Other possibility is you’re losing your mind. Makes sense-lost everything else. Why not a clean sweep?
“You’re blocking something.” Dr. Heller’s words floated up like big yellow balloons.
He dropped the tabs back into the vial and got out of bed and went downstairs. The kitchen was a small space with very little counter area, filled mostly with ceramic cannisters for sugar, coffee, flour, and a wire spice rack with jars of different powders and herbs, a microwave, a small Mr. Coffee, and teapots. All the utensils were in two drawers.
He cleared a space on the counter and pulled open one of the drawers and dumped the contents onto the counter. Knives of all sizes and shapes, forks, spatulas, pie cutters, and other things tumbled out like pickup sticks.
He picked up one black-handled carving knife with a ten-inch blade of shiny, honed blue steel that came to a stunning point. He slowly turned the knife, and the overhead light arced across the curved honed edge like neon.
Nothing.
He picked up another, a heavier cutter with a thicker steel stock, probably for heavy carving or chopping. He held it in his right palm, felt the heft.
He put it back. Nothing.
He stirred his fingers through the pile looking for some connection, some zap of awareness.
Nothing.
He swept the knives and other utensils into the drawer and closed it. He then tore open the second drawer—handles of rolling pins, serving spoons, barbecue forks, whisks, eggbeater blades, spatulas, and small steak knives, all under a pair of pot holders and oven gloves. He removed the pot holders and gloves to expose the full contents of the drawer.
For a numbed moment his eyes rested on a single object: the heavy-duty wooden-handled stainless-steel mallet, one side tooled flat for pounding thin cutlets, the other a crosshatch of tiny pointed pyramids for breaking fibers of flesh or cracking bone.
Jack picked it up and felt a hitch in his breathing.
He did not gasp in recognition. He did not become assaulted with shakes or break out in a sweat or feel a rush of blood to his head. Just the solitary hitch in his breathing, as if on some level just below the surface the something beamed up an impression like a sonar image almost too blurry to make out.
A meat mallet.
A MEAT MALLET.
At two-thirty he lay in bed staring into the black as he had for the last two hours. His mind was very alert, as if a bungee cord had been affixed to it and every few minutes that drawer down there would give a yank.
A goddam meat mallet.
The sickening whacks against bone cap.
Sweet Jesus!
He kicked off the covers, pulled on his jeans and shoes, and went back down to the kitchen, tore open the drawer and removed the meat hammer. Still on a weird autopilot, he made his way through the dark to the garage, where he found a shovel, and cut across the lawn to the rear edge of the property by an anchor fence, and under some yews he dug a hole and buried the mallet. He returned the shovel to the garage and went back inside, where he cleaned up and got back into bed.
For another forty minutes he lay in the dark feeling his heart pony around the inside of his chest and trying to shut off his mind. He rolled around on the sheets, concentrating on regulating his breathing, calming his heart rate, and composing his mind to sleep. Several times he grabbed the vial of lorazepams, but he knew they would do little to block the pull of that mallet. It lay under two feet of dirt out back, but it might just as well have been strapped to his head for the way it kept slapping against his mind.
Die, goddamn it, die.
It was a sick, crazy, obsessive compulsion of the purest ray serene, but he could not shake it, and doping himself into slumber would only put off the next assault. And daylight would only make it worse, because the freshly overturned dirt would be glowering at him until he couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Shit”
He kicked off the covers once again, got dressed, and went out back with the shovel and dug up the mallet. He put it in a paper bag so he wouldn’t have to touch it. Then he headed down the driveway in the dark and onto the Mystic Valley Parkway that led to a small bridge over the Mystic River where it drained into the lower Mystic Lake. Because of the hour, no cars were on the road. He removed the hammer, and with all his might he flung it into the water.
For a long moment he watched the water smooth over itself as the moon rode the ripples.
He was sweating yet chilled by the time he returned to the house. Because his mind was still on high alert, he got himself a beer and went to the porch and sat in the dark, his insides trembling as if he were sitting in wet clothes. He took a sip—always the best part—but it was not satisfying. He tried to distract himself with the bright electric sounds of the cicadas, a hoot owl, the moon whitewashing the yard grass. None of that worked.
As he gazed into the dark corner of the yard where he had dug the hole, the pieces came together with such clarified horror that a squeal rose up from three decades of merciful sleep.
A man.
He could not see his face or morph together the body from the shadowy flashcard form, but it was a man. And something had happened and he had pushed her or she had fallen, and she was on the floor by the fireplace … then he was bending down over her muttering … Oh, shit, no!
Then a towel across her head to absorb the muffle the sound—
Goddamn it, die.
And blood …
Dark clothes, bending over, legs straddling her as she lay groaning, twitching horribly on the floor by the stone fireplace.
Her feet moving, as if trying to catch traction on the air. Groaning. The arm raised, hammer arching upward, coming down and down and cracking the bone.
Die … Die … Die …
The bright red spot spreading across a towel and puddling onto the floor.
Looks this way, thinks twice: Do him, too—the kid in the crib?
Stop that screaming.
Charges over … the big shadow face.
And all goes black.
70
“TELL ME ABOUT THE JELLYFISH DRUG.”
“What about it?”
“You said it had something to do with enhancing memory.”
It was the following morning, and Jack and René Ballard were sitting in a booth at the Grafton Street Pub and Grille in Harvard Square. The luncheon crowd had left, and it was three hours before the dinner menu kicked in. Jack had surprised her with his call, reminding her of her offer to help if he had any problems.
René looked very stylish in jeans and a black silk top and red paisley scarf, her shiny chocolate hair framing her face like a feathered wreath. Her face was smooth and well designed. Her nose was thin and sharp, her cheekbone high, her mouth full and expressive. Her eyes were perfect orbs of reef-blue water. It was a beautiful and intelligent face, and Jack took pleasure in it. “It reverses the damaging effects of the plaque that builds up in the brain of Alzheimer’s victims.”
“And it restores memory.”
“In patients with the disease, yes.”
“Short-term and long-term?”
“Yes. May I ask why you’re asking all this?”
“In a moment. But just tell me approximately how far back, the recall.” He could feel something pass through her mind as she considered the question.
“In some cases very far.”
“Even early childhood?”
Rene’s eyes were calm but guarded. “Yes. But why do you want to know?”
But he disregarded the question. “And if they go off it, what happens?”