Insanity

by Susan Vaught

  “I remember hearing about this,” he said, shaking his head at the clipping, then passing it back to Imogene. “That boy was six years old when he shot his best friend to death after they fought over some scrap iron they were trying to sell to a junk dealer up in coal country. Youngest murderer ever convicted in this state, or anywhere.”

  Scrap iron. I shuddered again, remembering the shanks stabbing toward me in the rain, and that maniac-child face on top of a man’s body.

  “Whole nation got up in arms about how young he was, and the attorney general sent him back to his folks instead of putting him in reform school,” Imogene said. “That’s when the newspapers forgot him, and his folks brought him west to get away from the trouble.”

  “But he brought the trouble with him?” Addie said.

  Imogene nodded. “Boy was twisted up, even that young. He came to Lincoln when he was twelve, after he tortured a girl to death over to Cadiz. They had to keep him in a room by hisself, or he’d try to kill folks when they slept. He died of consumption afore he turned thirty. I crossed him over.”

  After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, Ms. Hyatt shifted in her wheelchair. “So he came back, like my father?”

  “Seems so,” Forest said.

  “Why?” Ms. Hyatt asked.

  “It’s what the bad ones do,” Imogene said. “They linger close, and come back to work whatever wickedness they like best. They’re starving for blood and mayhem.”

  “Did they all have Madoc blood in life?” my father asked. “The spirits that make it back?”

  “I used to think so,” Imogene said. “Time was, I wondered if only folks with Madoc blood went crazy, or did the terrible things on this earth. But now I know the truth. Ain’t a person in this world who can’t go bad or lose their wits, no matter what kind of blood runs in their veins. All it takes is the wrong things to happen.”

  Ms. Hyatt’s frown seemed as dark as a thundercloud. “The ghosts and spirits trying to come back—does that happen in other places, too, or just Lincoln?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” Imogene admitted, “but I suspect we ain’t the only ones livin’ a few inches too close to hell’s own hills.”

  “But the Madocs came to our area—” Addie started.

  Imogene cut her off with a quick gesture. “Those folks, whatever they was, didn’t only settle here. This is just one place. Likely there are a lot of others.”

  My father’s face twitched as he considered this.

  In the quiet that followed, I tried to imagine a kid awful enough to murder his best friend and torture a girl to death, all before he even turned thirteen. “I think Carl Newton Mahan used the energy in my spells to turn ghost or poltergeist or come back to life or whatever,” I muttered. “Perfect.”

  “True enough, spirits can’t usually get solid enough to act.” Imogene shifted her gaze to her knobby knuckles, and I saw the slight tremor in her hands. “Like as not, those what want bedlam feel me waning. I used to could send them on their way a second time, before they figured a way to really wreak havoc, but that time’s passed, and they know it.”

  My father’s half-broken face stayed blank. His eyes fixed on mine, and for once in my life, I felt like I was reading him, staring at his soul, instead of the other way around.

  “That’s the real war,” I told him. “Good people like us against true evil, not us against people with Madoc blood. Do you get that now?”

  He opened his mouth, like he was about to say a whole bunch, but all that came out was a whispered “Trina.”

  I took a quick breath, and Darius squeezed my hand.

  So much emotion in just one word. How did my father do that?

  I knew it was the closest he could get to apologizing. A million years ago that would have pissed me off, but right at that moment, it was enough. I nodded to him, and he seemed to relax.

  “Before we got attacked,” I said to Levi, “Darius and I saw somebody who looked just like Forest in the hospital, on Unit C.”

  Levi’s too-red lips pulled into a frown, and I tried not to look at how his teardrop tattoos glittered red in the sunlight. “Darius told us that.”

  “Could it be a time thing?” Jessie asked. “Maybe she moved through it and was in two places at once.”

  Levi shook his head. “Can’t happen.”

  The thought of Forest being in two places at once was way too metaphysical for me, so I left it alone. “Forest—or the thing that looked like her—shrieked when she saw us. The sound had power, and it made Darius visible. I think it also summoned the—that—Carl Mahan, or whatever it was.”

  “Opened the door for him to come through, maybe.” Forest leaned forward in her folding chair. “It sounds like she used sound to shove you out of Lincoln.”

  “Can you do that?” Ms. Hyatt asked Forest.

  A touch of color rose in Forest’s cheeks. “I usually just find a thin spot where it’s easy to do the crossing. I never tried making my own.”

  “I tried to fight Mahan with spells,” I said, “but they didn’t work right. They just made him stronger.”

  Levi sank into a crouch next to Forest, as if I had just knocked all the strength out of his legs. “So he’s strong enough to absorb energy,” he murmured. “Guess he’s a shade, like Eff Leer was.”

  Jessie cracked his knuckles. “Can we kill him again, like we did Levi’s grandfather?”

  “Yes,” Imogene said. “Though ‘kill’ might be the wrong word. We can send his spirit back where it came from.”

  Levi sat quietly, watching my father, and for the first time ever I saw something in his eyes that looked like fear. He lowered his head, and I swear his shoulders shook before Forest brushed her fingers through his hair.

  “Was it him?” I asked Levi, nodding toward my father. “The one who, um, killed you?”

  Nobody looked at my father, and Levi didn’t answer.

  After a minute so long the planet seemed to stop spinning, my father whispered, “It was me.”

  When Levi raised his head, the tattoo under his right eye seemed brighter than usual, like he was actually crying a tear made out of blood.

  I felt like crying myself, or apologizing. I wanted to hit my father or shake him. Then my emotions just shut down, and I wanted to lean over, put my head on Darius’s shoulder, and sleep until next week, or next month, and wake up to find out I had only had a nightmare about my father being a killer.

  “I was wrong,” my father said. “I can see that now. I’ll turn myself in to the authorities and confess my crimes.”

  “That won’t make any of this right, preacher,” Imogene said. “You never can, not in my books. But Levi speaks for himself.”

  She got up from the wall without saying anything else and walked out of the yard, heading back in the general direction of Lincoln Psychiatric. I was about to say something about somebody giving her a ride when the world seemed to shimmer, and Imogene wasn’t in the backyard anymore.

  I stared at the spot where she had been, but I couldn’t make a sound.

  “Why?” Levi asked, and the sound of his voice made me jump.

  “My father started this business after his father got killed.” My father cleared his throat. “My grandfather’s killer was a man named Purcell Mace. He was a patient at Lincoln, off and on. When he was out, he drank. Seemed like he always knew who had money he could steal. Followed my grandfather out of a bar one night and beat him to death with a lead pipe.”

  After another pause he glanced up at me, and I didn’t look away.

  “Mace never did a day’s time in jail,” my father continued. “They just sent him back to Lincoln, and he died there, but not before he killed one of the folks trying to take care of him. My cousin. Her mother’s the one who told us about him, and about other patients they had who could—you know, do things no human being ought to be able to do, and know things they couldn’t possibly know.”

  “Like who had money to steal?” Ms. Hyatt asked.

/>   My father nodded.

  “I came to find out there were folks like that all over Never,” he said. “Not all of them were patients in the hospital. And I could sense them, or reveal them using spells I learned.” This time, he looked at Levi. “A lot of our murders and disappearances—a lot of things that shouldn’t have happened—Madocs were at the bottom of them.”

  Levi still didn’t say anything, but I could tell he didn’t disagree.

  My father shifted his gaze back to me. “With that, and after Mace, I figured they were all bad. Creatures of the devil. So I did what my father taught me to do. I eliminated them whenever and wherever I found them, and I thought it was God’s work.”

  He stopped and looked at his hands. “I thought that’s why God gave me the tools he gave me, to rid the earth of the scourge.”

  His mouth got tight, but the edges trembled.

  Oh God. Was my father going to cry? I couldn’t hack it if he cried.

  But he didn’t. He just waited, like he wanted me to say something, but I didn’t have any words for him at all. Understanding why he had done what he did ... it made more sense, but it didn’t feel any better.

  “What do you want us to do with Pastor Martinez, Levi?” Ms. Hyatt asked. “Call the police? Let it be? You’re the one he wronged, so whatever you think ought to happen, we’ll help you.”

  Levi swallowed once and blinked, and I found myself waiting for that bloody tear on his cheek to drip onto the patio. “Seems like right and wrong don’t matter much now. What matters is getting rid of Carl Mahan before he hurts somebody else.”

  My brain tried to latch on to the reality that Levi was looking at the man who murdered him, and that man was my father. If Imogene hadn’t been whatever she was—if she hadn’t been able to cross spirits back—Levi would be dead right now, and my father would still be killing anybody he thought had Madoc blood.

  “I’ll stop Mahan,” my father said. “Then you can do with me as you will.”

  “You can’t do it alone,” Forest said. “He’s a shade, and you can’t cross him over.”

  Addie considered this, then murmured, “Maybe we can, if I find the right spell. I’ll study my books, and Xavier’s, too.”

  “We don’t have time for that.” Levi kept his eyes averted. “We’ll have to work together.”

  Right and wrong don’t matter much now. The words wouldn’t stop running through my mind. I fidgeted with my fingers. “I don’t think we can use our spells,” I told Addie. “They might work, but they just as easily might give Mahan more power.”

  “I want to go to the hospital,” Forest said, surprising me and everybody else.

  Levi turned toward her, his mouth slightly open. “No. That monster’s running around loose. We have to think this through.”

  “That spirit looked like me. She could be related to me—and maybe she could help us with Mahan.” Forest touched Levi’s hair, keeping her eyes trained on his. “I need to go back to Unit C and find out what’s going on.”

  “Not now,” Levi said, sounding stunned and sad all at the same time. “Mahan first, then the shade.”

  “It’s far too dangerous, Forest,” my father said, and I heard the protectiveness in his tone.

  “If she wants to go, we should take her,” I said, feeling a mix of relief that my father was being protective of Forest like she was a real person to him, and frustration that she was getting dismissed so fast. I turned to Darius. “Imogene just went back, right? And Mahan knows he’s taking on Levi and Imogene now. He’s not going to attack right away, not until he figures out how to beat us. Now’s the perfect time.”

  “Sorry, baby, but I vote with them.” Darius gave my hand a squeeze. “We’ll go when we’ve got a plan for taking on that monster.”

  Addie and Ms. Hyatt didn’t say anything, and something in Addie’s expression, a resignation mingled with a glint in her eyes, made me keep my mouth closed even though Forest looked crushed.

  After a long minute of silence, my father brought up the idea of making dinner before we did any more work. He and Jessie and Darius decided to grill us a meal, and the meeting broke up quickly as they headed off to retrieve hot dogs and ground beef from the Hyatt kitchen. Ms. Hyatt gave directions and instructions, but she didn’t go to help, and neither did Addie. Levi stayed next to Forest for a few minutes, then got up to sit on the brick wall where Imogene had been. I figured he needed to be alone with his thoughts.

  The four of us sat together quietly until the men were out of earshot, and then I put my hand over Forest’s trembling fingers. She was staring at her own feet, and my touch startled her into meeting my gaze. She had tears in her eyes.

  “Who do you think she was?” she asked me, her voice shaking.

  “It was you,” I said. “Unless you have a twin sister.”

  “Not that I know of,” she told me.

  “Anything’s possible,” Ms. Hyatt said, but Forest never stopped staring at me.

  “What did your mother look like?” she asked.

  The question caught me off guard, and my stomach did a quick little flip. “I don’t really know.” My eyes darted to Addie. I was never sure how she felt about hearing things related to my biological mother, and I didn’t want to say anything that would make her unhappy. I know most kids stayed all torn up about parents who were missing from their lives, but with Addie around, I had never really cared that much. I loved Addie, and she loved me, and my mother, wherever she had decided to go, had made a choice not to be a part of my past or my future.

  “My father always tells me my hair is like hers,” I said to Forest. “And my eyes, and—oh.”

  In that moment, we all saw the same thing, and we saw it clearly. The knowledge passed from face to face, lighting our eyes and minds with the truth, and the truth was this:

  We had to pay a visit to that spirit on Unit C, for Forest.

  We had to find out if it was Forest’s mother, and somehow we all knew that nothing was more important than doing this, no matter what the risks might be.

  “They think we always need protection.” Forest nodded toward the house, where the boys were beginning to bicker about the best way to light Darius’s grill to cook hamburgers. Levi was still perched on the wall nearby, off in his own world. “They’ll never agree to it.”

  “We don’t need their permission,” Addie said.

  Maybe they were right, my father and Darius and Jessie and Levi. Maybe it was too dangerous to go near Lincoln Psychiatric, even if Imogene was back in her bell tower. There was always that possibility, but there was also the possibility that we were right, too—that it was important to get to that spirit and gain a better understanding of what she knew about Carl Mahan, and Forest, too.

  My father and Jessie and Darius—even Levi—wouldn’t help us. They would try to stop us, and possibly destroy any chance we had of finding out what we needed to know.

  Addie picked up her bag. Then she cleared her throat and waved a hand at the men.

  “Never mind about those hamburgers,” she said. “I can make us all a nice, juicy pot roast in under an hour.”

  Chapter Thirty

  A little after sunset, the men of the house—Levi included—succumbed to full bellies and a bit of after-dinner tea laced with some of Addie’s best hops and valerian. We figured we had at least a few hours, but with my father and Levi in the mix, who knew. At least we got out the door without a fight.

  No one spoke as Addie drove Forest, Ms. Hyatt, and me to Lincoln Psychiatric, which took about fifteen minutes. We used the employee badge I had clipped to my collar to get past the guard at the main gate, and I directed us to the parking lot outside the entrance closest to Unit C.

  “I never worked anywhere but the geriatric unit, and that was years ago,” Forest said as she and I walked to the heavy metal door that would let us into the basement of the old asylum. “Since then, I’ve mostly been at the bell tower. Everything looks different now.”

  I shook
out the kinks as I moved, still feeling weird twinges from my fight with Mahan. It was hard to remember that when Forest crossed spirits to the other side, she stepped out of time. She couldn’t really go backward in history, but she could go forward in a huge hurry. Even though she was my age chronologically, she had actually worked at Lincoln Psychiatric years and years ago. It was weird. And it made me wonder about Levi. Forest said he was our age, or close to it, biologically, but when had he actually stepped onto this earth?

  We reached the darkened corner of the main building and had to cross out of the comforting halo of a sidewalk lamp to get to the door, where we stopped to wait for Addie and Ms. Hyatt. The sudden rush of darkness made me shiver. My fingers hovered over my pockets, where I had my willow charm and a little bag of graveyard dirt, snakeskin, powdered bones, sulfur, and other things I didn’t even recognize. Addie gave it to me because it was one of our best offensive spells. I hoped we didn’t have to use it. Aside from just plain not wanting to fight Mahan again, that dust smelled like pepper and cow manure, and it burned like hellfire.

  Addie had also given us a bunch of dimes with holes punched in them strung on little leather strips and hung around our necks, wrists, and ankles. She said the shiny silver would go dull or turn black if we got close to anything evil. As Addie walked out of the shadows on the sidewalk, pushing Ms. Hyatt in front of her, dimes glittered all over her body. My father’s kill bag rested in Ms. Hyatt’s lap, along with Addie’s spell bag.

  “Won’t you get into some kind of trouble with your husband?” Forest asked Addie as she parked Ms. Hyatt in the darkness beside us.