Straightjacket (28 page)

He felt nothing.

He was nothing.

Chapter Thirty

Anna woke up from the dull thump of her head hitting the grass. When she opened her eyes, Caleb was sitting up straight with his back to her. The last thing she remembered was falling asleep with her head resting on his shoulder.
He could have moved me off of him before he sat up.

Her irritation drove her to say something to that effect. But before she could get the words out, she noticed something was wrong. He was breathing so loudly and heavily that his entire body jerked violently to the rhythm. Still dazed from sleep, she placed her hand on his back. His shirt was soaked through with sweat. He jerked away. When he turned around and she caught a glimpse of his face, she almost jumped back herself. He was in agony.

“Caleb! What’s wrong?” she asked in a panic, inching closer to him without her realizing it.

“I—I can’t…” His fingers reached up for his head and grabbed two clumps of hair on either side. He squeezed so hard that the veins in his arms popped out.
My God, is he trying to pull his head apart?

“Tell me,” she said, more calmly. “What happened?” When she tried to take his hand, he leaped up. In a fraction of a second he was standing over her, gripping himself with crossed arms, watching her watch him.

“Caleb, please! You’re scaring me. Tell me what happened. I thought you fell asleep—did you have a nightmare? Is that what happened?”

“A nightmare?” he asked, confused. “No, it wasn’t a nightmare. Now I know.”

“You’re not making any sense. Please, just sit down and tell me.”

“He was trying to tell me this whole time. I didn’t want to see it.”

“Who are you talking about?” She stood up. It was too unnatural trying to talk to him while he stood and she sat. “You just had a bad dream. It’s not real. It’s all right. Just try to calm down.”

“It
is
real. That’s what’s going to happen—goddamn it!” He snatched up a nearby rock so violently that he brought up a handful of dirt with it, some of it packing up underneath his fingernails. He flung the rock at a nearby tree, screaming as it left his hand at a dizzying speed. Anna instinctively cowered, using her arms to cover her head. She stood there silent and frozen, watching him squeeze his arms brutally, creating a physical pain that matched the one on the inside. The urgency grew exponentially with each second that passed. Something had to be done. She was the only one there to do it.

“Caleb,” she said very slowly. “Let’s just get back to the house. Will you come back with me?” She moved toward him again, this time more cautiously, but he matched each of her steps forward with his own steps backward. “Please come with me.”

He gasped softly and shook his head back and forth with short, quick movements. “I can’t do that. Go back to the house by yourself. I need to think. I need to stay out here and think and talk to him, try to reason with him.” He backed up a few feet, his terrified eyes glued to her, and then he bolted into the trees.

“Caleb!” she shouted, running after him. He wasn’t following the path; he was running away from it, deeper into the woods. She ran hard and fast, having to jump over fallen tree trunks and use her arms to shield her face from protruding branches. Her collarbone ached, but she pushed away the pain and kept going. He was faster than her though, and his body grew smaller and more obscured as he traveled farther into the thickness of the woods. Finally she couldn’t see him any longer and stopped, trying to catch her breath.

“Caleb!” she screamed again, frantically listening for the cracking of twigs under his steps, but all she heard was the heavy sound of silence.

“No, no…This can’t be happening.” She said it over and over, hoping that if she said the words enough, maybe it would stop. Her heart pounded and suddenly she felt dizzy.

“Stop it!” she screamed at herself. “I won’t let it happen.” She breathed in and out, vengefully and defiantly, until the dizziness stopped and the panic had nothing to hold on to. She had stopped the attack from happening, but she couldn’t think about that. Caleb needed her, needed her to take care of him like he’d taken care of her. She couldn’t do this by herself, though. That much was clear.

She whipped her cell phone out of her pocket—she carried it with her everywhere since they were stranded on the boat—and scrolled down the list for Dr. Hillman’s number. Even having hit the send button three times, the dial tone never rang in her ear. The reception bars were white and empty. There were too many trees. She needed to find her way back to some open space.

She didn’t know where she was, so she walked in a straight line, listening for the sound of the lake and keeping the darkness of the woods behind her. After a long time, she came to it. Three of the bars on the phone were lit up now. Frantically, she hit the send button again.

“Come on!” The dial tone, which was in no hurry, made her angry. Finally someone picked up on the other line.

“Answering service for Dr. Hillman. May I help you?”

“Damn it!” Anna forgot that it was a Saturday. “I need to talk to Dr. Hillman right now!”

“Is this an emergency?” The voice was bored, and it irritated her to the point of madness.

“Of course! I need to talk to him
now
!” She spat out her phone number, hung up, and began to pace. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, her body, anything that belonged to her.

Her nails attacked an itch on her biceps. They encountered a thin, dry scab. Her arms were covered in scratches from the tree branches. She forced herself not to scratch and continued pacing. When the phone rang, she jumped.

“Dr. Hillman?” The words exploded out of her mouth. When she heard the doctor’s calm, pleasant voice, she went at it. She spoke so fast that he had to stop her at least twice to tell her to slow down. “We were in the woods and Caleb had some sort of nightmare and he freaked out and ran away…” Was she even making any sense? Over and over she explained what had happened, each time using different words and hoping that somehow Dr. Hillman would understand.

“Anna, please try to calm down. I need to know exactly what happened so I can figure out what the best course of action is.”

“Yeah, I’ll try. I’m sorry.” She wrung her hands together.

“Now what exactly did he say was the matter?”

“He said he needed to go think, needed to reason with him.”

“Who was he talking about? This is very important. Was there any indication that he’s having delusions again?”

She wasn’t sure how to answer. Yes, he had been talking about Samuel. That was a truth. But was Samuel a delusion? She didn’t know. She’d trusted Caleb all this time. To admit to Dr. Hillman that he was having delusions, to start to believe he was ill, would mean she was betraying the faith she’d promised to hold in him. She let the silence hang in the air for half a minute.

“You just need to help him.
Please
.”

“I’ll be right over.” The other end was dead, and Anna dropped the phone without pressing the end button. She was sick with worry.

I need to get back to the house so I can meet him.

She searched the same spots over and over for the path, but it eluded her. She could make out the house in the distance and decided to walk as closely to the shore as she could in that direction. Parts of her walk were difficult. Sometimes she had to step through the shallow water. But she did what she had to, always keeping the house in sight.

Soon she reached the front steps. Dr. Hillman wasn’t there yet. Her legs were weak from both fear and exertion. Her body collapsed onto the step and she sat with her arms hugging her legs, her forehead resting on her knees. All that was left to do was wait. But as terrifying as the next few hours would be, she took comfort in the fact that she hadn’t betrayed her faith in Caleb or herself.

Chapter Thirty-One

Caleb was bleeding. The instant he saw the thin stream of red trickling down his ankle, he felt the sting of it. Specks of dirt and tiny shards from the tree branch that had cut him were mixed with the blood. He looked more closely, not because he cared about the wound or the pain, but because he was mesmerized by the fact that he could still bleed. He hadn’t completely disappeared yet.

He sat up straight again, his back leaning against a tree. It was getting dark now. The faint light that managed to penetrate the bushy treetops was a strange mix of orange and pink. Soon it would dull and there would be no light, only an absence. He would be sitting in darkness before long.

“So what’s your next move, genius?” Samuel stood a few feet away, a soft glow emanating from him.

“I don’t know,” he said, dropping his head and examining the blood again. “Maybe I’ll just sit here until the dark swallows me up.” He noted the color of the sky and tried to calculate how long he had until nightfall. “I think if that happened, it would be quiet and easy.”

“I think you’re shit out of luck there.”

Caleb didn’t answer.

“You need to stop this. It needs to be over.”

Caleb focused his attention on the wet leaves and dirty ground in front of him. His head hung down heavily, and his rounded back pressed uncomfortably against the tree trunk. Sharp slivers of bark dug into his backbone, but he didn’t move away. He sat very still and felt the pain.

“If you don’t stop you know what will happen,” Samuel continued. “You’ve known all along but just pretended you didn’t.”

“You gave me that dream, didn’t you, to show me what’s going to happen?”

“I had to do something.” Samuel moved closer. “Caleb, you can’t just do what you want when you’re an angel. Your fate isn’t your own. When you go against the natural order, there are consequences.”

“I get it. I can’t go back to heaven if I stay with her.” Caleb’s voice was soft and frail.

“No, you won’t be able to go back. Not ever.”

“And instead…” Caleb couldn’t bring himself to say the rest.

“Instead, it’s the alternative.” Samuel eyed the ground—eyed
through
the ground—to make his point. “And down there, well, down there there’s nothing. Don’t you see? It was already starting to happen to you, the nothingness starting to swallow you up.”

“I thought—I thought it was from the drugs.”

“I know.” Samuel rested his hand on his friend’s back. Caleb couldn’t hold himself up any longer and fell to the ground, landing on his side. Samuel’s hand slipped off. The wetness from the leaves soaked through Caleb’s T-shirt quickly, and fine particles of dirt invaded his nostrils, making his eyes water. Samuel’s glowing white golf shoes filled his entire field of vision.

“You can have eternity with her, but you just have to wait, for now. You know what you need to do. It’s for your own good. It’s for Anna’s, too.” The shoes walked away from him. Soon he was left alone in the dark.

His hand was sprawled out in front of him. He could see only its outline and the faint color of his flesh, but it was enough to prove that what he had wanted had not happened. Instead of swallowing him up, the darkness was just a blanket over him. He was no different to it than the trees around him. It treated him the same, with indifference.

In the end, he knew he didn’t really have a choice. He couldn’t bear to think what this would do to her now, so instead he drew a picture in his mind of him and Anna, in heaven for all eternity. The picture gave him the strength to get himself up off the ground and begin walking. Every direction looked the same, especially in the dark, but he knew exactly where to go. His hands pushed back the branches that protruded out onto his path, clearing the way. His legs and feet carried him forward. He moved slowly and purposefully, almost gliding across the ground. His body had taken over, and he listened to it with a quiet mind. There was no sense in thinking about it. His body would take care of everything.

He emerged from the woods and the lake stretched out in front of him. The dark sky was clear and the moon was almost full except for a thin sliver missing from one of the edges. There was a second moon, its twin, on the surface of the water. The ripples moved through it, breaking up its curve and making it lose its shape.

He breathed in the air and listened to the owls and to the water hitting the shore. His sneakers came off a few minutes later. His toes dug into the ground. The grains of sand, still warm from the day, gave way.

His sketchpad and his pencils were strewn along the ground, just where he had left them. He walked over, picked them up, and started writing to her. Even though the words came easily, he wrote slowly as his hands trembled, and it took him a long time. She would find this here, and he hoped it would be enough to get her through what it would be like for her.

When he was finished, he placed the sketchbook down exactly where it had been. His body moved him slowly toward the water. The coolness washed over his toes first, and it was a shock. He smiled, relieved that he could still feel and it wasn’t too late. As he moved forward, the coolness rose in increments to his shins, his knees, soon his waist, his chest, and his shoulders. His body tilted itself forward. His feet began kicking and his hands and arms sliced through the surface of the water as he swam toward the center. After a few minutes, he stopped.

Treading water, his body turned him in a slow circle so that he saw a ring of trees interrupted only by the small cabin in the distance. Then it flipped him onto his back and let him float for a few moments. The moon in the sky, unlike its deformed twin, was stagnant.

After he took everything in, it was time.

His mouth closed.

His body stopped floating.

It became heavy, so very heavy, and pulled him under the surface.

He didn’t fight but let his body do what it wanted to do. It was so dark that he couldn’t tell where the water ended and the sky began. His body hung in space and he was still and quiet.

After a minute, his mind began to rebel. It wanted so badly for him to hunt for air, swim up and rip through the surface. But his body kept him still, made sure he didn’t fight.