The Madman's Tale (52 page)

She lifted her hand to her face and touched her scar. The man who’d attacked her had been a cliché of anonymity. His face had been obscured by a knit ski mask, so that she only saw his dark eyes. He wore black leather gloves on his hands, jeans, and a nondescript pullover parka of the sort available in any number of outdoors equipment stores. On his feet had been Nike running shoes. The few words he spoke were guttural, rough, designed to conceal any accent. He didn’t really need to say anything, she remembered. He let the glistening hunting knife that had sliced her face speak for him.

That was something she had thought about hard. In the processing of the event afterward, she had dwelt on this detail, for it spoke to her in an odd way, and had made her wonder if the rape had been less of the purpose of the whole encounter than the disfigurement of her face.

Lucy leaned back, bouncing her head off the wall once or twice, as if the modest blows could loosen some thought from where it was glued within her imagination. She wondered sometimes how it was that her entire life had been altered by the time she’d been assaulted in that dormitory stairwell. How long was it, she asked? Three minutes? Five minutes from start to finish, from the first terrifying sensation when she’d been grabbed, to the sound of his footsteps heading off?

No more than that, surely, she told herself. And everything from that moment on had been changed.

Beneath her fingers, she touched the ridges of the scar. They had retreated, almost blended back even with the rest of her complexion, as the years had passed.

She wondered whether she would ever love again. She doubted it.

It wasn’t anything as simple as coming to hate all men for the acts of one. Or being unable to see the distinctions between the men she had come to know and the one who had harmed her. It was more, she thought, as if a place within her had been turned dark, and iced over. She knew that the man who had assaulted her had fueled much of her life and that every time she had pointed accusingly in a court of law at some sallow-faced defendant destined for prison she was slicing slivers of retribution from the world and gathering them to herself. But she doubted that the hole inside her would ever be filled enough.

Her mind slid then to Peter the Fireman. Too much like me, she thought. This made her sad, and unsettled, unable to appreciate that they were both damaged in like fashion, and that should have linked them. Instead she tried to picture him in the isolation room. It was the closest thing to a prison cell the hospital had, and in some ways it was worse. It existed for the sole purpose of eliminating any outside thoughts that might intrude on the patient’s world. Gray, stuffed padding covered the walls. The bed was bolted to the floor. A single thin mattress and threadbare blanket. No pillow. No shoelaces. No belt. A toilet that had little water in the bowl to prevent someone from trying to drown themselves in that sad way. She didn’t know if Peter would be put into a straitjacket. That would be procedure, and she guessed that Mister Evil would want to see procedure followed. For a moment she wondered how Peter was able to maintain any sanity at all, when just about everything that surrounded him was crazy. She guessed that it took a considerable force of will to constantly remind himself that he did not belong.

That would be painful, she thought.

In that regard, she realized, they were even more alike.

Lucy took a deep breath and told herself that sleep was critical. She needed to be alert in the morning. Something had driven Francis to confront the stocky man, and she didn’t know what it was, but suspected it was relevant. She smiled. Francis was proving to be more helpful than she had imagined he would be.

She closed her eyes, and as she shut one dark away with another, she was suddenly aware that she could hear an odd sound, one that was familiar, but unsettling. Her eyes popped open and she recognized the noise as the soft padding sound of footsteps in the carpeted hallway outside her room. She let out a long slow whistle and realized her heart rate had increased, which she instantly told herself was an error. Footsteps weren’t that unusual in the nurse-trainees’
dormitory. After all, there were different shifts, requiring twenty-four-hour attendance, and this caused the sleep patterns in the dormitory to be erratic.

But as she listened, she thought the footsteps paused outside her door.

She stiffened in the bed, craning her head in the direction of the faint, distinctive sound.

She told herself she was mistaken, and then thought she heard the handle of her door slowly turn.

Lucy instantly turned to the bed stand, and fumbling noisily, managed to click on the bedside lamp. Light flooded the room, and she blinked a couple of times, as her eyes adjusted. In almost the same motion, she threw herself out of the bunk, and stepped across the room, banging into a metal wastebasket, which skittered noisily across the floor. The door had a deadbolt lock, and she saw that it had not moved from the closed position. Crossing the room rapidly, Lucy pushed herself up to the solid wooden door and placed her ear against it.

She could hear nothing.

She listened for a sound. Anything that might tell her something; that someone was outside, that someone was fleeing, that she was alone, that she was not.

Silence gripped her as awfully as the noise that had plunged her into alertness.

She waited.

She let seconds slide past her, craning forward.

One minute. Perhaps two.

Through the window open behind her, she suddenly heard some voices passing by beneath. There was a laugh, then it was joined by another.

She turned back to the door. She reached up, threw the deadbolt lock, and with a sudden, swift motion, thrust the door open.

The corridor was empty.

She stepped out and peered to the right and to the left.

She was alone.

Lucy took another deep breath, letting the wind inside her lungs calm her racing heart. She shook her head.
You were always alone
she told herself.
You are letting things get to you
. The hospital was a place of unfamiliar extremes, and being surrounded by so much odd behavior and mental illness had made her jumpy. If she had something to fear, it was far less than whoever it might have been had to fear from her. This sense of bravado reassured her.

Then she retreated again into the room Short Blond had once occupied. She locked the door, and before getting back into bed, arranged the wooden chair so that it was balanced up against the door. Not as much as an additional barrier, because she doubted that would work. But propped in such a way that
were the door to open, it would crash to the floor. She took the metal waste-basket and placed that on top, then added to the makeshift tower her small suitcase. She believed that the noise of it all tumbling to the floor would be enough of an early warning to rouse her, no matter how deep her sleep might be.

W
as that you?

“
It was never me. It was always me
.”

“
You took risks,” I said stiffly, argumentatively. “You could have played it safe, but you didn’t, which was a mistake. I couldn’t see that at first, but eventually I saw it for what it was
.”

“
There was much you didn’t see C-Bird
.”

“
You’re not here,” I said slowly, the tone of my words betraying the lack of confidence I felt. “You’re only a memory
.”

“
Not only am I here,” the Angel hissed, “but this time I’m here for you
.”

I spun about, as if I could confront the voice that harried me. But he was like a shadow, flitting from one dark corner of the room to the next, always elusive, just out of my reach. I reached down and seized an ashtray jammed with butts and twisted cigarette filters, and threw it as hard as I could at the shape. His laughter blended with an explosion of glass, as the ashtray shattered against the wall. I twisted, right, then left, trying to line him up, but the Angel moved too quickly. I shouted at him to stand still, that I wasn’t scared of him, to fight fair, all of which sounded a little like a crying child in a playground trying to confront a bully. Each moment felt worse, every second that passed I felt smaller, less capable. Furious, I picked up the wooden stool and threw it hard across the room. It smashed against the frame of the door, gouging out a chunk of painted wood, then dropping to the floor with a thud
.

With every second passing, I felt more and more despair. I opened my eyes,
searching the room for Peter who might help, but he wasn’t there. I tried to picture Lucy, Big Black, Little Black, or any of the others from the hospital, hoping to enlist someone in my memory who might stand by my side and help me fight
.

I was alone, and my solitude was like a blow against my heart
.

For a moment, I thought I was lost, then, through the fog of all the noise of madness past and madness to come, I heard a sound that seemed out of place. An insistent banging that seemed, well, un-right. Not exactly wrong, but something different. It took me a few moments to collect myself and understand it for what it was. Someone at my front door
.

The Angel blew another chilly breath on the back of my neck
.

The knocking persisted. It grew louder, like the volume being turned up
.

I cautiously approached the sound
.

“
Who is it?” I asked. I was no longer completely certain that the noise from the outside world was any more real than the snakelike voice of the Angel, or even Peter’s reassuring presence on one of his haphazard visits. Everything was blending together, a soup of confusion
.

“
Francis Petrel?”

“
Who is it?” I repeated
.

“
It’s Mister Klein from the Wellness Center
.”

The name seemed vaguely familiar. It had a distant quality, as if it belonged somewhere in the recollections of childhood, not something current. I bent my head to the door, trying to fix a face to the name, and slowly features came into shape in my imagination. A slender, balding man, with thick glasses and a slight lisp, who rubbed his chin nervously near the end of the afternoon, when he grew tired, or else when one of his client patients wasn’t making progress. I wasn’t sure that he was actually there. I wasn’t sure that I could actually hear him. But I knew that somewhere a Mister Klein actually did exist, that he and I had spoken many times in his too-bright, sparse office, and that there was a slim possibility that this was indeed him
.

“
What do you want?” I demanded, still standing by the door
.

“
You’ve missed your last couple of regularly scheduled therapy appointments. We’re concerned about you
.”

“
Missed my appointments?”

“
Yes. And you have medications that need to be monitored. Prescriptions that probably need filling. Would you please open the door?”

“
Why are you here for me?”

“
I told you,” Mister Klein continued. “You have been regularly scheduled at the clinic. You have missed appointments. You’ve never missed appointments before. Not since your release from Western State. People are concerned
.”

I shook my head. I knew enough not to open the door
.

“
I’m fine,” I lied. “Please leave me alone
.”

“
You don’t sound fine, Francis. You sound stressed. I could hear shouting from inside your apartment when I came up the stairs. It sounded like a fight was going on. Is there someone in there with you?”

“
No,” I said. This wasn’t exactly true, nor was it exactly false
.

“
Why won’t you open the door and we can talk a little more easily
.”

“
No
.”

“
Francis, there’s nothing to be afraid of
.”

There was everything to be afraid of. “Leave me alone. I don’t want your help
.”

“
If I leave you alone, will you promise to come to the clinic on your own?”

“
When?”

“
Today. Tomorrow at the latest
.”

“
Maybe
.”

“
That’s not much of a promise, Francis
.”

“
I’ll try
.”

“
I need your word that you will come to the clinic either today or tomorrow and get a full examination
.”

“
Or what?”

“
Francis,” he said patiently, “do you really need to ask that question?”

Again I placed my head against the door, banging it with my forehead, once, then twice, as if I could chase thoughts and fears out of my thinking. “You’ll send me back to the hospital,” I said cautiously. Very quietly
.

“
What? I can’t hear you
.”

“
I don’t want to go back,” I continued. “I hated it there. I almost died. I don’t want to go back to the hospital
.”

“
Francis, the hospital is closed. Closed for good. You won’t have to return there. No one does
.”

“
I just can’t go back
.”

“
Francis, why won’t you open the door?”

“
You’re not really there,” I said. “You’re just another dream
.”

Mister Klein hesitated, then said, “Francis, your sisters are worried about you. Many people are worried about you. Why won’t you let me take you to the clinic?”

“
The clinic isn’t real
.”

“
It is. You know it. You’ve been there many times before
.”

“
Go away
.”

“
Then promise me you will come there on your own
.”

I took a deep breath. “All right. I promise
.”

“
Say it,” Mister Klein insisted
.

“
I promise I will come to the clinic
.”

“
When?”

“
Today. Or tomorrow
.”