Black Mad Wheel
Black Mad Wheel plunges us into the depths of psychological horror, where you can’t always believe everything you hear.THE DANES, the band once known as the ‘Darlings of Detroit’, are washed up and desperate to have another number one hit.When an agent from the US Army approaches them with an unusual offer, they believe it could be the answer to their inspiration drought. So, under the guidance of their front man, Philip Tonka, the Danes decide to embark on a harrowing journey through scorching African desert to track down the source of a strange and debilitating sound.In a Midwestern hospital, a nurse named Ellen tends to a patient recovering from a near-fatal accident. The circumstances that led to his injuries are mysterious, and his broken body heals at a remarkable rate. Ellen will do the impossible for this enigmatic patient as he reveals more about his accident with each passing day.BLACK MAD WHEEL plunges us into the depths of psychological horror, where you can’t always believe everything you hear.
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2017
Copyright © Josh Malerman 2017
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Josh Malerman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007530090
Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9780007530083
Version: 2017-04-03
IN MAY OF 2012 the High Strung had just played the record release show for our album ¿Posible ó Imposible?, I’d just set the microphone back upon the stand, and Derek (drums) and I were stumbling out of the bar. From the bar’s shadows, an imp came, a gorgeous pair of bright green eyes and legs so long she must have been standing in the cellar. She spoke, too. “Do you have any more of that face paint?” Before the show I’d used a Sharpie on myself. Easy designs. “Yes,” I told her, reaching into the pocket of my jacket. But the imp had hands and she took hold of my face and rubbed it against her own.
Voilà. A painted face. And the beginning of something, too.
This book is for Allison Laakko, who got Black Mad Wheel piecemeal, spark by spark, as every night I relived for her the day’s excited writing. For that, there will always be a path, tracks, made by a wheel, perhaps, leading from her to me, then to the book and back to us again.
I like that.
We’ll forever know which way the wheels rolled.
I love you, Allison.
Contents
The patient is awake. A song he wrote is fading out, as if, as he slept, it played on a loop, the soundtrack of his unbelievable slumber.
He remembers every detail of the desert.
The first thing he sees is a person. That person is the doctor. Wearing khaki pants and a Hawaiian shirt, he doesn’t dress like a doctor, but the bright science in his eyes gives him away.
“You’ve been hurt very badly.” His voice is confidence. His voice is control. “It’s an unparalleled injury, Private Tonka. To live through something so …” He makes fists about chest high, as though catching a falling word. “… unfair.”
Philip recognizes more than medicine in the man who stands a foot from the end of his cot. The strong, lean physique. The unnaturally perfect hair, the skin as unwrinkled as a desert dune.
This doctor is military.
“Now,” the doctor says, “let me tell you why this is such an incredibly difficult thing to do.” Philip hasn’t fully processed the room he is in. The borders of his vision are blurred. How long has he been here? Where is here? But the doctor isn’t answering unasked questions like these. “Had you broken only your wrists and your elbows, we might surmise that you fell, hit the ground in just such a way. But you’ve broken your humeri, radii, and ulnae, too; your radial tuberosities; coracoid processes, trochleas, and each of the twenty-seven bones in your hands.” He smiles. His smile says Philip ought to share in the astonishment. “I don’t expect you to know the names of every bone in the human body, Philip, but what I’m telling you is that you didn’t just break your wrists and elbows. You broke almost everything.”
Sudden whispers from somewhere Philip can’t see. Maybe voices in a hall. Philip tries to turn his head to look.
He can’t. He can’t move his neck at all.
He opens his mouth to say something, to say he can’t move, but his throat is dry as summer sand.
He closes his eyes. He sees hoofprints in that sand.
