“How did you kill them, boy?” the dwarfish lieutenant asked sharply.
“With this thing in my head,” Bradley Wallace answered, reliving the grisly scene in his mind. “I . . . I burned them up.” A wave of self-disgust and loathing assailed him. At the time of the attack, his retaliation seemed justified. Now, it just seemed sickening and evil. No one said anything, and Bradley Wallace couldn’t stand their accusatory silence. “I got so mad when they attacked Whilly that I couldn’t think straight. I just wanted them dead.” He looked away again shamefaced. “I don’t even think there was anything left.” The image of those charred bones flashed before his eyes, and he shuddered.
He broke, then. Something just snapped. All the emotions he’d dammed up inside gushed forth in a torrent of tears, and he sobbed uncontrollably. The Flying Nun, who he hadn’t noticed before, rushed forward and sat beside him on the bed, cradling his head in her gentle embrace. Marge stood unmoving, as though in shock.
“I think he should rest, now,” Cooke finally spoke to break the awkward silence. “Nurse, stay with him.”
“Yes, doctor,” the young woman replied in that gentle voice, still cradling the sobbing child.
Cooke herded everyone from the room and they gathered out in the corridor. Marge and Jack were too upset to even speak, and Mr. O’Conner slipped away unnoticed. He had other matters to attend to. As orderlies bustled past them, the swarthy lieutenant whistled in amazement. “That’s quite a story your son tells, Mr. and Mrs. Murphy. He oughtta be some kinda writer.”
Marge couldn’t even answer, so great was her despair. Jack cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. My son wasn’t lying in there. He’s just confused.”
The policeman chortled condescendingly. “I’d say he’s more than
just confused, Mr. Murphy, but I don’t want to butt into family business.”
“The boy’s had a severe shock to his system,” Cooke spoke up, “in addition to being delirious for three days. He most probably dreamed all those crazy things, and may be too frightened to remember the real truth. But this much I can tell you with certainty - that boy was shot by some kind of pistol at point blank range, dragons and monsters notwithstanding.”
“But you couldn’t find a bullet?” the suspicious lieutenant pressed.
“I told you before that the bullet passed completely through his body and came out the back,” Cooke reiterated, barely keeping his temper in check. He didn’t like being doubted. “Would you like to examine the exit wound for yourself?” the doctor added acidically.
The stocky man chuckled and shook his head. “Now don’t get all hot under the collar, Doc. It’s my job to be suspicious, especially with a cockamamie story like that kid told.”
“My son may be mixed-up at the moment, lieutenant,” Jack put in, finding it difficult to contain his own enmity toward the rather distasteful man, “but he was shot. What do you intend to do about that?”
The lieutenant turned his rat-like face and fixed Jack carefully with the slits he called eyes. “Don’t worry, Mr. Murphy, I’m on my way to the school right now to check around for any evidence of the shooting. And then I’m gonna check out that old water tank your son said he went to right after the shooting. At either or both places I should find blood or some other concrete evidence that the boy had been there. I can maybe verify those parts of his story. “
He slipped the notepad into one trench coat pocket. “I can even buy the Captain Courageous stuff, that he imagined it, that is. My kids play Batman and Robin all the time. Kids love to pretend. But dragons? That just ain’t my bag, Mr. Murphy. Nope, not my bag.” Muttering to himself, the stocky man waddled off down the corridor like a lost penguin, whipping the baseball cap back onto his shaking, balding head.
Cooke watched the man depart and snorted with disgust. “He’s the kind of guy who gives cops a bad name.” His anger was instantly replaced with concern as he turned to Marge and saw the terror and abject hopeless—
ness written across her strained features. “Give Bradey a couple of days to get over the shock, Marge. I’m sure he’ll think more clearly then and we can get to the bottom of this whole thing. Those fantasies are just temporary delusions.”
Marge shook her head somberly. “No, they aren’t. I should’ve seen this coming, all those comic books and monster shows, no friends, always by himself. It’s my fault.” Her face twisted into a contorted mask of guilt and anguish, and the small woman pulled away from her husband’s side to move off slowly down the busy corridor.
“He will be all right, won’t he, Dan?” Jack asked cautiously after his wife had moved out of earshot.
“He’s a strong kid, Jack,” Cooke replied, his tone noncommittal. “He always has been.”
There was an unstated hint in those words that Jack’s inability to understand and communicate with his son might very well have contributed to the boy’s delusions. Jack picked up this unspoken observation, and Cooke knew it. The doctor slapped him on the back and offered a half-smile of encouragement before crossing the hall to the nurses’ station, where he began consulting several charts.
Jack turned as the door to his son’s room clicked shut and the pretty young nurse approached him. She had a very shapely body and slender leqs, he noted with a faint discomfort. “He’s sleeping now,” she announced pleasantly, and he nodded, chewing absently on his lower lip. She hurried past him to the nurses’ station, where she and Cooke began conversing.
Jack stared a moment at his son’s closed door and wondered briefly if there was anything to Cooke’s implications. He truly believed he’d done the best he could raising his son, and how could anyone expect him to be or do more than he was capable of? No, he decided, this situation wasn’t his fault - it had simply happened. Self-recrimination was pointless and only destructive.
He glanced over at the pretty nurse’s legs one more time before starting down the corridor to the waiting room and the woman who was his wife.
Bradley Wallace slept almost without interruption through the night and into the next day. When he awoke, he felt stronger and more refreshed than he would’ve thought possible. Did this mean that Whilly was getting stronger, too, he asked himself at once? Usually they mimicked each other’s health, and mood, exactly. But if this was true, why didn’t the dragon contact him? Where could Whilly be?
The ugly police lieutenant with the crumpled notepad and ratty old baseball cap didn’t show up that morning (thank God!), but Bradley Wallace’s parents spent over an hour trying to convince him that he must’ve dreamed the story he’d told the day before.
At first he was surprised, having been too dazed the previous day to realize that no one took his story seriously.
“Don’t you believe me?” he demanded fiercely, fearfully. But he saw the unspoken answer in both sets of eyes. They didn’t believe him. None of them believed him. Which meant that no one was out looking for Whilly. Because no one believed the dragon even existed.
He argued with them adamantly, insisting that his story was true, every word of it, and that someone had to look for Whilly because the dragon was hurt. But they only looked at him as though he was some kind of nut. “Oh, never mind!” he finally spat out hotly, burying his face deep in his pillow. Anger and fear coursed through him in equal doses. No one believed him! He finally tells the truth and no one even tries to believe him!
“Honey,” his mother faltered, her voice quavering, “It’s not that we don’t want to believe you (had he placed that thought in her mind, he wondered), it’s just that . . .” She trailed off helplessly, recalling all the times over the past year she had observed her son acting strangely. Even on the plane going to Hawaii, and she’d caught him talking to himself on more than one occasion. And what about the several incidents at school? The time he hit that boy? Or that memory lapse in Mr. Baldie’s class? And then there were his extreme shifts of mood, and his sudden demand for a meatless diet.
“It’s just that what you’ve to
ld us is so fantastic and unrealistic,” Jack concluded, a bit too harshly for Marge’s taste. But then, Jack had always had a vile, volatile temper. She glowered at him in anger.
Bradley Wallace whipped his head around and his beautiful emerald eyes flashed challengingly. “Okay, so how do you explain all those things that really did happen? The volcano filling up with snow in July, the missing cats and cows, all those rescues by Captain Courageous, who was never found - and what happened at the Golden Gate Bridge? Huh? How does your damned reality explain them away? Tell me!”
His eyes flared with unchecked fury, and anger raced through his bloodstream. Yet he felt not the slightest familiar surge of power, not even a tingle. Just like Whilly. There was nothing. If only he could call up that power and do something with it, something that would convince everyone he was telling the truth.
He didn’t understand why the power didn’t come, and silently cursed himself for even thinking anyone would believe him. How could they, when they never saw beyond what they were looking at? Imagination was foreign to grownups, and that lack might cost Whilly’s life. And his own.
“Son, I’m sure there’re rational explanations for everything you just mentioned,” his father stated impatiently.
“Your father’s right, Bradey,” his mother agreed, driving home the notion he’d formulated in recent months that the only time his parents ever seemed to agree was when it hurt him the most.
“Oh, yeah?” he spat viciously, “Well you just go out and find your rational explanations before you come back!” His cold-blooded attack stung them, he could tell, and he felt glad that he’d hurt them. After all, they were hurting him plenty.
Some say the world will end in fire . . .
There was that damned poem again! He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about anything.
Some say in ice . . .
He pushed the words away from him; closed off his mind to all but his anger and the hurt his parents’ disbelieving looks had caused him. He turned away. He didn’t want to see them anymore. “I’m tired now,” he announced quietly, without emotion. He decided he’d be better off like
Whilly after all, not feeling anything.
“We’ll come back later,” he heard his mother say, and momentarily felt the urge to apologize for his rudeness. Would you believe your story if someone else told it to you, he asked himself? He wasn’t sure, but felt certain he’d at least try. He heard the door close with a click, and knew his parents had gone.
He took in a deep breath, and winced with pain. His chest still hurt, and his heart ached. Where was Whilly? Everything would be so simple if the dragon was there. Whilly was the only proof these doubting grownups would accept, and no one was even out looking for him. He was certain the dragon had been too weak that night to fly anywhere, so what could have happened?
It was all so frustrating, especially being trapped in this stupid hospital where everyone thought he was crazy. And that dumpy old policeman wasn’t going to investigate anything. He probably just went back to headquarters and joked with the guys about the loony kid at the hospital who thinks he sees dragons and monsters.
If only he could find Whilly, even zero in on a general direction. But he felt nothing, almost as though the dragon had vanished from the face of the earth. The only other possible explanation for his inability to mind-link with Whilly was simply too terrifying to even contemplate, for it would mean he really was crazy. Squelching those thoughts like an annoying insect, Bradley Wallace rolled over in the lumpy bed and tried vainly to sleep.
Marge and Jack sat wordlessly on the faded, well-worn couch in the otherwise empty waiting room. Marge stared off into space, alone with her thoughts and fears. Jack didn’t want to think, so he concentrated his attentions on the constant passage of nurses (many of them quite attractive), orderlies pushing gurneys, clattering medicine carts, and an uncountable number of doctors. But none of them was Cooke.
The white-haired physician had requested a meeting with the Murphys, claiming he knew another man who could help their son. Neither parent wanted to face the possibility that Bradley Wallace had lost touch with reality, but after all he’d told them, and his stubborn refusal to cooperate, what else could they think?
Katie had only been to see her brother once since his fever broke, and went away in tears because she feared he’d be locked up in some asylum. In her own way, Katie really did love Bradley Wallace, and it broke her heart to see him this way.
After what seemed like hours and hundreds of passing men in white smocks, Cooke finally appeared, another man in a grey suit at his side. The other man was much taller and slimmer than Cooke, with short, close-cropped dark hair, greying slightly at the temples, angular facial features highlighted by a sharp, beakish nose, and a full, but well-trimmed beard. He carried himself like a man of great self-assurance.
“Marge, Jack, this is Dr. Rosenbloom, an old friend of mine,” Cooke began.
“Not that old,” Rosenbloom interrupted with a smile, and Cooke laughed politely. “It’s a pleasure to meet you both.” Rosenbloom’s perfect white teeth gleamed in the fluorescent light like bones under a desert sun.
Marge and Jack stood and Jack extended his hand. Rosenbloom clasped it firmly and they shook. “Doctor,” he said with a nod.
Cooke hesitated a moment before continuing, and Marge immediately was on her guard. “I called Dr. Rosenbloom because I felt Bradey needed special treatment. Arthur is one of the finest psychiatrists in the country, in my opinion.”
Marge shook her head empathically. “Oh, no. My son doesn’t need a psychiatrist. He’s not crazy!”
“Now wait, Marge, hear me out,” Cooke continued quickly.
“May I, Dan?” Rosenbloom interrupted, gesturing to the protesting couple. Cooke nodded with obvious relief and stepped slightly to one side. Rosenbloom’s narrow, brown eyes focused on Marge with a smugness she instantly took a dislike to.
“No one said your son was crazy, Mrs. Murphy,” the bearded man stated flatly, “But he is most certainly confused. It seems obvious to me that he is retreating from some harsh reality into a safe, make-believe world of friendly dragons and beautiful, no doubt sexually alluring, sorceresses.”
“He’s only fourteen,” Marge instantly protested.
“That’s more than old enough to be interested in girls,” Rosenbloom commented drily. “Marge, your son is retreating farther and farther into his fantasy world every day. If we don’t find out the reason behind that retreat, we might very well lose him completely.”
His pomposity turned Marge’s stomach, but the truth behind his words stirred her deepest fears. Jack had thus far remained silent, considering carefully everything that had been said. While he didn’t particularly like this man either, nor did he have much respect or faith in psychiatry in general (he felt deep down that it was merely a crutch for people too weak to work out their own insecurities), the image of his son describing in detail how he’d controlled the wind finally convinced him they had nothing to lose by allowing Rosenbloom a chance. Marge still hesitated, but between the persuasions of Jack and Cooke (whom she trusted a great deal), she reluctantly agreed to try.
Rosenbloom promised not to upset the boy. He would simply talk to him, try to get some insight into what was really troubling him. The bearded doctor flashed an arrogant smile and excused himself, saying he had to gather some facts together before confronting Bradley Wallace, which he intended to do the following morning. And no, he informed them bluntly, the parents could not be present. That was standard procedure. Marge and Jack returned home that afternoon uncertain, thoughtful, and very much apart. Marge mostly blamed Jack for their son’s problems. Jack knew this and resented her for it. They slept in separate rooms that night. Katie barely slept at all, worrying desperately over her brother’s condition.
Bradley Wallace tossed and turned and cried out all night and had to be given a sleeping pill to calm him. The next morning he awoke with a raven
ous appetite and practically inhaled the bacon and eggs brought in to him, not even noticing that he was breaking his vegetarian pledge in doing so. It was the first really solid meal he’d eaten since his birthday, the night of the shooting.
He felt much stronger, and very restless. But there was still no trace of the power in his increasing strength, and he began to wonder if he’d ever really had it at all. Perhaps Whilly really had done all those things.
The morning passed with agonizing slowness, and Bradley Wallace felt certain he would go out of his mind with frustration. Who knew what might be happening to Whilly and he was stuck in here! Then, shortly before lunch (the boy was curiously ravenous again, as if he hadn’t eaten anything for weeks), the door to his room popped open and a tall, bearded man wearing a pinstripe mafia-type suit entered. Even before the man spoke, Bradley Wallace took an instant dislike to him. There was an almost stifling air of arrogance and self-importance about this man that immediately repelled the sensitive boy.
“Good morning, Bradey,” the man smiled through his beard, a phony P.R. smile that further rankled Bradley Wallace. The man’s casual use of his hated nickname did not help, either. “I’m Dr. Rosenbloom, and I’d like to talk to you.”
Without waiting for an invitation, he pulled a chair over from the window to the side of Bradley Wallace’s bed and sat down, casually crossing his legs. He indicated the sunlight streaming through the venetian blinds. “Beautiful day outside, isn’t it?”
Bradley Wallace shrugged. He didn’t like this man and he’d had it with doctors in general. “It’s okay, I guess.”
Rosenbloom sat back and regarded the boy carefully, his deep-set eyes hidden beneath very bushy brows. “So,” he began conversationally, “Why don’t you tell me about your friend Willie?”
The boy’s head shot up. “Who told you about that?” he demanded. “Who are you, anyway? I’ve never seen you before.”
A Boy and His Dragon Page 52