Elizabeth Hand - 12 Monkeys

Kathryn watched incredulously as he slid across the backseat and hammered at the window control. A rush of cold air filled the car, but Cole only laughed delightedly, sticking his head out the window with his mouth open.

“Air!” he yelped. “ I’m breathing air!”

Ahead a sign reared from the side of the freeway.

Kathryn nibbled at her lip again and watched Cole, still reveling in the cold night air. Now what? she thought.

“…on Blueberry Hi—ill…”

Abruptly the song cut off, Cole yanked his head back in from the window, giving Kathryn an accusing look.

“ This just in from Fresno, California ,” a radio announcer pronounced in gloomy tones. “ Emergency crews are converging on a cornfield where playmates of nine-year-old Ricky Neuman say they saw him disappear right before their eyes …”

Cole’s expression became troubled as the announcer continued.

“ Young Neuman apparently stepped into an abandoned well shaft and is lodged somewhere in the narrow one-hundred-fifty-foot pipe, possibly alive, possibly seriously injured. Playmates claim they heard him cry out faintly, but since then there has been no contact with …”

Cole shook his head. “Never cry wolf!”

Kathryn frowned, turning the radio down. “What?”

“My father told me that,” Cole said rather primly. “‘Never cry wolf.’ Then people won’t believe you if — if something really happens.”

Kathryn swung the Cherokee past a bus emblazoned with posters advertising Atlantic City. “If something really happens,” she repeated thoughtfully. “Like what, James?”

“Something bad.” Cole yawned, running a hand across his brow. “Is that all the music? I don’t want to hear this stuff.”

Kathryn hit the SCAN button, glanced in the mirror to see Cole yawning again. Despite herself she felt another stab of pity for him — something she tried not to feel for most patients, especially since the warning rating she’d received from Fletcher six years before. It was one thing to make a show of sympathy for the disturbed people she saw every day, quite another to grapple with unreasoned spurts of emotion like this.

But there really was something about him , she thought. For one thing, the last six years seemed to have passed over him like water. Despite a few bruises and his haggard expression, his face was as unlined as it had been when she first saw him, and his eyes — those eyes! — his eyes held such wounded innocence…

“Did — did something happen to you when you were a child?” she asked tentatively. “Something so bad …”

The radio locked into a station and Cole sat bolt upright. “Ohh, this one!” he cried. Automatically Kathryn turned up the volume.

“Sine I met you baby, my whole life has changed…”

With and ecstatic look, Cole stuck his head out the window again. Kathryn allowed herself a small smile as she watched him fighting another yawn, his face one big loopy grin.

“Yeah, I kinda like this one, too,” she murmured, but Cole didn’t hear.

“…’ cause since I met you baby, all I need is you …”

Cars streamed past a lonely motel bathed in pink neon. They were in the country now. Overhead the sky was flush with stars. On the western horizon the full moon poised like a kiss as the Cherokee sped on, the radio making promises it couldn’t keep as Kathryn drove and Cole hung blissfully out the rear window, his weary eyes ashine, his lost heart as happy as it ever had been.

The next morning, Marilou Martin waited outside of Kathryn Railly’s apartment building, huddling in her down parka and periodically swiping her eyes with a Kleenex. She gave an involuntary cry as a police car pulled up.

“Oh God, thank you for coming—”

The policemen nodded, tight-lipped, as Marilou followed them into the building. The super met them, a gray-faced man who opened Kathryn’s apartment and then scurried back downstairs without a word. Marilou hurried into the room, bending to sweep a mewling cat into her arms.

“Oh, Carla,” she murmured. “You poor thing.”

The cat cried plaintively as Marilou crossed the room to Kathryn’s answering machine. The police followed, eyeing the living room warily. The cat leapt from Marilou’s arms and padded into the kitchen, making hungry cries. Marilou punched the answering machine and stared at it grim-faced as a single message played.

“Dr. Railly, this is Wikke from Psych Admitting. There was a guy here this afternoon looking for you. He seemed very agitated. We tried to keep him, but he refused, ‘n’ I kept thinking, I know this guy. Then, just a few minutes ago, it came to me — It’s Cole! James Cole . Remember him? The paranoid who pulled the Houdini back in ninety. Well, he’s back and he’s cuckoo and he’s looking for you. I thought you oughta know.”

Click . The police officers exchanged a look. Marilou turned to them, white-faced.

“It’s like I told you,” she said, her voice cracking. “My husband and I went to the restaurant, but she never showed. She would never just not show — not without calling, or—”

One of the cops broke in. “Do you happen to know the make of her car?” he asked, pulling out his notebook.

“Umm — a Cherokee. Ninety-one — no, 1992 Cherokee. Silver.” Her eyes fell on the cat, piteously kneading at its empty food dish. “And that cat’s starving! She would never neglect her cat—”

The policemen nodded. One took her arm and turned toward the door. “Would you mind coming down with us to the station for a few minutes? I’d like to get a statement.”

Marilou stared at him, dazed, then nodded. “Let me call my husband first,” she said, choking on her tears, and reached for the telephone.

In front of the boy, the airport concourse is empty now, except for the staggering figure of the blond man. One hand is splayed across the front of his gaudy Hawaiian shirt; blood seeps between his fingers, sends a few bright drops floating like petals onto the floor. As the boy stares, the blond woman suddenly races across the room, her mouth open as she reaches for the man. The boy shakes his head, confused, but also aroused as he knows he should not be.

Because she looks like someone, except for the honey-colored hair and briskly rouged mouth — but still he knows her, he has seen her somewhere. Her mouth is open and he can hear her now; he recognizes her voice as she races past him toward the bleeding man.

“ My time machine is all ready for the experiment. All I need is somebody — is somebody —”

He woke, gasping as he sat upright. He was on a large bed, still sloppily made-up with a worn chenille spread emblazoned with a tired logo HIGHWAYS & BYWAYS MOTEL. In front of him a snow-riddled television screen showed a wizened man with bald head and white mustache, pointing at a hole labeled TIME TUNNEL.

“— somebody — Ah, the woodpecker! ”

Cole stared engrossed as Woody Woodpecker strolled across the screen.

“ Yoo hoo! Woodpecker! ”

“Please untie me.”

Cole watched for another moment, finally turned.

“Please,” Kathryn Railly repeated, exhausted.

Her jacket had been pulled backwards over her arms, the sleeves ties behind her. Her pale eyes were deeply shadowed, her hair knotted and loose to her shoulders. She looked as though she had been crying. “I’m very uncomfortable.”