An Affair Of Sorcerers

Chapter 17

I seemed to be trapped in some strange, nonvisual dream; there was no light, no images-only lucid thoughts. What I was thinking was that I had to get up and go to the hospital for my daily shot. Without my injections, I would go mad and die in agony. It occurred to me that something had happened, a problem had arisen, which could prevent me from going to the hospital. I tried to remember what it was, and couldn't. I decided it was nothing; I wasn't hurt, and I couldn't imagine anything aside from injury that could keep me from going for my medication. That would be suicide. It was simply a matter of waiting to wake up.

Something was tapping softly on the inside of my head-not painfully but persistently, with a sound like a pencil eraser bouncing on soft wood. Then I realized with astonishment that it was only the blood pulsing through my veins. I listened for a few minutes until it faded away and I was once again left alone with only my thoughts. I couldn't move, which seemed to reaffirm the fact that I was dreaming after all. That was all right; I was resting, as Joshua had told me to. I would rest a little while longer, then wake up and go to the hospital.

I didn't seem to be able to wake up. I kept waiting for the phone to ring, or Garth or someone else to come and wake me up. No phones rang, and no one came. Time lost any meaning; after a while I couldn't tell whether I was awake or asleep. My thoughts were my only companions, and I couldn't shake off the feeling that something terrible had happened to me. Or was happening. I fought against a growing sense of panic by carrying on long internal monologues, telling myself old jokes over and over again, laughing without sound inside my mind. The line between sleeping and waking became increasingly blurred, then seemed to disappear altogether.

I remembered. A low moan started somewhere in the back of my mind and exploded in a silent, breathless scream punctuated by terror-filled images: My attacker had fractured my skull and I was in a deep coma. Or I was paralyzed. I had no head, no toes, no legs, no fingers-no body at all. There was only the theater inside my mind, and I wondered how long that was going to stay open. Or perhaps what I was experiencing was but a split-second journey that all men must travel between life and death.

I choked back my terror and tried to think. Obviously, I wasn't dead yet. I felt no hunger or thirst, and it occurred to me that I could be in a hospital, being fed intravenously. Garth, Joshua and April could be at my bedside. Janet might be there, praying for me.

Maybe the doctors didn't know my mind was working; maybe they'd pull the plug on whatever machine was keeping me alive. Or, maybe I was simply lying in a ditch at the side of some road.

Maybe I'd be buried alive.

Waiting; silence; a constant struggle against a terror that, once out of control, would devour my mind before the rabies that was now coursing unchecked through my system. I tried to think of other things, but "other things" always ended up April-and I knew I loved her. I longed for her. That made me cry. I couldn't feel tears, couldn't hear my sobs, but I knew I was crying-at least, inside my mind. Every thought was filled with emotion, and emotion was my only link with reality. Suddenly my mind screamed again, and I backed down into myself, away from the terrible need to see and touch someone I loved, and who loved me.

My mind blinked, and I found myself on a gray plain stretching endlessly off to-nothing. There was no horizon, only a black pit directly in front of me. I backed up. . and the pit moved forward, like some living thing stalking me. It yawned before me like a dark hole on a silent planet. There were sounds in the hole-wailing winds, screams, groans; and I realized the hole was myself, the deepest part of me. It was an abyss, a tear in my psyche I knew I must, at all costs, avoid falling into; at the bottom was madness.

I was crying again. I thought of April, then of my mother-a beautiful, willowy woman who'd loved me, and who, with Garth, had kept me whole during the nightmare years of my childhood and adolescence.

Still waiting; still locked in combat with my fear. At the moment, that battle was a standoff. I kept waiting for something to happen.

Once I must have fallen asleep, because I found myself slipping like a slab of molten plastic over the edge of the hole; the hole was closing over my head, and I struggled desperately to pry open its jaws and climb out. The sides of the hole were dotted with faces; lips curled menacingly, baring long fangs and froth-specked teeth; there were large red holes where the eyes should be; hands studded with thousands of snakelike fingers curled around my throat and tore at my eyes.

Madness. I wondered how many seconds, minutes, hours, days had gone by since I'd been hit on the head. Perhaps rabies was percolating in my brain tissue, carrying me along its foaming crest into the terrible dark hole. I could stay in a coma indefinitely, until my brain became totally infected and I died screaming-to myself.

Suddenly my mind blinked again and I found myself out of the hole, my mind cast adrift on a vast, eerie sea of quivering rubber. I wept again; not as a man weeps, but as a child caught in the grip of nameless, nighttime terror.

My mind was closing in on me, eating itself; there were other things in my mind with me, and they were alien. The whisper of snakes that poison and crush; a world of giants that laughed and mocked; things that would hurt a dwarf and not even notice.

It suddenly occurred to me that the fears were somehow familiar, like a scarred rocking horse uncovered in the corner of some dusty attic of the mind. In this case the terrors were old, half-forgotten memories from the storage bin of my childhood. My mind had turned cannibal and was gnawing through the protective membrane of the subconscious.

"Hello, Bob."

The voice was soft, and seemed to originate from some alternative universe inside my head. It came from everywhere and nowhere, starting from somewhere behind where I thought my eyes should be, then undulating out to fill my skull. I waited desperately for something else to be said, but there was only the terrible silence-now even more maddening. After a while I decided I'd only imagined the voice.

"Hello, Bob. This is a friend."

The voice was definitely real. For one long, terrifying moment I was afraid it would go away, as it had before. But the voice came again-very soft and soothing, with a slight accent. I couldn't place the voice, but its owner had made a mistake-perhaps spoken too soon, or for too long a time. My mind paused in its self-destructive feast, looked around, and growled with anger as it struggled desperately to make connections.

"You have been with us. . some time now. I am going to help you. I know how lonely you are. I know you are sick and need medicine. I know. . you need love. I can give you all these things, but first you must be alone a while longer so that you can think. You will learn to love my voice. Then you will learn to love me."

There was a prolonged, aching silence. Then:

"Goodbye for now, Bob."

Suddenly I knew where I was, and who had put me there. In that moment my breathing stopped as countless pieces of thought and memory fused together to form a conscious idea that burned somewhere behind my eyes with white-hot, searing certainty.

I was being subjected to sensory deprivation.

It meant my old friend Vincent Smathers and his buddy Kee were charter members of Esobus' coven. They'd arranged a special demonstration of their work just for me. After my initial reaction of mindless shock, I felt almost relieved; the realization of what was happening to me gave me a frame of reference, eliminating the horrible fear that I was in a coma and paralyzed, buried alive inside my own mind.

All that was left was the equally horrible reality. I was a helpless captive of the scientists, who, for their own arcane reasons, were keeping me alive simply so that they could drive me crazy. The irony was that, without my daily shots, the strain of rabies in me would be bubbling away, cooking me toward madness and death. Smathers and Kee were competing for my mind against the disease in my body; it was a race I couldn't win, and perhaps had already lost. I had no idea how many shots I'd missed or, if I'd missed a lot, what was keeping me alive. It was all enough to depress me.

I tried to keep my terror at bay by concentrating on what I'd read about sensory deprivation. I thought I could visualize my surroundings; I'd be floating in a large, water-filled tank. The saline solution would be warmed to body temperature; my arms and legs would be restrained by straps, loose enough to allow for circulation but sufficiently tight to restrict any kind of movement. I imagined my head was encased in some kind of hood which was wired for sound and into which oxygen was pumped. There were probably tubes stuck into my body through which I was being fed intravenously. I didn't feel any pain in my thumb or stomach-indeed, I had no physical sensations whatsoever. It could have been the cumulative effect of the womblike environment, or they might have given me just enough of a paralyzing drug, like curare, to damp down my nervous system.

The next thought that occurred to me was that I'd be in the tank until I died, living like a mental mole in absolute darkness. Smathers and Kee would never take me out, even after they'd squashed my will and mind; the tank was my stakes in the ground, Kee's voice my ceremonial sword.

I was only a floor above dozens of people who knew and cared about me, yet they had no way of knowing where I was, or what was being done to me. My captors would one day grow tired of the madman they'd created; the ritual would be completed, and they would go away and lock the steel doors of the laboratory behind them. I would be left suspended in the water-floating forever until I died and rotted and my bones sank to the bottom of the tank.

That image unleashed my panic; it pounced on me like a huge, shapeless beast. I shrieked soundlessly under its weight and gnashing teeth. I kept shrieking until I passed out, or slept, or simply short-circuited.

"Hello, Bob. This is your friend again. I know how you've missed me; I know how terribly lonely you are, and how badly you need to hear a human voice. But you must be left alone still a while longer to think things out. There has been a great misunderstanding on your part. You hate Esobus and his servants. You have spoken to people and said incorrect things. You have done me a great disservice. But you will become a servant of Esobus, and you will do his will. You will love me and want to undo the damage you have done. Listen to my voice, and you will understand. I will leave you alone now, Bob. You should give a great deal of thought to what I have said. I am Esobus, and you will learn to love me as you love the sound of my voice."

I seriously doubted that, but I waited for more anyway. There was only silence. For the first time, I tried to speak out loud. I cursed slowly, methodically-or imagined that I did. It seemed to me that my voice came back to me muffled, as from a great distance.

Through the timeless silence I clung to my rational thoughts like a finely spun life raft; they were all I had. I'd accepted the fact that my situation was hopeless, and an unexpected benefit was the temporary suspension of my terror and frustration. Now I was involved in a ritual of my own. The idea of a bunch of witches killing me when cholera, a psychotic Russian and the Iranian SAVAK had failed made me angry enough to want to hold out as long as possible. It had become a matter of pride.

I tried to fight off the oppressive loneliness by finely focusing my thoughts. For a while I concentrated on April, but that was too painful and only made matters worse. I shifted my concentration to Esobus and the coven, mulling over everything that had happened, everyone I'd talked to, all I knew or could reasonably conjecture: Daniel's behavior, Marlowe's immolation, Kathy's poisoning-I kept it all rolling, in living color, on an endless loop in my mind.

It didn't take me long to come to the conclusion that Smathers and Kee had been carrying out experiments in sensory deprivation at the university from Day One. They'd probably been scooping Bowery derelicts up off the sidewalk to use as subjects, then putting them back-or burying them-when the experiments were finished. The money for the equipment had come from their piece of the coven action in milking wealthy victims like Bobby Weiss.

Also, I was now positive that the rabid bat had come from Smathers. The Nobel Prize winner had unlimited access to the research facilities of the university's medical school, and that was undoubtedly where he'd scrounged up the diseased animal. Ironically, his reason at the time had probably been personal, completely divorced from the Esobus investigation. The bat had been Smathers' offbeat revenge on me for investigating him.

Every so often I tried to move. Perhaps because I finally had a fix on the nature of what was being done to me, I imagined I could occasionally feel an arm or leg move, my chest expand and contract. Once I even felt pain in my thumb, and I'd never experienced a more welcome sensation. But then it disappeared, which seemed to confirm that they were using curare in the intravenous solutions they had to be feeding me.

Waiting.

It went on and on, the terrible, crushing silence filled with my personal demons. Despite my acceptance of my death and my desperate efforts to focus my thoughts, the impact of the sensory deprivation was devastating. Knowledge of my situation was at once my greatest torment and my only defense; but it wasn't enough of a defense. The total lack of stimulation was tearing away the scabs on my psyche, releasing every pustule of fear and frustration I'd ever known, bringing it all up in one lump to sore and fester in my conscious mind; soon a flash point would be reached.

With increasing frequency, I found myself waking from periods of unconsciousness to find myself slipping down into the black hole. I fought back, but I was getting progressively weaker. Soon, I knew, I would fall down there and not be able to climb out. I'd be a zombie, a slave to Esobus, willing to do anything that was asked of me.

Until the rabies killed me.

The next time I emerged from semiconsciousness, I discovered that the black hole was far in the distance, and I felt on fairly solid mental ground. It took me a few seconds to realize what had brought me back.

My left foot was resting against something solid. I could feel it, and it was as if this delicate sense of touch were the greatest gift I'd ever received.

Slowly, tentatively, I sent a message from my brain down to my left leg, very politely asking it to move. It did. My toes wiggled, and my foot slid back and forth, touching the smooth, slightly slimy side and bottom of the tank. I tried the other leg. It too moved, as did my arms.

I was floating free.

I twisted around and felt my knees bang against the slate bottom. I stood, reached up with my hand and felt my fingers curl around a steel edge. I gave a mental whoop, pushed off the bottom and pulled with my arms. Buoyed by the salt water, I soared like a slightly dopey flying fish over the side of the tank. Needles tore from my flesh, and I landed hard on my back on a bare, hardwood floor. That stunned me for a moment, but nothing had broken. I ripped the rubber mask off my head. The light from the fluorescent lights in the laboratory slashed into my eyes like razor blades. I screwed my eyes shut and took deep, shuddering breaths. My skin was a kaleidoscope of sensation, as if every nerve fiber in my naked body were thirstily drinking up the feel of the water and the cold wood. My sensory floodgates were open, and living was gushing through them.

They hadn't killed me yet.

I tried to rise, but couldn't. My legs felt like warm putty. After spending an unknown length of time in the water, I knew it was going to be some time before everything worked properly.

I propped myself up on one elbow and opened my eyes to slits. The light still hurt, but the pain was tolerable. I was surrounded by a tangle of wires and plastic feeding tubes. A metal stand from which the intravenous feeding bags had hung was directly to my left. A huge electronic monitoring machine a few feet off to the right blinked merrily, as if welcoming me back to the world of light and the living.

When I moved my head, I found something else watching me. My flop on the floor and the tearing out of the feeding tubes must have tripped some warning device; Kee's Chinese assistant had appeared, and he was holding a large.38 in his hand. The sight was just what I needed to cheer me up.

The Chinese advanced toward me. I rolled over on my back, closed my eyes and moaned. When I felt him standing over me, I opened my eyes, grabbed the metal stand and pulled it toward him. The Chinese ducked, instinctively raising his gun hand to ward off the steel bar. The.38 went off, and a bullet shattered the glass tank above me. Several thousand gallons of water cascaded over us, knocking the Chinese off his feet and sloshing me across the room to come up hard and painfully against the monitoring machine. I sputtered and coughed water. My vision cleared in time for me to see the dazed Chinese get up on his knees and retch; fortunately, he'd swallowed more water than I had. The gun had fallen out of his hand and was about twenty feet to his right, near what looked like the main power switch for the floor. I began crawling toward the weapon on my hands and knees.

I'd just got started when the rest of the entourage arrived. Smathers and Kee, probably alerted by the sound of the gunshot, rushed in through the door on the opposite side of the room.

Things didn't seem to be going too well for me.

Seized by terror, and not a little self-pity at the injustice of it all, I felt my heart hammering inside my chest, paralyzing me; all I could do was stay kneeling and stare at the two scientists.

Kee was wearing a plaid work shirt, shiny chinos a size too small for him, and green, high-top sneakers. But he didn't look funny to me. His eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses were great dark pools of oil set in flesh that might have been made of fine yellow porcelain. He made a hissing sound behind his teeth.

Smathers' emerald-green eyes were filled with hate. He swore in frustration, then barked orders. The assistant quickly rose to his feet, spotted the gun and started to walk toward it.

The realization that I was about to be shot-or dumped back into the tank-proved remarkably therapeutic. It seemed a good time to do something; like turn around, scramble back the way I'd come, climb up on top of the monitoring machine and pull some wires.

The machine whirred and popped, sending up clouds of black, acrid smoke. The live wires in my hands sputtered like deadly Fourth of July sparklers. I figured it was time for something to start going my way; I spun a mental prayer wheel, something concerning proper insulation in the machine I was squatting on, then tossed the wires into the water on the floor.

Kee had excellent reflexes. He leaped at the same time I dropped the wires and managed to land on a dry, warped, upward-sloping spot against the wall on the opposite side of the room. Smathers and the assistant weren't so lucky-or fast. They both tried walking on water, but didn't get far. Their screams were burned out of their throats by a few hundred thousand volts of electricity. Already dead, they danced around for a few seconds, then fell; their bodies gradually stopped twitching as the electricity locked their joints and muscles. There was a smell in the air like that of fried pork rinds.

The gun was still in the middle of the floor, surrounded by the electricity-filled water. That was just fine with me, because Kee was having troubles of his own: the water was gradually working its way up the increasingly narrow shores of his island of dry wood. Kee was backed up against the wall, his arms splayed out to either side of him, his fingers clawing at the plaster. Rabies or no, dunking or no, at the moment I felt-good. I sat down, crossed my legs and smiled at him.

"Tough batshit," I said easily. "Win a few, lose a few."

For the first time, Kee's eyes reflected real emotion. There was fear of the liquid death seeping toward him, and there was hate. A lot of hate. I shouldn't have goaded him; it had been too inspirational.

The main power switch was a good fifteen feet away, but I'd already seen the strength he had in his legs. Kee gave a tremendous yell, then leaped straight up in the air; he planted his feet against the wall and dived for the power switch.

I knew he was going to make it, and he was closer to the gun than I was. Kee's fingertips hit the control switch, plunging the floor into darkness. His body hit the water a split second later, and I jumped to the floor. Waddling like a drunken duck on legs that felt as if they belonged to a toddler, pumping my arms for momentum, I staggered down the corridor toward the stairs. I could hear Kee splashing furiously along behind me, and there was no doubt in my mind that he'd remembered to pick up the gun. I caromed off the wall at the end of the corridor, fell down the stairs and hit the steel door at the bottom. Naturally, the door was locked.

There wasn't going to be any naked dwarf running through the hallowed corridors of Marten Hall.

I spun and crouched in the darkness, trying to make myself as small a target as possible. With two bodies in the laboratory to explain or somehow get rid of, I expected Kee would no longer be concerned with making me a servant of Esobus; he'd want to dispose of me as quickly as possible. It was going to be like shooting a dwarf in a barrel.

I held my breath and waited for the crash of the gun. All I heard was a dull click; the water had fouled the gun's firing mechanism. I waited.

I could hear Kee slowly and cautiously descending the stairs. I'd taught him some respect, but that wasn't going to be enough. Even if I hadn't spent an unknown number of hours underwater, semi-paralyzed by drugs, I'd probably have been no match for the powerful Kee I'd watched flit across the floor and walls of the laboratory like Superman. On the other hand, I couldn't just sit still and wait for him to beat my brains out.

After waiting a few seconds for him to descend further, I lunged up and forward, sweeping my hand through the general area where I hoped his legs would be. I got lucky. I caught his ankle and yanked. Kee yelped with surprise and went backward, landing on his back on the stairs.

There was no way of getting by him. I was very weak, and I assumed Kee was a karate expert. He'd probably break every bone in my body by the time I got halfway past him. But I had an angle on his midsection, and I drove my fist into his groin. That took the power out of a kick that could have killed me; his heel bounced painfully off my rib cage, but did no damage.

Kee was doubled over with pain, his shape just barely visible in the darkness. I could get past him now, but that would just mean playing cat-and-mouse up in the darkness of the laboratory; that was a game I eventually had to lose. I had no choice but to attack.

Grimacing against my own pain, I moved up and clapped my hands over Kee's ears. He screamed and half-rose. That was the position I wanted him in; he was off balance, his concentration shattered. I grabbed hold of both his ears and dropped. Kee flew over me and plummeted down into the darkness. He came up hard against the steel door, and there was a single, sharp cracking sound. I didn't have to go down and feel his pulse to know that Kee was dead, his neck broken.

I tasted blood, and I was very dizzy. I slumped down on a step, braced myself against the wall and waited for my head to clear. Eventually I would go back upstairs, find a phone and call Garth. At the moment I was thinking of something else. The fact that I was still alive was nothing short of miraculous; I should have felt elation, but I didn't. I felt hollowed out. Now that the danger was past, I felt strangely split, not caring about anything at all; I felt a stranger to myself.

I told myself it was just the aftermath of terror, the effects of shock and exhaustion. I was sure the strange feeling of emptiness would pass.