The face staring back at him almost made him scream. Distorted by the concave glass, she was thin and old, eyes sunken deep into her skull. That’s exactly what she looked like too, a smiling cadaver. The dark lines under her eyes were heavy and Tyson couldn’t help thinking about how they looked like the purple lines under his own eyes.
It had nearly been a week now since he had slept at Skip’s cottage and he knew it was catching up with him in a big way. Increased heartbeat, inability to concentrate, frayed nerves. All the old symptoms were there all right, and then some. Tyson’s new friend was still watching him. A thought occurred then and he dismissed it almost immediately.
Could that be Brenda? Somehow awakened from her coma and walking about.
It could be, for all he remembered of the way she looked, but this woman was far too young. Brenda would be approaching seventy. The chances were strong that she was lying in some room hooked up to a dozen life support machines, hardly aware the end was so near at hand. Better yet, if this Dr. Hunter did what Tyson hoped he did, she might very well already be dead.
Tyson heard a clang as the elevator doors slid open. Something compelled him to look down the hallway again. That’s when he noticed that, as far down as he could see, patients were watching him from nearly every porthole, their faces twisted up against the glass. For a moment a curious thought flit through his mind and it had to do with the way they were watching him. As though he was the crazy one, a freak of nature. Maybe they had a point. On the eighth floor in Sunnybrook Asylum he was the odd man out.
He stepped onto the elevator, scanned the panel and pressed a button labeled S3. The doors were sliding closed when it started again. Somewhere a genderless voice was screaming at the top of its voice. Beneath that, the sobs of another, this one a young male, begging for someone to help.
• • •
Climbing off the elevator onto S3 didn’t do anything to put Tyson’s mind at ease. It looked like a maintenance area more than anything. Long shadowy hallways, exposed piping overhead and with each step he was becoming sure something wasn’t quite right. The clanging sound of a heavy generator came bellowing out from behind a set of double doors. On each was the picture of a man, head back, feet well off the ground, his arms splayed in each direction and a bolt of lightning about to cut him in two. You didn’t need to be a genius to tell that whatever was in there could give you a nasty shock if you weren’t careful.
Ahead was an open door with warm light spilling out into the hallway. A faint pinging sound was coming from inside and he knew right away what it was. The slow steady beat of a heart monitor.
Tyson slowly approached and peered inside. The basement of an asylum was the last place he expected to find his mother, but nevertheless, here she was and a million electrified thoughts were jostling through his head.
He was about to step inside and stopped. He hadn’t laid eyes on her since he was five years old. Not that he remembered anyway what she looked like. But if he couldn’t even pick her out of a police line up, then how could he be sure this was the right person?
He went to the side of her bed. A piece of tape on the heart monitor settled his concerns.
The name on it read: Barrett, Brenda.
Her face was old and contorted by tubes and wiring. But he had seen this decrepit face before, hadn’t he? At Skip’s cottage. That haggard face in the window and then hovering over him in bed and seeing it now gave him a chill.
“Now it’s my turn to put a bag over your head,” he whispered.
On the wall was an electrical socket where the life support machines were keeping her alive. All he needed to do was pull it from the wall and it would be over.
That old expression about pulling the plug was closer to the truth than he had ever realized. And then he was struck by another realization.
It was one of the many idiocies of life. That pulling the plug now would be tantamount to murder while waiting for Dr. Hunter to sign some papers wouldn’t. He had learned the hard way the consequences of being impatient, of wanting a solution right away. That was what had gotten him into this mess to begin with, wasn’t it? Maybe counting to ten and fighting the urge to yank the cord out of the wall would mean the difference between a life in prison and a life watching Kavi grow up.
Tyson was watching the line as it traced the rhythm of his mother’s heartbeat when a terrible thought occurred to him.
What if she wakes up before the paperwork goes through? Where would he be then?
It was one thing to pull the plug on someone who was for all intents and purposes dead, but the idea of plunging a knife into someone’s heart, well that was another matter entirely.
Studying her face from here he could almost swear it looked like her eyelid had twitched. The way eyelids tended to twitch when someone was playing dead, waiting for the right moment to spring up and yell
Surprise.
“She’s magnificent, isn’t she?”
The voice from behind him nearly made him jump. Tyson turned on his heels to find Dr. Hunter standing in the doorway. He didn’t look well at all. Tyson had watched a program about people who were addicted to methamphetamines and this was how they looked. Eyes receding into their skull, cheekbones high and protruding. He might have been missing teeth judging by the way his thinning lips curled inside his mouth.
“Why the hell was she moved down here?”
“Merely a formality, I assure you.” Hunter said. He was lisping. “We try to remove patients whose life support is about to be terminated from the general population so it doesn’t upset the others.”
Hunter smiled and in the dim light of the room he looked more ghoulish than ever.
“So Mr. Barrett, should we get this over with? I still have mountains of work ahead of me.”
Tyson nodded and was walking toward Hunter when his eye caught something he hadn’t noticed before. He had been so overwhelmed with seeing his mother after all these years that he hadn’t taken a moment to take in his surroundings.
To his left was the door to what looked like a utility closet and running out from beneath the crack…
“Is there a chance,” Hunter was asking, “that when all of this is over and done with I could ask you a few questions about your childhood?”
…what looked like…
“That isn’t being too presumptuous, I hope?”
…a thin stream of blood…
Hunter set the briefcase he was carrying on the table and removed a series of documents.
“Why don’t we get started then?”
For the first time since he had arrived, Tyson felt the walls closing in around him. His breath was coming in shallow gulps. His senses suddenly kicking into high gear. Everything around him slowed to a crawl, the way the victims of car accidents later describe the moment of impact. Something or someone inside that closet was dead and it didn’t take much to realize Dr. Hunter had something to do with it. The doctor was closing the door and the loud noise it made reminded Tyson of a jail cell door swinging shut.
“Maybe this isn’t the best time,” Tyson heard himself say, vaguely aware that his mouth had gone terribly dry.
“Nonsense, you’ve come all this way.”
“Maybe I wanna give it some more thought.”
“Mr. Barrett, there’s nothing to think about. It’s the state that pays for her care, not you. After six months in a comatose state…well, it’s a matter of policy really.”
“Yeah, well then you don’t need me,” Tyson said as he reached for the door. But Dr. Hunter was there, right in his face and in one hand were the documents, bunched into a tight fist. He was holding them up as if he were a waiter challenging a customer who was refusing to pay. In Hunter’s other hand was a syringe filled with a yellow liquid and he plunged the point into the fleshy part of Tyson’s neck. Tyson yelped and swung his left arm to knock Hunter away. Hunter had been trying to depress the plunger and inject the yellow substance into Tyson’s neck, but now there was a snap
ping sound and the needle was skidding across the floor.
The point was missing.
No, not missing, it was sticking out of Tyson’s neck and the pain was excruciating. Hunter couldn’t have had time to inject more than a few drops of whatever was in that needle, but still Tyson felt his vision becoming glassy. His limbs suddenly felt heavy and sluggish.
Tyson knew full well this had not been the way Dr. Hunter had intended things to unfold. Certainly it wasn’t how it had gone with whoever was dead in that closet and Tyson could see it all on Hunter’s face. He suddenly looked like a desperate man without a backup plan. If Hunter had brought a gun, it would have been messy, but it would have been over. Tyson took an unsteady step away from Hunter who was coming toward him determinedly, his arms swinging madly. One of those wild punches connected with Tyson’s left cheekbone rocking his head backward into a cloud of starbursts. Another punch and this time he had enough sense to raise his arm to block the incoming blow. But Hunter’s fists were flying at him faster than he could avoid them and he was caught by a left hook and went spilling onto his mother’s prone form. He tried shaking his head to clear the grogginess and that’s when something hard hit the side of his head and he felt himself sink to his knees. Hunter was standing over him, grinning. In his hands was a metal bedpan with a sizeable dent at the end. Tyson was on all fours trying with everything he had to stay conscious.
Hunter motioned to the utility closet.
“The old man and Al the janitor didn’t nearly have the fight in them you have.” He was still gripping that bedpan with both hands. His skeletal face broke into a gap toothed smile. “You had me worried there for a moment. Anyway, it isn’t you your mother wants, but I’m sure by now you’ve already figured that out.”
Hunter took a step forward and as he did Tyson remembered the parting gift Skip had offered him as he left. That same fountain pen was now in his pocket beside his inhaler and he reached for it, not entirely sure if his hands would cooperate. Hunter was on top of him now, saying something, the words not making sense. Just then the bedpan tumbled out of Hunter’s grasp and hit the floor with a metal clang. The fingers of Hunter’s left hand rose to his temple. Then his right. He was having some sort of aneurism. Behind them, Brenda’s heart monitor was going crazy.
Tyson flicked off the cap with his thumb and plunged the Mont Blanc into Hunter’s belly just above the navel. He pulled down, using the leverage to get one of his feet planted firmly on the ground. The piercing scream that emanated from Hunter’s open mouth sounded animalistic. A gush of blood was sliding out of what was now a six-inch gash. Tyson pulled the pen out and swung it again, but this time twelve inches higher. It tore through his doctor’s lab coat and made a sick noise as it bore through his chest cavity and punctured his heart. His hands clamped around Tyson’s neck, but his hands had lost whatever power they once had. Hunter sucked in a final breath before his eyes turned up to whites and his knees buckled. Tyson fell on top of him, his chest heaving. The world was swimming away from him and he knew in another few seconds everything would go black. How ironic would it be, he thought, to have struggled to stay awake for so long, only to succumb a few feet from his goal. If he failed now, there was no telling what might come through.
Less than three feet away, past Dr. Hunter’s convulsing body and the pool of blood that was forming around him, lay the plug that housed his mother’s life support. Her heart was beating fast and he could hear the distant pinging of the machine beside her. For a second his eyes closed and he slapped his face until his vision settled. Couldn’t have been more than a few drops of that yellow shit swirling through his system and he wanted nothing more than to sleep.
Two feet now.
He could hear his mother’s breathing quicken. She was dreaming. Somehow he knew that. But about what he wasn’t sure.
One foot.
His eyelids each weighed a thousand pounds and he knew he was seconds from losing the battle. The wires were within arm’s reach. He saw a hand—his own?—grasp both cords and when his eyes closed for good this time, he hoped to hell he had managed to pry them loose from the wall in time.
Chapter 40
“I gotta say, Ty, you certainly don’t waste any time.” That was the thought running through Skip’s head when he heard the knock at the door. He and Kavi were eating cookie dough ice cream and playing a game of Uno. He swung open the door without bothering with the peep hole. The young woman before him was beautiful. At least she could have been beautiful if it weren’t for the queer blotchiness of her skin and the fact that large chunks of her hair was missing.
“Where is he?” she croaked.
Skip tried to slam the door shut, but the woman’s foot stopped it cold.
“Who are you?” Skip shouted.
“Don’t fuck with me, old man! Where is he?” The knife in her hand was a Sashimi and right away Skip recognized it as the one from Tyson’s kitchen.
He was backing away into the living room, trying to buy some time, hoping for an opening where he could lung for the knife and overpower her. The woman slammed the door behind her. The loud boom must have startled Kavi because he came running around the corner, eyes wide, holding his ice cream bowl.
They both saw him at once.
Skip reached out a hand, palm first. “Kavi, get back!”
“I told you not to fuck with me,” the woman said and slashed a deep red line across Skip’s throat. His hands found the wound right away and thick ropes of blood slipped between his fingers as he tried holding the loose flaps together.
But the woman wasn’t done, not by a long shot and Skip knew there was no other choice. He charged and tackled her. The back of her legs hit the sofa armrest and both of them tumbled over it and onto the ground. Skip’s hands locked onto her face and she swung the blade in a frenzy. A single thought was pulsing through his head: rip her apart, or you and Kavi will both be dead. The thumbnail on Skip’s right hand cut through the flesh of her cheek and when he pulled it away a chunk of flesh the size of his fist came with it. But the woman didn’t scream, she just swung the knife in a wide arc burying the blade in the top of Skip’s head. It made a strange sound, like whacking a wet pile of rags with a stick. His mouth opened almost as if he was about to say something. Then his eyes went dull and his body went limp. The woman pushed him off her and stood up.
Kavi’s hand was on the doorknob. One turn and he’d be in the hallway. An ice cream bowl lay shattered at his feet. The woman was coming toward him now, telling him everything was going to be all right, that he didn’t need to be afraid and the boy could see her teeth through the hole Skip tore in the side of her face and her teeth were black.
Chapter 41
Black spots. That’s what was dotting Tyson’s vision. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands and waited while the room around him slowly came into focus. His first overall sensation was an auditory one, or at least it was the lack of sound. That loud clanging from the generator room next door was gone, but that wasn’t all. So too was the soft symphonic pinging from Brenda’s life support.
The first image to form before Tyson’s eyes was the electrical socket. Both slots were empty and the eerie silence suddenly made sense. He had managed to jerk them from the wall before he hit the ground like a sack of dirty laundry.
But she didn’t die right away, did she?
Dr. Hunter lay nearby, face down. A creeping puddle of wet and sticky blood pooled around him.
Tyson used the railing on Brenda’s hospital bed to get to his feet. His legs were unsteady and stiff and he wondered how long he’d been out for.
Before him lay his mother, mouth ajar, her body still and lifeless. He felt her wrist for a pulse and found none. Her skin was cold and looked the color of raw dough. The surge of happiness he had expected to follow never came and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it had something to do with the dead man lying on the floor next to him, Tyson’s Mont Blanc jutting from his chest.
Tyson grabbed a handful of Dr. Hunter’s bloody lab coat and rolled him onto his side. He looked away as he curled his fingers around the handle of the pen and pulled it out.
But the whole time he’d been watching his mother’s lifeless body, certain he would see her eyes snap open.
Come to Mommy. You know how much I love you. Tyson, don’t make me ask you twice.
Then he remembered the utility closet. He crossed the room and opened the door.
Inside were the bodies of two men. One was wearing a doctor’s lab coat and had a clear plastic bag over his head. The name embroidered near the breast pocket read Dr. Bowes. Tyson removed the bag and saw that a painful looking hole had been drilled into his forehead. The second man wore a janitor’s uniform. His name tag read: Al Quinlan. Beneath his left ear was the puncture mark from a needle. Quick and painless.
Tyson was in the hallway, preparing to leave when he noticed his shirt was covered in Hunter’s blood. There wasn’t a chance in hell he would make it out looking like this.
Only one of the three dead men in the room wasn’t soaked in blood. Tyson returned and undid the upper part of the janitor’s overalls. He was wearing a filthy white T-shirt and it reeked of rotting flesh. The janitor’s body had been in the closet long enough that he’d begun to bloat and his shirt now bore the undeniable smell of death. Plugging his nose, Tyson pried the shirt off the cadaver. At this point he wasn’t in a position to be picky.
If he managed to make it past the guard, Tyson hoped Judy would be outside waiting for him.
He slowly made his way out of the labyrinth, and up onto the main floor. Joe was still at his desk. The guard looked up when he saw Tyson walk by.
“Excuse me, sir. Sir…”
Tyson stopped and slowly turned around. The muscles in his cheeks and forehead and around his lips were twitching and he was sure Joe could see that. The guilt on his face was unmistakable. And the blood. There had been so much of it surely he had missed some. A spec or two on his collar was all it would take.
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