Then it came, like a printed film sliding across his eyes. Patricia lay under a limestone slab jutting out from the cliff like the head of an iguana. He knew the place well; it was a quarter-mile down the creek from his cabin. A hole had been dug, and rocks gouged out to form a shallow grave. He bent over and tipped her into the hole, heard the soft pfifft! as leftover flatus was forced out of her intestines. He heard Jeff’s voice booming down from the heavens: Where did you bury the sixth girl?
He felt Harold’s soft warm hand on his shoulder. “Okay, go up and get your tray.”
Dan got up, took a wet metal tray from the rack, scooped up his knife, fork and spoon, and moved down the steam table. The meat tray contained the dismembered corpses of several chickens. A sardonic voice asked: “white meat or black?”
Dan froze and lifted his eyes. The Learned Doctor wore the pale green smock of a food handler. His hair had been clipped short above his ears, his lean face was shaved except for a trimmed moustache covering his upper lip. Dan felt a surge of affection; he wanted to leap across the steam table and embrace his old friend. He opened his mouth to speak, but Tom shook his head quickly.
“Bend over, like you’re trying to pick out a piece. We had the chronic ward all wired, gonna take you out in the food truck—then you switched. I’ve got the key to the crisis ward, so we’ll take you out tonight. Any questions?”
Dan picked up a chicken wing, dropped it. His brain had congealed in captivity; the thought of being free was alien and somehow frightening. “How’d you know where i was?”
“From Liza. She came down to Mexico. I’m not sure where her head is, so we gotta take you out before she gets back. That could be anytime, so we’ll do it tonight if Lona can swing her end—”
“Lona? She’s here?”
“We’re all here. Look, enough questions. Just be ready. We got you a fake ID so we’ll head straight for Mexico—and here comes your pet gorilla.” He raised his voice. “Dammit, grab a chunk and move on. Never saw anybody so damn picky …”
Danny shuffled down the line in a state of shock. Mexico was a wish come true. He couldn’t believe it would really happen … Back at his table, he looked down at his tray and discovered he had taken a leg. He remembered how Patricia’s legs had felt when he rolled her into the grave, slick with blood and gritty with dirt …
I didn’t do it!
It’s all right, Danny. It’s alllllll right …
Jeff met her at the airport. She was glad to see him, glad to see anybody who spoke English, who used language for any purpose except to obtain food, sex and transportation. She talked almost nonstop during the sixty-mile drive down from the city, releasing the dammed-up flow of her impressions of Mexico, particularly the last sticky degrading scene at the border. She had seen the arch of welcome across the bridge, and had been so happy to leave the smell of fried beans and tortillas—but there were these stern anglo-saxon faces, thin-smiling Texicans who ordered everybody out of the van. “Asshole check,” muttered the driver. “Just be sure you ain’t holding.” The matron was lean, blonde, persimmon-sour. She ushered Liza into a white-washed cubicle and ordered her to strip. Liza argued, displayed her credentials, her state hospital ID. The matron shook her head from side to side. “You came in with that load of hippies, din’t ya?”
“They gave me a ride—”
“Bend over and spread your cheeks, honey. I don’t like this any better than you.” But you’re doing it, Liza had thought as she bent over and pulled her buttocks apart, so your good intentions don’t mean shit.
Jeff cooked dinner when they reached his apartment: Calf’s liver fried in butter, sprinkled with chopped onions, drowned in a sauce of orange juice and Dubonnet. She ate too much, and was glad she’d changed into a loose sleeveless denim dress. Jeff wore a white calypso shirt with ruffled cuffs. She could look down through the smoked glass tabletop and see the white duck trousers hugging his lean hips. He poured wine reverently into the long-stemmed crystal goblets: “A ‘45 Chateau d’Yquem. I don’t waste it on people I don’t care about.”
She studied his face in the flickering candlelight. Jeff had been part of the furniture in her life so long she had quit thinking about him. Now his air of savoir-faire seemed too smooth, his posturings too boyish, his attitudes false and overdone—or was it her values which had changed?
In the bar, between sips of a cold banana diaquiri, she tried to verbalize her feeling: “When I went to Mexico … I don’t know what my reasons were. I thought I would probably come back, and say, Well, Dan, I checked out your scene and I still feel the same way. But the truth is I don’t. I hate cops, hate governments, hate institutions of all kinds. Yes, even our own dear benevolent hospital. I’m beginning to wonder if psychiatry hasn’t turned into the greatest monster since Christianity. We tell them to adjust to the world. But the world is a cesspool of greed and warped motives. So what it comes down to on a personal level is we give them lessons in self-degradation.”
“It works,” said Jeff, sipping. “Sometimes …”
“How can you be sure, if you can’t read their minds? Look—I used to think that hallucinations were always, invariably, symptoms of a sick mind. Since then I’ve seen things that could only have been hallucinations. So what do I do? Walk up to receiving and tell them to check me in, I’ve gone nuts?”
Jeff eyed her gravely across the bar. “You have to assume that you’re sane. That’s where you begin.”
“All right. Assume that I did actually experience that girl’s death. Suppose I did get an insight into how Dan’s mother felt when she was buried. And how Noel felt when he rammed into the cliff. What the hell does it mean? What’s the explanation?”
Jeff looked down, making rings on the bar with his glass. “Could be this will never be explained. Maybe that’s why some of the patients just look at you and smile kind of funny, then go on their way …”
His words dwindled into silence, broken only by the click of the beaded portieres stirred by the tiny fan. Liza looked at her sunburned face in the mirror and wondered why she was sitting here, wasting time, when there was so much to do.
But what did she have to do?
“About Danny …” she said after a minute. “I don’t think you’re being fair to the other patients putting him in there. He’s a strong personality. He’s … possibly psychotic, I don’t know, but he has the kind of—call it charisma, that other people can’t seem to resist. Particularly these weak, self-doubting types that we have. He’ll pull them all into his scene.”
Jeff smiled, his eyes squinted, teasing her. “You speak from experience? Did he pull you in?”
She felt something harden inside her. “You’re forgetting he was assigned to me.”
“But he isn’t now.” Jeff lifted his glass and shrugged. “He’s got a room and a special guard and that’s the best I can do. I’ve got to see how he interrelates with others.”
“So you can get some good notes for your book?”
“No, actually, it’s the situation that grabs me. There’s an odd sort of interchange of personality between the twins. When Danny got in trouble, he always shifted the blame to Debra. Even in his own mind.”
“How did you learn that?”
“Hypnotic regression. I took him back into his past.”
Liza felt a tingle of alarm. “Have you talked to Debra? How do you know it wasn’t the other way around?”
“She doesn’t answer her phone, her husband gives me evasive answers. No, I haven’t talked to her.”
“Maybe I could—”
“No.” He reached out and took her hand, enclosing it in both of his. “Do you mind? I’d rather you didn’t get into it now. I’m expecting a development, very soon.”
“What kind of development?”
His lips curved into a smile. “A little post-hypnotic trigger. Right now he’s wondering where he buried the sixth body. When he remembers—”
She gasped. “Jeff! What if he didn’t do it?”
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His eyes evaded her. “… When he remembers, we will go out and dig her up, and then he can start facing reality.”
Feeling nauseous, Liza swung around and slid off the stool. “I think I’ll go home.”
“Don’t go.” He glided around the bar and put his arms around her. “It’s been a long three weeks. I’ve missed you …”
His kiss left her cold. “Jeff, I’ve got to get some rest. Goodnight.”
She passed into a world of phantoms the moment she drove between the granite columns of the hospital. Down the slope to her right sat a group of demons, with goatlike hindquarters and pointed fawn’s ears. They hunched around a hexagonal stone altar waiting for the sacrifice to begin. It’s only the old bandstand, she told herself, surrounded by clumps of arbor vitae. Ahead on her right stood a satyr, with luminescent purple dog face and pulsing red eyes. Rose trellis, she saw as she passed. It was the darkness, she decided; she wasn’t used to seeing the hospital at night. Also she was in a hypersensitized state. Must keep that in mind, she told herself, gripping the steering wheel. Remember the plane trip, the drinks with Jeff. Not to mention that crack on the head …
Ahead loomed the three-story limestone bulk of the administration building. The glowing windows became a multifaceted eye which stared at her; the four white pillars in front were teeth spread in a bizarre, humorless grin …
Get hold of yourself, Liza. She reached down and squeezed her thigh. Oh, this is silly! What am I doing?
She turned left, following the curving drive which looped around the cottages. On her right lay rolling fields where the hospital’s dairy herd had once grazed. It looked like a rumpled bed in the moonlight. The cottonwoods in the hollow flowed into a humanoid shape; a giant humped his giantess amid the pillows. Such erotic images …
Her nerves jumped when she saw the blocky security van parked outside the crisis ward. Her first thought was: Jeff’s trigger went off. Then she saw a huge figure leaning back against the van, hands in pockets and uniform jacket unbuttoned to accommodate his overflowing belly. The Frog. She lifted her hand to her face as she drove past him. Now why did I do that? She felt her heart thump against her chest as she passed the lighted office. Through the window she saw a man in a white jacket bend over a file cabinet. He looked impeccably neat and efficient, thin lips pursed and narrow nose intent on his papers, the very personification of a low-level bureaucrat …
The Learned Doctor, in another of his famous imitations of real-life. Dammit, why didn’t I talk him out of it when I had the chance?
Because you got stoned instead, stupid.
Still … her duty was clear and imperative. She had to report the escape to Security and have them stop it But then who was Security? Frog?
She was nearly past the building and still hadn’t decided what to do. Apparently she wasn’t going to go inside and confront them. She could hardly blame Tom; she had told him: Leave me out of it. Oh, why didn’t I take him seriously? What if somebody gets hurt? What have they done with the night attendant? And where is Lona?
As she passed the corner of the building, she saw two figures clinching in the shadow. Her headlight beam flashed on straw-blonde hair. That answered all three questions. Lona was taking care of the attendant, nobody was getting hurt …
She drove on, her mind swinging like a pendulum: eenie, meenie, minie mo. Stop the man or let him go? She made up her mind, and drove directly to her office building. She got out and walked with firm determined steps up the concrete walk. The lower floor was dark except for a light in the shoproom. MacGregor always left it burning to protect his precious machines. She opened the front door with her pass key and stepped inside, smelling the sharp piney scent from the wood-working room, the odor of paste and wood pulp from the occupational-therapy room. Halfway up the stairs she stumbled, and realized she was hurrying as if something was after her. She paused to light a cigarette, then walked on. She felt calm by the time she reached the second floor. A light from one of the offices cast a blurred shimmer on the waxed corridor. As she walked nearer she saw that it was hers.
She slowed to a cautious tiptoe, edged up to the door, and tried the knob. It turned. She felt her heartbeat quicken. She threw open the door and stepped back.
Her familiar office looked strangely miniaturized, a puppet theatre framed in the dark doorway. But the stage was empty: the black leatherette armchair sat unoccupied behind the desk, the wheeled typewriter table was pushed off to the left, four beige crackle-finish file cabinets stood quietly against the wall on the right. They seemed to have been waiting for her …
She reached back to pull the door shut. At that moment a veil seemed to drop down between herself and her inner eye. It was like looking through a shower curtain. She saw herself walk up behind the chair and pull it out, then seat herself and reach for the telephone. Myself? But I’m over here by the door!
And yet she wasn’t. She was definitely sitting in her chair. She could look down her arm and see her finger on the telephone dial, She had no memory of walking across the room, yet here she was. She felt goose pimples rise on her arms. Lord, that’s what they mean, when they say, i lost control of myself.
They … really … lose … control
She felt cold sweat gather in her armpits. She strained to hold on, to keep that going-away sensation from taking control of her own flesh, her own brain. It was like a dose of curare coating the ends of her nerves; she could feel the message shooting down her arm: Extend the little finger, insert in dial hole marked “8” and get an outside line. Then call Jeff and tell him his patient is escaping.
Simple. But moving her finger was like pushing it through thick taffy; she managed to get it into the hole but it froze, trembling.
She felt a lurching sensation, as if some heavy mass had shifted beneath her. A sudden pressure clamped her skull, as if a thick fluid were being pumped in, under pressure, causing her brain to swell up and push against its container of bone. She felt her eyes bulging, her ears humed like telephone wires on a subzero morning. The line where the wall met the ceiling began to vibrate. It tilted, rocked back and forth, turned completely over, spun slowly at first and then faster, until the lines blurred into a soupy swirl of chaos …
Suddenly all the lines stretched out flat. She seemed to be sitting inside a goldfish bowl; she could see the walls curving behind her. She could also see the window, the bookcase, the filing cabinets on her left and the typewriter stand on her right. Her vision had expanded to 360 degrees. The only blank spot was the area directly behind her. Someone seemed to be standing there …
Oh Lord, that’s me. She could see the back of her head, the outline of her shoulders, the imprint of her shoulder blades on her denim dress. She felt a rush of love, a warm half-pitying benevolence toward herself. Hello, Liza. How are you? I am all right.
She wondered why she felt no fear. Surely there was no greater terror than to realize you have become separated from your own body. There she sat, vacant eyed, hand frozen on the telephone. What if the building were to catch fire? Would she watch her flesh burn, char, sizzle, and pop?
The idea amused her. She realized she was smiling—not inside her mind, but with her mouth. Still smiling, she lifted the receiver and spun the dial. Her bones articulated smoothly, the movement of her body was a sensual joy, almost a rapture. She decided to get up and dance, just as soon as she finished making the call …
“Switchboard.”
She loved the girl, whoever she was. “Get me Ward Six, will you dear?”
Click – bzzzt … bzzzt … bzzzt. The electronic sounds annoyed her. She was losing her sense of remoteness. She had come back to her body but it felt like a strange house that she had occupied by mistake. Why was she calling Ward Six? Hadn’t she planned to call Jeff?
A voice answered: “Crisis ward.”
“Who is this, please?”
From the other end came a sudden explosion of laugh sounds which she identified as the Learned Doctor’s. If a
polar bear could laugh, that’s how he would laugh.
“Tom, what are you doing?”
“Came to visit my old buddy. Is this Elizabeth?”
From some hidden wellspring her anger surged up like a volcanic eruption; all the miserable days she’d spent with Bobby, the gang rape on the desert, the indignity at the border, came up like clots of phlegm and exploded from her mouth. “You son-of-a-bitch. You filthy, lying … deceptive … immoral PIG! You’re as greasy as those lizards you left to take care of me, you cowardly … insignificant … FREAK!”
There was more, as she dug into her memory and raked up every insult she could think of, until at last she realized she was empty, and relieved, and no longer angry.
And Tom, who had been trying to break in, finally said: “You’re absolutely right. It was a sticky moral dilemma …”
Here comes another load, she thought
“… whether to bring you along, and take the risk that you’d blow the whole deal, or sacrifice my own integrity in order to get the job done. In the end …”
“In the end you ran out.”
“I had a mission—”
“That’s an old one. You’re pure, the rest of us are devils. Therefore it’s okay, whatever you do to us—”
“It isn’t that way, Liza. We’re on the defensive. All we want is out.”
“And how can you be sure you’re not turning loose a killer?”
“Because we’ve shared water with him. Look, even if you’re right—well, it’s started and we won’t stop.”
“Let me talk to Danny.”
There was a minute of silence, then a new voice came on, remote, strained, muffled. “Hello, Liza.”
Kiss The Girls and Make Them Die Page 20