Out of the Shadows (26 page)

Henry took a deep breath, hoping for relaxation but fighting the taste of bile rising from his stomach. He pointed at the door on the right and said to the guard, “May I see my father, please?”

The guard smiled and rose from his chair. “Of course, Henry.”

Hesitantly, he entered and began his trek through the winding halls toward his father’s room. He had already been feeling a little queasy by the thought of the upcoming conversation he needed to have with him, so the fact that last decade’s mayor began pounding relentlessly on his own door as Henry passed only worsened the jitters.

The doors to the individual rooms for each of the societal figures were locked with a special keypad and thumbprint scanner. Studies had shown that where the cells had most resembled rooms of the patients’ homes, they were more at ease and had far less episodes. For this reason, these rooms all had doors, unlike the barred cells of the west wing and the Plexiglas barriers in “The Alley.”

Equal opportunity was not a common conviction of most in town. You only had the right to it if you could pay for it – and none of the other patients could afford a room without bars.

With an unsettling electric whir, the overhead lights flickered again. A chill seized Henry’s essence, making his pace quicken. He noted the odd lack of windows throughout the winding halls, magnifying the feeling of claustrophobia.

I guess psychopaths don’t get the privilege of a little sunlight.
Henry flushed, regretting his thoughts. After all, his father was one of those psychopaths. He figured most of these people probably preferred the dark anyway. Being able to lose yourself completely, not seeing who you are but only who you want to be. In darkness, you could create a world of your own in which to live. Anything could happen.

He now stood at the familiar door, quivering with nerves and unable to calm his fluttering heartbeat. As his resolve faltered, he noticed the door to the left of his father’s. There was no nameplate, and the keypad was not illuminated. He shivered, feeling sorry for the next poor soul that would call that empty room home.

Soft moans and tortured wails echoed down the hall as Henry reluctantly tapped a four-digit number into the keypad. The finger scanner beeped and activated with an intense sapphire light. Placing his thumb on the slick pad, a blue laser light scanned his print, releasing the security mechanism on the door.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed down on the cold, metal handle and entered his personal hell.

Henry’s shoes sunk into the soft burgundy carpet as the door shut behind him. Ornate wall sconces filled the dark room with a warm glow, highlighting the incredible detail on the expensive mahogany paneling that lined the lower portion of the walls, a deep purple-striped wallpaper covering the top half.

The brown leather couch provided a view of the small aquarium, which housed exotic fish and added some cool tones to the room’s golden glow. Against the back wall sat a large, oak desk with “RJ” carved into its front – Robert’s close friends had given him the nickname years ago. On the desk were placed photos of family, including one where Henry was a mere toddler, bouncing jubilantly on the knee of his father, his wonderful mother smiling down upon them from behind.

I miss you, Ma.
He ran his finger over the top of the picture frame.

Flanking either side of the desk were shelves full of books – medical texts, the DSM, journals packed with research, and favorite classic novels.

Ah, how at-home he felt looking at this room – as long as he ignored the fact that Robert James London was strapped with thick leather belts to a hospital bed at the other end, mumbling incoherently and thrashing from left to right, his gray wispy hair frizzy and wild in the suddenly eerie light. The IV bag dripped medication into Robert’s veins, a small heart and brain monitor pulsing to the side. The heart gave a quiet, rhythmic beep, its green line peaking every second while the brain’s monitor looked like an undulating waveform.

Henry refocused his thoughts, remembering once again why the room in his house that used to be his father’s den was now empty; the furniture had all been brought here to help keep him calm.

And isn’t it working fantastically?
he thought sarcastically as his father squirmed.

The harsh smell of ammonia and sterilized bed linens assaulted Henry’s nostrils, removing everything that was once comforting about the room. He approached Robert, whose eyes darted back and forth frantically and then came to rest on his son.

Henry fought to swallow, his mouth dry. “Hello, Father.”

Robert stopped thrashing and became still. Panting shallowly for air, he whispered in a raspy voice, “Henry.”

He could already feel his determination beginning to crumble, and he struggled to hold back the inevitable tears as he tightly gripped the old man’s hand. “Yes, Father. It’s me.”

“Henry, please listen to me.” Robert’s eyes grew wide. His lips began moving rapidly, as if he were hurrying to tell Henry some important information before it was too late. But no sound came out.

“What is it?” Henry leaned in closer to hear his father’s words, his brow furrowed with concern. It was nothing more than whispered babbling – incoherent syllables.

Robert stopped mumbling and stared at the ceiling before letting out a hideous bellow that frightened Henry, jolting his spine upright. His heart raced, and his hands shook.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to be
, he thought.
I need you to listen, Father! You have to listen to me!
But his feet were already carrying him quickly back down the hallway in which he’d come. He felt the walls closing in around him.
Turn left,
and he ran.
Right and through the double doors!
His soggy shoes slid across the surface of the linoleum around the turn. He clumsily regained his balance and continued his flight.

Through the round vestibule he fled, his brain a frazzled tsunami of fractured thoughts. A voice calling out his name. His dam of emotions cracking, threatening a salty deluge. The whiteness blinding him. Blood pounding in his ears. At the door back into the main foyer now. Hand balled into a fist, pounding on the barricade. Pounding, pounding, hand going numb. Screaming for Charise.

Suddenly, the door hissed and opened quickly.

“What’s wrong, Child?!” the woman demanded, her gaze on the hall beyond the young man, her grasp securely on her nightstick in its sheath.

He placed a weak hand on her shoulder and muscled past her, gasping for air and wiping the wetness from his red cheeks.

“Li’l Bobby!” she persisted.

He reluctantly looked at the caring woman, his resolve crumbling. “I can’t do this. Not tonight.”

Her face softened as she gave him a bittersweet smile, grabbing hold of his arm. “Child, there may not be a tomorrow for Dr. London.”

“I know that! But I…” Henry wasn’t completely sure why he’d run from his father’s room. Images of his parents flooded his brain; they were smiling, and laughing, and bouncing “Li’l Bobby” on their knees. Henry closed his stinging, puffy eyes, drowning in the memories. “I know that, Ms. Jacobs.”

Charise unsheathed her nightstick and waved the black, wooden bludgeon in Henry’s face. “If ya don’t stop with that ‘Ms. Jacobs’ crap, you’ll be walkin’ funny for weeks!”

Henry forced a smile and gasped between sobs. “I’m sorry I forgot your soda.”

She waddled back behind her desk and plopped down into her seat, its springs protesting the abuse. “You got any idea what a caffeine headache does to a woman of my constitution?”

Henry tipped his head to her out of respect and said, “I’ll try to stop by tomorrow.”

As he turned and reached for the oak doors’ handles, he heard Charise bitterly say, “Go on home, then.”

Noticing the irritation in her tone, he stopped and turned to her. “What?”

She rolled her eyes. “Now you listen to me, Child, and you listen real good. I love you like my own, but there ain’t room for cowards in this hospital!”

Henry was speechless, anger rising within.

She continued, “You think this is hard on
you?
What about the old man?! You just stand there and take a minute to think on it!”

The fiery rage building within Henry suddenly coalesced into an inflamed shame. She was right. The conversation he needed to have with his father would be just as important to Robert as it was to Henry. But this woman had no idea what it was like. No one would ever know.

“Now, you walk back there and visit with your daddy, or you best hope I ain’t on duty next time you show that pretty face ‘round this lobby. ‘Less you want another earful!”

A deafening crack of thunder shook the asylum, quickly followed by the sound of a distant explosion. The lights flickered, fighting to hold their power. And then, with a shower of sparks from Charise’s console, the fluorescents rescinded their illumination and gave way to a sickly yellow glow: the backup emergency lights.

Charise cursed, immediately retrieving a flashlight from a desk drawer. She picked up the phone and listened for a moment. “Dammit!” she muttered to herself and slammed it down onto its receiver. “Child, what did you do?” she asked, as if the hospital’s main power going out were somehow connected to Henry’s cowardice. She removed her walkie-talkie from its hip-clip and depressed the side button. “Tom, how we lookin’?”

The man’s voice that crackled through in response was labored and panting; he was obviously on-the-move. “Problem in the Alley – Gary’s out. I’m on my way there now! You stay put!”

Charise’s eyes widened as she considered Henry standing by the exit doors. She suddenly rose from her squeaky chair and headed for the door into the institution.

“Tom said to stay here!” Henry protested.

“Yes, well. I ain’t no coward when the people I care about need me.” And with that pointed statement, she opened the door leading back into the bowels of hell.

Courage.

Having the fortitude to confront fear, uncertainty, and pain. Courageous men were not fearless; they simply understood that there was something more important at stake than their fear. Their fear became a lesser priority.

Henry trembled with fear but found no courage within.

He was afraid of many things, but the greatest of these nightmares was that he would one day disappoint everyone he loved. There was much potential in this day to bring his fear to fruition.

He knew he was not equipped to follow Charise into the hospital corridors, nor would she have allowed him to accompany her. But her words had struck a chord with him: “I ain’t no coward when the people I care about need me.” So, now he stood outside the penitentiary’s entrance doors, a deluge of wet blackness cascading from above, chilling the marrow of his bones.

If he couldn’t offer Charise support against the evils within, he could at least circle the soggy grounds to find out what had caused the explosion that had occurred directly before the emergency lights had come on.

Lightning probably zapped the generator
, he rationalized as his swelling fear crashed farther up the shore of his mind with every step he took through the glistening grass, past the massive sycamore trees encasing the perimeter and rounding the corner of the building to his left.

If he weren’t certain of his sanity and logical thinking skills, he would have sworn that over the din of the rainstorm and howling wind gusts, he had heard a soothing whisper that had uttered one simple word: “Henry.”

His body violently shivering (not totally from the chill of freezing rain), he continued down the length of the stone building, damning himself for not having checked Charise’s desk for something useful, like an extra flashlight or a weapon of some kind.

Shadows crept and crawled their way around Henry’s body from the surrounding foliage, their sinewy grasp constricting his chest. He found it difficult to breathe. Seeing was no small task with rain streaming down the lenses of his glasses, and his hands were numbed from the chilly wetness in the air, his senses quickly becoming crippled. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to be back at home in his father’s former den, sitting in front of the warm firelight while his mother sat on the leather couch, knitting, and his father poured through texts behind his desk!

A fractured bolt of lightning sizzled across the sky and crashed down onto the roof of the hospital, illuminating the heavens for a brief second. And in that miniscule moment in time, Henry saw a figure twenty yards ahead.

A woman with long brunette hair, bathed in a flowing white gown. Her ghostly appearance petrified him. It was uncanny how much the woman looked like…

“Mother?” he said softly to himself.

But as long as it took the lightning to appear and disappear from the sky, so did the apparition slink back into nothingness.

With no memory of having lifted his feet at all, Henry was already standing at the spot where the woman had materialized. He gasped to catch his breath as he searched around frantically. No footprints. No woman. Nothing.

A pop and a shower of sparks erupted next to him, and a small fuse box mounted to the wall now crackled and smoked, a casualty of Mother Nature. Next to the box was a metal door labeled “
Maintenance
.”

As he opened it, a cloud of black smoke poured out from the generator room, and his lungs became flooded with the overwhelming stench of seared oil and damaged mechanics. He quickly covered his mouth and let out a short hack. After a few seconds, the smoke had dissipated, and he entered the space now bathed in yellow emergency lights.

The massive generator, no longer running, coughed sparks at consistent intervals. Henry followed the conduit line from the outside fuse box up the wall, across the ceiling, and down to a control panel on the other side of the small room. On the left panel, he noticed a large push-lever the size of his fist, stuck between the “on” and “off” positions.

Here goes nothing
, he silently prayed, wrapping his wrinkled, waterlogged fingers around the lever and pushing it up into its “on” position.

The instant he did so, he knew he’d made a grave mistake. He felt a shockwave rock his body as he quickly removed his hand from the console, which whirred in protest, sparked with dazzling defiance, and fell silent once again.

*     *     *

Charise jogged briskly through the sickened yellow hallways, flashlight at-the-ready, prepared for the worst. Her heart was pounding at the thought of having to enter The Alley. There were many stories about their most disturbed patient, Gary, but she’d only experienced a handful of his episodes in person. Gary was enough to make her wish they were permitted to carry firearms.

She charged over the threshold in front of her and into the round vestibule that housed the trio of doors into the separate wings of the hospital. “Goin’ in The Alley, Stan,” she said to the old guard behind the circular desk.

“I’m sorry, Charise. No, you’re not.”

She stopped and shifted her hefty weight to properly glare at Stanley. “Say that again?”

“Tom and his crew just went in. He told me if you showed up, I wasn’t to let you in.”

“Well, I don’t give half-a-rat’s ass ‘bout what Tom says. You let me through that door!” she spat, pointing her nightstick at the center door behind him. She faintly heard the alarm sounding in The Alley – an indication that a security system had gone offline.

“Please, Charise. Don’t do this,” he requested of his co-worker.

Her fiery stare drilled into his soul, and she spoke with a quiet intensity, “Stanley: Open… that… door…”

He kept eye contact with her as he slowly stood from his chair and placed his hand on the head of his sheathed nightstick.

*     *     *

The Alley.

The expansive two-story cell block echoed with the primal moans and screams of the lunatic-filled cells lining both sides of the walls, the long, claustrophobic hallway up the center barely a safe haven from the hospital wing’s violent inhabitants.

Crazy Gary Shorno stood at the Plexiglas-barred gate of his cell on the second floor at the end of the room. His eyes twinkled with a glimmer of hope as the emergency lights came on and The Alley’s alarm sounded. The high-pitched siren filled his senses with the blood frenzy of gruesome murder as the foam from his chapped lips ran down his stubbled chin. Snot oozed above his upper lip as he wiped his face haphazardly on his orange T-shirt sleeve, already caked with dried mucous and dirt. He took a moment to fill his lungs with the glorious aroma of his own sweat-covered body, the feces in the stagnant toilet, the mildewed stains on the bed linens and walls… and he smiled at the potentially fantastic night ahead.

His waxy ears reveled in the symphonic
clink-ker-chunk
of his cell’s glass gate unlocking and retreating into the wall. The alarm’s pulsing sound waves fed Gary’s thirst for revenge – for cold-blooded murder.

He hobbled out of his cell and onto the thick Plexiglas walkway that lined the walls of the second floor. The other inmates giggled eerily and looked to Gary for guidance. His eyes filled with passionate insanity, and he thrust his arms into the air – freedom! The sound that burst forth from his throat was a monstrous cheer, leaving the other patients with no other choice but to echo its mesmerizing vocal strain.

The only entrance into this chamber, two hundred feet on the other side of the room at the beginning of the long hallway, crashed open as ten security guards filed in, their clubs at the ready, instantly targeting the crazed man bellowing at the top of the spiral staircase on the second floor’s balcony walkway.

The guards ran, their hearts pounding in their ears, anticipation of the confrontation ahead searing their nerve endings. Gary was a wild one; they had experienced that fact first-hand – especially the head of security, Thomas Aikers. On numerous occasions, Tom’s club had tasted Gary’s rotten flesh, and Gary had threatened to steal his life if he were ever to get out of his cell at night.

Just another incident. No idea how he got out, but all the same
, Tom thought to himself, hearing nothing but the pound of his own echoing footsteps. He was so focused on getting to Gary that nothing around him existed. No alarm, no screaming patients, no other guards. His sights were set on Gary – The Alley’s self-assigned leader, for all intents and purposes.

Tom’s sweaty hand reached for the railing of the spiral staircase leading up to the lunatic. He saw the wild fires blazing within the eyes of a madman. And a flicker in his chest filled him with a terrible premonition: this would be the last time he would ever have to deal with Gary. No matter which way the scale would tip, he felt in his gut that this was it.

And then something unexpected happened. The building shook once more from the ferocious mauling of the storm, and the sound of the alarm was drowned out by the release of a hundred locks. All the other gates slowly eased open, releasing every single patient in the crowded two-story chamber. Ten guards against one hundred bloodthirsty delinquents…

Tom panicked only for a second before finding his resolve.
Eyes on the prize, Tom. Finish this first!
He lunged up the final step and barreled straight toward Gary. As the disgusting man’s meaty fist reared back for an attack, Tom raised his club into the air, ready to bring it down on the madman’s face.

And then the lights went out.