The Madman's Tale

by John Katzenbach

  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.

  chapter 33

  “Apollo!” 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, tr
ying 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.

  And Lucy, so few feet away, but alone with the man who’d thought of nothing except her death for so long, feeling the knife at her throat, knew that she needed to keep stealing seconds.

  Lucy tried to think past the cold of the knife and the sharpness of the blade as it dug at her skin, a terrible sensation that reached deeply into the heat of the moment, and crippled her ability to reason. Down the hallway she could hear the noise of metal being bent, as the locked door was savaged, groaning with complaint as Peter and the retarded man assaulted it with the bed frame. It yielded slowly, hesitant to open up and let loose rescue. But above that noise, rising into the air beyond, she could hear the word Apollo being sung by the men in the dormitory, which gave her a wisp of hope.

  “What does it mean?” the Angel demanded fiercely. That he had patience amid the sudden arrival of noise in what had been such a sleeping world, frightened her as much as anything.

  “What?”

  “What does it mean!” he asked, his voice growing lower, harsher. He did not need to attach a threat to his words, Lucy thought. The tone was clear enough. She kept repeating to herself buy time! and so she hesitated.

  “It’s a cry for help,” she said.

  “What?”

  “They need help,” she repeated.

  “Why do they …” and then he stopped. He looked down at her, his face contorting. Even in the blackness of the floor of the nurse’s station, she could see creases in his face, lines and shadows, each that spoke of terror. Once he’d worn a mask as he terrorized her, but now, she understood he wants to be seen because he expects that he will be the last thing I ever see. She gasped for breath, and she moaned beyond the pain of her swollen lips and ravaged jaw.

  “They know you’re here.” She spit the words between blood. “They’re coming for you.”

  “Who?”

  “All the crazy men down the hall,” she said.

  The Angel bent down to her. “Do you know how quickly you can die here, Lucy?” he asked.

  She nodded. She didn’t think she should answer that question because her words might invite the reality. The blade of the knife bit into her skin, and she could feel her flesh parting ever so slightly beneath its pressure. It was a terrifying sensation, and one that she remembered with an awful intimacy from the first terrible night that she’d had with the Angel so many years earlier.

  “Do you know that I can do anything I want, Lucy, and you are powerless to do anything about it?”

  Again, she kept her mouth closed.

  “Do you know that I could have walked up to you at any point during your stay here in this hospital and killed you right in front of everyone, and all they would have said was ‘He’s crazy …’ and no one would have blamed me? That’s what your own law says, Lucy, surely you know that?”

  “Then go ahead and kill me,” she said stiffly. “Just like you did Short Blond and those other women.”

  He put his head down closer, so that she could feel his breath against her face. The same motion that a lover would make, leaving his partner asleep as he went off in some early hour on some distant task. “I would never kill you like them, Lucy,” he hissed. “They died to bring you to me. They were simply part of a design. Their deaths were just business. Necessary, but not remarkable. If I’d wanted you to die like them, I could have killed you a hundred times. A thousand. Think of all the moments you’ve been alone in the dark. Maybe you weren’t alone all those times. Maybe I was at your side, you just didn’t know it. But I wanted this night to happen in my own way. I wanted you to come to me.”

  She did not reply. She felt caught up in the vortex of the Angel’s sickness and hatred, and she spun around, feeling her grip on life loosening with each revolution.

  “It was so terribly easy,” he hissed. “Create a series of murders that the hotshot young prosecutor couldn’t help but be attracted to. You just never knew that they meant nothing and you meant everything, did you, Lucy?”

  She groaned in reply.

  From down the hallway, the door being torn at emitted a great rending sound. The Angel looked up, searching with his eyes in the direction of the noise through the darkness that hung in the corridor. In this moment’s hesitation, Lucy knew her life hung in balance. He had wanted minutes in the deep of night to luxuriate in her death. He had seen it all, right from the way he’d approached her, to the attack, and then beyond that. He’d fantasized and envisioned every word he would speak, every touch, every slice, every awful cut along her path to dying. It had all been a hallucination, in his mind every second of every waking moment, that he was compelled to make real. It was what made him powerful, fearless, and every inch the assassin that he was. Everything in his being had been directed to that space in time. But it wasn’t happening quite the way he’d perfected it in his mind, day after day, through every turn, planning, anticipating, sensing the deliciousness of death when he delivered it. She could feel his muscles tensing as he was caught in a contradiction between what was real and what was fantasy. All she had left to hope for was that the real would take over. She didn’t know if there was enough time.

  And then she heard a second sound, penetrating past all the terror that cascaded around her. It came from upstairs, and was the sound of a door being slammed, and feet pounding against the cement of the stairwell. Apollo! had done its job.

  The Angel blasted out a great scream of frustration. It echoed down the hallway.

  Then he bent back down. “So, this night Lucy is lucky. Very lucky. I don’t think I can stay here any longer. But I will come for you some other night, when you least expect it. Some night when all your fears and all your preparations will mean nothing, and I will be there. You can arm yourself. Guard yourself. Move to some deserted island or some forgotten jungle. But, sooner or later, Lucy, I will be there at your side. And then we can finish this.”

  He seemed to tense again, and she could feel him hesitate. Then he bent down toward her and whispered, “Never turn out the light, Lucy. Never lie down in the darkne
ss alone. Because years mean nothing to me, and some day I will be there for you.”

  She breathed in sharply, almost overcome by the depth of his obsession.

  He started to step off of her, dismounting like a rider off a horse. But then he coldly added, “Once I gave you something to remember me by every time you looked in the mirror. Now you can remember me every time you take a step.”

  And with that, he plunged the knife blade into her right knee, twisting it savagely a single time. She screamed as pain far beyond any she’d felt so far in any moment of her life seemed to constrict her every muscle and tendon. Black unconsciousness swept over her, and she rolled back, only vaguely aware that she was alone, and that the Angel had left her beaten, wounded, bleeding, barely alive and possibly crippled and with a promise that was far worse.

  The metal in the door screeched one final time and a sliver of darkness grew between the frame and steel. Francis could see the corridor beyond, gaping like some dark mouth waiting open. The retarded man, suddenly straightened up, tossing the makeshift crowbar down to the floor, where it clattered aside. He reached out and pulled Peter away, and then he took a few steps backward. For an instant, he lowered his head, like a bull in an arena, infuriated by the matador’s preening, then he abruptly charged forward, bursting out with an immense cry of attack as he did so. The retarded man threw himself against the door, which buckled and gave way with a huge booming sound. Staggering, shaking his head back and forth, panting, a thin line of dark blood dripping down from the edge of his scalp, running between his eyes across the bridge of his nose, the retarded man retreated. He shook his head, and for a second time, he braced himself, his face set like iron with the singleness of his task, and then a second time he bellowed a great sound of fury, and charged the door again. This time the door burst open, swinging free, and the retarded man tumbled into the hallway, skidding to a halt across the dark gap.