He sat in his lounger, a square affair with a rectangular leg rest that supported him as he leaned back and blinked a request for his live video feed from Memory.
He shouldn’t have been able to remember that face in the window. His face. The Watchman should have prevented it.
But it was there, staring at him as he watched reruns of Antiques Roadshow while lying back and trying to calm his shaken mind.
Help me.
He would, he decided. He would help.
And with the decision made, stress shed from his frame like water, and he fell asleep.
* * *
Mitch sat on a bench, watching the nostalgia trolley as it zipped along the short circuit around the small downtown park in his direction, picking up the few that had decided to brave the cold, windy weather. Ahead, beyond the trolley tracks and a lawn still brown from winter, stood a Civil War museum that had been constructed a few years ago.
Two weeks had passed since the incident at the antique store. He’d been thinking nonstop of how to reach that other compartment—the one that was crying for help—but he didn’t know how, and it hadn’t tried to contact him since.
Or perhaps it hadn’t been allowed to.
The Watchman must have discovered its error and refused any new attempts at communication. But this brought up another, more puzzling certainty. If the Watchman knew, then Dr. Narayan and her staff knew, yet she hadn’t brought it up during any of his sessions. What did that mean? That it was simply a glitch and they didn’t consider it worth telling him? That they hoped he would simply forget about it?
Most likely they knew he wouldn’t forget about it and were waiting to see what his reaction would be. No. Check that. They knew his reactions already—they were fed them constantly through the upfeed in Mitch’s head—and this implied that they were waiting to see the progression from the incident. And that implied that there was something within him so damaging that he could not be allowed to approach it directly.
The trolley approached, then stopped at the concrete slab in front of him. Dr. Narayan stepped out, her long black hair falling around her shoulders. She watched him carefully—always guarded, always careful to give nothing away—and then sat next to him. As the trolley pulled away Mitch noticed another passenger, a man with blond hair, watching the two of them. Mitch had seen him somewhere before. He just couldn’t remember where.
No. He wasn’t being allowed to remember. He was getting good at recognizing the difference.
“Why did you ask me here?” Dr. Narayan asked after the trolley had departed, and slipped behind the row of condos beyond the museum.
It took him a while to work up his nerve. “You know about the face in the window. You know what’s being hidden from me.”
She didn’t say anything. Something told him that even if protocol allowed it, she still wouldn’t tell Mitch. And that made him angry. Interesting, he thought, that he was being allowed to stew in his own anger.
“What happened to me?”
“What do you mean, Mitch?”
“Why did I decide to get the procedure?”
“You know I can’t tell you.”
“It was trauma, wasn’t it?”
Silence as seagulls swooped down near a boy tossing hunks of bread onto the brown lawn.
Mitch turned to her, stared into her piercing green eyes. “Did I try to kill myself?”
To her credit, she didn’t give anything away. Her expression didn’t change one whit.
“This isn’t the right place for this discussion, Mitch. Why don’t we talk tomorrow during your session?”
“Please tell me.”
She shook her head. “Tomorrow.”
He tried to smile. He nodded. She patted his knee and stood as the trolley came around again. As she stepped on, the same blond passenger watched her closely, and then, over Dr. Narayan’s shoulder, watched Mitch.
Mitch knew him, or had known him. He requested the memories, was refused.
Mitch thought about this for the rest of the day, and as he lay in bed that night, the tight ball of energy sitting in his chest slowly releasing as he drifted toward sleep, he was surprised to realize he wasn’t angry. A few weeks ago, he would have been furious at the prison he was in, but not now. Not today, anyway, because he’d discovered something important. He’d asked Dr. Narayan about his old life, and about the incident, and he still remembered. He hadn’t been denied these memories.
Which implied that they wanted him to know.
Compartmentalization Design Document - Section 2.3 - The Super-conscience
The Watchman shall act as a super-conscience for the patient—the ego and super-ego to the patient’s id. It shall do so based on parameters set by the attending physician but shall make informed and dynamic decisions based on both the acute and long-term trends of the patient’s mental state.
Another memory that had never been denied was the way he’d reacted when he saw the diner. He’d been terrified to go back there—he’d given up exercising because of it—but he knew he had to return.
He paced along the downtown street that led toward it. The buildings—jumbled like a pile of disregarded blocks—hid it away. The diner was one of the last odd remnants of this old freight-town’s nearly forgotten past.
His heart sped up as he neared the corner. He stopped before he reached it, placing his hand against the rough red brick of the building for support. Near his hand was a brass plaque: Brightforge Bell Foundry, Est. 1906.
He couldn’t breathe. There was something stuck in his throat. He bent over and held his knees, telling himself he needed to go home.
But as he clenched his eyes, there was an image playing inside his head of an old man mouthing Please in an antique store window. He pictured that part of him, huddled, cringing, hiding from the world in a place filled with so much pain that it had caused him to do this to himself.
He stepped back to peer in the windows of the building. The ground floor was empty, the expanse yawning and dark. Forgotten. He stared at his reflection. He could see the fear in his face. His face. And if he was this scared, how scared was that other part of him, the one that was locked away, all alone?
He knew he couldn’t leave it to fend for itself. With his heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his neck and shoulders and the pit of his stomach, he stepped beyond the corner. The diner stood on its old rails, as if it had been abandoned while the rest of the train had continued beyond the horizon. He picked out the window he’d seen before. He was at a different angle, and no one was in that same booth now, but he could still see that little boy.
And it brought with it those same feelings of walls closing in.
He let them. He fixed in his head not the boy he’d seen the other day, but the memories of the other boy, the one that filled him with such fear.
No, not fear of the boy, he realized. He loved that boy. He loved him desperately.
What, then? What was he afraid of?
He was afraid of the truth, Mitch realized.
The truth.
He couldn’t face it. It was why he’d run from his life, run from himself.
But he didn’t want to run anymore. Not knowing was just as painful as knowing. And if he never knew, he would never be able to heal.
How could he remember, though? His memories were locked in a compartment, and it wasn’t going to let them out.
And then he remembered. The baseball.
His heart was beating so madly he thought he would pass out, and for a while he couldn’t figure out why the autonomic subsystem wasn’t keeping things in check.
But of course, in the end, it was obvious.
* * *
Mitch took the stairs up to his apartment, which was one of sixteen semi-independent cubes attached to a square central column. Normally the complex was filled with people and activity. Today there was no one.
When he reached his door, it swung open and Mitch stepped inside.
On the mant
le above the fireplace, between an antique Navajo ewer and a wooden crank phone, sat the scuffed, red-stitched ball. Mitch’s heart was no longer tripping over its own rhythms, but he could still feel it, pounding hard as he could ever remember.
He only needed to grip the ball—it had only been a symbol, after all—for the first of the memories to come.
A boy, five years old.
His grandson, Nicholas.
Nick.
Nicky.
They’d been playing hide and seek, like they’d done a hundred times before. Nicholas had been getting better at it, though.
If only Mitch had taken his pills.
Nicholas had learned patience, waiting longer and longer for Grandpa to find him, and this time he’d decided to hide in the basement. He’d found the old wooden washing tub and slipped inside.
Mitch should have taken his pills.
Mitch sank to the couch, staring at that white ball cradled in his hands. Tears streamed down his face. He was sure his chest was heaving with his cries, but he couldn’t hear it.
The latch on the machine had caught, locking Nick in. And Mitch…
Mitch had a condition. Vasovagal syncope. It meant he passed out. Plenty of people had it.
In Mitch’s case it happened when he grew overly worried. The meds helped with his heart rate and the body’s reaction to stress. And he’d stopped taking them. He knew he needed them, but he’d just stopped. Just one more pill on the pile that he was sick to death of taking.
He’d searched the house frantically, calling to Nick. But Nick hadn’t heard him, or had wanted to hide a few minutes longer—the exact time of death was too unclear to tell which. Mitch had just started to take the stairs down to the basement when he felt the episode coming on, fast and hard.
“Nicky!” he’d shouted.
And then the world leapt up and swallowed him whole.
When he woke, he was in an ambulance, already near the hospital.
His son’s wife, Melanie, was sitting next to him.
Her face was ashen.
Dear God, Nick’s mother.
What had he done?
The shock over the accident he’d caused formed a strange and brittle alloy when mixed with the relief of discovering he had a son… James. Nicky’s father.
More memories came rushing in: the days that followed, the funeral, his inability to sit more than thirty seconds into the deacon’s prayer before standing and staggering from the church, eyes burning with tears, Melanie following, though it was clear she didn’t want to. James had stayed inside, and Mitch had gotten in his car and left. He’d gone home and fallen into a depression so deep and vast and wide he remembered little of it. Except the pills. And the blades across his wrists.
Seven times he’d tried to kill himself, and he’d been embarrassed by each and every one. It was a cry for help, everyone said. But it wasn’t. He was just too chickenshit when it came right down to it, and he hadn’t had the nerve to finish himself off, though he knew, and his son knew, and God knew that he deserved it.
Melanie had come to him nine months after Nicky’s death, only two days after his last, failed attempt at suicide, telling him of a new procedure he qualified for as a GI. He’d sent her away that first day, but she was a determined woman, Mel. She came again and again until Mitch had agreed to let Dr. Narayan visit with him.
“Is this what Jim wants?” Mitch had asked.
“You know he does,” she’d said.
“Did he say that?”
“He doesn’t have to, Mitch, and you know I want it, too.”
Jim didn’t have to say it… He didn’t want to say it. How could he? How could he face the man who’d killed his son, even if it meant losing his own father in the process?
He couldn’t. He was a chip off the old block.
“What would it take?” Melanie had asked, desperate.
Mitch remembered this clearly, as bright as day, as stark as the red-stitched baseball he held tenderly in his hands. He remembered how much he wanted Jimmy to be there with him when he had the procedure.
“If he comes,” Mitch had said. “If he comes with me to the hospital, I’ll do it.”
Melanie had swallowed at those words. She’d swallowed hard, and looked into Mitch’s eyes with both uncertainty and a determination he’d rarely seen in anyone, much less this petite, one-hundred-pound woman.
“He’ll come,” she’d said. “I promise.”
Compartmentalization Design Document - Section 4.3 - Compartment Dynamics
Any number of compartments shall be allowed. The initial number, typically three, shall be determined by the attending physician. Compartments may be added at any time. In a likewise manner, compartments may be merged. When the number of compartments has been reduced to one, normal functions shall resume and be indistinguishable from normal brain behavior.
A knock came at the door.
Mitch stood and stared, his hands shaking, wondering who could have come. He was somehow sure it wouldn’t be Dr. Narayan. He was also sure, though he didn’t know how, that it wouldn’t be Melanie.
As he stepped toward the door, he flexed his hands. They were sweating something fierce.
He started as another knock came—his whole body shaking from it—followed by a rush of adrenalin. He licked his lips as he stood there on the simple brown entry mat, remembering the face of the trolley passenger. Remembering the face of the man sitting on the park bench.
When he reached out and opened the door, he saw that same face. Strong chin. High brow. Dirty blond hair and gray-blue eyes. It was the face of his son. It was the face of a man estranged from his father by absolute and mutual consent. The face of a man, Mitch thought, that was hopeful. Hopeful for what, Mitch didn’t know. He just knew it was beautiful.
He was mindful that the old Mitch would have thought this was hell. He pulled his son into a deep embrace, then held him out, taking a good look at him. “It’s great to see you, Jimmy,” he said slowly.
The words were a lie, though. Or at least, they weren’t the whole truth.
It wasn’t merely great.
It was pure bliss.
Upon the Point of a Knife
I
As the sun set over Providence, Jonah Bloom lay at the end of Dorrance Street where the street gave over to the railroad tracks. His hands were cupped over his head while the five boys who’d caught him there surrounded him and kicked him mercilessly. How long the beating lasted Jonah couldn’t say, but eventually they stopped and watched as he writhed on the cold ground. Jonah hugged his ribs. He sucked air through clenched teeth. Each inhalation was pure white pain. A simple shift of his leg brought torture to his ankle. Luther, the tallest and the leader of the vicious boys, had stomped on it, and when he had, Jonah had heard something snap like a twig in the dry heat of summer.
Jonah had asked for it, he supposed. He’d run when they’d found him again. It was the fourth time, and he knew what was coming. The other three times they’d held him down and cut him, once to each hand and once to his right foot. They’d waited weeks between each assault—why, he had no idea—but he was sure this time they’d come to finish what they’d started. They would cut his left foot, and he wasn’t about to let them have their way. Not without a fight.
Some fight. Young Caleb had tackled him from behind before he’d gone a hundred strides.
As he lay there, they stripped him of his worn-through shoe and sock and held his leg tight. They stuffed the sock down his mouth and clamped their sweaty hands over his mouth while Luther pressed the tip of the knife deep into the sole of his foot.
As it kissed his flesh, Jonah thought he heard laughing. He wasn’t sure if it came from the boys or himself. Or maybe it was some long-forgotten memory dredged up by the pain. Just as they had the other times the knife had pierced his skin, visions came to him: golden-white light smothered by darkness. Like a storm cloud blotting out the sun, the light was soon gone. The light had been wonderful, a
thing to make the soul sing, and now it was gone, utterly consumed by the darkness surrounding it, and it made Jonah wonder what he might have just lost. Much, certainly, but like a blind man standing before the stark beauty of nature, he had no idea how much.
Luther leaned down over Jonah. “It won’t be long now.” The rusted sky and the setting sun outlined his angry face, and for a moment Jonah swore his eyes were aglow like flames in the pits of hell. His features grew and distorted. His nostrils flared, black pits completely out of proportion with the rest of his face. His teeth unsheathed like snake fangs.
A trick, Jonah thought. A trick of the pain and his bottled rage and the darkness of the coming night.
Jonah blinked, and the visage was gone.
From the nervous glances the other boys were sending in Luther’s direction, Jonah had the impression that Luther’s warning wasn’t something he should have shared. But soon after, Luther had pointed with the knife down the alley and they’d all left Jonah there on the street to bleed on his own.
While gripping his foot to slow the flow of blood, Jonah laid his head down—he hadn’t meant to; it had just happened—and when he woke, it was to the sound of clopping hooves. He was unsure how much time had passed, but the sky was dark now, the moon a sliver of fresh, curled wood. The rattle of steel-rimmed wheels against cobbles filled the streets of Providence. A wagon, Jonah thought, near the chapel, perhaps, or the mayor’s house.
By the time he realized the wagon was going to come very near, it was too late to run. He’d managed only to lever himself to a standing position before the carriage turned up the lane toward him. The driver’s bench was empty, but the four horses clopped on until the coach came abreast of Jonah, then it sighed to a stop like a raft against the shallow banks of a river. Jonah backed away and leaned against the bricks of the old warehouse. He stared into the dark depths of the carriage but could discern nothing. He could smell plenty, though; not merely the horses, but the smell of loam and burnt cedar. It irritated his nose and throat. Made his eyes water.
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