The Dead Zone

1.

'What are you going to do?' Sam Weizak asked.

'Christ, I don't know,' Johnny said. 'How many did you say are down there?'

'About eight. One of them is the northern New England AP stringer. And there are people from two of the TV stations with cameras and lights. The hospital director is quite angry with you, Johnny. He feels you have been naughty.'

'Because a lady's house was going to burn down?' Johnny asked. 'All I can say is it must have been one frigging slow news day.'

'As a matter of fact it wasn't. Ford vetoed two bills. The P.L.O. blew up a restaurant in Tel Aviv. And a police dog sniffed out four hundred pounds of marijuana at the airport.'

'Then what are they doing here?' Johnny asked. When Sam had come in with the news that reporters were gathering in the lobby, his first sinking thought was what his mother might make of this. She was with his father in Pownal, making ready for her California pilgrimage, which began the following week. Neither Johnny nor his father believed the trip was a good idea, and the news that her son had somehow turned psychic might make her cancel it, but in this case Johnny was very much afraid that the cure might be the greater of two evils. Something like this could set her off for good.

On the other hand - this thought suddenly blossomed in his mind with all the force of inspiration - it might persuade her to start taking her medicine again.

'They're here because what happened is news,' Sam said. 'It has all the classic ingredients.'

'I didn't do anything, I just...

'You just told Eileen Magown her house was on fire and it was,' Sam said softly. 'Come on, Johnny, you must have known this was going to happen sooner or later.'

'I'm no publicity hound,' Johnny said grimly.

'No. I didn't mean to suggest you were. An earthquake is no publicity hound. But the reporters cover it. People want to know.'

'What if I just refuse to talk to them?'

'That is not much of an option,' Sam replied. 'They will go away and publish crazy rumors. Then, when you leave the hospital, they will fall on you. They will shove microphones in your face as if you were a senator or a crime boss, nuh?'

Johnny thought about it. 'Is Bright down there?'

'Yes.'

'Suppose I ask him to come up? He can get the story and give it to the rest of them.'

'You can do that, but it would make the rest of them extremely unhappy. And an unhappy reporter will be your enemy. Nixon made them unhappy and they tore him to pieces.'

'I'm not Nixon,' Johnny said.

Weizak grinned radiantly. 'Thank God,' he said. 'What do you suggest?' Johnny asked.

2.

The reporters stood up and crowded forward when Johnny stepped through the swing doors and into the west lobby. He was wearing a white shirt, open at the collar, and a pair of blue jeans that were too big for him. His face was pale but composed. The scars from the tendon operations stoodout clearly on his neck. Flashbulbs popped warm fire at him and made him wince. Questions were babbled.

'Here! Here !' Sam Weizak shouted. 'This is a convalescent patient! He wants to make a brief statement and he will answer some of your questions, but only if you behave in an orderly fashion! Now fall back and let him breathe!'

Two sets of TV light bars flashed on, bathing the lobby in an unearthly glare. Doctors and nurses had gathered by the lounge doorway to watch. Johnny winced away from the lights, wondering if this was what they meant by the limelight. He felt as if all of it might be a dream.

'Who're you?' one of the reporters yelled at Weizak.

'I am Samuel Weizak, this young man's doctor, and that name is spelled with two X's.'

There was general laughter and the mood eased a little. 'Johnny, you feel all right?' Weizak asked. It was early evening, and his sudden insight that Eileen Magown's kitchen was catching fire seemed distant and unimportant, the memory of a memory.

'Sure,' he said.

'What's your statement?' one of the reporters called.

'Well,' Johnny said, 'it's this. My physical therapist is a woman named Eileen Magown. She's a very nice lady, and she's been helping me get my strength back. I was in an accident, you see, and ...' One of the TV cameras moved in, goggling at him blankly, throwing him off-stride for a moment '... and I got pretty weak. My muscles sort of collapsed. We were in the physical therapy room this morning, just finishing up, and I got the feeling that her house was on fire. That is, to be more specific ...' Jesus) you sound like an asshole! 'I felt that she had forgotten to turn off her stove and that the curtains in the kitchen were about to catch fire. So we just went and called the fire department and that's all there was to it.'

There was a moment's gaping pause as they digested that - I sort of got the feeling, and that's all there was to it - and then the barrage of questions came again, everything mixed together into a meaningless stew of human voices. Johnny looked around helplessly, feeling disoriented and vulnerable.

'One at a time!' Weizak yelled. 'Raise your hands! Were you never schoolchildren?'

Hands waved, and Johnny pointed at David Bright.

'Would you call this a psychic experience, Johnny?'

'I would call it a feeling,' Johnny answered. 'I was doing situps and I finished. Miss Magown took my hand to help me up and I just knew.'

He pointed at someone else.

'Mel Allen, Portland Sunday Telegram, Mr. Smith. Was it like a picture? A picture in your head?'

'No, not at all,' Johnny said, but he was not really able to remember what it had been like.

'Has this happened to you before, Johnny?' A young woman in a slacksuit asked.

'Yes, a few times.'

'Can you tell us about the other incidents?'

'No, I'd rather not.'

One of the TV reporters raised his hand and Johnny nodded at him. 'Did you have any of these flashes before your accident and the resulting coma, Mr. Smith?'

Johnny hesitated.

The room seemed very still. The TV lights were warm on his face, like a tropical sun. 'No,' he said.

Another barrage of questions. Johnny looked helplessly at Weizak again.

'Stop! Stop!' He bellowed. He looked at Johnny as the roar subsided. 'You are done, Johnny?'

'I'll answer two more questions,' Johnny said. 'Then... really. . it's been a long day for me ... yes, Ma'am?'

He was pointing to a stout woman who had wedged herself in between two young reporters. 'Mr. Smith,' she said in a loud, carrying, tubalike voice, 'who will be the Democrats' nominee for president next year?'

'I can't tell you that,' Johnny said, honestly surprised at the question. 'How could I tell you that?'

More hands were raised. Johnny pointed to a tall, sober-faced man in a dark suit. He took one step forward. There was something prim and coiled about him.

'Mr. Smith, I'm Roger Dussault, from the Lewiston Sun, and I would like to know if you have any idea why you should have such an extraordinary ability as this ... if indeed you do. Why you, Mr. Smith?'

Johnny cleared his throat. 'As I understand your question ... you're asking me to justify something I don't understand. I can't do that.'

'Not justify, Mr. Smith. Just explain.'

He thinks I'm hoaxing them. Or trying.

Weizak stepped up beside Johnny. 'I wonder if I might answer that,' he said. 'Or at least attempt to explain why it cannot be answered.'

'Are you psychic, too?' Dussault asked coldly.

'Yes, all neurologists must be, it's a requirement,' Weizak said. There was a burst of laughter and Dussault flushed.

'Ladies and gentlemen of the press. This man spent four-and-a-half years in a coma. We who study the human brain have no idea why he did, or why he came out of it, and this is for the simple reason that we do not understand what a coma really is, any more than we understand sleep or the simple act of waking. Ladies and gentlemen, we do not understand the brain of a frog or the brain of an ant. You may quote me on these things... you see I am fearless, nuh?'

More laughter. They liked Weizak. But Dussault did not laugh.

'You may also quote me as saying I believe this man is now in possession of a very new human ability, or a very old one. Why? If I and my coleagues do not understand the brain of an ant, can I tell you why? I cannot. I can suggest some interesting things to you, however, things which may or may not have bearing. A part of John Smith's brain has been damaged beyond repair - a very small part, but all parts of the brain may be vital. He calls this his "dead zone", and there, apparently, a number of trace memories were stored. all of these wiped out memories seem to be part of a "set" that of street, road, and highway designations. A subset of a larger overall set, that of where it is. This is a small but total aphasia which seems to include both language and vizualization skills.

'Balancing this off, another tiny part of John Smith's brain appears to have awakened. A section of the cerebrum within the parietal lobe. This is one of the deeply grooved sections of the "forward" or "thinking" brain. The electrical responses from this section of Smith's brain are way out of line from what they should be, nuh? Here is one more thing. The parietal lobe has something to do with the sense of touch - how much or how little we are not completely sure - and it is very near to that area of the brain that sorts and identifies various shapes and textures. And it has been my own observation that John's "flashes" are always preceded by some sort of touching.'

Silence. Reporters were scribbling madly. The TV cameras, which had moved in to focus on Weizak, now pulled back to include Johnny in the picture.

'Is that it, Johnny?' Weizak asked again.

'I guess...'

Dussault suddenly shouldered his way through the knot of reporters. For a bemused moment Johnny thought he was going to join them in front of the doors, possibly for the purpose of rebuttal. Then he saw that Dussault was slipping something from around his neck.

'Let's have a demonstration,' he said. He was holding a medallion on a fine-link gold chain. 'Let's see what you can do with this.'

'We'll see no such thing,' Weizak said. His bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows had drawn thunderously together and he stared down at Dussault like Moses. 'This man is not a carnival performer, sir!'

'You sure could have fooled me,' Dussault said. 'Either he can or he can't, right? While you were busy suggesting things, I was busy suggesting something to myself. What I was suggesting was that these guys can never perform on demand, because they're all as genuine as a pile of three-dollar bills.'

Johnny looked at the other reporters. Except for Bright, who looked rather embarrassed, they were watching avidly. They looked like the nurses peering at him through the glass; Suddenly he felt like a Christian in a pitful of lions. They win either way, he thought. If I can tell him something, they've got a front-page story. If I can't, or if I refuse to try, they've got another kind of story.

'Well?' Dussault asked. The medallion swung back and forth below his fist.

Johnny looked at Weizak, but Weizak was looking away, disgusted.

'Give it to me,' Johnny said.

Dussault handed it over. Johnny put the medallion in his palm. It was a St. Christopher medal. He dropped the fine-link chain on top of it in a crisp little yellow heap and closed his hand over it.

Dead silence fell in the room. The handful of doctors and nurses standing by the lounge doorway had been joined by half a dozen others, some of them dressed in streetclothes and on their way out of the hospital for the night. A crowd of patients had gathered at the end of the hallway leading to the first-floor TV and game lounge. The people who had come for the regular early evening visiting hours had drifted over from the main lobby. A feeling of thick tension lay in the air like a humming power cable.

Johnny stood silently, pale and thin in his white shirt and oversized blue jeans. The St. Christopher medal was clamped so tightly in his right hand that the cords in his wrist stood out dearly in the glare of the TV light bars. In front of him, sober, impeccable, and judgmental in his dark suit, Dussault stood in the adversary position. The moment seemed to stretch out interminably. No one coughed or whispered.

'()h,' Johnny said softly ... then: 'Is that it?'

His fingers loosened slowly. He looked at Dussault.

'Well?' Dussault asked, but the authority was suddenly gone from his voice. The tired, nervous young man who had answered the reporters' questions seemed also to be gone. There was a half-smile on Johnny's lips, but there was nothing warm about it. The blue of his eyes had darkened. They had grown cold and distant. Weizak saw and felt a chill of gooseflesh. He later told his wife that it had been the face of a man looking through a high-powered microscope and observing an interesting species of paramecium.

'It's your sister's medallion,' he said to Dussault. 'Her name was Anne but everyone called her Terry. Your older sister. You loved her. You almost worshiped the ground she walked on.'

Suddenly, terribly, Johnny Smith's voice began to climb and change. It became the cracked and unsure voice of an adolescent.

'It's for when you cross Lisbon Street against the lights, Terry, or when you're out parking with one of those guys from E.L. Don't forget, Terry... don't forget...'

The plump woman who had asked Johnny who the Democrats would nominate next year uttered a frightened little moan. One of the TV cameramen muttered 'Holy Jesus!' in a hoarse voice.

'Stop it,' Dessault whispered. His face had gone a sick shade of gray. His eyes bulged and spittle shone like chrome on his lower lip in this harsh light. His hands moved for the medallion, which was now looped on its fine gold chain over Johnny's fingers. But his hands moved with no power or authority. The medallion swung back and forth, throwing off hypnotic gleams of light.

'Remember me, Terry,' the adolescent voice begged. 'Stay clean, Terry.. . please, for God's sake stay clean...'

'Stop it! Stop it, you bastard!'

Now Johnny spoke in his own voice again. 'It was speed, wasn't it? Then meth. She died of a heart attack at twenty-seven. But she wore it ten years, Rog. She remembered you. She never forgot. Never forgot ... never

never. .. never.'

The medallion slipped from his fingers and struck the floor with a small, musical sound. Johnny stared away into emptiness for a moment, his face calm and cool and distant. Dussault grubbed at his feet for the medallion, sobbing hoarsely in the stunned silence.

A flashbulb popped, and Johnny's face cleared and became his own again. Horror touched it, and then pity. He knelt clumsily beside Dussault.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean ...

'You cheapjack, bastard hoaxer!' Dussault screamed at him. 'It's a lie! All a lie! All a lie!' He struck Johnny a clumsy, open-handed blow on the neck and Johnny fell over, striking his head on the floor, hard. He saw stars.

Uproar.

He was dimly aware that Dussault was pushing his way blindly through the crowd and toward the doors. People milled around Dussault, around Johnny. He saw Dussault through a forest of legs and shoes. Then Weizak was beside him, helping him to sit up.

'John, are you all right? Did he hurt you?'

'Not as bad as I hurt him. I'm okay.' He struggled to his feet. Hands - maybe Weizak's, maybe someone else's -helped him. He felt dizzy and sick; almost revolted. This had been a mistake, a terrible mistake.

Someone screamed piercingly - the stout woman who had asked about the Democrats. Johnny saw Dussault pitch forward to his knees, grope at the sleeve of the stout woman's print blouse and then slide tiredly forward onto the tile near the doorway he had been trying to reach. The St. Christopher medal was still in one hand.

'Fainted,' someone said. 'Fainted dead away. I'll be damned.'

'My fault,' Johnny said to Sam Weizak. His throat felt close and tight with shame, with tears. 'All my fault.'

'No,' Sam said. 'No, John.'

But it was. He shook loose of Weizak's hands and went to where Dussault lay, coming around now, eyes blinking dazedly at the ceiling. Two of the doctors had come over to where he lay.

'Is he all right?' Johnny asked. He turned toward the woman reporter in the slacksuit and she shrank away from him. A cramp of fear passed over her face.

Johnny turned the other way, toward the TV reporter who had asked him if he'd had any flashes before his accident. It suddenly seemed very important that he explained to someone. 'I didn't mean to hurt him,' he said. 'Honest to God, I never meant to hurt him. I didn't know ...

The TV reporter backed up a step. 'No,' he said. 'Of course you didn't. He was asking for it, anybody could see that. Just... don't touch me, huh?'

Johnny looked at him dumbly, lips quivering. He was still in shock but beginning to understand. Oh yes. He was beginning to understand. The TV reporter tried to smile and could only produce a death's-head rictus.

'Just don't touch me, Johnny. Please.'

'It's not like that,' Johnny said - or tried to. Later, he was never sure if any sound had come out.

'Don't touch me, Johnny, okay?'

The reporter backed up to where his cameraman was packing his gear. Johnny stood and watched him. He began to shake all over.

3.

'It's for your own good, John,' Weizak said. The nurse stood behind him, a white ghost, a sorcerer's apprentice with her hands hovering above the small, wheeled medication table, a junkie's paradise of sweet dreams.

'No,' Johnny said. He was still shaking, and now there was cold sweat as well. 'No more shots. I've had it up to here with shots.'

'A pill, then.'

'No more pills, either.'

'To help you sleep.'

'Will he be able to sleep? That man Dussault?'

'He asked for it,' the nurse murmured, and then flinched as Weizak turned toward her. But Weizak smiled crookedly.

'She is right, nuh?' he said. 'The man asked for it. He thought you were selling empty bottles, John. A good night's sleep and you'll be able to put this in perspective.'

'I'll sleep on my own.'

'Johnny, please.'

It was quarter past eleven. The TV across the room had just gone off. Johnny and Sam had watched the filmed story together; it had been second-lined right after the bills Ford had vetoed. My own story made better theater, Johnny thought with morbid amusement. Film footage of a bald-headed Republican mouthing platitudes about the national budget just didn't compare with the film clip that WABI camera man had gotten here earlier this evening. The clip had ended with Dussault plunging across the floor with his sister's medal clutched in his hand and then crashing down in a faint, clutching at the woman reporter the way a drowning man might clutch at a straw.

When the TV anchorman went on to the police dog and the four hundred pounds of pot, Weizak had left briefly and had come back with the news that the hospital switchboard had jammed up with calls for him even before the report was over. The nurse with the medication had shown up a few minutes later, leading Johnny to believe that Sam had gone down to the nurses' station to do more than check on incoming calls.

At that instant, the telephone rang.

Weizak swore softly under his breath. 'I told them to hold them all. Don't answer it, John, I'll...

But Johnny already had it. He listened for a moment, then nodded. 'Yes, that was right.' He put a hand over the receiver. 'It's my dad,' he said. He uncovered the receiver. 'Hi, Dad. I guess you ...' He listened. The small smile on his lips faded and was replaced by an expression of dawning horror. His lips moved silently.

'John, what is it?' Weizak asked sharply.

'All right, Daddy,' Johnny said, almost in a whisper. 'Yes. Cumberland General. I know where it is. Just above Jerusalem's Lot. Okay. All right Daddy...

His voice broke. His eyes were tearless but glistening.

'I know that, Daddy. I love you too. I'm sorry.

Listened.

'Yes. Yes it was,' Johnny said. 'I'll see you, Daddy. Yes. Good-bye.'

He hung up the phone, put the heels of his hands to his eyes, and pressed.

'Johnny?' Sam leaned forward, took one of his hands away and held it gently. 'Is it your mother?'

'Yeah. It's my mother.'

'Heart attack?'

'Stroke,' Johnny said, and Sam Weizak made a small, pained hissing between his teeth. 'They were watching the TV news ... neither of them had any idea ... and I came on... and she had a stroke. Christ. She's in the hospital. Now if something happens to my dad, we got a triple play.' He uttered a high scream of laughter. His eyes rolled wildly from Sam to the nurse and back to Sam again. 'It's a good talent,' he said. 'Everybody should have it.' The laugh came again, so like a scream.

'How bad is she?' Sam asked.

'He doesn't know.' Johnny swung his legs out of bed. He had changed back to a hospital gown and his feet were bare.

'What do you think you are doing?' Sam asked sharply.

'What does it look like?'

Johnny got up, and for a moment it seemed that Sam would push him hack onto the bed. But he only watched Johnny limp over to the closet. 'Don't be ridiculous. You're not ready for this, John.'

Unmindful of the nurse - they had seen his bare tail enough times, God knew Johnny let the gown drop around his feet. The thick, twisting scars stood out on the backs of his knees and dimpled into the scant swell of his calves. He began to rummage in the closet for clothes, and came up with the white shirt and jeans he had worn to the news conference.

'John, I absolutely forbid this. As your doctor and your friend- I tell you, it is madness.'

'Forbid all you want, I'm going,' Johnny said. He began to dress. His face wore that expression of distant preoccupation that Sam associated with his trances. The nurse gawped.

'Nurse, you might as well go back to your station,' Sam said.

She backed to the door, stood there for a moment, and then left. Reluctantly.

'Johnny,' Sam said. He got up, went to him, and put a hand on his shoulder. 'You didn't do it.'

Johnny shook the hand off. 'I did it, all right,' he said. 'She was watching me when it happened.' He began to button the shirt.

'You urged her to take her medicine and she stopped.'

Johnny looked at Weizak for a moment and then went back to buttoning his shirt.

'If it hadn't happened tonight, it would have happened tomorrow, next week, next month...

'Or next year. Or in ten years.

'No. It would not have been ten years. or even one. And you know it. Why are you so anxious to pin this tail on yourself? Because of that smug reporter? Is it maybe an inverted kind of self-pity? An urge to believe that you have been cursed?'

Johnny's face twisted. 'She was watching me when it happened. Don't you get that? Are you so fucking soft you don't get that?'

'She was planning a strenuous trip, all the way to California and back, you told me that yourself. A symposium of some kind. A highly emotional sort of thing, from what you have said. Yes? Yes. It would almost certainly have happened then. A stroke is not lightning from a blue sky, Johnny.'

Johnny buttoned the jeans and then sat down as if the act of dressing had tired him out too much to do more. His feet were still bare. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Yeah, you may be right.'

'Sense! He sees sense! Thank the Lord!'

'But I still have to go, Sam.'

Weizak threw up his hands. 'And do what? She is in the hands of her doctors and her God. That is the situation. Better than anyone else, you must understand.'

'My dad will need me,' Johnny said softly. 'I understand that, too.'

'How will you go? It's nearly midnight.'

'By bus. I'll grab a cab over to Peter's Candlelighter. The Greyhounds still stop there, don't they?'

'You don't have to do that,' Sam said.

Johnny was groping under the chair for his shoes and not finding them, Sam got them from under the bed and handed them to him.

'I'll drive you down.'

Johnny looked up at him. 'You'd do that?'

'If you'll take a mild tranquilizer, yes.

'But your wife ...' He realized in a confused sort of way that the only concrete thing he knew about Weizak's personal life was that his mother was living in California.

'I am divorced,' Weizak said. 'A doctor has to be out at all hours of the night ... unless he is a pediatrist or a dermatologist, nub? My wife saw the bed as half-empty rather than half-full. So she filled it with a variety of men.

'I'm sorry,' Johnny said, embarrassed.

'You spend far too much time being sorry, John.' Sam's face was gentle, but his eyes were stern. 'Put on your shoes.'