Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman
And it’s getting worse.
“Oh yes,” a voice says. “Rises and sets like the sun. Like the rest of us.”
It’s Dr. Szands.
The Asian is very drunk. Philip has seen the same expression in a hundred beer halls, a hundred gigs.
Movement by the window and Philip sees a third man, fair-haired, with angular features. His eyes sparkle with night, as if he’s come in through the window.
Philip tries to lift his right hand, can’t. Can’t even move the fingers.
The syringes look like liquor to him now, the needles left loaded in the Rehab Unit.
The Asian is backing up, toward the unit door, replaced by two men dressed like Scott Malone, the government man who came to question Philip with the sketch artist.
“Careful with your drink, Mr. Serino,” one of the men says. He’s smiling, but there is no humor. Philip has seen the same expression in used car lots, in department stores, Macy’s; the men in this room may be drinking, but they’re here on business.
“Progress,” Szands says. Concrete pride in his eyes; Philip can imagine the trucks that poured it.
Szands walks to the filing cabinet, folding white cloth. Philip recognizes it as his own hospital gown.
“Naked,” Philip says, and his voice is agony.
The room erupts with astonishment.
“He speaks!” the Asian cries.
“Yes,” Dr. Szands says. “Just like the rest of us.”
Philip is naked.
Exposed.
Displayed.
The Asian claps the man with the windbreaker on the back. He points to Philip’s abdomen with a wobbling drink.
“Careful,” the second government man says, smiling anxiously, as though, while it may be funny to spill his drink on a patient who can’t move, this patient is valuable.
The man in the windbreaker approaches the cot.
He leans in. Examining. Philip smells scotch. But this man isn’t sloppy about it.
Music is coming from the office. Lounge music. Island music.
“Amelioration,” Szands says, quietly taking center stage. “A man wakes to discover he’s suffered a hideous injury, to most of his body. Less than two weeks later, the same man is able to walk out of the hospital that has healed him.”
“He’s ready then?” the man by the window asks.
Szands shakes his head no.
Philip groans. Because he has to. Because it feels like nails are being pulled from his bones.
Szands looks over his shoulder. Philip recognizes disappointment, and worry, in his eyes.
Philip knows why.
The patient is not supposed to groan. He’s supposed to do push-ups, pull-ups, and to outrun his younger self, the man he was before he got hurt.
“Close,” Szands says. And his voice is full of uncertainty.
“Show us,” the man in the windbreaker says.
Szands wastes no time.
“Sit up, Philip.”
And Philip understands, sees clearly that this moment, now, is supposed to be the triumph of Dr. Szands.
But Philip can’t sit up.
“Philip. Sit up.”
Embarrassment. For Dr. Szands. Very close now. Philip can sense it coming.
And what will a man like Szands do? Humiliated before his peers?
The Asian rushes to the cot. With his free hand he reaches a wet finger to Philip’s lips, then motorboats them.
He laughs. Heartily. Shrieking like a schoolboy.
He does it again.
Szands grips the man’s wrist. When he does, all the humor leaves the Asian’s face and Philip is very aware that the other men in this room are more powerful than the doctor.
The Asian yanks his arm free.
But Szands is coming unglued.
His masterpiece is misbehaving.
“Sit up.”
But Philip can’t sit up. Can’t move. Feels the bones of his face tightening.
“Looks like you’re further behind than you estimated,” the man in the windbreaker says.
“I know exactly where we are at, thank you. Sit up, Philip!”
No snickers from the others.
Drunk or not.
Szands grips Philip by the shoulders and pulls.
Philip only half screams because the pain of a full one is unfathomable.
“Careful!” the man by the window yells.
“There is no danger,” Szands hisses. “The patient is acting up!”
“Doctor, I don’t think he can—”
“SHUT UP! I know what he can and cannot do!”
Szands tries to position Philip on the cot.
The snap of Philip’s bone echoes through the hall.
“That’s enough!” the man in the windbreaker yells. But Szands is beyond command.
“Doctor . . .”
It’s Francine. She’s standing in the doorway. She’s holding a tray.
“Bring those to me now!”
Francine does.
Dr. Szands administers the medicine.
“Two more,” he says.
He’s hard with the needles. He stabs.
“More, doctor?”
Francine questions this because Philip has never received more than two shots.
Szands looks at her like he might kill her.
Francine is out of the unit and back in again before Philip can speak. But he’s getting closer. The first two are already working.
The others only watch.
Szands grabs the syringes so quick that a needle connects with the band of his watch.
“Two more,” he demands, administering the first of the second round.
Philip’s bones no longer hurt.
Francine leaves. Returns.
Szands stabs Philip a fourth time.
He drops the syringe to the floor and holds out an open palm for a fresh one.
“Doctor,” Francine says, as if she might pull the tray from him. But the power is short-lived.
“GIVE ME THE FUCKING DRUGS, FRANCINE!”
She does.
Szands looks into Philip’s eyes. Philip sees no footing in there. No ground. No Path.
“Want to make a fool of me?”
He stabs Philip a fifth time.
By now Philip can speak. But the relief he feels is too big. Too strong to process.
“Help,” he half says, looking to the others.
But the adoration in their eyes tells him they are finally seeing what they came to see.
Szands stabs Philip a sixth time.
“More.”
Francine does not respond.
“MORE!”
She makes to leave the unit but she pauses at the door. When Szands sees this, he loses what airs remain.
“You are my nurse. You will do as I say. It’s because of you that this is happening in the first place.”
“Dr. Szands.”
Philip is floating, ghostlike, to the ceiling. In his mind he’s going to break it, going to leave the hospital at last.
“Why was the patient not given his medicine, Francine?! WHAT DID YOU DO?!”
“Dr. Szands . . . I had to attend to another patient last night . . . I gave that responsibility to Ellen.”
Szands opens his mouth to speak, but stops.
Sweating, mad eyed, he turns to look at Philip.
“Ellen,” Szands says.
He smiles. He runs his fingers through his hair and laughs.
“Ellen,” he repeats.
“Please,” Philip says. “Don’t hurt her.” But his own voice is a chimera.
The others in the room murmur their approval. The patient has spoken. The patient has turned his head toward them. The patent is reaching out with both arms, as if he might stop the doctor from hurting the nurse in question.
The man in the windbreaker approaches the cot.
Then the Asian.
Then the man by the window.
“Excellent,” windbreaker says. ??
“Yes, well.” Dr. Szands is breathing hard. “Forgive me. It would have gone much smoother, had . . .”
“No,” windbreaker says, extending an open palm. “Truly. This is excellent.”
Philip hears the word as if it’s looped. As if, like time, it repeats itself, on a wheel, wheeled, until the present is happening long ago, and the things that have passed return to the present. As if, by virtue of being a wheel, it must roll, and by rolling it shakes the earth, the dirt, the dead beneath it, brings them forth, summons them, calls to them, says, You were once and you are once again.
To this turning, Philip spins into a relief too big, a darkness with no visible objects to stop him.
32
Greer is talking about ghosts. Old ghosts and newer ghosts and ghosts yet to be, including, Philip thinks, their own platoon: future ghosts; men who could be found in this desert, on these dunes, a hundred years from now, a century ahead; Larry Walker’s petrified body in the sand, Philip Tonka descending a dune, archaic weapon in hand, more interested in the modern man’s light source than the more advanced weapon he brandishes. And while Greer talks (Civil War, American Revolutionary War, this is no coincidence, guys, this is the meat of why we’re here; this has to do with the SOUND) Philip is restlessly thinking of home, knowing now that a hundred thousand dollars isn’t enough and never was.
Home, Wonderland, the Danes, the Path . . .
“Imprints,” Greer says, stuck on this word. “Residual hauntings. The past on a loop. But the thing is, usually imprints don’t interact with the present; they’re energy, running in place, repeating themselves over and over. That’s the loop. But the man Philip saw addressed the flashlight, and that’s something there. And the body,” Greer thumbs over his shoulder, all the way to the foot of the dune, where the man with the Civil War boots lies still, rewrapped and hidden from the sun. “Another imprint.”
“Like echoes,” Larry says, tightening the green shirt tied around his head.
“Yes,” Greer says, relieved that somebody has made a correlation between sound and spirit.
Philip looks to the sky. Can’t picture the plane returning. Can’t see it happening.
His pack begins to tremble in the sand.
“Hey,” he says. “Guys . . .”
The first thought he has is: Tanks. Crossing the desert.
But the sound arrives before the idea takes root.
This time, the sound comes as a beam, a singular force, powerful enough to rattle the reels, shake the boots of the soldiers. Auditory, yes, but there is a flash of something seen; a rippling, ten feet across, passing over their heads, vanishing between dunes in the distance.
As quick as it comes, it is gone.
Not long enough to get sick. Not long enough to study.
“Holy Christ,” Duane says. “It’s gonna kill us, isn’t it.”
But Philip’s mind is elsewhere.
Looking to the sky, as the others are, bracing himself lest a second, even more forcible example arrives, he crawls beside Greer.
“Could a sound wave shake up an imprint? Bring it back . . . to life?”
Greer smiles as if to dismiss the idea; then the smile falls.
“What do you mean, Tonka?”
“A frequency . . . able to break the pattern, the loop, of a residual haunting. Free the ghosts that enact them.”
Greer is quiet for some time.
“If that were possible, why stop with hauntings?”
“Now what do you mean?”
“If a sound were capable of breaking such patterns . . . why not bigger ones?”
Philip makes to ask for more, but Greer is already delivering it.
“Like history. Like history repeating itself. If we’re going to be crazy enough to believe a sound can free literal ghosts, Private Tonka, why not figurative ones as well?”
Lovejoy calls from a dune.
“Tell it to me plain, Greer,” Philip says.
“If we’re comfortable believing that ghosts can step from their loops, why can’t man? Why can’t this sound put an end to war? You see? Not a weapon after all, Tonka. But . . . the opposite.”
It’s time to move on. To follow the hoofprints in the sand.
They are unarmed. They are scared.
They are determined to continue.
“Don’t let this thread die,” Greer says to Philip.
“Do you believe it?”
“Of all the scientific theories that have been warring in my imagination, none feel as real as this. And yet . . . the hoofprints . . . the goat . . .”
Philip grabs his pack, stands, and asks himself, What is the opposite of a weapon?
He looks to his useless gun in the sand. Picks it up anyway.
It’s time to go deeper into the desert.
33
Standing up.
Ellen is repeating these two words as she approaches the office. Dr. Szands is in there, she knows. She saw him minutes before finding Philip standing up (standing up!) in his unit. The sight, only ten days into his rehabilitation, has snapped any hesitation.
She is a nurse. Her job is to nurse.
And this (STANDING UP) is not healing.
When she reaches the office door, she pauses. She thinks of exactly what she’s going to say and how she’s going to say it.
This is a military hospital. This is the government. This isn’t like the time she complained about the rats outside the Dairy Dame.
Are you sure you have the patient’s best interests in mind, doctor? As a nurse, I can’t be a part of something that isn’t . . . that isn’t . . .
But what isn’t it?
Ellen will have to tell Dr. Szands that she saw the drugs in the Medicine Unit, A-9-A; tell him about the man in the bar who took the drawing of the goat she did for Philip.
Ellen breathes deep and enters the office.
Szands is standing in the center of the room, arms crossed.
He’s been waiting for her.
“Did you refuse to give Philip Tonka his medicine?”
She wasn’t expecting this. But shouldn’t she have been? What did she think would happen if he didn’t get his shots?
“Yes.”
“Good. Honesty. Why?”
This is worse. The why. ’Cause the why can only be answered with I don’t trust you anymore.
“He’s healing too fast.”
Szands laughs, and Ellen hears in it a cackle.
“Is there such a thing, Miss Jones? And is it your job to decide?”
On the desk, within reach of his fingers, is a knife.
“Am I being fired, doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Very well.”
“Nothing to say?” Szands asks.
“No, doctor.”
Szands uncrosses his arms. His blue and yellow Hawaiian shirt has never looked as out of place to Ellen as it does right now.
“Most people, when they’re let go from their place of employment, express at least some malaise, Miss Jones.”
“I didn’t administer medicine when I was told to. I understand.”
The rancorous look in his eyes . . . the only other time Ellen’s seen a look so exaggeratedly fierce was in the comics Jean enjoyed.
“I’ll gather my things,” she says. “I’ll turn my uniform in.”
“You will be watched, Miss Jones.”
“What did you say?”
Szands doesn’t feign innocence.
“This is a matter of national security. Not a love story.”
Ellen reddens. She would check her heart for bugs if she could.
She exits the office and takes the hall to the nurses’ station. On the way back, on her way out of the hospital, she looks into Unit 1.
Philip’s legs are on the cot. He’s doing sit-ups.
Ellen walks away.
Leaves through the front door.
She knows, darkly, that this is not the end of it. That this event, this day,
For Philip.
In Macy Mercy, Ellen is his only friend. Without her, who is going to watch over him? Who is going to say something when they should?
Ellen reverses, shifts, and exits the parking lot. Ahead, the open cornfields of Iowa look like freedom. Like the future.
Go. It’s one man. One life. Go.
But in her rearview mirror she sees Macy Mercy, sees it for the first time for what it is: a cold, brick rectangle with only one way in, one way out.
Philip.
As she drives, she turns up the radio, then has to turn it off.
What can she do about this? What can be done?
She thinks. She drives. She feels the false relief of leaving a place she can never really leave, the sense that, with each half mile, each hundred feet, she is safer.
Something keeps her tied. Something tethers her.
“Philip,” she says. “I’ll be back for you.”
But she doesn’t know if this is true. Doesn’t know how to make this true.
34
Greer drags the body, wrapped like a cigarette in the tarp. Lovejoy points to the prints in the sand.
Faint.
Yet present.
Nobody talks about the “ghost” Philip saw because nobody feels safe. Ross is missing, yes, but the appearance of these impossible soldiers is equally frightening, as if they’re beginning to line the path of hoofprints, or as if the prints have intentionally led the platoon into this mad arcade.
A haunted house, Philip thinks. Or like the house of horrors on Mackinac Island. Only we’re out in the open here.
Even the click of Stein’s camera sounds less confident. Like there’s less chance of anybody ever seeing the images he captures.
With each minute passing, the other Danes feel more responsible for Ross. And the body Greer drags, the human Picasso, does not bode well for their friend.
Duane hasn’t spoken in two miles. And when he did talk, it was only to mutter the word “airplane,” as if needing the consistent reminder that there is a planned end point to this experience.