“See, that’s the Kerri Hollis we need!” Andy cheered, laughing at her automatic shyness. “Kerri the Encyclopedia. ‘The brains of the team’!”
“Shit. You remember that.”
“Course I do. I’m sorry, I snooped around your place a little last night. I saw you keep the Telegraph too. My copy is somewhere in Tulsa, I think. Hey, at least you got a cool nickname.”
“She kind of gave you one too,” Kerri recalled. “You were not afraid, ‘despite being a girl’!” They delivered the quote together.
“Thanks for reminding me,” said Andy. “Can you believe a woman wrote that?”
Kerri gave her a tender look—the first one this side of the Harlem River. “It was meant to be a compliment, you know?”
Andy innerstruggled to keep her focus on the road.
“So, why was Nate put in Arkham? Why so far from home? His mother doesn’t like him?”
“He committed himself; he’s all grown up too,” said Kerri. “And he doesn’t live with his mother anymore. He doesn’t like her.”
A trailer truck roared past them.
“You ever visit him?”
“Not in Arkham, no. I saw him when he was in this other place upstate last year, McLean Hospital or something.”
“Why does he do it? Commit himself?”
“He thinks it’s good for him. He says it’s like a vacation. He spends the rest of his time buried in fantasy books and computers.”
“Why doesn’t he just go outside?”
“You know. He doesn’t like people.” She paused. “He always had issues.”
Andy waited for a development, then inquired, “What kind of issues?”
“You know.” Kerri was looking away again. “Broken home. Father left, mother drank. That’s why Aunt Margo took him in every school break. He had bouts of depression. He was bullied at school. All that.”
“Really? He seemed fine when he was with us.”
“Yeah. We were that awesome.”
Andy registered a rest area after the next exit. “Do you still want to go?”
Kerri consulted with her digestive system. “No. I’m fine. But I could use some cigarettes.”
Andy decided the nicotine would help her relax, so she pulled over.
—
They parked close to the highway, only a ten-feet-wide strip of incredibly resilient plant life away from the flow of eighteen-wheeled trucks. The world was wide and flat and smelled like oil. And it was mostly gray and damp and ugly. But for the last few minutes the cloudscape was shattering in patches of blue and the sun peeped through in funny angles, creating cool chiaroscuro effects, sparkling off the drizzle-washed amber bodywork of the Chevy Vega and infusing it with supporting character charisma.
Andy stepped out and touched the asphalt with her fingers. She always liked the feel of transit places. They’re thankful for the attention. Sunlight painted the scene with unsolicited detail: the plainest blade of spartan grass, the skin on Andy’s hand.
Tim escaped the car right after Kerri and ran off into the wild like a wolf released to repopulate New England. She called after him in vain.
“Christ, if only that energy could be harnessed,” she grunted, and turned to Andy. “Try and make sure he doesn’t, you know, go feral, eat children, and listen to satanic music.”
She headed to the minimarket, leaving Andy to try to imitate Kerri’s martial tone to call after the dog. Tim had hardly gotten used to Andy, but so far he seemed to respect her. In the old days, Sean was obedient to everyone in the group as well, but he performed his best with Kerri. Andy would have to win Tim over.
The Weimaraner reappeared in his own time, ever running, ears flapping in the wind, his crazed expression far from the “awaiting command” range.
Andy knelt down and put her hand forward. Tim approached to smell it, realized she had nothing important to tell him, and roamed off again.
“Hey, Tim! Come back! Come!”
He trotted back describing a wide arc, every pebble on the way deserving his hummingbird attention. Andy was checking her pockets for a treat when her fingers touched something better.
She did a quick mental self-inspection: despite all the tempers and the impending doom, she felt fine since she had reunited with Kerri. Maybe it was time to pass her security blanket on.
“Come here, boy. Come here.”
She knelt to make the dog understand this was specifically for him, waited until Tim came close, and tossed the plastic penguin at his feet. Sunrays quickly spotlighted it in high definition.
Tim simply smelled the novelty, considering its edibility. Then Andy stretched forward and squeezed it gently. It squeaked.
Tim stepped back, the countenance of eighteenth-century gentlemen first meeting a time-traveler in his face.
For the next two minutes he continued to sniff the penguin from every conceivable angle, learned how to make it squeak by pounding it with his paw, learned how to stand on three legs to pound it, and finally took it in his mouth and hopped back into the car.
Kerri returned a little later, a cigarette between her teeth, marigold hair rejoicing under the new light.
“You know, in frontal view, it can almost pass for a sports car from far enough away,” she commented. She stopped a couple yards before the station wagon and tilted her head. “Not in profile, though; then it’s like a hearse for dwarves. It’d look cool with a black racing stripe.”
Then she glanced inside. Tim, lying on the narrow backseat, made the penguin between his forelegs squeak for her, an intense Can we keep it, Mom? look in his Dickensian orphan eyes.
“You gave him a squeaky toy?” she asked Andy.
“Yeah, it’s my, like, you know…a stress-relief thing. I thought it would help him focus.”
They read each other, then Andy dodged Kerri’s look and sneaked into the car.
“You suffer from stress,” Kerri said, getting in. It wasn’t so much a question as a line of questioning.
“Not stress, just—” Andy buckled up, pressed cancel on that sentence and started a new one. “They think I have aggression issues.”
“Oh. I hope you launched their gonads into orbit for their diagnosis.”
“I couldn’t,” said Andy, impervious to sarcasm. “It was the military doctors.”
“The military said you have aggression issues,” Kerri recapped. “Good. Not meaningful at all.”
—
Xira the Princess Warrior returned just in time to Actheon’s citadel during the commercial break and Adam shushed Craig, who had just initiated a tirade over Kimrean’s implausible sexual exploits. Nate did not share Adam’s passion for Xira, but found it an entertaining format. And Adam’s zealotry in itself was comforting, when compared with Nate’s hardly unhealthy penchant for the sword and wizardry genre. That was about the sum of the benefits of being institutionalized: living with crazier people helped put things into perspective.
“So, Blyton Hills,” said Old Acker.
The man had just sat down in the armchair next to Nate’s, his raspy voice entangled in the threads of his white beard. Nate checked him out, his astonishment only surfacing as a mere frown, as required by his veteran inmate persona. This was clearly in violation of the Geneva seating conventions.
“Uh-huh,” he replied.
“That’s in the Pacific Northwest, in the Cascades,” said Acker, glimpses of his old academic life poking through. “Near Sleepy Lake, is that right?”
“Indeed,” Nate pinged back, taking another drag.
“In the area the Walla Walla Indians called Land of Deadly Shadows.”
“I think even they agree to call it Oregon now.”
“Mentioned by Simón de Urribia in his Book of the Last World, whose American translator was burned during the Salem witch trials.”
“Christ, why does every single horror story have to make a connection with Salem?” Nate ranted. “It’s like, I don’t know, are you implying something actually demonic
happened there? Because I’m sorry to tell you it was only a bunch of Christian fanatics burning women and being massive fuckheads; stop giving credit to their actions.”
Acker didn’t seem sidetracked. Instead, he added: “Named the Sea of Yottha in the Necronomicon.”
The last puff of smoke out of Nate’s mouth hurried away from the awkward silence.
“That book doesn’t exist.”
Acker did not reply. Instead, always at grandfather speed, he produced from his breast pocket a crayon stolen from the art room and a newspaper from the rack, and he started drawing in a margin. It began with two basic strokes, combined into a five-pointed star. Nate watched with badly faked disinterest as the little figure grew long, angry-angled branches, and tortured spirals, and arrowheads stabbing the original figure, nudging the sound of the TV into the background and causing sunlight to dim, and time to slow down, and Nate’s heart to suddenly adjourn the next beat.
Old Acker put away the crayon. Nate commanded his throat to swallow.
“That’s a fake,” he argued. “It’s from Clint Sorhein’s short story ‘The Secret Gate to Kathom,’ 1959.”
“That’s not where I got it from,” Acker teased, a wrinkled hand alluding to his beard and the yellow uniform that distinguished patients at Arkham. “I can tell you reading science fiction is not what landed me here.”
He peered over his spectacles and into Nate’s eyes.
“You’ve seen symbols like this before. You’ve been there. Things live at the bottom of that lake and under the hills. Ancient, corrupt things that are not granted the gift of death by their cruel gods.”
Nate breathed deeply, striving to pull his God, I’m surrounded by crazy people mask over his true fear.
“You’ve seen them, as the Indians did, stealing out into the world they once claimed. You felt, deep below the water, the heaving slumber of the quiescent monstrosity they call Father, whispering your name.”
“Rogers.”
Nate popped back into the asylum’s living room, unprecedentedly quiet. All the inmates’ attention was funneled into the hallway behind Nurse Angela.
“You have visitors,” the nurse announced.
“Ooh, women!” Kimrean pointed out.
Kerri peeked into the bleached living room.
Sitting in a grandmother armchair, clad in yellow, Nate Rogers, 24, caffeinated blue eyes and blond hair cropped to half an inch, stares back, holding the trembling ash ghost of a cigarette between his fingers.
“Hey, Nate.”
Every single crazy person in the room turned to Nate. He rose to his feet.
“Hey.”
Kerri took a breath, orange hair gathering strength, strode into the room, and hugged her cousin. Andy thought she heard Kerri’s curls sighing for real, objectively loud, until she realized it had been the other patients.
“Hi, Andy,” Nate greeted over Kerri’s shoulder, arms around her parka. “Long time.”
Kerri wished she had come to visit him sooner.
—
They switched to the nonsmoking parlor, where they could smoke and be alone. It was literally four papered walls around a table and three chairs. Nate had never stepped in it before, but he automatically knew how to use it; he took the solo chair at the far side of the table and let the girls sit across from him.
Andy had not seen Nate since he was fifteen. He didn’t look that different: pale, blue-eyed, more worn but still fragile. His body looked like it still had a growth spurt left to hit.
“So how’ve you been?” Kerri started.
“Groovy.” He dragged on one of her cigarettes and ashed it in a flowerpot. “Place is nice. Good people. Apart from those claiming a mental disorder that compels them to steal my socks.”
“Kleptomania?”
“Oh, it’s a thing? Shit. I owe someone an apology.” His right hand played with Kerri’s lighter. Such devices were discouraged in the ward. “Anyway, how are you? How’s…Tim, was it?”
“Fine! Fine, he’s three already. A bit unruly, but honoring his ancestors. He’s in the car right now.”
“Oh, good. The whole family’s here,” he said, just the teensiest bit overacted. Enough for Andy to hold her frown for a little longer. “So what’s the occasion?”
“Well…” tiptoed Andy. “We came for you. We’re putting the band back together.”
“Oh, really?” he said in interested-mom pitch. “What’s come up? A damsel in distress? Sheep smugglers?”
“No, we…we’re reopening the Sleepy Lake monster case.”
—
A thrush on the lakeshore looked up toward the horizon spiked with fir trees and took flight with an agitated wingbeat.
—
Nate continued to smoke, the ghost of a smile on his face. His eyes pinged Kerri just once, enough to be persuaded she was into it too, and returned to Andy.
“All right. Let’s do it.”
He squished the cigarette in the flowerpot and sat up, avid for orders.
Andy and Kerri didn’t move for another minute.
“So…” Andy began, and resumed, much later, “You okay with this?”
“Hell yeah. About damn time, if you ask me.”
The girls sidechecked each other in a brief reaction shot.
“In fact, I don’t know what kept me from taking the initiative myself,” Nate elaborated. “I mean, how much longer could we go on ignoring the elephant in the lake?”
“So, you’re willing to come?” Kerri asked. “To Blyton Hills?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.” Andy checked Kerri again. “So…We’re good to go?”
“I guess.”
No one stood up.
“Okay, let’s go then,” said Andy, willing herself onto her feet.
“Let’s,” said Nate, following suit.
“On our way! Gonna solve the shit out of that mystery!” said Andy, leading them out into the corridor. “Sleepy Lake won’t know what fucking hit it.”
“Hell yeah!”
“Where do you think you’re going?” said the head nurse.
They stopped at the end of the corridor, two inches from the stairway.
“Oh, right,” said Nate, noticing his yellow uniform. “That’s what kept me.”
The girls confronted the armfolded nurse behind the counter, an overacted frown on her face, like this was the weirdest thing she had ever witnessed in that building.
“But you committed yourself,” Kerri told Nate. “Can’t you just uncommit?”
“Mr. Rogers chose to put himself into our care until the doctors see it fit to discharge him,” the nurse intoned in her wild attempt for a sweet, diplomatic voice.
“Can’t he take a leave of absence or something?” Kerri wondered.
“You’ve been fucking with us,” Andy accused Nate.
“Partly,” Nate said. “I didn’t want to rain on your parade. I loved the we’re on a mission from God pose and everything. But I was serious about Blyton Hills.” He shrugged innocuously. “We should go.”
“Really?” Kerri still had trouble believing that.
“Sure. I’ve done a lot of thinking too. Shit, if there’s something we do in this place it’s thinking. It’s not all bouncing in padded cell rooms and riding wheelchairs to Waterloo,” he said with a flourish. “That’s Tuesdays.”
“But how are you gonna get out?”
“He needs a straitjacket,” Andy said, and repeated for the nurse on her way out, “Put him in a straitjacket.”
“Loved seeing you too,” Nate grumbled.
“I’m serious,” she told him. “And get a helmet. Tomorrow, high noon. We’re doing a reverse werewolf trap.”
And she grabbed Kerri by the wrist and left through the stairwell, leaving Nate standing on the limits of his privilege area.
“A reverse— Andy, wait! There is no skylight in here!”
—
Twenty-four hours later, Nate was sitting on his armchair, being bound.
“What are we doing?” Kimrean wondered.
“It’s a game. Buckle this up,” Nate said, wiggling his left shoulder. “Tighter.”
“I get it’s a game, but why aren’t we using Chuck the Plant as usual?”
“Because the orderlies said it’s wrong to play with the catatonics,” Craig grumbled. “Pull that strap! You’re doing it wrong.”
It takes two madmen to put a straitjacket on a third—the answer to an old philosophical question. The jacket itself had not been difficult to obtain; since Kimrean had been transferred to that floor, the orderlies always kept one on hand at the nurses’ station, just in case of a particularly heated argument with his inside voices. Safety devices are usually easy to borrow in psychiatric hospitals because of the staff’s mistaken assumption that patients won’t possibly find a way to use them to harm themselves or others. It takes a while in the yellow uniform to grasp the reach of a patient’s imagination for mischief. The helmet had been trickier to procure: Nate had had to steal it from the locker of the head nurse, who rode a scooter to work. It offered no jaw protection, just the skull, but it would have to do.
A bloodcurdling roar came through the TV’s low-fi speaker. It was Xira time again.
“The hounds of Tindalos have been released!” Adam and Princess Irya warned in unison.
“Back off!” Xira ordered, brandishing her ax.
Kimrean suddenly let go of the straps and gave Nate an asymmetric, squinting gaze. “Is that true? You’re leaving?”
Nate tried his best to stare back at either the green eye or the brown one. “Who told you that?”
“You are, aren’t you?” If anything, Kimrean sounded saddened to lose a playground friend.
Old Acker was slouching toward the armchairs. Nate, sitting with his knees up, acknowledged him with a nod. The straitjacket didn’t allow for much loquacious body language.
“Land of Deadly Shadows, eh?” Nate said casually.
“I wouldn’t dare go within a hundred miles of that lake” was heard from the thickness of Acker’s beard. “You must have your reasons.”
“I’ve got unfinished business to attend to.”
Acker nodded, then sat down in Craig’s armchair, since Craig was too engaged in an argument to notice. Nate closed in as well as he could, trying to conceal their conversation from daylight.
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