“Like that shit’s gotten us anywhere,” Ethan said under his breath.
Cynthia’s eyes narrowed to slits. With the light just so, she reminded Ethan of his mom. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.
“You know perfectly well what it means, you two-bit princess. We’re lost. One tunnel’s good as another at this point. Either one could lead us to a dead end.”
“At least I have a plan.”
“Sure. Leave it up to the bimbo to come up with a plan, eh, Martin?”
“How dare you talk to me that way.”
Ethan’s mind started to swim. Just another bitch tryin’ to hold you down. Then his eye twitched enough for Cynthia to notice. “I’ll talk to you any way I want to talk to you! You’re just a selfish, silver screen whore—”
“Guys!” They stopped fighting and looked at Martin as if he had just fired a gun. “We’re in this together, remember? Gina and Paul are counting on us. Please, quit it. At least until we find a way out. Until then, we need each other.”
It was enough to stop the yelling, but Ethan and Cynthia continued to glare at each other until Ethan said to her, “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”
It was not only enough to break the stalemate, but soften Cynthia’s position, as well.
She directed her attention to Ethan. “You make a good point. I think we should split up and try them both.”
THEN
AS A FAVOR to Byron, the police agreed to deliver Ethan directly to Ridgeview. “He’s not a criminal,” Byron said, leaning into the window of the cop car. “He needs help.”
And Byron couldn’t think of a better place to send his son for that help than Ridgeview. The private psychiatric facility had opened its doors in the late sixties, and had since been home to an exceptional staff of Birmingham doctors.
“Sure, Mr. Lancaster,” the cop said.
“Thanks, Tom.”
Byron had known the officer for more than ten years and had personally refinanced his house twice—both times with a handshake and a smile. That was why Byron had asked for Tom specifically when he called the police; he knew that Tom, if anybody, would handle the situation with as much discretion as was possible in a town as small as Triton.
The officer looked past Byron. He watched two EMTs load Norma into the back of an ambulance and added, “If she doesn’t make it—”
“I know.”
If Norma died, Ethan would have to stand trial for murder. That would mean rumors—lots of them—and Byron knew that enough rumors in a small town could sink his business.
It wouldn’t happen immediately, but if Ethan stood trial, his customers would, one at a time, take their money out and go somewhere else. No more loans, no more savings accounts—his doors would close.
Then, with Ethan yelling for Byron to get him out, Byron said, “Trust me, son. This is the best thing for you.” Then he sent the cop on his way and rode with Norma in the back of the ambulance to Triton General.
NOW
“MARTIN, YOU TAKE the tunnel to the right,” Ethan said. “Cynthia and me will go the other way.”
“Meet back here in twenty minutes?” Cynthia asked.
Martin said that sounded reasonable and turned on his headlamp. Unless another earthquake hit, what could go wrong in twenty minutes?
THEN
THE OFFICERS DRAGGED Ethan into the Ridgeview lobby. He was shouting obscenities and kicking his legs wildly, trying to escape.
The nurse at the front desk turned on the PA and announced, “We’ve got a live one.”
Seconds later, a pair of double doors flew open, and men in white coats came running out. Two, three, four—Ethan wasn’t sure. All he could think about was escaping. All he could hear was that voice in his head shouting, Why are you letting them do this to you?
Then a needle sank into his arm.
In the dreams that followed, he saw rivers of lava burping up fire, jagged black rocks, and winged demons with razor teeth.
NOW
THE TUNNEL ETHAN had chosen started to narrow almost immediately. At five minutes in, it was so tight he and Cynthia had to duck not to hit their heads.
“This doesn’t look promising,” Cynthia said. But she knew better than to be discouraged just yet. The guts of a cave were unpredictable. This narrow tunnel could open up to wider tunnels, a massive cavern or, even better, an exit.
Ethan, who was several steps behind Cynthia, stopped briefly to stretch. His back was getting stiff. Worse, though, was the hunger that everyone was trying to forget.
There was a solution, of course. Every problem had a solution. Martin wouldn’t like it—it didn’t fit their plan—but considering their situation, that didn’t seem to matter much.
“I remember a story I heard once,” he said. “About a plane that went down in the middle of nowhere.”
“What’s your point?” Cynthia asked, still moving forward.
“It was all icy and cold, and nobody was going nowhere to help them because nobody knew where to start looking. But they were hungry, like we are, and they did what they had to do to survive.”
Cynthia stopped and turned, her bloodstained face alarmed. “And?”
“They ate their dead, Cynthia.”
“All right, that’s enough of your sick, psycho shit for now. We have enough to do without you trying to scare me. Once we get out of here, you can eat until you’re fat. For now, if you can’t say something positive, just shut up.”
THEN
ETHAN WAS PUT on a regular diet of specialized medicines. At breakfast and dinner, he was given a small cup of colored pills. They were to control his anger, help him sleep, and various other things he couldn’t remember.
However unnecessary they seemed to Ethan, the hospital felt otherwise. Most days, he was handed the cup by the overworked and overweight Nurse Habal, who watched him until he had chased the pills down with a cup of water.
“Open up,” she’d say when he was through. She’d stick a finger into each side of his mouth and pull his lips wide to look for any pills he might have stashed away. “They usually hide them under their tongues or beside their cheeks,” she said the first time she examined Ethan. “But you wouldn’t do that. You’re a good boy.” Then, satisfied he’d swallowed all his meds, she patted his cheek and told him to sit down and enjoy the rest of his dinner.
Ethan, though, had no intention of giving his mind over to the meds. He was sleeping fine, and what they called anger he called strength—why would he give that up? So, instead, he would wait until Habal had her back turned, and he would sneak into the bathroom to vomit.
She never caught him, and, once she trusted him, she stopped checking for the pills. That was when he stopped swallowing them.
She still watched him take the pills and swallow the water, but then she’d just ask, “They down?”
“Yes,” he’d say, with the pills hidden in all the places she’d told him about.
It hadn’t taken Ethan long to figure out that getting out of Ridgeview meant convincing the doctors that he fit their definition of sane. So he played along as well as anybody could.
He told the doctors about his childhood abuse and how it had made him feel. “But I think I’m getting better,” he said to Dr. Stark at the end of his second month.
Ethan did all of his private sessions with Dr. Stark. Stark had been a professional therapist for more than a decade and had a receding hairline that made him look older than he was. He also had gentle eyes that made him easy to lie to.
Ethan could stare straight into those aqua green pools of simplicity and tell him whatever he thought Stark needed to hear. “I think I’m ready to go home.”
“Let’s just take it slow,” Stark said. “You almost killed Norma last time you saw her. If that happens again, you might end up in jail instead of in here.”
Stark was right, as always. Norma hadn’t pressed charges only because Byron had pleaded with her not to. But in a nasty letter—the only time she a
ttempted to communicate with Ethan during his stay—she said she would see him rot in jail if he ever tried anything like that again.
Then she had wished him the best of luck with his therapy (which she only did because she feared for her life, Ethan thought), and closed the letter with just her name.
No one could blame her for being angry. She had nearly died from the beating and had to get reconstructive surgery to put her face back together.
All Ethan wished, though, was that’d he’d finished the job the first time.
“You’re right, Doc. Like you’re always fuckin’ right. Take it slow.”
With just a flash, the demons clashed in Ethan’s head again. They had been a regular fixture since he had arrived at the hospital. He and Dr. Stark had talked extensively about them. Stark had explained they were merely his pain visualized, an effort on behalf of his subconscious to externalize and, in doing so, minimize his suffering.
Stark even seemed to think he could talk them away. But he didn’t know that every day Ethan’s mother lived Ethan hated her more. He didn’t know that Norma represented all that was wrong in the world.
There was no talking away that sort of pain.
“You’re thinking about them again, aren’t you?” Stark asked.
“No, it’s nothing.”
“You have to talk to me if you want to beat this thing.”
Ethan sighed, leaned forward in his chair. “I guess I still see them sometimes . . . or hear them.”
NOW
AND HEAR THEM he did—especially now. It had been days, maybe weeks, since he’d last heard the demons’ wings flapping around in his head. But now that they were back, they were louder than before, louder than they had been in the hospital.
Shut up, Cynthia had said. Shut up. As if she had any right to tell him that.
He took a step closer to her, and Cynthia took one back. Just to needle her, he asked, “Are those breasts real?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Just curious. I’d bet a high-priced cutie like you has done a little nip-and-tuck. Got to keep that figure.”
She could tell by the quiver in his voice, the twitch in his eye, that he was growing more and more unstable by the moment. But she didn’t know why—it all seemed so sudden. She didn’t know that he had a history of unexpected outbursts, or that when he looked at her he saw a girl who’d turned away Martin’s love, a mediocre actress, and—in the right light—a woman called Norma whom he desperately wanted to kill.
“Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“What happened to working together?” Cynthia said, taking another cautious step backward. She wanted to turn around to see where she was going but didn’t dare take her eyes off Ethan. “What happened to getting out of this place?”
“Don’t be stupid. We weren’t all getting out of here alive, anyway.”
“You’re insane!”
“Apparently, I’m not.” Not according to his release papers.
“Martin!” she screamed as loud as she could. But she knew Martin—now crawling through his own narrow tunnel—was too far away to hear her.
Then she stepped on uneven ground and stumbled to her left. That was the opening Ethan had been waiting for.
He grabbed her by her arm and pulled her to him. “We can do this any way you want,” he said.
Cynthia screamed and swung a fist at his face.
Ethan caught her hand before she could connect, twisted her arm around her back, pushed her to the ground. Then, with her on her stomach and his knees locking down her shoulders, he tried to unfasten her pants.
What little doubt she had before was gone. He was going to rape her—rape her and kill her if she let him.
She threw her legs in the air, trying to kick him in the face, but she couldn’t get close enough. Then she realized how close her mouth was to his thigh, and she bit into his flesh as hard as she could.
Ethan’s head twisted upward, teeth grinding to restrain a scream. Cynthia used the distraction to push him off her. She hopped to her feet and kicked him in the groin before he could stand.
Then she ran, without thinking, deeper into the unknown of this new tunnel.
PITCH BLACK
NOW
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY AFTER entering the westward tunnel, Martin came to a dead end. All black earth and rock. Or so he thought until he scanned the walls more carefully with his headlamp.
There, hidden by the shadows of small stalagmites, was a hole. He had to clear away several big rocks to be sure the opening was wide enough to crawl into.
Martin had told Ethan that Cynthia was the one who hated the grime and the dirt, which was why Ethan was so impressed he had convinced her to go caving. However, the truth was quite the opposite. Cynthia had been a tomboy until she was fifteen. Those early teenage years were when she had learned to fight and conquered her fear of bugs.
At least once a month, she had come home with a black eye, and her mother had worried she was going to grow up to be a “bad kid.” And while she now wore makeup and designer labels and high heels most of the time, she still didn’t mind getting dirty when the situation called for it.
Such was not the case for Martin. His idea of roughing it was two nights in a cheap motel. But he had agreed to the trip when Ethan suggested it because he hadn’t wanted to look weak—that, and other reasons which weren’t important right now.
THEN
ONE MONTH AFTER Ethan asked Stark to release him, he asked again. This time he was in a session with three other patients. They met regularly in a room on the west wing that reminded Ethan of an old school building. Stark always had the chairs arranged in a circle before the patients arrived.
“Group therapy?” Ethan asked the first time.
“I prefer to think of it as a gathering,” Stark said. “Like a meeting of minds.”
Ethan shrugged. No matter how the doctor dressed it up, the meeting was still group therapy, and Ethan knew even before the first session that he would have benefited as much from talking with a rotted tomato as he did from his conversations with these three whack jobs.
One was a girl with stringy blond hair, her face scarred from severe acne; she was delusional to the point of absurdity, as far as Ethan could tell. The second was an overweight man in his late forties who spoke little. The third would jerk his head spastically to the right and talk about the end of mankind.
“They’re just going to swoop down and take over. I’m telling you, that’s what they have planned.”
“Who?” Stark asked.
“Them.” He jerked his head and pointed upward. “The aliens.”
“Last time you said it was the ground dwellers that were threatening us,” Ethan said, with no attempt to hide the annoyance in his voice.
The patient shook his head violently up and down. “Them, too. The people underground. They’re working together.”
“The time before that you said the plants were conspiring against us.”
The man tensed up, and his eyes glazed over with confusion. He clearly didn’t remember this last conspiracy.
“You said you could hear the trees plotting,” Ethan reminded him, but it didn’t help any.
Then Stark leaned forward like he was just about to say something when the girl added, “My sister could protect us. She’s a botanist.”
Ethan dropped his head, crossed his arms over his chest. He knew from past conversations that the girl didn’t have a sister, and he did not hesitate to tell her so.
“I do have a sister. I have two sisters.” Then she counted on her fingers. “I mean, three sisters.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Stark said, “focus on me. One problem at a time.”
“Sounds fair,” Ethan said, hopping to his feet. “Me first.” He stepped to the middle of the circle and stared down the doctor. “Get me out of this hell hole.”
“I’d really like to, Ethan.”
The overweight man looked up. �
��Can you get me out, too?”
“And me?” asked the girl.
The doctor’s eyes moved quickly from one patient to the other, and he said, “I’d like to get all of you out. That’s why we’re here.”
Suddenly Ethan’s annoyance turned to fury. The logical plan he had formed before—to be patient, agreeable, and considerate—was no longer even a memory. He spun around. “You three are never going to get out of here! You’re nuts! All of you!”
“I don’t want to get out of here,” said the patient with the jerking head. “I’m safe in here.”
Ethan balled his fists and screamed until he was out of breath. He could find no words to describe the absurdity of his situation. He was the only sane man in Ridgeview, and nobody would let him out!
He pointed a finger at Stark. “Why are you doing this to me? What’s the matter with you?” He grabbed the plastic chair Stark was sitting on by the seat and lifted, dumping the doctor onto the floor. “Can’t you see I’m ready to go home?” He kicked the doctor in the ribs. “Can’t you see I’ve been in here long enough?”
The other patients stared—terrified and immobile.
Another kick. “How long are you going to keep me for?”
At that moment, two male nurses ran in and dragged Ethan away from Stark. The doctor rolled onto his side, curled into a ball, and coughed loudly. Ethan continued to shout for his release. Then, just like when he was admitted, a syringe sank into his arm, and he blacked out.
Byron never visited because Norma had forbidden it. “My legs will be closed to you forever if you go see that boy,” she’d said. So he wrote instead.
His letters were frequent and long. The first one Ethan received came after his outburst: “I’m sorry to hear about the recent incident. I know I shouldn’t tell you this, but I had talked Norma into letting you come home just before it happened. Now we’re both sure that you’re not ready. But I miss you, son, and I can’t wait for you to get better.”
A Reagan Keeter Box Set: Three page-turning thrillers that will leave you wondering who you can trust Page 49