False Memory

dismayed, as well, to know that Al Capone was proving to be a better defender of this sacred ground than Davy Crockett.
    The private nurse watching over Skeet on the evening shift was Jasmine Hernandez, she of the red sneakers and green laces, who was unfortunately professional and incorruptible. The doctor had neither the time nor the interest to put Nurse Hernandez through a complete schedule of programming just to be able to render her blind and deaf to the instructions he needed to give to Skeet. Therefore, he would have to wait until her shift ended. The nurse who came on at midnight was a lazy twit who’d happily park his butt in the employee lounge, watching the Tonight show and sucking on a Coke, while Ahriman had a powwow with Dustin’s pathetic half-brother.
    He didn’t want to chance instructing Skeet in suicide over the phone. The miserable junior Caulfield was such an iffy subject for programming that it was necessary to put him through the drill faceto-face.
    Paper clip. Ping. Disaster. Colonel Bowie is down. Colonel Bowie is down! The Mexican Army is now leaderless. Capone gloats.

     
     
    Lovely, the forest, deep and cool. The huge trees are crowded so close together that their smooth, red-brown, polished trunks blend into one encircling wall of wood. Martie somehow knows that they are mahogany trees, although she has never seen one before. She must be in a South American jungle, where mahoganies flourish, but she can’t recall making the travel arrangements or packing her bags.
    She hopes that she brought enough clothes, remembered the travel iron, and included a wide selection of antivenin, especially the last of those items, because even now a snake has sunk its fangs into her left arm. Fang, singular. The serpent appears to have only one fang, and the tooth is quite peculiar, as silvery and slender as a needle. The snake has a thin, transparent body and hangs from a silver tree with no leaves and one branch, but you expect exotic reptiles and flora in the Amazon.
    Evidently, the serpent isn’t poisonous, because Martie isn’t alarmed about it, and neither is Susan, who is also on this South American expedition. At the moment she is sitting in an armchair across the clearing, half turned away from Martie, visible only in profile, so still and quiet that she must be meditating or lost in thought.
    Martie herself is lying on a cot, or perhaps even on something more substantial, like a sofa, which is button-tufted and has a warm leathery sheen. This must be a first-class wilderness tour if so much effort has been expended to bring along armchairs and sofas.
    From time to time, magical and amusing things occur. A sandwich floats in the air—banana and peanut butter on thick slices of white bread, judging by the look of it—moves back and forth, up and down, and bites disappear from it, as though a ghost is here in the woods with her, a hungry ghost having lunch. A bottle of root beer floats in the air, too, tipping to invisible lips, to slake the thirst of the same ghost, and later a bottle of grape soda. She supposes this is to be expected, because, after all, South American writers created the literary style known as magical realism.
    Another magical touch is the window in the woods, which is above and behind her, shedding light into the forest, which would otherwise be quite dark and forbidding. Everything considered, this is a fine spot for their camp.
    Except for the leaves. Fallen leaves are scattered about the clearing, perhaps from the mahoganies, perhaps from other trees, and though they are only dead leaves, they make Martie uneasy. From time to time, they crunch, they crackle, though no one steps on them. Not even the slightest breeze weaves through the forest, but the restless leaves tremble singly and in small gatherings, shudder and scrape together, and creep along the floor of the campsite with sinister susurrant sounds, as if mere leaves could scheme and conspire.
    Without warning, a hard wind blows out of the west. The window is west-facing, but it must be open, because the wind rushes through it and into the clearing, a great howling presence on which are borne more leaves, great seething masses, hissing and flapping like clouds of bats, some moist and supple, others dry and dead. The wind sweeps up the leaves on the floor, too, and the churning debris pumps around the perimeter of the clearing— red autumn leaves, moist green leaves, petals, stipules, whole bracts—pumps around like