I opened my mouth. I said: “I’m not a Marine.”
“But you’re a Swanson,” he said. “And you could have been a Marine. You’re a hard son of a bitch, Kevin. Impossible doesn’t exist for you either. You can do anything. You hear what I’m saying? Anything.”
He looked back at me, still smiling.
“A lot of guys washed out,” he continued. “I almost did. There was this one point, when I’m down on my face doing pushups with fire ants running all over my goddamned hands and arms, but I don’t even feel them biting me because my chest is cramping up. There’s this drill instructor standing right over me screaming about what a pussy I am and I think, he’s right. I’m not cut out for this. I’m never going to make it in the Marine Corps, I should just quit right now. I can’t handle it. This is my reality. This is who I am.”
“So what happened?” I asked. “Apparently you made it.”
The smile broadened.
“That D.I. called me a pussy one too many times,” he said. “And my reality changed. I said, fuck this. I’m not washing out. Every last one of you motherfuckers can kiss my ass. Because I’m going to do this thing.”
He looked out the window again, his smile fading. He looked thoughtful now, older.
“You can change your reality, Kevin,” he said. “You can be anything you want to be. You’ve just got to tell everyone and everything around you to kiss your ass, because you don’t accept this. When it all comes down, you make your own rules.”
45.
“We’ve got this in the bag,” Dr. Koenig said on the way back to Magnolia Plantation after I’d given my testimony. I understood he wasn’t Dr. Koenig, but I’d tried out Daniel Wheeler and it just didn’t seem to fit. So he remained, in my mind, a psychotherapist. “You did great. I’m in awe of you. Bobby would have been very, very proud.”
I took a drug called clonazepam, which allowed me to testify. By the time we made it back to the car afterwards, I’d forgotten almost all of it. I took that as a blessing. The drug, an abnormally large dose for today, dragged clouds across my ability to feel. Eventually, it would stop working and I would need something that only came in needles. For now, though, I could walk and speak like anyone else.
I rode with my head resting against the window glass, but at the last stoplight before Magnolia Plantation, a question occurred to me, and I asked it of Dr. Koenig.
“Where was I?”
“Pardon?”
“I guess I went to the hospital after the cops or whoever found me down in the basement. Where did I go after that? Did I go straight to the booby hatch or what?”
The light turned green. He began to drive.
But he didn’t answer.
“Well?”
A slight shake of the head, a pursing of the lips.
“No,” he said.
“No, I didn’t go straight to the booby hatch?”
“No.”
“Okay…so where was I? Did I go home?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
He slowed down to pull into the circular driveway. “I mean, I don’t know,” he said. “Nobody does. That’s one thing that’s really never been resolved in this case. You weren’t released from the hospital; you just left. And six months ago, we found you wandering on the road…”
“In Glen Raven,” I said. “On Highway 87.”
Just like Brandon Cross.
“Yes.”
He paused, breathing through his nose. I recognized a ki breath as he brought the car to a stop.
“You had leaves all over what remained of your clothes,” he said. “You had apparently just emerged from the woods. But as far as where you were before that…”
He trailed off into a shrug.
“…is anybody’s guess. When you figure it out, give me a call. Because I’d really like to know.”
I woke up in my room late that night; exactly when, I couldn’t say. I enjoyed a private room roughly the size of the one in which I had lived in Hinton-James Hall my first year at Carolina, only this one didn’t smell like sweat and gym socks. No cinderblocks, either, just smooth, white drywall. And air conditioning. When I opened my eyes, I found myself face-up to the ceiling, staring at a solitary vent that blew cool air across my face.
The room was sparsely furnished, with only a wardrobe, a nightstand and a single chair accompanying the twin bed in which I lay. The doorknob was of the heavy industrial variety; I doubted it would open. The staff remained concerned about the possibility that I might disappear again, Dr. Koenig had told me—hence the lockdown. I had started out in a lower security wing, but I had gotten out. They always found me, eventually, sitting on that bench in the courtyard. But sometimes it took them awhile, and they didn’t want to go through that every week, so I would remain in lockdown for the foreseeable future.
My room must have been easy to access from the outside, though, because when I rolled over on my side, I found Allie sitting in the chair. I sat straight up.
“What are you doing here?”
“Good evening to you, too.”
“What…what are you doing here?”
She grinned. She wore blue jeans and a simple purple blouse beneath a black jacket. Her hair was full and healthy. She didn’t look dead.
How did she get in here? Visiting hours are over and I’m in lockdown, so how did she get in here?
“Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Uh, yeah, but…”
“But what?”
“But you’re dead.”
She pursed her lips. She looked up at the ceiling.
“You’re dead,” I said again. “I’m deluded.”
“Funny,” she said, “I don’t feel dead.”
“But Dr. Koenig…”
“Dr. Koenig is the worst quack in the State of North Carolina,” she said. “He’s bad. Very bad. I am going to kill Tom Spicer for that referral. Seriously.”
I swung my legs off the edge of the bed, frowning. My feet touched the hardwood floor. I felt its cool solidity. Allie reached out and took my hands; hers were warm. Real.
“But I testified,” I said. “I remember…”
“You don’t remember a thing,” she interrupted me. “You remember what you were told by your quack of a shrink. You can listen to him, or you can listen to me. I want you to listen to me, Kevin, but you need to listen very closely.”
Ki breath.
I listened.
“There was no trial. There was no rape. There was no murder. Nobody’s dead except for Leon Pinnix and Trayshaun Ramseur. They’re dead because you killed them.”
I blinked. She reached into the cavernous maw of a purse she produced from underneath the chair. She pulled out another copy of Southern Rifleman. My issue.
“Read it,” she said. “Read your story in the Hero of the Month column. Go on.”
I took the magazine in my hands. The slick, glossy cover was in perfect condition save the deformation wrought by Allie doubling it over to fit in her purse. I flipped to the back. I flipped on the lamp beside my bed and stared at the words. I read them exactly as they appeared.
“Kevin Swanson, an attorney with the law firm of Carwood, Allison, Spicer and York, P.A., in Burlington, North Carolina, successfully defended his home when Leon Pinnix and Trayshaun Ramseur gained entry through an unlocked window in the basement.”
Allie smiled. The lamp hadn’t changed her appearance any. Still there. Still real.
“Pinnix and Ramseur attacked Mr. Swanson, who had been watching a basketball game in his basement man-cave, by striking him over the head with a softball bat before leaving him for dead and proceeding upstairs.”
I stopped reading.
“See?” She said. “You did it. You’re a double Hero of the Month.”
I stared at the words on the page. I closed the magazine and rolled it into a tube. I looked at the end table upon which the lamp sat and squinted at the grain of
the wood. No telltale black line around the table’s edges; this appeared to be solid wood.
“What is all this?” I asked.
“You suffered a nervous breakdown,” she said. “You got hit on the head, and that didn’t help any, but it wasn’t a very good whack. You’ve been deteriorating ever since this happened, and you suffered a nervous breakdown because you couldn’t get over how narrowly we escaped the exact fate that Dr. Koenig managed to convince you was the truth. And I understand that. It was a close call.”
“Why would Dr. Koenig want to do that?”
“A form of aversion therapy,” she replied. “So he said. You were terrified of what could have happened, so he thought it would be a good idea to take you through it. And show you that you could survive it. Let these fears run their course, he said, so that Kevin can put them away. I went along with it because you seemed like such a wreck. I wish I hadn’t.”
I looked down at her hands. They were soft, delicate. Like her face.
“It sounds so elaborate,” I said. “I mean…I did testify, which means this is…”
She rose suddenly, and I stopped mid-sentence. We locked eyes and remained that way for a long moment. I saw no fear in her eyes, but I knew she saw it in mine. Dark waves rose and fell within me, a deep and black seascape where nothing stayed level and a person could dive forever and never reach bottom. I thought of the Bald Man, and I thought of golems, and I thought that maybe he wasn’t the only one who could conjure things.
But I said none of this.
“It’s over,” she said. “I’m taking you home.”
“Now?”
“You’re not in prison. You’re not under an involuntary commitment.”
“Bobby’s not dead?” I asked. “Wasn’t killed in the war like Koenig said?”
She laughed. The sound washed over me like a warm shower in the middle of January.
“Very much alive,” she said. “And he’s at the house with Kate. I told them I was bringing you home tonight, and they wanted to be there. Bobby bought a case of beer. It’s probably half gone by now, but if we hurry you might still get one or two.”
“Abby?”
“Right now, she’s at home sleeping,” Allie said. “Unless she’s gotten up and gotten on her phone again.”
My head, still heavy from whatever drugs they’d given me, felt heavy. A basketball perched atop a drinking straw; my neck felt weak from the weight of it. I let my eyes wander around the room and they came to rest upon the nightstand beside my bed. It looked like oak or walnut or some other heavily grained type of wood, but the moonlight reflected off a flat, smooth surface. Veneer, I thought. It’s not real oak, or walnut. It’s basically a big sticker some Chinese guy slapped over a hunk of particle board. The furniture equivalent of a Chicken McNugget.
I opened my mouth to comment on this, but Allie held up a finger. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say what you were about to say,” she said. “You’re going to need to be careful about the questions you ask from now on. Places you look. Don’t pick at things anymore, Kevin. When you get to a good place, there comes a time to stop asking questions. To just accept what’s in front of you and enjoy it. Because if you don’t want to enjoy it, honey, I can go away. You don’t have to come with me.”
She studied me and cocked her head to one side.
“Do you want to come with me, Kevin? Or do you want to stay here and wake up in a morning in a world where pretty much everyone you love is dead?”
I looked back at the nightstand.
And then I hopped out of bed.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Hold on. There’s something we need to do first.”
She reached into her purse again and pulled out an empty Mason jar. She reached in again and pulled out a freezer bag full of sand. Not for the first time in my life, I reflected that she probably could have hidden a dead body in that purse.
“I have a friend on the Arts Council,” she said, “who practices nontraditional medicine. Holistic healing. Herbs, relaxation techniques, things like that.”
She set the Mason jar on the nightstand and unscrewed the lid. It made a metallic click as she set the lid down beside it.
“She suggested that I have you do this,” she said. “Here, take the bag.”
“Why?”
“Just take the bag.”
I did. She motioned for me to sit back down and I did that, too.
“Fill up the jar,” she commanded.
I filled the Mason jar with the sand handful by handful, careful not to spill any. Allie hadn’t said not to spill, but I felt like I needed to put as much in the jar as possible. When the sand reached the rim, I packed it down with the heel of my hand and added even more. I didn’t ask any questions.
“Put the lid on,” she said.
I screwed the lid back on the jar.
“Okay.”
She smiled again. “How do you feel?”
“Fine.”
I set the jar on the nightstand and stared at it for a long, silent moment. Allie sat quietly, watching me.
“What did I just do?” I asked.
She stood up and motioned for me to do the same. When I rose without the Mason jar, she took it from the nightstand and pushed it into my hands.
“We’ve got to take this with us,” she said. “Come on, let’s go.”
“I need to pack.”
“No, you don’t. I’ve got everything you need at home. This jar is the only thing you can take out of this room. Now come on, follow me.”
She opened the door and led me out into the corridor. The overheads burned brightly out here, and my eyes rebelled at the sudden introduction of so much light. I stood there holding the Mason jar, blinking, until Allie grabbed my wrist and tugged me.
“Come on,” she said. “The car’s outside.”
We found no nurses in the hallway. We passed a clock on the wall reading three in the morning, but this seemed like the kind of place that would have a night shift. Duty nurses, orderlies, people patrolling the hallway for wanderers just like me. We passed a nurse’s station—abandoned—and stepped out into the vacant lobby. Someone had drawn the blinds across the visitors’ window. Across from that, the entire far wall of the lobby consisted of floor-to-ceiling windows, navy blue with night. Allie pushed open one of the double doors. I expected an alarm to sound, but none did. I followed her and stepped out into the night.
“Breathe,” she said.
I inhaled the air that enveloped me as soon as the door closed behind him. We were standing on the broad sidewalk that ran along the turnaround in front of the facility. The night was cool but not cold, heavy in the way that only spring evenings can be. I smelled dogwoods, those vaguely fishy harbingers of spring. It felt like a good night for a walk, a run, even. Beautiful temperatures like this didn’t stay around for long. Twice a year we got this weather from Heaven as the landscape shifted between those few weeks of balls-freezing cold and the long months of balls-sweating hot. Spring never stayed long; this kind of beauty always slid away. I took in great, greedy lungfuls of it.
I caught Allie looking at me quizzically and realized I was tearing up. “Sorry,” I said with a sheepish grin. “I think it’s been a while since I’ve been outside.”
“It has.”
“It’s a beautiful night.”
“It is.” She smiled and pointed to my right. “There’s the car.”
On the curb just a few paces away sat the BMW, my burgundy chariot, polished and shiny beneath the lights shining from the awning over the turnaround. I darted forward.
Allie’s hand on my shoulder stopped me.
She reached around and tapped the Mason jar.
“You’re going to take this home,” she said, “and you’re never going to allow it to break. You must never open it.”
I nodded. I clutched it against my chest, not wanting it to slip from my grasp. “What is it?” I asked.
She pursed her lips in a little smile.
“It’s everything bad that’s ever happened to you in your lifetime,” she said. “It’s all in that jar. We’re going to take it home and you’re going to put it somewhere safe, but you’re not going to open it because it belongs in there. There is no need for you to ever, ever open that jar.”
I nodded.
“No more questions,” she said gravely. “There’s no need. You know what the truth is. Don’t ever question it.”
“Okay.”
“I’m serious, Kevin. Don’t ever question it. No matter what. Don’t ever open that jar. And don’t drop it. Because it can break.”
I looked at it. “Okay.”
“Do you understand what I’m saying? Do you understand the choice you’re making here?”
I took a deep breath of that exquisite night air, closing my eyes. When I opened them again, she was still there.
“Yeah,” I said, “I do. No more questions. Ever. Not a one.”
She smiled again and opened the passenger door to the BMW. I made as if to get in, but she stopped me again.
“You’re driving,” she said. “I don’t like stick, remember?”
I did. Still holding the jar, I rounded the trunk and got in on the driver’s side. The leather seat accepted my back and buttocks like a custom-fitted glove. I looked around for a place to set the Mason jar but couldn’t find anything, so I put it on the floor in the passenger foot well.
“Ready?” Asked Allie.
“You bet.”
“Then I suggest we go. Right now.”
I buckled my seatbelt and pushed the button for my memory setting on the power driver’s seat. Allie had driven, and she’d about jammed the seat up against the steering wheel. The seat returned to my position with an aristocratic whir. I reached down and released the parking brake.
“Take us home,” Allie said.
I pushed the stick into first and eased out the clutch. The rumbling six-cylinder dipped then rose again as the car rolled out of the turnaround and into the parking lot. As the facility faded to nothing in my rearview mirror, I didn’t look back.
Trigger Finger Page 23