The Reality Conspiracy (11 page)

Now he was more convinced something might be wrong. Maybe she'd left him a note somewhere.

As Ed walked through the living room he saw the school portraits of his two kids smiling at him from the top of the television set. Randy, looking like a toothless pixie; Lucy, starting to look a bit . . . well. womanly, in spite of the silver line of her braces.

Entering the kitchen, he flicked on the light. The blue-painted plywood cabinets reminded him how Winnie had been stashing money to replace them with oak. She'd put away a pretty fair nest egg before Lucy's "trouble" began. Then the money had depleted so fast Ed didn't even see it go.

The therapy sessions had started at just one a week, and that wasn't too bad; the doctor's fee was covered by Ed's insurance. Then the number of sessions increased to two a week, then three. And pretty soon the insurance allowance was used up. Now the therapy was all coming out of his own pocket.

Still, he had to be fair. Winnie had offered to take a part-time job as a clerk at the Ben Franklin Store; he had to give her credit for that. But her taking a job wasn't right. No wife of mine's goin' out to work, he'd told her. He'd have no part of it. Providing for the family was a man's job, simple as that.

But with three therapy sessions a week—Ed pulled a Bud out of the refrigerator—why that was $180 a week that went straight out of his paycheck and into the pocket of that female doctor—what's her name?—Karen Bradley.

Ed extracted two pieces of salami from the white waxed-paper packet, rolled them into the shape of a cigar, and bit off about an inch.

That lady doctor was okay, though, he had to admit it. She was doing all she could to get rid of Lucy's "trouble." She had even offered to give them every third session for free. But Ed would have no part of that, either. "I pay, same's I expect to get paid," he had told her.

If he had to work, then by God he'd work. Lots of families had troubles far worse than his. But $180 every week required an awful lot of overtime. And when the overtime stopped, he'd have to take a second job. Good thing they'd bought the house back when they did; mortgage payments were only $257 a month. But as the area around them got more developed, taxes kept right on going up and up . . . .

Ed opened the back door and looked out at the yard. No one there, either.

"Randy! Lucy!"

The tire swing he'd put up for the kids was unoccupied. It moved ever so slowly in the breeze, like a pocket watch dangling on a long chain.

The four Adirondack chairs he'd made last summer—one for each of them—were similarly vacant. Too bad he'd never built that picnic table he'd promised the kids. It was to have been Randy's first lesson in carpentry. Instead, he'd had to sell his table saw before he got around to making anything else. Next, he feared, he'd have to start selling off his guns.

Ed put the empty beer bottle into the space between the counter and refrigerator where they kept shopping bags and empties. Chewing the last of the salami, he walked to the cellar door, opened it, and looked down. "Hey, Winnie, you down there?" But of course she wasn't; the cellar light wasn't on.

"Winnie! Kids! Where the hell is everybody?"

Sure enough, they must have gone off with Winnie's mother. Okay, so where was the note? Least they coulda done was leave a note.

No sir, this wasn't like Winnie at all. Somehow, Ed knew things weren't going to be that simple.

"Winnie!"

God! What if one of the kids was hurt? What if an ambulance had taken everyone to the hospital in Burlington?

"Aw, shit . . ." Ed smacked his forehead with his palm. He chuckled happily.
They're hidin' on me. A'course. Pretty quick they're gonna jump out from someplace yell, "Happy Birthday!"

The front door slammed shut.

Ed jumped. Almost cried out. His heart pounded.

The living-room light flicked off.

"Winn, zat you?"

The kitchen light went out automatically the moment he stepped across the threshold and into the living room.
What's going on with the friggin' lights around here? Can't be a circuit breaker, both lights would've gone out at once
.

"Edmund." It was Winnie's voice, coming from the direction of their bedroom. "Edmund," she sounded funny.

"You're lucky, Edmund. You're so very, very fortunate."

Lucky? What was she talking about? Why did her voice sound so dry and scratchy? Was she sick or something?

He moved toward the hall that led to the bedroom just as Winnie stepped into view. In the darkness her appearance was strange. It was as if she were somehow darker than the shadows in which she stood.

Ed stepped toward her, squinting. She appeared to be dressed in some sort of transparent, filmy outfit. She was naked beneath it. He smiled, taking another step forward. So this was his birthday present! She looked good, too. Her waist was still thin, her thighs were tight, and her tits could still turn a lot of heads.

Smiling, Ed stopped when he realized he wasn't seeing things exactly right. She wasn't dressed in some provocative negligee. Instead, she seemed to be wrapped in an opaque veil of black swirling smoke. It was a form-fitting cocoon of mist that flowed over her body like the glaze of water in a shower.

That's what it looked like, anyway, and that was impossible. He stopped, unbelieving, tried to blink away the dream image. Her voice grew stranger now: windy-sounding, hollow, and distant.

Was she trying to sound sexy or something? "Your great good fortune is to be envied, Edmund my love . . . ."

Beneath the cloak of flowing shifting vapor, Ed could see her heavy breasts swaying as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. The vertical scar from her C-section seemed to glow, pulsing with an unearthly ruby light. Her beautiful red thigh-length hair was tightly braided. Draped over her shoulder, it hung like a crimson cable that dropped almost to her pubic thatch.

"W-what's going on here, Winnie? What's wrong with you? How come you're runnin' around naked like that? Where's the kids?"

She continued as if he hadn't spoken. "All your worries are as memories far, far behind you. Your future is bright, a clearly lighted path—"

"What are you talking about, Winnie? What's happened to you?" He wondered if Lucy's craziness could be contagious; could Winnie have caught a dose of it like some sort of mental influenza?

When he tried to take another step, he couldn't. His feet wouldn't move.

"Think of it, Edmund, love. Think of that one eventuality men fear above all else. The intriguing perplexity that humbles the magnificent, that levels the insignificant—"

"Damn it, Winnie, why are you talking crazy like that?" He tried to move again; couldn't. His voice slid up a register. "Help me. Something's wrong. Jesus Christ. I . . . I can't move!"

"Then listen, damn you."

"To what? What are you talking about for Christ's sake?"

"I'm talking about the sublime inevitability; I'm talking about headin' west, the end of the line . . . ."

"Winnie—"

"I'm talking about the grimmest of reapers, the old man down the road—"

"What old man?" He could feel a useless tide of adrenaline sloshing dead-ended within his paralyzed limbs. What was happening to him? Was this a heart attack? Was he having a stroke?

"The thing, Edmund . . . I'm talking about the very thing that makes the mightiest of you grovel with the peasantry in terror. The eternal footman. Azrael. Man's ultimate uncertainty. For some, Edmund, but not for you. You are the exception. For you, my Edmund, the grand uncertainty is no uncertainty at all."

She stepped closer to him. "Did you ever wonder, dear one, just what it's like to die?" She ran her fingertips ever so softly along his cheek. Her thumb came to rest upon his lips.

"Wh—" Now his lips wouldn't move. It was as if they'd been shot full of Novocain. He wanted to ask her for help—
God, Winnie, I can't move, help me, please, call an ambulance
—but now, dear God, he couldn't speak at all.

"When we pass on, dear Edmund, do the billions of cells in the body die all at once, a perfectly coordinated whole? Or does it happen slowly, cell by cell, piece by piece, a section at a time?" In a graceful curtsy she lowered herself before him, stroked the petrified muscle of his right calf. Numbness took it. It wouldn't support his weight. He collapsed onto his knee in an awkward genuflection. She touched his right thigh and he toppled.

"It's my birthday gift for you, honored husband." She smiled sweetly down at him. "Imagine the terror it must hold for the infirm, the diseased, the elderly. Imagine the solitary crone, her family far away and gone, living in the ancient house alone. Think, Edmund. Think how she makes her way to bed each night, night upon night, and always alone. Think how she wonders if she will survive till morning. Think how the terror will take her, night after night like a sadistic demon lover: Will this be the night? Will she see her children just one more time? Will she see another birthday of her own?"

Ed's eyes hurt. They burned something wicked, but he couldn't blink to lubricate them. His wife took a step closer, straddled his head, looking down. Slowly she lifted her copper braid.

What are you going to do
, he wanted to ask her, but his tongue was a dead thing lying dry and fat in his mouth.

"For you, Edmund my love, there is no more questioning, no more guessing. Fancy it? Freedom from dread, freedom from trepidation. For you, Edmund, uncertainty becomes certainty. There will be no more birthdays—"

She lowered her head, puckering her lips as if preparing for a kiss. The limp braid dangled above his face. Impossibly, its bristled end scraped across his forehead spreading pain like sandpaper on an open wound. Yet he could not cry out.

She straightened. Hands on hips she sauntered around his prone form, continuing her one-sided litany. "No more birthdays, no more Christmases . . ." Her black smoky cloak slid around on her naked body like the tide slipping across the sand. Ed thought he saw tiny sparks here and there within the black intricacy of the smoke. Little pops and flashes, like a miniature lightning storm.

Then she knelt beside him, pulled her hair forward, and draped the braid across his chest. When she pulled it back toward herself, slowly, incredible white-hot pain seared through him. It was like getting whacked with 220 volts. Yet he couldn't pull away, he couldn't scream.

"It's my gift to you, dearest Edmund. Tonight you may enjoy an absolute certainty: tonight is the night you will die."

His fear mounted, raced toward hysteria. But there was no way he could release it, no emotional escape valve. He couldn't pull away, couldn't utter a cry, he could only lie there as she pranced around him, grinning, laughing, flicking him repeatedly with her braided whip. Every time it touched him, pain surged with the ferocity of lightning.

"And again you're fortunate; you'll not endure a lonely death. No, nothing quite that horrible. Your loving family will be with you at the end. We'll surround you, comfort you . . . ."

Little Randy stepped out of the hail. Although he was fully dressed in a jersey and overalls, he too was shrouded in that shifting smoky veil. He held a fifteen-inch wood chisel from Ed's toolbox, and he grinned crazily.

It's a nightmare
, coaxed Ed's racing mind.
But I can't wake up! Why. Can't. I. Wake. Up?

Randy walked over to his father, squatted flat-footed beside him, and tore open Ed's shirtfront. The little boy swayed as he positioned the chisel's blade against Ed's nipple. Randy held it there, metal against flesh, as Ed's mind reeled.

Oh my dear God, why can't I pass out?

Winnie circled behind him, quickly moving out of sight. The reflex to follow her with his eyes was there, but it was out of commission.

Just then Lucy stepped out of the shadowy hallway. No veil of smoke obscured her delicate features.

Help me, Lucy. Help me
, he thought. He wanted to cry out to her. He would plead, if that's what it took. She could help him; she was normal, unaffected.

Then she looked at him, terror in her eyes. Had she seen the smoky fabric screening her mother and Randy?

A pressure built inside Edmund. Terror and frustration grew to lunatic proportions. He thought he would explode. Yet the undiminished voice of the protective father still screamed loudly somewhere in his combusting brain:
Run, Lucy! Run before they get you, too!