The Madman - Страница 85

But Peter, who'd been watching and listening, suddenly leaned forward. "Why not?" he asked.

Francis turned to the sound of the Fireman's voice. Peter was grinning. "Why not?" he said again.

Evans looked upset. "We don't encourage delusions here, Peter," he snapped.

But Peter, fresh from the padded walls of the isolation cell, ignored him. "Why not, Francis?" he asked a third time.

Francis waved his hand about, as if to indicate the hospital.

"But C-Bird," Peter continued, his voice picking up momentum as he spoke, "why couldn't you be an astronaut? You're young, you're fit, you're smart. You see things that others might fail to notice. You're not conceited and you're brave. I think you'd make a perfect astronaut."

"But Peter…" Francis said.

"No buts at all. Why, who's to say that NASA won't decide to send someone crazy into space? I mean who better than one of us? I mean, people would surely believe a crazy spaceman a helluva lot quicker than some military-salute-the-flag type, right? Who's to say they won't decide to send all sorts of folks up into space, and why not one of us? They might send politicians, or scientists or maybe tourists even, someday. Maybe they'll find that when they send a crazy guy up, that floating about in space without gravity to hold us on earth, well, it helps us? Like a science experiment. Maybe…"

He paused, taking a breath. Evans started to speak, but before he could, Napoleon hesitantly added, "Peter might be right. Maybe gravity makes us crazy…"

Cleo jumped in. "Holds us down…"

"All that weight right on our shoulders…"

"Prevents our thoughts from zooming up and out…"

From around the room, patient after patient started to nod in agreement. Suddenly each seemed to find his tongue. There were first murmurs of assent, then abrupt acclaim.

"We could fly. We could float."

"No one would hold us back."

"Who would be better explorers than us?"

Around the group, men and women were smiling, agreeing. It was as if in that moment they could suddenly all see themselves as astronauts, hurtling through the heavens, their earthbound cares forgotten and evaporated, as they slipped effortlessly through the great starry void of space. It was wildly attractive, and for a few moments, the group seemed to soar skyward, each member imagining the force of gravity-being sliced away from him, experiencing an odd sort of fantasy freedom in those seconds.

Evans seethed. He started to speak, then stopped.

Instead, he tossed an angry glare at Peter, and without a word, stomped from the room.

The group quieted, watching Mister Evil's back. Within seconds, the fog of troubles fell back upon all of them.

Cleo, however, sighed loudly and shook her head. "I guess it's just you, C-Bird," she said, briskly. "You'll have to head to the heavens for all of us."

Dutifully, the group rose, folded up their chairs and placed them against the wall where they belonged, making a rattling, metallic clanking sound as one after the other was lined up. Then, lost in his own thoughts, each member made his way out of the therapy room, back into the main Amherst corridor, blending into the tidal flow of patients that maneuvered up and down the hallway.

Francis grasped Peter by the arm.

"He was here, last night."

"Who?"

"The Angel."

"He came back again?"

"Yes. He killed the Dancer but no one wants to believe that and then he held a knife to my face and told me he could kill me or you or anyone he wanted, whenever he wanted."

"Jesus!" Peter said. Whatever leftover exhilaration Peter had felt at out-maneuvering Mister Evil disappeared, and he bent to every word Francis spoke. "What else?" he asked.

Francis, hesitantly, trying hard to recall everything that had happened, could feel some of the remainder of fear that still lurked about within him. Telling Peter about the pressure of the blade on his face was harsh. He thought, at first, that it might make himself feel better, but it did not. Instead, it merely redoubled anxiety within him.

"He held it how?" Peter asked.

Francis demonstrated.

"Jesus," Peter repeated. "That must have scared the hell out of you, C-Bird."

Francis nodded, unwilling to say out loud precisely how scared he'd been. But then, in that second, something struck him, and he stopped, his brows knitting as he tried to see through a question that was murky and clouded. Peter saw Francis's sudden consternation, and asked, "What is it?"

"Peter…" Francis started, "you were the investigator once. Why would the Angel hold the knife against my face that way?"

Peter stopped, thinking.

"Shouldn't…" Francis continued, "shouldn't he hold it against my throat?"

"Yes," Peter said.

"That way, if I screamed…"

"The throat, the jugular vein, the larynx, those are the vulnerable spots. That's how you kill someone with a knife."

"But he didn't. He held it to my face."

Peter nodded. "That's most intriguing," he said. "He didn't think you would scream…"

"People scream all the time in here. It doesn't mean anything."

"True enough. But he wanted to terrify you."

"He succeeded," Francis said.

"Did you get a look…"

"He made me keep my eyes closed."

"How about his voice?"

"I might recognize it, if I heard it again. Especially close up. He hissed, like a snake."

"Do you think he was trying to conceal it somehow?"

"No. Funny. I don't think so. It was like he didn't care."

"What else?"

Francis shook his head. "He was… confident," he said cautiously.

Peter and Francis walked out of the therapy room. Lucy was waiting for them midway down the corridor, near the nursing station. They headed toward her, and as they maneuvered through the knots of patients, Peter spotted Little Black, standing not far from the station, a few feet away from Lucy Jones, and he saw the smaller of the two brothers bent over, jotting down something in a large black notebook attached to the metal grate with a modest silver chain, a little like a child's bicycle lock. In that second, he thought of something, and he stepped toward Little Black rapidly, only to have Francis grasp at his arm and stop him.

"What?" Peter said.

Francis looked pale, suddenly, and there was a nervous hesitancy in his voice. "Peter," he said slowly. "Something occurs to me."

"What's that?"

"If he wasn't scared of speaking to me, that meant he wasn't worried that I might accidentally overhear his voice in some other location. He didn't worry about me recognizing it because he knows there's no chance I'll ever hear it."

Peter stopped, nodding, and gestured toward Lucy. "That's interesting, Francis," he said. "That's very interesting."

Francis thought that interesting wasn't the word that Peter really meant. Francis pivoted about and thought to himself: Find silence.

He noticed a slight quiver in his hand when he thought this, and he realized suddenly that his throat had dried up. There was a noxious taste in his mouth, and he tried to swirl saliva around but he had none. He looked at Lucy, who wore an expression of annoyance; he thought it had little to do with them, but much to do with how the world she had entered so confidently now proved more elusive than she had first guessed.

As the prosecutor approached them, Peter stepped toward Little Black.

"Mister Moses," he spoke cautiously, "what are you doing?"

The slender attendant looked up at Peter. "Just routine," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"Routine," Little Black continued. "Just making some notes in the daily log book."