“If you’re not hurt, then why are we here?”
“We need answers. Those scratches I found on the door prove there was something real in that room, not some imaginary bogeyman. Who knows, maybe my mother was protecting me from something.
“I have these loose snippets of memory that come tumbling out from time to time and I’m never quite sure if they actually happened or not. I remember going to sleep at night in that house, the covers up over my head because I was sure something was under my bed. And I dared not look down because when you’re that young, what you don’t see can’t hurt you. But I remember once I did look and I could swear I saw something crawling out from under my bed and into the hallway. Seeing that house where I used to live again. Maybe that’s what triggered the memory, I’m not sure. But I’m about as positive as a person can be that it’s the same thing I killed in there. The same thing that got Ruma and maybe even Dr. Stevens. I need to know what it was after.”
“Maybe it wants you all to itself, like when you were younger,” Judy said innocently. Her eyes softened. “Maybe it only loves you and doesn’t want to let you go.”
Tyson brought the tips of his fingers to the raised and sensitive flesh around his neck. “Then it sure has a funny way of showing it.”
The head nurse at Marlboro Regional was a busty thing with a deep manly rattle in her voice. Tyson could see she had gone to great lengths to whiten her teeth—were those dentures?—but had ignored the yellow tobacco stains on the first two fingers of her right hand. He could see those two fingers twitching impatiently now as though he were the only obstacle standing between her and the fix she so desperately needed.
Her left eyebrow cocked when she spotted the deep purple bruise around his neck and Tyson was suddenly not so sure this would go as well as he had hoped.
“Birth records?” she asked, as though Tyson had just asked her to pull her pants down and stand on her head.
“I was put in a foster home when I was five.” He paused. “The same age as my son here, Kavi.” Tyson’s arm fell to his side, waiting to receive Kavi’s tiny hand, but it never came. When he looked down he saw that Kavi was clinging to Judy’s leg.
“So you wanna find your birth mother, is that it?”
“No, I know exactly where she is. I’m trying to find out if I’m an only child.”
The head nurse’s hand was still twitching. “Records are in the basement. Go down that hall, hang a right till you see a set elevators. Ruth is the head archivist. If we got it on file, she’ll know.”
“Don’t you have them on computer?”
“Good one,” she said. “Computers break down. You store it properly and paper’ll last forever. Just look at them Dead Sea scrolls.” The head nurse smiled and now Tyson was sure she was wearing dentures.
Much to Tyson’s surprise, Ruth wasn’t at all the head nurse’s haggard doppelganger. Granted, she was old enough to be his mother and then some, but haggard? Definitely not. Just looking at her bright and intelligent eyes, he could tell there wasn’t much that got by this one.
Tyson told her why they had come.
Kavi was sleeping in Judy’s arms and Ruth leaned over and stroked his head.
“What you’re going through is perfectly normal after an early fragmentation.”
“Yes,” Tyson said automatically. “You know, I never thought of it that way, but that’s exactly how I feel. Fragmented.”
“Then you’ve come to the right place. If you were born here we’ll have a record of it. Your name?”
“Tyson Barrett.”
The sudden change in the nurse’s facial expression was so striking that Tyson wondered if he hadn’t given her a name like Adolf Hitler, or Pol Pot. Her otherwise smooth features rippled with tension.
“I’m so sorry,” was all she said before disappearing through an opaque door.
Judy was running her fingers through Kavi’s hair, his limp arms slung over her shoulders. There was a distressed and anxious look on her face and Tyson didn’t think it had anything to do with the nurse’s strange behavior.
“You don’t look so well. What is it?”
“I’m not crazy about hospitals,” she said. “And I don’t think Kavi will be either when he wakes up. He’s sleeping, but I can feel his heart beating a mile a minute. I’m wondering if we shouldn’t talk to one of these doctors and get him a valium or a Prozac or something.”
“Valium? I don’t think that’s a good idea. I mean, that’s something I might have agreed to in the past, but—”
“Half a pill, Tyson. It’s no big deal. Think about what he’s just been through. Fact, I might take a couple myself.”
“Yes and the next time life gives him an upper cut, he’ll be looking for his next fix.”
“I’m not trying to turn him into an addict, I’m just trying to help.”
“Yes, so am I. Besides, he’s only five years old.”
Tyson could hear the nurse coming back.
“Yes, maybe you’re right,” Judy said coldly, and Tyson wasn’t entirely convinced she meant it.
The nurse emerged and laid a manila envelope on the desk. She was starting to act like one of those cops on TV who have the terrible burden of informing a family there’s been a terrible accident.
“I think you’d all better come with me,” she said reaching down under the desk and coming up with a sign that read: Be Right Back.
She led them into the filing room. On either side stood shelves taller than a man, not unlike the ones you’d find in a library, except these bookshelves had wheels on either end. In the corner sat three chairs and a table. Judy hoisted Kavi up on her lap. Nurse Ruth was still holding onto the folder.
“I wasn’t out of nursing school longer than a week or so when a young woman was rushed into the emergency room. Her water had broken and she was dilated, nearly seven centimeters. I was working in intensive care at the time. Never did get a chance to see her. The head nurse was the one to tell me later, her belly was so pronounced it looked about ready to split.
“She was ranting and raving about the germs. Germaphobe was what they called them back then. Nowadays, they call it OCD. And I’m sure to some of the younger, less experienced staff, she must’ve looked plain old nuts.”
Judy stirred and Tyson wondered if the nuts comment wasn’t sitting well with her background in early childhood development.
Ruth pushed the folder across the table to Tyson. Inside were a series of faded looking documents. On top, one labeled Birth Certificate.
Under that Tyson Barrett.
Date of Birth: May 23, 1974
Time of Birth: 4:35am
“This seems standard. Why the need for the sit down?” He wondered if the precautionary measure had to do with his mother’s attempt to murder him.
“Turn the page,” the nurse said.
Tyson complied and it took a second for the information to sink in.
Alexander Barrett
Date of Birth: May 23, 1974
Time of Birth: 4:15am
“I had a twin brother named Alexander?”
“A fraternal twin.”
The nurse waited until he had scanned the rest of the page. Under the comments section was something he didn’t quite understand.
“What’s sirenomelia?”
“Your brother was born with a deformity.”
“What do you mean de—”
“Sirenomelia is where a child’s legs fuse in the womb. Most of the poor souls afflicted with the deformity die very young. Thank God. Those who survive learn to crawl on their stomachs until they’re old enough to use a wheelchair. In Alexander’s case, he also had a slight compression of his nasal bridge. It’s a degenerative condition which means that had he lived, upon reaching middle age, his breathing would have become incredibly labored.”
Tyson’s eyebrows rose.
“Sort of like a pug?” Judy asked.
“Yes, exactly.”
Tyson suddenly became very quie
t. His stomach was rolling over in slow nauseating circles. “What happened to him?”
“I guess the answer to that depends on who you ask. Most everybody in town could tell you a piece or two, but I’d be surprised if anyone apart from the police and the other members of your family have any clue what really went on. From the bits that I know…” Ruth paused, looking at Kavi.
“It’s all right,” Tyson said. “He’s asleep, go ahead.”
“Your brother, Alexander, died from neglect when he was about the same age as your son Kavi. After his death, your mother arranged his mummified body in his bedroom as part of some sort of shrine. I’m sorry, all this must be terribly difficult to hear.”
Kavi’s head was buried into Judy’s chest and Tyson hoped he was still sleeping and hadn’t heard any of this.
Tyson was flipping through the pages and stopped when he came to an old photograph from the hospital’s nursery. On one side was a pink newborn baby, wrapped tightly in a blue blanket. In the isolette next to it, a ghastly sight. Bulging eyes, long skeletal fingers and legs bound by dark gray flesh into a horrible looking tail. And now Tyson had a name for the creature that had kept him awake as a child terrified to look out from under the covers. The same fear that now kept him from sleeping but for a vastly different reason.
Alexander.
That thing he had fought in the basement of his old house. The thing that seemed to want nothing more than to tear them apart. Could that really have been his brother? No, of course not, his brother had died years ago. If not his brother, then what had followed him back from the dream world, groping and clawing out from some horrible cocoon in his kitchen? If not a real being, Tyson reasoned, perhaps it was a symbol. A facsimile of a childhood trauma. Everyone has their own bogeyman, don’t they? How could he forget as a child entering the dim confines of Alexander’s room on that horrible day so long ago. Of seeing something recently dead staring back at him from the bed where all the stuffed animals were neatly arranged. His mind kept returning to something on the scrap of paper he had found on Ruma’s body. What are the chances that his nightmares could have started on the same day his mother in Sunnybrook fell into a deep coma? Then he remembered what the nurse had said about Alexander’s breathing problem and suddenly it all made sense.
Chapter 36
“There’s no way I could have known.”
Judy was crossing the living room of Tyson’s apartment, heading for the kitchen. She’d just come from checking on Kavi who’d slept for most of the ride home. She poured herself a drink and sat down next to him. Tyson was still babbling to himself.
“What do you mean, couldn’t have known?”
“That thing from my nightmare, that’s been chasing us, that killed Ruma.”
“His name was Alexander.”
“Yes, but that’s what I’m saying, it’s not the real Alexander.”
Judy was staring at him intently.
“The real Alexander died almost thirty years ago, right?”
“Yes, of course,” she said.
“And this…this perversion that pushed it’s way out from the darkest part of my subconscious. Wouldn’t you also agree that it’s nothing more than a kind of projection of a childhood fear? Hell, my mother used to threaten to lock me up with whatever was in that room. So you can imagine what was going through my mind as a child when that thing was under my bed in the middle of the night or when I saw it sitting in that room, the flies swarming over its corpse.” Tyson stopped and leaned against the wall. He’d just now made the connection between the flies he had seen buzzing around the rotting flesh of his brother’s dead body and the same insect that acted as a warning sign of the creature’s arrival.
“I’m not sure I see where you’re heading, Tyson.”
He was beside Judy now and he held her shoulders. “If those things coming back are from some deep dark pit of experience buried somewhere inside me, then nothing should be there that wasn’t a part of that experience, correct?”
“I guess.”
“When that thing chased us from this apartment, it was grunting and snorting.”
“Yes, I remember. It made me think of a dog.”
“That nurse at the hospital, Nurse… Ruth, she said that Alexander had a degenerative problem with his nasal cavity.”
Judy’s eyes lit up.
“Alexander died when he was five years old. So I couldn’t have known about his breathing problem if it hadn’t kicked in yet. It wasn’t something that I’d ever heard as a child, the scratching at the door sure, but the heavy breathing? Never. And yet sure enough when he shows up, there it is.”
“So then where did it come from?”
“The Alexander that’s been coming back from that other place isn’t coming from me. Not entirely. There are things present I couldn’t have known about. I mean, part of it is me, the way I remember seeing him. The rest, well, the rest is being supplied by someone else.”
“But who?” And as she spoke the words Tyson could see the inevitable realization slowly begin to dawn. “No, it couldn’t be.”
“Why not? As crazy as it sounds, when you take everything we now know, there’s no other answer.”
“But how could she?” Judy asked.
“There was a scrap of paper I found with Ruma’s things when I was at the morgue. On it were two events connected by a single date. The first was the onset of my mother’s coma and the second was the beginning of my nightmares.
“When you add in Alexander’s breathing defect, something only she and a handful of nurses knew about, there’s no other conclusion you can draw. Look, we still don’t even completely understand what happens to people in comas. She lives in a dreamscape and maybe she’s finally found a way to finish what she started thirty years ago.”
Judy’s hands were shaking. Tyson slid his arm around her and pulled her close to him. “I’m so sorry I involved you in any of this. Never in a million years did I imagine things spinning out of control the way they have. If you want to leave I completely understand.”
She put her arms around his neck. Her hands were soft and he welcomed the warmth of her touch. “How can I?” she said. “I’ve spent most of my adult life secretly wishing for something I thought I’d never find.” Her eyes were shining.
Tyson drew her moist lips to his.
The sound of shrieking from the other room sent a violent jolt racing up the nerve pathways of Tyson’s spine.
“Kavi!”
Tyson sprung to his feet, numb with fear. Scared to death that he would fling open the door where Kavi was sleeping and find a mess of blood and gore. Ruma’s mangled corpse was being projected on a screen inside his mind as he burst into the room. Frantically, he scanned the darkness certain he would see the creature he had killed in the basement of his old house, grinning back at him, Kavi’s blood smeared all over its burnt face. Tyson flicked on the light and saw Kavi sitting up in bed.
He was crying.
Tyson went to him and curled an arm protectively around his son’s tiny frame. His hairline was wet with perspiration. Tyson was patting him down, looking for blood.
“Bad dream?” he asked, when he was finally confident that his son was unhurt.
Kavi nodded, his eyes were fixed on some point in the distance. It had been so long since Kavi had really looked at Tyson and seen him. In the doorway was Judy.
“Just a bad dream,” Tyson said. “He’ll be fine.”
“I’ll put some warm milk on. It’ll help you get back to bed. Would you like that, Kavi?”
Kavi nodded. “Yes, please.”
Tyson stood, making ready to leave.
“Daddy, I don’t want you to go.”
Tyson stopped.
“You want me to stay till you fall back asleep?”
“Yes, that too. But I don’t want you to go.”
“Go where? Where don’t you want me to go, Buzz?”
“To the hospital. The old lady told me you were coming and I think th
at something bad is going to happen.”
A cold, dead hand seized his heart. “Which old lady is that? Do you mean Nurse Ruth?”
“No, not her,” he said drawing the words out, the way kids do when adults just don’t get it. “Your mommy.”
Tyson felt that same dead hand begin to squeeze.
“Is that what she told you when you went there with Mommy?”
“No.”
“Can you tell me when?”
“Just now.”
“When you were sleeping?” Tyson asked, trying to control the sudden fear rising in his voice.
Kavi nodded.
Tyson’s eyes fell to the shadow beneath the bed. He dropped down on one knee and scanned the darkness. Nothing. He was in the middle of checking the closet, cursing his frayed nerves when Judy reappeared with a mug in her hand. Soon he was satisfied they were safe and the two of them sat with Kavi while he drank his warm milk. Studying his son’s tiny features, Tyson wondered what kind of a person would want to harm a face like that.
“You know Daddy loves you more than anything in this whole wide world. I’d never let anyone hurt you.”
Kavi rolled his eyes and smiled. “I know.”
When Kavi was done, Tyson took the mug from him, hugged his son one more time and went to the door. He would leave the bedside light on so Kavi could sleep. He was halfway done closing the door when Kavi spoke.
“Please don’t go to the bad lady. Please Daddy, promise me you won’t go.”
Tyson’s eyes fell to the door handle. He was suddenly very conscious of a thin layer of grime on the metal polish. His mother’s solution to that had been to vacuum seal the entire house in plastic wrap.
“I promise,” he whispered and as he spoke the words he hoped Kavi couldn’t tell he was lying.
Chapter 37
The day after Bowes’ disappearance, Hunter had ordered a fresh battery of tests on Brenda and the results had surprised him. He’d also had to deal with a terrified Cindi Jaworski who’d swore up and down she saw Brenda sitting up in bed the other night. Of course, he wanted it to be true more than anything else in the world, but none of the tests he’d just performed bore out her wild story. What the tests were showing, however, was that Brenda’s ageing regression, which had been so startling after Ruma and her son’s visit, had slowed to a virtual crawl.
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