“Trick or Treat, Bat Sap. I knew you couldn’t resist getting your hands on me,” he said. “Especially if you thought I had done Gordon in. And I will. Out of order, unfortunately. But, that’s life.”
I tried to breathe slowly, deeply, regain some strength. I eased my hand farther under the seat and touched the plastic Gordon head.
“I could have filled that model of me with my dissolving liquid, you know. But I wouldn’t have had time to gloat, and I gloat so well . . . See, I’ve already turned thumbs down on you. This pressurized gun holds one large pellet of my dissolvent and water, and all I have to do now is squeeze the trigger, and splat, you’re bat guano. So, before my gas wears off and you climb up here and knock knots on my attractive green-haired head, I will, for all the unhappy years you’ve given me, bid you adieu.”
He laughed that insane laugh, and it went up my spine and kicked around inside my head, and just before he pulled the trigger, I grabbed the plastic head, twisted and tossed it. It hit the gun on the tip of the barrel just as the Joker pulled the trigger. The plastic head took the blast I would have gotten, and the chemical splashed on either side of it and on the Joker.
He yelped, jumped back, and dropped the gun. The mess had splattered on his coat and pants, but hadn’t touched his flesh.
I was still weak, but I managed to pull myself over the edge of the stage. It seemed to take hours.
The Joker was screaming with rage. He ran at me as I came up on my knees, and he kicked, and as he did, a thin blade sprang from the bottom of his shoe.
Normally, I could have blocked it with time to spare, but I was still weak from the gas, so I only managed to twist partially out of the way. The blade tore into my side like a nuclear missile.
I grunted, slammed his shin with my forearm, and the Joker went stumbling back.
I was on my feet now, and the Joker slapped at me with his right palm. Again, too slow. His hand hit my shoulder, and he had one of his souped-up joy buzzers strapped to his palm, and when it hit me, a shock like a lightning bolt went through me.
For a moment, I thought I’d go down.
So did the Joker, and he got in too close.
I snapped out a lazy left jab and grazed his cheek and he went back a foot and his hand went inside his coat and came out with a deck of cards. He threw them at me. They were metal cards with razor-edged sides. I tried to dodge them, but it was like trying to move out of the flight of a flock of geese. A number of them hit me and stuck, the worst being one that tore through my cowl and cut deeply into my forehead.
I yanked it free and shook like a dog and the others flew out and away from me like panicked pigeons.
I smiled at the Joker.
He, of course, was smiling back. But there was nothing mirthful about his grin.
The effects of the gas had worn off, and I charged him with a yell.
He knew the bloodlust was on me and he tried to run for it.
I caught him by the shoulder and spun him around and hit him with a left hook in the midsection, and he blew out his breath and went skidding across the stage. He got up, wobbled toward the screen, put his hands on it, touched the bottom of his image, tried to get his breath back.
I calmly strolled over and took him by the shoulder and turned him around. I smiled at him. A nice, big smile.
He could hardly find his voice. “I give.”
“Okay,” I said, and hit him with a hard right cross that connected with the side of his jaw and knocked him through the screen and onto the floor of the room beyond.
The rip in the screen went from top to bottom, splitting the Joker’s film image as if it had been halved by a giant cleaver.
I went through the split into the darkness and the light from the projector followed me in. I took hold of the Joker’s lapels and pulled him to my height and let him dangle in my hands. He was unconscious. A bruise the color of my cloak was forming on his paper-white cheek. He looked like nothing more than a pathetic clown puppet. I thought of all the people he had murdered, all the lives he had shattered and haunted, including mine, and I thought how easy it would be to snap his neck, to make certain it all ended here.
Then I remembered where I was. The Gotham Theater. The place I had last been a child and my parents had sat on either side of me and I had felt loved. And moments later I had felt dark and empty because that love had been taken away from me.
I was a crime fighter, not a murderer like the Joker, and I hoped that’s how I would always be. Still, I hoped Arkham Asylum held him this time, because next time around I couldn’t be sure of the color of my soul.
I dragged him through the split in the screen and onto the stage, over to the Time Machine. I set him in the seat, unfastened the air hose from the gun and the compresser behind the curtains, and used it to bind him to the chair.
I stared at the projector light, watched dust ride down its beam. That beam had held all kinds of dreams and that night so long ago. I had shared a dream with my parents. A dream where a man in black fought the bad guys and always won and got the girl in the end.
I took in a deep breath, climbed off the stage, and checked on the Joker’s men. A few of them were moving. I unfastened my cloak and used the pen knife in my utility belt to cut it into strips. I used the strips to tie the hands and feet of the thugs.
I used the rest of it to bind my wounds, then I went out of the theater and out to the Batmobile, used the phone inside to call Jim.
I put a hand to my injured side, walked down the alley and out back of the theater, stopped where my parents had fallen.
I glanced up at that one lonesome streetlight. Certainly it was not the same light of long ago, but it was in the same place. I looked at it the way I had that night when my parents lay on either side of me.
It occurred to me that maybe I, too, had been shot that night, only wounded, and that I lay in some hospital somewhere in a coma, dreaming all I thought I had lived. Living in a permanent dark world where a man can dress like a bat and fight a criminal who looks like a psychotic clown.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
—For Kasey Lansdale
“Definitive Therapy”
F. Paul Wilson
ARKHAM ASYLUM
Medical History
NAME: “The Joker” DATE OF BIRTH: Unknown MR# 20073
ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: Dr. R. Hills & staff
CHIEF COMPLAINT: Committed to life internment by court order. Returned to this facility after the most recent of his periodic escapes.
HISTORY OF CHIEF COMPLAINT: A career criminal with a long, well-publicized, well-documented history of antisocial and sociopathic behavior in the guise of a self-created public persona known as “The Joker.” Convicted of multiple murders. Multiple escapes and readmissions to this facility. See old charts.
PAST HISTORY: Little available besides what is in the public record. The patient relates a history of juvenile delinquency, which meets the criteria for Severe Conduct.
Disorder, undifferentiated type (312.90).
ALLERGIES: None known. MEDICATIONS: On no meds
PREVIOUS HOSPITALIZATIONS: Many to this facility. See previous charts.
FAMILY HISTORY: Unknown. Patient uncooperative as historian.
SOCIAL HISTORY: No external stigmata of alcoholism or drug abuse.
SYSTEMIC REVIEW: According to what little history can be gleaned from the patient, he has been in generally good health for most of his life. He has a past history of facial trauma combined with toxic chemical exposure resulting in permanent disfigurement of the facies, the integument, and its appendages. No history of hearing loss or visual impairment. No thyroid disease or diabetes. No asthma, emphysema, or chronic lung disease. No heart disease or hypertension. No history of ulcer or colitis. No GU infections or past disease. No seizures or strokes. His psychiatric history has been exhaustively explored and documented at this facility. His facial/chemical trauma was once posited as the source of his psychopathy, but the patient re
lates a long history (undocumented) of criminal antisocial behavior since his early teens, long predating the trauma.
DICTATED BY: Harold Lewis, M.D. SIGNATURE: Harold Lewis
Physical Exam
NAME: “The Joker” (legal name unknown) MR# 20073
ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: Dr. R Hills & staff
VITAL SIGNS:
BP: 122/78 P: 82 R: 10 T: 98.6
PHYSICAL FINDINGS: A thin, facially disfigured Caucasian male, apparently in his midthirties, alert, well-oriented, in no distress. The head is normocephalic with slight evidence of proptosis. Neuromuscular paresis and cicatricial disfigurement of the facial tissues have resulted in a permanent rictus. Ears, nose, and throat are negative. The neck is supple, the thyroid is negative to palpation. The chest shows a moderate pectus excavatum. The heart is normal in size and rhythm with no murmurs. The lungs are clear to auscultation and percussion The abdomen is soft, no masses, no organomegaly, no tenderness. Normal uncircumcised male genitalia. The lymph nodes are negative. The limbs are intact and freely movable. The deep tendon reflexes are +2 bilaterally, the pupils are equally reactive to light and accommodation. The skin is markedly pale. Its appendages—the hair and nails—are green. This does not appear to be factitial since there is no sign of natural color under the cuticles or at the roots.
PROVISIONAL DIAGNOSIS:
1. Antisocial Personality Disorder (301.70)
2. Probable Delusion Disorder, grandiose type (297.10)
3. Rule out Bipolar Disorder, manic, mood congruent with psychotic features (296.44)
4. Rule out Intermittent Explosive Disorder (312.34)
DICTATED BY: Harold Lewis, M.D. SIGNATURE: Harold Lewis
SESSION ONE
He was painfully thin, and taller than I’d expected.
I remained standing as the guards led the gaunt, manacled figure into the interview cell.
The Joker’s appearance is positively shocking at close range. I’d seen his face before. Who hasn’t? But to find myself standing across a small table from the man, to have his eyes scan me from a distance of only three feet as if I were some kind of insect, was a jolt. The smile . . . that was what did it. We’ve all seen that soulless, mirthless grin countless times, shining at us in black and white from the front page of the Gotham Gazette or in never-quite-true color from the TV screen during the evening news, but nothing in the media prepares you for the original. The smile . . . the corners of the mouth are drawn up and back, fully halfway into the cheeks. And the teeth—so big and white. Bigger than Morton Downey Jr.’s. But they’re not as white as his skin. So pale. Not so much in the bleached, albino sense; more like a white stain. I could not help feeling that with a little cold cream on a cloth I could wipe it off. But I knew that had been tried many times. The seaweed green of his hair and fingernails were the garnish on this bizarre human concoction.
During my five years of psychiatric residency in New York’s Downstate Medical Center, and in various maximum security facilities about the country, I have encountered mental illness in its most violent manifestations. But I could not remember actually feeling madness as I did in my first seconds in the room with the Joker. Nothing in the media prepared me for the power of the man. In fact, the never-ending stream of stories about him in the press only serves to trivialize him. We’ve become used to the Joker; we’ve become almost comfortable with him. We all know that he is a career criminal and a multiple murderer, to boot, yet his face is so familiar that he has become part of the background noise of Gotham. His latest outrage does not stir us to as much anger as it would had it been perpetrated by a stranger. Better the devil you know . . .
My task was to get to know this devil.
With two armed guards watching closely, I thrust my hand across the table.
“I’m Doctor Lewis, Mister Joker. I’ll be—”
“Call me ‘Joker,’ ” he said in a surprisingly soft voice as he stared at me, ignoring my hand. The contrast between his grave tone and his grinning face was disconcerting.
“But that’s not your real name. I’d prefer to address you by that.”
“That name is gone. Call me the Joker if you wish to have any meaningful communication with me.”
I was reluctant to do that. The patient’s Joker persona appeared to be the axis upon which his criminal career turned. I did not want to reinforce that persona. Yet I had to communicate with him. I had little choice but to acquiesce.
“Very well, Mister Joker. I—”
“Just . . . ‘Joker’ ”
I thrust out my hand again.
“Joker, I’m Doctor Lewis. I’ll be handling your therapy.”
He ignored my hand and appeared suddenly agitated.
“When did you arrive? I’ve never seen you before. Where is Doctor Hills? Why isn’t he treating me?”
“Doctor Hills sent me. I’m new to the staff since your last . . . escape.”
I could read fury in his eyes, but the grin never wavered.
“I want the head man. I always get the head man. I deserve it! I’m not just another petty crook, you know. I’m the Joker. I’m the king of crime in this burg and I want Doctor Hills!”
Grandiosity and entitlement. I considered adding Narcissistic Personality Disorder (301.81) to my list of diagnoses.
I shrugged and tried to be disarming.
“Sorry, Joker. He sent me in his place. Looks like we’re stuck with each other.”
Suddenly he relaxed.
“Okay.”
Emotional lability.
For the third time, I stuck out my hand. This time, to the accompaniment of small clinks from the chains on his manacles, he took it. As we shook, I heard a buzz and felt a sting in my palm. I cried out in surprise and snatched my hand away. The Joker began to laugh.
That laugh. His speaking voice had been so soft, almost soothing. But the laugh—a broken, high-pitched keen that makes the small hairs rise.
The guards leaped forward and thrust him into the chair. He laughed maniacally as they ripped something from one of his fingers. The older of the two guards handed it to me, then they searched him for anything else he might be carrying.
I stared at the object in my hand. A joy buzzer. A simple, corny, old-time practical joke.
“He’s clean, Doc,” the older guard said as they finished their search.
I stared at the buzzer.
“He was supposed to be ‘clean’ when you brought him in here.”
They said nothing but took up new positions, closer now, flanking him on each side.
I held up the buzzer.
“How did you get this?”
“I had it sent in.”
“You can’t just have things ‘sent in.’ Inpatients are severely restricted as to possessions.”
“You mean other inpatients,” he said. “I’m the Joker. What I want, I get. Security here is a joke.” His eyes lit. “Get it? A joke!”
The guards looked uncomfortable as he laughed. And they deserved to. He should never have arrived at this interview carrying something like that. What if the prong had been poisoned?
He seemed to read my mind.
“All in good, clean, harmless fun, Doctor Lewis. I’m as harmless as a pussycat.”
I gave him a level stare.
“I believe Colin Whittier might take exception to that . . . if he could.”
The Joker snorted and waved a hand in dismissal.
“Whittier! A fraud! A charlatan posing as an artist. He left his mark on the art world—like acne. I put a finishing touch to his work—a match. Get it?”
He began to laugh.
“You murdered him!”
“No loss. He deserved to die. A destroyer of true art. The world is far better off without him.”
Complete lack of remorse or guilt.
I remembered his latest atrocity so well. I’d joined the staff shortly after the Joker’s last escape and it wasn’t too long thereafter that he raided an art gallery that was showi
ng the work of an immensely talented young artist named Colin Whittier. The Joker pulled all of Whittier’s work from the walls and burned the canvases in the center of the gallery floor. Then he replaced them with a collection of dark abstracts, each signed, The Joker.
The next morning, Whittier flew into a justifiable rage. He yanked all the Joker’s paintings and ripped them to shreds. An eye for an eye. And that should have been that. But it wasn’t. Whittier was found in the gallery two days later, dead. Murdered. But not by any means so simple as a bullet or a knife. No, his mouth and nose had been poured full of thick green paint, asphyxiating him. And then he was nailed to the gallery wall within a large, ornate gilt frame. On the wall next to the corpse was written:
Colin Whittier
RIP
An artist who really threw
himself into his work
The casual brutality of the crime still blew an icy wind through my soul whenever I thought of it. And the perpetrator was sitting not three feet away from me. Grinning.
Grinning . . .
I’d quietly admired Whittier’s work for years. His paintings spoke to me. I’d even bid on one or two of his early works a few years ago when they were still within reach, but lost out to deeper pockets. Now they were permanently out of reach. Well, at least there were posters. But when I thought of all the paintings he would never do, I felt a rage seep through to my very soul—
Stop!
This was no good. I was becoming emotional. I couldn’t allow that. I had to help this man, and I couldn’t do it if I remained angry. I terminated the first session then and there.
SESSION TWO
“He’s clean this time, Doc,” said the older guard as he sat the Joker in front of me.
“You’re sure of that?” I said.
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
I did not offer to shake hands with the patient.
“Good morning, Joker,” I said, cheerily addressing him by the name he preferred.
The Further Adventures of The Joker Page 4