The Colour of Death (10 page)

Back at Tranquil Waters, Jane Doe paced her room, brought to life by Nathan Fox’s diagnosis.  In one session he had discovered more about her than her previous psychiatrist had in over a week, but she was unsure of the implications of Fox’s discovery and anxious about what to expect next.  When Fox eventually returned, he had been away for only half an hour but it felt more like two.  He carried his briefcase in his right hand and a clutch of sealed envelopes in the other.  She glimpsed something scrawled on the top envelope.  He stopped in the doorway, reached into the briefcase and pulled out some sandwiches and a small bottle of Evian.  “I got you some lunch.  Come, let’s take a walk.”

She took the sandwiches but felt too excited to eat.  “Where are we going?”  She stiffened.  “We’re not going back to the other room?”

He smiled.  “No.  But we are going to visit some of the other rooms in the original building.”  He took her hand.  “Come.  Trust me.  It’s going to be OK.”  Reluctantly, she let him lead her down the corridor and along the enclosed glass walkway that linked the new wing to the original Victorian building.  “OK, this is how the experiment goes.  I’m going to take you to four empty rooms and I want you to tell me what you experience in each of them.”

“Why?”

He led her to the elevator and pressed for the second floor.  “To test a theory.”

“What theory?”

“I can't tell you yet because it might affect the experiment.”

“What’s in the envelopes?”

“Predictions.”

“Of what?”

The elevator opened on the second floor.  He led her down another long corridor and stopped outside a room.  ‘In each of these four envelopes I’ve written messages that apply to the four rooms we’re going to visit.  The messages are effectively predictions, descriptions of what you’re going to hallucinate in each room.”

She didn’t feel comfortable about this.  “Is this some kind of test?  Do you think I’m making this up?”

“On the contrary.  This is simply a controlled experiment to check out a theory of why you hallucinate, and this building is an ideal place to conduct it.  Also, for what it’s worth, the only way you’re going to conquer your fear of these hallucinations and gain some distance is to expose yourself to them, again and again.”  He peeled off one of the sealed envelopes and held it up.  The number 207 was scrawled on it.  “The number on each envelope tallies with the number assigned to each room.  This contains my prediction of what, if anything, you’re going to hallucinate in room 207.”  He took a key from his case and unlocked the door.  “The normal occupant is at lunch.  Step inside and tell me what you experience, if anything.”

“But what if—”

“Don’t worry.  Just humor me and step inside for a moment.”  His blue eyes locked on hers.  “If you do feel anything, remember what I told you yesterday.  Try to be as objective as possible and distance yourself from whatever it is you’re experiencing.  Imagine you’re standing on a bridge, looking down on your stream of consciousness.  Let whatever you think, feel or experience drift past you, under the bridge.  Observe everything but don’t accept responsibility for it.  After all, you can’t control it.  You’re an innocent bystander.  And remember, nothing in the stream can hurt you.  If it gets too much, just step out of the room.”  He smiled and his intense features softened, became almost boyish.  “Please trust me, Jane.  I’m not doing this to make you feel uncomfortable.  I’m trying to diagnose what’s happening.”

He opened the door, stood back and gestured for her to go in.  Aside from a few personal touches — a photograph by the bed and some books on the desk — the room was like her own.  She hovered in the doorway then took three tentative steps inside.  Fragmented images, smells and sounds intruded on her senses, but nothing other than the normal white noise she was accustomed to.

“Anything?”

“No.  Not really.”

“Walk around a bit.  Get a feel for the place.”  She did as he asked.  “Anything now?”

She shook her head.  “Nothing specific.”  She wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed.  “What did you predict for this room?”

Fox kept his face impassive, folded the envelope in half and placed it in his jacket pocket.  “Come, let’s go to the second room.”

The second room was down the corridor.  He unlocked and opened the door then peeled off another envelope, which had the number 222 written on it.  He stood back.  “In you go.”

She took a deep breath and took three steps inside.  Nothing.  She shook her head.

He frowned.  “You always move to the center of a room — you even moved your bed away from the walls because you said it made you feel more comfortable.  Walk to the side of the room.  Touch one of the walls.”  She walked slowly toward the window and found that her hand was shaking as she tentatively touched the wall, as if it might burn her or deliver an electric shock.  It felt normal.  “Keep it there,” he instructed.  The ‘white noise’ became slightly more intrusive, but still nothing concrete or cohesive.  “Anything?” he asked.

“Nope.  Some low-level stuff but nothing much.  In fact it’s quite calming.  If I had to choose, I’d say this was actually more peaceful than the first room.”  He remained expressionless but, for a fleeting moment, she thought she saw relief on his face.  He had predicted she would see something in here, she was sure of it.  So why was he relieved?  What was so frightening about his theory that he wanted to disprove it?  “What was I supposed to have seen in here?”

He folded the envelope, still sealed, and placed it back in his jacket pocket with the first one.  “I told you, I’ll show you everything after the experiment.  Let’s try the third room.”  By now she was impatient for the experiment to be over so she could hear his theory.  When he unlocked and opened the door to room 302 on the third floor she didn’t wait to be coaxed.  She stepped straight into the room and casually reached out her arm to touch one of the walls, convinced it would be three strikeouts.

But this time it was different — very different.  Immediately, she sensed something:  heat.  It didn’t just come from the wall she was touching.  It was in the air around her.  She could smell smoke, sense its acrid taste on her tongue and feel the burning in her throat and lungs.  “Fire,” she said aloud.  Then she saw a woman huddled in the corner, holding her nightgown around her as if the flimsy cotton would shield her.  The apparition had a pale violet tint, which flickered on and off, but the woman looked real:  Jane Doe could see and feel the terror in her eyes.  She turned to escape and saw flames blocking her path.  Fire was billowing into the room from the corridor outside, its searing fingers crawling across the ceiling and walls, reaching to claim the woman who was now coughing and screaming.  As Jane Doe realized that she too was coughing and screaming, she felt strong hands grip her and pull her backwards, through the door and out of the room.  Suddenly, the fire receded, the pale flickering violet was gone, and she could see Fox looking into her eyes.  His now-familiar face comforted her.  “What did you see and feel?”

As she told him about the woman in the fire his eyes widened.  Her account seemed to affect him almost as much as the experience had affected her.  “Did you predict that?  Is that in your envelope?”

He folded it and put it in his jacket pocket.  “One more room, then I’ll tell you everything.”  He paused.  “You OK for the last one?”

She was still trembling but she could tell from Fox’s face that he was on to something and needed to know what.  “I’m fine.”

The last room, 410, was on the top floor.  As Fox unlocked and opened the door she could feel her courage ebbing away so she hurried in before her nerve failed. The window was closed and the day was warm but even before she touched the walls she began shivering and felt the hairs rise on her forearms, as if a chill air was blowing.  Steeling herself, she reached out and placed her palm against the wall.

“How are you doing?” she heard Fox ask.  “You look very pale.”  She didn’t answer because another sound immediately intruded on her consciousness:  the smashing of glass.  Then a sudden rush of cold air hit her face, making her take a step back.  “What’s happening, Jane?  Tell me what you see.”  Suddenly, the flickering pale violet returned and the window in front of her changed — the frame was no longer freshly decorated but cracked with flaking white paint.  Then a man appeared to her right, tall and thin with a beard.  He was holding a chair aloft and using it to hit the window as hard as he could.  The glass was strong and it took him four blows to break the pane.  He looked over his shoulder and she felt the terror in his eyes.  Then she realized another man was coming into the room —with a knife.  The bearded man grabbed one of the shards and held it like a blade.  As he did so she felt the glass, cold and hard, in the palm of her own hand.  With icy awareness she realized she was witnessing the scene in the third person but experiencing it from the first, from the bearded man’s point of view.  In that instant she knew the bearded man was about to die.  He raised the glass shard, defensively, but backed away toward the open window.  Then the other man rushed him and stabbed him repeatedly.  She doubled over with each stab as if they were entering her own body.

“What’s happening, Jane?  Speak to me.”  Fox’s anxious voice reached her from some faraway place but she was too immersed in the nightmare to respond.  She could only watch helplessly as the mortally wounded bearded man climbed onto the windowsill, desperate to evade his attacker, and jumped from the window.  She felt herself falling, then all went black.

She awoke to discover herself shaking with cold and shock, being carried from the room in Fox’s arms.  In the corridor the cold left her but when she tried to stand she was still shaking.  “You OK now?” he asked, his blue eyes creased with concern.  He was also shaking, as if he could feel her cold.

She leaned on him and nodded.

“What happened in there?” he asked.

As he listened to her he shook his head in disbelief.  Pale, he looked as tired and drained as she felt.  When she finished he pulled the sealed envelopes from his pocket and stared at them.  “Did the experiment work?” she asked.

He frowned and glanced behind him, as if worried he might be overheard.  “Let’s go back to your room.  I’ll explain everything there.”

Chapter 14

Back in Jane Doe’s room Nathan Fox laid the four envelopes in a line on the desk.  Was it her imagination or were his hands still shaking?

“So what’s in them?”

“Look for yourself.”  He pointed to the envelope with the number 207 scribbled on the cover.  “Open them in order.”

She picked it up.  “This relates to the first room, right?  The one in which nothing happened.”

“Right.”

She tore it open.  Inside was a single line handwritten in black ink.  She read it aloud.  “In room 207 Jane Doe will
not
hallucinate.”  She smiled.  “You got that right.”  She reached for the second envelope, room 222.  Again she read the message aloud.  “In room 222 Jane Doe will hallucinate.  The hallucination will feature a man lying in bed by the window.  He will look peaceful and appear asleep.”  She looked up at him.  “You got that wrong.  I didn’t see anything.”

He remained silent, just looked up at her, unblinking.  She opened the next envelope, pulled out the enclosed slip of paper and read the prediction.  “In room 302 Jane Doe will hallucinate.  The hallucination will feature a woman being consumed by fire.”  Her mouth felt dry.  “How did you know that?”

He didn’t answer, just kept looking at her.  “Open the last one.”

She reached for the final envelope and tore it open.  As she read the last prediction, she could hear her voice shaking.  “In room 410 Jane Doe will hallucinate.  It will feature a bearded man smashing the window with a chair before being stabbed repeatedly by another man and jumping out the broken window.  She may well feel intense cold.”  The paper slipped from her hand and she watched it fall to the ground.  “How did you know that?  How did you predict two of my hallucinations?  That’s impossible.”

“What
I
did was relatively easy.  What
you
did was impossible.  I simply recognized a pattern.  What do all your hallucinations have in common?”

“They all have the same flickering pale violet tint?”

“What else?”

She frowned.  “They’re frightening?”

He shook his head.  “
Why
are they frightening, apart from the fact you’re seeing and sensing things no one else can?  What’s the common theme in all your hallucinations, including the ones you had at Oregon State before coming here?”

She thought for a moment.  Then it came to her, clear and cold.  “Death.”

He nodded.  “In all your hallucinations you see or sense a person on the point of death.”

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a file.  “These are the patient files for the Pine Hills Psychiatric Hospital which used to be on this site.  Those weren’t predictions I wrote in the envelopes.  Quite the opposite.  They were records of historical events — deaths.  Nineteen years ago there was a fire in this hospital.  Most patients got out but Mary Lopez, the woman in room 302, perished.  Two years later, in midwinter, Bob Kesey, the bearded man in room 410, was attacked and killed by a psychotic patient with a knife.  He tried to escape by jumping out of the window but was dead before he hit the ground.”

“But that’s impossible.”

“That’s what I thought.”  He pointed to another entry.  “This is the record of Frank Bartlett’s death.  He was the man in the Bart Simpson T-shirt you saw committing suicide yesterday.  The description matches your hallucination exactly.  One of yesterday’s orderlies was there when Bartlett died and he said you included accurate details that weren’t even in the report.  What’s more, records show that decades earlier another man committed suicide in the same room.  He hanged himself exactly as you described.”

She put her hands over her mouth.  “You’re saying that what I saw in those rooms actually happened?”