Apocalypse Island (5 page)

A month into his release Wolf had managed to carve out a life of sorts. He had rented a small downtown second floor apartment in a nineteenth century building on Sparrow Street, comfortable but nothing fancy. There was a combination kitchen and living room, separated by an ornate Victorian archway, with one small bedroom and a bath. The walls were all painted the same dusty white. He didn’t mind. After the drab grays and browns of prison life the white felt cheerful, like being out in the sunshine. The apartment was at the back of the building on a quiet alley. No traffic. No noisy neighbors. He liked it.

It did not take long before the local music establishment heard of Wolf’s reemergence into the world and sent out scouts in hopes of recruitment. After a series of auditions he chose an established band that had recently lost their lead vocalist to a brutal murder. Fittingly enough, the name of the band was
Bad Medicine.

Wolf took it for what it was. Not a sign of salvation, but more a tenuous bridge to a future yet unreasoned. The sickness still had him; there was no doubt of that. The dreams persisted with a vengeance, a variety of them mirroring his own shattered life as well as the lives of others he did not recognize; children, men and monsters. Before long, and not for the first time in his life, the bottle became his best friend.

After nearly half a dozen sessions with the psychiatrist Wolf became bored. It seemed the more he laid his soul bare the more flummoxed he became as to the root causes of his sickness. And the doctor wasn’t much help. Mostly he just sat listening; sometimes Wolf wondered if he was even doing that.

No matter. To Wolf the sessions were merely ritual that, under the law, had to be endured for one year only. After that—provided he kept his nose clean, and he had no intention of doing otherwise—he’d be a free man left to his own devices. He’d never been hopeful that psychiatry could heal his condition. That was the good doctor’s wish, not his. Even so, the longer the sessions endured without any noticeable progress, the more frustrated and bewildered Wolf became.

Chapter 9

“I don’t think we’re accomplishing anything,” Wolf told the doctor one day following a particularly long and grueling session.

“Please, let me be the judge of that,” Hardwick replied.

“I’m giving you everything there is,” Wolf said. “And nothing is happening. I just don’t see the point.”

“Trust me,” Hardwick said. “There is a point to it all.”

“But I don’t see it.”

“It’s there,” Hardwick said in a tantalizingly cryptic tone. “Progress is being made every day. Actually I believe we’re on the verge of a breakthrough.”

Wolf choked out an astonished laugh. “A
breakthrough?”
he said. “You’re joking.”

Hardwick smiled. “On the contrary.”

“A breakthrough into what? All we’re talking is nonsense shit. Dreams, illusion or whatever the fuck they are. They mean nothing.”

Hardwick smiled again. “Oh, but I believe they mean everything, Danny.” He had taken to calling Wolf Danny from nearly the first session, an intimacy that had always been reserved for the closest of Wolf’s relationships; friends, lovers, and only then by invitation. Although Hardwick’s use of the moniker mildly irritated Wolf, he kept silent about it, bearing it as one might a bur beneath an article of clothing.

“Why do you say that?” Wolf asked. “Why do you think my dreams bear so much significance?”

Hardwick gave a small condescending smile. “It’s not merely the dreams, Danny, but the manner in which you speak of them. Your relationship with them seems so...intimate. It’s as though they’re not dreams at all but something more akin to reality. Each smile, each frown, each word spoken fills volumes. You’re a veritable open book.”

Wolf stared at Hardwick in amazement. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “They’re fucking
dreams.”

“Perhaps so,” Hardwick said. “But it’s been my experience that dreams are the doors to the true self.” 

“This is just psychobabble bullshit,” Wolf said in frustration. “Did it ever occur to you fucking Freudian types that you can’t analyze away every problem of the human condition? Some things just can’t be pigeonholed with logic. Besides, my problems are mine. I live with them and I’ll die with them. They don’t hurt others.”

“Are you sure of that?”

Wolf gazed suspiciously at the psychiatrist. “Yes, I’m sure. What the hell are you insinuating?”

Hardwick held his hands up defensively. “A step at a time, Danny. We need to get through the initial stages of the therapy first. Then perhaps...”

“Then perhaps what?” Wolf said. “If you think you know something I don’t, then tell me.”

“At our next session I’ll want to talk about Siri,” Hardwick said.

Wolf felt panic rise in him. “Why do you want to talk about her?  Do you think I killed her?”

Hardwick feigned surprise. “Interesting that you should say that, Danny. Is she dead?”

Wolf sat forward in his seat, rage rising in him. “I’m sick of your fucking insinuations. How should I know if she’s dead?”

“You just said—”

“I know what I just said. I was responding to your insinuations.”

“I wasn’t insinuating anything.”

“Yes you were. Now you’re trying to fuck with my head. Tell me what you think you know.”

Hardwick’s stare was piercing.

“This is bullshit! You’re screwing with me.”

“You have no idea what’s inside you, Danny.”

“And I suppose you do.”

“I know some.”

“You know nothing!” Wolf stood up.

“Please try and understand,” Hardwick said. “I’m just trying to get to the bottom of your condition. You’re the most intriguing patient I’ve ever had.”

Wolf gave a bitter laugh. “Me? Intriguing? I spent nearly five years for a stupid murder I didn’t commit and that’s intriguing. What the hell are you talking about?”

“There’s more to you than meets the eye,” Hardwick said, unable to mask the excitement in his voice. “I believe there’s something hiding inside you, something rare, something extraordinary. And I want very much to get to the bottom of it.”

“There’s nothing there!” Wolf argued.

The doctor’s eyes were gleaming. “Oh, but there is. And I think you know it. I think you’ve been hiding it your entire life. Now it’s getting restless and it wants to come out but you won’t let it because you’re afraid. That’s why you’re having all these...dreams, all these emotional upheavals. Just let go, Danny. Be what you are. Be what you were meant to be.”

“You sound crazier than me, doc.”

Hardwick steepled his fingers, his expression contemplative. After a long moment of silence he said, “See, Danny, that’s where you’ve always been wrong about yourself. You’re
not
crazy. On the contrary. What you feel is real. What’s inside you is right and good.”

“How the hell do you know what I feel?”

“I have ways.”

“You think I killed Siri, don’t you? And you’re trying to twist it all around and draw a confession out of me.”

“I’m not ready to make any learned conclusions about you yet, Danny. You need to look inside yourself first. I want you to do some soul searching. Starting with our next session I’ll want to hear about your childhood. I want you to think very carefully about it over the course of the next week. And when you come back to me I’ll want to hear some truths.”

“I already told you, I don’t remember my childhood.”

“I know that’s what you said, but I think you’re in denial.”

“Why is any of this relevant?” Wolf said in frustration.

“Because I think it’s where it all started.”

“What does it have to do with Siri?”

“She was a part of your life and it seems you still care very deeply about her.”

“Five fucking years I’ve been trying to forget about her,” Wolf said. “I don’t want to remember.”

“Because she betrayed you?”

“Yes, because she betrayed me!”

“I don’t believe you really want to forget about her. I think you’re trying to come to grips with what happened to her.”

“You’re full of shit.”

Hardwick smiled, ignoring Wolf’s impertinence. “We need to take this a step at a time. Right now that’s all I can tell you.”

“I’ve had enough of your insinuations,” Wolf said. “If you can’t be more specific, then I’m leaving.”

“If you walk out of here you’ll have some explaining to do to the parole board.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck,” Wolf said and stormed out of the office.

Chapter 10

As the afternoon wore on, fog drifted in from the ocean blanketing the city in a thick veil of gauze. Wolf wandered the wet streets for more than an hour before stepping into a store to buy a bottle of liquor. Bag tucked deftly beneath his arm, he drifted uneasily along the wet sidewalks feeling depressed by the drab storefronts and apartment blocks that flanked the street. Everything felt dead, useless. He bought a newspaper from one of the kiosks along the way, folded it and shoved it in his pocket.

In recent weeks his apartment, plus the booze, had become his only bastions of sanity in an increasingly insane world. That’s where he went now for solace, trudging up the stairs to the second floor. He was searching in his pockets for the key when he heard a door open down the hall. From the corner of his eye he saw Mr. Tripp, his elderly neighbor, shuffling toward him along the corridor.

“Young man?” Tripp called, waving his arms. “Please, young man, may I have a word with you?”

Wolf sighed. Tripp limped up to him and stopped. His head was a nimbus of unkempt white hair, he had an arthritic hump on his back and one of his legs did not work properly. The old man wore a wrinkled night-shirt, baggy gray pajama pants and was glaring at Wolf through a pair of dirty drugstore bifocals, clearly pissed off about something.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Tripp?”

“You’ve got to stop that insane screaming in the middle of the night,” Tripp said. “I don’t know what you’re doing in there but it has to stop.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wolf said.

“Every night!” Tripp exploded. “It’s like someone’s being murdered. And I’m not the only one who hears it. Mrs. Rosenberg down the hall says if it happens again she’s calling the cops.”

“But I’m not doing anything—”

“You’re doing
something,”
Tripp interrupted, his piercing eyes filled with contempt behind the dirty glasses. “I can get you evicted, you know. I’ve lived here a lot longer than you have and I know the superintendent.”

“I’m a singer,” Wolf said. “I need to practice.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about!” Tripp said. “We all hear you singing, but usually you stop before bedtime, and at least that’s tolerable. That other noise—I don’t know—it’s evil, and it’s coming out of you. It has to stop, I tell you.”

“I have dreams,” Wolf said, by way of explanation.

“Dreams, is it?” Tripp said, his piercing eyes narrowing down into suspicious slits. “I don’t care! It has to stop! You’re scaring the hell out of the residents.” Tripp turned and limped back toward his apartment. “No more of it,” he said as he went.

Wolf watched until the old man had disappeared inside his apartment. He fished the key from his pocket, unlocked the door and went inside, locking the door behind him. He went to the sink counter and brought down a glass from the cupboard filling it two thirds full from the bottle. He downed half of it in the first bitter swallow, refilled it and got himself comfortable in his favorite chair. He switched on the television but turned the volume down, not really interested in it.

He invited no one here. Not his band mates, nor any of the women he met in the bars, and there were more than a few. This was his place, private, unassailable by a world that meant him only harm. At least that’s what he’d thought until now. Back in prison he’d been under the impression that freedom was what he needed to get well. He guessed he’d been wrong. It seemed the sickness only got worse as each day passed. Hardwick’s suspicions seemed to reaffirm his own. And now he was faced with the very real prospect of eviction. He was falling deeper and deeper into a bottomless chasm of despair, and he was powerless in the face of it.

As he sat drinking he thought about the woman he’d loved who’d disappeared from the face of the earth, the woman whose testimony might have saved him from a felony conviction and five years in prison.

Where are you, Siri?
He wondered.
What happened to you? Are you dead? Why can’t I stop thinking about you?

And as his mind wandered he drifted into a shallow slumber. All around there was glowing blue light, and out of that light came a voice from his past.

Remember, Danny, if you don’t do as they say—if you disobey them, you’ll end up just like the other children. And if you end up like them you’ll be doomed. Is that what you want?

No.

Are you sure?

Yes.

Then give them what they want. I can’t protect you anymore. This is your last chance. Do you understand?

But I don’t know how.

Yes you do. I know you do. Please try, okay?

“Okay.”.

Cross your heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye?

Yes.

Say it!

Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.

That a boy. Now you can pray.

He crosses his hands, looks up and sees the life-size Christ figure hanging on the cross, the oversized nails driven into the emaciated hands and delicate feet, the ropes, the bloody gash on the side of the ribcage, the crown of thorns wrapped tightly around the bowed head, blood dripping down the angelic face, the sad eyes filled with both hope and despair.

And somewhere in the shadows of the room, in the shadows of his psyche, he remembers the other children, the one with the powerful body and the hair-covered face, the small boy with no face at all, the angelic little girl, so sad he wishes he could kiss her tears away. And he remembers the other little girl who always stays to herself, the one they love to take away into the test room, into the bad medicine room. And he remembers her screams.