Alexis leaned back, shielding her eyes from the grasping limbs, the tannic aroma of green oak burning her nostrils. Her legs were damp sand, her throat a cold pipe, her lungs buckets of dead ash scooped from an ancient burial pyre.
The gathering oaks breathed, their whispered words taunting her in the voices of wood. Lumber creaked, sap spat, leaves rattled.
The Monkey House was real.
“You okay, miss?”
These trees, which had been young when the first English speakers had landed on the Eastern shore with their muskets and axes, had their own language. How could she reply in any way but a scream? She clamped her hands over her ears and wriggled against the unyielding concrete bench.
Nothing like the “brink of madness” existed. She understood now. No soft gray fog created a foreboding borderland between sanity and the land beyond.
The two states existed simultaneously, commingling in the same ether, built of common atoms. The stuff of stars was all the same, only some burned while some bled.
“Miss, you don’t look so hot.”
She blinked. Students crowded the sidewalk around her, moving in twin but opposing streams. The young man in the knit cap held her books, brows scrunched above the plastic frames of his glasses. Across the stretch of lawn, the trees stood majestic and gray, and a whiff of cigarette smoke trailed past as a student grabbed a nicotine fix before class. The sun reflected off the neat rows of windows, the bricks of the buildings as solid as the hands that had stacked them.
Reality.
It wasn’t a state of mind or an illusion of perception. It was nothing more than a shared and mutually accepted madness. An agreed-upon delusion kept the Earth fixed in the heavens and the trees knitted deeply into the soil.
And Briggs was no longer a fantasy. He had happened. The Monkey House had happened.
The Monkey House was real.
And she couldn’t let it show. No matter what, she had to maintain appearances. She was Dr. Alexis Morgan, respected neurochemist, not some trippy-dippy English professor.
“I’m fine,” she said, taking the books as she spied the knotted shoulders of the fullback bobbing above the crowd, hurrying away. From the concrete steps, the campus cop observed her behind frigid shades.
A fugue experience. Mind slip. Deja vu of an event that couldn’t have happened.
Yet the warm glow of a pinprick emanated across her back, and she was afraid the dizziness would return. Before the cop could climb down the steps, before the trees could walk, before the injected venom could taint her bloodstream, she smiled in gratitude at Knit Cap Boy and hurried across the compound, toward the center of campus and the safe, familiar walls of her office.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kleingarten smirked.
The university cop uniform had been easy to fake, and nobody looked at patches or badges. In fact, by changing from the blue shirt to a brown shirt, he could just as easily have passed for a member of the landscaping crew. He’d paid a little visit to Dr. Morgan’s office and the crowd in the hall had parted like a creek around a boulder. These college brats were so damned cool they couldn’t even acknowledge authority, much less respect it.
The day was warm and he enjoyed ogling the sweet young coeds, and probably a few were into men in uniforms. He might find out if he held his post long enough to draw them in. But despite all the budget cuts, a real university cop might show up and cause trouble.
Kleingarten could handle trouble, but part of the fun was in working outside the system. Any idiot could go out guns blazing, playing Die Hard and hoping for a sequel. It took real skill and genius to go completely undetected.
And he liked this little game Briggs was playing. Hell, he might have taken the job for half price.
Still, he had overhead, like the jock sidling his way, trying to blend in despite his letter jacket, spiked hair, and a steroid-bloated neck that made his head look like a ferret-covered bucket of rocks.
Kleingarten rolled his eyes to a secluded alcove that led to a basement entrance, indicating the jock should follow him.
The guy mouthed, “What?”
Fucking amateurs. Kleingarten gave an impatient jerk of his thumb and turned away. After a moment, the jock followed.
“Did I do good?” he said.
“Sure, kid,” Kleingarten said, pulling the roll of unmarked bills from his pocket. They were bound by a rubber band. He should have tucked the money in the envelope, but this was part of the game, too.
“It won’t hurt her none, will it?” The jock was making an effort to be concerned, but compassion was a few too many rungs up the IQ ladder.
“Would your government do anything to harm one of its citizens?”
The jock shook his head, visibly stiffening as if looking for a flag to salute. He struggled to stuff the bills into the pocket of his too-tight jeans.
“What about…you know, the other stuff?”
“Of course.”
Kleingarten handed over the vial of anabolic steroids. “This should be good for six extra touchdowns and moving up a couple of rounds in the draft.”
“Sweet. You know how hard it is to get this stuff these days?”
“Hey, there’s always the Canadian Football League.”
The guy didn’t catch the humor. “Yeah, sure. So, are we done here?”
“That’s it. Easy as pie, just like I promised.”
A couple of students passed, and Kleingarten gave an exaggerated slap to the jock’s arm and guffawed for their benefit. “You kick State’s ass for us, okay?”
The jock nodded. “If Coach gives me the ball more.”
Kleingarten winked as the students moved on past to join the human stream. “Take enough of that, and he will. Now, how about that needle?”
“Right,” the guy said, as if he’d forgotten. He reached into the pocket of his letter jacket. “Ouch. Fuck.”
He pulled the needle out and looked at the little pinprick on the side of his thumb. “You sure this stuff is okay?”
“Safe as mother’s milk, my friend. And, remember, it’s a secret.”
“A matter of national security,” the jock recited, those magical words that allowed people the world over to get away with murder.
“Now get out of here and forget you ever saw me.”
The jock hunkered away and Kleingarten pretended to check the locks on the doors. Someone might be watching. These eggheads lived in their own oblivious little fantasy land, though, and considered their island immune from the ills of the real world.
They were worried about people taking the word “nigger” out of books and how many goddamned butterflies were dying in the rain forest. That stuff was too important for anyone to notice an anonymous rent-a-cop.
A cute coed walked by and gave him the once-over, and Kleingarten resisted the temptation to open the door for her. Instead, he just touched the bill of his cap in greeting. He didn’t smile too broadly or she might remember him.
As she entered, he followed, using his foot to hold the door open. He retrieved the backpack he’d tucked behind an air unit, and then went to the private faculty restroom that was little more than a closet. Those with extra college degrees couldn’t just shit in a stall like the rest of the crowd.
Kleingarten removed the uniform shirt and now wore only a “Go Heels” T-shirt featuring the horned head of a ram, the school mascot. He never could figure out why a school nicknamed “Tar Heels” used a ram, but he supposed you couldn’t just walk around at halftime holding up a black, splotchy Styrofoam foot.
He crammed the cop hat and blue shirt into the backpack and changed into scuffed loafers. He was mussing his hair when someone tried the handle and then knocked.
“Just a sec,” Kleingarten said, and then cut a fart so the room would smell authentic.
He flushed and exited, and a preppy dude in a sweater vest stood there tapping his foot like he had diarrhea. “All yours,” Kleingarten offered.