The Madman - Страница 82

He did not reply, but continued to stare up at the ceiling, all the time believing more and more firmly that he was dying. Or perhaps he was already dead, and every word he heard was just the last reverberations of life, accompanying his last few heartbeats.

"Mister Moses! Come here! We need help!" Napoleon seemed suddenly on the verge of tears.

Francis could feel himself spiraling in two opposing directions. One that seemed to thrust him down, one that insisted he soar upward. They battled within him.

Big Black pushed to his side. Francis could hear him ordering the remaining members of Amherst out into the corridor. He bent over Francis's form, looking deep into the younger man's eyes, muttering rapid-fire obscenities. "Come on, Goddamn it, Francis, get up? What's wrong?"

"Help him," Napoleon pleaded.

"I'm trying," Big Black answered. "Francis, tell me, what's wrong?" He clapped his hands sharply in front of Francis's face, trying to get a reaction. He grasped Francis by the shoulder and shook him hard, but Francis remained stiff on the bunk.

Francis thought that he no longer had any words. He doubted his ability to speak. Things inside him were glazing over, like ice forming on a pond.

The garbled voices redoubled commands, pleading, urging him to respond.

The only thought that penetrated Francis's fear was the single idea that if he didn't move, he would surely become dead. That the nightmare would become true. It was as if the two had blended together. Just as day and night were no longer different, neither was dream and wakefulness. He teetered again, on the edge of consciousness, a part of him urging him to shut it all down, retreat, find safety in the refusal to live, another part pleading with him to step away from the siren's song of the blank, dead world that suddenly beckoned him.

Don't die, Francis!

At first, he thought this was one of his familiar voices speaking to him. Then, in that perilous second, he realized that it was himself.

And so, mustering every minute amount of strength that he had, Francis croaked out words that one second earlier he'd feared were lost to him forever. "He was here…," Francis said, like a dying man's last breath, only contradictorily, the mere sound of his voice seemed to energize him.

"Who?" Big Black asked.

"The Angel. He spoke to me."

The attendant seemed to rock back, then forward.

"Did he hurt you?"

"No. Yes. I can't be sure," Francis said. Every word seemed to strengthen him. He felt like a man whose fever suddenly broke.

"Can you stand up?" Big Black said.

"I'll try," Francis replied. With Big Black steadying him, and Napoleon holding out his hands as if he would break any fall, Francis lifted himself up, and pivoted his feet out of bed. He was dizzy for a second as blood rushed out of his head. Then he stood.

"That's good," Big Black whispered. "You must have gotten some kinda scare."

Francis didn't respond. This was obvious.

"You gonna be okay, C-Bird?"

"I hope so."

"Let's keep all this to ourselves, okay? Talk to Miss Jones and Peter, when he gets out of isolation."

Francis nodded. Still shaky. He realized that the huge black attendant understood just how close he had come to not being able to get out of that bed ever again. Or falling into one of the blank holes occupied by the catatonic patients, who looked out on a world that existed only for themselves. He took an unsteady step forward, then another, and he felt blood flowing throughout his body and the risks of a greater madness than the one he already owned falling away from him. He could feel his muscles and his heart, all working. His voices cheered, then quieted, as if taking satisfaction in his every movement. He breathed out slowly, like a man who has just avoided being struck by a piece of falling rock. Then he smiled, regaining some of his familiar grin.

"Okay," Francis said to Napoleon, still holding Big Black's massive forearm to steady himself. "I think I could use something to eat."

Both men nodded, and took a step forward, except it was Napoleon who hesitated.

"Who's that?" he asked abruptly.

Francis and Big Black pivoted about, following Napoleon's glance.

They both saw the same thing, at the same moment. Another man had failed to get out of bed that morning. He had gone unnoticed in the attention Napoleon had drawn to Francis. The man lay motionless, a misshapen lump on a steel bunk.

"What the hell," the huge attendant said, more irritated than anything else.

Francis stepped forward several paces, and saw who it was.

"Hey," Big Black said loudly, but there was no response.

Francis took a deep breath and then walked across the dormitory room, angling between crowded beds, to the supine man's side.

It was the Dancer. The elderly man who'd been transferred into Amherst the day before. The retarded man's bunkmate.

Francis looked down and saw the man's rigid, stiff limbs. No more flowing, graceful motions listening to music only he could hear, Francis thought.

The Dancer's face was set hard, almost porcelain in appearance. His skin was white, as if he'd been made up to go onstage. His eyes were wide open, as was his mouth. He looked surprised, maybe even shocked, or even more, perhaps terrified at the death that had come for him that night.

Chapter 24

Peter the Fireman sat cross-legged on the steel bunk in the isolation cell, like a young and impatient Buddha eagerly awaiting enlightenment. He had slept little the previous night, although the padding on the walls and ceiling had muffled most of the sounds of the unit, save the occasional high-pitched scream or disconnected angry shout that emerged from one of the other rooms very much like the one he was confined within. These random cries meant as much to him as animal sounds that echoed through a forest after dark; they bore no obvious logic or purpose except for the person that uttered them. Midway through the long night, Peter had wondered whether the screams that he heard were actually happening, or were more likely sounds that had been issued sometime in the past by long-dead patients, and like radio beacons shot into space, were destined to reverberate through eternity into the darkness, never stopping, never ceasing and never finding a home. He felt haunted.

As daylight crept hesitantly into the cell through the small observation portal in the door, Peter pondered the bind he was in. He had no doubt that the offer from the Cardinal was sincere, although that was probably not the correct word, because sincerity didn't seem to have much to do with his situation. The offer simply required him to disappear. Walk away from all the tangible aspects of his life and vanish into a new existence. The only location where his home, his family, his past, would continue to live was in his memory. There would be no returning once he accepted the offer. Who he was, and what he had done, and why he had done it, were all to evaporate from the collective consciousness of the Boston Archdiocese, to be replaced by something new and shiny and with glistening spires that reached heavenward. In his own family, he'd be the brother who died under hushed circumstances, or the uncle who went away, never to return, and, as years passed, his family would come to believe whatever myth the Church helped to create, and who he had been would crumble away.

He assessed his alternatives: prison; MCI Bridgewater; maximum security; lockdowns and beatings. Probably for much of the rest of his life, because the considerable weight of the Archdiocese, which at this moment was pressuring prosecutors to allow him to vanish into a program in Oregon, would shift if he rejected the plan, and come down heavily on him. He knew there would be no other deals.

Peter could hear the distinctive clanging sound of a jail door being closed and hydraulic locks shutting with a whooshing noise. This made him smile, because he thought it about as close as he was likely to get to one of his friend C-Bird's hallucinations, only this one was uniquely his.

For a moment, he remembered poor Lanky, filled with fear and delusion, his grasp on the little life that the hospital provided him dropping away, turning and pleading with Peter and Francis to help him. He wished, in that second, that Lucy could have heard those cries. It seemed to him that throughout his entire life people had been calling to him for help and that every time he'd tried to come to their assistance, no matter how fine his intentions, something had always gone wrong.