The Madman's Tale (75 page)

She was facing the Angel all alone in a world surrounded by people, as isolated and abandoned as if they were on some deserted island or deep in some dark forest. Help was a flight of stairs away. Help was down the hallway, behind a locked door. Help was everywhere. Help was nowhere.

Death was a man with a knife pinning her to the floor. He had all the power; she understood that an electricity born of planning, obsession, anticipation of this moment must have been coursing through the Angel. Years of compulsion and desire, just to reach that single moment. She knew, in a way that went beyond anything she had learned in any law school class, that she had to use his triumph against him, and so, instead of saying
Stop!
or
Please!
or even
Why?
she spit out between swollen lips, and loosened teeth a statement of complete fiction and arrogance. “We knew it was you all along …”

He hesitated. Then he pushed the flat of the knife up against her cheek. “You lie,” the Angel hissed. But he did not cut her. Not yet, and Lucy understood she had purchased herself a few seconds. Not a chance to live, but a moment that had made the Angel hesitate.

The noise of Peter and Francis savagely ripping at the bed frame, trying to pry loose a strip of metal, finally began to rouse the patients in the dormitory room from their unsteady sleep. Like ghosts rising out of a graveyard on All Hallow’s Eve, one after the other, the men of the housing unit stirred themselves to wake, fighting off the deep seduction of their daily sedatives, scrambling, struggling, blinking their eyes open to the novelty of Peter’s increasing panic, as he fought against the metal with every muscle he could gather.

“What’s happening, C-Bird?”

Francis heard the question and lifted his head in the direction of the sound. It was Napoleon. As Francis paused, at first unsure precisely how to respond, he watched as the men of the Amherst Building slowly lurched from their bunks, joining together in a haphazard, misshapen knot behind Napoleon, staring out through the darkness at Francis and Peter, whose frantic efforts were making some modest headway. He had almost managed to free a single three-foot section of the frame and he grunted as he twisted and pried at the reluctant metal.

“It’s the Angel,” Francis said. “He’s outside.”

Voices started to murmur, a mixture of surprise and fear. A couple of the men cowered back, shrinking from the thought that Short Blond’s killer might be close by.

“What is the Fireman doing?” Napoleon asked, his voice tripping over each word with a hesitancy stirred by indecision.

“We need to get the door open,” Francis said. “He’s trying to get something that will break it down.”

“If the Angel is outside, shouldn’t we be blocking the door?”

Another patient murmured in agreement. “We need to keep him out. If he gets in here, what’s to save us?”

From the back of the gathered men, Francis heard someone say, “We need
to hide!” and at first he wondered whether it was one of his own voices. But then as the men wavered indecisively, he recognized that for once his voices were quiet.

Peter looked up. The sweat of exertion was dripping down his forehead, making his face glisten in the wan light of the room. For a moment, he was almost overcome by the craziness of it all. The men of the dormitory room, their faces already marked by the fear of something terribly out of routine, thought it would be better to block the door, than to get it open. He looked down at his hands, and realized that he’d torn open great gashes in his palms, and ripped at least one nail from a finger, as he’d thrashed with the bed. He looked up again, and saw Francis step toward their dormitory mates, shaking his head.

“No,” Francis said with a patience that defied the necessity for action. “The Angel will kill Miss Jones, if we do not help her. It’s just like Lanky said. We have to take charge. Protect ourselves from evil. We have to take steps. Rise up and fight. If not, it will find us. We have to act. Right now.”

Again, the men in the dormitory shrank back. There was a laugh, a sob, more than one emitted some small sound of fear. Francis could see helplessness and doubt in every face.

“We need to help,” he pleaded. “Right now.”

The men seemed to waver, swaying back and forth as if the tension of what they were being asked to do—whatever it was—created a wind that buffeted them.

“This is it,” Francis said, his own voice filling with a determination that shocked him. “This is the first best moment. Right now. This is the time when all the crazy people here in this hospital building do something that no one would ever expect. No one thinks we can do anything. No one would ever imagine that we could manage something together. We’re going to help Miss Jones, and we’re going to do it together. All of us at once.”

And then he saw the most remarkable thing. From the rear of the clutch of mental patients, the hulking retarded man, so childlike in every action, who never seemed to understand even the most modest, clearly stated request, suddenly stepped forward. He pushed himself through the knot of men, coming straight for Francis. He had a baby’s simplicity about him, and it was impossible for Francis to tell how he had come to understand a single thing about what was taking place that night, but penetrating through the great fog of his limited intelligence was some notion that Peter needed help, and it was the sort of help he was uniquely capable of giving. The retarded man put his Raggedy Andy doll down on a bunk and strode past Francis with determination in his eyes. With a grunt and with a single huge forearm, the retarded man pushed Peter back. Then, as they all watched in rapt silence, he reached down, grasped hold of the iron frame and with a single great heart-bursting effort, tore loose
the bar, which ripped free with a screeching sound. The retarded man waved it in the air above his head, broke into a wide, unrestrained grin and then handed it to Peter.

The Fireman seized the bar and immediately thrust it deep into the space where the door met the frame, adjacent to the deadbolt lock. Throwing all his weight into the makeshift crowbar, Peter pushed hard to break the door free.

Francis could see the bar bend, metal complain with an animal-like shriek and the door begin to buckle.

Peter let loose a great sigh, and stepped back. He worked the bar into the space again, and was about to throw himself into it, when Francis suddenly interrupted him.

“Peter!” he said, his voice filled with urgency. “What was the word?”

The Fireman stopped. “What?” he asked, confused.

“The word. The word. The word that Lucy was supposed to use to call for help?”

“
Apollo
,” Peter replied. Then he tossed himself at the door again. Only this time, the huge retarded man stepped forward to help him, and the two of them bent their backs to the task.

Francis turned toward the gathered men of Amherst, who were frozen in place, as if awaiting some release. “Okay,” he said, marshaling himself like a general in front of his army at the moment of an attack, “We’ve got to help out.”

“What do you want us to do?” It was Newsman, this time, who spoke.

Francis lifted up one hand, like a starter at a race. “We need to make a noise that they can hear upstairs. We need to signal for help …”

One of the men immediately shouted, “Help! Help!” as loud as he could. Then a third, “Help …” that was lower in volume, fading away.

“It does no good in here to yell for help. We all know that,” Francis said emphatically. “Nobody ever pays attention. Nobody ever comes.
Help!
is useless. What we have to do is yell
Apollo!
as loud as we can …”

Timidity, confusion, doubt turned the men into a reluctant chorus. A mumbling of
Apollos
followed.

“
Apollo?”
Napoleon asked. “But why
Apollo?”

Francis said, “It’s the only word that will work.”

He knew this sounded as crazy as anything, but he said it with such conviction that any further discussion was erased.

Several of the men instantly cried out, “
Apollo! Apollo!
” but Francis shut them down with a quick wave.

“No,” Francis shouted sturdily, orchestrating, organizing. “It has to be together, otherwise they won’t hear it. Follow me, on the count of three, let’s try it …”

He counted down, and a single modest, but unified
Apollo
emerged.

“Good, good,” Francis said. “Only this time as loud as we can.” He looked back over his shoulder at Peter and the retarded man, both groaning with exertion as they struggled with the door. “This time, we need to make it heard …”

He raised his hand. “On my mark,” he said. “Three. Two. One …”

Francis brought his arm down fast, like a sword.

“Apollo!” the men shouted.

“Again!” Francis yelled. “That was great. Again, now, three, two, one …”

A second time, he sliced the air.

“
Apollo!”
The men responded.

“Again!”

“
Apollo!”

“And again!”

“
Apollo!”

The word rose up, soaring, bursting from the group of patients full bore, exploding through the thick walls and darkness of the mental hospital, a starburst, fireworks word, never heard before in the asylum, and probably never to be heard again, but at least, on this one black night breaking past all the locks and barriers, beating back every strand of earthly restraint, rising, flying, taking wing and finding freedom in sound, dashing through the thick air, unerringly racing directly to the ears of the two men above, who were to be its primary recipients, and who craned forward, surprised, at the designated sound resounding from such an unexpected source.

“A
pollo!” I said out loud. In mythology, he was the sun god whose swift chariot signaled the coming of day. It was what we needed that night, two things that were generally in short supply in the world of the mental hospital: Speed and clarity
.

“
Apollo,” I said a second time. I must have been shouting
.

The word reverberated off the walls of my apartment, racing into the corners, leaping up to the ceiling. It was a uniquely wondrous word, one that rolled off my tongue with a strength of memory that fueled my own resolve. It had been twenty years since the night I’d last spoken it out loud, and I wondered if it wouldn’t do the same for me this night, as it did then
.

The Angel bellowed in rage. Glass shattered around me, steel groaned and twisted as if being consumed by fire. The floor shook, the walls buckled, the ceiling swayed. My entire world was ripping apart, shredding into pieces around me, as his fury consumed him. I clutched my head, pushing my hands over my ears, trying to drown out the cacophony of destruction around me. Things were breaking, crumbling and exploding, disintegrating beneath my feet. I was in the midst of some terrifying battlefield, and my own voices were like the cries of doomed men surrounding me. I buried my head for a moment in my hands, trying to duck the shrapnel of remembrance
.

On that night twenty years earlier, the Angel had been right about so much. He had foreseen everything Lucy would do; he understood precisely how Peter
would behave; he knew exactly what the Moses brothers would agree to and help arrange. He was intimate with the hospital and how if affected everyone’s thinking. What the Angel comprehended better than anyone else was how routine and organized and drearily predictable everything was that sane people would do. He knew the plan they would come up with would leave him with isolation, quiet, and opportunity. What they had thought was a trap for him was actually the most ideal of circumstances. He was, far more than they, a student of psychology and a student of death and he was immune to their earthbound plans. To take her by surprise required him only to not try to surprise her. She had willingly set herself up; it must have thrilled him to know she would do that. And on that night, he knew murder would be in his hands, directly in front of him, ready like some weed that had sprouted up, to be plucked. He had spent years patiently preparing for the time that he would have Lucy beneath his knife once again, and he had considered almost every factor, every dimension, every consideration—except, oddly the most obvious—but the most forgettable
.

What he hadn’t counted on were the crazy folks
.

I squeezed my eyes shut with recollection. I was a little unsure whether it was all happening in the past or in the present, in the hospital or in the apartment. It was all coming back to me, this night and that night, one and the same
.

Peter was shouting deep, guttural noises, as he bent the door from its lock, the hulking retarded man wordlessly straining and sweating at his side. Beside me, Napoleon, Newsman, all the others, were arranged, like a chorus, waiting for my next direction. I could see them quiver and shake with fear and excitement, for they, more than anyone, understood that it was a night unlikely to ever be repeated, a night where fantasies and imagination, hallucination, and delusion all came true
.