Borderlands 2 Read online

  The microscope was moved into position behind Lynch’s head. Through its twin lens, both men would have a clear view of the brain. “Hit the lights,” said Rossini.

  A blanket of darkness fell over the room, accentuated by the oasis of light around the operating table. As Rossini leaned into the eyepiece, the students in the darkened OR gathered closer around their video monitor. A recorded image of the brain greeted them as they watched—a white mass of spongy tissue intersected with hundreds of thin red blood vessels.

  Rossini sat like a jeweler, arms lifted, eyes glued to the lens. What he saw was infinitely more vivid than what any video monitor could pick up: the redness of the blood vessels had a deep, thick texture, like freshly cut rose petals; a redness that he could almost smell. And the brilliance of their crimson light was prodded by the eggshell whiteness of gelatinous brain tissue. Gently now, he could proceed. What came first, son, the chicken or the egg.

  His father’s mocking voice flickered in his mind, just before Moyer spoke.

  “The patient moved.”

  Rossini froze. His arms hung in the air. Without moving his eyes from the microscope, he called to Giovinco: “Damn it, Phil. What’s happening?”

  “We’re stable,” replied Giovinco irritably. “But I see movement.”

  “There is movement,” reiterated Moyer. “Are you telling me how to do my job?” “I’m telling you …”

  “Wait!”

  Rossini’s body had tensed like a car accident victim just before the brick wall.

  “It’s not the brain that’s moving!”

  Moyer quickly was on the lens again. “Jesus,” he hissed.

  “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  “It can’t be.”

  “It is.”

  “What the hell is it?”

  “… don’t know … never seen anything …

  “Doctor?”

  “… but it’s alive …”

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” and moving.”

  The circulating nurse suddenly burst out laughing. “This is a joke, right?”

  Giovinco pushed his way up to Rossini. “Just what the hell is going on?”

  Cries of horror and disgust rose from around the video monitor—the students were seeing what no textbook in the world described.

  And through the noise, all Rossini could think of was alligators.

  7

  Why struggle on?

  It’s not the quality of my life. God knows, it’s not Angela.

  No, what I fight to keep alive for is a sense of responsibility born more from guilt than any moral imperative.

  Something dreadful has happened to me and I doubt if any surgeon can cure it. Within the closed doors of my unconscious mind, a creature lives, a man who longs to be free.

  I have dreamt him into existence. Night after night he comes to me, always the same: dressed in a black suit, tall and thin, wearing a black bowler, his face a canvas without features, a void of bone-white flesh.

  I call him the Walker, because in my dreams he walks endlessly—through cities and towns, across oceans, circling the globe. Growing larger as more people see him, until he rises above buildings, his head lost in the clouds, his shoulders blotting out the sun. And his eyes, as large as two black planets, stare down into the panic and terror below.

  With every dream I bring him closer to reality, forming him bit by bit, only to contain him within the borderlands of my dreams.

  If I should die under the surgeon’s knife, I am afraid that he will live on without me.

  He is so vivid in my mind that when I awake in the morning (or in the middle of the eternal night) my eyes scatter round the room, anticipating that paleface grinning down at me, free at last, for he is everyone’s secret nightmare.

  He is the unknown hand of fear that clutches men and women around the throat as they sit alone on cold winter nights, consumed with the knowledge of their lonely existence. He is the nameless dread that thickens the air of abandoned buildings, avatar of the incomprehensible void that lies just beneath the surface of reality. He is the demon in the pit, the monster at the center of the maze. His face is blank, until gazed upon; then he becomes a mirror, for he is nothing less than ourselves. Naked and hairy—exposed—our evil and guilt, our betrayals and ravenous egos. He is the hidden reality of the beast.

  8

  Angela sat in the cafeteria, trying desperately to keep her mind on the tangible reality before her, but nothing worked. Her mind kept rushing back to Shelton …

  … ascending the rocky trail up the mountain to the old mines.

  The slope above the fossil site was littered with the husks of dead trees leaning above a raging ocean of wild brush. She had worn a pair of khaki shorts and the bramble that encroached upon the path scratched her bare legs. Sweating and sore, she reached the plateau where the decaying wood buildings stood, a few yards behind Jonathan. Stopping to catch her breath, she stood in the shadows of a moldy breaker.

  Her husband kept walking. He moved parallel to the old rail tracks that led to the rotting gangways down to the mine. Piles of rotted lumber and old railroad ties lay in clumps along the tracks, supporting the twisting growth of vines and weeds.

  Then she saw the smoke, rising from fissures along the ground—dozens of them—the pillars of vapor snaking upward toward the blue sky. There was an odor of sulfur in the air and, combined with the heat, it made breathing difficult. She felt like she was standing in the lair of some ancient, tire-breathing dragon.

  “I want to leave,” she called out.

  Jonathan stopped with his back facing her.

  “No.”

  “Why can’t you listen?” she complained loudly, venting her frustration. “The man said it was dangerous here. You could see that for yourself if you just opened your eyes. You won’t be happy until you kill yourself.”

  “You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

  He was standing on a mound; a few feet to the left was one of the smoking fissures. She could only see half his body, the rising steam from the underground mine fire obscuring his figure. He turned to her, the sunlight diffused through the gray fog, making a wavering silhouette with dark eyes that shone like hard nuggets of coal. Hi voice rang clearly when he spoke: “We have to talk about something.”

  The rising smoke billowed around him, floating over his shoulders, encircling his legs, moving across his stiff face like the finger of a lover.

  “Explain this.”

  His arm appeared out of the vapor. In his hand, he held a creased note.

  Automatically, she shook her head and laughed, denying the gleaming fact of the note’s existence. Denial filled her like a flood of water forced into a narrow-lipped jar, spilling over the top.

  “Explain.” he repeated, jabbing the note at her like a prod, stepping off the mound of dirt. His broad, wide face was flushed crimson, a red fist of anger.

  “Explain what?”

  “This note, that’s what!”

  “How do I know what it is?”

  “It’s addressed to you. ‘Dear Angela …’ Read it to me. Loud, to refresh your memory! I want to hear his words come out of your mouth.”

  “Whose words?”

  “Your lover … I want to hear if he’s a better writer than I am.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah? Does he fuck you good?”

  “You’re an asshole!” she shouted in utter disgust.

  He moved for her. She could see every muscle and nerve in his body trembling. “WHY? HOW COULD YOU?”

  Then he was in her face, his harsh breath blowing wetly over her cheeks. He gripped her shoulders. “You fucking whore! Who is he?”

  “Stop it,” she cried, feeling real pain from his violent grip. “There’s no one else.”

  “Bullshit!” He began to shake her, his face a clenched mask of animal fury.

  “What the hell do you care?” she streamed through her tears. “You se
lf-absorbed prick! You’re not there for me! You don’t even know I exist. You don’t talk to me, don’t touch me … I’m not even human to you. I don’t matter… the only thing that matters is your work.”

  “Yeah, my work and my royalty checks … you sure exist when they come in, don’t you? DON’T YOU? PARASITE!”

  Angela shrieked. The hatred snapped through her bones like a brittle, white-hot wire. She twisted one of her arms free and slapped him viciously across the mouth. The jarring impact shot to her elbow, inciting her rage. She flung herself at him with all of her strength.

  “Bastard! Bastard!” she cursed him as he was driven back, tripping over the railroad tracks. She delighted in watching him fall, a graceless drunk. The back of his head thumped dully against the ungiving rail. His face squeezed out a silent moan of pain. A pool of copper blood seeped into his light brown hair.

  Time stopped.

  I killed him, she thought. I betrayed him and then I killed him.

  And then the dragon opened its mouth and swallowed him.

  A burst of gas-scented smoke poured out of the soil as a hole opened beneath him. With a look of almost comical amazement, her husband tumbled down into the earth, his desperately clawing hands trying to reach for support.

  “Jonathan!”

  Angela rushed forward, reaching through the dust and smoke for a grip on his hands, but they had vanished. “Jonathan? Jonathan!”

  The dust cleared in silence.

  “Angela!”

  His voice was a ghost, filtering up through the black hole.

  She scrambled down onto her stomach and brought her face to the brink of the opening. The hole was no more than four feet in diameter, sealing off the penetrating rays of sunlight at the very top.

  “Help me!”

  She stared at the impenetrable murk. “I can hear you, but I can’t see you. Are you all right?”

  “I’m right here … wedged in … I can see you … help me out.” don’t know what to do,” she cried in desperation “I’m sorry.”

  “Find something I can hold … hurry … there’s things down here.”

  “Things’?”

  “For God’s sake, hurry. Get a piece of that stuff that’s piled up!”

  Angela ran from the hole, grateful for the sense of direction. At the old woodpile she swiftly began to Sort the lumber—most were so rotten with age that they crumbled in her hand—but toward the center she found a solid two-by-four and raced back to her husband.

  “I have it,” she called, kneeling over the hole.

  “Good! Angle it in … hurry.”

  Angela moved the board into the hole until the front end struck against the earthen wall below. She pushed the opposite end tightly against the partially exposed railroad tie that rimmed the opening.

  “There! It’s done!”

  Almost immediately she saw his right hand grab the board. There was a loud grunt and his other hand followed. “Come on,” she urged.

  Slowly and painfully, he pulled himself up out of the blackness, his face streaked with blood and dirt. She was surprised at how close he actually was—she had a vision of him tumbling and screaming to the center of the earth—but he had only fallen about six feet. Using the wood as a hoist, he moved toward her outstretched hands. The need to touch him sliced her heart like a razor.

  She remembered the exact feeling as she sat drinking her tea and staring through the nearly empty cafeteria—for that one brief instant, on a desolate slope in a forgotten town, she could have brought him back. Across years of silence, betrayals, lost dreams. Pulled him back from the blackness of her own guilt and anger, into her safe arms. But time had run out and whatever control they had on the fate of their relationship had been taken from them like toys from naughty children by an unseen force greater than any hope she could possibly summon. She remembered the look in his eyes as he reached the top of the hole; there was a riot going on behind them, fueled by terror and panic. Using his upper body strength, he planted the palms of his hands on the wooden tie, swung himself completely out of the hole, rolled once, then jumped to his feet, shouting: “There’s something in my hair!”

  And that’s when she saw it, through his clawing fingers at the back of his head—it was like seeing the door shut on her future.

  At first she thought the wind was lifting his straight brown hair, but the atmosphere was dead with humidity, and there wasn’t a sliver of breeze around them.

  She realized it wasn’t his hair that was moving, but something alive, clinging to the back of his head like moss on a cypress tree. Something with dark gray tentacles that danced in the air with liquid grace. She thought absurdly of a wig that had sprung to life, transformed into a large, bristling oval of horror, multi-dimensional, a chaotic brew of evolutionary stages. Part water creature, part insect—the shiny, stiff center reminded her of the hard shell of a beetle—and when she saw, briefly, a lizard jaw lined with needle-point teeth snap up from the tufts of hair, she thought of reptiles … and Grayer’s old fossils at the base of the mountain.

  Jonathan reached back with his right hand, shouting like a madman. He grasped the wriggling mass and tore it away from his head, hurling it back into the steamy, dark pit. Out of sight forever … gone in an instant, so that Angela doubted whether or not she had actually seen it. The only trace of its existence was the fear left in her husband’s wild eyes, the revulsion she felt in her own crawling skin, and the small puncture wound at the base of her husband’s neck.

  An opening that healed within two days, just before the nightmares and the pain began.

  Angela shook her head, trying to dislodge the images of that day and return to the present. She searched the cafeteria, staring at the people around her—a group of nurses laughing at one table, an old janitor emptying trash, a father and a young boy silently eating breakfast.

  She had never told anyone what she had seen that day, not even Jonathan (who only knew that something had gotten into his hair), because she knew they would have thought that she was crazy. And maybe she was. Either way, she was responsible for what happened. Everyone in the cafeteria seemed to reflect that guilt in their eyes when they looked at her. There was no end to it. No matter where she ran to, or where she tried to hide, the reality followed her, hounding her like a criminal, accusing her of the failures of her dreams. All she ever wanted was to be taken care of. She was weak and she was selfish, and she wanted—no, demanded—someone to love her who didn’t care about her faults. Someone who was blind to everything but love for her who did not reflect in their own selfish pursuits and cold silences her own weaknesses. She wanted the White Knight to take her forever.

  9

  Robbin brought him back, squeezing his hand, shaking his trembling arm.

  “Ben, get control. If you can’t continue, I’ll call someone.”

  “Get someone now!” ordered Giovinco.

  Rossini whirled around, his eyes circling the room, trying to find an opening, an escape from the madness, but he was trapped—nurses, students, doctors—they surrounded him, waiting for him to fail, or succeed, or lead them back into the hellhole he had opened.

  “I want quiet in here!” he screamed, sucking up every last ounce of willpower he could muster. “Get back on the lens, Moyer. I need forceps, Robbin. Giovinco, you mealy-mouthed son-of-a-bitch, get back to work!”

  And to himself he said I’ll show you what comes first, Pop.

  He went back to the microscope. His hands were shaking, a betrayal. He wanted to scream at them, command them, hurl them against the wall until they obeyed. A vicious rage possessed him—he was tired of looking into the unknown like a newborn babe.

  “Dr. Moyer? Are you with me?” The young resident was hovering above his lens. His eyes were glazed with tears and when he spoke, the words sounded as if they had been stretched like rubber bands, about to snap and backfire.

  “What the hell is it?” he kept asking.

  Rossini didn’t know. He had seen man
y parasitical diseases of the brain in his time; he’d relieved the pain of cutaneous larva migraines on more than one occasion. He had found tapeworms, roundworms, and even fly maggots in the brain. But he had never seen anything like the thing in Jonathan Lynch’s head.

  It was about four inches in diameter, with numerous tentacles that entwined in the folds of the pulpy brain matter. Its body was alternately flat and bulging. Parts of it adhered to the living tissue like a second layer of skin; other Sections bulged with undigested brain matter. The head was the most remarkable thing—long and narrow, eyeless, scaly, and possessing a mouth lined with numerous pointed teeth. It was something out of a nightmare.

  “I’m going in for it,” said Rossini. “I don’t know what the hell it is or how it got there, but the principle has to be the same … relieve the pressure, relieve the pain.

  Lipinski handed him the forceps as silence fell over the room once again—a quiet alive with unspoken fear.

  As Rossini entered the skull, the creature moved, sensing danger, but the surgeon was precise and swift. He clamped down on the twisting creature. The thin tentacles lifted protectively, wrapping around the forceps as the angry head reared back, biting into the steel. But Rossini was not to be denied. With a single brutal, inelegant move, he tore the thing out of the skull.

  And as he did, Jonathan Lynch tried to open his eyes.

  “Goddamn it, Giovinco! You’ve lost him!” shouted Rossini, holding the forceps, and the wriggling creature caught between the prongs, as far away from his body as possible.

  “Get his hands!” Lipinski cried. The circulating nurse sprang forward, reaching for Lynch’s flopping hands. A deep, raw gurgling issued from his throat and his head shook in the vise.

  “Shit! He’s tearing arteries!”

  A powerful fount of blood spurted from the skull, spattering onto the gleaming tiled floor.

  “Get another unit of blood,” ordered Rossini. Whirling in the opposite direction he shouted at Giovinco, who was frantically turning the valve to increase the flow of anesthesia. GET HIM UNDER CONTROL!”