by Pavel Kornev
But I didn't change my opinion. I didn't believe in miracles. I believed in deals.
I only hoped this was not a deal with the devil...
"There he is!" Doctor Ergant declared. "But we cannot give him to you. He might be a criminal, but he's here on court order."
A moment later, Ramon Miro, decked out in a police uniform, kicked the doctor in the back, pushing him into the cell, and aimed a revolver he pulled from his holster at the orderly accompanying him.
"Get in! If you so much as twitch the wrong way, I'll shoot!"
The boy obeyed.
"Up against the wall!" Ramon ordered, and the workers of the psychiatric hospital hurriedly retreated to the back of my cell.
The automatic four-hundred-fifty-five caliber Webley-Fosbery revolver, massive and bulky, could convince anyone to behave.
"Can you walk?" Ramon asked me, not taking an eye off his captives.
"No," I admitted.
"Tito, help him up!"
A boy in a uniform cloak and peaked cap with police emblem took a step into the room and I lurched forward, getting up off my knees. I stumbled and could barely stand, but Ramon's nephew grabbed me in good time and pulled me out into the corridor, where he then left me lying on the floor.
"Remove the straightjacket!" I demanded. "Faster! I can't feel my arms!"
Tito loosened the straps. Sensitivity started to return to my tightly clenched hands and I began to groan through my teeth, gritted in pain.
"Pull it off!" I repeated.
"We still have to accompany you past the guards!" Ramon announced and returned his revolver to the holster. "We'll take it off outside!"
"Accompany? Who is gonna let us out?! We're gonna have to fight our way out!" Not listening, I kept trying to shake the hated garment off my body.
"Damned stubborn bastard!" Miro cursed out. "Tito, come on, help him out!"
Ramon's nephew pulled the straight jacket off me, grabbed me by the shoulders and set me on my feet. Then, with a moan, I leaned against the wall, although I knew perfectly well that time was slipping through our fingers like water.
"We need a gurney," I said, not feeling strong enough to move. "Gurney! Find a gurney!"
Ramon looked at me angrily, but immediately snapped his fingers.
"That's right, a gurney! Tito, do you remember? We saw one in the corridor. Run!"
The hulking man's nephew ran off, the soles of his uniform boots thundering, and I walked along the wall to the door of my cell, opened the viewing window and glanced inside.
"Leo, what are you doing?!" Ramon asked in alarm.
"Stay back!" I waved him off and smiled at the prisoners. "Do you know what I'm about to do, doctor? I'm looking for kerosene and matches. And I'll be back. I'm not sure if this padding is flammable, but it's sure to go up a treat with kerosene! I'm gonna burn you all! This whole den of snakes!"
The orderly gave a slight whimper of fear, while Doctor Ergant went white as a sheet, but I couldn't fully enjoy their horror. There wasn't time. Ramon pulled me away from the door and slammed the window shut.
"Leo, tell me you were joking!" the hulking man barked out, his face gone crimson in anger. "We didn't sign up for that!"
I wasn't joking. I was scaring them. But I didn't delve into details and crawled down the wall onto the stone floor.
"Ramon, what kerosene? Get real! We have to get out of here!"
Miro nodded, but kept looking at me with unhidden suspicion.
He didn't trust me.
Just then, I heard the wail of the broken gurney wheel come down the corridor, and Tito pushed it into our corner. My rescuers lifted me together and set me on the familiar mode of transportation, then threw a none-too-clean sheet over top of me.
"What the devil?" I asked, startled.
"Easy!" the hulking man ordered. "Just play dead for a second, it won't do you any harm!"
And we headed off on our way. If any of the orderlies and doctors we came across on our way did notice the constables, who must have forgotten something in the clinic, they didn't interrogate the guardians of order one bit. And only the guard watching over the exit asked anything:
"Now what's this?"
"One of your rebellious souls," Ramon yawned. "He cut down two orderlies."
"That one?" the guard asked, disgruntled. "What happened to that degenerate now?"
"He was trying to get out of his straightjacket, and got strangled," my former partner informed him tranquilly.
"Or someone helped him," his nephew added. "You didn't happen to see anything suspicious last night, hm? We've got this guy on some serious charges. If you could help out, we could..."
"I just got to work!" the old man answered quickly and clanked his keys, unlocking the door, but doubted: "How're you gonna take him without documents?"
"We're going now to draw some up," Ramon Miro quickly twisted out of it. "The department administrator is already at work. He can do everything."
"Professor Berliger?" the guard drew out. "Ah, that's right. Who if not him..."
The gurney gave a jolt when crossing the high lip of the ramp, and I jerked the sheet off my face.
"What now?" Ramon whispered, setting it back. "And?"
"They won't let us out the door without documents. It's a dead duck."
"There's three hardheads there." Tito reminded him. "All with revolvers."
Miro cursed out soundlessly and stopped at Berliger's office door. There was a thin strip of light coming out from under it.
"Fifty thousand francs or five years hard labor. The choice is yours," I reminded them, and my former colleague, casting off his doubts, broke into the professor's office.
"How can I help?" asked the department administrator, standing in front of the coatrack with a long cloak in his hands.
Before the professor managed to raise the alarm, Ramon and his nephew tied him up, tore off a strip of white fabric from his frock and stuck it in his mouth. And although Berliger was wailing desperately, my straightjacket was pulled deftly onto him and he was left to lie on the floor.
After that, Tito returned to the corridor and, not without difficulty, pushed the gurney into the office.
"What now?" he asked his uncle, who was tearing through the professor's card cabinet.
"Stand watch," Ramon ordered.
Soon, the hulking man had found my hospital chart and, setting a pile of some forms on the table, started forging the signature of the department administrator with confident strokes of a feather quill.
I couldn't bear it and leaned over the gurney toward Berliger. His left eye was twitching.
"Do you know what I want, Professor?" I asked. "I want to kill you. But that would be wrong. You aren't a threat to me now..."
"Leo!" Ramon called out.
"We're just talking!" I waved off my former partner and turned back to the professor: "But revenge is not such a great motive. After all, you cured me. Although it wasn't your goal, the electroshock therapy helped me overcome my paralysis. And I'm thankful for that. Which is why I won't kill you... yet. But one day, when you are monkeying with your implements, I'll come up behind you and stick one of the wires in your left ear, and another in your right. And don't you worry, you won't die instantly. I’ll do my due diligence and figure out what voltage is needed to fry brains... low and slow. Oh, it will be a wonderful experiment!"
Tito chuckled, and his uncle threw out angrily from the desk:
"Quiet, you!"
"Professor, remember this conversation. One day, you will turn around and..."
"Just shut up!" Ramon said, enraged. "Shut up! Don't make any noise!"
I stayed quiet but didn't deny myself the pleasure of a characteristic gesture, leading a finger across my throat. The professor's face turned the shade of fresh-fallen snow, but a bit green. He believed me, and that slight echo of another's fear set my soul at ease for the moment, as if my illustrious talent had woken up again.
But no, it didn't wake up.<
br />
Devil! Who was I now?!
"Let's get out of here!" Ramon commanded, getting up from the table. He brought my medical chart with him, along with a forged patient release form indicating my death by natural causes.
Tito covered me with the sheet again and rolled me out into the hallway, while Ramon Miro locked the professor's office and, breaking the key in the hole, followed after us with a business-like demeanor.
NONE OF THE ORDERLIES or cleaners suspected anything. Sure, they stared, but they didn't come at us with interrogations and, what was more, didn't try to stop us. The senior guard expressed barely more interest in the corpse and, when Ramon extended him my papers, gave them nothing more than a cursory glance.
"And where is Doctor Ergant?" is all he asked, not detecting any forgery in the signature of the department administrator.
"Doing his morning rounds," Miro didn't miss a beat.
The hospital guard couldn't find any more questions. Tito rolled me outside and off the porch down a narrow ramp.
"Faster!" Ramon whispered and waved his hand at yet another false policeman parked at the exit in an armored vehicle. He quickly jumped to the side door and threw it wide open.
A gust of wind ripped off the sheet, but Tito didn't pay that any mind, just hurried up, pushing the gurney with all his might toward the self-propelled carriage. The yard flickered by, surrounded by a high fence, then the gloomy hulk of the main building of the psychiatric hospital. Then Miro grabbed me by the armpits and dragged me into the trunk. Tito jumped in after me, and the armored car started off to the sharp claps of the powder engine, quickly gaining speed and driving out of the yard of the psychiatric clinic.
A moment later, we were rolling away through the city, stretched over by a morning fog.
"Ugh!" Ramon then exhaled loudly and unbuttoned the stiff collar of his uniform. "Leo, old buddy, this is none of my business, but how'd you end up in Gottlieb Burckhardt? Problems with your head?"
"A simple misunderstanding," I said, not wanting to reveal too much. "I'll smooth it all over."
"I don't doubt it," my former partner laughed. "Where should I drop you off?"
"Where can you take me looking like this?" I answered, collapsing on the side bench, all my energy sapped.
Ramon cringed in disgust and admitted:
"Yes, you don't smell too great."
"You're tact in human form"
"Believe me, Leo, I am being very tactful. You should see yourself!"
I just sighed.
"Take me to your office. And find out where Albert Brandt is living these days."
"What about the fifty thousand?"
"I'll pay you as soon as I meet with my attorney."
"Tell me, Leo, was that court order authentic?" Ramon suddenly asked. "Does Moran have something to do with this? Should I start working on an alibi?"
"Forget about it," I waved it off. "Moran has nothing to do with this."
"Gottlieb Burckhardt!" the hulking man shook his head. "Just think!"
I didn't answer. The armored car went very smoothly down the asphalted road, lulling me to sleep. But my eyes didn't close, just went blurry. When the wheels started shaking on paving stones, and then started falling into potholes on the alleys of the factory outskirts, it got easier to stay awake. But it still turned me inside out just to get out of the trunk into the back yard of Miro's office.
"Water!" I rasped out, straightening up.
"Here," Ramon extended me a bulbous flask.
I spent a long time sucking away at it. I poured the remnants of the water on my head.
"Brr!" I shivered from the morning chill. "It seems cold for September!"
"Leo," Ramon looked at me somehow strangely, taking the flask, "it's the end of October."
"Bugger!" I unwillingly spat out my imaginary friend's favorite word and asked: "Can you heat up a couple buckets of water?"
"Whatever you want for that money!" the hulking man laughed and asked: "The boy you sent to me, do you know him well?"
"Someone came to you?" I asked in surprise. "It wasn't a telegram?"
"No, it wasn't a telegram. So, do you know him?"
"No. And?"
"I didn't like the look of him. He was from the nobility. I always expect problems from those types."
"Too bad," I muttered. "I owe him a service."
"I don't want to know anything," my former partner waved it off and went off to heat water, I meanwhile crawled up onto the lower step of the porch. It was chilly, but the fresh air cleared my head and chased off the nausea. It got easier.
Devil, it was as if I'd been reborn!
I HAD TO WAIT a little less than a quarter hour for the water and, although I caught quite a chill during that time, I pulled off my hospital gown without hesitation and threw it in disgust on a pile of trash. And then, despite the brownish marks of fresh bruises, I started going mad, rubbing myself down with a piece of crude soap. Ramon poured hot water on me.
"They really beat the shit out of you. And you're thin. It hurts to look at you," he noted after I had dried myself with a coarse towel. I put on some pants and a shirt, which had been washed to an even shade of gray and were too short for me. Then he asked, "do you want to eat?"
"No. Have you got vodka?"
"Only rum."
"Let me have some. And bring two glasses."
"I don't drink rum."
"And you won't have to. Find out where Brandt lives."
Ramon helped me get up onto the porch and led me inside. There, he placed a bulbous bottle of dark glass on the table and brought two faceted cups, then set out to find out the poet's address.
"If you need anything, ask Tito," he warned me before leaving.
"Alright," I nodded, leaning heavily on the wash basin.
It took me a long time to build up the courage to look into the mirror over the wash basin. When I finally overcame my indecision and glanced at my reflection, without any surprise, I met with water-clear eyes. Not colorless-gray, as before, but simply glass.
The professor had worked me over well. Too well even. I should have strangled him while I had the chance.
I flicked the light switch, and the room was immersed in gloom. The headache somewhat abated. My legs ached madly and could barely move. I sat down at the table heavily, filled a faceted glass from the liter bottle and started drinking it, getting the rum into my system gulp by gulp. It took some effort to keep the strong sharp alcoholic beverage down, but it was worth it. Very soon, the tension retreated, the pain in my beaten body quieted down, and my head was filled with a light fog.
I took another gulp now without any disgust and didn't even collapse but melted behind the table. After that, I filled another glass to the rim, and immediately saw a massive figure stand up in the corner of the room, immersed in gloom. It was wrapped head to toe in a long flowing robe. The newcomer's face was hidden by the shadow of a deep hood. Only two burning dots could be seen, its eyes.
Its angular fingers pawed at the glass, and the glass gave a plaintive creak at the squeeze of its deformed claws. After that, the monster poured rum down its throat and loudly slammed the glass on the tabletop.
"Bugger, that's good stuff!" my imaginary friend exhaled and nabbed the bottle from the table. "Alright, boy. Let's drink to commemorate our reunion!"
Part Three
Oracle
Dreams and the Dreamer
1
PEOPLE CHANGE. First, they become mature, then old. On the way, they might grow fat, skinny, gray, or bald. It's normal business.
But such metamorphoses are only normal for normal people.
Imaginary friends don't change. They simply are not capable of such things. An imaginary friend exists exclusively in one’s head. It is the fruit of an overly vivid imagination, and nothing more. That isn't what changes. What changes is one’s consciousness.
And if my white-haired leprechaun pipsqueak had turned into a ghastly chimera with claws that could ea
sily scratch a glass cup, I must have had serious problems with my head. To put it more simply, I’d lost my marbles. Gone loco. Bats in the belfry. Out of my mind.
That's what I was thinking when I saw my old friend throw back the hood, but I didn't make any comments. Instead, I asked:
"What happened to the top hat?"
The albino showed me his middle finger in a familiar gesture, with its ghastly looking claw, and drained the glass of rum in one swig.
"Bu-u-uger!" he shook his powerful head, then looked at me with his eyes half closed and melted into an acrid smile. "And why did you change your haircut?"
I lead my hand over my unevenly cut crown, took the glass, but didn't drink and looked above it at the leprechaun. He caught my gaze and melted into a somewhat scary smile.
"And how do you like me?"
"You were an ugly creature, and you still are," I answered, bending the truth a fair amount.
Although the leprechaun couldn't have been called a looker before, in his former body, he wouldn't have scared anybody. But now, one look at him made my knees shiver and I wanted to press my back up against the wall.
His eyes, burning with a ghostly fire, were hidden behind massive curved brows; his teeth, it seemed, could not all fit in his wide frog's mouth. His thin lips were stretched tight over them, leaving long fangs to stick out. His sharply pointed ears were tightly pressed against his head, while his flat nose looked absolutely inhuman, and his short bristles of white hair looked like the rough fur of an animal.
However, the albino was not a disgusting monster. It was as if he had taken in a share of the unearthly beauty of the fallen one whose heart he had eaten. That internal luster smoothed over his rough features, mitigated them and turned his frightening countenance into a template which a skilled sculptor could easily form into the face of Apollo.
I took a sip of rum and shook my head.
"Come on, it’s nothing..."
"Look at yourself!" the albino got offended, placing a cigar on the table and cutting the tip with a confident swipe of his claw. A deep scratch was left on the wooden tabletop.