Phoenix Falling

by Laura Bickle

  “No.”

  “I said, get out.”

  He remained in place. Sig weaseled up to the front seat and growled at him. Petra grabbed Sig with her right arm, hugging him close to her chest. She hit the gas, and the Bronco churned into reverse. She spun it around, fishtailing before speeding into a field. Gabe, lacking the benefit of a seat belt, braced himself against the door.

  “You have to listen to me . . .” he began.

  “No. No, I don’t. Not after you threatened to kill me.”

  She stomped the gas and sent the Bronco plunging through the field at top speed. Her teeth ground and she gripped Sig tightly. She jounced over a rill and stomped on the brakes.

  Gabe lurched forward. His head struck the windshield with a sickening crunch.

  Petra felt bile rising in her throat the instant she’d done it. She’d never hurt someone she’d loved before. Not ever.

  But she’d never had someone she loved threaten her before.

  Gabe pushed himself back into the seat. Blood ran over his brow into his eye. A star-shaped crack spidered across the windshield, and there was blood and a chunk of his hair embedded in it.

  She was breathing heavily, trying to keep from vomiting guilt all over the dashboard. She wanted him to get the hell out. She was afraid of him, and her guts churned. But she hated to see him hurt. Sig squirmed and buried his head in her armpit.

  “Are you all right?” she said quietly, instead.

  He pressed the heel of his hand to his brow and wiped away the blood. “I’m fine.”

  She exhaled slowly. “Then you should leave. It’s what you want, anyway.”

  He turned to her. “It’s not what I want.”

  “You’d shoot me for that tree.”

  He shook his head. “I will not let that tree have you.” He reached toward her, to touch her cheek, and she flinched away. “Please understand. That was the only way it would have let you go.”

  “You would have shot me.”

  “Yes. Rather than let the tree have you.”

  Pain lanced through her chest. “You’d rather have me dead than give me immortal life. That’s some fucked-up logic, there.”

  “Not when this immortal life is a nightmare!”

  Petra looked at him, unsure what he meant.

  “In its previous incarnation?” he started. “I would have let you join the old tree. I would do anything to have you by my side.” His expression was stricken. “This tree . . . the tree is not what it was. There’s darkness in it. It’s become corrupted, contaminated.”

  “Contaminated by what?”

  “It feels like Lascaris’s magic. It . . . the Lunaria has been driven mad. It no longer has the Hanged Men. Its children are gone, destroyed. It is incomplete, unsatisfied by having control over just me.” He shook his head. “Its longing is palpable.”

  He reached for her hand, and she didn’t pull away. “You must not go near it again. The Lunaria wants you. And I don’t want to make that choice.” He looked away, and blood trickled over his eye. “It would destroy me to kill you. It would. I could not go on without you. It would be the end of us both.”

  She believed him, that killing her would cause him to end his own life. But still. “You’d kill me. To keep me from becoming like you.”

  “I want for you to be free. Always.” He held her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “What the Lunaria is now creating is a hell. I would not see you consigned to it, even if it was forever with me.”

  “We have to get you away from it,” she whispered.

  He shook his head, and his eyes were dead as glass. “Once it has you, there is no escaping it. Not ever.”

  Chapter 10

  Seeing Ghosts

  The state mental hospital had been around for a long time, Owen knew. The size of the population it served had ebbed and flowed over the years. At its height, the campus had several operating buildings perched on top of a grassy hill and surrounded by picturesque trees. Now, only about a hundred residents remained. Most of the outlying buildings were locked and boarded up, and the patients treated here were housed in one of the hospital’s main buildings.

  Owen had rarely had cause to come here on official business over the course of his tenure as sheriff. He disliked it intensely, even more so than the jail. The residents of his jail could be counted on to be gone quickly. Most usually posted bond within days. Those who didn’t were usually gone within a couple of weeks. And even the sentenced ones did not stay more than a year. The rest went to state or federal prisons. But here, some folks stayed a very long time. There was a steady short-term churn of voluntary and involuntary commitments, to be certain. But then there were some, like Robin Wayne Cuthbert, who never went away. They were never cured—there was no cure for whatever demons they had inside them—and could not be allowed back to wherever they’d come from.

  So yes, he hated coming here and having to see those lost eyes staring back at him. But more, Owen hated coming here because he had been a patient himself once. He’d had a brief psychotic event, when he’d first faced the supernatural creatures of Yellowstone’s backcountry, which had landed him in a very quiet room. He’d gotten out with a few bottles of pills that were quickly flushed down the toilet as soon as he was eventually able to wrap his noodle around the bizarreness he’d inherited with the Rutherford Ranch.

  But even that brief stay was enough. Owen was not a fan.

  He walked down an echoing hallway with a psychiatrist at his elbow. He’d decided not to come in uniform . . . The last time he’d done that, such a stir had been caused among some of the more agitated residents that he’d been asked politely to leave. In civilian clothes, he attracted less attention from the residents. But the staff still eyed him with suspicion. He felt unarmored without the uniform. As if they might squint at him if he said the wrong thing and chuck him back in one of those white rooms.

  “This patient has been with us for the past six years,” the psychiatrist was saying. She was a painfully thin woman with the eyes of a bird. Thankfully, she was not the psychiatrist who had treated Owen on his little vacation. The psychiatrist didn’t refer to Robin by name within earshot of the other patients, sort of like he was the Bogeyman. More likely, she was strict with HIPAA.

  “That’s a long time,” Owen said as they passed by a day room with a handful of people watching television, reading magazines, and playing checkers. Two orderlies watched carefully, their eyes flicking from resident to resident.

  “He’s actually our resident with the longest tenure,” the psychiatrist agreed. “He’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He’s been very resistant to medication and has not responded at all to therapy, individual or group. He’s been deemed a serious risk.”

  “To himself or to others?”

  “Mostly to others. He’s never made a suicide attempt. He will attack others if he feels he’s been provoked. He has a history of violent assault that you’ve seen in his previous convictions. He broke an orderly’s arm two years ago and broke his lawyer’s nose eight months ago. So, for your conversation with him today, he will be restrained. I hope you understand.” Her mouth flattened as she finished speaking. Owen wondered how much of an imposition his visit had caused. Sounded like a right pain in the ass.

  He’d called in a couple of favors to gain this visit as a professional courtesy—quite a lot of them, in fact, and it had taken him the better part of yesterday afternoon to get it done. Robin’s former public defender hadn’t been really excited about Owen speaking with him, but was even less excited by the prospect of coming to supervise the discussion in person, likely owing to the nose situation. Robin wasn’t competent to agree to questioning on his own, so Owen had to get somebody to sign off on it. Owen had played out an afternoon-long negotiation among a judge who owed him some favors, Robin’s public defender, and the prosecutor’s office. It had been pretty much agreed that Robin was in no shape to stand trial for anything, but that it was in everyone’s best interest i
f the murder of Anna Sawarski could be solved quickly, to finally give some kind of closure. As the prosecutor said: “He will never see the light of day. He’ll likely die in that facility, but I have enough other charges to bring on him that he’d wind up in state prison for any number of other offenses. You do what you’ve gotta do.” A couple of secret handshakes had been exchanged, and Owen pretty much gained carte blanche for this interview. Was it legal? Nope. But this was a situation in which everyone involved felt the ends justified the means.

  Owen nodded. “I do understand.”

  But at least Robin could be restrained. Owen glanced at the little girl beside him, the one that nobody else but him could see. He’d told Anna nothing about what he was doing, investigating her death. Not yet. There was no point in upsetting her, at least not until he had something solid to go on. For all he knew, this was a dead end, and it would be cruel to traumatize her again for no good reason.

  Right now, she was peering into the day room, chewing on the drawstring of her hoodie. Anna tended to come and go as she pleased. She materialized in Owen’s passenger seat on the way over, wanting to know where they were going. Owen said he was going to do an interview with a bad man. Anna disliked bad men. Yet she hadn’t left, either.

  And now here they were, close to as bad a man as Owen could think of. She glanced at two men playing checkers. She took a step toward them and looked up at Owen. “Can I play with them?”

  Owen gave her a nod, and she trotted off to the table. She sat down in a chair and rested her chin in her hands, elbows planted on the table. The middle-aged man playing checkers smiled at her as if he saw her.

  Owen tore himself back to the conversation with the psychiatrist and nodded at her as she talked. But internally, his mind was whirring. These people . . . these patients . . . it seemed as if they could see her. Owen had never met anyone else who could. So what did it mean? That—that Anna was real and that he wasn’t crazy? Or that Anna wasn’t real, and only insane people imagined they could see her? It made his head ache.

  “This way, please,” the psychiatrist said, gesturing him away and down a corridor.

  Owen followed, hands jammed in his pockets, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder at Anna. The psychiatrist narrowed her eyes at him, ever so slightly.

  Maybe the psychiatrist could tell there was something wrong with him. Jesus. He found his voice again. “I appreciate you doing this for me, Doctor.”

  “It’s no problem,” she answered. But the tightness in her voice sure indicated it was a problem. A whole lot of hassle, likely.

  An orderly was posted outside a room with a metal door, the surface painted to look like wood grain. The orderly opened the door and the psychiatrist went in first.

  The room inside was painted an egg yolk yellow, with a single window. The window, Owen saw, had chicken wire embedded in the thick glass, rendering it nearly unbreakable. An air conditioner hummed in the background, coolant ticking and hissing. A twin bed with white linens was pressed against one wall, its legs screwed into the floor. A particleboard desk also had legs screwed into the floor, and a soft upholstered chair with no hard edges sat in the corner. There were no exposed door hinges to present a hanging risk. But for the additional unobtrusive bits of hardware, it could almost have been a dorm room in any college across the United States.

  Except for the chair at the center of the room. Owen recognized it; they had one at the jail. It was a plastic contraption of seat belts, the chair constructed at a backward angle. A man could hold another man in the chair with the pressure of a finger. With the seat belt restraints, the occupant could cause no harm to anyone. At the jail, it had been dubbed the “Hannibal Lecter chair.” It was one step ahead of being strapped into “the boat”—a backboard with seat belts to lock a prisoner down in a prone position.

  Owen stood just inside the door, beyond spitting distance. The occupant of the chair was a man in his middle forties, a little worse for wear. His hair was brown, peppered with grey, shorn in an institutional crew cut. He was dressed in a baggy sweat suit and white sneakers with no laces. His face was surprisingly soft and round, almost like a child’s. His blue eyes darted left and right. Whether Robin was assessing the situation or looking for a means of escape, Owen was uncertain.

  “Good morning. Robin, you have a visitor today,” the psychiatrist said in a pleasant, well-modulated tone.

  Robin looked at her and then at Owen. “Who’s he?”

  “I’m Sheriff Rutherford,” Owen said, sitting down on the chair opposite Robin. Upholstered in vinyl that could be hosed down, it squeaked as he sat. “But you can call me Owen.”

  Robin’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want, Owen?”

  “Be polite, Robin,” the psychiatrist insisted mildly. She glanced at Owen. “Shall I leave you two to talk, or would you like for me to stay?”

  “I think we’ll get along fine on our own,” Owen said. “Thank you.”

  The psychiatrist nodded and glanced at her watch. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes. Have a good chat, gentlemen.”

  She closed the door, but Owen could hear the murmuring of the orderly behind it. As it would be if this were a jail interview, he would be able to reach out to someone if Robin got out of hand. The air conditioner coolant burbled. Something moved in his peripheral vision, and Owen squinted at the drip beneath the air conditioner. A tiny black toad, the size of a quarter, hopped into the puddle and disappeared under the damp-looking baseboard.

  Owen turned his attention to Robin. “I understand that you’ve been here a very long time.”

  Robin frowned. “Too long. Years.” He jerked his head toward the door. “They think I’m crazy.”

  Owen placidly looked at him. “What makes you say that?”

  “They don’t see what I see. What’s underneath the world.” He pursed his lips and shook his head.

  “I’d like to know what you see, Robin.”

  “No, you don’t. Nobody really does. If I’m honest, they give me more pills. If I lie, they leave me alone. Everyone just wants to be told the right answers.”

  That sounded reasonably lucid for a guy who’d been in the state mental hospital for several years. At least, it was part of Owen’s own life philosophy.

  “What’s the honest truth, Robin?” Owen asked.

  The man shook his head and refused to answer.

  Owen tried another tack. “I talked to a friend of yours.”

  “I don’t have any friends.”

  “I talked to Rattler.”

  Robin threw his head back and laughed. “Rattler? What’s that old meth head into?”

  “He’s into jail, actually. Got himself involved in a bit of trouble.”

  “Of course he did. What’d he do this time?”

  “He seems to have acquired some items that weren’t his.” Owen tried to be carefully neutral.

  “What was it? Drugs?”

  Sharing the reason might forge some trust. “It was . . . antique bowling balls.”

  Robin giggled. “A bowling ball heist. That’s amazing.”

  Owen spread his hands. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff I see.”

  “Heh. Try me.”

  Owen racked his brain for things that were public knowledge, on the police blotter. “We had a guy who took a shit in a popcorn machine at a wedding venue. A kid who stole a python in an ice chest. And a woman who set fire to her boyfriend’s car, only she got the wrong car.”

  “Whose car was it?”

  “Just some random dude who stopped at the Bucket Cluck for dinner. He was none too thrilled initially, but the charges got dropped because they’re dating now.”

  Robin chortled. “Some people are crazy.”

  “All people are crazy. Just in different ways.” That was a truth that Owen believed with his whole heart. Some just hid it better than others.

  Robin cocked his head, like a chicken looking at something edible on the ground. “So, what did the Rattler have to say a
bout me?”

  “He said that he knew you back in the day. Spent some time in jail with you. Said your girlfriend brought some acid for you guys to party with.”

  He tipped his head, glancing at the humming air conditioner. “Didn’t see the Rattler round much after jail. As they say, we grew apart.”

  “The Rattler said that you were in touch with something pretty bizarre and amazing. A . . . a spirit, if you would.”

  He screwed up his face. “What does a guy like you know about spirits?”

  “A guy like me sees all the weird shit that goes down after midnight. I see all the bloody footprints and the shit that disappears from locked rooms. I hear all the secrets that wind through that jail.” And there was Anna. He didn’t want to tell him about Anna. But he would if he had to, to get this sonofabitch to talk.

  Robin gave him an appraising look. “That jail’s supposed to be haunted.”

  Owen shrugged. “All jails are haunted. At least, all the ones that got people who died in ’em.”

  Robin leaned as far forward as he could against the angle of the chair and the seat belt restraints. “You ever seen a ghost, Owen?”

  Owen told him the truth. “Yeah. I seen a ghost. I seen a ghost, a dead man walking, and a freaking mermaid. I’ve seen some weird-ass shit, Robin. And I’m betting you have, too.”

  Robin leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. “Why should I tell you about the weird shit I seen? Nobody believes me.”

  “I believe you, Robin. No matter what it is, I believe you.”

  Robin’s Adam’s apple worked up and down. “I seen things . . . things you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  Robin shook his head.

  Owen held up his right hand and took off his glove. “You see this? A freaking carnivorous mermaid ate my hand. There ain’t any way that you’ve got any weirder shit to say than that.”

  Robin looked at Owen’s plastic hand. “For reals?”

  “For reals.” He tugged the glove back on. “You don’t piss off shit that’s stronger than you. There’s a whole lot of things out there in heaven and earth that are more powerful than one man. That’s one thing I learned from that.”