The Faculty Club

35

We found ourselves in a room that was somehow vast and claustrophobic.

Vast, because the far wall-and the only other door-stretched away from us like a hallway in a bad dream. The kind that keeps extending the more you run.

Claustrophobic, because the side walls and low ceiling loomed in on us. Every few feet I saw narrow slots that ran from the floor up the side walls and across the ceiling. There were elegant sconces with candles on the walls. Miles pulled out his Zippo and lit a few.

To my left, I noticed a bizarre mosaic on the wall, made out of tiny slick tiles. It traced the form of a demon, a grotesque creature with massive lips and hands, and an odd phallus that hung limp.

Miles walked up next to me.

“Ugly little fucker,” he said.

Sarah was across from us, examining a mural on the opposite wall. This one resembled a subway map but with no stops labeled. She studied the branching paths.

I put my hand on the demon and let my fingers trace over the tiles.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“It’s a totem of some kind. A god from some ancient religion.”

“Which one? What does it mean?”

Miles squinted his eyes.

“South American, maybe. Or Pacific Islander… Looks like one of those Easter Island heads.”

“You guys have no idea what you’re talking about,” a voice said from behind us. It was Sarah. She was laughing.

She started walking toward us, and her foot came down on a floorboard that sank inward with a series of sickening clicks, like an old man cracking his knuckles. Sarah’s head jerked up at us. Her eyes were wide.

“What did I just do?” she asked.

Before we could guess, there was a grinding noise from within the walls. My fingers were still on the tiles. I felt a vibration pass in a wave under my hand. There was a tremendous noise, like a machine rumbling to life, and then there was a release-the noise a carnival ride makes after it’s raised you up ten stories and the claws suddenly spring open.

We heard a screaming metallic cry. It started slow and then accelerated, rising in pitch. Then there was a flash of mirror and the blade-as tall and wide as a man-came tearing out of the slot with blinding speed. It arced down, sliced a hair above the floor in the center of the room, then disappeared into the slot on the far wall. The screaming slowed, then stopped.

Then it built up again, and a moment later the blade tore back across the room, straining its cable like the pendulum of an asylum clock.

“Oh, shit,” Sarah said.

The blade swung back and forth at the far end of the room, in front of the lone door.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay. It’s not that fast. We can time it.”

“Time it wrong, and you’re salami,” Miles offered.

Every pass of the blade made a palpable whomp, a pulse of wind that reached us. I counted from the time it disappeared into the slot until it reappeared and ripped across our path. At least three seconds. No problem.

“We can make it.”

No sooner had I spoken, than the noise roared louder and a second flash of silver released from another slot in the wall-this one about a foot closer to us. Now two pendulums were slicing past each other, out of phase.

“Shit.”

I counted again. They were off, but the cycles were steady-I could hear the motors grinding above. The noise was terrible, and the smell of burnt oil was filling the room. But there was a moment of opportunity, once the blades crossed paths. One or two seconds, but long enough. If we took turns, we could make it, one by one. We just had to be patient.

I started to say so when the third blade fell, a foot in front of the second and closer to us. It came tearing out and cut a lunar path across the room.

Now three blades were crossing; it was getting harder to see the door behind them. The cables whined and the motors squealed like animals being branded.

“I no longer think we can make it,” I announced.

“That,” Miles said, staring at the walls, “really isn’t the issue anymore.”

I saw what he was looking at.

The blades came out of slots, all about a foot apart. I hadn’t paid attention before, but the slots continued from the far end of the room, where the blades were swinging-all the way to us. In fact, there were only six inches between the door we came through and the first slot. Miles was more than six inches thick. So was I. Maybe Sarah could suck in, but then what? Spend infinity watching a giant pendulum slice past your nose? Plus or minus a few toenails?

“Maybe there’s just three,” I said hopefully.

I barely got the words out before hiss, clank, release and a fourth monstrosity whomped across the room.

That broke the spell.

Miles grabbed the doorknob behind us and twisted it frantically. Locked. He put all his weight into it. Nothing. He rammed his massive form into the door. It didn’t even buckle.

“This,” he shouted, poking a thick finger into my chest, “is the last time I listen to you!”

Miles kept slamming his shoulder into the door. I turned to Sarah. Her eyes were locked on the colossal blades, six of them now, mesmerizing. She was paralyzed. This wasn’t a room designed to kill. This was a room designed to make you lose your mind. The killing was an afterthought. Another blade dropped, and this time I really felt it-my hair blasted in the breeze.

I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. I shouted her name, but it was hard to hear over the roar. It sounded like a trash compactor closing in on thousands of glass bottles. I pulled her back. Her feet dragged like she was unconscious. She looked at me blankly. She looked at the blades and started screaming.

I had lost count of them. I yelled at Miles-he was getting nowhere with the door but probably breaking his shoulder.

I saw the image of the demon, grinning at me with those big lips.

Sarah knew something about the demon. She said so.

“Sarah!” I yelled, trying to get her to hear me over the machines. “Sarah, you said it wasn’t a totem…”

She blinked at me. She shook her head like she couldn’t hear me.

“You said we didn’t know what we were talking about… What is it?”

I turned her toward the mosaic.

“Please, we need to do something.”

“I don’t know…”

“You do. I need you to focus. Come on.”

The sound roared and a blade fell so close to us that Miles had to jerk us backward with his massive arms.

“We are going to die,” I yelled at her.

That did it. Sarah nodded. Her eyes seemed to clear.

“It’s not a demon,” she said. “It’s a homunculus.”

Miles roared. “Demon, homunculus, it’s the same thing!” He looked at me. “The alchemists made life from scratch. They called them homunculi.”

“No,” Sarah said, shaking her head vigorously. She had to shout over the machines. “Listen to me. Not alchemy. Biology.”

“There’s no time,” I said. “Can you stop this or not?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “But I know what he is.”

She pointed at the demon.

“Talk fast,” I pleaded.

“He… it… is a map. Of the nervous system. It shows where our nerves are. The more nerves, the bigger you draw the body part.”

“What?”

“From neurology… the hands, the lips, the genitals… that’s where we have the most nerves. That’s why they look big in the picture. It’s a symbol.”

“That ugly little shit is us?” Miles shouted.

“So what’s that?” I asked, pointing to the subway map.

“I knew I’d seen it before,” Sarah said. “It’s the brachial plexus.”

“The what?”

“A map of the nerves in our shoulders and arms. Look. The median nerve. The radial nerve. The ulnar nerve.”

We were running out of space. The door was impossible to see across the room. We had feet left to go.

“Sarah, honey, this has got to get practical really fast.”

“It is practical,” she said. “Doctors use these maps to figure out where an injury is…”

“Like…”

And then she saw it. Her eyes literally welled with joy.

“That’s it!” she cried.

She pointed.

“Here. See this?”

She jabbed her finger at a missing tile in the subway map, a small hole in the mural.

“So what? It’s old.”

“No. This isn’t an accident. This is what doctors do. This means something.”

We heard a hiss and Miles pulled us back. His shoulder slammed against the back wall, just as another blade swung past.

“What, Sarah?”

“If someone got hurt, here-” She pointed to the gap in the mural. “If this nerve got severed… you’d have a specific injury… I need to think…”

“NO TIME!”

“… C5, C6, C7…”

“Come on, Sarah…”

“… roots… then trunks… then divisions…”

“Come on.”

“… splits to the median nerve and crosses…”

“COME ON”

“… you’d lose sensation in… in…”

She was squeezing her eyes shut and shaking her head.

Miles pressed himself flat against the back wall and yelled, “Why do I have to be so fucking fat?”

The next blade would pin us all.

She cried: “He’d go numb in the lateral three-and-one-half fingers of his right hand!”

She bolted across the room toward the homunculus.

I heard the rumbling of the next machine. There was a flash of silver. Behind me the blade came free, split the subway or the brachial plexus or whatever the fuck it was and tore at me. I jumped. The blade flew toward Sarah. It would split her in half.

“SARAH!”

She dove to the floor and slammed her fingers toward the demon. The noise was unbearable. I hit the wall, saw flashes of light, and moaned and rolled over onto my side to see her reach the demon and press the shiny tiles of his outer four fingers. They sank inward with a click and she screamed or laughed and rolled to her side as the blade ripped past.

It disappeared into the wall and a tremendous clamping sound rang out. It didn’t come back out. All down the room the blades swung on their paths into the walls and didn’t come out again. The noise decreased with each return, until one or two last blades disappeared and it was totally, unnaturally silent. There was only the smell of rank gasoline and the total absence of thought in my head-perfect stillness.

At the far end of the room, the door had slid open.

I felt a joy surging inside me.

Sarah was on her feet. She was okay. She was smiling at me and tears were streaming down her face. She put her hand on my cheeks and I realized I was crying too. I grabbed her and hugged her tighter than I’ve ever hugged anyone, and I just kept saying Oh my God, Oh my God in her ear, over and over. Then I felt the crushing hug of Miles around us.

“You did it!” he cried to Sarah. “My God you fucking did it! What did you do?”

Sarah beamed. “It’s just science.” She pointed at the brachial plexus. “It’s a map of the nerves in someone’s arm. This missing tile, here, it’s intentional, like someone severed the nerve. I just had to figure out where a person would go numb if you cut that specific nerve.”

“Oh,” Miles said. “I knew that.”

Sarah was smiling and we ran toward the door. “Let’s get out of this room,” she said, laughing. She took off, Miles behind her, me last.

And that’s when the bad thought came into my head, so quickly that I didn’t even see it at first. It was just a sensation. We ran toward the door.

I felt the thought unpacking itself. I became aware of it, of what it was trying to tell me. I couldn’t verbalize fast enough. Sarah was at the door, running through it. Miles was on her heels, his momentum vast. I couldn’t get the words out fast enough, but my arm just shot forward and grabbed at them.

Why hadn’t I seen it sooner? It was so obvious. Three rooms. Three puzzles. The first one logic: the two kings. A lawyer’s puzzle. The second: the Ship of Theseus. A philosopher’s riddle. The third, the homunculus-only for a neurologist could that puzzle exist. Three of us-a lawyer, a philosopher, a neurosurgeon.

Oh God, they were just waiting for us.

My hand closed over a shirt, and with the strength that only terror can give you, I pulled back and Miles came with me as Sarah disappeared through the door.

I fell backward and Miles came down, half on top of me, crushing the wind out of me.

A second later, I heard Sarah scream.