by Paul Cleave
Wait . . . nothing hidden in the wall? Are you sure about that?
“I almost have it,” he says.
Hans says nothing.
“Just let me think,” he says, closing his eyes, and there he is, it’s a workday and every day was a workday back when he used to write, weekends and weekdays were all the same. He’d work on his birthday. He’d even let Henry Cutter out of the bottle for an hour or two on Christmas Day to get those thoughts down. That was the life of a writer—keep writing, keep moving forward, stay ahead of the crowd because if you don’t get that story written down then somebody else would. He’s in his office, he’s building the word count, and he’s wrapping up for the day and he needs to make a backup, needs to get those words secure, because to lose a few thousand of them, let alone an entire manuscript . . . that was one part of being a writer he could avoid. His office, his desk, he’s putting a flash drive into his computer, copy, paste, then he’s taking the flash drive back out. Then what? What does he do next?
Getting out of his chair. Past the couch and to the wardrobe. He opens the wardrobe door and—
“Jerry—”
Crouches down. There’s a box that holds half a dozen reams of paper there. He pushes it aside then—
“You have to focus, Jerry.”
Presses the bottom corner of the wall. An opposite corner juts out. It’s a false wall, no taller than his forearm but the width of the wardrobe. He pulls it away, and there’s the gin, there are the flash drives, one for each novel, there’s the gun and there’s—
“I know where the journal is,” he says, and he stands up so quickly he bangs against the table. The glass slides towards Hans, who catches it before it can fall.
“At the house?”
“In my office,” Jerry says.
“Then let’s go.”
“Let me grab my second journal,” Jerry says, and he’s already moving back towards the study. “I want to read it on the way.”
DAY ONE MILLION
Okay, so it’s not really day one million, and I’m not sure how liberal I was with exaggerations in the books. Derek (it’s actually Eric, but I’ve come to think of him as a Derek) told me this morning it’s been eight months since I checked in. Which, by my calculations, is nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand days and change short of a million. Still, it feels like I’ve been here forever.
Today is a Jerry is Jerry day.
Jerry has Alzheimer’s—check.
Jerry used to be a crime writer—check.
Jerry knows he shouldn’t trust Derek—check.
Or Eric—check.
Jerry is making a checklist—check.
I’ve been flicking through the journal and seeing I’ve been piling crazy on top of crazy, and among some of those entries is evidence that Henry has been coming out to play. I’ve been having conversations with him. Henry and me shooting the breeze. There are two points here, Future Me, that I want to make. It’s two-for Tuesday. The first is to stop trusting Eric. Let me put that in big capital letters. DON’T TRUST ERIC. I came into my room earlier and found him elbows deep in my drawer. I think he was looking for my journal. For what reason, I don’t know. I asked him what he was doing. He said he was tidying up. Henry thinks he’s lying. Henry thinks there’s an ulterior motive for Eric wanting you to write in the journal, and Henry does, after all, deal in ulterior motives (most of the characters he creates have one). In this case the motive is Eric stealing my ideas because he wants to be a writer. One thing I can remember clearly from my life of crime (writing) is the amount of people who tell me they want to write a book. It’s one of those professions everybody thinks they can do, and I always wanted to say to a lawyer I’ve been thinking about trying a case or to a surgeon I’ve been thinking about performing a heart transplant, as if their job is no more challenging than mine. And the reason, according to them, they haven’t written that book yet? Time. It’s always that they don’t have time, but they’ll make it. How hard can it be? Eric is writing a book—and at least Eric is putting in the time, he’s said he writes a few hours every night, making it a passion as well as a hobby, and that’s something I always respect, and for that I wish him all the best. However, he has once committed what I’ve always thought of as the cardinal sin, and that’s to ask Where do you get your ideas?, as if I order a box online every year and have an assistant weed out the bad ones. I’ve told him Write what you know, because there is nothing truer when it comes to the job of making stuff up, but Eric wants to write what I know. That’s why he’s looking for my journal. Sometimes on the days I remember who I am, I wonder if it’s the writing that made me this way—all those crazy people running around inside my head—some of that crazy was bound to rub off on me, wasn’t it? If Eric wants to be a writer, then let his own crazy do to him what mine did to me.
On the subject of Eric . . . I had this very strange dream a few days ago. He was taking me somewhere. I don’t know where, and dreams are like that—just random images taken from random moments of your life. Only, if I’m to be honest, and Madness Journal Version 2.0 demands nothing but honesty, it feels more like a memory than a dream, because dreams are something that disappear even while you’re fumbling around, trying to hold the pieces together. But what the hell would I know? Jerry Version 2.0 has faulty software. It was a messy upgrade that’s been slowly wiping the original operating system. Whether dream or memory, it was me in the passenger seat, my head leaning against the side window, and we were somewhere in the city and the streetlights were burning bright, hotels and office buildings lit up like Christmas trees against a black sky. I would close my eyes and when I opened them again everything would be different: different snapshots of time, traffic lights, a convenience store, a couple of drunk people staggering along the sidewalk. Then there was a house, and that house didn’t move by, it wasn’t a snapshot of a moment, it was solid, it was real, and we were parked in front of that house for a while, and there were no lights on inside, there were no lights anywhere other than streetlights. Only it wasn’t we, it was just me. Just me waiting and doing nothing, unable to move, as if the signals to all my nerves and muscles and tendons had been severed. I drifted off again then, returning a while later to a world that had moved on, the house no longer there, instead I was in a park somewhere lying on the grass.
If it was a dream, it was the most boring dream I’ve ever had.
But the thing is . . . I’ve been wandering. I see I’ve previously written in my journal I’ve been caught on the edge of the grounds, on what, in hindsight, may have been escape attempts. When I went wandering I made it into the city. It was some kids who found me on their way to school. They found me lying down on the ground in a park (like the park in the dream, I guess). One of them poked me with a stick, the way kids do a dead insect. But I was alive, and I don’t know what I said to them, but they called the police. I wandered again, trying to figure out where I was even as I was trying to determine where I wanted to go. The police found me three blocks away. I was sitting down on the pavement, leaning against a fence. I was trying to collect my thoughts, but my thoughts were a jumble. I was disoriented. I can remember there was a cat that was keeping me company, head butting my elbow over and over. That bit I remember. I remember the kids too. But the rest I don’t know. How I got there is a mystery.
Since then, I’ve learned that it’s not the first time I’ve wandered. In fact, it’s the second. And, right now as I write this, I’m staring at a pair of earrings that are on the table next to me. I found them in my pocket earlier. Either I held up a jewelry store or it’s the first indicator that I’m about to start cross-dressing. I’ll check later to see if I’ve hidden any high heels in the wardrobe.
I asked Eric whether he’d driven me anywhere. Of course I did. He laughed, and said it was my crime-writer imagination making connections that aren’t there. He said he’d have no reason to drive me anywhere, and both Henry and me agree with him. What would be the point? Eric asked if I had
any memory of the other time I escaped, and I don’t. In fact, I can’t even find any mention of it in my journal.
So now for the second point of two-for Tuesday.
Hans came to see me today. I wish he hadn’t. I actually had no idea who it was when I first saw him. He had to tell me a few times, and one of the nurses told me that he actually comes to see me quite a lot, that he spends time with me out in the gardens if it’s a nice day, walking the grounds and updating me on the outside world. I never remember these talks, and I think that’s because when I’m with him I’m not Remembering Jerry, I’m the Jerry that functions in the off position.
I saw earlier that I scribbled in my journal not to trust Hans.
Now I know why.
It’s because he tells me things I don’t want to hear. He tells me why I’m here. I should respect that at least somebody is willing to level with me, but respecting him doesn’t mean I can’t hate him. It’s always easy to shoot the messenger.
Today we sat down outside. It was cold out, but the sun was shining and provided just enough warmth to make sitting outside bearable.
Why am I here? I asked. Why can’t I go back home?
How much do you remember? Hans asked, and it was Henry that answered for me, but before he answered he gave me a warning. He said Something isn’t right here, J-Man. Let me get this for you.
Henry isn’t real, I know he isn’t real and Henry would be the first to agree, yet I was willing to let him take the lead. I didn’t want to listen to Hans. I think even then, as we sat outside, I knew why I didn’t want to listen to him, and yet I did anyway.
Do you remember shooting your wife?
I didn’t remember that, no, but once the words were out there I did. I knew Sandra was dead. I knew I had killed her, but pulling the trigger—that was something I didn’t remember and never wanted to. The news was shocking, it hurt, and for a while I was inconsolable.
Why? I asked, because I had to know. Why did I shoot her?
You don’t want to know. That’s what Henry was saying. Henry, who would observe, who would study, who would connect the unconnectable dots. You really don’t want to know. Don’t listen to him, J-Man. It’s all bad news.
But I did want to know.
Hans looked away. He drew in a deep breath. Then he looked at me. Then he asked, Do you really want to know?
Yes, I said, and Henry was still telling me no.
I think that she thought you killed somebody else.
What?
There was blood, he said. Blood on your shirt.
What shirt? I asked.
And a knife.
What knife?
Let me ask you again, Jerry. Are you sure you want to know?
I told him that I did. That I wanted to know everything. And here’s what he told me.
He told me that last year, the night of Eva’s wedding, I sat in my office watching a video of myself that had been posted online (that video, that speech, that’s something I still haven’t forgotten). After watching it several times, I decided to go out. I phoned him hours later, needing a lift. He said there was blood on my shirt, and when he asked me about it, I told him I didn’t know. He said over the following days he came to believe the blood belonged to the florist at Eva’s wedding, and that I had killed her, and that Sandra had figured it out.
Hans thinks those suspicions made Sandra threaten to call the police.
He thinks I did what I had to do to make sure Sandra couldn’t make that call.
Then he reminded me that it wasn’t my fault. Killing the florist, killing my wife, he reminded me that it wasn’t me, that it was a different version of me, a darker version whose morals and ethics have been stripped away by the disease.
Of course none of that changes the fact that Sandra is dead. Or the florist.
Don’t trust Hans. I got it wrong. What I should have said was don’t believe Hans. Or, more accurately, don’t listen to him. Next time I see him, I’m going to ask him to stop coming to see me. After all, who the hell wants to be reminded of the fact they’re a bad man? I just want to become Forgetful Jerry again. Maybe it’s time to stop writing in the journal. Maybe it’s time just to let nature take its course.
Let nature take the pain and the anger and the memories away.
They’re driving back to Jerry’s house at a steady pace, Hans behind the wheel, Jerry with his eyes scanning over the final entry in the journal, the entry ending with him wanting nature to take the pain and the memories away. He can’t remember writing these words. Jerry feels dissatisfied. Instead of the journal offering closure, it has been like reading a book with no ending.
“First thing we need to do,” Hans says, snapping Jerry back into the moment, “is make sure the police aren’t going to be there.”
“Be where?”
“At your old house.”
“They weren’t there earlier,” Jerry says.
“True. But since then you showed up, you assaulted your—”
“I didn’t assault her,” Jerry says. “She just fell over.”
“You think she’s going to remember it that way?” Hans asks.
“She’ll probably tell them I tried to kill her. But that was hours ago, right? The police will have been and gone.”
“Maybe,” Hans says. “Or maybe they’re still there and keeping an eye on the place, hoping you’ll return.”
“Or maybe they think I wouldn’t be stupid enough to return.”
“But you are returning,” Hans says.
“So what do we do?”
“You ring the nursing home,” Hans says.
“What?”
“You ring them, and you tell them everything that’s happened. You tell them about Eric, that he’s dead, and that you’re at his house and you’ve found proof of everything he’s done. You tell them you’re still there and you want them to come and pick you up.”
“Why would I tell them that?”
“Because then they’ll call the police. They have to. And the police will head to Eric’s house to get you. If there is anybody waiting for you at the old house, this should draw them away. We can’t call the police ourselves because we don’t want them to triangulate the call.”
“And what if it doesn’t work?”
“You just have to hope that it does,” Hans says, and he pulls the car over at the end of the block, about a hundred yards from the house.
“I don’t even know the number,” Jerry says.
“I do,” Hans says, and quotes it from memory.
Jerry makes the call. He asks for Nurse Hamilton. He can feel his heart racing at the prospect of talking to her, of lying, and he’s thinking this is why he used to be an author and not an actor, but then he realizes it doesn’t matter because either way Nurse Hamilton is going to call the police, either way she’s going to tell them where he said he was, and she isn’t going to editorialize the call and say Well, even though he said all that, I really think he was making everything up, so you should keep an eye out on all the other places you’re keeping an eye on.
Nurse Hamilton’s voice comes on the line. She tells him that she’s worried about him, that they all are, and in return he tells her everything Hans told him to say. When he’s finished all he hears is silence. Jerry thinks this must be the first time in Nurse Hamilton’s life she’s ever been speechless. But the silence doesn’t last long.
“You must be confusing the day with one of your books again,” she tells him, and he can hear hope that what she is saying is true, that this is nothing more than one of Jerry’s Days of Confusion. He can also hear her doubt. What she knows for a fact is that the police are hunting him because they believe he’s a killer.
“There are photographs of the women Eric killed. And he was keeping locks of their hair.”
“Listen to me, Jerry, you’re not yourself right now,” she says.
“I’m very much myself right now,” he tells her.
“Eric is really dead?”
“Are you by yourself?” she asks.
He looks at Hans. He remembers what Hans asked of him earlier. “Yes.”
“You figured all of this out on your own.”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“Don’t you see, Jerry? You’ve gotten confused again. You’ve—”
“This whole time everybody thought I was sick, but it was just Eric all along.”
“Eric didn’t make you sick, Jerry.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“Just lately. All the bad stuff lately is because of him.”
“Jerry—”
“Come to Eric’s house and take a look at what I’ve seen,” he says, “and then tell me I’m making things up.”
“Jerry—”
“I have to go now,” he says, and then he hangs up. When all of this is over, he’ll explain everything. He switches off the phone because it seems the thing to do.
“So now what?” he asks.
“Now we give it two minutes,” Hans says.
They give it two minutes, in which there are no signs of movement, in which neither of the two men talk. Without discussing it, they give it two more minutes.
“Either they’re not moving,” Hans says, “or they were never there to begin with. But we need to get in there. We have to get that journal. We can’t exactly go up and knock on the front door, because your bloody neighbor will call the police. We can knock on the back door, and if they’re home, then—”
“They’re not going to let us in,” Jerry says. “The owner yesterday thought I was crazy, and today he thinks I’m a killer.”
“Then we break in,” Hans says. “I have my lock picks with me.”
Jerry reaches into his pocket. He shows Hans the key. “We won’t need them.”
“You remember which house is the one behind yours?”
“No,” Jerry says, and shakes his head. Then he nods. “Yes. Maybe. Why?”
Hans starts the car. He takes the next right and comes down the street running parallel with Jerry’s. He starts slowing up halfway down the block. “Well?”
