A Host of Shadows

by Harry Shannon

  Something moved.

  Kenzie brought up his weapon, but there was nothing to shoot. Except…right at the foot of the steps, a creature had begun to form itself, something that was unspeakable. It was short, like a child, but the features—formed mostly of dirt, trash and spiderwebs—were distorted and smeared. It had the hungry teeth of a predator; the canines came to nasty little points.

  “Klaus didn’t murder his own child,” Kenzie said. The demonic specter in the corner shifted and floated towards them. Kenzie suddenly realized that several others had formed themselves in other nooks and crannies. They also approached him, grinning and drooling.

  “Fuck this!”

  He fired his weapon three times. The explosions were nearly deafening in the confined space. The bullets passed through the strange creatures and harmlessly punched holes in the wall. Kenzie giggled mindlessly. “Hell no, he didn’t kill her. He tried to save her.”

  Doc gasped and clutched himself. His chest had tightened unbearably, and death anxiety raced his heart past the breaking point. The world began to grow dim. “He’s experimenting, trying to find some way to bring her back.”

  “And they,” Kenzie said in a broken voice, indicating the approaching ghouls, “are the practice runs.”

  The lights went out and Kenzie was suddenly in darkness. Doc fell heavily to the floor, mercifully unconscious. Kenzie heard the sound of several children giggling, then the rustle of clothing and the smacking of their greedy little lips.

  He knew that his backup would eventually arrive, but that they would be far too late. Kenzie put the gun in his mouth and gripped it as tightly as possible. He promised himself he would pull the trigger the second he could no longer stand the pain.

  A Host of Shadows

  “This may hurt a bit.” If Dr. Neumann is aware of the cliché, he hides it well.

  The surgeon is a squat, balding gnome with yellowing, uneven teeth like chipped piano keys. The patient on the table is confused and frightened and does not remember anything except his name. Neumann turns from the table with busy, white-gloved hands. Meanwhile, the helpless man’s senses telescope as a wickedly long needle approaches and freshly starched medical greens whisper obscenities.

  “Wait.” Quinn despises himself for sounding frail. “Not yet. What are you going to do to me?”

  Neumann purses his ruined mouth, cocks his head. “Mr. Quinn, we have been over this a number of times.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “This we know.”

  “Are you comfortable?” There is a tall, coltish nurse, who would normally be considered attractive in a surfer-girl kind of way, but at the moment, standing in the corner, half covered in shadow, she most resembles a praying mantis. She is tactful, sotto voice; asking if Quinn needs more medication. He likes the hushed drug glow just fine, hell it’s better than a pitcher of martinis at Happy Hour, he’s nicely fucked up, but any more and he’s likely to fade out completely…and then what happens?

  Quinn realizes he has waited far too long to answer. “No, I’m comfortable. I want to stay awake.”

  “Remember, we can do this either way,” Dr. Neumann says, crisply. “But we must deal with your delusions once and for all.” He dons a thick pair of glasses, positions the needle sideways on a glittering silver tray. “It would certainly be helpful to have you cognitively present to contribute to this examination, but that is not absolutely essential to the success of the procedure.”

  “Are you certain?” Convince them you’re fine.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Certain this is necessary, and that I am…hallucinating.”

  Nurse Elizabeth glides spider-sideways out of the gloom, pats his arm just above the taped IV. “Be calm, sir.”

  And Dr. Neumann says: “Oh, but you are already far more rational on the Haldol, yes? Mr. Quinn, one of the drugs you have received is a powerful anti-psychotic. You have been suffering from some quite spectacular delusions. You must allow us to help before it is too late.”

  “What if I’m not crazy?” You’re not. Don’t let them do this to you.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Have you got the right guy? This could be a mistake. You did read my file, right? Jesus, you’re not about to operate on the wrong man are you? I’ve read about stuff like that, amputating a perfectly good leg.”

  “Let me offer an example.” The good doctor leans down and Quinn can see himself reflected in large, oval lenses. “You told us that you believe you have seen some kind of an unknown parasite. You are convinced that it causes violent behavior in humans. Yes?”

  “Yes. No. I’m not sure.”

  “Well, my dear Mr. Quinn, I can assure you of one thing. That was not a delusion. In point of fact, such creatures do exist.”

  Large rush of adrenaline, time slows like a drool of cold syrup. The man who knows himself as Quinn squints up at the surgeon, one eyebrow raised. Images appear. His tongue abruptly feels carpeted. “Parasites that cause violence?”

  “Astrocytoma is a rare but efficient tumor in the frontal lobes, Mr. Quinn. As I’ve said, it can cause severe emotional disturbance, dizziness, mental confusion and both auditory and visual hallucinations. I believe you have such a tumor, and cancer may certainly be viewed as a parasite. All we need to do now is explore how to best attempt to remove the astrocytoma with a minimum of collateral damage.”

  “Without turning me into a potted plant?”

  No answer. The air thickens. Quinn swallows dryly, sleepily. “I just can’t believe it’s come to this. Someone I don’t know from beans is going to saw a hole in my skull and dig around in there with some shit that looks like an electric toothbrush and a tuning fork, and he says it’s going to hurt. God, why this is happening?”

  “Now, now.” The nurse wipes Quinn’s feverish brow with a cool cloth. With economy of movement, Dr. Neumann busies himself with a tower of electronics that glitters like a blackened Christmas tree. He taps a monitor with two gloved fingers then slaps it with his palm. The screen flickers on, a blurry smear of color, and confirms that at least one of the probing devices will contain a miniature camera. Neumann keeps his back turned as he covertly tests something.

  RRRRrrrrrrRRRRRrrr.

  Quinn vaguely hears the nasty, tenor snarl of a small bone saw. He writhes, whimpers.

  “I think… I’m going to be sick.”

  “Now, now.” It’s Nurse Elizabeth, again wiping his moist brow. That’s her name, Elizabeth. Quinn thinks: This bitch is like one of those goddamned Disney robots. His fear is rapidly becoming palpable, stronger than the medication, and again all he wants to do is delay. Talk. Stall. “Did you read the report on me, Doc? All the way through, I mean?”

  The surgeon is still turned away, hunched over, the bone saw growling again—RRRrrrrRRRR—even more aggressively this time. “We all did.”

  Quinn goes blank. “Did what?”

  The surgeon and the nurse exchange knowing glances. He says: “Read the report.”

  “Wait! I remember now.” Quinn begins to babble. And in a way, he does remember. “I started getting these headaches, you know? Right smack in the middle of my forehead, where they used to say there was a third eye. Ha. Nobody could find anything wrong with me, though, not at first. They wired me up and stuck me with needles and did every test they could think of before saying it was all in my head. That’s one sick joke in itself, right? All in my head.”

  “Now, now.” Female fingers on his temple.

  “Stop saying that!” Quinn knows his voice has gone up an octave or two, kind of a soul scream, and he’s rambling now but can’t seem to stop talking. “It came out of nowhere. I was talking to one of the physicians, some specialist named Edison, a big guy with white hair. And he looked out the window and I saw something coming out of his right ear. It was kind of like a small earthworm, but with antennae, and all black and shiny. It wiggled for a second and then went right back in.”

  “Just so.” Apparently satisfie
d, Dr. Neumann brings the small bone saw over to the silver tray. He sets it down on the table, next to the hideously long needle. “And obviously, something like that is illogical and absurd. Yes?”

  “Perhaps, but…”

  “You must not agitate yourself,” the surgeon offers, gently. “Staying calm is best. Your mind will produce less dissonance that way.”

  “Doc, you don’t need to do this. I can get better on my own.” Again, Quinn hears the desperation, that frail voice. And again it shames him. Because Quinn does not know anything for certain, has begun to lose faith in his own sanity. But if I believe I’m crazy, I’m not crazy anymore, right? I read that somewhere.

  “Now, now.”

  Quinn moans. “Nurse, please, let me have some water.”

  “We can’t do that,” she whispers, efficient as ever. “You might aspirate and strangle on your vomit. It won’t be long now.”

  “Wait. Wait.” Now Quinn needs to finish the story. “I really do remember. I didn’t say anything at the time, I mean everyone would have thought I was crazy, but that weekend I was watching the basketball game and I changed back to the local news at halftime, and…”

  Dr. Neumann raises the needle, caresses the plunger, a jet of clear liquid ejaculates into the frigid air. His huge glasses now reflect something or someone squatting behind Quinn’s head, in a clenched fist of darkness well behind the nurse, but a second later it is gone. Wait, who was that?

  “…Anyway, the news said this doc named Edison had gone completely bonkers over the 4th of July weekend.”

  The nurse feigns interest. “Really?”

  Quinn pauses to breathe, his eyes crossing to focus on that freaking needle, willing it to freeze in space and time. “He poisoned his whole family. He put something medicinal in the party punch, related to curare, that ‘rendered them immobile,’ the news said. Something commonly used in surgeries, I think. And then he cut them up with scalpels while they were paralyzed but could still feel everything.”

  “How ghastly. Did they ever catch him?” Dr. Neumann asks. It is clear he either does not care or already knows the answer. The long needle moves closer to the trembling flesh of Quinn’s exposed vein.

  “No, he got away somehow.” No, don’t!

  “Tragic.” Was that voice male or female? Actually, Quinn is not sure anyone spoke the word. Perhaps he imagined it.

  “Amazing.” Who said that? Are there others in the operating room?

  “So,” Neumann masks his lower face, reaches forward with the syringe, “and now we begin.”

  “Wait!” Something else occurs to Quinn, something deeply disturbing. “Didn’t you just hit that dirty monitor with your fingers?”

  The doctor shrugs. He examines the needle again, checking a second time for air bubbles. Satisfied, edging closer, he bends over and cloaks Quinn in velvet shadow. While groping for a vein, he finally responds. “The monitor can be uncooperative at times.”

  “But that means your gloves aren’t sanitary anymore, doesn’t it?”

  “No worries,” the doctor whispers, feigning a mediocre Aussie accent. The nurse clamps down on Quinn’s bare shoulder. Someone else is nearby. A male moans in a low voice, the sadist in sexual ecstasy.

  “Wait, I mean, you’re about to fuck around with my brain for God’s sake! Wait. And what’s in that thing? What drug are you giving me?”

  The needle penetrates and his entire body slides into a deep puddle of warm, loose mud. Now Quinn can recall having been worried about something recently, but he has no idea what; even when the saw roars to life, he remains calm and indifferent. A few more pinpricks render his face and forehead numb.

  RRRrrrrRRRRRrrr.

  He is neatly scalped and feels some tugging. The top of his skull is gently removed with a sticky pop. Quinn grunts; his eyes float lazily to the monitor and register pulsing red and blue patches and the tip of a long aluminum probe.

  “Now, I need to know exactly what happens,” the good doctor whispers, “when I touch this…”

  …He is thirsty beyond description. The heat slams down hard, splintering the rocks ahead into fragments that glow like gleaming shards of broken mirror. There is a miniscule pocket of shade lurking beneath the stunted row of browning tamarind trees over to his left. Quinn stumbles that way, licking dry lips, hoping to find water. The sun has been up for nearly two hours. He will have to rest. It is already too hot to make good time. Quinn makes for the shade and aims his deerskin boots at flat rocks to hide his tracks. He crawls under the half-naked trees, pulls dried sage over his body and covers his eyes. He wants to rest but he can still hear the tormented, feeble screams of that mule skinner the Apache roped to a wagon wheel, the one they are slowly roasting to death. Quinn cannot understand that need. Killing a man is one thing, necessary from time to time, but taking pleasure in his extended suffering…

  Pebbles rattle in a nearby arroyo. His heart kicks hard. Quinn clings to the big-bore Hawken rifle and its nearly exhausted pouch of ammunition. On the other side of the slope the Mexican boy shrieks on and on without respite or release. Quinn’s hands are shaking as he brings the barrel to his own mouth. He swallows dry spit and resolves to shoot himself rather than be captured by the savages. He waits. Listens…

  “Mr. Quinn?” Dr. Neumann seems irritated. “You must remain focused for this approach to be effective. What happened when I touched you there?”

  “Bright light,” Quinn manages. Gags. “I was somewhere else.” He is very thirsty. “It was very hot, like a desert. I heard my feet moving in the dirt and a noise like someone screaming from far, far away.”

  “Ah.” The doctor seems satisfied. “We have both light and sound, then. And we certainly all know who was screaming, now don’t we? Very good, thank you.”

  The instrument teases new tissue. Its image on the monitor quivers, as if the probe were somehow aroused. “And what happens now?”

  …The old man is looking down at withered arms and spotted hands that cling to a dented walker. His brown slippers whistle-thud along worn shag carpet streaked with sunshine and shadow. With every forced step, he grunts darkly. Some dim and still furious part of him remembers being young. He hates what his body has become. He wants to make it to the front window; wants to be looking out that window not trapped in his own shit and piss in the bed in the room with the others who have become as helpless as infants. He wants to drink fresh water. There is light outside, birds and colors and fresh, clean wind…

  “Wind,” Quinn says in a voice startlingly loud. He thinks: Where was I just a moment ago? What was I dreaming?”

  Dr. Neumann’s eyes crinkle slightly above the white mask, which bellows and sucks with increasingly rapid, very shallow breathing. He seems agitated, but also genuinely puzzled. “That one made you hear it as the wind? Odd.”

  Quinn sees the monitor, struggles to make sense of it, starts to object but then comes another touch of the probe—again no immediate pain; in fact this time just a whirling dervish of color and sound…

  …A sunny day but not a dry one

  —he sees a stretch of damp, sparkling backyard grass and the twirling hiss of a lawn sprinkler. Quinn drops the shovel and blinks away sweat. Pleased, he watches a bronzed young woman with long, brown hair and almond eyes dancing through the cool spray. She wears a man’s white t-shirt, and the wet fabric flatters her body and reveals tantalizingly pert nipples and a wet triangle of her sex. She smiles broadly, winks and waves. He looks down, examines his hands and finds them calloused; his arms are strong and roped with a younger man’s muscle. She approaches, her hips swaying, and he moves to touch her but the world turns black and his hungry fingers touch empty space, and a bitter emptiness…

  “Not that, not the emptiness,” Quinn cries. Her abrupt absence renders him inconsolable. I was really there that time, not imagining it. “Please no.” Take me back. He means to beg them for more but emits a sobbing cough instead. “I’m so thirsty.”

  The nurse clucks her
tongue and dabs his brow. She offers something likely intended to reassure Quinn. What emerges is a garbled drone. Time warps. The universe crackles like tin foil. Dr. Neumann adjusts the white mask. He scratches his face, shakes his head. “What emotion did you feel just then, Mr. Quinn?”

  “Please don’t do that again,” Quinn gasps. Please, don’t bring me back here. Not to this room. Leave me with her.

  “The…emptiness?”

  “Not that.” Quinn cannot make them understand. He begins to cry. “The emptiness.”

  Neumann chuckles. “I see. Well, obviously that place you call the emptiness has served to make you feel very, very sad.” He looks up and away as if playing to an invisible audience. “We are getting closer, yes?” He writes something down on a notepad.

  Closer to what? Who else is here?

  “Who are you people?” Quinn shouts. “What are you doing to me?” He is suddenly full of terror because the answer is abruptly coming to him, knowledge that has Quinn fearing his own swollen heart might burst. He begins to fight for his sanity, his life. He struggles, kicks.

  The medical team chirps and sooths as the patient bucks mightily against frayed canvas restraints. The fresh flow of cold adrenaline helps bring clarity. Now the man called Quinn knows that he has not been ill at all, that he does not belong here and that this operation is a fraud. He’s being drugged, tortured. He bites down on his own cheek; hard, and again harder. The pain snaps him into focus.

  There are secrets he must keep.

  Then a jarring paradigm shift allows Quinn to take it all in; first a miasma of odors ranging from pungent disinfectant to urine and excrement, then the truth of his surroundings. The operating room is not pristine at all; it is a dusty basement or garage of some kind, filled with odd equipment gone orange with rust. The floor is concrete and stained with what appears to be dried blood. He has soiled himself repeatedly.

  “Enough foreplay.” Someone offstage, addressing Neumann. “Let’s make the little traitor talk.”