Apocalypse Island

by Hall, Mark Edward

  “I’ve told him nothing,” Starkey replied, “only because I do not wish to get his hopes up.” He looked dubiously at Wolf. “The doctor here thinks he has a solution to all our problems.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Wolf. “What problems might those be?”

  “Don’t play coy with me, Wolf.”

  Wolf shrugged.

  “Your little...psychotic episodes,” Starkey said.

  “They’re not psychotic episodes,” Wolf replied.

  “What are they then?”

  “Bad dreams.”

  The warden made a face. The kind someone makes when they have indigestion. “That’s not what your discipline reports suggest.”

  “They happen when I sleep. I don’t know why. I’ve never hurt anyone—”

  “So you say, but I figure it’s only because you’ve been locked up alone in your cell. If not for that, someone would surely have been injured by your hand before now.”

  Wolf’s eyes flamed. “Bullshit,” he said through clenched teeth. “You don’t know anything about me! I have some kind of sickness, that’s all. I hear things. Sometimes I see things—”

  “Oh, I see,” said Starkey. “This supposed sickness turns you into a mad man. Is that it? It causes you to move objects with your mind and make the electricity go on and off?”

  Wolf jumped to his feet. “I have never maliciously hurt anyone,” he said.

  The warden’s eyes shone with both fear and dull hate. “And I suppose this little jaunt in Warren is just a vacation. You’re in here for manslaughter, Wolf. You killed another human being.”

  Wolf frowned. “I hit the guy. I never denied that. But I didn’t kill him. I was set up.” Wolf stopped, knowing it was a lame and overused defense. He hadn’t been believed at the trial, and of course he wouldn’t be believed now, maybe never. Just the same, the knowledge of his innocence and its subsequent denials were the only things left in his life that held any meaning. Everything else, including his dignity, had been stolen from him.

  “Yes, Mr. Wolf, that’s what all the inmates here say. What about the little floozy you claimed witnessed the event. The one whose testimony you claimed could clear you. What do you suppose happened to her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It seems she disappeared from the face of the earth.”

  “You’re insinuating I had something to do with that? You know something? You’re full of shit! You’re all full of shit!” Wolf took an angry step toward the warden. The guard who had been standing quietly by the door took a couple of tentative steps toward Wolf, his hand moving toward the wand on his belt.

  Starkey held up his hand to stop the guard’s advance. “Sit down, Wolf,” he said, “or I’ll have you hauled out of here in irons.”

  The psychiatrist cleared his throat in an attempt to silence the banter. “Please,” he said. “If I may?” The warden’s hate-filled eyes shifted from Wolf to Hardwick.

  Wolf backed up and sat down stiffly. “I never hurt anyone,” he said again.

  “Mr. Wolf,” Hardwick said. “Truth is you were convicted of a violent crime. And you have shown a propensity for violence while here at Warren. It’s all here in your discipline reports: fights in the prison yard, threats against other inmates—”

  “They all deserved it—”

  “Yes, Mr. Wolf, I’ve heard all that before. It is part of the reason you were moved to an isolation cell. It is probably why you are still here at Warren. But the most intriguing part of it is the violent behavior in the middle of the night that seems to be directed at no one in particular. Can you explain these episodes?”

  “No.”

  “No matter. The only way for you to get an early parole is if you agree to psychiatric counseling.”

  “You know nothing about me.”

  “Irrelevant,” said the warden.

  “I know some, Mr. Wolf,” the psychiatrist said. “I have gone back and reviewed the events leading up to your arrest, the trial transcripts and your subsequent sentencing, as well as your record while here at Warren. And the truth is, I’m quite baffled by it all.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Wolf said. “You want to dissect me, find out what makes me tick.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” the warden said.

  “I want to get to the bottom of your pathos, Mr. Wolf,” the psychiatrist said, ignoring the warden’s comment. “And that is the truth. Now, I have talked to the correctional board here at Warren and to the judge who sentenced you, and together they have agreed to an accelerated release date provided you agree to certain...conditions.”

  “Conditions?”

  “Correct,” interrupted the warden. “You’ll stay out of trouble. The first hint of a violent act and you’re back in here. Got it? You’ll find a job, you’ll see a parole officer on a regular basis, and you’ll see the shrink—ah, I mean Dr. Hardwick, once a week.” Starkey shot the psychiatrist a petulant little smirk.

  Hardwick went back to Wolf’s file. “Let’s see, do you have any siblings, Mr. Wolf?”

  Wolf stared at the Doctor. “No.”

  “No?”

  “At least none that I know of. I never knew who my real parents were. I was raised in a Catholic orphanage until I was about eight years old. But I have no memory of that time.”

  “None at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “Interesting,” said the doctor. “Tell me, how do you know you were in an orphanage?”

  Wolf shrugged. “I don’t know. Someone from my past told me. Maybe it was one of my asshole foster parents. Listen, I don’t really give a shit.”

  “I see,” said the doctor. “Do you remember why you left the orphanage?”

  Wolf frowned. “I don’t even remember being there, so I sure as shit don’t remember why I left.”

  “So after the orphanage you ended up in the State foster care system.”

  “Yeah, a real enlightening experience.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It sucked. No one really wanted me. I went from home to home until I was old enough to escape.”

  Expressionless, Hardwick wrote something on his notepad and made no reply.

  “What’s this got to do with anything?” Wolf said.

  “Information I’ll need when we start our sessions, Mr. Wolf. We will be going deep into the recesses of your psyche. We’ll fish around and see what we can pull to the surface. Do you like to fish, Mr. Wolf?”

  “No,” Wolf replied.

  “No matter,” Hardwick said. “Fishing is my job and I’m quite good at it. I’ve landed some lunkers in my day.” He smiled at his own lame analogy. “I’ll need to know a lot about your life.”

  Wolf smirked. “Good luck.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “There’s not much to know.”

  “Oh, I think you are wrong about that, Mr, Wolf. I think there’s much more to your life than meets the eye.”

  Wolf glared at the doctor for a long moment. “How often did you say I’d be required to see you?” he asked.

  “Once a week for a year,” answered Starkey.

  Wolf didn’t offer the warden the courtesy of another glance. “Is that it?” he asked, his gaze still fixed on the psychiatrist.

  “Pardon?” said Hardwick.

  “I mean, will there be any other limitations?”

  “You’ll be required to see a parole officer, of course,” said the doctor, giving the warden an uncertain glance. “And I assume that you’ll be randomly tested for illegal substances. As far as I know there’ll be nothing else.”

  “After six months you’ll be reevaluated,” added the warden. “Bear in mind that when you are through with the psychiatric counseling you’ll still have three years of probation left to serve. If you screw up even once you’re back in here and your ass is mine. Understood?”

  “When can I get out?”

  The warden shaped a tedious smile. “The arrangements are being made as we speak
,” he said. “I think by the start of the weekend—barring any unforeseen obstacles—you’ll be a reasonably free man.”

  Chapter 7

  The night before Danny Wolf left Warren State Prison he dreamed he came awake in his cell not as a man but as a monster. He was nearly twice his normal size and his body was completely covered in thick dark hair. He was angry and he could not speak. He needed someone to see and understand the injustice of what he’d become so he got up and began shaking the bars of his cell. When no one came to his rescue he began to roar with anger. Still no one came so he easily ripped the bars from the wall and stepped out of his cell, thundering down the cell block, shaking the bars of his fellow inmate’s cells. Look what I’ve become, he thought with indignity, trying to speak the words, but he could not form them on his tongue and they came out as a series of grunts and groans. Can’t somebody help me? All he received were stares of indifference from his fellow prisoners. Could they not see what he’d become? Was this some sort of joke? Out of frustration he began laying waste to everything in sight, ripping down cell doors, turning over bunks and throwing personal possessions about. When men tried to stop him he pulled them apart like so much raw meat.

  Eventually the guards came, beat him to the floor, put him in shackles and took him away. Starkey was there, and he said, See, Wolf, I knew you were dangerous. I knew you’d fuck everything up and end up spending the rest of your life in this shit hole. The warden laughed gleefully. Dr. Hardwick stood beside him, his glasses down on his nose staring reprovingly at Wolf.

  “No,” Wolf said, looking from one man to the next. “It wasn’t me. It was someone else.”

  Don’t be stupid, Wolf, Starkey said. You killed people. We have a hundred witnesses.

  “But it wasn’t me, I tell you.”

  Who then?

  “Someone who lives inside me.”

  What the hell are you talking about, Wolf?

  “I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

  Tell it to the judge, Starkey said.

  “No,” Wolf cried again. “It wasn’t me, I swear, I didn’t do it,” and he realized he was awake in his bed, sweat-soaked and out of breath, staring up at the dark ceiling.

  He lay awake for the rest of that long night, thinking about the large, hairy beast that lived inside him, not daring to sleep, afraid he might dream again and the dream would become real. He was still awake when the first stirrings of a gloomy and wretched dawn began to spill into his cell announcing his first day of freedom in nearly five years.

  Chapter 8

  A month into his release Wolf had managed to carve out a life of sorts. He had rented a small downtown second floor apartment in a nineteenth century building on Sparrow Street, comfortable but nothing fancy. There was a combination kitchen and living room, separated by an ornate Victorian archway, with one small bedroom and a bath. The walls were all painted the same dusty white. He didn’t mind. After the drab grays and browns of prison life the white felt cheerful, like being out in the sunshine. The apartment was at the back of the building on a quiet alley. No traffic. No noisy neighbors. He liked it.

  It did not take long before the local music establishment heard of Wolf’s reemergence into the world and sent out scouts in hopes of recruitment. After a series of auditions he chose an established band that had recently lost their lead vocalist to a brutal murder. Fittingly enough, the name of the band was Bad Medicine.

  Wolf took it for what it was. Not a sign of salvation, but more a tenuous bridge to a future yet unreasoned. The sickness still had him; there was no doubt of that. The dreams persisted with a vengeance, a variety of them mirroring his own shattered life as well as the lives of others he did not recognize; children, men and monsters. Before long, and not for the first time in his life, the bottle became his best friend.

  After nearly half a dozen sessions with the psychiatrist Wolf became bored. It seemed the more he laid his soul bare the more flummoxed he became as to the root causes of his sickness. And the doctor wasn’t much help. Mostly he just sat listening; sometimes Wolf wondered if he was even doing that.

  No matter. To Wolf the sessions were merely ritual that, under the law, had to be endured for one year only. After that—provided he kept his nose clean, and he had no intention of doing otherwise—he’d be a free man left to his own devices. He’d never been hopeful that psychiatry could heal his condition. That was the good doctor’s wish, not his. Even so, the longer the sessions endured without any noticeable progress, the more frustrated and bewildered Wolf became.

  Chapter 9

  “I don’t think we’re accomplishing anything,” Wolf told the doctor one day following a particularly long and grueling session.

  “Please, let me be the judge of that,” Hardwick replied.

  “I’m giving you everything there is,” Wolf said. “And nothing is happening. I just don’t see the point.”

  “Trust me,” Hardwick said. “There is a point to it all.”

  “But I don’t see it.”

  “It’s there,” Hardwick said in a tantalizingly cryptic tone. “Progress is being made every day. Actually I believe we’re on the verge of a breakthrough.”

  Wolf choked out an astonished laugh. “A breakthrough?” he said. “You’re joking.”

  Hardwick smiled. “On the contrary.”

  “A breakthrough into what? All we’re talking is nonsense shit. Dreams, illusion or whatever the fuck they are. They mean nothing.”

  Hardwick smiled again. “Oh, but I believe they mean everything, Danny.” He had taken to calling Wolf Danny from nearly the first session, an intimacy that had always been reserved for the closest of Wolf’s relationships; friends, lovers, and only then by invitation. Although Hardwick’s use of the moniker mildly irritated Wolf, he kept silent about it, bearing it as one might a bur beneath an article of clothing.

  “Why do you say that?” Wolf asked. “Why do you think my dreams bear so much significance?”

  Hardwick gave a small condescending smile. “It’s not merely the dreams, Danny, but the manner in which you speak of them. Your relationship with them seems so...intimate. It’s as though they’re not dreams at all but something more akin to reality. Each smile, each frown, each word spoken fills volumes. You’re a veritable open book.”

  Wolf stared at Hardwick in amazement. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “They’re fucking dreams.”

  “Perhaps so,” Hardwick said. “But it’s been my experience that dreams are the doors to the true self.”

  “This is just psychobabble bullshit,” Wolf said in frustration. “Did it ever occur to you fucking Freudian types that you can’t analyze away every problem of the human condition? Some things just can’t be pigeonholed with logic. Besides, my problems are mine. I live with them and I’ll die with them. They don’t hurt others.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  Wolf gazed suspiciously at the psychiatrist. “Yes, I’m sure. What the hell are you insinuating?”

  Hardwick held his hands up defensively. “A step at a time, Danny. We need to get through the initial stages of the therapy first. Then perhaps...”

  “Then perhaps what?” Wolf said. “If you think you know something I don’t, then tell me.”

  “At our next session I’ll want to talk about Siri,” Hardwick said.

  Wolf felt panic rise in him. “Why do you want to talk about her? Do you think I killed her?”

  Hardwick feigned surprise. “Interesting that you should say that, Danny. Is she dead?”

  Wolf sat forward in his seat, rage rising in him. “I’m sick of your fucking insinuations. How should I know if she’s dead?”

  “You just said—”

  “I know what I just said. I was responding to your insinuations.”

  “I wasn’t insinuating anything.”

  “Yes you were. Now you’re trying to fuck with my head. Tell me what you think you know.”

  Hardwick’s stare was piercing.

&
nbsp; “This is bullshit! You’re screwing with me.”

  “You have no idea what’s inside you, Danny.”

  “And I suppose you do.”

  “I know some.”

  “You know nothing!” Wolf stood up.

  “Please try and understand,” Hardwick said. “I’m just trying to get to the bottom of your condition. You’re the most intriguing patient I’ve ever had.”

  Wolf gave a bitter laugh. “Me? Intriguing? I spent nearly five years for a stupid murder I didn’t commit and that’s intriguing. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “There’s more to you than meets the eye,” Hardwick said, unable to mask the excitement in his voice. “I believe there’s something hiding inside you, something rare, something extraordinary. And I want very much to get to the bottom of it.”

  “There’s nothing there!” Wolf argued.

  The doctor’s eyes were gleaming. “Oh, but there is. And I think you know it. I think you’ve been hiding it your entire life. Now it’s getting restless and it wants to come out but you won’t let it because you’re afraid. That’s why you’re having all these...dreams, all these emotional upheavals. Just let go, Danny. Be what you are. Be what you were meant to be.”

  “You sound crazier than me, doc.”

  Hardwick steepled his fingers, his expression contemplative. After a long moment of silence he said, “See, Danny, that’s where you’ve always been wrong about yourself. You’re not crazy. On the contrary. What you feel is real. What’s inside you is right and good.”

  “How the hell do you know what I feel?”

  “I have ways.”

  “You think I killed Siri, don’t you? And you’re trying to twist it all around and draw a confession out of me.”

  “I’m not ready to make any learned conclusions about you yet, Danny. You need to look inside yourself first. I want you to do some soul searching. Starting with our next session I’ll want to hear about your childhood. I want you to think very carefully about it over the course of the next week. And when you come back to me I’ll want to hear some truths.”