The Cold Smell of Sacred Stone

by George C. Chesbro

  “But you don’t recall Garth ever suffering from any exotic disease?”

  “No.”

  “I hope you’re not concealing anything from me that could be useful in the treatment of your brother, Frederickson.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, Doctor.”

  “So am I, Frederickson, so am I.” Slycke paused, rubbed his temples with his middle fingers, grimaced as if he had hurt himself. “You shouldn’t have brought those tapes of the Ring to your brother.”

  “I think I might agree with you. But that’s a moot question now, isn’t it?”

  “We’re looking at symptoms; we still don’t know the deep structure of Garth’s psychosis, or the mechanics of what’s causing it. We could speculate that one effect of NPPD poisoning is to wipe the mind clean of most emotions associated with people and events, past and present. In essence, the mind becomes a kind of emotional blank tape, and the result is a state of profound depression leading to a paralysis of thought, will, and movement which closely mimicks classic catatonia. But that blank tape can be imprinted—if a stimulus can be found that is powerful enough to pierce the profound depression. You pierced the depression, and imprinted the tape, when you played the Ring for him. But that’s all you did; you didn’t reawaken the whole person, or heal the real hurt. Indeed, you’ve probably compounded the injury.”

  “Why do I get the impression that you’re trying to make me feel bad?”

  “I’m trying to construct a psychiatric model of your brother’s problem that I can work with, Frederickson. If you get the impression that you’ve made my work more difficult, and possibly endangered your brother’s health, by taking unauthorized actions, it’s a correct one. But what’s done is done, and recriminations are useless. We have to go on from where we are.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way.”

  “Whatever experiences and feelings Garth associates with that music now form the core of his emotional being, and he behaves accordingly. As a result of that imprinting, Garth’s personality is now focused almost completely on physical and emotional pain. You know, your brother actually suffers when he listens to that music.”

  “So you told me.”

  “Yet he won’t stop listening.” There was a faint note of disbelief in the psychiatrist’s voice.

  “Maybe the music is the only thing that’s holding him together,” I ventured carefully.

  “Then he’s holding himself together with barbed wire; eventually, that will shred him.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m not sure, frankly, that there’s anything we can do about it,” Slycke said with a heavy sigh. “Psychiatry is very effective with neurotics, but—I’m sad to say—not so effective with psychotics. At the moment, your brother is definitely displaying psychotic symptomology. Usually, the best we can do with psychotics is to attempt to change their brain chemistry in order to alleviate their symptoms and allow them to function to whatever degree they’re capable of.” The doctor smiled thinly, without humor, and for a moment frustration and real pain moved in his eyes. “We dope them up.”

  “I appreciate your candor, Doctor, and I’m beginning to understand why you … come so highly recommended. All right, then, what about medication? Antidepressants?”

  “They might work to some degree,” Slycke said thoughtfully, “but it’s doubtful that they’d provide any significant or long-lasting relief for the sort of core personality disorder your brother is displaying. I may approach Garth on the subject; we’d need his permission to medicate. My guess is that he’ll firmly reject the idea.”

  “Nobody’s going to dispute the fact that Garth is seriously disturbed. Why do you need his permission to medicate him? I’ll give you permission, if you think it might help in any way.”

  “You can’t. He’s now conscious, aware of his surroundings, not a threat to himself or others, and functions rationally within a construct of reality that includes this facility and his own treatment. Even if correct therapy didn’t dictate that he participate in a decision concerning chemotherapy, which it does, state law insists on it.”

  “Then what happens now?”

  “We wait, and we continue to observe closely to see if more changes take place. Also, we hope. As long as traces of nitrophenylpentadienal show up in his urine, we know that the drug is continuing to pass out of his system as it metabolizes. If Garth’s brain chemistry were eventually to return to normal—” Slycke paused, shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “You mean we may simply be waiting for him to get over one long, humongous hangover?”

  There was a quick smile, reflecting genuine amusement. Then it was gone. “I don’t want to raise any false hopes, Frederickson.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Your somewhat bizarre analogy may not be beyond the realm of possibility. We’re just going to have to wait and see, and in the meantime deal with Garth honestly.”

  “Thank you very much for your time, Doctor,” I said, rising to my feet. “You’ve been very kind, and I appreciate your concern.”

  “Frederickson …?”

  Slycke had begun to shuffle nervously through some papers on his desk. Finally he looked up at me, said: “Mr. Lippitt really is a close personal friend of yours, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is,” I replied evenly. “Why?”

  The psychiatrist shuffled more papers. “Have you spoken to him, uh … lately?”

  “No,” I replied, my curiosity aroused. None of the former hostility, resentment, or suspicion remained in the psychiatrist’s voice; it had been replaced by what sounded like anxiety, and not a little uncertainty. “I haven’t spoken with Mr. Lippitt since the arrangements were made for placing Garth here.”

  “I see,” Slycke said quietly, then cleared his throat. “I thought … maybe you had.”

  “Is there some reason why you think I would—or should—have, Dr. Slycke?”

  Slycke looked at me sharply, and something dark moved in his eyes. “No,” he said curtly. “Why do you say that?”

  “I know that somewhere you got the notion that I might be spying on you for Mr. Lippitt, but that was never true. It got us off on the wrong foot at the beginning, which is something I still regret. As I’ve said repeatedly, my only concern is that Garth get well; I don’t care about anything else.” I paused, wanting to choose my next words carefully. “Even if there were something funny going on here, I wouldn’t want to know about it. That’s not to say that I think there is; I’m just trying to make my priorities and position crystal clear.”

  Slycke studied me for some time, his face a blank, then abruptly looked down at the papers on his desk. “Good night, Dr. Frederickson,” he said tersely.

  “Good night, Dr. Slycke.”

  After my talk with Slycke, I returned to Garth’s room. I’d been concerned that some of the things I’d said earlier might have upset my brother, but I found him where I’d left him—contentedly sitting at the table, staring out the window and humming softly along with the music coming through his earphones. Siegfried. I sat with him for a half hour, until it was time to change the tape. Forcing myself to flash a big smile, I rose, patted him on the shoulder, and told him I’d stop by next day to see how he was doing. Garth said that would be fine, and then went back to listening to his music.

  Distracted, self-absorbed, and decidedly upset about Garth’s condition and my possible role in causing it, I could easily have been killed if my knife-wielding attacker had been slightly more skilled and slightly less impatient. I was halfway back to the staff building, taking a shortcut around the back of the chapel, when a figure wearing a gray, hooded sweat shirt leaped out at me from behind the trunk of a huge oak tree. The man’s right hand described an arc heading for my chest, and moonlight glinted off the six-inch blade of the hunting knife he held. I dropped to my knees; as the blade passed through the air over my head, I planted both hands on the ground, kicked up and back at the man’s midsection. I
missed his stomach and groin, but caught him solidly on the left hip. The man cried out in surprise and pain as he flew backward through the air and landed hard on his back. The knife landed on the grass in the darkness somewhere off to my right, and I decided not to waste time looking for it. I scrambled to my feet, darted back to where the man still lay on the ground, and kicked him in the head. Then I sat down hard on his chest. With my left hand I pulled back the hood, brought back my right with the index and middle fingers stiffly extended, ready to strike at his eyes or larynx. I stopped when I found myself looking down into the startled, frightened face of Dane Potter. Blood was running from his mouth. He coughed, turned his head to one side, and spat teeth.

  “You hurt me,” the boy mumbled thickly, gasping for breath.

  “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Dane?”

  “You’re not allowed to hurt me! My parents will sue you!”

  “Dane, that’s a really crazy thing to say to me,” I replied, and stomped on his stomach as I was getting off him. He doubled up, turned over on his side, gagged, and threw up.

  When Dane Potter had finished being sick, but before he could completely catch his breath, I stripped his sweat shirt off him, used it to tie his hands firmly behind his back. I pulled him to his feet, gripped the folds of the sweat shirt, and dragged him backward along with me as I searched in the grass. I found the knife, slipped it into the waistband of my jeans. I also picked up his teeth—three of them—and put them in my pocket. Dentists can do wonders these days.

  “I want to go back to the hospital now, Frederickson,” the boy wheezed over his shoulder in a kind of mewling, simpering moan. His breath whistled through the gaps where his teeth had been.

  “That’s where you were headed before you decided to take this little detour and try to kill me, right?”

  “Frederickson, I—”

  “And that was you in the pickup trying to add me to the paint job on the bridge this afternoon, right? Don’t try to bullshit me, Dane, or I’ll kick out some more teeth.”

  The boy swallowed hard, nodded. “I’m sorry, Frederickson. Please take me back.”

  “In a few minutes,” I said, dragging the limping teenager into the moon shadows at the rear of the chapel. “Maybe. Then again, maybe I’ll break your arms first. I hate to think of what would have happened to me if you’d gotten your hands on a gun. That’s your weapon of choice, right?”

  The boy’s eyes were wide with pain and fear; I decided my words were having a therapeutic effect on him.

  “You can’t do this,” the boy whimpered, craning his neck back and spraying blood over me. “It’s against the law; it’s abuse.”

  “If it’s abuse you want, you big, stupid shit, I’ll give it to you. What I’ve done so far is called reality therapy—and if I think the reality therapy isn’t working, then I may really beat your ass. People have a right to defend themselves, Dane. If you want to be crazy and try to hurt people, don’t be surprised or offended if someone hands you your head. This is the real world out here, my young friend, and you made the wrong move with the wrong person. You’re extremely lucky you’re not dead or permanently crippled right now, and I’m debating how I should drive that lesson home. What do you think? Should I knock out some more teeth, or just break your nose?”

  The boy bowed his head, sobbed. “Please don’t hurt me any more, Frederickson.”

  “I won’t if you answer my questions and tell me the truth. Have you hurt anybody since you ran away?”

  “No.”

  “Everyone thought you were long gone. What the hell are you doing here, and why did you try to kill me? I certainly don’t think it’s because you miss your desk. I never hurt you, and I even thought you and I were beginning to establish something of a working relationship.”

  The psychotic teenager shook his head, sobbed again. “I didn’t want to do it, Frederickson.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “Marilyn made me do it. She said I had to kill you if I wanted to stay with her.”

  “Dane, I really hope for your sake that this isn’t crazy talk.”

  “It’s not crazy talk, Frederickson.”

  “Who the hell is Marilyn?”

  “She’s my woman, man,” the boy replied, raising his head. His voice had become considerably brighter. “She’s beautiful, man. She helped me escape and then took me to live with her. Man, we’ve been blowing dope and fucking like bunnies.”

  I yanked on the sweat shirt, slinging Dane Potter none too gently up against the brick wall of the chapel. I anchored him there with my finger on his solar plexus. Now I could see that his eyes were cocaine-bright.

  “What horseshit are you trying to hand me, Dane?”

  The boy swallowed, grimaced, spat blood. “You hurt me bad, Frederickson.”

  “Who’s this Marilyn? Some old girl friend?”

  “Marilyn’s no girl, Frederickson; she’s a woman.”

  “How old is she?”

  “I don’t know how old she is.”

  “But she’s not a kid?”

  “No, man. I told you she’s a—”

  “How’d you meet her?”

  “Two days ago I got a call down in the cottage. There was this woman on the line, and she talked in this low, real sexy voice. She told me she was dying to fuck my brains out; she actually said that. She told me she worked at the hospital, out in the records department at the front. She said I’d never seen her, but that she was always watching me. She said that she was in love with me, and she wanted to help me run away so that I could come and live with her. She told me she needed a big stud like me to keep her satisfied, and she wanted me around so she could fuck me any time she wanted. Recreation was showing us a movie that night, and she told me to slip out whenever I could and go down by the gym; the exit door there would be unlocked. That’s what I did. The door was unlocked, just like she’d said it would be, and she was out there waiting for me in her car. Whooee! She drove me to her place, and we got right into bed. Man, I ain’t never had a woman like that. And she had lots of coke—a whole pile of the stuff. We’d screw, blow some dope, then screw some more. Today, just after lunch, she said that I had to do something for her if I wanted to stay with her. I had to kill you.”

  “Kill me?”

  Dane Potter nodded. “She drove me back here, and we parked and just kind of watched and waited. When you started walking off the grounds, she made me steal the truck; she said I should run you over first chance I got.”

  “Nobody made you do anything, Dane. You were just afraid of losing your meal ticket and a piece of ass.”

  The boy shook his head. “Marilyn’s a spooky broad, Frederickson. Some of what you say is true, but it’s also true that she kinda scared me.”

  “Tsk. Tsk. Poor you.”

  “When she found out that I missed you, she was pissed. She said that I didn’t deserve a real woman like her, and that maybe she should kill me. She gave me that knife. She told me you’d eventually be coming out of that building tonight, so I just waited. I really am sorry, Frederickson.”

  “Why did she want you to kill me?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “And you didn’t ask?”

  “Hey, man, I was high—you know what I mean? I wasn’t really thinking about anything except getting more of Marilyn’s dope and back into her pants.”

  “What kind of car did she drive?”

  “A Mercedes; a red convertible.”

  “What does Marilyn look like?”

  “Tall, long blond hair. She’s got these great long legs, and big tits.”

  “Dane, what did the social worker you tried to rape look like?”

  “Now that you mention it, she kinda looked like …” Dane Potter paused, frowned. “You know about that?”

  “Yeah. I know about that. I also know that you have a lot of sexual fantasies, most of them associated with violent acts.”

  The boy blinked slowly. “You don’t be
lieve me?”

  “Where does Marilyn live?”

  “Somewhere around here. It’s about a half hour away. She’s got this beautiful house, and a waterbed with—”

  “Where around here?”

  “Hey, man, I don’t know. It was night, and I had my hand up her dress all the time she was driving. I wasn’t exactly looking at the scenery.”

  “Do you think this story you’re telling me gives you some kind of excuse for attacking me with a knife?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s start all over again, Dane. Begin with how you managed to get out of the hospital, and then tell me where you’ve been.”

  “You don’t believe me!”

  “Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. A tall, beautiful woman with long blond hair, long legs, and large breasts who drives a red Mercedes convertible and lives in a big house with a waterbed lusts after you so badly that she helps you run away from the hospital so that you can live with her and have all the sex and dope you want. Then she says you have to kill me if you want the sex and dope to keep coming. Right?”

  “Right!”

  “How did you know I’d be coming out of the building? Or did you just happen to see me walking across the lawn and then decided to have a go at me?”

  “She told me where you’d be! It’s the truth!”

  “Dane, let’s just say that I enjoyed the account of your adventures so much that I want to hear it all over again.”

  “Are you going to hurt me anymore?”

  “No, Dane,” I said wearily. “I just want you to tell me the truth.”

  The boy swallowed hard, shook his head. “I’m telling you the truth, Frederickson. Marilyn’s waiting for me right now.”

  “Where?”

  “Down the street. She’s parked on the other side of the firehouse.”

  “She’s sitting there in her red Mercedes convertible waiting for you to go back with her to her house for more sex and dope.”

  “Right. Go see for yourself.”

  Keeping a firm grip on Dane Potter’s belt, I marched him the two blocks to the firehouse, where we stopped and looked down the side street. The street was empty, as I’d been certain it would be. Dane Potter looked genuinely bewildered, as if he really had been expecting to see a blonde in a red Mercedes convertible waiting for him.