The Lost and the Damned (32 page)

I let my breath out with a gasp, not realizing I had been holding it.  I took deep breaths as I felt my heart pounding in my ears. I tilted my head, listening, trying to hear beyond my heartbeat and the ringing in my ears I acquired from the gunfire. After thirty seconds I was confident there was no more flapping.

“I got them!” I called, then lowering my voice when I heard how loud it was. “I got them both.” I stared at the corpse of the bird, finding out it wasn’t even a bird at all. I can’t even describe what emotions went through me as I looked at it. Confusion, fear, revulsion, confusion again, then a horrible sense that reality was failing. I shook it all off. I needed the others to see this.

In a moment Katie rounded the corner, helping Merill along. His sleeve was in tatters, a makeshift tourniquet around his arm. I looked at his arm for a moment. “How deep is it?” I asked.

“Huh?” said Merill.

“How deep is the wound?” I insisted. “Aren’t you a doctor of some sort? How deep is your wound?”

“N-not very deep,” he said. “I don’t think I need a tourniquet.”

“That’s your call,” I said. “Make it into a bandage if you want. But I want you to look at this.”

I walked back over to the corpse of the “bird.”

“What the hell is this?” I asked, pointing at the corpse with the gun I still held in my hand.

Merill and Katie both stared down at the corpse, a strange mixture of emotions crossing their face, similar to the ones I went through when I first looked at it. I stared down on the corpse as well. The quotes were justly deserved when I said “bird.” The only thing that was bird-like about it was the wings. Black raven wings now lay cracked and mangled on the ground. But those were not the part that confused us. It’s what the wings connected to that was just bizarre. It was not even the body of an animal. The wings were connected to a knife. A long, nasty looking butcher knife. With wings. A knife with wings. That alone was enough to set my mind reeling. But there was more. The knife was bleeding. When I slammed my shoe down on the handle of the knife, blood squirted out of the knife itself. It was a living knife with wings.

“Merill, what the hell is this?” I asked again.

“I guess it’s…” he started, then trailing off as he looked at it again.

“This is wrong,” I said. “Completely wrong. This shouldn’t even exist. This is not scientifically possible. Knives can’t be alive. Knives can’t fly. Knives can’t bleed. What the hell is going on here?”

“I think it’s quite obvious – ” he began weakly before I interrupted.

“No, it’s not obvious, Doctor, it’s not obvious at all. Stop talking around the truth, stop trying to infer things and hoping we figure it out or hoping we don’t figure it out. Tell us straight, we deserve that,” I looked to Katie who nodded to me, stepping next to me to present a united front. “We want it straight, doc, where the fuck are we.”

Merill stared back at us for a long moment, gripping his wound and staring. Then he straightened up and shook his head to get his hair out of his face, almost haughtily. “I would have thought it was obvious, John. We’re in Max’s mind.”

Fifteen

TRANSCRIPT: OBSERVATION ROOM 5. PATIENT 457. ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: DR. MERILL

DOCTOR: Let’s talk about responsibility. Do you think people should be responsible for their actions?

PATIENT: Yes.

DOCTOR: Even when there are extenuating circumstances?

PATIENT: Yes. People should have to pay for what they’ve done.

DOCTOR: In all cases?

PATIENT: Yes, like my father. He needs to be punished for his unforgiveable crimes.

DOCTOR: Yes, we’ve been over that. But what about you?

PATIENT: What about me? I am an innocent.

DOCTOR: Don’t you think you should have consequences for your actions?

PATIENT: I’m not guilty of anything. It’s always been done to me.

At the end of the warehouse, we found a door which opened to gaping black space. With reservations we stepped through it. I was falling again and once more I had the dream. That horrible house where I saw violence happen to that boy. I just barely remembered it as my consciousness blanked out and I awoke with Katie and Merill on a cold hard floor.

We stood up, dazedly looking around. We were inside some sort of control booth. Computers and audiovisual equipment lined one side of the booth, pressed up against a glass wall through which I could see a table, some chairs, and an operating table. The room was empty.

I still felt dazed, so I sat down in one of the office chairs. I stared at Katie and Merill, watching them for their own reactions. Katie was completely out of it: she was staring into space, rocking back and forth. I kept some attention on her, in case I needed to catch her if she fell. Merill was looking around the room, but also seemed to not be very alert. He probably recognized the place, even if he couldn’t think of it at the moment.

I leaned back in the chair, letting my mind run over the new possibilities. Dr. Merill had dropped quite a bomb. He claimed that this was all Max’s mind. I’m not sure I believed it quite yet. It might be unequivocally true, but accepting it as true was something else. Before it I had a theory of travelling in time, hitting all the moments of Max’s life. I was kind of okay with that, though it was definitely a hard position to defend. But instead of time travel, we were somehow inside someone’s mind. For some reason, that was much harder to believe. Time travel felt like science, even though it was probably more science fiction. But being inside someone’s mind seemed fantastic and impossible. How did we fit inside? How did we get inside? Did his mind get bigger? Did we get smaller? What is a mind exactly? Questions abound.

Yet, as I became more alert and let the idea sit, there were certain things that the theory of being in Max’s mind answered. First, yes, I would have to accept that we somehow got into his mind. But once we used that assumption, things added up. We were travelling in time to different points in Max’s life. Easy, they were just memories. Each scene began with something related to Max. Memories again. The scenes were populated with some recognizable people, but they were also populated by faceless half-people. This was a bit harder to get. Maybe Max remembered that someone was there, but not what they looked like? Memory is a tricky thing.

 My mind moved to the things that didn’t fit. Murders. What was up with those? I’m pretty sure that all of those murders did not occur in real life. Whether he had done them or not, Max would have been the common denominator in all situations and been thrown into prison just for that. No, that seemed… out of place. But what were they then? Why were murders going on in his mind? And what was with the monster? Why would a man have such a beast inside his own mind, particularly one that seemed to be looking for him?

I shook my head. The more things that made sense the more things seemed not to fit. I wasn’t going to figure this one out just by sitting and thinking about it.

“I know where we are,” said Merill, his voice starting slow and then becoming normal speed. I figured he’d recognize this place.

“So where are we?” I asked.

“Not a place I have good memories of,” he said. “Observation Room Six.” He paused for a moment, letting it sink in. Or I assumed so. I know he had mentioned Observation Room Six before, but I couldn’t remember the significance.

“At least now I can actually show you the strange case of Max,” he said, “and maybe dispel some of your doubts.”

He sat down in front of one of the computers, waking it from sleep and displaying the most boring solid blue desktop background I had ever seen. He soon began opening folders quickly, obviously knowing where he was going.

“Ha!” he said with a laugh.

“What?” I asked, taking a moment from watching Katie, who had now collapsed into one of the chairs. She looked okay otherwise. I hoped.

“Even in Max’s mind, this computer is still on the network,” he said with an amused smile.

Strange, but okay. Maybe I’d buy that.

I got up and waved my hand in front of Katie’s face, her eyes following me. “You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, giving a faint smile. “Just tired.” She paused, then looked at me with a more concerned look. “It’s that blackout. Every time I go through it, the things I see…”

“What things do you see?” I asked.

“Ah-ha, found it!” said Merill exuberantly. “Come here, John, this will answer some of your questions.”

I looked back at Katie, but the moment had already passed and she was looking away. She was tired and I didn’t want to dredge up the topic that was so draining. I wanted to know about what she saw in the blackout, but that would have to come later. I sat down in the chair next to Max.

Max had brought up a video player and put it in full screen mode. He pressed play and there was a black screen with the date. The date faded away and then in white letters it said “OBSERVATION ROOM 6, PATIENT 457.” The words and black screen disappeared, giving way to video footage of a room which I quickly realized was the room on the other side of this glass. I saw a man strapped down to the operating table and two male nurses in scrubs standing next to him. As I looked closer I realized that the man on the table was Max. He didn’t look happy.

I saw Max struggle, but his movements were slow and lethargic. I turned to ask Merill about it when I heard a voice from the video: “Please administer the stimulant to the patient.” The voice was an older male voice, slightly distorted by speakers. The sound ended with a click. I looked over to my left, seeing a microphone with a push-to-talk button.

“That’s Ashborn,” said Merill.

I nodded, watching as one of the nurses loaded up a hypodermic needle. Max flexed like he was trying to avoid it, screaming “No,” but the second nurse held his shoulders as the first injected Max. Both nurses withdrew and Max relaxed. For a long moment nothing happened. Then Max started to freak out. He struggled against his bonds, growing more frantic with every second.

“Please relax and allow the stimulant to do its work,” said Ashborn.

“No, no, st-stop!” shouted Max as he struggled. “Th-this is wrong!”

“Please relax and allow the stimulant to remove any lingering effects of the sedative from your system. We want your consciousness clear and alert.”

“No!” said Max, franticly squirming. “S-sedate me already! D-don’t you understand?”

I could hear Ashborn’s chuckle distorted by the same speakers. “I don’t understand, do I? Why don’t you show me?”

“No!” shouted Max again, his body writhing.

“Sir, are you sure?” asked the first nurse. “He looks as though he is entering a seizure.”

“I’ll not be lectured by a grunt nurse,” replied Ashborn. “I will tell you when you need to step in.”

The nurse stepped back, obviously intimidated, but also pissed off. Both nurses turned their eyes to Max, watching him continue to writhe. Concern was written on both their faces, but there was also fear of a reprimand.

All at once Max tensed and then relaxed, his body back slumping against the table. The first nurse stepped forward, then froze mid-step, looking at the camera and then stepping back to position. The second nurse stood unnaturally stiff, his wide eyes staring at Max’s limp form.

Max’s eyes opened, staring at the ceiling. His lips began to move slowly, but at first there was no discernible sound. Just movement and drool. Then it became louder.

“I… I can see…”

“What can you see?” asked Ashborn, his voice very interested.

“I can see… I can see…”

I noticed that the video was becoming brighter and brighter. At first I thought it was poor video quality. There was a growing white spot in the back right corner of the room, near one of the nurses.

“What’s that?” I asked Merill, pointing at the white spot on the screen. “There’s some kind of weird lens flare in the video.”

“That’s no lens flare,” he said knowingly. “There’s nothing wrong with the video. It’s showing what happened.”

Max was still mumbling and the nurses were focused on him. They stared, trying to hear more, and then in a moment, I saw them notice. One of the nurses happened to glance at the corner with the white spot and did a double-take. He stared at that corner, and it was not long before the other nurse noticed as well. The second nurse turned and stared at the bright spot, stepping between it and the camera, momentarily backlighting the nurse.

The first nurse turned back toward the camera. “Sir?”

There was no response from the camera as the second nurse took a step closer to the white spot, staring into it. I could now plainly see translucent ripples travelling from Max to the white spot. It appeared like simple distortion of gasoline fumes in the air, but it was a consistent ripple leading straight to the white spot.

“Sir, what is this?” asked the first nurse.

The second nurse was now squatting in front of the white spot, staring into the bright light. He stared into it, though we could only see the nurse’s body backlit by the light.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” said the first nurse again. “This was not in the briefing.”

“I can see,” said the second nurse.

“… can see…” echoed Max from the table, drooling.

The first nurse’s head snapped toward the second nurse. “What did you say?” Fear filled the voice.

The second nurse reached out slowly toward the light.

“I don’t think you should do that,” said the first nurse.

The second nurse continued extending his arm and touched the light. Since it was luminous, we could not see where the hand touched the light. We did see the second nurse turn toward the first nurse with a smile and say, “It feels warm and pleasant. Squishy.”

At that moment, the second nurse’s arm was yanked forward, his face changing to fear. He lost his balance, slumping to the floor, his arm still in the light. There was another yank and then the second nurse began to scream. Then Max began to scream with him, two voices in a horrible chorus. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. I just wished Merill would turn down the volume.