by David Jester
The boy bounced backwards, his skull knocked against the solid wall, and then flopped forward, perfectly placed for Eddie to deliver another shift jab, this time to his nose. The appendage ruptured under the impact, following by a muffled whine as the kid crumpled in on himself.
“Hurry up!”
Eddie turned to see Darren yelling at him. He looked alarmed, desperate. Eddie could see the thirst for blood in his eyes; he was impressed and felt a newfound respect for his friend.
“Finish him!” Darren screamed.
Eddie nodded slowly, “Okay.” He tossed the knife back to his right hand and looked down at the youngster, who was gazing up at him with defiance in his eyes.
“Kill me,” the youngster said, echoing Darren’s thoughts and Eddie’s intentions. “Kill me.”
“Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.”
When Malcolm burst into the room he saw Eddie looming over Neil, Neil was murmuring, repeating a succession of mumbled words, but this time Malcolm could make out what he was saying.
“Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.”
Darren was standing back, watching in horror and screaming at Eddie to stop, to leave Neil alone, but Eddie seemed lost in a world of his own. He picked Neil up with his free hand, whispered something to him and then prepared to drive the knife into his stomach. Malcolm tackled him before he had a chance.
He didn’t think about consequences. He didn’t think about the knife in Eddie’s hands as he hit him and knocked him to the ground, but he felt the blade whip across his thigh when they fell, felt it cut through his jeans and open a small gash just above his knee.
He was lucky, but he didn’t think about that. He let the adrenaline take over, let his anger—an anger that had been repressed, held deep down in the darkest pit of his conscious, for most of the day—take over. He rolled Eddie over and looked briefly into his eyes, there was no recognition there, no feeling, he didn’t even look angry, he looked blank and apathetic. Malcolm hit him hard, so hard that he felt the floor beneath Eddie’s skull as he forced the latter into the former. He hit him twice, three times, four times, driving his fist into a face that had been so familiar for so long.
Eddie didn’t retaliate. His hands lay still by his side. He had lost control of the knife but he didn’t even try to reach for it, nor did he try to punch back or to block his friend’s punches.
Eventually Malcolm felt some resistance, some fight, but not from Eddie. Darren was behind him, pulling hard at his shoulders and his back, trying to yank him off their friend. He succeeded in the end, but only because Malcolm had exhausted himself. Darren dragged him off and they both fell to the floor, alongside Eddie who lay still—a smirk on his bloody face.
Eddie coughed, blood dripped from his mouth down his face. He laughed, a choking, warbling sound that filtered through the blood gushing from his nose his fat lip.
“Well then,” he said with a snigger. “That was fun.”
Malcolm shook his head. He looked at Darren who seemed less shocked with Eddie’s indifference. He rose to his feet and looked down at Eddie who was also trying to climb to his.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked.
“Me?” Eddie coughed, wiping the blood from his mouth and inspecting the back of his sleeve. “Me? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Malcolm didn’t answer, he felt a pang of guilt, but that vanished when he looked at Neil and remembered how close Eddie had been to killing him. He felt the anger return and took a step towards Eddie, but Darren quickly jumped to his feet and moved forward to stop him.
“Leave him,” Darren warned. “He ain’t worth it.”
Eddie looked at Darren and laughed. “You changed your mind so fast,” he said.
“Changed my mind?” Darren snapped. “Are you fucking kidding? What the hell is going on inside that head of yours?”
Eddie didn’t reply, he just stared.
“So, now what?” Eddie asked, his words slurred by his bleeding lip. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, smeared the blood across his chin and cheek. “Clearly you don’t want me to come with you, so you could just kill me or . . .”
Darren turned to Malcolm and saw the concentration and determination on his friend’s face as he glared at Eddie. They locked stares for a moment before Malcolm gave a shake of his head and lowered his eyes. “Just leave,” he ordered. “Find your own way out.”
“Really?” Darren asked.
“What else do you think we should do?” Malcolm wondered.
Darren thought about this for a moment. He knew they shouldn’t split up, but he also knew that they weren’t in it together anymore. They had been together as friends for a long time, but as strange as it felt, Eddie wasn’t their friend anymore. Eddie was barely even Eddie anymore. They couldn’t trust him if they went with him, and despite what Eddie had suggested, they couldn’t kill him.
“We could tie him up,” Darren offered. “We can always come back for him when we get help.”
Malcolm quickly dismissed the idea. “This place is full of psychopaths, they’ll find him. If we tie him up, then we might as well be killing him ourselves.”
Darren nodded. He didn’t like the idea of Eddie being loose in the hospital, he disliked the idea of Eddie sneaking up on them as much as if he were one of the crazies, but they had no other choice.
“Leave,” Malcolm ordered. “Just . . . if you find a way out before us, make sure you get help.”
Eddie nodded and held his friend’s stare momentarily. Malcolm could see the apathy in his eyes and knew that if Eddie did find a way out, he wasn’t going to get help. He would leave them to die in this place.
They both watched as Eddie departed, glaring back at Neil—still cowering in the corner—before he did so. When he was gone and they listened to the sound of his footfalls echoing down the corridor, Malcolm stared at his bloodied fists and slowly shook his head.
“You certainly gave him a beating,” Darren noted. “I bet that felt good.”
“I don’t know what came over me,” Malcolm said. “I just lost it. I’ve been angry all day, I nearly lost control earlier on, after we first came here, but . . .” he trailed off.
“I know what you mean,” Darren said with a nostalgic tone. “I felt it too. I went crazy on Ian this morning and beat the shit out of him. I mean, the dickhead deserved it, but it’s not like me.”
Malcolm looked at his friend and nodded, he was right, it wasn’t like him.
“It’s this place,” Darren said, looking around as if to emphasize his point. “It did something to us.”
“And Eddie?” Malcolm said, asking the question on both of their minds.
Darren nodded. “Probably. He was already heading that way, but . . .” he finished with a shrug. “I don’t know what happened to him. He wasn’t listening to me; he didn’t seem to be hearing what I was saying. I’m pretty sure he tried to kill me, he said he didn’t know it was me, but he was looking right at me.”
Malcolm nodded. “I saw him on the cameras; I saw the look in his eye earlier. Something’s not right, something’s snapped.”
“He killed two people in the hallway,” Darren said, remembering the violent slaughter. “They were staff, I’m sure of it. They were just scared, they weren’t patients and they certainly weren’t killers. I had the knife and I dropped it to show them I didn’t mean any harm, then Eddie . . .” he shook his head, lowered his eyes to the floor. “He butchered them. I tried to stop him. I tried to tell him what he did was horrible, but he didn’t seem to hear a word I said. He thought I was fucking praising him.”
Malcolm patted his friend on the back, “It’s okay,” he said. “The psycho has gone now; we’ll get out of here and leave him to rot.” He looked around the hospital. “It’s probably the best place for him.”
34
Neil had stayed in his corner, watching the events unfold. His nose had stopped bleeding but the sleeve of his g
own and his T-shirt underneath were both covered in blood; his lip was swelling and his eye blackening. He looked melancholic and was trying to keep a low profile, hoping that Malcolm and Darren would ignore him, even though they had probably saved his life.
Malcolm walked over to him, maintaining a smile and a calm exterior. He didn’t want to scare him.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “He used to be our friend but . . .” He struggled to finish his sentence.
“But now he’s a fucking nutcase,” Darren said.
“Sounds about right,” Malcolm agreed. “But he’s gone now and we need your help.”
Neil looked up at him, he looked pitiful, like a beaten dog, but he also looked like he was ready to help.
“We need answers,” Malcolm said. “What is going on here? What caused everyone to act like this?”
Neil shook his head slowly.
“You must know something,” Darren begged. “Who started this?”
Neil shrugged again.
“Who’s in charge?” Malcolm asked, before correcting himself, “Who was in charge?”
Neil sighed heavily. “Doctor Hildenberg. He’s the head doctor.”
Malcolm nodded, feeling like he was finally getting somewhere. “Is he still alive?”
Neil shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“What has he got to do with all of this?” Darren jumped in. “Is this some sort of sick experimenting thing?”
Neil frowned at him as if he was an idiot, in that moment, that brief expression, Darren and Malcolm saw a spark of intelligence, but it quickly faded and Neil lowered his head again. “I don’t think so.”
“Where is he?” Malcolm asked, frustrated. He checked over his shoulder, fearful that Eddie would return. He had no idea where his friend had gone, he might have been able to guess where the old Eddie would retreat to, they had been friends a long time and he knew him well, but he didn’t know the new Eddie at all.
“You can check his office,” Neil said.
“Where is it?”
Neil didn’t answer; he merely glanced over Malcolm’s shoulder, through the double doors which Eddie had retreated through.
“Okay,” Malcolm said with a nod.
“You’re not going to leave me, are you?”
Malcolm looked at Neil and saw the fear and desperation in his eyes. He didn’t think that Eddie would return, but he knew that if he did, he would probably kill him. “I have no other choice,” he said. “But you’ll be okay, he’s gone now. Just stay here, hide, and keep your head down.”
Neil lowered his head immediately, digging his chin into his chest. He didn’t look up at Malcolm or Darren and didn’t utter anther word.
“We’ll be back,” Malcolm said, though he knew that he probably wouldn’t be.
“They weren’t the first he killed.”
“How do you know?”
Darren shrugged. “There was something about him when I ran into him. He changed. God knows what he was doing before he bumped into me.”
Malcolm thought about the recreational room, about the pregnant woman and her unborn baby at her feet; he thought about the woman slumped in the hallway and the man disassembled in the kitchen. Was Eddie capable of murder? The same kid who had played football with him in the street, the same kid who he used to watch cartoons with, was he capable of that kind of brutality?
He tried to give Eddie the benefit of the doubt, tried not to imagine what he might have done, but it preyed on his mind. As they walked back through the hospital corridors he took every corner with caution, wondering if his friend was waiting around one of them, ready to do to him and Darren what he had probably done to others.
Darren asked, “Do you think he led us here on purpose?”
Malcolm looked at him and then back down the long and empty corridor. He shrugged. He had been thinking the same thing, Eddie was the reason they were there after all, but he had nothing to gain by getting them there.
“No,” he said. “This place does something to people. It did something to the patients and it’s done something to us. We managed to suppress it, but Eddie and the patients . . .” he trailed off.
“Patients?” Darren quizzed.
Malcolm nodded slowly. “This isn’t a clinic for rich drug addicts; it’s a looney bin, a mental hospital, whatever you want to call it.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yep.”
“Do you think Eddie knew?”
Malcolm stopped and stared. “Look, it doesn’t matter if Eddie knew or not, it doesn’t matter if he lured us here. What matters is that we find out what the fuck is going on and then get the hell out of here. Agreed?”
“Do we need to find out what’s going on?” Darren wondered. “I’m all for breaking a window, yanking out the bars, and jumping. The sooner we get the fuck out of here, the better.”
Malcolm shook his head. He thought about all the murder and the carnage. He also thought about Neil and about other innocent people who might be hiding out in the hospital. “We need answers,” he said eventually, “we need to do what we can to help these people and bring justice to those we can’t help.”
Darren agreed, but he still felt the urge to run or hide, “And you think we’ll find it with this doctor?”
Malcolm shrugged. He checked down the corridor and spotted the doctor’s room on the right, hiding under a flickering fluorescent, the nameplate glistening in the stuttering light. “We’re about to find out.”
35
The doors shut with a bang, startling the teenagers who turned around so quickly that they nearly lost their footing. It was pitch black inside the room, broken only by a thin stream of stuttering light that crept underneath the door and illuminated their feet. They felt the rush of air from the door as it shut. They froze. Darren stretched out his arm and grasped at Malcolm’s sleeve, holding it tighter, feeling comfort in knowing that his friend was so close, even though he couldn’t see him.
He heard a noise in the darkness, a muffled noise that came from the other end of the room.
“Was that you?” Darren asked, hearing the hiss of his whisper as it reverberated throughout the room.
Malcolm answered softly and simply, “No.”
Darren held onto his friend tighter, his fingertips brushing the flesh of his arm, his hand nearly wrapping around his wrist. He side-stepped closer, until he felt the comfort of his friend’s body heat.
He felt his heart beat quickly in his chest and held tighter onto Malcolm’s arm as his palms moistened with sweat and his grip loosened.
“I don’t like this” Darren said. “I don’t—”
His throat turned bone-dry. He could sense someone else nearby. He had a feeling they were being watched. He knew something wasn’t right.
He held Malcolm tighter, moved even closer. He didn’t feel embarrassed; Malcolm was bigger, stronger, and more confident than him. Malcolm had always been the leader of their group; he’d always protected them, Darren was just the funny one.
“It’s okay,” Malcolm said. “I’ll find a light switch.”
“Okay, be—” Darren paused, the words were stuck in his throat. He turned to his right, towards the source of Malcolm’s voice. He felt him move beside him as he searched for the light switch. He turned to his left, towards the arm he had been holding. He loosened his grip and steadily pulled away, staring upwards, towards where their face would be, and his heart dropped to his stomach.
When Malcolm found the light switch and flicked it on, a big man grinned down at Darren, who quickly let go of the arm he had been holding.
“Shit,” Darren croaked.
He saw the punch coming as it cut through the air and headed straight for his face, but he couldn’t move in time to stop it. His breath caught, his heart stopped, and his brain froze in anticipation, then the punch landed and everything exploded. A bolt of pain raced through his body, he lost control of his senses, lost his ability to stand and to see. He toppled backwards, tripping o
ver his legs and an unseen piece of furniture. His back and his skull collided with the floor and with whatever else managed to get in his way. He was dazed and semi-comatose. He tried to right himself, listening to a primal instinct that warned him to stand and fight or face certain death, but he couldn’t drag himself to his feet. He couldn’t concentrate his eyes on his attacker. He was slipping further and further out of reality.
Malcolm managed to dodge out of the way of his own attacker, he felt the rush of air as Darren took the blow, saw his friend propelled backwards under the incredible force of the impact, but he tried not to concentrate on it, tried to keep his mind on the man in front of him. After ducking out of the way of the first blow, he waited for a second. The man was bigger than him, but he was also slower.
The second was a low shot, which Malcolm hadn’t been expecting. He tried to shift out of the way but his space was limited and there was nowhere for his body to move. He cornered himself against the wall, felt his attacker’s fist against his stomach and then watched, helplessly, as he threw another low punch. He couldn’t back up anymore and didn’t possess the power to block the punch, so instead he braced himself. The punch sucked the air out of his lungs and forced all his oxygen and blood into his head. He recoiled, bent forward and then immediately wished he hadn’t. He was exposed, waiting for a shot to his forehead, a punch that could knock him unconscious or kill him, but rather than a forceful fist against his exposed temple, he felt a hand on his shoulder, felt his attacker shove him upright and back against the wall. Then he felt a sharp prick in his neck. He didn’t see the syringe in his attacker’s hand. He didn’t feel the drug enter his bloodstream, but in moments, before the needle was pulled out of his flesh, he felt the effects.
Malcolm lost his balance and fell to his knees, struggling to stay awake. His attacker calmly stepped over him and injected Darren with the same needle. The drug took away the pain and the fear, replacing it with a calm and empty void.