The Revelations by Erik Hoel (some good books to read TXT) 📗

last time I felt promise? The remaining rind of sun is swallowed by the horizon and the gloaming makes all things soft. Everyone and everything bows out after having one really good day.

A soapy arm extends over the side of the tub, sets down a book, and then withdraws. The wetted-down crown of Kierk’s head sinks even farther into an aquatic, steamy meditation. The bathwater is opaque with soap, and from his point of view his legs are stuck out far beyond him, partially submerged, the hair on them plastered down—how incredible it is that these are my legs! That I am the thing that owns them! How responsive they are to my commands, how my toes leap to wiggle, how my ankles flex in response, how one leg lifts out of the water at a mere whim and then drops back below! How good it feels to be so submerged in this warmth but to have my feet, my feet, on the cold porcelain edge of the tub; how the sensations differ if the point of contact shifts from the pads of my toes to the expansive roundness of my heel, the change in the texture. How different it would be if these were a young woman’s legs instead of a young man’s! How different but how the same.

Sinking down until he is fully submerged he enters a warm world filled with the background hum of being underwater. From his mouth he releases a few peaceful bubbles. Then comes the knock.

His head rushes out of the water and he pauses for a second, his body totally still, the tub now rocked by waves. The knock had been unhesitant, aggressive and loud enough to shock him. Could it be Carmen or Alex? They probably would have called first . . . or maybe it’s the mailman, or a neighbor, or someone confused, or some other improbable event, people come to doors all the time—the knock comes again but much louder this time, like some huge fist is slamming at the door. After a frozen moment Kierk rises out of the tub and wraps himself in a towel. Everything is slowing down. He leaves wet footprints behind him on the tiles to the short corridor leading to the front door. A few steps forward on the cold, slippery wood and then another knock booms and he can see the door shudder on its hinges. He can’t take his eyes off the lock which had vibrated violently but held. Then from the other side of the door there is a guttural grunt, the shifting of some large bulk, a huffing snort. A broad shadow can be seen blotting out the light, a dark line wavering. A form. There is the stamp of something large and almost hoof-like and another snort. Kierk’s eyes are wide, his hair still plastered down, his skin frigid from convection and fear. He is suddenly sure that it is happening again. He braces for sound, for that unearthly hum, but none comes. In the waiting silence he wants to look into the peephole but he can’t, he can’t close that distance and peer through. What would he see? His heart is beating like mad. Paralyzed, he watches the shadow shift with a corresponding creak of weight. Three booming cannon-loud knocks in rapid succession are followed by a tortured vibration afterward. The door holds but now looks as if it is about to splinter into pieces, or the locks rip from their hinges. Then there is an angry huff and the sound of a departure, the quick fading of heavy, plodding footsteps. Kierk suddenly begins breathing again, not knowing he had stopped. He slowly approaches the peephole and looks through to the empty optically curving hallway, and then he turns and sinks down to a sitting position, his back against the door, his flesh wet and flush with goose bumps, his hands trembling, his mind racing over dark, impossible notions.

MONDAY

Kierk wakes up gasping, vexed to wake by nightmare. Something had been trying to get at his face, at his eyes, and he’s trying to shove it off but already it’s dispersing into amnesiac dream vapor. Blinking and sweating, he realizes that he must have left the air-conditioning off as the entire room is sweltering hot and stuffy. Running cold water he takes a shower, but keeps going back to the knocking late last night, and has to remind himself that he did not dream it. It was too surreal to be real, too strange. Yet not a dream. Going over it in his mind he acknowledges some possibility that it had been someone from SAAR, or maybe even a Crick Scholar, even just a random stranger trying to break in. The other possibilities were too fantastical even to consider, and he kept aborting those halfway through. And finally the equally dark thought: that this is not a problem with the world, but the observer of it. Both now and perhaps earlier, that first night at the break-in. After all, auditory hallucinations are the most common, and a knock on the door is syntactically and semantically simple enough to be such an early mirage, the preface of something more dire.

Out on the streets he’s still playing around with these notions but soon the reality of the hot complex world sandblasts them all away, almost like he really had dreamed the knock, and there were daylight explanations for everything; his worries were dissolving in sun. Outside the CNS he stops to squint at the bloodred spray paint near the front door: DOUBLE TROUBLE LIVES. TORTURE FOR TORTURERS. He watches the snub-nosed toy of a plane drawn steady across a perfect blue far above

. . .

During a brief meeting last Thursday Max Pierce had been skeptical that Kierk had done animal research previously, despite Kierk’s insistences. In response Max had asked Kierk to perform two surgeries, one implantation and one decapitation. It was an obvious challenge and Kierk,