Fear itself

“You deserved it, you know,” said Grandfather Childs.

“I hate you.”

“I hate you.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

“You’re not capable of love.”

“You’re not capable of love.”

“I loved Missy,” said Simon.

“I loved Missy,” said Grandfather Childs. “You k-”

Simon knew what his grandfather was about to say; he snatched up a man’s hairbrush from a basket next to the sink and smashed the pewter handle straight into the old man’s face, shattering the mirror. “It was Pender who killed Missy, and don’t you forget it,” he said.

“It was Pender who killed Missy, and don’t you forget it,” said Grandfather Childs, though his face lay in shards all over the marble counter.

Upon returning to the bedroom, Simon untied Gloria, sat her down in front of her chromed-steel mirrored vanity, and made her watch as Grandfather Childs began to give the pretty looking-glass Gloria a clumsy haircut. From the way both Glorias shuddered when the scissors bit in, Simon knew he was on the right track. He also knew it wasn’t really Grandfather Childs in the mirror-Ecstasy didn’t cause hallucinations-but he was starting to learn that sometimes it was a whole lot easier to suspend disbelief than it was to unsuspend it.

First pass, they only took a few inches off the bottom. Gloria seemed more angry than frightened, and both emotions were blurred by drugs and trauma-but then, she still didn’t know where he was going with all this. That was a discovery he wanted her to make on her own; he wanted to see the realization dawning in her eyes before he so much as nicked her. And who knows, he told himself: if her initial reaction proved to be intense enough, pure enough, he might not have to mess up that pretty face at all.

In any event, Simon was aware that the longer he stalled, the better. Once he cut her skin-if indeed he even had to-the race for her soul, the race between fear, shock, and pain, would be under way. So he proceeded slowly on the hair, a few snips here and a few snips there, until at last Gloria was shorn like Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls.

“There you go.” He rubbed her scalp affectionately-the black stubble was surprisingly soft, like one of Missy’s stuffed animals-and tenderly dabbed away the tears trickling down her cheeks. Or at least, he felt affectionate and tender, but when the old man in the mirror did the same for his gal, it looked smirky, and insincere as all get out.

“It’ll grow back,” Simon whispered, helping Gloria to her feet and leading her over to the bed-to tell the truth, he was getting a little tired of seeing his dead grandfather in the looking glass. “Hair grows back.”

Then he’d repeated it, with a slight change of emphasis. “Hair grows back.”

Still no reaction-so much for subtlety. “As opposed to lips or noses, that is.”

Bingo. There was no need to disfigure Gloria beyond a few shallow scratches for effect-Simon soon discovered that he had only to bring the single-edged blade of the box cutter he’d found in a kitchen drawer anywhere near Gloria to provoke the fear he craved.

Once he realized that, all that remained was the fine tuning: finding the perfect rhythm, knowing when to press and how hard, when to back off and for how long, learning when a mere threat or feint would suffice to get her attention and when an actual thrust was required: the game might not be about sex, thought Simon, but when it was good, it was an awful lot like making love-or the way making love was supposed to be, for those who didn’t suffer from ejaculatio praecox.

Lhermitte’s Sign 1

When she found herself feeling kind of punk at breakfast on Wednesday morning, Linda decided to blame it on the Betaseron. Flu-like symptoms were not an uncommon side effect. And if it was more than a Betaseron reaction, if her T-cells had decided to go off on another myelin-munching spree, there wasn’t much she could do about it anyway. In the multiple sclerosis sweepstakes, Linda Abruzzi had drawn the booby prize. Unlike relapsing-remitting MS, in which the effects of each episode are only temporary, or secondary progressive MS, in which the symptoms are permanent, but which typically doesn’t develop until a good fifteen years after the onset of the relapsing-remitting course, in the primary-progressive course of the disease, with which she had been diagnosed, the effects of each attack are permanent from the get-go.

Linda’s first episode, nearly six months earlier, had been presaged by a weird, electric tingling in her lower extremities, followed by near-paralytic weakness in her calves and ankles. Still, she knew she was one of the lucky ones. Thanks to an early diagnosis by her doctor in San Antonio, she had been put on a course of Betaseron almost immediately, and to date had suffered no subsequent attacks. Her vision was good, her mind and memory sharp as ever, her pain was bearable, her fatigue generally surmountable, and now that she had her cane to lean on, she was getting around like shit on a wheel-no sense giving in to the bastard now.

Unless-What if-

She tried to stop her mind from finishing the thought, but it was already formed: What if she had an attack while she was driving? Or in the office, or at lunch? Wouldn’t it be better to stay home, make sure of what she was dealing with, rather than risk-

Then it struck her: this was what classic agoraphobia was like, this was what her poor phobics (and she thought of them as hers now, a week and a half into the investigation) went through every day of their lives. It wasn’t going out to the market or the mall or the office that they feared, it was having an anxiety attack while they were out there. Isn’t it better to stay home than risk public humiliation?

The answer, of course, was no. You said no-fuck no, if you were from Linda’s neighborhood-and you dragged yourself out into the arena. Because if you said yes, if you gave in to the fear, there would be no going back. The excuse, the cop-out, would be there again tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Something else they used to say in Linda’s old neighborhood: I shoulda stood in bed. At first, it seemed as if she might as well have, for all the progress being made in the Childs manhunt. Save for one lonely red pin in San Francisco, representing Zap Strum’s apartment, the map on the wall was still embarrassingly blank-no valid Childs sightings to date, though a highway patrolman near Flagstaff had chased and braced a gray-haired attorney driving a silver Mercedes convertible with California plates, who had in turn threatened to hit the state of Arizona with a lawsuit so punishing that its unborn children would die broke.

But a few minutes after ten, Pender called from the coast. “You’re up early,” she told him.

“Your FBI never sleeps, kiddo. I was down in Big Sur yesterday-Dorie and I stopped in to see her old friend Dr. Luka.”

“That’d be the Dr. Luka you promised you weren’t going to try to interview yourself.”

“No interview-just an informal chat.” He gave her the gist of it.

“So where does that leave us?” she asked, when he had finished.

“With a first name and an approximate address for the year1963. How would you go about nailing that down a little more concretely?”

Swell, a pop quiz. “I guess I’d have somebody check the property records. City of Berkeley or Alameda County.”

“That’ll give you the owner’s name. Nelson was a kid.”

“Call me a dreamer, Ed, but I’m guessing he’ll have the same last name as his parents.”

“Good point. But if you do run into trouble-”