by Harvey Click
“Do you have money for a hotel room?” she asked.
He was startled by what sounded like a proposition. “Yeah, sure,” he said.
“I mean cash. They might be able to trace credit cards.”
“They?”
“Bring a change of clothes and enough cash to last a couple days.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to prove to you those pills you take aren’t aspirin, and after you see the proof you probably won’t want to take them anymore. Getting off them is going to be rough. I know, because I’m on day six and I’m still so jittery I can barely stand up. But I’ll help you kick. I have the next couple days off. I don’t have to go into work until Friday, and I’ll stay with you if you want me to. I’ll help you any way I can.”
Now it sounded even more like a proposition, and he didn’t trust this sort of offer coming from a woman he barely knew. She didn’t look like a prostitute, but maybe she wasn’t as innocent as she looked. Maybe she had a boyfriend who was planning to rob him of the cash she’d asked him to bring.
“We can just go to my apartment,” he said.
“No. Your apartment’s probably bugged and so is mine.”
He wanted to tell her again that she was delusional, but instead he glanced around the park to see if they were being watched. A woman walking a Saint Bernard seemed to look away just as he glanced at her, and a tall man leaning against a tree was staring straight at him.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“Because I need an ally. I want to find out what’s really going on, and I can’t do it by myself. I need your help as much as you need mine.”
For some reason he believed her, at least halfway. They agreed to meet at a certain hotel in an hour. As he was turning away to go to his car, she said, “Bring a couple of your pills with you. And don’t swallow the damn things, just bring them.”
He drove home and packed a few things in a carryon bag. He slipped a couple aspirins into his shirt pocket and stared at the bottle for several seconds, sorely tempted to load it in his bag. But of course she’d throw it away if she found it, and besides he intended to prove she was delusional. He noticed his hand was shaking as he set the bottle back on his nightstand.
He paid cash for a room and waited anxiously until she arrived. She had her own carryon bag, and as soon as she’d placed it on one of the beds she removed a big 500-count bottle of aspirin.
“This is the legit store stuff,” she said. “I just bought it. Did you bring a couple of your own?”
He handed them to her. She put them in a little plastic glass, put two of her own in another glass, and went to the bathroom to pour some water in each glass. She stirred with a plastic spoon until the pills were dissolved.
“Now taste them,” she said. “Don’t take a sip, just stick the tip of your tongue in the glass.”
She handed him the glass with the store aspirin, and he tasted the solution. It was sour and nasty, nothing like what he was used to. She handed him the other glass, and though it had some of the same sour taste, there was also the sweet, almost fragrant flavor Jack knew so well and loved so much. Just the taste on his tongue made him want to gulp down the cloudy water like a shot of good whiskey.
Rachel snatched it away from him before he could. “Believe me now?” she asked.
“This doesn’t prove anything,” he said. “Maybe my bottle is old and the flavor is off. I didn’t check the expiration date.”
“What you tasted has nothing to do with an expiration date,” she said.
He didn’t say anything, but he knew she was right. The flavor he craved every morning when he awoke had nothing to do with normal aspirin. Probably he’d noticed this before but had put it out of his mind, and he wondered how many other things he’d been putting out of his mind.
Rachel dumped both glasses into the bathroom sink. She put her big bottle of store aspirin on the dresser and said, “If your headaches come back, you’re going to have to be content with this stuff. It won’t get rid of your jitters, but from now on the other crap is verboten.”
She sat on one of the beds. Jack sat on the other one and clasped his hands in his lap so they wouldn’t shake. “Tell me what you know,” he said.
“Not much, not enough. I was having bad dreams, but I’d always forget them as soon as I got up, so I started keeping a notebook by my bed. You know, like a dream journal. The moment I woke up I’d start scribbling down anything in my head. The name Dr. Good started appearing pretty often, and the word aspirin, and some descriptions of a little room with a hospital bed and some gadgets.
“I started thinking the little room had something to do with the orphanage, and I wondered why I couldn’t remember very much about those days. As I said, the word aspirin kept showing up, so six days ago I stopped taking it. The first couple days were awful, just unbelievable, but after that my head began to clear a little and some memories began to come back. Horrible memories, just horrible.”
“Such as?”
“They make us commit crimes, Jack. Horrible crimes.”
“What are you talking about? Robberies? Extortion?”
“Worse.”
She lay down facing away from him, and Jack saw that her shoulders were shaking. He realized she was crying and he didn’t know what he should do. After a while he went over to her and awkwardly clasped her thin shoulders.
“It’s all right, Rachel,” he said. “This is all delusion. I’m certain I’ve never committed any serious crimes, and I don’t think you have either. Maybe there’s some truth to all this, but it’s not what you’re thinking. It’s possible somebody performed some sort of mind experiments on us at the orphanage, and maybe whatever they did left us with screwed up memories. I don’t really think that happened, but I guess it’s possible. We were unwanted children, and maybe the government or somebody decided to try some experimental crap on us, and maybe that’s why we both feel confused sometimes. If this happened they don’t want the public to know about it, so it’s all hush hush. Who knows, maybe there really is somebody named Dr. Good, some sort of psychiatrist who occasionally checks on us to monitor our condition. But there aren’t any crimes. You haven’t committed any crimes, and neither have I.”
She stopped crying after a while. She sat up, looked at her watch, and said, “It’s almost noon. I think we should have some lunch soon. In a couple more hours you probably won’t be able to eat.”
They picked up some fast food and brought it back to their room because Rachel was afraid they’d be spotted in a restaurant. Jack’s cheeseburger tasted like greasy cardboard, and after eating half of it he went to the bathroom and vomited.
“Try taking a shower,” Rachel called through the door. “They seem to help. I’ve been taking three or four of them every day.”
The water felt like needles on his skin, and it was hard to get the temperature right—it was always too hot or too cold—but he stood under the shower for a long time because it took his mind off the jangling in his nerves. His clothes felt scratchy as he put them back on. When he was dressed, he got under the covers of his bed with his hair still wet and shivered. The shivering soon turned into a hard tremor running through all four of his limbs, and he curled into a fetal position and with his arms grasped tightly around his knees, trying to make it stop.
He felt the bed move, and realized she had gotten under the covers with him. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her slim body against his back.
“The shaking will come and go,” she said.
Soon he felt hot and threw off the covers. She put a damp washcloth on his forehead, then unbuttoned his shirt and wiped his sweaty chest with a damp towel.
“Do you mind if I undress you?” she asked. “You’re drenched all over with sweat.”
He didn’t answer. She lifted his shoulders to slip off his shirt, then undid his trousers and pulled them off along with his boxer shorts, and began wiping his whole body slowly and gently w
ith damp towels. How long she did this he didn’t know, but eventually it took the fever away, and then he was cold again. He got under the covers and shivered, and again she pressed her body against his back and held him.
He drifted for a while through horrific delusions, imagining he was killing people with the pocketknife he always carried. He killed them in alleyways and dark street corners, in parking lots and in their homes, men and women, young and old.
He awoke and sat up, very thirsty. It was night now, and the only light in the room was a pale ghost of streetlights through the drape. Rachel was sleeping beside him, and as he eased quietly out of the bed he saw she was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and pink panties, and despite his illness he felt strongly aroused. He padded barefoot to the little kitchen area and got a bottle of water from the refrigerator.
He felt better now, clear headed and no longer shaking, but he knew the sickness would come back and he didn’t know if he could tolerate it again. She was right that the pills were addictive, but she was wrong to think it was safe to go cold turkey. Junkies and alcoholics sometimes died from sudden withdrawal. It was safer to taper off gradually. He thought if he could have just one pill, it would keep his sickness from being so violent, and then maybe just one more in a few hours, and eventually none at all. That was the safe way to do it.
He finished the bottle of water and crept around the bedroom, pulling on his clothes as quietly as possible. He opened the door noiselessly, shut it the same way, and hurried to his car. It was hard to drive; his hands felt numb and prickly on the wheel, and his foot against the pedal felt dead, as if it didn’t belong to him. Though his apartment was just a few blocks away, it was difficult to keep from speeding and running lights. When he reached the parking lot of his building, he raced inside in a sort of frenzy.
Ah! There was the bottle! He shook one pill into his hand and chewed it so it would dissolve more quickly. That sweet fragrant taste, almost like strawberries, made his tongue tingle with delight, and in less than a minute he felt that familiar comforting glow in his stomach. He sat on his bed, feeling waves of relief wash over him—but not quite enough relief, so he took one more.
He wanted to get back to the hotel before Rachel awoke. This would be his little secret. He was determined to kick this drug, whatever it was, but he was going to do it his own way, gradually. He put a small handful of pills in a plastic bag, thought for a moment and added a few more, and hid the bag in his pants pocket.
He drove back to the hotel with a sense of sweet serenity coursing through his limbs. He let himself back into the room very quietly and was happy to see she was still sleeping. As he was undressing he stumbled over one of her shoes in the dark, and she sat up and rubbed her eyes.
“You’re dressed,” she said.
“I had to go out for a short walk so my legs wouldn’t cramp. I’m feeling a little better now.”
“It sort of comes and goes,” she said. “But it never goes away for very long.”
He finished undressing, climbed in bed, and put his arms around her.
“You’ll become sexually aroused sometimes,” she said. “At least I did.” She giggled and added, “I still do, in fact. I told you I’d help you in any way I can, so if you need some relief…”
“That would be nice,” he said. He kissed her neck and then her lips.
***
In the morning he took one pill while she was having her shower. He desperately wanted another but resisted. Tapering off instead of going cold turkey might add a few days to the ordeal, but one way or another he was determined to kick this habit.
“Do you think you’ll be able to eat some breakfast?” she asked when she came out of the bathroom.
“I’ll try. I’m feeling a little better.”
She gave him a sharp look, and he was afraid she’d search his pants pocket and find his stash. “That’s weird,” she said. “For me the second day was worse than the first.”
He shrugged and said, “I guess we have different systems. And it’s not like I’m feeling great or anything.”
She was wearing nothing but a towel, and when she dropped it to get dressed, he stared at her slim body. Though he was a good-looking man he’d never had any luck with relationships. Too weird and withdrawn for ordinary women, he supposed, but Rachel was no ordinary woman.
“I think what we did last night helped a lot,” he said with shy grin.
She didn’t bother getting dressed. She climbed into bed with him, and by the time they were finished it was well past breakfast time. They lay pressed together with her back to him, his arms around her narrow shoulders and his face nuzzling her neck. He was thinking she’d be easy to fall in love with, and maybe she was the only woman in the world he dared fall in love with.
“I’m surprised you’re not feeling worse,” she said.
“I feel like crap, but holding you helps a lot.” It was half true; the one pill was enough to take the edge off, but his whole body was hungry for more. “I like you so much, Rachel. I wish we didn’t have…this problem.”
“I like you too,” she said. After a minute she asked, “Have you ever tried to Google the Gandalf Orphanage?”
“No.”
“You won’t find anything.”
“Maybe it’s closed down or changed its name.”
“You’d still find some reference. Somehow they’ve blacked it out, like it never existed.”
“Who do you think they are? Some government agency?”
“Maybe. Or maybe some corporation or a criminal organization like a drug cartel. Whoever it is, it’s a nice setup for somebody. You do their dirty work for them, and if you get caught you don’t know a damn thing. And then when you’re sitting in a jail cell with your drug wearing off, you start acting like a lunatic. So you spend the rest of your life in a psych ward raving about mad doctors and mind control, and nobody believes there was somebody else pulling your strings.”
“What do you mean, dirty work? You’re not talking about murder, are you?”
“Assassination is more like it. Look, Jack, today or tomorrow or sometime soon you’re going to start remembering some things you don’t want to remember.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to believe her but was beginning to.
“I want to find the orphanage,” she said. “After you’re feeling better, that is. If we can find it, we can tell the authorities we were abused there, and then somebody will have to investigate.”
“How do you plan to find it?”
“I remember it better every day, as the drug wears off. It was out in the country, surrounded by trees, and I think there were fields beyond the trees. It seemed like a new facility, and I think they built it out in the middle of a farm where it wouldn’t be easily seen. I’m beginning to remember being taken there. There were two other kids with me and some sort of guard or warden, and we were sitting in the back of a passenger van with the windows blacked out, but I could see some scenery through the windshield. I’m sure it was in Ohio. I’ve always lived here in Columbus, and that’s where they picked me up, and it wasn’t a terribly long drive, maybe an hour and a half.”
“There are a lot of farms in Ohio.”
“Yeah, but when we were getting close to the place the van had to keep slowing down because there were horses and buggies on the road. It was in Amish country, Jack, and I don’t think there’s a whole lot of Amish country in Ohio.”
“So we can drive around looking for it,” he said, “but if it’s hidden in a woods way off the road, how are we going to see it?”
“I’m hoping if we get close to it I’ll start recognizing some landmarks. It’s not much of a plan, but it’s the only one I can think of.”
“Let’s give it a try,” he said. “Let’s get going.”
“Not yet. You’re going to be too sick to be in a car today.”
“I’ll be okay if you drive. If I’m feeling bad I can lay down in the back seat. Look, nothing’s worse than
just sitting around here feeling helpless, waiting for some bastard to find us and give us electroshock treatments or something worse. I’ll feel better if we’re on the road making some kind of effort.”
He showered and got dressed. They decided to take his car because it was newer and had a more comfortable back seat. “Do you have an Ohio road map?” she asked before they set out.
“GPS.”
“GPS is good if you know the address you’re going to. If you don’t, a road map is better.”
She got a map from her old Toyota, came back to his car and studied it for a while. “We’ll take Route 62 up to Danville and then hit some of the back roads,” she said.
They stopped at a fast food place and ate in the car. He was able to keep his fish sandwich down and soon wished he’d bought another. It was a cool day, but not too cool to have the windows open, and for the first half hour it felt good to be on the road with breeze blowing on his face.
He stared contentedly at farm houses, old barns, and cows grazing in pastures until he began to feel dizzy and shaky. He asked her to pull over so he could move to the back seat, but lying down didn’t keep him from trembling.
After checking to make sure she wasn’t watching him through the rearview mirror, he sneaked one pill out of his pocket and swallowed it. Relief came quickly, but it wasn’t enough, and he had to bite his lip and pinch his arms to keep himself from taking another. Eventually the rocking of the car and the warm glow in his stomach let him drift into an uneasy half-sleep.
It wasn’t a restful sleep. He kept seeing Dr. Good sitting in a dim-lit room, watching him with dark piercing eyes. It seemed to him he’d been half asleep for about an hour when he felt the car slow down, turn, and stop. He sat up and saw they were sitting in the gravel driveway of a small country church. A few of the windows were broken, and the yard was overgrown with tall weeds.
“What are we doing here?” he asked.
“I’m not really sure,” Rachel said. “I think I recognize this place.”