Cherry Hill

by James A. Moore

  “I’m really amazingly boring. Mostly I sit in my cell and stare at the wall. There aren’t even any interesting water stains to look at.”

  “Would you like some paper and a few markers?”

  “I don’t draw much. Mostly I whittle.” The man looked his way and winked. “I’m guessing there isn’t much chance of getting some wood and a good whittling knife.”

  Harrington chuckled, feeling a little more at ease. “No, that’s not really likely to happen for a while, but I could get you a few bars of soap and couple of plastic knives. You’ll have to work with them carefully, they break easily, but I could arrange that.”

  “Do that, and we’ll be friends for life.”

  He made a quick note on the legal pad he had across his leg. “Consider it done. Now, in return, tell me about yourself.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything. Are you married, what do you do for a living, do you have kids, how did you lose your leg.”

  “I was married. Now I’m a widower. I had three children. They’re all dead. For a while I was a professor of theological studies with a side of parapsychology, but it got boring. I lost my leg in Korea, where I made the mistake of stepping on a mine.”

  He looked at the man in absolute silence. That was the most John Doe had spoken to him. “How did your wife die?”

  The man sat up straighter and looked him in the eye. “I really don’t want to discuss that.”

  “John, how can we work on making you better if you aren’t willing to share the information that we need in order to find out the problems?”

  John Doe smiled at him and leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees, like he was just going to have a nice, casual conversation. The smile was the sort that said he could easily take a bite out of Phil’s face, as if he were a ripe, tasty apple. “We’re going to get this out of the way. I’m going to tell you this once, Dr. Harrington, and then we’ll move on to other things, am I making myself clear?”

  “By all means, John.” He prepared to take all the notes he needed and looked at his patient.

  “My wife is dead. My children are dead. They lived happily and I was happy with them. But I made a mistake and that mistake came back to haunt me.” Harrington opened his mouth to speak and his patient held up a hand to stop him. “Let me finish and then you can ask me five questions. I suppose you can ask more than that, but I will only answer five.”

  Harrington nodded.

  “Now, I did some very dangerous work a while back and I quit that work. I gave up that life when I decided to get married and settle down. Someone I thought had been removed from the picture came back into my life and murdered my wife and my children. When that was done, that special someone tried to kill me. I’m tougher than I look.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, John. When did all of this happen?”

  “A few months ago.”

  “Right before you were incarcerated?”

  “That’s right. I was still trying to work it all out in my head when I had my unfortunate run in with the police.”

  “What happened to the person who killed your family?”

  “I think I killed him.”

  “How did that make you feel?”

  “The murders? Like my life was over, which it is. Killing him?” He shrugged. “Like there was still a possibility for joy in my life.”

  “Were you wanted by the police for killing him?”

  “No one ever found the body. Believe me, no one will ever find the body.”

  “Do you believe in God, John?”

  “Sorry, Doc. That was five questions. You’re all out of answers.”

  They sat in silence for the rest of their appointment.

  ***

  He sat in his cell and stared at the wall, infuriated by the audacity of Harrington. It didn’t matter that the man was supposed to ask him questions. It didn’t matter that he knew the head doctor was only trying to help. He didn’t want to talk about his past. His past was best left behind.

  He couldn’t escape from the things that had happened, but he could fake it if he tried hard enough. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the remains of his family scattered across the inside of his house, ripped into bloody pieces and strewn about as if they were mere trash for the garbage heap.

  “Stop thinking about it,” he warned himself. “If you think about it, it’s real.”

  When he closed his eyes he could hear their voices, see their faces and almost feel them.

  But that was impossible after what had been done.

  John Doe closed his eyes and settled back on his mattress. Three doors down the hallway, the man he’d already come to think of as “The Screamer” was wailing out agonized cries and begging somebody to leave him alone.

  Even at full volume he was less of a distraction than he would have been in the outside world.

  Doe looked at the pills they’d given him to swallow earlier, the ones he’d fake swallowed after his evening meal. He knew what they were, that they were designed not to cure a psychosis but to dope him to the point where he couldn’t be violent on a bet.

  He didn’t believe in anesthetizing his mind. It was the one asset he still had that could be useful in his life. Still, it was his mind that was haunting him, making his existence more miserable than he wanted to be.

  The Screamer stopped wailing and settled down into a much softer crying jag, his sobs echoing down the hall in waves of desperation.

  Something dark and menacing slipped through the wall in John Doe’s room and looked at him for several seconds, taking his measure. It was not natural, he knew that immediately.

  Doe sat up and stared at the thing and it in turn stared back, surprised that he could see it.

  The thing took one step closer and thought about reaching for him; a spectral hand moved away from the pool of darkness that made up its body and stretched in his direction.

  “Now then, do you really want to do that?” he spoke softly, but knew it heard him.

  The thing flinched just a bit and then slid out of his room, fading through the wall as if it were nothing but a thin mist.

  John took the pills to the toilet and flushed them, watching as they were caught in the currents and finally knocked down into the sewer pipes.

  “No pills for you, old fellow. Not yet anyway.”

  He settled in for the night, lulled by the sounds of the Screamer crying.

  ***

  The Cherry Hill Mental Health Institute rested as well, the doctors reduced to only two for emergencies and the patients fed their nightly doses of medication.

  The lights that normally burned throughout the day were still lit, but they flickered at one-third the brilliance, leaving just enough illumination to let the guards walk their beats and ensure that no one being held in the place got stupid.

  Ernst Holbrook was the night watchman on the North Wing. He seldom had any troubles; aside from people like Lawrence Poole screaming away half the night. Even Poole was being quiet for a change.

  Just after midnight he made his usual rounds, starting at the top of the fourth floor and working his way down level by level, he looked into each of the rooms and made sure no one was misbehaving.

  On the third floor he pulled out his cell keys and held them tightly in his fist to ensure no one would hear them jingling. The third floor was the women’s ward, where most of the cells were empty. There were only seven patients in all of the rooms, and few people would have willingly called any of them human if they knew the truth about what they had done. Sandra Dennings had stabbed her husband of seven years over fifty times, claiming that he beat her and made her do bad things. He couldn’t defend himself, being dead and all, so the choices were to let her go or lock her away. Somebody decided she needed a mental overhaul and now she was a guest on his ward. She’d been a looker in her time, but that was all in the past. Before they upped her drugs the last time around, she’d taken to ramming her face into the wall. Sh
e’d shattered her chin, her left cheek and four teeth before they restrained her. What was left of her face had taken on all different contours when she was done healing.

  Eloise Fischer was only three cells down from Sandra of the mashed face. Ellie had taken a can of gasoline and set her house on fire. She was still inside when it happened. She didn’t try to move or struggle until the firefighters came to her rescue. She fought the firemen for every inch of burning space they dragged her from. They got to her, but not until she’d suffered third degree burns over half of her body. It was touch and go as to whether or not she’d live for a while, but they saved her. Well, her body at any rate. Her mind was as gone as gone could be, and no one had managed to make her talk since her arrival.

  They found the bodies of over four hundred cats inside her house. As he understood it, some of them had been dead for years.

  Leslie Anne Hampton was in the cell at the end of the wing. He still didn’t know why she was in the place, only that she was. Leslie Anne was thin and pretty in a mousy sort of way. Best of all, she went out like a light when she was given her meds.

  He opened her cell and checked on her, locking the door for the safety of everyone concerned. She was alive, but deeply unconscious. Ernst took advantage of the situation and had his way with her. She didn’t complain. She never did.

  When he was finished and had cleaned her up properly, he left her cell and moved on down toward the second floor. The stairwell was better lit than the corridors and he started down them with a spring in his step.

  For a moment, just as he was setting his foot on the landing where the stairs turned back on themselves, his skin pulled tight and the hairs on his neck rose in a wave of gooseflesh.

  Ernst looked all around, half certain that he’d heard or seen something, but not sure exactly what it was. He listened carefully and scanned everywhere, fully expecting to find a patient walking the stairs and trying to hide.

  There was nothing to see and nothing to hear, so Ernst moved along, rubbing his hands over his arms and suffering from the distinct feeling that someone was watching him.

  Something was, of course, doing just that. It watched him when he took advantage of Leslie Anne Hampton and it watched him as he checked all of the cells on the second floor of the North Wing.

  It watched, and decided it did not like what it saw.

  But now was not the time. Soon, it promised itself, but not just yet.

  Maybe tomorrow night.

  When it was properly hungry again.

  Chapter Three

  Roger Finney answered the questions to the best of his ability, and even though he had done nothing wrong, the police detective intimidated the hell out of him. Detective Branaugh was intimidating, any way you looked at him. The man stood over six feet tall and looked like he should have been a linebacker. He also had the sort of face that gave away nothing at all. Probably the worst part was that, even when he was looking at you, he seemed more like he was looking through you. Finney had seen a lot of men with that sort of intensity. The difference was that most of them were locked away in his buildings, not coming in to ask questions about the corpse found rammed down a drainage pipe.

  “I honestly don’t know what to say, Detective. I’ve triple checked, and we’re not missing any of our patients or any of our staff. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “Well, I expect we’ll know more when we hear back from the coroner.” The man looked around the office as he spoke, never seeming to actually focus on anything for more than an instant before he looked away.

  “If there’s anything we can do to help, please, just let us know.”

  “You can count on it.” The man stood up, readjusting his jacket as he did so. “There is one thing you could do for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  The detective handed him a card. “Let me know if you hear anything from the inmates. I know it isn’t likely, but maybe one of them heard something that could be useful.”

  “Of course.” He stood up and shook the man’s hand, hoping his grip didn’t shake too much. He couldn’t have explained it in a million years, but something about the detective made him nervous.

  Something about the entire situation made him jumpy, who the hell was he kidding?

  He sat back down at his desk and pulled a cigarette from his pack. They were an annoying habit and one he’d tried to break a few times before deciding he needed to keep at least a few vices in his life.

  Just as soon as he lit up, the phone rang. He put out the smoke with a muttered curse and answered it.

  “There’s a problem with the new patient.” Harrington’s voice reminded him that he still needed to chew the man out.

  “What seems to be the problem, Phil?”

  “The man is unresponsive. I mean he’s borderline comatose.”

  “John Doe?”

  “The very same. His pupils aren’t fixed, but I’m getting no sort of activity out of him at all. No response to pain, nothing.”

  “Reaction to medications?”

  “I don’t think so. His pulse is perfect, his respiratory is fine, no signs of a rash or anything else.”

  “I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone and lit his cigarette again, frowning to himself. He’d have a few minutes to himself and then he’d find out what was happening.

  You already know what’s happening. It’s happened before, hasn’t it?

  He didn’t want to jump to any conclusions before a proper examination had taken place. Scientists were supposed to handle things in a certain way and he refused to let himself dwell on what had happened to a few of the other patients who exhibited catatonia early on in their stays.

  He didn’t bother with putting back on his lab coat—a violation of his own rules—but moved as quickly as he could toward the cell he’d assigned the new patient. The worst part of it was not knowing, of course. In this case he didn’t know if Phil had screwed up with medications or if the situation was worse than that, one of the rare occasions where he couldn’t make it right.

  There were two guards stationed outside in the hallway to room 29. Both of them were very alert, facing toward the open doorway and the two men inside the room.

  Phil was wringing his hands and looking like all he wanted to do was curl up in a corner and hide until the newest problem went away. The man had the potential to be brilliant, but his lack of innovation and appalling inability to deal with a crisis crippled him as far as Roger was concerned.

  He ignored Phil and moved closer to the new patient. His skin wasn’t flushed, there was no sign of a rash, and his pulse was perfect.

  “When did this start?”

  “I don’t know. The last time anyone checked on him he was fine.”

  “When was the last time he was checked on?”

  “This morning when the shift change took place. The attending nurse noted he seemed in good spirits.”

  “Well, let’s get him to a proper examination room.”

  John Doe sat up in his cot and smiled. Phil let out a yelp and Roger stared at the man who two seconds earlier had been dead to the world.

  “Well, I have an audience,” the voice was dry and sarcastic. “How lovely.”

  Roger shrugged. “You were unconscious, John. Do you know if there’s a history of epileptic seizures in your background?”

  “I wasn’t unconscious. I was meditating.”

  “You put yourself into a meditative state?”

  “That would be the premise behind meditation, yes.”

  “Well, you had Dr. Harrington a bit worried. He tried to revive you and you were completely unresponsive.”

  “I’m a deep sleeper when I want to be.” Doe smiled at him and Roger resisted the urge to flinch. His smile had nothing to do with kindness or humor.

  “In the future, you might want to leave a warning about your meditation. You almost wound up in the infirmary.”

  “Does the infirmary have real beds as opposed to a mattr
ess on the floor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I probably won’t be leaving any notes.” He shrugged. “I have to say, the accommodations aren’t at all what I was expecting.”

  Harrington was pacing and red faced. No doubt he felt that he had just been humiliated.

  “No one can sleep that deeply!” Phil’s voice was louder than he meant it to be and both of the men in the room looked in his direction while the two guards outside did their best not to laugh out loud.

  “I wasn’t sleeping. I was meditating.” Doe spoke slowly and clearly enunciated as if he were speaking to a slightly deaf imbecile. “I heard you, Doc. I just didn’t feel like answering you.”

  Phil’s face went redder still and Roger bit the side of his lip to stop from braying laughter.

  “That’s not a wise thing to do around here, John. It most decidedly isn’t.” Harrington’s voice was low and menacing.

  “Calm down, Dr. Harrington.” Roger spoke in placating tones. “John hasn’t even been here for two days. It’ll take him a while to get used to the rules.”

  Doe was looking at Finney; the smile gone from his weathered face and the look in his eyes was less than pleasant. “Wanna’ get me a new doctor? I don’t think Harrington likes me very much.”

  “Oh, I suspect the two of you can overlook a simple misunderstanding, John, don’t you?”

  Doe stared hard at the other doctor; his eyes focused and clear enough that Roger had to wonder if he’d actually taken his medications. “Yeah. I guess we can look past this incident, can’t we, Doc?”

  Harrington stared hard back for a moment and then finally nodded his head.

  “I’m sure we can. John.”

  Roger clapped his hands in a well-that’s-all-settled-then gesture. “Excellent. Now, gentlemen, if you don’t mind, I have business to attend to.”

  That was one dilemma solved at least. It was a start.

  Roger headed back to his office; finally ready get the day under way.