The Cursed Man (23 page)

“But you don't understand what you are trying to save.” Anna flipped the light on. “Look at him and tell me you want anything to do with him.”

Alister looked, gasped, let go of the man and tripped as he backed away. The man that hung flailed and the noose tightened its hold, forcing the veins and eyes in his head outward.

“You see that now, don't you?” Anna said. “Despicable.”

A gurgle trapped inside the man's throat kept Alister's attention.

“That was the side of yourself that was once good,” Anna said.

The hangman's face was bright red and desperate with pain and fear.

“Your need to care is what makes you vulnerable.”

“Is that—”

“Worry not. It's only a part of you,” Anna said. “The part you have no use for.”

“Please God, no.”

“I hung him there to make him suffer as he has made you suffer.”

“How has he made me suffer?”

“By trying to take away everything I've ever done for you.”

Anna exited the room.

A war scream that startled Alister filled the hallway and turned Anna askew. Something moving so fast that it was nothing more than a blur slammed into Anna and took her out of sight.

“Run, Alister!”

Alister recognized Michael's voice. The desire to help the man that dangled by his neck made him hesitate.

“Now,” Michael said. The sound of an intensifying scuffle grew louder.

“I can't leave him,” Alister said, and he jumped on the hanging man. Something on the ceiling groaned and snapped and together Alister and the hanging man fell to the floor.

Alister jumped to his feet, loosened the noose on the man and ran from the room. Michael and Anna continued to exchange blows. Michael's handicap seemed no longer visible.

Alister moved forward while he planned his attack, knowing this might be his only chance.

 

 

 

Anna straddled Michael's chest and cackled. Without pause, she delivered a fist, one after the other, into his face.

“Get off of me!” Michael said as he bucked, twisted and flailed his limbs. Swollen welts and gashes leaking blood distorted his appearance, and Alister could instantly see the man was really a boy no older than the age of eight or nine. And Anna was really the child's mother relishing in the fear and pain of her son.

“Get off of him,” Alister said. His words were no louder than a whisper, and he was paralyzed.

“You little bastard. You don't know how to listen!”

“Get off of him,” Alister said, his words building but still a whisper.

“I hate you! Do you hear me? I hate you!” Anna said.

Past the physical damage, Alister knew the boy's spirit was being crushed and transformed into something terrible. It seemed inevitable that he would grow up to be an outcast and become an abuser himself. Another participant tangled in the web of hate.

“Can't you see what this is doing to him?”

Alister wanted to take the boy in his arms and carry him someplace safe. It was a place no one knew about and where wounds would be given enough time to heal. Beneath the long, hulking branches and thick canopy of a weeping willow awaited shelter and protection like the hug from someone who cared.

Alister charged forward and lowered his shoulders. He slammed into Anna, and she was thrown off of the boy. The force of the impact jolted Alister's system and stole his breath.

“You dare?” Anna asked, already on her feet. “After all I've done for you?” The surprise of his attack contorted her features.

Alister gasped for air, his lungs on fire.

“You need to sit,” someone said.

He struggled to his knees.

“Calm down. Your breath will come soon enough.”

Alister fell forward on his hands and tried to draw a breath.

“Raise your hands over your head.” The voice was male and the care it seemed to have for him was genuine.

“Like at this, Alister.” He demonstrated by lifting his hands over his head.

Alister looked and stopped.

“You.”

The man next to him smiling and speaking softly looked exactly like him. He was reminded of the face that used to look back at him in the mirror. It wasn't the one obsessed with the thought of suicide and death that held onto misery but the one that liked the way his hair looked when he ran a comb through it.

“You look like me.”

The man chuckled and slapped Alister on the back. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

Alister continued to study the man. The physical similarities were endless.

“I knew you would find me, Alister. Thank you.” He tugged on the collar of his shirt and Alister could easily see bright red rings around his neck that oozed something terrible.

“You were the one hanging in that room,” Alister said. The realization pushed him to his feet. “Who did that to you?”

“I think you know.” The man covered the wound and turned away. “She's gone for the moment but could return any second. We should take advantage of the opportunity to get away from here before she returns.”

“Where would we go?” Alister balled his fist and held it out. “I think we should stay and fight.”

“No. Fighting her like that is doing things on her terms. There is another way.”

Alister followed the man into a room, and the noose he had pulled the man down from dangled from the ceiling again.

“I thought that came down when we fell to the ground,” Alister said.

The man slid a chair beneath the noose, stopped and looked at Alister. “It did.” He patted the chair. “Please, have a seat right here.”

Alister sat.

“Give me the syringe that's in your pocket.”

“How did you know?”

The man held out his hand and wiggled his fingers. The lumpy flesh on his palms matched Alister's perfectly. “Please, Alister, we don't have much time.”

Alister dug in his pocket and withdrew the syringe. He handed it to the man.

“You need to roll up your sleeve.”

Alister hesitated.

“You know what is going on. This is what you've always wanted, isn't it?”

Alister searched deep within for the answer, and there was never any doubt about it.

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“Then you need to follow my instructions without pause. Pull up your sleeve.”

“I'm not afraid to die.”

“Yes, I know because neither am I.”

The man squeezed the plunger on the syringe and stopped when a stream of liquid shot out of the needle tip. “How about pain? How do you feel about that?”

Alister rolled up his sleeve and looked away.

“No more pain. I've had enough of that.”

“Yes, we have.”

“We?”

“I think you know, Alister. You got this needle and filled it because that was what I suggested you do.”

Alister flinched at the small stab of pain and looked to see the contents of the needle being pumped into his arm. “No, I took it with the intention of using it on Anna.”

The man shook his head. “You brought it here for me to use on you. Although we're different in many ways, we're both in search of the same ending.”

Alister raised a brow.

“Anna isn't who she says she is, and she's not who you think she is.” He sat next to Alister and paused long enough to touch the oozing lesion on his neck. “It is important for you to know that she's the one responsible for keeping me away from you. I escaped the darkness once, but she caught me, bound my hands behind my back and forced me into the noose. I've been hanging there for days, unable to free myself and get back to you.”

“And who or what are you?”

The man smiled. “Your ability to think logically.”

Alister laughed. “That's ridiculous.”

“I was once a part of you, and we were separated long ago.”

“By what?”

“Cruelty.”

Alister looked at his hands and flexed his fingers.

“I've been trying to get back to you for a long time. Now that I have, you know what we must do now, don't you?”

Alister nodded. “I do.”

“I knew you would.” The man turned away. “The woman who calls herself Anna. She is really our mother.”

“How…”

“Something inside us brought her out, and she's been inside here,” he said as he tapped his temple, “wreaking havoc ever since. She created this hell for us and plays on our fears, desperate to keep us apart.”

“What hell?”

“This place—it is only within our mind.”

“Why didn't you come and warn me sooner?”

“Oh, I tried, but it was almost impossible to get you to hear me. Especially when she returned to you the second day.”

Alister thought of the hospital and how big it was. He had spent most of his days trapped inside that little room, leaving everything else for Anna.

He laughed.

No, not Anna. It was his mother. He had allowed her to run free.

“I eventually started getting through to you, and that's the reason you started to question her.”

“I couldn't imagine what you were going through.”

“When I would start making progress with you, she would distract you with another lie. Every time she left your room, she would hunt for me. When she eventually caught me, she locked me away deep within the scars of our mind. And she knew each scar intimately because she created every one of them.”

“That is where we are now,” Alister said. “Caught inside the trappings of a sick mind.”

“And there's only one way out for us.”

Alister embraced a moment of silence.

“She told us we were worthless,” Alister said. “We were beaten every day for nothing. We suffered to satisfy her sick mind.”

Alister took hold of the man's hands and turned his palms upward. “I remember now.” He compared the scars one last time and let go of his hands. “She did this to us.”

“We had many great years with our family while we were able to keep control over her. I think it's time we regained that control.”

Alister looked away. “It's fuzzy, but I think I remember them, too. He's been here recently, hasn't he?”

“Yes, he has.”

“Does he know?”

“Who, Michael?”

“Yes, Michael.

“That he's our son and that we love him? That we're sorry?”

Alister nodded.

“Yes, he knows that. When we worked together as a team, we were able to tell him.”

“I am glad. He deserves that much.” He began to cry.

“No more crying.”

“OK,” he said, and he wiped the tears. “I hate her for what she's done to us.”

“I do, too.”

Alister stood and slipped his head into the noose.  “Finally, we can have peace.”

“Alister!” Anna said. She stood in the doorway and was drenched in sweat and short of breath. “What are you doing? Come down from there.”

“No,” Alister said. “I won't listen to you anymore.”

“You're sick and don't know what you're doing.”

“No, Mother, you're sick, and you've infected me. To know I've allowed you room inside my mind to carry out your evil sickens me.”

Alister stepped off the chair and kicked it away.

“Alister, no!”

 

 

 

Bonnie hummed softly. The sound of her sneakers squeaking in the emptiness of the hallway kept perfect time with the simple melody.

“No, no, no,” she said, and she stopped walking. The tray she held had a large bowl of water in its center that swirled and spilled over the rim. The other items on the tray—a towel, a bar of soap, a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste—got wet.

“Damn,” she said, and she stomped onward less careful with everything now that it was soaked. When she arrived at a closed door, she balanced the tray in one hand, keyed the doorknob and pushed the door open with her shoulder.

“OK, Alister.”

She stepped into the room; the door slowly swung closed behind her.

“I've come to give you your bath.”

Although Alister had never responded to the sound of her voice in the ten years she had fed and bathed him, Bonnie believed he heard every word she said and that he appreciated it.

“It is a beautiful day outside today.”

And that one day he would say something back to her.

“The doctor told me you responded to the sound of your sons—”

The tray fell out of Bonnie's hands and crashed to the floor. The water drenched the floor, walls and Bonnie's legs.

“Oh my God!”

Her hands covered her mouth and muted a scream. She backed away with her eyes wide and transfixed on Alister's limp body swaying on a makeshift noose torn from the innards of his mattress. His face was blue, and his head was titled at an awkward angle.

Bonnie backed into the wall and slipped. Her tailbone crashed on the hard floor and her head snapped back and slammed into the wall. Stars filled her eyes, and a surge of pain tensed her body.

She moaned as she struggled to her feet and winced as she moved. She looked over her shoulder at Alister and quickly looked away. She pulled his door open and shouted out into the hallway.

“Help! Somebody, please help!”

 

 

 

Anna wiped away her tears with a tissue and looked to Director Conroy's closed office door.

“I don't want to go in there.” She sniffed. “Not now.”

Her gaze moved to Jennifer, Director Conroy's secretary. She was on the telephone speaking low enough not to be heard. Her desk was to the left of his door, and nobody got past her unless she approved. She handled everything from his phone calls to his appointments and always made sure he had enough coffee to keep him going.