by R. W. Ridley
The Pure:
Book Three of the Oz Chronicles
by
R.W. Ridley
Single ‘R’ Imprint
Middlebury House Publishing,
Printed in USA
Copyright © 2007 R.W Ridley
All Rights Reserved
ISBN10: 0-9792067-2-3
ISBN13: 978-0-9792067-2-6
Library of Congress Control Number: Pending
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
First Edition
The Pure
DEDICATION:
As always For Mom, Dad, and Marianna
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
No one writes in a vacuum. I truly appreciate the support and input from all my friends, family, the good people of Tullahoma, TN, and the fans of Book One and Book Two. I hope Book Three lives up to your expectations.
ONE
The dead watch me when I sleep. As you can imagine, I don’t get a lot of sleep.
I don’t know what they want with me, but the hate in their lifeless eyes doesn’t suggest they want to throw me a party.
“There’s all kinds of dead in the Délon’s world.” That’s what my best friend, Gordy Flynn, told me right before his dead sister tried to have me as an after-life snack. Then again, it’s possible that didn’t happen at all. It’s possible I imagined the whole thing. Even Gordy. I don’t know anymore.
My room is dark. Even in the daytime. A single fluorescent light flickers above my head. It gives off the illusion that the walls are breathing. At least I hope it’s an illusion. I don’t have a view of the outside world. I can’t recall ever seeing it since I’ve been in this... “facility.” I’m not even sure what kind of “facility” it is. Judging by the crazy people that walk the halls, I’m guessing it’s a loony bin, but I don’t want to think that because it will mean I’m one of the crazies.
The things in my mind, the things I see and remember, I should think I’m crazy, but I can’t quite let myself believe it. Maybe that’s what a crazy person would believe. Canter, the half-crab, half-man freak that visits me every night, wants me to believe I’m crazy. I don’t know why, because if I’m crazy, he’s just a figment of my imagination, and he doesn’t really exist. I hear the locks on my door slide back, and the door opens. Chester, the giant orderly steps inside. “You ready, little man?”
I sit on my bed, exhausted from watching the dead watch me all night. “Don’t call me that.”
“What should I call you?” Chester snickers.
“My name’s Oz.”
“All right, Oz, you ready? Doc’s on a tight schedule.”
I don’t stand right away. I’m testing him. “What is a DH?”
“A what?”
“A DH. I overheard the pharmacist call me a DH.”
He steps farther into the room. He lowers his head and peers down at me. “You don’t need to concern yourself with that. Now, c’mon. Let’s go.”
I fold my arms over my chest. “What is it?”
He sighs and rubs one of his giant hands on the back of his neck. “You’re killing me, little man... Oz.”
“Tell me, and I’ll go with you.”
He chuckles. “You’re coming with me no matter what.” “Not without a fight. I’ll go willingly if you tell me.”
He thinks it over. “I ain’t in the mood for no fight today.”
He looks over his shoulder to make sure nobody is within earshot.
Back to me. “Double homicide.”
“What?”
“DH stands for double homicide.”
I can feel the blood rush to my cheeks. I’m embarrassed, and I’m not sure that’s the proper reaction. I should be angry. “I don’t like that.”
“You asked,” Chester says. “Now get up, or Dr. Graham is going to sick a skinner on me.”
I cock my head. Did I hear what I think I heard? “A what?”
“Get up!” he barks.
“What did you just say?” I bark back.
“I said get up, or Dr. Graham is going to skin me alive.” He grabs my arm and yanks me to my feet.
“You said ‘skinner.” I say dragging my feet as he forces me to the door.
“I said no such thing because I don’t know what in tarnation a skinner is. You’re hearing things.” He tosses me in the hallway. “You broke your word. You said if I told you what DH meant you wouldn’t put up a fight. You’re fighting me like a cat going in a bag.”
“You said skinner.”
“Fine,” Chester says. “If it will make you feel better I said skinner.”
It doesn’t make me feel better.
The hallway is lined with crazies. Some crazier than others. A short man with saggy jowls compulsively sticks his dentures out of his mouth and sucks them back in over and over again. He has a vacant look in his eyes.
A fat woman with a see-through hairdo farts, and the sound scares her as if someone had just snuck up behind her and screamed “boo” in her ear.
We turn the corner following the yellow line on the floor. Ahead of us to the right, leaning against a door jamb, is a man with no eyes or nose. His face looks as though it has been scooped out. I stare in disgusted awe.
“Stop eyeballing me, boy,” Scoop-face demands.
How did he know?
“Relax, Mr. Maynard,” Chester says. “Don’t nobody want to look at your ugly face.”
Scoop-face chuckles. “The uglier you are the more people stare. You ought to know that, Chester.” He laughs revealing his toothless mouth. “Where you taking the young crazy?”
I am struck by his use of the word ‘young.’ According to Dr. Graham, I’m forty years old. The same age I imagine Scoop-face is. Although, it’s hard to tell. But then again, he can’t even see me. Can he?
“Dr. Graham’s. And you need to get your eyes checked. This crazy ain’t but a few years younger than you.”
“Ha-ha,” Scoop-face replies sarcastically. “Ain’t nothing wrong with my eyes.” He sticks out his slimy tongue, flicking it like a snake. Drool forms on his chin. He slurps it back in his mouth. “You’re crazy, don’t taste no older than a boy. Fourteen or fifteen, I’d say.”
We pass the poor disfigured soul. Chester is half-dragging me as I look at the man in total amazement.
“Say something, young crazy,” Scoop-face barks. “Let me hear you talk.”
I say the first thing that comes to my mind. “What happened to your face?”
He hesitates. If he had eyes they would have been wide open. He is surprised by my voice. “It’s you.”
Chester tosses me ahead of him. “You’re wearing on my last nerve, Oz. Get it in gear or I’m going to put you in restraints.”
The threat is enough to get me to change my attitude quickly. I have experienced the restraints before. I don’t know why or when, but I have a vivid memory of the fear and pain. I know I never want to experience that again.
I feel the eyeless stare of Scoop-face as we turn the corner.
***
Dr. Graham is annoyed by me today. I haven’t done anything, but his impatience for my mere existence is obvious in the way he sits in
his chair. He purses his lips together as he taps his Bic pen on a small yellow notepad in his lap.
“That’s weird,” I say.
The doctor stops tapping the pen. “What’s weird?”
“I never thought of it before.” I stare at the pen.
He twirls his penned hand signaling me to elaborate. “You’re using a pen... and paper.”
“I often do when I want to write something down,” the doctor says.
I scratch my head. “But this is... the 2030s, I would think we’d have come up with something better by now. More high tech.”
The doctor smiles. “If it makes you feel any better, the pen does have a nice cushiony easy grip.”
I look at his clothes. “Styles haven’t changed much in 30 years.”
He looks down at his coat. “It’s hard to improve on the white lab coat.” He writes something on the yellow pad. “What year would you like it to be, Oz?” A smirk forms on his face.
I watch him write. Ignoring his question I say, “I didn’t kill anyone.”
He stops writing and looks at me, right eyebrow raised, lips taut.
“I know that’s what you want me to believe...”
“I want you to get better, Oz. I’m afraid that may mean you facing some uncomfortable truths.” His posture changes. He’s gone from irritated to confused. He doesn’t know what to do next.
“How did I do it?” The words come out of my mouth with little thought. I am instantly sorry I asked the question. I pray he won’t answer.
“You tell me,” he says. He is studying me. This is some game they teach you in shrink school. If I play, he wins.
I twist in my chair and face the opposite wall.
“Very well, Oz.” He clears his throat. “New topic. Do you know a woman by the name of Millie B. Story?”
“No.” I answer with my back still to him.
“She’s written me,” the doctor says.
“Congratulations.”
“She wants permission to visit with you.”
I slowly turn toward him. I run the name over and over again in my head. I can’t place it. “Why?”
When a shrink asks you a question, even if it’s the simplest question in the world, you have to measure your response carefully. He cares more about how you answer than what you answer. He is mining your face, your body, your tone for the secret to who you really are. The truth is I didn’t know who I was, and I didn’t want the doc finding out before me.
“I don’t know her,” I say, coating every inch of my response in disinterest. In point of fact, I am dying to know who she is. “But if she wants to visit me, let her visit me. What do I care?”
I can see the gears turning in the doc’s head. “I’ll give it some thought.” He returns to tapping his pen on the yellow notepad. “We should return to last week’s session.”
“What about it?”
“Some things remain unanswered,” he says as he flips through his notebook. “The Source, for one.” He clears his throat. “We still don’t know where or what it is.”
“Does it matter?”
He looks surprised. “I believe it does. It’s the key to you getting better. I’m sure of it.”
“I’m not so sure.” I look at my hands. They are unnaturally old. “It’s just crazy talk.”
He shakes his head. “We don’t like that word, Oz.” “What word?”
“Crazy. Crazy is used by people who don’t understand how the mind works.”
I snicker. “Then it’s okay for me to use it because I don’t understand how the mind works.”
“Nevertheless, I’d prefer if we steer clear of that word.” He is stern but sympathetic.
I shrug my shoulders.
He looks back at his notepad. “You know...” he says as he jots something down in the margins of the pad. “You mentioned that there were nine dogs.”
“Yeah,” I say impatiently.
“Well, all but Kimball seem to be missing from the end of your last story.” He flips through the pages. “Yes, yes, Kimball is with Wes and the others, but you don’t mention the other dogs.”
I run the story over in my head. “Oh... hmmmm. I don’t know. Is that important?”
The doc taps his pen on the notepad. “I’m not sure. I just find it puzzling.”
I share his bewilderment. I had not given those other dogs a second thought until now. They just disappeared. Perhaps my twisted imagination was running dry.
Doctor Graham stands unexpectedly. The act of it startles me. His hands fall to his waist, right hand holding the notepad, the left holding the pen. I scan them quickly. Just a week ago, he had a purple rash. No signs of it now.
“Perhaps, we should try another regression.” He motions for me to enter the back part of his office. I look past him and stare at the couch. My throat goes dry. I can hear the blood rushing through my head. I am glued to my chair.
“Oz?” he says.
I am frozen. The sound of the metronome hits me for the first time. Has it been going the whole time?
“I...” My palms start to sweat. I look up at him. “Not today, Doc.” The room starts to spin.
When Doctor Graham talks, he sounds a million miles away. “The Pure won’t be happy.”
The room starts to vibrate. I feel a thump in my throat. I think it’s clogging my ears. It sounded like the doc just said something about the Pure. “Oz,” his voice is now strikingly clear. “It’s purely up to you. I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to.”
I shake my head and blow out a big puff of air. “I want to go back to my room. Can I?” It feels strange for me to call it “my room.” Part of me finds the phrase completely foreign although I know I have spoken it before.
“Of course,” Doctor Graham taps a silver bell on his desk. It lets out a high-pitched tone that screeches through the room. It’s oddly low-tech. Just one more thing that doesn’t fit.
Chester enters the room. “Trouble?”
“No...” the doctor looks at me with a sympathy I did not think he was capable of. “No, not at all. Oz isn’t feeling well. Can you escort him back to his room?” He turns to walk to his desk, but then stops. “Have Nurse Kline put Mr. Griffin on her rounds tonight. I want her looking in on him every hour.” He addresses me with a loud and deliberate tone. “Just as a precaution, Oz. For your own good.”
I am too disoriented to argue. Besides, maybe she’ll keep the dead away.
***
I spend the journey back to the room wondering why the doc asked me about the dogs. It seems to be a ridiculously unimportant point. There are so many other things he could ask me about.
As I walk through the hallway with Chester’s meaty hand wrapped around my upper arm, I begin to wonder myself what happened to the dogs.
“Snarkel, snapper, momma, jaws!” a young kid shouts from the doorway of his room. “Snarkel, snapper, momma, jaws spot, jumper,” he says with a grin. He’s obviously very happy that he’s caught my attention. The young man is emaciated. His elbows look sharp as knives and his cheekbones look like small mountains on his otherwise sunken face. “Hambone, Charlie boy.”
I smile politely and nod.
He winks. “It’s a secret code.”
“It’s crazy code,” Chester laughs.
“Dr. Graham doesn’t like that word,” I say, eyes shifting upward as Chester tightens his grip on my arm.
“Yeah?” Chester says. “I don’t like taxes, but I still gotta pay ‘em... most of them... some of them.” He turns to the skinny young man and shoots him a menacing glare. “Back in your room, Bones. Don’t nobody want to hear your code today.”
Bones backs up. “Snarkel’s going to get you. You’ll see.”
Chester raises a brawny fist as we continue down the hall. “I got something for Snarkel when he comes to get me.” He laughs loudly and alone.
We turn the corner. Scoop-face’s room is just ahead. I am relieved that he is not there. Beyond his disf
igurement, or maybe because of the enormity of it, I am deeply unsettled by him. He seems to have an eerie peace about his... affliction. I can understand a man adjusting to the loss of an arm or a leg. There are prosthetics to help you cope, to simulate the missing extremity and a passable number of functions it once served. But to lose a face? There is no prosthetic to replace that. None that I had ever heard of, anyway.
We round another corner and reach my room. Chester pushes me inside. He pulls the door shut quickly and punches in a code on the keypad next to the door. I hear the lock tumble and click into place. He looks through the eight-inch square window and sprouts a vindictive little grin. “Good night,” his muffled voice cracks. “Don’t let the shunters bite.”
I stop mid breath as I’m exhaling and scan his grinning face. Did he just say shunter? I step toward the door with my eyes fixed on his mouth.
He nods. “What?” He doesn’t like my expression.
“Say it again,” I say, just shy of demanding.
He shakes his head. “You really are the lunatic fringe, little man.” With that, he moves away from the small window and moves down the hall.
***
The next face I see in the small window is Nurse Kline’s. An hour earlier I cried myself to sleep. My mind collapsed in on itself. I had never felt more out of place in my entire life. At least, I think I hadn’t. As I was breaking down, I felt as if I had done it before, many times before, yet I had no memory of it. The feeling of it was new and frighteningly painful.
My eyes closed, and my brain almost completely shut down, I begin to feel the movement around me. They’re here. The dead. Crawling, walking, zooming all around me. I can smell them. I am afraid to open my eyes. One tugs at my sheet. Another one runs its clammy fingers through my hair.
“Osmond,” one whispers.
Another one gargles something incoherent yet terrifying. The tone of its voice is set in a level of anger I can’t even begin to imagine.
Finally, it is too much for me to bear. I open my eyes and back against the corner of the iron headboard that meets the wall. I am breathing so erratically, I am almost hyperventilating. The room is dim, illuminated by the sparse light poking through the window on the door. I see the figure of a pale child scamper across the room, his bare feet slapping against the cold concrete floor. He turns to me just before he disappears into the darkest corner. His face is rotted. Worms crawl from his exposed cheekbone. His nose is hanging by a flap of skin. I scream at the sight of it. He vanishes into the darkness.