by Amy Cross
“I don't know why I'm doing this,” I whimper, despite the fact that a kind of abject sorrow has filled my soul, causing my body to shake. “I don't know what's wrong!”
“Who are you?” the little girl's voice whispers, echoing in my head. I don't know how, but I can tell she's not talking to me. “Why do you want me to go with you?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Okay, ready?” the nurse asks.
With the rubber cylinder gripped between my teeth, I nod. She doesn't even need to strap the cylinder in place anymore. I've learned to cooperate. I need the treatment. Without the treatment, I can never get well.
***
The crow is on the lawn again this morning.
The man is still watching from the forest.
The crow has two worms in its beak.
The man has no worms, so far as I can tell.
The crow flies off, arcing high into the cloudless sky.
The little girl is still scared.
***
“Yeah, the world's turning into a dangerous place alright,” Marvin mutters later, as we sit in the snack room. He's opening another packet of biscuits, his third, and he already has crumbs caked to his fingers. “Sometimes I think we're better off in here. Out there...”
He turns and points toward the window.
“Out there, that's where things are really crazy. And the worst thing is, the craziest people are the ones who are best at making themselves look normal. That's how they end up so goddamn slippery!”
Hearing a bump, I turn just as a cleaning woman pushes her trolley into the room. I immediately start to get up from my seat, but she waves for me to stay. We're supposed to get out of any rooms that are being cleaned, but most of the staff here are pretty relaxed when it comes to the rules. Still, as the woman starts cleaning the area around the sink, I can't shake a sense of unease in the pit of my belly. It's been a few hours since I last heard the little girl's voice in my head, and I'm starting to wonder whether she's okay.
“Biscuit?”
Turning, I see that Marvin is holding another packet out to me.
I shake my head.
“Your loss.” Still chewing the previous biscuits, he's already opening the next packet. “Sometimes, I wonder whether I'm really ill at all. I mean, Doctor Hamlin and Doctor Douglas say I've got all these problems, but I think maybe I just see the world the way it's supposed to be seen. I mean, if you really think about it, I never actually did anything to hurt those little girls. I bet they'll all grow up strong and happy and healthy. Maybe they'll even be better off because of our little meetings.”
“Girls?” I ask. “What exactly did you do?”
“Want a drink?” he asks, getting to his feet.
“No. What did you do to little girls?”
He lumbers past me, leaning heavily on the table, and then he makes his way past the cleaning cart and over to the sink. The cleaning lady is already wiping the surfaces down, so Marvin is free to take a plastic cup from the cupboard and pour himself a drink from a bottle.
“Sure you don't want some juice?” he asks.
“I'm sure. Marvin, what exactly did you do? Why are you here?”
He turns to me with a big grin.
“I taught them to play pretty.”
He lifts the cup to his lips, but he stops before actually taking a sip.
“There's so much over-reaction about that kinda thing,” he continues, clearly warming to his theme. “Everyone's so paranoid these days, worrying that their precious little kids are gonna get a dose of the cold, hard adult world. If you ask me, it's better to ease 'em in gently to the hard knocks, otherwise they're gonna get a really nasty shock when they grow up. So those kids learned a valuable lesson from me, and yet here I am, on a goddamn psych ward while their holier-than-thou parents are out there walking free. I'm telling you, they only put people like me in places like this 'cause they wanna make themselves feel better! Sanity's relative!”
“But what did you do, Marvin?” I ask.
He smiles, before taking a long gulp from his cup and then letting out a brief burp.
“Nothing wrong with a tickle,” he mumbles finally. “Everyone likes to be tickled.”
“I think I have to go,” I stammer, getting to my feet and heading to the door. It's clear that Marvin has a pretty dark history, and I'm not sure I'm in the right state of mind to hear about it right now. In fact, I feel faintly nauseous. “I just -”
“And they enjoyed it,” he continues. “I could see it in their eyes. Through the tears.”
Stopping in the doorway, I realize that although I desperately want to go to my room and pretend I haven't heard any of this, I can't just walk away. Turning to him, I watch as he goes to the counter and refills his cup, and then I wait as he turns to me and keeps drinking.
“Marvin,” I whisper, “what did you do to those girls? Why did you end up in a place like this?”
Lowering the cup, he burps again, although this time his whole body seems to shudder slightly. At the same time, he leans back and grins at me.
“You're sick,” I continue. “You're -”
“Where's my bleach?” the cleaning lady asks suddenly, hurrying past me and checking the counter. “I need you two to freeze for a moment until I find my bleach.”
“Ah, cool your cans,” Marvin replies, rolling his eyes as he turns and fills his cup again.
This time, I catch sight of the bottle, and I realize it's blue.
“Marvin, what are you doing?” I ask.
He turns to me, with the cup in his right hand and the bottle in his left, and I realize with a sense of horror that he's been drinking bleach.
“My name is Marvin,” he says, still grinning as I see a faint dark patch starting to form on the front of his white shirt, around the belly area, “and if you want to know exactly what I did, it's all in the papers. Everything they told about me was true. But right now, all you need to know is that even though my conscious mind is subdued at this exact moment, it's still in here, and in a moment it's going to take back control of my body. And when that happens, the pain is going to be intense. After all, I've got undiluted extra-strength industrial bleach mixed with cleanser burning through my stomach. A lot of it, too. Almost the whole bottle.”
The dark stain is spreading across his belly, with some of the liquid starting to drip down to the floor.
“Jesus Christ,” the cleaning lady stammers, stepping back. “No, oh please...”
Suddenly she turns and runs out to the corridor, and a moment later I hear one of the alarms starting to ring.
“See?” Marvin continues. “Sometimes I do good things. It's not just children I go after. Sometimes I deal with the scum, and I make sure they suffer the most painful deaths you could imagine. Just a little extra job that helps me sleep at night.”
Stepping back until I reach the door, I watch as he stumbles toward the table.
“Still,” he gasps, “the body does have its limits. I think -”
He stops suddenly, leaning against the wall and looking down at his belly. After a moment, he lifts the front of his gray hospital-issue shirt, revealing a saggy belly that looks to be dissolving from the inside.
“I'll see you soon,” he groans. “I really just came to let you know that I'm still watching you, Emily. That I'm still here. I had a little more that I wanted to mention, but I don't think this body is going to last long enough. I also want to test you a little and see how your mind works. They're changing your brain in this place, and that makes you different. You've been chasing me for so long, but until now you never really interested me. You're no longer just another of those awful -”
He burps again, and this time blood starts dribbling down his chin.
“I guess now it's... Marvin's time to shine!”
“No,” I stammer, “please -”
Suddenly he lets out a piercing scream, as his belly finally bursts. Blood and bleach come pouring out, crashing against the
table and then slopping to the floor. Marvin staggers back, screaming louder and louder, and then he slips on his own blood and falls, landing hard and cracking his head against the side of the counter.
“Move!” one of the attendants shouts, rushing into the room but stopping as soon as he sees Marvin writhing on the floor.
Another attendant grabs my arm and pulls me out into the corridor, where other patients have gathered to listen to the continued screams.
***
“What exactly did he say to you before he drank the bleach, Emily?” Doctor Hamlin asks as we sit in one of the side-rooms. “I'm sorry to be so blunt, but we really need to know why Marvin chose to end his life in such an awful manner.”
“He was talking to me while it happened,” I reply, still replaying the moment over and over in my head. “I could see the stain on his shirt, where it was burning through.”
“I'm not sure that's possible,” he continues. “Emily, by that point Marvin would have been in the most excruciating pain imaginable. Within seconds of drinking the bleach, he would have been unable to talk.”
“He spoke to me.”
“Emily -”
“You said you wanted to know what happened,” I continue, “so I'm telling you. It wasn't Marvin in there, it was...”
My voice trails off as I think back to the taunting tones that came from Marvin's lips. His stomach was burning, blood was running from his mouth, but somehow he was still grinning and talking to me. Deep down, I know that wasn't really Marvin, I know that for a few minutes at least it was someone else speaking to me through Marvin's body. I also know that if I say any of this to Doctor Hamlin, he'll probably have the E.C.T. settings turned all the way up to eleven and I'll end up with a completely fried brain.
Better to cooperate.
Better to tell him what he wants to hear.
“Maybe I was wrong,” I say finally. “Maybe he spoke to me before he drank, and then he collapsed almost as soon as he'd taken the bleach. I might have been getting confused.”
“Exactly,” he replies, making some notes. “I'm glad you're remembering things a little more clearly.”
I feel a shudder run through my body as I realize that he's far more interested in hearing lies that sound good. I can't tell him the truth. Not about Marvin, and not about the little girl's voice that occasionally drifts into my head.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The crow is back again. Still hunting for worms.
***
Suddenly, two men are fighting.
Stopping in the corridor, I realize there's a commotion in the recreation room. I can hear someone shouting, and furniture getting pushed aside, and a moment later several other patients come hurrying out. Seconds after that, a couple of attendants rush the other way, and I hear more raised voices in the distance.
This happens a lot around here. It doesn't take much for one patient to turn on another, and their little bursts of violence can be shocking. Or, they were shocking, at first. Now I'm almost used to them.
Almost.
Turning, I head back along the corridor, passing the door to my room and then going around the corner. Usually there's an attendant here to stop me, but right now they're busy dealing with the fight. I keep going, making my way toward the foot of the stairs, and then I stop for a moment. I like it here, without any other patients around, and I think I'd like to stay where it's calmer. I know I'm not allowed to go upstairs, but I doubt anyone will really notice if I'm not around for a short while, so I start making my way up toward the next floor.
The higher I get in the building, the further away the angry voices seem, until finally I reach the top of the stairs and I realize I can't hear anyone else at all.
A faint smile crosses my lips. I honestly don't remember the last time I was truly alone. Then again, these days I don't remember much at all.
Wandering along the corridor, I see empty rooms on either side. I guess this must be a ward that's no longer in use, although it's a little sad to think that such a beautiful part of the building has been left abandoned. Old pipes run along the walls, and I find that they're cool to the touch when I run my hand along their cream-painted sides. Doors have been left ajar, and the black-and-white tiled floor is cracked in several places, especially around the drains that feature every few meters. The place is clean, albeit a little dusty, but as I reach the window at the far end of the corridor I realize that light rain is falling outside once again.
I stop for a moment and look down toward the forest.
The man is still there. Still looking at the building. Maybe looking directly at me.
For a few seconds, I feel as if the fogginess is starting to lift from my mind. I know there's something I've forgotten, something important, but I can't quite manage to get a grip on the facts. Even now, as spatters of rain fall against the window, I can feel a vast cloud of confusion drifting through my thoughts, keeping me from knowing the truth. Ever since the E.C.T. treatment began, it's as if there's an entirely new type of weather in my head, constantly raining down onto my conscious mind and washing away any attempt to really figure out what's happening. Even when I manage to snatch a brief snippet of understanding, the moment only lasts half a second and is quickly destroyed. I can't link one thought to another, and I can't work out where I was before I came back to the psychiatric hospital.
And all the while, more rain is falling in my head, filling my thoughts.
Suddenly I turn and look over at a door in the corner. I have to go through there. I have to go up. I don't know why, I just know that I have to try.
Once I've pushed the door open, I find that I'm at the bottom of a tight spiral staircase that twists up through the gloom. The railing is a little loose, so I take extra care as I make my way up, and finally I reach another door. The handle almost comes away in my hand, but after a moment I'm able to get it turned, and when I push the door open I'm momentarily blinded by a bright white light. I have to cover my eyes for a few seconds, and then I slowly become accustomed to the glare of the gray, rainy sky.
I'm on the roof.
Stepping out through the doorway, I feel rain falling on my face. A strong wind is blowing too, but suddenly I realize that I have no idea how I got up here. I turn and look back, seeing a door with stairs leading down into the building, but I don't remember coming up. I know I'm still at the hospital, though, and I seem to be alone. I also know that my memory is shot to pieces since the E.C.T., so I guess at least I understand why I don't remember the past few minutes. Still, as I wander across the roof, I can't help feeling that I must have had a good reason to come all the way up here.
When I reach the edge, I immediately spot a figure down below, standing at the edge of the lawn. He's in the shadow of the trees, and I have a feeling that I've seen him before. Not only here, but in other places too.
I blink.
In a fraction of a second, in the darkness of that blink, I remember being outside an apartment building at night, falling down a grassy incline and hurting my ankle.
As soon as I open my eyes again, the memory is gone. I try to keep hold of the image, but it slips away in an instant, and I'm left standing at the very edge of the roof, trying desperately to remember what was running through my head a moment ago.
There's a man down below, in the shadow of the trees.
I have a feeling that I've seen him before. Not only here, but maybe in other places too.
I step forward, until my bare feet are on the very edge of the roof and my toes are hanging over in the rain. A gust of wind blows against my back, almost as if the weather itself is trying to force me over the edge, and when I look down I immediately see the empty courtyard far below. I know that if I fall, I'll die as soon as I hit the concrete, but somehow that thought doesn't seem to scare me at all. Instead, I feel strangely encouraged by the idea of dropping through the air.
But the weather in my head is holding me back.
My thoughts seem trapped, caugh
t between two different clouds. Something is urging me forward, telling me to step over the edge, but some other force seems to be trying to warn me. I stare down at the concrete for a moment, and then I look toward the distant figure next to the tree-line. Squinting, I can just about see that he's a hunched man, but his face is completely blurred. Still, I know that I can see through the blur if I just concentrate, and my mouth once again fills with the taste of onion as I stare at the man and see his features starting to become clearer.
Two dark, angry eyes.
A grin filled with bloody, razor-sharped teeth.
He wants me to do this.
So I do.
As rain falls harder and harder, I step forward, off the side of the building. I feel my bare feet starting to drop down through the air.
And then someone grabs me from behind, taking a firm hold of my collar and hauling me back until I fall down against the cold, wet roof.
“Emily Carter!” one of the attendants yells, stepping around me and then dragging me away from the edge. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I don't know!” I stammer, suddenly realizing that I don't remember how I got up here. I know I'm at the hospital, but apart from that everything is a complete blank and I'm filled with a sudden sense of panic.
Suddenly I realize that rain is falling.
“Jesus Christ,” the attendant continues, “you're lucky I noticed you were missing. When I find out who left that door unlocked, I'm gonna report their ass!”
He drags me further from the edge, and then he takes my hand, helping me up. My bare feet slip against the cold slate, but I manage to follow him to the door and then I let him lead me back into the stairwell. My entire body is trembling and in my mind's eye I keep replaying the moment when I was about to step off the edge. Finally, I turn and look back out at the roof, and I think back to the figure down by the trees.
Except now I can't remember his face.
“I didn't mean to do anything bad,” I whimper, as more tears run down my cheeks. “Please don't be mad. I wasn't being naughty on purpose, I swear!”