The Madman's Tale (53 page)

“
I have your word?”

“
Yes
.”

I could feel Mister Klein hesitating again, just beyond the door, as if assessing whether or not to believe me. Finally, after a moment of silence, he said, “Okay then. I’ll accept that. But don’t let me down, Francis
.”

“
I won’t
.”

“
If you let me down, Francis, I will be back
.”

This sounded to me like a threat. I sighed deeply. “I’ll be there,” I said
.

I listened for the sound of his footsteps retreating down the hallway
.

Good, I said to myself, and I scrambled back to the wall of writing. I dismissed Mister Klein from my memory, right alongside hunger, thirst, sleep, and everything else that might intrude on my storytelling
.

It was well past midnight, and Francis felt alone in the midst of the harsh breathing and disjointed snoring sounds of the Amherst dormitory. He was in that troubled half sleep, a place between wakefulness and dreams, where the world around him was indistinct, as if its moorings to reality had come loose and it was being tugged back and forth by tides and currents that he could not see.

He was worried about Peter, who was locked in a padded isolation cell at Mister Evil’s order, and probably struggling against all sorts of fears along with a straitjacket. Francis remembered his own hours in isolation and shuddered. Restrained and alone, they had filled him with dread. He guessed that it would be just as harsh for Peter, who would probably not even have the questionable advantages of being drugged. Peter had told Francis many times that he wasn’t afraid of going to prison, but somehow Francis didn’t think that the world of jail, no matter how harsh, equated with an isolation cell at Western State. In the isolation cells, it was as if one spent every second with ghosts of unspeakable pain.

He thought to himself: It is lucky that we are all crazy. Because if we weren’t, then this place would make us crazy in pretty quick time.

Francis felt an arrow of despair strike him, as he understood in that second that Peter’s grip on reality would, one way or another, open the exit door to the hospital. At the same time he knew how hard it would be for him to gain enough purchase on the slippery, shale rock slope of his imagination to ever persuade Gulptilil or Evans or anyone at Western State to release him. Even if he were to start informing on Lucy Jones and her investigative progress to
Gulp-a-pill, as the doctor wanted, he doubted that it would lead to anything other than more nights listening to men moan in torment as they dreamed of terrible things.

Troubled by everything that stalked him in his sleep, struggling with everything that surrounded him when he was awake, Francis closed his eyes and shut out sounds around him, praying that he would get a few hours of dreamless rest before morning.

To his right, a few bunks away, he could hear a sudden thrashing sound, as one of the patients twisted and turned in nightmare. He kept his eyes closed, as if that could shut out whatever personal agony had intruded on some other patient’s dreams.

After a moment, the noise receded, and he squeezed his lids together, murmuring to himself, or perhaps listening to a voice say
go to sleep
.

But the next noise he heard was something unfamiliar. A scraping sound.

Followed by a hiss.

Then a voice, followed by the sudden sensation of a hand closing over his eyes.

“Keep your eyes closed, Francis. Just listen, but keep your eyes closed.”

Francis breathed in sharply. A quick inhale of very hot air. His first instinct was to scream, but he bit that back. His body jerked and he started to lift up, only to feel himself pushed by a significant force back on his pillow. He raised a hand to grab at the wrist of the Angel, only to be stopped by the sound of the man’s voice.

“Don’t move, Francis. Do not open your eyes until I tell you. I know you are awake. I know you can hear every word I say, but wait for my command.”

Francis went rigid on the bed. Beyond the darkness behind his eyes, he could sense a person standing over him. Looming terror and darkness.

“You know who this is, don’t you Francis?”

He nodded slowly.

“Francis: If you move, you will die. If you open your eyes, you will die. If you try to scream out, you will die. Do you understand the framework for our little conversation tonight?” The Angel’s voice was low, hardly more than a whisper, but it pummeled him like fists. He didn’t dare move, even as his own voices screamed at him to run and flee, and as he lay motionless, in a tumult of internal confusion and doubt, the hand over his eyes suddenly evaporated, replaced by something far worse.

“Can you feel this, Francis?” the Angel demanded.

The sensation against his cheek was cold. A flat icy pressure. He didn’t move.

“Do you know what that is, Francis?”

“A blade,” Francis whispered his reply.

There was a momentary hesitation, then the low, awful voice continued: “You know about this knife, Francis?”

He nodded again, but he didn’t truly understand the question.

“What do you know, Francis?”

He swallowed hard. His throat was dry. He could feel the blade continuing to press down on his face and he didn’t dare to shift position, because he thought it would slice through his skin. He kept his eyes closed, but he was trying to gain a sense of size for the presence beside him. “I know it’s sharp,” Francis said, weakly.

“But how sharp?”

Francis couldn’t choke out a reply through a throat suddenly parched for moisture. Instead he groaned slightly.

“Let me answer my own question,” the Angel said, speaking in tones still hardly more than a whisper, but with an echo that reverberated within Francis louder than a scream. “It is very sharp. Like a straight razor, so that if you even move just the tiniest bit, it will part your flesh. And it is strong, too, Francis, strong enough to slice easily through skin and muscle and even bone. But you know that, don’t you Francis, because you already know some of the places where this knife has found a home, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Francis croaked.

“Do you think that Short Blond had a real understanding what this knife meant when it bit into her throat?”

Francis didn’t know what the man meant, so he remained silent.

There was a small, slithering laugh.

“Think about the question, Francis. I’d like an answer.”

Francis kept his eyes squeezed shut. For a moment, he hoped that the voice was really just a nightmare and that it wasn’t truly happening to him, but, even as he wished this, the pressure of the blade against his cheek seemed to increase. In a world filled with hallucination, it was sharp and real.

“I don’t know,” Francis choked out.

“You’re not using your imagination enough, Francis. In here, that’s all we really have, isn’t it? Imagination. It might take us in unique and terrible ways, force us to head in nasty and murderous directions, but it’s the only thing we really own, isn’t it?”

Francis thought this was true. He would have nodded, but he was afraid that any motion would put a scar forever on his face like Lucy’s, and so he remained as rigid and still as he could, barely breathing, fighting against muscles that wanted to twitch with terror. “Yes,” he whispered, his lips barely moving.

“Can you understand just how much
imagination
I have, Francis?”

Again, whatever words he tried to speak in reply were croaked into mere sounds.

“So, what did Short Blond know, Francis? Did she only know pain? Or maybe something deeper, far more terrifying? Did she connect the sensation of the knife cutting through her flesh with the blood that was pouring out and was she able to assess it all, and realize that it was her own life that was disappearing, and her own helplessness that made it all so pathetic?”

“I don’t know,” Francis said.

“What about you, Francis? Can you feel how close you are to death?”

Francis couldn’t answer. Behind his closed eyes he could only see a red sheet of terror.

“Can you feel your own life hanging by such a thin strand, Francis?”

He knew that he didn’t have to answer that question.

“Do you understand that I can take your life this second, Francis?”

“Yes,” Francis said, but he was unaware where he got the strength to speak even that word.

“Do you realize I can take your life in ten seconds. Or thirty seconds, or perhaps I will wait an entire minute, depending upon how much I want to savor the moment. Or perhaps tonight isn’t the night at all. Perhaps tomorrow would fit my plans better. Or next week. Or next year. Whenever I want, Francis. You are here, in this bed, in this hospital every night, and you will never know when I might return, will you? Or maybe, I should just do this now, and save myself the meager trouble …”

The flat of the knife blade seemed to rotate and for a second the edge touched his skin, and then the flat returned.

“Your life belongs to me,” the Angel continued. “It’s mine to take when I please.”

“What do you want?” Francis asked. He could feel tears welling up behind his tightly squeezed eyelids and his fear finally burst through and his hands at his sides and his legs shook with spasms of terror.

“What do I want?” The man laughed, hissing, still barely a whisper. “I have what I want for tonight, and am closer to getting everything I want. Much closer.”

Francis could sense the Angel lowering his face to his, so that the two men’s lips were only inches apart, like lovers.

“I am close to everything of importance to me, Francis. So close that I am like a shadow on all your heels. I’m like a scent that sticks to you that only a dog can smell. I’m like the answer to a riddle that’s just a little too complicated for the likes of you.”

“What do you want me to do?” Francis was nearly begging. It was as if he wanted some sort of task or job that might free him from the Angel’s presence.

“Why nothing, Francis. Except to remember our little conversation when you go about your daily business,” the Angel replied.

There was a momentary silence, and then, he continued, “You may count to ten, and then open your eyes, Francis. Remember what I told you. And incidentally”—the Angel seemed almost gleeful and terrible at the same time—“I’ve left a little present for your friend the Fireman and the bitch prosecutor, too.”

“What?”

The Angel lowered his face closer to Francis, so that Francis could actually feel his breath against his skin. “I like to leave a message. Sometimes, it’s in what I take. But this time, it’s in what’s left behind.”

With that, the pressure on his cheek abruptly disappeared, and he could sense the man rising from the bedside. Francis continued to hold his breath, and then began counting. Slowly, one through ten, before opening his eyes.

It took another few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dark, but when they did, he lifted his head and turned toward the dormitory door. For a second, the Angel was outlined, glowing, almost luminescent. He was turned, looking at Francis, but Francis was unable to make out any of his features except for a pair of eyes that seemed to burn into him and a glistening white aura that surrounded him like some otherworldly light. Then the vision disappeared, the door thumping shut with a muffled bump, and followed by the unmistakable noise of the lock being turned, which, to Francis, seemed like a lock being shut on all hope and possibility. He shuddered, his entire body quivering uncontrollably as if chilled by a plunge into icy waters and the onset of hypothermia. He remained in his bed, plunging through a darkness of terror and anxiety that had rooted within him, and which seemed to spread unchecked like infection throughout his body, wondering whether he would be able to move when morning light filled the room. His own voices remained quiet, as if they, too, were afraid that Francis suddenly teetered on the edge of some immense cliff of fear, and that should he slip and fall, he would never be able to climb out.

Francis lay still, not sleeping, not moving, throughout the night.

His breathing came in short, shallow spasms. He could feel his fingers twitching.

He did nothing except listen to the sounds around him and the pounding in his own chest. When morning arrived, he suddenly wasn’t certain that he could force his limbs to move, wasn’t even sure that he could make his eyes wander from the locked position they were in, staring out up into the dormitory ceiling, but seeing only the fear that had visited his bedside. He could feel emotions tripping around within his head, haphazardly slamming into side-walls, skidding, sliding, racing, runaway, out of control. He no longer was sure
that he had the ability to rein them in and gain any grip whatsoever, and, for an instant, he thought in actuality he might have died that night, that the Angel had really cut his throat like he had Short Blond’s and that everything he thought and heard and saw now was only a dream, and was some reverie that penetrated the final seconds of his life, that really the world around him was utterly dark, night remained closing in on him, and that his own blood was seeping out steadily, with every heartbeat.