Flashback

by Gary Braver

  Nothing.

  Boxes, storage trunks, lamps, old armoire, furnace, oil tank, small workbench, Christmas decorations, washing machine, and dryer. No demon woman. The room was empty of any other presence.

  Christ, now it’s phantom voices in the daytime.

  All the shit you’re on, man—all conspiring to scramble your squeeze box. He got the photo album and shuffled over to a pile of boxes and sat down. His head felt slow, as if operating on a sluggish strobe. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to steady himself. Just a little misfiring that’ll pass, he told himself. He opened his eyes and began thumbing through the photo album again.

  Then from behind him he heard the voice again: “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.”

  Jack bolted straight up, the album tumbling to the floor. For a moment he stood perfectly still, his body throbbing to the fright in his blood. He took a deep breath and slowly turned to get a fix on the voice, certain that it came from the shadows by the furnace. He crossed the floor by the workbench. Who the hell would be down here, and why hide in the shadows and sing?

  I’m going crazy. I can’t tell if it’s external sound or it’s inside my head.

  He removed a ball-peen hammer from the pegboard. His heart took a huge surge of blood as he crossed the stairs and looked up to the light of the kitchen.

  “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.”

  Jack let out a shuddering gasp. “Who-who’s there?”

  This time he was dead certain. A woman’s voice, and not just in his head but in his ears. Real sound that still registered vibratory stimulation. Real sound: A clear, thin female voice singing. But not from the kitchen.

  Someone’s down here with me.

  He moved into the cellar, his fingers in a tight, cold grip on the hammer. Jack didn’t know the people who owned the house, nor did he know anything about them. The arrangements had been made by Vince, who said that personal problems had forced the couple to move out of state with their daughter. But it crossed Jack’s mind that those personal problems could mean that said woman of the house was psycho and had sneaked back home and was hanging somewhere in the shadows.

  Jack moved toward some tall furniture against the far wall. “Okay, game’s up.”

  “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine …”

  An involuntary cry fluttered up Jack’s windpipe. The woman’s voice was right on top of him. He snapped around, his hand fused to the hammer, but he could not get a direction. He dipped his head into the black gaps between the furnace and the armoire. He wished he had a flashlight. “I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing.”

  Nothing.

  He tapped the doors of the armoire with the hammer. “Come out, goddamn it.”

  Nothing.

  He raised the hammer and snapped open the door. The armoire was lined with shoe boxes, but nothing else. He walked toward the rear of the cellar. “All right, I’m calling the police.”

  Nothing.

  He circled back toward the laundry table.

  “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine …”

  Jack froze. Movement. He saw movement. He was standing before the opening to a small recess that decades ago had served as a storage room for coal.

  “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine …”

  “I see you, goddamn it,” he said to the shadows, the hammer in his fist ready to swing if some lunatic woman rushed him. “Get out here!” His heart pounded so hard he had trouble putting breath in his words.

  In the coal room hung an old wooden framed mirror, resting at a tipsy angle, the glass cracked and smoky. But he could see himself clearly, his pale face, his eyes like holes in his skull, the solid-bodied silver hammer in his hand.

  As he stood there contemplating his image, he heard the thin falsetto. But this time she wasn’t singing. “Ahmahn seerem anoosheeg …”

  Jack let out a shudder. The voice was coming from him.

  In the reflection he saw his mouth form the syllables, their sounds piercing his ears like slivers of glass. His voice. His voice. He could still feel the muscle sensations in this throat. He could hear the vibrations in his ears.

  God Almighty!

  A black rush of horror passed through him. He had spoken—or someone or something had spoken through him, as if from another brain. Or worse: He really was losing his mind.

  What made him all the more horrified was the realization that the words he had uttered were not words he comprehended. They were a foreign language. But he was certain that the words were those of his long dead relatives and ancestors. That he had spoken Armenian.

  Disbelief flooded his mind because Armenian was a language he did not know, had never learned, had never spoken. Yes, he recognized phonemes and sound patterns picked up from friends of his aunt and uncle when he was a kid. But he was no more conversant in Armenian than he was in Danish or Inuit. But he would bet his life that the words he had uttered were Armenian.

  Jack turned off the light and went upstairs one step at a time, thinking that this had nothing to do with medication or blood pressure or tricks of the light and that, given the option, he preferred to think there had been a crazy woman down there and not that he was going insane.

  62

  JACK SAT BY THE PHONE STARING at Dr. Heller’s number and running through his head what he would tell her: That yesterday he had had a bout of auditory hallucinations—that he was in his cellar, and suddenly he began hearing a woman singing in a voice that appeared to emanate from inside his own head.

  Some kind of seizures like what that pharmacist woman, René Ballard, had said the dementia patients were experiencing on that new Alzheimer’s drug. Maybe just a coincidence, maybe there was a connection. She had called them flashbacks.

  Maybe that’s what was happening, except it gets worse, Doc. Oh yeah, much worse, because then I began speaking in a language I’ve never spoken before and in a voice that wasn’t my own. What do I think, Doc? That I’ve got a haunted head. And what I did was pop three Xanax tabs and fall into an eight-hour hole.

  For maybe a full fifteen minutes he sat by the phone. If he told her straight out what had happened, she’d call him in immediately, set him up with neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, dementia specialists, flashback experts, whatever, then submit him to another battery of tests, put his head in the MRI hole again, wire it for bugs. But, frankly, he just didn’t want to go through all that. Besides, he had a scheduled appointment next week. He’d leave it at that.

  In the meantime, he’d keep out of the cellar. Oh, yeah. In fact, he’d minimize his time in the kitchen to avoid the pull of the damn door. He’d also double his dosage of Dilantin to keep the ghosts in their coffins. Sure, he should have consulted Dr. Heller. Sure, only a fool was his own pharmacist. Sure, he could probably trigger some nasty side effects—although he had none. On the contrary, the extra hit had the effect of a pop-up stopper. For eighteen hours he was dream-free, flashback-free-not even a slice-and-dice still out of the blue.

  The bad news was that because he refused to take any more sleeping pills, Jack had traded bad visions for insomnia. For the next five nights he logged no more than twenty hours of sleep, some nights getting maybe two, spending the remaining hours twisting in his sheets until dawn. He even went online and found a Web site for insomniacs that offered a list of a dozen sleep-inducing strategies: take a warm bath; listen to soft music; drink warm milk at bedtime; visualize something boring … He tried them all, but nothing worked. He just became more alert in his desperation.

  He also dreaded dusk. In fact, it got so bad that when the evening news came on his heart rate increased and his mouth went dry. At about nine-thirty on the fifth night he actually felt sleep weigh heavily on his eyelids. So he slipped into the bedroom, trying not to think about how he was pretending to yield to drowsiness like most normal people. He took his medicine, resisting the temptation to down a few tabs of Xanax, turned off the lights, and got into bed.

  He clos
ed his eyes, trying to settle into his drowsiness as if he were just your average Joe—stable, relaxed, retiring after a long and exhausting day at the office. At 10:18 he was still awake and even more alert than ever. He stared at the dark ceiling, trying to pretend that he was fighting sleep, forcing his eyes to remain open until the last possible moment when he’d close them and slip into the warm well of oblivion.

  But it didn’t work.

  And his mind filled with the illuminated dial of the radio clock, the cable box, light strips framing the window shades from the street, sounds of the house settling, the fridge compressor kicking in, Logan jets … goddamn butterfly wings in Peru.

  He got up and draped towels over the radio, then found some duct tape and sealed the shades against the window frame. The black was now total, but his brain was hot with frustration. He closed his eyes and tried not to think of the sounds of his heart clicking in his ears, hoping the white noise would lull him to sleep as with any other normal person. Except that he wasn’t like any other normal person but a man cursed to lie awake holding his breath for the subtlest decibel to pin his affliction on.

  At 1:46 he was still awake.

  By 2:11 his mind was a flywheel. If there was a God, he thought, he or she didn’t have a sleep problem. The cable box clock. As a light source it wasn’t intrusive, but he knew that every time he opened his eyes there was the countdown in glowing red—and as long as the digits were visible, he’d be tempted to gauge the passage of time.

  Shit!

  He got up and covered the cable box.

  An hour later, he headed down to the kitchen for another warm glass of milk. He thought about reading a dull book or maybe catching some mindless movie on TV. But that would only stimulate his brain all the more. So he sat at the kitchen table and sipped warm milk out of a blue glass under the garish fluorescence of the circular tube on the ceiling. He closed his eyes and rested his head on his elbow, thinking about warm milk coating his stomach and magically transmitting rock-a-bye-baby signals to his brain. But that didn’t work.

  Jack opened one eye. It fell on the cellar door.

  The cellar.

  Don’t think about it, he told himself. Then another voice cut in: Yeah, sure. Like don’t think “elephant” and suddenly there’s Dumbo flapping his ears at you.

  His eye dropped to the hexagonal glass knob.

  Turn me.

  Click.

  Pull.

  He closed his eye and sipped more milk.

  Come on, guy. Peek-a-boo.

  His eye slitted open.

  Thata boy, I see you …

  The door, and just behind it a black shaft and twelve little steps down, light switch at the top. He closed his eyes again.

  He got up, scraping the chair noisily against the floor, and downed the rest of the milk and rinsed out the glass. Then he turned and leaned against the sink, staring at the door. So, what’s it going to be, Jacko? Stay out of the cellar for good until your laundry rots in the machine—been five days now, still sitting in a damp twist at the bottom, never did make the dryer. Going to have to send them through again for the mildew.

  He crossed the kitchen and opened the door.

  So what’s the big deal?

  Well, you see, the last time I did this, there was this poltergeist thing that took me over.

  What are you afraid to find? Just a lot of boxes of old stuff. Maybe glug up the throat on nostalgia, but that’s an old friend by now.

  He flicked on the light.

  Empty stairs, no goggle-eyed zombies gaping up at him, and no ooga-booga vibes registering. Plus, a few low-sleep cobwebs aside, your head feels clear for once.

  He took the steps one by one, holding on to the rail. Someplace in the front hall he had left his cane, which would have been comforting to grip at the moment. But he decided not to bother going back up.

  At the bottom he turned slowly until he faced the rear wall and the armoire. Nothing.

  He moved across the floor to the washing machine and put his hand on the lid, thinking that this is where the thing with the KKK hood jumps out and crushes your skull. Nothing but his clothes in a fused ring around the base of the agitator. They were still damp but they didn’t smell mildewy, so he put them into the dryer.

  He limped across the old carpet and stopped in his tracks. Along the metal shelves were boxes. He didn’t know why he stopped, but as if following some radar beam his eyes fell on a single carton. He had been through all the boxes—all but this one, which still had tape across the flaps. On the side in small black letters it said “Jack’s Stuff.”

  As if by remote control he went over to the shelves, his mind funneling all attention onto that parcel, that plain brown cardboard box with no commercial lettering. It was maybe eighteen inches on a side, but surprisingly light. He placed it on a table and opened the top.

  Old newspapers were balled up as packing. He unfolded one double page that was discolored from long repose in the box—October 1979. He felt around under the upper layers until he hit the source of the weight. Smooth shape—soft, cloth, pliable. His fingers began to hum as they sent up crude premonitional images to his brain like a sonogram. He pulled it out.

  A large tan stuffed mouse with round sausagey limbs, floppy round pink ears, a red knobbed nose, big startled cartoon eyes in white and black, a thick brown tail. Instantly every inner sensor focused on that stuffed mouse.

  “Mookie.”

  63

  “IT’S A DAMN JOKE. KLANDER AND COMPANY gave them just what they wanted to hear: It’s the dementia, stupid.”

  René had not seen Nick so upset. His face was red, as if too full of blood. The Klander Clinical Research Group report sat in a black folder on Nick’s desk.

  “They hired a bunch of fancy-sounding neuro people and threw a ton of money at them and got the validation they were looking for.”

  “But we gave them reams of data and documentation of the problems.”

  “Yeah, and they concluded that the events were not Memorine-related but the results of the brain’s deterioration from Alzheimer’s. And they bolstered the claim that since the flashbacks are treatable with standard antipsychotic meds, the phenomenon equals demented delusions. QED.” He pushed a copy toward her. “You can read it yourself.”

  René took the report and thumbed through it. There were pages of data from outside literature documenting hallucinatory behavior of AD patients. “But the evidence is overwhelming.”

  “Not when the conclusion is predetermined. So instead of burying the evidence, they hire so-called neutral specialists to say the problems aren’t drug-related. Pretty clever, huh?”

  “But can’t the FDA see through that?”

  “No, because the FDA wants this to go to market. So does the president. He sees it as a sixty-billion-dollar savings of taxpayers’ money. So, it’s fait accompli.”

  “What about the investigators at some of the other sites? I thought we had some support on this.”

  “We do. Paul Nadeau wants an extension. So does Brian Rich. In fact, Nadeau reports he’s got a patient who keeps having flashbacks of finding his father hanging in the closet when he was eight years old. And Dr. Rich says one of his keeps reliving her days as a child at Dachau. And the only treatment is to dope them into a stupor.”

  “God, the cure is worse than the disease.”

  “Exactly, but GEM’s going to deny that.”

  “So we treat the flashbacks with the usual stuff.”

  Nick nodded. “And if people recede into the past, let them stay there. If they get out of hand, sedate them, and to hell with the burdens on the families.”

  “I don’t believe this.” And in René’s mind she saw Louis Martinetti blanching with horror as he was suddenly transported to the Red Tent where he was forced to watch his captors do unspeakable things to his buddy, pleading for them to stop in some kind of pidgin Korean speak.

  “Believe it. What we have is a fifty-billion-dollar piggy that’s goi
ng to market, no matter what—ethics and good business practice be damned. It’s the same sealed mind-set you saw with Enron and Tyco. Nobody wants to hear bad news. And if you have any or you raise ethical questions, you’re not part of the team—and don’t get the rewards.”

  “But this didn’t happen on its own. Somewhere along the line somebody made a decision to compromise the truth.”

  Nick nodded. “There’s an old Greek expression: ‘The fish rots from the head first.’”

  In all the years she had known Nick, René had never seen him so worked up. His face was flushed and his eyes filled his glasses. He looked like another person pressed to the surface under internal heat. In the classroom he had held forth on the need for strong ethical safeguards, especially in the cloudy interface between drug companies and physicians. But the lectures were always cool and reasoned. And never had she heard him criticize colleagues or staff behind their backs. If he had a problem, he was always diplomatic and respectful, stating his differences in objective and conciliatory terms. And if someone was wrong, he always gave second chances. “We’re all allowed one mistake to learn from,” he once said. “It makes us better and stronger people.”

  “So what do you think will happen in Utah?”

  “I’ll lodge my protest, but I don’t expect to turn a lot of minds. As somebody said, it’s like trying to stop a train in its tracks.”

  Then from the floor he lifted a large cardboard box full of Memorine marketing products—gym bags, umbrellas, hats, decals, letterhead stationery, rain ponchos, a jewelry box with a pearl necklace. He slapped down a CD. “They even have their own soundtrack—Back to Life.” As on the other items, the diamond GEM logo was prominent. Also in the box were brochures on Bermuda, Gstaad, and Italy—junkets for the principal investigators. “Hard to fight all this,” she said.

  “A flawed medical miracle whose benefits exceed any risks, they claim.”

  64

  JACK HAD NOT BEEN IN MASS General since the days of his coma, so he remembered nothing. He made his way across the lobby to the elevators in the Lane Building and up to the eighth floor, where he found Dr. Heller’s office. He was let in to see her almost immediately.