We Are Monsters (32 page)

Chapter Sixty-Two

Crosby had been running for what seemed like hours, but he couldn't tell if he was covering any ground. The scenery never changed. It seemed like he kept passing the same group of bushes as he traversed the same uneven terrain. Overhead the pockmarked moon shone its sickly light down upon him as though tracking his location. And the beasts were forever nipping at his heels.

More and more of them had emerged from the depths of the garden as he had lain in hiding. Grisly, alien creatures bearing little resemblance to the real beasts of the natural world. Warthogs with horned tusks extending out from between crimson eyes. Tigers with long, distended necks and gaping jaws lined with disproportionately large fangs. Baboons swung between trees, throwing feces, shrieking from savage snouts with kaleidoscopic colors. They must have come from the wild imagination of the original artist. This world was no longer his own.

So he ran, never tiring, never travelling far, while the strange beasts followed. But he knew a place he could go to escape. He just didn't know how to get there. And he wasn't sure that it was safe.

He had seen her break through the threshold and enter into the garden, accompanied now by two men. It had been the final straw, causing him to flee deeper into this realm. He felt like his whole life had been spent running from monsters of his mother's making, and now was no different.

He knew, though, he couldn't run forever. He had made a stand before. And he had conquered the evil forces in his life. Had conquered her. He could do it again.

He slowed. The snarling grew louder, closing in from behind. He stopped in an opening of a copse of trees and turned to face them.

They stalked forward, glossy fur shimmering in the moonlight, eyes glimmering green. Slowly, the distorted beasts circled, sniffing the air with chuffing snorts and tasting it with their dexterous tongues. They growled, and grumbled and tittered. Their sharp teeth gleamed.

Behind them, the two men emerged. One was a strong and serious-looking man in army fatigues. The other was fat and splattered with blood. His forehead had been sliced open and stapled shut. Stark bone shone through the rippled skin. They both stopped, stood tall and smiled when they saw Crosby. Then they parted ways to create an opening for his mother to walk through.

“Told you I'd track the son of a bitch,” the army man said.

“Indeed you did,” Crosby's mother said. “Now keep your stupid mouth shut.”

She looked radiant in the moonlit glow of the garden. Her blonde hair shone with a ghostly aura. Her face was sharp and severe, like he remembered. His eyes tracked down her long, wiry arms—which swung gracefully as she stalked forward—to what hung heavily below: her hands. Knotted and twisted with bulging veins, the fat fingers curled in like claws.

But it was
his
hands that had caused the most damage in the end. The last time he had seen his mother they had been wrapped around her slender neck, wrenching it as he pressed his weight against her, thumbs digging into the skin. Her icy-blue eyes had shown more hate than fear as they had gradually dimmed. Her final expression, as he stood trembling in shock over what he had done, had been a sneer of contempt. Or a look of baleful disgust.

You disappoint me to the very end.

“You don't look happy to see me,” she said, still stalking forward, causing him to stumble back. He heard a warning snarl from behind and stopped. “But I'm so happy to see you.” Her face suggested otherwise.

She pulled up a couple of feet before him, measuring him up and down with her frigid stare. She stood just beyond arm's reach.

Crosby thought about charging forward and grabbing her neck, choking her dead, as he'd done before. But he felt powerless and paralyzed in her presence. He knew that the beasts were on her side, just like they'd always been. And he knew that they wouldn't hesitate to hurt him, just as they always had.

“My little broken baby. All grown up.” When she stopped speaking her mouth settled back into a scowl, its natural state. “Got himself put in a loony bin. No big surprise there. I always knew you were fucked in the head. What kind of sick kid has sex with his mother's boyfriends? Is that why you did what you did to me? So you could have them all to yourself?”

Crosby could feel himself shrinking in her presence, shriveling back into the body of the boy he'd once been. He looked at her hooked hands and shivered. He saw her shadow and began to cry. It was darkness deformed, a lopsided lunatic. It had come to seek her revenge.

“You made me do those things,” Crosby said, his voice quivering as he cowered. “I only did what I did to make it stop.”

Her laughter cackled, her shadow howled—the two sounds mingled together to create a psychotic wail. The beasts joined in, sending their discordant screams into the moonlit sky.

“They always place the blame on other people. The fault always lies with the parents, never themselves. Seen it all before.” Bearman chuckled, enjoying the show.

“I know how to fix men who fall out of line, trust me on that,” Sergeant Wagner said. “Just say the word.”

“No. This is between me and my son,” she said. She lifted her chin and Crosby could see the purple outline of his fingers imprinted on her neck and a splash of black where her trachea had burst. “It's my lesson to teach.”

The shadow grew. It overwhelmed her, dwarfing her in size, casting her aside like molted skin, as it took on a third dimension. The beasts began baying into the night as it stretched taller and taller until it loomed overhead.

“Ho-lee-shit,” Bearman said and began backing away.

Wagner followed, crouching down with his head angled up and his eyes opened wide.

“No,” Crosby whimpered, watching it rise. “I killed you already. You're already dead.”

The thing stopped growing and glowered down from high—a dark stain that swallowed the light.
“I don't die.”
He heard the words inside his head. They came as a ferocious whisper.
“But you do.”
The last word stretched and then dissolved into the abrasive sound of static, expanding out from the center of his brain—a loud electronic hiss that was either a laugh or a scream, or something else entirely.

Crosby fell to his knees before it. Like he'd done with all the other beasts his mother had conjured and sent his way.

Chapter Sixty-Three

Eli held the vial in his hands, inspecting the clear liquid within. “Why didn't you tell me?”

Alex was chalky white. He held blood-crusted hands against the dark-red bandage. “I don't know, Eli. I didn't think you'd approve. And I didn't want to let you down.”

“Why did you do it then?”

Alex blew out a long gust of air until his lungs emptied. He waited until it hurt before inhaling. “I wanted to do something important. I wanted to make a name for myself, something I could never do while working in your shadow.” He paused, reflecting. “I wanted to make my parents proud.” He smiled shamefully. “I wanted to get rich.”

Eli turned the vial in his hands and held it up to the light. He popped the top and sniffed. “How does it work?”

Alex winced as he straightened in his chair. He rotated the right wheel to half turn towards Eli. “Its primary compound is a derivative of the neurotransmitter Dimethyltryptamine, which is a psychoactive chemical I studied in med school.”

“I've heard of it,” Eli said. “It's been coined the ‘spirit molecule'.”

Alex raised an eyebrow, impressed. “That's right. So, as you know, it's endogenous to our bodies. We create it in the pineal gland. It's renowned for its ability to produce extreme altered states of consciousness, perhaps even responsible for dreams during REM sleep and the visions that come during death.”

Eli was nodding. He set the vial down and leaned back against the desk, facing Alex.

Alex continued, “My hypothesis was that people experiencing extreme hallucinations and distorted perceptions of reality were suffering from an unregulated release of neurochemicals, similar to, if not specifically, Dimethyltryptamine. My formula is designed to restore balance to the levels of these compounds released by the pineal gland, bringing them back to baseline, relieving the patient from what, in essence, can be described as an extraordinarily strong, self-induced hallucinogenic trip.”

“Okay. I question the scientific accuracy of your hypothesis, but I'm following your point. How does that explain all of this?”

Alex shook his head. “I don't have a clue. I tested it extensively without anything remotely like this occurring. The only side effects that some test subjects experienced were intensified hallucinations.”

“Then what was different about Jerry and Crosby?”

Alex spoke slowly, trying to work it out in his blood-deprived brain. “I modified the formula some. But not much. I administered the medicine under less-than-ideal conditions.”

Then in his mind he saw the long seven-inch needle plunging into the vial, the syringe filling to the brim with liquid. “The dose,” he said with a renewed sense of conviction, with the dawning of a revelation. “I increased the dose. By a lot.”

“How much is a lot?”

“Double.” Alex avoided Eli's stare. “Triple. The higher the dose, the better it seemed to work. At least, at first.” He became silent, thinking. “But still. That wouldn't account for this?” He waved an arm towards Lacy and Miranda.

“Hey!” Miranda said, feigning offense. “You'd be having your head examined by Dr. Lobotomy by now if it weren't for us.”

Alex still couldn't look at them without showing disgust, so he averted his eyes.

Eli came off the desk and began to pace. “Or maybe it does,” he said. “The pineal gland has held significance for certain societies stretching back to ancient times. Some have called it the seat of the soul, its resting place within the physical body while alive, and the channel through which it departs upon death.

“It has also been referred to as the third eye—the eye of true perception. In some reptiles, the pineal gland actually has a developed cornea, lens and retina, literally making it an eye inside the mind.

“If the pineal gland has anything to do with how our conscious minds interpret the world, then manipulating it could alter the way we perceive reality. Think of it like a radio antenna. Changing the channel allows you to pick up a different station. Or, in our case, a different wave of reality.”

“But I don't think we're dealing with your standard hallucination here.” Alex nodded towards the blood-soaked rag covering his stomach. “I'm not imagining this.”

“No, you're not,” Eli said. He looked towards the door, wondering what was taking Angela so long.

Lacy stepped forward. It sounded like a leaking tire when she spoke. “Reality is created by our consciousness. It exists in a state of perpetual potential until we dream it into being. It is eternal, it is multidimensional. If we cocreate our physical reality through the power of our conscious minds, then by altering that perceptual filter, we alter the reality that we manifest.”

“Look at you, smarty-pants.” Miranda said, nudging her with her elbow. “Way to parrot a bunch of New Age mumbo jumbo.”

“Not necessarily. There are people within the quantum physics community who propose the same thing,” Eli said. “The world is a hologram that we call into existence through the power of observation. It's still a radical fringe theory. But this is a radical situation.”

“There's a flaw in the logic, though,” Alex said.

Miranda propped a hand on her hip and cocked out her elbow. “Oh yeah? What's that?”

“None of us have taken the medicine, yet we're experiencing the altered reality.”

Their heads all turned as one when they heard the scream coming from down the hallway. It was Angela—an inarticulate wail of terror, coming closer, growing louder and more shrill. They could hear her feet pounding in a panicked run.

Then her shadow emerged on the other side of the pebbled-glass door. The knob began to rattle under her hand. It was locked. She began banging on the frame. “Open up! Hurry, open up!”

Eli rushed to the door and unlocked it. Angela almost knocked him over as she barged in. He could hear another set of footsteps bounding down the hallway.

“Oh God! Close it! Hurry!” Angela yelled.

Eli slammed the door shut and locked it.

A second later another shadow appeared on the other side, less than two feet from where Eli stood. It was a bulkier shape, the outline of a man.

“Who is it?” Eli said, more to Angela than the figure on the other side of the door.

But it was the man who answered. “Is that you, Eli? Chief Medical Director Dr. Alpert, I mean? My, haven't you come a long way.”

Eli waited for Angela to answer. She was shaking. Her face was dripping sweat. “I don't know who it is. I've never seen him before. He looks like a doctor, but from a long time ago.”

“Dr. Alpert. We have a situation out here that we could use your assistance with. You always were such a trusted hand. Loyal and obedient. One of our old patients is in there with you, I understand. We did such good work with her, together. Why don't you let me in? We're all on the same side here. There's nothing to fear.”

“No, don't,” Angela said.

Eli gripped the doorknob and tensed, he clenched his teeth so hard together his jawbone knotted and his molars squeaked.

“No, Eli, don't let him in.” It was Miranda this time. She came up behind Eli and placed her hand over his. She turned her bloodless face towards him and batted her opaque eyes. “I always hoped I'd get a chance to see Dr. Francis again,” she said with a hint of genteel charm. “I'll go out and greet him.”

She bumped Eli aside with her hip and opened the door before he could stop her. She stepped out and slammed it shut. Dr. Francis issued a squeal of surprise as Miranda unleashed a scream of rage. They heard the sound of bodies colliding and then the hallway went silent. Their shadows disappeared.

Eli reopened the door. Outside was clear.

He spun back around, surveying their faces, eyes wide with shock.

“Don't worry about her,” Lacy said. “I can't say the same for him.”

Angela dropped the medical bag and started jumping up and down, shaking her arms as if she had just walked through a spiderweb. “Ahhh!” she screamed. “I am so fucking over this! I don't know how much more I can take.”

Lacy moved towards her with open arms, offering a hug.

Angela pushed her away. “No, please. I know you mean well. But…I just can't. Not right now.”

“Well then. Where were we?” Alex said, his head bobbing slightly. He looked loopy and mildly amused.

Eli grabbed the medical kit and brought it over to Alex. He rifled through the bag to find cleaning supplies and gauze. He carefully removed the bandage and began dressing the wound.

“Hey, wait,” Alex said, and Angela looked up. “What was your theory behind what all is happening?”

“That we've all lost our fucking minds?”

“Yeah, but…there's a name for it.”

“Folie à deux,” Eli said. Then he said it again with emphasis, “
Folie à deux.
That could actually explain how we're experiencing whatever this is without having taken the medicine. If we're somehow stuck in this alternate reality created by the rewiring of Crosby's brain, then perhaps we're capable of cocreating the experience on some smaller scale. Our conscious minds are adapting to the new environment and operating within the framework of a new set of rules.”

“But it's still Crosby's world,” Alex said, “which would explain why it's so damn…” he paused, searching for the proper word, “…insane,” he finished, smiling like he'd nailed a punch line.

“Perhaps we can counteract that,” Eli said, holding up the liquid vial, “with this.”

Angela shuddered when she saw the vial. “I think that's the problem, not the solution.”

“Besides,” she said. “You already seem capable of manipulating this reality. All the people we've encountered so far are here because of you.”

“But it's beyond my control.”

“You think Crosby is controlling any of this? Do you think he conjured his mother back from the dead to hunt him down?”

Alex bolted upright in his chair, wincing in pain. “That's what Jerry said, ‘You conjured my killer'.”

“Yes, but he also said something else. What was it?”

“The medicine opens up the mind. You can create any world you choose.”

“I will happily choose any world other than this,” Angela said. She reached inside the medical bag and pulled out a bottle of pills. “Something for the pain?”

Eli reached out and grabbed them. “Not yet. We need him as clearheaded as possible.”

“For what?”

Eli grabbed Alex's hand and placed the vial in his palm. “For this.”