Psychos

by Neil Gaiman

  “The orderly’s bringing one.”

  Lecter stood until Graham was seated in the hall. “And how is Officer Stewart?” he asked.

  “Stewart’s fine.” Officer Stewart left law enforcement after he saw Dr. Lecter’s basement. He managed a motel now. Graham did not mention this. He didn’t think Stewart would appreciate any mail from Lecter.

  “Unfortunate that his emotional problems got the better of him. I thought he was a very promising young officer. Do you ever have any problems, Will?”

  “No.” “Of course you don’t.”

  Graham felt that Lecter was looking through to the back of his skull. His attention felt like a fly walking around in there.

  “I’m glad you came. It’s been what now, three years? My callers are all professional. Banal clinical psychiatrists and grasping second-rate doctors of psychology from silo colleges somewhere. Pencil lickers trying to protect their tenure with pieces in the journals.”

  “Dr. Bloom showed me your article on surgical addiction in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.”

  “And?” “Very interesting, even to a layman.” “A layman…layman—layman. Interesting term,” Lecter said. “So many learned fellows going about. So many experts on government grants. And you say you’re a layman. But it was you who caught me, wasn’t it, Will? Do you know how you did it?”

  “I’m sure you’ve read the transcript. It’s all in there.” “No it’s not. Do you know how you did it, Will?” “It’s in the transcript. What does it matter now?” “It doesn’t matter to me, Will.” “I want you to help me, Dr. Lecter.” “Yes, I thought so.” “It’s about Atlanta and Birmingham.” “Yes.” “You read about it, I’m sure.” “I’ve read the papers. I can’t clip them. They won’t let me have scissors, of course. Sometimes they threaten me with loss of books, you know. I wouldn’t want them to think I was dwelling on anything morbid.” He laughed. Dr. Lecter has small white teeth. “You want to know how he’s choosing them, don’t you?”

  “I thought you would have some ideas. I’m asking you to tell me what they are.” “Why should I?”

  Graham had anticipated the question. A reason to stop multiple murders would not occur readily to Dr. Lecter.

  “There are things you don’t have,” Graham said. “Research materials, film-strips even. I’d speak to the chief of staff.”

  “Chilton. You must have seen him when you came in. Gruesome, isn’t it? Tell me the truth, he fumbles at your head like a freshman pulling at a panty girdle, doesn’t he? Watched you out of the corner of his eye. Picked that up, didn’t you? You may not believe this, but he actually tried to give me a Thematic Apperception Test. He was sitting there just like the Cheshire cat waiting for Mf 13 to come up. Ha. Forgive me, I forget that you’re not among the anointed. It’s a card with a woman in bed and a man in the foreground. I was supposed to avoid a sexual interpretation. I laughed. He puffed up and told everybody I avoided prison with a Ganser syndrome—never mind, it’s boring.”

  “You’d have access to the AMA filmstrip library.” “I don’t think you’d get me the things I want.” “Try me.” “I have quite enough to read as it is.” “You’d get to see the file on this case. There’s another reason.” “Pray.” “I thought you might be curious to find out if you’re smarter than the person I’m looking for.”

  “Then, by implication, you think you are smarter than I am, since you caught me.”

  “No. I know I’m not smarter than you are.” “Then how did you catch me, Will?” “You had disadvantages.” “What disadvantages?” “Passion. And you’re insane.” “You’re very tan, Will.”

  Graham did not answer. “Your hands are rough. They don’t look like a cop’s hands anymore. That shaving lotion is something a child would select. It has a ship on the bottle, doesn’t it?” Dr. Lecter seldom holds his head upright. He tilts it as he asks a question, as though he were screwing an auger of curiosity into your face. Another silence, and Lecter said, “Don’t think you can persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity.”

  “I don’t think I’ll persuade you. You’ll do it or you won’t. Dr. Bloom is working on it anyway, and he’s the most—”

  “Do you have the file with you?” “Yes.” “And pictures?” “Yes.” “Let me have them, and I might consider it.” “No.” “Do you dream much, Will?” “Good-bye, Dr. Lecter.” “You haven’t threatened to take away my books yet.”

  Graham walked away. “Let me have the file, then. I’ll tell you what I think.”

  Graham had to pack the abridged file tightly into the sliding tray. Lecter pulled it through.

  “There’s a summary on top. You can read that now,” Graham said. “Do you mind if I do it privately? Give me an hour.”

  Graham waited on a tired plastic couch in a grim lounge. Orderlies came in for coffee. He did not speak to them. He stared at small objects in the room and was glad they held still in his vision. He had to go to the rest room twice. He was numb.

  The turnkey admitted him to the maximum-security section again.

  Lecter sat at his table, his eyes filmed with thought. Graham knew he had spent most of the hour with the pictures.

  “This is a very shy boy, Will. I’d love to meet him…Have you considered the

  possibility that he’s disfigured? Or that he may believe he’s disfigured?”

  “The mirrors.” “Yes. You notice he smashed all the mirrors in the houses, not just enough to get the pieces he wanted. He doesn’t just put the shards in place for the damage they cause. They’re set so he can see himself. In their eyes—Mrs. Jacobi and…What was the other name?”

  “Mrs. Leeds.” “Yes.” “That’s interesting,” Graham said.

  “It’s not ‘interesting.’ You’d thought of that before.” “I had considered it.” “You just came here to look at me. Just to get the old scent again, didn’t you? Why don’t you just smell yourself?”

  “I want your opinion.” “I don’t have one right now.” “When you do have one, I’d like to hear it.” “May I keep the file?” “I haven’t decided yet,” Graham said. “Why are there no descriptions of the grounds? Here we have frontal views of the houses, floor plans, diagrams of the rooms where the deaths occurred, and little mention of the grounds. What were the yards like?”

  “Big backyards, fenced, with some hedges. Why?” “Because, my dear Will, if this pilgrim feels a special relationship with the moon, he might like to go outside and look at it. Before he tidies himself up, you understand. Have you seen blood in the moonlight, Will? It appears quite black. Of course, it keeps the distinctive sheen. If one were nude, say, it would be better to have outdoor privacy for that sort of thing. One must show some consideration for the neighbors, hmmmm?”

  “You think the yard might be a factor when he selects victims?” “Oh yes. And there will be more victims, of course. Let me keep the file, Will. I’ll study it. When you get more files, I’d like to see them, too. You can call me. On the rare occasions when my lawyer calls, they bring me a telephone. They used to patch him through on the intercom, but everyone listened of course. Would you like to give me your home number?”

  “No.” “Do you know how you caught me, Will?” “Good-bye, Dr. Lecter. You can leave messages for me at the number on the file.” Graham walked away.

  “Do you know how you caught me?”

  Graham was out of Lecter’s sight now, and he walked faster toward the far steel door.

  “The reason you caught me is that we’re just alike” was the last thing Graham heard as the steel door closed behind him.

  He was numb except for dreading the loss of numbness. Walking with his head down, speaking to no one, he could hear his blood like a hollow drumming of wings. It seemed a very short distance to the outside. This was only a building; there were only five doors between Lecter and the outside. He had the absurd feeling that Lecter had walked out with him. He stopped outside the entrance and looked around him, assuring himself that he was a
lone.

  From a car across the street, his long lens propped on the window sill, Freddy Lounds got a nice profile shot of Graham in the doorway and the words in stone above him: “Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.”

  As it turned out, The National Tattler cropped the picture to just Graham’s face and the last two words in the stone.

  The Exit at Toledo Blade Boulevard

  BY JACK KETCHUM

  In trying to make sense of seemingly senseless tragedy, one of the hardest things to reconcile is the randomness of fate. We like to think in terms of cause and effect—I punch you in the nose, and the result will be hurt—because it’s nice and simple, and often true.

  But the only straight lines are the ones that we make. Life tends to be a lot more complex and rococo, weaving patterns so elaborate they often go right over our heads, leaving us with nothing but the question Why?

  And so with this puzzle box by noble literary savage Jack Ketchum, never more thoughtful and heartbreaking than here. Don’t worry; the pieces come together hard.

  Just not necessarily in the shape you might have hoped.

  The boys in the pickup were traveling north along the dark empty stretch of I-75 near Nokomis, three of them cramped side-by-side in the cab and sweating in the mid-July heat despite the open windows. They could smell each other’s sweat wafted in and out by the breeze. They didn’t mind. It was Monday night. There weren’t any girls around anyhow.

  Jimmie who had just turned eighteen the week before and was losing yet another battle in his ongoing war with zits popped a Bud and handed it to Doug who handed it to Bobby. The truck was in the fast lane doing seventy in a sixty zone. Bobby was driving. Having his fourth beer open in his hand was dangerous. Less out here on the highway at nearly midnight than it would have been back home on the streets of Tampa—you were much more likely to get stopped in towns—but dangerous enough.

  He didn’t mind that either. Hell, the risk was part of it.

  He’d been lucky so far.

  He tilted back the can. The beer was warmer than he liked but the first pull always tasted good, warm or not.

  “Hey. Turn that up,” he said to Doug. “Quick.”

  The song on the radio was Johnny Cash doing The Tennessee Stud and it reminded him simultaneously of his uncle’s hardscrabble farm in Georgia and of Mary Ann Abbot and Dee Dee Whitaker—and what he, Bobby, knew about life that these other two, Doug and Jimmie, didn’t.

  He loved this guy. The Man in Black.

  And for once Doug didn’t complain about Johnny’s singing. Truth was, Doug was past complaining. Five cold brews at the Cave Rock Inn in Murdock and one on the road and old Douggie could barely find the volume control. He managed though, leaning forward and studying the panel and then Jimmie started singing along beside him. Jimmie had a pretty good singing voice but he couldn’t get the growly low notes that Johnny got. What could you expect? Hell, Bobby still remembered when little Jimmie’s voice changed. Wasn’t that long ago, either. Jimmie was still a kid.

  He thought about Mary Ann again, an image of cool white thighs spread naked in the woods.

  He was thinking of that and listening to the wind and the song up loud over the wind and he had the beer can to his lips again when he saw something glint ahead of him and then something loom suddenly in the headlights and way over against the passenger side door Jimmie stopped singing and shrieked and he guessed he did too, something like whathafuuuuck? and he swerved the pickup and braked and tried to steer and the next thing he knew they were cruising the bumpy dirt shoulder at fifteen miles per hour, amazed to be alive. He was shaking like a cold wet dog and his lap and legs and teeshirt were foul and wet where Doug had thrown up all the hell over him.

  Earlier that afternoon George Hubbard stared out the double glass doors leading from his kitchen to the lanai and thought about the dog and how the dog had in some ways been the beginning of the end of it.

  The dog had been a gift to her, something to make her stay, a hope against hope that a few furry pounds of warm retriever puppy would be the glue for them that sex no longer was, nor love, nor anything else was able to be.

  It hadn’t worked. She was gone, the dog with her.

  Just like all the rest of them.

  His father was gone—dead of a heart attack—and that was all to the good, actually. At least one of them wouldn’t be around to play victim to his mother’s fucking viciousness any more. His sister, now in her thirties, had somehow without his noticing turned into the lesbian bitch from Sodom, working as a mail carrier for god’s sake in Shreveport, Lousiana. They hadn’t talked in two years, not since his father died and even then that was mostly to shout at one another. His friends had drifted away into one Sarasota warren or another since he started telling them the truth about what was really going on with him. They’d all stepped back into their own little lives, their own private blind alleys of pseudo-awareness. Good riddance. Sister, friends. Even his sadass father.

  The only one he couldn’t get rid of was his mother.

  Ever since he was a kid she’d been trying to kill him and lately she’d been stepping up the pace. In a way, she’d already succeeded.

  He stared out into the dimming sunlight on the lanai and pulled at the joint. The joint was one of the few ways he had of escaping her.

  They said he was crazy. Paranoid. The doctors at the hospital after his meth OD had the balls to go even further. Paranoid schizophrenic they said.

  Even Cal and Linda thought he was paranoid and said so to his face. Told him he needed to get help—his best friends since high school. Said his mother couldn’t do all that. When he knew damn well she was mob connected, knew damn well she’d been harassing him constantly, anyone could see that, getting her friends in the IRS after him, getting her friends in the police force after him for back child-support payments to his first wife and his daughter, trying to put his ass in jail.

  He’d had to leave the state. Come here to Florida.

  He’d disappeared.

  His mother wasn’t the only one who knew a trick or two.

  Though he knew she was looking for him even now. He could feel it. In his blood he could feel it. His mother had tentacles everywhere. She was psychic as hell and she was looking.

  Get help. Shit. Once, years ago, he’d fucked Linda. It had been a good fuck too. Friendly.

  And now she denied him.

  They all did.

  Even Sandy, after three years of loving him or at least saying she loved him, making him think that, making him feel he knew that, staying with him even through the relocation because she understood first-hand what a bitch his mother was, she’d had enough run-ins with her herself by then, though even she wouldn’t believe how connected she was with police and mob and government, his mother was too smart for that, too smart to let on to her. Some things she reserved strictly for him.

  He stubbed out the joint and walked absently through the condo, looking at what she’d left behind. It wasn’t a whole lot. In the living room, his desk, a shelf full of paperbacks and audio tapes. In the kitchen, some old pots and pans, some silverware and glassware, the toaster and the microwave they’d bought together.

  Upstairs in the bathroom she’d even taken the shower curtain.

  The worst, for him, was the bedroom. The bed was still there, but stripped of its quilt and the lace hand-made bedspread. Dirty sheets lay in a corner. She’d left him three out of seven pillows. The television was gone and the night stand by the bed. The dresser was there, but empty of her jewelry boxes and perfumes and toiletries it looked uninhabited, the entire life of it fled. The empty hangers in the big walk-in closet seemed ridiculous, poverty awaiting an abundance that would never occur again.

  He crossed the room and sat down on the bed.

  His footsteps sounded much too loud to him.

  The bed had seen them through three apartments together, one for every year they’d been together. It seemed almost wrong that she hadn
’t taken it with her—like leaving a child behind or a kitten. A kind of betrayal. He thought of what had happened on the bed, the talking, the laughing, the fighting, jesus, all the joys and sorrows between them that had lasted long into the night sometimes, he thought of making love to her, her intense, amazing passion that was easily the equal to his own and the like of which he’d not only never seen before but never even knew existed in a woman and which hadn’t dimmed at all until just recently, until just this last year when he’d begun telling her the truth about what was happening to him, sharing with her really, what his mother was doing and the whole damn conspiracy. And finally, a week ago, about what was wrong with him.

  He thought of how intimate a bed was. In the night, before sleep, the soul pours forth its strength.

  He put his hands to his face and cried.

  His listened to his sobs echo in the empty room.

  When he was exhausted he stood and went downstairs again. One of the dog’s chew-bones lay half-eaten on the landing. He picked it up and walked to the kitchen and dumped it in the garbage.

  He stood a moment looking out at the lanai, into the fading light. The screens leading out to the small enclosed yard were becoming overgrown with creepers. Normally he’d have wanted to take care of that right away. He made his living as a gardener and it was a matter of his pride as a professional. A few creepers were one thing, even attractive. He liked them there, their graceful abstract patterns. But the way they were going, eventually they’d ruin the screen.

  He decided it was time to break his rule. He’d quit because Sandy hated the smell of the stuff on his breath and he wanted to smell good for her for when they went to bed, for the times they made love or even just kissed good night, so that sleeping beside her on the bed, he wouldn’t offend. But now that she was gone there was no one to offend anymore and given this fucking little problem of his, there never would be.