How I wished he could. But he was just a tired working stiff at the end of a bad shift. I told him I was just going to see a friend.
He eyed me. “Okay . . . one false move back there, and a can of whoop ass is going to be opened. Yeah, that’s right, New York style . . .”
Oh, I did like this guy. He’d seen almost everything—the night crawlers, the drunks, the weirdos, the freaks, and maybe even the ones like me. He wore a small cap tilted to one side and a leather jacket that was probably two sizes too small. He spent the ride gnawing on a smelly unlit cigar stump and giving me the hairy eyeball in his rearview mirror. Finally, he couldn’t contain his natural cabbie chatter any longer.
“So, lady, what is it? Guy problems? Nah . . . Why would someone like yourself try to get into that crazy house?”
“Who said I’m trying anything?” I asked back. “I told you, I’m just making a fast visit, sort of collecting something . . .”
He told me that the place was now a homeless shelter for men, which I already knew. Although it was down the street from Bellevue Hospital Center, the famous trauma and research facility, the old psych building wasn’t affiliated with it at all. The driver knew the difference and steered the cab toward the right location. Then he introduced himself as Tony and asked my name.
“My name is Jackie.” I realized that I had said it in an uncertain tone. I rubbed my hands together, trying my best to stay in full possession of my own body and mind. It was easier right now than it had been; there were no voices pounding in my head, fighting with me. I wondered why Patricia was leaving me alone.
“I’m not trying to be nosy or nothing, but you got a relative up in there?” Tony asked.
“Yeah, I guess you can say that,” I said. “I’m just going in to pick something up from someone. Listen, if you wait for me, I’ll pay you double—for your time and generosity.”
“Look, I don’t do this, but I’ll wait. I wouldn’t want to be you.” No kidding, I thought as he continued, “Hey, you know, my grandmother from the other side, she used to say, ‘If you do good, good comes back.’ So I’ll wait.”
We pulled up along the side of the hulking stone building, and as I got out, Tony warned me not to bring any smelly homeless people back to his cab. This guy really had seen a lot. I steeled myself for what I would have to see before I returned to his taxi and then walked around to the entrance. It was still as bleak and grim as before. And the environment wasn’t helped by its neighbor. The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner was right across the street. Bellevue’s patients—and now the homeless—had nothing but a steady stream of death every time they looked out the windows. And not easy, natural deaths, either. Only the homicides, the suicides, and the unclaimed John Does came by van to that place. Nice view for people who needed help and compassion, wasn’t it?
I walked up to the front doors, where two security guards stood. They shooed me away—no women allowed in the men’s shelter. I stood back and looked up at the dead vines clinging to the brick, reaching several stories up. I knew which floor was calling me, but how was I going to get there?
My gaze fell on the line of men waiting to get in for the night. Each one was searched before the guards allowed them in—their poor, torn garbage bags rifled through, as if they had no property rights at all. My heart hurt for them. Didn’t they have any family who could help them?
Hmmm. I walked back up to the hard-ass guards. “My brother is on the front of the line. I’m here to take him home.”
They didn’t budge, just tried to stare me down. I told them that his name was Tony, and he was sick and contagious. “Who knows, you probably have it anyway by now.”
Their stony glares broke as they nervously asked what my “brother” had.
“Some kind of flesh-eating parasite that spreads like wildfire.”
“Shit,” said one of them. “Go on ahead and get him out. You got two minutes—in and out, lady.”
I darted inside, quickly found a set of stairs, and began to climb two at a time. Syringes and crack vials littered the floor. Mold grew thick on the walls, and there were still psychiatric devices around, like mouthpiece restraints and leather straps.
As I approached the fifth floor, I began to hear noises again. The door from the stairwell had a padded knob that crackled under my fingers as I turned it. I stepped into the corridor and watched it transform back into what it had been. Psychiatric hell.
One at a time, the overhead lights clicked on. Gurneys came out of corners and lined up against the walls. Wheelchairs that had been flung into a pile righted themselves and rolled out into a neat line. Demon Sally yelled at me from the nurses’ station.
I felt as though I was out of my body and in a dream as I began walking down the hallway. The floor creaked beneath my feet as I headed for room 7. I peeked through the little glass windows of the rooms I passed on the way. Each held broken human beings huddled in the corners of their private hells.
I got to room 6. I thought I was almost there. Silly me. I heard moaning, but I couldn’t see through the little window because it was covered in some fetid gunk. Gagging from the smell, I scanned the floor for something to wipe it away. Trash was everywhere, and I picked up a small piece of paper. It looked like an advertisement of some sort as I unfolded it.
Come one, come all . . .
Big, bold letters began to appear, one by one.
Surf Hotel.
The place where my mother died. The place she was killed by a demon during an exorcism. I fell against the wall, trying to catch my breath. I knew it was a full-blown panic attack, but that knowledge didn’t help at all. I was stuck up here, in this hell, and I couldn’t breathe.
I tried to sneak past room 6 without it seeing me. This isn’t real, I repeated to myself. It can’t hurt me anymore. A face that I recognized came to the window, looking wildly from side to side as it tried to find me. It was the demon that had killed my mother.
That was a battle I did not want to fight again. I ran toward room 7 and flung open the door. I could see as I walked in that the window looked out onto the medical examiner’s building. The view inside was just as terrible. Sewage dripped from the ceiling. A bloodstained mattress leaned against a wall. A child’s desk was tossed in the corner. I moved further in.
Something inside the closet started banging. I tried to ignore it as I saw a yellow wristband on the floor. It had my name on it. I picked it up in horror. In my addled brain, I had become an official psychiatric patient, which was one of my greatest terrors. I had no choice but to put it on. As I fastened it around my arm, the closet door flew open and out came that damn wheelchair again. It rolled forward and waited for me. I knew that this time, I could not avoid the ride. I arranged all of the restraints neatly around the chair and then took my seat.
The only way out was in.
I sat in the wooden wheelchair with a wristband on. The restraints swung free, but I was trapped all the same. The room approved and started to tidy itself. Trash cleared away and the desk righted itself as a fog rolled in. I knew what was coming and began to cry. I knew I was the offering.
The tall man in black stepped out of the cloud. His zodiac sign glowed white against his black hood. I stared at him as he bent down toward my face. I couldn’t move. It was psychic paralysis. I was being invaded by another force, and it completely immobilized me. I have interviewed thousands of people throughout my career who have experienced this—able to see and hear everything yet not allowed to move a muscle. It’s a well-known occurrence in parapsychology. But even though I knew exactly what was happening, I was still terrified. He leaned closer, and his breath smelled like rotting flesh and old blood.
“Jackie, you have come home . . .”
I felt a knife plunge into me. I tried to look at my body but couldn’t see the wound. Patricia’s wound. I was almost completely lost now. Jackie was leaking out
through Patricia’s wounds.
“I told you to stay dead, didn’t I?” His breath reeked. “How many times must I kill you?”
A piece of paper floated through the air and landed in my lap. “Go on, pick it up! Read the paper, Gemini!”
I couldn’t move.
The paper was empty, except for the sign of the Gemini, written in blood.
“You see—that’s us. Isn’t it fun? You can be Patricia and I can be the Zodiac Killer, and we can play . . . We both have company. Our twins!” The Gemini. He flipped back and forth so quickly. One second talking to Jackie and the next to Patricia. Now he switched back, leaning in closer to address Patricia.
“You worthless piece of schizophrenic shit. Coming back . . How dare you mock me!” He paused, and I could feel his sick smile behind the mask. “But I must say I do like the person you picked. The power I could get from her. And my boss is so pleased with your choice.”
The smile and the stench made the room start to spin. He leaned in closer still.
“Close your eyes and listen to my voice. . . You will be two . . .”
I did as I was ordered, and the wheelchair threw me forward. I sprawled on the floor and opened my eyes to find myself back in the stairwell. I tripped over piles of trash and broken floor tiles as I ran, as fast as I could, toward the exit. I pushed past the two thug security guards and found Tony. That should show how bad it was getting for me—that my safe haven was a New York taxi cab. We pulled away, and I begged him to drive me back home. He turned to look at me and pointed to my wrist. “What’s that yellow bracelet? You’re wearing a hospital band?”
I pulled at it frantically until it came off. It was all real, and I was in real trouble. I stuffed it in the pocket of my sweatshirt and curled up in the backseat. I guess I looked so bad that tough-guy Tony took pity on me and shook off my money.
“Today’s your lucky day. Keep it.” He handed me his business card and eyed me carefully. “Hey, take this in case you need a private ride to hell again.”
Thanks, Tony, but I was already there.
EIGHT
Patricia’s presence was becoming so intense, I found myself deliberately planning ways to elude her. One day, on the way to the dentist—that’s how desperate I was for some normalcy—I thought I’d try the farmers’ market. I got off at the Fourteenth Street–Union Square station so I could walk through the stalls and lose myself in the crush of people.
This was what I loved about New York. Give us a space, and we’ll make it happen. You could buy almost any kind of fruit or vegetable in that stretch. People jostled one another as they reached for the best fruit. Vegetables clanged onto scales as growers weighed their sales. Somewhere nearby, I could smell that someone was selling delicious apple-cider donuts. It was all packed together, tickling every one of my senses and making me feel safe.
I stopped at an apple stand, with half a dozen varieties piled high. I picked them up, one by one, enjoying the feeling of the fruit in my hands as I looked for the perfect apple to buy. The conversation of two women nearby washed over me. They were talking about work, and I smiled to myself. Ordinary life. One of the women looked over at me, and as she took a bite of her own apple, her companion’s words and my surroundings started to fade away from me. I grabbed my head but couldn’t look away from the woman, whose apple was covered in writhing maggots. Her features turned sharp and frightening as she laughed and licked at her disgusting corpse-delight snack.
My stomach heaved, and I threw up, right in front of the apple cart. When I straightened, there were no maggots; there was no evil. Just people staring at a sick woman who had fouled the farmers’ market. I staggered away and slowly made my way to the dentist’s office. I no longer felt safe. Even worse, I was starting to feel crazy. I did not know what to do.
Somehow, I made it to the big building in Midtown, where Rick, the doorman, greeted me by name, as usual. I came to my dentist pretty often. I confess that I’m addicted to teeth whitening. So everybody in the office, and Rick in the lobby, knew me quite well. It was a beautiful lobby, and interesting. It had two elevators—one big and one small. The small one was a tiny box that seemed to get smaller once you stepped inside. I hate cramped spaces. So, naturally, that was the elevator I got. I reluctantly stepped inside and sweated as I counted the chime for each passing floor. I finally reached the eighth floor, stepped out, and stopped short. My dentist’s office should have been to the left in the hallway, just as it had been for years. But this hallway was covered with sheets of plastic and looked like it was under construction.
“Hello?” I called loudly. The plastic sheeting blew and snapped against itself, so at first I didn’t hear the shuffling. It slowly took on the sound of a child’s feet and then I heard a child’s laugh. On the other side of the plastic, as if through a fog, I saw a little girl dressed in a yellow raincoat. She was skipping along slowly, chanting a nursery rhyme, and holding a red ball under her arm. I quietly parted the plastic to get a better look without her seeing me. I watched her hop along, clutching the ball with one hand and, under her other arm, a teddy bear. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. She turned as though someone called to her, and I saw a man walking toward her. I could only see the back of his dark green uniform as he bent down toward her. I tried to walk forward to stop him but couldn’t move.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, caressing her soft curls. “Do you like puppy dogs or kittens?” he asked. “I have lots of them. I spoke to your mommy, and she said you’re such a good girl I could give you one.”
“You spoke to my mommy?” she said, in that pure child’s voice.
“Yes, I sure did.” He pinched her cheek, trying his damnedest to gain her trust. Easy to do with such innocence. He told her to leave her toys. She would need to carry her new pet instead. He would come back for her toys later. “Promise . . . Cross my heart.”
She dropped her ball and teddy bear and took his hand. I know how these things end, but I refused to let this one turn out that way. Not on my watch. I wrenched myself away from the wall and flung myself toward them. They didn’t hear or see me, and I ran right through them both. I stumbled and fell face-first into the opposite wall. I spun around and saw her toys, but the two of them were gone.
“God damn it! Where did you go?” I shouted as I ran down the hallway. “Give her back . . . Give me that child!”
The elevator doors were banging open and shut so fast I couldn’t get on. I ran toward the emergency stairwell and a shadow loomed behind the plastic closest to the door. It was the tall man in black. He spoke through the plastic.
“You can’t stop the process . . . We, too, have a purpose. I will eat your sins and take your soul . . .”
I ran past, pushed the exit door open, and took the stairs down two at a time. I did not slow until the fourth floor, when I heard a woman’s singing. I rounded the turn in the stairs and saw a large broken mirror on the wall. In front of it was that Patricia woman. I edged past her, hoping she wouldn’t notice me as she stared at her own reflection. She didn’t, and after I made it past, I turned to look. She was the one haunting me, after all—I didn’t feel too bad about invading her privacy.
She stood in front of the mirror, fixing her lipstick, swaying her sultry body back and forth, making eyes at herself. She told herself that she was pretty and dabbed at her heavily made-up face, like she was getting ready to go search the night for some good-looking taker. I quietly backed away and ran faster than ever down the remaining steps and into the lobby.
Rick, the doorman, rushed over and grabbed my arms. I must have looked absolutely nuts as I babbled about a child getting taken and a woman in the stairwell and an entire floor of the building under construction.
“Jackie, calm down,” he said, still holding my arms. “You’ve been up there for more than twenty-five minutes.”
I hauled him into the el
evator and pushed for the eighth floor. I had to prove myself to him. I had to prove myself—to me. The damn box finally chimed for the eighth floor, and the doors slid open. Rick, like the gentleman he was, held it open so I could go first.
“Just drop the bullshit,” I snapped. “You go first.”
He walked out, looked around, and then spread his arms wide, as if to say, “See, not a thing out of place.” I slowly walked out of the elevator and looked around. I ran my hands along the walls for traces of plaster and work dust. Nothing. I swung open the utility-room door near the stairwell. Nothing but a broom.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked Rick.
He looked at me. He had known me for years. “Jackie, are you working on a homicide?”
“No,” I snapped again. “And if I was, what does that have to do with it? You think I’ve gone mad, don’t you?”
He hesitated. “No. I think you saw something real bad. Real bad. I’m getting creeped out!”
“Yeah, me, too,” I said as I yanked open the door to my dentist’s office.
“Jackie!” said the smiling receptionist. “Where did you go? We were looking all over for you.”
I stared at her in astonishment.
“You came in, sat down, and then just got up as though you were sleepwalking,” she continued. “I went out in the hallway—you were gone.”
I told her I would reschedule my appointment and walked out. Rick waited with me for the elevator.
“Hey, Jackie,” he said softly, “I believe you.”
It didn’t matter. I rode down to the lobby without saying a word. I needed help.
Joanne was waiting for me in the lobby. My wonderful, beautiful grown daughter, who I always met with for lunch after my dentist appointments. I would get her all to myself for the rest of the day, and we would catch up on everything. It was one of our traditions. I had been so excited about it today. Before all of that had happened.
The Haunting of the Gemini Page 7