The Madman - Страница 113

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The Fireman seized the bar and immediately thrust it deep into the space where the door met the frame, adjacent to the deadbolt lock. Throwing all his weight into the makeshift crowbar, Peter pushed hard to break the door free.

Francis could see the bar bend, metal complain with an animal-like shriek and the door begin to buckle.

Peter let loose a great sigh, and stepped back. He worked the bar into the space again, and was about to throw himself into it, when Francis suddenly interrupted him.

"Peter!" he said, his voice filled with urgency. "What was the word?"

The Fireman stopped. "What?" he asked, confused.

"The word. The word. The word that Lucy was supposed to use to call for help?"

"Apollo," Peter replied. Then he tossed himself at the door again. Only this time, the huge retarded man stepped forward to help him, and the two of them bent their backs to the task.

Francis turned toward the gathered men of Amherst, who were frozen in place, as if awaiting some release. "Okay," he said, marshaling himself like a general in front of his army at the moment of an attack, "We've got to help out."

"What do you want us to do?" It was Newsman, this time, who spoke.

Francis lifted up one hand, like a starter at a race. "We need to make a noise that they can hear upstairs. We need to signal for help…"

One of the men immediately shouted, "Help! Help!" as loud as he could. Then a third, "Help…" that was lower in volume, fading away.

"It does no good in here to yell for help. We all know that," Francis said emphatically. "Nobody ever pays attention. Nobody ever comes. Help! is useless. What we have to do is yell Apollo! as loud as we can…"

Timidity, confusion, doubt turned the men into a reluctant chorus. A mumbling of Apollos followed.

"Apollo?" Napoleon asked. "But why ApolloV Francis said, "It's the only word that will work."

He knew this sounded as crazy as anything, but he said it with such conviction that any further discussion was erased.

Several of the men instantly cried out, "Apollo! Apollo!" but Francis shut them down with a quick wave.

"No," Francis shouted sturdily, orchestrating, organizing. "It has to be together, otherwise they won't hear it. Follow me, on the count of three, let's try it…"

He counted down, and a single modest, but unified Apollo emerged.

"Good, good," Francis said. "Only this time as loud as we can." He looked back over his shoulder at Peter and the retarded man, both groaning with exertion as they struggled with the door. "This time, we need to make it heard…"

He raised his hand. "On my mark," he said. "Three. Two. One…"

Francis brought his arm down fast, like a sword.

"Apollo!" the men shouted.

"Again!" Francis yelled. "That was great. Again, now, three, two, one…"

A second time, he sliced the air.

"Apollo!" The men responded.

"Again!"

"Apollo!"

"And again!"

"Apollo!"

The word rose up, soaring, bursting from the group of patients full bore, exploding through the thick walls and darkness of the mental hospital, a star-burst, fireworks word, never heard before in the asylum, and probably never to be heard again, but at least, on this one black night breaking past all the locks and barriers, beating back every strand of earthly restraint, rising, flying, taking wing and finding freedom in sound, dashing through the thick air, unerringly racing directly to the ears of the two men above, who were to be its primary recipients, and who craned forward, surprised, at the designated sound resounding from such an unexpected source.

Chapter 33

Apollo!" I said out loud.

In mythology, he was the sun god whose swift. chariot signaled the coming of day. It was what we needed that night, two things that were generally in short supply in the world of the mental hospital: Speed and clarity.

"Apollo," I said a second time. I must have been shouting.

The word reverberated off the walls of my apartment, racing into the corners, leaping up to the ceiling. It was a uniquely wondrous word, one that rolled off my tongue with a strength of memory that fueled my own resolve. It had been twenty years since the night I'd last spoken it out loud, and I wondered if it wouldn't do the same for me this night, as it did then.

The Angel bellowed in rage. Glass shattered around me, steel groaned and twisted as if being consumed by fire. The floor shook, the walls buckled, the ceiling swayed. My entire world was ripping apart, shredding into pieces around me, as his fury consumed him. I clutched my head, pushing my hands over my ears, trying to drown out the cacophony of destruction around me. Things were breaking, crumbling and exploding, disintegrating beneath my feet. I was in the midst of some terrifying battlefield, and my own voices were like the cries of doomed men surrounding me. I buried my head for a moment in my hands, trying to duck the shrapnel of remembrance.

On that night twenty years earlier, the Angel had been right about so much. He had foreseen everything Lucy would do; he understood precisely how Peter would behave; he knew exactly what the Moses brothers would agree to and help arrange. He was intimate with the hospital and how if affected everyone's thinking. What the Angel comprehended better than anyone else was how routine and organized and drearily predictable everything was that sane people would do. He knew the plan they would come up with would leave him with isolation, quiet, and opportunity. What they had thought was a trap for him was actually the most ideal of circumstances. He was, far more than they, a student of psychology and a student of death and he was immune to their earthbound plans. To take her by surprise required him only to not try to surprise her. She had willingly set herself up; it must have thrilled him to know she would do that. And on that night, he knew murder would be in his hands, directly in front of him, ready like some weed that had sprouted up, to be plucked. He had spent years patiently preparing for the time that he would have Lucy beneath his knife once again, and he had considered almost every factor, every dimension, every consideration except, oddly the most obvious but the most forgettable.

What he hadn't counted on were the crazy folks.

I squeezed my eyes shut with recollection. I was a little unsure whether it was all happening in the past or in the present, in the hospital or in the apartment. It was all coming back to me, this night and that night, one and the same.

Peter was shouting deep, guttural noises, as he bent the door from its lock, the hulking retarded man wordlessly straining and sweating at his side. Beside me, Napoleon, Newsman, all the others, were arranged, like a chorus, waiting for my next direction. I could see them quiver and shake with fear and excitement, for they, more than anyone, understood that it was a night unlikely to ever be repeated, a night where fantasies and imagination, hallucination, and delusion all came true.

And Lucy, so few feet away, but alone with the man who'd thought of nothing except her death for so long, feeling the knife at her throat, knew that she needed to keep stealing seconds.

Lucy tried to think past the cold of the knife and the sharpness of the blade as it dug at her skin, a terrible sensation that reached deeply into the heat of the moment, and crippled her ability to reason. Down the hallway she could hear the noise of metal being bent, as the locked door was savaged, groaning with complaint as Peter and the retarded man assaulted it with the bed frame. It yielded slowly, hesitant to open up and let loose rescue. But above that noise, rising into the air beyond, she could hear the word Apollo being sung by the men in the dormitory, which gave her a wisp of hope.

"What does it mean?" the Angel demanded fiercely. That he had patience amid the sudden arrival of noise in what had been such a sleeping world, frightened her as much as anything.

"What?"

"What does it mean!" he asked, his voice growing lower, harsher. He did not need to attach a threat to his words, Lucy thought. The tone was clear enough. She kept repeating to herself buy time! And so she hesitated.

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