaw in my plan was James. Last Christmas he gave me a children’s Bible painted with toothy cartoon characters.

  They smile cheerfully at me from between the box flaps. I glance away before my eyes start to heat up.

  On the floor I sit, legs in a wide V and pull the carton to me. It doesn’t look like much. It’s quite ordinary, really. Logically, there’s nothing ominous about a package wrapped in tape. If someone saw me struggling into the post office with this thing, they’d assume it was a care package bound for a beloved friend. It’s the contents that lend it the sinister air of a secret long turned malignant.

  I have a plan. It’s been in my head since Jesse approached me on the train, but the human mind excels at withholding information from itself. Errant thoughts loiter in the less-traveled parts of our hemispheres until something triggers their leap from the shadows.

  The United States Times. Jesse. His face pressed against the train’s window, looking me in the eye for the first time, daring me to do something bigger than clean floors and cages.

  The scissors leave ragged edges on the tape. A new roll sits beside me ready to take its place as soon as I’ve done what I must.

  Deep breath.

  Lift lid.

  Scoop a handful of pieces with a plastic Baggie. Seal the bag first, then the box. Shove it back into its hiding place with my foot.

  I’m ready to do something bigger.

  DATE: NOW

  The Swiss corners me on the deck. “Your stupid friend wants an abortion.”

  “No she doesn’t.”

  “Who are you to decide for her? Is it not her body? Americans. Every life is sacred except the lives they neglect to save because some places have no useful resources.”

  “I’m not making a moral judgment. This is about her safety. There are no tools and no place clean and safe enough for any kind of surgery. Lancing a boil could be risky these days. I’ve told her already.”

  “If we find a hospital, there will be antibiotics,” he says.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know more than you about many things.”

  Anger rolls through me, gathering my power. I want to grab his throat, squeeze, but I don’t. Instead my elbow shoots out and up, catches him on the chin. He stumbles backwards, falls in a sprawling heap. For a moment he lies there, limbs flailing like a lobster freshly plucked from its saline home.

  No one moves to help him. They look away, don’t want to get involved. Who can blame them? The ugly side of humanity has shown its face for too long, and I’ve contributed. Shame burns me. I should have held back, but he’s done enough to Lisa already.

  He flips over, jumps to his feet.

  “What about when she delivers her child? What will happen then? What will happen when you deliver yours?”

  Help me, I beg of the ocean, the sky, and all the world in between. I don’t know what to do.

  DATE: THEN

  Athens’s Parthenon has many cheaper, lesser cousins scattered across the world; man’s capacity to create is just as limited as it is infinite. One such building houses the National Museum, where James and Raoul once sorted potsherds. What was a mere tap of my boots on the sidewalk is now a pounding on marble tiles in an almost empty lobby. Its sole occupant is a girl seated behind the front desk, only her eyes visible over the uncreased covers and rigid spine of the Bible.

  “Oh.” As though surprised that someone would choose to visit the museum on purpose. “Hello.”

  She stands, brushes her pants, smiles like she forgot to perform some important task to which she is bound.

  “I’m supposed to say ‘Welcome to the National Museum,’ but I wasn’t really expecting anybody today. We haven’t had anybody in for a week now. Except the staff. And they usually come in the back because that’s where our parking is.” She leans on the marble-top counter and whispers, “I’m not supposed to do this, but you can go in for free. Normally it’s ten dollars, except on Tuesdays, when admission is free, but I don’t think ten dollars is going to help much. A museum isn’t much of a museum if no one is looking. So it’ll be nice to have someone appreciating our collections. Are you here to see anything in particular?”

  From behind the counter she pulls a glossy pamphlet, spreads it open to reveal all the world’s wonders. So great is her enthusiasm that I don’t tell her I know the way. Let her have her moment.

  “Anthropology?”

  She draws a ring around the whole east wing. “It’s huge, but it’s worth all the walking, I promise.”

  She settles back into her chair, cracks open her new Bible. She’s either looking for answers or salvation. I hope she finds both.

  I’ve been here a dozen times times over, delving deep in the basement where curators and their lackeys keep poky offices that are close kin to coat closets. Like a car that’s traveled the same roads pulling toward the familiar exit, my feet carry me to James’s nook. There he is in white on black: James Witte, PhD. I will not lose it. I will not cry. Weeping won’t serve anything now. And yet, as my fingers trace those white plastic grooves, my eyes are hot and damp and full.

  The door I’m looking for is at the end of the row and sits in a corner, which means it’s a larger closet than its neighbors. But it’s a dead end because my knocks go unanswered. I hope Dr. Paul Mubarak isn’t dead.

  But he still lives. I find him sitting on one of the museum’s many benches, hunched over a coin too rough to be modern.

  He looks up, gives a little laugh, flips the olden-time money between lean, brown fingers.

  “A denarius. A day’s wage for some in ancient Rome. It became obsolete in the second century, but for four hundred years, it meant something in the world.” His bright eyes inspect me, catalog me, place me on a pedestal behind glass. “We’ve met.”

  “At James Witte’s funeral, yes.”

  “And what has brought you to the museum today? Surely you can’t be here as a tourista—not when another civilization is crumbling right outside these doors.”

  I take a deep breath. “I need help identifying something. James and Raoul were helping me when …”

  “Then let us walk and pretend you’re here to see our magnificent collections, first. My soul is heavy with many things, least of all the new shipments for which I have no interns to torture into sorting. I will be your tour guide and hope the company of a pretty girl will lift my spirits. We’ll take care not to disturb the crowds.”

  I fall into step beside Dr. Mubarak, let him enthrall me with tales of ancient Rome and Egypt. His faint accent helps me imagine I’m someplace exotic where Death doesn’t stalk.

  “Sometimes I like to look at her and ask: Are you my great-great-great-grandmother?”

  We’ve stopped beside a mummy whose charm lies in her age, not her current attire of rotted fabric strips.

  “Who was she?” I could read the bronze plaque with its black lettering, but I’m enjoying this too much.

  “Alas, my fair ancestor has no name, so we call her Grace until such a time as she can wear her own title once more. A queen, perhaps, or a princess. Someone of enough significance that they made certain her form would endure. And now, why don’t you tell me what has brought you to my door. As you can see, we are not blessed with many visitors these days. The world has problems and stares at anything but history for answers, and so the people do not come. Everything we need to know today can be found in the past. It is the foundation upon which we stand. Mistakes have been made before; they will
be made again in perpetuity.”

  I cannot repay this man with a half-truth, so I tell him everything about James, Raoul, and their intention to help me discover the origins of the jar. When I am finished he says, “Show it to me.”

  We go into the light so he can peer at the Baggie into which I’ve stuffed several shards and a handful of dust. Several bones have made it into the mix.

  “No, no, no,” he murmurs. “Old, they said?”

  “Yes.” I punctuate the word with a small nod.

  “No.” His sigh pushes up through centuries of rubble. “Sometimes the mind picks apart reality and restitches it to form a fabric it prefers. James and Raoul are—were—both hungry for a new, brilliant discovery that would serve to elevate their careers. Men like to pin their names to things; it makes us feel immortal.” He gives me a small, apologetic smile. “You presented them with a fascinating mystery and that lent your jar qualities it does not possess. He was wrong about your bit of pottery. He and Raoul both. That thing is not old. My wife has something similar in our foyer. People assume it’s old because of what I do. She’s always winking at me, telling them it is Etruscan or Greek.”

  “And they believe it?”

  “My dear, they eat it up with a dessert spoon. People believe what they want to believe. It does not fit with their worldview, you see, that a curator of archaeology would display modern ceramics in his home. People are funny. We have changed and yet we are the same as always.”

  The words thump inside my head. The jar is not old. And yet, James and Raoul believed. I was there, I saw them. Or maybe I was the one seeing what I wanted, and they were toying with my funny bone. Or maybe they thought I was tickling theirs with my new-old jar, and so they played along. They took the answer to their graves without leaving me an explanatory note.

  For a moment I want to laugh, because I’d kill them both if they weren’t already dead.

  “The bones,” he continues, “belong to something in the Muridae family.”

  “You know bones?”