Ellen stares. Blank.
“No, Delores. Tell me.”
“I thought that was obvious.” Delores grips her purse handle, preparing to leave. “They’re getting him ready, Ellen.”
“Ready for what?”
“To send him back, Ellen. Back to Africa.”
For a horrifically plausible second in time, Ellen sees herself reaching across the table and strangling Delores. Because Delores has known these things. Because Delores could’ve put a stop to them long before now. And now that job is left to Ellen.
When the vision passes, when Ellen is left with the flat reality of her situation, she asks one more question.
“What does A-9-A mean, Delores?”
Her voice is as flat as a body in its casket.
Delores swallows hard.
“It’s the only thing they’ve discovered that’s more powerful than the sound.”
“What?”
“It resists it.”
“How do you know? Have you seen them test it on Philip?”
Delores can’t even look Ellen in the eye.
“They haven’t done that yet,” she says. “But they’re about to.”
38
Philip has badly broken his ankle. He knows that much. It might be many bones. Many things hurt.
He can’t stand up. Not yet. The shock of pain was almost as big as the fear was when he fell. So, in the dirt, in the dark, Philip alternately grips the ankle and sweeps his arm across the floor, searching for the flashlight that could be anywhere.
His fingers are bleeding. So is either his forehead or the right half of his face. That side is hot with something.
The gun is lost, too. But the gun doesn’t work.
There is no light in here. And without making a sound, he has no sense, no scope of the space.
He doesn’t call for help, though he wants to. Doesn’t find a place to hide, though he wants to.
Instead, for now, he listens.
Where is he?
The word mine makes sense to him. Diamond mines in the Namib. Abandoned in the 1930s. More than twenty years ago. But other words resonate, too.
Cave
Lair
Nest
He can still see Ross swimming, Ross telling him to jump in the lake.
Mirage? But it was so definitive. So . . .
How long has he been out?
He remembers some very scary rumors from World War II. Mental warfare. Gases that made men see werewolves on the battlefield, soldiers whispering that they’d encountered family members in the woods at the bloodied boundaries. Captors removing the hands of American POWs, replacing them with live mines, lowering them into holes, dark ones, places like this.
Climb out, soldier! Use your new hands!
Is this like that? Is he . . . a prisoner?
Maybe. But it feels (cold), smells (damp), and sounds (hollow) more like a grave.
Have you guys ever heard of Cemetery 117?
Greer’s story about the fossils of the world’s first war; Cemetery 117; unearthed not far from here.
Will they one day excavate here, dig Philip’s bones from this buried place?
Greer’s words are the easiest to recall in the dark.
Philip closes his eyes. His own dark is mercifully soothing. Better than the impenetrable blackness of the unknown.
He tightens the grips on his ankle, understands that it will need to be set. In his mind’s eye he sees his own ghost, a soldier of the Revolutionary War.
Lantern.
Light. Flashlight. VU meters. Stein’s camera.
Oh, so many options, but none of them within reach.
Philip holds his breath. He listens.
He waits.
He listens.
He waits.
Quiet as he can, he rolls to his side, then up onto his knees.
He crawls. And every time his right boot touches the ground, his lower leg asks him to stop. His bloodied fingers search the dirt, then gravel, small sharp rocks that indicate an intentional change in flooring.
Philip finds the flashlight.
He turns it on.
For the duration of many breaths, he doesn’t feel the pain in his ankle and body.
The awe is overwhelming.
It lasts long enough for him to crawl to the incredibly smooth wooden wall the light has shown him, to use the wall to help him stand. There he looks up to the breathtaking murals.
Adorning the vaulted ceiling, displayed religiously, hundreds of white goats stand in profile; childish renderings; each with their single eye fixed upon Philip below.
And everywhere he limps, dragging his foot across the open space, the eyes from above seem to follow.
The red, blotched background looks less like paint than it does dried blood, and Philip believes there can be no other sufficient explanation for the source of this color.
“My God,” Philip whispers.
And his voice is detonation. His voice is cannonade.
The echo is deafening.
Nuclear.
That hideous word. Nuclear is a secret whispered behind even the backs of presidents, supposed leaders of the world.
Nuclear.
The word comes to Philip foul-green and oozing, as though the syllables themselves are infected, toxic, and capable of creating the terrifying vision of the mushroom cloud. Philip touches his abdomen with a bloodied hand, mindlessly checking to see that he isn’t already experiencing the effects of exposure to radiation. He’s seen photos of what nuclear can do. All the Danes have. Philip remembers sipping whiskey with Larry, leafing through an admonishing military brochure, The Conflicts of Nuclear Weaponry.
NUCLEAR
It’s not hard to trace the chain of thoughts that have led to him thinking the worst. The power inherent in the echo of his voice is astonishing.
IS IT A WEAPON DOWN HERE OR IS IT NOT?!
“GUYS!”
He yells because he’s got to. Because if he doesn’t call for the others he’s going to go crazy here in this chamber of potential nuclear power, unseen radioactive waves that could already be changing him, altering his makeup, weakening his bones.
As the word explodes through the space, as it circles the wooden walls like a marble, proving the laws of diminishing energy, Philip must appreciate it, for he understands, clearly, with an artist’s mind, exactly what it could be used for.
It’s an echo chamber.
The Danes use an echo chamber of their own at Wonderland. It’s a small wooden box into which they play back the song, then record it again, this time with the natural echo off the wood. It’s the very box they used on Ross’s famous guitar line on “Be Here.”
But the sound in this room . . . it’s the cleanest, most magnificent echo Philip’s ever heard.
Now, he remembers the sound of his fall reverberating. The disorientation of manifold falls, a blind soldier suspended midflight, on his way to a break, then the break, too, the clacking of a bone as big as a tree.
If the thud of him making contact was exaggerated to such a degree, what might the actual source of the sound . . . be? It, too, must be smaller than what escapes this place, must be more manageable, even recognizable.
For Philip has decided that whatever hole he’s fallen into, the source of the sound is down here.
He trains the beam across the walls, looking for the way in. From where did he fall? But there is no open top, only the murals. He discovers two archways on either side of the room. Both are framed with the same wood. And between them, beside where he stands, Philip reveals a trail in the dirt, like the trail made by the body Greer dragged across the desert.
Hoofprints, too.
Philip did not fall into this room. He was taken here. And yet, the cacophony of his tumble, the echo . . . there are other rooms down here, other halls, and all of them, Philip believes, must contribute to the force behind the sound and the brilliant echo that accompanies it.
Philip sinks to one knee in the dirt. Grip
s his bad ankle to ease the screaming pain.
Just as he begins to rise again, he hears something, movement from under the archway ahead.
Philip turns off his flashlight.
The space goes black. And yet, he can still feel the goat eyes above, watching.
He holds his breath. He knows this sound, this coming sound.
Hooves.
Because how could he not, he thinks of the Thing in Red. A fluttering face. Shimmering steel where twin horns meet.
He exhales because he must, and the quiet, strained wisp is a rising wind in this room. And yet, the sound he has made is trumped.
Whatever is coming has arrived.
Philip almost speaks. Almost says who’s there?
Is it someone who can see in the dark? Someone who knows these halls, these rooms, these dimensions so well that he doesn’t need to see anything at all?
Philip thinks of Detroit. He clings to the delusional safety of home. Of the bars and the gigs, the musicians and the women. The way it feels to sit at the piano, his fingers above the keys, as Duane counts into a song.
Even when he hears breathing he does not cry out. Does not try to penetrate the darkness.
Lights out!
Duane’s call for the closer, the final song of the set.
Lights out!
Yes, Philip thinks. Lights out. End of the night, end of the road, end of the Path and all it’s showed.
An inhale of breath. Something else living, something else breathing.
Philip counts. 1, 2, 3, 4 . . . as if a song is about to begin, one he needs to know. 1, 2, 3, 4 . . . like Ross and Larry are holding their instruments, a half breath from striking the strings. 1, 2, 3, 4 . . . like the night is about to begin, but a new night, a better night, in which people will dance themselves into insanity and the band will play till they bleed.
1, 2, 3, 4 . . .
But it’s not a song Philip is counting into, no. It’s the rhythmic steps that are coming toward him, then passing, growing distant, going away.
Philip is still.
He counts.
He waits.
He waits.
He waits.
Whatever came has gone.
Philip breathes deep, once, then advances toward the archway through which the thing had arrived. Limping, afraid, Philip crosses the room and enters a hall.
The ground noticeably slopes. To continue would be to travel deeper beneath the desert.
“Ross,” he whispers through gritted teeth. “I’m coming.”
And the sentiment is spoken close enough to the echo chamber that it repeats, behind him, with iridescent clarity, with increasing volume, as he treads farther into the abyssal tangle of unknowns, touching the piano key, the F, that swings at his chest.
As if something so small, or a key just like it, might bring an end to his time below.
39
Philip is standing. Without the assistance of a walker, without an orderly to lean on.
He’s in a room he hasn’t seen before. It’s colder than the Rehabilitation Unit, which, in turn, was colder than Unit 1. And whereas the Rehab Unit was designed to kill all sound, this room is clearly the opposite; it’s a steel cube, walls, floor, and ceiling, all excellent conductors for an echo, all capable of keeping a sound, any sound, alive for an unnaturally long time.
He is free to move about, but the length of the myriad wires attached to his naked body would eventually run out, and Philip understands that whatever happens next is going to be recorded for posterity.
His full form is reflected in the walls. It’s the first time he’s seen it since waking, and it’s a difficult image to accept. The colors are unnerving enough, but it’s the bent bones that chill him; the crooked fingers, the uneven face, the ribs without pattern.
Philip reaches to his neck for the F key that no longer hangs there.
From small black speakers embedded in the colorless walls, a voice:
“Private Tonka, hello. My name is General Jack Andrews. How are you feeling today?” Philip doesn’t respond. Assessing the timbre of the man’s voice as spoken through equipment Philip knows, he imagines Jack Andrews is sitting far from the microphone. Probably because he’s not alone. “It’s remarkable, truly, what modern medicine has done for you. Astonishing. Now, the room you’re standing in is called the Testing Tank and we’re going to conduct a test, Philip, and I hope it doesn’t frighten you. The United States Army has a responsibility to exhaust all options before concluding . . . anything. It must be obvious to you that we’re interested in your body’s reaction to certain stimuli.”
Philip is thinking of other voices. The voices of ghosts beneath the Namib Desert. The hissing from a prison cell down there.
And the one, so familiar to him, but which he cannot place.
I wouldn’t do that if I were you.
A door opens in the steel wall facing him and a red ball emerges, airborne, from the darkness. It bounces once, and, still thinking, still trying to make connections, the Namib and all that happened, Philip reacts in time, catches the ball.
“Great work,” General Andrews says.
Beside him is a treadmill. A machine upon which Philip can run in place. But rather than think of how incredible it is that he might be able to run, so soon after waking from a six-month coma, Philip is remembering running through hallways below the sand.
From the darkness of the open door a blue ball comes.
Philip catches it.
“Excellent.”
He will go through with their tests, he will perform as they want him to perform. Until he knows where they store the drugs, until he knows he has the means of surviving outside this place, he will behave.
Philip hears a chicken clucking. He understands what’s expected of him before the feathered animal emerges from the darkness. It’s simple, Philip sees, easy to bend and scoop the thing up. But because of the obvious astonishment in the voice of the general, Philip is very aware how special this is.
“Please,” the general says, “the treadmill.”
Without responding, Philip climbs up onto the inert track. He doesn’t grip the bars that anybody in need of balance would. Instead, when the floor begins moving, he simply runs.
Goats.
Philip recalls the murals below.
“We’re going to increase the speed now, Philip. Be advised.”
Philip hardly notices. Yes, his legs are moving faster now, but the sensation is of remaining still. As if his mind, his heart, his torso are independent of the physical activity of his lower half. He’s running. Faster. Faster, yet.
“Excellent.”
Philip absently understands the machine is coming to a stop.
“You just ran a mile in five minutes and fourteen seconds. Magnificent show, Private Tonka.”
Philip steps off the treadmill. As he does, a yellow ball comes quick into the room.
He catches it.
“Why did you ask Nurse Jones to draw you a goat, Private Tonka?”
The question, so sudden, is what they’re after. Even more so than testing his physical strength.
“I saw paintings of goats below the desert.”
“What do they mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do they mean, Private Tonka?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do they mean?”
Philip is quiet. But the room is not. Not for long.
At first he feels a familiar sickness, a graying of the gut. In the walls he sees himself fall to his knees, feels the cold steel of the floor on his bare flesh.
The sound is playing. The sound is here.
The night Philip rolled from his cot he discovered the sound was somewhere in this hospital, stored no doubt on a reel. And every hour that has passed since then, he has worried that this moment would come.
And yet . . . he is not as sick as before. Not as sick as he got in the control room of Wonderland as Secretary Mull observed
. Not as sick as he got while up to his knees in ocean water, the day Ross was taken. And the feeling is nothing like what happened to him below.
Philip stands.
What began as a thudding in his head has mellowed to a distant beat. Duane on drums. His friend practicing in the garage as Philip and Ross pitched beer cans at trees in the yard. Yes, Philip is not only standing again but he is resisting the sound. And for the first time since noting his own impossible progress, he understands clearly what the drugs are for.
The United States Army is planning on sending him back to Africa.
But for now, this can wait. These thoughts—Ross, the Danes, the Namib, the Thing in Red, and the red piano, too—the revolutions of these images, the way they orbit his consciousness, the way they turn as though wheeled, on a wheel, close to him then far from him, how they overlap when they come too fast, too many of each, Ross in kaleidoscope, a thousand horns and hooves, Dr. Szands and the drugs, too, ten thousand needles descending upon him, his back to the sand . . . until all of it is the color red, falling from the sky of his own mind, rising from the base, too, to meet in the middle, to connect in a bloodbath explosion of the color red . . . all of this can wait . . . for now . . . NOW . . . Philip is experiencing the sound . . .
. . . and he’s not getting sick.
In fact, he can feel the waves washing over his body, gentle fingers, the distant hint of electricity, a rippling, yes, on the surface of his skin. The sound, so feared in the desert, so feared even in here, Macy Mercy, now it makes contact but does not penetrate, does not sink to his soul.
The volume is raised. So is the sensation of triumph. The overcoming of something once thought to be impossible, revealed now as simply unknown.
Philip knows the sound now. Can almost see the sound now. Like it’s rolling in slow motion, pouring into the Testing Tank through the black speakers: pink and white, purple and blue, swirling, waves, multicolored surf upon him.
He closes his eyes.
He smiles.
The bad thoughts can wait.
For now, he is stronger than the sound.
And when it ends, when two orderlies enter through the open silver door and watch him as though they are nervous now, unsure of what he is physically capable of doing, Philip stares deep into their eyes, then smiles, not wanting to alert them that he is planning on doing something.