Crowley screamed until every iota of breath was forced from his body and then he continued the primal shriek inside of his mind, and through it all, he damned the woman that had brought him back to the world when he had finally come so close to final peace.
And finally, he was still. His body rested and his mind absorbed.
He was still, but he was not at peace.
For a time Jonathan Crowley truly belonged at Cherry Hill. Perhaps it was best for all of them that most of his truly insane moments occurred while he was unconscious.
***
Roger Finney pushed the woman out of his way, momentarily forgetting his sudden infatuation as he moved to find out what sort of madness could make a man utter the sounds that escaped from Jonathan Crowley’s body. The sounds had made his skin crawl as surely as hooked fingers dragging a chalkboard.
Crowley had fallen from his bed and ripped loose damned near everything that was connected to him. His IV was trickling blood and his catheter was draining urine across the floor. His bare feet were pressed against the foot of the bed and shoving the wheeled contraption across the ground despite the brakes locked to prevent that from happening.
Wait. Feet? Roger froze for a moment and looked, absolutely certain that his mind was playing unpleasant games with him. Crowley’s right foot was completely under the bed, but he could see the full length of his leg as he seized on the ground. His left foot was pushing against the actual leg of the bed and he could clearly see real bones and living flesh as the limb pressed harder.
He could also see the artificial left leg the man had been wearing, where it dangled precariously from the corner of the mattress. The sole of the replacement foot was scuffed and dirty.
What the hell? Roger checked the number of legs again. Two left, one right; one artificial and two real. For a second he thought he might actually faint, but then the situation his patient was in made itself known to his senses again.
Crowley was still kicking and pushing and moaning across the floor. He shoved with his legs and his right hand slapped the ground next to Roger’s foot. Finney couldn’t see the man’s face but he could see the hair on his head, and he was looking right at it as the color changed, a smooth chameleon-like transition from thin and white to thicker and brown.
Amelia moved closer to him and looked into his face as he studied the insanity on the floor. “It’s all right. Or it will be.”
“What in the name of God is happening?”
Amelia looked at Crowley and then back to him, worrying her lower lip. “I think he’s getting better. But, Doctor, I have to tell you, he isn’t going to be in a very good mood when he recovers. You might want to call security.”
Roger looked at her again, and felt just slightly calmed by her presence. “Security?”
“I was told there were issues when Jonathan had a run in with the police. He was feeling very weak right then.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t you imagine it might be a worse situation now, when he’s recovered most of his strength?”
Jonathan Crowley stopped twitching on the ground and simply panted, looking at the floor and then turning his head enough to let both of the other people in the room see his face.
Roger resisted the urge to faint as he looked at a man who was easily thirty years younger than he had been five minutes earlier.
Come one, come all! See the man who re-grows limbs and gets younger before your very eyes! He checked his own pulse with shaking hands and wasn’t at all surprised to discover it was close to twice the norm.
Jonathan Crowley stood up on two perfectly healthy looking legs, his eyes lowered to the ground and his face almost buried in shadows. Amelia, still standing next to Roger, looked like the idea of running was crossing her mind a great deal.
“John? Are you all right?” His voice trembled.
Crowley looked up, nearly a completely different man than he had been a few minutes ago. His face was lean and long, and really nothing very remarkable. His eyes were the same color as before, but clearer and with far less wrinkles around them. His mouth was set in a scowl, and all of the features of his younger face twisted with rage. At that exact moment Roger had no doubt in his mind that Jonathan Crowley was perfectly capable of committing murder or any other atrocity.
Then Crowley smiled, a purely predatory expression, and nodded his head slowly. “Right as rain, Doc. Never been better.”
“Jonathan…” Amelia Dunlow looked at the man, her eyes wide and apologetic, her sensuous mouth set at the edge of a trembling pout. “Jonathan, I’m sorry, but I need you and the people here need you.”
Crowley barely looked at her. “We’ll discuss that later. Meantime, precious, why don’t you find me some decent clothes while I think about how I can thank you for bringing me back to myself.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm and if the woman affected him the way she had every other person in Finney had seen her with, he hid it remarkably well.
Amelia nodded her head and took the excuse presented for getting the hell out of Dodge.
Roger kept staring, at a loss for what to say, and finally Crowley got around to noticing his discomfort. “I’m fine, Doctor. Got my leg back and everything.” While he spoke he started pulling the remaining sensors from his body and despite a knee jerk reaction to tell him to stop, Finney kept his mouth shut and observed the closest thing he’d ever seen to a miracle. He looked over his patient very carefully and wasn’t overly surprised to see that the flesh where the IV had been taped in place didn’t even have a red mark to prove it.
He watched even more carefully as Crowley unwrapped the thick bandages around his head, revealing more brown hair with every layer peeled away.
Crowley watched him with an amused expression as he kept undressing the place where his wounds should have been. There was no sign of a wound left, but Roger concentrated on the gauze and was rewarded by more impossibilities: There, nestled within the wrappings, were the lines of silk used to stitch the man’s flesh back together. Two oddly shaped lumps of metal were also there, presumably the fragments that Harrington hadn’t felt comfortable enough to remove during Crowley’s brain surgery the day before.
Roger shook his head, trying to form words.
“You okay there, Doc? You’re looking a little shaky. You know, like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“John, how in the name of God can you be standing in front of me?”
Crowley shrugged. “Ask God. Maybe he can give you a proper answer.”
“I don’t understand…”
“And you probably never will. It’s complicated.” Crowley turned away from him and Roger looked at the exposed flesh along his back, from his feet—both of them and that was still hard to grasp—up his legs. He noted the healthy, vital form and color across the buttocks, up his spine and all the way to his hairline, and tried to absorb what he was seeing. He’d guess the man’s age at thirty to thirty-five and not a day older. The man tossed the dirty bandages in a container marked for bio-hazardous materials and then walked over to wash his hands in the small hospital sink.
“You keep looking at my ass and I’ll just start calling you Roger. I figure you’re going to look that hard it’s the next best thing to a kiss, so first names are okay. That work for you?”
“Um. Okay. Sure.” What the hell else could he say?
“Wonderful. Now, I’m sure you have a lot of questions, Roger. I know I would if I were standing in your place. That’s all good and well, but right now I have a serious need to eat food. Regeneration is a costly prospect, and I’m hungry.”
Crowley walked back to look at him, a cocky half smile on his face.
“Feels weird, doesn’t it, having all your preconceptions knocked away?”
The voice was younger, but the vocal inflections were the same. Either he was really, truly dealing with Jonathan Crowley or the man in front of him had studied his patient intently.
“Goddamn it, John. What the hell happened to you?”
�
�Cellular regeneration. We just went over that.”
“Cellular regeneration my ass!” Logic was flying out the window and Roger’s emotions were getting out of control. He was not a man readily used to seeing the impossible and at the moment he was close to panic.
“Roger, look at me.” He looked. Crowley nodded and smiled. “I’m still Jonathan Crowley. I’m just in better shape than I was.”
“But that’s crazy!”
“Well, we’re in an asylum, aren’t we?”
Roger couldn’t come up with a proper argument for that.
“Listen, Roger, I’m not staying in that room you gave me any longer. I tend to need a little more space to move around and much as I appreciate the hospitality, I think the accommodations around here leave a lot to be desired. So I’m going to need another room, one with a real bed, and I’m going to need a key.”
“What?” He shook his head. “John, I can’t just let you leave.”
“Believe me, Doc. You don’t have a chance in hell of making me stay if I don’t want to. I’m going to be leaving in a few days tops, just as soon as I can figure out exactly what’s going on here to cause all the death and destruction.”
“It doesn’t work that way, John. You’re still a patient here and—”
“Trust me. I’m all better.” He tapped his forehead with a finger and Roger noticed there wasn’t even a scar to prove he’d ever had surgery.
“I can’t just let you go.”
“Really? Do I look like Jonathan Crowley to you? The same one in all of your documents? Do I fit his description?”
“But I have paperwork.”
“And I have my life back. All cured. Good show. I’ll recommend you to anyone else with similar problems, I promise.”
Crowley headed for the door of the room without even getting permission first. That in itself was as unorthodox as everything else happening, but Roger simply shook his head and followed.
“Amelia! Come on now, I can’t go walking the halls with my ass hanging out for everyone to see!” Despite his loud comment, Crowley left the room, and Roger followed. Apparently having his rear end sheltered from the eyes of the rest of Cherry Hill wasn’t as important as getting out in the open after all.
***
Carl Branaugh watched with a slightly amused expression as the half-naked man stormed through the hallway, calling for Amelia Dunlow. He moved with a general’s disposition and he looked all over the place as if she might be hiding in even the most impossible spots.
“Detective.” The man walked right past him still looking, and for the first time Branaugh noticed Roger Finney looking at the man. Finney looked flabbergasted and a little hectic.
“Jonathan, you really should wait for proper clothing. I can at least get you some surgical greens.”
“That’d be swell, Doc. Thanks so much.” Aside from acknowledging the comment, the man kept going.
Carl didn’t have time for the antics. Instead he headed directly for the doctor, who was his main reason for leaving the interviews in the first place. “Doctor?”
“Just one moment, please, Detective Branaugh. I have a runaway patient.” He kept looking at the man who had already moved down the hallway, his bare ass displayed for anyone who wanted to look.
“Do you need help?”
“Well, you might want to talk to him, that’s Jonathan Crowley, but as for stopping him, I wouldn’t recommend trying.”
“That’s Crowley?” Branaugh looked at the retreating figure and shook his head. There was something familiar about the face and the posture, but that couldn’t be Crowley. Physically impossible.
Then again, so was the ruined body of Andrea Tartelli.
“Oh, yes.” The doctor nodded. “I don’t know how or why, but that is Jonathan Crowley and if I don’t get him in pants sometime soon, the ward is likely to riot.”
Branaugh looked down the hallway again, trying to spot the runaway mental patient. There was no sign of him.
“Well, Doctor, I think we might have a problem on our hands.”
Finney shook his head, scowled and then closed his eyes, mouthing the numbers between one and ten under his breath. When he opened his eyes again he seemed calmer, or at least more focused.
“What can I help you with, Detective?”
“You’re okay with your patients just disappearing?”
“No, I’m not, but one crisis at a time.”
“Well, I just wanted to ask if I could see you and Ms. Dunlow at some point, but it can wait. I have a few more depositions to take.” Actually, that was a lie. He’d decided the best way to handle the situation was to have all of the witnesses write down what they had seen in vivid detail. None of them wanted to be there, and rather than keep most of them waiting for an hour or more, he decided to save himself the typing troubles and get them on their ways. He intended to check on them in a few minutes.
“Well, as you can see, Ms. Dunlow isn’t here at the moment. I need to find Crowley before I can be of any other assistance, Detective. I’m terribly sorry.”
With that the man moved down the hallway, mimicking Crowley’s earlier need to look in every impossible corner. The day was getting crazier by the moment.
The night proved even worse. After the sun set, the insanity truly began.
Chapter Thirteen
For the first twenty or so minutes it was almost amusing, but when Crowley still hadn’t shown up anywhere, the security team was called to start looking. It was one thing to feel safe that he wouldn’t just walk out of the facility in the buff, and another to realize that no matter what Harrington or he believed, Finney could very well be dealing with an escaped convict.
There was security at every major entrance, and the doors that were normally kept locked also had alarms loud enough to make sure everyone knew if something went wrong. But Cherry Hill was a damned big facility and there were enough hiding places to cause no end of worries. With deep regret, Finney was forced to call the first actual lockdown in the asylum since he’d taken over.
Roger moved through the corridors of each and every wing, Bob Wilkes at his side. Bob hadn’t thrown a fit when he heard about the man wandering the corridors, though he’d certainly looked like he wanted to. Roger would have let him, too.
He knew he’d screwed up, but he was still having trouble fully accepting everything that had happened. Mutilated bodies aside, the transformation of Jonathan Crowley into a younger, healthy man was an impossibility that refused to leave him alone.
After they’d been walking corridors and investigating every room they came across for almost two hours, Roger was beginning to have doubts that they’d ever find the man. He had visions of getting a call a month from now in which a police officer went over the details of a multiple homicide caused by Crowley. It wasn’t the sort of thing that let him rest easily.
Bob Wilkes looked over his way and nudged him with an elbow. “Relax. He’s here. There’s no way in hell he got out without being seen, so he obviously didn’t get out.”
“What if he knocked out a guard?”
“Every guard is reporting in, so that’s nothing to worry about. Seriously, relax. It hasn’t happened and it won’t. He’s just hiding somewhere.”
“You know, I really don’t find that as comforting as I’d like to, Bob.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because if Jonathan Crowley is hiding somewhere in the building, it means he’s capable of popping up just about anywhere.”
“There’re only so many places a person can hide, even in Cherry Hill. We’ll find him.”
“Bob, if it’s all right with you, I need to go to my office and try to sort out a few things.”
“Oh, listen, I appreciate you even coming along for the ride, Doctor Finney.”
“Bob, in the seven years I’ve been here I know I’ve told you at least hundred times that you can call me Roger.”
“True enough,” the man chuckled deep in his chest. “I’m just not
good at changing the rules. You know what I mean?”
“Just as long as you understand you can change them if you want to.” He waved halfheartedly and started back towards his office. He had no doubt that the detective was ready to head home and he knew half of his staff were going to have fits if they weren’t allowed to leave soon, but the lock down came first, regardless of what they might want. The rules were there for a reason and even the ones who had families waiting for them had to understand that letting anyone leave when there was a dangerous subject wandering the halls was more negligent than Roger would allow.
He unlocked the door to his office and moved toward his desk, lost in his own thoughts.
If he’d been paying attention he would have had a chance to call for security before he spotted the man he was looking for sitting at his desk and reading through a stack of files.
“John? We’ve been worried sick about you!” His voice cracked when he started speaking but sounded closer to normal when he was finished. “I’ve spent over two hours checking every damned level of this building. Have you been here all along?”
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