by H. P. Bayne
Sully met his brother’s eye, and Dez responded with a shrug. With little else to do now, Sully scanned the room to assure himself neither Dr. Gerhardt nor the orderly from the other day, Larson Hackman, were around. Satisfied on that count, he lowered himself to one knee next to the chair and peered up into the face, the alternate image of which had been haunting him.
“Mr. Schuster? I don’t know if you can hear me, but my name’s Sullivan Gray. I think you know who I am. I’m here with my brother and your son, Thackeray. Do you remember Thackeray?”
Sully gave it a moment, analyzing Harry’s face for any indication of recognition, a flicker of eyelids, an involuntary twitch of a muscle around thin lips, a tensing of flesh in the deeply lined area between substantial brows.
There was nothing.
“I’m hoping you don’t mind if I call you Harry,” Sully said. “We’ve been spending some time together in fairly close quarters, so we’ve kind of gotten to know each other. You must know about Betty. Maybe you even tried to warn me. Is that true, Harry?”
Nothing.
“People say you can see the future. Are you trying to use me to prevent something from happening, maybe to Thackeray? Maybe to you? Is that why you used me to go after Lowell Braddock?”
No response.
Sully sighed. “I wish I knew if you could hear me.”
“Oh, he can hear you all right.”
Sully turned his head. Next to him stood a stout woman somewhere in her sixties, a pair of thick, round glasses enlarging her eyes and giving her the appearance of an owl. Her clothing—yellow pyjamas matching Harry’s—marked her as a patient.
Sully stood, finding her close to a foot shorter than he was. Next to Dez, she looked like a garden gnome.
“My name’s Phoebe but most around here just call me Snowy the Owl. You can, too, if you want. You know you were thinking it.”
Sully met Dez’s gaze, noted a set of upraised brows that no doubt mirrored Sully’s own.
“I’m Sullivan,” he said, returning his attention to Snowy with an outstretched hand.
Her small fingers wound around his gently, barely squeezing. “I know who you are, young man. He’s talked about you, you know.”
“Harry?”
“Yes, sir. He says things sometimes before they drug him up. The things he sees, they disturb him. Sometimes, he even wakes up screaming. Did recently, yelled his wife’s name over and over. Two days later, someone killed her. Isn’t that right, that she’s dead now?”
Sully nodded. He sensed Dez beside him was finding new definitions of anxiety as this conversation unfolded, but there wasn’t much they could do about it. If they couldn’t get answers directly from Harry, it seemed Snowy the Owl was happy to act as stand-in.
“What did he say about me?”
“Nothing in so many words. He doesn’t, you know. Never does. His brain doesn’t work so well anymore, so his premonitions just come in bits and pieces. Never heard a last name, but I have heard him say the name Sullivan recently, quite a bit.”
“Has he said anything else?”
“Not much, but there was another phrase I heard one night, something like ‘red dead.’ No idea what that meant.”
If Sully was a betting man, he’d be prepared to lay down a few bucks on the likelihood it was a premonition of the death of Sully and Dez’s red-headed father. It wasn’t a subject he wanted to broach.
But there was something else he hoped she could tell him. “Have you ever heard him say anything about a blue room?”
Snowy’s eyes had, to this point, been wide behind her glasses, giving the impression of a five-year-old child relaying a story to the class about how she’d spent her summer holidays. Now Sully watched as the light faded from the woman’s expression, stealing years from her and making her seem far closer to her true age.
“We don’t talk about that.”
“Why not?”
“We just don’t. They say bad things happen there.”
Dez switched his weight from one foot to the other and back again. This time, Sully shared his brother’s discomfort.
“I don’t mean to upset you,” Sully told Snowy. “But I really think it might be important.”
“It is important,” she said. “But some important things are best kept quiet. Like family secrets. You have some, surely. They’re important, but saying them out loud …. Nothing good comes of that, now, does it?” She leaned closer, her voice near a whisper. “We aren’t supposed to know about it, you know. That room. But Harry knows. Harry knows a lot. It’s his greatest strength and his Achilles’ heel, all in one. You don’t want to know about that room, child. You don’t ever want to know.”
“What’s going on here?”
Sully realized he’d been staring at Snowy, and the approaching voice had him blinking hard as he spotted Larson Hackman coming toward them.
“Who’s that?” Dez hissed.
“Head orderly,” Sully replied before Hackman could close the distance.
“Why are you bothering Mr. Schuster?”
Dez squared off against the large man, providing some substantial reason to pause. “We weren’t bothering anyone. We were visiting. I wouldn’t have thought that would be a problem.”
“The two of you were here the other day,” Hackman said, gaze flicking between the brothers, suspicion eking from the lowering of eyebrows and narrowing of eyes.
“I recognized Mr. Schuster,” Sully said. “I worked with his wife, Betty.” Sully motioned toward Thackeray. “We brought Harry’s son with us. He wanted to see his father, but he didn’t want to come alone.”
Thackeray took that as his cue to rejoin the land of the living and, thankfully, he backed Sully’s play. “I thought I did. Now, I’m not so sure. I thought maybe he’d know me.”
“Harry barely knows who he is some days.” Hackman’s voice was kinder now, whether the result of Dez’s imposing form or of speaking with Harry’s son.
“That’s not true,” Snowy said. “He knows more than you think.” She turned back to Sully. “And I wonder how much better he could show that if they didn’t insist on drugging him.”
Hackman addressed the accusation like one might explain to a child why dessert can’t come before dinner. “We’ve had this discussion before, Phoebe. Harry’s thoughts are very disturbing to him. They upset him badly and, what’s more, they upset everyone else. You remember what happened the last time, when Dr. Gerhardt tried to lower his dosage?’
Sully was surprised when Thackeray provided the answer. “He tried to kill himself.”
Hackman reached out a beefy arm, settling a solid hand on Snowy’s shoulder. The weight of it shifted her body, had her reestablishing her balance as she turned narrowed eyes up onto his face. “We don’t want to see that happen again, do we, Phoebe?”
“I’m not a grade schooler, Larson,” she said. “Don’t speak to me like one.”
The smile didn’t leave the orderly’s face, but he did remove his hand from her shoulder after giving it a couple careful pats.
“What sort of drugs is he on?” Sully asked.
Hackman’s eyes clamped back onto his face. “That’s not really your business, is it?”
Thackeray took a step closer, edging in nearer to Hackman while managing to keep his distance from his father. “But it is mine.”
Hackman, caught in a situation without a decent excuse to turn to for extraction, provided an answer. “I’m not aware of all the particulars, but he’s on several drugs. One is an anti-psychotic and he’s also on an anti-depressant and a mood regulator. And he often has trouble sleeping, so he receives medication for that at night. It’s likely a combination of the drugs leaves him a little dopey, but it’s better than the alternative. As I said, it’s disturbing not just to him, but to everyone here, when he’s in one of his states, and it has, on occasion, proved an actual threat to his life.”
Thackeray’s gaze fell onto his father’s still form and, for the first
time since they’d arrived, remained there longer than a couple seconds. “I’m aware.”
“I know why you keep him medicated,” Dez said. “But I think it would be helpful to both Thackeray and Harry if they had a chance to have a proper conversation. What are the chances he could visit sometime when his father’s not like this?”
Dez might later tell him he was imagining it, but Sully thought he could see a smirk toying at the corners of Hackman’s mouth, held in check by self-control and necessity. “Honestly? Probably never. I hate to say this, but Harry suffers from psychotic episodes frequently, and the risks are just too high. Phoebe can attest to that. I know it might sound trite, but I truly am sorry, Mr. Schuster. I deal with your father every day, and I just don’t see that he’d be in any state to have a proper conversation, whether medicated or not.”
Thackeray nodded, a tight up and down, before looking to Dez. “I think I’d like to go now.”
“I’m sorry you were unable to get what you needed from the visit.” The remark from Hackman had Sully looking up at him more sharply than he would have liked, afraid the automatic response might inadvertently prove the orderly right. Because there was something in the man’s statement beyond a stated regret about the lack of communication between father and son; there was recognition of the existence of an ulterior motive.
Thankfully, Dez played it far cooler than Sully had managed, launching his response with a non-committal shrug. “Yeah, us too. Seems sad he doesn’t understand his wife’s gone. Sully and I had hoped we could explain it to him. Betty would have wanted him to know why she wasn’t coming back to see him.”
“We’ve done our best to explain,” Hackman said. “But I don’t think anyone really knows what registers with him and what doesn’t.”
Thackeray extended a hand to Hackman, shaking. “Thanks for looking after him for us. It’s not that he and I were ever what you’d call close, but I wish there was a way I could know him better. More than that, I wish he didn’t have to live like this.”
As if sensing the visit was at an end, Hackman turned to lead the way to the exit, Thackeray falling in next to him. Dez looked down at Sully and gave his shoulders a shrug, but said nothing before making to follow the others.
Sully studied Harry’s face one last time and, seeing nothing there but that same stony mask, turned to join his brother.
He was caught short by an iron grip around his wrist, coming so suddenly, he was unable to hold back an audible gasp. Harry’s fingers clenched, vicelike, around his forearm.
The man’s lips were moving as if to try and form words, and Sully leaned in as Dez regained his side, the larger man’s body acting as a visually impenetrable wall between them and the orderly. At first, all Sully could hear was the in and out of breath, bent around a failed attempt at speech. But, as Sully put his ear right next to Harry’s mouth, the indiscernible sounds of a mental hospital patient gradually came into audible focus.
“What’s he saying?” Snowy asked.
“I’m trying to make it out.”
“It’s important you tell me.”
Spoken through both inhale and exhale, Harry breathed out two words, repeated them three times. Then, as Hackman started back toward them, voice raised with demand as he asked what was going on, Harry fell silent.
“Quickly,” Snowy said. “What did he say?”
Sully turned his attention from stilled lips and fingers unclenching from his wrist, meeting Snowy’s wide eyes. “River boy.”
Hackman regained their side just as Snowy shuffled off. “The two of you need to leave.”
“One moment,” Snowy called out over her shoulder. “I want to give them a present.”
“Phoebe, not now.”
The woman ignored Hackman, continuing off down the hall and leaving Sully and Dez with the orderly.
“I’m going to ask, again,” Hackman said. “Were you doing something to upset him?”
Snowy had provided ample distraction to gift Sully with the time to invent a story. “I think I might have. I didn’t mean to. I whispered to him that Betty had been killed. I wanted to see whether it registered.”
Hackman stepped forward, lifting Harry’s left arm from where it dangled next to the wheelchair and returned it to the armrest. “Something must have for him to have moved like that. I don’t know why I should have to tell you this, but it is not your place to tell him things like that. Nor is it safe for him. It was left to Dr. Gerhardt to inform Harry about Betty’s passing because only Dr. Gerhardt understands Harry’s illness well enough to recognize potential impact and what to do about it when he becomes upset. Harry is susceptible to having another stroke. You telling him about that might well have killed him. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
Sully wasn’t a liar by nature, but uttering false statements to Hackman felt as natural to him as the breath needed to speak. What was more, it felt necessary. “I’m really sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Snowy returned, a piece of drawing paper folded in her hands. “I’d like a word with Sullivan, if you don’t mind, Larson.”
“Not today, Pheobe. Sullivan and Desmond were just leaving.”
Snowy turned so she was facing Hackman head on, determined eyes trained up on him and neck cranked back to make it possible. “Larson. It isn’t everyday I get to visit with a handsome young man, and I want to give him a picture I drew. If you don’t mind, I’d very much appreciate being treated like a human being. I don’t see how that could be too much to ask.”
Hackman drew himself up to full height and sniffed, but said nothing else before moving off a few steps to grant Snowy her request. The older woman angled herself away from Hackman for further privacy before unfolding the paper.
Sully’s breath caught as a rudimentary drawing came into view: two orange-haired people standing next to a reed-bordered river, a dripping young boy’s hand held by his father’s.
Snowy’s words didn’t match the finger she was using to point to various elements in the picture, her motions clearly a disguise intended for Hackman as she provided her message to Sully. “Sometimes, I can see the things other people think. It comes and goes, but it comes far more often with Harry. He showed me this. He calls it ‘River Boy.’ I believe it means something to you.”
Sully nodded and Snowy continued without the need for verbal confirmation. “You see things too. I think you’ve even seen Harry when he leaves this place. There are things you and I and Harry know about this world and the one beyond that others never will while they remain on this side of the veil. But there are people who wish to, people who will do anything in their power to gain that knowledge. That’s the Blue Room. It’s a place where they try to learn. You don’t ever want to see it, child.”
She refolded the picture and pressed it into Sully’s hand.
“Leave this place, Sullivan. And don’t you ever come back.”
23
The drive back to Thackeray’s house was long enough to get Dez’s brain spinning, caught up in thoughts of dead family members and how they’d ended up on a drawing by a stranger in a psychiatric hospital.
“How you doing?”
At his brother’s quiet question, Dez glanced over. Sully studied him from the passenger seat. Dez returned his eyes to the road, discovered he was back in Riverview, that he’d crossed the bridge without noticing.
“Fine.”
“No, you’re not. Neither am I.”
Dez responded with a small upturn of lips before deciding Sully deserved better. “I don’t get it. I’ve been turning it over in my head since you showed me that picture and I can’t figure out what the message is supposed to be. I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious it’s Dad and Aiden, right?”
“Looks like.”
“So, why? What’s it about? And why is some random woman drawing them?”
“Apparently, because she draws what Harry shows her. Maybe she does the same thing with other people too. I don’t know.”
“
But why is Harry seeing Dad and Aiden? I’d like to say it’s a sign the two of them are together now and are at peace, but they don’t look happy in that picture. They’re not smiling. They should be, right?”
“I don’t know, Dez. I don’t know what Harry saw.”
Dez was suddenly keenly aware Thackeray was still with them, a silent presence in the backseat since they’d left Lockwood. Dez would have preferred to save his next question for a private moment with his brother, but wasn’t sure he’d get up the nerve to ask again. As it stood, it wasn’t something he was convinced he really wanted answered.
“Sully, I’ve never asked you this. Not ever. Maybe part of me never wanted to know. But do you see them? Dad and Aiden?”
He tried to meet Sully’s eye, but the need to watch the road got in the way. So was Sully’s hair, falling forward across his face and acting as a curtain between them. It occurred to Dez once that Sully always kept his hair long enough that he could hide behind it when he felt the need. Dez tried to tell himself that wasn’t what Sully was doing now, not with him.
Sully didn’t answer right away, but Dez waited him out, convinced his brother had heard his question. The eventual reply came as softly as many of the utterances that had passed Sully’s lips over the years.
“No, Dez. I don’t see them. And I don’t think you’d want me to.”
Dez considered pulling over, forcing Sully to face him and repeat that statement, a move that would allow Dez to search for truth in his brother’s words. Sully had never been able to lie to him convincingly, not when push came to shove. And Dez knew he could do some shoving now if he chose.
But his foot stayed on the gas, his eyes on the road ahead as they continued in silence toward Thackeray’s. At some point—once the pain of losing his father was less fresh, once it had time to settle in and make itself comfortable—maybe then he’d be able to face the fact Sully had probably just lied to him. Right now, Dez had more than enough pain to contend with and he knew he was in no state to handle more. And if Sully was seeing their dad and Aiden, that meant more torment for all of them.