Lair of Dreams

“I don’t want to be your exhibit. I only want to have a normal life.”


“Normal!” Marlowe thundered. He loomed over the table. “No man worth his salt wants to be ‘normal,’ Jericho. Be remarkable! Aim high. After all, do you honestly believe that your young lady wants a normal, ordinary life? Not from what I’ve seen. How funny that she’s Will’s niece. They’re as different as chalk and cheese.”

“Like you and me,” Jericho snapped.

“Am I really so repugnant to you?” Marlowe said quietly.

He was hurt, Jericho realized with a mixture of pride and shame.

“It’s… it’s not that I’m not grateful for what you’ve done for me. Sir.”

“It’s not your gratitude I want, Jericho,” Marlowe said. “I remember the first time I saw you, lying on that bed in the hospital. You didn’t cry, and you didn’t complain. They told me you were smart and that you liked to read, particularly about philosophy and machines—you’d gained an interest in helping your father fix things around the farm. And I asked you a question to start us off. Do you remember?”

Jericho did remember. It was the morning that he’d truly realized the full, intractable horror of his situation. For an hour, he’d stared at the ceiling, fighting desperately to hold on to his thinning hope in miracles. But as he listened to the moans and cries of those around him, he understood that hope was not a construct of faith meant to bring man closer to God but one of denial and delusion meant to keep him from accepting that God did not exist. He wondered if he stopped eating, if he let himself slip away, if that could be considered suicide, which he’d been taught was a sin.

But was it a sin if there was no God?

He’d heard the tap-tap of shoes coming closer. He could have turned his head to see, but he continued staring at the ceiling. Suddenly, the smiling nurse was standing beside his paralyzed body, saying, “There’s someone here to see you, Jericho.” Jake Marlowe’s face loomed above his, blocking the light.

“Hello, Jericho,” Jake Marlowe had said.

Jericho hadn’t answered.

“Now, Jericho, where are your manners? Mr. Marlowe has come all the way from Washington to see you,” the nurse tsked, and Jericho imagined her falling off a cliff.

He still didn’t say hello.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Marlowe,” the nurse said. “He’s not usually so disagreeable.”

“That’s all right, Miss Portman. Could you leave us for a moment?”

“Certainly.”

Marlowe stood next to Jericho’s bed, examining the metal cage that kept Jericho breathing. “I invented this, you know. It’s no substitute for good lungs, but I’m working on that. I understand you like mechanical things as well.”

Jericho did not answer.

“So. Tell me,” Marlowe tried gamely, “what do you think is man’s greatest invention?”

Jericho turned his head just slightly toward Marlowe, looking him straight in the eye. “God.”

He waited for Marlowe to be shocked or horrified. He waited for a lecture. Instead, Marlowe had put a hand on Jericho’s head like a father, saying quietly but firmly, “I’m going to help you, Jericho. You’re going to get up from this bed. You’re going to walk and run again. I will not stop until you can, I promise you.”

And just like that, the snare of hope trapped Jericho again.

Marlowe made good on his promise. But like all deals with the Devil, there were drawbacks. In the past ten years, his relationship with Marlowe had gone from idolatry to rebellion and resentment.

Fathers and sons.

“What if I don’t want to be your experiment or exhibition any longer?” Jericho said. “What if I want to be my own man?”

Marlowe’s eyes flashed. Jericho knew that look well. The great man did not have much patience for insubordination.

“You want to be your own man? Be your own man. Without this.” Marlowe held up the precious vial of serum and stuffed it into his pocket.

Jericho squirmed a bit. What game was Marlowe playing now? “You wouldn’t do that,” he challenged. “You care about your experiment too much.”

“I could start over with somebody else.”

“If you could do that, you would have already. And that golden boy or girl would be standing on the stage with you.”

“Fine. Go without the serum, then,” Jake said evenly.

As far as Jericho knew, Marlowe’s little blue miracle powered the machinery of his body. It kept his heart beating, his lungs breathing, his blood pumping. And it kept his mind from devolving into madness. Marlowe was bluffing. Had to be.

Jericho was scared, but he refused to let Marlowe win. “All right. Maybe I will.”

“I wouldn’t advise it.”

“Why not? What will happen if I do?”

Marlowe didn’t respond.

“I deserve an answer,” Jericho said, raising his voice. He banged his fist on the table, toppling some of the buildings on Marlowe’s artfully arranged Future of America model.