SHUDDERVILLE FIVE (2 page)

*

Will Ballard woke up in a hospital room. He was covered in bandages and splints and hooked up to an IV drip and a heart monitor. Doctors came and went. Nurses came and went. They gave him drugs for the pain. Morning crept into hazy afternoon, and he fell asleep and dreamed he was drowning in a sea of gray clouds. He dreamed his fingers had turned into frogs, and the frogs kept trying to hop away.

When he woke up again, it was twilight, and everything was dusted with a pale orange light. He could hear the sluggish
blip-blip-blip
of the heart monitor. The floorboards were old and wide, polished to a dull gleam from years of abuse by the hospital staff.

He wasn’t alone. A studious-looking man in his mid-30s with pale skin and a crooked nose occupied the visitor’s chair. The man nodded courteously at him. “Hello,” he said.

Will looked away. He didn’t want any visitors.

“How are you feeling?”

“Great,” Will mumbled. “Terrific.”

The man said, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

He didn’t answer, already bored with the question.

“My name is Tobias Mandelbaum. We’re partners.”

Will looked at him. Nothing about the man was familiar. He had a narrow, high-arched nose and full pink lips. He wore an expensive-looking suit and a camel’s hair coat. He had crystal blue eyes and an imperious gaze. Leaning against the wall was a mahogany cane. “What kind of partners?” Will asked, curious now.

“We work together at Lon-Gen. We’re quantum theorists.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t you remember?”

“No.”

“What about the lab? Do you remember that?”

“No.”

Tobias sighed. “Shame. You were on the brink of a breakthrough.”

Will lay in stubborn silence, wondering if he cared. He was swaddled in hospital sheets, which the nurses had pressed as smooth as wedding-cake icing over his body. His arms were folded stiffly across his chest and his hands were cold. The intravenous needle sank into a vein in his arm, and the stale tape tugged at his skin.

“Look,” Tobias said, dragging the chair over to the bed and whispering fiercely, “we’re onto something important here. I’m talking Nobel territory.” He leaned in close. “It used to be just the two of us, arguing over coffee, dueling math and physics theories, you know what I mean? Thought experiments. But now we’re actually developing a prototype. We’re putting our ideas to the test. Don’t you remember any of this?”

“No,” he cried, afraid of this man. “I don’t!”

“Superposition. A particle exists in all possible forms at once. A wave contains all possible outcomes—dead or alive, up or down. A particle in one place can be affected by what you do someplace else. It’s
Alice in Wonderland
.”

“Jesus. Listen. I’m just trying to remember what I did
yesterday
.”

“Sure.” Tobias nodded slowly. “Sure. Take your time.” He observed Will closely. “The doctors tell me you’ll recover your memory eventually.” He got up from the chair and picked up his cane.

Will felt his head spin like a slow merry-go-round. He saw her face swimming before him, and it twisted his soul. Before Tobias turned to leave, Will gripped the sleeve of his coat and said, “I remember my wife. Charlotte.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” he said, and Tobias sat back down. Will felt his life untangling before his eyes. Things were becoming clearer. “She’s dead, isn’t she? My wife?”

Tobias gently pried Will’s fingers off the expensive fabric. He looked around to make sure no one could hear them, and then he said, “Yes. I’m afraid she is. She died in the plane crash, along with most everyone else. I’m sorry.”

A sob escaped from his lips. Tears ran down his cheeks.

“But listen,” Tobias said softly. “Maybe we can fix this.”

“Fix what?” he asked in great pain. “Fix Charlotte?”

Tobias nodded. “You remember the equations we were working on before?”

“Equations?”

“The prototype. Come on, Will. I need some answers.”

“Answers to what?”

“Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Two physically separated objects that are not separate.”

A gap widened between them, like a river slowly overfilling its banks. In his mind, Will tried to creep further and further away from the truth, but it was too strong. It was like a magnet. The truth, memory and pain were all interconnected in his mind. “But it’s not possible,” he said, wiping a rogue tear off his cheek. “Reality doesn’t work that way.”

“Depends what you mean by reality.”

Will’s eyelids stuttered in a series of blinks. He turned his head away. This man had brought him nothing but grief. Hospital staff flitted past the open doorway, and he yelled, “Nurse!”

She poked her head inside the high-ceilinged room. Her long black hair was pulled into a thick, oiled bun at the nape of her neck. She wore a crisp white uniform and an efficient pair of orthopedic-looking shoes. “I’m not your nurse, but I can get her for you. What do you want?”

“Make him go away.” Will pointed at Tobias, who smiled apologetically.

The nurse tapped her foot. “We all set here?”

Tobias nodded stiffly. “I’ll be back when he’s in a better mood.”

“Fine.” She hurried off.

“Don’t come back,” Will told his partner. “Ever.”

Tobias shrugged. “It’s entirely up to you.” He limped out into the hallway, leaning heavily on his cane, and joined the foot traffic. Soon he was gone.

*

The first thing Will did when he got back to Boston was to visit the cemetery where his wife was buried. He took an unpaved access road past chipped fieldstones and heavy marble slabs that had shifted off their foundations. He trudged up a gentle incline toward the place where Charlotte’s grave stood in stark silhouette against the sky. Curving elegant script spelled out her name. A pair of ballet slippers was etched into the pink and gray granite, and he traced the cold stone with his fingertips. He tried not to cry. He held out the bottle of wine he’d purchased for the occasion and said, “Brought you something. It’s that burgundy you like.”

Thick curls of fog evaporated around the base of the slab, creating the impression of a soft, damp loneliness. He plopped down in the snow, uncorked the bottle and poured two glasses—one for him and one for her. He draped his arms around his legs and drew them close. Inadequately dressed for this weather in a thin winter coat, T-shirt and khaki pants, he clinked the glasses together and said, “Down the hatch.” He finished them off in quick succession, and then drank from the bottle.

Rusty hinges creaked. Old feelings surfaced. He drank until the bottle was empty. It was getting toward dusk when he looked across the rows of gravestones, neat as the sentences, and said, “I miss you, Charlotte.” Tears welled in his eyes. “I miss you so much.” He made a fist and knocked on his skull. It made a hollow sound.

Now a figure came limping out of the fog—the last person in the world he wanted to see. Tobias wore a camel’s hair coat over a linen two-button custom suit. “You’re shivering,” he said when he reached the gravesite, breathing hard and leaning heavily against his wooden cane.

He wiped the tears off his face, every last trace. Tobias had caught him in the act of speaking softly to himself, as if there were somebody else there with him.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Fuck off,” Will said.

Standing in a clot of snow, his partner studied the gravestone. “Charlotte wouldn’t want you to give up.”

“Oh, how manipulative is that?” Will cried in protest. “What the hell do you want?”

“What do I want?” Tobias knelt in the snow. His mouth was tense, but he kept on smiling. He slipped his hand into his coat pocket, took out a joint and a pewter lighter, and said, “You remember our conversation in the hospital?”

Will squinted up at the naked trees creaking in the wind. The sun had set in a blaze of crimson. His thoughts were scattered. His body was shaking.

Tobias held out the joint. “Age before beauty.”

With a strangled sound, Will knocked it out of his hand.

His partner treated the outburst like a mild disturbance. He glanced at the horizon, his intelligent eyes momentarily glowing crimson. “So you do remember our conversation.”

“Every word.”

He held his head at a contemptuous angle. “And?”

“The answers elude me.”

“Ah,” Tobias said.

Will’s eyes brimmed with stinging tears. “It came to me with blinding insight right before we crashed. But it’s gone now. Totally wiped out.”

“Can’t you put yourself back on the plane?”

“All I know is… I was writing it down on a paper napkin.”

“And?”

“Charlotte put her soda can on the napkin, and it got ruined. Right before we crashed.”

“Focus on the napkin. What did it say?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Think.”

“I have been thinking, Tobias. I can’t remember a damn thing.”

His partner stood up and watched him with a strange tenderness bordering on pity. “Then I’m sorry, but you’ll never get her back.”

Will squinted. “What did you just say to me?”

“You’ll never get her back.”

“Are you
insane
?” His heart rate accelerated. Suddenly he was on his feet. Overwhelmed with rage. “You think we can reverse this? How? By going back in time?”

Tobias gave him a tormented look. “That would make us rather powerful, wouldn’t it?”

“We aren’t photons, Tobias. We aren’t quarks. We’re human beings. Flesh and blood.” He felt more alive than he had in days. He was filled with a buzzing electric fury. He stood in a defensive posture, feet planted firmly on the ground. He held up his fists, ready for a fight. “I can’t remember. What more do you want from me?”

His friend inspected him carefully. “It’s not a time machine. It’s better than that. More intricate. More interesting. Vastly more nonsensical. But that’s quantum physics for you, isn’t it? Nobody knows anything. The ball is in your court now.”

Will stared at him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I think you know what it means.”

He lunged forward and swung out his right fist, narrowly missing Tobias’ head. The shorter man slid to the right, not so much intimidated as surprised. Will launched another strike at his head, but Tobias blocked the blow with his cane.

The two men circled one another cautiously, fog swirling around their ankles. Will took another swing, and Tobias darted deftly out of the way and parried with astonishing quickness. He swung his cane and caught Will hard on the shoulder. The blow stung, but there wasn’t enough momentum to knock him down.

Will swung his fists wildly, lost his balance, and Tobias moved in to attack. Will twisted left, and then right, trying to avoid the counter-blows. He remembered his father’s advice—
everybody has a weakness
. Tobias wasn’t indomitable. Will was six inches taller. He found a reserve of energy, grabbed onto the wooden cane and rotated it sharply to the left, knocking his partner to his knees.

A serious blow to the side of the head stunned the shorter man senseless. Tobias raised his arms to protect his head and deflect the body blows. He crouched in a sign of submission. Spine bent forward, head held down. His cane was abandoned in the snow.

A guide-wire snapped inside Will. He reared back and produced a roundhouse kick that knocked his partner against the edge of a marble slab and rendered him unconscious.

Will stood motionless with surprise. “Get up!”

Tobias didn’t move. His face was covered in blood. Will knelt on the ground and tried to wake him. Tobias looked dead. There was a pool of blood in the snow. The roots of his hair were streaked with red.

Will’s veins filled with freezing water. He tried not to panic. He looked around to see if anyone had seen them. Night had fallen. The only movement in the cemetery was a lone figure, far away. He studied the chilly scene in the moonlight, everything the color of a gas flame. Filled with fright, he turned and ran.

*

The Lon-Gen Foundation was located in an industrial area of Cambridge full of ugly buildings, bus stops and neighborhood
marketas
. The late-night traffic rushed past, drivers zipping around one other in itchy zigzags. Will pulled into the parking lot under the full moon. It was a very dry cold, the kind that hurt your lungs when you inhaled. He used his keys to enter the building and took the elevator to the second floor.

The lab was empty. He walked past the vacant workstations, microscopes and chalkboards. They were just beginning to understand the mad, crazy dreams of quantum mechanics. Will sat at his workstation, feeling grimy and exhausted. They would find him. He would have to turn himself in—he’d just murdered his only friend. He opened his lab books and skimmed through his old notes. He’d been searching for a magic bullet, but there were too many factors to consider. He closed his notebooks, picked up a piece of blank typing paper, inserted it in the typewriter and typed out a confession.

When he was done, he ripped out the page and tucked it in his pocket. The building throbbed with the sound of silence. He walked over to the chalkboard, erased the equation he’d been struggling with, turned out the lights and locked the door behind him.

Outside in the parking lot, a lone figure stood beside Will’s car, his blood-streaked face washed in moonlight. Will’s stomach turned. His legs felt gelatinous. “Tobias?” How was it possible? “I thought you were dead.”

His partner shrugged. There was blood matted on his scalp and face. “I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Never felt better. Friends?”

Will nodded reluctantly. He held out his hand.

Tobias stormed forward, hoisting his cane, and smacked Will forcefully across the stomach. He bent double with pain. Tobias stood over him, breathing hard. “Now we’re even,” he said hoarsely.

Will caught his breath. “I thought I’d killed you.”

“No such luck.”

“I typed out my confession.”

Tobias held out his hand. “Let me see.”