Mortal Fear

Drewe is still speaking into the headset, her tone almost conspiratorial.

“SWAT’s moving through the building,” Miles says softly. “Drewe still talking to him?”

“Yes.”

“He talking back?”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know.”

“If someone blew open the side of your house, wouldn’t you run like hell?”

“I’m not him. He may be about to blast that whole SWAT team to hell. Remember Dallas.”

“No shit. Keep him talking.”

“Drewe’s got it.”

“I checked your transcripts in the Tulane Medical School computer,”says Berkmann.“You scored mostly twelves on the MCAT. That put you in the top one percent of medical school applicants. You could have gone to Hopkins or Columbia or Harvard.”

“So? What did you score?”

“I am the measuring stick, Drewe.”

“Ah.”

“You could have been a surgeon.”

“You have a point?”

“I’m trying to show you how accident has limited you. Circumscribed your life. You attended university near your home town. You married a man you’d known since childhood, settled in the place you were born. And there you remain. You spend your days delivering welfare babies doomed to wasted lives, your nights alone in bed.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know you, Drewe. You’re a barely subcritical mass of potentialities. People realize that you’re special, but they don’t want you to realize it. Because if you did you would leave them forever. You are a higher being, yet you do the work of a midwife. My God, to think of you bent between the heaving thighs of mindless women spawning children like roe, soiling your hands with their eternal muck. You’re like a saint sentenced to an eternity of healing lepers. Do you understand the kind of work you would be doing with me? Challenging the dominion of death itself-”

“They found a hostage!” Miles cries in my ear.

“What?”

“Male hostage in a basement. Alive! It must be Peter Levy. Jesus, they got another one! A woman! Wait… It’s just like we thought. A SWAT guy says the basement is set up like a hospital operating room.”

“What about Berkmann?”

“Nothing yet. It’s confused in there.”

“Female physicians,”Berkmann is saying,“driven beyond their abilities by their parents, hard little girls pushed into a male system. Slaves to technique, looking for father figures. I don’t need supplicants. Do you know the epigram of disappointment? I listened for an echo and heard nothing but praise-”

“They found his computers! Second floor. They’re powered up, but no Berkmann. Damn it, anybody who knows anything always leaves their computers on!”

“I know that!” I snap.

“I was telling Baxter,” says Miles.

“Berkmann must be in another part of the building,” I reason. “That’s why he didn’t split when they blew the doors. He’s safe in there somewhere. They have the exits covered?”

“They say they do. Berkmann still talking to Drewe?”

I tune in long enough to hear Drewe say, “Tell me more about Catherine, Edward. I’m sorry, may I call you Edward?”

“Of course.”

“He’s still on. He’s all sweetness and light. Miles, could Berkmann own the building next door? Sort of like the apartments in Dallas?”

“NYPD’s covering the adjacent structures. Oh, man-”

“What?”

“Body parts in the basement. SWAT just found them. Bodies and body parts in a big freezer. Bodies in plastic bags, parts in biological specimen jars.”

“To hell with that, where’s Berkmann?”

“We’ve got to get in there!” Miles yells suddenly. “Waitshit — I’ve got to see those computers! I’ll tell you where that son of a bitch is!”

I hear Daniel Baxter’s deep voice, the chopped cadence of orders. “We’re going in,” says Miles, panting like a sprinter again. “Keep Drewe talking!”

“She’s rolling, man. Go!”

“My father took me deer hunting when I was young,” Drewe says. “With a rifle. I hated it. It seemed a senseless slaughter. But then I learned to shoot a bow. And I loved it. Creeping through the forest looking for scrapes, letting the does pass by. Drawing the bow, holding my breath, waiting for the buck to step clear of cover with his massive rack. My arms quivering from holding at full draw, and then the release, the arrow crashing through his heart in the moment he heard it fly. I felt like a goddess.”

“That was but a taste of your true nature.”

“Edward? I want to share something with you. Something I’ve never told my husband. Something he’s never even asked me.”

“What is it?”

“A dream.”

“Yes.”

“It started during college, long after I’d stopped hunting.”

“This is a recurring dream?”

“Yes. I’m walking through a forest in winter. Snow on the ground, ice in the trees. I’m not wearing enough clothing to keep warm, just an old dress. No coat. I see many deer, but they’re starving. I pass them by. Then, through the bare black trees, I see a flash of pure white against the bluish snow. It’s a great buck, with fur like ermine from antlers to tail, his antlers black like wet branches, the underside of the tail like sable. Not an albino, because his eyes are bottomless rings of blue. Deeper and deeper into the forest I chase him. My throat burns from the cold. Once I catch a longer glimpse, and I see that he is wounded, a splash of blood on his white belly, as though he has taken an arrow yet runs on. Only a heart shot can bring him down. As dusk falls, I track him to a cave. He stands just inside the mouth, as though safe in shadow. I draw the bow. Then, just as he sees me, I release, burying the shaft in his heart.”

There is absolute silence in the room.

“Do you dress the carcass in the cave?”

“The buck doesn’t die. As he lies shuddering in the cave mouth, he is transformed into a man. A young man, with skin like alabaster. But the old wound in his belly remains. Then I come to him in the cave, and he goes down on all fours before me, facing away. And though I cannot see anything at my waist, it is I who penetrate him. Some part of me passes into him, and when he rises his wound is healed, he is made whole. But when I rise, I see thatI now have the wound. And I’m no longer a girl, but a woman, and it’s me running now, running with him chasing me. He gets closer and closer and then… then I wake up. I always wake up before he catches me.”

Berkmann says nothing.

I cannot imagine Drewe fabricating this story on the spot. The detail is too vivid. How little we really know about the people we live with.

“You still have this dream?”Berkmann asks finally.

“Yes. And it… it arouses me. Sometimes I have an orgasm when I’m in the cave. Sometimes not. Sometimes I feel only fear. Raw terror.”