by Pavel Kornev
Anyway, on that night, I didn't sleep. I felt like a criminal sentenced to death by hanging, guessing whether the rope would hold my weight or snap. Whether they'd hang me a second time if I got lucky–that was the question.
And in the morning, the lock clanked, the doors flew open and redheaded Jack entered the room. As usual, his knobby face was twisted up into an unkind smirk. Lucien pushed the gurney in after his partner and had already grabbed me by the elbows when my mad roommate gave a start.
"Devil!" he shouted out, throwing a pillow at the redheaded orderly. "Electricity is the devil!"
Jack picked up the pillow, but didn't throw it back and, instead of that, walked up to the nutjob and laid him out on the bed with a strong crack.
I raised my head and asked Lucien:
"What day is it today?"
"The twenty-fifth," he answered mechanically.
The orderly led his gaze away from his partner only for a moment but, at that precise instant, Jack gave a hoarse exhale:
"Ah-h-h!"
The redhead didn't have a single chance. The psycho, under the sway of the electric devil, waited until the orderly turned his back and threw himself on his back. Jack tried to get out, but the patient was clutching his frock with a dead man's grasp.
Stab! Stab! Stab! he started going at the neck of his victim fitfully with the sharpened splinter, and streaks of red flew throughout the cell.
Lucien ran to his partner's aid, but the passage was blocked by the gurney, and the strong man had to squeeze between that and my bed. I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him toward me. In surprise, the orderly took a step back, then I cut his throat confidently and harshly with the piece of Bohemian glass.
I cut him just once, but true: in the side of his throat, where the main blood-carrying arteries pass, splitting the skin and flesh in one go. A taut stream of crimson sputtered out of the split artery.
Not losing time, I threw away the piece of glass and jerked the unbuttoned frock off the orderly as he lost consciousness. The white fabric had just a few red spots on it, but that didn't upset me one bit.
I was upset just as little as by the double murder. They should never have backed me into a corner, and that was that.
Pulling the frock on my body, I got off the bed and removed the keyring from Lucien's belt. I then pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and tied it on my head in order to at least somewhat hide my uneven haircut. The dead man's boots were quite large, but I didn't waste any time lacing them up–the fingers of my right hand couldn't really move properly. In any case, I would just be wasting time. And time was of the essence.
My cellmate was still madly beating his lifeless victim with the broken splinter. I, meanwhile, grabbed the gurney, gathered my strength and fell down chest-first on it but, even so, I nearly fell back onto the floor.
Gathering my strength, I pushed the cart into the corridor and slammed the door behind me, starting to hobble toward the basement exit. My knees were giving out, and I couldn't feel my ankles or feet at all, but still I managed to push the gurney down the corridor without hitting a single stone wall or locked door.
The vile squeal of the broken wheel was screeching in front of me and cutting into my hearing like an emery board. My back was wet with sweat, and my heart was beating like a madman's and not one iota out of worry, though, just because my strength was all going toward keeping up my intended tempo.
Push. Push. Push.
The whole way, I was half-lying on the gurney and forced myself to straighten up only at the finish line, though I did lower my head at that, hiding my face.
The guard who looked out of his booth at the creak of the wheel didn't suspect anything at first. He just stuck his hand to his side and was about to make a joke to the orderly, who had already been tormented by work since morning. He was going to let me pass but, by the time he changed his mind, it was too late. Before he managed to swing his club, I had sent the gurney at him, pinning him to the wall.
The strong old man didn't lose consciousness, but the strong blow to the stomach made him double over and drop his weapon. The guard quickly pushed the gurney away, straightened up and peeled himself off the wall but, by that time, I had already fallen on my knees and grabbed the rubber-coated handle of the police club.
"Drop it!" the old man ordered. Instead, I jabbed the club into his groin.
An electric charge cracked. The guardsman's eyes rolled back, and he crawled down the wall onto the floor. I dragged him back into his booth and, removing the kerchief from my head, clipped on his gray cap with the clinic's emblem. I didn't take his pea coat, though: the orderly's frock covered my naked legs, while the jacket would have been too short.
Returning to the corridor, I threw the club on the gurney and rolled it up the steep ramp, getting out of the basement. But as soon as I unlocked the door and pushed the cart into the wide first-floor corridor, I heard a surprised exclamation.
"Where are you going?!" a guard barked, not fooled by my masquerade.
He slammed down on the alarm handle, and a frightening wail blasted out. I tried to repeat my trick and knock the boy off his feet with the gurney, but the distance between us was too great, and the guard pushed the cart away with a sharp kick, turning it on its side. I fell on the floor along with it and immediately waved the club, counting on not so much hitting my enemy as driving him back, but I missed again. The man sniffed out the simple trap, waited for the right moment and slammed his club down on my head at full speed.
The blow made contact with the crown of my head, and consciousness left me even before the electric shocks started...
I WOKE UP in a solitary cell with the floor and walls covered in a thick layer of white padding. I tried to move but couldn't and got dead scared that the paralysis was back, only to realize that I had simply been squeezed into a straightjacket. My whole body was numb, my head was splitting in pain, and my right eye was swollen and wouldn't open, but I was alive nevertheless.
Surprising? Considering the orderlies I killed in my escape attempt, yes.
The taste of blood was still fresh in my dried-out throat. I wanted devilishly to drink. To drink and to breathe. I had no way to take in a full chest of air: either my ribs were broken, or the straps of the straight jacket were too tight.
But still, I didn't have any regrets.
None...
Then the doors flew open, and two unfamiliar orderlies walked into my cell. One had an electric club squeezed in his hand, and the second was grasping a glass syringe in his thick short fingers.
I tried to hit the club-wielding boy in the ankle with my foot, but he easily dodged and body-slammed me, pinning me to the ground. His partner used the syringe and the white walls immediately began spinning, melting into a kaleidoscope of mad visions.
I could feel sharp blows to my kidneys, already drifting into unconsciousness.
"Bastard!" one of the orderlies cursed out, but it might have just seemed that way.
By that time, there was already a white abyss spread out around me. I was hovering in it, hovering and hovering. I became the center of creation. There was only me, everything else had lost all meaning. Damned morphine...
Then I was pulled down and fell to earth, as if repeating my long-ago jump from the burning dirigible. Only now I was racing, striving to gain speed right until the very end, and the blow was so strong that clods of dirt flew for hundreds of meters around the steppe, which was scorched by a fiery rain.
"You again!" rang out the faceless voice in my head.
I got out of the huge pit with unexpected ease, looked around and, not far away, saw a familiar white silhouette.
"How are you doing that?" a new question followed. "How are you entering my dreams?"
"This is my dream," I objected, starting an argument with my own subconscious with a certain shock.
"Not at all," the silhouette objected, leading a fleshless hand from left to right and, at that very instant, grass began growing
up through the scorched surface of the earth.
I didn't manage to even blink before everything around turned into a green meadow.
"This is my dream," the silhouette said, but I just shook my head.
The grass went black, the flowers dried out and the trees began swishing their brittle leaves.
Night fell.
Now we were in the cursed garden of my family manor, and the only light spot around us was the silhouette of my unknown conversation partner, foreign to this vision.
"Devilry!" he whistled.
And so much surprise sounded through in his voice, that I couldn't hold back and asked:
"Who are you?"
"The Dreamer," his quick answer followed. "And who, devil take me, might you be?"
I chuckled. It was funny to me.
Morphine and an illustrious imagination make for a killer combination.
"The man dreaming this dream," I answered, wanting to make him mad.
"No!" He refused to believe me. "I can only go into the dreams of people I know!"
"That means we know each other, no more no less."
The silhouette didn't answer, touching the branch of a dead tree. One black leaf instantly filled with a young greenness.
"We know each other?" the Dreamer asked slowly. "That's impossible. I don't have a very wide social circle and I know all of their nightmares by heart."
I looked around the imaginary garden and laughed.
"Well this is no nightmare. Do you know the word: nostalgia?"
"Yes, it is too calm here to be a nightmare," the silhouette admitted. "And I no longer feel pain. I am at ease. Nothing hurts. Surprising..."
"That's the morphine," I said, watching lighting flashes bloom in the black sky in the distance.
"Narcotics rot the brain, they are pure evil. But sometimes, the pain can be simply unbearable. I might visit your dreams sometimes, alright?"
"Visit?" I asked, and suddenly his answers came together into a unified whole like the pieces of a mosaic. "Are you illustrious?" I groaned. "And going into dreams is your talent?"
"What a good guesser!" the Dreamer laughed.
"Curses!" I exhaled, not able to believe my own luck but, before I managed to ask for more, a strong wind blew into the garden. It tore the black leaves from the trees, spun them around me with a whirlwind of electric shocks, and the dream started dissolving into little pieces.
"No, wait!" I shouted, but I had already been cast out.
The electroshock therapy session had begun.
WHEN THE PROCEDURE was over, and I was fed broth degradingly through a tube, then was returned to solitary. I was just thrown inside from the doorway, a knee jabbed into my ass for good measure.
And I stayed there, lying on the soft padded floor. I was being torn apart. My mouth was full of the bitter taste of bile. Enraged at my escape attempt, the professor had decided to increase the duration of the electroshock therapy to the limit, and that had borne fruit.
I didn't care at all. I didn't want to move, breathe, live... So, I just lied there. Lied there and waited for evening. To be more accurate, I waited for the unchanging injection of morphine.
A dose of morphine was simply necessary.
And I got it.
I WAS STANDING on the top of Calvary, looking down on an unfamiliar city from the top of the hill.
It was not New Babylon and, behind my back, there was not a rusty steel tower. In this dream, the hill was only topped by three wooden crosses. All that remained was the smog. Squat stone buildings were drowned in a gray haze, as if the waters of the Yarden were overflowing its banks.
"You're back?" the Dreamer was surprised. "Already?"
"As you see."
"Alright. It's too bad though. You're about to die."
That put me beside myself.
"Why do you say that?" I objected, although I was preparing to ask something else entirely. "Why must I die?"
"How much morphine do you take every day?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Doesn't matter! Could you do something for me?"
The white silhouette stood next to me and glanced at the city. I supposed his eyes saw a totally different picture. The illusions brought on by the narcotic were extremely... erratic.
"Are you asking for a favor? In a dream?"
"Yes, I am. Is that strange?"
"Unusual."
"Can you help?"
"What do you want?"
"Send news to a friend of mine," I explained and asked as my heart skipped a beat: "Can you do that?"
"It won't work," the Dreamer shook his head. "I cannot go into the dream of a person I do not know personally. That would be impossible."
"Devil!" I swore. "Forget about dreams! I want to you to send a telegram! I'll go gaga if I'm not dragged out of here soon!"
"Out of where?" the silhouette wondered. "Where do you need to be dragged out of?"
I hesitated, but still answered:
"Do the words Gottlieb Burckhardt mean anything to you?"
The Dreamer laughed.
"The psychiatric clinic? I've heard of people going gaga in the walls of that institution before. But many have their sanity restored there as well."
"Do it," I asked. "Do it, I'll pay you. Name your price!"
I heard laughter again.
"Where is this world headed! A psychopathic murderer is offering me money! What devilish irony! Money is the last thing I need!"
"Then I'll owe you a service."
This time the Dreamer didn't rush to answer. But, in the end, he just shook his head.
"Hrmph," he said with unhidden pity. "I cannot help you. I cannot wake up. Dreams do not leave me. We're both in a trap, my mad friend."
"You don't have to wake up! Just ask someone to send a telegram. After all, you're the Dreamer! You can go into someone else's dream!"
The silhouette slowly nodded.
"I can," he admitted. "And, if I do that, you will owe me a service."
I cast my gaze at the far-off lightning flares and quickly said:
"Anything!"
"Anything? Even if you have to kill someone?"
I hesitated, and the Dreamer hurried me on:
"Well? Decide! Yes or no?"
"Yes, devil!" I exclaimed. "I'll kill if need be! I'll kill!"
"Swear it!"
The figure extended me his glowing hand. I accepted it and said:
"I swear!"
And immediately, I felt a shiver pierce through the dream.
"You cannot change your mind."
"Curses! I swore!"
"You swore," the Dreamer confirmed and, to the hum of an incoming hurricane, asked: "Who should I inform?"
"His name is Ramon Miro," I answered and dictated my former partner’s address by memory. "He will get fifty thousand as long as he drags me out of here!"
"What is your name?"
"Lev. Tell him it's Lev!"
Blinding shocks of lightning started tearing down from the sky. I shouted:
"Gottlieb Burckhardt, Berliger, basement!" Then the earth underfoot dissipated, and I began to fall endlessly into an abyss.
6
DO YOU THINK DESPERATION and hopelessness lead to madness? Nothing of the sort. Desperation leads to desperate actions, and hopelessness gives them a suicidal character.
Uncertainty leads to madness. When nothing remains certain, one begins to doubt everything, even one’s own mind.
"Was the Dreamer real, or was I just conversing with my own hallucination?" Now, locked in solitary once again after another electroshock therapy session, that question was all I could think about.
Had I finally gone mad from the massive doses of morphine, or had I really made a deal with an illustrious person? That question was just turning over and over in my head and, as soon as I assured myself it was all real, doubts flooded me with a renewed force. They destroyed my concentration and pushed me into a vortex of uncertainty. I was just one tiny st
ep away from madness.
Gathering my strength, I got up to my feet and started pacing in the stiff straightjacket from one corner of the cell to the other. My body was numb from the overtight garment. I hadn't felt my arms in a while and, no matter how I tried to spread my shoulders, trying to loosen the straps, my attempts didn't lead to anything. It didn't help that the pain of fresh blows and old wounds had started penetrating the narcotic haze.
Very soon, my knees started giving out in exhaustion, and I fell down on the padding. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but I couldn't even drift off. My consciousness had been too strongly reshaped by Professor Berliger's experiments, I been injected with too much morphine too frequently in the last few days.
My bones were twisting, my joints breaking. I wanted unbearably to drink. The straightjacket was soaked through with salty sweat. My breathing became choppy and uneven. And my head was splitting hellishly. Now, I would easily have refused anything for a glass of water and a few gulps of an opium infusion, but no one was preparing to persuade me of anything.
Do you know why the devil doesn't try to buy human souls? He doesn’t need to! They fall at his feet like overripe apples! We are our own worst enemies. And we are also our own best tempters. There's nothing so vile as the justifications a person can think up.
Sensing madness taking control of my consciousness, I turned onto my side, leaned my forehead on the wall, and got up to my knees. I quickly vomited. My ribs seized in pain, but that did make my head slightly clearer. I moved away from the puke, which had also spattered on my straightjacket, and kept kneeling. I was just kneeling, not praying, no.
It wasn’t that I'd finally lost faith. That’s not why I wasn’t praying; it's just that one needs to pray out of an earnest yearning of the soul. It would be stupid to ask for a miracle in a situation with no way out. There are no miracles. I knew that for certain.
"There are no miracles," is what I was thinking when, in the corridor, I heard alarmed voices. Then, the door of my cell flew open with a clank and I was blinded by the beam of a powerful electric torch.