Pandemonium

The blackness is a door. All he has to do is open it. The Boy Marvel, on patrol high above Olympia, Kansas, looked down to see the farmboy slip from the bridge and plunge into the rushing stream. Someone’s a little clumsy! the hero exclaimed. He swooped toward the lad and landed with a splash.

Need a lift? he queried. He picked up the boy in arms as strong as Her- cules, and zoomed down the road with the speed of Mercury. As luck would have it, there was a hospital nearby. The Boy Marvel kicked open the doors and walked through with the sopping wet boy in his arms. Is there a doctor in the house? he called jauntily. The nurses were amazed. Someone said, Why, that’s the Noon boy! And someone else said to the hero, How did you carry him all this way—you’re just a boy yourself!

But the Boy Marvel only smiled and said, All in a day’s work, ma’am. Before he left, the hero leaned down to Bobby Noon and whispered, I’m going to teach you a secret. He told Bobby how to make a high- frequency whistle that only superheroes could hear. Whenever you need me, the Boy Marvel said, just whistle.

And with that the caped hero vanished.

Bobby couldn’t move or talk, but the doctors and nurses knew how to take care of him just the same. They put him in a clean room with windows that faced his farm. For the first few years his grandmother came by every afternoon to read to him. After that, he told stories to himself. He measured the hours by the calls of the freight trains. He watched the skies.

Sometimes he got bored, so bored that he dreamed of running wild. He’d jump out of bed and knock over the food trays and yell at the nurses. And sometimes, especially at night, he got scared. He’d hear what sounded like the drone of a Japanese Zero, or the pad of small bare feet on the hallway tile. He’d tell himself to be brave. There were heroes in the world. And Bobby could call on the most powerful one of all. Someday he’d put his lips together and whistle, and the Boy Marvel would come speeding out of the Kansas skies like a bullet.

15

I awoke to the distant howl of a freight train. The sound was familiar, comforting. I blinked up at the dark, content to be safe in my bed, thinking about the train coursing along the prairie. I could almost hear the engineer shouting into the wind as he leaned out the window.

The mash-note chord sounded again, then again, louder. In the second or two of silence between the blasts I heard a car engine start up.

I got to my feet, still sleep-drunk but rapidly waking. This wasn’t my house, wasn’t my bed. Outside the star-cracked window—past the fields, past the highway and the black bulk of the hospital silhouetted against the slate gray of the sky—the headlamps of a train plowed through the dark. The thrum and clack of the wheels carried easily through the damp air. It was impossible to tell how far away the tracks were, but the train seemed to be moving extremely fast. I reached the window and looked down at the front yard. The headlights of O’Connell’s pickup flicked on, and the truck backed up, turned toward the road. I yelled her name.

Where the hell was she going?

I looked up at the hospital, its top windows still lit, and suddenly understood what O’Connell had seen from the window a few hours ago. How the farm must look from a window in the top floor of that hospital. How the Painter had always painted it that way, looking down, from a distance.

Bobby Noon was watching the farmhouse. He’d always been watching.

I turned and started for the door, then realized I was barefoot. I found the first gym shoe, finally found the second under the bed. I yanked them on, sockless, stamping on the heels as I reached the hallway. I called O’Connell’s name, not expecting an answer, and ducked into her room. Even in the gloom I could see that her bed was empty. I turned and plunged into the pitch-black staircase, taking the stairs two at a time, using my arms as guides and shock absorbers, and stumbled into the living room. The front door was ajar. I knocked it wide and ran outside. The bones of the barn raked the gray sky. It was near dawn, and the crescent moon hung low behind the house.

O’Connell had taken the road, but I could head straight for the hospital through the high-grown fields.

I ran.

The frost-hardened grasses whipped at my arms and hands, tangled my feet. I could see nothing but the night sky, the blur of grass, and the lights of the top floor of the hospital jittering in my vision. Invisible rocks and depressions tripped and jarred me, and several times only momentum kept me upright. Finally I saw a slice of deeper black through the tops of the weeds—the road.

Something seized my foot, and I slammed onto my chest. I lay for a moment, the breath knocked out of me, and finally pushed myself up onto hands and knees. I sucked air, and began to cough. My foot was still trapped. I reached down, felt the metal teeth of barbed wire biting into my shoes, gripping the cuff of my jeans. My ankle burned. Nearby I could see now the outlines of a fence, knocked

flat in this section, but still connected to upright posts through strands of wire. A few feet in that direction and I would have run into the wire at full speed.

I stood awkwardly, my right foot and leg still trapped. I carefully pried the wires away until only my jeans were still snagged. I hopped forward and ripped them free. Then it was a long step over a drainage ditch, and I was standing on the road.

The hospital’s peaked entrance was perhaps a hundred yards away, lit by sconces to either side of the double doors. O’Connell’s pickup was parked under it.

I jogged up the road, huffing now, exhaling clouds, my feet slapping the black pavement. I’d stopped trying to think. The top-floor windows watched me approach, unblinking.

Car lights swept up from behind me; I glanced back, then jumped aside as a long black car roared past. The car swung into the hospital entrance and skidded to a stop just behind the pickup. I slowed, catching my breath. Fifty feet away, the driver’s-side door opened. A figure stepped out: gleaming black shoes, razor-creased charcoal pants, black trench coat. He straightened, flexed gloved fingers, and adjusted his slouch hat, each movement precisely choreographed. He slowly turned his head in my direction. A hatchet-nosed man. His eyes were in shadow, but his gaze pinned me like a prison searchlight. I froze, waiting for him to lift those hands, waiting for the glint of pistols.

His head tilted forward in what could have been a nod. Then he spun away from me, the trench coat fanning, and stalked through the hospital doors.

I almost knelt then, my legs spongy with fear and relief. I bent over, hands gripping knees, and breathed deep. It’s only a demon, I told myself. Just like you. Sirens approached from the distance.

I reached the front doors before I realized I was running again.

. . .

To my night-widened eyes, the lobby was lit like an operating room. The front desk was abandoned, but nearby a woman’s voice made a sound like a scream or a squeak. I leaned around the corner. A dozen yards down the hallway a heavy woman in a blue pastel smock tried to press herself into the wall, her head down and arms crossed over her chest. The Truth stalked past her without turning his head. When the demon reached the next intersection of hallways he glanced back, as if making sure I was following him. Fuck you, I thought. I’m not following you anywhere. The Truth disappeared down the side hallway. I ran toward the nurse, touched her shoulder. She cringed but didn’t scream. She was maybe fifty or sixty, with carefully hair-sprayed black hair.

“Have you seen a bald woman?” I said. “Kind of thin and angry?”

She stared at me, then shook her head.