In addition to the stethoscope, he had brought other instruments with which to monitor his progress. A sphygmomanometer for measuring his blood pressure. An ophthalmoscope which, in conjunction with a mirror, he could use to study the condition of his retinas and the pupil response. He had a notebook, too, in which he had intended to record his observations of himself, for he was aware — sometimes only dimly aware but always aware — that he was the first man to die and come back from beyond, that he was making history, and that such a journal would be invaluable once he had fully recovered.
Remember the mice, the mice…
He shook his head irritably, as if that sudden baffling thought were a bothersome gnat buzzing around his face. Remember the mice, the mice: He had not the slightest idea what it meant, yet it was an annoyingly repetitive and peculiarly urgent thought that had assailed him frequently last night. He vaguely suspected that he did, in fact, know the meaning of the mice and that he was suppressing the knowledge because it frightened him. However, when he tried to focus on the subject and force an understanding, he had no success but became increasingly frustrated, agitated, and confused.
Returning the stethoscope to the nightstand, he did not pick up the sphygmomanometer because he did not have the patience or the dexterity required to roll up his shirt sleeve, bind the pressure cuff around his arm, operate the bulb-type pump, and simultaneously hold the gauge so he could read it. He had tried last night, and his clumsiness had finally driven him into a rage. He did not pick up the ophthalmoscope, either, for to examine his own eyes he would have to go into the bathroom and use the mirror. He could not bear to see himself as he now appeared: gray-faced, muddy-eyed, with a slackness in his facial muscles that made him look… half dead.
The pages of his small notebook were mostly blank, and now he did not attempt to add further observations to his recovery journal. For one thing, he had found that he was not capable of the intense and prolonged concentration required to write either intelligibly or legibly. Besides, the sight of his sloppily scrawled handwriting, which previously had been precise and neat, was yet another thing that had the power to excite a vicious rage in him.
Remember the mice, the mice bashing themselves against the walls of their cages, chasing their tails, the mice, the mice…
Putting both hands to his head as if to physically suppress that unwanted and mysterious thought, Eric Leben lurched out of bed, onto his feet. He needed to piss, and he was hungry. Those were two good signs, two indications that he was alive, at least more alive than dead, and he took heart from those simple biological needs.
He started toward the bathroom but stopped suddenly when fire leaped up in a corner of the room. Not real flames but shadowfire. Blood-red tongues with silver edges. Crackling hungrily, consuming the shadows from which they erupted yet in no way reducing that darkness. Squinting his light-stung eyes, Eric found that, as before, he was compelled to peer into the flames, and within them he thought he saw strange forms writhing and… and beckoning to him..
Though he was unaccountably terrified of these shadowfires, a part of him, perverse beyond his understanding, longed to go within the flames, pass through them as one might pass through a door, and learn what lay beyond.
No!
As he felt that longing grow into an acute need, he desperately turned away from the fire and stood swaying in fear and bewilderment, two feelings that, in his current fragile state, quickly metamorphosed into anger, the anger into rage. Everything seemed to lead to rage, as if it were the ultimate and inevitable distillate of all other emotions.
A brass-and-pewter floor lamp with a frosted crystal shade stood beside an easy chair, within his reach. He seized it with both hands, lifted it high above his head, and threw it across the room. The shade shattered against the wall, and gleaming shards of frosted crystal fell like cracking ice. The metal base and pole hit the edge of the white-lacquered dresser and rebounded with a clang, clattered to the floor.
The thrill of destruction that shivered through him was of a dark intensity akin to a sadistic sexual urge, and its power was nearly as great as orgasm. Before his death, he had been an obsessive achiever, a builder of empires, a compulsive acquirer of wealth, but following his death he had become an engine of destruction, as fully compelled to smash property as he had once been compelled to acquire it.
The cabin was decorated in ultramodern with accents of art deco — like the ruined floor lamp — not a style particularly well suited to a five-room mountain cabin but one which satisfied Eric's need for a sense of newness and modernity in all things. In a frenzy, he began to reduce the trendy decor to piles of bright rubble. He picked up the armchair as if it weighed only a pound or two and heaved it at the three-panel mirror on the wall behind the bed. The tripartite mirror exploded, and the armchair fell onto the bed in a rain of silvered glass. Breathing hard, Eric seized the damaged floor lamp, held it by the pole, swung it at a piece of bronze sculpture that stood on the dresser, using the heavy base of the lamp as a huge hammer—bang! — knocking the sculpture to the floor, swung the lamp-hammer twice at the dresser mirror—bang, bang! — smashing, smashing, swung it at a painting hanging on the wall near the door to the bathroom, brought the picture down, hammered the artwork where it lay on the floor. He felt good, so good, never better, alive. As he gave himself entirely and joyfully to his berserker rage, he snarled with animal ferocity or shrieked wordlessly, though he was able/to form one special word with unmistakable clarity, “Rachael,” spoke it with unadulterated hatred, spittle spraying, “Rachael, Rachael.” He pounded the makeshift hammer into a white-lacquered occasional table that had stood beside the armchair, pounded and pounded until the table was reduced to splinters—"Rachael, Rachael" — struck the smaller lamp on the nightstand and knocked it to the floor. Bang! Arteries pounding furiously in his neck and temples, blood singing in his ears, he hammered the nightstand itself until he had broken the handles off the drawers, hammered the wall, “Rachael,” hammered until the pole lamp was too bent to be of any further use, angrily tossed it aside, grabbed the drapes and ripped them from their rods, tore another painting from the wall and put his foot through the canvas, “Rachael, Rachael, Rachael.” He staggered wildly now and flailed at the air with his big arms and turned in circles, a crazed bull, and he abruptly found it hard to breathe, felt the insane strength drain out of him, felt the mad destructive urge flowing away, away, and he dropped to the floor, onto his knees, stretched flat out on his chest, head turned to one side, face in the deep-pile carpet, gasping. His confused thoughts were even muddier than the strange and clouded eyes that he could not bear to look at in a mirror, but though he no longer possessed demonic energy, he had the strength to mutter that special name again and again while he lay on the floor: “Rachael… Rachael… Rachael…”
PART TWO
DARKER
Night has patterns that can be read
less by the living than by the dead.
17
PEOPLE ON THE MOVE
Choppering in from Palm Springs, Anson Sharp had arrived before dawn at Geneplan's bacteriologically secure underground research laboratories near Riverside, where he had been greeted by a contingent of six Defense Security Agency operatives, four U.S. marshals, and eight of the marshals' deputies, who had arrived minutes before him. Under the pretense of a national defense emergency, fully supported by valid court orders and search warrants, they identified themselves to Geneplan's night security guards, entered the premises, applied seals to all research files and computers, and established an operations headquarters in the rather sumptuously appointed offices belonging to Dr. Vincent Baresco, chief of the research staff.