The Wild by Whitley Strieber
Easy does it, fella, this is serious. You are out in the middle of the street. But was he walking, flying, or being blown like a leaf? And where was he going? A bus leaped at him, its driver leering down, chewing gum furiously. Someone had him by the hand, was drawing him farther and farther —no, he was still in front of the bus, it was his arm that was getting longer and longer. He stared down the immense stretch of his sleeve into the real world. There was a man out there, holding hands with him. Dance?
"Can't you cross a goddamn street?"
Bob ran around in the garden, gathering flowers, and each flower was a word of a part of a word. "Oh," snapdragon. "I'm," daffodil. "Sorry," Easter lily. "I," Queen Anne's lace. "Slipped," Mountain laurel.
"Holy Christ, leggo my hand. Goddamn pansy." The man shook Bob off and hustled away. "Geek," he cried over his shoulder.
Bob was struck dumb with wonder to find himself at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Sixtieth Street. The zoo stood just across the street, a damnation of cages. He saw it not as a place but as a state of being. It was as ideological an institution as mankind has produced, a place of total and perfect injustice, where innocents were confined in hell for the amusement of the curious.
Oh, getting sentimental about the animals again, Bob? What about people, what about Auschwitz, Rudi Mengele standing on Sonja Teitelbaum's chest? Did that happen because Sonja went to too many movies, or smoked on the street? And why is the wolf here? He ate living flesh, and so is no more innocent than his captors:
Here we have it: To survive is to be guilty. To die is to be more guilty still. That's the point of Kafka's Trial, isn't it: guilt is the central quanta of life. The trial is itself the sentence. The accusation proves the guilt of the accused, okay? And the wolf? Well, he was tried in the court of the tranquilizer dart, and in that court the sentence is always the same: life behind bars, thank you very much.
Once upon a time Bob had known a man who had suffered from a tic so extreme that it made him look as if his face was a wobbling gelatin sculpture. He was a bond salesman and his life depended on the impression he made on people. He had a pipe, which he would grasp in his teeth, surround with his lips, and struggle to hold. He never lit it. The pipe was his anchor. And the guy in Atlanta—Jeal—had used his the same way.
The pipe—Bob needed its equivalent on this terrible pilgrimage to the lair of the wolf. He needed something totally ordinary that would contain his urge to flutter, to run, to skitter along under the benches.
"Popcorn," he gasped, the prospector dying in the desert, calling to his last mirage.
"A dollar."
He took the bag of warm popcorn, gratitude humming in him. The world made nice things. He could remember the six-to-sixty matinee at the Broadway Theater in San Antonio—oh, to just once hear the faint cataract of fresh popcorn being expelled during the love scene, and you could go out to the lobby and for a dime actually buy a red-and-white-striped box of that wonderful smell.
There is no six-to-sixty matinee anymore, because there are no children. Childhood was invented by Lewis Carroll as the private amusement of a master of paradox. Carroll's brilliant artifice was destroyed by the twentieth century.
But there is still popcorn, and walking along the rows of cages to the cage of the God, Bob looked just like any other lost man ambling through the forest that never ends. "Hey, tapir, I know somebody who might like to free you. And you, kinkajou, let's set you up in my secret zoo." He elaborated on that theme. Manhattan is a place of secret clubs, even a secret coffee shop on Lexington Avenue, a place where they serve perfectly ordinary coffee and danish and make a decent egg cream, all ordinary and nice, except it is a secret, and because it is a secret, is fought over by the endless stream of the newly famous who make the city at once so sad and so hilarious.
The popcorn was good. Overhead the trees, swept by afternoon wind, hissed with a voice too subtle to be understood, too important to be ignored. Bob looked up and almost wept with the grandeur he beheld, the leaves dancing, the clouds sailing past angels on their indifferent ways.
In his preoccupied state it took him some little time to understand that the zoo had gone into pandemonium, more or less coincident with his arrival. He realized it only when a condor began beating its wings against its bars and huffing as he passed. He noticed that keepers were running back and forth, one a young woman in tears, sobbing words of comfort to a cage full of bellowing, eye-bulging monkeys. The tiger dragged its' flab around, rippling as it waddled. Its eyes stared into Punjab.
The ring-tailed cats were screaming and hissing, slashing at the air, which was itself in turmoil, the wind whipping women's dresses, grabbing a baby carriage and sailing it off, its au pair frantic and far behind, shrieking in Swedish. A tiny hand waved from the carriage.
The mountain goats were leaping toward the top of their enclosure, the gorillas were roaring, the gibbon was laughing, its teeth bared.
Still the wind came on, sharp and cold, sudden black hands of cloud chasing the fluffy angels, stinging flecks of rain and squadrons of leaves sweeping down the paths, catching in Bob's popcorn, swarming, swirling, and the clanging of the little Indian elephant as she tortured her bars.
Just then three keepers rushed past carrying between them a huge slack snake with an oblong bulge in its middle. "For God's sake she swallowed a purse," one of them wailed. "Maggie swallowed a damn lizard purse!"
Behind them came a well-dressed woman of perhaps fifty, her black face tragic, her makeup running. "I never seen no snake that big strike," she said to Bob. "They think she's gonna die because of my purse!" The last word came out as a crackling moan. Then the woman hurried on, presumably to claim her belongings after the vet operated on Maggie.
Bob let his popcorn fall away. He was drawing close to the cage of the wolf. There was only one word to describe his feelings, and that was awe, for he had seen the eyes. The wolf alone was not screaming, it alone was not gnawing or beating or pushing its bars. Bob was overcome by emotion. He could not look into the face of the great forest beast, but rather looked down. He felt its gaze, as implacable as diamond, a radiant fire. Now the God reveals itself, he thought. It has hidden long enough in the folds of the animal.
He went to his knees, crouching, and felt himself raise his right hand, press it closer and closer to the jaws of the cage, spread it wide, and slip it through. The wolf sniffed Bob's fingers.
It snarled. Then it took his hand roughly, shaking its head from side to side. Bob could almost see as if through the tips of his fingers the crusted old teeth, the cracked and yellowing tongue. The wolf shook him once and let him go, then raised his own paw. Bob looked up. The animal's ears were back, his eyes gleaming like taxidermist's glass. Bob sensed within himself a great animal awakening and flexing.
He knew with a clear and sickening certainty that he was going to change. Right here, right now, he was going to become body with body, this wolf. His insides bubbled. He was melting, being reformed by powerful, hidden hands. His mind struggled with the matter—he was out in public now, people were bound to see. His clothes would be lost, he would be naked. And what about his wallet? There came a great spasm and his back went as straight as a rail. Frantically, he put his hand over his wallet pocket.
Then there were strong hands. "Hey, buddy, you okay?" He was lifted and he saw a flash of brass and blue. A cop was bending over him, lifting his head in a big palm. "You okay?"
"I—I—"
"Have you taken anything? Do you need a stomach pump?"
Would that get it out—he thought not. He lay with his head on the cop's knee, gazing up the powerful lines of the cage bars behind him, and high above he could see the nose of the wolf poking through, and one fang. Ever so carefully, the wolf was gnawing at his cage.
The rest of the zoo was growing quieter. "I'll be all right," Bob said through a thickness of tongue he had never felt before. A shudder racked him.
A policewoman bent over him, her face pinched. "Don't let him s
"Mary, what the hell's the matter with him? I can feel his bones, he's shaped funny."
"Sim, it's a fit. The guy is a cripple and an epileptic." Her face softened. She was a mere child, probably not much past twenty. "Grand mal seizure," she said. "We've got to keep him from swallowing his tongue."
He could not speak, especially not when she stuffed a pocket comb redolent of her styling mousse in his mouth.
"It's not drunk or drugs?"
"Nah. Don't haul him in on a substances charge. We'll look like jerks."
"Thanks, Mary. I don't want an arrest. I don't want to lose lunch break."
Their hands holding him, the sweat of their presence, the faint scent of deodorant and cologne and gunmetal had brought Bob back to the world of fingers and eyes that see in color. It hurt a little: some sort of magic was leaving him, and that was sad.
The comb was bothering him, held firmly in his mouth by Officer Mary. He began to work it with his tongue, which only made her hold it more firmly at first. "Wiiff—pibb—" Finally she removed it. She smiled. "Welcome back. See, we're gonna be fine, aren't we?"
He tried to sit up, but the cops restrained him. "Just a minute. Catch your breath."
"I'm okay."
"You sure?"
He hoped that his expression wouldn't betray him. "Yeah," he said.
The male cop suddenly ran his hands along Bob's chest. He was frowning. "You're—you were—"
"I'm okay."
"You sure are!"
They didn't prevent Bob from getting up when he tried again. The male cop was staring hard at him as he stood.
"Thank you, Officers."
The cop stood with him, looked him up and down. "Jesus!"
Bob could only turn and hurry away. Behind him he could feel the raging presence in the cage, the very wild itself straining at the toils of rusted steel.
Behind him, he heard the cops talking. "He was all bent up, Mary." There was an edge of panic in the man's voice.
"It was the seizure."
"I felt twisted bones! I felt them straighten out!"
Bob kept moving. He hardly glanced to the left and right, ignoring the remains of the pandemonium, the gorilla curled into a giant ball of fur and clutching hands, the monkeys piled in the back of their cage, still and silent, the condor staring, its beak agape.
The cop's voice rose in the distance, high, full of scream. "That man was crippled, I felt his body. I felt his bones'"
An energy had definitely departed. Even the wind had ceased to blow. The light in the streets had lost all magic. Buses and taxis went screaming madly down Fifth Avenue, people dashed back and forth, lovers walked hand in hand, women in furs gazed at the windows of Bergdorf Goodman, limousines lurked before the Plaza. A bag man leaned against the wall that separated Central Park from Fifty-ninth Street. He was totally inert.
Bob felt as he had when he was a teenager, after some immense act of sex, drained, emptied of all spark, of all friction, a dreg.
The policeman's attentions had interrupted the process. But the cop had felt his bones. He had been in the process of actually turning into something physically else!
By the time he entered Monica's office, he was wondering why he had ever bothered to call her. No psychiatrist could help a man who was melting.
She was cheerful, still dapper in her blue double-breasted suit, her eyes wide and bright, so innocent that they stopped the heart, so knowing that they made him humble. "Well," she said in a confident tone, "how are we this afternoon?"
He could only lie into her broadside of supportive signals. "I feel better."
"Elavin is a good drug. There's nothing like it when somebody's feeling a little panic."
Panic. Yes, that was a good word. But it was not bad panic. Grand panic. Exotic panic. Magical panic.
"At first I thought the pills had made it worse. I got into a really horrendous state."
"How so?"
He related his story, ending it with the kindness of the two cops.
"The zoo animals we can discount. If there really was a disturbance, it was coincidental. It might even have been what induced your attack."
"I was having trouble before I got to the zoo."
"No doubt you were. But we can't trust our own perceptual memory, can we?"
"Monica, I can only repeat that it was a physical thing. One of the cops that helped me out at the zoo thought I was crippled. He was practically screaming when I walked away, because he obviously didn't understand how a person that twisted could just get up and stroll off."
"Well, this is your perception."
"I had a seizure."
"I grant that—but only that. A seizure I can deal with, hallucinations I can deal with, panic I can help you with. But we have to have a basic understanding that these perceptions of yours are not real. Otherwise, Bob—well—"
"I'm psychotic."
"That would be one diagnosis." Her voice was soft and even, but the sharpness in her eyes betrayed her.
"You think I'm going around the bend."
"I think I can help you."
"Then it's Cindy. You're worrying about her."
"Of course. She is my dear friend. I've known her for more than twenty years. And I know how much she loves you. She treasures you."
"Why would anybody do that?"
"I am not in the profession of analyzing love. I'd be a fool to try."
"Implying that you cannot imagine why she loves me. Well, neither can I. I'm a lot of trouble and not much good."
"You've made her happy." There was an edge in Monica's voice.
"Am I leaving my marriage behind? Is that what this is all about?"
"What do you think?"
"I don't know! That's why I asked. You're the expensive psychiatrist. You tell me."
"I'm not a Miss Lonelyhearts. My profession is to guide you toward insight."
He remembered the wolf sucking at his hand. He could feel the tongue, the teeth, could see those glaring, empty eyes. They looked like glass because the soul behind them had been burned away. That wolf was already dead. It wasn't responsible for what was happening, it was just a mechanism.
There was an impression of somebody so huge that they contained the whole earth. He thought of the Catholic image of the Blessed Virgin Mary standing astride the world, and was for a moment deeply comforted. "Officer Mary."
"Excuse me?"
"Did I say something?"
"Something. I couldn't hear you. What were you thinking about?"
There was no way to say it, because the image was so strange and private. His mother must have held him newborn thus, a magical being cradling an infant who trailed in his soul the whole world.
"We underestimate ourselves, Monica. Human beings don't know what they are."
"I've often thought that." A smile almost captured her face, but it got away.
There was something startling here—this woman was not at all wise. She wasn't even a good questioner. Her mind wandered about. She occasionally repeated something you said, agreed, tried to make you expand. But she was not concentrating. For all her well-groomed beauty, the perfect blue of her eyeshadow, the colorful humidity of her lips, her heartbreaking almond eyes, her radiant blond hair—for all of that—she was just not here.
Bob was here, totally. Maybe that was his problem. He had come awake to a life which is normally meant for a sort of sleep. A soul might be like this in heaven, but when it was born, it would forget everything it had learned in the airy libraries of the angels.
"What are you really, truly thinking about right now, Monica?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Monica, please. Forget the session. Forget the questions. What are you thinking about?"
"What should I be thinking about?"
He noticed that there was nothing near the patient that could be thrown, no ashtrays, no fat little statuettes of Buddha like in the rest of the office.
"I could get a comp
"Would that satisfy you?"
A tingling iron was thrust directly into his groin by an unseen hand. His penis sprang up. Sweat flowed from his every pore. Her skin was alight, pale and smooth, her fingers tapering, her breast a milky stillness. The fire in him almost cracked him open. He thought for a moment that he would split in two and his organs would fall out, a stoke of blazing coals.
She laughed a little, leaning forward, her chin on one of those long, soft hands he wished to God would touch him. "Bob?"
"I'm remembering the Catskills." It wasn't true, it was more than that. He wasn't remembering anything and it wasn't her in particular. His desire went flying right out the window, and in an instant included everybody in the world, good, big, little, bad, old, new, every sweat and softness, hair in the sun, sweet skin in the dark.
Singing came from the reception room. Monica turned her head sharply. "Katie, are you still there?"
"I'm leaving now, Monica. Is that okay?"
"Sure, Kate." She got up, a glory of whispering movement. In a low voice she spoke to her assistant. "You don't need to stay for this one. He's a little overwrought, but he's harmless. I've known him for years."
The kiss they traded, made to look casual, seemed to Bob like two molten cymbals crashing, a thing of fury hidden behind a thousand curtains, and on each curtain was another deceiving word. It was not casual. It meant that their hidden souls were in deep and abiding love. They should share their bodies, their very blood. That they did not know this, or ignored it, made them sinners.
She closed the door firmly and came around her big desk. She stood before Bob, her arms folded. "That night haunts you, doesn't it?"
"I want you."
"We could put all that to rest, you know. I'm speaking as a friend. You don't want me, you want your image of me. If I satisfied your curiosity, maybe we could get on with the analysis."
Her words shuddered, and Bob saw that she was shaking. Behind the folded arms, her hands were clenched fists. He felt sorry for her, because he had discovered her secret. She had tried so hard to hide her failure. The reality was before him, though. She had no idea what she was doing: her profession was exactly what it seemed—a superficial fraud clinging to a deeper truth.