Trey got out of his chair and went to the door. "I guess it's time to go to God."
“Sure,” Jim said. “Room 3 on Program 28. Hey, you'll love it down there. It's like an isolation tank. Times six. Hey, got another one. What's the oldest written story?"
"The Epic of Gilgamesh," Trey said. "Man, you'd think that my brain could remember complex mathematical equations, instead of this stuff. You lead the way."
The two men began walking down the green corridor, toward Program 28.
2
Two COs stood at the entrance to Program 28.
Big, muscular guys who looked like they were hyped up on testosterone. That was good. They needed some scary guys to keep the really scary ones in line.
"This is Ash Freeman, and, this is the infamous Pete Atkins," Anderson said, by way of introduction.
Trey shook their hands, and the one named Atkins couldn't seem to make eye contact to save his life. Trey never liked that in people who worked on his ward. Even a CO. It might spell trouble down the line. It was a psychological checkpoint, and when a man in particular couldn't look him in the eye, particularly during an intro, it might mean that man was hiding something or at best, not all there.
It wasn't like Trey had never had problems with COs before. He had learned the primary rule of working with the forensics patients. There were three kinds of people who liked working with them: the ones who had a talent for the work, the ones who had the background for it and needed the job and could handle it. Then, there were those who worked there who either actively hated the patients or liked to have positions of power of people they considered lesser.
Trey tried to engage Atkins in conversation, briefly, but the CO exuded a bland disregard for him.
Trey had, once, years before, had to separate a CO from a patient when the CO has nearly beat the patient's brains out of him. It was a guy just like this one: young, smart, strong, and something was up. He had not been all there. Half the battle at Darden State was just making sure that the staff was saner than the patients.
It was the problem with life outside these walls, too.
But inside, it could be deadly in a way that wasn't pleasant to contemplate.
Familiar patterns, back one day, he thought. Put it aside. Deal with it later.
For now, Scoleri.
3
Program 28 was entered via the standard reinforced double-doors, but when Trey glanced through their porthole windows, he saw a different kind of hallway than the norm. This one looked as if it were for medical quarantine. It was completely metallic and gray instead of the usual light green of Ward D. It gave him an eerie feeling. It wasn't made for warmth or human habitation. Whoever designed and then built this special hallway knew the effect it would have on the patients.
They would feel especially trapped and separated.
It was like a 21st century science fiction dog pound, with minor adjustments for human beings. Shiny and metallic and very cold.
It was a nightmare.
Trey felt as if this were more dehumanizing than necessary, but when he thought about the kinds of crimes these particular forensics patients had committed, he knew that Darden State was at a loss. None of the other state hospitals wanted the six patients in Darden's Program 28. It was a new experiment that the Executive Director was willing to try, mainly at the behest of Dr. Elise Conroy, and a consortium of medical personnel from among the psychiatric community. They worked closely with the law enforcement agencies when the possible psychopath was out in the real world, to try and understand the inner workings of the kind of human being who had stepped into the territory of human monster.
And Trey, coming back, now would have Program 28 as his supervisory group. He would be spending the next several months working daily with each patient.
He both dreaded it and couldn't wait to find out more.
4
When he got through the doorway, with Anderson right behind him, they had to turn and lock the doors behind them. "Added security," Anderson said. "The sweet thing of it is, we have a lockdown, we're fucked. See that?" He pointed to the ceiling, toward what looked like a series of small round lights, recessed into the ceiling itself. "Those are the strobes. But every third one is a camera. Every fourth one is for gas."
"Gas?"
"I told you it was unorthodox. They have a breach here, those doors," Anderson pointed back down to the doors they'd just locked, "can't be opened until the folks up there," pointed up to the small recessed orbs, "see that whoever is in here — and that means you and me, too — are down on the floor, either in sleepytime or overdose land."
"Jesus, it's like smoking bees."
Anderson arched an eyebrow. "Say what?"
"When you want to get the honey from a hive, you can use a bellows and get smoke on the bees. It makes them dormant. Like freezing them."
"I wish we'd just freeze these guys sometimes," Anderson said. "My love for humanity sort of goes south in here."
"Can't be true about gassing people. That sounds like Nazis."
"I don't know. It's what I heard," Anderson said, chuckling. "Maybe it's another Darden rumor, like the little pill that simulates death so try and get the worst patients to stop killing. I like those myths. Frankly, I'd rather pass out without knowing whether or not some loon had chewed my nuts off."
They were several feet from the first room. The rooms were all on one side of the hall. "Patients don't look at each other here. They can hear each other, sometimes, but it's basically isolation. Some outside stuff comes in. But it's very regulated, and three doctors have to sign off on it."
"That can be good or bad," Trey said. "They don't hear each other, they don't get in an excited state. But they spend too much time not interacting, they start to go kaboom."
Anderson grinned. "God, I'm glad you're back. Nobody knows about kaboom like you do. Here you go, first room."
Chapter Twenty
1
Each of the six rooms had the illusion of being open to the hall, but with a thick transparent wall. Behind this, more bars. The door into each was barred, also. Each room held a large cot, a wash basin, a toilet in the corner, and a table with two chairs. Trey was about to ask about the chairs — they could be used as weapons — but noticed the floor where the chairs were bolted down. The walls were bare. The ceiling of each room seemed fairly high, and at the top, there was a rectangular window that no doubt also had thick Plexiglas in it, as well as bars. The window was close enough to the ceiling that it would've been extremely difficult for even the most agile athlete to leap to them.
"They never hurt themselves?" Trey asked. "The Plexiglas? I'd think that might be worse than a little padding."
"It's not quite Plexiglas. It's a reinforced glass and plastic, bonded together. It's a bitch to keep clean. Especially when they scratch them up or put all kinds of crap all over them. But on the patients' side, it has some give to it. These guys never hurt themselves that way. They think they're little messiahs. They believe too much in themselves. Scoleri tried to kill himself, but using his fingernails. I don't know how he gets those suckers so sharp. We keep them as clipped down as possible, but he grows 'em fast."
"Is he on a suicide watch?"
"Scoleri? Naw. He just had a moment. He said he wanted to prove that he was God. Or something. You know the routine."
2
The man in the first room was naked, and his body was covered with what could only be feces. He had been wiping his own shit across the walls, writing out long sentences that were unreadable.
"He's the artist," Anderson said. "Calls himself Ivory. Finger paints like this all the time. He is probably the only one I feel bad for here, just because he's alive. If I were like that, I'd want someone to put a bullet in my head."
"What was he on the Outside?"
"Murdered his wife, his five kids, the dog, the works. Then started taking out the paperboy and the old man next door to him. He said he'd gotten word that it was time.
"
"Time?"
"Time to kill. Apparently the secret of all human life is something that was revealed to him by voices. Sort of like Joan of Arc. And the secret must've involved a pretty sadistic death, too. I think it's on record that he didn't just shoot 'em. He played with them before they died. Look at him. He thinks he's doing the goddamn Sistine Chapel. Twice a day at least they have to hose this room down."
Trey was used to this, as was Jim Anderson. They had spent their adult lives working with people who were among society's most violent.
Yet, Trey felt an inward shiver. A goose walking over my grave.
They passed the next room, and the next. Each held a patient whose crimes seemed worse than the one before. It was like walking into the mouth of nightmares.
"Jesus, it's still a zoo in here."
"And we're the zookeepers," Anderson said. He pointed to the fifth room, fifth patient, who lay on his cot, facing the side wall. "That's Mandolar. He's in for beheadings. He's pretty depressed right now. Last night at one of his sessions, Brainard got him talking about his childhood and it turns out Willy's family had weekend incest parties involving Dad, Mom, Grandma, the whole bit. He's been a little under the weather all day. And now..." They approached the last room on Program 28. "Your new boyfriend."
3
"Anything I should know before I go into the tiger's cage?" Trey asked.
"Want more Scoleri trivia? Absolutely," Jim Anderson said, keeping his voice low. "Michael Scoleri is the worst. His crimes on the outside were beyond the pale. He cuts them up, gets off on it. Some men, too. Likes to collect souvenirs, you know that routine. Gets off on the memory of the kill. Went high profile when he killed that porn star, Fiona Raleigh. Her sugar daddy was pretty powerful in the governor's office, so when he got picked up, finally, they really went to town. Nobody was happy he ended up here. They wanted the death penalty. They got us. Scoleri used to do carny tricks like stick long needles in his face and other stuff. Likes to carve into his skin. Claims he feels no pain whatsoever. Get off on the pain of others. On fear. He told Bobby once that fear is a magical drug that you could inhale and get power from. He completely believes he's God and pisses off too many people to mention with his curses on them and his pronouncements of the end of the world. He'll be in here until the day he dies, I suspect."
4
Before entering the room, or "pod" as Trey would soon come to know these Program 28 rooms, he wanted to get a sense of the man within it.
He sat at the table, reading a book.
He looked too young to have committed the murders which had landed him here.
He looked too young to have raped, mutilated, and killed other human beings.
He looked like an innocent.
Once inside the pod, Trey felt differently.
The familiar sense he had around sociopaths returned: a feeling of human cold. Of being in the same room as a lion. Only with less compassion. It was almost an aura around them. Scoleri’s was strong—the feeling of not being all there. Not quite being human. The sense, perhaps instinct, that some enormous gulf existed between the two of them.
A feeling of emptiness, of something being terribly wrong.
A preternatural sense.
“Campbell, William, 36, Caucasian, brown, brown, not quite as tall as you look,” the youngish blond man said, not bothering to glance up from his book. Trey didn't know books were allowed here. He was never sure, in these experimental programs, where the rules twisted. The young man's voice was sonorous, and had an oddly hypnotic quality to it. He didn't seem like the killer that Trey had just read about. “Poor family from Yucaipa, or maybe Barstow, or San Pascal, or Yucca Valley—that kind of place that feels like nowhere when you’re growing up in it. Brought yourself up pretty much on your own. Maybe some group homes. Jesus Camp and Bible School and memorizing the book of revelations like it was the Boy Scout Handbook. Lots of dreams of getting far away from your parents. Not your parents, though. Your foster parents. You were one of those unfortunate kids, at least you think that. I can smell it — that insecurity, that feeling that it might all be taken away. Sometimes you wonder who your parents were, your real parents. But you leave that door closed. Because you know one thing about them. You know your mother was put in a place kind of like the place you're in now. Only hers was for nice people who went crazy. Not like this place, where only bad people go crazy.” His legs were crossed, and the book was spread open between his knees.
When the young man did glance up, sighing, he didn't look the way Trey expected. It was as if a man of twenty three had dropped six years. He looked like a kid, not an adult. His face was peach, his jaw elfin, his youth startling. His eyes, pale blue, were the only distraction. They seemed to quiver, as if keeping his steely gaze on Trey’s face were impossible. As if all the young man’s nerves were in his eyes. Scoleri glanced down to the book again. “They call you Trey.”
Trey Campbell shook his head. “Amazing. You’re sharp, Michael.”
“Thank you.” Scoleri wore the tan fatigues and olive drab T-shirt of the ward. Scoleri grinned, the sweet shit-eating grin of a farm boy. He didn’t look up at Trey's face again, but stared at Trey’s midsection.
“Like I told you,” Michael said. “I created the world, so I know every secret in it. I was there that day, watching your foster father take the strap to your brother. And then, after he stopped moving, your father left him with you, in your room, for nearly a week and locked you in. Always in the dark. You had to be with your dead brother for seven days. And then, he touched you. Even after he was dead.”
Trey took it all in: Scoleri. Reading material, intuition, rapid eye movement, creative delusions, family construct, two brothers, one dead?
“Something about your eyes,” Michael said, in a hushed tone. "You see a lot, don't you?"
“What are you reading?"
“Beautiful Joe,” Scoleri said, rubbing his hands over the book. Trey knew it. He’d read it as a kid. A dog book. The kind of book that got kids crying. His daughter had read that book when she was in third grade and wept for a week.
“You like that story?”
Scoleri nodded. “It’s wonderful. They chop off a dog’s ears and tail. Another dog gets shot at.”
Trey nodded slightly. He was not going to try to set Scoleri off. Sociopaths could be like lions if you tapped the wrong emotional key. It depended on who was watching. Since Trey had never before interacted with Michael Scoleri, he didn’t want to chance anything. “Dr. Brainard tells me you’ve been doing okay. You’ve been talking up a storm today I gather.”
“No complaints. I really had nothing to say before. So, Trey,” Michael grinned. Eyes still down, unwilling to look him in the eye again. “I heard you had a run in with one of my better creations.”
“Really?” Trey returned the grin, unsure of where this would go.
“Miss Hatcher from D Ward. Catalina Island.”
Trey glanced at Jim Anderson, who stood at the doorway. Anderson, big as a house, filled up the doorway. Jim suppressed a laugh.
“Word gets around,” Trey said.
“Well, rest assured that it was not my intention to have her hurt you or your lovely family. Sometimes even these creations get out of hand,” Michael set the book aside, bringing his knees up to his chest. The scars from his attempted suicide were clearly visible — striations along his wrists, still healing. “I was sure you wouldn’t return to my domain so soon.”
Trey shrugged. “Well, you know how it is.”
“Have to earn a living, yes,” Michael said. “You’re already taking classes towards your Master’s.”
Trey lost his good humor. Again, he glanced at Jim who raised his eyebrows.
Trey squatted down beside Scoleri. He knew to keep his balance and push his face slightly forward. Sometimes they went for your eyes. It was the easiest thing they could go for in order to debilitate you. He had spent years making sure both his eyes stayed in his head. He wa
nted Michael to feel comfortable talking with him. “So, you know all this because you’re God, right?”
Michael threw back his head, laughing. He had a girlish laugh, high and sweet. He closed his eyes, opening them wide.
The pupils moved so rapidly back and forth they were a blur. It was almost too horrible to look at. The eyes moved independently of each other, seeming to spin and spin until all Trey saw was a viscous darkness.
How the hell does he do that? Trey thought.
Then Michael Scoleri whispered, “I’m Abraxas. I'm God. But there's a very bad Devil out in the world right now. He's making his little angels fly to me to give me messages. But I don't answer the Devil's prayers. Let me tell you, Trey, you're going to want to have God step in soon to stop the Beast before the world ends. Which might be in just a few hours, at least as far as Dr. Conroy is concerned. Do you know something?"
“What’s that?”
“I hate the rain.”
“It won't be that bad. It's pretty light."
"I like snow. But not rain. Have you ever made snow angels?"
"Sure. When I was a kid."
"I wonder if kids still make them," Scoleri said. He glanced up to the barred window that touched the ceiling.
"Would you mind showing me what you wrote on yourself last night?" Trey asked.
Scoleri closed his eyes. Opened them. They were normal again. Not moving rapidly in their sockets. "No. I'm tired," he said. "I don't want to talk anymore."
5
Criminally Insane: The Series (Bad Karma, Red Angel, Night Cage Omnibus) (The Criminally Insane Series) Page 27