The Pure: Book Three of the Oz Chronicles (2 page)

I am too disoriented to argue. Besides,
maybe she’ll keep the dead away.

***

I spend the journey back to the room
wondering why the doc asked me about the dogs. It seems to be a ridiculously
unimportant point. There are so many other things he could ask me about.

As I walk through the hallway with
Chester’s meaty hand wrapped around my upper arm, I begin to wonder myself what
happened to the dogs.

“Snarkel, snapper, momma, jaws!” a young
kid shouts from the doorway of his room. “Snarkel, snapper, momma, jaws spot,
jumper,” he says with a grin. He’s obviously very happy that he’s caught my
attention. The young man is emaciated. His elbows look sharp as knives and his
cheekbones look like small mountains on his otherwise sunken face. “Hambone,
Charlie boy.”

I smile politely and nod.

He winks. “It’s a secret code.”

“It’s crazy code,” Chester laughs.

“Dr. Graham doesn’t like that word,” I
say, eyes shifting upward as Chester tightens his grip on my arm.

“Yeah?” Chester says. “I don’t like
taxes, but I still gotta pay ‘em... most of them... some of them.” He turns to
the skinny young man and shoots him a menacing glare. “Back in your room,
Bones. Don’t nobody want to hear your code today.”

Bones backs up. “Snarkel’s going to get
you. You’ll see.”

Chester raises a brawny fist as we
continue down the hall. “I got something for Snarkel when he comes to get me.”
He laughs loudly and alone.

We turn the corner. Scoop-face’s room is
just ahead. I am relieved that he is not there. Beyond his disfigurement, or
maybe because of the enormity of it, I am deeply unsettled by him. He seems to
have an eerie peace about his... affliction. I can understand a man adjusting
to the loss of an arm or a leg. There are prosthetics to help you cope, to
simulate the missing extremity and a passable number of functions it once
served. But to lose a face? There is no prosthetic to replace that. None that I
had ever heard of, anyway.

We round another corner and reach my
room. Chester pushes me inside. He pulls the door shut quickly and punches in a
code on the keypad next to the door. I hear the lock tumble and click into
place. He looks through the eight-inch square window and sprouts a vindictive
little grin. “Good night,” his muffled voice cracks. “Don’t let the shunters
bite.”

I stop mid breath as I’m exhaling and
scan his grinning face. Did he just say shunter? I step toward the door with my
eyes fixed on his mouth.

He nods. “What?” He doesn’t like my
expression.

“Say it again,” I say, just shy of
demanding.

He shakes his head. “You really are the
lunatic fringe, little man.” With that, he moves away from the small window and
moves down the hall.

***

The next face I see in the small window
is Nurse Kline’s. An hour earlier I cried myself to sleep. My mind collapsed in
on itself. I had never felt more out of place in my entire life. At least, I
think I hadn’t. As I was breaking down, I felt as if I had done it before, many
times before, yet I had no memory of it. The feeling of it was new and
frighteningly painful.

My eyes closed, and my brain almost
completely shut down, I begin to feel the movement around me. They’re here. The
dead. Crawling, walking, zooming all around me. I can smell them. I am afraid
to open my eyes. One tugs at my sheet. Another one runs its clammy fingers
through my hair.

“Osmond,” one whispers.

Another one gargles something incoherent
yet terrifying. The tone of its voice is set in a level of anger I can’t even
begin to imagine.

Finally, it is too much for me to bear.
I open my eyes and back against the corner of the iron headboard that meets the
wall. I am breathing so erratically, I am almost hyperventilating. The room is
dim, illuminated by the sparse light poking through the window on the door. I
see the figure of a pale child scamper across the room, his bare feet slapping
against the cold concrete floor. He turns to me just before he disappears into
the darkest corner. His face is rotted. Worms crawl from his exposed cheekbone.
His nose is hanging by a flap of skin. I scream at the sight of it. He vanishes
into the darkness.

“They don’t like you.”

The man’s voice comes from my right. I
am too startled to scream or shout for help. I manage to say “Wha...,” but
nothing more.

“Relax,” the voice continues.

“Who’s there?” I search through the
grayness of the room. In the corner across from where the dead boy disappeared,
I spot him, Scoop-face.

“It’s just me,” he says.

Somehow the knowledge that it is just
him does not relax me. “Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?” He
steps toward me. He moves like a man who can see.

“No,” I answer.

“A long friggin’ time.” He laughs.
“’Cept in my case, it ain’t so much looking as it is searching.” He points to
the vacant area on his face.

“Do I know you?”

He sits on the edge of the bed. I move
as far away from him as possible. “Used to... I think.”

“How did you get in here?”

He tugs on his left ear. “I heard
Chester punching in the code to your door this evening. I got ears like a dog
now that my face is gone. I can pretty much hear anything.”

“How...”

“How did I get this hole in my face?” He
chuckled. “You know what they say.” He leans in closer. “Don’t ever try to
remove a shunter from the host’s face.” He laughs and a wad of spit drips out
of his mouth and rests on his chin.

I don’t react. My mind has been playing
tricks on me all day. He didn’t say shunter. I wasn’t going to fall for that
again. I was tired of being my demented brain’s whipping boy.

“You ain’t got nothing to say?” He cocks
his head. If he had eyes, I would no doubt see a puzzled look on his face.

“What’s to say?”

“Hell, boy, I just confirmed what’s been
whirling around in that pointy head of yours. This ain’t no hospital. They’s
inside of you.” He reaches out and cups the top of my head with his thick hand.
“They’s crawling around in there, ‘tween the grooves in that squishy brain of
yours, and they’s trying to find what they ain’t got.”

I knock his hand away. “Oh, what’s
that?”

“The Source.”

I swallow hard. “This is a trick. You’re
crazy. We’re both crazy.”

Scoop-face thinks it over. “Well, hell,
yeah I’m crazy. I had my eyes ripped out, and my nose tore off by some slimy
little face sucker with about a thousand tentacles, and I lived to tell about
it. That’d make anyone crazy.” He laughs and chokes on a wad of mucus stuck in
this throat. He hacks and coughs so loud I wait for nurse Kline to appear at
the window, but she doesn’t come. He catches his breath and wheezes, “We’re all
crazy, kid. You, me, and everyone whatever survived the end of the world.”

I scoot to the end of the bed. “The
world didn’t end,” I say as I stand.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Stand. Move around. My quilibrium’s all
shot. I get nauseous if people move around.”

“Quilibrium? You mean equilibrium?”

“Whatever the damn word is, I ain’t got
none of it.” He sounds angry for the first time. “Now sit”

I comply although I’m not sure why.

“The Délons is real. The Takers is real.
The Silencers is real.” He leans in and whispers. “The Pure is real.”

I start to sway. I desperately want him
to shut up.

“You got to snap out of this fool
business here. This is the part that ain’t real.”

I feel a pressure in my throat and
chest. It’s panic. I will burst into tears soon. I have done this before. Many
times before. I whimper.

“Don’t you do that,” Scoop-face insists.
“Don’t you set off to your balling again.”

“Again?” What does he mean?

“Yes, again. We go through this nonsense
pert-near every night, and I’m worn to my last nerve. We are running out of
time. You forget a little bit more every day.”

Confused I say, “You said you’ve been
searching for me for a long time. Now you say we’ve been through this before.”

He shakes his faceless head. “We have,
and we haven’t. You got to stop thinking like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like time ticks away on a clock. It
don’t. It jumps and stops and starts, goes all over the place. You do things
for the first time over and over again.”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

“The purple dead-eyed pigs whittle away
everything you got in here,” he points to his head. “’til there ain’t nothing
left, but the Source.”

“I don’t know what the Source is!” I
scream and the tears follow a snot bubble shooting out of my nose.

“How do you know?”

“Because,” I chuckle madly, “I know what
I know.”

He chuckles back. “Not for a long time,
little Oz. Not for a long time.”

“Leave,” I demand.

He sighs in frustration. “Do me a
favor.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m an old-fart without a face.
Life ain’t been exactly Santa Claus to me. The least you can do for me is one
stinkin’ favor.”

I mull it over. There is a long
penetrating silence between us. Finally, I say, “What?”

“Ask Doc Graham for a GP pass tomorrow.”

“A what?”

“A general population pass.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Without turning toward him I say, “What
makes you think he’ll give me one?”

“Cause they’re getting impatient.
They’ve drilled and drilled and drilled into that little pea brain of yours,
and they ain’t come no closer to finding the Source than the day they started
this whole mess.”

I clear my throat. “Will you leave if I
agree?”

“That hurts my heart, kiddo. You and me
are friends from way back, and this is the thanks I get.” He stands. “I’ll
leave if you agree.”

“I’ll ask for a GP pass.”

He shuffles toward the door, talking as
he walks. “There’s a janitor’s closet three doors down from the doc’s office.”

“What of it?”

“Be in it at 11:00 tomorrow.”

“What for?”

He stops and grins, “Because Lou wants
to say ‘Hi’.”

TWO

The dead do not leave until morning. I
have not slept for longer than a ten minute stretch in... years. I cannot
remember a time when I was not tired. I cannot remember a time when I was not
scared. I cannot remember a time... clearly. That’s the problem. If I am the
age Dr. Graham says I am, I have lived an entire life without one single shred
of a memory to hold onto. It doesn’t seem possible.

Yet believing that I battled an army of
slobbering, greasy monsters and purple dead-eyed freaks seems even more
preposterous. I am crazy. I am insane. I am out of my ever-loving mind.

For all I know, nothing is real. I am
neither who Dr. Graham says I am nor who Scoop-face says I am. I am a dream. A
twisted, grotesque nightmare inside the head of some bratty kid who watches too
many scary movies or plays too many zombie video games. I will be gone as soon
as he wakes up. God, how I wish he would wake up.

I lie in bed and do not move. I stare at
the ceiling... through the ceiling, really. If I stare hard enough, maybe I can
see the beady little eyes of the spoiled turd who is making me live this
horrible nightmare.

The familiar tone of numbers being
punched on the door’s keypad diverts my attention from the ceiling. Nurse Kline
enters carrying a tray of food.

“Breakfast is served,” she says setting
the tray down on a table near the bed.

I stare at the oatmeal in a plastic
bowl.

“You best eat up.”

I look at her. My eyes burn from lack of
sleep. “Do I like oatmeal?”

She smiles. “Don’t you know?”

“I don’t know anything.”

“You love it.” She walks back to the
door. “I’ll bring you some juice if you want.”

I shake my head. “I want to see Dr.
Graham.”

She shakes her head and considers my
request. “You’re not on the schedule today.”

“I don’t care.”

“You might not, but his other
patients...”

“I want to see Dr. Graham. He’s my doctor.
I want to see him.” I am much more abrupt with her than I’d intended.

She considers arguing but, to her
credit, doesn’t. “I’ll see what I can arrange.”

“Now!” I bark.

Her jaw sets as she mashes her teeth
together. She wants to let me have it with both barrels, but she backs off.
“Very well.”

She shuts the door. The lock tumbles
into place. I hear the muffled sounds of a conversation. It’s heated. Chester’s
face appears in the window. I have never seen him with such a serious
expression. He grunts and moves down the hallway.

I lie back down and stare at the ceiling
again. The patterns in the tile begin to take on shapes: a cat, a tree, a bus.
A scene begins to form in my head, a thought, a memory.

I’m on Westwood Avenue in Tullahoma. The
dogwoods are in bloom. The smell of honeysuckle is in the air. Hummingbirds
feed on a nearby bush. The sound of their wings ripping through the wind is
deafening. I sprint out of earshot of the tiny little noisemakers. Ahead I see
Gordy. A young spry Gordy. He’s no older than six. He’s talking to another boy.
I dig my feet into the ground as I pump my legs faster and faster to reach
them.

I get to my old friend and quickly
identify the other boy, Stevie Dayton. His eyes are puffy slits. Gordy is
laughing.

“Look at the retard cry! Look at the
little retard baby!”

“What...” I want to ask what’s going on,
but the words aren’t coming out. I walk up to Stevie and slap him across the
face. What am I doing?

“Little retard! Little retard!” I hear
the words come out of my mouth. Stop! Stop! My mind is about to explode. I
can’t be doing this. I’m not doing this.

“Punch him, Oz,” Gordy says. He scans
the immediate area. “Ain’t nobody around.”

I can feel myself hesitate.

“Do it, chicken head! Do it!” Gordy is
bouncing up and down in an uncontrolled fury. “Punch the cry baby retard!”

I watch in horror as my fist flies
forward and lands squarely on Stevie’s nose. Oh, God no. No, no, no. Stevie,
I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry...

Blood drips from Stevie’s fat nose.
Tears well up in his eyes. He cups his hands over his face, but he doesn’t run.
He looks at me. “It’s o’day, Oz. I see you in dere. It’s o’day.”

“Hit him again, Oz!”

“You see what in where?” I ask Stevie. I
ask, but I know the answer. He sees me. Not the bully pounding him in the face,
but me, the guy who so desperately wants to take back everything I did to him.
The guy who wants to be Stevie’s hero.

“I see it,” he says.

I pound him in the nose again. “You see
what?”

He’s terrified, but still he doesn’t
run. “I see,” he says between breaths. “I see da magic in you.”

***

The door to my room opens and Dr. Graham
enters. I am still caught up in my vivid memory or hallucination or whatever it
is. I do not acknowledge the doctor.

“Oz?”

I am stuck... in those words... “da
magic in you.” What did Stevie mean?

“Oz, I don’t have time...”

“Pass,” I snap.

“What?”

“A GP pass. I want a GP pass.” I turn to
him, eyes still glazed.

He clears his throat and turns to
Chester. I have never asked for this before. I can tell by their expressions
that they don’t know what to make of it.

“May I ask why?”

“I... I’m tired of this room.”

He nods. “Understandable, but still.
You’ve been reluctant to venture outside this room ever since you arrived.”

“People change.”

He purses his lips together and rubs his
chin with his thumb. “Alright. I’ll give you a restricted pass. You’re not to
go off the yellow path. Understood?”

“The yellow path. Right.”

“This is a test, Oz. You play by the
rules and do as I say today, who knows what tomorrow will bring.”

“Tomorrow. Got it.”

“I’m not kidding,” he says with a smile.
“I’m cautiously optimistic about this request. It shows progress. Something you
haven’t shown before.”

I smile this time. “Take a bow, Doc.
You’re a miracle worker. Next thing you know, I’ll be running for president of
the yellow path people.”

***

What I soon come to find out is the
yellow path people are really just a multitude of crazies who barely qualify to
be human beings. They come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages. The only
thing they have in common is the winding yellow line that divides the corridor
floor throughout most of the hospital. There are other lines, red, green, blue,
but I never see the people that inhabit those corridors. I see the occasional
shadow of the blue crazies or red crazies or green crazies where the yellow
line briefly dissects their paths, but I never get a close look.

A patient with leathery skin and
walnut-sized lumps across his forehead stops me on my way to the janitor’s
closet.

“New?” he mumbles.

“I... I’m not sure,” I answer

His stubbly chin quivers as he stutters
“P-p-p-p-pudding.” “What?”

“P-p-p...” He gulps to right himself.
“Pudding to p—p-pass.”

“Pudding?” I say as if this is a crazy
request. Of course it’s a crazy request. He’s crazy. “I don’t have pudding.”

Upon hearing this, the leathery little
man screams and rams his head into a nearby door jamb. The origin of his lumps
suddenly becomes very clear. “Pudding to pass! Pudding to pass!”

As I stare at the man in disbelief, a
bony hand appears in my field of vision holding a cup of chocolate pudding.
Bones smiles back at me as I try to piece this scene together in my cluttered
mind.

“It’s his favorite,” Bones says.

I don’t respond. I’m seriously
regretting my request for a GP pass.

“Take it. Give it to him. Before Chester
comes.”

I still hesitate. Bones slams his hand
into my chest. I take the pudding and hand it to...

“Gator.”

“What?”

Bones sighs in frustration. “His name’s
Gator. On account of his skin is all wrinkled and leathery. That’s what they do
in this place. They call you by what you look like instead of your real name.
They call me...”

“Bones.”

“That’s right, Bones.” He looks at Gator
as he rips open the pudding cup. “He’s harmless, ‘cept to himself I suppose. He
was a great man once... well, he claims he was anyway. I didn’t know him ‘fore
they stuck me in here.”

“Where is here?”

He looks around. “I don’t really know.
It’s just here.”

We begin to walk down the corridor.
“Where do you come from?” I ask.

He thinks about the question. “I’m not
sure. Still trying to figure that out.” He leans in closer and whispers. “I’m
your lookout.”

“What?”

“Archie sent me.”

“Archie?”

He reaches toward his face and mimics
pulling it off. “Archie.”

I nod. “Ahhh, yes, Archie. How come he
has a name?”

He shrugs. “Guess don’t nobody want to
call him what he looks like.” Bones scratches his head. “He says you’re the
key.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Neither do I, but if Archie wants me to
look out for you, that’s what I aim to do. Won’t nobody hurt you long as I’m
around.”

I look at his skinny frame and fight the
urge to laugh at his bravado. He senses my skepticism. “Snarkel, snapper momma,
jaws, spot, jumper, hambone, Charlie boy,” he says with a smile. “Long as I got
that, I’m friggin invincible. You understand?”

I don’t have the heart to tell him “no”
so I nod as if it makes perfect sense.

We reach the janitor’s closet. We both
stare at the door as if it might explode.

“No matter what you hear in there, don’t
come out,” Bones says staring at the doorknob.

“What am I going to hear in there?”

“Don’t know, but Gator was normal before
he went in there.” I look at him wide-eyed.

“Gator?”

He looks at me for a split second before
he busts out laughing. “I’m just yanking your chain. Gator ain’t never been in
there... or normal, far as I know.”

I look to my left and then to my right
before putting my hand on the doorknob. Slowly I pull the door open and step
inside the surprisingly roomy closet.

Bones gives me one last reassuring grin
as the door slowly closes. “I got your back,” he whispers. As the door clicks
shut and I lose all light, I try to convince myself that it’s reassuring to
have Bones right outside the door.

I stand motionless, not knowing exactly
what to expect or do. The sound of muffled voices comes from the back of the
closet. I carefully step toward them. They are high up, toward the ceiling. My
eyes adjust to the darkness , and I can make out a vent. The sounds of a
conversation escape the metal grate.

The first voice I can make out is Dr.
Graham’s. “The other patients look up to you,” he says.

“They’re idiots,” his companion answers
back. “It’s kind of like being looked up to by a pack of greasy rats. It don’t
mean much.” I know by the comment more than the voice that it’s Archie
Scoop-face.

“You shouldn’t dismiss the others so
easily.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yap, yap, yap. For a
shrink you sure do talk a lot. Shouldn’t you be listening?”

“Okay,” the doc says sounding more than
a little irritated. “Talk.”

“Not here.”

“What do you mean?”

“The couch. I want to go under.”

There is an awkward silence.

“Hypnosis? Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” Scoop-face
chuckles. “It’s what you do, ain’t it?”

“You called it a gallon of goose crap
last week.”

“Last week?” Scoop-face chuckles even
louder. “You can’t hold a crazy man’s feet to the fire for a thing he said last
week.”

The doc clears his throat. “I don’t like
that word.”

“I know... I had a change of heart,
that’s all. I got some things I want to explore in the deep recesses of this
dented head of mine. Now, are you going to help me or sit there with that puppy
dog look on your face?”

I can hear movement. The doc shifts in
his leather chair. I wonder how you hypnotize a man with no eyes. Are the eyes
necessary? They aren’t when you’re under.

A chair squeaks. One of them clears his
throat. “Very well,” Dr. Graham says.