The Madman's Tale

by John Katzenbach

  Francis sat upright in the bed. “Lanky!” he whispered. “What has happened?”

  Before the tall man could respond, Francis heard a hissing sound. It was Peter the Fireman, who had awakened, and had swung his legs over the edge of the bunk, and was craning toward them. “Lanky, tell us now! What has happened?” Peter insisted, also keeping his voice as low as possible. “But be quiet. Don’t wake up any of the others.”

  The tall man bent his head slightly, agreeing. But his words came out in an excited, almost joyous rush. Relief and release flooded his words. “It was a vision, Peter. It must have been an angel, sent right directly to me. C-Bird, this vision came straight to my side, right here to tell me …”

  “Tell you what?” Francis asked quietly.

  “Tell me I was right. Right all along. Evil had tried to follow us here, C-Bird. Evil was right here in the hospital alongside of all of us. But that evil has been destroyed, and now we’re safe.”

  He breathed out slowly, then added, “Thank goodness.”

  Francis didn’t know what to make of what Lanky had said, but Peter the Fireman moved over and sat at the tall man’s side. “This vision—it came here? In this room?” he asked.

  “Right to my bedside. We embraced like brothers.”

  “The vision touched you?”

  “Yes. It was as real as you or me, Peter. I could feel its life right next my own. Like our hearts were beating in unison. Except it was magical, too, C-Bird.”

  Peter the Fireman nodded. Then he reached out slowly and touched Lanky’s forehead, where the soot marks remained. For a second, Peter rubbed his fingers together.

  “Did you see the vision come in through the door, or did it drop down from someplace above?” he asked slowly, first motioning toward the dormitory entranceway, then up to the ceiling.

  Lanky shook his head. “No. It just arrived, just one second, right by my bed. It seemed as if it was all bathed in light as if directly from heaven. But I couldn’t exactly see its face. Almost like it was cloaked. It must have been an angel,” he said. “C-Bird, think of it. An angel right here. Right here in this room. In our hospital. Helping to protect us.”

  Francis said nothing, but Peter the Fireman nodded, his own head bent slightly. He lifted his fingers to his nostrils and whiffed strongly. He seemed to be startled by what he smelled, and he took in a sharp breath of air. For a moment, the Fireman paused, looking around the room. Then he spoke in low, direct words, his voice carrying all the authority that it could, giving orders like a military commander with the enemy close by and danger in every shadow.

  “Lanky. Go back to your bed, and wait there until C-Bird and I come back. Don’t say anything to anybody. Absolute silence, got that?”

  Lanky started to speak, then hesitated. “Okay,” he said slowly. “But we’re safe. We’re all safe. Don’t you think the others will want to know?”

  “Let’s make absolutely sure, before we get their hopes up,” Peter said. This seemed to make sense, because Lanky nodded again. He rose and maneuvered back to his bunk. He turned and held up his index finger, the universal signal for silence, when he got there. Peter seemed to smile at him, then whispered, “C-Bird, come with me, right now. And be quiet!” Each word he spoke seemed taut with some undefined tension that Francis couldn’t quite fathom.

  Without looking back, Peter the Fireman began to creep gingerly between the bunks, moving stealthily in the meager spaces that separated the sleeping men. He slid past the toilet, where a little bit of harsh light sliced under the doorway, heading toward the sole door to the dormitory. A few of the men stirred, one man seemed to half rise as they crept past his bunk, but Peter merely shushed him smoothly as they went by, and the man shifted about with a low groan, changing sides and then descending back into sleep.

  When he reached the door, he looked back and saw Lanky, once again, sitting cross-legged on the bunk. The tall man saw them and waved before he lay back down.

  As Peter the Fireman reached for the door, Francis joined his side. “The door’s locked,” Francis said. “They lock it every night.”

  “Tonight,” Peter said slowly, “it isn’t locked.” And then, by way of proof, he reached out, grasped the handle and turned it. The door pushed open with a small swooshing noise. “Come on, C-Bird,” he said.

  The corridor was darkened for the night, with only an occasional weak light shedding small glowing arcs across the floor. Francis was taken aback momentarily by the silence. Usually the hallways of the Amherst Building were jammed with people, sitting, standing, walking, smoking, talking to themselves, talking to people not there, maybe even talking to one another. The hallways were like the veins of the hospital, constantly pumping blood and energy to each central organ. He’d never seen them empty. The sensation of being alone on the corridor was unsettling. The Fireman, however, didn’t seem concerned. He was staring down toward the middle of the hallway, where the nurses’ station was marked by a single, faded desktop light, a small glow of yellow. From where they stood, the station seemed empty.

  Peter took a single step forward, then stared down at the floor. He dropped down to a knee and gingerly touched a splotch of dark color, much as he had the soot on Lanky’s face. Again, he lifted his finger to his nose. Then, without saying a word, he pointed, gesturing for Francis to take note.

  Francis wasn’t precisely sure what he was supposed to see, but he was paying close attention to everything Peter the Fireman did. The two of them continued to creep down the hallway toward the nursing station, but stopped midway, opposite one of the storage closets.

  Francis peered through the weak light, and saw that the nursing station was indeed empty. This confused him, because he had always assumed there was at least one person on duty there round-the-clock. The Fireman, however, was staring down at the floor by the door to the closet. He pointed at a large splotch that marred the linoleum.

  “What is it?” Francis asked.

  Peter the Fireman sighed. “More trouble than you’ve ever known,” he said. “Francis, whatever is behind this door, don’t shout. Especially don’t scream. Just bite your tongue and don’t say a word. And don’t touch a thing. Can you do that for me, C-Bird? Can I count on you?”

  Francis grunted a yes, which was difficult. He could feel the blood pumping in his chest, echoing in his ears, all adrenaline and anxiety. In that second, he realized that he hadn’t heard a word from any of his voices, not since Lanky had first shaken him awake.

  Peter moved cautiously to the storage room door. He pulled his T-shirt out of his pajama pants and covered his hand with the loose end as he reached for the handle. Then he opened the door slowly.

  The room gaped in front of them, pitch-black. Peter stepped forward very slowly and reached inside where there was a light switch on the side of the wall.

  The sudden glare of light was like a sword stroke.

  For a second, perhaps even less, Francis was blinded. He heard Peter the Fireman choke out a single, harsh obscenity.

  Francis craned forward, looking into the storage room past Peter the Fireman. And then he gasped, abrupt fear and shock slamming him like a gust of hurricane wind. He recoiled from what he saw, taking a step backward and feeling like every breath he inhaled was steam-hot. He tried to say something, but even an “Oh, my God …” came out like a deep, disconnected groan.

  On the floor in the center of the storage room, lay Short Blond.

  Or the person who had been Short Blond.

  She was nearly naked, her nurse’s uniform seemingly sliced from her body and discarded in a corner. Her undergarments were still on her body, but pushed out of the way, so that her breasts and sex were exposed. She lay crumpled on her side, almost curled up in a fetal position except that one leg was drawn up, the other extended, a great lake of deep maroon blood beneath her head and chest. Streaks of red had dripped down across her pasty white skin. One arm had been stuffed sharply under the body, the other was extended, like a person waving t
o someone distant, and rested in a pool of blood. Her hair was matted, almost wet, and much of her skin glistened oddly, reflecting the harsh glare from the storage room light. A nearby bucket of cleaning materials had been knocked over and the stench of cleaning fluid and disinfectant stormed their nostrils. Peter the Firemen bent down toward the body, but then stopped short of feeling for a pulse when both he and Francis saw that Short Blond’s throat had been sliced, a huge, gaping red and black wound that must have drained her life in seconds.

  Peter the Fireman stepped back into the hallway, next to Francis. He took in a long, slow breath, then exhaled slowly, whistling slightly as the wind passed his clenched teeth.

  “Look carefully, C-Bird,” he said cautiously. “Look at everything carefully. Try to remember everything we see here tonight. Can you do that for me, C-Bird? Be the second pair of eyes that records and registers everything here?”

  Francis nodded slowly. His eyes tracked Peter the Fireman, as the man stepped back into the storage room and wordlessly started to point at things. First the gash that cruelly marred her throat, then the overturned bucket and the clothing sliced and tossed aside. He pointed at a visor of blood on Short Blond’s forehead, parallel lines that dripped toward her eyes. Francis could not imagine how they had gotten there. Peter the Fireman, lingered momentarily, as he pointed at the marks, then he started to maneuver carefully in the small space, his index finger pointing out each quadrant of the room, each element of the scene, like a teacher with a pointer rapping it impatiently on a blackboard to gain the attention of his dull-witted class. Francis followed it all, printing it like a photographer’s assistant on his memory.

  Peter lingered longest pointing at Short Blond’s hand, extended out from the body. Francis saw suddenly that it appeared that the tips of four of her fingers were missing, as if they’d been sliced off and removed. He stared at the mutilation and realized his breath was coming in short spasms.

  “What do you see, C-Bird?” Peter the Fireman finally asked.

  Francis stared at the dead woman. “I see Short Blond,” he said. “Poor Lanky. Poor, poor Lanky. He must have thought truly he was killing evil.”

  “You think Lanky did this?” he asked, shaking his head. “Look closer,” Peter the Fireman repeated. “Then tell me what you see.”

  Francis gazed almost hypnotically at the body on the floor. He locked on the young woman’s face, and was almost overcome with a mingling of fear, excitement, and a distant emptiness. He realized that he had never seen a dead person before, not close up. He did remember going to a great-aunt’s funeral, when he was young, and being gripped tightly by the hand by his mother, who had steered him past an open coffin, muttering to him all the time to say nothing and do nothing and behave, for she was afraid somehow that Francis would draw attention to them all by some inappropriate act. But he hadn’t, nor had he really been able to see the great-aunt in the coffin. All he could remember was this white porcelain profile, seen only momentarily, like something spotted through the window of a speeding car, as he was shunted past. He didn’t think that was the same. What he saw of Short Blond was far different. It was dying at its absolute worst, he realized. “I see death,” Francis whispered.

  Peter the Fireman nodded. “Yes, indeed” he said. “Death. And a nasty one, at that. But you know what else I see?” He spoke slowly, as if measuring each word on some internal scale.

  “What?” Francis asked cautiously.

  “I see a message,” the Fireman replied.

  Then, with an almost crushing sense of sadness, he added, “And Francis, evil hasn’t been killed. It is right here among us and is as alive as you or I.” Then he stepped back into the corridor and quietly added, “Now we need to call for help.”

  chapter 6

  Sometimes I dream about what I saw.

  Sometimes I realize that I am no longer dreaming, but I am wide-awake and it is a memory imprinted like the raised outline of a fossil in my past, which is far worse. I can still see Short Blond in my mind’s eye, perfectly framed, like in one of the pictures that the police came and took later that night. But I suspect the police photographs weren’t nearly as artistic as my memory’s vision. I recollect her form a little like some lesser Renaissance painter’s vivid but journalistically inaccurate imagination of a martyred saint’s death.

  What I remember is this…. Her skin was porcelain white and perfectly clear, her face was set in a beatified repose. All it lacked was a glowing halo around her head. Death as a little more than an inconvenience, a mere momentary bit of distasteful and uncomfortable pain on the inevitable, delicious, and glorious road to heaven. Of course, in reality (which is a word I have learned to use as infrequently as possible) it was nothing of the sort. Her skin was streaked with vibrant dark blood, her clothes were ripped and torn, the slice in her throat gaped like a mocking smile and her face was wide-eyed and twisted in shock and disbelief. A gargoyle of death. Murder at its most hideous. I stepped back from the doorway to the storage closet that night filled with any number of vibrating, unsettling fears. To be that close to violence is the same as having one’s heart suddenly scraped raw by sandpaper.

  I didn’t know her much in life. I would come to know her much better in death.

  When Peter the Fireman turned away from the body and the blood and all the big and little signs of murder, I had no idea what was about to happen. He must have had a much more precise notion, because he immediately admonished me once again not to touch anything, to keep my hands in my pockets, and to keep my opinions to myself.

  “C-Bird,” he’d said, “in a short amount of time people are going to start asking questions. Really nasty questions. And they may ask these questions in a most unpleasant fashion. They may say they just want information, but trust me, they’re not about helping anyone but themselves. Keep your answers short and to the point and don’t volunteer anything beyond what you have seen and heard this night. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes,” I’d said, but I really had little idea what I was agreeing to. “Poor Lanky,” I repeated once again.

  Peter the Fireman had nodded. “Poor Lanky is right. But not for the reasons you think. He’s about to get a real up close and personal look at evil, after all. Maybe we all are.”

  He and I walked down the corridor to the empty nurses’ station. Our bare feet made little slapping sounds against the floor. The wire gate entranceway that should have been locked was swinging open. There were a few papers scattered around the floor but these could have tumbled off the desk when someone simply moved too quickly. Or they might have been swept to the floor in the midst of a brief struggle. It was hard to tell. There were two other signs that something had happened there: The locked cabinet that contained medications was wide open, and a few plastic pill containers littered the floor and the sturdy black telephone on the nurses’ station desk was off its hook. Peter pointed at both these observations, just as he had earlier as we had surveyed the storage closet. Then he reached down and replaced the receiver, then immediately picked it back up to get a dial tone. He pushed zero, to connect himself with hospital security.

  “Security? There has been an incident in Amherst,” he said briskly. “Better come quickly.” Then he abruptly disconnected the line and waited for another dial tone. This time he punched in 911. A second later, he calmly said, “Good evening. I want to inform you that there has been a homicide in the Amherst Building at the Western State Hospital in the area adjacent to the first-floor nursing station.” He paused, and then added, “No, I’m not giving my name. I’ve just told you all you need to know at this point: the nature of the incident and the location. The rest should be pretty damn apparent when you get here. You will need crime scene specialists, detectives, and the county coroner’s office. I would also suspect you should hurry up.” Then he hung up. He turned to me and said, with just a slight wry touch and perhaps a little more than interest, “Things are about to get truly exciting.”

  That is wh
at I remember. On my wall, I wrote:

  Francis had no idea the extent of the chaos about to break above his head like a thunder burst at the end of a hot summer afternoon…

  Francis had no idea the extent of the chaos about to break above his head like a thunder burst at the end of a hot summer afternoon. The closest he’d ever been to a crime up to that point was what he had unfortunately created all by himself when all his voices had shrieked at him and his world had turned upside down, and he had blown up and threatened his parents and his sisters and ultimately himself with the kitchen knife, the act which landed him in the hospital. He tried to think about what he’d seen and what it meant, but it seemed as if it was just beyond the reach of contemplation and more in the realm of shock. He became aware of his voices speaking in muted, but nervous fashion, deep within his head. All words of fear. For a moment he looked about wildly, and wondered whether he should just sneak back to his bed and wait, but then he couldn’t move. Muscles seemed to fail him, and he felt a little like someone caught in a strong current, being tugged inexorably along. He and Peter waited by the nurses’ station, and within a few seconds he heard the distinctive noise of hurrying footsteps and a fumbling of keys in the locked front door. After a moment, the door flew open and two hospital security personnel burst through. They each carried flashlights and long, black nightsticks. They were dressed in matching gray work outfits that seemed more the color of fog. Outlined for just an instant in the doorway, the two men seemed to blend with the wan light of the hospital corridor. They moved swiftly toward the two patients.

  “Why are you out of the dormitory?” the first guard asked, brandishing his club. “You’re not supposed to be out,” he added unnecessarily. Then he demanded, “Where’s the nurse on duty?”

  The other security guard had moved into a supporting position, braced to assault if Francis and Peter the Fireman proved to be a threat. “Did you call Security?” he asked sharply. And then he repeated the same question as his partner. “Where’s the nurse on duty?”