Under Veihl of Knight

Maybe I didn’t read the fine print on that insur­ance pack­age, though. Maybe I wasn’t clear on just who that pack­age cov­ered. See, my ex-girl­friend, Cindy, well, her nephew came up the week­end I went into the hos­pi­tal. She was pret­ty heart­bro­ken. Couldn’t fig­ure out why she wasn’t enough. Neither could I. But none of that had any­thing to do with Ronnie. He was just there for her emo­tion­al support.

The police report said it was an acci­dent. Said he was clean­ing his rifle, get­ting ready to go hunt­ing the next morn­ing. It was a long rifle. Hard to imag­ine him end­ing up in that posi­tion. It was sad. He was only fif­teen. Needless to say, Cindy wasn’t wait­ing when I made it home.

After I made it back from the hos­pi­tal, there was oth­er stuff. The mayor’s daugh­ter got real­ly sick. She always kin­da had a thing for me. She was a cou­ple of years below me, in my sister’s class. She stayed sick until about a week after I dropped out. She said she had a vision. It made the news. Said that some­thing “like a mir­ror wrapped around a nin­ja vibrat­ed a mes­sage into [her] bones and said [she’d] be fine in the morn­ing.”  When she woke up, she was.

A cou­ple months before that, my guid­ance counselor’s moth­er ticked over in the gro­cery store. The same day, two states away, her ex-hus­band, his estranged father, flipped his car over the guardrails of the Mackinac bridge when his pas­sen­ger-side tie rod broke at the same instant his driver’s side rear tire explod­ed. The senior in the car behind clutched the St. Christopher medal­lion dan­gling from her rear-view mir­ror and said it looked like some­body had flicked a domi­no over a ping-pong net. That’s not even sup­posed to be pos­si­ble. He had been help­ing me set up a Shadowrun club as an after-school activity.

Then my sis­ter got sick on the night of her big dance. She had final­ly got­ten up the nerve to ask Kyle. It was a big deal. The ambu­lance that picked her up got side-swiped by a drunk and rolled over. By the time they got her to the hos­pi­tal, she had a bro­ken leg, three bro­ken ribs, and a fever approach­ing one hun­dred four degrees. Fahrenheit.

I just didn’t have the hubris to believe that any of that had any­thing to do with me.

But then my dad slipped. He was just walk­ing down the stairs from his office on the eleventh floor, and he slipped. They say he had just come out of the bath­room, that the sole of his shoe was wet when he hit the land­ing. I don’t know; such a small thing, but now he’s in the hos­pi­tal, in a coma. I go up and talk to him pret­ty often. I remem­ber how it feels to be alone.

That’s why I knew it was over when I saw that old truck. There was some­thing in the way that fad­ed shade of Grenadier Red peeled away from the rust­ing shoul­ders of the wheel wells that spelled an end­ing. Something in the primer of the mis­matched pan­el that felt like a black eye on a shop girl. Something in the taste of the late sum­mer dust smacked of a mem­o­ry. Spinning orange dev­ils flung wisps of sting­ing dirt across our eyes. The fren­zied sand splashed into glow­ing pink clouds fat with the sun’s dying blood, now dis­card­ed hap­haz­ard­ly across the new evening sky. That image snapped into my mind as we exit­ed Gerri’s Chevette, and it lin­gered there, like a yel­lowed Polaroid in a shoebox.

When I opened the side door in the lean­ing cara­pace of Rat’s grandpa’s barn, there was a sense that this was not the event itself, but the mem­o­ry of it; like this moment was an arti­fact of a for­mer life lin­ger­ing before the void of dissociation.

When I stepped out of the shaft of light that fol­lowed me through the door, I saw what was left of Rat under­neath the sham­bles of the kit, skins torn and buck­ets shat­tered, paint­ed in a red that would be brown in hours. Shaker was on the oth­er side of the barn, still shak­ing because some­thing was still kick­ing him. Hard thrusts, down, meant to crush and destroy. It was vague­ly Tripod-shaped, if Tripod had been a foot­ball play­er made of ani­mal parts and junk­yard scrap, but patchy, ragged, and fuzzy around the edges. I could see the grain of the barn wall through it as it raged on my for­mer lead gui­tarist. It lunged at me, and I stepped into it because Gerri was behind me. Then it was gone, and I felt a warm spray hit the back of my neck, and some­thing with Gerri’s neon pink curls on it spun by my periph­er­al vision.

I remem­ber walk­ing for­ward into the barn, wip­ing blood off the side of my face, clear­ing my eyes. Beams of late-day sun shone through gaps with fire around their edges. Motes of straw-dust danced in the chaot­ic splen­dor of the after­math. Nothing moved but the wind. Nothing spoke but scrub and scraps thrown by the sky into the bones of the old farm. A star­ling flut­tered down to an old straw nest on a beam in the sunlight.

There are a mil­lion things I should have been feel­ing at that moment. I’m sure. I’m aware of what most of the feel­ings should have been. The only thing I felt, though, was that I had received a very clear mes­sage. It was time for me to leave. The Oscars were my last con­nec­tion to high school, to the com­mu­ni­ty I grew up in, to who I had been before the hos­pi­tal. Hubris or no, con­nec­tion to me seemed to have a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant like­li­hood of pre­cip­i­tat­ing a neg­a­tive impact on a person’s well-being. I was no longer a dan­ger to myself. I had become a dan­ger to oth­ers. That in mind, I walked through the field of dry­ing corn stalks on my way home. I took the rough path through the bound­ary for­est that me and the Oscars had kicked through on the way to the barn over the last cou­ple years, turn­ing on the fork that led to my folks’ back­yard. The day had fin­ished bleed­ing out, and night had slipped into its bed.

“I can still see the X.” A voice ascend­ed the stair­well. I closed and locked the door behind me and descend­ed the steps with­out hurry.

She had brassy red hair and hazel eyes, the col­or of a grasshop­per in July, that pierced me from behind her freck­les. She was com­pact and pret­ty in a seri­ous way. Her crisp grey uni­form revealed no insignia.

“Catch the wave. Hello, Gina.”

“Hello, Max. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

I still had the cop­pery edge of dis­si­pat­ing mil­i­tary speed in the back of my mouth and the mem­o­ry of warm spray on the back of my neck.

“Pretty sure I do, too. The Posthumous Oscars are, you know, posthu­mous… Ah, for real. And what­ev­er it was that killed them ran through me, and killed Gerri behind me. I think it want­ed me, but couldn’t get to me. We were, like, phase-shift­ed. Polarized oppo­site each oth­er so we passed through the same space with­out touch­ing each other.”

“What did he look like?” Gina asked.

“Looked a lot like Tripod, actu­al­ly, big, hulk­ing even. But met­al in places. Chrome, shim­mery. Transparent in oth­ers. No face. And fast. Too fast. Like bi-loca­tion. Like mul­ti­ple places at once. I need to leave, Gina. I need to leave, and you need to pro­tect my fam­i­ly, Gina. That was the deal.”

Gina’s eyes remained locked on mine; inti­mate, intel­li­gent, unreadable.

“That is bad news, Max. The fact that the assailant looked like your drum­mer sewn togeth­er with bad sci-fi hor­ror imagery isn’t sur­pris­ing, but still very bad news.”  She respond­ed smooth­ly and with­out inflection.

“It is par­tic­u­lar­ly bad news because it means the mes­sage I received was correct.”

“What mes­sage?”

Gina fold­ed her hands across the cool grey cot­ton of her knee. She flicked her eyes toward the cor­ner of my bed, and I sat automatically.

“There is no band called The Posthumous Oscars in 1989.”

She flicked one fin­ger toward a spot on the wall. My eyes fol­lowed to a poster hung mid­way up my bed­room wall. It was a two-foot by three-foot black-and-white glossy depict­ing the burnt-out shell of an old Baptist church. The chain across the front doors had been cut and hung loose, the lock rest­ing on the con­crete steps of the entry­way. One mas­sive carved door, its two-sto­ry half-arch cast­ing a point­ing shad­ow over the crum­bling brick­work, stood open to reveal a spray of holy books and hym­nals pour­ing in a shal­low tum­ble from the door­way down the steps. Smoke stains twist­ed cat-eyes from the cor­ners of the steepled win­dows to the caved-in slate roof. It lay below, crush­ing the seats of the sin­ners. Sprayed in scream­ing faux blood­print across Ansel’s night­mare of a church was the word Ransacked.

“You scream for a band you named Ransacked. Tripod is in West Virginia vis­it­ing his grand­par­ents. This you know, because you front­ed him the bus mon­ey. Rat, Gilly, Gerri, all down at the reser­voir won­der­ing where you’re at.”

“Who’s play­ing drums if I sent Tripod off to his granny’s?”

“Rat. You’ve had him prac­tic­ing for weeks. It makes sense that your assailant looks like some­one you know who presents a sense of phys­i­cal dan­ger mixed with your favorite fic­tion because you are hav­ing hal­lu­ci­na­tions. That was the mes­sage I received.

“This is very bad news, Max, for a vari­ety of reasons.”

“I can think of sev­er­al,” I blurt­ed, con­fused, embarrassed.

Gina pinched the fin­ger and thumb of her right hand togeth­er. She froze me with her eyes, then con­tin­ued after a beat.

“Be qui­et, Max, and lis­ten. First, we thought it was a prob­lem with your wet­ware, but diag­nos­tics returned noth­ing. All your feed­back from our inputs was nom­i­nal. We con­sid­ered it was the intox­i­cants, but we con­trol both your sup­ply and their effects. We can mute or even turn off most intox­i­cat­ing effects using cut-outs to the plea­sure cen­ters and sev­er­al sen­so­ry input webs through your net. We ran more diag­nos­tics any­way. Several sets of tests on sim­i­lar sub­jects, uncount­able com­bi­na­tions of intox­i­cants, and dim­ming cas­cades. Everything worked fine. You try to turn on too many lights, we turn off whichev­er ones we want, in real-time. That’s the real­ly scary part, Max.

“Nothing wrong with your wetware.

“You’re not start­ing the hallucinations.

“We can’t stop the hallucinations.

“Any process that orig­i­nates in your brain, we can stop with your net. See the prob­lem, Max?”

“So many I couldn’t pos­si­bly articulate.”

“Here’s the one that should stand out to you. Any process that either you or I can ini­ti­ate in your brain, I can also stop using your net. That means some­thing else is feed­ing you those night­mare man­u­fac­tur­ing sig­nals. That also means they’re implant­i­ng them direct­ly into your short-term mem­o­ry, because if they were com­ing in through a real-time input, I could stop them real-time. And that, Max, means you are under some­one else’s con­trol. Because what hap­pened today is that some­one sent you a sig­nal to walk to the barn and implant­ed the whole sce­nario in your mem­o­ry in tran­sit. By the time you made it to the barn, it was real to you, and you walked back. Just like a dog on a leash. And I saw none of it because all I saw was you tak­ing an all-day stroll.”

“Oh. That does seem bad.”  What else could I say? Dumbfounded is a bit short of where I fell at that moment.

“I’ll bet I can make it worse. Tell me who sent the mes­sage, Max.”

“How could I possibly?”

“Because if this isn’t a prank, Max, we have much big­ger problems.”

“I’m not much of a prank guy, Gina. I’m cer­tain you’ve been watch­ing long enough to know that.”

Gina reached into a pock­et on the sleeve of her uni­form and drew out a tat­tered old enve­lope with the agency’s stamp embossed in the cor­ner. She flat­tened it and hand­ed it to me. In the left-hand cor­ner was today’s date. In the cen­ter was Gina’s full name and office address.

“The mail room brought this up to me today. The let­ter inside was deliv­ered by tele­type. The actu­al let­ter is at the lab being test­ed. Ink sam­ples. Paper sam­ples. Samples of par­tic­u­lates in the enve­lope or on the paper. Systems is run­ning down any trace of the doc­u­ments’ prove­nance in agency files.”

She pulled an 8 x 10 glossy out of anoth­er pock­et and smoothed it in front of me.

“Here’s a pho­to of the doc­u­ment, Max. Any thoughts?”

Simple black type­face punched into thick yel­low­ing paper stock. Double-spaced. The edges of the let­ters dif­fuse, old ink slip­ping between fuzzy fibers.

November 12, 1953 — 23:00 EST

M.

to

G.

Max is hav­ing hal­lu­ci­na­tions. It’s not the net. You need to move him.

Gina pulled a tiny vial from a clasp at her shoul­der. Bold blue let­ters over the crys­tal cylin­der read Good Knight.

“You were right about one thing, Max. You have to leave. And you have to leave all the way dark. No neur­al activ­i­ty. Good night, Max.”

She reached over to lift the enve­lope from my hand and brushed the tip of the vial under my wrist.

All the lights went out.