“Pirate ships would bloom with vines,” the one-armed man was singing, “When He roared out his name!”
“Code Green!” yelled a nurse. “Hit the alarm!”
Cochran could hear a roaring now, a grinding bass note that seemed to rumble up from the floor, from the very soil under the building’s cement slab foundation. He had to take a quick sideways step to keep his balance.
“Aftershock,” he said breathlessly, “from the one this afternoon.” He glanced at Plumtree, and took hold of her forearm, for her face was white and pinched with evident terror, and he was afraid she would just bolt. “Stay with me,” he said to her loudly. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling flickered.
“Code Green, code fucking Green!” shouted the nurse, retreating toward the hallway door.
The building was shaking now, and from the nursing station and the conference room echoed the crashes of cabinets and machinery hitting the floors.
“—the magic flagon,” sang Long John Beach, whirling the tablecloth like a bullfighter’s cape, “lived by the sea, and frolicked in the Attic mists in a land called Icaree!”
And all the lights abruptly went out. Glass was breaking inside the building somewhere, beyond the waving and thrashing shapes dimly visible in the reflected moonlight in the room, but Cochran spun toward the reinforced window, yanking the unseeing Plumtree with him.
The window was glittering like the face of the sea, for silvery cracks were spreading across it like rapid frost and shining with the captured radiance of the moon—and a cloud of plaster dust curled and spun at the far corner.
“Get me Cochran and Plumtree!” came Armentrout’s panicky call through the shouting, lurching bodies jamming the room. “Stun guns and Ativan!”
Cochran looked back toward the hall doorway. The fat, white-haired doctor was standing just inside the room, waving a flashlight in random circles that momentarily silhouetted clawed hands and tossing heads and vertical siftings of plaster dust; two men Cochran had never seen before were standing closely on either side of the doctor, with their arms around his shoulders—and of the whole chaotic, crashing scene, the one element that chilled Cochran’s belly was the sight of those two blank-faced men swiveling their heads back and forth in perfect unison, and flapping their free arms in swings that were awkward and disjointed but as perfectly synchronized as the gestures of a dance team.
Cochran bent down to shout in Plumtree’s ear, “Don’t move, stay right where you are—we’re getting out of here.” And he let go of her arm and lifted one of the upholstered chairs in both hands.
The floor was still flexing and unstable but he took two running steps toward the far corner of the window, muscling the chair around him in a wide loop, and then he torqued his body hard, at the expense of keeping any balance at all, and slammed the chair with all his strength into the reinforced glass at that end.
The window bent, like splintering plywood, popping out of its frame at that corner.
“One dark night it happened,” the voice of Long John Beach roared on somewhere behind him, “Paki Japer came no more—”
Cochran’s full-tilt follow-through had thrown him headfirst against the buckling sheet of glass, tearing it further out of its frame, and tumbled him to the gritty floor; but he scrambled to his feet and wobbled back to where Plumtree stood dimly visible in the roiling, flashlight-streaked dimness, and he pulled her toward the window. “Both of us hit the glass with our shoulders,” he gasped, “and we’re out of here. Keep your face turned away from it.”
But a hand gripped Cochran’s right hand strongly, and he was jerked around against the solid restraint of the big hard fingers clenched on his knuckles and wrist. He looked back—and whimpered aloud when he saw that there was no one anywhere near him. Then in a flicker of the flashlight beam he saw Long John Beach a dozen feet away, staring at him and hunched forward to extend his amputated stump.
Cochran tugged hard, and the sensation of clutching fingers was gone; Long John Beach recoiled backward into the crowd.
A number of the patients had lifted the table over their heads like a float in a parade, all of them singing now, and Cochran and Plumtree were able to step away from the wall and get a running start toward the bent sheet of glass.
It folded outward with a grating screech when they hit it, and then the two of them had fallen over the sill and were rolling on the cold cement pavement outside. Plumtree had hiked up her legs as she’d hit the glass, and had landed in a controlled tumble, but Cochran’s knees had collided with the sill and he had jackknifed forward to smack the pavement with his outstretched hands and the side of his head, and in the moment when his legs flailed free and he was nearly standing on his head he was sure that his spine was about to snap.
But then he had fallen over and Plumtree had dragged him to his feet, and he was able to limp dizzily forward across the dark courtyard, pulling her after him; the exterior spotlights had gone out too, and Plumtree kept whispering that she couldn’t see at all, but the dim shine of the half-moon was bright enough for Cochran to avoid the wooden picnic tables as he led her to the parking-lot fence, where he and Long John Beach had stood talking six hours ago.
“Grape leaves fell like rain …” came a wail through the broken window behind them.
The winter night air was as harsh as menthol cigarette smoke in Cochran’s nose, but it cleared his head enough so that he could lift one of the picnic-table benches and prop it firmly against the spike-topped iron fence; and though he saw two of the security guards furiously pedaling their bicycles across the lot from the main hospital building, they were clearly heading for the clinic entrance, and no one shouted or shined a light at Cochran as he boosted Plumtree up the steeply slanted boards of the bench seat.
The fingers of her good hand caught the top edge, and with a fast scuffling she was at the top, and leaping; and Cochran was already scrambling up the bench when her sneakers slapped the pavement. Then he had jumped too, and though he almost sat down when he landed, he was ready to run when he straightened up.
But Plumtree caught his shoulder. “Don’t be a person in a hurry,” she said breathlessly. She linked her arm through his, wincing as her swollen knuckles bumped his elbow. “It’s lucky we’re a couple. Just be a guy out for a stroll by the madhouse with his girlfriend, right?”
“Right.” With his free hand he reached back through the bars of the fence and pushed the bench away; the clatter of it hitting the cement pavement in the yard was lost in the crashing cacophony shaking out through the sprung window. “What’s my girlfriend’s name?” he asked as they began walking—a little hurriedly, in spite of her advice—along the tree-shadowed fence toward the lane that led out to Rosecrans Boulevard.
“I’m Janis again. Cody came back just now like somebody fired out of a cannon, so don’t tell me what happened—okay?—or you’ll just have Valerie on your hands. It’s enough to know that you agreed about escaping, and that we’ve done it.” She gave him a frightened smile. “Let’s make like a tree, and leave.”
He nodded, and though his breathing was slowing down, his heart was still knocking in his chest. “Put an egg in your shoe and beat it,” he responded absently. He could see the corner of the fence ahead, and it was all he could do not to walk even faster. “I did agree, in the end.”
He was remembering a pair of shoes Nina had bought for him, actually leather hiking boots. They were only about an eighth of an inch bigger than his ordinary shoes at any point, but he had constantly found himself catching the sides of them against furniture, and tripping on the tread edges when he’d go upstairs, and generally kicking things he hadn’t realized were in his way; and it had occurred to him that in his ordinary old shoes, as he had routinely walked through each day, he must have been only narrowly missing collisions and entanglements with every thoughtless step.
What size shoe am I wearing now? he thought giddily. I’m not walking any differently, but lately I’ve collided with a man who can ta
lk with my dead wife’s voice, and who can reach out and grab you across a room with a hand he hasn’t got; and I’ve run afoul of a doctor who wants to keep me locked up in a crazy ward and give electroshock treatments to a woman I … am growing very fond of; and she claims to actually be several people, one of whom doesn’t like me and another of whom is reportedly a man, who can—
He took a shuddering breath and clasped her arm tighter, for he was afraid he might fling it away and just run from her.
—who apparently can, he went on, finishing the thought, call up actual earthquakes at will.
Maybe I’m not wearing any shoes at all now, he thought, in that manner of speaking. It’s mostly barefoot people that break their toes.
“You’ve … seen this stuff too, right?” he said softly. “Ghosts? And—” She didn’t want to hear about the earthquake right now. “—supernatural stuff?” He had spoken haltingly, embarrassed to be talking about the very coin of madness; but he needed to know that he really did have a companion in this scary new world.
“Don’t make me lose time here, Scant.”
“Sorry.” Her abrupt reply had brought heat to his face, and he tried to keep any tone of hurt out of his voice. “Never mind.” Don’t be disturbing her, he told himself bitterly, with talk of something distasteful that might be important to you, like your mere sanity.
“I’m sorry, Scant,” she said instantly, hugging his arm and leaning her head on his shoulder, “I was afraid you’d say something more—something specific!—that would drive me away from you here. You and I can’t have misunderstandings between us! Yes—I’ve seen this stuff too, undeniably. Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell, because even normal things … change, if I take my eyes off them. I never cross the street on the green light, because an hour—a week!—might have gone by between the moment I saw the WALK sign flash and the moment I step off the curb; I always cross with people, almost hanging on to their coats. When I was twelve, my mother took me to her sister’s funeral, and halfway through the ceremony I found out that it was her mother’s funeral, and I was fourteen! I think if she hadn’t ever brought me to another funeral at that same cemetery, so I could recognize it, I wouldn’t have found my way back at all, ever, to this day!”
She laughed helplessly. “But I’ve seen ghosts, too, sure. I attract them, they come to me crying, often as not, telling me they’re lost and want help finding their mothers, these transparent little … cellophane bags, like cigarette-pack wrappers! Or they’re … feeling romantic, and whisper nasty things in my ear, as if they could do anything about it. But they can’t grab me, I always just lose time. And Cody and Valerie have different birthdates from me, so each of us that comes up is a fresh picture, and the ghosts slide off, can’t get a grip.” He felt her shudder through his arm. “I think they’d hurt me, I think they’d kill me, if they could get a grip.”
Cochran kissed the top of her head. “Why are they attracted to you?”
“Because I have ‘wide unclasped the table of my thoughts.’ Don’t ask me about that,” she added hastily, “or you’ll be kissing Valerie’s head.” She smacked her lips. “I wish I’d brought my mouthwash.”
They had rounded the fence corner now, and they were walking on a sidewalk under bright streetlights. Cars were driving by, and he could see the traffic signal for Rosecrans Boulevard only a hundred yards ahead of them.
“I think I could call my lawyer now,” he said, “when we find a Denny’s, somewhere we can sit down and they have a pay phone. I’ve got change for the call, and I think I can slant the story a little to make sure he’ll wire us money and then legally get us out of Armentrout’s control.”
“A Denny’s would be nice,” Plumtree agreed, “I’ve got a twenty in my shoe, and Ra only knows when I last ate. But we don’t need your lawyer—Cody can get us money and a place to stay, and we’ve got … things to do, locally, people to see.”
Cochran could imagine nothing now but getting back to his house in South Daly City up in San Mateo County as quickly as possible. “People?” he said doubtfully. “What, family?”
“No. I’ll tell you when we’ve got drinks in front of us. Don’t most Denny’s serve liquor?”
“I don’t know,” Cochran said, suddenly very happy with the idea of a shot of lukewarm Wild Turkey and an icy Coors for a chaser. “But most bars sell food.”
CHAPTER 6
“Tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake?”
“A long time, I suppose.”
“But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it.”
—Charles Dickens,
A Tale of Two Cities
“DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ‘making amends’?” Plumtree asked as she led him across a dark parking lot in the direction of the white-glowing façade of a fast-food ice-cream place called the Frost Giant. Cochran thought she sounded a little uneasy.
“I suppose,” he said, trudging along beside her and wondering when they would get their drinks and talk. The night air was chilly, and he wished he’d been wearing a jacket when they had escaped from the mental hospital, and he wanted to get someone in San Mateo County to wire him some money tonight, or at least use a credit-card number to get him a motel room. That should be feasible somehow. “Restitution,” he said. “Taking the blame, if you deserve it; paying back people you’ve cheated, and admitting you were the villain, and apologizing.” He smiled. “Why, did that guy in the 7-Eleven give you too much change?” They hadn’t bought anything at the convenience store three blocks back, but Plumtree had cajoled the clerk into giving her seventeen one-dollar bills and a double fistful of assorted coins in exchange for the crumpled twenty-dollar-bill that had been in her shoe. When they had got outside, she had made Cochran give her too four quarters from his pants pocket.
“No. The thing is, making amends is … good for your soul, right?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“But before you can do it, you’ve got to cheat somebody.”
“I—” He laughed as he exhaled. “I guess. If you want the sacrament of Confession, you do have to have some sins.”
“Whatever.” She gave him a blank, tired look in the white glow. “Don’t speak, here, okay? Do you know any foreign languages, besides plain old Mexican?”
“Oui, mademoiselle—je parle Français, un peu.”
“That’s French, right? Cool, you be a Frenchman. They’ll figure you don’t know what your stupid shirt says.”
She pulled open the glass door of the Frost Giant, and a puff of warm, vanilla-scented air ruffled Cochran’s hair.
There was only one customer in the brightly lit restaurant, a woman in a Raiders sweatshirt in a booth by the far window. Plumtree scurried to the counter, and she was laughing with evident embarrassment as she dumped her pile of bills and change onto the white formica.
“Could you do me a big favor?” she asked the teenage boy who was the cashier. “My friend paid me back twenty dollars he owed me, but he doesn’t understand about American money—I can’t fit all this in my pockets! Could you possibly give me one twenty-dollar bill for all this?”
“I—don’t think so, lady.” The young cashier smiled nervously. “Why don’t you get rid of some of it by buying some ice cream?”
A muted crack sounded from the far booth, and the woman in the sweatshirt said, “Shit. You got any spoons that are any damn good?”
Plumtree gave the young man a sympathetic smile as he fetched another white plastic spoon from under the counter and walked around to give it to the woman.
“I understand,” Plumtree said when he was back behind the counter, “and we can come back tomorrow and buy some. But my friend here doesn’t speak any English at all, and he thinks all Americans are stupid—especially me. I told him I could get this money changed into one bill, and if you don’t do it, he’ll call me a, a haricot vert again.
That means damn fool. You can tell he’s thinking it already, look at him.” She waved at Cochran. “Momentito, Pierre!”
“Ce n’était pas ma faute,” said Cochran awkwardly. “Cet imbécile m’est rentre dedans.” It was a bit he remembered from the Berlitz book: It wasn’t my fault, this imbecile crashed into me.
The name badge on the cashier’s shirt read KAREN, and Cochran, perceiving him as a fellow-victim of ludicrous men’s wear, sympathetically wondered when the boy would notice that he had put on the wrong badge. “Well,” said the young man, “I guess it’d be okay. We could use the ones, I guess.”
“Oh, thanks so much,” said Plumtree, helpfully spreading the bills out on the counter for him to count.
The young cashier opened the register drawer and handed her a twenty-dollar bill, his eyes on the ones and the change.
“What are you giving me this for?” asked Plumtree instantly.
The bill in her outstretched hand was a one-dollar bill.
The young man stared at it in evident confusion. “Is that what I just gave you?”
“Yeah. I wanted a twenty. You must have had a one in your twenty drawer.”
“I … don’t think that’s what I just gave you.”
“You’re gonna take all my money and just give me a dollar?” wailed Plumtree in unhappy protest.
The woman in the Raiders sweatshirt broke her spoon again. “Hey, shit-head!” she yelled. “You’d think with all the money you make cheatin’ folks, you could afford decent spoons!”
After a tense pause, the young man took back the dollar and pulled a twenty out of the drawer. He stared at it hard for a moment before looking up.
“I really hope,” he said quietly as he handed the twenty to her, “we’re not twenty short at cashout. You seemed nice.”
Cochran’s teeth were clenched, and he could feel his face heating up. This was abominable. He knew he should make Plumtree give back the other twenty-dollar bill, the one she had palmed, but all he could think of was getting out of this place. “Uhh,” he said, feeling a drop of sweat run down his ribs. “Merde.”