Brainfire Read online

  “I guess that’s it,” he said.

  And as the man nodded, Rayner brought his knee upward. He drove it sharply into the region of the groin and listened as the man gasped, groaning, slipping back against the handrail, losing his balance and slithering down a couple of the concrete steps. He stared in an astonished way at Rayner, who was already trying to pass him on the steps, but he reacted with an agility that surprised Rayner, reaching out, grasping the ankle, twisting it so that Rayner felt a jarring pain. A desk job, Rayner thought. You’re not cut out for this nonsense. He lifted his free foot and swung it and heard it strike the side of the man’s head; he saw the head snap back, skull against handrail, bone against metal, a look of anguish on the sour face. The hand dropped away from Rayner’s ankle and he was free—free to get to the bottom of the steps, where, as he found himself in still another corridor, he could hear the guy shouting for assistance.

  8.

  Mallory was dizzy. He experienced a blurry double vision that created from the twenty-two players on the field a spectral forty-four. But it was the sense of panic, of dread, that was even worse than the pains, the distorted sight, the buzzing in his ears, the giddiness, the itching of the skin. It was the dread. Hadn’t he read somewhere that it was this dread that accompanied dying? Hadn’t he read that somewhere?

  MacMillan was telling him how pale he looked. Was there something he could do to help?

  Mallory gripped the edge of his seat as if it were a final anchor, the last thing he could trust. He listened to the roar of the crowd, which seemed to become one with the merciless buzzing in his ears. He was aware of a film of cold sweat on the surface of his eyelids. He thought: Is this how it ends? In this rainy stadium on a bleak April afternoon? All at once without warning? Something the checkups never revealed? Is this all?

  He felt the touch of MacMillan’s hand on his shoulder. It’s almost half time, he was saying. Perhaps I can find you a doctor, sir.

  A doctor? Half time? Mallory suddenly realized that he didn’t know where he was, or how he had come to this place, or why. Half time? What the hell did that mean? And the roar of the crowd—why couldn’t somebody stop it?

  He closed his eyes, rubbed his eyelids, and tried as hard as he knew how to keep control of himself. Now the crowd, as if the rain had muffled it, was totally without noise and the only sound he heard was the frenetic buzzing in his head—like the flow of an electric current through a bad connection, and painful, painful in the extreme.

  How could it end here? Here in this godawful rain?

  9.

  Corridors, endless white corridors. A moment before, he had heard footsteps coming down stairways after him and he knew they would have their neat little radios out now, talking with one another—there’s some nut running loose—rushing to seal off his route, swarming everywhere. You run. Out of breath, no matter what, you run. Beneath the whiteness of overhead lights, through the corridors of the labyrinth, you run. Where—where in this whole fucking place did he turn? There were open doors and empty rooms, doors marked PRIVATE, shower rooms, exercise rooms—which room did he want? And when he found it, if he found it, what then? An old woman—did you just go up to her and beg her to stop doing whatever she was doing? Did you try and choke her to death? Rayner, Rayner—what began as a series of impossible suspicions has become a monster, an obsession, because you don’t even know if she exists, if she’s a figment, a creature of the kid’s making, a fantasy molded out of the Play-Doh of the adolescent mind. You still don’t know. And if she doesn’t exist then what you’ve been doing all along is taking a circuitous route to the paranoid parlor, the funny farm—

  Now he could hear the echo of voices in the distance and the sound of footsteps other than his own. Just the same he had to stop, he had to catch his breath. Isobel would have taken the kid back to D.C. General by this time. What would she say? This poor girl’s in a … trance? Instant merriment amongst physicians who would automatically suspect your average teenage overdose and break out the stomach pumps. Poor girl’s a psychic, Doctor. Ah, yes, common enough problem these days. Where’s my stethoscope?

  Run. Just goddam run. He came to a corner, turning, feeling like the rat caught in some laboratory maze, all impulses controlled by the whiff of some delectable cheese. Running and running, as if he might never reach a finish line.

  10.

  For a time she had to let go, she couldn’t continue, there was a stubborn resistance, a willpower, that she hadn’t encountered before, and it was draining her. Eyes shut, swollen hands clenched together, she tried to gather her strength—but her breathing was tight and quick and constricted and she felt strangely feeble, beset by a lack of purpose, a feeling like that of trying to breathe life into a body already dead. Slowly she opened her eyes. Mallory is strong, she wanted to say—but she didn’t have the strength for speech. He’s very strong. Young and firm and controlled—a disciplined man. She struggled for air and thought: I feel what Mallory feels. His pains, his anguish are my own. And if I go to the very edge with him—what then? But I can’t go on, not now, not for the moment. She saw Koprow standing over her. She saw a small blue vein beat madly in his scalp. The woman, Katya, was standing by the wall with her arms folded tightly. Exhausted—they don’t understand the price, what it costs me, all they want is the result, all they have ever wanted is one thing from me, nobody has wanted me for myself apart from Aaron and Aaron died when he understood me. Is this all I am any good for now, this unending slaughter?

  “Is it finished?” Koprow asked. “Is it done?”

  She shook her head from side to side and whispered. No.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why isn’t it finished? What’s keeping you back?”

  He was angry. She understood that he was trying to control his anger but he couldn’t because it was natural to him. He couldn’t help himself.

  The woman, her arms still folded across her thin breasts, approached the wheelchair. “She needs to rest a moment. Isn’t that obvious?”

  The cold one’s concern touches me, the old woman thought. How very touching. Koprow said nothing. He was bending toward the wheelchair, staring, his eyes the color of a cold sea.

  “Andreyev—” Katya started to say.

  “Andreyev is dead. Andreyev is of no damn concern to me now,” Koprow said.

  The woman was silent for a moment, hushed, her face pale. Then she said, “Andreyev was always concerned with her strength. He was always careful never to push her too far.”

  “Andreyev was a traitor,” Koprow said. He reached down and put his hand under the old woman’s chin, turning her face upward. “Why haven’t you done it? Why isn’t it finished? Do you imagine we carried you all this way for nothing?”

  She shook her head. The room, the reflective tiles, the whiteness that came through the other door—the room was filled with cruelty, with an absence of compassion, of any simple human feeling. And she thought: What right do I have to think these things? I’m as bad as they are. I’m just as bad. There was fear too, currents of fear that she felt moving among all three of them in complex ways. They were afraid of each other. Each is afraid of me. And I, I’m afraid of myself. Now, like a stain spreading, she could feel the rush of tightness across her chest. I can’t go on.

  “Have you forgotten?” Koprow had taken the pictures from his coat. He selected one, the top one, and put the rest back. He held it in front of her and, panicked, she stared at it a moment. “Mallory. That’s all. Do you understand me?”

  The photograph magnetized her; she couldn’t stop looking at the way he held it. It was as if he held the grandchild depicted in the picture—the boy; it was as if he held the small body and was threatening to drop it from some great height.

  “Mallory,” Koprow said. “If you want to meet in the flesh all these nice people in the photographs.”

  She was numb, unable to feel herself. Why did he have her photographs? Why had he taken them from her? She couldn’t remember exactly now, b
ut it was all wrong. They belonged to her, they shouldn’t have been taken away from her.

  She strained to speak. “I want my pictures back,” she said.

  “When you’re through,” Koprow said. “Only when you’ve done what you’re here to do.”

  She closed her eyes and turned her head to one side. She thought of Mallory for a moment—but Mallory didn’t have the pictures; why should Mallory concern her now?

  “My … pictures,” she said. Opening her eyes, staring at Koprow, she held out one hand very slowly. He shook his head, dangling the single photograph well out of her reach.

  “My …” She continued to stare at him, feeling his unease, understanding his fear, realizing that his fear lay concealed beneath a thin layer of bravado and cruelty. He was all at once like glass to her, a thing she could see through. My pictures, she thought. I want my pictures. Koprow took a step backward.

  She saw him smile, then take the photograph of the boy and bend it between his fingers, making a crease the length of the picture. Then he tore it into two pieces. He let the pieces fall from his fingers to the floor. She followed them in their awful flight downward. One half lay with the colored side up—half of the boy’s face, eyes and nose and hair. She pushed herself forward in her chair as if she meant to bend and retrieve the pieces.

  Koprow took another photograph from his pocket and held it out toward her. “These are only pictures. Think of your own family, not as photographs, Mrs. Blum, but as real people. Real people. Nobody wants any harm to come to them. Nobody.”

  She couldn’t take her eyes from the two sliced pieces that lay just beneath her feet. Her anger was a slow thing, building slowly, terribly. She raised her face to look at Koprow. His eyes—what lay beyond his eyes? What lay in that glass heart? He stepped farther back. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted his pain. Now, in a distant way, she was conscious of somebody running, somebody running nearby, running hard. And she wondered who it might be, and why he was running. But there was no time for that now, there was only Koprow, the photograph in the man’s hand, the two slashed pieces on the floor which lay, sadly, like some ancient love letter ripped in a fit of anger later regretted.

  My papers. My flight. What time tomorrow?

  There was an emptiness in Koprow’s mind. She concentrated, wanting an answer from him that would be positive and truthful—afraid to hear still another lie.

  What time tomorrow?

  Koprow had moved another step away from her. His face was all fear now. She made him drop the picture, watching his hand open and the fingers spread stiffly. Appalled, he looked at the photograph drifting away from him. You’re strong, she thought. Strong. What time tomorrow? Tell me, tell me.

  There was nothing. There was nothing.

  “Mallory,” he said, his voice weak. “Remember what …”

  What time tomorrow?

  She caught the arms of her wheelchair and, fighting, struggling against her own weakness, pushed herself up. Her limbs were painfully weak, her muscles trembling.

  “What are you doing?” Katya asked. “Please—what are you doing?”

  She thrust herself away from the wheelchair, dragging her blanket behind her, stepping delicately over the destroyed picture; she pushed herself forward and moved, one hand uplifted, toward Koprow. He thinks he can hide, she thought. He thinks he can hide from me. But there’s no hiding place. There’s nothing.

  “Remember what—”

  Tell me. Tell me the truth. Tell me about tomorrow.

  And she saw. It didn’t matter to him, there was no tomorrow, there was no flight, there were no papers to be signed, because all she caught was confusion, the confusion of the liar who can no longer separate truth from fiction. What time? Nothing. No time. Lies, humiliation, fear—they had forced her through all of this in return for what? She stopped, thinking she was going to lose her balance, feeling a sudden spasm in her legs. I wanted so badly to believe, she thought. I needed to believe. I needed it. Now there’s nothing. Nothing but my own pains, my own endless torment. The killing—there had to be a place where the killing would stop. But not yet. Not now.

  She watched him back into the open doorway of the lighted room. His shadow fell across the white tiles. You can’t hide in there, Koprow. You still don’t understand: there’s nowhere to hide.

  She glanced at Katya, who, her mouth open, her arms hanging loosely at her sides, stood motionless against the opposite wall. Katya knows, she thought. Katya knows there’s no refuge. And you are going to know too, Koprow.

  Please, Koprow said.

  She watched him fall to the floor and turn over on his back. A game, she could make it a game, something like the things she had done as a young girl. A guessing game—you were always able to guess the cards when they were face down. Sometimes you could tell what was on a person’s mind. It was mischief. You reached out with your mind, you sent your mind flying out like some discus until it struck its target. Don’t you remember how amazed and puzzled you were when you found that nobody else could do it, and then how ashamed you became as you grew older, how you hid it away like a sin?

  Sin: they have made me sin. Played on my weaknesses, my fantasies, my losses: my need for loving. They made me sin for all that.

  Koprow moaned, his body twisting, his hands going up to his skull.

  Pain, she thought. It’s only just begun. One by one by one the bones break. The arm the arm first begin with the arm hurt him. Katya moved slightly as if she might make for the door but she knew—she knew when it was utterly hopeless. There was the sound of something cracking and Koprow, his body curled in a stiff fetal position, opened his mouth to scream. But she wasn’t going to give him that escape.

  “Don’t,” Katya said. “Don’t do it. Think. Think of what will happen to your family.”

  “Family?” she answered. Family?

  “They’ll be killed,” the woman said.

  She hesitated. She looked down at Koprow. Screaming in his profound silence. Family. They will be killed. There was a knotted sensation within her. How could she bear this pain any longer? And she remembered Aaron—I’m sending the boy away, I’m sending him to our relatives in Palestine. How can you bring him up? How can I expect you to raise him knowing what you are?—Dear God. Family. Sending the boy away. The boy she never knew. The father of her grandchildren. They don’t want me, she thought. What do they need with me? I have built love out of nothing, out of nothing at all. A castle in the air. A dream. The letters, the photographs—what did they amount to? Were they real? Was there really any family? Had there ever been one? She shut her eyes. It has to end here. The killing has to end in this place. No matter what, the killing has to end in this place. She moved, shuffling, wracked with pain, toward the figure of Koprow.

  11.

  It was the smell of burning that made Rayner open a particular door. It was the scent of flesh burning. Even then he opened the door hesitantly, letting it swing slowly inward to the room. Half-lighted, white tiles, shadows, fluorescence burning from another door beyond. He stepped inside the room, trying to make out shapes from shadows, conscious at the same time of a soft sighing noise coming from a dark corner. In the doorway that faced him there was somebody—something—lying. At first he couldn’t make it out. He thought: You read of strange things in weird books; you read of unexplained phenomena—a woman in Florida disappears in some wildly improbable outrage of spontaneous combustion. You read it, you forget it, then it comes back to you—all the strange things you’ve read: objects falling out of the sky, blue sunsets, a man in Kansas disappearing from sight in full view of his family. Other dimensions, they say—as if that explained a goddam thing. The mysteries of living and dying. He bent down over the shape. Startled, he backed off. A man. Maybe. Maybe once. You couldn’t say for certain that this had been a man—this blackened object that lay in the doorway, this charred form: a Frankenstein gone wrong. Burnt clothing; was that skin that had been scorched? He shut his eyes a second. A tric
k of the mind, a delusion, another sign of your condition. But it was still there when he looked again. Blackened bone, that was what he could see. Bones broken and protruding through flesh the color of cinders. A man, something that had once been a man. He felt sick as he stood up and stared at the thing. She could break your mind. What was more terrible—the ability to reduce a man to this condition or the capacity for taking a mind and driving it toward a total destruction? He didn’t want to look—but he couldn’t prevent it. And still, from the dark corner of the room, there was the same soft, sighing sound. He stepped over the body and into the inner room, where the lights made him blink. His eyes watered—from what? Fear?

  A cubicle door was open. He went toward it. Like a child crouching in the distant corner of a room, like a child fending off the nightmare monsters of the imagination, there was a middle-aged woman covering her head with her hands, her knees bent, her body doubled. She was trembling. He reached out to touch her and wondered: Is this the one? Is this the kid’s woman? Did she just get the age wrong? He turned her face toward him and immediately, as if something had stung him, he backed away, sickened, sickened again. The facial skin was scorched, bloodied, the eyelids swollen—the eyes themselves red and blind as if they had been rubbed constantly for years, rubbed and pushed and pressed to the point of sightlessness. He backed out of the cubicle and the woman turned her face away, once again covering it with her hands.

  In the doorway he paused. You reach a point, he thought. You think: I can’t deal with it anymore. It’s beyond what I know. It’s beyond simple torture, simple violence—a place where you dare not go. He listened to the same quiet, sighing sound as he had heard before and he stepped over the charred thing in the doorway and back into the other room, his eyesight darkened and dimmed by the fluorescence. He waited, listening, hearing other sounds now from along the corridor. But it was the sighing that drew him to the corner of the room.