Jazz Metzner used to make it with her, Matthew thought.
From the promontory he observed a full scope of events unseen anywhere else in town. Did they realize just how close Panecraft stood to the high school and park? It almost seemed that the asylum had drifted farther into the community. He couldn’t remember any parents ever having taken up signs and picketing the way they would have anywhere else. There’d been no real controversy, petitions, or outright hostility. His father had been a masterful spin doctor, placating the county.
Matthew replaced the binoculars, hefted the satchel back up onto his shoulder, and squinted into the dusk. He stared at the asylum, rejecting his father’s euphemisms: this psychiatric facility, sanitarium, shelter for the distressed. Matthew glared at the stone building.
He’d been away too long.
Back in the late sixties, the overcrowded Panecraft housed thirty-one thousand patients. Now there were fewer than fourteen hundred up there behind the leveled rows of cube windows. Most of the current denizens were hospitalized by their own hand on a voluntary admittance basis, or came for group drug or alcohol counseling. Of the five buildings only one maintained a full staff and was kept in continuous use. Three others were in major disrepair and, except for the lowest floors, were shut down. The last was nothing more than a burned-out gutted frame that had been condemned years before.
Epiphanies awaited him. Matthew regarded the series of interconnected buildings and thought of when he and A.G. had ridden their bicycles through the echoing hallways. A.G., to his embarrassment, had still needed training wheels at the age of seven. They’d read comic books and crossed wooden swords and flipped baseball cards against the walls, while floors above people lay strapped to their beds for trying to gouge their own eyes out. Once it had been their fun house, before they’d had to find new names for the appetite of Panecraft. He’d finally settled on calling it the mother murderer.
Before Debbi’s death.
On certain nights, you could head down these back roads surrounding the hospital and watch the twining shadows of the complex cut into the skyline and carve down alongside the moon; it got you somewhere deep. You could feel the haunted shells of these tens of thousands of men and women who once dwelled here, curled in its corners. Insanity crept toward tangibility, and if possession had any truth, you could believe this darkness could take over the unwary. High school kids performed primitive rites of passage, knocking down the barbed-wire fences in order to tear the lawns in pickup trucks, swigging Jack Daniel’s and heaving in the bushes, sometimes using the condoms they brought, sometimes not buying into the facts.
His father had been the architect of that monstrosity. On the night Matthew’s mother was taken away, he and A.G. had watched the trees rustling outside the half-opened windows of his bedroom, her lovely muffled songs and terrified squeals changing to even uglier sounds, his father’s soft voice failing to appease her at all as men filled the house and the screaming started.
Oh Christ …
Now A.G., too, had been imprisoned behind Panecraft’s walls.
… give me strength.
And Matthew could hear him calling.
One of the worst realties about a small town like Summerfell was that you were just as likely to be friends with the killers as you were with the victims.
Sweat slid down Matthew’s sideburns as Dr. Henry Charters silently ushered him through one of the decrepit tunnels that connected the sites of the facility. Leaves, candy wrappers, tenth-grade geometry notes scrawled in a dyslexic hand, and kindergarten coloring book pages carpeted the cracked tile floor. Dragged in by the wind through the splintered planks that haphazardly covered the broken windows, the litter beneath his feet told him more tales of life than he’d witnessed so far today. Stepping on the trash was like stepping on his own past.
Matthew had a hard time stifling the memories; even more disturbing were the sounds of his childhood assaulting him now, snapping like his steps. If he shut his eyes he could fall back to being seven years old and hear A.G. flopping sideways off his bike, hitting the ground with a squeaky cuss.
“I apologize, Mattie, but I’m still kind of shocked to hell at seeing you again,” Hank Charters said. “I’m glad, you understand, and certainly relieved, believe me, but surprised. I wasn’t sure if you’d heard or even cared anymore.” That last bit proved nothing more than a baited taunt, but Matthew let it slide. Charters dropped a loose, consoling hand on Matthew’s shoulder and let it slip away quickly. “I can imagine how difficult this is for you, to return now to face this. If you feel ill I have some tablets upstairs that will help.” Charters kept trying to be nice, oppressively so, going too far out of his way.
They walked the complex for nearly twenty minutes while Charters vacillated between acting as if he truly cared and being too damn pushy, hoping to ferret out information. So far as Matthew knew, the apprehension he felt hadn’t been betrayed by either his face or voice, though the calm look he worked hard to keep might be a betrayal in itself. Charters enjoyed piercing veils. He’d been the proverbial uncle to Matthew for most of his life, and though they hadn’t seen each other in five years they’d both naturally fallen back into their roles.
“I tried getting in touch with you,” Charters said, “as soon as it happened.” He stuffed his hands into his sweater pockets and the massive ring of keys chimed feebly on his belt. “When this mayhem first occurred, there was no way to contact you. No one had an address or phone number where you might be reached.”
“Yes,” Matthew said. He hoped it would be enough of an answer.
It wasn’t. The doctor paused and measured his words carefully, scratching and stroking at his wiry broad mustache as if it were a beloved terrier curled under his nose. Matthew wondered what other psychiatrists saw in that repetitive gesture—masturbation? obsession for a long-gone pet? A hurt look flashed over his face. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized you’d cut your native cords so effectively. Even Helen—”
“Please don’t talk about her.” The familiar rage coiled around him, so close and intimate as always. Matthew kicked broken glass aside, enjoying the feel of garbage here. “This is bad enough for the moment.”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing, Hank. Has he said anything?”
It took the doctor back. “No.”
“Not even to himself? Muttering, whispering?”
“On occasion. But nothing of real consequence.”
If you only knew. “Anything on tape? For me to listen to?”
“No.”
Charters cleared his throat and swallowed thickly. As an uncle figure, he should have known better than to push the wrong buttons, much less attempt to initiate conversation by pressing them; as a psychiatrist, Charters had failed to take into account the Galen temper—being too close tended to warp the analytical view, as Matthew had learned of his father. He’d written two plays about crazy psychiatrists. “Any visitors?”
“No.”
Charters went back to petting his terrier. Clearly he was torn, unsure of which tack to pursue: to follow his line of questioning of Matthew, or answer Matthew’s queries about A.G. Everyone had control and power here in Panecraft, and it switched hands from moment to moment. Matthew sensed Charters backing off, trying to regain control. Amazing how clearly a counselor could be read.
“All I knew about your current whereabouts was what I’d stumbled across in the papers these past few years. It was a wonderful surprise to learn you’d so quickly become a successful playwright.” The doctor gave a tight brisk laugh, humorless yet nearly a giggle; Matthew had forced his director to replace lead actors because they’d given performances bad as this. “I even went to Manhattan in the hopes of tracking you down, if you can imagine that.”
“No.” Matthew allowed himself a momentary grin. He could just see Charters stalking down Times Square, mentally configuring notes and papers on sexual mores, looking for the twenty-five-cent peep shows
and brazen transvestite prostitutes and finding only the Disney Store, Japanese tourists, guys trying to sell him watches, and scattered homeless.
“After two train connections and getting lost for an hour on the wrong subway line heading into the Bronx, I finally made my way to the theater where Epitaphs was being presented, only to be told by the manager that he didn’t have any idea how to get in touch with you.”
“I recently moved to a new apartment.”
“I tried, Mattie, I wanted you to understand that.”
“I do, Hank, and I appreciate it as well.”
They moved into another tunnel, this one winding toward Tower C, the only section of Panecraft he hadn’t been allowed to freely roam and explore as a child. It still felt like forbidden ground, perhaps of a holy kind. Here they kept those patients his father had called the “highly disturbed” and the “deeply troubled.” His dad could make it all sound so loving and caring, so profound in the light of reason. He could never say the “criminally insane.” Perhaps he’d never even thought it.
“How long has A.G. been here?”
“Twelve days. How did you finally learn about it?”
Matthew didn’t answer, scanning the cracked plaster and spiraling, water stains, seeing the various signs and portents in the walls.
The heavy ring of keys at Charters’s belt jangled a tone-deaf tune. “I suppose it doesn’t matter.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Anguish and fear snapped together like shears closing shut. He would have asked Charters to give him the tranquilizers if he’d believed they might actually work. He might’ve asked anyway in order to hold the moment at bay, to keep from seeing another of his loved ones in a cell, but if he stopped now he’d never be able to start on this walk again. His fingernails were weak from a lifetime of nail-biting, and they bent where they dug in against the strap of the satchel.
Corridors revived sounds, scents, and images without form, not even recollections anymore, just kid stuff making no sense now—the migraine came swiftly and he chewed his lips to keep from grunting, ancient languages rising from the silt of memory. This can’t be happening, he thought, knowing the truth, not again. And with startling clarity: I’m going to die here.
“Tell me about it,” Matthew said.
Hank Charters sighed and held his hands open in front of himself, a meaningless gesture, looking for a way to grasp a greater design. He rubbed at the corners of his eyes, tired, with his voice drained of its usual critical energy. Jesus, this place killed everybody. “From the sheriff’s point of view there’s not much to tell.”
There wouldn’t be. There never had been much to say, not even when they were dragging Matthew’s mother out of the living room on her belly. “The sheriff’s point of view is usually quite narrow and unperceptive.”
“Are you aware that over the past six months six people have vanished?”
“Yes.”
“Four women and two men … my God, men, women, actually most of them are only teenagers. Talk has gone around about a serial killer, and the police issued a curfew to keep children off the streets.”
“I heard.”
Charters stopped abruptly and turned, a little heat in his glare now, the bad acting over; mustache disheveled, steel-wool corner hairs curving down into his mouth, the doctor stroked it some more. “Yes, well, did you also know that one of the women was Ruth Cahill?”
Matthew cringed.
In an instant, the scars on his chest began their hideous whispering, voices filling his head.
For a moment he almost lost his balance in the tunnel, feeling the blood drain from his face. The arcane chattering continued, laughter so loud. Charters watched him closely as Matthew went through the motions. “No, I didn’t know that.” Walk, make your goddamn feet move forward.
“She’s A.G.’s fiancée now, but no one has seen her for almost six months.”
Six months. The Goat had been planning well in advance for Matthew’s return. “What happened? Why do they suspect him now?”
“Ten days ago the mother of a newspaper boy named Richie Hastings called the police on the verge of hysteria. He hadn’t returned home from school and was already several hours late. Earlier that afternoon, he was supposed to be collecting money owed him by customers on his paper route. It usually only took thirty minutes or so—”
Matthew’s pinkie nail split against the leather strap. It used to take us all afternoon, all night if we wanted it to, cutting through back yards, chasing Lilith’s children. Banal and transparent symbolism, though, the Goat using another paperboy to make a point.
“—but Richie was now very late. The police proceeded with a door-to-door search of Richie’s customers, knowing how adolescents, however responsible, don’t tend to let their mothers know their whereabouts all the time.”
“But they found him.”
“Yes.” Charters stopped and looked into Matthew’s eyes, going for the direct approach now, on the level and man-to-man, though of all places he shouldn’t have looked there. You could see how it affected the doctor, made him take a step backward to withdraw from what he’d found in this gaze, but discovering that it was too late to let go. Charters turned again. “They discovered him semicomatose sitting on A.G.’s porch, seated beside A.G. on the verandah swing.” Strange to know what was about to be said, regardless of how much no one wanted to hear it. Matthew quickly pinched his throat to keep the nausea from rising any farther, the doctor paling to another shade. “In his lap A.G. cradled the mud-covered osseous framework of a child.”
It took effort not to say, “I know,” and to keep the scars from shrieking, and to not punch Charters in the mouth for being so pretentious as to say “osseous framework.” Three fingernails were bleeding where they’d ripped at the cuticles. Bones, the inherent power in those bones. A.G. had gone back for her skeleton. “My Christ.”
They came to the elevator, and as Charters reached to touch the up button, the car arrived as if expecting them. They entered and the doctor pressed fourteen, the top floor.
“Even upon initial examination it proved evident the skeleton was too small and much more aged than could possibly be matched to any of the other missing people. We turned it over to the county officials, who reported that the body was of a Caucasian girl about twelve years old who’d died at least a decade ago from extreme trauma to the midsection, according to the forensic anthropologist. Dental records are being checked.” Strictly professional, without giving Matthew time enough to ask just when a small town like Summerfell might need to know anything about forensic anthropology.
Charters laid it out without a hint of emotion, though he must have been well aware who the victim was—only problem was that Dr. Williamson, their dentist, had long since died and his obsolete records tossed. Her braces had turned to dust in the wet caves. “The police are checking cemeteries in the county to see if any graves have been recently disturbed; they’re also backtracking missing-persons reports from that time. They searched A.G’s home thoroughly and found the partial remains of another skeleton, of an infant also many years dead, as well as several preserved animal carcasses.”
“Any physical proof indicating he’d murdered someone?”
“No, not as of yet, but …”
“Nothing besides the fact that his fiancée is missing to directly tie him to these other disappearances?”
“No, but you see what must be inferred …”
The ride took too long; he looked at the lit numbers overhead and saw they’d only just passed the ninth floor. “Yes.” What was happening? Panecraft had captured him again.
“The curfew is supposedly still in effect,” Charters said. “The police stated they haven’t concluded their investigation yet, but you know this town. A.G.’s capture relieved most of the tension. No one feels they have anything to be frightened of now that A.G. is imprisoned—they simply couldn’t stand being terrified any longer. Everyone believes A.G. killed them all and hid the
ir bodies elsewhere.”
“Nothing else in his house or yard?”
“It was completely torn apart, lawns dug up, walls smashed, wood of the floors cut through and broken away, and they’re still looking. No, nothing else. The papers have taken to calling him a ghoul.”
He is, Matthew thought. We all are. “Has he confessed?”
With that annoying kick-back lurching the elevator slowed as they arrived at the fourteenth floor. The doors opened on brightly lit hallways of institutional gray-green, a softened but somber color Matthew had painted his apartment because he’d grown so used to it. Two men in impeccable security uniforms waited to one side. They were either orderlies or guards, he didn’t know the current nomenclature, but they wore side arms.
The first guard sat behind a half-moon desk watching several small video monitors, and the other stood with his right hand resting on his gun belt, fingers edging sideways, gently slapping against the handcuffs. Matthew wondered how long it would take before the guy shot himself or his partner in the foot.
Now it made sense why the elevator had taken so long; he glanced back into the car before the doors shut and saw what he’d missed while listening to Charters: mini vidcams hidden high in the corners. He was unfamiliar with these procedures of Tower C, where he’d never been above ground level. It was like finding a hidden room in your own house.
The guards’ routine remained thorough, though Hank Charters was the director of Panecraft. He had to display two ID badges and sign in; Matthew assumed they were going through the inspection so they could check him carefully, hoping to gain something conclusive from him to pin on A.G. The questioning would begin soon. They put on little white gloves, and Matthew wondered if he’d have to break somebody’s jaw. He had to hand over the contents of his pockets, and submit to a frisking and a search through his satchel, the contents of which they scattered on the desk and poked through. They took his belt, watch, the silver chain he wore at his throat, and they still looked as though they really wanted to draw their guns, practice their karate kicks, put on the rubber gloves.
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