Apprehensions and Other Delusions (10 page)

“It was vermin that brought Plague, Brother Emmerano. I am mad still, though I pray devoutly that God will pity me and save me from the madness that has claimed the whole of my thoughts for all these years.” It was not easy to understand him with his face to the wall. “But suppose it is true? What if my madness is no madness? Suppose that there is truth in those pages, and our efforts have been spent in vain? That is what makes my days’ torment: suppose the book is right, and there is vermin and vermin’s vermin and vermin’s vermin’s vermin, and that is what causes Plague when God is displeased with mankind?”

Brother Emmerano sighed. “He should not have drunk so much. The wine has muddled his thoughts. He has had too much, and mad that he is, he is sunk into his madness.” He started to rise. “I will have Brother Luccio record all you have said, Brother Rat, and in the morning it will be read to you and you will be absolved, and the priests will anoint you.” His habit rustled as he rose, clapping his hands for the lay Brothers at the door.

“There could be other vermin that bring other ills,” muttered Brother Rat. “There may be many others. It may not be sufficient only to kill rats.” He pulled his blanket close around him and coughed, low and steady, as the writing table and two stools were removed from the cell.

As the lay Brother turned the key in the lock of the cell door, Brother Emmerano blessed him and added a blessing toward the door itself. “You will bring the Confession to me, Brother Luccio. Make sure you include my request to review it.”

“As you wish,” I told him, lowering my face to show him respect. “As soon as I have presented it to the Prior.” I walked behind Brother Emmerano, as was proper. “They say the Plague has returned,” I mentioned as we started up the stairs to the refectory.

Brother Emmerano nodded. “We have said Masses for the dead already.” He paused, his face emotionless. “Poor Brother Rat, if he learns of it. But it is not likely, in God’s Mercy.”

I bowed my head and protected myself with the Cross. And as we resumed our climb, I could not keep from asking, “Do you suppose there is the least chance he is right? I know he is mad, but some madmen have visions, don’t they?”

Brother Emmerano laughed once. “How can that be? Brother Rat has been broken by the wiles of the Devil. Madmen who have visions see angels and the hosts of Heaven and the tribulations of the Martyrs or are offered comfort by Our Lady. They glimpse the world that is beyond the earth, either Heaven or Hell. They do not see the vermin of rats, Brother Luccio.”

“Amen,” I replied, my faith in Brother Emmerano and God. I resolved not to be led into error, though I had received warning that my sister was ill with a cough and a fever. How simple a thing it would be to blame rats and the vermin of rats instead of God—how simple and how monstrous. I whispered a prayer for her protection as well as my forgiveness and went to my cell to prepare the record of the Confession for the Prior.

About
Confessions of a Madman

I wrote this story for the anthology
Psycho Paths
at the request of its editor, the wonderful and much-missed Robert Bloch. He asked if I could come up with something in which the supposed cause or expression of madness was not madness at all, but in which, also, the madness was genuine. This was the result.

“THEY WERE
much
wiser than we are, you know.” She stood behind the gift counter at the Dry Plains International Airport, a woman with shag-cut, grey-struck hair and enormous light-blue eyes behind small wire-rimmed glasses; she looked as if she had been stuck in 1967 for the last quarter century.

“They?” said Philips absentmindedly as he paid for the two magazines of local interest; one boasted a long section on the delights of Mexico, just over the Texas border, the other had a gorgeous series of photographs of restored turn-of-the-century houses in Dallas and Houston. He wanted to keep his mind off Dry Plains—the place gave him the creeps, always had.

“The Comanches. They used to live around here, long ago. Sometimes, at night like this, I think they’re still here. They were a very spiritual people.” She beamed at him, handing him his change with an expression that said, “Have a nice day,” though it was now twenty minutes after two on a windy autumn night.

“I don’t know about Comanches,” Philips said, his manner suggesting that ignorance was just fine with him.

She smiled and indicated some of the Indian necklaces in the display case—Hopi and Navajo, for the most part, and with very unspiritual price-tags—with a gentle sigh of approval. “The Native Americans understand nature so much better than we do. They’re so empathetic, so much in tune with the earth. It’s part of their way of life, not like us at all. They respect everything in nature. You can see it in everything they do.”

“Thanks,” said Philips, moving a short distance from the counter so as to end her version of small-talk. He paid no attention to her, choosing to put his mind on the superior photographs of the magazines. After a little while he wandered out toward the lobby area for private and corporate airplanes, half-reading the first of the magazines and trying to decide if he ought to call the Trager International office in Dallas before they called him. Just because it was the middle of the night didn’t mean that Trager wasn’t barreling along. He decided that he ought to get another cup of coffee so he wouldn’t be tempted to doze.

He had taken a seat on one of the high stools at the only snack counter open at that hour and had just been handed a large, biodegradable cup filled with lukewarm coffee when he heard his name on the PA system. He picked up the carry-out cup and hurried toward the nearest courtesy phone, preparing to defend his decision to land here rather than at Dallas/Fort Worth. “Galen Philips here,” he said as he lifted the receiver.

“A call for you, sir,” said a woman’s voice with a faint Spanish accent. “I’ll put you through.”

“Thanks,” he told her in order to be polite. He waited, wondering who would be on the other line.

“Philips!” boomed D. A. Landis, as if in the middle of the night he was ready to participate in a jousting tournament or emcee a banquet for a thousand people. “Good to talk to you this way.”

Philips sighed. He had a strong distrust of the hearty, venal Landis who ran the Trager division in Chicago. “Good morning, D.A.,” he said, trying to infuse a little good fellowship into his voice.

“I had a call from the maintenance people there about half an hour ago.” He made every word portentous. “They told me that you had to be one lucky son of a bitch to bring our company jet down without any harm, considering the malfunction of the instruments. We ought to listen to you veteran pilots more often. Your hunch about the plane was right. If you’d tried to push on, you might have crashed; that’s what the night supervisor just told me. We can’t have that.”

“I guess not,” said Philips, his guts feeling suddenly hot, then cold.

“You experienced flyers, you’ve got instincts.” He coughed once. “You better layover there until the plane is fixed. They say it shouldn’t be much more than two days. They can start work on it in the morning; their night crew is just a skeleton, a shift of five guys. They can’t handle the trouble, and according to them it’ll take a day at least to check it out. Hell, we can spare you from the roster that long. Besides, you’re due for some ground time, aren’t you?”

“Pretty much,” said Philips.

“Too bad we don’t have a corporate apartment there you can use—there’s no reason for it—but find yourself a hotel and get a good room. Not the most expensive suite in the place, but we don’t want you camping in a broom closet, either. Looks bad to the stockholders.” He had a plummy chuckle that sounded like ripe fruit bursting. “Put it on your corporate account. We’ll cover anything reasonable like car rentals and meals, providing you don’t eat steak and lobster three times a day, or drive to Nevada.”

“Thanks,” said Philips, feeling a bit dazed by his good fortune and suspicious of it all at the same time.

“Use this as your long rest time. You’re supposed to take three days off at the end of the month. You might as well do them now.” He sounded more hail-fellow-well-met with every word, and Philips distrusted that.

“Why now? I’ve got other flights logged.” He did his best to sound mildly curious instead of worried.

Landis did not answer him. “Oh,” he said as if it had just occurred to him, “would you mind sticking around the airport until the morning maintenance crew comes on? Stay with them while they go over the report on the plane? You were there when the trouble started and you know the right things to ask. They’ll be able to give you a better picture about the repairs, and you can relay that to me when you get to the hotel.”

Philips swallowed hard. He knew that the morning crew at this airport arrived at six, which would mean he would have to wait another three and a half hours to talk with them. He was glad now that he had bought the magazines. “Sure. No problem.”

“That’s terrific,” said Landis. “That’s just fine.”

As reckless as it was, Philips could not keep himself from asking, “What about the Amsterdam flight? Who’s going to cover for that?” He was scheduled to leave late tomorrow afternoon with a group of executives bound for a crucial meeting in The Netherlands.

“We’ll find someone,” Landis told him confidently. “We can probably bring Chapman back from vacation a day early.”

“I could take a commercial flight up in the morning, after I get the report on the plane. I could be out of here by noon,” Philips suggested. He did not want to admit that he hated this place and the thought of being here for more than a couple of hours made him edgy. “I’d have enough time for sleep and sufficient hours off to make the flight.”

Again that high-calorie chuckle. “I wish more of our people had your dedication, Philips.”

He wanted to say it wasn’t dedication, it was dread, and a sense of being drawn here, as if the very place itself were reaching out to snare him. But such an admission could earn him a psychiatric evaluation and enforced retirement; he was close enough to that already. “You know me. I like to fly, and Amsterdam is a great place. I had some plans for the trip, that’s all. I was hoping to get in a little ... play.”

Now the chuckle had a licentious spice in it. “I enjoy playing in Amsterdam myself. I can’t blame you for wanting to go there. Maybe we can arrange for you to have a couple of extra days there when this is over.” The offer was a sop and both men recognized it for what it was. “Let me know what the maintenance people tell you, and we’ll figure out what to do next. How’s that?”

“Great,” said Philips, who thought it sucked.

“I’m relying on you,” said Landis, and went on to assure Philips that he would be sure to credit him with saving the company’s second-largest jet, and planned to inform the Board of Directors that there ought to be a bonus in the deal for him.

When Landis had finished finessing Philips, he hung up abruptly, leaving Philips to stare down the long, empty corridor toward the main part of the airport. From the air, he thought it looked a little like a lopsided galaxy, with four spiral arms stretching out from the center. Now he had the disquieting impression that he was at the edge of a whirlpool, turning and pulling, turning and pulling. He wanted to avoid the center as long as possible, for once there he would not escape. It was hard for him to shake off that irrational sensation as he went back to the snack counter to buy a couple of stale doughnuts.

The woman from the gift shop was there, getting a cup of herbal tea. “You’re still here,” she said in that lilting way that brought back memories of flower children. “Are you waiting for a connecting flight?”

“No,” he said. “Worse luck.”

If she noticed his terseness it made no difference to her. “At night like this, there aren’t many flights coming in on this arm. It stays quiet here. Over there”—she cocked her head to the south where the international flights arrived—“there’s things going on all the time. People leave at one in the morning and land at three. But here, we don’t see much of that. They try to keep traffic to a minimum after nine.” There was a faint, romantic smile on her face. “I used to work in the international shop, but they moved me over here a couple of years ago. It was exciting, seeing all those strange things in the shop, and meeting people from all over the world. Don’t you think it’s exciting to meet people from other countries? Isn’t it wonderful to learn about them and the places they come from?”

“I guess,” said Philips, who had no desire to talk.

She beamed at him and held out her long, slim hand, nails unpainted. “I’m Senta. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I don’t often get to talk to people, working the night shift. But most of the staff don’t like working at night, even though it pays better.”

Reluctantly he took her hand. “Galen Philips.”

Her eyes brightened behind the granny glasses. “You fly for Trager, don’t you?”

Since the badge on his jacket was embossed with the Trager logo— sixteenth-century merchant ship called a hulk—he only nodded.

“I like the way Trager planes look,” she said. “You can always spot them, with their wings and the tail painted red and the ship in black. It’s very distinctive.” Her expression changed, became distant. “When I first worked here, Braniff had jets painted neon orange and shocking pink and bright lime, colors like that. They were beautiful, like huge butterflies. I loved it. No one does that anymore.”

“I remember them,” said Philips, drawn by the memory. “The first time I saw one I thought I was hallucinating.”

She laughed, sounding much younger than she looked. “So did I. I was still doing mushrooms then, so it made sense. Still, it was a relief to know that I wasn’t just seeing things. Sometimes, around here at night, I worry about that.” She glanced in the direction of the gift shop, then looked back at him. “I’m sorry. This is great, talking to you, but I’ve got to get back to work. There’s nobody here, but I have to stay in the shop. We have rules. Things could happen. You know how it is.”

Now that he had the opportunity to get away from her, Philips decided he would rather talk a little longer. “I’ll come with you. I haven’t anything to do until six, anyway, and if I read I’ll
probably doze.”

She looked mildly surprised. “That would be nice,” she said with curious formality. “My relief comes on at eight. But things pick up before then. The first of the commuter flights arrives just before six. The first is from Atlanta, and then the one from Chicago, and then two from New England—Boston and Hartford, I think, or maybe Providence—and then L.A., St. Louis, Seattle, Omaha, Atlanta again, Salt Lake, Albuquerque, Buffalo, San Francisco, and Cleveland, and that takes us almost to seven. I guess you’ll be gone by then.”

“You’ve memorized the schedule,” said Philips, wondering if there was somewhere he could sit in the gift shop.

“After all the time I’ve worked here, it would be hard not to. I know some of the regular passengers now. There’s a man who comes in on the seven-ten flight from Denver. I’ve seen him twice a month every month except December ever since I’ve been working here. He told me he’s a courier for some international outfit. He always dresses in expensive suits; he carries a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. He buys the local paper, a couple packages of gum because he gave up smoking, and he says something about the weather. Every time. It’s unreal. And one of the men on the L.A. flight makes the trip on the first Monday of every month. He’s some kind of attorney, real flashy. He always comes in, picks up magazines and the paper. Another one, on the seven-forty-nine from Dulles, stops in to ask about traffic. He talks fast, in bursts. He’s a kind of a flirt. He’s the assistant to the Congressman in this district.” Her color was heightened, like a girl boasting about her suitors and not a middle-aged woman discussing her regular customers. “They have news, sometimes, but not like over in the international arm. It’s not as exciting here. Those people were real different.”

“Because they’re from far away?” Philips guessed.

“Oh, yes. They’re out doing all kinds of things, things you can’t imagine; they’re seeing things.” She gave him a winsome smile, the kind of smile that usually fades by the time a woman reaches thirty. “I used to like the trans-Pacific flights, because everyone was trying to figure out what day it was. No one has that trouble over here, except sometimes when we have real bad weather.” It might have been a joke because the lines around her light-blue eyes crinkled.