“Well, welcome to Cherry Hill.” He smiled politely.
The man nodded his head, but otherwise made no gesture.
“Can you tell me your name?” No response.
“Can you tell me what you did to get yourself sent to my facility?”
The man chuckled softly. “Yeah. I got bitchy with a few police officers.”
Roger let himself smile at that one. A “few police officers” in this case meant a total of seven: Two when he was initially arrested and several more when they took the man out of the hospital. Naturally he’d read over the case files and then studied the court transcripts. John Doe was very obviously not sane. He was here for the same reason that most of the people were here, because no one knew what to do with him. During his time in an actual holding cell, he’d broken several other prisoners’ limbs and in one case, broken a man’s back. The problem was, despite his actions, he showed little sign of being a dangerous person unless he was put into a confrontational situation. Apparently the man whose spine he’d ruined had been attempting to rape him at the time. Most of the others had started with small attempts to establish a pecking order and ended with near riots by the time it was all over.
Too violent to actually keep with the general populace, too crazy to be left to his own devices, and too unpredictable to leave in a regular prison, he’d been deemed criminally insane and sent to Roger.
“I’d really prefer to have your name, sir. I can call you John Doe if that’s your preference, but honestly, what harm is there in letting me know who you are?”
Once again, the man’s only response was silence.
“Why did you attack the police officers?”
“Because I told them not to touch me and they didn’t listen.”
“That hardly seems an appropriate response to an officer of the law, surely you realize that.”
The man looked at him for the first time, and despite all of his training, Roger flinched when he looked into the new patient’s eyes. They were nothing spectacular, plain and brown and unremarkable, but the intensity of the gaze was surprising, even for a man who was used to looking into the eyes of madmen.
“Let’s give you your revelation for the day, shall we, Doctor? A little something to make you feel like you’ve done your job and made progress in the examination of your newest patient.” Roger stared hard, taken aback not only by the fury in John Doe’s expression, but also by the cultured, educated phrasing. “I was minding my own business and trying to sort out the things that have gone badly in my life just of late. I was bothering no one and simply wanted the same courtesy, because, I have to tell you, my life has gone to shit in the last few months. I was having one of the worst days of my very long life, Doctor, and because they were bored, a few officers of the law decided to get fussy about me not being properly dressed. All I can say to that is I found the clothing that I could. There wasn’t much left after the plane crash, you understand.”
The man stopped for a moment, his face perfectly calm except for the rage that seethed from his eyes. “I didn’t want help, and I didn’t want trouble. So when I told them not to touch me and they did anyway, I lost my temper. Oh, and those fine, upstanding officers of the law? They were using nightsticks. I was using my hands and my one good foot.” His hands reached down and tapped his left leg, which gave off a clearly artificial sound, even over the rattle of his chains.
“I was defending myself. Was I maybe a little rude? Oh, yes. But I was still only defending myself.”
Roger leaned over onto the small table and placed his elbows on the edge as he focused on the man. “One of them shot you in the stomach, didn’t he? Why was that?”
“I said ‘boo’ to him and he panicked.”
“That was all?”
“Well, I’d just knocked his partner down and he was a rookie.”
“What plane crash, John? I’m not aware of any plane crashes.”
The man shrugged “Small commercial jet. Went down a day or two before the incident with the cops. I was one of the passengers.”
“I don’t recall any notes on that.”
John Doe grinned for just a second, a wolfish expression that changed the shape of his face. “I haven’t seen any of the notes, Doctor. So I wouldn’t know what you’ve heard.”
“I think I would have remembered hearing anything about a plane crash.”
“It might not have come up.”
“Do you remember the flight number of the plane?”
“Not the vaguest clue.”
Roger nodded and jotted himself a few notes. That was the sort of thing that could be researched, and that could, maybe, tell him who was on the plane that crashed, if there had actually been a plane. He was dealing with an unknown, after all.
“Are you sure you won’t tell me your name?”
“Doctor, what makes you think I even know my name?”
Roger had to think about that one for a while, so he ended their session. Afterwards, in his office again, he looked over his notes and decided that he’d keep close tabs on John Doe. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to take the case for himself, but he would definitely keep watch.
A smile played at his lips when he made his final decision. Harrington would have the case. He needed something out of the ordinary to shake him up. John Doe might just be exactly what Phil needed. Roger had a strong feeling that Doe would not be as easily handled as some cases.
***
The guards handled their new charge with a modicum of respect, but mostly because he was old. He shuffled on as best he could and said nothing to anyone.
He didn’t want to be here, but then who would? The place was about as comfortable and homey as a prison. Each of the doors they passed as they entered the North Wing was made of heavy grade steel and had a number stenciled above it. His new home for the foreseeable future bore the number 29 and had a small window with wire mesh at the right height for sneaking peeks at him as discretely as anyone wanted to. A simple handle with a deadbolt lock and a three-inch thick steel bar to slide across the door should he suddenly decide to go traipsing through the hallways in the middle of the night. Closer to the bottom was an access port for sliding his meals in.
The interior was just as lovely, with a thin mattress and a pillow, as well as his very own toilet, also made of steel. Aside from that, there was nothing, not even a desk.
He knew why, of course. He was considered a dangerous man. Those days were over. He would accept his time at the asylum and call it a blessing. This would be a nice enough place to die.
One of the guards walked into the room with him and had him sit on the mattress. Once he was down, the man unlocked the cuffs on his wrists and ankles and stepped back to the door.
“Listen up, sport. If you’re smart and don’t do anything to make waves, this isn’t the worst place to be.” Oh yes, this was the welcome speech. He managed to suppress a smile. “Don’t try to attack anyone and we’ll all get along fine. We’ll be coming once a day to get you a shower and a shave, and if your doctor says it’s all right, you’ll be allowed outside for a bit. Other than that, this is your new home. Make the best of it”
He liked the guard. The man was direct and honest and didn’t feel the need to beat his chest to show everyone who was boss. They’d probably get along just fine.
A few moments later, the door was closed and locked and John Doe leaned back on the cot and settled in for rest.
The screams from one of the other inmates lulled him to sleep.
***
The air in the room smelled bad, but that was to be expected. On the lowest level of the asylum was the wing where the least functional patients were kept, and the man sitting in the small room qualified as barely smarter than a carrot these days.
After more violent episodes than anyone else in the history of Cherry Hill, Dr. Phillip Harrington decided that Alex Granger was too dangerous to himself and to others to be left merely drugged out of his mind. Electroshock therapy had
failed to make him more agreeable and so had locking him in an isolation chamber. Thorazine and every other anti-psychotic they used seemed to keep him calm for about ten minutes before he went into another hyperactive assault mode.
After the third time Granger escaped from a straight jacket, the most extreme measures had to be taken. He was lobotomized. A small, sharp implement was used to frappe his frontal lobes in an effort to make him calm down. By God, that had the desired effect.
These days Granger stared at the walls and rocked back and forth when he was feeling frisky. Most of the time he simply stared and drooled.
Alexander Anthony Granger was nineteen when he was delivered to Cherry Hill. He was arrested after a long string of murders led figuratively and literally to his front door. Police in Philadelphia had spent months seeking any sort of evidence in connection to a cannibal killer who apparently hunted and then mutilated the bodies of his victims.
Alex was found coming home with a head gripped in his hand, held by the long hair of the teenager he’d decapitated. Michelle Ellis was the last person he killed, but a quick look inside the basement of the home he shared with his grandmother made clear that she was not the first. He’d kept their heads, leaving their bodies to rot wherever they dropped.
Granger didn’t resist when the police took him in and he didn’t have much to say when he was questioned and later taken to trial. He was another case where the only real way to handle the situation was to have him locked away where he could harm neither himself nor others.
That hadn’t worked so well and the end result was the lump of flesh now sitting on the mattress in his room, stewing in his own wastes.
The interns and nurses came around and cleaned him every day, changing the plastic sheets on his mattress and helping keep him as tidy as they could. He ate the pureed foods they gave him and behaved better now than he ever had before the operation.
Whenever anyone looked in on him, he was as quiet as a mouse and as docile as a newborn babe.
Granger fell back on his cot and his body twitched a few times, his eyes rolling back into his head as his muscles danced to their own tunes. To date no one had ever seen one of his seizures, or felt the sudden chill that came into the room, or heard the whispers that surrounded him when they happened.
No one saw the smile that twisted those bland features into something frighteningly like the expression Granger wore before the lobotomy. And the instruments that could have recorded his massive surge in brain activity hadn’t even been invented yet.
The doctors would have been amazed to see what was growing in place of his frontal lobes. They would have made him famous with their careful studies and the copious notes they would have taken.
But Granger was a model patient these days. He never made a sound and he never caused trouble.
Maybe if he had, they would have known what was coming and been able to prevent it.
Or maybe they would have just died violent deaths, instead.
Some things are more careful about hiding.
What was growing inside of Alex Granger was newly formed and young, but more cautious than Alex Granger had ever been.
Chapter Two
The leakage started slowly. It almost always came as a trickle first, and by the time he knew about it, whatever had caused the problem was ready to break the pipes into shreds. Currently, there was a pool of water soaking his knees as a reminder of that sad fact.
Billy Hague always hated that part of his job. He stared at the toilet in cell number 31 and scowled. “You just know that sombitch did something to it on purpose. Every damn time I come to his cell, I find the worst things stuck in this here bowl.”
Wilkes chuckled and nodded his head. “Know why he does it, Billy?”
Hague pulled his plunger from its spot on his cart and looked back at the security guard. “Why don’t you enlighten me while I find out what he used this time?”
“Because there’s only two places we’re gonna take him in this sort of situation. Either he gets to go to the park or he gets to sit for an extra hour in the cafeteria.”
The custodian nodded his head. “Which one is he doing today?”
“He’s in the park.” The park was what everyone in the place called the patch of grass, benches and two stunted trees where the inmates could go for a spell.
“Well, I guess I can’t begrudge him that one. Got to beat staring at the same four walls.” He attacked the clogged toilet bowl with the plunger; doing his best to force the water down hard enough to dispel the clog. It was a stubborn lump of whatever, and after a few tries he gave up and reached for the coiled steel snake designed for just such an emergency.
“That’s why we let him get away with it, the poor old bastard.” The man in question was a flabby, pasty slob who had tried to prove his love for a woman by killing her entire family. Aside from that one miscalculation, he’d never hurt a single person. Understandably, the woman whose family he’d set ablaze didn’t seem to find the gesture overly romantic. Hague couldn’t remember the man’s name, but he’d long ago started calling him ‘Cupid,’ because of the literally thousands of love letters he’d written over the years.
No one seemed to have the heart to tell him his paramour had died ten years earlier. Hague wasn’t about to be the one to spill the beans. He could have changed his mind when a wave of water splashed his legs and soaked him a little more than he already was.
“Christ on a bike!” He pushed and prodded the blockage, but couldn’t get it to move.
“Giving you a little trouble there, Billy?”
Hague shot him a withering look. “Yeah, you could say that.” It was time to go for the big guns, and he didn’t hesitate. He grabbed a different, more elaborate contraption that he’d picked up from a friend who was a plumber a few years earlier. The rooter was half an inch thick and ended in a set of pinchers that could clamp down and pull back out of the toilet damned near anything that was put in. If this didn’t work, he’d be forced to actually remove the toilet bowl, and that wasn’t an idea he liked very much. Cupid was rapidly getting on his nerves, love letters be damned.
Wilkes gave out a low whistle of appreciation. “Guess he got a little serious this time around.”
“He gets any more serious, I’m gonna shove this thing up his ass and pull his liver out.” The device slid in and Hague worked it until he found the blockage. Once he was sure he had the thing in place well enough, he used the grip on the far end and clamped down on the obstruction. It was tough, whatever it was. He could feel the obstruction giving a little, but not as much as he would have liked. Whatever the hell the man had shoved into the toilet wasn’t ready to move without a serious fight.
Hague pulled hard and felt the stuff move toward him, the snake sliding forward by an inch before it stopped. Wilkes shook his head and moved closer. “You need some help?”
“I won’t complain. You need to stop giving that sonovawhore things to write with.”
“Oh, quit being such a wimp and move over.” Hague slid a little to the side and the guard braced one foot against the commode as he grabbed the snake. The two of them counted to three and put their backs into it. Whatever was in there slid forward again, giving a little, but not enough to pull it loose.
“Damn.” Wilkes shook his head. “Why isn’t the pipe just busting?”
“For all I know it is.”
“That’s not funny, Billy.”
“You hear me laughing? No, I didn’t think you did.”
“One more try?” Wilkes looked dubious, but Billy wasn’t about to turn down the help. Again they counted to three and gave it the old college try, this time with more success. With both of them straining and holding the snake tightly, the blockage suddenly slid forward, spiking more water from the toilet bowl on the floor. Billy cursed as his already soaked pants got wetter, but at least they’d managed to snag the blockage.
It came out of the toilet in a rush, and the stench made both men gag. Hague
coughed and looked away for a moment, but Wilkes looked at the lump and then backed away quickly. “What in the name of God?”
The clamps at the end of the snake held their prize for both men to see: a dark gray, putrid lump of meat, raw and rotting. Hague saw three fingers in the tangle of decay and dropped the snake right then and there. A wedding ring glistened on one of the digits.
“There ain’t no way I’m seeing that.”
“Back away from it, Billy.” Wilkes put a hand on his shoulder and urged him to move. “It’s time to call in the cops.”
Hague broke policy and reached for his smokes, lighting up as he sat at the far end of the room and stared at the remains of a human hand. Wilkes joined him a few minutes later, both of them forced to wait for the police to show and start asking questions.
They were both still there several hours later, after the police removed the toilet bowl and began extracting the mangled human body that was blocking the pipes. Despite their best efforts, the only way to remove the mortal remains was to take it out in bits and pieces.
Billy Hague turned in his notice just after the question and answer part of his day was finished. He wasn’t a superstitious man, but he couldn’t bring himself to work at a place where anyone or anything could manage to cram a grown man into a four-inch wide pipe.
***
Phil Harrington sat in the room provided for dealing with his patients and stared at the man on the couch. He had no reason at all to be scared about the meeting; the man was once again in cuffs that were anchored to the floor, but he was scared anyway.
Something about the man was just creepy as all hell and he knew in his heart that as much as he was assessing his new patient, the man was taking his measure.
“So, John, why don’t you tell me about yourself?”
Cherry Hill Page 2
