“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.
“All right, folks,” he heard from the doorway. “Time to rise and shine. Breakfast is waiting.” It was Big Black, greeting the dormitory residents in customary fashion.
Around him, people started to groan their ways out of sleep, leaving behind all the troubled dreams and near-nightmares that plagued them, unaware
that a real, breathing nightmare had been in their midst.
Francis remained rigid, as if glued to his bunk. His limbs refused commands.
A few men stared down at him, as they stumbled past.
He heard Napoleon say, “Come on, Francis, let’s go to breakfast …” but the round man’s voice trailed into nothing as he must have seen the look on Francis’s face. “Francis?” he heard, but he did not reply. “C-Bird, are you okay?”
Again, he warred within himself. Inside, his voices had started up. They pleaded, they cajoled, they insisted, over and over, Get up, Francis! Come on, Francis! Rise up! Put your feet on the floor and wake up! Please, Francis, please get up!
He did not know whether he had the strength. He did not know whether he would ever have the strength again.
“C-Bird? What’s wrong?” He heard Napoleon’s voice grow worried, nearly plaintive.
He did not reply, but continued to stare up at the ceiling, all the time believing more and more firmly that he was dying. Or perhaps he was already dead, and every word he heard was just the last reverberations of life, accompanying his last few heartbeats.
“Mister Moses! Come here! We need help!” Napoleon seemed suddenly on the verge of tears.
Francis could feel himself spiraling in two opposing directions. One that seemed to thrust him down, one that insisted he soar upward. They battled within him.
Big Black pushed to his side. Francis could hear him ordering the remaining members of Amherst out into the corridor. He bent over Francis’s form, looking deep into the younger man’s eyes, muttering rapid-fire obscenities. “Come on, Goddamn it, Francis, get up! What’s wrong?”
“Help him,” Napoleon pleaded.
“I’m trying,” Big Black answered. “Francis, tell me, what’s wrong?” He clapped his hands sharply in front of Francis’s face, trying to get a reaction. He grasped Francis by the shoulder and shook him hard, but Francis remained stiff on the bunk.
Francis thought that he no longer had any words. He doubted his ability to speak. Things inside him were glazing over, like ice forming on a pond.
The garbled voices redoubled commands, pleading, urging him to respond.
The only thought that penetrated Francis’s fear was the single idea that if he didn’t move, he would surely become dead. That the nightmare would become true. It was as if the two had blended together. Just as day and night were no longer different, neither was dream and wakefulness. He teetered again, on the edge of consciousness, a part of him urging him to shut it all down, retreat, find safety in the refusal to live, another part pleading with him to step away from the siren’s song of the blank, dead world that suddenly beckoned him.
Don’t die, Francis!
At first, he thought this was one of his familiar voices speaking to him. Then, in that perilous second, he realized that it was himself.
And so, mustering every minute amount of strength that he had, Francis croaked out words that one second earlier he’d feared were lost to him forever. “He was here …,” Francis said, like a dying man’s last breath, only contradictorily, the mere sound of his voice seemed to energize him.
“Who?” Big Black asked.
“The Angel. He spoke to me.”
The attendant seemed to rock back, then forward.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No. Yes. I can’t be sure,” Francis said. Every word seemed to strengthen him. He felt like a man whose fever suddenly broke.
“Can you stand up?” Big Black said.
“I’ll try,” Francis replied. With Big Black steadying him, and Napoleon holding out his hands as if he would break any fall, Francis lifted himself up, and pivoted his feet out of bed. He was dizzy for a second as blood rushed out of his head. Then he stood.
“That’s good,” Big Black whispered. “You must have gotten some kinda scare.”
Francis didn’t respond. This was obvious.
“You gonna be okay, C-Bird?”
“I hope so.”
“Let’s keep all this to ourselves, okay? Talk to Miss Jones and Peter, when he gets out of isolation.”
Francis nodded. Still shaky. He realized that the huge black attendant understood just how close he had come to not being able to get out of that bed ever again. Or falling into one of the blank holes occupied by the catatonic patients, who looked out on a world that existed only for themselves. He took an unsteady step forward, then another, and he felt blood flowing throughout his body and the risks of a greater madness than the one he already owned falling away from him. He could feel his muscles and his heart, all working. His voices cheered, then quieted, as if taking satisfaction in his every movement. He breathed out slowly, like a man who has just avoided being struck by a piece of falling rock. Then he smiled, regaining some of his familiar grin.
“Okay,” Francis said to Napoleon, still holding Big Black’s massive forearm to steady himself. “I think I could use something to eat.”
Both men nodded, and took a step forward, except it was Napoleon who hesitated.
“Who’s that?” he asked abruptly.
Francis and Big Black pivoted about, following Napoleon’s glance.
They both saw the same thing, at the same moment. Another man had failed to get out of bed that morning. He had gone unnoticed in the attention Napoleon had drawn to Francis. The man lay motionless, a misshapen lump on a steel bunk.
“What the hell,” the huge attendant said, more irritated than anything else.
Francis stepped forward several paces, and saw who it was.
“Hey,” Big Black said loudly, but there was no response.
Francis took a deep breath and then walked across the dormitory room, angling between crowded beds, to the supine man’s side.
It was the Dancer. The elderly man who’d been transferred into Amherst the day before. The retarded man’s bunkmate.
Francis looked down and saw the man’s rigid, stiff limbs. No more flowing, graceful motions listening to music only he could hear, Francis thought.
The Dancer’s face was set hard, almost porcelain in appearance. His skin was white, as if he’d been made up to go onstage. His eyes were wide open, as was his mouth. He looked surprised, maybe even shocked, or even more, perhaps terrified at the death that had come for him that night.
chapter 24
Peter the Fireman sat cross-legged on the steel bunk in the isolation cell, like a young and impatient Buddha eagerly awaiting enlightenment. He had slept little the previous night, although the padding on the walls and ceiling had muffled most of the sounds of the unit, save the occasional high-pitched scream or disconnected angry shout that emerged from one of the other rooms very much like the one he was confined within. These random cries meant as much to him as animal sounds that echoed through a forest after dark; they bore no obvious logic or purpose except for the person that uttered them. Midway through the long night, Peter had wondered whether the screams that he heard were actually happening, or were more likely sounds that had been issued some time in the past by long-dead patients, and like radio beacons shot into space, were destined to reverberate through eternity into the darkness, never stopping, never ceasing and never finding a home. He felt haunted.
As daylight crept hesitantly into the cell through the small observation portal in the door, Peter pondered the bind he was in. He had no doubt that the offer from the Cardinal was sincere, although that was probably not the correct word, because sincerity didn’t seem to have much to do with his situation. The offer simply required him to disappear. Walk away from all the tangible aspects of his life and vanish into a new existence. The only location where his home, his family, his past, would continue to live was in his memory. There would be no returning once he accepted the offer. Who he was, and what he had done, and why he had done it, were all to evaporate from the collective consciousness of the Boston Archdiocese, to be replaced by something new and shiny and with glistening spires that reached heavenward. In his own family, he�
�d be the brother who died under hushed circumstances, or the uncle who went away, never to return, and, as years passed, his family would come to believe whatever myth the Church helped to create, and who he had been would crumble away.
He assessed his alternatives: prison; MCI Bridgewater; maximum security; lockdowns and beatings. Probably for much of the rest of his life, because the considerable weight of the Archdiocese, which at this moment was pressuring prosecutors to allow him to vanish into a program in Oregon, would shift if he rejected the plan, and come down heavily on him. He knew there would be no other deals.
Peter could hear the distinctive clanging sound of a jail door being closed and hydraulic locks shutting with a whooshing noise. This made him smile, because he thought it about as close as he was likely to get to one of his friend C-Bird’s hallucinations, only this one was uniquely his.
For a moment, he remembered poor Lanky, filled with fear and delusion, his grasp on the little life that the hospital provided him dropping away, turning and pleading with Peter and Francis to help him. He wished, in that second, that Lucy could have heard those cries. It seemed to him that throughout his entire life people had been calling to him for help and that every time he’d tried to come to their assistance, no matter how fine his intentions, something had always gone wrong.
Peter could hear some sounds from the corridor beyond the bolted door to the isolation cell, and there was a thudding noise of another door being opened, then slammed shut. He couldn’t refuse the Cardinal’s offer. And, he couldn’t leave Francis and Lucy alone to face the Angel.
He understood, that however he managed it, he had to propel the investigation forward, as rapidly as possible. Time no longer allied itself with him.
Peter looked up at the locked door, as if he expected someone to open it right at that second. But there was no sound, not even from the restless corridor beyond, and he remained seated, trying to check his impatience, thinking that in some small way the situation he was in resembled his whole life. Everywhere he’d been, it was as if there was a locked door preventing him from moving freely.
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