False Memory

of the beast, tries to spit it out, but more leaves are shoved into her mouth, and she must swallow, swallow or suffocate, because still more crushed and powdery leaves are forced up her nose, too, and now a moldy mass of leaves squeezes into each ear. She tries to scream for Susan’s help, can’t scream, can only gag, tries to cry out to Dusty, but Dusty didn’t come here to South America or wherever this is, he’s back there in California, there’s no one to help, she is filling up with leaves, her belly full of leaves, her lungs clogged, her throat, choking on leaves, and now a frenzy of leaves whirling in her head, inside her skull, scraping across the surface of her brain, until she can’t think clearly anymore, until her entire attention is focused on the sound of the leaves, the incessant scraping- rattling-ticking-clicking-crunching-crackling-hissing SOUND—

“And that’s where I always wake up,” Martie said.

She looked down at her last scampi, lying on what remained of a bed of pasta, and it less resembled seafood than it did a cocoon, one of those she’d encountered from time to time when she was a kid, climbing trees. In the upper branches of one spreading giant, in what seemed to be clean bowers of sunlight and emerald-green foliage and fresh air, she’d once come upon an infestation, dozens of fat cocoons firmly glued to leaves, which curved to half conceal them, as though the tree had been induced to help protect the parasites that fed on it. Only mildly repulsed, reminding herself that caterpillars, after all, can become butterflies, she studied these spun-silk sacs and saw that squirming life filled some of them. Deciding to free whatever golden or crimson winged wonder wriggled within, to release it into the world minutes or perhaps hours before it would otherwise be free, Martie delicately peeled back the layered fabric of the cocoon — and found not a butterfly, nor even a moth, but scores of baby spiders bursting from an egg case. Having made this discovery, she never again felt exalted merely to be in the airy tops of trees, or indeed to be in the upper reaches of any place; thereafter, she understood that for every creature living under a rock or crawling through the mud, there is another equally squirmy thing that flourishes in high realms, because although this is a wondrous world, it is fallen.

Appetite spoiled, she passed up the last scampi and resorted to her beer.

Pushing aside what remained of his dinner, Dusty said, “I wish you’d told me your nightmare in all this detail a lot sooner.”

“It was just a dream. What would you have made of it, anyway?”

“Nothing,” he admitted. “Not until after my dream last night. Then I’d have seen the connections right away. Though I’m not sure what they would’ve meant to me.”

“What connections?”

“In your dream and mine, there’s an…an invisible presence. And a theme of possession, of a dark and unwanted presence entering the heart, the mind. And the IV line, of course, which you didn’t mention before.”

“IV line?”

“In my dream it’s clearly an IV line, dangling from the floor lamp in our bedroom. In your dream, it’s a snake.”

“But it is a snake.”

He shook his head. “Not much in these dreams is what it appears to be. It’s all symbol, metaphor. Because these aren’t just dreams.”

“They’re memories,” she guessed, and felt the truth of it as she spoke.

“Forbidden memories of our programming sessions,” Dusty agreed. “Our…our handlers, I guess you’d call them, whoever they are — they erased all those memories, they must have, because they wouldn’t want us to remember any of it.”

“But the experience was still with us somewhere, deep down.”

“And when it came back, it had to come distorted like this, all in symbols, because we were denied access to it any other way.”

“It’s like you can delete a document from your computer, and it disappears from the directory, and you can’t access it anymore, but it’s still on the hard disk virtually forever.”

He told her about his dream of the heron, the lightning.

As Dusty finished, Martie felt that familiar mad fear suddenly squirming in her again, with frenzied energy like thousands of baby spiders bursting from egg cases along the length of her spine.

Lowering her head, she gazed down into her mug of beer, around which she had clamped both hands. Thrown, the mug could knock Dusty unconscious. Once broken against the tabletop, it could be used to carve his face.

Shaking, she prayed that the busboy wouldn’t choose this moment to clear their plates.

The seizure passed in a minute or two.

Martie raised her head and looked out at the wedge of restaurant visible from their sheltered booth. More diners were seated than when she and Dusty had arrived, and more waiters were at work, but no one was staring at her, oddly or otherwise.

“You okay?” Dusty asked.

“That wasn’t so bad.”

“The Valium, the beer.”

“Something,” she agreed.

Tapping his watch, he said, “They’re coming almost exactly an hour apart, but as long as they’re this mild…”

A prickly premonition came to Martie: that these little recent seizures were merely previews of coming attractions, brief clips from the big show.

While they waited for their waiter to bring the check and then to bring their change, they pored through the haiku books once more.

Martie found the next one, too, and it was by Matsuo Bash-o, who had composed Skeet’s haiku with blue pine needles.

Lightning gleams and a night heron’s shriek travels into darkness.

Rather than recite it, she passed the book to Dusty. “This must be it. All three from classic sources.”

She saw the chill quiver through him as he read the poem.

Change arrived with a final thank-you from the waiter, plus the traditional have-a-nice-day, though night had fallen two hours ago.

As Dusty calculated the gratuity and left it, he said, “We know the activating names come from Condon’s novel, so it should be easy to find mine. Now we have our haiku. I want to know what happens when…we use them with each other. But this sure isn’t the place to try that.”

“Where?”

“Let’s go home.”

“Is home safe?”

“Is anywhere?” he asked.

56

Left alone most of the day, turned loose in the backyard rather than walked properly as any good dog deserved to be, given dinner by an intimidating giant whom he had met only twice before, Valet had every right to sulk, to be stand-offish, and even to greet them with a disgruntled growl. Instead, he was all golden, grinning, wagging forgiveness, snuggling in for a cuddle, then bounding away in pure delight because the masters were home, seizing a plush yellow Booda duck and biting it to produce a cacophony of quacks.

They hadn’t remembered to tell Ned Motherwell to switch lights on for Valet, but Ned did indeed mother well, leaving the kitchen brightly lit.

On the table, Ned had also left a note taped to a padded mailing envelope: Dusty, found this propped against your front door.

Martie tore the envelope, and the noise excited Valet, probably because it sounded like a bag of treats being opened. She withdrew a brightly jacketed hardback book. “It’s by Dr. Ahriman.”

Puzzled, Dusty took the book from her, and Valet stretched his head up, flared his nostrils, sniffing.

This was Ahriman’s current best-seller, a work of psychological nonfiction about learning to love