Richmond clucked his tongue. ‘Lemme see how it works together.’ He sang the song under his breath, filling with the chords.
The song was Richmond’s sole creation, and Donnell approved of it; it was, like Richmond, erratic and repetitive and formless. The choruses - there were dozens, detailing the persona of a cosmic outlaw who wore a three-horned helmet - were sung over a major chord progression; Richmond talked the verses in a minor blues key, telling disconnected stories about cheap crooks and whores and perverts he had known.
The slow vibration in the air ended, sheared off, as if a circuitbreaker had engaged, and Donnell suddenly believed it h.ad been in the air, a tangible evidence of Magnusson’s proof, and was not a product of suggestion or sensory feedback from his own body.
‘This here’s the best goddamn one yet!’ Richmond poised his hands above the keyboard. ‘Dig it!’
‘I think Magnusson’s done something,’ said Donnell.
Richmond snorted. ‘You hearin’ voices or something, man? Shit! Listen up.’
‘Now that…’ said Richmond proudly. ‘That’s got it. What’d you say about the last one?’ ‘The archetypal power of good graffiti.’ ‘Yeah.’ Richmond plinked the keys. ‘Archetypal!’ The main doors swung open and Laura Petit wandered in, stopped, and trailed her fingers across the gilt filigree of a table. The same slow, rippling vibration filled the room, more forcibly than before, as if it hadn’t died but had merely grown too weak to pass through walls and now could enter. Audrey waved, and Laura walked toward the sofa, hesitant, looking nervously behind her. She asked something of Jocundra, who shook her head: No. ‘Please!’ shrilled Laura. Audrey stood, beckoned to Jocundra, and they all went into the hallway, closing the door after them. The vibration was cut off.
‘Squeeze, you might have a point about the Doc’ Richmond shut the piano lid and swiveled around to face the door. ‘There was some strange bullshit walked in with that little lady!’
‘What is it?’ Audrey shut the door to the main hall.
Laura was very pale; her Adam’s apple worked. ‘Hilmer,’ she said, her voice tight and small; she looked up to the glass eye of the camera mounted above the door and was transfixed.
Jocundra sprinted ahead, knowing it must be bad.
Magnusson’s door stood ajar; it was dark inside. Sunlight through the louvered shutters striped a heraldic pattern of gold diagonals across the legs of the shadowy figure on the bed. She leaned in. ‘Dr Magnusson?’ Her words stirred a little something within the darkness, a shiver, a vibration, and then she saw a flicker of fiery green near the headboard, another, and another yet, as if he were sneaking a peek between his slitted eyelids. ‘Are you all right, Doctor?’ she asked, relieved, thinking Laura had overreacted and nothing was seriously wrong. She turned on the ceiling light.
It was as if she had been watching someone’s vacation slides, the projectionist clicking from scene to scene, narrating, ‘Here’s grandpa asleep in his room… kinda pretty the way the light’s falling through the shutters there,’ click, the screen goes black, and the next slide is the obscene one which the neighbor’s teenage kid slipped in as a prank. Click. Magnusson’s room was an obscenity. So much blood was puddled in the depression made by his head and shoulders, streaked over the headboard and floor, that at first she could not bring her eye to bear on the body, tracking instead the chaotic sprays of red. A mild heated odor rose from the glistening surfaces. She clutched the doorknob for support, tucking her chin onto her chest, dizzy and nauseated.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ said Audrey behind her. ‘I’ll get Edman.’
Laura snuffled.
Jocundra swallowed, gathering herself. Magnusson lay on his side, his right arm upflung across his face and wedged against the headboard, concealing all except his forehead and the corner of his right eye. She switched off the lights, and the green flickers were again visible. God, she thought, what if somehow he’s alive. She switched the lights back on. It was becoming easier to bear, but not much. She stepped around the bloody streaks and stopped a foot from the bed. His chest was unmoying. She knelt beside him and was craning her neck, trying to locate the wound, when his arm came unwedged and dangled against her knee. The shock caused her to overbalance. She tipped forward and planted her hand on the bed to stabilize. Blood mired between her fingers, and her face bobbed to within inches of a neat slice in his throat. Its lips were crusted with a froth of pink bubbles.
One of them popped, and a clear fluid seeped from the wound.
Laura screamed - an abandoned, throat-tearing scream - and Jocundra threw herself back and sat down hard on the carpet, face to face with Magnusson. Folds of waxy skin sagged from his cheeks, and the bacteria were in flux within his eyes. Spidery blobs of luminescence spanned the sockets, their edges eroding, gradually revealing sections of his liverish whites and glazed blue irises. Jocundra was spellbound. Then she felt something soaking her slacks and realized that the horrid paste sticking them to her thighs was a spill of Magnusson’s blood. She scrambled up and started for the door. And stopped. Laura had fallen to her knees, sobbing, and behind her stood Richmond and Donnell.
‘There’s been an accident,’ Jocundra said, obeying the stupid reflex of lies. She pushed them away and tried to shut the door, but Richmond knocked her hand aside and jammed the door open with his foot.
‘No shit!’ he said, peering into the room. ‘Ol’ Doc musta tripped or somethin’, huh?’
Jocundra decided she couldn’t worry about Richmond; she took Donnell’s arm and propelled him along the hall. ‘I think he killed himself. It’s going to be a madhouse in a minute. You wait in the room and I’ll find out what I can.’
‘But why would he kill himself?’ he asked, as she forced him through the door. ‘He was getting out.’
‘I don’t know.’ She helped him lower into the wheelchair. ‘Let me go now. I’ve got to make my report.’ A flash of memory showed her the old man’s eyes, his throat, something still alive after all that blood, and she shuddered.
Donnell blinked, looking at the wall above his writing desk. ‘Yeah, go ahead,’ he said distractedly. He wheeled over to the desk and picked up a pen. “What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’ He opened a notebook. ‘I’ll figure it out.’ She knew he was holding something back, but she was in no mood to pry and no shape to field his questions. She reassured him that she would return quickly and went into the hall. Agitated voices lifted from Magnusson’s room; Laura was still sitting outside the door, collapsed against the ornate molding like a beggar girl beneath a temple arch. Jocundra leaned against the wall. From the moment she had seen Magnusson, she had been operating on automatic, afraid for either herself or for Donnell, and now, relieved of pressure, she began to tremble. She put her hand up to cover her eyes and saw the brown bloodstains webbing the palm; she wiped it on her hip. She did not want to think anymore, about Magnusson, about herself or Donnell, and so, to occupy her mind and because no one else would be likely to bother, concerned only with their experiment gone awry, she hurried down the hall to find if anything could be done for Laura.