Slow Burning Lies - A Dark Psychological Thriller

by Ray Kingfisher

  He’d missed Rozita the way only a man locked away in another world could. He would have gladly stayed as Patrick the Physician with the perfect wife and perfect life, and never returned to OrSum and Beth and his apartment in Chicago. Whatever this world was, he wanted to stay in it for eternity, but knew he had no choice in the matter.

  The buzz of the intercom jerked him away from his musings, and the receptionist announced that his next patient was ready.

  Patrick the physician dealt with eight-year-old Jack’s foot rashes by reassuring his mother it was definitely not meningitis, and by giving the boy a wide smile and a friendly wink. He also told Jack’s mother she should try buying her son cotton instead of synthetic socks, and in the meantime he prescribed some cream.

  But as Jack and his mother left the room, Patrick’s heart gave just a little blip – somehow he knew something was not all rosy in the world, as though he had no right to be so cheerful.

  “Have you got my next patient ready, Shania?” he said into the intercom.

  “Next patient?” the box crackled back to him.

  “It’s only eleven. I don’t need a break just yet.”

  “But Doctor Leary, we’ve cancelled your appointments for the rest of the day just like you asked.”

  Patrick took a moment to work it out. He failed.

  “Did I?” he said.

  “The hospital said you can be with your wife now.”

  “You mean Rozita?”

  There was a pause before the answer came. “Well… Yes… Rozita.” It was spoken slowly and precisely, as if explaining something to a schoolkid.

  Patrick’s pulse started hopping around. What the hell had happened to her? He coughed and said, “I’m sorry, Shania. Yes, of course.”

  “That’s quite understandable, Doctor Leary. Please let me know how she is.”

  Quite understandable. The under the circumstances was left unspoken, but Patrick heard it loud and clear.

  Patrick left his office and walked towards the main hospital foyer. He kept on walking straight across and towards the opposite wing of the hospital, apparently knowing where to go without being consciously aware of it.

  The signs pointing to the psychiatric ward jogged his memory. Yes, now he remembered the events of the past twelve hours:

  Rozita and he had gone to bed as normal, and she had woken up in the early hours of the morning shrieking and crying, and nothing Patrick could do seemed to calm her down. She had staggered around the bedroom screaming about “the children, the poor children”, but would not entertain any notion of explaining her words or her emotional reaction.

  When their own children had been woken up by the noise and became disturbed by their mother’s erratic and frightening behaviour Patrick had no option but to call for an ambulance.

  By the time the ambulance arrived Rozita was no better, shouting about the poor children, and how horrible it all was, and asking Patrick and everyone else how anyone could do such a thing. The medics sedated her and took her to the hospital for further investigative work, and told Patrick they would contact him later that morning. Patrick was distraught, but kept himself together for the sake of their own children, calming them down, getting them fed and packing them off to school.

  After that he phoned the hospital. The specialist told him Rozita was still sedated so there was no point coming to see her just yet, but that he could visit any time after eleven. He was also told that even then, if she was awake, it wouldn’t be wise to mention the incident to her.

  And so, rather than stay at home worrying all morning, he’d gone into work for a few hours.

  Now those few hours were over and he felt weak as he approached the reception desk of the psychiatric ward.

  Ten minutes later he was in a small consultation room with Doctor Bailey, a woman Patrick initially thought too young to know about life and its tribulations.

  “Okay then, Mr Leary.”

  “Doctor Leary.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Doctor.” She paused for a moment. “May I ask what sort of doctor you are?”

  “I’m a General Physician.”

  “Good. It might make this easier to explain. We think your wife has experienced some sort of mild psychotic episode, specifically some non-paranoiac delusional beliefs.”

  She paused to allow the news to sink in. Patrick’s face dropped a little and he pushed his fingers through his hair.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “I mean, I understand what you’re saying, but why has this happened?”

  “That, we don’t know. We’re trying to discern whether the underlying causes are physiological or psychological, or even…” Doctor Bailey’s eyes met Patricks then quickly moved off.

  “What?”

  “Doctor Leary, has your wife ever taken any hallucinogenic drugs?”

  “Jesus Christ, no.”

  Bailey nodded slowly. “I’m sorry. We have to ask. It’s one cause we can discount. In that case the main possibility we’re looking at is a mental trauma brought on by delusional dreams.”

  “Oh God.”

  “You know something about this?”

  “I knew she was having bad dreams, but only just recently. Look, is she okay?”

  “She’s currently sedated.”

  “No antipsychotics?”

  “No, just a little Nitrazepam to calm her down.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “By all means – in fact seeing you might be good for her; it should stabilize her mind on reality. But please, don’t ask her about her dreams – she needs to forget about them.”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay then. Please follow me.”

  Soon Patrick was at Rozita’s bedside. Her washed-out face was pointing back at him, but Patrick wasn’t sure whether she recognized him. Then one side of her mouth twitched and a hand reached out and stroked his arm, and then he knew.

  She croaked out a “Hi” that was more of a high-pitched groan.

  “How are you feeling?” Patrick said, grasping her hand and squeezing it gently between both of his.

  “I’m not feeling anything. It’s kinda weird.”

  “That’s the Mogadon.”

  “I wish it could make me… forget.”

  “It will, Rozita. Just try to think about the children if it helps.”

  A crease slowly materialized on Rozita’s forehead, and she brought a heavy hand up to cover her eyes.

  “I meant our children,” Patrick said, “not…”

  Her face crinkled, threatening to collapse in on itself. “Oh, Patrick, it was terrible. Those poor children.”

  He wanted to ask, to find out every detail, to know dates, times, places, people, the whole shebang.

  “You don’t need to tell me about it,” he said. Inside his mind a voice screamed, “Yes, you do!” But he simply leaned over and gave Rozita an awkward hug, putting his head next to hers, feeling her cheek, cold and wet, against his. And there was that fighting inner voice again, urging him to ask more. Where did this happen? What children? Our own?

  A nurse entered the room. “Everything okay?” She walked around the bed for a better look, then threw a stern look in Patrick’s direction. “Perhaps that’s enough for today,” she said.

  Patrick nodded and forced a flat smile to the nurse. Half of him wanted to stay by Rozita’s side because this was burning his heart and he wanted to protect her from her demons. But the other, hidden part, needed to know what had happened in her dream, and he cursed himself for not having the courage to ask.

  He told the voices in his head to shut the fuck up, then stood. He gave Rozita one last tender kiss, and left.

  “So where do we go from here?” Patrick asked Doctor Bailey back in the consultation room a few minutes later.

  “We’d like to keep her here under observation for another day or two.”

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “Oh, I’m not suggesting she’s any danger to anyone should she suffer more
delusions, but if that were to happen at least we could see it first hand, perhaps judge whether some antipsychotic medication might be in order.”

  “Jesus. It’s that serious?”

  “It might not be.” Doctor Bailey closed the folder she was holding and paused to draw breath. “Doctor Leary, do you know anything about a Red Barrow Parade?”

  “A what?”

  “It’s what your wife started talking about once she’d calmed down – or, to be accurate, once we’d calmed her down and we could make out what she was upset about.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Are you sure it’s not something in her past – some tragedy or other?”

  “Tragedy?”

  “She kept talking about a Red Barrow Parade at a school, where thirteen schoolchildren were shot dead.”

  Patrick shrugged. “Did you check the news? Is it something that happened recently?”

  “I hope not, for your sake, Doctor Leary. You see, Mrs Leary told us that it was she who killed the children.”

  “Oh no,” Patrick said. “Please God no.”

  “I take it you know nothing about this?”

  “It’s another bad dream. She’s been having a few of them lately.”

  “We thought it was just a dream too. We put this to her but she still insisted it wasn’t just a dream, that it happened.”

  “But that’s not possible.”

  “We’ve been through all this with her, Doctor Leary. But she said there was no way a dream would be that clear, and, to be fair, she did seem to know every detail – or was making them up as she went along with great storytelling skills.”

  “Details like what?”

  “If you really want to know…”

  Patrick’s throat locked up. He’d witnessed enough tragedy of his own. He didn’t want to know – he just had to.

  “She described everything down to the stonewashed black jeans and green top she was wearing and where she bought the gun. She said she took a small boat down the river the night before and slept the night in the ruins of an old ice-house at the edge of the school grounds. Early on the morning of the parade she broke through the storeroom window where she hid for a few hours. Again she could remember it in detail: the polished wooden floor, the tables and chairs and sports equipment in storage there. And when the children filed into the main hall she ran out killing them indiscriminately, shooting most of them in the back as they ran to escape.”

  Patrick’s jaw shook a little. “Jesus, that’s terrible.”

  “Terrible, yes. But only a terrible dream, that’s all. We tried a few basic cognitive techniques to make her understand that this didn’t really happen, but she didn’t respond.”

  “She said it wasn’t a dream?”

  “Yes—well, no. She said it was ‘more than a dream’.”

  “What could that mean?”

  “In your wife’s case, Doctor Leary, sadly it means she’s unable to distinguish between reality and imagination – leading to our preliminary diagnosis of some form of psychosis.”

  “No, no.” Patrick held both hands to his head. “But she’s always been so… so well-balanced.”

  Doctor Bailey lowered her voice. “We’re talking about a psychotic disorder here – although it’s just possible it could be no more than a one-off incident. It does happen. That’s why we want to keep her in for observation.”

  “Yes, yes. I’m sorry. Do whatever you think’s best for her.”

  “Doctor Leary, we always do what we think is best for our patients.”

  “Of course.”

  That evening, after telling the children their mom wasn’t well enough to come home, and making them all say a prayer for her, Patrick crept into his cold bed. The pillow on the other side of the bed still smelled of Rozita, so he pulled it close, turned it lengthways, and slept with his body against it, a protective arm over it.

  *

  23

  When Patrick woke up again he was back in his own apartment in Chicago.

  And the very second his eyes opened – almost before his first waking breath – he grabbed a notebook and then spent twenty minutes transcribing every detail of Rozita’s dream he could remember.

  The information was completed by online searching for the Red Barrow Parade and schools and rivers and ice-houses. By the time he picked up the phone to ring Beth, he had two sheets of dense scribble laid out in front of him.

  But Beth wasn’t answering. He swore at her before the tone, and left a message after it. He was going to all this effort, risking his… his sanity – yes, that wasn’t too dramatic a word for it – he was going to the trouble of transcribing his dreams yet she couldn’t be bothered to even pick up the damn phone.

  He groaned and thought for a moment. It was Saturday morning – perhaps she was stuck in some busy, noisy store. Then again, she had left her address and told him to go over to see her.

  A short cab ride brought Patrick to the apartment block. He stood outside for a few seconds, looking up, impressed at what sort of a place a high-flying career could buy. The property was select by Chicago standards, a block of twenty spacious apartments, four on each floor, held within immaculately kept communal gardens. It was no mansion, but pretty impressive for anyone under thirty.

  Patrick buzzed the intercom and heard a “come up” in the tone of yeah, yeah, I’ve been expecting you.

  There was a little surprise in the back of his mind at the lack of security, but that wasn’t important right now.

  Three flights of stairs later he knocked on her door, and started explaining as soon as she opened it:

  “I’ve got it. It’s a killing at a school. I’ve done some research too—”

  “Hey, won’t you just shut up for a moment and come in?”

  “Sorry.”

  Beth led him into the breakfast kitchen. He took a moment to glance through the floor to ceiling windows and down to the river meandering below.

  “I got a fresh coffee here,” Beth said.

  Patrick nodded and they sat down.

  “So shoot,” Beth said.

  “Okay. Success. I got back to the same dream last night. Rozita had a nightmare. I’ve written down all of the details and added some notes from internet research.”

  “No, no, Patrick. Start with her dream, just what her dream was.”

  “Okay. She used a boat to travel to this school, where there was a Red Barrow Parade due the next day. She spent the night hidden in the ice-house—”

  “The what?”

  “I didn’t know either. That’s the research bit. I found it, Beth, I found the school. It used to be a mansion house in the nineteenth century. They used to gather the ice in winter, store it in the ice-house, and use it as a kind of natural deep freeze to store meat and stuff.”

  “Hold on, Patrick. How did you find the school?”

  “Will you let me finish?”

  Beth frowned, then drew her head back and nodded.

  “Rozita said she spent the night in the ice-house, then in the morning she broke into the school storeroom. She hid there until the children came into the hall. Then she ran out and shot thirteen of them dead.”

  Beth sat impassively.

  “Well?” Patrick said. “It’s a prediction, or a premonition, whatever you want to call it.”

  “Is that it?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You could have looked all those details up on the net.”

  “No, not really. Look.” Patrick grabbed two sheets of paper from his pocket and unfolded them on the table in front of them. “This first one is exactly what was in my dream – or rather Rozita’s – no internet research of anything, just what I wrote down as soon as I woke up, before I even switched my laptop on. See, I’ve written the time next to it. This second one is all the stuff I found out from the internet search.”

  Beth grabbed the second sheet and started reading. She nodded agreeably as she read, but halfway through she let out a
gasp and placed her coffee on the table, splashing a little. “This school is in Wichita?”

  “Well, I did a search on Red Barrow; it’s a summer custom in Kansas. Quite a few schools around there have a parade for it, but there’s only one that borders a river, and only one that’s got an ice-house on the premises. And it’s the same one: Buckthorn High School, Wichita.”

  Beth struggled for words.

  “You’ve noticed the date, yeah?” Patrick said.

  “What date?”

  “The date of the Red Barrow Parade. It’s tomorrow.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Well… what, then?” Patrick said. “What is it?”

  “My sister lives in Wichita. I’ve got a niece and nephew there.”

  “You know what school they go to?”

  Beth shrugged. “No.”

  Patrick leaned across to her. “Look. I guess all this could sound a bit sick from your point of view, but believe me, compared to my other dreams it’s pretty tame. But really, I had no idea about your sister. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry; you haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “But can you find out if they go to this school?”

  Beth flicked the back of her fingers against the sheet of scribbled notes. “Your research is pretty thorough; I’m surprised you didn’t find that out for yourself.”

  There was a silence for a few seconds. Patrick finished his coffee in two large gulps.

  Well, that was it. He’d told Beth the dream; soon he’d have a second (and very logical) opinion on whether he was going insane. But what was his next step – to go home and wait or to stay with Beth? Judging by the expression on her face he didn’t much fancy the latter. Perhaps she thought he was playing with her mind, trying to stress her out as part of some power game. He wanted to tell her that was the last thing he wanted, that he had enough problems. He was just phrasing the words in his mind when she spoke first.