Because the Night Read Free

all right? Reciting your fear mantras? Following the program?”
    â€œYes, Doctor.”
    â€œGood. Then leave the money with me. I’ll call you at the pay phone later this week.”
    â€œYes, Doctor.”
    The sounds of departure forced the man to catch up with his note-taking. As if on cue, the Doctor clapped his hands and said, “Jesus, what an ugly creature. Speaker three, Goff. Efficacy training.”
    Goff plugged a jack into speaker number three and hit the record switch. When the tape spool began to spin, he tiptoed upstairs to watch. This would be his first visual auditing since blasting his “beyond” to hell, and he had to see how far the Night Tripper was taking his recruits. Only one of them was capable of approaching his own degree of extremity, and all his instincts told him that Havilland was just about to push him to it.
    Goff was wrong. Peering through a crack in the door, he saw the Professor and the Bookworm kneeling on gym mats facing the mirror that covered the entire west wall. Their hands were clasped as if in prayer and Havilland was standing over them, murmuring works of encouragment. With Billy Boy and the Bull Dagger already counseled, it meant that the Doctor was saving the foxy redhead and the real psycho for last.
    Goff pressed himself into the wall and stared into the bedroom just as the two men on the mats pulled off their undershirts and began shouting their fear mantras. “ Patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum. ” With each repetition of the phrase they smashed their hands into their chests, each time harder, shouting louder and louder as the blows hit home. Throughout, they retained eye to eye contact with their own mirror images, never flinching, even as blood-dotted welts rose on their torsos.
    Goff checked the second hand of his watch. One minute. Two. Three. Just when he thought the chanters would have to collapse, he heard the word “ Stop !”
    Havilland knelt on the mat, facing the men. Goff watched them move their eyes from the mirror to the eyes of the Doctor, then extend their right arms and squeeze their hands into fists. Havilland reached into the pocket of his lab coat and withdrew a disposable syringe and a handful of cotton balls. First he injected the Bookworm; then he wiped the needle and injected the Professor. Both lonelies swayed on their knees but remained upright.
    The Doctor got to his feet, smiled, and said, “Think pure efficacy. Robert, you have been placed in a very wealthy home on assignment. A couple, an older man and woman, are drooling for your favors. The phone rings. They both go to answer it. Where do you go?”
    Robert stammered, “T-to the b-bathroom? To check for drugs?”
    Havilland shook his head. “No. You have drugs on the brain; it’s a weak point of yours. Monte, what would you do?”
    Monte wiped sweat from his chest and twisted to stare at himself in the mirror. “ I would wonder why the call was so important that they both had to run for the phone, especially when I was there looking so groovy. So what I would do would be to run for an extension and pick it up the very second that the old fucker did, then listen in and see if there was any salient info I could get from the call.”
    Havilland smiled and said, “Bravo,” then slapped Monte across the face and whispered, “Bravo, but always look at me when you answer. If you look at yourself you get the notion that you thought independently. Do you see the fallacy in that kind of thinking?”
    Monte lowered his eyes, then brought them up to meet Havilland’s. “Yes, Doctor.”
    â€œGood. Robert, a hypothetical question for you. Think pure efficacy and answer candidly. My supply of legally obtained pharmaceutical drugs runs out, because of new laws passed limiting hypnotics and the like to physicians with hospital affiliations. You crave them and