Amnesia

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Why don’cha make up your mind which way ya goin’!”

  . . . . . .

  the man glared at him furiously as he shuffled by in what literally looked like a pair of worn old black leather slippers without socks, rims of scratches and dark red and sickly pale white blotches on both of his ankles.“I wish I could!” he cried after him and watched him disappear into the crowd, actually jealous of the disheveled black man for knowing where he was going.

  The voice over the public-address system announced train departures and arrivals. It had the sound of urgency. People were moving faster. Everyone knew something he didn’t. That short moment of amusement he had experienced a few moments ago started to ice into a panic. What if everyone made it to his or her destination and he was left in this great lobby, his cries echoing and dying?

  Which way was he supposed to go?

  Where exactly was he heading?

  Why hadn’t it come back to him?

  And worst of all, he thought as he turned slowly in a circle,Who the hell am I?

  Books by Andrew Neiderman

  Sisters

  Weekend

  Pin

  Brainchild

  Someone’s Watching

  Tender, Loving Care

  Imp

  Night Howl

  Child’s Play

  Teacher’s Pet

  Sight Unseen

  Love Child

  Reflection

  Illusion

  Playmates

  The Maddening

  Surrogate Child

  Perfect Little Angels

  Blood Child

  Sister, Sister

  After Life

  Duplicates

  The Solomon Organization

  Angel of Mercy

  The Devil’s Advocate

  The Immortals

  The Dark

  In Double Jeopardy

  Neighborhood Watch

  Curse

  Amnesia

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  AnOriginalPublication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  Copyright © 2001 by Andrew Neiderman

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproducethis book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-7434-1800-X

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For my nephew Joe,

  whose laughter and smile

  remain forever in our hearts

  amnesia

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Epilogue

  . . . prologue

  suddenly he stopped walking. The realization that he didn’t know where he was going struck him like a blow to his head. In fact, the feeling was so similar, he actually combed his fingers through his hair and over his scalp to see if there were any wounds, bumps, or blood. He looked at his palm and then turned his hand and saw it was clean.Someone knocked into him rather roughly, nearly bowling him over. He fell forward, reaching out as if to grab an invisible railing to catch himself. The individual, a young Chinese man, didn’t acknowledge the collision, but that wasn’t really unusual here in Grand Central station, especially this time of the day. People nudged and bumped each other all around him. For a moment they all literally turned into frenetic bees whose hive had been disturbed, their wings flapping, their stingers whipping dangerously close to his face as they passed. The image made him gasp and cringe. He scrubbed his forehead with his dry right palm and looked about him again.

  The bees changed back to people.

  “What was that about?” he muttered and laughed to himself. No one else would pause near him long enough for him to ask if he or she had seen it, too. It was rush hour and the air was electric with the frenzy of those who had minutes to make their trains and those who feared not getting a seat. He recognized the reasons for this barely controlled mass hysteria. He vaguely remembered it all, including his own frantic pace at times, especially here; however, at this moment for the life of him, he hadn’t the slightest hint as to which way he was to go. He felt adrift, lost way out at sea, the tiller broken, the sails ripped away. No matter in what direction he looked, there was no sign of any shore.

  He gazed up at the large timetable above him and studied the names of various destinations. None of them rang a bell. There wasn’t even a tinkle. And then the timetable burst into flames. It simply exploded into a conflagration right before his eyes, but apparently, no one else but him noticed this, too. He actually started to point it out and was on the verge of shouting when the flames suddenly disappeared as quickly as they had appeared.

  His first reaction was to laugh again at himself. What the hell is happening to my mind? he wondered. People turning into bees, fires exploding! Did he have too much to drink? Did he have anything to drink? He moved his tongue around in his mouth. The flavor of the extra-dry martini was still there. At least he knew that he had a drink. He couldn’t remember where, how many, or how long ago, but he realized it couldn’t have been too long ago.

  He gazed back at the entrance on Forty-second Street. He couldn’t remember who had dropped him off. Was he in a taxicab or a private car? Or did he walk here from someplace relatively nearby?

  So am I drunk or what? he wondered. He didn’t feel drunk, at least not in the usual sense. He thought he could walk as well as he ever could. No wobbling. Actually, he felt terrific except for these ridiculous hallucinations and the fact that he didn’t know what to do.

  “What the hell’s happening?” he asked himself again, this time loud enough for a woman in her early thirties dressed in an expensive-looking business suit to hear, pause, turn, and look back at him.

  “Pardon?” she said a puzzled smile on her face. “Did you say something to me?”

  “I . . . I’m so confused,” he told her. He held out his arms, pleading for a look of compassion. Instead, she widened her smile and looked relieved.

  “So? Welcome to the human race,” she said and continued on.

  Was she right? Was everyone in this gargantuan railroad station rushing to nowhere?

  He searched the timetable again, still recognized nothing, and then decided to take a few steps to the left. That seemed wrong so he took a few steps to the right, which seemed just as wrong. He paused too abruptly and someone else ran into his back.

  He turned to see an elderly black man in a pair of tattered dungarees and a torn flannel shirt half in and half out of his pants. The white stubble on his chin and cheeks looked more like tiny white pimples. Hiseyes were a mixture of white and pink twirl, the pupils resembling spots of ink. The man’s lower lip had a purple bruise in the corner, and the middle was cracked with dried blood coating it.

  “Why don’tcha make up your mind which way ya goin’!” he snapped and glared at him furiously as he shuffled by in what literally looked like a pair of worn old black leather slippers witho
ut socks, rims of scratches and dark red and sickly pale white blotches on both of his ankles.

  “I wish I could!” he cried after him and watched him disappear in the crowd, actually jealous of the disheveled-looking black man for knowing where he was going.

  The voice over the public address system announced train departures and arrivals. It had the sound of urgency. People were moving faster. Everyone knew something he didn’t. That short moment of amusement he had experienced a few moments ago started to ice into a panic. What if everyone made it to his or her destination and he was left in this great lobby, his cries echoing and dying?

  Which way was he supposed to go?

  Where exactly was he heading?

  Why hadn’t it come back to him?

  And worst of all, he thought as he turned slowly in a circle,Who the hell am I?

  . . . one

  the answer to the last question was easy to discover. He sat on a bench and reached into his inside jacket pocket to take out his wallet. He held it before him and studied the gold letters embossed on the outside: A.C. It didn’t stimulate any recollections, so he flipped it open and turned to his driver’s license. The photo identification told him his name was Aaron Clifford and he lived at 5467 North Wildwood Drive in Westport, Connecticut. He was thirty-four years old, had blue eyes and light brown hair. He weighed one hundred and sixty-four pounds and stood five feet nine.Is this who I am? he wondered. Why didn’t confronting the information jolt his memory? Maybe this isn’t me. Maybe this is someone else’s wallet, he thought. Feared was more like it because why would he have someone else’s wallet? And if he indeed did, where was his?

  He stood up and gazed around until he spotted the rest rooms. Then he hurried into the men’s room andwent directly to the sink to look in the mirror and compare himself with the picture on his license. He held it up against his image in the mirror.

  A fifty-one-year-old transit company employee in a pair of coveralls stepped out of a stall and went to the sink beside him, watching him make the comparison. The man shook his head, washed his hands quickly, and reached for a paper towel.

  “This looks like me, doesn’t it?” Aaron asked him, turning the wallet toward him.

  The transit employee tilted his head away as if he believed he would be the victim of either a practical joke or a crime and then looked at the picture and at Aaron.

  “So?” he asked. “What’cha think, it doesn’t do you justice or somethin’?”

  “No,” Aaron said, smiling. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” the man said and, wearing one of those smugI’ve seen it all looks, walked away from him.

  Aaron continued to search his wallet. There were two credit cards and then a medical insurance card. At the bottom of all this were three business cards with his name on them. They told him he had the status of an associate who worked for an architecture firm, C.W. Clovis and Associates on Madison Avenue. The card said they were specialists in creative design solutions, custom, residential, or commercial. He stared at the cards, but no memories came to mind, no visions of offices, employees, projects, nothing.

  He had no other wallet or case other than this slim leather one. In his right pants pocket he found a smallfold of bills which amounted to ninety-one dollars and some loose change. There was nothing in his other pants pocket. His sports jacket pockets were empty, too, and there was nothing in the back pockets of his pants.

  His frenzied search of himself drew the attention of two young men who watched him for a moment before going to the urinals. While they urinated, they kept their eyes on him as if they were afraid to turn their backs completely on someone who looked so panicky.

  Embarrassed by his own actions, he smiled at them and stepped out of the bathroom to continue the search of his own person.

  He wore a Swiss Army watch, a black onyx pinky ring in a silver setting, and a wedding ring. He was married. What was his wife’s name? Why didn’t he carry a picture of her? Did he have any children?

  His legs suddenly felt wobbly, so he had to sit again. He found an empty bench nearby. After a moment he looked up at the people rushing by, hoping to see a recognizable face or a face that seemed to recognize him. Some glanced at him, but few made any real eye contact or acknowledged his existence. They looked toward him but not at him. He touched himself on the chest to be sure he was really there. Was this all some nightmare? Would he wake up any moment and find himself home in bed—wherever that was?

  Noise, odors, tastes in his mouth told him this was real; this was no dream.

  The panic which now had begun at the base of his stomach fanned out like long fingers of cold steel topuncture his lungs and then his heart before moving up to his throat. It felt as if it were slowly closing on him and soon would shut off all the air. He seized his throat and massaged it, nudging his Adam’s apple a bit too hard to help himself swallow, making himself choke and cough.

  Sweat had beaded on his forehead and temples. When was this cloudiness, this emptiness going to pass? He embraced himself and rocked for a while on the bench. It gave him some relief and some comfort, but it was short lasting.

  Now that he was beginning to act out, people did begin to take more note of him. A tall redheaded woman of about forty gazed at him and sped up, but as she moved away, her legs grew thinner and thinner until they looked like the legs of a grasshopper.

  He groaned loud enough for two teenagers to smile and laugh at him when they walked by. An elderly lady shook her head in disgust, waving her bag in the air between them like some ancient priestess clearing the world of evil demons. She sounded like she was hissing, and he did see a mist come out of the bag and hang in the air between them.

  “You all right?” a man about his age, dressed in a dark gray pin-striped suit, asked. He had stopped by the bench. He had wavy blond hair and deep blue eyes and carried a soft black leather briefcase.

  “Actually, no, I’m not all right.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m suddenly having some serious memory problems. I’m so confused and I keep having these horrible visions.”

  “Are you on your way home?”

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Well, do you know where you live?”

  “Yeah. I mean, my address is here,” Aaron said, digging out his wallet and opening it to show his license. The young man leaned over to read it. Aaron inhaled the man’s cologne and aftershave. It had a sweet maple aroma. The man nodded and straightened up.

  “So you’re going to Westport. No problem.” He looked up at the board. “Go to Gate Four. There’s a train in about ten minutes. I’m sure when you get home, you’ll feel better,” the young man said, smiling.

  He started away.

  “Thanks,” Aaron called to him.

  The young man just lifted his hand and waved without turning around.

  Aaron rose, took a deep breath, and went to the ticket seller’s window to buy a ticket. He proceeded to the platform.

  When the train arrived, he stepped into it, found a seat, and stared ahead. However, nothing about this was even slightly familiar. He couldn’t recall when he was on a train last, and the failure to remember made the experience feel new.

  The train rocked, its wheels groaning with the effort to move like some old arthritic man rising out of a chair, and began its journey. He closed his eyes and sat back for a moment. Then he opened them quickly and stared at each and every other passenger. He saw nothing but vague interest in anyone else’s face. Most eyes were glassy orbs appearing frozen in their heads.

  Everyone resembles me, he thought. They alllooked like they had lost their memories. Didn’t at least one recognize him? They were all going in his direction. Why wasn’t anyone smiling or nodding some acknowledgment?

  I’m on a ghost train, he thought, moving with the dead toward some dark place.

  And then he thought maybe this just wasn’t the usual train and time for him to be going home. He checked his watch.
It was nearly seven-thirty. What time was he usually home? What did his home look like? My home, my house, my wife, he thought and closed his eyes, struggling to resurrect some sleeping memories, but nothing came. There was just this grayish black wall that seemed impenetrable, and if he tried too hard to remember anything, a sharp pain tore across his forehead, making him feel as if he wore a crown of thorns.

  The train rocked on, the vibrations traveling up his legs, into his spine, and then shaking him so hard he opened his eyes. It was already quite dark outside. Despite the sudden unusually warm temperatures, the early October days were growing shorter and shorter. A much cooler September had caused most trees to lose their leaves. Now they glowed like radiated bones in the moonlight. The world looked full of twisted and mangled skeletons. The houses he saw looked empty, deserted, no one even silhouetted in the curtains or shades. There was an urban air about, an indifference. It was a world in which no one touched. The people in it had taken on the characteristics of steel and cement. He longed to feel some humanity, especially now, especially in these moments of utter desperation.

  He closed his eyes and embraced himself, waiting for his memory to start working again, searching his mind for a solid thought to comfort him. However, when he opened his eyes and looked down, his feet were immersed in what looked like a pool of blood up to his ankles. He cried out and lifted them.

  The train rocked on. People gazed at him, still mostly with indifference, some with a little interest, but no one caring enough to ask what was wrong, why was he holding his legs up like that? Were they all in a trance? How could they not see what was happening? He started to point out the floor when he noticed the blood was gone.

  First people turn into bees, then a fire appears and disappears, and now this. What is happening? Christ, what’s happening to me? he asked himself again.

  People looked away or returned to their books and newspapers. Only a young woman, homely with brown hair chopped short about her pale face, looked in his direction. She started to smile. He was about to acknowledge her when the smile turned into a melting of skin at the corners of her mouth, revealing more and more teeth and gums and then bone. He gasped and closed his eyes. He kept them closed until he could feel the train slowing down. When he opened them, he saw that the young woman was standing in anticipation and facing the door. She looked back at him quickly, her face now a complete skeleton, but still with eyes, an inky gooey liquid drooling down her chalk cheekbones.