A Season of Shadows

By K.W. Moak

In 1976 graduate student Adam Reardons fiance Lis and her children vanished. Officially, they died in a tragic house fire. In reality they escaped the fire- and worse- through an impossible portal to another world. The portal closed before Adam could follow: he was nearly killed, and survived only to have his incredible memories of that night dismissed as shock-induced delusion. For half his life Adam has suffered from nightmares and depression; knowing the truth, but gradually coming to accept that nothing can possibly be done about it. Then, twenty years after the fire, extraordinary, alarming things begin to happen. Adam, now a successful architect, discovers proof of Lis survival, and realizes he can not turn his back on the slim chance of finding her, though it means losing everything he has. Armed with a mysterious fragment of ancient high-tech, and aided by an old friend who also knows what really took place in l976, Adam decides to try reopening the portal. But others have their own sinister plans for it. Unbeknownst to Adam, events already underway will soon put him at the center of a long-deferred battle that may well determine the fate of all Humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475937459

K.W. Moak

K.W.Moak writes on an antiquated computer, grows all his own vegetables, and makes pretty darn good cheese. A Season of Shadows is his second published novel; he is also the author of Discontinuum.

Book preview

A Season

of

Shadows

K.W. Moak

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

A Season of Shadows

Copyright © 2012 by K.W. Moak

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Front cover design by Molly Csere

ISBN: 978-1-4759-3744-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-3745-9 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 8/25/2012

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

For John, for Chyrel,

and as always, for Judith

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

To bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

Robert Frost

Chapter One

There was a dead mouse on the top step. Dry dead, brittle. Tail segmented into tiny, distinct vertebrae. Adam saw it at eye level when he was halfway up.

Oh, charming.

What is it?

He glanced back at his wife. Pointed. The Unknown Soldier.

I don’t—Yuck! She took a step down.

It’s dead, you don’t have to run.

I can see it’s dead—and I wasn’t running, Nerd. Do something with it, will you?

Adam climbed two more steps, reached out and picked it up by the stiff tail. Rigor mortis has set in, Inspector, he said with an inept brogue, dangling it toward her.

Stop it! She flinched, made a face. You are really gross, do you know?

And you, m’dear, are afflicted with teeny-bopper jargon. Nerd? Gross?

Well, it is. Take it away, put it somewhere.

He started down, then noticed an empty carton on the attic floor. Here’s a roomy rodent coffin.

Not up here! Take it down to the trash.

He snagged the box. This is trash. I put it in here, like so... He dropped the mouse. And presto! We’ve got incentive to fill the rest of the space with some of the crap up here. Good idea?

Barbara climbed the rest of the way, regarding the carton dubiously. I guess so. Ugh, it’s all shriveled.

They get that way. Just ignore it, I’ll throw some stuff on top. He moved off.

Barbara nudged the box with a foot. Poor thing.

It’s a mouse, Honey. They live in the fast lane.

I wonder what killed it.

Uhm… Who.

Who? Oh. That’s right. She grimaced.

Adam picked up another, smaller box and tossed it on top of the mouse. There. Gone.

I wish we hadn’t, now.

Barb, don’t tell me you’re feeling guilty about using Warfarin?

Well...

He put an arm around her shoulder. Honey, remember the giant economy box of cereal?

Well, it had to eat, after all.

So do we, and mouse turds don’t appeal. It’s humane, they just black out or something.

She frowned, looked perplexed, then grinned. Black out? Do mice black out?

Adam grinned back. Okay. They eat it, get very, very despondent, and hang themselves. Is that better?

Hmm, not much. I thought that stuff made them go outside to die, that’s what the box said.

So this one was confused, or agoraphobic. Can we get to work now?

Barbara turned from the box and peered around the attic, uncertainly lit by two bare bulbs. A small, modern attic; well-filled after only a decade. On all sides boxes, old suitcases, bundles of magazines, and nondescript not-quite-useless-enough-to-throw-away items waited for oblivion, gathering dust. A wasp flicked almost silently, almost invisibly toward the end vent.

"I guess we’d better. God, this is a mess up here! I thought you sorted it out last fall."

Stacked it, anyway. I guess Shaun tried to find something.

Grr! I’ll tan his hide. Well, let’s see... They might be in that big box there, or your old chest of drawers...

What in God’s name would they be doing in there?

"I don’t know, I might have put them where I could find them. But Shaun’s got everything topsy-turvy. This is such a mess!"

Are you sure it’s worth the bother, Honey? We could spend all night up here.

She hesitated, then gave a determined nod. Yes. They’re good skates, and Trish was really excited when I told her about them. Besides, remember the rodent coffin? We can get rid of some of this skulch while we’re looking.

Adam sighed. Okay. So where would I be, if I were a thirty-year-old pair of ice skates—that probably won’t fit your niece anyway?

She wears the same size shoe I did at her age. And I know they’re up here—

"Everything seems to be up here."

—So just do as I say: check those drawers, and I’ll start with this box. Race you.

Adam reached for her waist. Mmm-hmm, and the winner gets...?

She slid away. The winner gets terminally dusty if he tries to fool around up here. Later, maybe we can search the bedroom. Now dig!

Yas’m boss-lady, I’ze diggin’. He gave her bottom a pat, then started picking his way through the clutter.

The old chest of drawers, along with a couple of wobbly chairs and a defunct floorlamp, had been stored as far back to the side as the sloping roof would allow. Since its interment, a berm of old textbooks had been raised in front, a third of the way to its top. Working in the stacks, Adam muttered cheerfully as he began shifting volumes to the side. Behind him, Barbara was extracting armloads of clothing from a large box.

When he finally had it cleared, he stood looking at the chest for a moment, surprised by its forgotten familiarity. It was a styleless but solid artifact of no value whatsoever, bought at a Goodwill store for ten dollars when he equipped his first college apartment. For years he had essentially lived out of it; one of those taken-for-granted things that always seem to survive each move, growing a little seedier, a bit more battered in every succeeding apartment. When he married and brought Barb to their first and only home, it had gone along. But in the new, less complaisant feminine regime it had never taken up its old position. For a while, a year or so, it sat in the spare bedroom; then, when their finances permitted a new set of furniture, it had passed beyond even the fiction of working retirement. It should have gone to the dump, but a vague loyalty- and inertia- had prompted Adam to lug it upstairs, like a faithful retainer buried in the family plot.

Odd, he reflected, how a thing like that had a history. He looked at it and felt a queer, uneasy tugging; realizing that it was, in a way, his last solid link with the dead past.

Here’s Shaun’s old heffalump, look, Barbara called across the attic.

Adam blinked, glanced over and said, No kidding.

There were five drawers in the chest: two deep bottom ones, one shallow, and a side-by-side pair at the top. Anything as large as ice skates would presumably be in the bottom. Adam stooped and tugged at the lowest to no avail, until long-abandoned reflex made him yank hard on the right knob. The warped drawer squealed, but came out: nothing inside except yellowed 1981 newspaper lining. He pushed it back and opened the next. No skates, but there was his one-time favorite sweater, the one Barb thought looked professorial. It was a fretwork of mothholes. Adam lifted it out and carried it to the mouse-box. No skates, Hon, he told Barbara in passing. She was bent over, plumbing the depths.

Keep looking.

Pointless, he thought. Skates wouldn’t fit the other drawers. But he returned to the chest, prompted by what he told himself was idle curiosity. The archaeology of his past...

The shallow middle drawer held more moth-leavings, scarcely recognizable, and a cracked leather belt. The two sock-drawers remained.

On the right he found, appropriately enough, an old sock, and a folder of ZigZag papers. Ah, youth, he said to himself. The last drawer was more productive.

It was stuffed with papers, the most intrinsically interesting of attic fossils. Adam pulled it out and set it atop the chest, the better to examine his find. There was, however, little to justify the effort. Taking them out one by one, he found letters from unremembered friends, painfully cute birthday cards from his father- Heard you’re pushing thirty... And inside, a pop-up mountain, with a pop-up man sliding on a cardboard strip above it: Guess you’re over the hill! Love, Dad. Nineteen Seventy-nine, then. Old, alarmingly old.

Under the cards, some casual sketches of mills, a fin de siecle postoffice, remembered from his graduate school days. Studies done for his abortive thesis: Functional Architecture in Nineteenth Century New Hampshire. The drawer was yielding history in layers, the strata were getting older, dangerous ground...

Bills below the sketches, and he knew without looking at the dates that they were vestiges of the mid-Seventies: Barnet’s Service Station, the one place that could keep his battered Studebaker going. Paid... Yes, February 4, 1976. It appalled him that these things existed, that Nineteen Seventy-six was still connected, even in such a flimsy way, with him. He was tempted to throw the whole mass into the trashbox, or shove it away for another decade or two, or three, or forever. But as he hesitated, shuffling the bills, he realized he had come to the end. Below there was only a thin, drawer-spanning copy of a student broadside- RISE!- and that, he knew for certain dated from much further back, ‘Sixty-nine or ‘Seventy, and so was a memento of the safe past, the past of nostalgia. He had jumped his time machine back to the age of innocence. It felt like a reprieve, but it stung.

He had no interest whatsoever in the dated contents of RISE! and made to replace the other oddments on top of it. But in doing so, the magazine shifted. It was nearly as wide as, but quite a bit shorter than the drawer, and had been laid near the front. His hand accidentally pushed it a half-inch backwards, just enough to reveal a glossy white corner beneath.

The attic and its clutter drew away. In the instant he saw that tiny wedge of white, he was suddenly alone in a vast, terribly empty place. He knew what he had discovered; he remembered with eidetic precision the moment he had slid it- them- under the stupid broadside. He didn’t need to look to verify that, he didn’t think he could bear to look, but God in Heaven! He wanted to look!

They were photographs. If ephemerae are the best of attic treasures, photographs are the best of ephemerae. Who can resist a fading snapshot of someone long since gone or changed? Even someone unknown, a stranger. But these... Long gone, and perhaps inconceivably changed, but strangers? No...

Adam didn’t experience the act of removing the pictures. He simply found himself holding them, staring. There were five or six; good quality color snapshots taken with the fifteen-year-old Leica that was part of his tool kit in grad school. The one on top- it would have to be the one on top- was the most... evocative. There was a house, a small, white, oddly-built house, with a bare driveway/turnaround- a dooryard- in front. Two spindly trees stood in the foreground, framing the end of the driveway. The house was about seventy feet from the camera, across a lawn of tufted, yellowish grass. The sun was very bright. He remembered how hot it was that August day, the first time he saw them, the first picture he took.

The people in the photo looked posed, but weren’t. He had caught them- strangers then- in a natural group. All five of them. Two little girls on a red-white-and-blue striped swing set. Age four. Twins. Blonde pony tails and identical green playsuits. A skinny little boy straddling a leaning bicycle. Six. An older boy, slender like his brother, but at nine already growing tall, broad of shoulder, beginning to resemble the man he would (Would have? Christ!) someday become. They all faced the camera, watching the weirdo hippie take their picture. The little boy looked pugnacious, one of the Twins had her tongue out. They were the epitome of rural confidence, secure in their own barren front yard.

They had a mother. Adam looked at her and thought for an instant she had come alive, tiny. But the movement was that of his shaking hand. She stood beside the swing set, also watching the camera. Not exactly smiling, not frowning; interested, wary, amused. Black hair, long in a tail not unlike the Twins’. Small-boned, plump, only a head taller than the older boy. Round face, full cheeks, dimples beside her mouth. Pert, smallish nose, dark eyes. Floral print, blue and white summer dress. Sandals. White teeth just showing in her not-smiling open interest. Lis. Melissa...

Here they are! The exclamation was part of a soundtrack playing in a far room. Adam ignored it. Hey! Yoohoo, you can stop looking. Adam? The soundtrack took on a worried note. What have you found there?

Melissa’s arms were bare. Strong arms- not particularly muscular, but strong in their positioning, capable. She had a small fleshtone bandaid on her chin, visible to Adam only because he remembered it. She had on lipstick, playing in the hot yard with her children. She always liked to look nice. She was, that long-ago day, twenty-four years old...

"No! Barbara’s hand struck the photos out of nowhere. Her voice and movement had been imperceptible through the webs of time. She struck them, sent them flying against the chest, then clutched them, catching them like escaping birds, a fistful of crumpling paper. No! Not now! Adam!"

Adam had no volition, only sluggish reflex. He clutched against her clutching, caught an edge of paper, glimpsed the sundappled curve of an arm, saw it slip away, crumpled. He fought, in a way; sluggish still, not understanding, but trying to preserve those flat sudden essences of everything real. He struck out, heard a cry, but had no effect: hands were crumpling, tearing across and across again, grabbing escaped pictures, ripping. Showers of glossy bits about his feet, a creased triangular fragment of roofline the size of a postage stamp. Crying, shrieking almost: "Stop it! Where did you find those? I won’t let you! No! No!"

The pictures were gone, the ripping had stopped. He was on his knees, touching the bits. The crying went on, doubled. Slowly, with infinite surprise, he realized that half of it was his voice, now, joining in with mournful, hopeless, No. No. No.

It wasn’t a breakdown. It wasn’t a calamity. Doctor Weygand delivered his assessment in a tone of confident, almost paternal simplification. Reassure. Minimize. Lawrence Weygand was good at that, well-adapted to his role. A small, neat man with a long, pink face, he wore a grey three-piece suit and grey, old-fashioned toothbrush mustache like badges of common-sense. His breast-pocket handkerchief always had three perfect points. He oscillated on his swivel chair for a second or two, watching Adam.

You could say it was a positive development; coming to grips with reality.

Adam frowned. He wanted to say, Lawrence, that is a crock of shit and you know it. But although he had been Weygand’s patient and casual friend for the better part of two decades, he had never once been tempted to address him by his given name during a session, and somehow Doctor, that is a crock of shit... didn’t pass muster. He frowned, fidgeted, and settled for, It doesn’t feel positive.

Weygand nodded sagely. It wouldn’t. Catharsis is painful. Nobody likes to vomit. But from my perspective, it looks positive. You stumbled on a key to your emotional safe deposit box. It opened, and the contents flew out and knocked you for a loop. That was painful: well, haven’t we talked about pain, and pain avoidance a few hundred times? You’ve become damned good at avoiding that specific pain, that’s the main reason we’ve spent so long working at this. As I see it, the sudden assault on your control just might be the wedge we’ve been trying for. Smile, and an abrupt question; Are you frightened?

"I’m scared shitless. This wasn’t like the dreams, it wasn’t... symbolized. I saw those pictures and I was there! It was all happening again! I swear I could smell Lis’ perfume, I could smell the dust on the road. I was there, dammit!"

Weygand made an unobtrusive note on his pad. I don’t know as I’ve ever heard a better description of the cathartic experience: re-enacting, reliving.

"I wasn’t reliving, I’m trying to tell you. I was living again."

Mmm. What perfume was Lis wearing?

How the hell do I know? She collected perfumes. It was just one of her scents; lilac, something like that.

One of her scents. That’s very interesting, you know. Smell is the sense most closely tied to emotional recall. If you were struck by the impression of smell—

I wasn’t struck by it, that was just an example. I saw everything with the same... feel of reality. I heard the swing creaking...

But you expressly mentioned smell. Lis’ smell.

Adam sighed. So what?

I don’t know, you tell me. And tell me something else: what made you say, ‘I was living again’?

Adam had long since accepted the peculiar bullying of analysis; he even agreed with it, with the aggressively neutral cross-examination, the deft keeping of the subject off balance. It had worked, after all; Weygand had utilized that technique over the years, and Adam had shown a slow but steady improvement. Until now. Now everything was in doubt; for the first time he perceived a dishonesty in analytic detachment, a sense of Weygand making simple things complex.

I was just making a distinction between the experience of living an event, and reliving it. Maybe I expressed it badly.

Weygand smiled, just a hint of disappointment. I see. He fell silent, rotating slowly, waiting for Adam to speak again.

Barbara called it a psychotic break.

Weygand’s chair stopped moving. Do you agree?

I... Hesitated. I’m not sure. It could have been.

Mmm. I imagine Barbara was very distraught, after what happened. You told me once that she sometimes uses words... ah, carelessly?

It was an extreme misquote, obviously intentional; Weygand had a prodigious memory for offhand comments. He wanted Adam to argue the point, and although Adam found himself resenting that, he had no choice. Not carelessly, unexpectedly. She has a large vocabulary; she uses words as much for effect as meaning, it isn’t careless. She knows language. She knows exactly what psychotic break means.

"She knows what it means to you, Adam. Could that be what frightens you: that your wife applied a very, very powerful label to your... experience?"

Adam started to make a considered, careful reply, when the absurdity of their argument struck him and jarred something loose. Weygand was straining at a gnat; Barbara’s verbal skills were irrelevant, the memory of smells was irrelevant, the whole abstract complexity of catharsis and pain avoidance was suddenly irrelevant, meaningless, futile. He felt betrayed, disillusioned. Became, quickly and unexpectedly, angry.

Do you want to know what frightens me? You really want to know? It frightens me that I came within an inch of breaking my wife’s nose, it frightens me that I don’t even remember doing that, it frightens me that when it happened I wasn’t consciously fighting with her in our attic, I was looking through a camera viewfinder a hundred miles from here, in Nineteen Seventy-six! He realized he was nearly shouting, didn’t care. "It frightens me that Shaun had to get one of the neighbors because Barb’s nose wouldn’t stop bleeding, and I was curled up crying on the floor, that the neighbor wanted to call the police, that Barb had to force a handful of Valium down me before she’d agree not to call them, that if she had they would have strapped me down and taken me away! That frightens me, Doctor Weygand! It frightens me that my son had to spend the night with his aunt and uncle! It frightens me that... That..." Something was surfacing, something dark and unmentionable. He choked on it, he fought a losing battle with the words someone in the back corner of his brain was screaming.

"It frightens me, it scares the living fucking hell out of me that after all these years I still don’t know where Lis and the kids are! And it frightens me that God help me I want to know! I need to know!"

Silence. In it, Adam’s last despairing cry seemed to echo around the office, repeating a hundred times before it finally died away. Weygand rocked back in his chair, brought both index fingers up to the sides of his nose and looked concerned. No, he looked vindicated: try as he might, he couldn’t entirely mask the glow of, There. See? What did I tell you?

It would have been cruel to protract the silence, and Weygand was not a cruel man. Adam slumped, head almost between his knees, and tried not to sob.

Do you think that’s unreasonable? Wanting to know?

Adam spoke without looking up. It’s self-destructive. It’s pointless. I really thought I’d put it behind me, but... No. I don’t think it’s unreasonable.

Nor do I. It certainly isn’t unreasonable to seek closure. What I’m wondering now, though, is why you’ve suddenly decided that you don‘t know what happened to them. That’s something you’ve always been very sure of, isn’t it?

I didn’t say I wanted to know what happened to them, I said, ‘where they are’. There’s a tremendous difference.

Is there?

Adam was surprised by the question. That was Weygand’s skill: keep surprising the patient by questioning the obvious, let him discover the semantic tricks he used on himself. It worked, usually, but this time Adam wouldn’t let it.

Yes. You know what happened. You know it doesn’t answer where they are, it doesn’t even explain how they went.

Are you quite sure of that? Very gently.

What do you mean, am I sure? For Christ’s sake, they vanished off the face of the Earth, what else can you say?

Weygand hesitated. Nothing, of course, if you put it that way. Do you suppose Barbara appreciates how badly you need to know? The question was a clumsy evasion. Adam ignored it. They stood on the brink of hostility; Adam suddenly had a question of his own, one he had never considered asking.

What do you think happened to them?

Weygand frowned, disliking the shift of initiative. It doesn’t really matter what I think, does it, Adam?

Yes it does, if we’re not thinking the same thing. What happened, Doctor? What did I experience?

Weygand sighed, smiled indulgently, rocked further back in his chair. We spent the better part of our first two years covering that, Adam. Do you think I don’t remember? I’ve got almost a hundred pages of typed notes: you arrived back at the house about nine-thirty. Driving in, you saw—

No! Adam sat bolt upright. "Not what I told you. What do you think happened? What have you thought all along?"

Weygand shut his mouth. He stared at Adam for a second or two, then did an unprecedented thing. He got out of his chair, took a few steps around the room, stopped at his desk, idly touched the blotter, and with his back turned, addressed Adam.

This isn’t the way it’s done, Adam. You know that. We’re not in an adversarial situation. He turned. Do you trust me?

Of course I trust you. You’ve done wonders for me. But this isn’t a matter of trust.

Isn’t it? Adam, I’m a therapist. I may also be your friend, after all these years, but the therapist-patient relationship comes first. He went back to his chair, sat. Rotated. That relationship is predicated on a very special kind of trust, on your part. He thought for a moment. You’re an educated man, a professional yourself. When someone asks you to design a house, they usually know just what they want, don’t they?

Adam didn’t answer, and Weygand didn’t insist.

"You, as an architect, have to work from that ‘knowledge’ they reveal to you. But as an architect, you understand the... mechanics of design infinitely better than they. You know all about structural requirements, you appreciate that a fifty-foot long kitchen isn’t practical, that what they really mean they want is... a connected dining room, or a kitchen-patio, something they just don’t know enough to ask for."

I have to respect their ideas, though, in the end. I’d be a shitty architect if I treated my clients like morons.

Of course you have to respect them. But in turn, Adam, they have to trust you, or the project won’t work. They have to accept that you are trained to know more about designing houses than they are; they can’t second-guess you, and they can’t expect you to abandon your professional viewpoint in favor of their layman’s intuition. That’s understood when you engage a professional: you’re paid for expertise, not agreeable yea-saying. Weygand spoke in an earnest voice, and the sentences piled up far more than usual.

I’m not complaining, I simply want to know—

Incredibly, Weygand cut him off. Aren’t you, Adam? Aren’t you prepared to berate me for having interpretations of things other than the ones you want- need me to have? He wasn’t quite angry. He was concerned, troubled, but his temper was rising.

"Let’s forget interpretations. I’m asking about facts: what are the facts, as you see them? What happened there?"

For a moment Adam thought Weygand wasn’t going to answer. He glanced at his watch, and Adam was prepared to hear, We‘re out of time for today. Let’s schedule for... But the smooth pattern was too disarrayed. Weygand rocked, sighed.

Let’s not forget interpretations, Adam, he said at length. "Let’s remember that I deal specifically and almost exclusively with interpretations. If you didn’t before, after our years working together you now know quite a lot about psychology. You know how I operate. I listen, I prompt, I get your interpretations of events in the past. That’s our subject matter, Adam; we’re not detectives, we’re not trying to solve a mystery. We’re trying to bring order to your perceptions. You say you trust me, and I believe you do, and I don’t believe you’ve ever been under any illusion that Lawrence Weygand is so uncomplicated that he doesn’t have his own, personal interpretation of everything. Interpretations that have no bearing whatsoever on what we do here. If I were a bad doctor, maybe they would. But I’m not, and I think you know I’m not."

Adam regarded him levelly. "I know you’re a good doctor. And I do accept that your opinions aren’t relevant to my... treatment. But it just hit me- you just put it in so many words- maybe we ought to be solving a mystery, maybe I ought to. And that’s about facts. So, Doctor; what do you think happened?"

We’re about out of time, Weygand said desperately. Seventeen years of hard work were coming undone before his eyes.

No. This isn’t therapeutic. The session’s already over. What I’m asking now, I’m asking as a friend. Tell me, please.

Adam, don’t do this. Break our trust, and you’re going to take a giant step backwards.

I’m not breaking trust. I want to know. Damn it, I think I’m entitled.

Weygand abruptly yielded. He was finally angry enough to tell the truth.

All right. You want to know what I think? I think you went through a terribly traumatic experience. I think you saw people you loved die, I suspect you heard them calling for help. I think you dissociated for a time, reconstructed the events into—

I didn’t ask for analysis! Give me facts!

Weygand leaned forward, voice rising. "Facts? All right. Fact. There was a propane gas leak. It ignited. Fact. The tank exploded, the building collapsed and caught fire. You and a number of other people saw and heard it, but you were closer than anyone else. You got there within minutes. It was already an inferno. You couldn‘t do anything! Fact. Melissa Bedell and her children were in that building. They died in it. They were burnt beyond recognition. That is fact, Adam! That is not interpretation!"

Adam stared. Felt a tightness, realized he wasn‘t breathing. He let out a great gush of air. He wanted to laugh and weep.

Fact? he asked Weygand’s contorted face. My God. Lawrence, that’s not fact. It’s not.

"And what is? That in the five or ten minutes- at most- between the time you got there, and the first other witnesses arrived, you had an hour’s worth of utterly incredible experiences? That you and Melissa fought a God damned battle with... living nightmares? Is that fact, Adam? Is there any way that five-minute hour can be fact? Melissa Bedell was dead or dying before you even got there! The neighbors a half-mile away were in their yard watching the fire—"

They were looking at the bubble! They didn’t know, they couldn’t see what really—

"They were watching the fire! The sky was lit up! And they were watching it when you drove by! They had been watching for some time. Adam, that old station was a pyre before you got there, you never got inside, you weren’t even singed, for God’s sake! You never got within thirty feet of Melissa Bedell that night!" Weygand’s face was red. He wasn’t a young man; Adam wondered if he might have a heart attack.

They weren’t in there. They were gone before—

They were! There were bodies! Adam, there was no mystery!

Adam remembered to breathe again. Not their bodies.

Weygand closed his eyes. Adam, Adam.

Did you ever read the fire marshal’s report?

Listen Adam, this is way out of—

"Did you?"

Yes.

Did you look at the pictures of those bodies?

I... Weygand hesitated. I glanced at them. I don’t enjoy looking at... remains.

Adam gaped. Well I’ll be damned. He gave a short laugh, repeated, I’ll be damned.

Weygand was out of his chair. Adam had never seen him like this: angry, furious. And something else, something like tormented. The torment of a man who had perhaps been fighting harder all those years to convince himself, than his patient, that nothing impossible had happened.

This is over. I want you out of here. I don’t know if we can even—

Adam was almost calm. He stayed in his chair. "You’re lecturing me about interpretation, and you didn’t even study the damned pictures?"

There was nothing to study! I’m no damned forensic pathologist! Please, leave now, Adam, before it’s too late to salvage something out of this.

"Salvage something my ass. All these years, I trusted you! I knew you couldn’t really believe my story- who the hell could, that wasn’t there? But I thought you had an open mind, I thought you at least knew what was wrong with the official version."

Nothing. There was nothing wrong.

"Shit. Pardon me, but shit. I’ve read that report, I’ve read it so many times I could recite it from memory. It was a crock. Nobody gave a shit what really happened, except me and Kyle and Mr. Gironde. Only three people who might have asked awkward questions, but I was a basket case, Kyle took a powder, and Lis’ father probably forgot he’d ever had a daughter, after a couple of days! So questions weren’t asked. Do you know how many big-shot pathologists were called in? None! Do you know what they said about dental records? ‘The teeth burned.’ Teeth don’t fucking burn! I’ve researched it! Bottom line: the authorities didn’t really care. There wasn’t any life insurance, and there weren’t any survivors. Small-town single mother and her probably illegitimate kids burn up in a God damned converted old railroad station because- and this is a fucking quote- ‘Mrs. Bedell was a heavy smoker with probable history of mental illness,’ or because- quote again- ‘The possibility of murder-suicide can not be ruled out’! Shit. Shit! You stand there talking about facts? Here’s a fact: they found four bodies, one of which was adult, three of which were presumed juvenile. Where’s the fifth, huh? Fact: three of the bodies showed ‘gross developmental abnormalities of the major bones’, which is pure unadulterated bullshit if you claim those belonged to any of the kids, ‘cause they were all long-limbed and straight-backed specimens. Fact—" He suddenly ran down, caught himself. Realized he was sitting with his fingers clamped on the chair’s arms, yelling at the man he had often considered his very best friend in the world. He felt sick and scared.

Weygand must have seen that. To his credit as a man, if not a therapist, he ignored it. Let his response come from a basic, unprofessional part of the mind.

"In one minute I am going to throw you out of here. First I am going to explain just why your factual rationalizations are preposterous. The station was built of heavy, creosoted wooden timbers. It collapsed in the initial tank explosion, which probably mangled everyone inside. It caught fire and burned hot. In a short time the floor burned through, dropping the bodies into the half-cellar. There was a ton of soft coal in there. It caught fire. Coal burns hot enough to calcine bones and teeth. By the time the fire department arrived, the collapsed roof beams- still very solid and heavy- had also fallen on top of the bodies. The calcined bones were crushed and mixed. Even with that, the investigators found three definite skeletons, corresponding in size to the three younger children. A fourth set of fragments, badly damaged, could have included two skeletons, one of them certainly adult. There were skeletal abnormalities noted, yes, but the condition of the remains made it impossible to determine just how severe they had been. Some of the bones were abnormally thin and frail- not deformed; which could plausibly be laid to improper diet, or a minor genetic defect. If it wasn’t simply a result of being burned at high temperature. There were no ‘big shot’ pathologists called in because there was no mystery. There was no focus on dental records because the children had had no significant dental work done, and because- because, Adam, what you don’t seem to remember: an engagement ring, known to have been worn by Melissa Bedell at the time of the fire, expressly mentioned and described by you yourself, was found on the largest skeleton’s finger. A recognizable ring, a distinctive ring. They burned, Adam. They burned to ashes. That’s what happened. That’s all that happened- outside your mind."

A nice, clinical judo chop. Last-resort shock therapy. Adam had read it all; he had never heard the words. If he could believe them any more than the text, he supposed Weygand would just have, inadvertently, broken his mind. But he didn’t believe them, didn’t even have to work at not believing them. And for the first time, that made him feel good. It wasn’t neurotic at all, he realized with a kind of bewilderment; it was a mark of his sanity and resilience. Despite everything, he had remained sure of the facts as he knew them, no matter how inexplicable. Like the Ring... He had never told Weygand the truth about the Ring. Honoring a pledge. He wondered briefly if he should have, if that would have made a difference now. Decided it wouldn’t have.

He stood up. Weygand made an almost imperceptible movement, a hint of a step backward. Rationality in retreat.

Adam was saddened to see it. Lawrence... He paused, chose his words. I’m sorry I put you through this. Truly I am.

Weygand relaxed, tried to smile. I’m sorry too, Adam. I’m the one who’s overstepped here. We’ve come to a crucial point- you can see that- and I’m afraid I... wasn’t ready for it. I’m afraid I’ve done some damage today.

Adam shook his head. No, I don’t think so.

It’s going to require some backtracking, some redefinition of our roles, but I honestly think we can move on, now, at a... He trailed off, seeing Adam’s expression.

I agree, we have come to a crucial point. But I doubt very much we’ll need to backtrack.

Well, I hope you’re right. He shifted position uneasily, smiled, made a delicate gesture toward the door. For now... There is someone else waiting, I believe.

Adam shook his hand the same as always. You can bill me for the extra time.

Oh, I wouldn’t think of it. We just used up some of the slack. Ah, shall we schedule the usual…

I’d better call, later.

Oh?

I’ve got some thinking to do. I think I ought to work that out by myself, first.

Weygand sounded hollow. Of course. That might... be useful. Meantime, if there are any... episodes...

There won’t be, I’m sure. Thanks for everything. He left Weygand contemplating a crisis of faith.

Barbara was waiting at the curb. Adam would have walked right past the car, unseeing, but she blew the horn and called to him through the open passenger window, Adam! Over here.

He felt disoriented, wondering if he should have expected her, if a chip of memory had fallen out of his morning. He opened the door. Hi. What are you doing here? It came out tainted with the annoyance he was ready to feel for his own forgetfulness, but of course Barbara didn’t know that. A tentative little light in her eyes dimmed, went out.

I thought you might like to have lunch together.

Oh. He slid into the car. Sure. Good idea.

Barbara sat with both hands on the wheel: alert, though the engine wasn’t even running. She was wearing her brightest split-skirt and jacket outfit, white pumps, and two large cloisonné bracelets. She also had a paisley scarf around her head, adjusted to hide the makeup that hid the bruise on her cheek. Blonde hair done up in a loose bun at the back. A beautiful woman gaudily dressed to divert attention from her face, like a movie star trying for anonymity. To Adam it seemed worse than useless. She might as well have worn a placard: battered wife.

So, she said carefully. How did it go today?

Fine. It went fine.

Rebecca said you left the office early. I deduced that you were walking here.

Adam didn’t want to chat. Yes. I did walk.

You got out ten minutes late.

We had some... perceptual conflicts to resolve. I guess we ran over.

Barbara gripped the wheel, pretending she had to watch traffic. She laughed. What’s a perceptual conflict, for heaven’s sake? Has Doctor Weygand expanded his jargon?

Yeah. I guess he has. Look, Barb, are we going to go?

Oh. Sorry. She started the car, shifted, and launched them away from the curb. In motion, she now wanted to look at Adam.

What did he have to say? It was the tone, not the words, of Was the cancer test positive? Adam grimaced.

I’m not a psycho, I think.

Adam...

He ignored her. What I am, apparently, to Weygand, is someone who’s determined to live in a dream world. Someone you by golly humor all down the line, until push comes to shove, and you by golly tell that dim someone how things really are. I’m a guy, you see, who just can’t accept ‘fact’. We talked a whole lot about ‘facts’. Funny thing, turns out we haven’t even been dealing with facts ‘till now. We couldn’t, I wouldn’t accept them.

What happened? Barbara’s fear was a whisper.

Adam suddenly relaxed, discovering that the feeling driving his words was not as simple as anger. Nor as negative.

We had a pretty good session, all in all. Weygand feels that... what happened, was a catharsis. My ‘emotional safe deposit box’ in his inimitable words, came open and ‘threw me for a loop’.

That isn’t necessarily bad, is it?

Oh, on the contrary, Weygand sees it as a positive step. It was a positive step, he added with personal emphasis.

Adam... She drove meticulously, turned a corner. "I’m deeply, sincerely sorry I said... You know, about a psychotic break. I’m not apologizing for anything else I said: you deserved all of it, but that wasn’t fair. It was pure bitchy malice, and I’m sorry I let it out."

He felt a rush of warmth toward her, wanted to touch her, but didn’t. That’s okay, really. Catharsis or whatever, I wasn’t in my right mind. It felt psychotic.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Barbara turned another corner, completing three sides of a square. Adam realized she was just circling. Creating, maintaining a private time.

Something else must have come up, though. What was all that about facts?

We just got under each other’s skin. I pushed Weygand too far. He took off the shrink’s gloves for a minute, let off some steam. That’s all.

You had a fight?

Adam took a breath. Yeah. You could say we had a fight.

Returning fear, in the way the car jerked around the last corner of the square, passing Weygand’s office again. That’s never happened before.

Maybe it should have. Maybe that goes along with the catharsis, or maybe... He shifted around to look squarely at her. Plunged; Barb, I’ll ask you what I asked Weygand: what do you think really happened back in ‘Seventy-six?

Barbara, unlike Weygand, didn’t attempt an evasion. I think, she said with careful, but not strained sympathy, "that there was a fire. Maybe there were other things going on- I assume there were, even if I can’t, personally, credit them, because I know you well enough to be sure you believe them. And you’re not stupid, Adam. But whatever else happened, there was a fire. And no matter what you experienced, what really occurred, Melissa Bedell left your life at that point. And even if your memories are one hundred percent accurate- which I’m willing to say they are, God help me- everyone else in the whole world is convinced that the fire took her. You may be right, but so what? You have to live with the... consensus reality that five people burnt up in a simple, horrible fire. And you were in love with one of them—"

I loved them all.

It was a thoughtless cruelty; worse, perhaps, for being unintentional. Barbara closed her eyes, bit her lip. "My God, Adam. My God. Aren’t you ever going to let go? It’s been almost twenty years, nobody but you even remembers, except when you pick at your scabs and bleed all over us! People don’t mourn for twenty years, Adam. Why must you?"

I’m not mourning. You mourn for the dead, you... wonder about the missing.

Barbara was on the verge of tears. "They are dead, Adam. When somebody is lost at sea, they’re dead after seven years. When they’re lost somewhere you can’t even name, after twice that long, what else can you call them? And nobody but you believes they are lost, nobody!"

Adam focussed on that last nobody and knew that Barbara’s love, like Weygand’s professionalism, had spun an illusion of agreement all those years. Humoring him. And how urgently he must have needed that, to have swallowed the gentle lie so unquestioningly, for so long.

He could have accused her, but why? It was more productive, just then, to reflect on the disservice he had done himself by passively allowing others to decide what he was supposed to think. The years of trying to doubt, of carefully avoiding productive attempts to explicate what he knew, because, after all, Barb and Doctor Weygand already believed him. They were on his side. He didn’t have to do anything but learn to forget. Denial had somehow become guilt, and the guilt had been validated a hundred ways. Sham validation, based on false premises. He had been coaxed into emotional acceptance of Weygand’s- and evidently Barbara’s- interpretation of Lis’ last words to him: Come on, Sweetheart! Hurry! though he knew better. It hadn’t been a cry for help, only an urgent summons. He hadn’t failed anyone, maybe not even himself.

It was an irresistible realization. It swept through his mind like a vandal, yanking closets open, looking for valuables. And it found what it needed.

I’m not the only one who knows what really happened. He spoke quietly, to himself or whoever might be listening.

Adam, Honey, I’m not saying I don’t—

There’s Jim Kyle.

The interior of the car exploded with silence. It was the same in quality, if not intensity, as that which fell when he saw the photographs. But this time he shared it with Barbara.

She hit the brakes, screeching to a senseless stop in the middle of a block. Kyle! Nothing happened. The word hung, fading by expansion like a smoke ring. Horns blared outside.

Barbara took her foot off the brake. A car went by, the driver yelled, Stupid cunt! They began to move.

"I, don’t, ever, want, to, hear, that, name, again."

Adam looked at her, genuinely surprised. He remembered that she didn’t believe him, never had. What then could Kyle mean to her?

She told him. I can’t believe, she said in words spaced almost as precisely as those preceding, "that you, of all people, could bear the sound of it. If you really credit your memories, how can you help but despise him?"

Why would I—

"He caused it! she screamed. People on the sidewalk turned to look. By your account he was the one who made it all happen, he was the one—"

Barb, he was helping us. If it hadn’t been for Jim—

"And then he left! When you were shattered, when you were physically sick and needed support, he disappeared! He scuttled off to ‘investigate’ some mountaineers who were seeing angels! Or maybe it was Santa Claus out of season, it doesn’t matter. It was far away from North Barton, wasn’t it? It kept him out of your problems, didn’t it?"

That’s hardly fair. He came to see me twice. The first time I was unconscious, the second—

"I know all about the second time! Meanwhile there were two weeks, during which your father and I all but had to get a court order to keep the police from grilling you! Where was the Answer Man then? Safely hidden in the wilds of Kentucky!"

I never begrudged him that. He had his reasons.

Oh, right, Off to rescue some other lucky people- only he didn’t, did he? People died. Isn’t it funny how people always seem to end up dying after good old Jim Kyle does his thing?

Anger was peeling away conversational options. The car was going straight now, nothing left to prolong. If Barbara wasn’t a good enough driver to function by reflex, they would sooner or later crash. Neither she nor Adam worried about that.

"Jim suffered, Barbara! Helping us cost him the thing he valued most in the world; his one chance to—"

Fuck! It was a word she held in reserve, it had to be wrung out of her. "Suffered? The only thing he suffered over was being too involved in what happened to dare try and write another stupid, moneymaking book about it. That cost him! Wise up, Adam! He could have- he by God should have been there, supporting you, telling everybody your precious truth about what happened!"

She was, even in her rage, being considerate. But Adam had already seen what she was trying to hide. No, he said, when she drew a breath. That’s not it.

Barbara glared.

You don’t hate him because he didn’t stay to back me up. You don’t think he could have. And when you say he caused it, you aren’t talking about opening the fissure, are you? You think he... What? Set us up?

He was a magician. Barbara was trying, now that it was too late, to be calm.

Which means?

You told me yourself, he could do incredible tricks.

Stage magic, Barbara! It was his hobby. You don’t seriously imagine he... engineered the things we went through?

"That depends on what you mean by ‘engineered’. I don’t suppose he had the resources to hire midgets in funny suits and put on a laser-light show, but who says he needed to? Power of suggestion, Adam: that’s what magic is all about! The same as hypnotism! I do know he was a cynical, egotistic opportunist who preyed on gullibility, who made his living writing sensational books about things anybody in their right mind knows don’t happen. Even the flying saucer kooks thought he was crazy, remember? Then there was you and... The name came harder this time, but she got it out. Melissa. A couple of mixed-up kids with overactive imaginations—"

Barbara, I was twenty-five years old.

She spun on him. The car swerved, reflexes held. Oh, for God’s sake, Adam, compared to Jim Kyle you were a babe in arms! You were still in school! By your age, Jim Kyle- if you believe him- had been around the world on his own, learned the Mysteries of the Orient- She said it in a Gypsy accent. "And probably been elected Dalai Lama. He could have sold you the Brooklyn Bridge without trying! And Melissa? She wasn’t in school, she didn’t finish school! She had a kid at fifteen- you like to make that sound like a great noble thing, but the fact is it was just plain stupid. And she went right on being—"

I think you’d better stop now. I don’t want to hear any more.

No? Well, you’re going to! It was Weygand all over again, the second time in an hour. Adam was suddenly terrified. No. Barbara, please.

She went right on being stupid, and getting pregnant, and filling her pretty, silly little head with whatever exciting, romantic notions she happened to come across, and that is a real shame, because when you and good old Jim Kyle got through with her, and she had got through with herself, she didn’t know shit from Shinola, and one fine night, after you had finally started to wise up and dump her, she. Barbara stopped, as if Adam’s plea had just reached her ears. It wasn’t that, of course. It was the sudden reaction of a sensible person, insensible with anger and old, hidden hurts, realizing in the last possible instant that she was about to say something unforgettable, unforgivable.

The too-sudden break made it inevitable. Adam knew what she was going to say; in his mind the sentence played out without a pause: One fine night, after you had finally started to wise up and dump her, she took a knife or a hammer or a hatchet to those precious, wonderful kids, and then she opened that propane tank and went in and sat down with them and lit one last cigarette.

Barbara didn’t say that. She said, Adam. I’m. I didn’t. Mean. That was all she said.

Surprisingly, they survived that. Neither said another word, and lunch was forgotten. But after Barbara turned around, retraced their unguided path back downtown, and pulled up in front of the Bernor, Chapman, and Reardon offices, Adam discovered that there was nothing really bad left in the air between them. He looked at Barbara with a kind of tenderness; she returned the look, unoptimistic, but accepting. Catharsis for her, at least, had been positive.

You’ll be home...

Probably a little early. There’s nothing too pressing today.

Okay. She hesitated, decided, made the offering; I think I’ll pick Shaun up at school. There’s no reason...

Adam gave her a smile to show the gesture was appreciated. Sure. He can come home. I’d like that.

Me too. Pause. Nothing else to say. Well.

I’d best get in, I’m late already.

Bye. She hung on the edge of apology, wisely stepped back.

Bye. See you later.

Adam went into the building, across to the elevator. Bernor, Chapman, and Reardon was the second floor. He got up there, through the foyer and outer office, past- almost past- Rebecca.

Oh Mr. Reardon! Did Barbara find you?

He looked at her, smiled. Yes. She caught up with me.

I was sure she would. Where’d you eat? Inquiring as though it mattered. Rebecca was family at Bernor, Chapman, and Reardon, posing as a secretary. Halton Bernor had hired her before either Chapman or Reardon learned to drive; the hiring had long since passed into myth. She may, incredibly, have once slept with Halton. Now she was his- and by extension Warren’s and Adam’s- devoted, maternal, impertinent factotum.

We didn’t. Barb wanted to drive around. We forgot all about lunch.

Now, isn’t that nice? Spur of the moment. People don’t do that sort of thing enough anymore.

I guess not. Rebecca, I’ve got a slight headache. I don’t have to see anybody this afternoon, do I?

She made sympathetic noises. No you don’t, I’m happy to say. Mr. Chapman’s already left to meet the people from Sunglade, and Mr. Halton expressly wanted to handle that defensive new engineer from English and Son. I think, she added in a stage-whisper, he’s going to pin his ears back.

Good, Adam said. If anything does come up, I’ll be in my office.

That’s fine. Remember, though: the Clevelands are expecting to go over the plans first thing tomorrow. Something in Adam’s face, though he tried to smile neutrally, must have stung her. You did ask me to remind you.

I sure did, and thanks. He fled.

In his office, alone for the first time since meeting Weygand, Adam sat and let himself be amazed at how much of his life had unraveled in less than twenty-four hours. He wasn’t angry or afraid: the three or four seconds immediately following Barbara’s clipped-off she had exhausted all hot emotion. It had vented like steam from a broken pipe, until there was no pressure left. He almost felt exhilarated after learning, in one day, so many... What was it Ev Barnet called them? Home truths. As in: Those guys wrapped that Bacaruda around a pole, learned some home truths about bald tires. Thinking of Ev after all those years, and Ev saying, That kind of shit, you can get infected. Another home truth: apparently infection with that kind of shit, like AIDS, took years, decades to ripen, then in one day your whole life burst out in some horrendous plague of boils.

In one day. Things had been going along very well, great, for... Five years? Six? The screaming nightmares, the depressions, those were all in the past. For a long time he couldn’t, couldn’t sleep without a light on, but that was so far gone that he and Barb could laugh about it, like an eccentricity of childhood. Until he opened that stupid drawer, moved that stupider broadside, he had been mending. Sometimes late at night he still lay awake, and his thoughts were torment. But late at night, aren’t everyone’s, sometimes? He had done well, damn well.

He looked around his office, at the Swedish furniture, the signed prints, and wondered, not for the first time, how somebody with one foot testing the threshold of the asylum had managed to come so far. When he started work for Halton Bernor, the nightmares ruled his sleep. He and Barb couldn’t have anything much smaller than a bed in their bedroom, because he would, every night, try to throw things through the wall. Screaming. He was on lithium and tricyclics when Halton made him a second partner. He was in hell for almost all of his professional life, but somehow it never touched his work- or had it? There was that framed review of his first biggie, the Prentiss House: Reardon’s design acknowledges, in its recurrent emphasis on surprise, on provocative vantage points opening from a deceptively blind interior, the debt of American architecture to the harsh pragmatism of frontier blockhouses, or deeper still, to mediaeval European fortresses that showed endless overlapping angles of fire from crenellations and loopholes. It embraces the modern desire for security by active, indeed aggressive interconnection of spaces, rather than the hackneyed, passive employment of barriers. Provocative vantage points, aggressive interconnection of spaces, and a forever-to-be image of a great dark eye, seeping fluid around a child’s ski-pole jabbed through a ticket slot that must have been a very unexpected interconnection of spaces.

The afternoon clocked on in a series of unfolding thoughts like that. Adam sat at his drawing board and tried to make the central stairway of the Cleveland house work, but he found himself doodling with the number three pencil on the margins: an oblong doorway, and a hand extended ("Come on!")… He started to crumple the sheet, caught himself, used the electric eraser ruthlessly. A ghost of a hand remained, would the Clevelands wonder...

He stuck it out until four, not because the time meant anything to him or his partners, but because he didn’t want to be swamped with concern and fretfulness when he negotiated Rebecca’s domain, much too early. As it was, she mothered him in passing.

Head still bad?

It’s a little better.

Pollen, I’ll bet. Everyone’s sinuses are acting up this week.

You’re probably right. I’ve, ah, got some errands to run. I’m out of here now.

I hope you feel better.

I’m sure I will. Goodnight, Rebecca.

Goodnight, Mr. Reardon. Try soaking your feet in icewater! she called after him. It’s a wonderful remedy for headaches.

Barbara had convinced herself a crisis had been passed, successfully. By the time Adam got home there was a smell of Polynesian ribs coming from the Jenn-Air, the dining room table was set with silver and china, and a bottle of Haut-Brion ‘81 was breathing on the sideboard. He came in through the back door, into the kitchen. Two rooms away, the TV chattered. Welcome home Shaun. Glasses, ice bucket, waiting bottles on the sink; his prerogative as honored husband. And he would slice the ribs. No serve yourself tonight.

Hello!

From the bathroom: That you, Honey? Be right out. Shaun’s home.

Adam went to the living room. Shaun was a bundle of long limbs in an easy chair, sprawled like a hypnotized spider-monkey in front of the tube. A smart kid, active and well-rounded, but at twelve just wise enough and dumb enough to stand up for his right to excessive electron-beam brain entrainment.

Hi, Scamp.

Shaun’s eyes shifted. He smiled. Hi Dad. He could have been indifferent or uneasy. His