Twisted (11 page)

30

The patients are speaking to me.

That sleep of death
,
Christopher.

A message now poking at my psyche like a puppy’s needle teeth. Once was obscure enough to be the ranting from a mind gone sour, but coming from an entire floor?

And now Nicholas has mysteriously vanished.

What do the patients want me to know? The only way to get some peace of mind is to stay rational and seek information. So in my office, still trying to warm my shivers, I take a wild stab in the dark—or rather, at the Internet—and to my surprise, I score a direct hit.

Shakespeare?

Okay, so we have some lovers of classic literature among the men of Alpha. The phrase is part of the opening soliloquy in Hamlet’s nunnery scene.

To die, to sleep,

To sleep, perchance to dream; Aye, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause.

A whole lot of talk about death there, but whose? I’m a bit rusty on my Shakespearean studies, so I examine the words individually, hoping they’ll reveal some kind of hidden meaning.

Sleep.

Death.

Dreams.

I was dead asleep, Christopher . . . Nicholas has bad dreams all the time.

Now Donny Ray’s comment comes back, and although the connection might be somewhat loose and far-reaching, I have difficulty ignoring it.

From the relative safety of my desk, I revisit Alpha Twelve. Lots of disturbing activity happening there, which I’ve yet to understand, let alone figure out. But one thing seems more than evident. An aggressive and sinister pestilence is snaking its way through Loveland’s basement floor.

Something that feels disturbingly prophetic.

“The patients are trying to communicate with me,” I tell Adam as we move through the cafeteria line.

He stops sliding his tray. “Come again?”

“They’re exhibiting some sort of peculiar mass reaction. It’s like they’re trying to give me a message.”

Adam moves on but doesn’t respond. When we get to the cashier, he turns back to me and says, “A message . . .”

“Yeah, ‘that sleep of death’ thing I mentioned. I’ve heard two different patients say it, first Nicholas, and just a little while ago, Stanley. Then right after, the others started in.”

“The patients are constantly saying crazy things. That’s why they’re here.”

“All of them? Repeating the same phrase?”

“And they’re constantly repeating each other.”

“Okay, but now Nicholas has disappeared.”

I reach for my wallet, but Adam moves faster. After paying the cashier, he says, “
Disappeared
,
like, how?”

I tell him on our way to a table.

“I’m not sure I’d exactly call that a disappearance,” Adam says as we take our seats. “I mean, patients get transferred out of here all the time.”

“To Billings, Montana?”

“Why not? They could have a specialist who’s better suited to treat him.”

“It’s a place I’ve never heard of. Smithwell Institute. And besides, it seems like they rushed him out of here pretty fast.”

“His transfer was probably already in the works. These kinds of things are planned months in advance. You know how that goes.”

“I feel like the information was intentionally kept from me.”

Adam looks up from his lunch.

“And Nicholas has been a fixture in this place for years. Why now?”

“Could be for any number of reasons. New complications, new treatments.”

We continue eating.

A few minutes later, I say, “It’s from Shakespeare.”

“What is?”

“
 ‘That sleep of death.
’
 ”

“Okay . . .” He chews but doesn’t say anything more.

“
Adam
, everyone on that floor was acting very strange yesterday. I told you about it.”

He stops chewing, stares at his food for a few seconds, then looks up at me. “Chris, they’re mental patients.”

The conversation stalls out, and for the rest of lunch, neither of us speaks.

31

I leave the building to head home when my phone vibrates. After checking the screen, I see two missed calls from Jenna.

Wait a minute.

Why is my ringer turned off?

Wait, again. Jenna’s cell?

She usually calls from home at this time of day, because she’s usually getting dinner ready. I click the answer button, but before I can speak, she says, “Where are you?”

“I’m just leaving work.” I glance at my watch and wonder if I’ve once again lost time. Nope. I’m good.

“Leaving work,”
she says.

“Yeah. What’s wrong?”

“Why are you just now leaving?”

“Because that’s what I do when I’m done?”

“But you’re supposed to be here.”

“Be where?”

“Chris, we spoke about it this afternoon. On the phone? You couldn’t have possibly forgotten. You were supposed to take off early. Adam’s already here.”

I still don’t know where
here
is, so I ask.

“At Adam and Kayla’s. For dinner.” Her voice trails into apprehensive concern. I feel her on that one. “Chris, what’s going on?”

I’m not so sure that I know. I don’t recall her telling me about this, don’t recall agreeing to leave work early; but I do remember losing a block of time during our conversation.

“Didn’t you see Adam this afternoon?” she asks. “He was supposed to remind you.”

“I actually did. At lunch. But he didn’t mention anything.”

It was intentional.

What was?

Adam didn’t tell you on purpose. He doesn’t want you in his house. That’s where he keeps the files.

Which files?

The ones with all the information he’s been gathering on you.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” I say, trying to block out the voice and get back to my wife. “I got really busy after we spoke. It completely slipped my mind.” Not exactly a lie but perhaps my biggest understatement of the year.

Jenna sighs. “It’s okay. Just get here as soon as you can, all right?”

“On my way.” I hang up and hurry through the parking lot.

32

The lost time during my earlier call with Jenna.

Stanley’s frightening and hysterical declarations.

Nicholas’ unexplained and secretive disappearance.

The list keeps growing, my stress keeps cannonballing, and any attempt to hold my mind together seems like a job unto itself.

On the road, I make a concentrated effort to gather myself, to block out the crazy taking up residence in my mind. At the same time, I’m well aware this dinner may only throw more hurdles into my path, because there is yet another problem waiting for me there.

When I met Adam, he was single. A few years later, Hurricane Kayla blew in, and before I knew it, she was part of the deal. Not that I have a problem with Adam finding love—it’s just that he really didn’t. He instead found Kayla, a woman incapable of giving or receiving anything of the sort. It’s my professional opinion that Kayla suffers from an acute personality disorder. Diagnosis: Histrionic Hot Mess.

Drama queen on steroids pretty much nails it. Kayla is ridiculously eager for attention, inappropriately demonstrative, and if pretentiousness and superficiality are her goals, she’s cornered the market. As much as I love Adam, I could have predicted that Kayla—or someone like her—was a problem waiting to happen. His judgment is fairly sound in most aspects of life, but somewhere deeply embedded within him is a noncognitive wrinkle, a psychic blemish that greatly impacts his relationships with women. Because of that deficit, he drifts into the same hapless pattern, making mistakes that seem to fall far beyond his learning curve. To put it plainly, Adam turns to Silly Putty for any woman with good looks and a rocking body. Kayla has both, and she works them with skill—or as other friends have rather crudely observed, Kayla has Adam’s dick in an iron vise. But because I care a great deal for Adam, I force tolerance and try my best to ignore his wife’s antics.

However, it’s not always easy.

When I walk through the entryway, Jenna and Kayla are sitting and talking. Actually Kayla is talking, and my wife is making a valiant effort to listen. Jenna looks at me in that special and subtle way we have, the one that speaks our universal language:
Get me out of here
.

“Christopher!” Kayla says with a nerve-grinding shriek. She deploys from her wing chair like it’s got a built-in ejection handle, the under-seat rocket motor launching her the distance between us. She lands against my chest, throws her arms around me, and kisses the air next to my head on both sides. Over her shoulder, I catch one of those corny leg lifts you see in movies but never in real life.

Jenna looks like she’s about to barf.

I work to paint a smile on my face and swallow bile.

I’m also trying to suppress a malicious laugh over Kayla’s clothing choice for the evening—or perhaps, more appropriately, her costume. An angora sweater, pink, fuzzy, and barely legal within a public context. Same goes for the skirt—or at least I think that’s what it is—with a hemline that would leave nothing to even a sailor’s imagination.

A pink beret. Eyeglasses without any lenses.

Adam enters the room and the fray.

“Honey, Chris is here!” Kayla announces, emphasizing the syllables as if her husband were hard of hearing or an idiot.

Adam nods and smiles. This is his standard. Whenever Kayla states the patently obvious, he blows it off while simultaneously excusing her overbearing and vainglorious behavior.

“Hi, Chris,” he says. “Get a little mixed up today?”

He has no idea just how mixed up, but I ask what he means anyway.

“About coming here. Jenna said I never mentioned it to you.”

“But you didn’t.”

His head pulls back in surprise. “Yeah, I did. I told you at lunch.”

“I don’t remember that at all.” And I don’t, but Subject to Change seems to be the flavor of the day in my world lately, so I add, “Maybe it was just a misunderstanding.”

It was no misunderstanding. It was intentional.

Knock it off.

He can’t get you out of here fast enough.

Shut up!

Adam starts to say something, then thinks better of it, and I see traces of apprehension drift across his face, possibly left from our discussion at lunch, now made worse by a conversation we either did or didn’t have.

“It was probably my fault,” I add, trying to ease the unspoken tension between us.

It was his fault.

Kayla flutters over to us and says, “Come on, you guys! Dinner’s ready!”

Adam smiles blissfully at her.

Kayla flutters off.

And I wonder if being crazy is a good enough excuse to get me out of here sooner.

33

Dinner is served.

Kayla holds the conversation on her own, Jenna and I try to hold down our food, and as usual, Adam holds firm to oblivion. Also as usual, my nerves are screaming for deliverance. It’s not just what Kayla says, or how much—it’s her voice, a high-pitched nasal tone with a handful of gravel thrown in for added irritation. The cathedral ceilings only amplify the sound and make her all that more difficult to endure. It’s like having dinner with ten Kaylas, when even one is far too many.

The meal drags on, then mercifully comes to a close. Adam takes Jenna outside to see the new roses he planted, which leaves me alone with Kayla. It’s awkward and tense, at least for me, because I honestly don’t know what to say, although I’m sure she’ll have no trouble filling the gaps.

“So, Chris,” she starts, “I’ve always wondered . . . Does it bother you talking to all those crazy people every day?”

“Actually, we don’t like to refer to them as—”

“Having to listen to all those horrible
, horrible
stories? From criminals? Killers even?” She shivers, and a tiny moan escapes her thin lips. “I just don’t know if I could do it.”

“Well, then it’s probably good that you don’t,” I say with diminishing patience. “But what do you think your husband does all day?”

“Oh, that’s different. He’s a
medical
doctor.” She takes a sip of coffee and nods as if agreeing with herself. She looks back at me. “But have you ever considered doing something not so creepy?”

“I don’t find it creepy. I’m giving help to people who need it.”

With a patronizing simper that one might offer a toddler, Kayla says, “Well, that’s nice for you.” She grabs a few dishes from the table and heads for the kitchen.

I lean over to spit in her coffee.

A few moments later, Kayla returns. She settles into her seat again, sips her coffee, then delivers a tacked-on smile.

I return one.

Jenna and Adam reappear. Kayla’s mouth is once again off and running, and I’ve got to find an escape hatch before she sucks the last bit of oxygen from this room.

I stand.

Kayla ignores my departure signal, then with a kittenish grin asks, “Has anyone noticed something different about me today?”

Has anyone thought about putting the bitch out of her misery?

“No, but if I had a gun, I’d happily fire the first bullet.”

Oh. Shit.

There is charged silence.

Kayla, for once, is speechless. Jenna is clearly shocked. Adam is motionless, but I sense it’s not just because of my rudeness toward his wife. Something else is going on, something that feels a lot like creeping suspicion, similar to what I saw during our earlier conversation, only far more pronounced.

Now I’ve done it.

And I don’t know where that awful remark came from, or even more, how to fix this mess I’ve created. Still, I try.

“Settle down, everyone!” I say, forcing a laugh as an attempt to backpedal. “It was a joke!”

Nobody sees the humor.

I’m mortified, and now I really need to get the hell out of here, so I abruptly leave the table and make a rush for the bathroom.

Inside, I lock the door. I check myself in the mirror. I run the sink water, stick my hands under the faucet. I yank a tissue from the box, throw it into the toilet. I flush.

But really, I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with me. It’s like some stranger is taking over my actions, my speech, and even worse, my thoughts. A stranger who flies into fits of rage, makes inappropriate and now even frightening comments. Who can’t keep track of time.

I fall against the wall and slide to the floor. I hit bottom, drop my face into my hands. I’m so terribly frightened. I feel so humiliated. So goddamned broken.

And here I am, doing the same thing my mother did, the thing I hated most about her. I’m trying to make the pain go away by running, trying to compartmentalize the inevitable when I should be dealing with it. That strategy never worked for her, it certainly didn’t help my father, and it’s not working for me. I need to go out and apologize. Kayla is many things that I don’t like, but my behavior makes me no better, and in some ways, far worse.

As I walk down the hallway and toward the dining room, a glimmer of vibrant light steals my interest. A glass knickknack glistens from high atop a shelf, a globe, no larger than a golf ball. I pull the object down to inspect it, admiring the filamentary spatters of iridescent color in each continent. Beautiful in many ways, this tiny glass world, yet in others, so very fragile and vulnerable.

So completely loaded with aching truth.

I smile with sadness, lift the globe higher, and a ray of light shoots through, igniting it with even more color, more life. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

So I slip it into my pocket, then head back to join the others.