The Shibboleth (16 page)

Rolling fast on 70 out of Ohio into Pennsylvania. I pull the car into a Chevron, put forty bucks in the tank courtesy of Dr. Sinequa. Nab a Red Bull and some beef jerky and chips. Stand for a long time in front of the candy rack, thinking about all the sugar I've slung. Pocket the change.

Once past the Pittsburgh exits and signage, I catch the sparkle of flashing blue from the rearview.

Moment of panic. All my experience, even my time on the run with Jack, makes me want to bolt, to jam down the accelerator and flee.

But I don't. I wait, heart hammering, and slow the car, pull it over on the shoulder.

The trooper lumbers over, and it isn't until he's approaching that I even think of peeping his noggin.

Damn. Rider.

I make a hard, sharp run at his mind anyway, looking for a crack to slip through, but it's like attacking the hull of a battleship with an icepick. And the Rider doesn't stir behind the trooper's mirrored sunglasses.

He's tall and rangy, this trooper. Looks like a basketball player.

I'm learning that there are bulls everywhere you go. The Casimir bull isn't really any different from the Tulaville bull, who ain't too different from the Pennsylvania State Trooper bull.

When he gets to the window, I roll it down. He says, “License? Registration and proof of insurance?”

Mind racing. Cars and semis whip by in a mad cacophony of wind and the constant howl of wheels on pavement.

Only one thing to do.

At the limits of my range, I cast out my awareness. Everything slows the moment I go into the ether, out of myself, as if it's the flesh that slows down thought and, once free of the synapses and the electrochemical intelligence machine that is Shreveport Justice Cannon, my awareness becomes turbo-charged, hopped up on meth and racing far faster than the sluggish normal world.

Back along 70 a quarter of a mile, I see the spark of a woman, the candle flame of a soul burning, cocooned in her own little world, gnawing her lower lip as she listens to an audiobook. I slip in as easy and smooth as I can. Cheryl Greene, CPA, music aficionado and vinyl collector, driving to York, Pennsylvania, to help her grandmother move into a smaller condo (and possibly peruse her ancient jazz and big band platters), doesn't even feel it as I take control of her hands.

It's easy enough to sideswipe the trooper's cruiser, making a thunderous
crunch
that nearly kicks me out of the lovely Cheryl. I get her car under control and, once Cheryl is far enough down the highway, release her and pop back home to the Ponderosa to watch as the trooper hustles back to his now-dented cruiser and speeds off to ticket the only slightly worse-for-wear Miss Green.

I grip the steering wheel hard, panting into the interior of the car.

I put the car back in gear and pass the trooper as fast as I can without speeding. Holding my breath as the flashing lights pass to my right. I catch a glimpse of Cheryl's pretty face twisted into distress.

Sorry, Cheryl. I have this thing, the shibboleth, and I'm going to use it.

That's what I think about. The shibboleth. Used to be, I worried about the morality of using people. Controlling them. The conflicted power of the shibboleth. The common utterance. The password phrase. The metric shitload of filched history I have in my belly. Quincrux. What lies sleeping in Maryland. The Riders. Rollie.

But most of all, where is Jack?

The radio holds nothing for me. I scan the dial, back and forth, looking for something to distract me from my rear window. The music is vapid. Two days locked on a roof burned away my capacity to enjoy music.

Or maybe radio has always sucked this hard.

It's easy getting the hotel clerk at the Days Inn outside of Brookville to comp me a room, and I spend the night eating pizza and watching skin flicks on the pay adult channels. The women are tanned silicone bags with too much makeup and gigantic hair. The men, all dick and gym-bred muscles. I'd probably rub one out to their shenanigans, but the gyrations and histrionic orgasms seem like tantrums. My dick won't stay hard. Maybe I could spank it if it wasn't for their dead-doll eyes.

Eventually, I find a news station.

The insomnia epidemic has grown.

State and federal police, fire, and medical teams are overtaxed and exhausted, and the US National Guard has been activated to help with overcrowding in Pennsylvania state hospitals. There are parking-lot tent cities being set up to accommodate those suffering from the worst of the insomnia.

Local crime is up 3,000 percent. National car accidents up 7,200 percent.

Two nuclear reactor meltdowns. One in Tennessee caused by negligence and poor safety standards. The one in Arizona, the anchor announces with feigned solemnity, domestic terrorism. Cut to video footage of a dumpy man with glasses walking through industrial hallways with an automatic rifle in his hands, shooting people.

Cut to a mass suicide in the Pacific Northwest in a small Pentecostal church. One hundred and thirty-six dead due to the “sleeping potion” their pastor promised them came to him in a dream. Funny how the God-given sleeping potion looked exactly like poisoned Kool-Aid.

Four different sets of parents murdering their children and then themselves.

Two plane crashes just during the time it took for me to drive through Illinois. United Flight 571 from Chicago to San Francisco went down in an Iowa cornfield, responders too sluggish to save anyone. And American Flight 1114 from Miami to New York crashed on landing at LaGuardia. Dramatic footage of the plane's wings yawing unexpectedly, nipping the ground, and ripping off abruptly in an explosion of fire as the rest of the plane rolls over and breaks in half, pouring smoke. No word yet on survivors.

Cut to the president declaring a state of emergency.

I flip the channel. SpongeBob and Patrick fight, laugh, blow bubbles, hunt jellyfish. I wonder if Vig still loves SpongeBob, or if he's hardened so much now that he can't laugh at Mr. Krabs.

Jack never much liked SpongeBob either.

I don't feel guilty as I fall asleep, the world out there burning.

Midday, the skyline of New York becomes visible, beyond the smoke and traffic of the I-78 into Manhattan, but I'm too focused on driving to do anything more than note its presence. All my memories, stolen and native, didn't prepare me for driving into New York. It seems that's something you just have to do for yourself.

I've passed more than thirty overturned cars, some smoking husks. Cops, ambulances. I'm sure the tanks will be there soon. That's the way it works on television, anyway.

Hours later, I'm in the city and parking's a total bitch. I circle two blocks for an hour before cashing out and whipping the ride into a nearby garage. The attendant, a mangy-looking greaser with a ponytail and a bad complexion, has a Rider peeking from behind the iron curtains. For a moment, as I fork over the money, he looks like he's got something on the tip of his tongue.

Or maybe he's just doing his job best he can.

I know I'm long gone from Tulaville Psych, but damn, the paranoia is catching.

I park the car, walk down the stairwell stinking of urine, into the gray streets.

The weather is gorgeous, mid-eighties, the sun is out and there's a breeze, but the people on the streets look hollow and worn-out. Wary.

I head up a couple of blocks to Twentieth, near a park. Gramercy. That name seems familiar.

There are bearded men on boxes on the sidewalk, screaming warnings to passersby. One loon with a blow horn is ripe for Tulaville, trumpeting outraged verse.

I think about Jerry while I try to find his building. It's been a year. He was with me when I recovered from the knife wound the Dubrovnik woman gave me. Sometimes I have trouble even remembering what he looks like, other than the white hair and bushy eyebrows. It's as though I've stolen so many other people's memories, it's ruined my own. But Jerry was funny and asked too many questions. Bright eyes, but full of pain from the gallstones. Loved board games.

And here's the building. A nice one. I manage to catch the door before it closes as a harried-looking woman, cradling a squalling, florid child, exits. The boy's face is furious, screaming. Hands balled into tiny fists. I don't even have to go inside her head to know that she's thought about muffling the infant. And that's the difference between her and Schneider the bull. She doesn't act on the impulse. I am you and you are me though we always disagree.

I go inside the boy's mind like entering a maelstrom of emotion and desire. It's like a sea of water floating in outer space, wracked by millions of gravitational forces. There's no frame of reference. No up or down. None of the mental and emotional order that comes with adulthood.

I spark the matchstick of his mind, and his little head bursts into flames visible only to me. He shuts his mouth. Looks at me. It's strange when our eyes meet, the infant's and mine.

He'll sleep well tonight. And maybe so will his mother.

I move inside the old tiled foyer, pass the doorman who, luckily, has never been to Baltimore. Skim across his awareness and keep his eyes focused on everything but me. I'm invisible as I take the elevator.

The doors hiss open on the sixth floor, and I step out into the hallway.

Jerry's holding the photo when he answers the door. White-haired, eyebrows bristling, he wears a chambray shirt, khakis. White, comfortable tennis shoes and no socks. He's got skinny ankles, a thin chest. Large, liver-spotted hands. He's got the hard, knobby aspect of a withered boxer. He's dressed in a fashion that makes me think,
This is how rich folks dress down
. No sweatpants and flip-flops for the upper crust. Jerry's nicely tanned, making his white hair all the whiter. His craggy face splits into a great smile when he sees me.

“Ay, yay! Shreve!” He looks up and down the hall, bewildered. Then laughs and hugs me. Holding my arms, he leans back, gaze searching my face. “Somehow, I knew you would be visiting. But you look terrible.”

“Thanks, Jerry. How's things?”

“Fair. Passing fair, my boy.”

I look around his apartment. Nice digs. It's got two big bay windows looking out over the trees of the park. If you opened them, you could hear the bellows of the crazies on the sidewalk, clear as a bell.

I can hear the blow horn from the park crazy even with the window closed. Jerry says, “It is disturbing, these maniacs. Gramercy isn't a public park, and we never have people like this in our neighborhood.”

“Looks pretty posh, this area.”

He nods, a little sheepish. “It's mostly professional. Or monied. An old neighborhood.”

I look about some more.

Big painting of red circles on a black field. Architectural magazines on a blocky, stylish coffee table. Nice comfy sofa. Spare decor except for a few frilly touches and pictures of young adults with children.

He watches me nosing about. Puts his hands on his hips, arms akimbo, and grins at me.

“First time in the city?” he says.

I say, “Ran a record store on the Lower East Side in the seventies.” It was too hot in the summer and drafty in the winter and the rats had a field day in the remaindered pile in the basement. But I smoked a lot of weed. Or Wilson Welles did, and I have his memories.

He laughs like it's the best thing he's heard all year. “Always the joker, eh, Shreve?”

I've been here before, or some part of me has. But I just nod and look about. I say, “How you sleeping, Jerry? You're lookin' pretty good.”

“The insomnia? Terrifying, no? Strangely, I am not affected. The wife is a different matter.”

Figures.

Jerry's one of those knuckleheads, like Jack. A person with mental defenses so tough, getting in will hurt them. Maybe break their mind.

Whatever wavelength the sleeping thing in Maryland broadcasts on, casting its sleeplessness into the world, me, Jack, and Quincrux (I'm betting) are immune. Now we add Jerome Aaronson to those ranks. Not carrying a Rider, but mentally as
impenetrable as a steel blast door. You get them sometimes, the stubborn ones. With my new strength—the new and improved shibboleth—I could make a run at him, try to get in. Maybe even do it. I got in once with Jack, made him see what I wanted him to see. It was brutal.