A Cure for Madness

by Jodi McIsaac

  He grunted. I realized I had no idea where he would be going. “You moving back in with Mom and Dad, or what?”

  He snorted. “Yeah, right. Dad’s got an apartment lined up for me.”

  “Well, that’s cool.”

  There was a long pause, and then he said, “Your roommate really works for the NSA?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you thought about killing her in her sleep?”

  “Wes! Jesus!”

  “Hey, you shouldn’t swear.”

  “You shouldn’t suggest I murder my friend.”

  “Calm down; I was just kidding. But do you ever wonder if she’s . . . you know, keeping track of you?”

  “She’s not keeping track of me. And if she was, I’d just feel bad for her. I have the most boring life in existence. Believe me, the government has more interesting people to stalk.” I tried changing the subject again. “What have you been reading lately?”

  “I just think it’s weird that she happens to be living with you right now,” he persisted. “Because I just met this former government guy here at the hospital. Maybe they’re both plants.”

  “Latasha’s not a plant. She’s a systems analyst, not a spy. Who’s the guy you met?”

  “Winston Ling. A scientist. Got checked in a couple of weeks ago. He told me about a covert government project he was working on in a secret lab. Called it ‘Project Amherst.’ But something happened—something really bad.” He had lowered his voice, and I could picture him looking over his shoulder, checking to see that no one was listening at the door.

  “Like what?”

  “He didn’t say. Not exactly. Just said it all went wrong and something got out. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Mutants. I bet that’s what it was.”

  I was glad he couldn’t see me rolling my eyes. I slipped into autopilot. This was the part of the conversation where Wes would tell me about his latest encounters in the spiritual realm and I would nod my head and say “mm-hm” and bite my tongue whenever the word “crazy” floated in the general direction of my vocal cords. I drained the contents of my wineglass. This isn’t his fault.

  “And then he killed himself,” Wes continued.

  I abruptly switched back to manual pilot mode. “What? Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. Heard the nurses talking about it. Happened a week or so ago, I think. Wondered why I hadn’t seen him around.”

  “Jesus.”

  Wes cleared his throat at my language.

  “Sorry. What happened?”

  “Made a noose out of the bedsheets. At least that’s what they said. It’s not unusual. People kill themselves a lot around here. Or go missing.”

  “Well, it’s good you’re leaving, then,” I said in an attempt at levity.

  “Don’t you think that’s strange, though? He was part of this secret government project, and then he ‘killed himself’? Want to know what I think? I think they offed him to keep him quiet.” His voice was rising, and I could picture his eyes getting wider, the veins on his face becoming more pronounced. I had to nip this in the bud.

  “Listen, Wes. This guy was in there for a reason. Remember what it was like before you were on the right medication? How you’d think things were true, but it would turn out they were just in your head? This is probably the same thing. Everything he told you, it’s just due to his illness. Chances are he wasn’t even a real scientist. Don’t worry about it. Just concentrate on staying well and enjoying your new life. Won’t it be great to be able to come and go whenever you want and not have nurses hovering around you all the time?”

  “You tell me.”

  I pressed my lips together. “I’m really glad they think you’re well enough to leave.”

  “Are you coming home any time soon?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll try, but . . . it’s expensive, and I’ve got a lot going on with work.”

  “Sure.”

  There was an awkward silence—awkward on my end, at least.

  “So I killed a demon the other day,” Wes said.

  I frowned into the phone. I thought his medication was supposed to control this sort of thing. Maybe there was only so much it could do.

  “Oh yeah?” I struggled to keep the skepticism out of my voice. “How?”

  “With my telepathy.”

  “You have telepathy?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I can only use it to communicate directly with other telepaths. But God uses it to guide me to people who need my help.”

  “Okay. How does that happen?”

  “Well, I was just reading in my room, and I heard this little girl crying for help. But it’s not like there are any little girls in here, right?”

  “I hope not.”

  “But I knew she was scared—I could just feel it, and I could hear her crying. She was scared because there was a monster under her bed.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Only, it wasn’t a monster, it was a demon. They like to masquerade as monsters, y’know; that’s why kids are afraid of the dark. They can sense the demons. And this was a big one. I reached out to her with my mind and told her it was going to be okay. Then I transported myself to her room, and I just opened my mouth and sucked in the demon. I sucked it way down into my gut and then burned it with my holy fire.”

  “Your . . . holy fire?”

  “We all have it, everyone who has Jesus living inside them. Most people just don’t know how to use it.”

  “Wow. So . . . what happened to the little girl? Was she kind of freaked out to see you in her room?”

  “She never saw me; she just felt me. She knew I was there to protect her. I could feel her again after I destroyed the demon, and she wasn’t afraid anymore. She was peaceful.”

  There was a knock on his end, and a pause. Then he said, “I gotta go. We’re not supposed to be on the phone this late.”

  “Okay, well, it was nice talking to you,” I said. “I love you.”

  “You, too. Watch out for that roommate of yours.” He hung up before I had the chance to ask him what his phone number would be in his new place.

  I picked up the empty wineglass and headed back down the stairs and into the living room, where Latasha and Amy were once again staring intently at their screens. “How did it go?” Latasha asked, handing me an open bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

  “Oh, fine,” I answered, refilling my glass. “He thinks you’re spying on me.”

  “Him and everyone else,” she said with a snort.

  “I don’t know if he’s ready to be released, actually.”

  At this, Amy looked up, too. Her eyebrows were raised; Latasha’s pointed down in a deep V.

  I slumped into the armchair I had rescued from a garage sale after my move to Seattle. It was oversized and ancient, with black and red paisley cushions and round wooden legs. I loved it; Latasha tolerated it.

  “He seemed all right for most of the conversation,” I said. “But then he talked about crazy things. Like this guy he’d met—supposedly a scientist working in a secret government lab on something called Project Amherst. Maybe you should look into that,” I joked lamely, nodding at Latasha. She gave me a wry smile.

  “Anyway, Wes said the guy killed himself—but of course he thinks it’s all part of a big cover-up.”

  “What? At the mental hospital?” Amy asked. “Aren’t they supposed to have measures in place to protect against that kind of thing?”

  “Honestly, I never know what to believe with Wes. But he was convinced it happened, and that’s what makes me worry. And he followed that up with a story about how he can communicate through telepathy and saved a little girl from a demon under her bed by swallowing it and burning it with holy fire.”

  To their credit, neither Latasha nor Amy laughed.

  “Your parents keep a close eye on him, though, don’t they?” Latasha asked. “And you said it’s taken them a few tries to get his medication right;
maybe it just needs a bit more tweaking. Or maybe he’s nervous about leaving tomorrow, and it’s setting him off.”

  “Maybe,” I admitted. How would he adjust to normal life again? Not that Wes would ever have a normal life. Work wasn’t really an option. His current medication was strong enough to control the voices in his head—mostly—but it also wiped him out emotionally and physically. He slept at least sixteen hours a day. Being around people made him nervous—a painfully sharp contrast to the gregarious, outgoing boy he’d once been.

  I opened my laptop. Time to escape. Latasha was right; Wes would be fine. My parents would see to that.

  My phone rang, breaking the silence, and all three of us jumped.

  “Is it Wes calling back?” Latasha said, glancing at the clock on the wall.

  “Maybe. It’s a Maine number, but I don’t recognize it.” I lifted the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Clare? It’s your uncle Rob. I’m sorry for calling so late, but I’ve got some . . . difficult news.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I wished I could freeze time. I’d read the books, seen the TV shows. When someone called late at night and warned you they had difficult news, it always meant that your life was about to change in a horrible, irreversible way—and there was nothing you could do to stop it.

  “Is it Wes?” I whispered, knowing it couldn’t possibly be; I had just spoken to him.

  “No. I hate to be the one to tell you this, especially over the phone . . .” He took a deep breath. “Your parents were killed earlier this evening.”

  His words, still echoing in my ears, prompted a sudden out-of-body experience. I watched myself sitting in my paisley chair, my mouth slightly agape. One hand was clenched around the phone; the other was digging into my leg. A long silence stretched out. The girls were staring at me, and I knew Rob was waiting for a response. But I had none to give. Words were useless.

  “They were shot,” he continued, his voice tight.

  “By who?” I asked, staring at the hand on my leg as though it belonged to someone else. “Why?”

  “We know the who, but not the why. His name was Terry Foster. He’s known your parents for years. Went to their church. Didn’t have a violent bone in his body.”

  My brain shifted slowly into gear. “Terry Foster . . . yeah, I know who he is. But this doesn’t make sense.”

  “None of it makes sense. A jogger found them along the river, down by the train bridge. Terry must have ambushed them, then shot himself.”

  My mind was whirring, but I was having difficulty forming coherent sentences. “Are . . . you sure?”

  “I identified them myself. All three. It was Terry’s gun, and his prints were all over it.”

  “Does Wes know?”

  “Not yet. I want to tell him in person, not over the phone, but I can’t get in until morning. Unless you want to be the one to tell him?”

  “No, you can,” I said at once. “I mean, if you don’t mind . . .”

  His voice grew even more somber. “Of course. Listen, Clare, I can imagine how you’re feeling right now. Do you have someone with you? You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I have friends over.” Latasha and Amy’s eyes were trained on me.

  “Good. Listen, I’ll start getting things arranged with the funeral home,” Rob said. “You just concentrate on getting yourself back here, and we’ll go from there. Do you need any help getting a flight?”

  “No.”

  “There’s one other thing. I’m sure you’ve talked about this with your parents. You’re Wes’s legal guardian now—did you know that?”

  “Um,” I stammered. “I knew . . . I knew that’s what would happen if . . .”

  “I know. No one could have planned for this. Your parents met with his doctor and social worker earlier today for his discharge meeting. They were going to pick him up first thing in the morning. But since you’re his guardian now, you’ll have to be the one to get him once you come home. Between you and me, I think it would be best if he stayed there a few more days, until we’re sure he’s going to handle this okay. But it’s up to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “You going to be all right, kid?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know.” I hung up and dropped the phone into my lap, unwilling to hold it any longer. My chest throbbed. Maybe I was going into shock—or maybe I was just a horrible person for not being overcome with grief.

  “Clare?” Latasha asked. “What’s happened?”

  “My parents are dead,” I said. I felt like an actor in someone else’s play.

  “Oh my God,” Amy said, the horror I was suppressing reflected clearly in her face. “How?”

  I relayed to them what my uncle had told me.

  “They were shot by a friend of theirs? That doesn’t make any sense,” Latasha said.

  I nodded woodenly. “I know, I should have asked more questions, I just . . .” I felt them then, the tears, way down in my chest. I tried to keep them there—I didn’t want to cry, I didn’t want to dissolve, I just wanted to figure out what the hell I was going to do, how I was going to handle this tectonic shift in my life. A wave of nausea hit me hard, doubling me over. One minute my biggest concern was whether I wanted to settle down in Seattle or move on. Now my parents were dead, and I was my brother’s guardian. I had no idea what that meant.

  Latasha’s arms closed around me. She made gentle shushing sounds, as though I were a toddler on the verge of having a tantrum. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course you don’t know all the details, and this is hardly the time to talk about it.” She put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me, her dark brown eyes wet with tears. “How can I help?”

  I stood and paced around the living room, hoping movement would hold back the inevitable wave of grief. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Do about what? There must be some way we can help,” Amy said.

  “I’m Wes’s guardian now.”

  Latasha exhaled loudly. “Ah.”

  “I guess . . . I’ll figure it out when I get there. I mean, I have to go home right away. I don’t know for how long. At least for the funeral, and I have to make sure Wes is okay. It might take me a few days to set everything up, with his new apartment and all . . . and there will be family stuff to sort out.”

  Latasha watched me pace and ramble, but was strangely silent.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Will he be okay on his own?” Latasha asked. “Or does this mean you have to move back there, for good?” A pained expression spread across her face.

  “No,” I said firmly. “I’m never moving back there.”

  Latasha didn’t respond. I turned my back and headed up the stairs, not knowing where else to go. I closed my bedroom door and sat down on the bed.

  I pictured my parents’ faces, smiling in a photo from the top of the Empire State Building. Taken on one of their adventures, it was the last photo they’d emailed me. My parents loved going for short weekend jaunts, and they’d dreamed of traveling to Europe once Wes and I were on our own. But Wes’s illness was expensive. They never got their chance.

  My breath hitched, and I let out a small gasp. All I had ever wanted, ever since Wes’s problems started, was a normal life: a life with a brother who played football and dated girls; a life where I was just Clare Campbell, not the sister of the town freak; a life where we would grow up and have jobs and families and barbecues in each other’s backyards. It had all gone so incredibly wrong. Now I was an orphan—and my brother’s de facto parent.

  I shook my head and fought back tears. Enough. I told myself all the platitudes about death I’d heard over the years. They’re in a better place. Except I didn’t believe in heaven. They’re no longer suffering. They hadn’t been suffering in the first place. This is all part of God’s plan. I really hated a God who would make plans like this. It was their time to go. This was the absolute worst possible time.

  My hands balled into
fists and pressed into my forehead as I sat doubled over on the edge of the bed. I couldn’t keep the memories out now: memories of my mom’s perfume as she bent over my shoulder to help me with my homework, of my dad waiting for me at the finish line of my first cross-country race, of my mom’s face beaming as she brought out yet another spectacularly decorated cake for my birthday, of my dad and me sharing the newspaper over breakfast, pointing out articles of interest to each other. Gone. Gone. Gone.

  Latasha knocked at the door. “You okay?”

  I got up and opened it, letting my face speak for itself. She wrapped her arms around me and I finally dissolved, leaving great wet slimy patches on her shoulder.

  “I guess I need to book a flight,” I said, my voice muffled against her shoulder.

  “I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll see what’s available for tomorrow morning. You try and get some rest.”

  She kissed my salty cheeks and then closed the door softly behind her. A moment later the front door opened and closed, meaning Amy had left. I lay down on the bed, knowing rest would be a long time coming.

  I reached for my phone and flipped through my emails, looking for the last one from my mom. She’d sent it a few days ago, and I hadn’t responded yet. There was nothing urgent in the message, just small talk about her new hairdresser and how the pastor at church was taking a sabbatical and some young guy was coming in to take his place for the year, and how Dad had put up a few new bird feeders, these ones squirrel-proof, he hoped. She ended with her customary line: “It would be nice to hear from you once in a while, you know.”

  I hadn’t responded. Not out of spite or anger. Life had simply gotten in the way.

  I buried my face in my pillow. Wes, oh Wes, how are you going to handle this? What could I possibly say to comfort him? He and our parents had been locked in an eternal struggle of abuse and forgiveness—him doing the abusing and them doing the forgiving. They were the rocks he had thrown himself against time and time again. Who would absorb the impact now?