“Everything all right, Dr. Charters?” the first man asked, and Charters nodded impassively.
A third guard stood stolidly at the other end of the lengthy hall in front of heavy steel secondary gates; following Charters, Matthew observed that this man didn’t carry a gun. He was more like a sentry, standing watch, poised for anything. A calm and dangerous self-assurance radiated from him. There was absolutely no doubt he could efficiently protect and murder. The scars chattered and argued. Whoever the guy was, he was gifted, and possibly would play a role. He stood at least six four, and the corded muscles of his arms, neck, and shoulders appeared thick enough to seize up a miner’s drill.
“Matt, this is Roger Wakowski. He’s in charge of security in this wing.”
They were allowed to walk through the electrically unbolted gates. Charters exchanged a few more clipped words with Wakowski, who in turn gave Matthew a lecture on what not to do while in A.G.’s cell. Despite the formality, there was a certain playfulness to it all, as if Matthew were being toyed with to an extent, and it didn’t matter that he knew it. “You probably already know these maneuvers from the movies. There’s a painted line on the floor you are not to step beyond. If you do I’ll have to drag you out. Do not hand him anything; do not accept anything he might attempt to pass through the bars.”
“That’s stupid. Maybe he’d hand me a note, his signed confession. Wouldn’t you like to get your hands on that?”
Wakowski ignored the comment, both of them realizing the high theatrics of the moment, drama compounded by the spilling of blood. “Simply remain seated on the far bench and talk quietly. Don’t rile him. He’s not catatonic but does seem to know a great deal about meditation, so he might not be receptive to your visit. Any problems and just tap on the door. I’ll be directly outside.”
“Watching?”
“Certainly.”
A buzzer sounded and the gates slid open.
Wakowski continued. “There’s a video camera in his cell, but it’s not working properly.” Matthew saw the guy’s lips flatten almost imperceptibly, the scars also alerting him to the first lie. “Mechanical malfunction, they told me, but I’ve seen some of these men sabotage hundred-thousand-dollar equipment with their own feces and regurgitated digestive juices, which make for nice acids in the long run.” Wakowski’s speech pattern seemed to shift slightly from sentence to sentence, high New York intellect in there as well as some southern farmboy. Matthew had the underlying feeling that the guard found his lies a dishonor to bear.
Yeah, this guy would be along for the ride.
“There’s a camera on him all the time?”
“Until yesterday, yes. As well as every other patient in this wing. I don’t know much about constitutional law, but the state rules are that we can watch a patient’s personal meeting on the cameras but aren’t allowed to be present inside the cell during the visit unless requested by the visitor himself. It sounds hypocritical to me too, but those are the rules we follow.”
He knows plenty about constitutional law, Matthew thought. He could see a wavering afterimage about Wakowski, a conglomerate of past lives still hovering, almost all of them soldiers and warriors, a few lawyers.
“It’s not hypocritical, but it is deceptive,” Charters said. “Federal rules.”
Wakowski nodded. “Do you wish for me to accompany you?”
Matthew shook his head; he didn’t want all those warriors around A.G. “Thanks anyway.”
“Would you like a bandage?”
“A bandage? I don’t get you.”
“For your fingers, Mr. Galen. You’re bleeding.”
Sticky and dried blood almost to the second knuckle. He made a fist and held it against his thigh. “No, I’m okay.”
“Blood excites some patients.”
“Not A.G.,” Matthew said, and stepped into the other corridor, shoulder to shoulder with Charters as they were led through. He heard the resonant roar of the gates shutting behind him—and it was a roar … powerful and full, crying in a way that could shrivel your scrotum. An animal grunting from somewhere out of the depths of this castle as it worked its way toward you, leaving scratch marks every step of the way, and you could smell the wet fur too, once you were within, the stinking raw meat breath.
Grating metal doors scraped sidelong in their greased but dirty tracks, clickity-clicking as they slithered and thrummed, and a full three seconds later finally clamped across the width of the hall like a hand over a mouth ready to shriek. Slamming as they shut home with a thunderous concussion of huge bolts being automatically refitted into place, they locked with an endless sound of finality.
His father had made this hell called Panecraft.
Someone shouted obscenities in the distance.
Ghosts walked and spun. He caught vague shades and figures in his peripheral vision, hands waving, an occasional mouth silently speaking.
He clenched his fist tighter, aware that he was scowling, squinting into the recesses of this mother murderer. At twenty-four he had the same crow’s feet around his eyes that his mother had at the very end, though even insane she hadn’t been sad. “You didn’t answer me, Hank. Has he confessed?”
“He hasn’t said a word to anyone since his incarceration. That’s why I wanted you here, Mattie. I’m hoping you can get him to talk. Either he’s guilty or he isn’t, but obviously he’s had a hideous breakdown.” Charters was no longer simply the doctor stating facts; his voice sounded ready to crack. Where was all the medical terminology? He really did love A.G.
“I understand.”
Matthew’s father couldn’t speak in the vernacular if the Second Coming depended upon it. Matthew couldn’t imagine anyone finding any peace or reformation here. Redemption remained out of grasp, even for those in charge.
“You don’t need a Ph.D. in abnormal psychology to know cradling skeletons is horrifying in its implications.” Charters gave a noncommittal shrug. “I can’t get through. I’ve known the two of you since you were infants, and I can’t imagine what could have happened to twist him like this. If he’s not the one responsible for these missing persons, then there’s still someone out there in my town who likes to kidnap kids, and, God help us, who no doubt enjoys killing them as well.” The doctor took a breath, this kind of emotional outpouring so unlike him that both Matthew and Wakowski gazed at him apprehensively. “If it is him, I want to know why. Help us to find out the truth.”
They came to A.G.’s cell.
“You haven’t seen him in five years,” Charters said. “That’s a long time, and there might be awful feelings between the two of you, a sense of abandonment on either side. Don’t be too startled by what you see. He’s changed.”
“We all have.”
Wakowski unlocked the door to the cell and said, “Just tap, I’ll hear you. Don’t forget what you were told.”
No, he never did. Matthew felt nervous energy breaking like surf through his muscles, the same way the newspapers they’d thrown had roiled through the air to break windows and flowerpots, sent frightened cats up telephone poles, and, once, flung from seventy feet with great precision, had struck old Mrs. Grossnet, who never even gave a nickel tip, in the barn-fat ass. He never forgot anything, and that’s why they were here.
He knew A.G. and recognized the exemplar of evil coming back for them. His eyebrows hurt him, his forehead having been furrowed for so long it seared. He closed his eyes trying to loosen up and heard A.G. falling off his bike, listened again to their discussions on comic book characters and science fiction stories. Matthew understood there was one more question but was reluctant to ask it.
“What happened to the boy sitting on the swing?”
Without a sound, Wakowski, passive and in control, glanced left, as if hearing the sudden outburst of laughter from Matthew’s scars. So that was an answer. Charters stared at the floor, reflexively stroking his mustache again, weighing consequences perhaps, or simply unable to trust Matthew enough.
Af
ter a few more seconds the doctor put his hands in his pockets and took them out again. “Richie Hastings is in Tower A. He’s been kept sedated because of violent muscular spasms he’s been experiencing. He has screaming fits.
When he’s fully conscious we often can’t get him to close his eyes, and he shows no reaction, not even to his family. He’s suffering most symptoms associated with narcolepsy, as well. He hasn’t spoken since that day either.”
“He’ll be all right,” Matthew said.
“You sound sure about that,” Wakowski said.
“I am.”
Charters moved in without warning, unashamed, at the point of sobbing, suddenly trying to hug him warmly as if Matthew were the son he never had nor wanted. Jesus, this place could shred you to confetti and throw you anywhere it wanted. Tears welled as he attempted to apologize for the unforgivable horrors of all the insane dead Galens. “Your father was a good man, Mattie. He loved both you and your mother very, very much. Believe me, he …”
Matthew broke away gently. He turned to face his past, the present, and discover if there was any future left, surrounded by the presence of his parents, the demented spirits still wandering here, and the Goat.
Give me strength.
Thinking of Debbi, he threw open the door and entered A.G.’s cell, completing the circle he only now realized his life had become. Whispers followed.
Chapter Two
Smiling as she walked down the street behind him, Debbi snatched the newspaper out of his hand and smacked him lightly in the head with it. “That’s for the old dog,” she said. Vengeance for the arthritic German shepherd he’d frightened into crawling off the McCalisters’ porch with his poorly aimed Sunday supplement. Debbi had a thing for animals and always kept an eye on her neighbors’ pets.
She whapped him again across the bridge of his nose, laughed and tickled him under the chin until he blushed—it took only a second—then stuck the Summerfell Daily Gazette back with the others stuffed in the burlap bag hanging over his shoulder. “C’mon, give me a ride. And don’t ask where we’re going, let’s just go.”
Proving deaf to his halfhearted protests that he had to finish his route, she poo-pooed him in a perfect imitation of her mother—nose poised, hands thrown out as if fending off a mosquito, eyes sort of rolling. She climbed up onto his handlebars and scrunched uncomfortably into the space. Debbi was always smiling, never embarrassed about her braces like so many of the other kids were, like he would’ve been; she pulled his hands farther down the black grips so that his forearms were around her waist. He became heady with her scent and intimacy.
“C’mon, finish later, like anyone’s really gonna care.” Legs dangling on either side of his front wheel, her new sneakers occasionally bounced off the spokes as they rode, ka-tinking.
A hot day with an intense glare. When the thicker wisps of clouds passed against the sun, shadows fell like cool wash towels pressed against his skin. Her long black hair blew back into his face, fascinating him just as much as her hands and smile, making him dizzy, and he knew he was alive.
“Let’s go to the lighthouse,” she said.
Chapter Three
The room turned out to be two cells, one nestled within the other. A bench jutted from the far wall for psychiatrists, police, or personal visitors to sit on while talking with the patient. Twelve feet from there was the inner cage, filling the opposite side of the room, spaces between the bars too small to even slip an arm through. On the floor, bisecting the outer cell, lay the black line Wakowski had spoken about. Bright fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling gave an odd tapering effect to the chamber, making it appear that the light was being siphoned off toward one corner. In the darkest section of the cage rested a sheetless bed bolted to the floor. Presumably, the graduated lighting had been determined to quiet the prisoner and allow him to sleep even with the fluorescents burning. Sixteen feet overhead roosted the broken video camera.
A.G. sat in the center of the bed with his eyes closed. He was seated in a modified lotus position as taught by the works of the great Abra Melin, for greatest focus of astral energy: legs tightly crossed and feet pulled up so that they touched opposite thighs, spine straight and head back, hands in his lap with fingers interlaced into specific placement. Pinkies, thumbs, and index fingers steepled, and these three steeples each pointing back at himself—thumbs aimed at the heart, pointers at his throat, pinkies at the forehead. It was also a way to catch passing lower-caste dybbuks that might harass and tempt, and bind them into service.
He’d kept in great shape. A.G.’s biceps strained against the long sleeves of the white jumpsuit, his perfect laterals outlined under the contours of Panecraft fatigues. His hair was much longer, flowing past his shoulders, with his face now framed by a reddish-brown beard that had been peach fuzz only five years earlier.
Matthew concentrated on the floor, watching the line.
Spheres converging, once again crossing.
Like so many other black designs and depictions he’d seen carved into the stones.
A.G. didn’t seem aware that Matthew stood in the room with him. For several minutes, as A.G. continued meditating, the density of the cloying air slowed the momentum of this homecoming. Wards had been set in the cage, but not particularly powerful ones; A.G. never had the patience to fine-tune each incantation, or to train his tongue to accept unpronounceable words.
Silence snared memories and kept them in private places: sound, motion, sight, cognizance. Everything proved acceptable while they waited, children still trapped inside the house on a rainy day with nothing good on television, rereading old comic books. Discussing the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and Conan the Barbarian—entranced by those voluptuous barmaids Conan always saved, who deceived him in the end. Waiting quietly in the asylum, amiable, as if nothing had changed between them. Who would say “Let’s get a Krunchburger” first?
Suddenly there was a sharp twitch in A.G.’s upper lip, an incisor momentarily displayed. A slight flutter in the left eyelid. Coming out of it now. His nerves seemed to be returning one by one, flesh becoming more pliant, relaxing with beads of sweat and deposits of salt dappling his hairline.
The inertia of the minute broke. Inhaling deeply, A.G. moved his hands down and outward until the steeples of his fingers were positioned somewhat differently—thumbnails touching his chest, pointers shoved toward heaven, pinkies stiffly directed at Matthew. They both grunted. A.G.’s breathing grew regular, and at last he opened his eyes.
Still hurts a little, doesn’t it?
Fighting the urge to mirror A.G.’s posture, Matthew remained seated on the bench, silent, wishing the wards were stronger. Yes.
It was a much simpler process once, but in the last couple of years it’s gotten tougher for me … why do you think that is? Bulging veins in his neck pulsed as the sweat dripped down A.G.’s cheek and wove through his beard. The lingering stink of urine worked from the open toilet under the heavy smell of pine disinfectant. There were the barest tinges of winterfresh toothpaste and mint mouthwash. Screeched obscenities continued, only slightly stifled by the walls. This stagnant atmosphere of Panecraft was concrete slowly drying around them. Don’t you remember, Mattie?
Of course I do. I taught you.
A.G. smiled. Nice talking to you again.
What’s happened? Why are you still here?
You recognize the handiwork.
Stop this, A.G. I need you on the outside. I know you haven’t killed anyone.
No, you don’t. The smile broadened. You only hope I haven’t.
Why haven’t you spoken to them? You’re being stupid.
Giles Corey never gave a plea in Salem, not even when they put enough rocks on him to crush him to death. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of accepting or denying that he was a witch. But we know he was.
Giles Corey, was that his new idol? Matthew unconsciously clasped his hands and pressed his fingers together. It was much tougher than before. What do you want me t
o do?
Nothing you can do. We both know that.
The Goat had told them so back then, and the scars repeated it now, growling with A.G.’s voice, rehashing conversations from the catacombs. Matthew performed a simple evocation, calling forward a sample of spirit to quiet the dead past. The room grew cooler.
You’re famous around here now, Mattie, sort of a hometown golden boy. Our English teacher, Mr. Kroft, is going to direct the drama club in their presentation of your The Gift of Nightmares. They think it’s a wonderful play, full of innovation and heartwarming humor. Even the second act, which I think could use another pass, to tell you the truth. Hey, Jazz teaches there too.
Thank God that Jazz was all right. A migraine wrenched Matthew’s skull. Answer me, what do I have to do? What do you think I should do?
My advice, you want my advice? Is that what I’m hearing? I had a vision of Father Urbain
Grandier not too long ago, rather weak-kneed for a guy who possessed so many nymphos. I suppose being burned at the stake takes something out of a man. Jeanne of the Angels showed up too. Not a very pretty woman, though Vanessa Redgrave did manage to capture her nutty side in the Ken Russell film.
More games. What the hell was he talking about? Father Grandier had been sacrificed in Loudon for his political misdeeds. His bureaucratic enemies approached Mother Superior Jeanne des Anges and the repressed Ursuline nuns, who feigned possession, swearing they’d been bewitched by him. A.G. was saying what? At Grandier’s trial, Jeanne des Agnes appeared in court with a noose around her neck, threatening to hang herself if she could not expiate her lies, and of course she was ignored. An innocent man was tortured and murdered, and the public so appreciated the exorcism and sudden fame that the convent became a tourist attraction and continued its jesting performances, nuns running around naked, crying about the Devil pinching their asses.
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