by Blake Crouch
"Quit looking at me," Luther warns.
"Why are you so sad?"
"I’m not sad. I’m not anything. Watch the tape."
# # #
Maxine Kite unlocks the door and enters the small, dark cell. She sets the candle on the floor. Its flame throws shadows and light upon the stone.
Vi sleeps on the floor. Maxine kneels down beside her and jams the needle into her backside. Vi stirs, moans softly, and turns over to face the old woman. Her eyes barely open. She’s hung over horribly from the nitrous oxide, as she has been every night for the last two weeks.
"What are you doing?"
"I came to read to you while you sleep," Maxine says. "Rufus thinks it helps."
"Will you promise me something?" Vi asks.
"No promises here."
"Please."
The lucidity of the young woman alarms Maxine. Rufus would be furious. She should’ve injected the sedative into a vein.
"What is it?" Maxine asks.
"Don’t give me the drugs when I have my baby. I want to feel it. I want to remember it. Please. You’re a mother aren’t you?"
The old woman hardens, her weathered face beautiful and haunting in the candlelight.
"I said no promises here."
# # #
Once more, Andy’s eyes close at the urging of the hypnotic drug. Though he’s conscious, he doesn’t feel Rufus slip on the headphones and the light frames. The soundtrack consists of a binaural beat—two pure tones, close in pitch, one amplified into each ear. Every seven seconds, the diodes emit a burst of red light. This goes on for nearly an hour, seducing his alpha waves. Then he sees things.
# # #
Orson occupies a rocking chair on the porch of his cabin in the desert. Andy approaches, having walked here from some great distance. The day is brilliant, sweltering. He’s sunburned and thirsty.
"Hello, Orson," he calls out.
No answer.
"Could I have some water?"
No answer.
Andy steps up onto the porch. Orson is beyond still. Andy reaches out and palms his brother’s shoulder. Orson’s entire frame shifts slightly—he weighs nothing, a rigid dried-out shell, as hollow as the exoskeleton of a cicada.
# # #
"Mom, me and Orson want to play in the woods."
Jeanette stops cutting the onion and wipes her eyes.
"Orson’s dead, young man. But you’re welcome to go."
# # #
The rapist, Willard Bass, chases little Andy and Orson through the tunnel. In the distance, the circle of light at the end grows larger and brighter. Andy stops suddenly and spins around. Willard stops running, too. Filthy, wide-eyed, and breathless, he stares at the boys.
"Our turn!" Andy yells, and now the twins chase Willard back into the darkness.
When running in this direction, the tunnel has no end.
"Guilty, Your Honor. So very guilty."
# # #
Andy stands behind a lectern in an infinite bookstore. The crowd goes back for miles and miles. Every face in the audience glares at him. He looks down at the page he will read from, but the words are gobbledygook. He turns the page. More nonsense.
"I can’t read this," he says into the microphone. "It doesn’t make any sense."
"Read it anyway," someone shouts.
"But it’s meaningless."
Several boos emanate from the crowd.
"All right, all right, I’ll try."
Sweat beads on his face. He looks down at the page and reads aloud, slowly and with great difficulty.
"smf ejprbrt ,idy nr s vtrsypt om hppf smf rbo;. brto;u. jr ,idy gotdy nr sm smmojo;sypt smf ntrsl bs;ird/ yjid yjr johjrdy rbo; nr;pmhd yp yjr johjrdy hppfmrddz’ niy yjod od vtrsyobr/"
The crowd roars with affirmation. Now people are standing and clapping and shouting, "More! More!"
# # #
A giant onion stands in a kitchen, chopping up Andy’s mother, its eyes watering profusely.
# # #
Andy enters the study of his lake house. A man sits at his desk, typing on his computer. Andy stands behind the writer, listening to the patter of fingers on the keyboard and trying to read the text on the monitor. The writer glances back, just a small boy now.
"You better not read it," Orson warns and then goes back to typing. Andy leans forward and squints at the computer screen. The words are gobbledygook.
"What are you writing?" Andy asks.
"It’s a story. About you."
"What happens in it?"
"You go insane."
# # #
They lower me into a squeaky leather chair. The warmth of a fire laps at my face.
"Thank you, son. I’d like to talk to him alone now."
A door closes. The quiet pandemonium of the fire fills the room. I cannot recall the last time I’ve had such presence of mind. The recent past holds all the clarity of a coma, and the shards of memory I do have are not worth keeping. I wonder if it’s Christmas yet. I wonder many things.
As I lift my head, the textures of the room begin to materialize and vivify.
It’s night. Beyond the windows, I hear the tinkling of ice pellets. I recognize this room—the empty bookcases, the hearth, the satellite photograph of the Outer Banks, the oil painting of Luther Kite. I don’t remember when or why, but I’ve been in this room before.
Luther’s father sits across from me in an identical leather chair, legs crossed and stately in his black, satin robe.
"Don’t be afraid, Andy," Rufus says, smiling. "It’s my great joy and privilege to be sitting here with you."
I manage to home in on the details of his face. Rufus Kite must be at least seventy-five years old. But aside from a field of wrinkles and a few liver spots, he appears to be in phenomenal physical condition. He possesses the eyes of a young man—hard, vital, and thrilled with his place in the world. I can see the reflection of flames in them. His white hair is combed back and damp, as though he just stepped out of the shower.
"When is it?" I ask.
"You mean what month?"
His voice echoes. I wonder if it’s the room or my brain.
"Yes."
"It’s late March."
"No, but…" It takes a great effort to speak, and I have difficulty keeping my eyes open. "How long—"
"You’ve been with us for a hundred and forty-one days."
"No, it can’t be that—"
"You know what they say. Time flies."
I suspect he’s lying to me. It seems impossible that almost five months have elapsed since I came to this island. It feels more like a week.
"Where are the girls?" I ask. "Did I dream they were here?"
"Andy, let’s hold off on the questions for now, okay? Humor me, and I’ll fill you in on everything afterwards. Agreed?" I nod. "Wonderful. So how are we feeling?"
"Like I’ve just woken up from a long nightmare. But I feel like I know you very well."
"Oh, you and I have spent lots of time together."
Rufus reaches down and lifts a piece of paper from underneath his chair.
"I’m going to show you a picture. I just want you to react."
He holds the photo up in front of his chest. For some strange reason, laughter wells up inside of me. But I stifle it, because the photo shows Luther, tearing into someone with an ax. Rufus sets the photograph facedown in his lap.
"Answer me honestly, Andy. When you saw this picture, did you fight the urge to laugh?"
"No."
"No?"
"No."
He grins. "Bullshitter. May I assume you believe in good and evil?"
"Yes."
"And to whose value system do you bow down?"
"I don’t bow down to anything. A universal standard of behavior exists, and whether or not you choose to follow it, everyone who isn’t insane knows there’s an accepted right way and wrong way of treating each other."
"Accepted? I don’t accept it. Just because the majority
of human beings believes something, does that make it so? Let me ask you this. Do you believe in God?"
"I um… No."
"No? Well, then if you’re an atheist, please explain to me who created this ‘universal standard of behavior’ as you call it?"
"I don’t know."
"Let me help you. I’ve spent my life probing this question, and far as I can tell, a person can honestly believe one of two things. Either that there’s a God who created in all of us this innate universal standard of right and wrong. Or that there is no right and wrong except that which you fashion for yourself."
"And you believe the latter."
"Oh yes."
"Because that helps you rationalize the disgusting things you and your family do to people?"
Rufus smiles.
"Sadly, I speak only for myself when I say this. The infliction of pain is hardly the goal. What you would deem evil—the taking of life, the creation of suffering—these things are not the goal. Recreating values, thinking beyond good and evil, overcoming illusions so that we as a species can continue to evolve—that is the goal."
Rufus leans forward and pats my knee.
"I want to share with you my vision. We may never see it in our lifetime, but it will happen. I call it the Great Regression.
"Imagine: suddenly, unexpectedly, war breaks out on every level. International. Interstate. Intercity. Interfamily. Madness, hell, horror, and all that constitutes evil erupts and overspreads the globe like a virus of rage. Most of the world’s population dies as mankind unleashes every urge that has been suppressed over the span of its civilized evolution. Cities burn. Men murder their families and themselves. Armies attack their citizenry. The Regression could last years, but I have a hunch that the rage will be such that a month’s time is sufficient to bring mankind to the brink of extinction.
"But in the end, when the smoke has cleared, a small core of human beings will remain. They’ll have survived not only the malice of others, but the malice of themselves. They’ll have been the hardest, sharpest, cruelest, wisest. And amid the devastation, they’ll start a new world, no longer based on the fear of what lies in man’s heart, but on the elevation of man and his ideas. They will be magnificent, they’ll be gods, and the things they do will be wondrous and beyond our understanding."
Rufus leans back, glowing.
"Think you’d survive the Great Regression?" I ask.
"I’ve thought about that, and I don’t think I would. I’m not hard enough. But I want you to know that I’m very hopeful for you, Andy. I think you have it in you to see beyond the illusions. You know, as much as I tinker with your mind, I really can’t reprogram your value system. God knows, I’m trying. But I’ve got a good feeling about you."
Rufus puts in his teeth and pulls a pipe from his breast pocket. Then he rises and walks across the room to a small bookcase beneath the window that I hadn’t noticed before. He stoops down, lifts the glass lid from a jar of tobacco, and pinches just enough to pack his pipe.
"I’m surprised you haven’t asked about these," he says, motioning to a row of leather-bound journals. "Orson’s treatise is here. I should let you read it some time. You know, your brother was my only success story."
He’s puffing away, blowing smoke rings through smoke rings, as he returns to his chair. The room fills with the rancid sweetness of tobacco smoke. My heart pounds.
"What are you talking about? Orson—"
"Happened to Luther? Oh, no. We most certainly happened to him."
I straighten up in my chair. The grogginess evaporates. My hands tremble. Head throbs.
"I can see this is upsetting you, Andy. Should we talk about it another time?"
"Don’t fuck with me."
Rufus exhales a long stream of smoke.
"It’s been almost twenty years," he says. "It was summertime. My God, Luther was only fourteen. Maxine and I were walking along the beach south of Ramp 72, headed toward the southern tip of Ocracoke. It was windy. Sand blowing around like crazy, the sun liquid red as it sank into the dunes. It’s gorgeous out there. Soft white sand, far as the eye can see.
"At the end of the island, we came across this young man sitting in the sand, staring out across the inlet toward Portsmouth. He looked thoughtful and lonely, and I walked up to him and asked if he’d take a picture of Maxine and me. He obliged us. Your brother was such a sad young man, Andy. We got to talking. He told me he’d just quit college. I don’t know what was wrong with him. Depression probably. Whatever it was, I don’t think he’d have lasted much longer.
"I asked what he was doing on Ocracoke. Said he didn’t know. That he’d just been driving around from place to place, had never seen the Outer Banks, and so decided to come here on a whim.
"My wife, being the sweet angel that she is, invited him for dinner. He said no at first, but I could tell he was desperate for the company. We finally convinced him.
"Had a lovely dinner that night. Afterwards, Orson and I retired to this room. Sat in these very chairs. We were drinking black coffee and he was telling me about your father dying of cancer.
"Of course Orson’s coffee contained a substantial dose of Rohypnol. Boy, it’s always fun to watch them realize that something’s not quite right. Orson was chatting away, and all of the sudden he stopped and jumped to his feet. His legs just turned to milk chocolate and he staggered back into the chair and sat down, his chest heaving away. I explained that he would be staying with us indefinitely. He pissed in that chair you’re sitting in."
Rufus smiles. He sucks on the pipe but his flame has extinguished. He relights it and smoke clouds around him again like a foggy halo.
I’m fighting tears when I tell him, "But I read Orson’s journals. That’s how I found your house. I read about him kidnapping Luther."
Rufus shakes his head.
"You’re telling me Luther never attended Woodside College?"
"My boy never finished high school, Andy."
"I don’t understand. Why would Orson make that—"
"It isn’t necessary that you understand. Besides, it wouldn’t be the first thing Orson made up."
Rufus rises and walks over to the window. The sleet has turned to rain.
"I know Orson took you to his cabin several years ago," Rufus says. "He told me all about it. Please understand. That was a poorly rendered model of the experience you’re having with me."
I cannot ignore the horror that statement inspires in me. Rufus sets his pipe on the windowsill and runs his fingers through his hair. Then he nods at something behind me and a needle stabs into my shoulder.
Maxine stands behind my chair in a nightgown.
"Come on, boy," she says as the drug begins to envelop me. "Time for beddie-bye."
"Where are the girls, Rufus?" I ask. "Please. Are they dead?"
"Come on, boy," Maxine urges, pulling on my shoulder.
I rise to my feet, face the tiny old woman.
Then I punch her fucking lights out.
She hits the floor, unconscious. I hope I broke her jaw.
Rufus claps his hands and laughs and laughs.
"She is a pushy bitch, isn’t she? I’ve wanted to do that for forty-nine years."
I start limping toward him, intending to rip him the fuck apart with whatever strength I can muster. But the drug overpowers me and I sit down on the floor.
Rufus stands over me now, grinning and shaking his head.
"Hope you killed her, cause Maxine’s gonna want a little payback after that sucker punch, and I’m not sure I can blame her."
Rufus blurs.
The back of my head smacks the hardwood floor and I stare at the ceiling.
It’s sleeting again.
There’s no greater horror than knowing your mind is softening back into clay, and the potter is a psychopath.
# # #
Several weeks later, at sunset, the Kites take their class on a fishing fieldtrip to the ocean. It’s the first time Andy, Beth, or Vi have seen
daylight in more than five months, and they emerge from the stone house as frail and sun-shy as astronauts returning to Earth after months in space.
Everyone except Maxine and Rufus piles into the back of the old pickup truck.
