by Shaun Allan
Ectoplasm. Where were Bill Murray when you needed him? And was Slimer, all hunger and... well, slime... going to burst from the night and Tango us?
Down and in. Down and in.
Could they, the monsters that dwelled hereabouts, not have installed an escalator? A lift maybe? At the very worst, some steps to aid our decent? I'd prefer to go to my doom in comfort. And my knees, backside and knuckles were becoming scuffed and bruised from the number of times each of them had helped prevent me falling.
Joy stopped suddenly and it was a second before I realised we were on level ground. The Hollow. The hole in the great doughnut. Unfortunately, I feared it was going to be me that was eaten. D'oh! She put a long manicured finger on her lips. Did the dead have nail bars?
Sssshhh.
Suits me, I thought. I hadn't intended on announcing my presence with a hearty proclamation of "Grub Up!"
She walked forwards, slowly, a few steps then motioned for me to follow. I did so and stepped to her side. Her close proximity seemed to bolster my flailing courage (although that implies that courage had existed in the first place), but only to the extent that I didn't run away screaming. She held my hand and squeezed tight, and the light around us went out.
Did I scream? Squeal? Like a kicked piglet? Or was it only in my head?
All I could feel was Joy's hand in mine. The world had been snuffed out, a candle on a birthday cake blown out by the birthday girl.
Make a wish.
I couldn't feel the air - no breeze nor breath brushed my face. I couldn't actually feel my face. The ground beneath my feel had vanished and I felt as if I was standing, but not floating, on nothing. Terra Firma had become Terror Firmless. Was this sense depravation at its most extreme? People paid money to float in tanks of water, lying in an insulated cocoon to become one with their innermost being. Or some such nonsense. Maybe it works, or maybe you just go crazy from the complete lack of stimuli. Was I going crazy? Or was I still one stop away, clinging onto my ticket, but wondering if I should get off at this station rather than at the end of the line. Because it could quite literally be the end of the line.
A spark. A prick in the black. Was it real or were my eyes tricking me, creating light where there was none? Ha, got you that time. Nothing here but us Nothings. No. There was definitely something there. Maybe it was a cluster of Nothings, gathered together, and that many in one place created a Something. But a group of Nothings? What would that be called? And why would my mind insist on thinking of the term for a collection of crows - a Murder.
The Murder of Nothings was getting bigger. Not brighter, but it was certainly growing. It was a ball now, or at least not just a dot. No. Not a ball. A box. A spinning cube that was either becoming much larger, much faster, or was far away and was flying towards us, a speeding train with us on the tracks. I tried to let go of Joy's hand, intent on turning and running. I had no idea if I could actually run anywhere, suspended as I was in the night. But either way, Joy held on fast. She wouldn't let go and was somehow far stronger than I'd ever remembered her. My hand was in hers, and it was staying that way. The box continued to spin and grow or race wildly towards us. At first I'd thought it was featureless, the sides plain, but soon I could see detail. Blurring patches of greys and almost blacks.
Then there was a whoosh as the void we were in was suddenly filled with substance. My heart had been racing faster than the cube had been approaching, yet between one heartbeat and the next, the Nothing had disappeared and the Something had taken its place.
And I knew that place. I knew it better than the fluff in my own navel. I didn't need to read the sign on the door that had materialised in front of me to know what lay beyond it. I could feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord. The smell. The sense. The blinding white that should have meant purity but instead signified Purgatory.
Home sweet home.
I looked at Joy. Stared at her. The question must have been written all over my face in black permanent marker, perhaps by the same birthday girl who'd so successfully blown out the candle of the world. Why had she brought me to the office of Dr. Connors?
* * * *
Chapter Fourteen
"There's something I want you to see," she said. She smiled, a sorry effort that, if it had been in a grinning competition would have come right near the bottom. The edges of her mouth twitched in a vaguely upwards direction as if they knew there was nothing to get excited about, and any attempt would be meaningless and futile.
We no longer needed to be quiet, obviously. She hadn't whispered so any semblance of sneaking sneakily had snuck away. Did I feel betrayed? By my own sister? Was this a knife so deep in my heart the blade was playing hopscotch with my aorta? You might say that. Part of me said 'I told you so,' and another part of me wanted to slap the first part. Yet another piece of the jigsaw that had a picture of me and the name Sin on the box told the other two to shut up and get a grip.
The others shut up and got a grip.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"You need to see something," Joy said. "You need to be prepared."
I had never been a boy scout, and I doubted Baden-Powell had this situation in mind when he founded the movement. I was certain there wasn't an arm badge for letting your dead sister deliver you into the waiting arms of your former psychiatrist. What would such a badge look like? It would probably, I think, be similar to the No Smoking sign, except the thick red line would be cutting across my face. Would it be the same picture that was on the jigsaw box?
Ask me another.
So. I prepared myself. I'd entered this room on more occasions than I could count, at least not without taking my socks off. The door handle needed an extra wiggle - sort of a twist-lift-push kind of thing - to get the door open. The bottom hinge creaked, and half a can of WD40 had failed to cure it. A keypad lock had to be tap danced with to pass through. So many certificates and qualifications lined the wall in gold coloured frames, you could have been entering the Louvre, except the Mona Lisa would have been dragged off and drugged up. A desk, massive and leather topped for extra executive effect was the first thing you saw when you walked in. A little OCD tempered the good Doctor's habits, enough to make sure the pens were all blue and they were lined up parallel with each other and the pencils on the desk. A notebook and diary, each leather bound the same colour as the desk top (a blur of maroon into crimson) would be squarely placed in front of the large swivel recliner that enthroned the big man when he was holding court. A large grey flat screen monitor and a cordless mouse were the only other occupants of the desk top, perhaps to ensure nothing diverted your attention from the Doctor.
There were no pictures, unless you counted the proclamations of Connors' vast intellect. No indications of any family. No handshakes with politicians. No faded photo of a wannabe psychiatrist's graduation. The office was clean and sharp and pure Connors. It was as focused as a laser and the man behind the desk could do as much damage. More perhaps.
My preparations took a matter of seconds. I'd long since discovered that nothing could prepare you for entering this office. He was the spider and you were the big juicy fly caught on his web, accepting the invitation into his parlour. And you didn't need to worry - Dr. Connors would supply his own condiments. They came in needles and pills. So effectively, there was no preparation. It was a simple matter, if you were able to and were not under the influence (so to speak), of tapping, twisting, lifting and pushing.
So Joy gripped the handle, then... tap-tap, twist, lift... breathe... push.
I've read that there are police dogs that can smell death. They know if a body has been in the boot of a car, or crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. They can tell if you've touched one, and it can, supposedly, be weeks after the contact. That's amazing, isn't it? They're called Cadaver Dogs. Pretty name. The same goes for fear. Dogs, and other animals, can smell fear. They can taste it. I think it's something to do with, at least in the case of fear, endorphins or something. Maybe sweat. I'm no d
og. The only canine in my body is in my teeth and just as my molars don't enable me to dig dark tunnels in the ground, I don't have the olfactory abilities of your local Fido.
But this room. It wasn't a smell. It wasn't even a sense, not in the way of the five senses.
Now that sounded like the something Grasshopper would say to David Carradine. The Way Of The Five Senses is fraught with danger. To overcome them, you must overcome yourself. The way of the psycho is the way of the butterfly. He who laughs last, didn't get the joke. A wise man knows that if you throw up on a roller coaster, you might just be wearing it on the next loop-de-loop.
Did we have a sixth sense? Were people psychic? Could they contact the dead and move objects with their hands? Could they know who was going to call even before the telephone rang? I didn't think so. Which is strange, of course, seeing as I was currently standing, with a ghost, in a room in the middle of a mental institute I'd recently vacated.
Or had I? Was I still strapped to the low bed in my room, flying high on the wings of drugs?
I wondered how I could still think clairvoyancy was a whole load of tish-tosh on quick-wash yet accept my present company and the fact that I'd mentally torn a sea gull apart. Men, eh? And if you press the button on the remote control really hard and really fast, it would miraculously work even though the batteries were deader than... my sister.
Whatever the reason, whatever the explanation, you knew this room bred fear in anyone who was called here. Prickling sensations crawled up your arms. Your spider sense started to tingle. Your stomach knotted. Even your breath was afraid to show itself, choosing instead to stay hidden in your lungs until you forced it out in ragged pants. And behind the desk, basking in the effect he was having on you, like a leech sucking blood, would be Dr. Connors. His smile, plenty of shine but oh, so malign, could chill the balls off an Inuit. He knew it and he loved it. Almost as much as he loved himself.
Tap, twist, lift, push. Creak.
"Close the door."
What little breath I had froze in my chest as I looked at him and he looked, in turn, at me. I automatically went to close the door when I heard a voice that was not my own but came from my body say: "Yes, Doctor."
I felt a pull and the door closed, my hand sliding through it as if it was nothing more than smoke. Another pull, harder this time, and a bulky man in the white coat of an orderly stepped into view. I was confused for a moment as to where he'd come from, and then I realised. He'd come from me! Like Patrick Swayze in Ghost, I'd just been walked through. Was I now dead? Had I passed over into Brian's Bright Side of Life only to find it darker than midnight in a coalmine in December? Then I felt Joy's hand in mine again. Something was still solid. Unless, because she was a ghost and I now was, we were solid to each other...
My head spun and I felt faint. When had I died? Had I slipped while stumbling across the Seven Hills? Did I lay, a twisted broken mess in a hollow, food for the monster rats and other creatures that dwelled there? Was it in my sleep back at the house? Would Olivia discover me lying in a pool of my own bodily fluids, three weeks from now? Or... no, it couldn't be... Had my suicide attempt worked? Was I a cloud of ash and cinders floating on the thermal updrafts of a furnace’s radiant section? Had my escape, the crasheddeadmangled boy, the rapist farmer and his abused wife and everything else been some sort of mirage as I walked in the Valley of Death? Has it been an illusion of life to protect, or to fool, me?
Did a ghost vomit? I felt as if I was about to find out, but Joy put her arm around me and turned my face to hers. I could see she'd read my thoughts.
"Don't worry," she said. "You're not dead. I wouldn't do that to you. I'd tell you."
She would, that's true. Joy hated lies. She found it difficult to even handle fibs that were just a darker shade of pale. And an omission of the scale of this would probably have made her as physically sick as I was feeling. She would have told me.
So I wasn't dead. I didn't feel particularly comforted, but I was back in the office of my former tormentor. Or should that be saviour? I forget. I could be forgiven for being somewhat dazed and confused, and so not amused. Someone had just walked through my body as if I was a shadow of a shade of a shiver.
"Trust me," Joy said. What else could I do?
The burly body that had used me as a door it didn't need to open belonged, I saw, to Jeremy. I automatically smiled and took a step forward to say hello to the only person in such a long time that I called a friend. Even though I'd been a patient and he was the guy who stuck the needles in, we'd become, I hoped, friends. Joy held me back, though.
"He can't see you," she said. "Neither of them can. Or hear you. Just watch."
The perfect opportunity presented itself for me to tell the doctor just what I thought of him and his practices. I wondered if I slapped or punched him, would he feel it. I had opened the door, but to Jeremy I'd been as nothing. So the chance, I guessed, was a chance missed. Such a shame.
"So what are we doing here? Why here? I left here. I don't want to be back."
"You left here to kill yourself. You don't want that anymore, but if I don't bring you here now, you might just get it."
What?
"What?"
"Just watch and listen, Sin. And don't ask questions I can't answer. Just do as I ask, please."
Ok, ok. I'll be a good little puppy dog. I'll sit at your heel and wait for any tasty treats you might have to offer, and I'll watch the show.
"Fine," I said. It wasn't fine. Of course it wasn't. ‘Fine’ was like ‘nice’, meaningful and meaningless at the same time, but without 'Fine' I wasn't going to get anywhere. Of course I wanted to know what we were doing here. If it was a grown up version of show and tell, or if this was some sort of virtual reality television where you could sit in the Rovers Return whilst Jack and Vera argued next to you, then great. Excellent. Maybe Eastenders would be on afterwards. But I didn't think I'd be able to change channels and walk along any cobbled streets. Strange things were afoot and, even though I didn't think feet were all that strange, I needed to find out what they were. So I said: "Fine," once more, with feeling.
"Sit down, Jeremy," said Connors. He was smiling his smile, straight out of the freezer. Did the temperature in the room drop a few degrees?
"Thank you, sir." Jeremy settled his bulk into the only other chair in the room. It was a simple seat with legs. A back lent some support, and I'm sure it was designed by the man himself in a, very successful, attempt to make you feel even more insecure and insignificant than he thought you already were. As his chair was the throne, this could almost have been the stocks. It groaned in protest at the weight of the orderly, but Connors had long since stopped listening to such complaints. The chair had objected for a number of years and still stood, albeit sorrowfully, in front of the desk, a naughty pupil before the vengeful headmaster.
Did Jeremy notice? Not the chair - he'd been here long enough to not notice its grumblings either. No. Did he notice Connors' manner? The way he spoke. The smile that could melt a relative's resolve yet reduce a patient to a babbling mess. No-one who worked in this hospital, or resided here either, was addressed by their first name. Not by the Doctor at any rate. To do so would place them on an even footing with him. It would make them his equals. And although he'd insist that all were equal within these walls, he was plainly more equal than anyone. Or so he thought.
Connors had called him 'Jeremy.' I think that would have been my cue to run-baby-run right there. I'd be watching my back to make sure no blades were sticking out at odd angles making me look like a drug crazed knife block or a not so glamorous assistant for a failed circus act. Dr. Connors being nice was like a vulture at a funeral - it might be wearing a dark suit and shedding a tear, but you knew there was an ulterior motive there somewhere. You knew that, once everyone had retired to the wake to eat, drink and tell their stories, it was going to be there, spade in wing, digging up its supper.
I shuddered but Jeremy seemed oblivious. He had the pre
requisite timidity, giving the impression that he was kneeling before his lord. I think he could have been called 'Monkey Breath' and it would have been acceptable. The fact that he could easily have crushed the man he faced seemed to emphasise the smaller one's power.
Dr. Connors was Napoleon before his generals, or at least one of his foot soldiers. Small in stature but huge in ego. He wasn't really a short man - his height was a fag paper shy of average, as if one last mighty stretch would settle him nicely into the realms of medium - but his overall appearance was... minimising. He was balding, and had once, up until very recently, favoured a toupee that hadn't particularly favoured him. He wore rimless spectacles that seemed to pinch his head between their arms and squeeze his eyes into a permanent squint. Perhaps he thought the look gave him an air of Clint Eastwood, his eyes tight to focus his gaze. Did you feel lucky, punk? No, not really. If you passed him in the street, you wouldn't look twice, but he commanded a room with a sort of compressed regality. He believed in himself so much and kept himself so tightly bound, you became convinced he was about to explode with a wondrous cacophony. He was his own spin-doctor and his conviction was so convincing you couldn't help but be dragged onto the merry go round as well. And if you felt dizzy afterwards? Well, he had just the right medicine for that.
Jeremy, orderly of the month for the past two years running (if such an accolade existed, which is didn't, but if it did, it would be his) sat patiently. He knew better than to say anything unless he was spoken at, or on rare occasions to. Connors made the pretence of being busy on his computer, the delay a long mastered way of serving up the other person another mighty slice of discomfort pie. It felt as if it had been weeks since I'd seen my friend, since he'd last strapped me up in my snug little strait jacket. I couldn't believe it had been only so very recently.