Cherry Hill

by James A. Moore

  It paused for a moment as Nurse Kimberly washed Alex’s privates. Flesh responded to stimulation and Granger grew physically excited. The sensations were always pleasant, but distracting. The nurse kept up a steady stream of conversation, speaking of a movie she had recently seen, a picture called Easy Rider. It knew the words were only conversation, a pleasant way to pass the time when she had to do something unpleasant. Still, her tones were soothing.

  Finally she finished with the area and moved to wash Alex’s chest and shoulders.

  “Alex, why did you kill those people? Why did you consume their flesh?”

  That was a question that many people had asked Alex Granger over the course of his incarceration. He had never answered any of them. It asked now because, for the first time in its existence, it was curious.

  “I killed them for you.”

  “Why?”

  “You told me to. You said you needed to eat.”

  Nurse Kimberly had finished dressing him and was now spooning Alex his dinner of pureed steak and potatoes. The flavor was not abhorrent, but it lacked the depth and dimension of its first meal. Perhaps that was because Granger lacked the same sort of ability to taste foods.

  “But why did you decide to help me, Alex?” It knew thoughts were hard for Granger to put together, so it was patient with him.

  “Well, because you were always there for me when I needed you.”

  “Do you love me, Alex?”

  “I would do anything for you. You’re my god, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I suppose I am.” It paused for a moment, and looked through Alex’s eyes at the pretty nurse who had just finished feeding its host.

  “Alex?”

  “Yes?”

  “What is a god?”

  In his broken, deficient way, Alex Granger explained the concept of godhood as best he could, and it listened.

  And it learned.

  ***

  John Doe was led from his room, once again in manacled legs and cuffed wrists. He was getting very good at swinging his false leg and the chains connected to it while making virtually no sounds. No one around him noticed it, or if they did, they made no comment. There was no reason he could think of for training himself to move silently, except that it was an exercise to keep him sharp.

  He’d already been with two doctors earlier in the day, and the only reason he could imagine for his being taken to a different room would be because the pictures that allegedly would indicate his real name—and the police officer that was bringing them—were now at Cherry Hill a few hours earlier than anticipated.

  Once again he sat still while the guards anchored him to the floor. He tried not to dwell on what might be coming his way.

  It didn’t matter. It came for him anyway, in the form of a detective. He was a lean man, with dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin and a dark suit. He apparently didn’t believe in smiling.

  The detective introduced himself and sat down across from Doe. “Mr. Crowley, my name is Rico Montoya. I’m here to see if we can identify you.”

  “I’m guessing you already did that. If you hadn’t you wouldn’t be calling me Crowley.”

  The man looked at him with half-lidded eyes for a moment and then nodded his head slowly and methodically. “Very good. You’re right. My other reason for being here is to ask you a few questions.”

  Crowley—a name he would have to get used to now—looked at the man and waited. If the detective was expecting answers, he’d do what he could.

  “Mr. Crowley, do you know what happened to your wife and children?”

  “I think they’re dead.” Damn, but that hurt. His mind kept circling back to the images of a woman screaming as something tore into her. He pushed the memory away harshly, not wanting to deal with it until he could put it into context.

  “Did you kill them?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who did?”

  “I’m not sure. I get a face, but I’m not getting a name to go with it.”

  Montoya looked at him for a few seconds, his distaste clearly written on his features. Crowley resisted the urge to take a swing. It would have been futile, and he didn’t feel like trying to fight anyone when he was chained to a concrete floor. That didn’t mean he had to like being judged by anyone who didn’t even know him.

  “Mr. Crowley, I’ve been looking for you for over six years. I’ve spent the same amount of time looking for your family. Where have you been?”

  “Did you take the time to talk to the doctors in charge of me here?” He shook his head and leaned as close as he could toward the man staring at him. “Did they mention, maybe, that I seem to have a problem with remembering anything?” His tone was patronizing, but he didn’t care.

  “They did. Unfortunately, the law prevents me from examining your medical records and I don’t know what you know. I only know what they tell me.”

  “Until you confirmed it, I didn’t even know my name, Detective. How am I supposed to tell you where I’ve been? Last thing I remember before I was in a fight with some policemen was that I’d been in a plane crash and that I thought my family was dead. I remembered my address and I remembered being a teacher.” He stared hard at the man and the detective stared back, though Crowley could see he was uncomfortable with the way things were going. “I heard from one of the doctors here that I’m missing at least six years of my life, Detective Montoya. I thought I was in that damned wreck a few months ago and he tells me I’m off by half a decade.”

  Montoya kept staring at him.

  “What would you like to know, Detective? Ask me your damned questions.”

  “I want to know when you last saw your family.”

  “Not real clear on that.”

  “Tell me what you remember.”

  “Someone…” He closed his eyes and saw the images again, flashes of red, splashes of death in a collage of violence and screams. “Someone killed them. I don’t think anyone could have lived through what was done to them.”

  “Tell me.”

  “My little boy. Did I have a little boy? I see him getting torn apart. Do you understand me? Someone, some thing, pulled at his leg and arm until they came free. They were ripped out of his body, Detective.” He kept his eyes closed and tried to decipher the kaleidoscopic images, shattered fragments that wanted to blend together. “I see a little girl, God, she’s so pretty. She’s screaming, and it’s whatever it is, it’s…”

  He opened his eyes and looked at the man across from him. “No. That’s all I’ve got for you, Detective.”

  “That’s nothing, Mr. Crowley. What you’ve told me is nothing.”

  “Then I guess I can’t help you.”

  “I’ll find out what you’re hiding, Mr. Crowley. I’ll find out. And if I think it’s something that you did, I’ll have your sorry ass brought back to California so I can watch them sentence you to death.”

  Crowley smiled. “Didn’t you hear, you sorry sack of shit? That’s one of the reasons I’m in here. I want to die.”

  “Then maybe you’ll get your wish, sir.” The detective stood up, his back stiff and his face set in a deep scowl that aged him a decade. A moment later he was gone and Crowley sat back in his seat.

  He sat there for several minutes, vaguely aware of voices discussing him in the hallway. He was aware of something else, too. The dead were back, moving through the room where he rested, looking at him in some cases and oblivious to his existence in others.

  He studied the ghosts as he listened to the voices talking about whether or not he was really suffering from memory loss. They were talking about how they might get information from him, what, if anything, would make him more compliant.

  The spirits of the dead moved cautiously around him, looking him over or looking past him in some cases. It didn’t take a genius to realize that the ghosts were actually frightened of something and that piqued his interest far more than the idea of remembering things too painful to contemplate.

  “W
hat the hell could scare a ghost?”

  He hadn’t the foggiest notion. But given a chance, he might try to find out.

  ***

  “Detective, I understand where you’re coming from, but as much as I want to help you, there are certain rules we try to follow here involving the privacy of our patients.” Finney was trying to be calm, but the man from California wasn’t making it an easy task.

  “No disrespect, Doctor, but the man in that room is dangerous and I want to know if he killed his family.”

  “No, Detective Montoya.” He shook his head. “I really don’t know for certain if he’s dangerous. According to what he’s told us so far, I have doubts he should even be in this facility.”

  “Then why is he here?”

  “Because he’s obviously mentally unbalanced. That doesn’t make him a threat to anyone, except the occasional policeman who decides to interfere with him when he’s planning on going somewhere.”

  “There’s a real possibility that he knows what happened to his family, Doctor. That’s four people who disappeared six years ago, and the only person who might know where they are was also among the missing for most of those six years.” Montoya was getting hot under the collar, and there wasn’t a thing the doctor could do to calm him down.

  “I’m fully aware of that. But I have to see to my patients, do you understand me?”

  Phil Harrington had been quiet through the entire exchange, but he spoke up just before Montoya could start round seven of the circular argument. That was one of the things Finney liked about the young doctor: he was always good at being a peacemaker. He seldom had anything to add to a conversation until it was in danger of becoming an argument, but when it came to defusing volatile situations he was one of the best. “Okay, how about this: We can’t in good conscience have you in on any of the sessions, but if you gave me a list of questions, we might be able to get answers to them. They would have to be pertinent to your case, Detective, and they can’t be vague. They’d have to be mostly straight forward yes or no questions, with maybe a few clarifications.” He paused and looked from the detective back to Finney. “Does that sound fair?”

  Finney was dubious about it, but decided that he would play along. He could always review the questions beforehand. “I suppose we could go along with that. But I’ll be in the room with you when you ask the questions. First and foremost, we have to maintain the sanctity of our positions.”

  Montoya took his time thinking about the proposal and finally agreed.

  “Excellent. We’ll handle the interview tomorrow. In the meantime, Detective, perhaps you can work out your list of questions.”

  The man took his leave, and both doctors watched him walking away.

  Phil looked over at him after a few moments and shook his head. “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “I don’t dislike him, either. I don’t know him. I just know his type. He wants his answers and he wants them right away. He has no patience for due process and I’ve never been one to like being bullied, Phil.”

  Harrington scratched at the back of his neck for a second and nodded. “I know how you feel.” He sighed. “This should prove interesting. I’m thinking Sodium Pentothal should do the trick for making John Doe a little more agreeable. I’ve been toying with trying it anyway, to see if we could get past his defenses.” He stopped worrying with his neck and instead pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know what it is he’s trying so hard to hide, Roger, but he’s definitely hiding something.”

  Finney nodded his head in agreement, but said nothing. He’d watch the procedure and see to it that any answers that could cause trouble for the new patient were properly censored. He had to look out for the man’s rights and he didn’t want Crowley sent out of state.

  The man was an interesting case and Roger wanted him where he could keep an eye on him.

  Chapter Six

  They took him back to his cell and Crowley let them, though he dreaded what they planned for the next day. He didn’t tell them that he’d overheard their conversation, nor did he mention his newly discovered (or perhaps rediscovered) ability to see ghosts. He had enough issues already without adding complete psychotic breaks from reality to the list of reasons the people at Cherry Hill wanted to treat him.

  Did he think the ghosts were real? Yes. That did not, however, mean he needed to share the revelation with those around him anymore than they had deliberately shared the decision to use “truth serum” to pick at his mind.

  Once he was safely in his cell, Crowley reached for a fresh bar of soap and began carving, letting his hands do their own thing while he contemplated the possible outcome of his interrogation in the morning. He didn’t know for certain that being drilled for information would be a bad thing, but he had an odd hunch that it wouldn’t go the way anyone intended.

  He also focused on the fact that he’d lost over five years of recent memories and found himself dwelling heavily on that thought. He would have sworn on a stack of Bibles—little as that particular book meant to him—that he had wandered out of the woods within hours, maybe a day at most, of the plane wreck. So if that was wrong, where had he been for half a decade? He was wounded when he came out. He still wore the same artificial leg, or one that was close enough to confuse his already weakened cognitive skills.

  His hands worked their magic, carving flakes of soap from the main piece and gradually reforming the oblong block into something else. He didn’t look at it, but could tell that this one was more complex than the face he’d made earlier.

  Mostly, he tried to avoid the fractured memories of what had apparently happened to his family. If he didn’t think about them, they couldn’t haunt him. And if he told himself that enough, it might come true. In the meanwhile it was one hell of a lie.

  “If I wasn’t already in a nuthouse, I’d be headed for one soon.” He spoke only to hear someone, anyone, talking.

  He set down the bar of soap because his hands told him it was done. When he looked at it, he saw a body, female and mature, bent and broken into a new form.

  His hand reached out and crushed the sculpture trying to hide what he had already seen, but it was too late: the image of his wife dying came to him full blown.

  ***

  School had been fun. It always was when the students were attentive. He was retiring soon, and he wanted to enjoy his last session as an instructor. Most of the classes were a mixture of serious students with a scattering of a few morons who had only made it into his classes by mistake or the ability to bluff their way through their learning.

  He didn’t much care for the latter and they were in for an unpleasant surprise when report cards were handed out.

  He parked the sedan in the drive way and climbed out, ready to see—and here, much to his frustration, the memory gave him no hint of a name, merely the face of the woman he married—his wife and children. Three more weeks and they’d be going on vacation. She wanted to see Europe and his memories of the last time there had faded enough that he rather liked the idea.

  Nothing seemed at all amiss as he opened the front door to his home. Time away from his earlier life had muted his paranoid obsession with being careful. Really, there was no one to blame but himself for what he saw when he opened the door.

  Whatever it was, it had chosen a human form. He knew immediately that the man standing next to his wife was as far from human as he was.

  The man was of average height, with salt and pepper hair and a slight paunch. He looked like he should have been selling vacuum cleaners. All three of the children were sitting on the couch, their feet bound to their hands and their mouths taped shut.

  The woman he’d married stood next to the stranger, her feet taped together, her hands bound behind her back. The stranger had gotten more imaginative, and had not bothered with tape on her mouth. He’d sewn her lips shut with a thick cord. The needle that had done the job still dangled from the left side of her mouth.

  The sligh
tly pudgy face of the salesman was aimed directly at him, a pleasant enough smile set on the thin-lipped mouth. The eyes, dark blue and seemingly human, glittered with merriment. “So nice to see you again, Jonathan. Please come inside. We have a lot of things to talk about.”

  Crowley’s hands trembled as he took in the situation and he stepped into the room, carefully closing the door behind him. He’d worked hard to make a perfectly normal life. No reason to let the neighbors know that something had gone wrong in paradise.

  If he was supposed to ask the stranger what he wanted, then the man was going to be disappointed. He knew what the hidden thing wanted. It wanted him to suffer…

  ***

  “John?” The voice snapped him out of his recollections.

  He opened his eyes and looked directly at Dr. Finney.

  “Is it morning already?”

  “Yes indeed. You were sleeping like a baby. I’m sorry to wake you, but we have a new procedure we want to try today.”

  Crowley looked at the two guards between him and the doctor and held out his hands. After only a few days the routine was already half ingrained into him. He didn’t much like that.

  The men did their thing and cuffed his wrists and his legs, real and imitation alike.

  “This is the part where I get to answer questions with a little chemical help, isn’t it?”

  Finney was good enough to hide his surprise and honest enough to answer him with the truth. “Yes, I’m afraid so. The detective you saw yesterday needs his answers, and we’re going to try to get them. Dr. Harrington has been doing an astonishing job of helping you remember, but in this case we think it’s best to try to dig a little deeper.”