Fear itself

2

With amphetamines, there comes a point where a dosage sufficient to keep you awake is also large enough to cause optical field disturbances similar to hallucinations. Flashing lights in the periphery of your vision, trails and prismatic distortions-you don’t see things that aren’t there, but you almost see things that weren’t there a second ago, and aren’t there when you look again.

Simon reached that point late Tuesday afternoon. He’d fled La Farge profoundly shaken by how deeply the old woman had gotten under his skin, and though he’d driven blindly through the night and into the dawn, he couldn’t seem to drive fast enough or far enough to get her out of his mind-the fond look in her eyes when she told him about her Down child, her Stanley; the sincere anger in her voice when she recounted how the doctors had told her the best thing she could do for all of them, Stanley, her husband, and herself, was put the child away in an institution before they all got too used to each other; the shame when she told him how close she’d come to listening to them.

“They wouldn’t let me breast-feed him-they told me I’d get too attached. When he was three weeks old, we put him in his little basket and drove him to the state home down by Madison. The papers were signed-all I had to do was turn around and walk away, but do you know what, Mr. Bellcock? It was as if my legs had turned to stone. To this day-to this day, Mr. Bellcock, I still can’t understand how any mother could do it, physically do it, is what I mean, walk away and leave her baby behind.”

There’s an old woman in Atlantic City I’d like to ask that same question, thought Simon. And suddenly, although he couldn’t have put a name to the disquieting sensation welling up inside him-it was a strange amalgam of self-pity and empathy-he realized he couldn’t stand to hear much more about how it felt to be Ida Day in particular, or a mother in general, or how it felt to be anybody else at all other than Simon Childs. All he’d ever asked her about, he told himself, all he’d ever wanted to know was what she was afraid of, so they could get on with the game.

The irony of the situation was that when she finally got around to telling him, it only made things worse. Simon had known, of course, that there were other Down children in the world, tens of thousands of them, and if he’d bothered to think about it, he’d have understood that their parents had some of the same problems that he’d had, loco-parenting Missy-and probably with a lot fewer resources. But it wasn’t until Ida turned from the mantelpiece holding a photograph of Stanley in a filigreed silver frame, and told him how every night for the three years between Walt’s death and Stanley’s, she had lain awake in terror at the thought of dying first, of leaving Stanley behind, helpless, alone, afraid, that she really started getting under his skin.

Because every time she said “Stanley,” he heard Missy, and the nameless, unfamiliar, disquieting sensation worsened; when she told him how sometimes she even thought about using the revolver in her dresser drawer on both of them if her health started to fail, Simon could scarcely bear it. He fled La Farge at midnight, needing a game more desperately than he had when he’d arrived; by the time he finally pulled off the interstate somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania on Tuesday afternoon, to look for a motel before he drove the Volvo off the road while swerving to avoid something that wasn’t there, the need had turned to a craving.

Yes, and people in hell crave ice water, as Grandfather Childs was fond of saying. Simon should have remembered that when he saw the sign for Graham Graham’s Reptilarium, Route 15, Allenwood at the bottom of the off-ramp and was immediately reminded of the ophidiophobe who called herself (or himself, though the majority of ophidiophobes were female) Skairdykat, the last fruit of the PWSPD tree. According to Zap Strum’s information, Skairdy lived in Georgetown, which was not far from Pender’s home in Maryland. He should also have remembered what Grandfather sometimes used to add: if those folks in hell ever get their ice water, they usually find the devil has salted it first.

Graham Graham’s Reptilarium! Simon, whose interest in snakes went back to his boyhood pet Skinny and whose subsequent hobby had involved him with ophidiophobes more than once (it was one of the most common specific phobias), had often seen Graham on television and had wanted to visit the place for years, but it wasn’t until this afternoon that fate had brought him anywhere near Allenwood, Pennsylvania.

The reptilarium looked fairly crummy from the outside-it shared a strip mall with a hoagie shop-but once inside, Simon was not disappointed. Mambas, cobras, pythons, vipers, a twelve-foot gator, giant tortoises, exotic frogs and lizards-Simon even saw Graham Graham himself, in safari khakis, leading a group of schoolchildren on a tour. In other circumstances, he told himself, he’d have liked to shake the man’s hand, buy him a drink, talk reptiles. But it would have been indiscreet-after all, Simon was planning to rip the place off right after closing.