“Do. You. Know. Me. Did you do this to me?”
The old man said, “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
“Is that right?” His hands were balling involuntarily into fists. “Is there another Mack in this town?”
“Not that I’m aware of.” Mack pushed open the screen door, ventured a step out onto the porch. “Buddy, you don’t look so hot.”
“I don’t feel so hot.”
“What happened to you?”
“You tell me, Mack.”
A woman’s voice called out from somewhere in the house, “Honey? Everything OK?”
“Yes, Jane, all’s well!” Mack stared at him. “Why don’t you let me take you to the hospital? You’re injured. You need—”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Then why are you at my house?” A gruff edge had entered Mack’s voice. “I just offered to help you. You don’t want that, fine, but...”
Mack was still talking, but his words had begun to dissolve, drowned out by a noise building in the pit of his stomach like the roar of a freight train barreling toward him. The black holes were multiplying, the world beginning to spin. He simply wasn’t going to be able to stay on his feet another five seconds if his head didn’t explode first.
He looked up at Mack, the man’s mouth still moving, that freight train closing in with a vengeance of noise, its rhythm in lockstep with the brutal pounding in his head, and he couldn’t take his eyes off Mack’s mouth, the old man’s teeth—his synapses sparking, trying to connect, and the noise, God, the noise, and the throbbing—
He didn’t feel his knees give out.
Didn’t even register the backward stumble.
One second he was on the porch.
The next, the grass.
Flat on his back and his head reeling from a hard slam against the ground.
Mack hovering above him now, staring down at him, bent over with his hands on his knees and his words hopelessly lost to the train that was screaming through his head.
He was going to lose consciousness—he could feel it coming, seconds away—and he wanted it, wanted the pain to stop, but...
The answers.
They were right there.
So close.
It made no sense, but there was something about Mack’s mouth. His teeth. He couldn’t stop looking at them, and he didn’t know why, but it was all there.
An explanation.
Answers to everything.
And it occurred to him—stop fighting it.
Stop wanting it so badly.
Quit thinking.
Just let it come.
The teeth theteeth theteeththeteeththeteethteethteethteeth...
They aren’t teeth.
They’re a bright and shiny grille with the letters
M A C K
stamped across the front.
Stallings, the man beside him in the front passenger seat doesn’t see what’s coming.
In the three-hour ride north out of Boise, it’s become apparent that Stallings adores the sound of his own voice, and he’s doing what he’s been doing the entire time—talking. He stopped listening an hour ago, when he discovered he could tune out completely as long as he interjected an “I hadn’t thought of it that way” or “Hmm, interesting” every five minutes or so.
Nurse Pam lifted a blood pressure pump from a cart at the foot of the bed and strapped the cuff around his left biceps.
“You gave us a good scare, Mr. Burke,” she said as she inflated the cuff. “Walking off like that.”
She was quiet while the needle fell.
“Did I pass?” he asked.
“A-plus. Systolic is one twenty-two. Diastolic seventy-five.” She un-Velcroed the cuff. “When they brought you in, you were delirious,” she said. “You didn’t seem to know who you were.”