Apocalypse Now Now (27 page)

I want to scrub my skin with the brushes that the scullery maid uses. I suspect even then I couldn’t get rid of the smell of him from my body. His kindness has given way to corruption. I’ve stopped thinking of him lurching on top of me like an animal in heat laughing, that terrible, childlike giggling.

I can feel the growth in my belly. No, not the growth. The daughter. I know it is a girl. Klara, I decide to name her. A daughter to be born of the union of a Siener and whoever the magistrate, and the monster he worships, really is.

I think of killing him. That’s what my father would want me to do, to kill the enemy, to creep into his study with a knife from the kitchen and stab him until he stops moving. But even now I can’t.

I’m in the kitchen wringing the dirty water from the cloths. A movement in the corner of my eye catches my attention. I look out of the window and see Luamita crouched in the road. She beckons to me. I shake my head desperately. To go outside without permission would mean punishment. Punishment that I’m not sure I could stand.

She beckons again and touches her hand to her neck and mimics drinking. I clutch at the small bottle of luminescent blood around my neck. Luamita beckons again, insistently. I know I shouldn’t but I go anyway, slipping through the kitchen door and out into the road.

Luamita takes my hands in hers. I can feel the sunlight from her skin. ‘It is time to leave this place,’ she says in an excited whisper.

‘How?’ I say. ‘They’d know immediately. They’d alert the soldiers and I’d be found before I could even find a way to leave Cape Town.’

She smiles and removes something from around her neck and presses it into my hand. It is a small pendant made of brass which has been forged in the shape of a praying mantis. ‘This connects you to the Creator’s vehicle,’ she whispers. ‘With it you can draw on some of that power and change your shape. You can be anybody or anything, but only for a short time.’

I hold the mantis in my fingers. It’s warm to the touch. ‘But where
must I go?’ I whisper. ‘I could try to get passage on a ship, but once I change back I’d be named a stowaway.’

‘You’ll come with me to the mountain,’ she says. ‘My family is there. We’ll hide you.’ Her eyes shine with purpose and I can’t look away. In them I see my father and his father and his father before that, stretching back into history. I see myself and Klara. I see the boy with the spectacles and then his son and his son’s son and daughter. We are connected. We are a family.

‘Seee, see, seeee.’

I open my eyes and see a dull concrete ceiling. I try to sit up and then stop as pain lances through my skull. I touch my temple and feel a huge lump.

‘See, see, see,’ the voice screeches again.

I force myself to sit up. I’m on a steel bed and a guy is crouching on the end of it like a bird. He’s thin and pale, is dressed in a dirty medical gown, and has the look of pure crazy in his eyes. He scratches at the few strands of grey hair sprouting from his head, grabs one and yanks it. Blood dribbles from his scalp as he hands me the strand.

‘No, thanks,’ I croak. ‘I’m trying to cut down.’

He looks at me, looks at the strand of hair and then shoves it into his mouth, chewing happily and then swallowing.

I hold my head and get up groggily. Clearly I’m in a cell of some kind. There’s a basin in the corner and there’s another steel bed directly across from me. A large door, presumably locked, is the only exit.

The man hops off the bed and looks at me quizzically. ‘Monkey?’ he says, turning his head from side to side. ‘Monkey, monkey, see, monkey, monkey do.’ Then he wets himself. The urine pools on
the floor. ‘Monkey, monkey see, see, see,’ he says again. From my vantage point I can see scars from incisions that have been made in his head.

There is the sound of keys in a lock and the steel door swings open. A stout orderly with a chubby, kindly face opens the door.

‘Nigel,’ he says to the monkey man. ‘Time for your meds.’

‘Monkey, see, see, see,’ the monkey man says excitedly as he downs the pills that the orderly hands to him.

‘And now you, Baxter,’ the orderly says.

‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘I’d rather get away from you and the giant Crows.’

‘Now, now,’ the orderly says. ‘What did Dr Basson say about those delusions?’

He comes to stand in front of me with his hands on his hips. ‘Are you going to take your meds or are we going to have to do this the hard way?’ he says like a testy parent talking to his uncooperative four-year-old.

‘How about we do it the get-me-the-hell-out-of-here way?’ I say.

‘OK, tough guy,’ he says. His hand snakes out and grabs my arm. He’s surprisingly strong and I can’t resist as he slides a needle into my flesh. The walls begin to melt pleasantly away.

‘Monkey, seee,’ Nigel says.

My attempts to facilitate a smooth transition into a psychiatric facility have proven somewhat naive. Police brought him to Stikland after finding him trespassing in an old military installation. He was covered in blood and police investigation found the body of a caretaker with multiple stab wounds nearby. Baxter admitted killing him.

The resident psychiatrist contacted me and I was present at Stikland when Baxter was brought in. Upon admission Baxter was in a state of severe confusion. His glasses were damaged and he had a minor wound on the index finger of his left hand. He seemed to be talking to somebody who wasn’t there.

He became agitated and violent, mimicking using a gun to shoot one of the orderlies. His agitation became so severe that I was forced to sedate him.

Mental-State Evaluation

Baxter experiences extremely vivid auditory, visual and kinesthetic hallucinations which he is unable to distinguish from reality.

He describes talking to people and fantastical creatures which form part of a supernatural world that he has created. He is an avid reader
of science fiction and fantasy novels, which may have informed some of the content of his hallucinations.

‘Jackie Ronin’, Baxter’s primary hallucination, is an amalgam of several influences. This laconic detective is part father figure, part animalistic totem, fulfilling the role of guide and protector in Baxter’s hostile universe.

In addition to these hallucinations, Baxter suffers from grandiose delusions of being a kind of mystical prophet with the power of ‘seeing’. His embarrassment about his eye condition seems to be connected to his delusions about this mystical act of ‘seeing’. The eye carved into the foreheads of the victims of the Mountain Killer seems to have a particular resonance with him.

His obsession with the San Mantis God may be part of a much broader social syndrome affecting white suburban youths. These youths tend to view themselves as being part of a rootless culture and harbour a deep-seated guilt for the atrocities of apartheid. Much like young white Americans becoming superficially interested in Native American cultures, these young white South Africans resort to a heavily romanticised obsession with the mythology of the indigenous cultures of South Africa.

Baxter has developed a rich mythology in order to cope with the world. He is the wise-cracking antihero, the Machiavellian kingpin and the mystical saviour of a cruel and unforgiving world; exactly the sort of delusions that would appeal to a lonely isolated boy.

Medical History

On physical examination Baxter had a BMI of 16. His pulse was 58bpm. His BP was 110/60 and his temperature was 36.5
^o
C. His records show treatment for a minor eye condition which forces him to wear prescription spectacles. His records also show a brief childhood episode of asthma.

During our sessions he reported severe headaches and a throbbing in his forehead. An MRI scan has been scheduled to occlude an organic defect from the diagnosis.

Social History

Baxter immediately displays features of a paranoid personality. He describes his world as one where survival of the fittest reigns and where people are judged according to his harsh and exacting standards. He shows no guilt or remorse for the way he treats people, believing that they are deserving of nothing but scorn and condemnation.

He describes his autistic brother as a ‘retard’, and most of the people around him are ‘NPCs’, non-playing characters, a term borrowed from gaming culture for the incidental characters in a game-world played by the computer.

Baxter’s school life is viewed through the lens of this gaming metaphor. In his world people are merely game-pieces. This is consistent with reports from Baxter’s parents that he has no real friends, and lives an isolated existence.

During our consultations he revealed that he had been having repetitive dreams about an
Afrikaans girl during the Boer War. He expressed a belief that Afrikaner culture has a deeper sense of heritage than his own globalised sense of self, which is largely drawn from pop culture, including television and computer games.

Recommendations

During admission to the Stikland Medical Facility, Baxter confessed to being the ‘Mountain Killer’, the notorious serial killer. The investigating officer, Detective Schoeman, has been notified and has asked for a full report of my work with him. Further investigation is necessary; we cannot be sure whether Baxter committed these crimes or whether he is merely a copycat. His delusional beliefs and hallucinations represent a profound break with reality. It is my evaluation that his discomfort with feelings of guilt and remorse make him a prime candidate for violent, and possibly homicidal, behaviour.

‘
YOU’RE ILL, BAXTER
,’ Dr Basson says, his smile splitting his bearded face like a gaping wound in the body of a quivering rabbit. My hands are shackled together uncomfortably and I’m wearing a hospital gown that exposes my bare ass cheeks to the cold steel chair I’m sitting on. My body feels loose and rubbery; my lips are stuck together. I lick them tentatively.

‘Have some water,’ Basson says, passing me a plastic cup. I awkwardly reach out both handcuffed hands and take it.

‘How do you feel?’ he asks as I sip.

‘Like I’ve been captured by a fucking lunatic,’ I shout. ‘Let me out of here. Where the hell is Mirth? Are you working for him?’

‘Baxter,’ Basson says, ‘these delusions are hindering your chances of coming to terms with what you’ve done.’

‘What delusions?’ I ask croakily. ‘That I’ve been captured by an alchemist who’s creating an army of mutants. That you’re working with him?’

He crosses and uncrosses his legs. ‘Hmm. Yes, exactly. Those delusions,’ he says. ‘How much of the past few days do you remember?’

‘Oh, cut the crap,’ I say. ‘You seriously think I’m going to fall for this whole “Baxter, you’re insane” spiel?’

‘How much?’ he says.

‘Everything, you head-shrinking asshole,’ I say. ‘I remember everything. Elementals, zombies, Gogs. Everything.’

‘And …’ he consults his notepad, ‘Jackie Ronin?’

‘Yes, Ronin,’ I say. ‘What have you done to him?’

‘Tell me about him,’ Basson says.

‘He’ll fucking shoot you in the face,’ I shout. ‘How’s that?’

‘So you would consider him something of a hero, a protector?’ he asks.

I laugh. ‘An insane one, sure.’

Basson nods meaningfully. ‘So Ronin is the one that’s insane, not you?’

‘Oh fuck off,’ I say. ‘Is this your idea of bad-guy torture? You’re going to question me to death?’

‘You think we’re torturing you?’ Basson asks. ‘Why?’

‘Because Mirth is insane.’

‘So Ronin is insane and this Mirth is insane, but you’re acting rationally? Tell me, why did you go to that military installation?’

‘To rescue Pat,’ I say. ‘And Tomas.’

‘And did anybody get in the way of this rescue mission?’

‘A Gog,’ I say.

‘And what happened to this “Gog”?’

‘Ronin and I killed him.’

‘You killed him, Baxter,’ Basson says. ‘It’s an important distinction to make.’

He reaches down to pick up an envelope. From it he pulls a photograph and slides it across the table. I look at it and then look away quickly.