by A J Sherwood
“He’s killed four women and injured six others,” I answered steadily. “We’re not sure if he’s even aware he hurt them, to be honest. He’s said some rather interesting things while attacking them.”
Blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Is that right. Then we’ll forgo the IV for now, at least until I can figure out what treatment to prescribe him. How do you want to play this? Having multiple people interviewing will confuse a patient, generally speaking.”
“I’m aware. If you don’t mind, I can take point on this? I know something of what to ask, and I think I can give you enough background of what he’s experienced and his current state to help you diagnose him.”
“That would be nice,” Harley admitted frankly. “Weeding through the perceptions of a mentally unstable patient is rather like playing hangman with a blindfold on some days. If you have a roadmap in this man’s psyche, I’ll use it. Ready?”
“Yes.” Taking in a breath, I entered on the doctor’s heels.
The room was standard, with a bed in the center, two chairs on either side made of heavy wood and cushions, a bathroom en-suite in the far corner. The camera was near the bathroom, well away from the door, which was good thinking on someone’s part. Samuel Rice sat on the bed with his left arm handcuffed to the rails, a bemused look on his face.
He definitely looked better. His hair was washed and drying as it hung down his back, beard still scraggly and down his chest, but he no longer stank to high heaven. He looked like he’d come back from a long camping trip, honestly, with a little dirt still under his nails and in need of a good shave. The panda eyes were no joke, either. How sleep deprived was he? His aura still remained locked down and closed to me, not much more than a general smear of colors hard to make out. Seriously, how was he doing that?
If we didn’t somehow get him to drop his guard, I’d be very much useless here.
“Mr. Rice, I’m Doctor Harley,” the psychiatrist introduced himself with a benign smile. “This is Jonathan Bane. He’s a psychic.”
Rice didn’t care about the doctor whatsoever, but he perked up at the word ‘psychic,’ his eyes fastening on me. “You are?”
“Yes,” I confirmed, carefully taking a seat near him. There was still a good four-foot gap between us, and I made sure I was angled enough that I could dart out of the way if he reached for me. “I see and read auras.”
He licked chapped lips, eyes focused on me with unnerving intensity. “You can see them too, then?”
I cocked my head. “What are you seeing, Mr. Rice?”
“The monsters, of course.” A trace of doubt entered his tone and he drew back, no longer as excited.
Going off a hunch, remembering what he said to Myers, I gambled a little. “The monsters like the ones you saw on the women?”
“Yes!” Excited all over again, he brought his right hand up illustratively, talking a mile a minute. “Thank god you see them too! I thought I was the only one. I kept trying to tell people about them, but they looked at me like I was crazy, and they wouldn’t talk about them, and eventually I realized I was the only one who knew they were there. And they’re clever, so clever. They hide on the side of women, in the shadows, where you can’t see them, lurking near their heads and grinning back at me. I see them, grinning, and I saw them getting stronger and stronger, but no one would help me. No one would help me. But you’ll help me, won’t you?”
“I’d love to help you,” I answered honestly, feeling nothing but pity. Fucking hell, what a strong hallucination. This poor guy. “Rice, listen, you’ve got your aura locked way down. Did you know that?”
He nodded fervently. “I meditate every hour. I have to; they find me otherwise.”
“Okay.” Seriously? How the hell…? I’d heard of the theory that focused meditation could lock down an aura, but I’d never met anyone who could do it to this level. I really wanted someone to explain to me how he’d done this. “Can you drop that shield? I can’t read what you’re saying properly with that up.”
Paranoia clouded his eyes, and he shrank back again on the bed, the cuffs rattling as he moved. Eyes on the doctor, he asked in a loud whisper, “But what if…I haven’t heard them yet, but what if there’s one on him?”
I pursed my lips, trying to figure out how to maneuver around the paranoia without setting him off. “How do you hear them? What noise do they make?”
In an eerie manner, he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, the sound sharp and staccato. What did that mean?
Almost in answer, a similar sound came from the hallway. It repeated, getting louder with each repetition, although this time I was able to place the sound better. High heels on the tile floor.
Rice reacted like a wounded animal. He jerked upright on the bed, tugging hard at his cuffed wrist, eyeing the door with a frantic attention. “They’re here. Dammit, they’re here! Why are they here, why, whywhywhy? Let me out of this. You have to let me out of this; I can’t fight like this!”
I nearly winced in realization. Why did he only attack women? Because in his paranoid state of delusion, he thought their high heels were the sound of the monster. God, no wonder there’d been no commonality between the victims except for being all working women.
“Mr. Rice, you’re alright,” Dr. Harley soothed, voice calm and unrushed. “It’s alright, the monster can’t get to you.”
“I can hear it,” Rice snarled back, his paranoia and fear ratcheting in front of my eyes to nearly nuclear levels. “I can fucking hear it, don’t lie to me!”
Right, that line of attack wouldn’t work. “It’s okay, Rice, I know what you’re looking for. I’m going to step out, track that monster down so it won’t come after you. Can you sit tight while I do that?”
Rice paused, head turned so he stared at me from the corner of his eye. His hand was still clenched in a fist against the restraints, but he wasn’t actively pulling at it now. “You’ll do that? But you can only see them, right?”
Seriously, no one believed I could fight off anything. Despite the fact Donovan had been training me for the past four months. It hurt my male ego. “Yeah, but I won’t need to. I have a soldier with me. Trust me, nothing’s getting past him.”
Rice wasn’t buying it.
“Yeah, okay, tell you what. Let me show you who I mean, and if you’re convinced, then we’ll go after the monster, okay?”
Somewhat unwilling, Rice still dipped his chin in agreement. I saw his panic recede a notch, although I wasn’t entirely sure why this logic worked. Maybe because I was a psychic, the first to understand what he meant, he thought I had the necessary judgement to deal with the situation?
Either way, I had maybe a minute to convince him to let his guard down before they’d have to tranq him again. And then we’d have to try this interview all over again on a different day, which I wasn’t keen to do.
Knowing very well that Donovan could see through the monitor that I wanted him, I expected to find him in the hallway, waiting on me to open the door. As soon as I opened it, sure enough, there he was. I stepped aside to let him through, settling a hand at the small of his back as he stepped fully into the room. “Mr. Rice, this is my anchor, Donovan Havili.”
Rice’s neck craned up in almost comical degrees as he looked up and up at Donovan. Hope flared through him so hard that it nearly drowned out the fear. “Are you the Dark Warrior?”
Donovan, not sure how to respond to that, glanced at me in a clear bid for help.
“Wow, you recognize him?” I asked, trying not to overplay my hand. “Yeah, he is. He was military for a long time and only just came to me. But you see what I mean now, right? If anyone can vanquish a monster, it’s him.”
Rice grinned, relief sweeping through him. “Yes. Yes, you can vanquish the monsters. You’re stronger than I am. You can succeed. You will do that, won’t you, Dark Warrior? I’m so tired. I really want to rest.”
Gamely, Donovan gave him an answering smile. “I won’t let anyone else get hur
t, I promise. You’ve fought hard, but you can stop now. I’ll step in and take it from here.”
All the panic faded, although not the fear. “Okay. Okay, I’ll rest here. You’ll call if you need me?”
“I sure will,” Donovan assured him. “Just give me a few minutes. I don’t think the woman got far.”
“Okay.” Rice marginally settled, still alert and ready to pop up any second.
I stepped out of the room, closing the door, and blew out a breath. “Bless you for playing along, babe. If you’ll track down the lady with the high heels, I’ll tell the nurses’ station to not let anyone with heels on in this hallway.”
“Yeah, probably a wise precaution. Go.”
Stepping up to the nurses’ desk I hailed one of them, a little away from their computers, reading the name tag on her shirt as she moved. “Hi, Amanda? Jonathan Bane, psychic.”
“Yes, Mr. Bane, we were alerted you brought someone in.” She gave me a professional smile tinged in worry. “Is there a problem?”
“Yeah, we figured out one of the triggers that sends your new patient into violent reactions. He’s experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations. According to him, the sound of high heels on a hard surface is the sound of a monster laughing at him.” I gave her a mixture of a grimace and a smile. “Like the lady who just walked through, she set him off.”
“Ohhhh,” the nurse said with a wealth of understanding. “That is very good to know, thank you. We’ll stop any visitors with heels on from going through this hallway unless he’s sedated.”
“Thank you so much. My anchor went to track down the woman in heels and request that she not wear them until she’s clear of the hallway. But if you catch her before he does, please stop her.”
“We will, rest assured.”
“Thanks.” Mission accomplished, I turned back and headed for the room. I met Donovan at the door and canted my head in silent question.
“Found her. Visiting her brother. I explained the situation and she immediately put the shoes in her bag, swore she wouldn’t put them on again until she got downstairs,” Donovan reported before adding, “I want to go back inside the room with you.”
“Please,” I encouraged promptly. “I think if you’re there with us, he’ll be able to relax enough to drop his guard. He oddly trusts you for some reason.”
Donovan snorted. “The one thing people don’t doubt is that I’m enough to take on the bad guys. Okay, unto the breach?”
“Once more,” I agreed and gave a soft tap on the door. When I got the call to enter, I poked my head in and gave Rice a smile. “All gone. Donovan took care of it. Can we come back in?”
Rice beamed with open relief, shoulders sagging as tension left him. “You really did?”
“Yeah, you won’t need to worry about the monster again,” Donovan promised. “I’d like to come in too, just in case, and stand guard.”
Rice beckoned him in further. “Please, please.”
Alrighty, back on track. I reclaimed my seat, Donovan standing at ease near my elbow. I wasn’t sure if he’d done that on purpose or by habit. He was a little tense around Rice.
“Mr. Rice,” I started, not sure how to coax him to do what I needed him to do, “I would love to help you, but I can’t see much past that shield you’re carrying, as I said before. Can you drop that for me?”
He shrank into himself, uncertain. “I really don’t want to. They might still be nearby.”
“You don’t hear that sound now, though,” Dr. Harley offered with a hopeful smile. “So that should mean you’re safe right now, right?”
He didn’t look at all sold by this logic. “It’s true, I don’t, but you don’t have a beacon. The other women, they pulled the beacon out when I was close enough. They jangled it to clash with the monster’s call, distracting it so I could get a hit in. You don’t have a beacon, though. What if it comes? I won’t be able to help you.”
Beacon…what the hell could be the beacon? I ran through the list of possibilities, but the only other thing that the victims had in common was that they’d all been found with their keys out, as they’d been unlocking their cars when struck.
Donovan reached into his pocket and held up my keys. “You mean this?”
Shadowed eyes fixated on the keyring. “Yes. That. Do you sense it?”
“No,” he assured Rice quietly. “No, I don’t sense the monster. But that’s why I’m here, to take care of the monster if it appears. Tell you what, I’ll give these to Jon so he can signal me if he hears it first. That okay?”
He relaxed a little, shoulders slumping. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. It’s good one of you has the beacon. Alright. I can’t do it for long, but I’ll drop my shield. I can’t leave myself exposed, though, they’ll find me.”
“That’s fine, just a few minutes,” I promised him.
Finally, he let go of the shield, although he sweated doing it, it took that much concentration on his part. Rather than focusing on keeping a shield up, he was doing so almost subconsciously, and it took real effort on his part to relax his guard. I didn’t even want to consider how much treatment and therapy it would take to set this man back to rights.
It was a relief to finally be able to read his aura, even though looking at it made my head hurt. His body was a mess of pain lines—incorrectly healed wounds; the recent pattern of bruises on his chest, arms, and neck from Lieutenant Myers’ defense; and the trauma to his poor head…it was like a snarled ball of yarn, all bleeding angry red. “Your name is Samuel Rice, correct? The Samuel Rice who was in that apartment explosion in Colorado last August?”
He nodded sadly. “The monsters did it. I barely escaped. If my car hadn’t been parked down the street, away from the apartment, I might not have gotten away.”
“Have you been running ever since?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t stay long anywhere. They always found me. They like to hang out with women, for some reason. I noticed them more and more, I guess because I got sensitive to their auras.” He blinked at me sadly. “Eventually, I figured I couldn’t run forever, I might as well make a stand. I had to get rid of them. I wanted to go home.”
Stirred to pity, I gave a sympathetic noise of understanding. He resonated with lines of fatigue, confusion, fear—the fear hot enough it nearly drowned out his other meridian lines. No part of what he said was untruth. At least, not to him. The delusion was firmly set. “So you started fighting back?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know where to start, really. Then one of the women I watched pulled a beacon out. She’d figured out the monster was attached to her, somehow, and was signaling for help.” Earnestly, he assured us both, “I had to help her. I thought maybe I could save her. But it didn’t work; the monster just jumped to another woman. I hit them as hard as I could, but it didn’t work. I switched to a metal weapon, a sword, and tried again. But I haven’t found anything that’s worked so far.”
Which explained his change from one item to another. Although, interesting he thought of the metal cudgels as ‘swords,’ as he’d not once used an actual sword. Thank god. That would have been so much worse.
“Mr. Rice, do you know why you’re in here?” Dr. Harley asked in a soothing voice.
Rice stared at him, paranoia beating like a live drum. With a jerk of his head, he indicated ‘no.’
“It’s because of the apartment explosion you lived through,” the doctor answered truthfully. “Your injuries from that time didn’t heal right. Mr. Bane saw that and alerted us that you were in trouble, that you were hurt.”
Excellent, Doc. I went with this cover story and backed him up. “I couldn’t see much of your aura, but it was grey smears, and that always tells me there’s damage. It makes sense, after all; you had a whole building collapse on you. I’m surprised you healed enough to move, really.”
“I was hurt bad for weeks afterwards,” Rice admitted slowly, eyes still bouncing between the both of us. “But I’m okay now.”
Dr. Harley shot me an
uncertain glance. It’s okay, Doc, I’ve got this. “Actually, not so much. There’s a knot along your spine that’s fused with another vertebrae and causing you pain. And your right shoulder has a micro-tear in it that won’t heal, right? You can’t swing it all the way backwards or lift it at certain angles. And there’s a terrible pain here—” I put a hand to my own neck at the base of the cranial area in illustration “—that is sometimes blinding, right? Your head sustained an injury, and the vertebrae near that area is fractured, pushing hard on the nerves.”
Rice’s mouth parted in a hopeful manner. “Wow. You really can read auras. Yes, I hurt in those places.”
“Mr. Rice,” I said kindly, meaning every word of it, “you can’t save anyone until you get well, yourself. I know your story now. I know how to help.”
He seemed only half-sold on this. I didn’t know how to reassure him, but I had to do something; otherwise he’d fight to get out of here, and I didn’t want to leave that kind of volatile trouble in the lap of the staff here. It wasn’t a good move, professionally speaking, and I didn’t want to mess up our relationship with the hospital. The police needed access to their staff and facilities.
Donovan, bless him, reminded Rice gently, “Remember, we know what to look for now. I’m in perfect health, and I can fight anything off. You can rest and leave it to me until you’re well again.”
With a blinding smile, Rice looked up at him like he was Buddha. “You promise?”
“Hell, man, you think I’m going to let anything roam around free in this area? I’ve got a sister and mother who live here; I don’t want anything coming after them.”
That rang with truth, and Rice believed him.
With a sigh of relief, Rice asked wistfully, “After I’m well, do you think I can go home?”