They were truly alone.
Linda waited until the man in charge turned to her. “Who are you really? You’re not Sarge. You’re not Kaspar either, are you?”
Again, the man gave them that satisfied smile. Both the Austrian accent and his prior slight Southern twang were gone when he spoke, replaced with a flat tone, lacking any recognizable region. “I am merely a man with a great deal of money and resources at my disposal.”
“Then why are you doing this? Why us?”
The man playing Kaspar gave it thoughtful consideration. Alex turned from watching the road ahead to glance at him, as if wondering the answer himself.
“Quite a long time ago, someone very close to me asked the same thing, Linda. I’ll answer you the way I answered her: because I can.”
Linda looked away in disgust. Frank had already stopped listening, watching the mountains pass by in the tinted windows.
The man in the passenger seat turned to look back at him with an amused smirk. “You’re especially quiet, Mr. Moffat. Cat got your tongue?”
Frank eyed him a moment and said nothing, just returned his gaze to the passing scenery.
The man smirked. “I’m glad you’ve finally come to understand how futile it is to challenge me.”
Frank bit his tongue.
“No smart aleck remarks? No scathing commentary?”
Frank narrowed his eyes at the man.
“All right then. Let’s just enjoy the scenery, shall we?”
The man, whoever he truly was, looked out the window at the dark blur of mountains and trees, and Frank grinned to himself, satisfied to have gotten the upper hand, however slight.
Alex led the two of them into the foyer of Lone Loon Lodge. The maid, Maria Luisa, stood spritzing the front desk with a cleaning spray and wiping it down.
Frank wasn’t surprised to see she wasn’t dead, nor that there seemed to be no sign anywhere of the altercation that had occurred mere hours before, let alone a standoff with the FBI. Nothing surprised him anymore. Jesus could fly in on a chariot and he’d merely shrug it off.
Linda looked around herself. “I don’t understand. Will somebody please tell me what’s going on? Was anything real?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” the man in charge said, turning to face them as he reached the desk. “How can the mind separate fantasy from reality when the facts are lies and the fiction is true?”
“That makes no goddamn sense,” Frank grunted.
“Doesn’t it? In point of fact I’d say it’s the only thing that makes sense. Look at the world around you. The news is full of hyperbole and opinion. The government is a puppet show, our entire economy based on IOUs. How can we say for certain what is true and what is false in a world that no longer recognizes the distinction?”
Frank looked over his shoulder at Alex, who prodded him along with a finger. “Does this guy ever stop spewing bullshit?”
Alex remained unmoved, but the man in charge grinned. “Glad to have you back in the game, Moffat.”
Frank turned to Linda. “He’s literally fucking insane.”
The man chuckled. He thumbed a button on the desk, and the cedar panels under the stairs slid back to reveal an elevator car. Noting their astonishment, he gave Frank a wink. “You asked before about that elevator?”
The man stepped in. Alex pushed Frank ahead, and Frank staggered into the car. Linda shuffled in behind him. The concierge/orderly entered the elevator and thumbed “B1.” There were two other buttons: a second basement level and “G” for ground.
The elevator doors slid shut, and it began to move.
It seemed to drop for a very long time before “G” changed to “B1” on the floor indicator above their heads. The bell dinged, and the doors slid open on a large room with white walls, too-bright track lighting, and cafeteria-style tables. Three male orderlies stood huddled in one corner near an observation window where a woman studied security monitors. Linda couldn’t make out who the woman was or the orderlies from the distance. Several people shuffled about aimlessly or played games at tables on their own, dressed in white hospital gowns.
Maybe they’ll let us out of these straightjackets at least, Linda thought. The idea of being kept prisoner here for who knew how long wasn’t appealing, straightjacket or not, but it would be a relief to get changed out of her soiled shorts and underwear at least.
The air down here smelled like recycled farts to Frank. He noted the TV on a mount beyond the games tables, where Jack Nicholson, playing rebel without a cause Randall McMurphy, strangled Nurse Ratched while the other patients gawked.
“Ha,” Frank barked.
Linda raised an eyebrow in his direction.
“This whole goddamn place is insane,” Frank said and laughed again.
She shook her head.
The pack of orderlies at the far end of the room broke up, and each of the men turned toward their new admissions.
“No,” Linda breathed, terror twisting her insides. “That’s not possible.”
Frank saw the men’s faces and staggered back a step in shock. Rebel, Colby, and Jackson gave them impassive looks from across the room. A man about the size and body type of Gitmo approached, weaving his way through the tables.
“I shot him.” Frank jabbed a finger toward Jackson. “We saw them die!”
The man in charge shrugged indifferently. “You saw what we wanted you to see, Mr. Moffat. Blanks and blood packs. Breakaway glass. Retractable knives. We can review the tapes after our first session if you like. Suffice to say it can all be explained in excruciating detail—” He waved a hand in a circle. “But I’m sure you’d find it all rather boring.”
The large orderly who’d played the torturer nicknamed Gitmo stopped in front of them, acknowledging them with a nod.
“Take Mr. Moffat to his room please, Michael,” the man in charge said. “Get him changed.”
Gitmo, whose name apparently was Michael just as Sheriff Stanton had revealed, gripped Frank by the forearm and began to pull him away. Frank struggled, but the larger man pressed his fingers into the divot above his clavicle as he’d done back at the lodge, and Frank nearly went limp.
“No, wait! Linda!”
“Frank!”
Alex grabbed her by the shoulders as she reached for her husband.
“I have to speak with my wife.” Gitmo took his other arm, dragging him farther toward the doorway. “I have to speak with my wife!”
“Don’t make me hurt you, Mr. Moffat.”
Staggering, grabbing at the wall, Linda watched Frank disappear around the corner. “Remember what I said about that shit storm, Alex?” she said over her shoulder. “It’s coming for you, believe that.”
Alex said nothing.
“And you, you fucking psycho.” She turned her anger toward the man in charge. “What you’re doing here is in violation our constitutional rights, not to mention the Geneva Convention against torture.”
“Speaking of ineffectual documents,” the man said with a smirk, “I do have the contracts you and your husband signed releasing my people from any and all liabilities, including accidental death.”
“You can’t consent to torture. That won’t stand up in court.”
The man shrugged. “It’s true. But my team of very expensive lawyers is prepared to bury you in so much red tape you’ll think you were a Christmas gift. Mrs. Moffat, I would love to go on sparring with you like this, but I really must prepare your husband for his first electroshock treatment.”
He made a curtsy as he backed toward the doorway.
Linda leaped at him, but Alex kept her still. “If you touch him, I’ll kill you, Kaspar! If you touch him, I will fucking kill you!”
“Until we meet again,” the man said, and slipped around the corner.
Linda fell slack, defeated. “How can you work for that monster?” she growled.
Alex said nothing, merely pushed her forward and sat her at a table. “It’s better if you d
on’t resist, trust me.”
She looked up at him balefully. “Liars say ‘trust me.’ I noticed you say it a lot.”
He gave her a tight smile and walked away, heading for the observation window.
Once he’d gone, Linda scanned the room, looking at the other “patients.” Mathias, the man who’d played the cook, ploddingly put together a puzzle at a table near the television, his large brow furrowed in concentration. A woman with long, straggly hair pulled the joker from the bottom of a house of cards, and the entire thing collapsed.
Linda spotted a man in the uncomfortable-looking sofa set up in front of the TV. She recognized him by the shape of his head and his broad shoulders.
It was Neville. Jamal.
She remembered Frank telling her he’d seen the man outside the cabin window while Colby tortured them, and the white gown he’d mentioned made sense now, but everything else she thought she knew had toppled like the straggly-haired woman’s house of cards.
The chair screeched as she stood to head across the room.
In the far corner near the games shelf, Jackson and Colby sneered at her in unison as if they’d been rehearsing it, just waiting for her to look their way. She directed both of her middle fingers toward them and kept walking.
“Jamal,” she said, standing over him now.
The dead man looked away from the television, his expression shifting from startled confusion to a weak smile. “You made it. I thought they’d killed you for sure.”
“No thanks to you.”
He directed her toward the off-white cushion at his side. “Have a seat.”
“I’m not interested in sitting with you. I’m not here to break bread.”
Jamal nodded grimly.
On the television, Jack Nicholson’s character underwent electroshock treatment. Linda thought of Frank and channeled her fear and anger toward Jamal. “What you did, what you were a part of, I don’t understand how anyone could do something so vile.”
“Linda—”
“Let me finish.”
His perfect teeth clacked together.
“I don’t know how big a part you played in this. I know you’re just an actor. I don’t know if they paid you to fuck with us or if you’re being forced to do it, but I hope you’re fucking ashamed of yourself.”
When he saw she was finished, he spoke. “Linda, you have every right to want to hurt me. I’m sorry for what I did, and I know that’s not enough. But you have to know I wouldn’t have been party to this if they hadn’t forced me. That’s why they had my character killed. They were worried I was going to blow the whole thing. That’s why they partnered me with Harriet this time, instead of Cherise.” Jamal nodded toward the woman rebuilding her house of cards. “So she could keep me in line.”
He glared at Jackson and Colby. “They’re always watching us, Linda. Not just them. Her too.”
He nodded toward the woman in the observation room. From this angle, Linda could see her face: it was Teri Lumley. Harriet. All of Linda’s confusion and exhaustion caught up with her, and she flopped down on the sofa beside him.
Jamal kept his voice hushed. “The whole woods are filled with cameras. They made the ones in the room easy to spot, so you’d be looking for big ones. You’d miss the tiny ones everywhere else, even in the bathrooms. All of us are mic’d-up with earpieces the second The Method starts, so Control can steer us with script changes if things go wrong.”
“What about the dogs? The bear trap?”
“They still don’t know who set that trap. When Frank stepped on it, I thought they were sending Harriet and me out there to bring you back in, call it all off. Then it turns out those two were already there with the dogs.” Jamal shuddered. “My acting coach always used to say never work with dogs or kids. I can’t tell when those mutts of theirs are just acting pissed or when they’re about tear out my throat.”
“So everything is a lie,” she said.
Jamal shook his head. “Don’t get comfortable with that. This place is real, Linda. I’ve been stuck in this goddamn hellhole three years. It’s the only real thing I know anymore.” He sniffed and squinched up his face. “Did they piss on you too? That son of a bitch pissed in my face when I came here.” He jabbed a finger toward Colby, who snickered along with Jackson. “I think he gets off on it.”
“I think you’re right,” Linda said, her embarrassment long departed. “When I saw you and Alex in the hall last night, I heard you negotiating salary.”
“That was part of it,” Jamal said. “It starts out as minor psychological manipulation to disorient the subjects. You and Frank. Then they start in with the physical abuse.” He raised the right arm of his gown, showing her a tight row of pale scars down his forearm. “It happened to me, and I’ve seen it happen again and again. But this time…” He shook his head. “I think Dr. Kaspar’s drunk his own punch, if you ask me.”
Linda saw the sincerity in his eyes and suddenly flashed on where she’d seen him before. “‘I always use Allen’s Rub on my meat,’” she said.
Jamal let out a surprised chuckle. “Excuse me?”
“That’s you, isn’t it? You’re the Allen’s Rub guy.”
He feigned confusion a moment longer before sighing heavily. “Yeah, that was me. Nobody remembers me when I play Othello off-Broadway, but the Allen’s Rub guy, I can’t get away from.”
Linda stood, separating herself from him. “The way you sell that awful stuff like you really believe it . . .” She shook her head. “How can I trust you either, Jamal?”
He opened his mouth to speak but then closed it again. “I don’t know how to make you trust me, Linda,” he said finally. “I wouldn’t trust me either if I were you.”
Linda looked up at the TV screen, where the tall Native American man known throughout the film as “Chief” smashed a sink through the window of the asylum and reclaimed his freedom.
And the film faded out.
And the credits came up.
If only this was a movie, Linda thought.
Tears blurring her vision, she turned to a doorway leading to a long, dim hall lined with closed doors, wondering if she’d ever see Frank again.
If they’d ever see freedom.
If they’d ever get their happy ending.
19 — We Do What We’re Told
Frank sat on the edge of the uncomfortable single bed in his cell, staring at the camera above the door. He’d lost track of how long he’d been sitting there in his fresh, white hospital gown with nothing but his own anger to occupy him. It had to be at least an hour, maybe longer.
He’d heard the man called Michael lock the door behind him but had still checked it himself to be sure. He felt like a man unhinged. The orderly had told him nothing, merely pointed to the folded gown on the bed and locked him in. He didn’t know what was real. Didn’t know if he’d ever see Linda again.
One thing he knew beyond certainty was the reality of his injuries. Both legs burned and throbbed in steady waves, like a volcanic tide. His head felt like a thunderstorm. He focused on that pain, holding it like a life preserver. If he could retain what he knew they had done to him, they would never break his mind.
Thinking of pain, he gave his shorts on the floor a good, long look.
HK + JD = PAIN
He glanced up at the camera and knelt painfully to pick up his shorts. Blood had soaked through the fabric where Gitmo—Michael—had cut him with the utility knife. The cover of the green notebook still tucked inside the pocket was stained dark brown, along with splotches on several of the pages.
He wasn’t sure what he thought to do with it. It wasn’t like he’d suddenly become fluent in German. But now that he knew the man in charge was probably not really German—let alone actually named Kaspar—Frank wondered if the contents of the notebook were code rather than language.
He flipped through the pages looking for words he might recognize, looking for a pattern.
Nothing caught his eyes immediately,
aside from one name repeated over and over: Julia.
Could she be the J of HK + JD? Frank wondered.
As he looked deeper with this in mind, he found several words that were either the same in German as they were in English or had no translation:
Baby.
Student.
Trauma.
Argument.
Aggression.
Inspiration.
Experiment.
Opposition.
Rebellion.
Illusion.
Terror.
Chaos.
A story began to form in his mind. Julia was a student, pregnant with Kaspar’s child. She’d suffered trauma during childbirth. Maybe she’d lost the baby. They’d argued. Arguing became aggression. Kaspar felt inspired to create his experiment. Die Methode. The Method. At first, this Julia woman opposed it. But Kaspar manipulated her with “illusions.” (Delusions?) He terrorized her. She rebelled.
What happened then? Frank wondered. What happened to Julia?
A single word came to mind, one for which he had no German translation.
PAIN.
The lock unlatched, startling him. He slipped the notebook under the mattress as the door swung inward.
Alex stood in the hall with the set of keys in his hand. “It’s time,” was all he said.
Frank stayed seated.
“Please don’t make me come and get you, Frank.”
“Would hurting me disturb your delicate sensibilities, or are you just too tired?”
Alex’s eyebrows twitched in a frown. “I’m not a sadist.”
“No, you’re just one of the merry pranksters. You’re in it for the laughs.”
“I came here to help people—”
“Spare me the bullshit. You’re no better than Colby and Gitmo, or whatever the hell their real names are. Is anything you told me true?”
“Look, I didn’t know what this place was when I signed up. They wanted someone with acting and stunt experience. There aren’t many parts for Asian actors, so when I got a callback, I was excited. I thought this was gonna be my breakthrough role. When they told me what I’d be doing, they made it out to sound like a prank. An experiment. It hasn’t exactly happened as advertised.”
The Method Page 19
