Alone in the doctor’s office, Sweeney’s eyes lingered on the final panel and, once again, he found himself feeling something close to sympathy for the cartoon strongman, exiled and adrift, the world torn down in a random instant and supplanted with a precarious replacement.

Closing the comic book, Sweeney tried to bring himself back to the here and now. But in seconds he found himself studying the cover, this grotesque family portrait of circus freaks that an artist had elevated into icons. Then he heard the door open and, immediately, he rolled the book and slipped it into his back pocket, covering it with the tail of his sport jacket.

“Sorry for the interruption,” Dr. Peck said, coming around the desk and sliding back into his seat.

“Not a problem,” Sweeney said.

Dr. Peck was one of those individuals whose voice, on the phone, had conveyed his appearance: entirely bald, bordering on gaunt, well groomed but with lips that were too thin and pale. He looked as if his grandfather had owned the most efficient general store on the prairie. But Sweeney knew this wasn’t the case.

“We were speaking, I believe, about the accident,” Peck said as he reopened Danny’s file, then sat back and waited.

Like everyone else, Dr. Peck wanted a recounting. One more smug little prick who had to have the story. He sat and waited, actually folded his hands across the hollow that passed for his belly and assumed a position of clinical concern. His vision seemed to focus on the knot of Sweeney’s necktie, a Christmas present festooned with chicken boys.

Sweeney cleared his throat and tried to stay calm.

“As I was saying, it’s been a difficult year. But I think this move will be a step in the right direction for us.”

“The doctor in Cleveland—”

“Lawton.”

“He will be forwarding the rest of the boy’s records?”

“Daniel.”

Peck squinted as if he didn’t understand. As if the name weren’t on the file in front of him.

“The boy’s name is Daniel,” Sweeney said and crossed his legs. “You should have received the records already. I’ll call this afternoon to remind Dr. Lawton.”

Peck nodded and opened the manila folder on his desk.

“Coma is a complex condition, Mr. Sweeney. The word itself is used incorrectly more often than not.”

Sweeney nodded back. He needed the job and he’d burned all his bridges back in Ohio. But there was still a limit to the amount of patronizing shit he’d endure.

“As you might imagine, doctor,” he said, “I’ve immersed myself in the literature since the accident.”

Peck sniffed and closed Danny’s file, pushed back just a bit from the desk and lifted the coffee mug that featured a line drawing of the Clinic.

“I’m not trying to be difficult, Mr. Sweeney,” Peck said. “I understand what you’ve been through. This is a heartbreaking situation—”

“This is my life, doctor. This is not a situation, this is my life. And I don’t mean to be disrespectful or ungrateful. But your associates offered me this position and I accepted it. I pulled my son out of the St. Joseph and moved us eight hundred miles from home. And now you’re sitting here telling me I might not have the job.”

Peck put the mug down on Danny’s file.

“That’s not what I’m saying, Mr. Sweeney. Not at all. I simply want to make sure things are clear here at the start. I’m certain we both have some natural concerns and—”

“I have one concern and that’s the well-being of my boy. You tell me what your concerns are and I’ll address them.”

Peck picked the mug up and Sweeney saw that it had left a brown circle on Danny’s folder. The doctor was quiet for a minute and then he sniffed again. His voice, when it came, was lower.

“I want to make sure you have a realistic picture of what we can and cannot do here. Your son, Daniel, has had minimal brain activity since the day of the accident. According to the records I’ve received, the doctors at the St. Joseph have administered all the standard and appropriate therapies. We’re a research facility and we do good work. But the last thing I would want is to give you false hope.”

“I can promise you,” Sweeney said, “I’m a realist.”

They looked at each other until Peck blinked.

“All right,” the doctor said, putting on the weary voice. “I’ll take you at your word.”

“I appreciate that,” Sweeney said.

Peck looked at his watch and then slid another file out from beneath Danny’s. Sweeney felt some relief — the interview was coming to an end.

“Your CV looks fine,” Peck said. “You studied at Ohio State?”

A nod, waiting.

“Concentration in pharmacognosy?”

Another nod.

“But you never went into research?”

“I had intended to,” Sweeney said, trying not to sound defensive, “but it didn’t work out that way.”

Peck smiled as if he understood, then asked, “What made you decide on pharmacology in the first place?”

“My father had his own shop.”

“You liked working for the big outfits?”

Sweeney shrugged. “They paid well. They moved you along. I was thinking of buying my own franchise before the accident.”

Peck let the last sentence hang for a beat or two.

“And your wife was a pharmacist as well?”

A nod, thinking, Just ask, you little hump. When the doctor refused, Sweeney said, “We met in school.”

“May I ask if you’ve pursued any counseling in the last year?”

It was not what Sweeney expected and he took a moment before saying, “May I ask how that’s pertinent to my job here at the Clinic?”

Peck maintained a bland expression but scratched his nose.

“You’ve suffered extraordinary stress and grief. You’ve lost your wife and, for all intents and purposes, your son. And I’m about to put you in charge of the Clinic’s drug room. Which is to say, I’m giving you responsibility for all of the Clinic’s patients.”

Sweeney wanted to stand up. He wanted to move around the desk and pick up the coffee mug and break the man’s stuffy nose with it. He wanted to put the fucker on the floor and kick him in the head until Dr. Peck was a patient at his own Clinic.

He did none of those things. He folded his hands on his knee and said, “You’ve got my letters of reference there, doctor. You’ve got my employment history and you’ve probably got the results of your inquiry to the Ohio board. I’ve never been cited for anything. My performance reviews have all been excellent. This position means a pay cut for me. But it seems to be the best place for my son. Now either I have the job that was promised me or I don’t. If I don’t, please let me know. Because if that’s the case, I have to phone my lawyer and make new arrangements for my boy.”

Peck let the room go quiet before he stood up.

“I apologize,” he said, “if you feel my question was inappropriate.”

He extended his hand. Sweeney stood and took it across the desk.

A smile now, as the doctor moved to the exit.

“You’ll call Cleveland and see about those missing records?”

“I’ll call,” Sweeney said.

Peck opened the door to the office.

“You’ll find human resources downstairs. They’ll have some paperwork for you to fill out and you’ll need to have your photo taken.”

Sweeney stepped into the reception area and said, “Thank you, Dr. Peck.”

Dr. Peck nodded and said, “Welcome to the Clinic.”

They came from the city of Maisel in the heart of Old Bohemia, land of pogroms and demonology. They became a family in the most binding way of all, through a shared and pitiless suffering. Make no mistake, the oldest truths are the most reliable: persecution ties a people together. To be different is to invite oppression. To wear your difference on your body, on your face, this is to invite eradication. Unless, of course, your difference is so grotesque that the crowds will pause to study, to celebrate, to marvel at your misfortune for a short time before they smite you. Then, and only then, will you have a chance to escape.

What does it mean to be a freak? For the Goldfaden Freaks it meant, for a time, a brief period in the beginning, that they were stars. They had been handpicked, assembled over years and miles by Tedeo Bluett, showman extraordinaire and inheritor of the Goldfaden Carnival, the premier — and, perhaps, the most notorious — of all the traveling circuses in all of Old Bohemia. The circus featured the standard fare of all the major bazaars — acrobats and aerialists, fortune-tellers and magicians, trained beasts and juggling clowns, games of chance and skill. So what was it that set the Goldfaden apart from the many other cavalcades of garish drama and comedy that patrolled the gypsy circuits? Its tents were no larger or more colorful than those of the Theatre Magika. Its rings of fire no hotter than those of Valli’s Cabaret. Its gorillas were no more savage than those of the Kabalist’s Revue and its human cannon was no braver than that of the Circus Herman Nevi.

No, the single feature that separated the Goldfaden from all the other touring spectacles was the infamous Freaks’ Promenade. Staged just before the finale of each evening’s show, this procession of unsightliness and deformity was unmatched in the history of sideshow lore. Truly, the Goldfaden Freaks were the stars of not just Tedeo Bluett’s circus but the entire carny world. Legendary monstrosities, they were the only freaks whose appearance in the flesh was more unsettling than even their most hyperbolic promotional posters. And because of this, Bluett saved their act for the climax of each performance and kept it short and simple.

Every night, after all the lions had been tamed and all the swords had been swallowed, after the clown king had chased his nemesis, the thief of hearts, around and into the rolling fountain, after one of the Flying Zhilinskis had dropped Little Sonya into the arms of Count Leonid and the Weatherman had been electrocuted and revived by his curvaceous assistant, and the Halloween Killer had lost his head to the Magic Guillotine, then, and only then, did Ringmaster Bluett unleash his freaks. And they marched around the perimeter of the center ring and then up, up, into the audience, right up close and personal, where the customers could see for themselves the horrible mistakes that nature makes on rare occasions.

Physically, it was not a tough gig. And this proved to be the freaks’ downfall. Because while their “act” consisted solely of a ten-minute nightly stroll of ogling and groping amid shrieks and curses, the freaks’ pay and accommodations rivaled those of the acrobats and lion tamers — a fact that triggered no end of jealousy among the rest of the Goldfaden performers. And nowhere was that jealousy more inflamed than in the spleen of Shoshone McGee, the infamous “Blade of Zürau,” a half-Cherokee, half-Irish, and fully psychotic knife thrower who functioned as the Goldfaden’s resident diva.

McGee lived in a state of perpetual crisis, a melodrama of alcoholism, amphetamine abuse, manic depression, and bad karma. He went through assistant-wives like sour candies and his colleagues agreed that he approached anything like happiness only in the midst of performance, throwing his blades at a human target. He was a tall, muscular man of dark, movie idol looks, except for an enormous protruding brow that was never quite mitigated by the black, luxuriant hair, which he wore long and swept back. His cheekbones caused marital discord in the towns through which he toured. He lived his life barefoot and bare-chested, though he favored expensive leather trousers, the tighter the better. The bulk of his salary from Bluett went to liquor, pills, and knives. But when the throwers of Old Bohemia talked shop, most agreed that McGee had the finest collection of steel in the business. He may or may not have been the most skilled bladesman on the circuit, but he was certainly the most daring. He fired his daggers while blindfolded and drunk and from distances that no Entertainers’ Guild would ever sanction.

All of this, however, is mere addendum to the central fact of the knife thrower’s existence: Shoshone McGee hated freaks.

No, this is too generous. Truth be told, McGee abhorred freaks. He despised freaks. He loathed them with an antipathy that seemed to grow with each new day. Freaks lay at the center of a furious rage that boiled, year after year, in the heart of the knife thrower. And though there were many legends regarding the source of the man’s fury, no one could say with any certainty which one was closest to the truth.

But as far as the Goldfaden Freaks were concerned, the reason for McGee’s hatred was an academic mystery. What mattered was staying away from the madman and his cutlery. And so a system of avoidance grew up organically within the troupe. The freaks’ trailers were always parked at the opposite end of the campsite from the knife thrower. They dined in separate mess tents. And Bluett slipped Glomo the clown an extra kroner and a bottle of schnapps each week just to make sure that McGee was absent from the big top when the Freaks’ Promenade occurred each night.

And yet, for all of these precautions, Shoshone McGee’s hatred only grew as the years went by. And, over time, that hatred slowly poisoned the rest of the Goldfaden troupe against what the knife thrower, in his inimitable way of turning bile into poetry, called the devil’s putrid afterbirth.

And so it was the fate of the freaks that, even within the liberal world of a circus clan, they became outcasts, exiled from the bosom, show dogs kept forever beyond the warmth of the family fire. Of course, it was natural that they would build their own fire, their own family, constructed of their ill-fitting parts and bound together by an empathy that knew no limits. That family was comprised of:

Fatos, the mule-faced boy, guileless and playful and dreamy despite his large and perpetually infected ears and the mange that spread across his cheek each spring;

Aziz, the human torso, the stoic of the family, swinging himself forward on his thickly callused knuckles, a fat lower lip tucked up over his mouth;

Nadja, the lobster girl, whose claws could clip a cigar neatly in two, who relished a good party and hinted, in the small hours of too many drunken nights, of love affairs with princes and opium;

Durga, the fat lady, a half ton of matriarchal earth goddess, who dressed in flowing silk and would listen to any problem and provide counsel and solace and Bavarian chocolate;

Jeta, the skeleton, outfitted, always, in a navy singlet, so shy that the nightly Promenade could reduce her to tears;

Milena, the hermaphrodite, proud and testy, with a wit as sharp and fine as a German scalpel;

Antoinette, the pinhead, who adored gingham dresses and piano music, and who tended to wander if not properly supervised;

Marcel and Vasco, Siamese twins who loved and squabbled by the phases of the moon and who once passed a full year without speaking to each other — though today, neither can recall the source of their argument;

Kitty, the elegant, delicate, raven-haired dwarf, with just a touch of the femme fatale, of which she was mostly unaware;

And Chick, the chicken boy, the conscience and spirit of the freak clan, with his patchy coat of feathers and the hard cartilage that formed a beak of a mouth. Chick, the boy without a past, whose mother had given him to Tedeo Bluett to raise. The chicken boy whose spirit was so pure and whose soul was so wise that his tenure in this foul world was forever problematic. With a tendency to fugues and trances, with a notion of a long-lost father, with his tender love for the dwarf, his Kitty, and a knowledge that his destiny lay beyond the borders of Old Bohemia, in the legendary country of Gehenna.

We know little about the chicken boy’s origins. And, as usually happens in the absence of fact, legend has descended to fill in the gaps. Chick himself will not dignify the legends with discussion. But late at night, walking in the woods or huddled in a trailer with his beloved Kitty, he sometimes allows himself a nip of analysis and a shooter of speculation. Tedeo Bluett has told him the same simple tale from the start.

The troupe, stranded outside of Worgl when a show had fallen through, was camped on the edge of town, on a bluff overlooking the River Kalda. It was a season of recession and grippe and people were not venturing to the theaters. Troubled by another bout of worry and insomnia, the ringmaster had taken a walk to clear his mind. He was thinking that night of getting out of the circus business altogether. Selling the Goldfaden to Herman Nevi or Kalli Kraus or one of his other competitors. Lost in thought, stumbling through the fog, a young woman’s wailing suddenly startled him. He made his way toward her cries and found himself on a slimy jetty that protruded into heaving winter waters. And at the end of the rocks, he found her.

She couldn’t have been more than sixteen years, he told Chick. She was hysterical and distraught and, beyond this, Bluett would say, somehow he knew that she was the saddest creature he had ever encountered. This is a bold statement for a circus man to make and it is the one part of the story that Chick has never doubted. The girl was dressed—hidden was the word that Bluett used most often — in the kind of flowing, hooded cape that had been fashionable many years previously. Beneath the cape, she wore a serving girl’s frock, the tattered uniform of someone’s maid. A washerwoman-in-training, was Tedeo’s initial guess, but when he saw her face peek out from the hood, he knew he was wrong. No, even in this hysterical state, with her hair tangled and matted by the spray, this one was a beauty of rare breeding and grace.

Her crying ceased when she saw Bluett approaching on the jetty. But she was silenced for only a moment.

“Don’t try to stop me,” she screamed over the wind.

And Bluett knew that she meant to throw herself into the chop.

He halted and held a hand up, both to reassure the girl that he understood and to block the water blowing into his eyes.

The girl looked from the ringmaster to the river, as if suddenly unsure of her next move. And that was when Bluett saw she was holding a package, something the size of a bread loaf, wrapped in a rapidly decomposing newspaper — what he would later discover to be a medical tabloid known as The Journal of Physical Abnormality.

“Please,” he yelled over the screeching winds, “let me help you.”

With this, the girl threw back her hood. And even in the darkness, Tedeo Bluett could see that she had eyes as striking as the emperor’s emeralds.

“You want to help me?” she asked, her contempt cutting through the gale. “Get him to Gehenna.” And with that, she tossed the bread loaf at the ringmaster and threw herself off the rocks.

Instinct born of a lifetime in the circus caused Bluett to go down on one knee and catch, perfectly, the tossed burden that he understood, at once, to be something other than a loaf of bread, something alive and moving and making sounds of its own. Torn, he ran to the jetty’s end before allowing himself to inspect the creature in his arms. His eyes swept the water but there was no sign of the jumper. He called out to her but knew, as he called, that it was futile.

Then he peeled back the news wrap and took his first look at the child inside.

“I have lived a life in show business,” he would tell Chick over the years that followed that night. “I have trafficked all my days in spectacle. I come from a people who have made their living mining the most curious parts of this astounding world. But in all my time, in all my travels, I had never seen anything like you.”

Every freak and his mother were out on the streets of Bangkok Park, running or hobbling as best they could to their sundry negotiations. In the daylight, the Park was an even greater spectacle of degradation, the freest of all markets, where bloody money and rough sex could purchase any commodity. In this tenderloin, more often than not, a flamboyant violence was the service fee paid on the edgiest transactions. And into this bazaar, strolling from the west, his hair greasier than usual, his bad knee acting up with the weather, and the crotch of his jeans tacky with drying blood, came the Spider.

If who we are is best defined by our bad choices, then Spider was the kind of raging fuck-up destined to ruin most of the lives into which he wandered. This morning, he was wandering down Watson Street, trying to remain inconspicuous in this sea of human detritus. And though he was not wearing his colors, the eternally pissed-off squint and the tattoo on his neck would have given him away to both rival and cop as a stone biker, if not necessarily an Abomination. So he hurried, bouncing the antique satchel off his bad leg, limping to his grisly appointment on Watson, like one more rancid pilgrim trying to slake a chronic thirst or score some dirty capital.

Made of gleaming black leather, handcrafted in Spain long before Spider fell into this world, the satchel looked like a doctor’s bag on steroids. But its bottom was growing damp as the biker made his way through the maze of alleyways and ruined factories and cryptlike saloons of the Park, toward a cross-dressers’ bar called the Grand Illusion.

Spider had intended to be late for his meeting, if not quite this late. But he’d been up half the night, running a hundred bullshit errands for Buzz Cote. And then, at dawn, there was one final errand of his own, which had taken a lot longer than he’d anticipated.

The thing was, most of Buzz’s chores felt like idiot work that even the Fluke could’ve done. Every now and then, Buzz got that way — usually before he decided to break camp and head for another farm. That’s what Buzz called the clinics — the farms. Where you pick the turnips for the soup. Buzz had a way of going all stressed and pissy before a move. And of making sure that Spider knew his place. “Remember,” Buzz would say through that fake laugh, “you’re the deputy, not the fucking sheriff.”

The truth was, it stung, and it was one of the reasons why Spider was willing to risk going solo into the Park to make a move on his own. He was tired of being second in command. Tired of following orders and running errands for Buzz Cote. And tired as all fuck of the arguments between Buzz and Nadia over where the family should go next. It was building toward something ugly no matter how they tried to hide it. Buzz mumbling all the time about how Nadia’d gone round the bend with all her “last clinic” bullshit. Nadia laughing at Buzz last week, saying his imagination was even smaller than his pecker. It was like being a kid again, back in one of the foster homes.

One of these days, Spider would split off from the Abominations, and then Buzz would know the cost of disrespect and thoughtlessness. But starting your own crew took money. Which was why Spider found himself jogging toward an eye-opener with a soggy-bottomed satchel, headed for a sit-down with the mad scientist.

The bar was a narrow hole that straddled the oscillating border between Little Asia and Latino Town. Jammed like a middle child between an abandoned appliance showroom and an abandoned rod and wire mill, the Illusion bathed the street, all year long, with its strange bouquet of lavender, sweat, skunk beer, and rain. No more than a dozen feet wide but running deep into the block, the G.I. was known to give even longtime customers the occasional sense that they were inside a dark train, swaying and hitching along the roughest of track. It was a good place to bring someone if, like Spider, you wanted to fuck with him a little before you took his money. And while there were other drag clubs in the Park that stayed open night and day, the Illusion was said to host the meanest transvestites in the city.

Spider entered through the rear door and stood in the shadows, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. A long black marble bar ran the length of the place, opposite a row of tiny, two-man booths mounted against the far wall. The ceiling was made of acoustic tiles gone yellow and brown and interrupted by a large circular vent, a broken paddle fan and a working disco ball. Two cement support columns split the narrow aisle between bar and booths, both columns wrapped in deep shag carpet, one pumpkin orange and the other a faded aqua.

There was no natural light in the bar. The windows up front were blacked out by velvet curtains upon which were painted nude portraits of the great belters of American cabaret — Ethel, Carol, and Judy. The juke, an old Wurlitzer, was tucked safely behind the bar and featured songs by that trinity and other, less well-known goddesses. The booths were wooden and scarred with a century of burn-and-cut graffiti. The tables were red Formica trimmed in silver and sporting disturbing patterns of gouges, and the seats were red Naugahyde and often sticky. The floor featured several layers of linoleum worn into a gully along the heavily trafficked path to the restroom, revealing what seemed to be lower geological levels.

And there, in the midst of this submarine gloom, was Dr. Peck, fidgeting in one of the booths that lined the side wall. The doc was dressed like an embezzler, in a pricey gray suit that needed a pressing. He had a charcoal raincoat folded next to him and a hat resting on top of it. And Spider wanted to kick his ass just for bringing the hat.

Peck hadn’t sounded happy with the choice of meeting ground but he was a smart guy and knew when he had no leverage. He’d been waiting for close to half an hour, nursing a sour coffee in a dirty mug while Jared, the former linebacker and current barkeep, done up this morning in a Balenciaga gown, played the juke — some Kurt Weill song by way of Anne Shelton.

Jared pulled a bag of trash from beneath the bar and moved for the rear exit, spotting Spider at the last minute and letting out a squeal before finding his balls and warning, “I’m strapped,” in a voice that insisted it was true.

“I’m not looking for trouble,” Spider said, amused and maybe even a little flattered. “I got a business meeting, that’s all.”

Jared looked the Abomination over and thought about this. “You even raise your voice,” he said, “I’ll start shooting.”

Another time, Spider’d have told him he’d be shooting out his ass, ’cause that was the only place he’d find his gun. But this morning was business, so he let the threat go and walked past the barkeep, sliding into the booth opposite Dr. Peck and noting that, aside from Jared, they had the place to themselves.

“You’re late,” Peck said.

“And you’re an asshole,” Spider said. “It’s not a perfect world.”

Peck leaned forward and asked, “Why here?” in a low voice.

“Change of pace,” Spider said, starting to enjoy himself. “I worry about you, Doc. Stuck up on that hill all day with the turnips.”

“The turnips?” Peck said.

“The sleepers,” Spider explained. “The coma people.”

“My patients are not vegetables,” Peck said, as if talking to a dim journalist. “And, technically, they’re not asleep.”

“Yeah,” said Spider, “but they’re not exactly square dancing either, are they?”

Peck knew going in that the biker was insecure and moody, probably dangerous, possibly psychotic. But until this moment, he hadn’t realized that he was dealing with a moron.

“I was in the middle of a meeting when you phoned,” Peck said. “I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t call me at the Clinic.”

“I doubt there’s very much you and I agree on, Doc,” Spider said. “But just so you know? I’ll fucking call you whenever and wherever I need to fucking call you.”

“Look,” Peck said, “I don’t want to argue with you—”

“That,” said Spider, “is the first smart thing you’ve said this morning, Doc.” Then, before Peck could respond, Spider lifted the satchel and placed it on the table.

Peck looked from the bag to the biker and back again.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“That,” Spider said, “is the merchandise.”

“The merchandise?” Peck said, confused, and then, in an instant, not at all confused. “Good God, you’re telling me. .”

He trailed off and suddenly reached for the bag, but Spider was faster and swatted Peck’s hands away from the latch.

“You don’t touch it,” Spider said, “until I have my money.” He paused and let the gravity of the moment settle in. Then he sat back in the booth and added, “And you don’t look inside until you’re back at the farm.”

“This is outrageous,” Peck said.

Spider put on a surprised face and, in one casual motion, picked up Peck’s cup and tossed the remains of the coffee on the doc’s suit. Peck reared back but didn’t make a sound. He looked down on his shirt front and then up at the biker.

“You don’t know outrageous,” Spider said. “Now stop fucking around before you piss me off.”

Peck sat in silence for a few seconds, trying to think. Then he eased up off his ass, pulled a handkerchief from a back pocket, and started to dab at his collar and lapels as he stared at Spider, who hung his head forward, smiling and waiting.

“This,” Peck said, gesturing to the satchel with the handkerchief, “is not what we agreed on.”

“You saying you don’t want it?” Spider asked.

No one spoke to Dr. Peck this way and the experience was upsetting the rhythms of his thought and his speech.

“What we had agreed. .” he began, then stopped suddenly and regrouped. “I was to perform the procedure.”

“That’s right,” Spider said, “and I saved you the trouble. You’re not careful, I might start thinking that’s worth a bonus.”

“You don’t understand,” Peck said, his anger not yet in the voice but visible in the face and in the way he was holding his hands. “There’s a protocol. There’s a way that things need to be done for a successful harvest.”

“Successful harvest,” Spider repeated. “Jesus, listen to you. Successful harvest. That’s a fucking riot, Doc.”

“There are questions that I needed to ask,” Peck said. “Blood tests and tissue samples.”

“You’re a detail man, Doc,” Spider said. “I can see that. You take your work seriously.”

“There are time constraints,” Peck said. “I don’t even know when —”

“About five this morning,” Spider said. “And you know what? I just decided you owe me a new pair of jeans.”

Jared the bartender appeared at the table.

Spider startled a little, looked up, and said, “You’re like a fucking cat.”

“All those years of dance,” Jared said. “You want to hear the breakfast specials?”

“Get out of here,” Spider said, amused and delighted. “You serve food in this place?”

Jared just stared down at the biker, hands on hips, tired but smart and, always, professional. Dr. Peck stared at the black bag.

Spider asked, “What do you got? You got any eggs and hash? I’m in the mood for some eggs and hash.”

“We don’t have any hash,” Jared said. “Do you want to see a menu?”

“Fuck it,” Spider said. “Just bring us a couple of hairy knuckles and some doughnuts.”

Jared nodded and walked away.

Peck waited a second, then folded his hands on the table in front of the satchel and said, “I don’t think you understand my situation.”

“I think I do, Doc,” Spider said. “I don’t think it’s that hard to understand. I think even a shit-for-brains retard like me can understand your fucking situation.” And then, below the table, he gave the doctor’s shin a quick but solid kick. Peck grunted and lurched forward, but he kept his hands on the table.

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” Peck said.

Spider kicked the other shin and said, “Then you fucked up, didn’t you?”

Peck was careful to nod. “I suppose I did,” he said.

“I suppose so, too,” Spider said.

They sat in silence until Jared returned and transferred two highball glasses and a plate of chocolate-glazed doughnuts from his tray to the table.

“Will there be anything else?” the barkeep asked.

“Anything else for you?” Spider asked, leaning toward Peck.

The doctor shook his head without shifting his eyes from the satchel.

“Then pay the man,” Spider said.

Peck looked flustered for a moment, then shifted his body, rummaged in his pocket, and came out with an antique clip filled with neatly folded bills. Spider reached across the table and grabbed the money from him, handed the wad to Jared uncounted, and said, “You keep the change.”

Jared remained placid, accepted the bills, and moved back to the bar. Spider slid one glass in front of Peck, lifted the other, and said, “How ’bout a toast? How’s that sound to you, Doc?”

“You’re generous with my money,” Peck mumbled.

Spider laughed, spilling some of the drink. He put his glass down in front of the doctor and picked up its twin.

“I’m about to get real generous with an ass-kicking, too,” he said. “What the fuck do you care, anyway? You got more money than you’ll ever spend up there in the clinic.”

“The majority of my money,” Peck said, “is poured into my research.”

“Yeah,” Spider said, “me too. That’s why I’m in need of a grant. You aren’t the only one with big plans, Doc. So gimme my money and I’ll let you have a doughnut and we can both call the morning a success.”

“Why would I pay you,” Peck asked, “when you didn’t do what you promised to do?”

And in this way, the time arrived for Spider to get serious.

The biker sat back and wiped a hand across his mouth. He let his head fall back on his neck until it bumped against the back of the booth.

“You take that tone with me,” he said slowly, “and I hear it as disrespect. And you need to believe me here, Doctor, you do not want to disrespect the Spider. Sooner or later, that is always a fucking mistake. And in your case, it’ll be sooner.”

Peck was stubborn enough to fight his own good judgment. He made Spider wait while he stared at the satchel and pretended to think things over. Finally, he gave a single nod of the head and slipped a bulging envelope out of his coat pocket. He placed the envelope on the table and slid it toward the Abomination.

“I’ll pay you,” Peck said, “because it’s in my interest to pay you. And because it’s possible that I can use something of this harvest. But our business is finished. If you’d performed the way we agreed, we might have had an ongoing relationship. But apparently you’re not a man who thinks about the future.”

“That’s where you’d be all kinds of wrong,” Spider said, leaning his chest into the table, reaching down into his boot to pull and open his Buck knife, and jabbing it into Peck’s thigh, just enough to puncture trouser and skin and draw a run of blood.

This time, Peck yelled out, a shocked little scream that, for a moment, drowned out the jukebox rendition of “Night Has a Thousand Eyes.” The doctor pressed a hand against the thigh, took it away bloody, grabbed his soiled handkerchief, and applied pressure to the wound.

“You stabbed me,” he said, as if Spider didn’t know.

“I stabbed you,” Spider said, “you’d be holding your guts in that snot rag. I poked you’s what I did. Just to show you I’m thinking about the future right this minute. I’m thinking about how I’m going to come up to your turnip farm one of these nights and cut your dick off. And I’m thinking about how I’m going to use it to choke the life out of that bitch daughter of yours. And I’m thinking how after that, I’m going to burn your fucking clinic to the ground along with all your fucking sleepers. How’s that for the future, shithead?”

On the last word, he picked up the envelope with his free hand and slapped Peck across the face with it. Then he got out of the booth, stood in the aisle, tucked the envelope into the front of his jeans, tucked his knife back into his boot, grabbed two doughnuts, and limped out the bar’s back door.

Peck sat still for a minute, then looked across the aisle to Jared, who was wiping down the bar and humming along to the juke, unconcerned, lost in a familiar daydream. The wound was starting to burn, but Dr. Peck couldn’t help himself. He pulled the satchel down onto his seat and unfastened the hasp carefully, as if disarming a bomb. Pushing both flaps back on their hinges, he took a breath and peered inside at the fetus. It had taken on a blue and purple hue and he guessed it was roughly four months gestated and had been terminated about five hours ago.

Whoever had performed the procedure had done an adequate job. The fetus appeared normal and very likely harvestable. Peck closed up the satchel, relieved, and exited the bar, bleeding his way out the front door, suddenly excited despite the hole in his leg.

Behind him, Jared began to sing something bold and brassy.

Sweeney had the hotel send over his luggage. He’d traveled light, a canvas duffel and a garment bag. He had arranged with the real estate agent back in Cleveland to sell whatever furnishings she could to the buyer and dispose of the rest in an estate sale. Corrigan at the pharmacy said this was a sure way to get screwed but Sweeney liked the idea of getting rid of everything and starting fresh.

He hung his whites in a closet full of cobwebs and breathed in the smell of oil from out in the cellar proper. He unrolled his ties and hung them on the pegs of the coat post, put his few casual clothes in the bureau drawers. From the bottom of the duffel, he took out two bath towels and laid them on the bed. He unfolded one to reveal a framed photo. It was a snapshot of Kerry and Danny that he’d had blown up. A vacation shot from two years ago up at Put-in-Bay, posed on the deck of the cottage they’d rented. It was dusk and Kerry had lifted the boy up to show him something out on the lake. Sweeney had grabbed the camera off the picnic table and snapped them without warning. The sun was just about spent for the day and the horizon was a slash of bright red below the clouds.

He propped the photo on the bureau and picked up the puzzle book. The apartment’s last occupant had been the Clinic’s longtime custodian. Nora said he’d been a drinker, but not so bad that anyone had to act on it. Sweeney had no problem imagining the man after a few pops, admiring the charms of Miss January and wishing he were a decade younger. But as he lay down on the bed and sank into its middle and opened The Big Book of Logic Problems, he couldn’t quite imagine the custodian wrestling with two trains hurtling toward Chicago at different rates of speed.

He dozed off while trying to puzzle out the cost of the largest pumpkin at the farmers’ market. And was woken some time later by Romeo, the janitor from the third floor. Sweeney answered the door a little sleep drunk, having napped just long enough to feel disoriented.

“They told me to come get you,” Romeo said. “Your son’s on the way.”

“Danny’s here?”

The janitor shook his head. “I said he’s on his way. They called from the airport.”

“Thanks,” Sweeney said. “Let me throw some water on my face and I’ll be right up.”

Romeo didn’t answer and he didn’t step away from the door. After a second, Sweeney moved to the bathroom. He stood before the toilet and took a long and pain-relieving leak. Then he moved to the pedestal sink, rolled up his sleeves, and splashed himself into the present.

He patted his face dry and looked in the mirror. He ran a hand through his hair and reminded himself to buy some mouthwash. Then he left the apartment and followed Romeo upstairs. When they reached the front porch, he knew something was wrong.

Too many people were milling around — two orderlies with a gurney and three women huddled together, all of them looking as if they were on their way to a wake. Two of the women were crones, gnarled and as wide as they were tall. They were dressed in old-style nurses’ uniforms, complete with hats, and each one carried a large red plastic toolbox from which protruded tangles of tubing and swabs and packages of sterile wraps. They were listening intently to the third woman, who was a fraction of their age and wore a lab jacket and had a stethoscope slung around her neck.

One of the crones indicated Sweeney as he came down the stairs, and the young woman turned to greet him.

She said, “Are you the boy’s father?”

“Is everything all right?” he asked.

She put her hand out and said, “I’m Alice Peck, the chief of rehabilitation.”

“Is Danny all right?” he asked.

“We’re not sure,” blunt and emotionless. “They called as soon as they landed. The nurse practitioner that’s traveling with your son said there was a problem with his shunt. I’ve notified Dr. Siegel at City.”

“Jesus Christ, are you going to operate?”

The woman shook her head. “Probably not. We’re closer than City General. I’ve instructed the EMTs to bring the boy here. I’ll take a look at him. If it’s something we’re not prepared to handle, I’ll send them on to Dr. Siegel.”

“How did this happen?” Sweeney asked, trying and failing to keep his volume normal. “What’s wrong with the shunt?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen the patient yet.”

“His name’s Daniel,” though he never called him that.

“I haven’t seen Daniel yet. The NP said there could be a backup. His vitals had dropped a little but were holding steady—”

Sweeney tried to think. “Did this happen on the plane? I knew I should’ve traveled with him.”

“Mr. Sweeney,” the woman said, “right now I don’t know much more than you. Now when the ambulance gets here, I’m going to ask you to stand back and let me have a look at Daniel. And you’re not going to want to do that. But you’re going to have to.”

He had already quit listening. And then they all heard the sirens and, moments later, saw the red and white van turn onto the circular drive and start up the hill to the Clinic.

It came to a stop in front of the porch. The driver and his partner jumped out of the van simultaneously and Alice Peck yelled for the driver to get back behind the wheel. He did as he was told. The partner was already opening the back doors. They swung past their hinges and locked in place.

At first, Sweeney couldn’t see Danny. A third paramedic jumped out of the ambulance and began to talk to Alice. Sweeney couldn’t hear a word. The nurse practitioner he’d hired from the St. Joseph was on her knees next to the stretcher. Alice climbed inside the van and knelt on the opposite side. Her two crones moved to the lip and stood at the ready with supplies.

Sweeney came up behind them and leaned over their shoulders. Now he caught a glimpse of his son, the body in its familiar hunch, covered with a sheet to the waist. One of the nurses felt his presence, turned, and said, “You’ll have to stand back, sir.”

He said, “That’s my boy,” but he did as he was told.

Dr. Peck had her hands on Danny’s head and she was speaking in a low voice to the nurse practitioner, whose name was Mrs. Heller. Mrs. Heller had a blood pressure cuff on Danny and she was staring at her watch while nodding her head to everything Dr. Peck said.

On Danny’s second day in the St. Joseph, there had been a problem with the shunt. It had blocked off or backed up. Something went wrong. Two doctors and two nurses had gone to work on the boy and Sweeney had overreacted, yelling obscenities at the LPN who had tried to lead him into the solarium. The doctors had fixed the problem and Sweeney had spent weeks apologizing to the young woman.

That panic came back to him now and he tried to work on his breathing. It didn’t help and he shouted out, “Get him to the hospital.”

One of the EMTs gave him a look. Everyone else ignored him. Dr. Peck came up off her knees into a squat, pivoted, and started grabbing some things from the nurse’s toolbox. Sweeney saw latex gloves on her hands — when had she put those on? Mrs. Heller said something about blood pressure that Sweeney couldn’t make out. He moved to touch the shoulder of the paramedic to ask what had been said. He stopped himself, tried to breathe again.

Now the doctor had a handful of gauze panels, thick and soaked. She handed them to one nurse and took a fresh supply from the other. In her free hand, Sweeney saw what looked like a pair of pliers.

That was when he turned around, sat down on the porch steps, and supported his head with his hands.

That second night at St. Joe’s — when the shunt had blocked off or backed up, when the doctors had walked quickly into Danny’s room and asked Sweeney to wait outside. When he’d called that patient young nurse a fucking bitch — that night had ended with Kerry saying to him It would’ve been better if he’d died. And with him slapping her across the cheek.

He had never hit a woman in his life. He had rarely raised his voice to his wife. He did not hit her hard. There was no bruise. She had run away from him. And he had made his way to the men’s room and sat down in an empty stall and wept and gagged and punched the partitioning wall until he couldn’t feel his fist.

Now he felt a hand on his arm and looked up to see Alice Peck in front of him. He stood and almost bumped into her and she steadied him.

“He’s okay,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, too loud. And then, “You’re sure?”

“You can go to him,” she said.

Mrs. Heller was climbing out of the van, looking more angry than relieved, with the Limbo backpack slung awkwardly over her shoulder. Sweeney started to climb in where she’d been and a paramedic said, “Why don’t you let us get him out? You can see him better.”

Sweeney nodded and stepped back. The driver and his partner were in the rear of the ambulance now, throwing latches and sliding free the gurney. They held it above the driveway and one of them kicked loose and lowered the retractable wheels.

Danny was in his standard position, on his side, arms bent up to his chest, hands balled and tucked just below the chin. He was dressed in a johnny, and Sweeney made a note to ask what had happened to his pajamas. He had specifically laid out the Limbo pajamas. He leaned down over the boy, his chest shrouding most of Danny’s body. He kissed the boy’s cheek, brought his lips to the boy’s ear. He said, “Dad’s here,” and felt himself start to slip.

Coming upright, a little too quickly, he said to no one in particular, “Can we get him into his room now?”

There was a moment of group hesitation before Alice said, “We’ll be right along.” Then they wheeled the boy around the stairs and up the handicapped ramp and the crones followed behind with Mrs. Heller bringing up the rear, lugging a small travel bag.

As the group negotiated the front doors, Dr. Peck said, “Are you all right?”

He nodded and swallowed and said, “You’re sure he doesn’t have to go to the hospital?”

“I’m sure,” she said. “It wasn’t as serious as it looked. But if you’d like us to arrange for a consult with Dr. Siegel, we can do that.”

“If you say he’s okay,” he said, “I believe you.”

“And how about you?” she asked as she stripped off the latex gloves. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I’m just a little off balance. A lot of changes.”

She put her hands in the pockets of her lab coat. “Must be a big move.”

“We’ve been in Cleveland for almost ten years,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “The St. Joseph is a good facility. I know Dr. Roth pretty well.”

“I’ve heard the name, but I never met her.” After a second or two of silence Sweeney said, “So you’re Dr. Peck’s daughter?”

She smiled and her eyes widened a bit and she said, “My father’s the head of the Clinic, yes.”

He saw no resemblance.

“So it’s a family business?” he said and flinched at how lame it sounded.

“Not quite,” she said. “The Clinic’s a privately held corporation but we both sit on the board.”

Sweeney laughed before he could stop himself. “I was just making a little joke there.”

Alice leaned her head forward a bit and said, “I know.”

Sweeney couldn’t think of anything to say but “Oh.”

Alice Peck motioned to the front door with her head and said, “Listen, I’m going to collect all your son’s paperwork and get his new files going. We’ll give him a day to rest up from his trip before we start his assessments.” She put out her hand and said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sweeney.”

He took the hand and said, “Thanks for taking care of Danny, Dr. Peck.”

She started to walk away, turned back, and said, “I look forward to working with you.”

The crossing to Gehenna was, at times, perilous, and at other times, monotonous. The seas were often stormy and nauseating, and the ship was always cold. The freaks dressed in layers of costumes and passed the time imagining the riches and the fame that they would claim in the new world. Durga braided Antoinette’s sparse strands of hair. Marcel and Vasco played poker for matchsticks. Milena and Nadja occasionally tried to cadge drinks from the surly crew in the boiler room. And Chick scribbled in his diary, last year’s Christmas gift from Kitty.

Mostly he recorded and analyzed his visions, the messages he received during his seizures. He had them, on average, every third day throughout the voyage. All of them involved the doctor, Fliess, and his enormous laboratory castle, the Black Iron Clinic. All of them relayed in the voice of the Limbo, which had come to mean, in Chick’s mind and heart, the voice of his long-lost father. Calling out to him. Guiding him in fits and starts. Leading the son to communion and healing.

Kitty sat watch during the seizures, holding her love, cradling him as best she could, stroking the feathers of his cheek, kissing the feathers on his forehead with her seasick lips.

The Touya was a tramp steamer that managed fourteen knots on a good day and boasted a skeleton crew of fifty men, all of whom had more than a passing acquaintance with the darker side of human nature, and none of whom lost any love on the freaks. The Captain of The Touya, a hatchet-face bear of a man named Karl Gunter, communicated with the freaks through Bruno, the strongman, who conveyed the skipper’s insistence that the freaks confine themselves to the ship’s hold for the duration of the passage. Here they lodged among the freight — thousands of sealed drums filled with expensive fertilizer made exclusively from the excrement of Royal Bergauer Stallions. Twice a day, Bruno brought down a crate of food, mostly overripe oranges and tins of salted pork. The conditions were stark and filthy, but these were circus folk, after all, well used to improvisation and the uncertainties of nomadic life.

It took weeks to reach Gehenna and toward the tail end of the trip they caught the last slap of a nor’easter that snapped the freaks like marbles across the floor of the hold all night long. Jeta became hysterical and Aziz was forced to backhand her with one of his enormous paws.

Landfall came just after dawn one morning. Captain Gunter dropped anchor and summoned Bruno to his quarters for a card game and a conference over a breakfast of hardtack and Becherovka.

“My debt,” the Captain said, “is paid.”

Bruno nodded, raised his glass to the man.

“You kept your word,” Bruno agreed.

Gunter smiled, pulled out a small canvas pouch filled with snuff, and offered the strongman a pinch. The Captain’s ego was larger than his legendary belly. An autodidact, he had a well-known passion for the Bible and the Bard, and Bruno hoped that he wouldn’t have to endure a reading from the Song of Solomon.

“And what now?” Gunter asked. “What will you do?”

Seboldt waved off the snuff and tried to shrug his muscle-bound shoulders.

“We’ll look for work,” he said. “People are the same all over. Everyone wants to see the freaks.”

“So you’re staying with them, then?” said Gunter, a man not normally given to surprise.

“For a time anyway,” Bruno said.

“I could take you back home,” the Captain said. “You got them out of harm’s way. Most men would say that was enough.”

“I can’t go home,” Bruno said. “Shoshone McGee had a lot of friends.”

At this, Gunter spit out the latest sip of his drink.

“The hell he did,” the Captain said. “I knew McGee. Even his parents hated that bastard. He was a boil on the ass every day of his life.”

“The ladies liked him enough,” Bruno said, getting up from the table and moving to look out the Captain’s porthole. The small room smelled of oil and sweat and the odor combined with the low ceiling to produce in the strongman a touch of claustrophobia.

Gunter refilled Seboldt’s glass and carried it to him.

“The ladies,” he said to Bruno’s back, “feared him and loathed him. He was a bully on his best day and a rapist when he drank. And he drank whenever he was awake.”

Bruno turned around but didn’t argue.

The Captain handed him his drink and moved back to the bottle.

“The fact is, Bruno,” he said, “no one would give a goddamn that you killed the knife thrower. You did a favor for all of Bohemia. And I think you know that.”

“Murder is still murder,” Bruno said, but it came out weak. “There will be a warrant out on me.”

“There won’t be a one,” Gunter said evenly. “Teddy Bluett will find a new bladesman and life will go on.”

“Tell it your way,” Bruno said, wishing they could move on to a new subject.

“It’s my ship,” the Captain said. “I’ll always tell it my way. But this time it’s also the truth.”

“There’s nothing for me back in Bohemia,” Bruno said.

“Maybe not,” Gunter said. “Probably not. But I think you’re off to Gehenna because you want to stay,” his voice suddenly rising here, “with those pathetic vermin in the hold.”

Bruno was caught off guard.

“You’re touched,” he said to the Captain, but there was no force behind the insult.

“Careful son,” Gunter said. “You’re strong as Krok’s mule, but this morning you’re in the Captain’s quarters.”

“What are you getting at?” Bruno asked.

“I think you’re hard for those filthy monsters down below.”

Bruno spoke slowly and deliberately.

“I hate those miserable abominations. As much as you. As much as McGee.”

Gunter nodded and smiled in response.

“Son,” he said, “you might be a murderer. But you’re still a pathetic liar. And I say you’re sweet on the freaks.”

Then there was a moment of possibility in which one or the other might have thrown a punch. But both were smart men with a wealth of experience in the area of dismal consequence.

“Why don’t you just bring us into the harbor,” Bruno said, “and we’ll be out of your hair?”

Captain Gunter stared at the strongman, expressionless, then he moved back to his mess table and sat down again. He lifted his glass of spirits, brought it to his lips, and said over the rim, “Who said anything about the harbor?”

As a boy, Bruno Seboldt had survived daylong strappings from his maniac father. As a teen, he had seen trench combat in the Budwein province. As a young man, he had lived through the cholera epidemic and the Krumloff Circus fire. To say that Bruno Seboldt was a man of courage and tenacity was a more than reasonable statement. But that morning, as he heard Captain Gunter deliver those six casual words, he shuddered and was overcome with the kind of doubt that can render a man impotent for the balance of his life. And though Bruno could not have known it, down in the hold, at that exact moment, the chicken boy was starting to sweat and ache.

“I don’t understand,” Bruno finally managed to say.

“You don’t?” said Gunter, enjoying the taunting.

“You have to put in,” said Bruno. “Your hold is full of cargo.”

“So it is,” said Gunter. “Fertilizer and abominations. The shit goes down to the Port of Chaldea. That’s still a good hundred kilometers away. But I’m afraid you and the monsters are getting off here.”

Bruno squinted at him and Gunter barked out a laugh.

“I liked you, Seboldt,” the Captain said. “Truly, I considered you a friend. You could hold your liquor like a Russian and you played a fine hand of cribbage. But you’re sweet on those freaks. I’ve seen it. Don’t try to deny it. You’ve turned. You’ve gone over. And I can’t help you. I’ve got a business to run and I’ve got a reputation. If even one of my importers knew I brought those deviants to Gehenna, he’d tear up my compact. And if they knew their goods had been bunking with freaks, they’d dump all that expensive dung in the deep.”

“What are you going to do?” Bruno asked.

“You sound like a eunuch already,” Gunter said. “Good Christ, it’s an awful thing.” He shook his head and motioned to the porthole.

“We’re less than a kilometer from shore. That’s Bezalel out there. A terrible city. A place without God. Makes Maisel look like Eden. But it’s a fine spot for freaks. And their handmaids.”

“Then bring us in and we’ll be gone,” Bruno said.

“I’ve no business in Bazalel,” Gunter said. “You want to go there? Then jump in the sea and swim.”

It took Bruno a second to realize that the Captain meant his last words literally.

“You know they can’t make it,” Bruno said.

Gunter smiled as if on an indulged child.

“You had the strongest back in Bohemia,” he said. “Put it to work.”

“There are eleven of them,” Bruno said.

“Is that all?” Gunter said. “It seemed like a multitude.”

Then he called for his first mate, who was waiting outside the Captain’s door. Landau entered already smiling, as if in on the joke for a year.

“Mr. Landau,” Gunter said, “escort Mr. Seboldt topside. And have the rats brought up from the hold.”

Over the last year, Dr. Peck had become devoted to the sherry. It was a Manzanilla and had been shipped to the Clinic straight from Spain by Mr. Moore, the husband of the patient in 103. Peck had found it an odd choice for a Christmas gift and, upon sampling the first bottle, decided it was too pungent for his taste. He’d thought about giving the whole case to the housekeeper but Alice had discouraged him and, upon further consideration, Peck had come to agree with his daughter. Such a gesture would have been inappropriate. But in the end, after several more samplings, the doctor had grown accustomed to and, ultimately, quite fond of the wine.

Now he swirled it in his grandmother’s antique copita, as he climbed up the brief curve of stairwell that led to the tiny cupola above his study. This was where he learned to appreciate the Manzanilla, sitting under the low, copper-domed roof after a night of reading. The little round room was sealed but fitted floor-to-ceiling with glass, like a lighthouse, and on full moon nights, Peck loved the way the rays lit up the amber tinge of his wine. The room appeared designed for children, two, perhaps three of them at most, and Peck had spent a large percentage of his childhood here. The space limitation always produced a calming effect on the doctor. He liked to lounge on the narrow window seat and look down over the grounds of the Clinic as if gazing out on a vast sea. On a windy night, the pines that spread out across his acreage rippled like a black ocean. And when he spent enough time staring at the patterns of the waves, he sometimes reached a state of higher thinking, that realm in which the breakthroughs could come.

Tonight, as he sipped and brooded, Dr. Peck was thinking about his newest patient, Daniel Sweeney. It looked like Ohio was right. Everything indicated that the boy would be a premier candidate for arousal. Aside from the immediate area of brain trauma, he was young and strong and healthy. And the father, the pharmacist, was the perfect profile — devoted and unstable, desperate and drowning in guilt. The man was pliable and would be easily convinced. The trick was always to give them more hope than information. If you overwhelmed the families with the realities of procedure, you only confused them. Confusion led, inexorably, into fear. And though fear, on occasion, could be used as a persuasive tool, the more frightened the loved ones, the harder they were to control.

Everything requires balance, as the universe chronically reminds. The doctor needs to sense when to be authoritarian and when to be sympathetic. When to offer possibility and when to pull it away. When to be available but silent, and when to be absent but hovering as an unseen presence in the wardroom. The ghost with the only solution. The redeemer with magic scalpel and syringe.

Family tradition and a lifetime of study had taught Dr. Peck that neurologists were the priests of modern consciousness. He regularly reminded his daughter of this truth and pointed out that, like a priest, one must tend his flock with a rigorousness that others might define as inhumane. It was an irony the doctor could appreciate only after his third glass of sherry.

We are mapping the location of the human mind, he would tell his daughter and his colleagues and his students at the medical school. And our maps are not aligning with the received wisdom.

As a groundbreaker in a field that operated on the slippery edge of both medical science and philosophy, Dr. Peck could make such statements without apology. At the age of twenty, Peck had removed the brain of a salamander, transferred the brain into the animal’s tail fin, studied the creature for six weeks, then replanted the brain in the cranium and watched the salamander reassume all its normal functions, as if the operation had never taken place.

Peck first reported the results of his experiment to his father, who responded with a wry smile and the question, “Are you telling me that you plan to specialize in salamanders?”

Since the day that question was asked, Peck had cut out, divided, rotated, transposed, and shuffled thousands of brain parts of thousands of salamanders. Also of mice, rats, turtles, gerbils, chickens, cats, and rhesus monkeys. Between all of the cutting and rearranging, he had written some of the most radical and hotly debated papers in the young history of the neuro-transplantation field.

On nights like this one, safe in the cupola, brooding and sipping his sherry and looking out on the pattern of the wind, the doctor was beginning to realize that his life had been one long and steady journey. A pilgrimage to a place of certain, verifiable truth about the human mind. About what the mind is and where it can be found. About how, once stolen, the mind might be reclaimed.

Peck’s father had been too much the Yankee to speak, at least publicly, of a belief in the idea of personal destiny. But while Peck had inherited his progenitor’s brilliance — and then some, he knew — he had claimed none of the man’s modesty. And that was a fine and lucky thing. Modesty had no place in the high drama of revolution.

Peck’s wife, in the midst of one of the later binges that had made her stunningly crude, had called her husband a dickless genius. He seized on the term as a perverse badge of honor and never touched the woman again. That was the night he first slept in the cupola. His daughter had found him in the morning, curled up and shivering, dreaming of patterns and waves and the shuffled brains of salamanders.

Draining the last of the sherry, he heard movement below in his study, leaned his head over the stairwell, and called down, “Alice?”

She hesitated before answering.

“I was looking for a file,” she said.

“The Sweeney boy?” he asked and already knowing her answer he added, “I’ve got it here. Come join me. And bring the bottle from my desk.”

He listened closely, heard her approach the bend of stairs and begin to ascend. And then she was before him, looking like her mother before ruin, the moonlight making her face even softer, younger. She was still wearing her lab coat, but she’d let her hair down. Peck leaned back, held out his glass with one hand, and patted the files on the window seat next to him with the other.

Alice poured and said, “It’s cold up here.”

“You didn’t bring a glass for yourself,” Peck said. “It’s all right. We can share.”

Alice lifted the Sweeney file and sat down next to her father.

“Have you spoken to Lawton?” she asked.

Her father squinted.

“What for?”

“To touch base,” Alice suggested. “Let him know they arrived safe and sound.”

“I’m not a travel agent, Allie,” Peck said and sipped. “And the boy is no longer under Dr. Lawton’s care.”

Alice looked at him, hoping for a smile. When one failed to materialize, she opened the file in her lap and turned to read its contents in the moonlight.

“Everything seems to check out,” she said. “Precipitating incident was a fall that caused cerebral trauma. Buildup of blood on top of the brain caused compression of the brain surface. MRI revealed subdural hematoma.”

“No retention of consciousness since the incident,” her father said, taking over from memory. “No response to pain, temperature, or touch. No pupil reaction to light. CT scan reveals herniation of the right cerebral hemisphere across the midline and into the left cranium. But no apparent damage to the brain stem or spinal column.”

Alice nodded as she turned pages and read. “Weaned off the respirator and transferred from the admitting hospital to St. Joseph’s one week after the incident. The assessment team, under the direction of Dr. Lawton, found the patient totally unresponsive and requiring full nursing care, tube feeding, frequent turning, suctioning—”

Peck interrupted again. “They doused the boy with methylphenidate. Ten milligrams, twice a day, with no results. His GCS score has remained at four, unchanged for the last year.”

He took a sip of sherry, licked his upper lip, and added, “Lawton went through the motions. As he tends to do.”

“Well,” said Alice, “he’s ours now.”

“Another exile,” said Peck.

And his daughter responded, “Ten thousand strong and growing.”

This was as close to a motto as the Doctors Peck had yet to find. It referred to the fact that at any given time, some ten thousand individuals across the country were being maintained in a condition of profound unconsciousness, in some degree of coma or vegetative state.

“If it’s all right with you,” Alice said, “I’d like to head up the assessment.”

Peck put on a surprised look.

“I thought your plate was full,” he said. “I was going to ask Tannenbaum.”

“I’d rather handle it, if you don’t mind. I already met the boy and the father.”

Peck didn’t say yes or no. He rubbed across one of his overgrown eyebrows with a free index finger and said, “What about the mother?”

Alice was taken aback for a second.

“As you know,” she said, getting nervous and, so, too clinical, “the mother is deceased.”

“Does it say in that file,” asked her father, “the cause of death?”

“In the file?” she repeated and he didn’t wait for her to go on.

“The mother killed herself,” Peck said, “six months after the boy’s incident. Lawton said she opened her wrists in the bathtub.”

“Lawton?” Alice said. “I thought you hadn’t talked to Lawton?”

“I didn’t say that. I said that I hadn’t called him.”

She was beginning to feel claustrophobic in the tiny room, as if the copper dome above her head had been inching downward while she wasn’t looking.

“Did Dr. Lawton say anything else,” she asked, “that was pertinent?”

“He warned me to watch out for the father. That he’s ready to explode.”

“And we put him in charge of our drug room?”

“It was an appropriate incentive,” Peck said.

Alice shook her head, suddenly finding it difficult to keep her thoughts ordered.

“The man has lost his wife and his son,” she said. “He’s suffering catastrophic stress. Do you really think Tannenbaum is the right person to steer him through the process?”

Peck put the sherry on the floor between his feet, unfinished. He straightened up and reached out to put his hand on the back of his daughter’s neck.

“Allie,” he said, “if you want to handle this case, you know it’s yours.”

“Thank you, Poppa,” Alice said. “It’s just that the boy, Danny. . Have you taken a good look at him?”

Peck didn’t say anything but he took his hand away.

“He looks,” Alice said, “a lot like Alvin did at that age.”

And the hand came back up and Peck slapped his daughter across the face.

The action was as controlled and neat as the voice that followed it.

“We don’t mention that name,” Peck said.

Alice kept herself from touching the cheek, she nodded and tried to breathe, but the claustrophobic feeling was flooding through her now.

“Enough shop talk,” Peck said, putting both hands on his daughter’s shoulders and positioning her away from him on the window seat, so that he could come up against her back and wrap his arms around her. He let his chin rest on her shoulder, brought his nose into her neck, and took in her scent.

“Look at how beautiful the woods are tonight,” he said. “It’s like we’re the only people left in the world.”

Sweeney hooked his feet under the bureau and did sit-ups. This was his preferred method for avoiding sleep. He had been getting by on three to four hours a night for months now. What sleep he did get was fitful and, because of the dreams, sometimes more debilitating than restorative. The therapist out in Shaker Heights had promised they’d stop eventually. So far, she was wrong.

The dreams didn’t always center on Danny. Occasionally, they would feature people and places from Sweeney’s childhood. Sometimes the setting was the pharmacy. Sometimes an enormous shopping mall or a hot and confining bus or a stretch of off-season beach. But in every dream, whatever the locale, he was searching for something he had lost — money, keys, jewelry he’d bought for Kerry, the deed to his father’s house. In his dreams he had searched for his Honda, a beagle puppy, his college diploma, his driver’s license, his uncle’s toolbox, and an overdue library book titled Roots of the French Revolution. The therapist had suggested he keep a notebook by his bed and write the items down.

She had also suggested he attend the coma families support group that met once a month at the Holiday Inn on Royalton. His first meeting was also his last. He was horrified to find that members new to the group had not only to introduce themselves but to explain their loved one’s condition and the coma’s proximate cause. On impulse, he’d made up a story about a swimming pool accident. But when the group broke for coffee, a woman approached and called him on the lie. She had someone at the St. Joseph. She knew all about Danny, she said. Mrs. Heller had told her about Kerry and she knew “the whole truth.”

He ran from the Holiday Inn and almost hit a taxi on his way out of the parking lot.

But one good thing had come from the meeting. He learned that the dreams weren’t uncommon. The wife of a man who had been shot in the head told about a recurring nightmare in which she exited a car but closed its door on her raincoat. She ended up being dragged down the block as the car began to accelerate. At that, the woman next to Sweeney had leaned into him and whispered, “In mine, I’m at the zoo and all the animals are getting loose.”

Now he avoided sleep as much as possible, drinking coffee all day, keeping the lights and the radio on whenever he was at home. He’d been tempted to try some chemical solution to the problem. To either dose himself with amphetamine or narcotize his brain into his own, controlled coma. But like most of his colleagues, he’d been conditioned at school against self-medicating.

What he did in lieu of sleep was exercise. He couldn’t bear the sociability at the gym but he loved the old-fashioned regime of solitary calisthenics. In the privacy of his bedroom, by the glow of the muted TV, he jumped rope, pulled on a chin-up bar he’d mounted in the doorway, and ran through sequences of push-ups and sit-ups. As a result, he was college weight again and his arms and legs and abdomen had become toned and taut. And if his brain still, sometimes, screamed for sleep, he was learning to ignore its demands. What he found more difficult to ignore was the irony his new habits had produced. His muscles had grown hard as his son’s had atrophied. And Danny had achieved perpetual sleep while his father had made himself into an insomniac.

He hit three hundred, unhooked his feet and lay down on his back. The ceiling was cracked and water-stained. His room sat directly below 103 and he tried to picture where, exactly, Danny’s bed was located.

The admission and assessment team had spent two hours with the boy. Sweeney liked the idea that they were starting fresh instead of relying on the St. Joseph files. Alice — she insisted he call her by her first name — had explained that the doctors would meet in the afternoon, compare notes, and work up a prognosis and a schedule of therapies and medications. She told him that at the beginning they’d be reassessing almost constantly. Then she had dismissed the team and bought him dinner in the cafeteria.

The place was even seedier at night. They ate a runny stroganoff and Jell-O and, as he knew she would, she asked about the circumstances of Danny’s accident. He didn’t want a replay of the morning’s episode with Nora, so he said, “It’s all in his records,” and Alice didn’t push for anything more.

He stripped off his trunks and his T-shirt, threw them in the sink, and stepped in the shower. The water was hot and the pressure was high. He sat down at the far end of the tub and let the spray blast his body.

Kerry and he had often showered and bathed together before Danny came along. She’d reach up to wash his hair and he’d run the soap over her belly and between her legs. Afterward, he liked drying her off, wrapping her in a towel, and pulling her backward into his arms.

Now he placed a hand on his cock, then just as quickly took it away. He thought he heard a phone ring, got up on his feet, and turned off the water. The bathroom was entirely fogged. He climbed out of the tub and ran, dripping, into the living room. An old black rotary phone sat on the floor next to the sofa, but it wasn’t ringing. He squatted and picked up the receiver, put it to his ear, and heard nothing. Tomorrow he’d have to call from the pharmacy and have it turned on.

In its day, Harmony Prosthetics had provided something resembling wholeness to generations of the maimed and the amputated around the globe. At one time, it was the second largest replacement limb, bone, socket, and eyeball manufacturer in the world, shipping “artificial anatomicals,” as the catalogs called them, to every industrial sector on the planet. Founded by the Hanger family in the wake of the Civil War, the company prospered for a century, bingeing on government contracts with every martial conflict, and reinvesting in R & D during the periods of peace. But markets and technologies tend to change and those that can’t adapt die ugly deaths. And in the end, so it was with Harmony, which had succumbed more than a decade earlier to a combination of blows from both its Asian rivals and the miracles of microsurgery.

All that was left of this proud enterprise was the factory on Grenada, in the heart of Bangkok Park, a classic red brick mill, six stories tall and a full block wide. It had once employed two shifts of three hundred men each, and its smokestacks loomed over all of Bangkok like crosses on the road to Rome, spewing the plumed black smudge of rubber and plastic by-product seven days each week. Since then, most of the smokestacks had half fallen, leaving battered towers crumbling lazily beneath Quinsigamond’s toxic rains. And the mill beneath the stacks was a mausoleum of fiberglass hands and silicon palates, housing the typical urban scavengers — rats, pigeons, cockroaches, and, of late, a pack of nomadic bikers known as the Abominations.

Run by Buzz Cote, a burly veteran of the crank wars, the Abominations were classic renegades. Unaffiliated and proud of it, they swooped into towns like a plague, announcing their presence but never their agenda. Coming to Quinsigamond out of Phoenix, they found their way to the Harmony as if it were the ancestral home. They installed themselves in the mill and put their bikes on display in the gravel lot next door, as if taunting the local gangs, daring an offensive.

It had been six months since Buzz and his creatures arrived but, so far, no one had challenged them. Which was, to Buzz, a mixed blessing. Tranquillity begat productivity, but it tended to make the boys edgy. And being in one place for too long made them downright pissy. That’s when they started to fight amongst themselves. With any luck they’d be pulling out of the city in another week or two but Buzz knew, from experience, you don’t rely on luck. So tonight, he was sending the boys out on a run, to let them gorge on a little speed, maybe find a roadhouse where they could kick some ass and steal some poon.

“Ladies,” he said, as he walked inside the circle of revving hogs, clapping his boys on the back or the head, “do me proud, but come back in one piece.”

When he got to the end of the line, he laid a hand on the shoulder of his second in command and leaned in to the Spider’s ear.

“I need you to hang back with me,” Buzz said.

Spider let up on the throttle but squinted at Buzz to show his confusion. Buzz shook his head.

“Can’t be helped,” he said. “But I’ll make it up to you, I swear.” Then he stepped back to the next in line, the Elephant, and yelled, “Spider’s hanging back with me. We got some business. You’re in charge, Tubby. Keep the family circle.”

The Elephant nodded, both thrilled and frightened by the responsibility. Then he signaled with his pudgy hand and led the pack out of the lot and out of the Park, headed for some restorative mayhem.

Spider waited until all the boys had departed and the roar of the hogs was fading down Grenada. Then he leaned back in his mount and said, “The fuck, Buzz?”

Buzz chucked his deputy under the chin and said, “What’s the matter, boy? You ain’t getting enough?”

“I get all I need,” Spider said, shutting down his bike and climbing off to hover under Buzz’s chin.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Buzz said, slinging an arm across Spider’s neck to walk him back into the factory. “You barely got enough left for our girl.”

“I ain’t heard her complain,” Spider said.

“Well, now,” Buzz said, “complaining ain’t exactly Nadia’s style. Is it?”

Spider started to laugh and said, “I guess it ain’t.” And then they were both laughing, punching and poking each other, just a couple of irrepressible rebels, like in the old days back in Oakland, when they’d first gotten together. Back when the family was new and everything seemed inevitable. They’d met at a swap out in the hills of Berkeley, a kind of underground flea market for bikers and dopers and anarchists. Spider was buying a unit of crank and Buzz was picking up a case of test tubes and they almost came to blows over who would get the same issue of a favorite comic book.

Until that day, Spider had been a committed loner. On his own since the age of ten, he’d imagined himself the last individual, and he’d valued independence over any other virtue he’d ever sampled. But here he was, three years in, an Abomination. Another motherless brother, as the song put it. The thing was, Buzz had offered what no one else could — a shared independence. A liberty so radical it could scorch all the old freedoms and deliver an emancipation too real to refuse.

Spider wasn’t sure when he’d stopped believing Buzz Cote’s bullshit. Maybe it was Cincinnati. Maybe Louisville. But wherever it had happened, it was, he knew, the first time he’d experienced genuine grief. In the wake of that grief came the decision to split off from the family and form his own crew. And now, whenever the thought of fucking over Buzz and the boys started to bother him, Spider just remembered the fact of his own disbelief and the anxiety melted away instantly.

“You really think it’s a good idea, though,” Spider said as they entered the mill, “lettin’ the boys ride without me?”

“The boys’ll be fine,” Buzz said. “You got to have more faith.”

“But what was so important, you needed me to hang back?”

“It’s a bird problem,” Buzz said, his face as serious as his tone.

“A bird problem,” Spider said. “What the fuck’s that mean?”

“I’ll show you,” said Buzz, and he led the way through the first floor toward the rear of the mill.

The factory was organized by product makes and models, with each floor given over to the many shapes and sizes of a particular replacement part. The layout followed the logic of the human body itself: feet and legs were manufactured on the first floor; testicles and hips on the second; hands, arms, elbows, and shoulders on the third; all manner of oral implements — from tongues to teeth to palates — on the fourth; and eyeballs and sockets, ears and noses on the fifth. Skull plates, administrative offices, and research and development shared the top floor.

Buzz had poked around a bit up on six, rooted through R & D prototypes that had been left behind. He didn’t recognize everything he inspected, but some of the products left him with a queasy feeling that lasted several nights.

The work area of each floor was a plain of open space, made into intricate mazes by aisles of mammoth heavy machinery, all of it gunmetal gray or dull green. The floors were cold concrete, stained black by oil; the ceilings, a tangled canopy of wiring and piping. There were small, boxy windows fit into the brick here and there, but the glass was a heavy, opaque variety that let in little light. In addition, the windows were fitted, inside and out, with security grates, a black wire mesh, which gave a sense that the building could be converted from factory to penitentiary in a heartbeat.

The rear of the first floor was outfitted with a huge cafeteria. When the Abominations first colonized the Harmony, Buzz had the boys cart out all but the largest of the round, aluminum lunch tables and the bikers dropped their bedrolls and turned the room into a dormitory and clubhouse. They had running water and the Fluke had managed to jerry-rig some electricity to power the lights, stove, and refrigerator.

Beyond the cafeteria, at the very back of the mill, was a freight lift whose car remained locked up on the sixth floor no matter what the Ant tried. So, instead of elevator races for entertainment, the boys had begun climbing in the shaft, hauling themselves up and down like apes on the chains and wires that dangled into the blackness of the cellar.

As he moved through the central aisle between the gargantuan lathes, Buzz suddenly let out a war cry and started to sprint toward the shaft. Spider flinched but caught on fast and began to race after his leader. And when they reached the shaft, the two men flung themselves at the same time, catching different cables and lowering their bodies, hand over hand, into the bowels of the factory.

They emerged into the basement, a cavern of piping, storage, and furnaces that stunk of chemicals and sewage. Buzz pulled out a flashlight and clicked on a beam that revealed hundreds of drums of dyes and oils, countless barrels of paints and pigments. And though neither one of them said anything, they could both feel the rats breathing among the abandoned supplies.

In the center of the darkness sat a monster of an incinerator, a huge brick kiln, like a prison house for elves, with a cast-iron door on its face big enough for a man to climb through. The top of the oven fed into a steel funnel that tied to the factory’s main stack, which rose up through all the floors and, finally, through the roof.

Buzz put down the flashlight and took hold of the gear wheel on the furnace door as if he wanted to pry it loose from the incinerator. He made a face as though furious and constipated, then he used all of his upper body strength to budge the wheel. It groaned through years of rust but it turned, slowly and with a terrible sound. And when it could turn no more, Buzz took a breath, stepped back, and pulled the door open.

Spider hunched to look inside. He stared for several seconds but could see nothing. Straightening up, he looked at Buzz and shrugged.

“I need you,” Buzz said, “to climb in.”

It was a moment before Spider could laugh and, when he did, Buzz joined in. But when the laughing faded, awkwardly, Buzz said, “In you go.”

“The fuck you say?” Spider asked.

“Look,” Buzz said, “I’d go myself, but I’m just too big.”

Spider hunched again, tried to see inside the incinerator and came upright, just as confused.

“I’m not going in there,” he said.

Buzz sighed.

“It’s like this,” he said. “Somehow, a bird got in there. Made a nest, you know. Up in the stack.”

“A bird?” Spider said. “Who the fuck cares?”

“That’s the thing,” Buzz said, upbeat, as if his deputy were about to see the light. “It’s Nadia. She says she can’t sleep at night. The bird’s making all these noises. Keeping her awake.”

“I ain’t heard no bird. What the fuck kind of bird is it?”

“How do I know what kind of bird it is? What difference does that make? Nadia wants it gone.”

“I’m telling you,” said Spider, “I ain’t heard no bird.”

“And I’m telling you,” Buzz said, “Nadia says it’s there. And she wants it gone.”

“I’m a light sleeper,” Spider said. “I’d have heard a bird.”

Buzz waited a second, scratched his belly, drummed on his leg with the flashlight.

“You calling Nadia a liar?”

“’Course not,” Spider snapped. “That’s not what I’m saying at all.” He tried to think and then said, “Maybe it’s a bat. Maybe that’s what she’s hearing.”

“She said bird.”

“How’d a bird get in the stack?” Spider asked.

“How the hell you think?” Buzz said. “It came down from the top.”

“So you’re saying I have to go in there?”

“It’s a piece of cake,” Buzz said. “There’s a ladder mounted on the inside of the stack—”

“You’re shittin’ me,” Spider said. “A ladder?”

“A ladder,” Buzz insisted. “For maintenance. You got to clean these out, you know. They’re just like chimneys. Only worse. They get buildup.”

“This is fuckin’ nuts,” Spider said. “Couldn’t Nadia just sleep someplace else in the building?”

“You want to tell her to move?”

“I could get burnt up in there.”

“This thing,” Buzz said, kicking the incinerator, “hasn’t fired in ten years. There’s no power.”

“So I go in?” said Spider.

Buzz nodded.

“And I find the ladder?”

Another nod.

“And I climb up till I find a bird’s nest?”

“That’s it,” said Buzz. “It’ll be up near the top.”

“Up near the top? I can’t fit up there.”

“You’d be surprised,” Buzz said. “There’s more than enough room.”

“And when I find the fuckin’ nest? What do I do?”

“Well, if the bird’s there, you kill it.”

“Kill it?”

“Yeah, grab it and kill it. Just twist the neck.”

“I never killed no bird.”

“That,” said Buzz, “I find hard to believe.”

“What if it ain’t there?” asked Spider.

“Just knock down the nest. It comes back, sees you been up in there, it’ll fly off.”

“This is fuckin’ stupid.”

“You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” Buzz said. “Five, ten minutes, we’re done. Then we’ll kick back, have a few drinks, and wait for Nadia. We show her the bird is dead, you know she’ll be grateful.”

“You’re sayin’ I missed a run with the boys for this?”

“You’re my deputy, Spider,” Buzz said. “It’s not all privilege. There’s some responsibilities, too. Now get the fuck in there.”

The tone said that Buzz’s patience was gone, so Spider pushed his head through the incinerator door, hesitated a second, then hauled the rest of his body inside. Buzz kneeled down outside and thrust his head and the hand that held the flashlight into the furnace.

“I’ll be right here,” he said to the Spider. “I’ll light it up so you can see.”

“Christ,” said Spider, “I can barely breathe in here.”

“Go up, kill the bird, and come down,” said Buzz. “A moron could do this.”

And with that comment, Spider began climbing up the walls of the stack. In seconds, he was covered in soot and ash. Each time he passed through a flue, the stack grew a little narrower and Spider muttered to himself. Down below, Buzz ignored the curses and tried to make light.

“Stop whining,” he said. “You can have Nadia first.”

The words echoed and crumbs of rusted iron rained down from the rungs beneath Spider’s hands and feet and settled on Buzz’s head and arm.

“For this,” Spider yelled down, “I should get her first and second.”

“Fine with me, son,” Buzz said, “but I don’t think you’d live to tell that story.”

“Maybe,” said Spider. “But I’d die a happy man.”

He climbed more quickly, trying to think of Nadia and the night ahead. But the stack contracted dramatically now and the rungs of the ladder began to shrink.

Finally, Spider stopped his ascent and said, “There’s something blocking the stack.”

“Is it the nest?” Buzz asked.

“I dunno,” Spider yelled and Buzz could hear the strain in his voice. “Whatever it is, I can’t reach it. And I can’t go up any higher. It’s too tight.”

“Take another step,” Buzz said, pulling his trunk farther into the mouth of the furnace. “You can do it.”

“I can’t,” Spider said. “It’s too narrow.”

“Christ,” Buzz said, “you’re almost there. Just stretch up and grab. You can do it.”

“I’m stretching,” said Spider, angry now. “I’m telling you, I can’t reach it.”

“All you have to do,” said Buzz, “is knock it down.”

Spider cursed and struggled. The bricks were rubbing against his shoulders and his lungs were starting to convulse on him.

“I gotta come down,” he screamed in a voice too loud and high to plausibly deny panic.

Buzz stretched out his arm and shined his light up the cylinder. “You’ve almost got it. Just reach up. I know you can do this.”

“This is bullshit, you son of a bitch,” Spider yelled, enraged.

“Push yourself up,” Buzz yelled, in the voice of the father, a sound so weighted with threat that he saved it for the rarest of emergencies. “Force yourself up there.”

Spider gritted his teeth and jammed his body forward with everything he had. He felt the bricks squeezing in on his shoulders and his ass but he managed to raise his knee until his foot found the next rung and he hoisted himself that much farther. He was wrapped in brick now, corseted in mortar and creosote, but the nest was just above his head.

He stopped in place, took in some sooty air, got control, and said, “I get back down, Buzz, you and I are gonna have some words.”

“Just get the fucking bird,” Buzz said.

Slowly Spider found a way to inch his arm up over his head. He poked at the bottom of the nest and found it so dry and brittle that it began to break up with his touch. He fingered away at this dry bowl of twigs, leaves, wire, and plastic. And when he reached inside the bowl, he found no bird, only a fat wad of paper, which he grabbed and pulled down before his face.

“Did you get it?” Buzz asked from below, his voice now soft and emotionless.

Spider didn’t answer. Between the beam of Buzz’s light shooting up and the slice of moonlight that drifted down into the stack, he was able to see the object in his hands — a filthy envelope full of cash.

And just as Spider made out the logo of the Peck Clinic beneath a stain of ash, Buzz snapped off the flashlight.

Spider startled and dropped the envelope and money floated down over Buzz and into the belly of the furnace.

“What the fuck,” Spider yelled. “Turn on the light, asshole.”

He tried to take a step down to a lower rung only to find that the bricks refused to let go of his shoulders. The Spider screamed and tried to thrash his way free but his jerking and bucking made his situation only worse.

“You stupid bitch,” Buzz yelled from the belly of the furnace, his tone just short of regretful. “You think Nadia doesn’t know every goddamn thing that happens at that clinic?”

“Get me out of here,” Spider hollered, enraged and terrified, his body futilely trying to convulse within its minute confines. Dirt and rust and soot and some twigs from the nest fell into his eyes.

“I bring you into Limbo,” Buzz yelled, not caring if Spider could hear him over the screaming. “And this is how you repay me.”

Spider tried to push himself off of the ladder, but nothing happened. Pieces of the nest fell into his mouth and he began to spit and choke.

“I bring you to meet the freaks,” Buzz yelled, “and you do business with the enemy? You give that fucking doctor exactly what he needs. And then you hide the fucking money from me?”

At the height of his frenzy, Spider was granted the single moment of clarity in a life so twisted by violence and bad luck that it could culminate only in this kind of demise. He used the moment to make a request.

“Buzz,” he yelled. “Don’t do it this way. Help me come down and you can cut my throat.”

Buzz stayed silent for a minute, letting the Spider think he was mulling the option. Then he laughed and yelled up the stack.

“Can’t do it, Spider. I want you to think about what you’ve done while you’re drying out up there. You know, I might’ve even understood if you’d thrown in with Nadia and the last clinic and that fucking madness. But to choose that asshole Peck. You’re a real disappointment to me, Spider. And I want you to really understand what you’ve thrown away. Should take you three, four days to dehydrate—”

“The boys won’t let you do this,” Spider screamed.

“As far as the boys are concerned,” Buzz said, “you’re headed south to scout things out for us.”

“But they’ll hear me.”

“The boys won’t be back till sometime tomorrow,” Buzz said. “By then, without any water and with all that soot and shit in your lungs and throat, you won’t sound like much more than a bird that got stuck in the stack somewhere.”

The words yanked Spider back into his panic and he began to holler again, something about Limbo being bullshit, and Buzz, a fool and a liar. And then the yelling degenerated into a kind of scatological prayer, made of equal parts terror and rage, and losing meaning as it progressed.

The big man pulled himself out of the furnace, stood, and pushed the door closed. He could still hear the screaming, but now it was muffled, the words indistinct. Taking hold of the gear wheel, he began to turn it like a skipper steering his ship through a chaotic sea. When he heard the furnace door lock, he left his hands on the wheel for a moment and let his body slump, suddenly exhausted. And he thought, once again, about the obligations of the patriarch.

Sweeney used the stairs rather than the elevator. He took them two at a time. It was a grand staircase that wrapped itself around the elevator’s well, and he ran the last third of it. He had no idea why he was running. Not a clue why he was heading for the third floor, taking the stairs because he didn’t want to announce his approach with elevator noise.

He found them in 306. Four nurses, Romeo the janitor, one of the EMTs who had carted Danny from the airport, and a young guy in green surgical scrubs and a John Deere cap. Each was seated on the end of a bed, back to the bed’s occupant, leaning over a tray table that was covered with playing cards and money.

They all looked up as he stepped into the room but no one spoke until Romeo said, “You got to show fifty to sit in.”

Sweeney stared at him. The vague island accent was gone and in its place was an overdone street drawl, something from an early ’70s movie.

“Who’s he?” the guy in the scrubs asked and one of the nurses said, “He’s Ernesto’s replacement.”

The male nurse said, “His son’s down on one.”

Sweeney felt like they were watching him through a one-way mirror.

“Ernesto’s such a little shithead,” said a girl who looked too young to be up this late.

“Well c’mon in, for Christ sake,” said Romeo, “now you’re up here.”

Sweeney stayed where he was.

He saw Romeo look at the guy in the scrubs. Then the EMT said, “You here to play?”

“What’s the game?” Sweeney asked.

“There’s only one game at the Clinic,” said Romeo. “You know Limbo?”

Sweeney shook his head and everyone went quiet again until the guy in the scrubs crossed the room with his hand out.

“I’m Dr. Tannenbaum,” he said. “This looks awful to you, I’m sure—”

“Man didn’t say that,” Romeo interrupted. “Did you, Sweeney?”

Tannenbaum went on. “It’s really not as bad as it looks. Honestly, the game is in keeping with the mission of the Peck.”

“Listen to this guy,” said the EMT, mimicking. “Mission of the Peck.”

Tannenbaum ignored him. “We play for the patients. When the game is on, really, we become the patient. It’s an inclusive activity. We envision them wakeful.” He gestured toward a bed behind him. “Until you walked in that door, I was Mrs. Oliphant.”

Romeo had enough and said, “Yeah, and it’s Mrs. Oliphant’s turn to deal. So we got to know, did you come to play?”

There was no mistaking the question for anything but a threat.

“Not tonight,” Sweeney said.

The young nurse let herself ask, “Are you going to tell Dr. Peck?”

Before Sweeney could answer, Romeo said, “Now that’s just a stupid question, Debbie,” the sass a little too theatrical. “’Course he’s not gonna tell.”

“Just don’t bring the game to my son’s room,” Sweeney said and waited a beat before leaving the ward.

He took the elevator down to his apartment and grabbed The Big Book of Logic Problems. He carried the book back up to the drug vault and spent the rest of the night trying to work out the puzzle of the Chinese triplets.

. . The purchase of the bus hadn’t left much of a bankroll. And Bruno had to deplete it even further the next day by buying a route card at their first gas stop.

The next week was one long blur of driving through farmlands and pastures and skirting the bigger cities. The freaks were hot and dirty and regularly hungry. They ate two meals a day, cooked hobo style on the roadside. Gehenna became a different land with each day that passed, and the extent of the differences from day to day suggested an enormity that began to awe them.

They stopped twice for provisions — once at a roadside produce stand and once at a blighted general store. Bruno knew they would run out of money for gas and food before they reached the interior plains, but he chose not to share that fact.

Chick had a couple of low-grade seizures during the trip, which bore a couple of names that, as usual, didn’t yet mean anything to anyone. But he did hear the Limbo voice, the father voice, mention a show title that was featured prominently on the route card. The Bedlam Brothers Present the Roving Jubilee, a Pious Entertainment for the Righteous and the Reborn sounded both impressive and a little frightening and there was some debate as to whether or not such a show would want a freak act on their bill. But the card said the Jubilee was playing a weeklong stand at the county seat, a village called Mach’pella, which, according to the map, was only a day or two away. So that was where the freaks were headed.

They almost made it, too.

The bus broke down just ten miles outside of town. When he felt the engine start its death rattle and the noxious, black smoke being spewed became too much to ignore, the strongman veered off the road and coasted to a stop in a field that stretched to the horizon, a field barren of anything but scrub weeds.

Bruno put his head down on the wheel and said, to himself, “I’ll drive it and I’ll sleep on it, but I’ll be damned if I’ll push it.”

Then he climbed out of his seat, stood in the aisle to stretch, and said to the freaks, “Looks like we’re walking to work this morning.”

No one complained. Like good soldiers, they filed off the bus and lined up by its side. They had no possessions to collect, no clothes to gather and pack beyond what was on their backs.

“Okay,” said Bruno, taking his place before them, “we’re on the hoof and you all know what that means. We stay together and close. I’ll walk lead. Chick’s behind me. Fatos will bring up the rear. Nadja, you hold hands—” He stumbled over the word, regrouped and rephrased. “You hold Antoinette’s hand. Durga, we’ll try to keep the pace moderate. But it’s all flat land, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble. Holler when you need a break.”

And with that, they began their march. It was blazing hot and, though the twins tried to sing as they moved, the day proved too buggy for even a short medley.

Sweeney knew next to nothing about the city. And he felt no great need to educate himself. It was another rust-belt mill town and he had no intention of finding a way into its gritty life. He’d make his home at the Clinic. Come into town when necessary, when he needed supplies or maybe to see a movie sometime.

He was about a mile from the Peck when he noticed the warning light on the gas gauge. The drive-away agency had guaranteed that the car would be delivered with a full tank. He drove a few blocks, trying to tamp down the anger, and then it was no good and he was yelling son of a bitch and pounding the dash.

He came to a red light and, thinking he heard the engine start to gasp, he took a sudden arcing swing at the windshield. His fist went numb for an instant as the center of the glass formed a web of thin cracks. He put his fist in his lap and the pain came alive across the knuckles. The light turned green. A car behind him honked. He looked across the intersection and saw an antique, two-pump gas station.

As an attendant filled his tank, he made his way to the men’s room and ran cold water over his hand. It did nothing to alleviate the pain. He turned off the water, held both hands next to each other. One was already swelling but both were shaking. He tried controlled breathing for what seemed a ridiculous amount of time. Then he exited the toilet, paid for his gas, and asked where he could find the nearest shopping center.

The attendant seemed a little confused by the question and gave it all his concentration. He pointed down the road.

“The Mart might still be open,” he said. “It’s closing any day, but it might still be open.”

A half mile east, Sweeney found a nearly deserted plaza, a relic from the pre-mall era. A dozen small stores — a pharmacy, a shoe repair, a barbershop — were anchored by a five-and-ten. The structure had a flat roof and sported a metal awning that ran the length of the sidewalk. All of the stores but the five-and-ten were empty and, from the looks, had been for some time. Some were shuttered, others had whitewashed front windows, but the barbershop was wide open, its door and window smashed in.

Sweeney parked and locked the car and decided he wouldn’t linger. The Mart had automatic doors, but they weren’t working and he had to struggle to open one manually. Inside, the lighting was dim and yellow, an effect he found at first unsettling and, somewhat later, almost charming. Most stores overdosed on the fluorescents.

He grabbed a red canvas handbasket and began to walk the aisles. There was no apparent order to anything. Nothing was grouped by department. He found spray paint next to beach pails. Cakes of soap next to goldfish bowls. It was like a trip back to his childhood and, had his hand not hurt so much, he might have managed to lose himself for a few minutes. There were a half-dozen items that he picked up and examined, not interested in purchasing any of them, but simply stunned that they were still manufactured.

He began to suspect that he was entirely alone in the store until he turned a corner and came upon the key-making booth. The old man inside, perched on a stool, dressed in full apron and a knobby cardigan, was smoking a cigarette. Sweeney tried to recall the last time he’d seen someone smoking inside a department store. The man looked bored and hot and Sweeney thought about handing over the car keys just to give the guy something to do.

Instead, he said, “I’m looking for boys’ pajamas.”

The old man blew out a lungful of smoke and said, “Try aisle seven.”

Sweeney thanked him and moved on. None of the aisles were marked, so he continued to browse. As he looked at eggbeaters and cheese graters, clothesline rope and a full bin of rubber galoshes, he realized there wasn’t much chance that he’d find what he was searching for. But then there they were, on a table that featured a red plastic flag that bore the last traces of the word Special, dozens of pairs of Limbo pajamas. Along with random piles of Limbo card games with their box flaps taped closed, a few issues of the comic books with the covers torn off, Limbo wall calendars from years past, and some tiny, green plastic freak figures that Sweeney had never seen before. About the size of toy soldiers. Some of them, he noticed, were missing their heads.

He picked through the pile, selected four summer-weight pajama sets in Danny’s size. He held them up and out from his chest, sized them the way Kerry used to, and made sure there were no tears. He studied the design, tried to pick out as many characters as he could. Chick and Kitty and Bruno were easy, of course. But he could never remember the name of the lobster girl or the pinhead or the human torso. Though he could have told anyone that the human torso had lost his bottom half in a bear attack.

It was significant how someone became a freak. Danny had assured him of that. Some people, his son had explained, are just born that way. But some become freaks due to an accident.

He threw the pajamas in the basket and hunted down coffee, a percolator, a bottle of aspirin, plastic hangers for his lab coats, and three sets of twin sheets. Then he began tossing items that he didn’t need into the basket. A box of magic markers. A jar of olives. A thermometer. A Big Chief writing tablet. A package of mothballs. As he stood paging through a 1972 atlas of the interstate highway system, he began to smell frying meat. It was still only midmorning but the aroma was wonderful and he tossed the atlas atop the mothballs and followed the scent to the rear of the store.

Where he found a lunch counter that had been preserved, unchanged since, perhaps, the summer of love. A dozen leather-topped stools were mounted before a marble ledge. The black and white menu on the wall above the grill was faded but legible and offered a handful of staples like chicken salad and lime rickeys. Sweeney stared at it, thinking the prices were impossible. That over the years, the menu had evolved into a piece of nostalgic art. Of the same era as the napkin dispensers and the cake plates with their glass domes, but no longer functional.

The old key maker was behind the counter but he’d removed his cardigan. He was bent over a spitting grill, moving a beef patty around with a spatula. A single customer was perched on the last stool at the end of the counter, a tall biker in full leather, including jacket, chaps, and boots.

The guy had his elbows resting on the counter and his hands folded in front of him, as if in prayer. And though he wore sunglasses, Sweeney had the sense that his eyes were closed. At least until the biker turned his head and said, “What are you looking at?”

The question contained just the right degree of threat. The key maker turned from the grill and gave Sweeney a look as if to say Stop bothering the customer.

“Nothing,” Sweeney said. “I just didn’t know they served food here.”

The biker cocked his head until the old man slid a platter in front of him. The plate was bone white and heavy-looking and big enough to contain a rump roast but it held only a plump burger garnished with lettuce and tomato, a dill pickle, and a small pile of potato chips. Sweeney looked from the biker down to the platter and felt himself start to salivate.

“You going to order,” asked the old man, “or can I shut down the grill?”

“Aren’t you just opening?” Sweeney said, and the old man cleared his throat and let it suffice for an answer.

Sweeney put his basket down, slid onto the stool, and said, “I’ll have what he’s having,” gesturing toward the other end of the counter.

The old man tilted his head and bulged his eyes a little, as if to confirm the order, but the biker paid no attention. He was taking fast, aggressive bites out of his burger, making snapping, doglike motions with his jaw, and wiping the resulting spray of grease off his chin with the back of his hand. By the time Sweeney’s meal was ready, the biker had cleared his platter. He pulled a stack of napkins from the dispenser, wiped at his lips and then his fingers and deposited the saturated paper in the middle of his plate.

“Food of the gods, Myer,” he said to the old man as he climbed off the stool. “I’ll see you next Saturday.”

The old man poured water onto the grill from a glass coffeepot and watched the liquid sizzle and spatter. He shook his head without turning around and began to scrape debris into a grease well. As the biker passed behind Sweeney on his way to the exit, Sweeney swiveled and said, “Excuse me.”

The biker stopped walking and froze, overly dramatic. The old man, Myer, turned and put a hand to his forehead. Sweeney had taken a bite of pickle and began to talk with his mouth full.

“I wonder if you can help me,” he said. “I’m new in town and I was wondering, you know, if you knew a good garage. I’m having some problems with my car.”

The biker looked at Myer, then at Sweeney. He took a step forward and removed the sunglasses. He let his head sink down into his shoulders a little, then said, “I look like a fucking mechanic to you?”

Sweeney looked at Myer, hoping he’d step in or turn the moment into a joke. The old man looked infuriated.

“No,” Sweeney said. “I’m sorry, I just—”

“You just what?” the voice getting even lower. “You just looking for a reason to talk to me?”

“No, I thought—”

“You some kind of faggot?” the biker said and looked at Myer. “You serving faggots in here now, Myer?”

The old man looked down to the floor and said, “Not that I know of, Mr. Cote.”

“Look,” said Sweeney, “I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”

“You’re goddamn right you’re sorry. You trying to pick me up, you little cocksucker?”

“Jesus Christ,” Sweeney said and put his hands up. “No. No. You’ve got the wrong idea. I’m new. I’m new here.”

The biker put a finger on Sweeney’s chest and pressed in on the breastbone. “I’ll bury your fucking ass, you want.”

“For Christ sake,” Sweeney said. “I didn’t mean anything. I was looking for a garage.”

The biker bit down on his bottom lip, seemed to think for a second. Then he removed his finger, reached past Sweeney, and took the uneaten burger off the platter.

“You’re new to a town,” he said and pointed with the bulky roll and Sweeney watched some grease drop onto the boots, “you watch your manners. You understand that?”

Sweeney shook his head. The biker bit into the meat, chewed and swallowed, then said, “Buzz Cote is no fucking mechanic, asshole.” Then he put the burger back on the platter and left the lunch counter. Sweeney could hear his boots click on the tile floor all the way to the front of the store.

Myer took the platter and threw it in a rubber bus tub and said, “What the hell is the matter with you, mister?”

Sweeney looked up at him. “You heard me. I just asked the guy a simple question.”

Myer threw a hand out, disgusted.

“Listen,” Sweeney said, the weight of the encounter starting to settle on him, “I’m brand new in town. I’ve got some problems with my Honda. That’s it. I swear to you.”

“And why didn’t you ask me?” Myer said, steadying himself with a hand on the counter. “I’ve lived here seventy years. Most of my life. I’ve been through more lousy cars than you can count. Why the hell didn’t you ask me for a garage?”

“I just thought, you know, the guy must know bikes—”

“You just thought,” wiping hands on a dishrag, disgust moving up a notch to contempt. “Did you find the pajamas?”

The shift in subject, if not tone, was so sudden that Sweeney was confused.

“The pajamas,” Myer said, on the verge of yelling, “the pajamas. Me, you’ll ask about boys’ pajamas. You know I once lived next to a garage?”

“I didn’t mean to cause any problems,” Sweeney said. He got off the stool, bent down and lifted his basket, and took a step toward the checkout.

“Give me that,” Myer said, extending his arms across the counter for the basket.

Sweeney handed it over, but said, “Don’t you want to ring it up down front?”

“Something wrong with this register?” Myer said, indicating an antique brass machine located down by the soda taps. But he didn’t go near the ringer. Instead, he rummaged in the basket, shifting items and muttering. “Gimme thirty bucks.”

Sweeney was getting more confused by the second. “What are you talking about?” he said. “The percolator alone is twenty dollars. I’ve got three sets of sheets in there.”

“You,” Myer said, shaking his head, resigned to his annoyance, “are a disagreeable SOB.”

“But you’re cheating yourself.”

Myer handed the basket back to him and said, “Gimme thirty bucks or get out of my store.”

Sweeney went into his pocket, came out with a hundred. “I’ve only got big bills,” he said. “Can you make change?”

Myer pushed air out between his teeth, his aggravation beyond words now. He snatched the bill, shuffled to the register, hammered the sale tab with the palm of his hand, planted the bill, grabbed change, and slammed the cash drawer with his hip. He moved back to Sweeney with a heavy head and handed him a fifty.

“This isn’t correct,” Sweeney said.

“Get the hell out,” Myer said.

The Honda made terrible noises all the way back to the Clinic. The girl from the drive-away agency had done something to the car. Sweeney parked in the back lot and killed the ignition and the engine went through a melodramatic death scene, bucking and coughing up clouds of gray smoke. After the last spasm, he noticed the cigarette burns in the dash and the cupcake wrappers peeking out from under the passenger seat. Sweeney reached under the driver’s seat and pulled out two empty tequila nips and a half-empty can of Jolt. He put them in the handbasket — Myer hadn’t offered to bag his purchases — and got out of the car.

He dropped everything but the pajamas in the apartment, went up to the cafeteria and was surprised to find it crowded. He got a coffee and was looking for an empty table when Nora Blake whistled to him from the back of the room.

He slid into the seat opposite her. Nora was finishing a turnover and a paperback novel that featured a blond pirate on its cover.

“I didn’t know administrators worked Saturdays,” Sweeney said, and Nora held up a finger and brought her head just a bit closer to the words on the page.

Sweeney waited, sipped his coffee, and watched the woman concentrate. The book was beaten up, the spine cracked and peeled and the cover sporting dozens of creases that did nothing to lessen the pirate’s virility. Nora started to shake her head, a slow sway, side to side, and Sweeney couldn’t tell whether she was enthralled or disappointed. Finally, she looked up at him and gave a sigh that was almost as dramatic as the Honda’s.

“You like pirate books?” Sweeney asked. He noticed that Nora was wearing pearls.

She shoved the paperback into a purse that was slung on the back of her chair.

“I was a virtual widow for twenty years,” she said. “And I’m in love with historical romance.”

“How much is history,” Sweeney asked, “and how much is romance?”

“This one,” Nora said, pulling her Virginia Slims from a pocket, “was about seventy-five, twenty-five romance to history. And I think I’m being generous. So how was your first night in the Peck? And what’ve you got there in your lap?”

He answered the second question first.

“They’re pajamas for Danny,” he said. But he didn’t bother to hold them up.

Nora grimaced. “They might not go for that,” she said, “depending on the G-tube and all.”

“Danny would want these,” Sweeney said. “I’ll talk to Alice.”

“Oh,” said Nora, still feeling the effects of the high seas, “it’s Alice already?”

He ignored her and said, “As for my first night, you know anything about a card game called Limbo?”

She smiled, almost laughed, and sucked the life out of her cigarette, then pointed at him with it.

“Limbo is new,” she said. “Ernie’s game was Blue Migraine. We made close to two thousand dollars one season. I bought myself a portable Jacuzzi for Christmas.”

“So you know about the game and it’s all right with you?”

She put on a concerned grandmother face but Sweeney thought something mocking was in it as well.

“Does it bother you?” she said. “Because I was outraged at first. It’s amazing I didn’t go to Dr. Peck that night.”

“Why didn’t you?” Sweeney asked. “I’m thinking about telling Alice today.”

“You think she doesn’t know?”

Sweeney hadn’t even considered the possibility.

“Does she?” he said, a little too loud.

Nora shrugged and said, “Drink your coffee. It’s getting cold,” and Sweeney did as told.

“Look, Sweeney, I didn’t go to Dr. Peck because it isn’t in my nature to be a fink. Even though I was mad as hell and for a while it made me think about pulling Ernie out of here.”

“But you left him in.”

“I wish you smoked,” Nora said, stubbing out her cigarette even though half of it was left. “It was better when people smoked together.” She shook her head and started again. “The more I thought about the game, the more I started to believe Griswold was right—”

“Who’s Griswold?”

“He’s the one who started the game. He’s been gone a while now. But he insisted they were playing for the patients. And Griswold walked the walk, you know. He’d play as if he were just Ernie’s hands. One time, they were playing Lost Weekend, and it was western rules, and so the pot was growing pretty quickly. And before the end of shift they ended up with six, seven hundred dollars on the table. And it’s Griswold’s turn to either call or fold. And I’ll never forget this. The sun is coming up and everyone’s overtired and getting nervous. You can hear stomachs groaning and all. And Griswold just takes his time and he gets up and climbs onto the bed with Ernie. And he holds the cards in front of my husband’s face. And he starts whispering. This isn’t some nut, okay? This guy was top of his class at Stanford Medical. So the whispering and conferring goes on for a while. And then Griswold gets up off the bed, shaking his head, saying, ‘All right, Ernie, if that’s what you want to do.’ And he calls and it was one of those long moments, you know. Just like in a movie. Everyone waiting to see what happens. The tension just hanging there.”

She paused, trying to recreate a little of the original suspense.

“And Griswold took the pot?” Sweeney said.

Nora gave up a big, self-satisfied smile. “No,” she said, “Ernie took the pot. You’re missing my whole point, aren’t you? We gave Griswold seventy bucks and I bought Ernie and me the Jacuzzi down at the Mart.”

Sweeney put his coffee down and he and Nora stared at each other for a second. Then he said, “Look, I don’t want to upset you. But you don’t find that story a little. .” he fumbled, then tried, “macabre?”

“Macabre?” she said.

“How about disrespectful?”

“Disrespectful to who?”

“To your husband and you,” he said. “To the patient and his family.” She didn’t get upset. She patted his hand.

“You know what I find disrespectful?” she said and didn’t wait for an answer. “When they treated my husband like a vegetable in a warehouse. When they talked about him as if he wasn’t there. When some prissy little doctor would study my husband’s file as if Ernie was some math problem.”

She took out another cigarette but didn’t light it.

“Dr. Griswold said to me once, he said, ‘They’re still inside.’ He was convinced of it and he convinced me of it. He said the best way we could help them was to show them some faith. To show them we accept their new consciousness—”

The word was a button that brought Sweeney to life.

“Oh for Christ sake,” he said. “Their new consciousness? Jesus, Nora, this guy was a fucking nut.”

He was aware of people around them turning their heads in his direction, and he lowered his voice.

“They have no consciousness. That’s what this condition is. That’s the goddamn definition. They’ve lost consciousness.”

“If Danny has no consciousness,” Nora said, calm and serene, “then why did his father buy him special pajamas?”

Sweeney opened his mouth and closed it just as quickly. The question was a slap and it had the effect of flipping his anger into fear.

“I guess,” he said, “I bought them for myself.”

Nora was good with a cigarette in the way lifelong smokers often are. She pointed it at Sweeney’s chest and said, “There aren’t that many ways to get through this. You know I speak from experience. I’ve lived through some nights that most people can’t even imagine. Now you’re telling yourself you’re a stoic. And that’s keeping you from following your wife’s example. You’ve gotten rid of everything that existed before the accident. You’ve erased Cleveland. Everyone and everything you used to know. You’ve moved into this nightmare and you’ve started your vigil. Fine. But how long do you think it’ll be before you either take a swing at something other than a wall? Or get so scared that you want to trade places with your son?”

Sweeney’s throat was fully constricted. He said, “I’d give anything to trade places with Danny.”

“That,” Nora said, “we don’t get to choose. But we do get to choose how to think about this. You really want to believe that your son is a turnip who can still suck air?”

He lifted his coffee cup to throw it but Nora didn’t flinch.

“Or do you want to believe that Danny can’t wait to get in those new pajamas? That he knows when you’re next to him and that you still love him even though he’s not what he used to be?”

“It’s not a choice,” he said.

“It’s absolutely a choice,” she said. “It’s about the only option you’ve got left. Let me clue you in on something, honey. These doctors, they know a lot of impressive words and they’ve got enough attitude to choke a czar. But they have no idea what consciousness is. And don’t you let them tell you they do.”

All he could get out was her name and he said it like a request. He was exhausted and nauseated and he knew that no amount of breathing exercises would help.

Nora leaned over the table.

“If you don’t want Danny to be part of the game, then don’t let him. The game is nothing. But don’t start accepting someone else’s opinion about who your son is. They know their science. Maybe. But you know your boy. Right?”

He put down his cup and said, “I’ve got to go see him now.”

Nora put her free hand to her throat and touched her pearls. “You worry me, Sweeney,” she said.

He got up and left the cafeteria without another word.

At some point, Sweeney dozed off and dreamed that Kerry and he were with Danny at Put-in-Bay. They were sailing a boat through a series of narrow canals. Danny’s hair was long and summer blond. Kerry was wearing the teal bikini. He noticed a tattoo of the sun on her belly. And then it was a different boat, something larger with a tall mast and Sweeney was having trouble with the rudder. Kerry was down below getting lunch and he kept calling to her but she wouldn’t answer. Danny had climbed up the mast and grabbed onto a line and was swinging out over the water. With each swing the boat tilted on its side. The waves were hitting Sweeney. His eyes were stinging. He was furious, screaming for Danny to climb down and Kerry to come up topside. Then a flock of birds blocked the sun and the lightning began.

He yelled out when the second-shift nurse woke him.

“You were having a nightmare,” she said.

He swung his legs off the side of the bed, rubbed his eyes, and looked at his watch.

“What’s that?” he asked as the nurse began to hang a new bag on the IV pole.

“Just his meds,” she said without looking at him.

She checked the drip and moved on to attend Irene Moore. He wiped at his eyes again, pulled a peppermint from his pocket, and put it in his mouth. He leaned over the bed and kissed Danny, then went back down to the apartment.

Motionless in his terrarium, silent but wide awake in the dimness of the study, the salamander waited. It was a blue-spotted newt, of the Ambystomatidae family, about five inches long, with splayed toes and a black belly. Its name was Rene and it had been last year’s birthday gift from Alice Peck to her father.

An endangered species, the blue-spotted newt was typically found in the swamps and marshes of the American Northeast, where it fed on mealworms, beetles, millipedes, and aphids. Freedom, of course, has a price, and in its natural environment, a sallie’s life expectancy was less than ten years. But here in the study, safe and well tended, Rene might live twice that long.

It was difficult at best, insane at worst, to ascribe emotion to a creature as inscrutable as a salamander. But, if forced, Alice might have said that she sensed from Rene a certain serenity, a contentedness, born of life in her father’s study. Alice kept the terrarium tidy, filled it regularly with fresh moss scraped from the trees that lined the hill below the Clinic. Dutiful and vigilant, a good daughter, she misted the interior of the bowl each morning before her rounds and cleaned away any shed skin that Rene had failed to consume during the night.

For his part, Dr. Peck had come to consider Rene a necessary presence in the study, as essential to his work as the texts that rimmed the walls or the bottle of sherry in the bottom drawer of his desk. Over the course of the last year, Peck had discovered intriguing similarities between newt and neurologist. Both were naturally nocturnal. Both were deaf to conventional wisdom. Both were regenerators, magicians who could raise up that which had been lost or damaged or cut away. And both, Peck had become convinced of late, were the last mystics in this world — enigmatic shamans who could bend and shape consciousness itself. Which is to say, reality itself.

It might have appeared a contradiction, to label a man of science — a man whose life had been founded on and guided by logic, rationality, provability — a mystic and a shaman. But what Dr. Peck had come to understand, by way of hard, shaping experience, was that his work required terrifying leaps of faith into counterintuitive realms. What the doctor had learned about the human mind over the last decade had reconfigured everything he thought he knew about the way the world was put together. Now, like his blue-spotted confessor, he understood that the universe, the fabric of reality, was composed of nothing more than particles of longing, a kind of quantum desire for absolute connection. Dr. Peck understood that, from moment to moment, we are profoundly asleep and, so, profoundly alone. Like Rene, we are locked inside the glass terrariums of our lives. What the doctor needed to discover was how to wake us up. The path to that discovery began, he was certain, inside the craniums of his patients.

He knew that every arousal he achieved would bring him closer to answers that had more to do with the nature of consciousness than of coma. Every new patient was a fresh opportunity, one more chance to sound the alarm that would awaken the world itself. Which was why he had run from the surgical theater, down to the incinerator, and on to the study in the middle of the night. To share the latest good news with the newt. And to meditate, together, across the bounds of language and species, on what that news might mean.

Peck entered the study from the rear corridor that connected his residence to the Clinic proper. He was wearing his scrubs and carrying the black leather satchel. He moved to his desk, placed the satchel on his blotter, next to the terrarium, and stripped off his gown, cap, and mask. As he balled them together, he took note of the single drop of blood on the hem of the gown, then deposited the soiled laundry into the empty satchel for collection by Alice in the morning.

He left the latex gloves stretched over his hands, and when he felt the first tremor, he leaned forward and braced himself against the desk. Clad now only in his boxer shorts and slippers, he felt the chill more powerfully. He let himself tremble, let the small earthquake pass through his nervous system. It was happening more frequently of late, always after a session in surgery. He would not mention it to Alice — no need to worry the girl. It was, most likely, nothing more than a release of tension and stress, coupled with too many nights without any sleep.

As his body worked its way through the final few spasms, the doctor tried to recall the last time he had been to bed. But tonight, exhaustion had taken a toll on his short-term memory as well. So he waited for the episode to pass. And when it did, he began to collect the items he needed for his postoperative recovery. Rene, he knew, was waiting to hear the details. And the doctor was anxious to supply them.

From one desk drawer, he took the bottle of Manzanilla and the first edition of Les passions de l’ame, a volume that he had purchased to mark and celebrate his first arousal. From another drawer he removed the oversized gray envelope that contained his newest patient’s films — the latest scans, sent up by Dr. Tannenbaum yesterday afternoon — and a scuba diver’s flashlight. He tucked book, bottle, flashlight, and envelope under his arms in order to free both of his hands. Then, gingerly, he lifted the terrarium, nestled it against his chest and climbed the spiral staircase that led to the cupola.

Halfway up, he stopped, as he often did, to study the painting of his long-dead wife. Practically life-size, she was captured in heavy oils and boxed inside a thick gilt frame. The darkness of the composition made her look willowy and ethereal, a spirit leisurely slipping free from the trap of the body. Only her eyes retained the piercing, hateful focus, which had never quite been tranquilized by the many medications. It still surprised Peck that he had chosen this woman for a mate.

“Look at her,” the doctor said to Rene before moving on. “She wanted nothing more out of life than a prolonged nap.”

Up in his perch, his nest at the top of the world, he carefully placed each item on the floor below the window seat, then lay down on the seat itself, stretched out on its red velvet cushion. He closed his eyes for a moment and pushed his nose against the cool glass of the window. Reaching down to the floor, he found the bottle of sherry, clutched it and brought it to his mouth. Eyes still closed, he guzzled until he needed air. Then he cradled the bottle and opened his eyes quickly, looking out on the pines. Lit up by a half-moon, the trees that sloped along the hill below the Clinic were swaying with the wind so that they looked like the waves of some alien ocean.

This time, it took almost thirty minutes for the doctor to find that scarce and precious moment when exhaustion and sherry allowed him to fade out of the Clinic and into the place where his mind could rage against the borders of rationality. The place where, he knew from experience, the most radical breakthroughs were conceived.

Unfortunately, the doctor rarely had enough time or solitude these days to roam out into the frontier of his imagination. He was a man of staggering responsibilities. Few could know the enormity of his obligations and fewer still could discharge them. And while some mundane satisfaction derived from executing one’s duty, the cost was considerable — an ongoing sacrifice of the hours and the privacy needed to dream well and deeply.

But with his tools at hand and the right combination of sleeplessness and Manzanilla, Dr. Peck could dive down into a level of thought where language and history were increasingly irrelevant. These submersions tended to ravage him, like the pearl diver who plunges beyond all good sense in search of the ultimate gem. The pressure on the lungs and the temples becomes more severe with each additional foot of depth. The danger of dislocation more acute. The risk of remaining forever submerged, extraordinary. But Peck, like all visionaries, knew that there was no such thing as true exploration without true risk. In fact, that was where the thrill of discovery resided — in the heart of the peril. It was not work for cautious men, which is why it fell to the doctor. Whatever other traits his blood harbored, timidity was not among them.

Peck took a last long swallow of sherry and put the bottle down on the floor. He could feel himself arriving into that moment when discovery was possible. In the end, he knew, this was what he lived for: that instant of pure, galloping potential, that feeling of downrushing epiphany.

But calling forth fresh thought was, like summoning demons, a precarious process. And, for Dr. Peck, it required an instinctual blending of the right amounts of whimsy, research, fatigue, daydream, alcohol, and stress. It also required the right environment — the cupola was the only place that the notions would deign to be born. Finally, the summoning required a marriage of humility and patience that could allow the idea to reveal itself in its own manner and time. The idea, it must be understood, is always in charge.

From adolescence through the first years of his medical practice, Dr. Peck had believed that new knowledge was born of a specific process, reflection and experimentation coupling to yield results that were quantifiable, repeatable, and capable of being shared. But up here, in this womb at the top of the Clinic, in his boyhood sanctuary, he had learned otherwise. Genuine revelation, he determined, was nothing less than an explosion of new consciousness, a reconception of the mind itself. It did not accrete, building slowly and steadily upon existing information and tradition. It was, rather, a revolution and a rapture, a concussion that obliterated the past and re-created the world in the radiant light of newborn vision.

Seeking refuge from a spectral and unimpressed father and, later, a scornful and depressive wife and, later still, a daughter he loved too much, Peck had spent countless sleepless nights in the cupola, looking out over the ocean of pines and trying to dream his way into epiphany or, failing that, oblivion. Over time, the cupola had become a kind of petri dish or incubator, the glass uterus where the notions were conceived and matured. Peck had come to feel this was a place of holy asylum.

Once, years ago, Alice had found him on the window seat, calling out in his sleep, locked into one of those slow-motion nightmares in which the terror is inversely proportionate to the mundane image that triggers it. She was fourteen or so at the time, with hair trimmed short for the summer. Upon being woken, still tormented by his dreams, Peck had mistaken her for his son and struck her across the cheek. Shocked, she had dropped to her knees, eyes open and staring throughout the fall, her skin reddening with the prints of his fingers. When Peck realized his mistake, he pulled the girl into his arms and held her, too tightly, until sometime before dawn, both of them weeping with what the father wanted to believe was a shared understanding regarding the cost of genius.

On that night, Peck realized that the calling to medicine — at least the kind of visionary medicine to which he aspired — was more than a vocation; it was destiny. And as such, it called for a radical lifestyle. Doctors, like monks, were forever at risk of infiltration by the domestic world. He concluded, much too late, that they should be solitary, if not entirely celibate, creatures. A people, as the saying goes, set apart. The modern clinic, he now understood, was the contemporary monastery, its labs the chapels where communion could be reinvented perpetually. In the case of the Peck Clinic, it would be a communion with the sleepers.

On impulse, Peck reached down into the terrarium for Rene, caught the sallie gently inside his fist, and lifted it out of the glass bowl. Bringing his mouth close to his cupped hand, Peck spoke into it.

“My apologies. Did I interrupt a dream?”

The doctor’s query was nothing but a polite greeting, something to set the tone and begin the session. He knew that salamanders lived day for night. Through the latex, he could feel the newt move against his skin, a sensation he found comforting. The gloves were for the creature’s protection, certain toxins in the human epidermis being poisonous to newts.

Peck reached down with his free hand, grabbed one of the filmy brain scans and laid it on his bare chest. He placed Rene on the scan and the newt remained there, frozen, staring up into the sky of the doctor’s face.

“I won’t keep you in suspense any longer,” Peck said to Rene. “The harvest was a success. As you know, I had my doubts about the fetal source. But I feel certain now that we were within the nine-week limit.”

While it is true that salamanders are deaf to airborne sounds, the doctor was confident that his confessor received and processed the vibrations of voice in some satisfactory manner.

“The oldest irony,” Peck said. “We must go to the gutter in order to reach the stars.”

When drunk, Dr. Peck had a tendency toward the theatrical. Rene, for his part, did not seem to mind. There was little cruelty in artifice and, in small amounts, the doctor’s affectations could verge on the charming.

“Light out of darkness,” Peck intoned, like some hammy Victorian actor, ready to reach for a skull or break into song. “Life out of death. Consciousness out of profound stupor. As Bishop Berkeley said to his sallie, These are the miracles we work in the Clinic.”

He belched, and then, taking in some air, laughed at his own performance. Rene quivered slightly on his chest.

“It’s good to have a place,” the doctor said, “where we can let down our guard. You and I are fortunate. For all that we sacrifice in our pursuit, we always know where we reside. We’ll always have the cupola.”

He brought his hand up slowly and stroked the newt along its back with his index finger.

“But the mind,” he said, “the poor, lost mind, has no idea where it resides. The Greeks housed it in the stomach, you know. As good an address as any other. I once knew a physicist. Said he could move his mind into his shoulder or his big toe. A lunatic, I agree, though not without his appeal. But in the end, I seem to return to our favorite poet.”

He stared down at the sallie and smiled.

“Would you like a taste?”

The newt remained impassive. Peck grabbed the volume from the floor, propped it on his belly, and opened it to a page bookmarked with a torn sheet of pulp — a garish piece of comic art. He lifted the bookmark. It was a scene of dark romance, featuring a sinister-looking man — a magician, perhaps, or an undertaker — dark-eyed and gaunt, dressed in a flowing black cape that gave just a hint of its brilliant red lining. The man wore black boots with long pointy toes. He sat cross-legged, halfway up an enormous cliff, in a notch between two boulders. A cobra’s head cane rested across his lap. His elbows were planted on his knees, his chin cupped in his braced hands. And he appeared to be in the grip of some sort of trance, looking out over a raging sea, terrifying whitecaps breaking over the rocks below him.

Peck studied the image for a moment, frowned at it, unable to recall from where it had come. Then he dropped the bookmark to the floor and read, rendering the English from the old French:

Languor is a tendency to relax and be motionless,

. . Needless to say, following the murder of Lazarus Cole, the freaks and their strongman moved through that first night of the Jubilee in a state of stunned disbelief. And yet, they seemed to be the only ones who experienced the aftershock of witnessing such a degenerate and orchestrated killing.

“But remember,” Chick said to them just before the sideshow annex was opened for business, “the Jubilee comes through Mach’pella every year. And according to the bannerline, Lazarus Cole has been with them for seven seasons now.”

“You’re saying,” said Milena as s/he applied talc in the dressing room, “that he’s not really dead.”

“He’s a magician,” said Aziz, doing his stretching exercises. “That’s what he does. It’s all a trick. It’s the art of illusion.”

“I’ve been on the circuit all my life,” the lobster girl said, applying oil to her claws. “And I’ve dated my share of magic men. But I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s obscene, is what it is.”

Bruno had been sitting on a stool, trying to memorize a spiel that Milena had written for him.

“If it is an illusion,” he said, “it’s the best damned illusion I’ve ever seen. And I’ve shared bills and played cards with the best magicians in Bohemia.”

“Even if it is an illusion,” said Kitty, standing atop two orange crates, ironing an evening gown, “it feels like the trick is beside the point.”

“Kitty’s right,” said Vasco, slicking back his hair.

“There’s something wrong with this show,” said Marcel, borrowing the comb and completing the thought.

“Well,” said Milena, picking a feather boa from a steamer trunk, “right or wrong, we’ve got to get to work. It’s showtime.”

Nadia was sitting on the hood of the Honda, looking like a different person. The nurse’s whites were gone and she was wearing a short black skirt and red silk halter and a pair of high-heeled sandals. She had let all that thick black hair down and it changed the look of her face. Her cheekbones seemed higher, more pronounced, and Sweeney thought her eyes were more almond-shaped.

She smiled when she saw him.

“How’d you know it was my car?” he asked.

“You look,” she said, “like an Accord kind of guy,” and he thought there was no way to take it as a compliment.

He came to a stop at the bumper and she leaned forward onto her knees.

“Aren’t you beat?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It always takes me a while to come down. It’s like, being around all that sleep. .” and she rolled her eyes and shook her head and the thick hair, wavy and bordering on wild, bounced around her face.

“So where is this place?” Sweeney asked.

Nadia put out her hand and said, “It’s probably easier if I drive.”

Sweeney ran into room 103 to find the Pecks, father and daughter, on either side of Danny’s bed. Eyes burning, shirt stained with puke and chili, he stopped short in the doorway and looked from his son to the two doctors and back again. Alice seemed confused by his appearance and her father was about one step from appalled, but it was Sweeney who asked, “Is everything all right?”

The father let the daughter answer.

“Danny has a slight fever,” she said. “That’s not unusual. We’ve put him on an antibiotic.”

“Are you all right, Mr. Sweeney?” the father asked. He was wearing a banker’s suit and a red tie. There were figures on the tie but Sweeney couldn’t make them out. A nurse entered the room, glanced at the scene, and moved on to tend to Irene Moore.

Sweeney shook his head, put his hands on his hips. “Danny’s okay then?” he said.

“His condition is stable,” Peck said, then he shifted his eyes and asked, “What happened to your hands?”

Sweeney looked down to his palms. Alice stepped toward him, took a hand, and inspected it.

“It’s nothing,” Sweeney said. “I fell down in the parking lot.”

“In the Clinic lot?” Peck said.

“It’s just a scrape,” Sweeney said. “It’s nothing.”

“Did you put anything on this?” Alice asked.

Sweeney took his hand away. “I’m fine,” he said. “Can I ask what antibiotic you prescribed?”

In Sweeney’s experience, physicians tended to bristle when questioned by a pharmacist. Peck wouldn’t even acknowledge the question. But he forgot about the scraped palms and that was the point.

“Azithromycin,” Alice said. “It’s a low-grade fever. He’s running a hundred one. I’m not overly concerned.”

Sweeney stepped past her, leaned over the bed, and put his lips on Danny’s forehead. The boy was warm but he’d spiked much worse in the past. Sweeney pinched the elastic neck of the pajama top and found it dry.

He straightened and said, “Well, thank you both for looking in on him.”

“He’ll be fine,” Alice said.

Sweeney nodded. “I’m just going to grab a quick shower and change up. I should be back in twenty minutes.”

Alice smiled but her father said, “Didn’t you work last night?”

And here it was, the capper to the morning. Ernesto had reported him, had gone to Peck about the fight.

He made eye contact with the doctor and said, “I did.”

“Then shouldn’t you be getting some sleep?” Peck said.

“I sleep in the evening,” Sweeney said. “So I’m fresh for my shift.”

But he understood that Peck knew it was a lie.

To get to the Peck residence from inside the Clinic one had to walk a long corridor off the third floor that bridged the main house to the east wing. There were no rooms off the corridor and no windows, just one narrow, tunnellike expanse piled with discarded rehab equipment. Everything was old and bulky-looking, wooden wheelchairs and tarnished brass walkers and even a few bell jars. Behind a mattress that was leaning against the wall, Sweeney spotted several prosthetic legs.

Alice had her key out before they got to the door.

“There’s a separate entrance from outside,” she said. “Normally, that’s what I’d use. I like some division between work and home. But with the rain and all. .”

She let the sentence trail off as she tried to work the lock.

“Can I help you with that?” Sweeney asked as she turned the bolt and opened the door onto a large, dome-ceilinged room. Sweeney crossed the threshold first. Alice snapped on the lights and locked up behind herself.

The room was a library, the walls book-lined and the floor covered with an enormous Indian rug over dark hardwood. The furniture was antique but masculine — English club chairs and a big Kipling desk devoid of photos or knickknacks, except for a glass terrarium in which a salamander sat so rigidly that for a second Sweeney thought it was made of porcelain.

“My father’s study,” Alice said.

“That would have been my guess,” Sweeney said.

“He’s out tonight. He still lectures at the med school.”

He nodded and looked past her. Behind the desk, on the only wall not given over to shelving and books, was an oil painting, a formal portrait, dark and severe. The woman depicted was blond and a bit too fragile to be called beautiful. Sweeney looked from the painting to Alice and said, “Your mother?”

“My mother,” Alice said. “She died when I was a child.”

There was a credenza stationed beneath the portrait, and on top of it, a row of books, thick volumes, uniformly bound in red leather. Sweeney read the gilt titling on the spine and saw they were all copies of the same text—Perchance to Wake: On the Causes and Treatments of Coma. By W. Micah Peck.

“What’s the W stand for?” Sweeney asked.

“William.”

“What’s he got against the name William?”

“Only his parents called him William,” Alice said. “We should really go downstairs. My father doesn’t like people in his study.”

Sweeney followed her out of the room and down two flights of a semigrand staircase to the first floor. In the foyer, they came upon a small, wide woman struggling into a yellow rain slicker. There were two bulging plastic bags resting near her feet.

“Maneja con cuidado, Lucila,” Alice said.

The woman pulled a hood up over her head and lifted her bags.

“El cordero está en el horno,” she said. “Te veo el lunes.”

Alice opened the front door for her and Sweeney could see the storm had picked up. The woman ran out to a battered Volvo in the driveway. Alice waited until Lucila was in the car before she closed the door.

“Our housekeeper,” she said. “She’s from Miravago.”

She led him to the dining room, talking as she went.

“Her people disappeared years ago. Father and I are all the family she has left.”

The dining room was small and, like what he’d seen of the rest of the house, dark and Victorian. A hearth on the interior wall had a fire blazing in it.

“But she doesn’t live with you?” Sweeney said.

“She’s got a place in the city,” Alice said, and then put a hand out toward the table. “Sit. Get comfortable. I’ll be right back.” She started for the door, stopped, and turned back to him. “Do you eat lamb?”

“Lamb’s great,” Sweeney said. “Thank you. This is really nice of you.”

“I eat alone much too often,” she said and moved into the kitchen.

Sweeney walked to the hearth, thought about taking the poker and stoking the logs, but found himself, instead, studying the paintings that lined the walls. They were all portraits, all done in the same style as the one in the study, some of them, maybe, done by the same artist. The house, Sweeney realized, looking at all the pale and bony faces, was a museum to the Peck gene pool. There was probably a historical register up in Daddy’s library that would trace a fairly straight bloodline of doctors and scientists. A few founders of cities and banks with maybe a hemophiliac or two dangling from the family tree.

He heard the clatter of china and then Alice backed her way into the room, pushing through the swinging door. She was carrying a serving tray that held plates, glasses of wine, and napkins full of silver. She placed the tray on the table, said, “Be right back,” and vanished again into the kitchen.

Sweeney inspected the meal. A single, overlarge lamb chop was on each plate, and he knew they’d been cut from a full rack. Each chop was drizzled with a brown glaze and accompanied by a few tiny red potatoes, three stalks of asparagus, and a spoonful of mint jelly.

Alice returned with quilted placemats and a large box of stick matches. Sweeney hadn’t seen matches like these in years. She set their places, transferred the plates and crystal from the tray to the mats, removed the tray to a sideboy, and lit two candles that rested in simple pewter holders at the center of the table.

“I hope the wine is okay,” she said.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Sweeney said.

Alice smiled, motioned for him to sit, and said, “No, I mean, I know you’re working later.”

“Actually,” Sweeney said. “I’m off tonight. Unless you heard something different.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t make out the staff schedules.”

He couldn’t tell if she was joking. They sat down and he raised his glass to her.

“Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “Honestly, it’s a pleasure to have some company. Half my meals, I read patient files.”

He cut a piece of meat and put it in his mouth. It was tender but flavorless and he wondered what was the purpose of the glaze.

“This is delicious,” he said.

Alice nodded, finished chewing, and said, “Lucila is a marvelous cook.” She took a sip of wine and added, “There’s more in the kitchen.”

Sweeney speared a potato and glanced around the table for a salt or pepper shaker. There were none.

“You’ve lived here your whole life?”

“I was raised here,” nodding and sipping. “I went away for college and medical school.”

“You always knew you wanted to be a doctor?”

“It’s in the blood,” Alice said.

“I know what you mean,” Sweeney said. “My father was a druggist. That’s what he always called himself — a druggist. And my wife was one also. But the tradition comes to an end with me.”

It was a stupid thing to say and he was embarrassed it had slipped out. They gave up a few seconds of silence and drank their wine. Sweeney clinked his crystal against his plate as he set the glass back on the table.

“Well,” Alice said. “I’m in the same position.”

He looked across the table at her and she smiled. And then it dawned on her what she’d said. She brought a hand to her mouth, then took it away.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Of course, I’m not in the same position at all. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” Sweeney said. “Relax.”

“That was a foolish thing to say,” she said. “What I meant was there’s no one to. .”

He started to let her struggle and realized he didn’t want that.

“No heir,” he said. “You meant that there’s no heir. No one to carry on the Peck tradition.”

She nodded, shook her head, tilted it back.

“You can see,” she said, “why I dine alone.”

“I can see,” he said, and pointed with his fork to the portraits rimming the room, “why tradition could be a concern.”

Alice smiled, and it seemed genuine and grateful. She brought her napkin up from her lap and dabbed at her lips and said, “Can we start over?”

“There’s no need,” Sweeney said. “We’re doing fine.”

Then she surprised him by saying, “So what really happened to your hands?”

He forked a stalk of asparagus and said, “Told you. I fell down in the parking lot. But in case you’re worried, I’m not going to sue.”

“You looked like you were having some difficulties this morning.”

“I’m not a morning person,” he said. “So why won’t there be any Peck heirs?”

His question was a little harsh, maybe, but it sent the right message — we both have things we don’t want to discuss. She finished the wine in her glass and said, “I should’ve brought the bottle in.”

Sweeney rose and said, “Allow me,” and Alice didn’t object. He pushed through the swinging door and into the kitchen. It was large and old. Soapstone sinks and wainscoting and bad lighting. The Merlot was sitting next to a greasy roasting pan that held the rest of the chops. He grabbed the wine, moved back into the dining room, and filled Alice’s glass to just below the brim.

He returned to his seat, topped off his glass and said, “You come up with an answer yet?”

“Nothing witty,” she said. “Just the truth.”

“And that is?”

“That the days when you could be married to medicine and raise a family on the side are gone.”

“I knew a lot of doctors back in Ohio,” Sweeney said. “And most of them were married and had kids.”

Alice shrugged. “There’s practicing medicine,” she said. “And then there’s the way the Pecks practice medicine.”

Sweeney put on a mock grimace and said, “Excuse me.” The wine made the words more sarcastic than he’d intended.

“I know what that sounds like,” Alice said. “But like my father told me on my first day of med school, obsession is a requirement.”

“And you still think Dad is right?”

“I know he’s right,” all kidding and flirting gone from her voice suddenly. “My father’s always right.”

Sweeney stayed silent, let the last words hang there, hoping she’d laugh at them. Instead, Alice continued.

“We’re not bonesetters, Sweeney. We’re out on the edge. Part of what my father and I do, maybe the most important part of what we do, is draw maps of the human mind. Our patients are helping us redefine beliefs about consciousness. Where it begins and where it ends and what it is.”

“I’m glad,” Sweeney said, “that Danny could assist you.”

It was a snide comment but she’d been running toward pompous and he didn’t like it. It made her resemble her father.

“I’m not trying to hurt you or offend you,” she said. “And I’m certainly not trying to hurt your son. But you came to us because we’re doing things that no one else in the field is doing.”

“I came to you,” Sweeney said, “because I was told you could help my son. I don’t care what you do or don’t discover in the process. And you don’t have to talk to me like I’m on some grant committee.”

“We don’t take a dime,” she said, rigid now, as if it were a point of honor, “from the federal government. Or from any private foundations. Or from the drug companies. We’re funded exclusively by patients’ fees, contributions, and the Peck Family Trust.”

He’d touched some kind of nerve so he probed a little.

“And the reason for that would be?”

She looked at him as if the answer were obvious.

“We’re not beholden to anyone,” she said. “Outside of fulfilling our licensing and accreditation requirements, we can run the Clinic as we see fit.”

“So independence is important to you,” he said.

“In this area of research,” preaching now, “it’s crucial.”

He worked his tongue to free a piece of gristle from between two teeth, then said, “Why?”

She repeated the word and he nodded and said, “I don’t mean any disrespect, Alice. I really don’t. But for almost a year now I’ve been hearing about this place. People talk in a kind of reverent way about the Peck”—she smiled at that—“like it’s Lourdes, or something. Dr. Lawton said if I could get Danny into the Peck, I shouldn’t hesitate. I had to go. So I read everything I could find on you people and I made application. And now here I am, and Danny’s got a bed, and I’m having dinner with his neurologist. And I’ve still got no idea why this place is considered the Mecca.”

“But you know about our results—” she began and he cut her off.

“You’ve had two arousals,” he said.

She squinted at him, as if he’d wandered into a language she couldn’t comprehend.

“That’s right,” she said. “And they were both persistent and semivegetative cases.”

“And how do you know you were responsible for those wakings?”

“How do we know?” she said, stunned by the recklessness of the question. “For God’s sake, we’re scientists, Sweeney. We monitor our results scrupulously. We test and retest. We don’t make claims we can’t validate.”

“Then why haven’t the full case studies been published?”

“They will be published,” she said. “Of course they’ll be published. But there are procedures. These things take a lot of time. For precisely that reason, so results can be confirmed definitively. So we don’t give false hope.”

“I understand that,” he said, more frustrated than he expected. “And I’m not suggesting the arousals were spontaneous. I’m sure they weren’t. But you said yourself that your patients are helping you redefine your techniques—”

“Beliefs,” she corrected. “I said beliefs.”

He hurried so he wouldn’t lose the thought.

“And my son is one of those patients now. And I have no idea what your beliefs, or your techniques for that matter, are. I’m his father. And I have no idea. What are you doing here that isn’t being done elsewhere?”

She looked at him for a while as if trying to decide something, then took her napkin from her lap and put it on the table. She looked at her wristwatch and said, “You’re not working tonight?”

He shook his head.

“Then let’s do this,” she said. “I’ll clear the plates and you go into the living room and pour a couple of brandies and we’ll talk some more.”

She got up and started collecting the china before he could answer.

The living room was off the other side of the foyer. There were no ancestors here, but hung over the mantel was a gargantuan photo of the Clinic, matted and framed, pressed under heavy glass and dating, Sweeney guessed, from the turn of the last century. The building had been photographed at either dawn or dusk and the trees that today surrounded it had yet to be planted. As a result, the picture looked like a still from some early German horror film and he wondered what would possess anyone to make it the showpiece of the room.

On the opposite wall, hanging over an uncomfortable-looking couch that was too small for the room, was a family portrait, done in heavy oils. The portrait featured a young Dr. Peck, his wife, toddler Alice, and a scrawny preteen boy, who had to be an unmentioned son and brother. For such a young clan, and despite the artist’s best efforts, the family looked so deeply unhappy that after a few minutes, Sweeney realized he preferred the photo of the Clinic above the mantel.

Logs were stacked on the grate of the fireplace but they hadn’t been lit. He saw another box of kitchen matches on the mantel but decided to see if Alice wanted a fire. Next to the hearth was an antique grandfather clock and next to the clock, a small built-in closet with glass panel doors. He opened it and inspected the bottles inside, took down a cognac and filled the bottom of two snifters.

She came in and caught him with his nose above one of the glasses.

“Are you a connoisseur?”

“If you only knew,” handing her a glass, “how funny that question would be to a lot of people back home.”

She put her drink on the mantel and grabbed the matches, kneeled down before the grate and, in seconds, had a fire building.

“I would’ve done that,” Sweeney said and helped her to her feet.

“It’s fussy,” she said. “Takes a special touch.”

She held onto his hand and led him to the couch but they sat at opposite ends.

He took a sip of cognac and swallowed too quickly and in a second his eyes started to water. He blinked a few times and when he looked up she was staring at him.

“I know what you want,” she said. “And it’s impossible.”

He let himself wipe at his eyes and said, “It is?”

“You want what they all want. All the loved ones. All the family members. Especially the parents. It’s completely natural and completely unreasonable.”

“I’m glad to know I’m not alone,” he said.

She placed her glass atop a felt coaster on the coffee table and came forward to lean on her knees. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get into it then.” She straightened her skirt over her knees and put her hands together as if to pray. “You want me to take a lifetime’s worth of highly specialized research and give it to you in ten minutes. You want it jargon-free, translated into layman’s terms. And you want the end result of that translation to be an answer to your prayers.”

He took another drink and made an effort this time to swallow correctly.

“You make it sound like a chore,” he said.

“Am I wrong?” But it wasn’t really a question. He looked across the room to see that the fire had already died out.

“I doubt,” he said, “that the Pecks are wrong very often.”

When she ignored the comment and launched her spiel, he understood that she agreed with him.

“Here’s the problem. We’re dealing with an extremely emotional issue. And yet, in order to accomplish anything at all, I have to be blunt. From your point of view, your son has been stolen from you.”

“From my point of view,” he repeated but she just went on.

“It’s as if he’s been kidnapped. And in a real sense, he has been. One instant, Danny was a normal, healthy six-year-old. And in the next instant, he’s something else altogether.”

“He’s still Danny,” he said but there wasn’t much conviction in it.

“Okay,” Alice said, “this is where it gets tough. Is he really? Can we honestly say he’s still Danny?”

He bit down on the impulse to defend his son. He said, “I’m not sure I’m following.”

“We’re talking about basic questions of identity, Sweeney. Who we are is, in large part, determined by how we perceive our world.”

He shook his head. “So if Danny doesn’t perceive the world, what? He doesn’t exist?”

“You’re going off track,” she said. “You’re trying to jump ahead of me. I didn’t say that.”

“Jesus, Alice. You’re making my son into a game for stoners.”

“Try to stick with me,” she said. “Listen to what I’m saying.”

“If Danny falls in the woods,” he said, “and I’m not there to hear him—”

“Calm down,” Alice said. “You’re not listening. One of the reasons that coma is so frustrating — and fascinating — is that it forces us to deal with some root beliefs. And this,” coming down on the word, “is exactly where the Peck differs from every other facility I know of.”

She let herself take a drink.

“The majority opinion would say that in most stages of coma, our sensory apparatus is shut down. Some sort of trauma causes the brain to turn off most of the higher functions. The patient exists in a state of profound unconsciousness.”

He was listening but he was also thinking of Danny pre-accident. Flashing back to their last Saturday, the day of the accident. Thinking of his son, for some reason, propped up on a booster seat in the barber’s chair, getting his hair cut. The barber was trying to ask him what he thought of the Indians this year, but Danny wouldn’t answer. The boy just stared across the short distance between himself and Sweeney, his head looking so small above the tent of a blue nylon sheet that covered his body.

“What I’m saying is that the patient’s brain is no longer receiving information along the sense pathways. So the patient is sent into a void. He’s in a black hole. I know this is hard but it’s necessary.”

He mimicked Alice’s actions, brought his drink to his lips and let a little brandy into his mouth. He heard her words and he understood them. He nodded to acknowledge this understanding. But he was thinking of Danny in a barber’s chair.

“The average neurologist would tell you that soon after he arrives in that void, that black hole, the average coma patient becomes a vegetable. They lose any vestige of sentience.”

There was nothing special about this trip to the barber’s. There was nothing, no incident good or bad, that should have impressed such a vivid memory. But there it was, as clear, in this moment, as the woman lecturing before him. Danny, his mouth set in a manner that could turn, at any instant, into a smile or a frown, as flakes of his fine, soft hair floated down around him to rest on his nose and on the blue sheet.

“But there are two things wrong with this notion. The first is that there’s no such thing as an average coma patient. And the second is that no neurologist that I know of has ever visited that black hole. So what they’re telling us is conjecture.”

Father and son never broke eye contact throughout the duration of the haircut. At points, Sweeney felt as if Danny were trying to tell him something. But mostly, in the midst of this mundane Saturday morning, this common and forgettable trip to the barbershop, he felt there was a moment of unexplained and binding love, radiating back and forth between the two of them.

Alice took another sip, looked across the room at the fireplace, then back at Sweeney.

“Everything that my father and I have discovered over the course of our careers tells us that those doctors have no right to their conjectures. The brain is a stunningly versatile organ. And the mind is an entity that we understand only in the most infantile ways.”

And then the haircut was over and Barber Ray spun Danny in the chair, broke their eye contact. But only for an instant because Danny found Dad again in the mirror, watched his father rise and come forward to stand behind his son. He watched his father place a hand on the nylon sheet — Sweeney could feel it now, cool and silky against his skin — and barely squeeze the bony shoulder beneath. And Barber Ray was brushing off the cuttings, the small feathers of kid hair, as he asked Danny how he liked the haircut. And Danny said, “Good”—just the one word and not very loud. But he continued to stare at his father in the mirror. To look at the face, the eyes. As if to say, I dreamed of you before I knew you.

“What I believe, and what my father believes, is that if you shut down all sensory information to the brain, you do, in fact, separate the patient from our universe. From consensual reality, I’ll call it. And maybe there is a period of passage through a void. A black hole. But I don’t believe the patient’s mind, their consciousness, dies. I don’t believe they reside permanently in the void.”

Her last words pulled him loose from the memory and he said, “Then where do they reside?”

“I think,” she said, “they construct another reality. Another universe. One that doesn’t need the prompts of touch and taste and smell and sight and sound.”

“And what,” he asked, “do they build that universe out of?”

“Who knows? I don’t know. To say I do would be worse than arrogant. It would be a lie. But I can guess that, whatever the building materials, the comatose universe is entirely alien to our own.”

Sweeney got up without being asked, moved to the fireplace, sat down on the floor and started to rearrange the logs.

“It’s an interesting theory,” he said. “But how does it help Danny? How do I get him back into my universe?”

“I want to answer your question,” she said, “with another question. But it’s a hard one for you to hear.”

She got up from the couch and joined him, but left her shoes under the coffee table. She sat down on her heels and he watched her skirt ride up her thighs.

“I’m guessing,” he said, “that I’ve withstood worse.”

“How do you know,” she said, “that he wants to come back?”

He lit a match, held it beneath a piece of kindling, and watched strands of wood start to glow. “He wants to come back,” he said, “because he wants to be with me. Because his father loves him more than his own life.”

“And he knows that?”

It seemed like a test, so even though he felt the anger coming on, he tried to keep ahead of it.

“He knows that, yes.”

She didn’t respond, just opened her eyes a little wider. It made her face lose a good deal of its beauty and he shook out the match just before it burned his finger. Then he lit another.

“He knows because before the accident I showed him every day. And since the accident, I’ve stayed next to him as much as I could and I’ve told him that I love him.”

“There’s a good chance,” Alice said, “that he doesn’t hear you.”

He felt himself slip a bit, felt the defensiveness pushing its way into his voice. He said, “He hears me,” and felt her shrug even though he didn’t see her shoulders move.

“He’s stage six,” she said. “I’m not saying it isn’t possible. But it isn’t probable.”

“Danny hears me when I talk to him.”

“Do you think I’m being cruel?”

“You’re being,” Sweeney said, pausing, “a doctor.”

“I’m preparing you,” she said. “You’re going to be invited to the first team assessment soon. It can be a difficult experience for the families.”

“I’ll cope.”

She finished her drink and said, “I’m not so sure. You’re functioning under some really debilitating stress. That takes its toll on everyone over time.”

“I’ve spent a year being patronized by the best neurologists in Ohio,” he said. “I’ll handle the meeting.”

In a week, he hoped, he’d be back in Cleveland, visiting Danny at the St. Joseph every day, working third shift at a Wonder Drug or an independent. Taking his medication and waiting for it to build up in his system. Waiting for the drug to accumulate enough power in his brain to numb down the rage and the fear.

“I’ll help you out,” Alice said, “as best I can. In spite of what I’ve said, I think Danny’s a promising candidate for waking.”

“Let’s say the rest of the team agrees with you. What happens then?”

“Danny would be put in the RAT program.”

He stared at her.

“Radical Arousal Therapies,” she said. “We’ve gotten approval recently to start using a new battery of drugs and procedures. If Danny’s recommended for the program, I’ll go over all of them with you.”

“And if he’s not recommended?” he asked because he thought she’d expect it.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Let’s wait and see what happens at the assessment.”

The second match managed to burn him. He dropped it and put his thumb in his mouth. She took his wrist, pulled the hand to her, and inspected the damage.

“Do you want me to get some ointment?”

He shook his head and she released his hand and he wiped the thumb on his pants leg and nodded toward the logs.

“I don’t think it’s going to catch,” he said.

Alice hugged her knees. “There’s something wrong with the flue. It’s never worked right. I guess my mother was the only one who could make a fire in here.”

“How old were you when she died?”

“I was about Danny’s age,” she said. “About six. I’ve got a few memories.”

“Was it sudden?”

He watched her look down on her knees.

“It was to me,” and she let out a small and awkward laugh. “She spent a year stockpiling Valium. And then she took them all in a single night.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and thought of all the times he’d heard the same, feeble words.

“I guess she had a problem with it. I was a child. I didn’t know anything. She went away once for treatment. But it didn’t take.”

“In my family,” he said, “they called it the creature.”

Her face lightened. “The creature,” she said. “I like that.”

Sweeney nodded. “It works,” he said. “I had a couple of uncles. They were legendary.”

“It’s a genetic malady,” Alice said. “People like you and me need to be careful.”

He wondered if she’d smelled the beer off him this morning. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s never done much for me one way or the other.”

She gave him a long look that he thought was going to evolve into another lecture. But then she smiled and turned her body and stretched out on her back on the floor next to him. It would have been a surprise move had there been a fire burning before them. Without the blaze, he found it just short of bizarre. She closed her eyes for a second, opened them, reached out, and put a hand on his knee.

That it made him feel like an adolescent was off-putting. But the sight of her, in the tight skirt and the silk blouse and the thin gold chain around the neck, was making him hard for the first time in a year.

And so, before he could think, before he could remind himself that he planned on running home in the next week, he leaned over and kissed her. Her eyes closed again and her hand found his head and the fingers plowed through the hair over his ears and he kissed harder, leaned lower, and brought a hand to the side of her waist. And then her tongue was easing into his mouth and they were like high school kids, panicked and thrilled by the rush of enzymes and hormones, sweat breaking, noises building in the throat. He swung a leg over her, straddled her, and came down chest to chest. He felt her wedge a hand between them and grab at his crotch through his pants.

He reared up in a kind of amazed fear, born of both the realization that he was still functional and the lack of control that he’d never before known. His hand pushed down her thigh, found the hem of her skirt, and started up again and the sensation of touching the warm, silken skin brought him, almost instantly, to the verge of coming. He began to clench and something changed and she began to push him off her body. Then he heard the car door slam in the drive outside and understood that her alarm had nothing to do with his hesitation and everything to do with the return of her father.

“You’ve got to go,” she was saying, a panic in her voice that made her sound like a teenager. “It’s Daddy.”

She shoved him off and stood up, began straightening her clothing and hunting down her shoes. He looked around the room, helpless, infected by Alice’s alarm. She was hopping on one foot, storklike, an arm behind her trying to jam toes into a shoe.

“Up to the study,” she said, trying to yell through a whisper. “Leave the way we came in.”

He ran for the stairs and on the second landing heard the front door open. Then he stopped running and walked, small steps, balls of his feet, to Dr. Peck’s study. He let himself in and moved for the opposite door that led back to the Clinic. But before he stepped into the hallway, he took another look at the portrait of the doctor’s wife, then helped himself to a copy of the doctor’s book.

He closed the door to the study and looked out on the long, narrow corridor stretching in front of him. In that instant, the booze coupled with his exhaustion, and the hall began to tilt and expand. Sweeney placed a hand against the wall to steady himself. And as he did, the doctor’s text fell open and the comic book pressed inside dropped to the floor.

Going down on one knee, he picked up the comic and stared at its cover, which featured the strongman, Bruno Seboldt, lying on a patch of straw and dirt, in a vast puddle of his own scarlet blood. The issue was in pristine condition, as if it had never been read. Used only, perhaps, as a place marker in the fat medical tome.

The surprise of finding the comic inside Dr. Peck’s book gave way almost immediately to that reflexive fear, that compulsive desire to check in on Danny. As if the discovery of the comic were an omen. Sweeney stood up slowly and placed the issue back where he had found it, tucked the text under his arm and hurried down the corridor. And, in seconds, he was lost.

The route that Alice had taken from hospital to residence had been relatively short and direct, and Sweeney was certain that he had retraced it correctly. But at some point, he’d gotten himself turned around and ended up in a dim and narrow passage that dead-ended in an eaves that was crowded with dusty file boxes. He reversed direction and tried to work his way back to familiar ground. In minutes, he was completely disoriented and fighting a small panic.

And just when he was beginning to consider heading back to the Peck home, he found what he knew was the correct hallway and jogged to the door at its end. He pulled it open to find Romeo, the janitor, standing like a statue, his hands tight around a mop handle and a smile on his face as if he’d been expecting Sweeney.

“You out exploring again?” Romeo asked.

Sweeney stared at him for a second and then ran past him, sprinting all the way to Danny’s room.

He found his son in his bed, clean and warm and safe. Sweeney sat down on the ward’s empty middle bed and tried to breathe normally and stop his hands from shaking. After a time, as if it were the only way to calm himself, he pulled the issue of Limbo from Dr. Peck’s book, lay back, and began to read.

The chicken boy waited in the corridor of the county clinic, a blanket wrapped around his blood-soaked feathers. Nothing, however, covered the protruding beak, and the few doctors and nurses and aides who passed by couldn’t hide their shock and revulsion.

It was hours before the surgeon came. He was a tall, stout man who did not offer his name. He had the bearing of a sadistic policeman, though he was still dressed in yellow surgical garb that was stained about the midsection.

“You’re the one who came in with him,” the surgeon said.

Chick roused himself and let the blanket slip to the chair as he stood and nodded.

“You’re both with the Jubilee, I take it?”

Another nod.

“I ask,” said the surgeon, “because I’ve never seen you before.”

“How is my friend?” Chick asked.

“He lost a considerable amount of blood,” the surgeon said. “I’m afraid I had to amputate the arm.”

Chick again nodded his understanding.

“He’s stable,” the surgeon continued. “You can go in and see him in a few minutes.”

“Thank you,” Chick said.

“Don’t thank me,” the surgeon said. “It only makes this more difficult.”

“Makes what more difficult?” Chick asked.

“Normally,” putting his hands on the small of his back and stretching, “a procedure like this, I’d like to keep the patient under my care and supervision for several days, perhaps a week.”

“Normally,” Chick repeated.

“But it’s my understanding that this man is indigent.”

Chick stared, unsure of what to say.

“Is that correct?” the surgeon asked. “He has no papers? No money? No insurance?”

“It looks that way,” Chick said.

“Well, if that’s the case—” the surgeon began but Chick interrupted immediately.

“I understand what you’re saying. As soon as he’s ready to travel, I’ll take him with me.”

At some point while reading, Sweeney fell into a heavy sleep. And sometime after that, he came awake, slowly and partially, into what he thought, for just an instant, was a dream. But when he opened his eyes, he saw a figure perched above him, sitting on top of him with its head thrown back so far that he couldn’t see a face. He was still out of breath and he could feel his heart racing. He blinked and tried to sit up and the figure came forward and its arms pushed him down and he was too weak to fight. In that moment, sinking back into the bed, he realized he was fucking someone. That he’d been fucking someone for some time and that he was about to come. And the brain shut down and his buttocks and thighs tightened and he drove upward. And the person on top of him responded perfectly, speeded up the pace of her own rocking, began to gallop, short, hard slaps down onto his cock, her own noises increasing. In the midst of it, she drew one arm up to her throat and then used a hand to push her mane back behind an ear. And in the orange light, he saw that it was Nadia Rey.

She looked down at him, understood that he was fully awake and that he knew what was happening and who it was happening with. He put a hand on either side of her waist and adjusted their rhythm. They were grinding up against each other now. He could see the sweat on her forehead and cheeks. She was wearing her nurse’s uniform, the skirt hiked up. She sat back for a second, rested her ass on his legs, and he heard her take a deep breath. And then she came forward again, put her hands on his shoulders, pinning him against the bed. She began to ride him faster and her mouth formed itself into an oval and she looked as if she could blow a smoke ring. Her nails went into his shoulders. He bore upward, felt her tighten, and saw her start to shake her head in little seizurelike motions.

He began to pump as fast as he could. Within seconds she came and reared up and back and then crumpled down on top of him. When he felt her full weight on his chest, felt her hair against his mouth, he let himself go and bit down on his bottom lip to keep from crying out.

The intensity ran to the edge of catastrophic. He felt as if his body would collapse through the mattress and the steel frame, fall through the whole of the bed to the floor below and fall through the floor into the basement, into the bed in his apartment and then through that bed as well and into the dirt and rock of this mistake of a city. And then he fell back into a dreamless sleep.

He was out for at least as long as it took for the drool around his mouth and the jism on his legs to dry. He was woken by a tap — and then a slap across his cheek. He reached up before his eyes opened, still stupid with sleep, and touched Nadia’s face and felt the stubble of a new beard. This brought him to full consciousness at once and his head jerked off the pillow and his eyes opened. And he looked up at Buzz Cote, who was grinning and nodding and biting in on both of his lips. He pinched Sweeney’s cheek until it bruised but his voice was low and excited when he said, “Well, we’re brothers now, kimosabe.”

That combination of friendly tone and rough physicality set the pattern for their exit from the Clinic. Buzz stood, grabbed Sweeney’s shirt and pulled him into a seated position. And then he punched Sweeney, this quick jab that landed where the shoulder hinged under the breastbone. It connected perfectly and Sweeney felt as if the bone had chipped. But then it was another round of backslapping and arms locked as if to promenade.

“Nadia will meet up with us later,” Buzz said. “You ready for your initiation ride?”

Sweeney didn’t answer, but it didn’t seem to matter. Buzz threw an arm across his back and gripped the bruised shoulder on the other side. Then he proceeded to waltz Sweeney out the front door of the Peck, past the delighted eyes of Romeo the janitor, who was dusting in the reception area.

In the predawn quiet, their steps crunched on the driveway gravel. Buzz was moving quickly, spieling something about Nadia being one in a million, yes sir, and all the Abominations agreed about that and you haven’t known a jones till you’ve had a piece of that honey there. The words mattered less than their speed, their charged tone and the way they jumped from Buzz’s mouth. Sweeney had known a neighborhood speed freak in high school and had studied the symptomology in college. So he felt fairly certain that while he’d been dream-fucking Nadia, Buzz had spent the night injecting some high-test crystal meth.

They circled the west wing of the building and climbed the hill that led to the rear parking lot where Buzz’s hog was waiting.

They came to a stop before the bike and Buzz said, “The boys are pleased, I can tell you that. The boys are very excited about this.”

Sweeney didn’t try to escape the embrace but he said, “Fuck you,” in a clear, emotion-free voice.

“We’ll see about that later,” Buzz said without any smile or hesitation. “Right now, we got to get you initiated. And seeing how you don’t have a bike, there’s only one way that can happen.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Sweeney said.

Buzz rubbed and picked a bit at a nostril with his free hand and said, “The thing is, Sweeney, you are. And you’re not stupid. So you know you are. I can kick your ass from one end of this lot to the other and tie you to the back of this thing like a bitch. But neither one of us wants that. So just get on. You’ll be glad you did. At some point, you’re going to have to trust me.”

Sweeney looked back to the Clinic.

“I can start screaming.”

Buzz nodded. “You can. That’s true. You could get a scream out. But two things, okay? First off, nobody in there likes you very much and they’re not going to do shit to help you out. Okay? And second, I’d bust you in the throat as soon as you squealed and you’d end up puking and maybe passing out. I know you, Sweeney. You don’t want Nadia to see that. She’s watching you right now.”

His eyes scanned the windows on the back of the building but he didn’t see any shadows.

“So just get on,” Buzz continued. “And let’s run this fucker the way she’s meant to be run.”

Sweeney thought about bolting and then stepped up to the bike and mounted it. Buzz was delighted.

“You’ve made me happy,” Buzz said. “It’s gonna be much better this way.”

Buzz mounted in front, kicked over the engine and throttled up a few times. Sweeney wrapped his arms around the driver’s trunk and yelled, “What about helmets?”

Buzz thought this hysterical. He yelled, “You are the shit, man,” put the bike in gear, and sprayed gravel to either side as they rode out of the lot and down to Route 16.

He had to get down on his belly and crawl on his forearms to make it under the archway. His hips rubbed stone as he edged inward. The burrow was a bit longer than the length of his body. When he cleared it he got on his knees and reached his hands up in the darkness until he touched rock. There wasn’t enough room to stand, but now he could get off his stomach and crawl on hands and knees. The air inside was cool and dank and smelled like charcoal. And the light from outside didn’t make it in very far.

He began to crawl in an ever-widening circle, patting the earth and waving a hand to the side. He felt ridiculous, but he guessed that he was looking for some sort of contraband. A bag of dope or money or maybe even guns.

It took him a while to realize the initial chamber opened into a larger one, that the burrow was actually a series of caves, a honeycombed maze of linked vaults and passages. He struck a match and let it burn down to his finger and thumb. It didn’t throw a lot of light but he’d never have seen the graffiti without it.

It was in the second chamber, at eye level if you were on your knees. And when he got closer he could see that it wasn’t really graffiti. There were no obscene or obscure phrases, no insults or limericks or drawings of Kilroy or human anatomy. The writing was painted on the granite in Day-Glo lime but the numbers and letters were small and precise. The writer had etched them with a stick or a brush. This was not the work of some drunken teens with a spray can, but slow, close, methodical transcription.

Sweeney knelt in front of the first line, instinctively touched a random letter because the paint looked wet. It wasn’t, at least not the lines he found in that second chamber. But he knew immediately what the lines meant. And he thought, incorrectly it turned out, that they’d been painted specifically for his discovery.

He found writing on the wall of every chamber he visited after that. But by the fourth room he could no longer translate it. The writing had gotten too small and the lines ran too long and became nonsensical with tangential notations above and below the main text. By then he’d burned through his last match. And lost his sense of where he’d entered the cave.

He didn’t panic immediately.

The panic came when he called out for help and received an answer in the form of a laugh from somewhere close by. It was male and highpitched and sloppy and it echoed. Sweeney couldn’t pinpoint the laugh’s origin but that didn’t stop him from trying to run from it. He hit a wall almost at once, bounced off unhurt, but went down on his ass.

That was when the first beer can hit him. And when the laugh sounded again, it was in the same chamber. Sweeney scrambled backward, got his back against the stone, and said, “Who’s there?”

More laughter, then the sound and the smell of someone urinating.

Someone belched, sniffled, said, “Buzz send you in for me?”

When Sweeney didn’t answer, the voice said, “It’s been a fuckin’ week already?”

A flashlight beam snapped on, found Sweeney, and focused on his face. Sweeney put out a hand and shielded his eyes.

“You want a beer?” and a can landed in Sweeney’s lap. “Warm as piss but what the hell.”

Sweeney heard the cluck and hiss of a can being opened, then a moment of quiet and a second belch.

The beam of light came off Sweeney’s face and swung up onto the wall next to his head. It ran down the line of letters and numbers painted there.

“You know what that means?”

“Some of it,” Sweeney said.

“Buzz said you’d know. So you’re Danny’s old man, huh?”

The light moved again, jumped across the ceiling, and went into spasm. It darted back and forth over their heads until it blurred, then it vanished for a second, leaving an afterimage before Sweeney’s eyes. When it snapped back on, it was positioned beneath the speaker’s chin, lighting up the face Halloween style. The cheeks of the face were inflated, the eyes too large.

When he was done, he laughed for a while, his head lolled over one shoulder. An unseen hand turned on a Boy Scout lantern and illuminated most of the chamber. Sweeney looked out on a filthy Abomination. He wore the colors, but that was the only thing that marked him as part of the tribe.

He was small, scrawnier than Piglet, and wasted-looking, with spindly limbs and a tiny skull that sprouted stringy blond hair. Sweeney couldn’t hang an age on him, but sensed he might be younger than the rest of the crew.

“I thought,” he said, “I had a couple more days.”

“Did they put you in here?” Sweeney asked.

“Put me? Is that what Buzz told you? Fuckin’ Buzz.”

“Do you know the way out of here?” Sweeney asked.

“’Course I know the way out of here. Why you in such a hurry? You don’t like it in here?”

“I’ve got to get back to my boy,” Sweeney said.

The man began to pat himself down and came up with a pack of cigarettes. He offered the pack across his knees toward Sweeney, who shook his head to decline.

“You mind if I smoke?” the man said. “It helps me think. Came in here with a fuckin’ carton and this is all that’s left.” He searched himself again, found a Zippo this time, and lit up.

He took a long drag, pointed the butt toward Sweeney and said, “You don’t need to be worrying about Danny. Danny’s going to be okay.”

“Everyone seems to know about my son,” Sweeney said, “and his problems.”

The man made a face, kind of pulled his head back on his neck and tucked his chin down toward his chest.

“That embarrass you?” he said.

Sweeney hesitated and then said, “Does what embarrass me?”

“Your son,” the man said. He took another drag, expelled some smoke, and added, “And his problems.”

“My son doesn’t embarrass me,” Sweeney said.

“That’s good. That’s good to hear. And I hope I wasn’t out of line with the question. I apologize if I was. Takes me a while to get readjusted, you know? Get used to talkin’ to people again.”

Something occurred to him and he got up on his knees, a little unsteadily, and shuffled over to Sweeney. He put his hand out to shake and said, “I’m the Sheep, by the way.”

Sweeney took the hand. It was crusted with dirt and dried paint.

“I’m Sweeney,” he said.

“I know,” the Sheep said and sat down next to Sweeney, shoulder to shoulder. “I know you are. Buzz said you’d be comin’ for me. And Buzz doesn’t lie. You say what you will about Buzz. He does not lie to anyone.”

“You’ve been in here long?” Sweeney asked.

“Not sure,” the Sheep said. “You lose the sense of time. I’d offer you a bite but I ran out last night. I hope to hell Nadia’s got something going back at Gehenna.”

“You know Nadia?”

That laugh again.

“Well shit yeah,” the Sheep said. “And I’m guessing you do too by now. Buzz said you and Nadia’d be made for each other. Buzz knows people. He really does. That’s the thing about being a great leader. You have to see into people. Not that many can do it. Buzz knows how to push people’s buttons. He knows how to bring people together. Or push them apart.”

“You have any idea,” Sweeney asked, “why he sent me in here for you?”

“Believe me,” the Sheep said, “he’s got his reasons.”

“What are you doing in here?” Sweeney asked, and tried to lean away from the man, who smelled more than a little like his name.

“This is where I come,” said the Sheep, “when I need to block everything else out. I don’t know how other people do it. When I need to focus, I need to focus, you know? I mean, I’ve got to just seal myself away. I gotta crawl under the rock. Any distractions and my whole train of thought just goes to shit.”

Sweeney pointed to the writing on the wall opposite them.

“You’re their chemist?”

“I’m kind of a freelancer,” the Sheep said. “But I’ve been with these guys a while. They took me in. They really did. Most clients just treat you like the hired help, you know? But not Buzz. He gave me his colors. Set me up with Nadia. They’re good people.”

“You make crank for them?”

The Sheep blew out a long trail of smoke and laughed. He pointed at the wall with his cigarette.

“That look like any kind of crank you ever seen?”

Sweeney stared at the wall through the smoke for a while, then said, “So what is it?”

The Sheep got up on his knees, stubbed the butt into the ground, and crawled to the wall. He made a fist and knocked his knuckles across the line of symbols.

“It’s my goddamned masterpiece is what it is,” he said. “It’s my life’s work.”

“Your notations,” Sweeney said, “are a little unusual.”

“Yeah, well, I use my own shorthand. You think I’m the only one livin’ in these caves?”

The Sheep knee-walked to his little camp and started to tie up his bedroll and stash his tins in his pack.

“What happens now?” Sweeney asked.

“What happens now is you follow me out of here and we go back to Gehenna.”

“And what happens when we get to the factory?”

“Well, first, I’d like to freshen up a little,” the Sheep said.

“I mean,” said Sweeney, “what happens to me?”

The Sheep attached his roll to his pack and slipped it over his shoulders.

“That,” he said, “is for Buzz to say. I can’t speak for Buzz. I wouldn’t even try. But I really hope we get a chance to work together.”

He picked up the lantern, turned and started out of the chamber. It took a second for Sweeney to realize that the Sheep was heading deeper into the caves. He got up and followed.

“What do you mean,” Sweeney said to his back, “work together?”

The Sheep began to move more quickly, passing into and out of chambers, holding the lantern at arm’s length. Sweeney saw writing on every wall they passed. Some of the chambers came alive in Day-Glo as they entered, every inch of rock adorned with letters and numbers, some depicting basic chemical compounds and others simply nonsensical.

“I mean,” the Sheep said finally, a little out of breath, “that I’ve been needing an assistant for a while now. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Nadia tries. But she just doesn’t have the training. But you, being a chemist and all. .”

“I’m not a chemist,” Sweeney said and the Sheep stopped and turned and held the lantern out to look at Sweeney’s face.

“What do you mean,” he said, “you’re not a chemist?”

“I’m a pharmacist,” he said. “Did Buzz tell you I was a chemist?”

The Sheep sniffed, let his head drop toward a shoulder. He stood thinking for a minute, then said, “You’ll be okay,” and began his march again.

And Sweeney followed, unable to think of anything else to do. They wound left and right, through the interlocking chambers, sometimes crouching, sometimes down fully on hands and knees. The Sheep kept an even pace. Sweeney thought he heard sounds, all of them distant and brief. Water running. A shouted name. A crack of thunder. The Sheep gave no indication that he heard anything.

He lost track of time in the cave. He began to think they were revisiting corridors and chambers they’d been through before. He began to think that the Sheep was crazy and that Buzz knew it. That they might walk through this granite maze until both of them dropped. That whatever exits once existed had been blocked and mortared closed by a pack of Abominations. He began to think that maybe this was what it was like for Danny: cold entombment. A maze that emptied, always, back into the same pathways. A web of dark and useless roads that circled into one another until time and space and meaning were all degraded into a blind, exhausting loop.

And then he was following the Sheep down an incline and around a bend. And the walls were widening considerably. And light began to emanate from someplace up ahead. The Sheep turned off his lantern and waited for Sweeney to come level.

“Admit it,” the Sheep said. “You had your doubts.”

Sweeney didn’t know how to answer that. The Sheep took him by the arm and led him to a spacious mouth that emptied onto sand and rock and scrub. They stepped out into the air and Sweeney looked up at the sun and guessed that about an hour had gone by.

“Makes you appreciate the open,” the Sheep said, “doesn’t it?”

Sweeney nodded.

“What’s that song?” the Sheep said. “You know that song? Been through the desert of night. .”

Sweeney shrugged.

“. . Now it’s time for the wine and the friends.”

“Never heard it,” Sweeney said.

The Sheep smiled and handed off the lantern. “It’s a good one. But what I’m saying is, everything gets better from here on in.”

He walked about twenty yards and Sweeney thought he was looking for a place to take a piss. Instead, he pulled a bike from beneath a pile of bramble and walked it back to the mouth of the cave. The machine looked too big for its rider but the Sheep had no problem kicking it over.

He goosed the engine and motioned for Sweeney to climb on.

Sweeney hugged the lantern to his side and held onto the Sheep with his free arm as the Abomination opened up the hog. The speed might have alarmed Sweeney if the rush of cold air hadn’t felt so good. As if it were washing away all the grit from the cave.

They came upon the Harmony from the rear, pulling into the ruins of the old crematorium where the Abominations had played King of the Hill atop the dilapidated hearse. The Sheep killed the engine and climbed off the bike. Sweeney followed him to the antique funeral car where the Sheep reached through the passenger window, popped the glove box open, and extracted a pack of cigarettes.

The Sheep moved back around to the front of the hearse, eased himself onto its hood, and lit up a smoke. Sweeney joined him and they sat silently and rested for a few minutes, staring out at the prosthetics mill as if mulling a night on the late shift.

After a few minutes of this, Sweeney said, “Why are we stopping? You’re almost home.”

“I got to prepare myself,” the Sheep said, “before I can jump back into the crowd. It’s not that easy a transition for me. To go from the solitude back to the noise of the tribe. I can’t rush right back in.”

Sweeney looked out at the monstrosity they called Gehenna. In the distance, he could see a couple of Abominations sitting on the loading dock and someone was working on his bike down in the gravel lot.

“We had some good times in this city,” the Sheep said. “Personally, I’m gonna hate leavin’ here.”

Sweeney turned toward him.

“You’re leaving?”

The Sheep nodded.

“If things work out,” he said. “We’ll be movin’ on next week.”

“Where to?” Sweeney asked.

The Sheep grimaced as if this were a painful subject.

“Not sure yet,” he said. “Buzz has one idea. Nadia has another. But it’ll get worked out. We’ll know when we need to know. Buzz says we shouldn’t try to think ahead so much. You kill all the spontaneity in life.”

“Can I ask,” Sweeney said, “how you met Buzz?”

“Sure you can ask,” the Sheep said and then threw an elbow to show he was just kidding. “No, it’s all right. It’s a good story. They found me in Phoenix. And let me tell you, I was not in the best of shape, okay? I was not doing very well. I’d burned through all my money and I’d fallen in with some bad people. These were not good people. But, you know, it’s just like that song—When the sinner is ready, the savior comes along.”

He saw the blank look on Sweeney’s face and said, “You’re not a big gospel fan, are you?”

Sweeney shook his head and the Sheep said, “Well I hope you don’t mind, cuz I listen to gospel while I work.”

“Speaking of work,” Sweeney said, and before he could go on, the Sheep had both hands in the air, revival style.

“I know, I know,” he said, “that’s the million-dollar question. How did a chemistry Ph.D. from Stanford end up riding with the Abominations? I get the curiosity, I do. Sometimes I say to Nadia, my life’d be a hell of a movie. But I don’t say it to Buzz. You don’t even kid about stuff like that with Buzz.”

“So how’d it happen?”

“How’s anything happen?” the Sheep said, going all weary and mystical in an instant. “You make a couple of mistakes and, bang, you find out you’re not who you thought you were. You find out the world isn’t what you thought it was. You find out you don’t want any of the shit everyone’s been telling you to want since the day you were born.

“What happened with me,” confidential now, “was I had a full-blown textbook breakdown. I mean I was fuckin’ catatonic for months. Now I’m healed enough, at this point, to face the facts and take the responsibility. But the truth is — and I don’t mean this as any kind of excuse — I had a real asshole for an old man. One of these you-just-can’t-please-’em sons a bitches. And I tried to sort of follow in his footsteps and I couldn’t do it. And the pressure got so bad, my brain just shut the fuck down one day. And I ended up in the psych ward at Ford-Masterson out there. And I’ll tell you somethin’ right now. Wasn’t for Buzz and the boys, I’d still be there. Eatin’ poached eggs and starin’ at The Price Is Right all day.”

“How’d Buzz get you out?” Sweeney asked.

The Sheep gave him a look that said even Sweeney should know better.

“There’s something Buzz wants, Buzz finds a way to get it.”

“I guess what I’m asking,” said Sweeney, “is how he found out about you. I mean, you’re institutionalized at this point. How did he know about you? What was the connection?”

The Sheep squinted at him and Sweeney sensed some real disappointment.

“The connection,” said the Sheep, in a slowed down voice, as if he were speaking to a child, “is your new girlfriend.”

“Nadia?”

“Of course Nadia,” the Sheep said. “It’s always Nadia. I mean, c’mon, Sweeney, huh? She’s a sweetheart. And she’s got a body that’d make Jesus weep. But she’s a born pimp.”

“I’m sorry,” Sweeney said. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“Nadia,” the Sheep said, “is a procurer. I mean Buzz might be Moses, but your girl Nadia, she’s the burning bush. Hey, I like that. Burning bush. That works, doesn’t it?”

He saw the confused look on Sweeney’s face and took pity.

“Look, if you’re asking me how it all started, I can’t help you. I came in late. But at some point Buzz met Nadia. Or Nadia met Buzz. And that’s where the thing really begins. You look at us now, okay, and you can say what you want. We don’t much care, you know? We’re nomads. We’re a tribe in the desert. That’s how we see ourselves. You want to say we’re vampires, we’re parasites, well, those’re just words. We know the truth. We’re as much family as those scumbags that run the Clinic. We’re as much family as you and your boy. That’s the truth. And the truth sets you free, every time. You’ll find that out real soon, Sweeney.”

Sweeney tried to pull him back.

“You called Nadia a pimp,” he said.

The Sheep crushed out his cigarette on the fender of the hearse.

“It’s a metaphor,” he said. “Jesus Christ. You know what a metaphor is? I’m not insulting her. In fact — and I think the rest’d tell you the same thing if they had the balls — we’re a matriarchy. That’s what we really are. She lets Buzz think he’s the big bad dad. But the truth is we follow where Nadia leads. All the way to the last clinic. She’s got the plans. She’s the one who’s brought us to this point. And I’ll tell you, she’s gonna bring us across the border. Whether Buzz likes it or not.”

He paused, looked down at his boots and said, “But don’t tell him I said that.”

Sweeney was suddenly thinking too hard to stop and reassure the Sheep.

“Nadia was your nurse,” he said. “In Phoenix.”

The Sheep looked up and smiled and said, “Who says you’re slow?”

“And she knew the family needed a new chemist?”

“The guy before me, the Gerbil, he put his bike down in Oakland. Got run over by a Camaro.”

“So you move from clinic to clinic.”

“You got to go where the work is.”

“And what?” Sweeney said, trying to talk over the anxiety that was rising in his throat. “You do something to the coma patients? What do you do to the patients?”

“We do nothing but help them,” the Sheep said. “This is a total win-win situation here. And if you let us, we can help Danny too.”

“I’m not going to let you near Danny.”

The Sheep gave him a patronizing smile.

“What?” he said. “You’re going to kill us all? You? The pharmacist? Don’t be an idiot all your life, Sweeney. It isn’t necessary. You could turn everything around here if you’d just let go of the fear and let in the truth. I know. Because I did it.”

The stoner voice was slipping a little and Sweeney recognized something behind it.

“You don’t have to be alone,” the Sheep said. “You’re not supposed to be alone. None of us are. Buzz and Nadia and all of us accept you for what you are. You need some family, Sweeney. And we want you. Nadia wants you, I can tell you that. You got to make the leap. That’s all. You think it will kill you, but it’s the only thing that’ll save you at this stage. I don’t think you know how far gone you are. But you can turn the whole thing around tonight.”

“You’re not going to touch my son,” Sweeney said. But there was more panic than resolve in his voice.

“Someone,” the Sheep said, “already touched your son. And it wasn’t us. We didn’t put the boy in the coma, did we? Somebody else did that to him. Somebody else took him away from you. And all those fuckin’ doctors with their fuckin’ promises, they can’t do squat to bring him back.”

Sweeney stared at him.

The Sheep ran a hand over his skull. His head fell back and he closed his eyes for a while before he continued.

“I can help you and I can help Danny. I know I can. I can arrange for a reunion. You want to be with your son again, Sweeney?”

Sweeney sucked on his lips for an answer.

“You got to make the leap,” the Sheep said. “No one can do it for you. You got to be strong and you got to have some faith. I’m not sayin’ it isn’t hard. But you can’t go weak in the middle. This is going to be difficult. I won’t lie to you like those assholes back at the Clinic. It’s going to be frightening. Maybe terrifying. This is dangerous shit. And, yeah, it’s addictive as it gets. You’ve never known real want till you’ve come back from Limbo. But you keep the faith and you’ll make it. Out and back. You trust in Nadia and she’ll take you to the last clinic. That’s the real deal. And you better believe it.”

The Sheep did a little stretch, then he gave Sweeney a quick shoulder hug, stood up, and walked back to his bike.

“You’re not going to be alone anymore,” he said. “After tonight, you’ll be part of the whole thing. Just trust me.”

The Abominations had built a little campfire inside a massive stew kettle. They’d placed the pan on the floor in the center of the lunchroom and were sitting around it in a semicircle. Buzz was prodding the makeshift kindling with a tire iron. Opposite him, Sweeney was staring at the faces, all of them warped by shadow. The bikers looked like kids on Christmas morning, made silent by a panicky desire for a specific gift and a concurrent terror that it might not be under the tree.

The Sheep was in the middle of the semicircle, on his knees, holding a tin beer tray that held a pile of syringes. While everyone watched, he began loading the spikes with the contents of the saucepan.

Buzz put down the tire iron and said, “Looks a little thin.”

The Sheep shook his head.

“Looks,” he said, and snapped a finger against the last needle, “can be deceiving as a motherfucker.”

Buzz smiled but he let his voice go low when he said, “Careful there, Alvin.”

“How ’bout you take a taste, Buzz,” the Sheep said, “and then tell me how thin it is?”

Sweeney had watched his son receive countless injections but this was something else. Something disconnected from the medical, and tied, entirely, to the ritualistic.

Buzz extended his arm. The fire lit a coating of sweat across the bulge of muscle and vein. It was cool in the room but Buzz was stripped to the waist. He made the Sheep come to him. There was no rubber tie-off, no alcohol swab or sterile gauze. The Sheep put two fingers in his mouth and wet them with his tongue. Then he popped them free and slapped them across the underside of Buzz’s forearm. It was a sound that would stay with Sweeney.

The Sheep hugged the arm against his stomach, picked his line. He waited a second, concentrating, then looked up. He and Buzz stared at each other. Then he forced the tip of the needle under the skin and into the channel. He pushed until the hilt of the syringe came flush to the arm, then thumbed the plunger, forcing the soup into the bloodstream. Buzz didn’t move. Didn’t blink. But Sweeney thought he saw his lips tremble.

After a while, the Sheep pulled the needle free and threw the syringe into the fire. Buzz sat back on his heels. The Abominations studied him. He put his head in his hands, pulled in a long breath. He said something to himself. It might have been, “Oh, Jesus.”

The Sheep gave a self-satisfied nod and handed the beer tray to the Ant, who took a syringe and passed the tray down the line. The rest of the crew fixed themselves, messy or neat, but all of them relatively silent. When the tray got to Sweeney, he handed it back to the Sheep.

“Your turn,” said the Sheep, holding up a syringe. He smiled and thumbed the plunger just a bit to make the needle spurt.

“I don’t think so,” Sweeney said.

“I can’t fix,” the Sheep said, “until you fix. Buzz’s orders.”

“Buzz,” Sweeney said, “is incapacitated.”

“True enough,” the Sheep said, glancing down at his leader, who was moving his mouth but failing to emit any sounds. “But he’ll be better than new tomorrow. And he’ll be disappointed if he finds out we didn’t follow orders.”

“Well,” said Sweeney, “there’s at least two ways around that.”

The Sheep smiled but it was forced.

“Should I even hear them?” he asked.

“The simple way,” Sweeney said, “would be for us to tell him what he wants to hear.”

The Sheep shook his head, disappointed, patience exhausted.

“That won’t work,” he said. “For reasons you won’t understand unless you take your medicine here.”

“That leaves the second way, then.”

And though the Sheep didn’t want to ask, he said, “Which is?”

“Which is,” Sweeney said, “I go outside and drain all the petrol out of your tanks. Then I come back inside and pour it all over these scumbags. And then I drop a match and run the fuck out of here.”

The Sheep finally let the hand that held the syringe drop into his lap.

“I know we just met,” he said, “but I don’t think so. You’re a fuckin’ pharmacist from Cleveland.”

Sweeney stood up, loomed over the Sheep, and said, “I’m tired of people who don’t know shit about me thinking that they do.”

The Sheep wouldn’t back down.

“So you’re saying,” he said, “that you’d rather incinerate all of us than take a chance and find out what this is all about?”

“You’re threatening my son. The only reason I wake up every day is to take care of my son.”

“And you can’t believe that we’re here to help you both?”

Sweeney stared at him. The Sheep held up the syringe halfheartedly and said, “C’mon, take the leap.”

“Take it yourself.”

Which is what the Sheep did. He found a vein, low, on his left arm, inserted the spike and flooded himself with the soup.

“What is it with fathers,” he said, eyes fluttering a little, voice slight and soft, “that they can’t make the leap?”

Within a minute the Sheep went into a fetal crouch. The sight of it made Sweeney flinch. He looked at all of them, immobilized, lying on their backs or sides, faces waxy in the firelight. One of them — he thought it was the Ant — was drooling. Another, maybe the Rabbit, was twitching his hands in some logorrhea of signing.

Sweeney stepped over the Sheep, toed Buzz’s body and got no response. He put his foot on Buzz’s chest and started to apply pressure. Nothing. He kneeled down and put a hand to Buzz’s face, pinched the nostrils closed and fixed a palm over the mouth. Buzz didn’t struggle. Buzz didn’t make a sound. Sweeney took his hand from the face and knew something was wrong.

The Abominations had gone to the trouble of kidnapping him, of sending him into the cave to find the Sheep, of making sure he was present for the creation of the soup. They’d told him about the origin of the fluid. They’d seated him around the fire and let him watch while they fixed, and then collapsed into something beyond stupor. And now here they were, unconscious, harmless, helpless. Entirely vulnerable. Temporarily comatose. He could do anything he wanted right now. He could baptize them in gasoline, as he’d threatened. Turn them to ash if he wanted.

And Buzz would’ve known that. Buzz would have taken precautions. He could have tied Sweeney down and shot him up. He could have waited until Sweeney was unconscious before he let his crew fix.

So what to do now? Calling the police would pull him into the middle of an ugly investigation. Which certainly would delay his departure from the city. And once he was tainted by the story, what clinic would accept Danny? And what pharmacy would offer a position?

But the alternative was to get rid of the Abominations on his own. To go through with his original idea — soak them in gas while they’re incapacitated and incinerate them.

He was picturing the scene when Nadia entered the cafeteria. She was wearing a short robe, green and satin and clinging to her. Her hair was wet and pushed straight back over her head. Her feet were bare and she had a towel rolled around her neck.

She looked over her tribe and then at Sweeney and said indifferently, “Decided not to join them?”

“Yeah,” Sweeney said. “Just like you.”

She shook her head, used the end of the towel to dab some water from her nose.

“I never fix,” she said. “I watch over them. In case they need me.”

She started into the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “You want a beer?”

He didn’t respond. He waited until she returned and said, “Why didn’t they make me do it? Why didn’t they shoot me up?”

She brushed past him, went to a bench and sat down with her legs underneath her. The robe spread open on her thigh. She took a long drink from a bottle of Hunthurst and casually opened a copy of Limbo that was on the table.

“Buzz has this idea,” and the way she accented the word conveyed a little contempt. “He can bring you to the water. But he can’t make you save yourself. He’s kind of earnest like that. It’s one of his best virtues. Not a lot of imagination, but he’s got the passion. For someone like Buzz, you know, the trip to Limbo is an end unto itself.”

“And that’s not your take?”

Nadia shook her head.

“This whole ritual,” she said, “the traveling, the harvesting, the whole communion of the soup, I’m sorry, it’s just bullshit to me. It’s vampire theater. And it consumes too much time and money. At best, it’s a means to an end. Honestly, I can’t wait till we’re done with it.”

“Done with it?”

She put the comic book down, made her voice lower.

“There’s a place,” she said, “where you don’t need the soup. A real place. A clinic in Old Bohemia. Very exclusive. Very hard to find. But I know I can get us there. And I know it’s the last clinic we’ll ever need.”

“So go,” he said. “Just go and leave me and my boy alone.”

“It’s not so simple. Buzz isn’t up for the trip. He’s hopeless. The eternal nomad. He wants to keep moving. I try to tell him — movement for the sake of movement is just another trap. It’s reductive after a while. I want to take my boys to the next level. Where we won’t even need the soup to move through the membrane.”

“And what about Buzz?”

“I’m working,” she said, “on saving Buzz. On saving everyone.”

Sweeney took a few steps into the middle of the pile of Abominations. He rested a foot on the Elephant’s hip and said, “Yeah, they look saved.”

“Like the Sheep said, looks can be deceiving. Are you scared of it?”

“Am I scared? Of ingesting brain fluid and whatever other shit this idiot cuts it with?”

Nadia smiled and looked back to the comic book, shaking her head above her bottle.

“He’s not an idiot, Sweeney. Trust me on that.”

“Well, you should know. You’re the one who found him in Phoenix.”

“He told you?” she asked, unfazed, taking another sip of beer.

“He told me you’re their pimp,” Sweeney said. “You’re the one who finds the fresh victims.”

“Victims?” Nadia repeated. “Little dramatic there, don’t you think? Who’ve we victimized?”

He stepped off the Elephant and moved to the table and looked down over her.

“Danny to start with,” he said. “And me.”

“You? Jesus, Sweeney, you live to be a victim. Did you feel like a victim last night? While you were fucking me?”

He put his hand around her throat and started to squeeze. She looked up at him, unafraid, giving away nothing.

“I’m leaving now,” he said, but he kept the pressure constant. “I’m getting my son and I’m getting the fuck out of this city. And if you come after us, I’ll kill every one of you.”

Now she started to make the choking sounds. She dropped the beer bottle, reached up and put both hands around his wrist. He let go of the throat, but she held onto the hand. Pushed it down from her neck and inside the robe and across her right breast. He tried to pull away and she held firm.

And then he was untying the robe with his free hand and she was leaning back on the bench and pulling him down on top of her. The kinetics of it were fast and brutal. No grace, no tenderness. His mouth went down on her neck. She arched her back, pulled his hair. He pushed her legs open. She pulled off his shirt and threw it, pulled the T-shirt beneath out of the pants. They worked together to unbuckle and unzip, got his pants down past his knees and left them there.

Then he was in her and they were both bucking, working for the rhythm. He dropped his head. A nipple fell into and out of his mouth. She made a sound, grabbed at his shoulders. He got his hands up under her arms, felt her sweat, tried to lift her, reposition her. He felt her hands under his balls, on his ass, up his back. The speed and force of his thrusts increased. He looked at her face. The eyes were open but squinting. He looked down at the floor, saw the Abominations, immobile, staring at nothing. He looked at the fire, felt himself starting to come.

And then felt the stab of the spike.

He ejaculated but the orgasm broke off, went numb before climax. He yelled, tried to pull out and roll away but she had her legs wrapped around his waist and his own legs were strapped by his pants.

Then she released him and he fell to the floor, trying to turn around and look at his backside, hands flailing behind him. He was on his knees, turning from side to side. He heard her say, “I don’t agree with Buzz,” and looked up, saw her holding a syringe. Her legs were still splayed, her face shining, sweaty in the firelight. Her head was resting on the lunch table and she’d pulled the robe closed over her breasts.

She threw the syringe past him into the campfire. There was a bloody smudge across her fingers. She brought herself up to sitting, seemed to swoon a little before she steadied herself with her hands.

She looked at Sweeney and said, “I don’t think you have to save yourself.”

She pulled the comic book into her lap, leaned toward him over her knees. Her face started to fade and there were flashes of light behind her as if someone were taking pictures.

The last thing Sweeney heard was, “I’ll see you on the other side.”

. . The freaks rode in steerage out of the interior plains, packed in the darkness and stench of the elephant trailer. At night, they slept in open fields, under a moon that looked too big and clear to be real. And if they had heard the collision with the Resurrectionist, none of them spoke of it.

Though there was traveling money, they chose to scavenge their food from the wilds in order to avoid seeing others. They shared a need to be alone for a time, as family. To bind into one another in preparation for whatever lay ahead. And as they moved toward the western shores, they found even more untamed territories in which to hide. Much of Gehenna, it seemed, lay unconquered. The troupe spied the occasional sign of civilization, towns and villages that had sprouted around railstops. But from a distance, these settlements appeared more outposts than anything else, precarious — and maybe temporary — havens for the restless and the pursued.

Again they kept to the back roads and the wooded pathways. The chicken boy told Bruno when and where to turn, made all the forkin-the-road decisions. His seizures were getting more severe if less frequent. And when he returned from Limbo, he rarely had much to say about what he had learned. He studied the sun and the stars, gave directions to the strongman, and withdrew more deeply into himself. Kitty was both hurt and worried. She watched as Chick scribbled ferociously in his diary. She tried to ignore his nighttime wanderings away from camp and into the dense forests where the troupe hid.

The chicken boy’s confession finally came on the night that Aziz first smelled the salt of the ocean. They had pulled into a grove of enormous trees and were moving through the usual camp-making routines when the human torso tossed his head back, pulled in air through his nose, and announced, “I think we’ve reached the shores.”

All of the other freaks froze in place and began to imitate Aziz. And after a moment they started to nod and then murmur their agreement. In the wake of the murmuring came the celebratory sounds of a homecoming — though, of course, none had ever been to the western shores before. Their joy and hope were born of a sense of destination achieved. The fact that this destination was an unknown landscape didn’t matter very much at first.

Durga, Jeta, and Antoinette danced together in a small circle. Vasco and Marcel did their own little jig. Nadja and Milena embraced and hooted. Aziz hopped around on his knuckles like a frog. Only Chick maintained the gravity of the road, opening his beak in an effort to taste the salt that hung in the air. As if needing to confirm something.

Seeing the look on the chicken boy’s face, Bruno tamped down the revelry and called the troupe to a meeting. When they were all settled on the ground, the strongman put his remaining hand on his hip and spoke.

“It seems,” he said, “that we’re very close now. The ocean is less than a day away. And, believe me, I’m as anxious as all of you to get off the road and rest for a while. But I think, right now, that the one who brought us here should say a few words.”

He lowered himself to the ground with only marginally less grace than he’d once possessed.

Chick looked hesitant as he stood before the clan. He toed the earth as he thought about how best to begin. He scratched absentmindedly at his feathers and avoided eye contact.

Eventually, he said, “We’ve come a long way.”

The words triggered a whoop of affirmation from Fatos. Chick ignored the mule and pressed on.

“I want to thank all of you for having faith in me. You took a great chance. A great leap. I’ve never claimed to understand what happens when I go into Limbo. I just know that I hear and see things. And that those things feel true and real to me. So I want to thank you for trusting in something that none of us understand. Your faith is what makes it so hard to tell you this last bit.”

He paused and let the mood of the group change, felt the joy and excitement start to turn to anxiousness and suspicion.

“I know that we’ve all been looking for the same thing. We’ve been looking for a place where we can be our true selves, together. We’ve been looking for a haven. A place of refuge and sanctuary.”

Jeta nodded her agreement. Milena began to scowl and lean forward.

“But the fact is, I can’t promise you that place. It might be at the end of our road. And then again, it might not.”

Kitty reached over, took Nadja’s claw. Vasco and Marcel brought hands together nervously and cracked knuckles.

“All my life, I’ve been searching for my father. I think it’s my father who led me through the Limbo. I think it’s my dad who brought us to where we are tonight. And now, I think, he needs our help. And I think, if we help him, that he’ll help us in return.”

The chicken boy went quiet for a second and studied his comrades’ faces. The freaks looked back at Chick, unsure of what to say or do. Except for Bruno, who decided to push the boy.

“Tell us,” the strongman said, “exactly what you have to tell us.”

Chick looked at Bruno and nodded.

“Tomorrow,” Chick said, “we’ll arrive at the western shore. And at the castle of Dr. Fliess.”

At the mention of the name, Jeta burst into tears. At the sight of the tears, Antoinette became hysterical. Durga pulled both of them into her breast and looked to Milena for help. But the hermaphrodite only smiled at the fat lady and remained placid and unmoving.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Bruno said, standing and walking up to Chick in order to tower over him. “We spend this entire time running from Fliess. And now you tell us we were actually running to him.”

“I didn’t know,” Chick said, weakly. “Not until the last few days. Not for sure.”

“You said your father would be waiting,” Bruno said, confused.

Chick nodded. “Fliess has my father. And we have to free him.”

“You want us to go to the castle?” Vasco asked, incredulous.

“And demand that Fliess hand over your poppa?” asked Marcel, outraged.

“No,” said Chick, backing up as more of them rose from the ground and came toward him. “Of course not. I have a way in. There are tunnels. A series of caves that lead into the castle. I know exactly where to find my father. And I know, if we can free him, he can help us.”

That there was anger and outrage, disappointment and fear, did not surprise Chick. His own reaction to the knowledge of what lay in wait at the end of their road was profound sadness. The clan had relied on him to bring them to refuge. And instead, he had delivered them into their greatest terror and deposited them at the feet of their enemy. So he understood the bitterness that lay at the bottom of the troupe’s surprise. And beyond this, he felt his own particular brand of grief surge back into every feather of his body, the anguish that had simmered, for years, from the beginning, just on the edge of his consciousness. And he realized that whether or not his freaks abandoned him in the end, he would go to Fliess’s castle. And he would be saved or damned. But he would find whatever last truths were available to him. Because to live forever with a grief that deforms the heart is unacceptable — an abomination that must not be tolerated.

In the end, it was Milena who settled things and decided how the story would end.

“We’re here,” s/he shouted, drowning out the timorous carping of the others. “We’ve followed him this far. Now, we can call it a day and split up. Take our chances wandering around, looking for a show that will have us. Or we can trust in the chicken boy. We can play this out to the end. We can go to the castle and find his daddy and see what the man can do for us.”

It was as simple as that. As if all that had been needed was for a hermaphrodite to state, succinctly, the facts of the matter, and the options those facts generated. Milena’s tone was enough to indicate which option s/he had embraced. And once s/he declared her allegiance, the others began to fall in line. Their outrage and terror petered out rapidly and dissipated into little more than an undercurrent of grumbling. And suddenly, almost instantly, they were whole again.

Durga and Nadja got busy pulling together the night’s supper. And though the clan ate in silence, even the pinhead understood that all of them would remain a family to the end. There would be no splintering of the freaks. Come salvation or oblivion, they would face the future together.

And so, over a dessert of fresh berries and nuts, Bruno consulted with Chick, and the decision was made to set out just before midnight. They broke camp, buried their fire, left the truck to rust in the woods and followed the chicken boy on a path that, though it did not deter the freaks, did nothing to calm or reassure them. Within minutes of setting out on their last trek, they were overcome with a stench that made the slaughterhouses of Maisel seem like cologne shops by comparison. The ground beneath their feet turned into a hard, cracked clay of some sort. They tramped with hands and claws covering mouths and noses, taking short, careful steps that left them prematurely tired and uneasy.

They moved into and out of a fetid, swampy patch, slogging through warm murky water or pulling their feet step by step from the sucking mud. They passed through an infestation of fat, buzzing insects whose bites left welts the size of kroners over any exposed areas of flesh or fur. The freaks cried and groaned and cursed and threatened to turn back. But finally they emerged just meters away from a cascade of enormous boulders that coalesced into a cliff wall, atop which sat what could only be the castle of Dr. Fliess.

It loomed, as if it had been waiting for them since the day of its unlikely construction, all black iron and terrible rivets, countless stories of dark metal and tiny bug-eye windows. At its top was a single turret of tall glass panes, like a lighthouse, revealing a single, dim light within. From the top of the turret, a black metal spire thrust up into the sky like a lightning rod. And from the spire flew an enormous red flag, visible in the moonlight, its undulations in the wind incapable of obscuring the Gothic black F imprinted on its face.

Antoinette brought a hand up to cover her eyes, as if the mere sight of the castle and its awful banner would turn them all to stone. Jeta began to edge backward into the marshland from which they’d just emerged and Milena had to hold the skeleton’s hand to keep her from fleeing.

“That’s where we have to go,” Chick said, pointing to the turret. “That’s where he’s keeping my father.”

He looked to Bruno, but the strongman only nodded his head, gesturing to the mountain of rocks before them. So Chick led the way to the bottom of the cliff, moving to a smooth purple boulder that sat flush against the granite wall. He inspected it quickly, put his palm against its cool surface, then turned to Bruno and said, “This is the one.”

The others stepped back and made room for the strongman, who wasted no time putting his good shoulder to the shale and heaving all of his mass into the stone. It took time and effort to move the rock and at one point, Fatos attempted to offer assistance. But Chick warned him away with a look. They let Bruno grunt and heave, sweat breaking over his face, veins bulging across the dome of his skull. And gradually, the stone was rolled aside and an opening was revealed behind it, carved into the face of the cliff wall.

Chick smiled at the strongman, who was hunched down over his knees, blinking at his feet and breathing heavily. “It will be dark inside,” the chicken boy said. “Let’s stay close together.” And with that he entered the black hole of the cave.

The others followed, single file, Durga just managing to squeeze through. The air inside was close and stale. The tunnel opened out almost at once, but as it did, the sound of their steps on the stone walkway beneath their feet echoed loudly. Bruno brought up the rear of their parade. The freaks had no torches, not even a kitchen match among them, so they proceeded by touch and sound. They could all feel the curve of the path they walked and its upward slant. They were spiraling, Bruno knew, up a slowly inclining ramp, toward the top of the castle.

Everyone lost his or her sense of time after a while. Random and unsettling noises came and went — growling of stomach, clearing of throat, and what might have been the skittering of vermin across the flagstones beneath their feet. At some point they heard a muted weeping or laughing, but when Milena attempted to shush Jeta, the skeleton denied the sound had come from her.

And before Milena could argue, Chick crashed, beak first, into something and the clan collided, one into the next, fronts into backs. The chicken boy brought up a hand and touched a smooth wood panel that angled down at him sharply from the ceiling of the cave. It was a hatch of some sort and it was freezing. He pulled his hand away at once and called for Bruno. The strongman had to get on his belly and crawl between Durga’s legs, then squeeze past all the others until he arrived at the front of the line, where Chick indicated the door.

Bruno ran his hand over it, searching for a latch or a knob, but the chicken boy already knew the effort was futile.

“You’ll have to break it down,” Chick whispered, just as the realization dawned on his friend.

The strongman had an even harder time with the hatch than he’d had with the boulder at the base of the mountain. He had to work against gravity, to thrust his body upward into the impasse. With all his strength, he rammed his good shoulder into the hatch, as hard as he could, a dozen times before growing frustrated and angry. He pounded on the door with his fist. Slapped at it and punched it and then, in the instant when pique turned into fury, he bashed it with his head.

The bolt snapped and the trap flew upward and suddenly the freaks were illuminated by a dim yellow light that shone from above.

Bruno was bleeding from his brow but he ignored the gash, silently got down on his knees, and hunched his torso over. Chick understood that the strongman was offering himself as a stepstool and began to direct the troupe, one at a time, to climb up the patriarch’s back and pull themselves into the turret. A single grunt issued from the Behemoth when Durga trod his spine. But Fatos and the twins pitched in to haul the fat lady to the top of the castle.

When Bruno used his remaining arm to pull himself up through the hatchway, he thought Chick was about to slide into Limbo. The boy was shivering and his eyes were locked in that unblinking daze. But, in fact, there was no seizure under way. Instead, the chicken boy was transfixed by the gaunt man, suspended from the dome ceiling of the turret by chains shackled to his wrists.

The man was dressed in simple black pants and a white peasant shirt. He was shoeless and his feet were dirty with dried blood. His skull drooped and rolled on his neck as if he were balanced on the edge of consciousness. His feet dangled just above Bruno’s head. His arms looked as if, in the next second, they might tear away from the body at the shoulders.

But Milena was already removing the lantern from a small table that sat behind the hanging man, shoving the table forward and motioning for Bruno to climb on top of it. Bruno wasn’t sure the table could support his weight, but he mounted it anyway, then proceeded to take hold of the chains that bound the prisoner.

The freaks stared while Bruno ripped the chains from the ceiling. The hanging man dropped to the ground at the chicken boy’s feet. Chick went down on one knee, lifted the man’s head in his hands. The man’s eyes fluttered, then closed, as his mouth opened and the tongue inside batted around for a moment until he swallowed and found his voice and managed to say, “I knew you would come.”

Without any difficulty, the man came up on his knees and embraced the chicken boy. Over Chick’s shoulder, he surveyed the whole clan and, in a louder voice, said, “I knew you would all come.”

And then things happened so quickly that Antoinette would not suspect the truth until hours later, when she heard the first shovels of sand being tossed atop her casket.

The hanging man transformed his embrace into something closer to a choke hold and called for his creatures, a horde of grotesque homunculi — half-naked gargoyles with red eyes and diminutive but overly muscular bodies — which emerged through the trapdoor and swarmed into the turret.

And in that instant, Chick knew that the Limbo had turned on him. And that the man they had just rescued could not be anyone but their dreaded enemy and pursuer, the demon at the heart of all of their nightmares, the mad Dr. Fliess.

Within seconds, Fliess’s creatures had filled the turret, thronged over and captured all of the freaks. Bruno threw and kicked and stomped a dozen or more of the monstrosities before Fliess called the strongman’s attention to the scalpel held at the chicken boy’s neck.

Bruno and Fliess stared at each other until the doctor said, “Surely even a strongman knows when to surrender.”

Antoinette was hysterical beneath a swarm of Fliess’s monsters, who had her pinned on the floor. One of them bent back the cone of her head, as if making ready to snap the neck. Seeing this, Bruno gave up the fight and the creatures battened onto his legs and arm. The deformed angel on the pinhead’s back moved its hands to cover her mouth and silence her.

“Very good,” Fliess said, lifting himself and Chick to standing and walking to the far side of the room to get a better look at the entire troupe.

“You are more hideous,” he said, “than even I could have imagined.” He hugged Chick more tightly, brought his mouth to the chicken boy’s ear and added, “And I have a vivid imagination.”

Behind the doctor, out the turret’s window, Milena could see a vast ocean that rolled beyond the far side of the castle. For only a moment, s/he wondered about her chances of crashing through the glass and diving to the water far below. But at the end of that moment, s/he knew the idea was simply life’s last kick in the ass. A final instance of false hope.

“It’s true,” the doctor said to the freaks, “that I will never understand fear in the manner, or to the degree, that you understand fear. And yet, it breaks my heart and it angers me that you’ve allowed fear to damn you.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Chick said, staring at the strongman.

The doctor shrugged awkwardly while maintaining his hold on the boy.

“Despite all appearances,” he said, “you’re human. And like all of us, you fear the unknown.”

“You don’t know anything about us,” Bruno said, in a voice that should have held rage but, instead, contained only the sound of terminal failure.

“That’s incorrect, Mr. Seboldt,” Fliess said. “Try to remember that nothing is as it seems. That’s the original good advice.”

Then the freaks were marched out of the turret’s proper exit and down a long series of stairs and dark landings that led, eventually, out of the front gate and down a steep and narrow stone stairwell cut into the cliff. They were brought out into a small circle of beach, a horseshoe cove of hard, brown sand. There were no hysterics when they saw the graves that had been dug during the low tide or the simple pine boxes that rested next to their tombs.

Instead, Jeta and Antoinette wept and the others tried, with varying degrees of success, to assume a stoic posture. Without any delay, the gargoyles brought the freaks, in groups of two or three, to their respective coffins. No one fought and no one tried to flee. As if they’d all come, at the same instant, to some unspoken understanding or exhaustion. As if all of their spirits were like a circuit of circus lights and each one had gone out in the line.

The box for Durga was, of course, enormous. As was the one for Marcel and Vasco. Chick found himself wondering how the homunculi would manage to lower the crates into the ground. Then, ashamed at the thought, he found himself enraged. But when he spotted Kitty’s tiny coffin, his emotions simply imploded. He collapsed against the mad Dr. Fliess in a convulsion of self-loathing and despair, crushed under the realization that he had delivered the people he loved most deeply, most truly, into oblivion. Into the hopeless and ceaseless Limbo.

With one hand, Fliess stroked the chicken boy’s feathered cheek. With the other, the doctor adjusted the blade of his scalpel against Chick’s neck and made the boy lift his head.

“I want you,” the doctor said, “to witness this.”

And so, Chick watched through tear-splintered eyes as Bruno, the strongest man in the world, climbed, of his own free will, into his casket, and lay down, without a word of objection. One by one, the other freaks followed his lead.

The freaks had fought or run all the way across Gehenna. And now, here they were, models of acceptance and docility. More than anything else, in that moment, Chick wanted one final seizure, one last chance to fade out and quake and ask the reason for this gentle capitulation.

But the seizure would not come. There was no bile in his throat. No chill telegraphing up his spine. And so he tore his eyes off his clan as they lay down one by one. And turned his head upward to Dr. Fliess and asked, “Why?”

The doctor looked down at the chicken boy hesitantly, with a gaze that even a pinhead would call loving.

“Because,” said the doctor, “I am a man of both science and compassion.”

It was like cream at first. White on white and thick. And there was a richness, a hard sweetness. And cold moving toward freezing. That was where Sweeney first felt himself in the new moment. The sensation of his testicles rising with the cold, withdrawing — that’s what made it real, that sense of his body, that awareness. That’s what made it something more than a dream. Gave it a solidity that made it true.

He was still inside the factory. And Buzz and the Abominations were spread out around him, still in dream. That was his first sound, their collective respiration. He opened his eyes and blinked, surveyed the room and saw that Nadia was gone. He looked down to see that his pants had been pulled up and rebelted. There was a piercing sensation, like a bee sting, in the small of his back near the base of his spine. He rubbed it and only aggravated the pain.

He got to his knees and then, with some effort, to his feet. He made his way out of the cafeteria, through the kitchen, and out the loading bay onto the concrete apron. In the moonlight, he could make out the ruins behind the Harmony but everything was out of focus. He took his hand from his back, pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed down into the circles beneath his eyes. When he looked again, his vision had cleared. In fact, everything now appeared hyperfocused, more real than real. And somewhere out among the debris of the back lot, he began to hear a noise.

At first it was difficult to locate the source. The sound echoed and distorted on its way across the yards of brick and stone. Without thinking, Sweeney jumped down off the loading dock and began to walk toward the abandoned hearse, where the Abominations had played King of the Hill. Halfway to the hearse, he understood that the noise was a human voice, a child’s cry of grief and fear. And then Sweeney was running.

When he got to the hearse, he ran from door to door, pulling at each handle. But they were all locked. He began to circle the vehicle, pounding on the smoked glass of the windows. And the more he pounded, the louder the crying grew. The sound was making him frantic. He drummed his fists against the windows but nothing happened. He jumped up onto the hood and began to kick away at the windshield with his heels, but he could not shatter the glass.

Sweeney began to sweat and his breathing became labored. But at last, near the point of exhaustion, he moved around the rear of the hearse, got on his knees, and reached down for a brick. Bringing it up above his head, he let gravity carry the red block down against the hearse’s rear window, which cracked neatly down its center. Sweeney stood and dropped the brick, used his elbow to shatter the window, reached inside the hearse, and unlatched and swung open the gate.

Bending at the waist, he peered inside. And saw that the crying child was his son. And that his son’s body was covered in feathers. In all other respects, the boy looked normal, healthy. He was simply shrouded in a layer of down.

At the sight of his father, Danny stopped crying and yelled, “Daddy.”

Sweeney inserted his arms and extracted Danny from the hearse. Then the father fell back on his heels and cradled the child against his chest. And both of them breathed and shivered and held onto each other.

“I didn’t know where you were,” Danny said, starting to cry again. “I didn’t know where you went.”

“It’s okay, Danny,” Sweeney said, hugging his son more tightly, cupping the boy’s head and easing it down to the shoulder. “I’m right here. Everything’s okay.”

“I couldn’t find Mom,” Danny said, his need to suck air fighting his need to speak.

“We’ll find Mom. It’s okay, Danny. It’s all right.”

“I got so cold, Daddy.”

“I’ll keep you warm,” Sweeney said. “I’m here now.”

“Can we go find Mom,” Danny asked, “and then go home?”

“That’s a good idea,” Sweeney said, shifting the boy in his arms and struggling up to his feet. And when he looked around, he realized that the landscape had changed.

The ruins of the old factories now stretched as far as he could see. There were no bordering streets. No tenements or mills or city lights visible in the distance. Beneath his feet, what had been brick and rock and rubble was now something else — something like baked clay, hardpan, a gray and white expanse shot through with cracks. It was flat and it extended to the horizon. There was something intensely primordial about the landscape and it triggered sudden terror in Sweeney.

Sensing his father’s panic, Danny said, “It’ll be okay, Dad.”

Sweeney wanted to ask Where are we? but was afraid of the answer. Instead, he said, “I don’t know which way to go.”

“Can I ride on your back?” Danny asked.

Sweeney hoisted him and, once secure, Danny extended his downy arm and pointed away from the Harmony factory. And they began to walk.

They covered what must have been miles, but Sweeney’s feet and back carried his burden without complaint, though his eyes watered from the oppressiveness of the air. There was a chemical smell that got worse as they progressed, something like sulfur and cabbage. Danny either didn’t notice it or didn’t mind it.

They didn’t talk much. Once Danny asked if Mom would be mad that they were late and Sweeney said, “How do you know we’ll be late?”

“We’re already late,” Danny said.

After that they came to the first Joshua tree. It was growing up out of one of the larger cracks in the hardpan. Neither father nor son commented on it and soon they were spotting more of them and the new trees were bigger, fuller, their spearlike branches all pointing in the direction Sweeney was heading.

“Can you eat the flowers?” Danny asked and Sweeney said he didn’t know. As they passed one of the branches, Danny reached out, pulled free a white blossom. Seconds later, a few petals floated down onto Sweeney’s chest and leg.

And sometime after that they were in the thick of the trees. Their progress slowed considerably. The sky turned purple and the moon appeared low and to their right. Sweeney tried to hurry but the thicket of tree limbs made the going near impossible. There was no clear path. And the smell had grown putrid, a clogged leech field in high summer. He brought a hand up to shield his nose and mouth and from beneath the hand he said, “How can you stand it?”

“It’s not so bad from up here,” Danny said.

Sweeney felt his son’s feathers against the back of his neck and head. He wanted to put Danny down for a while, but he knew it was crucial that they continued moving. And so he tried to ignore the fatigue and tramp on. But as the hardpan began to soften, go marshy, his legs began to ache and he had to ask Danny if he could walk for a while.

The boy agreed and his father lowered him to the ground. Soon after, the trees began to thin again and when they left the last one behind them, they were fully in the swamps. Now the smell was different. Just as strong and just as unpleasant, but more alive, derived less from decay and more from something fertile and ripe.

They held hands and took smaller steps. Their feet sank into inches of heavy, fetid water. Sweeney felt it seep through shoe and sock and touch his skin. His flesh prickled and he ground his teeth. But the swamp water didn’t seem to have any effect on Danny. When it rose to the boy’s knees, Sweeney hoisted him up on shoulders once again. And that’s when the insects arrived. Fat, slow winter flies. They ignored his swatting hands, tried to land on him, their buzzing set to a ridiculous volume.

Sweeney breathed through his nose and shook his head. Within yards, the pests had swarmed into an infestation and he tried to run. But with each attempt to lift his leg and push out of the water, he planted a foot deeper into the bottom muck. Danny pressed his eyes into his father’s head and wrapped his arms more tightly around Dad’s neck. The flies began to mass on Sweeney’s face. He shook his head wildly but they refused to dislodge. And that was when he tripped over the first body.

He went down on his knees, yet somehow Danny managed to stay on his back. The putrid water sprayed up, soaked his shirt and face, which loosed some of the flies. He wiped the rest away with the back of his arm and opened his eyes to look into the face of Ernie Blake. Though Sweeney had never met the man, he was certain this was Ernie, Nora’s husband.

Blake was lying just beneath the skin of the water, floating in the murky pool. He was dressed in workman’s coveralls that had gone filthy in the swamp and sported a coating of slimy algae. Though he was fully submerged, his eyes were open and they tracked Sweeney’s movement as he tried to jump away from the body.

“It’s okay,” he heard Danny say behind him. “It’s only Mr. Blake.”

Sweeney didn’t know what to do, if he should attempt to lift the man out of the water. He felt his knees sinking into the mud and as he tried to think, Ernie Blake opened his mouth and dozens of tiny black fish swam out.

Danny began to laugh and Sweeney was horrified. He pushed himself up to standing, tried once again to run and tripped, this time over the floating body of Lawrence Belmonte, the footless hunter from Maine. Belmonte’s eyes were closed but his mouth was open and he was running his tongue over his teeth. The tiny black fish were swimming into one of the stumps at the bottom of the man’s left leg and out of the stump at the bottom of his right.

Sweeney tried to calm his breathing and failed. He stood up slowly and, though the swamp was dim, lit only by a sliver moon, he could see dozens of figures floating just beneath the water. And he knew they were all patients from the Peck Clinic — Honey Lieb and Tara Russell and Ginny Oliphant and all the others.

“Can they breathe under water?” Sweeney asked Danny.

But Danny just said, “I’m cold, Dad. Are we almost home yet?”

Sweeney’s answer was to begin walking again. When they cleared the swamp, they could finally see home. Only it wasn’t the house in Cleveland exactly. And it wasn’t quite the Peck Clinic. And it wasn’t entirely the Limbo fortress of the evil Dr. Fliess. It was, instead, some horrible and unlikely amalgam of all three structures. And it was looming above them from the edge of a cliff, a haunted Gothic castle, with handicap ramps and awnings, neon red crosses and enormous wooden shutters.

And looking up at it, Sweeney understood that it was the last place he wanted to be. That he’d rather spend the rest of his life in the swamps than in any room of this stone palace.

Danny sensed his father’s hesitation.

“You have to, Daddy,” he said. “You’ve got to bring me home.”

Sweeney shook his head, felt the brush of the feathers.

“That’s not your home, Danny,” he said.

“It’s my home now,” Danny said. “I’m late, Dad. And Mom’s worried.”

“Mom doesn’t have to be worried,” Sweeney said. “You’re with me.”

“She’s worried about you too, Dad. She’s worried about both of us.”

“But all those rocks,” Sweeney said. “I don’t know how to get up there.”

“I know a way,” Danny said. “I’ll show you.”

Sweeney stood for a minute looking up at the structure, then turned to look back toward the swamp. He started to say something about going back to the factory but was bitten on the hand by a green-headed fly. The sting and the after-burn were severe. He brought the hand to his mouth and sucked on it.

Danny said, “There’ll be millions of them in a little while.”

And so Sweeney started for the boulders without argument and began to climb. The stones were as big as cars, some of them larger, and they were slick with moss. Danny locked his arms around his father’s neck and asked questions as Sweeney tried to find his footholds and pull them upward.

“Do you think someone could lift one of these?” he asked. “How much do they weigh? What’s underneath the rocks?”

Sweeney replied in a monotone, “I don’t know.”

He slipped once, went down hard on his knee. The higher they rose, the steeper the rocks became. Had he been climbing alone, he would have had more options, but with Danny on his back he couldn’t make use of the crevices between stones. At one point while he was trying to get a purchase somewhere on the sheer face of a wall that stretched to twice his height, Danny asked, “What’s that say, Dad?”

“Danny,” Sweeney yelled, “I’m trying to climb here.”

His head was aching and his knee was throbbing and the boy was choking off some of his air. But when he heard the crying and felt the trembling against his back, he stopped attempting to pull them up and leaned his head back against Danny’s face.

“I’m sorry, son,” he said. “Dad’s really sorry. But this is very hard.”

“I just wanted,” Danny said through hitching breath, each word standing on its own, “to know what it meant.”

Sweeney looked up and backward now, to an outcropping of rock that formed a lip off the top of the cliff. Somehow, someone had spray-painted Freaks Die on the underside of the ledge.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Sweeney said and instantly regretted it.

“It says something,” Danny said.

“It’s in another language,” Sweeney said and turned back to the cliff wall and began to climb.

The rest of the way up they moved in silence. When they got to the top and Sweeney pulled them to level ground, they found freshly laid sod, a yard of meticulously clipped turf, too green to look natural. There was a brick walkway running through the center of the yard and it led to the oversized doors of the castle.

Sweeney sat on the grass, catching his breath and studying the doors. Danny sat next to him, imitating his father’s pose and demeanor.

“They’re not locked,” Danny said.

Sweeney looked from the doors down to his son. The feathers seemed less strange now. But the mouth appeared even more beaklike, harder and more protruding.

“Have you been here before, Danny?”

The boy looked down in his lap and nodded.

“What am I going to find inside, son?”

Danny looked up and said, “Everything’s going to be all right, Dad.” But the voice and the tone and the body language gave it away as a lie.

“If I go inside,” Sweeney asked, “will I wake up again?”

Now Danny looked genuinely confused.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“I’m asking you,” Sweeney said, “if the dream will end.”

Danny shook his head and said, “This isn’t a dream, Dad.” Then he stood up suddenly, extended his hand to his father, and said, “I’ll show you.”

They walked up the path to the doors, which parted as they approached. Candles mounted in holders high on the walls lit the interior foyer. Father and son stepped inside and Sweeney took a moment to let his eyes adjust.

It was partly the Peck Clinic. It was partly the St. Joseph in Cleveland. And there were touches of the old house back home — an endtable that had been in their bedroom, the framed print that Kerry had bought on a trip to San Francisco. But mostly the castle was Dr. Fliess’s Gothic laboratory, straight from the pages of Limbo.

In a corner of the foyer was an ornate, oversized grandfather clock, the same piece Sweeney had seen in the Peck residence. As soon as he looked at its face, the clock began to chime. And as soon as it chimed, as if it were a signal of some kind, Danny broke away from his father and sprinted up the center staircase to the second floor.

Sweeney yelled after the boy and started to run, but stopped when he heard his name called. He stood still, listened and heard it again, and followed the call into a parlor to the right of the stairs. The room was high Victorian, enormous but crowded with dark and heavy furnishings. Two wing chairs were positioned before a fireplace where a pile of logs was blazing. Someone was sitting in the nearest chair. He heard a crisp page being turned, smelled the cigarette smoke, and walked across the room to sit in the empty chair.

Nora Blake didn’t look up but she held out the hand that braced her cigarette to indicate she’d be with him in a minute. He looked up at the painting hanging above the mantel — a depiction of the Limbo freaks done in the same somber style of the Peck ancestral portraits. Danny was the centerpiece of the work. The rest of the troupe was fanned behind him.

Nora closed the book, sighed, and heaved it into the fire. Embers flew and she shook her head, plugged the cigarette into her mouth, and sucked until her cheeks caved in.

Sweeney looked at the book as the flames consumed its title—The Diary of a Young Chicken Boy.

He said, “You didn’t like it.”

“I’m done with fiction,” Nora said.

“Was it a pirate book?” Sweeney asked.

Nora shook her head, knocked some ashes onto the carpet.

“A love story,” she said and he knew it was a lie. “Really frivolous. I just don’t have the time or the patience anymore.”

She blew out a stream of smoke, came forward, slapped his bad knee, and said, “So you finally made it. What the hell took you so long?”

“You were expecting me?”

“I was hoping,” Nora said.

“To tell you the truth,” Sweeney said. “I didn’t have much say in the matter.”

Nora gave him a sour look and made a dismissive sound, blew some air through pursed lips.

“Of course you did,” she said. “Everyone has a choice. That’s all you’ve got. Choices up the wazoo.”

Sweeney didn’t want to argue with her. “What is this place?” he asked.

“Didn’t Danny tell you?” she said. “It’s home.”

“This isn’t my home,” he said. “I’ve never lived in a place like this.”

“Sweeney, honey,” Nora said, “your memory isn’t what it used to be.”

“I don’t think I can stay here, Nora.”

“You think too much, mister. I’d say that’s your number one problem. You overthink everything. My Ernie had the same tendency, by the way.”

“I’ve got bigger problems than that, Nora.”

She closed her eyes, shook her head.

“I knew you’d say that, Sweeney. I really did. I’m sorry but you’re as predictable as one of my romances.” She leaned forward again and knocked her paperback deeper into the flames. In a lower voice, she added, “It drove Kerry nuts you know.”

“You didn’t know Kerry,” he said and immediately regretted it. He realized that she was baiting him but couldn’t stop himself from giving her what she wanted.

“Let me tell you something about Kerry,” Nora said, angry now. “Kerry deserved better. Kerry deserved to be forgiven.”

“I did forgive her,” yelling now, “I swear to you I did.”

Nora wouldn’t look at him. She was staring at the fire. She said, “That’s right, swear to me.” And then she didn’t say anything else.

He waited a few minutes, watched the last of the paperback turn black and crumple into ash. Then he stood and said, “I have to find Danny.”

Nora rummaged in the chair cushion until she found her cigarettes. And Sweeney moved up to the second floor of the castle.

The first page was one full panel, a portrait of the troupe on the little beach, at the foot of the boulders that stretched up to Dr. Fliess’s castle. The freaks fanned out behind the chicken boy like bowling pins, their heads tilted up in unison and the same look of caution and anticipation on each face. Above them, the black iron castle, the laboratory of the legendary renegade, Dr. Wilton Fliess, sat at the edge of the cliff, looking ominous and uninviting.

The final picture loses focus and stability, turns into a piece of carnival spin art, as Danny throws the comic book into the air. It hits the poster above his bed and knocks it to the floor.

What comes next is a moment that someone with medical knowledge might term fugue. Danny sits up as if prodded by electricity. But then he holds in place. Were he a cartoon boy, and were we able to remove the back of his skull like the lid of a cookie jar, we might see a literal overload of circuits, a convulsion of charges running too fast or too slow, but all in the wrong direction. This lost moment lasts under three seconds. And when it ends, the boy begins to scream.

At that moment, Kerry is in the kitchen, mixing up a homemade yogurt dressing for her salad. But Sweeney can’t see this. He still can see only the squint-compressed vision of his son, his cartoon boy, in the midst of a nonsensical rage that has him shredding the Limbo pillow on his bed.

This is when Kerry enters the picture. She runs into the room to find the air filling rapidly with white and gray feathers. She tries to yell over Danny’s screams.

“What’s wrong?” she cries. “Danny, what’s wrong?”

Sweeney knows the look of growing panic on her face. He hadn’t seen it often but the few times it did appear made an impression. Danny throws what’s left of the pillow at his mother. It hits her in the chest, falls to the floor. She moves to the bed, tries to grab the boy, her sweet, sunny child, who is pounding his bedroom wall hard enough to bloody his fist and to poke a hole in the plaster, using his stubby fingernails to tear off the Limbo wallpaper. Kerry climbs up onto the bed, grabs Danny around the waist, manages to turn him toward her. He is hysterical and enraged and incoherent. Kerry is on her knees, level with him, and Danny hauls off and hits her across the face.

Stunned, she releases the boy and he jumps, animallike, off the bed in one leap and flees the room, but not before he runs his arm down the length of his little bureau, sending Limbo lamp and Limbo coin bank and chicken boy action figure to the floor in a pile of glass and ceramic shards.

“Danny,” the mother screams, now terrified.

She chases the boy into the hall, where he’s catapulting himself from wall to wall, kicking and screeching and punching, trying to break and gouge everything he sees. He runs into his parents’ bedroom, grabs a cast-iron doorstop from the floor, somehow hoists it and heaves it. The mirror above the dresser shatters as Kerry steps into the room. And on the heels of her disbelief comes her own outrage and anger.

“Danny,” she screams at him, “what is wrong with you?”

He dashes past her but manages to kick her in the shin. It shocks more than hurts — he’s not wearing his shoes. Kerry runs after him, catches up with her son on the second-floor landing, at the mouth of the stairway. She snatches an arm and goes down on one knee in the same motion. Danny flails, spitting, screaming, wailing. When he realizes he is caught, again he pulls back an arm and again he arcs it with all his might across his mother’s face.

This one both shocks and hurts. This one dislodges her grip on rationality if only for a second or two. Which is all the time it takes for her to release the son’s arm, cock back her own, adult arm, and bring it forward to crash across the boy’s cheek.

Danny’s head snaps with the blow. It carries his body out over the stairs. He sails into the air until gravity casts him halfway down the stairwell. He falls on a wrist and it breaks, shatters, in fact, small bones fracturing, splintering into rubble. But the body continues to fall. He bounces again on the second stair, makes a quarter turn, thus positioning the head to smash on the flagstone of the foyer.

An instant and an eternity, the fadeout is tipped sideways and involves Kerry’s diminishing scream and the lake of blood that runs in a puddle until resolving into the last image — a red plain with a single bubble in its center.

And then sound and vision terminate.

Later, he thought he could remember being carried. He thought he could remember the sound of a doorbell, but muted, as if the chime were ringing underwater. And maybe he heard an engine throttling up as it receded into the distance. That was about it. The whole of the world was reduced to sound.

Vision didn’t return for hours. The first thing he saw was Alice Peck’s face. She was hovering over him, pulling something cool and damp across his forehead. Then he was out again for a while, until he heard pages being turned. He opened his eyes to see Alice sitting on the edge of his bed, reading the final issue of Limbo. He tried to speak but nothing came and the effort revoked his consciousness once more.

When he returned it was to the smell of chicken soup. He blinked and brought the bowl into focus. It was on the nightstand, steaming, and Alice Peck was stirring it with a spoon. She lowered herself to the mattress, brushed the backs of her fingers against his cheek.

“Do you think you can eat?” she said. “It’ll help to eat.”

He nodded, tried to sit up, and failed.

Alice lifted his head from the pillow with one hand, brought some broth to his mouth with the other. He slurped it, let it pool in his mouth and then slide down the throat. The effort was exhausting, even with Alice’s support. She sensed this and eased him back onto the pillow.

“How long?” he asked. The words came out as a croak.

“I found you on my doorstep,” she said, “about six hours ago.”

“Danny,” he said.

“Danny’s fine,” she said. “He’s up in his room and he’s fine.”

And now he thought to look around. He was in his own bed, in his room in the basement, dressed in clean sweatpants and a T-shirt.

“Lucila gave me a hand getting you down here,” Alice said. “No one else saw you. And I didn’t get a look at whoever dropped you off. They were gone by the time I got to the door.”

She reached out and pulled a bottom lid low and studied Sweeney’s eye. She said, “More soup?”

He shook his head and said, “Danny.”

Alice nodded. “I know. We’ll get you upstairs to see him as soon as possible. But he’s okay, I promise you.”

He tried to sit up and she stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“I’ve called you in sick,” she said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

He opened his mouth and managed only, “Danny.”

She fed him another spoonful of soup, spilled most of it down the chin and mopped it up with a facecloth.

“Your blood pressure’s back to normal,” Alice said. “And so are your pulse and your pupils. You had me a little worried when you first arrived.”

He said, “Danny,” one more time and then he fell back to sleep.

Peck had placed the terrarium on the metal cart next to him, among the rest of his tools. From this vantage, Rene, the salamander, had a fine view of the procedure as it began to unfold. To some degree, the newt’s vision was affected by the curve of the glass bowl, which bent the light a bit and added just a touch of magnification.

The doctors were dressed in deep green gowns and caps. Their masks hung down at their necks, leaving their faces visible. The younger doctor seemed slightly manic, too jovial, bouncing on his feet, his gloved hands clasped tightly behind his back. The older doctor was serious if not severe. He stood at the head of the slab, a safety razor in one hand. The other hand held a swatch of gauze that he used to dab away the shaving cream.

“I’ve never trusted a surgeon,” Peck said to Tannenbaum, “who doesn’t personally shave his patient.”

Tannenbaum mumbled his agreement, but his focus was on the structure framing and confining the child’s skull.

“Everything today is about speed,” Dr. Peck said. “About efficiency and economy.”

The skull was held rigid within a gleaming metal halo that circled around the forehead, just above the delicate ears and the blond eyebrows.

“You’d think we were accountants,” Peck said, a touch dreamily, but still in his lecture voice, “or train conductors.”

The halo, in turn, connected to a series of metal rods, which formed an open cube and bolted to the surgical slab. The device was, Tannenbaum knew, the doctor’s own invention and construction. Just as he knew that he would be acting as little more than instrument nurse throughout the procedure.

As if reading his thoughts, Peck handed his aide the straight razor and foamy gauze, then left his cutting hand extended, all the while continuing to stare at the boy’s skull, as if it were a newly discovered planet. Tannenbaum took the refuse and placed it on the cart, grabbed a fat marking pen and slapped it into the doctor’s waiting palm.

Peck uncapped the pen and brought its tip to the bare scalp, drew a crosshair in the appropriate location and darkened its intersection with a bull’s-eye.

“Science has been degraded,” Peck said to the room. “What was once a vocation has become a profession.”

He recapped the pen, returned it to Tannenbaum. On the instrument cart, resting on a sheet of emerald cotton next to Danny’s bulging medical file, was a collection of Peck family heirlooms — the straight razor with its scrimshaw handle, the steel cannula that had been brought back from a trip to Germany in the ’30s, and the 150-year-old glass syringe, its bulging crystal bulb full of raw potentiality.

While he had hoped to use only Father’s instruments for this procedure, in the end Peck had chosen a state-of-the-art Kopf stereotactic drill to bore through the skull. It was a beautiful piece of equipment — a hand unit, battery operated, with a flexible shaft and a speed range up to fourteen thousand revolutions per minute. The drill weighed only five ounces and accepted a wide variety of shanks and bits. For this case, the doctor had selected a diamond bit to make the opening.

Peck lifted the drill, switched it on and listened to the hum of the motor, eyes closing for just a second as if trying to place the title of an obscure sonata. The procedure itself was a relatively simple operation. The optimum site for reseeding — in the center of the disaster area, in the superior aspect of the basal ganglia — had been identified through CT scans. The doctor would cut through the dura with the craniotomy, then insert a stabilizing probe, plant Father’s syringe, and slowly inject the contents of the crystal bulb — six million cells of potential consciousness. A personal wake-up call from Dr. Peck.

He shut the motor down and looked at his protégé.

“To be a doctor,” he said, “is to accept a responsibility that most men can’t comprehend.”

Tannenbaum nodded, uneasy with the pronouncement, wanting to get on with the operation.

“We’re not like other people,” Peck continued. “A real doctor, a true physician, is a person set apart. We’re a caste unto ourselves. We live outside the tribe. But we’re responsible for its health.”

“It’s a great obligation,” Tannenbaum said, because he felt a response was needed.

“I’m not speaking here,” Peck said, “about viruses and infections. Fevers and broken bones.”

“Of course not,” Tannenbaum said.

“I’m speaking,” Peck said, “about the essential well-being of the race itself. The protection and advancement of the species.”

Tannenbaum nodded, his mask bouncing against his throat.

“I need you to understand what’s at stake here,” Peck said, “I need you to witness the magnitude and the meaning of what we’re about to do.”

“We’re going to bring the boy back,” Tannenbaum blurted and immediately regretted his words.

Peck stared at the younger doctor suspiciously for a second, then pulled the mask up to cover the lower half of his face. Without taking his eyes off his assistant, he thumbed on the drill once again and the noise of its motor filled the theater.

Tannenbaum reached down and lifted the antique syringe gingerly, cradling the glass bulb full of saline and fetal cells. Peck motioned for the young doctor to stand on the other side of the slab, where he’d have an unobscured view of the implantation.

Peck positioned himself directly behind the child’s skull, the red bull’seye looking scarlet under the yellow lights and against the milky white canvas of the boy’s skin. Hunching, the doctor stepped in close and adjusted his weight across his hips, the way his father had advised so many years ago. He felt the control in his arms and hands; his muscles and nerves confident, assured, tremor-free. He could sense himself sliding into that place beyond thought, like a monk or an athlete, ready to fulfill his only reason for being. He brought the drill forward and made ready to bore into the boy’s head.

And in that instant, the salamander began to react to the vibrations that were rolling forward down the hallway. Rene shifted his gaze from the doctor’s hands to the theater’s entrance, just as the doors were kicked open with enough force to snap both of the hinges.

At the sound of the tearing metal, Peck simultaneously pulled back from the skull and began to turn toward the doors, just in time to have the drill batted out of his hands. It fell to the floor, still purring. The surgical theater was suddenly full of bodies. Three men, huge and hairy, screaming obscenities, dressed in leather and fur and denim, rushed inside, followed by the patient’s father and one of the clinic nurses.

The largest of the invaders, the Elephant, immediately grabbed the syringe from Tannenbaum and hurled it, shattering the bulb and showering the wall. Then the biker took Tannenbaum’s throat in one hand and, seizing his crotch through his gown, lifted the young doctor horizontally into the air and heaved him against the wall, where he crashed into and dislodged the display of antique surgical instruments before falling to the ground. In full adrenaline rush, the Elephant ran toward the crumpled pile of doctor and began kicking and stomping along the prone body. The sound of bones snapping was audible until Sweeney yelled, “Don’t kill him. Don’t kill either one of them.”

As Tannenbaum’s bones broke, Peck was knocked to the floor by a euphoric Piglet, then lifted up and held in place by Nadia and the Fluke. Sweeney made himself wait while Piglet drove a knee into Peck’s groin, then brought the cowering doctor upright again with two uppercuts to the head. Then Piglet noticed the drill still whirring away on the ground. He squatted quickly to snatch it, but stood slowly, as if savoring the many kinds of damage he could do with this tool. Positioning the drill before Peck’s forehead, he said, “How ’bout I cut this asshole a third eye?”

At this, Sweeney stepped forward and touched Nadia on the shoulder.

Nadia looked from Sweeney to Piglet and then back to Sweeney, before she asked, “You sure?”

“I’m sure,” Sweeney said.

Nadia nodded to her Abomination, who grudgingly shut off the drill and stuffed it in his back pocket. Sulking, he moved to the slab to start disassembling the brace and halo that held Danny’s head.

Sweeney stepped in front of Peck and said, “I never gave you permission to touch my child.”

Peck stayed silent but stared at the pharmacist.

Nadia slapped the doctor across the back of the skull and yelled, “Answer the man.”

“You don’t know what you’ve done,” Peck said.

“Yes, I do,” Sweeney said. “I’m leaving now. And I’m taking my son with me.”

“He’ll die,” Peck said and Nadia felt a little admiration for the stones on this elderly fucker. “Without the proper care, the boy will die.”

“I’ve made provisions,” Sweeney said.

“He’s all set,” Piglet called, tossing the last of the halo’s bolts over his shoulder.

“You report any of this,” Sweeney said, “and we’ll come back here. And the first person we’ll visit is your daughter.”

“Oh, fuck yeah,” Piglet yelled, as if already in deep fantasy about the many ways he would defile Alice Peck.

Then the Fluke popped the old man in the kidneys, twice, and Nadia let go of Peck’s bony arm and allowed him to slip to the floor.

The Elephant pulled a gurney in from the hallway and he and the Fluke gently moved Danny onto it. Sweeney reached into his pocket, pulled out his car keys and tossed them to Piglet.

“I’m parked at the rear exit, right next to the door,” Sweeney said. “Give us about a half hour before you head back to the Harmony.”

Piglet stared at the keys in his hand, squinted, looked from Sweeney to Nadia and said, “I ain’t driving no fuckin’ Honda.”

Nadia smiled and said, “Move your ass.”

Piglet heaved a sigh, started to turn, then, as if remembering something, pulled the surgical drill from his pocket and held it up defiantly, like a gun or a flag.

“I’m takin’ this,” he said to Nadia, who shrugged. Satisfied, Piglet led the way out of the theater and the Fluke and the Elephant followed, Danny on the gurney between them.

Nadia surveyed the room, motioned toward Tannenbaum with her head.

“That one will be out for a while,” she said. “But this one,” toeing Dr. Peck, “is still ambulatory.”

Sweeney went down on one knee and watched the doctor curl up, fetal.

“My son for your daughter,” Sweeney said, putting a hand on Peck’s shoulder in time to feel the tremble.

Rising, Sweeney said to Nadia, “Go on. I’ll be out in just a second.”

Nadia gave him an uneasy look.

“There are some things that Danny will need,” Sweeney said. “It’ll just take me a second.”

Nadia looked around the chaos of the room, nodded and departed.

Dr. Peck remained on the floor, knees bent up toward his belly, shoulders bent in toward the chest, both arms crossed and the eyes closed, as if in dream.

Sweeney moved to the surgical cart and lifted the shaving razor. Then he dropped it, gathered up Danny’s medical file and stuffed the bulging folder inside his jacket. He turned to leave, hesitated, and turned back to the cart once more. This time, he picked up and pocketed the marking pen. Then he put his hand inside the terrarium and lifted Rene out of the bowl. He placed the salamander in his shirt pocket and walked out the broken doors.

Sweeney rode to the Harmony on the back of Nadia’s bike, one hand around the nurse’s waist, the other cupping his own shirt pocket, making sure the newt was secure. And as the wooded hills surrounding the Clinic gave way to the city, he felt Rene begin to move. Felt the tiny, damp feet raking down softly over the heart.

They rolled at an even speed past the foundries and the chemical plants, past acres of ghostly housing projects and antique tenements long gone dark. Eventually, they cut into the city proper and made for downtown, a Mardi Gras in perpetual decay, this crowded hive of clubs and bars, noodle dens and arcades, strip joints and chapels of the apocalypse, all of them announced in red and blue neon. To Sweeney it looked like the last nightmare. And it smelled like a third world circus — sweet and rancid and toxic.

They approached the Harmony from the rear, through the blocks of ruined brick and stone. Halfway across the lot, they could make out Buzz, sitting alone in the rocking chair on the loading dock, waiting like some sea captain’s wife. Nadia parked the bike and killed the engine. They dismounted and climbed up onto the apron.

Buzz didn’t say a word and Sweeney sat down on the rail, blocking his view of the ruins. Nadia went inside the factory without speaking and after a minute they could hear her running water in the cafeteria.

Buzz looked as if he were staring through Sweeney, still focusing on the broken bricks in the distance.

“I’m not a solitary person, usually,” Buzz said and it sounded as if he were speaking to himself. “I like people around. I was alone a lot, growing up.”

Sweeney didn’t think the biker was looking for a comment, so he kept quiet.

“The thing is,” Buzz continued, “sometimes, when you really need to think, there’s no substitute for solitude.”

Sweeney allowed himself a nod.

“The boys are off on a run,” Buzz said. “And I don’t mind telling you, I miss every one of those fuckers already.”

“I’m sure you do,” Sweeney said, not rushing anything. Letting Buzz Cote do this in his own way and time.

“They drive me bugfuck. They really do, sometimes. But I’m like any parent. I’d be lost without them. And I like to think they feel the same way about me.”

“You’re a family,” Sweeney said and when Buzz’s eyes focused in on him for the first time, he knew he’d chosen the perfect word.

“I’ve been sitting out here for hours,” Buzz said. “I haven’t moved a fucking muscle. I been sitting here trying to figure out what it was you were gonna do. And I was trying to decide what I was gonna do once you made your decision.”

Sweeney took in air through his nose.

“I know sometimes I might seem erratic,” Buzz said. “Maybe even weak. But I’m neither one. I’m focused. It’s about being willing to become anything and everything to get what you need. To get what your family needs. To go hard or soft. Be sweet or sour. Eyes on the prize. Every fucking second.”

“It’s not easy,” Sweeney said, “being a father.”

“And I hope you understand how much I appreciate that.”

“The thing is,” Sweeney said, “I honestly do. I believe you get it.”

Buzz leaned sideways just a little.

“It changes you,” he said. “And not just in the ways you’d expect.”

Sweeney’s throat was dry. He wished Nadia would bring out a bottle.

“It’s about sacrifice,” Sweeney said. “To do the job right, you have to give up parts of yourself.”

“Fuck, yes,” Buzz said. “I swear to you, I’m not the man I used to be.”

“You’d give an arm and a leg,” Sweeney said, “to keep your child from getting lost. You’d give whatever was necessary.”

“You’d walk through fire,” Buzz said. “You’d kick God in the balls.”

“You’d give up your own life,” Sweeney said, “in a second. No hesitation.”

“No thinking at all,” Buzz said, “because that’s who you become.”

“But sometimes,” Sweeney said, “the kid gets lost anyway. And there’s not a thing you can do about it.”

Buzz went quiet for several seconds. When he spoke again, his voice sounded edgier, on the verge of impatient and heading into angry.

“That,” he said, “is where we disagree in a major fucking way.”

Sweeney didn’t say anything.

“You can always find him,” Buzz said. “And you can always forgive him for getting lost in the first place. Always.”

“The chicken boy tried to tell me the same thing.”

“It was Danny,” Buzz yelled, his voice suddenly loud enough to echo off the ruins.

He got up out of the rocking chair and joined Sweeney on the rail. The light on the dock was muddy and half of the biker’s face was in shadow.

“Jesus Christ, Sweeney, I have tried to be patient. But you don’t have an ounce of fucking faith. I gave you a goddamn chance to be with your boy for the first time in a year. And you come back the same zombie as when you left.”

“I’m just not sure it was Danny—”

“Of course it was Danny,” coming forward off the rail now and leaning down into Sweeney. “Who else you think it was?”

“I’m saying I’m not sure it was real.”

“It was as real as it gets,” Buzz yelled, raising an arm as if ready to backhand the pharmacist. But he caught himself and froze, took a breath, and made himself ease the arm to his side. He tipped his head back, rubbed his forehead, pushed out some air, lowered his voice, and said, “I’m sorry. I’m just running out of time here. I want to do this the easy way. The way that’s right for everyone involved. I’m trying to do what’s best for everyone — me and my people and you and your boy. But you’re making it awfully fucking difficult for me, Sweeney.”

“Think of it from my point of view—” Sweeney began and Buzz said, “I’m doing exactly that.”

But Sweeney pushed on with his words.

“In a single night, I lost everything. I’ve been living in a nightmare for a year. Now you and Peck both come along. And both of you start telling me I can wake up from the nightmare. Only Peck says he can bring Danny back into my world—”

“Peck is a lying sack of shit.”

“—and you tell me you can bring me into Danny’s world.”

“And I proved it. We took you into Limbo. We let you talk to your boy. And he told you what to do, didn’t he?”

“Someone,” Sweeney said, “or something told me what to do. But he didn’t tell me how to do it.”

“You leap,” Buzz said, on the verge of pleading now, the conversion so close he could feel it. “You take the fucking leap. You decide to believe. And you become one of us. There’s a family waiting for you here, Sweeney. Me and Nadia and all of the boys. We’ll take care of you and we’ll take care of Danny. And, in turn, you’ll take care of us. That’s the way family works. You don’t have to be alone anymore, Sweeney. This is the way out of the nightmare, son. This is the way out of the grave.”

“You can’t imagine how much I want to believe you.”

Buzz put a hand out into the dark air before him.

“Then do it,” he said. “I’m standing right here waiting for you. Let go and fucking leap.”

They stared at each other. No sound but the wind and their own breathing. White clouds of mist floated out from their mouths and nostrils.

Sweeney moved first. He reached a hand deep into his right pants pocket and slowly pulled out a glass vial filled to the top with a murky pink liquid. He held it up between their faces and then brought it down and placed it in Buzz’s enormous hand.

Buzz’s whole body gave up a single tremor. Sweeney saw the biker’s chest heave and heard his respiration catch for a second. Then fingers closed over Sweeney’s hand and the vial. And then the biker pulled the pharmacist into a long bear hug that ended only when Nadia came out onto the dock carrying a cocktail tray.

Sweeney and Buzz unclenched and turned to the woman. With one hand, Buzz lifted from the tray an uncapped bottle of bourbon and with the other he picked up two syringes. He leaned over and kissed Nadia on the brow, passed the bottle to Sweeney, and said, “Mother, the prodigal has returned.”

Sweeney took the bottle, brought it to his lips, and guzzled. He handed the bottle back and said, “What would you have done if I’d walked away?”

Buzz smiled and raised the bottle and closed both eyes for a second while he took a long drink.

“I’m a father,” he said, “I would’ve done whatever was necessary.”

Nadia rested the tray on the dock rail, stepped into Sweeney, laid a hand on his shoulder, and kissed him on the cheek.

“You made the right choice,” she said. “You’ll see.”

Buzz took another hit off the bottle and passed it back to Sweeney, then he slung an arm around Sweeney’s and Nadia’s necks, pulled both into him, released them just enough so that they could walk as a threesome back inside the factory.

Lit candles were on several of the lunch tables in the cafeteria and they gave the room a warm glow that hid much of its dinginess.

“The boys won’t be back till morning,” Buzz said, lowering himself into a Buddha posture in the center of the room and slapping the floor next to him, indicating that Sweeney should do the same. “I wanted the two of us to journey out together this time. We’ll go give Danny the word. Together. I can’t wait to see his face.”

He handed the spikes back to Nadia and began to roll up a sleeve. “The Sheep cooked up this last batch for me before he left. But with the new meat you brought tonight, there’ll be enough for everybody when they get home tomorrow.”

Sweeney pushed up his sleeves and put a hand on Buzz’s arm.

“You’ll let me talk to Danny first?” he said. “There are some things I’ve got to say.”

“When are you gonna realize,” Buzz said, “that I understand.”

“I know you do, Buzz,” Sweeney said and then looked up to Nadia and nodded.

She got down on her knees between the two men. The candles lit up her face. She took Sweeney’s arm in her hands, lifted it, and brought her mouth down to the inside crook and kissed the skin. Then she found the vein she wanted, plunged the needle in, and thumbed the soup home.

The puncture bled a little when she removed the spike. Sweeney looked from Nadia to Buzz and back. Then his head snapped back and he sucked in a fast lungful of air and keeled backward. He stared up at the ceiling, his mouth open a little, his jaw slack, his eyes unfocused, and one foot twitching at the end of his leg.

Buzz looked down on him approvingly.

“Let’s go, darlin’,” he said and held out an arm, “I told you everything would work out.”

Nadia cradled his arm and poked it with a finger looking for a target. “Buzz,” she said, “I never doubted you.”

And then she jammed the needle into the side of his neck, an inch below his left ear. Buzz screamed but didn’t manage to throw her to the floor until she’d flooded him with enough soup to overdose a trio of Abominations.

Nadia landed on her back at Sweeney’s feet. She looked up at Buzz who was trying and failing to yank the syringe out of his neck, muscles already numbing up. Buzz tried to stand and fell onto his stomach. He tried to speak but his tongue was swelling, and all that came out was a soft and slobbery sound. He threw an arm forward and hit Nadia’s leg but he was beyond a grasp by now.

Nadia sat up and kicked the hand away. She waited another second or two until she saw the eyes were dilated. Then she got onto her hands and knees, crawled to the incapacitated biker, pulled the needle from his neck and tossed it into a corner.

She put her hand over the seeping wound and said, “We’ll take good care of you, Buzz. I promise that. And the boys will come to visit whenever they get a chance.”

Taking a breath, she shifted position and said, “You okay?”

Sweeney sat up slowly and pulled down the sleeves of his shirt. He eyed Buzz cautiously and said, “You’re sure it was enough?”

She took her hand off the neck, wiped her palm across Buzz’s back, and said, “He’s in Limbo. And he’s never coming back.”

It took about an hour to give the Harmony a mediocre wipe-down. They worked in silence and spent most of their time packing what Nadia said she needed from the factory. They crated a hodgepodge of equipment, left it on the dock, and sat down in the rocking chairs.

“Do I want to know what was in my spike?” Sweeney asked.

“Saline,” Nadia said. “And some food coloring.”

“And you’re sure you won’t have any problems with the others?”

“I can handle my boys,” Nadia said. “Even the dumbest of the bunch knows he needs me more than Buzz.”

Sweeney thought about this for a few seconds, then asked, “How long will it take us to get there?”

For a while, he didn’t think she was going to answer. Then she said, “I’d like to make it to Tampico by Sunday. But you know, you can’t really open up a hearse.”

And as if on cue, they heard engines in the distance and looked out across the ruins to see the Abominations approaching. Near the end of the line of bikes he spotted his Accord. And bringing up the rear was the hulking, antique hearse. Both vehicles were spewing black smoke but managing to keep up with the convoy.

“I can’t believe,” Sweeney said, “they got the hearse up and running.”

“That’s been your problem from the start,” Nadia said. “This is a talented family. We can fix almost anything.”

“You’re sure there’s room,” Sweeney asked, “for both of them?”

“There’ll be plenty of room,” Nadia said. “There’s a lot of space when you take out the casket.”

Then the engine scream got too loud to talk over and they sat in silence as the bikes and the hearse and the Honda fell into a semicircle before them, idling, rumbling. The bikers glanced expectantly from one to the other and then all eyes turned up toward Nadia and Sweeney. And the nurse and the pharmacist gazed down on this collection of freaks, overgrown children with the names of creatures, all of them looking as if they had been woken, too suddenly, from a sleep that was heavy with the odd logic of dreams.

Nadia leaned over the dock railing and let a small smile spread over her lips.

“Okay, kids,” she said, “it’s time to rise and shine.”

. . They came from the city of Quinsigamond, in the heart of the industrial rust belt, a land of bad dreams and rubble. They crossed the American continent in a southwestern arc, traveling in a convoy that fragmented and regrouped over a run of days and states. And they became a family in the way that only renegades can, by embracing their difference and taking the hard-line against consensus reality.

Make no mistake, however: traveling with the comatose is a complex undertaking. But Nadia had planned well and thoroughly and on those rare occasions when her plans failed to consider an eventuality, she was a genius at improvisation.

Fueled on amphetamine and fast food, the Abominations kept pace with their leader, gunning their bikes through the night, some of them blocking for the hearse, some of them covering its rear. Sleeping rough, out in the fields and forests, they huddled in their leathers. They torched the Honda and abandoned it in Newark. They lost the Fluke to a state cop somewhere in Delaware. They lost the Piglet to a county sheriff someplace in South Carolina. But Nadia had no worries. The boys would either catch up or disappear, she said, and there wasn’t much anyone could do either way.

As for the hearse, it was left undisturbed, as if, in this land, death was always the final authority. The nurse and the pharmacist took turns driving, Danny and Buzz stretched out in the back. Nadia monitored her patients, tended their lines and sponged them down each night. She drew fluid from Buzz’s makeshift shunt. Beneath the beer cans in a Styrofoam cooler at his feet, she stored the vials — the Sheep’s new source of meat for the soup they’d consume while in transit. Danny’s fluid she dumped out the window.

Behind the wheel, Sweeney was pleasantly surprised to find a radio in the dash. He fiddled with the dial until he found the Chi-Lites or the Stylistics, then he would let himself daydream. And when he rode shotgun, he transcribed the daydreams on the back of his son’s medical reports, using Dr. Peck’s surgical marker.

From his perch on the dashboard, Rene, the salamander, acted as compass, herald, and mascot. Once or twice, when passing through a rural stretch, Sweeney pulled over and collected some beetles and aphids for the newt. But Rene didn’t seem interested in the grub and he began to eat less and less as the journey progressed. As if he were moving beyond food. As if he were preparing for a new kind of sustenance.

After a time, Sweeney started to follow Rene’s lead, foregoing the greasy burgers and fries and reducing his intake to the speed and the beer. In this way, the trip became more and more like a story as they pushed southward and began to zero in on the border, made themselves ready to cross out of their homeland forever. And at some unnoticed point on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere, Sweeney succumbed to a profound repose. And he understood that this was what it felt like to believe.

Unlike Sweeney, Nadia remained insatiable. The hearse became littered with her refuse, crumpled and stained paper bags piling up amid crushed aluminum cans and Danny’s issues of Limbo, which were now in a condition somewhat less than pristine.

Late in the night, as Nadia speeded along, one hand on the wheel, the other gripping a can or a bunful of meat, chattering about what they would find at the end of their journey, Sweeney would page through one of the comics, reading by the glove box light, searching out a needed name or nugget of history. Then he’d close the box and scribble in the dark on the back of a med sheet, sometimes right on an x-ray.

By Augusta, he came to feel, at last, that he understood the story of the freaks. By Tuscaloosa, he understood that the story was deficient. And by the time they crossed the border at Brownsville, he found that he was reading solely for reference.

To many, it might seem crazy to travel west in order to move east. But the only freighter bound for Old Bohemia that would consent to carry this troupe of misfits was the Wyznanie, an ancient Polish tramp with a crew of convicts and a captain who napped through much of the passage.

The ship departed from the Port of Tampico and steamed out of the gulf, headed for the old world. Nadia paid a fortune for transport, but they were able to drive the hearse right into the hold, where the Abominations set up camp.

The bikers stayed below deck throughout the journey, eating and sleeping among the freight — barrels full of colored inks and embalming fluid, crates full of barbiturates and the pulpiest of paper. They spent the nights curled together in blankets, rolling with the waves and dreaming of the castle on a hill outside of Maisel. Nadia had described it as the last clinic they would ever need. But Nadia never came down to the hold.

She remained, day and night, at the bow of the ship, Buzz in the deck chair behind her, wrapped in quilts, his eyes covered by sunglasses. Studying the Atlantic, Nadia searched for other ships that might be carrying other dreamers striving toward the same castle, that final clinic, the healing church of all sleeping freaks.

And like a mirror at the ship’s stern, Sweeney watched everything recede. Behind him, Danny lounged and dreamed, wrapped in alpaca.

Near the end of the voyage, on a particularly foggy night, Sweeney took the complete Limbo story and began to throw it overboard, one issue at a time, like some kind of ritual. In the moonlight, he glanced at one garish cover after another and then let it drop into the ship’s wake, watching it float for a moment or two before it sank into the blackness of the sea.

He spied Bruno swimming for the coast of Gehenna, Kitty on his back, the unconscious chicken boy cradled in one bulging arm as the strongman kicked the trio to safety. Sweeney focused in on the swimmer’s face, looking, perhaps, for a sign of realization regarding the moment’s meaning. And then he tossed the issue over the ship’s rail.

Next he perused a tawdry death scene, showers of scarlet blood frozen midspurt as Lazarus Cole was pummeled to death by the enraged dozen. Sweeney saw the rocks and bricks, pipes and plates crashing down on the magician’s body, tearing flesh, breaking bone, thrashing the skull until the brain began to turn itself off. This time, Sweeney closed his eyes for a moment as he sailed the comic into the dark and salty air.

When he opened them, he saw that the wind had selected a particular image in the last issue of Limbo and he looked down on a full page depiction of Chick, prone atop his own coffin lid, floating out into the watery expanse as the sun rose and his family folded itself, member by member, into unique shrouds of grief along the shore.

And as he studied this picture, Sweeney thought about all the places where the story’s creator had gone wrong, fallen down on the job. It was as if the artist had come to hate his characters and his audience. And for Sweeney, this was a helpful exercise in learning how to craft his own tales.

Some stories, the Limbo author had written, do not have a happy ending.

And some stories, Sweeney would counter, have no ending at all. Were he to meet and confront this Menlo, the creator of Limbo, Sweeney would insist that some stories sail on and on, moving, perhaps, beyond their maker’s vision, but floating, nonetheless, into worlds unknown. Carried by currents of need, whose source we may never discover.

If it is true that Danny was shattered by a story, then maybe it follows that he can be remade by a story. In this regard, Sweeney has ideas. Notions of wandering and adventure, of transgression and sorrow, penance and reconciliation. Beyond this, Sweeney has hundreds of sheets of medical reports and a surgical marker. And it is possible that this is all he needs for a communion of minds and shared memories. For a true dream in which human freaks engage an abominable world. And sometimes redeem it.

JACK O’CONNELL is the author of four widely acclaimed novels. He lives with his wife and children in Worcester, Massachusetts.

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