The Lost and the Damned (34 page)

I began to wonder if she was just making a giant circuit of the place, lost on some routine in Max’s memory. The halls were beginning to look the same. In boredom and distraction, we lagged behind her more than usual. We spaced out in our walking formation. Merill trailed behind and I had lost sight of him, I just took it as a given he was there. Katie was a few paces behind me, just lost in thought. She only came close to me when I peered around corners.  I began to wonder if this was all a waste of time. I was lost in thought as I watched the nurse turn around yet another corner into a dimly lit hallway.

Then we heard a scream.

I reacted first, stopping in my tracks, causing Katie to bump into me. We turned and looked at each other, wide eyed, as I heard an awful succession of “thunk” noises. Regaining control, I dashed down the hallway, sliding on the dusty floor as I tried to round the corner.

Immediately I noticed the nurse’s body lying on the floor, blood gushing from her. Blood splatters covered the entire hallway and a man stood in the dim light in front of her. He smiled and casually stepped over the body toward me. I stepped back a few steps, stretching my hand out to my side to push back Katie who had run up beside me.

The man stepped into the light, and I knew at once who it was. I recognized the face easily, but I had trouble accepting that it was the same person. Where I had seen glassy, almost dead eyes, now I saw eyes full of ferocity, wild and unpredictable. The face was tense, white skin made whiter by the blood that was splattered on it. He recognized me, and a twisted grin appeared on his face. Beyond that grin, his face had a nervousness that was still visible beyond his frenzy. The unkempt hair and the patient clothes he wore were the only things that were the same since I had last seen him.

It was Max.

That alone would have been enough to rattle me, just seeing someone so submissive and nonthreatening turned into this demon in front of me. But no, keeping with the impossible madness of this place, things were weirder and always worse. His hands were empty, yet I knew that he was the murderer. Floating in the air around him were twelve knives. They floated around his head and shoulders like a cloud of weapons, each pointing in front of him, each knife gently bobbing up and down with his breathing. They were all red with the nurse’s blood.

“So it’s the new doctor, is it?” said Max, his twisted smile becoming a mocking smirk. There was still confusion in his expression, no matter how much he hid it.

“I’m no doctor,” I said.

“No, but you had no problems leading me to believe that, did you?” he said smoothly, but anger was obvious behind the words.

“I didn’t mean to… look, I mean, that’s not the reason I…” I said.

“Save it,” he said. “It will all be lies. Yet another person who decided to take advantage of poor, defenseless Max.”

I looked at those floating knives, glistening with blood, and I wondered if we should just run. I tensed the hand that was still held in front of Katie.

“Why did you kill her?” I asked, trying to stall for time.

“Her?” he said, turning his head back to look at the body. There was a split second where we could have run, but I was a fool and missed it, remaining tense until his head turned back to us. “She deserved it. She had a gift for torture, the torture of those so insignificant that no one cared what happened to them. I was one of those victims. Myself and all the other defenseless victims that had to stay in this hospital. Her death is justice.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, and it was the truth, not just stalling.

“No one ever stops to understand the weak. They just want to take advantage. Now it is my turn to get just desserts.”

I looked up again at the very sharp and very blood knives, and decided that whatever he meant, it did not look good for our intrepid hero or the damsel in distress.

“And here’s the other lying doctor,” said Max, prompting me to turn my head. Merill had caught up and was a few paces behind me.

“Hello Max,” said Merill, his voice resigned. I wondered why there was no surprise in seeing Max with twelve floating knives, but I decided that was a mental note to file for later.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” said Max. “It saves me the trouble of looking for you.”

“Were you really going to look for me, Max?” responded Merill. “Do you really consider me someone who took advantage of you?”

A slightly confused look crossed Max’s face. “No, you aren’t. You were a patsy, a hindrance, a confessional, and a judge, but you inflicted no injustice of your own on me. It was all the others. I just wanted help, but they wouldn’t help. They just wanted to use me, like so many others had in my life. I just wanted to live my life. But I’ll get revenge. Ashborn will pay,” he hissed.

There was a brief pause in their exchange, and I decided to ask a question. Besides my own curiosity, it was a long shot.  Maybe it would provide the opening we needed.

“Max, what happened to your stutter?”

“My st-stutter?” he asked, momentarily taken aback. “My stutter? My stutter rose from injustice. Every wound I suffered at the hands of defilers made it worse. But I have been correcting that. All those wounds are healing. There’s only one more I worry about.”

“Dr. Ashborn?” I asked.

“No, it’s fa…” he stopped, his eyes wide, genuinely shocked at himself. “Faaaaaa… Faaaa… f-f-f-f…” he paused, pursing his lips, trying the word again. I grabbed Katie’s hand. “.. f-f-fa-fa..fa…” he was still having trouble, his face growing redder.

I spun on my heels, pulling Katie with me and I bolted down the corridor in the fastest sprint I could muster, Katie’s small body just skipping from step to step as I pulled her. Behind me I could hear Max getting angrier, trying to pronounce the word, his voice louder as he tried to compensate. “Fa..fa… fa-fa-fa-fath-fath- FATHER!” he finally screamed.

The scream turned into a feral howl, rage pouring out in his voice. I didn’t need to look behind me to know that he was running after us. If he was pursuing us, my only guess was that Merill was not far behind Katie and myself.

We were making good time down a hallway when I heard the noise again. It was a loud moan, but this time not from Max. This was in front of us. It was followed by the crash of an enormous foot hitting the ground. I knew at once that the monster had shown up, right on time. There had been a murder, now there was the monster.

I slowed down at once, skidding on the dusty floor. The thundering footsteps were louder and quicker. I actually believed that the monster was for once running in our direction. When it moaned again, I realized why: “Maaaaaaaaaaaax….”

It was looking for Max. It has been always looking for Max. I bet it had heard Max’s howl and it was coming after him. The problem was that we were between it and Max. I looked around. There was a closet door to one side and an office door to the other. I made a hasty choice and tore open the office door, ushering Katie inside. While it still possessed its office furniture, it was full of excess pieces. It had multiple cabinets, desks, and boxes piled all over it. I ran in behind her and started tearing the place apart, opening the closet, moving the desk, opening the cabinets. There was always a door into blackness. Always a door. We just had to find it. I prayed that it was in this room.

Katie got the idea and started looking too. If it wasn’t in the closet, where was it? She started throwing open cabinets, moving the desk around. I went back to the door, looking out. I heard both of them from each side. I wasn’t sure who would show up first. Merill came sliding to a stop near our door. I grabbed his arm and pulled him in. The thundering footsteps were very close now, as well as the howling shouts of rage from Max.

Max showed up first, rounding the corner and slowing to a stop, staring at me as he gasped for breath. He was unaccustomed to running, so he was winded. His eyes had murderous rage, even as he doubled over trying to breathe.

“Katie? Have you found it yet?” I shouted, staring at Max, not wanting to turn my back on him.

“Not yet!” she called over the sound of the slamming of cabinet doors.

“I’m going to… get you…” wheezed Max, probably completely unaware of his clichéd threats.

The giant steps were almost upon us, and finally the monster came in view. The hallway was dim, but I saw its hulking form coming toward us. I gazed in awe upon it. It was a ten foot tall giant, its bulk just barely fitting in the hallway. Bulging muscles covered its form, with popping veins covering those muscles. Its clothes seemed to have burst sometime before it reached its current state, just tatters of rags at this point. My first thought that this was another like the Five, experiments of Dr. Ashborn that had been unleashed. But as it stepped into the light, I recognized the face. I couldn’t remember where from, but I recognized the face. Merill stood next to me and as I turned to him, I saw the same strange look of recognition.

Max seemed to notice the monster for the first time and all the murderous bravado he had just possessed drained out of him. “W-what are you doing here?” he asked, “I-I’m n-n-ot ready y-yet!”

The monster paused a few steps before our door, staring at Max. “Maaaaaaaax,” it said, “Yoooou’ve beeeen baaaaad!”

Then the creature charged forward, its shoulders pushed forward like a linebacker. Max screamed, and from behind me I heard Katie say, “Found it!”

Merill and I immediately turned around, seeing Katie squatting in front of a floor cabinet that was now open, revealing blackness. Without thinking about it, we each dove into the blackness, feeling some relief in the thought-obliterating transition.

Sixteen

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

DOCTOR: Let’s talk about your problems with authority.

PATIENT: I haven’t been causing problems. I’ve been good.

DOCTOR: No, I know you obey it. But you do not seem to do it out of respect.

PATIENT: That’s true.

DOCTOR: So tell me about that. Why do you acknowledge authority?

PATIENT: I’m afraid.

DOCTOR: Why are you afraid of authority?

PATIENT: Because I’m always being taken advantage of by those with more power.

DOCTOR: Always? Those in positions of authority have never protected you or helped you out?

PATIENT: There was one person who was supposed to protect me. He was supposed to be there for me. But he was the source of the biggest betrayal. The first betrayal.

DOCTOR: And who was that?

PATIENT: My father of course.

DOCTOR: Let’s talk about that betrayal.

PATIENT: What’s there to say? He nearly beat me to death. The state put him in prison and put me in the hospital, and my life has been downhill since then. I still wake up in the middle of the night, afraid he’s going to come through the door and grab me.

DOCTOR: And you feel he is to blame for everything in your life?

PATIENT: Yes, completely. I see him when I close my eyes at night.

The blackness was everything I expected it to be. Falling through nothing, then the bizarre dream where I followed the young boy into the living room where very bad things happened. Then I found myself waking up on a cold, hard floor, staring at the ceiling.

Katie and Merill stood up and looked around. I remained on the floor, laying on my back and staring at the ceiling, going over things in my head. I was so close to figuring it out and the weird dream I had confirmed what I had been thinking. Now it was just figuring out what to do about it.

Merill cursed.

“What is it?” asked Katie.

“Look around,” he said, “we’re back in the control booth for Observation Room 6.”

“What does it mean?” asked Katie.

“I can only guess at what it might mean,” responded Merill. “We’re back in the same place we were before. We left the hospital memory just to show up in that same memory again. Max may not want us going anywhere.”

“So he can get us?” suggested Katie gloomily.

“I have every reason to believe that he intends to kill us,” responded Merill.

“Great,” said Katie. I saw her move into my field of vision, leaning over my prone posture and blocking my view of the ceiling. “Hey John, you okay?”

I snapped out of my thoughts. “Yeah, sorry,” I said, picking myself up off the floor. “What’s the problem?”

“We’re fucked,” said Katie energetically.

“That’s great,” I said. “Merill?”

“In so many words, yes, I believe that as well,” he responded. He grabbed at the door, pulling it open and looking out. After a moment he paused and swung it open. “This is interesting.”

I peered over his shoulder and looked out. It was the corridor we saw before, but not quite. It was clean, the walls repainted, the light fixtures completely different.

“It looks like they remodeled,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Merill. “This is the hospital that this control booth properly belongs to.”

“What does it mean?” asked Katie.

“I take it to indicate that while we are in the same place, we are in a different memory,” said Merill.

“Same shit, different day?” proposed Katie.

“Functionally a different place altogether,” said Merill, “if I understand how this works. Oh, I realize that it is technically the same place, but in Max’s mind, it exists entirely differently.”

“So why are we here?” asked Katie.

“We are just interlopers,” said Merill. “As to why this memory is active, I can only make guesses. This is the source of Max’s most recent pain. I believe he intends to go after Dr. Ashborn.”

“Or yourself? You were his doctor,” said Katie.

“Or all of us, for that matter. Based on his troubled state, I believe that none of us are safe. I believe he has an affinity for murder.”

“Bloodlust?” said Katie. “Great. Yeah, we are fucked. Trapped in the mind of someone who wants to kill us. What do you think, John?”

“Huh?” I said, “Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

My mind was still working it out. I think I had the solution; I just had to think it through and find the answer. Merill and I had both seen it, he knew too.