20
At first the pills seemed to have little effect. In spite of the warning on the bottle I took a third pill. I stared fixedly at the label: K7U. I wondered what the letters symbolized. One part of K to seven parts of U? Or was this the formula arrived at on the seventh try? I tried to read the words printed in Latin on the label. My eyes refused to focus.
Drowsily I lay back on the bed. My eyelids were heavy weights, my legs were leaden. I made an attempt to shift my feet, but I lacked the strength. I seemed to sink deep into the soft folds of the bed. At last I slept.
The day was broken into bright fragments of consciousness projecting out of a woolly fuzz in which I was often neither fully awake nor asleep. The barrier between consciousness and the oblivion of unconsciousness seemed to have disintegrated. At one point—I thought it was in the morning, but the time of day was not important, time itself had ceased to exist—the phone rang incessantly and I wanted desperately to answer it, but I was chained to the bed. And there was a moment when the girl next door was beating upon the window, her mouth twisted in grief. She saw me watching her and she fled. I called after her but there was no sound. At some point in the late afternoon I stood at the window. The sun was a blazing ball in the hard steel plate of sky. It seemed to have not only light and heat but sound, clashing and grinding until my head seemed sure to shatter from the vibrations.
Always in those sharp, isolated moments of crystal clarity, I saw everything with extraordinary vividness. Colors held an intensity I had never seen before—the shimmering green of a patch of grass, the brown of a tree trunk projecting from the yellow hills, the hot red of a plastic chair, the glittering white of a trailer, the shiny yellow-and-black of a police helicopter stuck against the intense blue of the sky. I saw in the most commonplace plant an unimaginable beauty, an exquisite natural architecture of life.
My perspective was faulty. Distances deceived me. Walls that should have met seemed to be in different planes. Space was an illusion. I reached for a glass on a table and missed it completely. Once I tried to sit on a chair and tumbled to the floor. Crawling, I seemed to inch forward over an interminable distance, taking hours to cover the few feet from one side of my living room to another, and this was not at all surprising or disturbing to me. At one time I was sitting on the floor of the kitchen looking up in wonder at the immense cliff of the sink high above me. And again I was walking down the narrow hall between my bedroom and the front of the trailer. The floor wobbled and waved and the hall stretched on endlessly, a bewildering corridor of doors that I kept reaching for and missing, until at last I burst out of the corridor into the bedroom, and then I was falling toward the bed, falling, floating through the cold black infinity of space.
While the hot mid-day sun beat down upon the trailer, I stood indifferently watching the still, white face of my mother, what had been my mother, lying rigid in the meaningless calm of death. I felt a total numbness, an absence of feeling, as if my whole body and brain had been shot with novocain.
But later, much, much later, I stared out at a gray city under a gray sky, relieved only by the streaks of orange and red and purple left by the sun at the horizon, and tears rolled down my face. I cried without knowing why I grieved.
I slept and dreamed of waves washing over me, of voices pounding with the fury of waves, lifting and tossing me at will, thundering and growling. And in the chaos of semi-consciousness, I tasted the delicious sweetness of red lips, felt the incredible softness of breasts crushed against my chest, touched with my fingers the silken mass of red hair—and found it inexplicably turned to gold, to the yellow of a field of grain under a hot August sun.
And in the evening, when darkness crouched like a living thing in the corners of the small bedroom, I woke suddenly to a moment of ordinary reality in which I saw the room exactly as it had always been, saw the open bottle of pills on the built-in chest within arm's reach, smelled the odor of my sweat-drenched body. Bewilderment flooded through me. I had the fleeting thought that this was wrong, that the pills had failed, that the snake pit into which I had plunged had been only an illusion. I groped toward understanding, but sleep descended upon me like a thick black fog. I tried to escape the darkness, grasping at the flickering light of reason, but it fled into the distance like the vanishing light in the center of a television screen turned off, the dot of light swiftly receding into a pinprick of brightness, winking, winking out....
The floor creaked. I woke trembling with an immediate and frightening impression that someone was in the trailer. I was not sure what had awakened me and for a moment I had no memory of the long, lost day. Then the floor creaked again.
And still I didn't understand. In a tumbling confusion of pictures I remembered the pills and the distortions they had produced. As quickly as this memory jelled, I knew that the pills had not worked. They had failed to induce the symptomatic exaggeration of my illness. My reaction had been violent, but it was no more than a normal mind's response to a heavy dosage. Moreover, the effects had worn off too fast.
All this I saw, but its significance escaped me. I was still thinking fuzzily. My head ached with an almost unbearable pressure and my limbs still felt heavy. The third warning creak brought me fully awake, and I knew that someone was creeping along the narrow hall toward me. I could see nothing in the darkness and there was no sound of breathing or of stealthy feet. But the complaining floor was a voice too familiar to be missed. It could mean only one thing.
I waited tensely, straining every sense. Nothing moved. I began to make out shadowy shapes as my eyes adjusted to the dark. Doubts attacked me. Could this be it after all—the mind's final breaking point? The self-created monster in the darkness?
At last full understanding came. No. I was not insane. The pills had merely proven my sanity. They had done their job after all. The danger now was real. Everything that I had been ready to dismiss as the delusions and hallucinations of a sick mind—all of it was real. And now—
He attacked.
In the instant I knew that I was rational and whole, I was able to move, rolling to the side. A giant figure crashed onto the bed where I had lain. I could hear his hoarse, quick breathing, no longer held in silence. I spun away from him. A huge hand caught at my arm, but I broke free. Still rolling, I tumbled onto the floor. As he pulled himself off the bed, I staggered to my feet. The room reeled around me. The effects of the drug had not fully worn off. I tried to take a step toward the hall and it was like walking through deep water, my steps slow and sluggish. I could see the man towering above me as he leaped off the bed. A great hand grabbed at my suit as I fell away, and the fabric tore. I stumbled, off balance, unable to control the loose flopping of my arms and legs. A fist slashed at me and glanced off my cheek. Even the slashing blow was so powerful that it smashed me backwards, half-stunned, to crash against the wall beside the bed. I went down heavily. My cheekbone felt as if it had been pulverized.
Panic came. The relief which had first soared in me at the knowledge that I was a sane man was lost now in the bitter realization that I had discovered the truth too late. There was no way I could survive this giant's attack. But who was he?
A huge hand plucked me from the floor and flung me down on the bed. He was bending over me then, his hands clutching at my throat. His breath whistled through his open mouth. He shifted, bringing up his thickly-muscled leg to pin me under him. With the desperation of fear and the blind urge to survival, I twisted wildly. One free hand raked at his eyes. He gave a bellow of rage and pain and pulled away, pawing at his face. I wrenched away from the loosening grasp of the hand which still gripped my throat.
I broke past him. It was an immense effort to drag my heavy thighs forward, straining for speed. In the fleeting seconds it took me to stumble to the doorway, I seemed to live an eternity of effort and jumbled thoughts. This was the alien—it must be! No subtleties now, no clever tricks of the mind—just brute force. And I had a vivid picture of Lois Worthington as she must have looked with her neck snapped like a brittle twig. I knew that I would not get away, that this was the end of all my running.
My hand, catching the door frame, brushed against a switch and the room suddenly blazed with light. Over my shoulder I saw him charging after me—saw the shock of black hair, the powerful shoulders and arms, the thick features twisted now in fury. Mike Boyle!
For an instant the light blinded him. And in that moment, out of the confusion and shock of recognition, I had time to feel a surge of disbelief. He couldn't be the one! I knew this slow, arrogant mind. And if he could control me as the alien had, why hadn't he stopped me now from trying to get away?
And then he was lumbering toward me. As I tried to spin away from him along the hall, his big hands pulled me back. I felt his arms slide around my chest and tighten. Twisting, I stared directly into his eyes. They were glazed, unseeing, frighteningly dumb. A crushing pressure squeezed my ribs together. I struggled weakly, kicking at his legs, trying to reach his eyes with my hand. Pain lanced through my chest, increasing swiftly in intensity as the terrible pressure drove the air from my lungs and my chest seemed to cave in.
And through the streaks of pain slipped a stab of perception. He was controlled! This was not the alien. This was a weaker mind, helpless to resist the command which drove him to kill just as I was helpless in his terrible embrace. Here was a weapon I had not counted on, an ultimate weapon beyond resistance—
The pain grew savage. I seemed to hear a cracking of bones yielding and I thought I could not bear the pain. A stifled, breathless cry broke through my locked jaws. Consciousness began to slip away from me and the trailer seemed to tip slowly like a ship listing.
"There is no pain, no sickness, no evil beyond the power of the mind to control."
The rich, vibrant voice of Swami Fallaninda echoed in the recesses of my mind.No pain, I thought dimly.Concentrate and there will be no pain. Draw the mind in upon itself, obliterate the knowledge of the body's anguish. Concentrate intensively, know the power of your own mind, and there is nothing you cannot do—
"Stop!"
I flung the mind's command at Boyle with all the force of my wavering consciousness. I felt his powerful body go rigid against me. I had reached him! The impulsive desperate try had broken through the barrier of his mind. He could be controlled! If the alien could do it, why not I?
"Release me!"
His throat worked and he gave a strangled cry. I could see his red face contorting with strain. His crushing arms slackened their hold. I tried to draw myself into a ball, to snuff out all pain, all sensation, everything except the awareness of being, of mind, of mental force. I existed only as awareness.
"Now!" My mind hammered the unspoken command at him. "Release me!"
I felt his arms slip loose like a broken spring uncoiling. Twisting free, I backed away from him down the hall. He stood transfixed, his great bulk filling the narrow space, and I saw in his eyes the dumb pain of an animal goaded into a corner, trapped in an intolerable dilemma of conflict. It was only then that I caught some remote glimmering of the torment my counter-command had produced in his captive mind.
I thought again of the swami's ringing words: "Know your own strength, believe in it, fear not!" The little man no longer seemed ridiculous.
The squeal of a police helicopter's siren shrilled close by—so loud that it seemed to come from almost directly overhead. Its shriek seemed to snap something in Mike Boyle's mind. I felt a shiver of horror, as if I had seen a mind broken even as a neck might snap or a rib crack under pressure.
He plunged toward me. Stumbling out of the corridor, I lost my balance and fell backwards. Boyle brushed past me as if I had not been there. He charged across to the door, clawed at its knob, hurled himself through the opening. His shoulder struck the door frame and he went out staggering.
As I reached the doorway, he was lurching into the street. A spotlight slashed toward him out of the darkness. He darted away from it, but the beam pinned his running figure against the outline of a trailer across the way.
"Halt!" a voice barked.
I caught the dim shape of a black police helicopter, its yellow stripe gleaming dully, and I had time to wonder how the police had got there, and I was aware out of the corner of my eye of light glowing in the next-door trailer. Then Mike Boyle was sprinting down the street, ignoring the warning shout, dodging like a halfback through an open field, moving his bulk with startling agility and speed.
Low and vicious, a policeman's silenced special spat out of the darkness. Boyle's legs went out from under him as if he had been hit by a low, hard tackle. The smack as he hit the pavement was brutally audible. Echoing it, so close that it brought me spinning around, was a low cry.
I stared into the frightened eyes of the blonde girl next door. She stood barely two paces away. I had a sudden intuition as if she had spoken to me aloud.
"You called the police," I said.
She nodded. "I—I was afraid you were being hurt."
"But how did you know? How could you know what was happening?"
Her gaze wavered and she seemed to hesitate. The words tumbled out in a rush. "I heard noises—I got up to see what was going on and—and I saw someone trying to break into your trailer, so I—I called the police. That's all."
For a second I frowned at her, trying to read her eyes. She was not frightened at all, I thought with surprise. Elusive. Evasive. Hiding something.
I heard a bellow of rage behind me and turned to see Mike Boyle struggling to get to his feet while two policemen pinned him to the pavement. I sprinted toward them. When I reached the group, Boyle's struggles were growing weaker. There was blood on the paving and I saw it seeping down his leg. He was mouthing unintelligible sounds and his eyes had that strange, glazed, unseeing stare. I looked at the two policemen holding him and recognized the pair who had questioned me earlier. Sgt. Bullock's cold, hard face had regained its meanness. I wondered what had become of the friendly puppy I had met the day before.
"What's this all about?" he snapped. "Who is he?"
"His name is Boyle," I said. "He's a student at the university—a football star. He's—he's out of his mind."
"MikeBoyle?" The sergeant's tone was incredulous.
"Yes. And Sergeant—" I weighed the words carefully, "I think he killed Lois Worthington."
Slowly the sergeant stood up. His eyes were mean slits in the blunt face. "You better know what you're saying," he said. "You goddam well better know."
For an instant I faltered, less sure of myself. I had no real evidence that Boyle had murdered the waitress, nothing but the faith I now had in my own convictions. But I knew without question that he had been ordered to kill her just as he had been directed to eliminate me. Yet I couldn't tell the police how I knew. If I tried to tell them the whole story, I would merely convince them that I was crazy.
The sergeant strode away. He reached the helicopter and pulled out a hand mike. I looked down at Boyle. He lay still, no longer struggling. Some of the bestial panic seemed to have drained out of his face. When I glanced up the sergeant was charging back toward me.
"Well?" he barked as he reached me. "What makes you say he killed the girl?"
"It was—something he said—when he was trying to kill me."
"Why would he try to kill you?"
I made my decision. "I think he blamed me—he was convinced that I had had something to do with Lois."
"Yeah?" Sgt. Bullock's hard, narrow gaze held mine. "Funny you should say that. I thought you were mixed up in this right from the beginning—and I'm beginning to think so again. It's nice and convenient for you to come up with another killer. The guy we were holding—Harry Grayson—cleared himself. The truth tests proved it right down the line. He's not guilty. He didn't kill her."
I stared again at Boyle. Handcuffed now, he was watching me. There was fright in his small eyes and it seemed to me that there was something stirring now in their depths that had been filmed over before, a glimmer of reason.
"Boyle did it," I said. "But he wasn't responsible for what he did. You can see that."
"Yeah? Maybe." The sergeant stared suspiciously at me. "What happened to your head?"
"I was in an accident—in a car."
"Yeah? You seem to be in a hell of a lot of accidents. I think maybe you better come downtown with us. You got quite a lot of explaining to do. You keep popping up in this too often, Cameron. I don't like coincidences."
"I killed her!" Boyle blurted out.
We all stared at him—Bullock, his lean partner, myself. The big youth rolled over on his side. Tears spilled down his cheeks and he began to beat his head against the pavement with a terrifying deliberateness.
"I killed her, I killed her," he moaned. "I killed her!"
The corporal bent down swiftly and jerked Boyle's head up. Sgt. Bullock moved in quickly. Between them they held the big man immobile.
"Okay," the sergeant said after a moment, glancing at me over his shoulder. "So he did it. So maybe that lets you out. We won't need you tonight—but stay where I can find you. I've still got some questions to ask you."
"What about him? What are you going to do with him?"
"There's an ambulance on the way." He looked past me, his gaze sweeping in a circle. "If you want to help you can tell these people to go back to bed. Then you might as well do the same."
I discovered that a large number of people had come out of their trailers and were standing in clusters talking and staring curiously at the tableau in the street. For some reason I was surprised. The whole incident had happened so quickly and with so little noise that I hadn't thought of anyone being aroused.
I moved toward the nearest group. "It's all over," I said quietly. "Might as well go back to bed."
"What happened?"
"A man went—" I caught myself. "Just a drunk. A guy who had more than he could take."
The groups of people gave way slowly, reluctantly. I stared back once more at Mike Boyle. I felt only pity now. At the same time I was aware of how timely and how lucky for me had been his guilt-ridden outcry of confession. Without it, I would have been in more trouble than I liked to think about, with Bullock eager to jump all over me, firing questions which I couldn't answer.
Boyle would be cured. His illness was not a deep-seated mental aberration but a temporary cracking under pressure. They would treat him and, when he was rational, they would get a full confession out of him about the murder of Lois. But they would never make sense out of his story of being controlled by an inhuman mind. He would get off on the plea of insanity. They would cure him and when they were sure that he was well, he would be freed.
I wondered if he would remember or understand later what had been done to him. Or who had done it.
Looking up, I saw the girl next door standing where I had left her. I walked slowly toward her. In her eyes and mouth I read anxiety.
"He tried to kill you," she whispered.
I nodded. I felt an inexpressible tenderness. Gratitude, I thought. How much I owed to her!
"Thanks for calling the police," I said. "And for—for being worried."
She blushed. Even in the darkness I could see the bright color in her cheeks. She started to turn away and the movement of her hips brought back, sharply and vividly, the image I had seen through her window so long ago.
"Wait!"
She stopped, her face averted, and I caught once again the sense of a bird trembling on the brink of flight.
"I don't even know your name," I said gently.
Her voice was low. "Erika," she said. "Erika Lindstrom."
I smiled. The name so perfectly suited her tall, blonde beauty. I felt a renewal of that strange, deep rush of tender feeling.
"Thanks again, Erika."
"Goodnight, Mr. Cameron," she said quickly.
This time I didn't try to stop her. Watching her retreat into the security of her trailer, I wondered why she was so anxious to help me. The knowledge of her anxiety gave me an unfamiliar pulsation of pleasure. In that moment I felt that I had regained more than my faith in my own reason. I had recaptured something lost long ago. Closeness. Warmth. The touch of humanity.