“Exactly. You called me Nat, and said you were still in love with—”
“Why are you doing this to me, Paul?”
“Doing what?”
“Chewing on me. Shouting. All these questions.”
“I’m trying to find out which one of us you’re really loyal to. Hamlin or me. Which side you’re going to take when the struggle for this body gets rough.”
“You aren’t trying to find out any such thing. You just want to hurt me.”
“Why should I want to—”
“How would I know? Because you blame me for bringing him back to life, maybe. Because you hate me for having loved him once. Because he’s sitting inside you right now forcing you to hurt me. I don’t know. Christ, I don’t know at all. Only why do you need to find out where my loyalty is? Didn’t I tell you last night that I didn’t want him coming back? Didn’t I offer to call the Rehab Center just now?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“So how could I possibly be on his side? I want him to be wiped out. I want him gone forever. I want—oh, Christ—”
She halted suddenly. Leaping from the bed as though stung, arms and legs flying stiffly out from her torso. Turning toward him. Her face contorted, the eyes bulging, the mouth a rigid hole, the muscles of her throat bunched and jutting. From her lips a bizarre clotted baritone, hoarse and unfocused, like the blunt blurtings of a deaf mute, no words intelligible: “Mfss. Shlrrm. Skk-kk. Vshh. Vshh. Vshh.” A terrible gargling cry, all the more horrible because of the deep masculine tongue in which it was delivered.
She lurched around the room, stumbling into things, clawing at the air. A plain case of demonic possession. What rides her?
“Grkk. Lll. Llll. Pkd-dd.” Eyes wild, pleading. Bare breasts heaving wildly. A sheen of sweat on her skin.
Macy rushed toward her, trying to embrace her, calm her, ease her back to the bed. She pivoted like a robot and her arm crashed across his chest, doubling him up in gasps. When he looked at her again her face was scarlet with strain and her mouth was open to the full reach of her jaws, beyond it perhaps. The wild gargling sounds still erupted from her, and her eyes registered total horror and despair.
Once again Macy tried to seize her. This time successfully. Muscles leaping and churning and twitching all over her spare naked form. He forced her down on the bed and covered her with his body, hands gripping her wrists, knees imprisoning her thighs. A sour smell of sweat rising from her, bad sweat, fear-sweat.
Some kind of epileptic fit? Epilepsy was much on his mind this morning. In a low urgent voice he talked to her, tried to soothe her, to reach her somehow. More baritone drivel coming out of her in halting husky bleeps of thick noise. The static of the soul.
“Lissa?” he said. “Lissa, can you hear me? Try to go limp. Let all your muscles hang loose.”
Easier said than done. She still twitched. While in the midst of this he felt a hot sensation at the base of his skull, as of an auger drilling into him. Or drilling toward the outside from the soft center of his brain. Something jumped frantically within his mouth, and it was a moment before he realized that it was his tongue, jerking itself crazily backward toward his gullet “Vshh. Vshh. Pkd-dd. Slrr. Msss.” The sounds not from Lissa this time. From him.
Lying there congealed and coagulated on top of Lissa, he understood perfectly what was happening. Nat Hamlin, having conserved his strength for a couple of hours, was trying to achieve a takeover of a new level of their shared brain. Specifically, Hamlin was attempting to grab Macy’s speech centers.
Macy knew that that would mark the start of his own obliteration; once Hamlin had control of the voice, it would be his thoughts, not Macy’s that their body would express. Hamlin would have access to the external world and Macy would be shut inside. But at the moment Hamlin wasn’t doing too well. He had grabbed the neural sectors governing speech, only his grasp was incomplete, and the best he could manage were these bursts of nonsense. Somehow, Macy realized, Lissa had become entangled in the battle before he himself had known it was going on. Her brain hooked into his; Hamlin speaking, or trying to, through her mouth. A microphoning effect of some kind. Now they were both doing it, the two of them bellowing like demented seals. Feeding hour at the zoo. Is this where it ends? Does Hamlin take over from me now? No. No. Fight back. Stop him here and drive him into a corner.
How, though?
The way you did last night, when he had hold of the side of your mouth. Pry him loose. Through sheer strength of concentration, break his grip.
Macy tried to visualize the interior of his brain. Telling himself, This is where Hamlin lives, this pocket of gunk, and these are the pathways he’s been building to other parts of my brain, and this is the place he’s attacking now. It was a purely imaginary construct, but it would serve for the moment. Try to visualize the speech centers themselves. Say, row upon row of tight-strung pink cords, a kind of piano deal, with a switchboard attached. Hamlin at the switchboard, plugging things in, looking for the right connection; and the pink cords, all ajangle, giving off weird groaning noises. Come up behind him. Grab his arms. He isn’t any stronger than you are. Pull him away, knock him on his ass. Jump on him. Careful, don’t smash any of the machinery. You’ll need it when this is over. Just hang on to him. Stay on top. Pin him, pin him, pin him! Good! Smash his head against the floor a couple of times! Okay, the floor’s spongy, it gives a little, smash him anyway. Stun him. Right. Now start hauling him the hell out of there. Heavy fucker, isn’t he? One hundred ninety pounds, same as you. Heave. Heave. Heave. Into this musty corridor. A hot humid smell coming out of it. Things must be rotting in there. In with him! Down the chute! Slam the door. There. Easier than you expected, eh? All it takes is some mental energy. Perseverance. You can relax now. Catch your breath.
Hey, Jesus, what’s this? He must have come to, in there. Hammering on the other side of the door. Starting to push it open. Wow, you can’t let him do that. Hold it closed! Push…push…push…a stalemate. He can’t get it open any farther, you can’t close it that last crack. Push. He’s pushing back. Push. Push. Bear down. Oh, Jesus. There! It’s closed again. All right, keep your shoulder to the door, hold it tight. The bear’s locked in his cave; you don’t want him coming out again.
Now fasten the door. With what? Slip a bolt in place, dodo. But there isn’t a bolt. Sure there is. This is your mind, your own fucking mind, can’t you use a little imagination? Invent a bolt! Like that. Fine. Now ram it home. In the slot. In. In. There. Okay, step back. See if he can break out. Be ready to clobber him if he does. He’s banging on the door. Throwing himself against it. But the bolt holds. It holds. Good deal. Let’s check out the machinery now. Make sure he didn’t screw it up. Loud and clear, let’s hear it:
“My name is Paul Macy.”
Good. Nice to hear some sense out of your mouth again. Keep going.
“I was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho, on the twelfth of March, 1972. My father was a propulsion engineer and my mother was a schoolteacher.”
Voice production generally okay. A little rusty around the edges, a little froggy in the lower frequencies, but that’s only to be expected, the way he was abusing your pipes. It’ll clear up fast most likely.
You win this round, Macy.
Slowly, shakily, he rose from the bed. Lissa still lay there, looking crumpled and flattened. She didn’t move.