by David Beers
Which was what Luke wanted, what he needed.
The guard turned the door handle and both walked in.
“We’ll be right outside if you need us,” the guard said, looking at Christian.
“Thank you, sir,” Luke said. The guard gave him a glance and then walked back out, closing the door.
Christian sat.
“My lawyers think this could be construed as witness intimidation, despite the fact that you were charged with assault and battery on me. Not even mentioning the fact that I’m chained, and you’re not.”
“Why did you want me to come?”
“I thought you might need a break from the apparitions.”
“I don’t.”
“Then why are you here?” Luke asked.
Christian was silent.
“Tell me, are you getting headaches?”
Christian closed his eyes but said nothing.
“You are. It’s getting worse, isn’t it? What’s happening in your head?”
Christian swallowed.
“I promise it’ll be over soon. We’re so very close now. Do you feel it?” Luke asked.
Christian opened his eyes. “It will be over, but not in any way you could possibly mean.”
“You know that’s not true.”
The two held each other’s eyes for a minute without speaking.
“How many times have you told me that, Christian? How many times have you said that what I want won’t happen? It always does, though, and you know it. It will this time, too. If you didn’t believe that, you wouldn’t have come. You don’t have any speeches for me, Christian. No grand declarations about how I’m going to die and you’ll be watching. You came because I asked, and that’s the only reason, is it not?”
“Then just tell me what you want so that I can leave,” Christian said.
Luke placed his hands together, the metal chain scraping across the table. “I told my lawyer we won’t discuss the trial, and as you know, I don’t like lying. Please don’t mention what I was forced to do in the mountains. It isn’t my proudest moment, but it was necessary. I’m sure you agree.” Luke smiled. “Let’s talk about something else. What’s happening with you?”
“You’re fucking kidding me,” Christian said. “I didn’t come here to discuss my current state.”
“Why not? I’m still a psychiatrist, though I think the American Board of Psychiatry is in the process of revoking my license. They haven’t done it yet, though.”
“I’m leaving,” Christian said, standing up from the table.
“Christian.” Luke’s voice grabbed hold of the room, refusing to let anyone leave. “Sit. Down.”
The two men stared at each other, Luke’s eyes daring him to disobey, daring anything in the world to disobey.
Christian sat down.
“Thank you,” Luke said. “Now tell me, please, what’s going on inside of you.”
Christian was still, not breaking eye contact. After a few seconds he leaned back in his chair and slumped down. He closed his eyes.
“The mansion is crumbling. I can’t fix it. It’s desolate. Even your floor is empty. There’s nothing for me in it, anymore.” Luke couldn’t see the tears because Christian’s eyes were closed, but he heard them in his voice. “The apparitions are always here, and I’m becoming more like them. I’m turning into them. The things they think … hell, the things they say, I find myself saying them too.”
Christian stopped speaking for a few seconds.
“What else?”
He sighed. “I know that there isn’t any way to stop it. Whatever is happening to me is going to keep happening until it eats me alive. Until I’m just a nutcase with no clue as to what’s happening around me.” He opened his eyes. “I’m going to kill myself before that happens.”
“You don’t have to do any of that, Christian. You don’t have to suffer anymore. And you know it.”
Christian shook his head, tears welling heavy in his eyes, ready to spill down his cheeks.
“Yes you do,” Luke said. “You know that you can end all of that. You can have any life you want, if you just embrace that life.”
“That’s not true. Not anymore.”
“Yes, it is. Remember that. Remember this conversation in the days that are coming. If you think hard, Christian, you’ll understand the truth of what I’m saying. You can have whatever life you want, if you simply let yourself. Do you remember what I told you before?”
Christian nodded.
“You’re free. You still are. You’ve thought that you were. That’s why you went to Mexico. That’s why you said what you did to that committee. You realized, though, when Veronica held the knife to her neck, that you weren’t free yet. You still held onto some vestige of the constraints society throws upon you. Shake them off, Christian. You don’t need them anymore. You’re close, and that means I’m close. So come with me.”
Another three months passed before the trial took place.
By any measurement, it would be the most followed trial in the country’s history. The players were ready, all knowing their role.
All except Christian.
For the next three months he withdrew from everyone. He was not seen on the streets, though reporters tried to catch glimpses of the scarred hero. He was not seen coming or going from his house. His phone was turned off, and he refused to answer written correspondence—which drove the Attorney General and the D.C. District Attorney absolutely mad. They could have forced him to come to them, but knew they were dealing with a fragile individual.
“He said he would play ball. There’s no reason to think he won’t,” Welcs told the DA.
“How do I know what he’s going to say when he gets up on the stand if I can’t work with him beforehand?”
“His doctorate is in psychology. He’ll know what to say.”
Even so, the DA—Nicholas Dreamond—went to Christian’s house and knocked on the door repeatedly for ten minutes. He yelled a few things, hoping that might bring the recluse to the door, but to no avail. Dreamond left his card.
Christian sat through it all. The reporters. The letters. The people knocking on his door. He ordered food in a few times a week, always late at night when no one would be watching. He lost 20 pounds, though he could hardly afford to lose any weight.
Luke’s words remained with him like a jobless adult does at their parents’ house. No matter what Christian did, he couldn’t shake them.
He spent his days and nights in darkness, though he rarely slept. The other and the mouth kept him company, offering their opinions on what he should do.
The other was of the opinion that he should kill himself.
The mouth was of the opinion that he somehow smuggle a gun into the courtroom and kill Luke, then spray off a few rounds just for the fun of it.
Christian found himself caught in the middle of the two opinions, thinking both sounded better and better with each passing day.
Free yourself.
Kill yourself.
Kill everyone else.
The thoughts dogged him constantly, and so he did the only thing that made any sense: he turned his air conditioning down extremely low and lay on his living room floor, staring up at the dark ceiling. He did this for the better part of each day.
He knew what he was supposed to do at trial. He was supposed to go on the stand and say that in his opinion, Luke Titan was capable of knowing right from wrong, and at the time of his numerous crimes, he was definitely in possession of said knowledge.
Free yourself.
That’s not what Luke meant, though, was it? Not really. Yes, the words had passed from his lips, but what had he actually been saying?
Free yourself.
“He wants you to kill him,” the other said. He was laying next to Christian, staring up at the ceiling fan.
“You’re saying he wants me to do what the mouth suggests?”
“No. Don’t be dense.”
Of course that wasn’
t what Luke wanted. Christian couldn’t simply bring a gun into the courthouse and start blasting. That would give Luke absolutely no satisfaction, nor would it fit into his grand plan. His war on God.
Christian laughed, the shrillness echoing off the walls and coming back to his own ears.
Free yourself.
“You’re not in control, Christian,” the mouth said, “but I’m beginning to think Luke might be.”
Christian agreed with the mouth, and not for the first time that day. He was thinking the exact same thing.
Chapter 11
District Attorney Nicholas Dreamond called witness Christian Windsor to the stand on the fifth day of the trial.
He didn’t want to take the chance of having a hostile, unpredictable witness on the stand, and had made that known to everyone involved. No one cared; no one listened to him. Senator Franklin especially applied heavy pressure on him.
“He’ll play ball. He wants Titan dead as much as the rest of us.”
So, there wasn’t much choice for Nicholas Dreamond.
“Your honor, the prosecution calls Christian Windsor as its next witness.”
The courtroom was still. Out of every witness to be called, he was perhaps the most anticipated—the person the papers fawned over, all of them willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for pictures of the man now walking to the witness stand.
Windsor stood from the gallery and entered the court, stepping through the small gate that separated the spectators from the participants.
“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“I do,” the man said.
Everyone in the courtroom watched, some even holding their breath—the judge included—as Windsor took the stand. Dreamond approached and laid eyes on the person who held so much weight in the jury’s eyes. The man that Titan had tortured for years on end. The man who, beneath his suit and tie, had scars unlike anyone else in the entire city.
Windsor held Dreamond’s gaze.
The scar, Dreamond thought. He got that because the man sitting just behind you stabbed him right through the face. What would you do if you were in his position? Would you want to send that man to the electric chair, or would you want him to live out the rest of his life in a nice, clean, asylum?
Dreamond nodded slightly, understanding how silly he had been to doubt where this was heading. Very soon after today, Titan would be wearing an electric crown.
The room was quiet for everyone except Christian. The mouth was flying around the ceiling, sticking to the walls’ edges, and kept screaming “WOOOOO!” as if it was on some kind of damned roller coaster.
The other stood in front of Luke’s table. Luke sat in the middle of his team of lawyers. The other paid them no mind, only looking at Luke like a child wishing his father would pay him some attention. He cried his silent, bloody tears and stared, as depressed as ever.
The room followed Christian, but he was doing everything he could just to keep from screaming.
Things had gotten bad. Very, very bad.
“Dr. Windsor, would you care to discuss your academic accomplishments, just so that the jury has an understanding you’re not speaking as a layman?”
Christian closed his eyes and swallowed.
“WOOOOOOO! WATCH ME, CHRISTIAN!” the mouth yelled from above, whipping around the room’s perimeter.
Breathe, he thought.
And then another, stranger thought, but one that fit. Find Luke.
Christian opened his eyes and flicked them in Luke’s direction. Luke was staring back at him and their eyes connected. The room silenced, the mouth and the other disappearing.
Christian sighed and felt tears wanting to come to his eyes. Tears of relief. Tears of happiness, just to have a moment’s break from this endless torture.
“Dr. Windsor?” the District Attorney said.
Christian didn’t look away from Luke.
“I earned dual PhDs in both psychology and theoretical physics, both from Stanford University.”
“By what age?”
“Twenty-one.”
“At what age did you graduate from Quantico, the FBI training headquarters?” the DA asked.
“Twenty-three.”
Dreamond paused and followed Christian’s eyes, seeing that they stared directly at Titan. Christian couldn’t tell if he had a problem with it or not, but only knew that he wouldn’t pull them away for all the world’s Subway sandwiches.
The attorney turned back to Christian.
“Can you briefly explain how you know Luke Titan?”
“I was assigned to the Exceptional Crimes Unit out of Quantico. Luke Titan and Tommy Phillips were the two agents already working in the group. I met him there.”
“And, Dr. Windsor, how long did you work with Luke Titan?”
“A little over four years,” Christian said. Luke’s face was unmoving. He clearly knew that to do anything now would be disastrous, and Christian also thought he knew that if he released Christian’s eyes, he might lose his mind.
“What ended your working relationship?”
“He put a knife through my stomach, and then my face.”
The attorney paused again and turned to the jury. “What did you learn about Luke Titan just before he did those things?”
“I learned that he had been working with the criminals we were trying to capture. That in some cases he created entire scenarios to see if we could maneuver out of them, or if we would die.”
“Dr. Windsor, I won’t make you recount the entirety of your history with the man in this court room. You’ve spent years chasing him and finally, in a fashion some may not agree with, you have brought him here to face justice. Now, Mr. Titan—”
Christian saw the slight grimace on Luke’s face at the missing title of Dr.
“—is telling us that he should not be held accountable for these crimes because he is insane. His lawyers want us to believe that for the past six years, he has been committing these horrendous atrocities—including the murder of children—without knowing that there was anything wrong with it. They would have us believe that this man of enviable intelligence could not determine that bombing buildings was indeed an immoral act. You may know Luke Titan better than anyone in the world, and I’d like to ask you, Dr. Windsor, based upon your experience as an FBI agent, and with your training in psychology, is Mr. Titan insane? Does he know the difference between right and wrong?”
Christian looked into Luke’s brown eyes.
Free yourself.
Drink this wine. Take this covenant. Sell your soul. Feed yourself to those that torture your mind. Do it all and free yourself, Christian, because if you don’t, you will be destroyed.
In the end, Christian didn’t even have to lie.
“No, Luke Titan cannot tell the difference between right and wrong. He holds his quest, his war on God, as the only true moral compass in the world, and anything that doesn’t fit within that parameter, must cease to exist.”
Chapter 12
The New York Post
Former FBI Agent Testifies to Luke Titan’s Insanity.
Insane asylum all but certain for criminal.
In an astonishing day by all accounts, former FBI Agent Christian Windsor testified that Luke Titan could not tell the difference between right and wrong, shocking both the prosecution and defense teams. It was widely assumed by legal experts and reporters alike that Christian Windsor would tell the court in his testimony that Luke Titan was a sane man, and that he knew what he was doing when committing his crimes.
Dr. Christian Windsor did the opposite today, however. He told the court room that Luke Titan’s could not judge his acts based on society’s moral code, due to a delusional war he wages with God. The District Attorney, Nicholas Dreamond, tried to salvage this turn of events by asking Dr. Windsor why Titan hid his actions then, why he shrouded everything in darkness if he didn’t comprehend that what he was doing was wron
g.
Dr. Windsor said Titan understood how society would view his actions, but his hiding them for so long had nothing to do with his own mental views. In fact, it supported the assertion of Titan’s insanity, as in his mind, he was so right that he could not risk being caught. Once his crimes were known, however, Dr. Windsor asserted that Titan actually took pride in them.
The trial still has many more weeks to go, but this testimony deals a significant blow to the prosecution. Titan’s defense admits to the crimes but insists he cannot be held responsible due to his mental state. Dr. Windsor’s intimate knowledge of Titan, as well as his academic record, would have lent heavy credibility to the prosecution’s argument: Luke Titan is not insane and should be given the death penalty for his horrific acts.
Dr. Windsor did not make himself available to the press, and as of the time of printing, has not responded to any inquiries from The New York Post…
Letters from a Killer
Dear Christian,
I wanted to thank you for your honest testimony at my trial. Without your courage, I certainly would not have received this result. I’m sure that you’re following along, but if you are not able, I was found not guilty by reason of insanity. There are pros and cons to this, of course, as there are with anything in life. The greatest positive is that I won’t be facing an electric chair or needle. I will get to live, and I find that to be positively exciting. Don’t you?
The cons … Primarily, my freedom is now taken from me. I’ve been sentenced to serve out the rest of my life (and may it be long and fruitful, yes?) in—what is euphemistically termed—a ‘hospital’, the new word for asylum. One of the major drawbacks is that I will not be housed in D.C.. Neither my lawyers nor I saw this added wrinkle. The judge decided D.C. was too populated to house me (his reasoning here was a bit sparse, but what could I say?) and they have shipped me to South Dakota.
I’m writing this from my new home, a cell inside the asylum. There are no views nor stimulating conversations. There is only time, and it does pass slowly, Christian. Much too slowly.