Authors: Brandt Legg
“Yeah, he’s the main reason I don’t. Maybe
drugs and alcohol made everything more intense for him, or he might have been
using them to numb himself or to escape the voices and visions.”
“You’re not Dustin.”
“Not yet, but he was fine, too.” I paused
to hold in the emotion. “Then at some point he lost touch with the real world,
or at least my mom thought he did. I need to talk to him. I need my brother. We
have to get him out.”
Linh saw me fighting tears.
“What was the final straw that got him
committed?” Kyle asked.
“He freaked out, said he had to go back and
take care of some things. The only way he believed he could get ‘there’ was to
kill himself.”
“He tried?”
“The day after he turned sixteen he drove
to Mount Shasta, did some coke and started hiking higher and higher in just a
t-shirt and shorts.”
“Was he going to jump?”
“No, he was going to freeze himself to death.
He said that’s the way the Incas did it.”
“Wow, that’s almost cool if it wasn’t so
tragic,” Kyle said. “So what happened?”
“The coke kept him up so he continued
hiking and climbing almost all night. There was only a crescent moon, so mostly
he was stumbling around in the dark, but he kept heading up. Sometime before
dawn, he finally collapsed and fell asleep. And he would have gotten his wish
and froze to death if it hadn’t been for two hikers who found him a few hours
later.”
“How’d he get to the institution?”
“He told my mother the whole story and said
he was going to find another way to get back. She didn’t know what to do, so
she had him committed.”
“Putting her own son in a mental institution.
That’s totally cold,” Kyle said. “Even so, tough lady.”
“I heard her on the phone right after it
happened, when she didn’t know I was listening, telling her friend about how
terrible it had been. Mom said Dustin kept screaming for her to help him while
they worked to get the straitjacket on. He flung the orderlies and doctors off
like blankets, crying ‘Mom, Mom, I’m not crazy. Don’t let them do this.’ Mom
told her friend that it was worst than the day our dad died.”
“That’s so sad,” Linh said.
“For Dustin.”
“For all three of you.”
“She said it was only temporary, but every
month I asked her when Dustin is coming home.”
“And?”
“After twenty-four evasive answers, it’s
pretty clear his ‘temporary’ hospitalization is permanent.”
“And she won’t allow you to visit? You’ve
haven’t seen him in all this time?”
I shook my head.
“I’ll take you to Dustin, but why do we
have to break him out?” Kyle asked.
“Because my brother might be the only one
who can understand. I need to know exactly what happened to him. He’ll never
reveal his secrets while medicated in an institution.”
“What secrets? It sounds like he may have
really needed professional help.”
“Whatever.
Don’t you get it? He’s my
only brother. He was my great protector, and I watched him twist into a desperate,
hollow, angry stranger
.
We need to help him.” I raised my voice, hands
shaking, “We need to
save
him.”
“Don’t you mean help
you
and save
you
?”
Kyle asked.
“Yes!” I shouted. “If he’s crazy then that
means I am, too.” I smeared my eyes before tears could escape. “You guys gotta
help me, please!”
“Where is he?” Kyle asked. “Why don’t we go
visit him and then decide what to do after we know what we’re dealing with? I
mean, you haven’t seen him in two years. He could be a raging lunatic.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Seriously?”
“She won’t tell me where he is. She’s
afraid I’ll try to find him, and it’s true. I would have run away but there was
nowhere to go.”
“How are we supposed to find Dustin?”
“Whenever my mom goes, it’s always a
day-trip. So how many mental institutions could there be within a half-day’s
drive from Ashland?”
It turned out there were four. After a few
minutes on the Internet, we narrowed it down to a private facility in Roseburg,
the most obvious choice, and about a two-hour drive.
“Mountain View Psychiatric Hospital,
Providing Quality Care Since 1957. Inpatient psychiatric services for children,
adolescents, adults, and geriatric patients, providing a safe place where
compassionate, quality care supports recovery from mental illness and addiction,”
the description read.
“Sounds like a great place. Maybe they’re
helping him,” Kyle said.
“Two years? It doesn’t take two years,” I
said.
“Kyle, Nate’s our best friend, Dustin’s his
brother. It’s family. We have to go,” Linh said.
“Road trip!” Kyle shouted. A three-day
weekend was coming up at school; it would be the perfect time. Early in the
summer we’d all gone camping and were sure our parents would let us go again.
“Visiting hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven
days a week,” Linh said, looking up from her iPad. “Shouldn’t we call to make
sure he’s there?”
“Yes, you should.” I dialed the number and
handed my cell phone to her. “Tell them you’re Jennifer Ryder and you’d like to
speak to your son, Dustin Ryder.”
“What if they put me through to him?”
“Not a chance,” I said. It took less than
three minutes to prove me wrong, as she shoved the phone at me and I said hello
to my brother for the first time in more than two years. “Dustin, it’s Nate.”
“Long time, Dude. How’s it going, brother?
Is something wrong with Mom?”
“No, Mom’s fine. She doesn’t know I’m
calling. Hey, you sound normal.”
“You caught me at the right time of day.
I’m at my clearest in the morning but they’re gonna hit me with a round of meds
in a few minutes. Why doesn’t Mom know?”
“She won’t let me visit or contact you.
It’s like she’s afraid I’m going to catch what you have.”
“Isn’t that why you’re calling?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean; you’re seeing things
all the time now, aren’t you?”
I was too surprised to answer.
“And you hear the voices?”
“How did you know?” I whispered.
“I’ve been waiting for you, brother. How
are you handling it? Better than me, I hope.”
“It’s gotten kind of crazy lately.”
“Hey, don’t say that word around me.”
“Sorry.”
“Nate, I’m kidding.”
“I’m coming to see you next weekend.”
“It might be a rough trip.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wish I had time to explain, but I hear
the nurse coming to drug me up right now. Just be extra careful. I won’t be in
any condition to help.”
“What are you talking about?”
“And Nate, whenever it get’s really bad,
you have to let go and trust yourself. That’s where the good is. If you feel it
inside and it soothes you, then you know it’s okay. Trusting anything else gets
tricky.” I heard something in the background and then he said, “Bye, Mom, see
you next weekend.”
“What do you think he meant?” I asked after
filling them in.
“He may not have meant anything
real
.
He is in a mental hospital.” Kyle raised his eyebrows. “Not to be rude, but he
could actually be crazy.”
“I know my brother, and he sounded totally
sane. He shouldn’t be in there.”
“I hope you’re right.”
I did, too.
Our parents agreed to our camping trip. All
I had to do was keep my head together for another week.
Talking to Dustin had made me feel much
better. Maybe he really wasn’t crazy, which meant maybe I wasn’t. But his
warnings worried me. What did he mean by “it could be a rough trip?”
6
The Outviews came almost nightly, but they
had begun invading my waking hours, too. Linh and Kyle didn’t understand they
weren’t nightmares. I hadn’t either, but that hope shattered on a beautiful
morning last July. Digging a hole in the backyard for a new fence post, I was suddenly
standing over a freshly dug grave in the rain. I turned trying to figure out
what was happening. It was still a sunny day; the backyard and our house were
normal. I looked back at the ground, and there, instead of my posthole, was the
grave and a muddy puddle at the bottom as the rain grew heavier. It was a nightmare
in broad daylight. Both scenes were happening simultaneously. Which one did I
belong in? When I focused on the grave, the backyard faded away. Looking back
at my house, the grave receded. I had an eerie feeling that the “me” standing
by the grave wasn’t really me. I mean, it was, but not Nathan Ryder. It was another
time. There were three horses tied to nearby trees and two men with rifles a
little farther back. A third with a pistol was yelling at me.
“Jump on down there, Wesley,” he said
motioning to the grave.
“Hell no! You ain’t burying me alive,
Brett,” I shouted back. The voice startled me because it vibrated inside my
body, but I heard it as clearly as my neighbor’s radio at the same time.
“Yes, I am,” he yelled angrily. Water
dripped from the brim of his cowboy hat.
I started shouting at him louder. “If
you’ve got to kill me then I reckon that’s what you’re gonna do, but have some
decency, man.” The rain picked up.
“How dare you talk about decency!” He
pulled the trigger. The “me” by the grave and the “me” in the backyard both
went down when the bullet tore into my knee. I looked back toward the house and
up at the blue sunny sky, but my references were blurring because, at the same
time, I was wet from the rain. Brett shot my other knee. I screamed out in both
the past and the present, and then he pushed me down into the grave. Crashing
hard in two inches of muddy water, one of my arms snapped under my weight. A
scraping sound competed with the falling rain while dirt came from above as
they dumped in shovels full in a slow steady rhythm. My agony gave way to the
terror of being buried alive. Once the earth covered my face I stopped
screaming, unable to tell what was up or down. The pressure from the mud numbed
all pain, as the crushing force stole my breath and finished me off.
Kyle found me passed out next to the fence.
I lied to him and said something about the post hitting my head. It took almost
two days to stop favoring my right arm and walk without a limp. I still haven’t
gotten over the emotional impact. That was the day the Outviews invaded my real
life, and being awake hadn’t felt safe since.
I wasn’t just being vague about the
Outviews. I hadn’t told Kyle and Linh many other things. No matter how close we
were, if they knew everything, the only way they’d agree to go to Mountain View
Psychiatric Hospital would be if I stayed as a patient. I’d seen “pops” over
people’s heads all the time--sudden bursts of color the size of a pencil eraser
would go off like a tiny firework display, bright and vivid, highly saturated.
They even occurred when I was alone and just thinking about things. I was
figuring out if there was a pattern to the colors: red pops seemed to be a warning
or happen around anger, while hanging out with Linh usually brought clear or
bright aqua pops. I wanted to keep a list, but there was too much going on.
I sat in my room feeling guilty for not being
completely open with my friends. I often thought out my problems while cropping
and enhancing photos on the computer. Everyone knew me as a photographer
because I always had a camera with me. The summer after sixth grade I started
selling photos online and in a few shops around town, making enough money for
regular upgrades to my cameras and laptop, plus some savings for a car.
Staring at a recent photo of several deer reminded
me of shapeshifting. We studied it in eighth-grade history class. Shapeshifting
was a big deal in Native American song and dance ceremonies, hunting, healing,
and warfare. With me it was different; hallucinations were attacking my sanity.
Out of the corner of my eye, there’d be a large deer with a full rack of
antlers, but then looking again, it turned out to be simply a brown bush. An
eagle in a tree would really be an old trash bag caught in branches. A running
lion was actually corn stalks rippling in the wind. The first look was fleeting
but crystal clear--no question I’d just seen a giant tortoise, but it was
really a small dumpster. When it started happening twenty times a day, every
day, I knew there was more to it. Either I was crazy or I really did see a
coyote in the school cafeteria or a giraffe in my front yard. If no one else
saw those animals, then I had to face the explanation: insanity was closing in.
I was unable to concentrate on the photo.
My thoughts continued to seek meaning in the shapeshifting episodes. I got up
from the computer and paced the room.
The rushing sound of a tornado sent me to
the floor. But as usual, nothing happened, no air moved and it didn’t last long,
it was just the “wind noise.” The first time I heard it was about two years
earlier and maybe a week before Dustin went up Shasta to kill himself. He and I
were hiking together. We did it less and less as he became more estranged, but
this had been one of his rare clear days. We were about two miles into a
three-mile hike when I heard the sound, a strong wind whizzing past my ear. My
hair even moved, but other than an inch around my head, the air was still.
After the third time, Dustin noticed me rubbing my ears.