Wayne of Gotham (12 page)

“Yes, I believe you are, Mr. Grayson,” Amanda replied, her gaze unfocused on the dark towers of Arkham across the river, her voice whispering as though she were murmuring through a dream. “I'm more lost than anyone and you managed to find me. How far did you have to come? Was it miles or years? How far do you think I'll have to go before I can be home, too? Before I can find my way back among the living?”

Bruce stood up, his eyes fixed on her. “Where are you, Amanda?”

She turned suddenly toward him, her eyes bright and pleading. “I don't want to die … I want to live! Please, I've got to find a way back. You've got to help me find my way back.”

“Back from where?” Bruce demanded.

“Back from this hell,” she pleaded. Her voice was frantic and rushed, her eyes darting. “Back from wherever they've put me. Back from the grave and the dark and the cold, Mr. Grayson. I see the shadows as they pass—young and old all at once—and I see you, too, the echo of your father as the echo of mine driving me to do things I do not want to do and say things I do not want to say. We're only echoes, shades, shadows of our fathers, you and I, but their sins still run through our veins and now the blood is calling us back … back to a past that is better forgotten. You've got to stop the ghosts. They're coming for us—both of us—in our dreams at night and they will devour everything that we are or ever will be!”

Bruce reached his hands up, grabbing her firmly by the shoulders. “I'll take you home, Amanda. It's just across the parkway and—”

“NO!” Amanda screamed, pushing away from him. A few of the people admiring the view glanced in their direction. “I don't believe you, Thomas! You said you would help! You said you would be there! You said it was our dream, but the nightmare came and it never went away.”

Bruce blinked.
Thomas
?

“Amanda,” Bruce said in a firm, quiet voice. “I am here to help now. I'll take you home—”

“Stop calling me that!” she yelled. “My name is Marion and you too well know it!
You
did this, Thomas! It's
you
who will pay for it, not me! You … you will pay for … for …”

Suddenly, Amanda threw her head back in a spasm. She shook violently and then collapsed so quickly that Bruce barely managed to catch her before she fell to the ground.

Bruce swept Amanda up into his arms, feeling the muscles in his back protest as he straightened up. The other people in the park had studiously moved away from where he was standing or were pointedly looking in other directions.

Bruce turned with the woman in his arms and started across the parkway toward the rows of brownstone homes on the far side of the Sprang River Drive and Burnley district beyond.

It was, indeed, time to take Amanda home.

Murphy Street / Gotham / 10:46 a.m. / Present Day

Bruce pressed the doorbell awkwardly with his extended right index finger, the rest of his hand otherwise occupied holding the limp form of Amanda Richter.

The dawn had not yet broken over the Atlantic to the east. All the streets in the early morning light were bathed in a rosy morning glow. A few citizens were stirring and a number of lights shown through the windows up and down the street, but among those early denizens no one took particular notice of the man in the flannel shirt and jeans carrying the woman up the brownstone steps.

He had secured the Batmobile in a side tunnel of the Gotham mass transit system specifically designed to keep the vehicle—and his Batsuit—away from prying eyes or hands. It was as close as he could get to Elm Avenue and Murphy Street and be sure his equipment—especially his Batsuit—would be safe. Walking to the park had been a casual distance. However, the park had been four blocks from Amanda Richter's brownstone steps and Bruce was feeling the exhaustion from the effort of carrying the woman this far. Now, standing on the stoop with the woman in both arms and struggling to press the doorbell, he wished not for the first time that he were back in the exomuscular Batsuit and letting it take away the years that he was feeling now in his complaining arms and legs.

He managed once more to find the doorbell and leaned against it.

The door opened at last.

“What in the name of …!”

“Delivery, Ms. Doppel,” he grunted.

“Who are you?” the nurse demanded at once.

“Gerald Grayson,” he answered, sweat beading on his forehead. “Do you mind if we come in?”

“What have you done to her?” Ms. Ellen Doppel, RN, was a frumpish middle-aged woman who had the general appearance of having just been shaken in a large paper bag and rolled out of it. Her dark cotton skirt and white blouse were both rumpled, and a bright pink sweater was draped over her shoulders unevenly. Her eyes were also uneven; one appeared slightly lower than the other and drooped perceptibly. Her iron gray hair was sticking out of its loosening bun at odd angles. Despite her worn appearance, Bruce noticed she moved surprisingly well.

“Nothing compared to what's going to happen to her if I drop her on these stone steps,” Bruce replied through gritted teeth. “You want to get out of the way?”

Ms. Doppel did not want to get out of the way but did so anyway. She dropped back against the entry wall, clutching her sweater closed as she did. “Straight down the hall and the first door on the left. There's a couch in the study. Put her there.”

Bruce obeyed quickly, uncertain as to how long his legs would hold out.

There was a time when I wouldn't have given it a second thought. There was a time long since past…

He crabbed sideways down the narrow hall and rotated through the open doorway. The study had stained panels up to a chair rail with a light khaki paint above running to ornate crown molding along the ceiling. A heavy desk stained to match the wall panels sat near the center of the room, while tall bookcases filled one wall. There was a window that let in light from a small garden nestled between the brownstones. An overstuffed leather couch sat against the back wall. It had been a man's room, yet Bruce decided that the room had not known a man's presence in perhaps half a century.

“Where did you find her?” Ms. Doppel asked. She had followed them to the room and was standing in the doorway.

“She was at Curtis Point,” he said. “I was waiting for a delivery and just thought I'd pass the time.”

“At Curtis Point.” Ms. Doppel was not buying it.

“That's about it.”

Ms. Doppel considered him for a few moments before she spoke. “You must be cold, mister, ah—”

“Grayson, ma'am. Gerry Grayson.”

“May I offer you some coffee before you go, Mr. Grayson?”

Bruce smiled his most winning smile.

“I would like that very much, Ms. Doppel.”

She backed out of the doorway, slipping back into the kitchen. “Come with me, please.”

Bruce followed her. The kitchen itself was definitely old, the floor covered with white tiles, accentuated by smaller black ones. The appliances had been replaced about ten years before, by the look of them. The nurse motioned Bruce to sit at a small table with a ridiculously old-fashioned pink Formica top. The chairs looked as though they might have come from a malt shop, and the plastic on one of the cushions was split.

“What do you know of Miss Amanda, Mr. Grayson?” Ms. Doppel asked without preamble as she poured the coffee from the gleaming metal pot into two large cups on matching saucers.

“Not much, really,” Bruce answered. “I'm not sure all her wiring is up to code, if you know what I mean.”

Ms. Doppel almost smiled. “That is quite true, Mr. Grayson.”

She picked up the cups and saucers, stepping across the kitchen and setting them on the table.

“Since we're sharing coffee, how about you just call me Gerry?”

“I'd prefer to keep things formal, Mr. Grayson,” the nurse said as she sat down across from him. “Remaining impersonal will make my news easier.”

“You do have a first name, though, don't you?” Bruce persisted.

She looked at him across the table, always considering what she said before she spoke. “My name is Dr. Ellen Doppel, I am—or was—a doctor of clinical psychology. I was treating Mrs. Richter and her daughter at the time of their unfortunate demise and am now barred from public practice due to inaccuracies in testimony at the inquest. However, it was the uncontested wish of both the mother and the daughter in their last wills that I inherit their house and their financial holdings. I have been a prisoner to their largess in this house ever since. Does that satisfy your curiosity, Mr. Grayson?”

“And so now you're treating the youngest daughter on your own?” Bruce asked with studied casualness.

“No, we both know that is impossible, now, don't we?”

Bruce looked up over the edge of his cup. “Pardon me?”

“Miss Amanda, as you know her, cannot possibly be Amanda Richter,” Ellen Doppel continued with studied cool. “Ernst Richter died at Arkham in an accident in 1958. Marion, the elder daughter, was fifteen years old at the time. Her younger sister Amanda was eleven. Had Amanda survived, she would be over sixty years old by now.”

“She looks pretty good for sixty,” Bruce chuckled.

“Well, the Richter women were known to carry their age well,” Nurse Doppel said.

Bruce raised his eyebrows.

“A joke,” Doppel shrugged. “No, Mr. Grayson, that is not Amanda Richter.”

“Well, I carried somebody into this house,” Bruce said.

“But not Amanda Richter,” the nurse said flatly.

“Well, she certainly believes she is Amanda,” Bruce countered. “Where did she come from?”

“I don't know,” the nurse answered, a troubled look creasing her brow for the first time. “She arrived on the back porch one day in the middle of a thunderstorm, soaking wet and barely able to speak.”

“Where did she say she came from?”

“This house.”

“But you just said—”

“I said she is not Amanda Richter,” Nurse Doppel interrupted, crossing her arms. “I have tried my best to help her, but she firmly believes that whoever she once was, she is now Amanda Richter. She believes she is possessed by the ghost of Amanda and that all her father's powers to redirect men's minds are hers as well. She believes she will not be free of this ghost until Amanda has been avenged of her father's death.”

“Possessed?” Bruce shook his head. “That's crazy.”

“Yes,” Nurse Doppel responded, sipping at her cup. “I do believe it is.”

Bruce watched Doppel for a moment. There was a resigned sadness to the woman, like an animal who had been captured in the wild and whose spirit had been broken by too many years in a cage.

“She called herself Marion,” Bruce offered into the silence.

Doppel looked up with sudden interest. “She did? When?”

“Just before she blacked out,” Bruce said. “Who's Marion?”

“That was the elder of the Richter daughters,” Nurse Doppel responded, shaking her head sadly. “This is very bad.”

“Bad?” Bruce said. “I thought we were well past bad already.”

“I mean worse,” Nurse Doppel corrected. “She had adopted the persona of Amanda, but now it appears she is forming schisms into multiple personalities. First Amanda and now apparently Marion. Dissociative identity disorder is a setback for Amanda—a worsening of her issues. This is usually brought on by inordinate stress, but I cannot think what kind of external stress she might be under that would be a causal factor in this newly manifest disorder.”

A moaning sound drifted into the kitchen from the study. Nurse Doppel set down her cup carefully on the saucer and stood up, the legs of the chair squealing against the tiles. “Excuse me, Mr. Grayson, I'll be back directly.”

Nurse Doppel moved past him, careful to keep as far out of his way as possible. She opened the door to the study, closing it behind her. Bruce strained to hear, but the voices through the door were muted and muffled.

Dissociative identity is extreme. Could an alternate personality be his opponent while the Amanda personality knows nothing about it? Dual personalities … isn't that what I am? Or does Gerry Grayson count as three
?

Nurse Doppel appeared again through the study door, closing it softly behind her. In her free hand she held a package, covered in plain brown paper and tied fast with twine. “She said I was to give this to you.”

Bruce took the parcel, turning it over in his hands. “What is it?”

“I haven't the slightest idea,” Nurse Doppel said, looking away and moving down the hall toward the front door. Her manner was polite, but there was a sense of accelerating farewell about her tone.

“Well, then, tell her ‘thank you' for me,” Bruce said, holding the object up as he passed her at the threshold. By weight and size, it appeared to be a wrapped book.