The room was dark, but my eyes adjusted and I could make most of it out. The walls were covered in large tiles, possibly green. I couldn’t be sure. I’d been laying on some kind of conveyor belt. In the darkness in front of me, I could see the gaping maw of an oven. It was cold. Edges scarred by flames. I could see part of a metal door that would close after I was pushed inside.
I sat on the conveyor collecting myself, breathing, because it was good for me and it felt good. I tried to decide if my heart was beating. I checked my pulse. If it was there, it was too faint for me to find. I began coughing, hoping that would compress my heart, then I started to pound on my chest. I’d pound and wait, pound and wait. Finally, I felt my heart flip and push rhythmically against my rib cage.
It was night. Somehow Dr. Harry had gotten me there, put me into a body bag, then inside this cardboard coffin and left me to be cremated first thing in the morning. Slowly, I pieced together how that must have happened. The last thing I remembered was being in the lab. I must have passed out as soon as whatever he gave me hit my bloodstream.
Clumsily, I struggled to climb out of the bag and the collapsing coffin, landing on the concrete floor before I managed to wiggle my way out of both. The bag and the coffin came with me, and I lay on the floor, kicking my way out of them. I was still in my pajamas, but barefoot. The floor felt warm though, but that only meant it was warmer than I was. I got onto my feet. The room I was in felt like a garage, no windows, a door that rolled up—for deliveries, I guessed. Some light slipped through chips in the blackout windows in the garage door. The moon was out, and it might have been full, I couldn’t remember.
Stumbling to the door, I felt around for a light switch but instead found the button that opened the door. With a loud jolt, the door began to roll up. When it reached the top, I went out into the parking lot of the funeral home. It was strangely bright. Looking up at the sky I found I was right. The moon was nearly full. The sky was cloudless but windy. Heavy, constant, howling wind.
I walked around to the front of the funeral home and saw a sign that read, HEARTWELL’S. Yeah, I wasn’t surprised. To my left and right was a small town, running only a few blocks in each direction: a couple of restaurants, a gas station, a few clothing stores, a movie theater, a post office. Pretty much like my mom had said.
Everything was closed. It must have been two, three in the morning. At the end of the street, a yellow caution light swung in the wind over the empty intersection. I didn’t know the name of the street in front of me or even the name of the town.
Despite the wind, flies began to swarm me. I waved my hands a few times, but I couldn’t be bothered. I had to get back to The Godwin Institute. Was the B&B my mother stayed in nearby? Where was it? What had she said about the area? There were no chain stores in town. I remembered that. I had no idea whether to walk left or right. The Institute could be in either direction, or even behind me. No, no, it wasn’t behind me. I could see a sign that said MARINA half a block away with an arrow pointing in the direction I was facing. The lake was in front of me. That meant the Institute was either to the left or right.
I had to figure out which direction. I had to get back there. I had to get back to Goth. I didn’t think Dr. Harry would do anything to him except send him somewhere he was sure to die, but I hadn’t thought Dr. Harry would send me to a funeral home to be incinerated. And that made me wonder, why had I woken up? Had he not given me enough medicine? Was that why my body felt thick? And my mind—
Wait. A car was coming, light from its headlights bounced against the small businesses. I thought to step out into the street to stop them and ask them to bring me back to the institute. But what story would I tell? I was a barefoot, pale-faced young man in pajamas wandering out of a funeral home in the middle of the night with a swarm of flies around him. If I was lucky and stopped a Good Samaritan, I’d be taken to a hospital. The police might be called. I didn’t want that. I stepped back into the Heartwell’s doorway. The car sped by.
Think. How could I figure out which direction to go in? The lake was north. The Institute faced the lake. When we arrived, the lake had been to my left when I got out of the car. I didn’t remember coming through this town. Did that mean the town was east of the Godwin Institute and I should turn west?. Was that right? I had no idea. But I knew I couldn’t stand in front of a funeral home until morning. I had to at least try to get back. I began walking west.
As I lumbered down the street, my legs still wooden from whatever drug I was given, the businesses quickly thinned and I passed clapboard houses that were, like, a hundred years old. Some of them had businesses in the front: a lawyer, a yarn shop, a store that sold spices. I pushed on.
Another car came toward me. I ignored it, but the car slowed. Why would someone do that? Well, it was a small town. People knew each other, and I was in my pajamas. I might be in trouble. I was in trouble.
As the car got closer, I saw it was one of those cars that’s half SUV and half mini-station wagon. A woman about my mother’s age was driving. She slowed almost to a stop. An empty baby seat was in the back. A mom coming home after a free night with a girlfriend or two. She was almost stopped, leaning over the passenger seat to get a look at me. I waved her on. Concern flashed across her face, then, as she got a good look at me, fear. The car suddenly jerked forward and sped down the street.
I hoped that wouldn’t happen too many more times. I could imagine the story the woman was going to tell her husband, that she’d almost stopped for a young man in pajamas, but when she slowed she saw that he was…horrible, a monster, staggering as though not completely alive. Her husband would laugh and make a joke about his favorite zombie movie. Or maybe she’d insist she saw a ghost, and her husband would tease her about that. And then lecture her about having too many drinks before driving.
How far was I going to have to walk? My mom drove most of the times she had come to see me, but she’d said that there was a trail she was going walk. Had she done that? Had she walked to come see me? Even if she’d only thought about it, I couldn’t be too far from the Institute. I pushed on.
At the very end of the town, I found another caution light swinging in the wind. There was one at each end of town. It wasn’t even a big enough place for an actual stoplight. At this end of town, the light hung over a T-intersection connecting with what looked like a major route. I was looking for a route number, not that it would have made any sense to me, but it would make me feel better. A route number meant the road was connected to the rest of the world, but all I could see was a street sign, Duck Pond Road.
But then, almost at the same time, I saw the sign for the Meehawnee Trail. The entrance to the trail was half a block up Duck Pond Road. The sidewalk ended. I was walking on gravel and sand. It should have hurt my feet, but it didn’t. I glanced behind me and saw my footprints in the sandy gravel; I was leaving drag marks. I reminded myself to pick up my feet.
What had I been given? And how much? Was it enough to kill me if I’d still been alive? I pushed the thought from my mind. I couldn’t think about that. I had to get back to the Institute before Dr. Harry sent Goth away.
The trail was paved, about as wide as a truck. I was barely a hundred feet in, and everything around me was wild. The wind rustled the leaves rhythmically. Tiny hands clapping. Fifty feet from the trail, there was a line of birch trees and poplars and some kind of evergreen. The trail was thick with them, but they seemed to have a terrible habit of dying. In amongst the living, growing trees were dozens that had died. They stood there, naked, craggy, beaten gray by the weather. Nearly glowing in the moonlight. The dead among the living.
I walked. Pulling myself forward. Step by step. Willing my feet to rise, one after the other. The trail seemed to lift, running along some kind of berm, with sitting water on either side of me. For a moment, that didn’t make sense. But then I thought about how close we were to the lake. These were wetlands. The land rose where I could see trees, and where it sank there was water
that barely seemed to move. And cattails. Rows of cattails.
The stars were out, the sky cloudless. The moon full and bright. Something about it so magical, majestic. I never saw the sky like this. We were too near Chicago to see stars. Somehow it gave me a feeling of peace, even in the midst of the mess that was now my life. As long as there were stars, it would be all right.
And then I saw the crows.
There were seven or eight of them flying above me. As I walked, they seemed to stay with me. Waiting. I was afraid they’d dip down and attack me at first, but I didn’t think crows were like that. Hawks were like that. And eagles. Crows waited until something was dead. They lived off road kill and whatever dead things ended up in the woods. For a moment, I felt safer. And then I remembered I wasn’t all that different from road kill. I just moved a lot more.
How would I know when to leave the path? How would I find the Institute? I tried to remember if I’d seen any landmarks when I was out in the back. I couldn’t remember any, though. It would be to my right, I knew that. The lake was to my right. Maybe I was wrong, though, maybe I should have stayed on the main road. That would have brought me to the Institute eventually. Now I was—
Up in front of me, I saw a flash. A tiny flame. A lighter. All at once, gray figures separated themselves from the silhouetted shrubs and trees. Four people were standing on or near the trail. One of them was smoking a cigarette. Well, not a cigarette, I realized as he passed it to the person next to him.
“Good stuff,” I heard him say, though I wasn’t close to them.
“My sister caught me when I was climbing out the window,” the girl said. One of them was a girl. Maybe two of them were. I couldn’t tell.
“No shit.”
“Is she going to tell on you?”
“Naw. She was climbing in the window. That’s how she caught me.”
“Oh man. You’re frigging kidding me.”
“I wish I could tell on her, though. Her boyfriend is the biggest asshole I’ve ever met.”
Of course it was hard to imagine she’d met many big assholes in her time. She was still sneaking out of her parents’ house. She couldn’t be too old. I decided avoiding them was a good idea. The image I’d create stepping out of the dark would likely cause them to have all sorts of wrong ideas. Or maybe not so wrong.
I stepped off the trail. Trying to avoid the wet places, I picked my way through the brush in the dim light. The feeling in my feet was beginning to come back, and I started to feel the twigs and stones I stepped on . I tried to make a wide arc around the teenagers who were still talking.
“So, what is that place?” a boy asked. “My mom said they used to keep the retards there.”
“Nooooo,” the girl replied, completely exasperated. “It was a Catholic boys’ school. My father went there.”
We were close to the Institute. That had to be what they were talking about. Could it be seen from the trail? It was possible. I hadn’t spent enough time in the back to know what could be seen through the stand of trees.
“So my mom was right. It was a place for retards.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my dad and stop saying that word. It’s not nice.”
Suddenly, in the muck, I stepped on a thin dry branch that broke with a loud snap. The snap was immediately followed by one of the girls screaming.
“Oh my God, something’s out there.”
I froze. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t afford to make any more noise. I didn’t want them coming after me.
“It’s just a deer,” a boy said.
“What if it isn’t a deer? What if it’s someone, someone horrible?”
“Then the monster will jump out and eat us. You’ve seen too many horror movies.”
“Most horror movies are based on real life, jackass.”
“Yeah, like Human Centipede is totally based on real shit.” That was another of the boys. He sounded drunker than the first one.
“You’re just freaked because you’re from the city,” the first boy said. “People who come up from the city are always a little afraid. Like they think cannibals are going to jump out of every bush.”
“Cannibal movies are real,” asserted the girl. “Texas Chainsaw Massacre really happened.”
“Which time? There’s like a dozen versions of that…”
I took a chance and stumbled through a few more steps. Stepping on another branch resulted in another scream. This time though, I decided to take a chance and start running. The noise would terrify them. There was a fifty-fifty chance they’d run in the other direction.
For what seemed like a really long time, I didn’t know if they’d come after me. I was making so much noise myself thudding through the swampy thicket that I had no idea if someone was behind me.
I might have heard a whisper of one of them saying, “We have to get out of here” but I couldn’t be sure.
Finally, I worked my way back to the path, finding myself in front of a wooden bridge made of graying planks stretching across a rushing stream. I pulled myself across the bridge, listening for the teenagers. They were silent. They must have gone in the other direction since I couldn’t hear them.
It wasn’t much longer when I saw a faint light through the trees. It had to be the Institute. The light was coming from the nurses’ station at the front of the building. I was seeing it through the windows in the solarium. As I got directly behind the Institute, the light disappeared. It must have been blocked out by the double-wide. Yes, I’d found it.
Now what? I wasn’t sure. My thoughts were half-formed. Almost pre-verbal. Primal. I had to get in. That was all I knew. I had to get inside.
I stepped off the trail, glancing down at my feet as I did. They were filthy. My pajamas were ripped, and I had cuts that oozed but didn’t bleed. I was going to have to get through the trees and brush between the trail and the Institute. I had no choice.
I picked my way through. More dirt, more scrapes, but in just a couple of minutes, I was in back of the Institute. I could clearly see the double-wide, the garden beds, the prairie. I kept pushing forward. I might have been able to sneak in through the solarium, but I walked around to the front of the building instead. I wasn’t thinking deception. I was thinking confrontation.
FIFTY-ONE
I pushed open the front door. Ray sat at the front desk with a quizzical look on his face, a newspaper open in front of him. He was trying to work a crossword puzzle but not doing well, I could see that half of it was painted over with Wite-Out. He jumped up when he heard the door, his snakish face contorting when he saw me. I wasn’t sure if he was freaked by the way I looked—flies, mud, blood—or by the simple fact that I was up and moving around.
“No, no, you’re—”
“I’m what? Inside a body bag waiting to be cremated in the morning?”
“Dr. Harry! Dr. Harry! Come down here!”
He fumbled with the phone for a moment. It didn’t work, of course. He was about to get up from the desk when I picked up the pen he’d been using and drove it through the back of his hand. “Jesus Christ! Oh my God!”
While he was screaming, I picked up a pencil from a small leather cup that held about a dozen pens and pencils and drove it into his chest. I must have hit something vital because he stopped yelling and plunked down into the desk chair. A bloody bubble popped up onto his lip. I wasn’t sure if I’d killed him, but it didn’t matter. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be bothering me.
I snatched the keys out of the pink cup with the funky saying about stabbing people. Funny, huh? Glancing into the ward, I saw Goth laid out in bed, oxygen pumping. But he wasn’t moving. That sealed my resolve. I lumbered up the stairs slowly. Watching Jesus in the stained-glass window, caught forever in his ascent to heaven. I wondered why it wasn’t blasphemy to show Jesus trapped between heaven and earth. Never entering heaven. Never returning to earth. Caught between life and death, just like me.
I was stepping onto the landing in front of the win
dow when Dr. Harry came running down the stairs.
“How did you get here?”
I kept climbing, up, up, up. “You tried to destroy me.”
“Jake, you have to see reason,” he said, following me. “There was always the possibility the experiment might fail. You have to have known that.”
Pushing by him, I reached the second floor and aimed myself toward the lab. He followed me.
“Can’t you see what I did was a kindness?”
I stood in front of the lab and flipped through the key ring to find the key.
“Your life will just keep getting worse and worse. You’ll continue to decay. You’ll never be able to leave here. Never be able to go back to your life.”
“That’s not what Dr. Callabray thinks. He wants to move forward. He wants to save me.”
The door opened, and I was in the lab. I lurched over to the filing cabinet and got the key to the glass refrigerator.
“Callabray just wants to make money. He doesn’t care about you.”
“You care so much about me you wanted to incinerate me.”
I slipped the key into the padlock. Dr. Harry tried to stop me, and I slapped his hands away. Reaching inside I grabbed a vial of Property Five and a syringe and needle wrapped in plastic.
“Jake, I thought, I hoped if I did that, you might have some peace.”
“These are my choices. Not yours. Mine!”
I aimed myself out of the lab into the hallway. I had to get downstairs to Goth. I had to give him Property Five.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think it is your choice,” Dr. Harry said, following me. “I’m the one responsible. I’m the one who gave you Property Five. The flies buzzing around your head are my fault. The pallor of your skin. The cuts and scrapes that will never heal. The stench that follows you. All my responsibility.”
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