Messages, a Psychological Thriller

by Chris Dougherty

  “Hell yes! Go on up and see him! Do whatever you want! Why not, right?”

  Arch glances at Henry with a ‘what the fuck?’ expression, and they both turn back to the old dude behind the desk. His face is red, and his bony hands are planted flat before him on the desk. Arch thinks the guy looks like an irritated baby bird, especially with his wispy white hair waving angrily above his head.

  “Look…” Henry reaches forward and tilts the nametag on the guy’s chest. “Look, Robert,” he says, “I don’t know what your bag is, but why don’t you just calm the hell down?”

  Robert had pulled back sharply at Henry’s hand coming over the counter, but he could only go so far before his back was pressed up against the chair. For some reason, he felt ashamed when the punk flipped up his nametag and then let it drop contemptuously.

  “I told you to go ahead, didn’t I? So go! Just go on up! Everyone else is allowed to go anywhere and do anything they want, so go! I don’t care what you do!” He turns away from them, his shoulders pushing up protectively, but not before Arch saw the tears gathering in the old guy’s eyes. He puts a restraining hand on Henry’s arm when he feels Henry begin to lean over the desk again.

  “What floor?” Arch asks, keeping his voice soft.

  The old man hesitates so long that Arch thinks he is not going to tell them, but then he says, “Three.”

  “Thank you,” Arch says, “I appreciate it.” He is glad to see the old man’s shoulders drop. Then he gives the slightest bit of a nod.

  “Room number,” Henry says sharply, but Arch grabs his arm and leads him through the vestibule doors into the lobby. “We’ll get it figured out once we get up there. Come on.”

  Chapter 41

  The day room on the third floor is large and institutional looking. Light green walls, grayish faux marble tiles, a small television bolted high off the ground, and tables and chairs of various makes and models. The overall impression is one of lethargic chaos.

  There are twenty-seven patients in the dayroom. Dinner had been served at five, and now is ‘social’ time for the ones ambulatory enough to be here.

  Angelo Magaldi has worked at this hospital a long time. He’s seen it change and change again over the years as first the state funded it, then didn’t, then did again; as law enforcement got involved and minimum security crazies started to come in for evals back when they were still called criminally insane. Now, everyone refers to these types of patients as the ‘forensics’. About a third of the facility is taken up by these minimum-security forensics, the low-risk nut jobs that had either grown old and feeble or were so incapacitated they couldn’t even brush their own teeth. Lots of them didn’t even have teeth anymore. Not just from lack of brushing, either.

  Angelo doesn’t mind the forensics. Most are pretty quiet as long as they’re medicated. Docile little lambs they are, then. So thinking, he pushes a paper cup into Red’s hand and pushes her hand up to get it going toward her mouth. Catatonic. He’s been medicating Red since before he can even really remember. She’s been in here for most of her adult life. Tried to kill her kid or something. Angelo used to know her name, but it’s been so long now…Margaret? That’s right. Margaret something-or-other. Munchausen case. Munchausen by proxy, actually. He turns to the next patient before the pill cup gets to her mouth. He doesn’t see as her vacant eyes come alive, cut to him shrewdly, and then to the pill that she tilts from the cup into the folds of her hospital nightdress. Her face takes on its vacant expression as she lowers the pill cup to hover just above the arm of the wheelchair.

  “Good job, Red,” Angelo says, turning back to her and peeking into the empty cup. “Here’s a little libation for you, sweetheart.” He tilts a pink, plastic pitcher of water to her mouth, and she reflex swallows, but most of it ends up down her front.

  “Whoops,” Angelo says and rubs a cloth briskly across her face and neck. Then he turns with the same pitcher and waters the next patient. He’s found it to be a real time saver, and it’s really coming in handy tonight because one of the gals on the shift had called out sick. They are calling around now to see who could work a shift on short notice, but in the meantime, Angelo has to gets all the lambs sedated. He checks his watch–six-fifteen–he’s doing all right. Not too badly off schedule. But he’d better shake a leg before anyone gets agitated.

  He glances to the far side of the room at Carol, the gal who did come in, and he is frustrated that she insists on doing one cup for pills and then filling another round with water. It’s wasteful and so time consuming! He sighs and hurries over, ready to show her his method. Again.

  Margaret James sits forgotten, slumped in her chair by the door. She waits until she sees the man slip behind a column, and then she slides her foot down onto the floor. Without adjusting her upper body, she pushes herself slowly backward, through the swinging door and into the corridor. She continues pushing until she is at the door marked Women’s Room. She pushes through that door, too, and then into a handicap stall.

  She leaves the chair in the stall, locking it from the outside, and peeks out the bathroom door, checking the corridor.

  She needs to find Baby Boy.

  Before they can take him from her.

  She has to make him better, save him.

  Chapter 42

  Nora stops at a heavy glass door reinforced with chicken wire. She taps and smiles at the desk on the other side. There is a small buzz, and she pushes through.

  “Forgot your ID, boss?” the orderly at the desk asks, smiling.

  “I sure did, Danny,” Nora says, ushering Lacey through the door. “This is Lacey Adams, she’s come to visit James Smith in 324. Will you sign her in, please?”

  Danny nods and turns a lined book to face them. “Sure thing. Just initial right here, Ms. Adams, and I’ll fill in the rest for you.”

  Lacey bends to initial the book, and when she straightens, Nora has put her hand out.

  “It was nice to meet you, Lacey. Just check in with Danny when you leave, okay?” She shakes Lacey’s hand once and then hurries back out the door and down the corridor.

  “Don’t see her up here very often,” Danny says.

  “Oh. No?”

  “Nah…we actually don’t see much of anybody up here.” He smiles. “It’s not for security reasons; security doesn’t need to be very tight. It’s just that most of these folks don’t get visitors. Just go straight up this corridor, past the nurses’ station–only Angelo and Carol are on, but they’ll be in the day room right now–and 324 will be on your left.”

  Lacey nods and glances down the corridor in the direction Danny has indicated, but she doesn’t move. She looks back at Danny, taking in his raised eyebrows and quizzical expression, and she laughs, an embarrassed chuckle.

  “I’m a little nervous, I guess,” she says and glances down the corridor again.

  “Nothing down there can hurt you. These people are all incapacitated in one way or another. You’re stronger than anybody here. Trust me, you’ll be fine.”

  Lacey nods and starts down the corridor, looking for 324. She passes the empty nurses’ station, and its gloomy feeling of abandonment tightens her stomach. She sees 324 just past it on the left. The door opens into the room, but the room is dark, almost pitch black.

  She stands in the doorway, allowing her eyes to adjust. Her hand goes automatically to the wall, hunting a switch. She finds it and flicks it up, and even, white light fills the room.

  It is like a standard hospital room: two beds, two end tables, a curtain on tracks that can surround the beds entirely, and lots of tubes and switches behind the beds. She notes an exception: there is no television. There is a bracket mounted high on the wall opposite the two beds, but the television is no longer hanging on it.

  Her eyes go to the occupied bed, but it is an old, old man, carefully covered with blankets and with some sort of breathing apparatus attached to his face. She looks at the empty bed and wonders briefly if they’ve taken James somewhere for te
sts. But then she notices that the bed is not made up, she should have noticed it when she came in, but…she didn’t.

  She steps back into the hall.

  324.

  That’s the room number she’d been told, she’s sure of it.

  She glances back in the room. Two beds, two tables, one old man, wires and tubes and…

  A small gasp, almost a yelp, issues from her throat as she steps back into the room. That old man, that wasted, tiny, misshapen bag of bones is…James.

  Everything is pushed from her head, all at once: Henry, Archer, Riddel, the craziness, the gun, the kidnapping, even the murder…and she sees only the James she’d met and fallen in love with, laughed with and lived with and made love to, the one who’d made sure she had packed a lunch, counseled her on her career, listened as she’d poured out the regrets over her shaky relationship with her parents…her James, the James she loved. Even now.

  Tears blur her vision, and somehow she is at the side of the bed, looking down at him. He does look different without eyelashes, without eyebrows, but he is still recognizable. Her eyes drift to the scars on his neck, and then they drift further to his narrow body bundled in the blanket. The white, waffle-weave cotton hides the details of his injuries but not the fundamental changes to the shape of his body. The odd, round, mitten-like appearance of his hands. The way his legs seem to end in points, as though the feet and ankles had been whittled away. And his midsection is sunken in, too–almost hollowed out looking.

  Her eyes drift back to his face, and his eyes are open, startling her. He blinks, and she sees him trying to focus on her, trying to see her face, and he squints, and then his eyes go wide. There is a muffled sound from deep within his throat, and it is the sound of a ruined bellows, but she recognizes it anyway, a drawn out ‘aaaaaayyy’ followed by a soft ‘eee’ as his chest falls. He is saying her name. He knows she is here.

  “James,” Lacey says, laying her shaking hand on his cheek. She touches him gently, and tears fall from his eyes. His eyes swim with them as he stares up at her. His chest rises, and the eerie noise comes again, pushed out from his dying lungs through his fire-ravaged throat, “aaawwweee aaayeee oohh aaaweee,” and she hears him, her mind filling in the lost forever syllables, “I’m sorry, Lacey, I’m so sorry.”

  She bends to him and kisses his cheek. She straightens, her lips wet with tears.

  “It’s okay, James,” she says. “I forgive you.”

  He closes his eyes, another long sigh pushing out as his chest falls, but this time it is just a whoosh, no vowel sounds, but Lacey feels that she can detect the relief in it. The letting go. And she feels her own relief, her own letting go that seems in concert with his, or in answer to it. She bends again, laying her head on his chest but gently, so gently; he is so frail now.

  “I love you, James,” she says, closing her eyes. “I love you.”

  She barely has time to register a small shuffling noise from behind her when a sudden, sharp pain explodes through her head followed by a burst of intense red light.

  Then there is nothing.

  Margaret stares at the woman on the floor. She’s one of them. A baby stealer. Margaret had watched her from the bathroom where she’d gone to get Baby Boy some water to wash down his medicine. She has a whole pocketful of medicine for him. She’d been saving up.

  Now, she sets the toilet tank cover on the stripped bed. She bends to the woman on the floor and hooks her hands around her wrists. She drags her away from Baby Boy’s bed. Then she turns and stares at her baby.

  She’s so happy to have him back. She wasn’t sure if she’d get the chance to see him again or not. He was such a sickly baby, she’d been afraid they wouldn’t know how to take care of him, to give him his special medicine. Did they know to only feed him every three days? And did they know they had to count out the medicine doses…one, two, three? Margaret hadn’t known until God had told her. Right after she’d had the baby. God told her how it was sick and it needed fixing, and God had given her the keys…the code. The code of three. To cure the baby. Poor Baby Boy. And it helped because she didn’t know how to take care of a baby, hadn’t even known she was pregnant. Hadn’t known what pregnancy was even. Her father had told her that her belly was growing a tumor made of cancer. That God was mad, bringing down his wrath because she’d been disrespectful, slothful, willful and not listened to her daddy, had not bent before him.

  And so, to her, Baby Boy had been both a bad secret and a miracle, a punishment and also her way to redemption. She had put the baby in the shed, and she had done as God instructed. And she had tried to listen to her daddy, too, but he told her that her addled brain was from sin, that the numbers she loved so much were so much nonsense, but she didn’t know if she should believe God or her daddy. And finally, she’d decided to believe God.

  Because God was nicer. Said nicer things. And she had killed her daddy and put him in the shed and brought the baby in the house. But eventually, the police had come, and they’d taken Baby Boy away…how long ago? Three years? She thinks so, yes.

  She thinks it’s probably been three years.

  She stands over him, looking down. She pulls the oxygen mask away to see him clear. It is Baby Boy just as God had told her. Told her in the dayroom, she’d heard him say it. That her son was here now. Waiting on her. To do her duty.

  She lifts his head, very gently, mindful of the scars on his neck (where did the scars come from…someone hurt the baby) and she pulls the pillow from behind his head. She has to get his breathing fixed up so he can take his medicine.

  She places the pillow over his face. To help him. To help his breathing, which has become ragged, tearing, as he gasps for air. But the pillow helps that. Makes his breathing easier. Quieter. His little legs kick in joy, and she laughs aloud, staring up at the ceiling, toward heaven. Toward God. Her mouth is open wide. She feels light and heat coming from her open mouth, lighting the room, illuminating each dark corner and recess.

  Now Baby Boy waves his arms in ecstasy. Margaret sees God looking down at her through the light from her throat, the beacon she made drawing his attention, the attention, the attention! His eyes on her! Now Baby Boy is singing, enraptured, and she sings too! Like a bird, like a whale, like a lion! Sending the Baby to his real father, to God, his father, his father, his FATHER…!

  Arch and Henry hear the wailing, and they stop walking and exchange an uneasy glance. It had been so quiet in here until now, but to both of them, the wailing–a crazy, uneven caterwauling–is what an insane asylum should sound like.

  Henry turns and glances back down the corridor in time to see the orderly Danny, who’d had them sign in, running toward them. The alarm on his face shows Henry that the wailing is not normal, is, in fact, far from it.

  At the same time, Arch realizes the sound is coming from 324–their destination. He bolts down the corridor, Henry not far behind. Arch rounds into 324, barely cutting his speed, and takes in the room at a glance. He registers Lacey on her side at the end of the bed, a halo of blood growing around her head. A red-haired woman in a hospital gown is at the head of the bed. The wasted form on the bed struggles as she holds something to it.

  He starts toward Lacey, but Henry pushs past him and drops heavily to his knees beside Lacey and gathers her into his arms. He is yelling her name over and over. Arch thinks, he is not going to be able to speak tomorrow, and then he turns his attention to the harpyish figure assaulting the man in the bed.

  He steps toward her and puts his hands on her shoulders, trying to pull her away, but her strength is fierce. Arch registers Henry trying to carry Lacey through the door as Danny, the orderly from the desk, finally makes it to the room, and now her body blocks the orderly’s entrance.

  “Stop her,” Danny yells, pointing at the harpy, his eyes on Arch’s, and then he bends to help Henry.

  Arch realizes two things in quick succession: one, that the red-haired woman is a patient, and two, the figure on the bed is James. The very m
onster he’d come to see. Without hesitation, he gets a stronger grip on the woman and pulls her away. Using all his strength, he shoves her aside and reachs to put the oxygen mask back on James’ face. His mouth opens and closes as he gasps for air.

  Next to him, the crazy woman screams.

  “My baby! My baby!” She struggles up and tries to push Arch aside, but he fights her, pushing back with one hand even as he snaps the mask into place with the other. She scratches at Arch’s face, and he feels her nails cut through his skin, stinging, but still he fends her off. He is conscious that he is stronger but that her determination is soon going to overwhelm his defensive strategies. He doesn’t want to do it, but if she doesn’t lay off, he’s going to have to hurt this woman.

  He tries a good, hard shove, his hands planted firmly on her chest, and she stumbles to her knees, but then is up so quickly, he barely has time to register his disgust at the worn, squashed feel of her breasts beneath his hands.

  Her wailing goes on and on, and Arch wonders if this is what it feels like to go crazy…when suddenly she collapses before him. A nurse with a needle is revealed behind her as she goes down, his eyes wide, his teeth gritted in determination. In the sudden silence, he looks in shock from Arch to the patient crumpled at his feet.

  “Jesus, Red,” the orderly says, addressing the woman on the ground, then he looks back up at Arch. “Hi, I’m Angelo.” He blinks at Arch and then looks back down almost as if he is unable to do anything else.

  “Uh, hi. I’m Arch,” Arch says. He puts a hand to his cheek. “You guys got any Band-Aids around here?”

  Angelo looks up, his eyes dazed, and he nods. “Yeah, course. Gimme a sec, though, okay?”

  Arch nods but then wanders from the room, hand still to his cheek. He turns back as he leaves to see the nurse checking James, asking him a question, and he sees James’ head nod once, a slight movement.