Dark Season: The Complete Box Set (37 page)

Dr. Penfold

After lunch, I head down to the basement. After the events of yesterday, which resulted in five orderlies needing medical treatment for a variety of injuries, I feel it's time to check on Mr. Tarmey myself. Of course, this is the same ritual we go through every month: I order Tarmey to be removed from his room, he attacks and fights off my orderlies, and I end up coming down to try to persuade him to cooperate. I imagine he's expecting me right about now.

I knock on his door before opening it. I've learned to give him a moment to prepare for visitors. You never know what he's doing in there, hidden away in his little lead-walled room. He seems perfectly happy, reading and meditating and working out. In fact, were it not for the fact that he pointedly refuses to leave the room, I'd say John Tarmey is more or less perfectly normal.

“
Come in,” he says.

I open the door and find that he's sitting on the edge of his bed. It's very obvious that he was doing something else when I arrived, but whatever it was, he's tidied things away and is now waiting for me to enter.

“Do you know why I'm here, John?”

He sighs. “Because I broke the noses of half a dozen of your employees yesterday?”

“Actually, only two of them suffered broken noses,” I say. “The others suffered a range of injuries including a fractured cheek, two fractured eye sockets, several missing teeth, two broken arms and one lost earlobe. I think that's a record. You must be very proud”.

“
You're the one who should be proud,” he says. “You're the one who keeps sending them in here”.

“
So it's
my
fault?”

He shrugs. “We both know what happens when you try. You're the one who insists on pushing things”.

I walk over to his desk and look at the pile of books. Some Kafka, some George Bernard Shaw, and the complete Harry Potter series. He certainly has eclectic tastes. “Do you think I should give up?” I ask, picking up the books to take a look at them. “Should I let you rot down here alone?”

“
Yes please,” he says.

I look at the papers on his desk. He's been writing again. I would dearly like to read his work, but I know that he would not allow that.

“Tell me,” he says. “You're in here alone with me. The walls are made of lead. No-one can hear a thing from outside. You've seen what I do to your men. Aren't you scared?”

I turn to him. “Scared of you?”

He nods and stands up. He's a tall man, with thick black curly hair and dark, menacing eyes. “Don't you worry that I'll turn on you? After all, this is a psychiatric hospital. Don't you worry that your patients are a little unstable?”

I smile. “We both know you're not unstable,” I say. “In fact, I think that's part of your problem. Everyone is a little unstable from time to time in their daily lives. But not you, Mr. Tarmey. You're absolutely the most stable person I've ever met”. I look over at the door. “Apart from when we try to take you out of this room, obviously”.

“Obviously,” he repeats.

I pick up another book from the desk. Dracula, by Bram Stoker. I thumb through the pages.

“Do you believe in vampires, Dr. Penfold?” he asks.

“
No,” I say. “But I have a patient who does. She thinks she has made friends with such a creature”.

“
Stupid kid,” says Tarmey.

“
People believe what they want to believe,” I reply. I put the book down. “My job is to temper their fantasies with a little reality. Dracula is a fascinating book. The original, I mean. Back then, vampires were creatures of horror. These days, they tend to be featured in fantasy stories rather than true horror. But when you think about it, they really are a quite monstrous concept”.

“
They certainly are,” says Tarmey.

I head to the door. “I have to get back to work,” I say. “Are you sure you wouldn't like to come up with me?”

“No thank you,” he says, watching as I head out.

I start pulling the door shut. “I'll get your out of this room one day, Mr. Tarmey,” I say. "Even if I have to dismantle the walls around you, I'll get you out."

“We'll all suffer if you do, Dr. Penfold,” he replies, as the door slams shut.

Sophie

“
Why aren't you afraid of clocks?” asks Alex, the nice but clearly mentally unwell guy who has decided to sit next to me as I stare out the window. He seems to be about my age. Young, messed up. “Horrible things,” he continues. “Always ticking, always counting down toward the end”. I ignore him, but he keeps talking. “Do you know what it means when all the clocks stop?”

I turn to him. “What does it mean?”

He leans close to me. “It means you're dead”.

I smile and nod. “I'll remember that”.

He grins. “It's not important,” he says. “It's potatoes for dinner today. I saw them bringing in sacks of potatoes. What do you think it means?”

I open my mouth to say something, but instead my name is called out from across the room. “Sophie Hart!” shouts an orderly. “Visitor!”

I haul myself to my feet. “Sorry, Alex,” I say, heading over to the orderly, who escorts me the short distance to the visiting room. There, I'm not particularly surprised to find my mother waiting for me. She looks sombre and sad, and very tired. The room doesn't help: it's small, pretty bare, and has no furniture other than the table in the middle and a few chairs.

The orderly shuts the door, remaining in the room as I sit opposite my mother.

“How are you getting on?” she asks.

“
Not bad,” I say, “considering you committed me to a loony bin”.

She's clearly unhappy with the term 'loony bin'. “It's a psychiatric hospital. And I didn't have you committed, I had you brought here for an extended evaluation”.

“I think you'll find,” I say carefully, “that forcing me to be here is kind of the same thing as committing me. Even if you don't want to say the words”.

My mother sighs. Over the years, I've become so accustomed to her just sitting on the sofa watching TV, it's actually something of a surprise to find her out and about in the real world. She always seemed to be increasingly disconnected, but now she has apparently reconnected in the most annoying way possible.

“Mom,” I say. “What happened on Monday? How did I end up here?”

She pauses, seemingly unsure of how to answer the question. “You don't remember?”

“No,” I say. “Pretty obviously not”. The truth is: I don't remember anything since I left Gothos with Patrick. We'd escaped from the old mansion of the vampires, just after Patrick and I made love. Well, we didn't so much 'make love' as he climbed on top of me and... well, it was still good.

“
Things just got too much for you,” my mother says. “And you... acted out. The doctor thinks it's grief from your father's death. All this talk about vampires”.

“
What's that got to do with Dad dying?” I ask.

She shakes her head. There are tears welling up in her eyes, but I don't really feel much sympathy for her. Years and years of us barely communicating can't be undone in a few minutes.

“Get me out of here,” I say. “You know I'm not crazy. I'll shut up about vampires, but get me out of here”.

“
It's not about shutting up,” she says. “You can talk about them if you want. You just have to admit that it's all made up. It's all stories”.

I shake my head. “I'm not going to lie,” I say.

“Then you're going to have to stay here a little longer,” she replies. “They think they can cure you, honey. And it'll all seem better when it's over and done with”.

I put my head in my hands. No-one is listening to me.

“Sophie,” says my mother, reaching over and putting a hand on my shoulder. “We were terrified when you went missing. We thought... You could have been killed, honey”.

I look at her. “Missing?” I ask. “I never went missing!”

“Honey, you vanished for nearly a year!”

I stare at her. What's she talking about? I was at home this time last week, then I went to Gothos with Patrick, and then... well, then things get a bit fuzzy, but there's no way I was missing for a year. No way at all.

“And then with what happened on Monday -”

“
What happened on Monday?” I ask, starting to get impatient. “Come on, Mom. You're scaring me. What happened? What are you talking about? I wasn't missing for a year! Just because you were too busy watching General fucking Hospital to notice me, doesn't mean I was missing!”

“
Everyone was out looking for you, honey,” she says. “Even that trampy friend of yours was worried!”

Trampy friend? What the hell is she talking about? Oh, okay, she means Shelley. But... I saw Shelley last week. And everyone. I saw everyone. There's no way anyone could think I was missing. Hell, I don't think I've gone more than a couple of days without seeing Shelley since I was in fourth grade.

“I wasn't missing,” I say. “I was at home. I didn't go anywhere”.

“
That's what we want to work out,” she says. “Where you really were”.

I stand up. “I want to go back to my room,” I say. “Do you mind if I go?”

She looks at me with a mix of desperation and sadness. She clearly doesn't know what to do. I kind of understand. After all, anyone would be worried if their daughter went missing for a year. Even my useless mother would have to spring into action. But the fact is: I
didn't
go missing for a year. I was away at Gothos for – at most – a couple of days. There's simply no way someone could go missing for an entire year and not remember it.

The door opens. I turn to see that the orderly has opened it up to let me out.

“Bye Mom,” I say, heading out of the room. I don't wait for her to say anything in return. I just want to go to my room, to try to work out what's going on. More than anything, I need to find a way to contact Patrick. Why hasn't he come to get me out of here?

Dr. Penfold

There's a knock at my door and Dr. Lucas pops his head into the room. “Got a minute?” he asks, in his usual happy and energetic manner. I swear, I can't deal with Dr. Lucas before I've had five or six cups of coffee in the morning. He reminds me of myself forty years ago when I first started out in this job: hopelessly enthusiastic and determined to help people. Part of me can't wait to see him in ten years' time, worn down by the job and unable to do much more than shuffle pieces of paper around. He'll have bags under his eyes, he'll be exhausted all the time, his marriage will be shot to pieces, his kids won't talk to him, he'll be teetering on the edge of a drinking problem... He'll be like me.

“What is it?” I ask, looking back down at my papers. Hopefully he'll see that I'm busy. This had better not be another attempt to get me to authorize the purchase of a pool table for the games room. If he thinks I want a group of mentally ill people wandering around with pool cues and balls, he must be insane himself.

“
It's about John Tarmey,” he says.

Great. This tired old conversation. I'm more than aware that the other doctors here think I'm taking the wrong approach with John, but they haven't been here as long as I have. If they'd seen what we tried in the 70s and 80s, they'd understand that John is a very special patient who can't just be electro-shocked back to normality. He's a special case, and I'm the only one who really understands him. The slow approach is the only way to deal with him.

“I know you don't want to talk about it,” Lucas continues, “but the fact is, while we're debating what to do with him, he's cooped up in that little room with no windows and no company. It's inhumane”.

“
It would be inhumane to release him prematurely,” I say, taking my glasses off and setting them down on the desk in front of me. “It would be inhumane to inflict his behavior on the other patients or on the general public”.

“
It would be inhumane to stop trying to rehabilitate him,” Lucas says. He's so sure of himself, so cocky... so wrong.

“
Some people can't be helped,” I say. “John Tarmey is a case in point. He's perfectly happy so long as we leave him in the lead room. I genuinely think he would prefer to spend the rest of his days in there, rather than being dragged out and forced to interact with the world. Damn it, sometimes I think I'd like to live in a lead room. He's fine down there for now”.

“
I know, but -”

“
Have you heard the way he screams?” I ask. “Every time we try to get him out of that room, he screams like some kind of wild animal. Have you heard that?”

“
Yes, of course -”

“
Do you really want to inflict that much pain on a man?” I ask. There's silence for a moment. “If he really wants to spend his life in a small lead room, and if we genuinely believe that to be the best solution for him right now, is there really a problem?”

“
You can't just leave him in there and forget about him,” says Lucas. I admire his passion, but I
do
wish he'd grow out of it. He's supposed to be a doctor, not a social worker.

“
I'm running out of orderlies,” I insist. “I send them in to haul him out, and he damn near kills them. Rumors are getting out, it's almost impossible to hire any new staff around here”.

“
So your solution is to just leave him in his room?”

I'm tired of talking about this every few days. “If you want to get him out of that room,” I say firmly, “you may go down there right now and attempt to get him out yourself. Haul him out, or die trying. Otherwise, please leave me to make the key decisions because ultimately I'm the one who has to answer if something goes wrong”.

I can tell he's not convinced, but he shuts up and drops a bunch of files on my desk. “Moving on,” he says, sounding annoyed and clearly planning to return to the topic of John Tarmey at a later date, “I have Sophie Hart's medical exam reports. She's healthy, and there was no sign of drugs or alcohol in her system”.

I open the folder to take a look. “No sign at all?”

“Nothing,” says Lucas. “You were wrong. She's not on anything. Whatever's wrong with her is psychological, not pharmaceutical”.

I take a deep breath. I really expected to find that she'd been using something. Then again, it's possible to disguise your habit, if you know what you're doing. From my contact with her so far, I'd say she's more than smart enough to slip something past us. “This doesn't confirm anything,” I say. “Young girls don't just start behaving like that with no inciting incident”.

“I'm just telling you what the tests told us,” Lucas replies, somewhat coldly. He's clearly annoyed with me. “The tests show no kind of substance. From what I can tell, she doesn't even take painkillers when she gets a headache”.

“
She drinks?” I ask.

“
Not heavily. Her liver's healthy enough”.

I leaf through the pages of the report.

“And she's not pregnant,” I say.

He shakes his head. “No”. There's a pause. “But she has been”.

I look up at him. “What do you mean?”

“
She's not pregnant now,” he says, "but according to the medical exam we did when she was admitted, she
has
been, in the past. She's carried a baby to term. She gave birth some time in the past month. And... I don't think she remembers”.