The Lost and the Damned

by Dennis Liggio

  “No,” said Katie, prompting him to continue.

  “He laughed at me. Really, he just laughed. He told me that he is the one who held power here, that this is his domain. Then he threatened me. He told me that I would be the one who would suffer. He said that if I called the authorities here, I would end up in jail. He said he’d simply show the authorities the patients experimented on and claim that they were my experiments. And I knew he could do it. With so many doctors on his side, everyone would speak against me. I would be the one to take the fall. So you can see why I didn’t go to the police.”

  “Poor Doctor,” said Katie soothingly, as Merill closed his eyes and accepted the sympathy.

  “Those are some very weak excuses,” she then said in a more assertive voice. We were all surprised. I turned around and saw her standing up sharply. “Seriously, what the hell?” she said. “How weak a person are you?” She turned and saw me looking. “Can you believe this shit? It’s a doctor without a spine.” She turned back to him. “I can’t believe you were my fucking doctor,” she said, poking a finger at him. “How were you supposed to help me when you don’t even have the backbone for your own life? Fuck man, how many people in your career are you going to help in hospitals? How many do you have to help to compare to the amount you could help by stopping people from torture and experimentation? What the fuck is the goal in your life? Aren’t doctors supposed to help people?”

  She stormed away from him, taking up a spot in the corner where I heard her rapidly pacing before finally kicking a crate. Wow, I thought, she really ran hot and cold. Was it from her catatonia, or was this vintage Katie?

  This left me standing closest to Merill and strangely the most sympathetic to him. I walked over to him and leaned against the crate next to him.

  “So finish your story,” I said wearily.

  “Huh?” he said, looking up at me, breaking him out of his thoughts.

  “Is that where it ends?” I asked. “Ashborn starts experimenting, I show up and all hell breaks loose? What about the pillar of light?”

  “There’s more,” he said, “I just don’t know much about it. Nealand no longer told me anything, and I knew only what I gleaned from chatty nurses. Ashborn’s threat made me back off, you understand?”

  “Sure,” I said, “But I still need to piece this together. What do you think you know?”

  “Things had been getting worse in the past week. All the nurses knew it, and they were scared. Everything was mounting toward an apex. Tonight, I think. I know that Ashborn’s cabal had a specific meeting tonight in the old part of the hospital, a section they didn’t want any nurses in. After the shift change at dinner, they disappeared into Wing F with five patients, mostly catatonics, I think. While I was curious, I was just unlucky to have stayed here this late.”

  “And then?” I asked.

  “And then there was a pillar of light erupting from what I believe was Wing F,” he said. “I think you know the rest of this story, or as much as I know. I felt the hospital rumbling, so I hid in the bathroom because I figured that room was secure. Then you found me.”

  “Yeah, lucky me,” I said.

  We all sat in silence for a few minutes, breathing the cooler air of the storeroom. I became very conscious of the sweat that covered me from walking through those hot tunnels. I wished I carried a flask or a canteen, but I had nothing to quench my thirst. I mused on what Merill had said. Ashborn and his cohorts had disappeared into the old part of the hospital with five patients. Sometime later a pillar of light erupted from that part of the hospital and the Five rampaged through the halls. Five monsters that I had the unfortunate luck of nearly bumping into as they exited the hospital. Ashborn’s experiments, five patients, a pillar of light, and then the monsters. They were all connected. I didn’t know how, but I knew that Ashborn had caused it. He turned those patients into those monsters. And he was around, somewhere, possibly creating more monsters. The thought did little to calm my nerves.

  To get my mind off it, I stood up and walked over to Katie. She had stopped pacing, but she still had her back to the doctor and myself. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She turned around, her face nervous and confused. But that soon changed and she gave me a smile, showing off her perfect white teeth. Even though it was obviously forced, her smile could light up a room. She almost fooled me into thinking everything was okay. I almost wanted to believe that. But I couldn’t believe everything was okay. The question was whether it was just the stress of our situation or if she was cracking up. I still worried that she might revert to her catatonia.

  “I’m fine,” she said, pausing a moment before she reconsidered. “Fine as we could be for being in this crazy fucked up place.”

  “You sure?” I asked, giving her another chance to confess her problems.

  Her beautiful eyes looked into mine for a moment or two before the beautiful smile returned. “I’m fine, John. Just get me out of here. Get us both out of here. I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.”

  “You and me both,” I said with as much of a smile as I could muster. She smiled back, and for one long moment we shared weak smiles and the pleasure of standing there.

  Then the flapping interrupted us.

  It sounded like the wings of a bird flapping, but the sound was magnified much louder than it should be. I wasn’t sure if it was the enclosed space that magnified it; all I knew was that it sounded like flapping everywhere. We stood looking at the ceiling in each direction, trying to figure out which direction the sound was coming from.

  The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up; my danger sense was on red alert. I wasn’t sure why, but the flapping put me on edge. I mean, it could be just some pigeons or something that got caught in the complex when they had the door open, right? Just harmless birds, flapping around, just trying to find a window or exit from this building. Nothing to worry about at all.

  Then why did my nerves just scream something was wrong?

  Something dark darted over a crate and came right at me. I didn’t see what it was besides a flap of black feathers, but some instinct in me made me jump to the side, just barely dodging whatever bird had just dove at me. I heard it glance off the boxes behind me and start flapping again. I turned my head to see another form streak toward Merill. I heard him scream as it clipped his arm and then darted off into the air.

  I scanned the ceiling above us for them, but all I could hear was the sound of flapping echoing around the crates. I stepped over to Merill, still looking above us for the birds. Katie was at his side, looking at his arm as Merill slumped against a crate, his face pale. He was bleeding from a wound on his upper arm. I couldn’t tell how deep it was. What I could see was that it was a pretty clean cut.

  “Tear off a strip of clothing, make some sort of tourniquet,” I said, fumbling around in my pockets.

  “Me?” said Katie, “What are you going to be doing?”

  I found what I was looking for and pulled my pistol out of my pocket, chambering a round.

  “Oh,” she said, looking at the gun, “that makes sense.”

  I crept to the corner of the crates we were now using as cover. The flapping became slower, and I wondered if they were stopping or if they were getting ready to strike again.

  Behind me I heard Katie say, “Tear clothing? With what? Clothing is too well made anymore to tear with hands! Hey, Doctor, do you have a knife?” Merill just groaned in response.

  I fumbled in my pocket and tossed my pocketknife behind me, not even looking to see where it went. I heard Katie say “Gee, thanks,” and scramble on the floor behind me. I kept all my attention on peering around the corner. I leaned a little farther and saw two black shapes fluttering near one of the lights in cages at the ceiling. I couldn’t see them well enough to tell what sort of bird they were, but knowing where they were was good enough.

  I leaned out farther in a squat and brought my pistol to bear. For now the birds seemed to be fluttering aro
und the light, so I could take my time. I slowly lined up my shot, watching their pattern. I didn’t want to take too long, in case they went on the offensive, but I also didn’t want to fire too hastily. I took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.

  There was a deafening noise as the gun discharged in such a confined space, and with pleasure I saw one of the birds explode into a cloud of black feathers. I smiled, but immediately pulled the trigger again, trying to hit the other bird. It had already started to frantically dodge, so my second shot just left a hole in the ceiling. The bird began to curve and I fired again, missing again. It started coming in on a wide arc and I knew was coming for me. I fired again, but it banked right. I fired again and it swooped lower. Miss. Now it was very evident that it was diving in my direction. I knew it was coming at me. I could get out of the way or take it down first. I squeezed off two more shots, blowing the corner off a crate and catching two black feathers in the air, but the bird was still coming at me. I could see its sharp beak now, it was kind of silvery. I fired twice, but firing so quickly with so much kickback killed my aim, and the bird easily dodged it.

  The clip was empty, my ammo spent. I had another clip in my pocket, but there was no time to grab it. There was no time to dodge. Almost in slow motion I saw it swooping toward me, on trajectory to dive under my arms, evading any further shots. What I did next even surprised me. It was a weird hybrid of calculation and instinct, but I acted without really thinking about it. As I saw its sharp beak zooming straight at my face, I brought my arms down, trying to slam the butt of my gun against the bird. The chances of me getting the timing right were so unlikely, but I felt a crunch as my strike connected, slamming the bird against the ground. It made a strange clink noise as it hit the floor and bounced a foot or two away. Without thinking about it, I stepped to it and slammed my foot down on it, feeling the unpleasant sensation of blood squirt from the sides of my shoe.

  I let my breath out with a gasp, not realizing I had been holding it. I took deep breaths as I felt my heart pounding in my ears. I tilted my head, listening, trying to hear beyond my heartbeat and the ringing in my ears I acquired from the gunfire. After thirty seconds I was confident there was no more flapping.

  “I got them!” I called, then lowering my voice when I heard how loud it was. “I got them both.” I stared at the corpse of the bird, finding out it wasn’t even a bird at all. I can’t even describe what emotions went through me as I looked at it. Confusion, fear, revulsion, confusion again, then a horrible sense that reality was failing. I shook it all off. I needed the others to see this.

  In a moment Katie rounded the corner, helping Merill along. His sleeve was in tatters, a makeshift tourniquet around his arm. I looked at his arm for a moment. “How deep is it?” I asked.

  “Huh?” said Merill.

  “How deep is the wound?” I insisted. “Aren’t you a doctor of some sort? How deep is your wound?”

  “N-not very deep,” he said. “I don’t think I need a tourniquet.”

  “That’s your call,” I said. “Make it into a bandage if you want. But I want you to look at this.”

  I walked back over to the corpse of the “bird.”

  “What the hell is this?” I asked, pointing at the corpse with the gun I still held in my hand.

  Merill and Katie both stared down at the corpse, a strange mixture of emotions crossing their face, similar to the ones I went through when I first looked at it. I stared down on the corpse as well. The quotes were justly deserved when I said “bird.” The only thing that was bird-like about it was the wings. Black raven wings now lay cracked and mangled on the ground. But those were not the part that confused us. It’s what the wings connected to that was just bizarre. It was not even the body of an animal. The wings were connected to a knife. A long, nasty looking butcher knife. With wings. A knife with wings. That alone was enough to set my mind reeling. But there was more. The knife was bleeding. When I slammed my shoe down on the handle of the knife, blood squirted out of the knife itself. It was a living knife with wings.

  “Merill, what the hell is this?” I asked again.

  “I guess it’s…” he started, then trailing off as he looked at it again.

  “This is wrong,” I said. “Completely wrong. This shouldn’t even exist. This is not scientifically possible. Knives can’t be alive. Knives can’t fly. Knives can’t bleed. What the hell is going on here?”

  “I think it’s quite obvious – ” he began weakly before I interrupted.

  “No, it’s not obvious, Doctor, it’s not obvious at all. Stop talking around the truth, stop trying to infer things and hoping we figure it out or hoping we don’t figure it out. Tell us straight, we deserve that,” I looked to Katie who nodded to me, stepping next to me to present a united front. “We want it straight, doc, where the fuck are we.”

  Merill stared back at us for a long moment, gripping his wound and staring. Then he straightened up and shook his head to get his hair out of his face, almost haughtily. “I would have thought it was obvious, John. We’re in Max’s mind.”

  Fifteen

  TRANSCRIPT: OBSERVATION ROOM 5. PATIENT 457. ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: DR. MERILL

  DOCTOR: Let’s talk about responsibility. Do you think people should be responsible for their actions?

  PATIENT: Yes.

  DOCTOR: Even when there are extenuating circumstances?

  PATIENT: Yes. People should have to pay for what they’ve done.

  DOCTOR: In all cases?

  PATIENT: Yes, like my father. He needs to be punished for his unforgiveable crimes.

  DOCTOR: Yes, we’ve been over that. But what about you?

  PATIENT: What about me? I am an innocent.

  DOCTOR: Don’t you think you should have consequences for your actions?

  PATIENT: I’m not guilty of anything. It’s always been done to me.

  At the end of the warehouse, we found a door which opened to gaping black space. With reservations we stepped through it. I was falling again and once more I had the dream. That horrible house where I saw violence happen to that boy. I just barely remembered it as my consciousness blanked out and I awoke with Katie and Merill on a cold hard floor.

  We stood up, dazedly looking around. We were inside some sort of control booth. Computers and audiovisual equipment lined one side of the booth, pressed up against a glass wall through which I could see a table, some chairs, and an operating table. The room was empty.

  I still felt dazed, so I sat down in one of the office chairs. I stared at Katie and Merill, watching them for their own reactions. Katie was completely out of it: she was staring into space, rocking back and forth. I kept some attention on her, in case I needed to catch her if she fell. Merill was looking around the room, but also seemed to not be very alert. He probably recognized the place, even if he couldn’t think of it at the moment.

  I leaned back in the chair, letting my mind run over the new possibilities. Dr. Merill had dropped quite a bomb. He claimed that this was all Max’s mind. I’m not sure I believed it quite yet. It might be unequivocally true, but accepting it as true was something else. Before it I had a theory of travelling in time, hitting all the moments of Max’s life. I was kind of okay with that, though it was definitely a hard position to defend. But instead of time travel, we were somehow inside someone’s mind. For some reason, that was much harder to believe. Time travel felt like science, even though it was probably more science fiction. But being inside someone’s mind seemed fantastic and impossible. How did we fit inside? How did we get inside? Did his mind get bigger? Did we get smaller? What is a mind exactly? Questions abound.

  Yet, as I became more alert and let the idea sit, there were certain things that the theory of being in Max’s mind answered. First, yes, I would have to accept that we somehow got into his mind. But once we used that assumption, things added up. We were travelling in time to different points in Max’s life. Easy, they were just memories. Each scene began with something related to Max. Me
mories again. The scenes were populated with some recognizable people, but they were also populated by faceless half-people. This was a bit harder to get. Maybe Max remembered that someone was there, but not what they looked like? Memory is a tricky thing.

  My mind moved to the things that didn’t fit. Murders. What was up with those? I’m pretty sure that all of those murders did not occur in real life. Whether he had done them or not, Max would have been the common denominator in all situations and been thrown into prison just for that. No, that seemed… out of place. But what were they then? Why were murders going on in his mind? And what was with the monster? Why would a man have such a beast inside his own mind, particularly one that seemed to be looking for him?

  I shook my head. The more things that made sense the more things seemed not to fit. I wasn’t going to figure this one out just by sitting and thinking about it.

  “I know where we are,” said Merill, his voice starting slow and then becoming normal speed. I figured he’d recognize this place.

  “So where are we?” I asked.

  “Not a place I have good memories of,” he said. “Observation Room Six.” He paused for a moment, letting it sink in. Or I assumed so. I know he had mentioned Observation Room Six before, but I couldn’t remember the significance.

  “At least now I can actually show you the strange case of Max,” he said, “and maybe dispel some of your doubts.”

  He sat down in front of one of the computers, waking it from sleep and displaying the most boring solid blue desktop background I had ever seen. He soon began opening folders quickly, obviously knowing where he was going.

  “Ha!” he said with a laugh.

  “What?” I asked, taking a moment from watching Katie, who had now collapsed into one of the chairs. She looked okay otherwise. I hoped.