Delirious

by Daniel Palmer

  The man grunted and turned. He looked at the pigeon holes and stopped. “Two-twenty-four?” he asked, with his back still turned to Charlie.

  “Yes, if it’s available.”

  The man pulled out an envelope from inside the cubby marked 224. He opened it and took out what Charlie thought to be a driver’s license or a laminated ID of sorts.

  “What’s your name?” the man asked, his eyes narrowing on Charlie.

  “Craig Devlin,” Charlie said. Without thinking, he had selected the name of one of his favorite professors from MIT.

  “Yeah? Craig Devlin, eh? Then tell me, who is this?”

  The man slapped down the ID on the counter. Charlie’s breathing grew shallower, and he shook his head, as though the motion would change what he couldn’t believe he was seeing. On the counter the man had placed Charlie’s driver’s license. The picture was facing up.

  “Room two-twenty-four is paid in full. It has been rented through next month and was paid for in cash, too. I got this in the mail just a few days ago. The instructions were to rent it to the guy in the ID. I’m not a specialist or anything, but you look a lot like him, amigo,” the man said. His twisted grin suggested that he enjoyed the mystery of the situation almost as much as the money he was making off the room.

  “Could I see that note?” Charlie stammered.

  The man fished it out of the envelope. The handwriting was unmistakably his own. Charlie’s blood turned ice cold as he read the undated, handwritten note.

  To whom it may concern:

  I will be arriving at this motel, requesting room 224. I will not have ID. Do not ask me any questions. In exchange, I will rent the room for two months at your standard rate, although I expect that my stay will be much shorter. Please return to me my ID and give me the keys to room 224 upon my arrival.

  “It’s impossible,” Charlie muttered. “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t, either,” the man said. “But I do understand one thing, and that’s money. I’ve kept in business this long by keeping quiet. You’re the guy in the ID. You’ve paid for the room. It’s yours.”

  He slid the ID across the counter. Charlie picked it up and appraised it, quickly convinced of its authenticity. He couldn’t figure out how they had his ID. If anything, it should still be in his wallet at Walderman. The man next pushed the key to room 224 across the counter. Charlie picked it up and held it loosely in his hand, as though it were diseased.

  “I’ll take it,” Charlie said and pocketed the key.

  Charlie stepped outside the office and inhaled the cool ocean air. Then he walked toward room 224.

  Chapter 46

  The room was standard-issue motel. In the center stood a queen bed covered with an orange polyester bedspread. Directly across from it, resting on a nondescript bureau, was a nineteen-inch color T V. The TV had a built-in VCR but no DVD player. Charlie figured the Seacoast Motel didn’t provide much in the way of on-demand entertainment.

  It was fitting, then, that as a substitute the motel offered a “bring your own video” service. He noticed that the bathroom lights, at the other end of the room, were on. He found that a bit odd since he was the only one who should be in the room, unless a cleaning person had left them on accidentally. The motel owner didn’t seem the sort to waste electricity.

  He had no idea how long the room had been vacant. Although he had meant to ask, it didn’t surprise him to have forgotten. He was still in shock from discovering he had a connection to this motel that seemed to predate his being committed. Charlie made a mental note to check back in with the owner and try to figure out exactly when the letter with his ID had arrived. It might help him construct a time line of events.

  Charlie hovered in the center of the room, pondering what seemed to be an endless supply of questions. When did I send him that note and money? I’ve never even heard of this place before. Why here?

  Nearly as startling as his having rented a room without any recollection of doing so was the realization that this was the first room he’d been in in nearly a week that locked from the inside. Moreover, it smelled more like other people than it did disinfectant, and had a color scheme that actually deviated from shades of white.

  “Good-bye, Walderman,” Charlie said aloud.

  Taking off his Windbreaker, Charlie realized his shirt felt damp with sweat. Given all that he’d been through, that wasn’t entirely surprising. He wondered if there was a clothing store nearby or at the very least a Laundromat. A clean change of clothes and a shower would do him a world of good.

  He looked at the time on the digital clock next to the bed and realized that he could catch the evening news. As long as his escape wasn’t broadcast, he felt a certain safety. At the least the motel would make a good hideout for a short while.

  Praying that local and national events would steal the spotlight from his escapades, Charlie turned on the television. He sat on the edge of the bed, gritting through a tightness forming in his chest. Fifteen minutes later he breathed a loud sigh of relief. There had been a shooting in Dorchester. Three-alarm fire at a home in Beverly. All occupants were rescued, including the cat. Police were still trying to make an arrest in a string of car break-ins in Newton. But there was nothing, not even a tease for the eleven o’clock news, about a former software executive turned escaped mental patient, considered dangerous and out prowling the streets. He was certain the police had been alerted to his escape, but suspected Walderman Hospital had earned enough political capital over the years to keep the security breach quiet. Quiet at least for the moment, Charlie reminded himself. Time was a luxury he didn’t have.

  Spent with exhaustion, Charlie buried his head in his hands. He took some pleasure from evading capture, but for what purpose? The note waiting for him at the motel was a dagger thrust into his heart. The idea of Eddie Prescott guiding him from beyond the grave felt foolish and, even worse, sad. What other answer could there be, save for his complete and total madness?

  The only thing that kept him from walking outside and surrendering to the authorities was a sudden and overpowering feeling of exhaustion. His eyelids grew heavy as his muscles gave way to relaxation. The sensation he felt was not unlike his earlier experience during the hypnosis session with Rachel. Images flashed through his mind with a hazy recollection. The faces of his former Magellan teammates from SoluCent were interspersed with images of his mother and Joe. He felt sick to his stomach, but rather than attempt the fifteen-foot trek to the bathroom, Charlie managed to fight back the urge to vomit. Even if he couldn’t resist the urge, Charlie doubted he’d have the strength to even make it there. His legs felt too heavy to move.

  He thought again of his mother. He hadn’t even checked in on her condition. For all he knew, she could be out of her coma, although that was doubtful. Every update they had ever gotten was the same—no change. But he still hadn’t ruled out that improvement was a possibility. Unlike how he felt about his own future, Charlie still held out hope for hers.

  Although he was free, he was essentially locked up again. It was just a different prison: one of his own making, which kept getting smaller and smaller. First he was a prisoner of this motel room, and now he felt a prisoner of the bed. He was too weak and exhausted even to stand.

  His head began to buzz, then tingle. It wasn’t an alarming sensation; it felt calming. Exhaustion had won out. Charlie’s thoughts drifted between his desire for sleep and a desperate need for answers.

  Perhaps I could sleep a minute. I’ll figure things out later. I don’t remember sending money to this motel. I’m so lost. Just close my eyes …

  The tingling in his head retreated a moment, only to swell up again. With closed eyes, Charlie watched as the faces of Rachel, Randal, Sandy Goodkin, and Joe spun around in his imagination in a wild, frenzied dance. George’s laugh echoed from somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind. There was a moment when Charlie felt himself falling, but the sensation was blessedly brief. He had only a vague awareness
that he was lying on the bed. His legs felt as if they had melted into the mattress, and his feet were glued to the floor. The tingling in his head stopped at last.

  “I’ll close my eyes for just a minute,” Charlie muttered. “Then I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure everything out….”

  His voice trailed off. Faces of people in his life ceased haunting his thoughts. They were replaced by the blackest infinity he had ever faced. The only feeling now was the familiar disconnect of body from brain, signaling the onset of sleep. As that feeling took him deeper into a blessed slumber, it brought along the one thing that had been most elusive in Charlie’s life of late. It brought him a moment of peace.

  Charlie awoke with a start. His back ached, and his legs were still draped over the foot of the bed. He went to stand, but his feet were numb and prickling; his muscles had fallen asleep from having stayed in the same awkward position for too long. Eventually he forced himself to his feet and shook his head vigorously from side to side to clear the fog. A film of mucus covered his eyes and blurred his vision. He rubbed it away so that he could see. His shirt, damp before, was now soaked through with sweat. He walked over to the bathroom on wobbly legs and ran cold water from the sink over his face. The person who greeted him in the bathroom mirror had become even more of a stranger than the last time he looked at his reflection. His skin was a ghastly gray. The grit of his beard extended well down his neck. His hair had grown, too, and was long past its normal cropped length. Worry lines, similar to his mother’s crow’s-feet, were visible on the sides of his eyes. Nothing about the man in the mirror reminded Charlie of the person he once had been.

  As he took off his drenched shirt, he noticed that his hands were caked with dried blood. Pulling the shirt over his head and draping it on the shower curtain rod to dry, Charlie rinsed the blood off his hands. He searched them for a wound.

  He had no memory of having cut himself. He supposed it was possible that he had scratched his hand in fitful dreams. Hard enough to draw blood, but not wake me? It seemed unlikely.

  With the blood removed from his hands, Charlie searched again for the source. He didn’t find even a trace of a scratch, let alone an open cut.

  As his shirt began to dry, Charlie noticed first a spot, then several spots that were darker than the rest of the fabric. Pulling the shirt down, Charlie examined the dark areas more closely. He held the shirt up to his face and pressed the fabric to his nose. The smell, like rusted iron mixed with sweet marigolds, was unmistakably blood.

  How did I cut myself? Charlie wondered. And how did I heal so quickly?

  Charlie left the bathroom and went to retrieve his other shirt, still crumpled inside the plastic Olympia Sports bag. It should have been on the chair nearest the room entrance, where he had left it. He looked on the chair and under it, but the plastic bag wasn’t where it should be. Perhaps, in his exhaustion he had placed it in the room closet and forgot. Not an unlikely scenario, given how forgetful he’d become.

  For a moment the blood on his hands and shirt faded into the back of his thoughts. He opened the closet door and flicked on the closet light on the inside left wall. He was certain he’d find the empty plastic bag crumpled on the floor inside and the clothing within neatly folded and tucked on a shelf.

  The moment the light came on, Charlie screamed. He sank to his knees and buried his face in his hands.

  The plastic bag was, as he expected, crumpled on the floor. But the closet was filled with clothes. There were shirts, pants, sweaters, all draped on hangers in a tight row on the chrome rod. On the shelf above were more shirts and pants. All the clothes were neatly folded, just the way he would have done it. And all the clothes were his.

  Chapter 47

  Charlie stayed on his knees until five minutes had passed. Shakily, he rose to his feet, bracing himself against the doorjamb before backing out of the closet. The first thing that caught his attention was the smell of blood. It was more pronounced now than when he’d first noticed blood on his hands and shirt in the bathroom. There was another foul odor that penetrated his senses as well. This one was a rank and disturbingly unfamiliar scent. He could equate it only with rot and decay. His right hand caressed his left; he was still hopeful that he’d feel a gash or scratch that could explain the blood he’d found earlier. It was a pointless gesture. The smell of blood in the air was far too intense to have come from anything less than a serious cut.

  He sank down onto the bed. The morning light that managed to seep into the room through the drawn shades did little to brighten the drab interior. A quick glance at the digital clock on the nightstand told him it was almost 6:20 a.m. The last time he had noticed the time was more than twelve hours earlier.

  What happened to me during that time? Charlie shuddered to think.

  Sitting on the bed, with his feet set on the floor, elbows resting on his knees, and head cradled atop his knuckles, he felt like a sad imitation of Rodin’s The Thinker. He glanced at the small color television on the bureau at the foot of the bed, then gasped aloud. A piece of paper, recognizable as the Seacoast Motel stationery and most likely having come from a pad of the stationery on the room desk, was taped to the TV monitor.

  The mattress springs creaked as Charlie rose from the bed. He kept his gaze transfixed on the television and reached for the paper. With trembling hands, he pulled the note free. To steady his shaking, he had to hold the paper with both hands. As with the other notes, this one was undeniably in his penmanship.

  The only thing left for him to do was to laugh. He fell hard to the floor, both knees crashing painfully onto the thin floor carpeting. All these events, it now appeared, were meant to lead him to this final moment. His fate had been scribed in four simple words penned in his hand, written on the plain white stationery belonging to the Sea-coast Motel. The note read simply:

  Look under the bed.

  Chapter 48

  Charlie shifted his body position from kneeling to prone on the floor. Without hesitation, he lifted away the bedspread and peered into the darkness underneath the bed. The stench of blood and rot was much stronger under the bed than anywhere else in the room. It made him gag, and he had to cover his mouth to keep from vomiting. The silhouette of a shoe-box-sized object was easily discernible, even in the dim room lighting.

  With his chest pressed hard into the floor, Charlie reached with both hands and pulled the box toward him. The box was slick to the touch, and the palms of his hands felt wet. The box slid out easily. In the light, he could tell that the box was seeping with blood. It left in its wake a dark trail and an even wider stain around its resting place under the bed.

  There was a manila envelope, similar to the one containing the kill list, taped to the top of the box. Charlie left the box covered on the floor and stood up. He stared down at it for several moments. He closed his eyes and prayed that when he opened them, the nightmare would have simply passed. He would wake up on the bed, having just had the most terrible of dreams.

  Once certain that wasn’t the case, Charlie took a deep breath and held it. Reaching down, he lifted the top of the box off and dropped it to the floor.

  The first thing that caught his eye was a glint of gold. It was gold from a ring that Charlie had seen too many times to count. The owner of the ring had made certain to show it off every chance he could. It featured a shield encasing three raised engravings of books. Together the letters on the books spelled out the word veritas, Latin for “truth.” Below the shield was the school’s name in raised gold lettering. Harvard. The ring was still lodged firmly on the finger of a bloodied hand, crudely severed at the wrist and stuffed inside the box.

  Another hand was in the box as well. Although both hands were badly mutilated from having been sawed off, the skin of the ringed hand was clearly that of an older man. The skin of the other hand, though of a similar deadened pallor, was certainly that of a much younger man. His breathing became uneven and his heart raced, as though he had overdosed on caffeine.


  Even in his cloud of confusion, Charlie knew one thing about the contents of the box. The hand with the ring belonged to Leon Yard-ley. The other, he assumed, was Simon Mackenzie’s, his former boss at SoluCent.

  Sitting on the nappy, shallow carpet of the motel room floor, Charlie stared at the box across from him. His focus shifted to the top of the box, a foot away and within reach. The manila envelope was still attached.

  He felt almost no need to open the envelope. This was a pattern he had become accustomed to. A note would be inside. He would be its author. It would identify Yardley and Mackenzie as the victims. The kill list would be complete, save for one significant exception. There would be a fourth victim. The surprise.

  The last victim’s name, Charlie was certain, would be revealed. Do I know that because my subconscious is reminding me that I am the author? he wondered. Charlie stayed quiet in his seated position on the floor and tried to recollect the night before. The last thing he remembered was sitting on the bed, glancing at the digital clock and noting that the time was nearly 6:00 p.m. He had watched the news, and the next thing he recalled was waking up, still in his clothes, some twelve hours later. He woke up in basically the same position in which he had fallen asleep—lying with his back on the bed and his feet still on the floor. There was blood on his shirt and hands. He knew whose blood it was. There were body parts under the bed.

  “What did I do?” he cried. “What monster have I become?”

  Charlie paced the room. He kicked the box with the mangled hands back under the bed but left the top of the box where it was. His thoughts spiraled in every direction. He needed something to help him focus and think. He tried convincing himself that this was a delusion. He slapped his right cheek hard with his open palm and then his left. The blows stung but did not shake away any visions. The box top was still on the floor where he had dropped it. The blood on the top’s sides was unmistakable.