Shadowfires

suspended animation,
though it was unsettlingly arrhythmic.
    In addition to the stethoscope, he had brought other instruments
with which to monitor his progress. A sphygmomanometer for measuring
his blood pressure. An ophthalmoscope which, in conjunction with a
mirror, he could use to study the condition of his retinas and the
pupil response. He had a notebook, too, in which he had intended to
record his observations of himself, for he was aware-sometimes only
dimly aware but always aware-that he was the first man to die and
come back from beyond, that he was making history, and that such a
journal would be invaluable once he had fully recovered.
    Remember the mice, the mice…
    He shook his head irritably, as if that sudden baffling thought
were a bothersome gnat buzzing around his face. Remember the mice,
the mice: He had not the slightest idea what it meant, yet it was
an annoyingly repetitive and peculiarly urgent thought that had
assailed him frequently last night. He vaguely suspected that he did,
in fact, know the meaning of the mice and that he was suppressing the
knowledge because it frightened him. However, when he tried to focus
on the subject and force an understanding, he had no success but
became increasingly frustrated, agitated, and confused.
    Returning the stethoscope to the nightstand, he did not pick up
the sphygmomanometer because he did not have the patience or the
dexterity required to roll up his shirt sleeve, bind the pressure
cuff around his arm, operate the bulb-type pump, and simultaneously
hold the gauge so he could read it. He had tried last night, and his
clumsiness had finally driven him into a rage. He did not pick up the
ophthalmoscope, either, for to examine his own eyes he would have to
go into the bathroom and use the mirror. He could not bear to see
himself as he now appeared: gray-faced, muddy-eyed, with a slackness
in his facial muscles that made him look… half dead.
    The pages of his small notebook were mostly blank, and now he did
not attempt to add further observations to his recovery journal. For
one thing, he had found that he was not capable of the intense and
prolonged concentration required to write either intelligibly or
legibly. Besides, the sight of his sloppily scrawled handwriting,
which previously had been precise and neat, was yet another thing
that had the power to excite a vicious rage in him.
    Remember the mice, the mice bashing themselves
against the walls of their cages, chasing their tails, the mice, the
mice…
    Putting both hands to his head as if to physically suppress that
unwanted and mysterious thought, Eric Leben lurched out of bed, onto
his feet. He needed to piss, and he was hungry. Those were two good
signs, two indications that he was alive, at least more alive than
dead, and he took heart from those simple biological needs.
    He started toward the bathroom but stopped suddenly when fire
leaped up in a corner of the room. Not real flames but shadowfire.
Blood-red tongues with silver edges. Crackling hungrily, consuming
the shadows from which they erupted yet in no way reducing that
darkness. Squinting his light-stung eyes, Eric found that, as before,
he was compelled to peer into the flames, and within them he thought
he saw strange forms writhing and… and beckoning to him…
    Though he was unaccountably terrified of these shadowfires, a part
of him, perverse beyond his understanding, longed to go within the
flames, pass through them as one might pass through a door, and learn
what lay beyond.
    No!
    As he felt that longing grow into an acute need, he desperately
turned away from the fire and stood swaying in fear and bewilderment,
two feelings that, in his current fragile state, quickly
metamorphosed into anger, the anger into rage. Everything seemed to
lead to rage, as if it were the ultimate and inevitable distillate of
all other emotions.
    A brass-and-pewter floor lamp with a frosted crystal shade stood
beside an easy chair, within his reach. He seized it with both hands,
lifted it high above his head, and threw it across the room. The
shade shattered against the wall, and gleaming shards of frosted
crystal fell like cracking ice. The metal base and pole hit the edge
of the white-lacquered dresser and rebounded with a clang, clattered
to the floor.
    The thrill of destruction that shivered through him was of a dark
intensity akin to a sadistic sexual urge, and its power was nearly as