The Clinic

by David Jester

  “Do you like all animals?” Malcolm asked.

  Neil nodded again, with more enthusiasm this time. Malcolm could see a light behind his eyes, but not the psychopathic light he had seen in the killers, this was the light of innocence, of an enthusiastic child talking about his hobbies or his friends. He saw intelligence and pain, he had never been a firm believer that you could tell anything about a person from their eyes or their expression, but something about the kid in front of him—something that resided deep within his smile and his eyes—told him that he was dealing with someone complex, someone deep, someone intelligent and someone who had suffered a lot.

  “I like the way they eat and move.” Neil repeated. “Simple but funny.”

  “I like that too,” Malcolm agreed. He paused and looked around, his eyes lingered on the slaughter room before he dragged them back to Neil. “D’you know what’s happening here, Neil?”

  Neil held his stare and then looked away. Malcolm thought he saw a timid nod.

  “A lot of people are getting hurt,” Malcolm said. “You don’t have anything to do with that though, do you?”

  Neil returned his stare and shook his head vigorously, Malcolm didn’t need clarification, he didn’t think that Neil was capable of lying to him.

  “I tried to hide,” Neil said softly. “They left me alone. But then . . .” he trailed off, his eyes tracing over where the mouse had been.

  “But then you followed that little fella, right?”

  Neil nodded.

  “Do you know what’s happening here?” Malcolm asked again.

  Neil met his eyes for a moment and then turned away.

  “Please Neil,” Malcolm begged. “If you know something, you need to tell me. I want to help you and your little friend, but I can’t if I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “You’re not one of them, are you?”

  “Malcolm shook his head. “I’m a . . .” he paused. “A visitor here,” he said, knowing Neil wouldn’t question him.

  “So, do you know something?” Malcolm asked.

  Neil raised his head again and stared deeply into Malcolm’s eyes. Malcolm thought he saw a wry smile, a glimmer of something previously unseen, but it didn’t linger. Neil nodded. “Yes.”

  31

  Darren kept his distance, walking a few feet behind Eddie. Eddie was honored, but also a little disgusted, that his friend would revere him so much. They had known each other for a long time, he thought, it was about time that Darren finally showed him some respect.

  Eddie had the knife now, still fresh with the blood of the two madmen that had tried to kill him. He had the upper hand in every way. He had worried that Darren might try to attack him, he clearly saw him as a threat and, when Darren had the knife, there was a chance he might have tried to take him out, but now he had lost his chance. It thrilled Eddie to know that at any moment he could kill his friend, but he wasn’t going to. He was going to be the bigger man and give him a chance to redeem himself, to prove that he wasn’t a worthless piece of shit who was afraid of his own shadow.

  Eddie walked tall and proud through the corridors, on the lookout for any more threats while his weedy friend cowered behind him. He saw Darren try to hide a few times, saw him look like he was preparing to run away, probably to cower in a corner somewhere like the feeble prick he was, but Eddie kept his eye on him, showing him the knife in his hand and the intent in his eyes.

  “I’m new,” Neil explained. He wasn’t comfortable looking Malcolm in the eye and preferred to avert his stare when he spoke, like a timid child being addressed by a stern adult. “They transferred me here a few weeks ago because . . .” he trailed off.

  “What you’re in here for isn’t important to me,” Malcolm explained.

  “I didn’t do anything bad,” Neil said, quickly meeting Malcolm’s stare. “Honestly I didn’t, I’m a good kid, they all say that. I’m not violent, I’m not—”

  “I believe you,” Malcolm said, fearing he was losing him. “So, what happened? Were the others always this violent?”

  Neil shook his head and looked thoughtful for a moment. “There were others who were just like me. Quiet. Soft. There were violent ones, too, men that screamed and banged all night long, but most of them were okay.” He tightened up his posture, hugged his knees closer to his chest, Malcolm thought he saw him shiver.

  “So what happened?”

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t know?”

  Neil shook his head again; he seemed reluctant to talk, reluctant to even contemplate what had happened.

  “You must know something. How did this all start?”

  Neil lifted his eyes, meeting Malcolm’s questioning gaze and then down the hallway, into a stretch of flickering light, at the end of which was a pair of double doors.

  “What’s down there?” Malcolm asked.

  “The security room,” Neil told him. “That’s where they watch the cameras.” He looked up and Malcolm followed his gaze. Black fixtures the size of tennis balls were embedded at the top of the walls. Malcolm had seen them in many of the rooms and assumed they were lights, but, now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen any of them illuminated.

  “Those are cameras?” he asked.

  Neil nodded. “They attacked the security room first. That way no one could see what happened elsewhere . . .” he slowed his speech and then tucked his head into his knees when he had finished. “I saw it though.” His words muffled as they filtered through his clothing. “I saw it all.”

  Malcolm nodded, he turned to the cameras and then back to Neil. The youngster look petrified and was visibly shaking.

  “You don’t know what started this?” he asked.

  Neil didn’t reply but Malcolm heard a strangled tear escape, then, after a few moments, he heard the murmuring restart as Neil began to rock—mumbling away his troubles, keeping his mind occupied and the memories at bay.

  Malcolm rested a hand on his knee and then quickly retracted it when Neil flinched. He stood and looked down at him. “I’m going to go check something out,” he said. “Will you be okay if I leave you here?”

  Neil didn’t reply, he continued to rock, to murmur.

  “I’ll be back,” Malcolm assured him.

  Still Neil didn’t reply, but Malcolm couldn’t afford to stay with him. He had to find his friends, to find answers, to find an escape route; he reasoned that the security room, and the monitors installed there, was probably the best place to start.

  Eddie was becoming familiar with the smell of death, a sickly-sweet stench that invaded his sinuses and threatened to remain there forever, and he recognized it as soon as he entered the large room. The room was well lit, unlike the others, and looked fairly clean. A few bottles of pills had been scattered on the floor but there was nothing too messy, nothing too out of place. Then he saw the open door, saw and smelled the blood that had been painted over the walls and floors.

  “Holy fucking shit,” he whispered.

  Darren was a few paces behind him and nearly fainted when he glimpsed the carnage. He backed away from the room while Eddie remained, standing in the doorway and grinning as he listened to his friend retching.

  It was pungent, worse than the others had been, but it was the sheer volume of blood and guts that set this room apart from the others. Eddie was drawn in, unable to take his eyes from it. He was strong, unlike his friend. He didn’t have a weak stomach and didn’t feel nauseous at the smell; he enjoyed it, it excited a part of him that rarely had a chance to shine.

  “Grow a pair of fucking balls,” he called over his shoulder. “It’s just a bit of blood.” Except that it was more than just a bit of blood, and he knew it.

  He looked around, took in the bodies that had been scattered over the floor like offal at a slaughterhouse. He ran over their faces, some rapidly decomposing, some mutilated beyond recognition, others face down in a pool of blood. He stopped when he studied the face closest to the door, he recognize
d him as the man he had bumped into in the hallway, The Thing, the bounding beast that had had a chance to kill him, but had merely pranced on by as if Eddie wasn’t there.

  Someone had caught up with him and judging by the wounds in his back, someone had taken advantage of him, stabbing him as he pranced on by, just as Eddie wished he had done.

  Eddie felt a presence behind him and he turned, ready to congratulate Darren on finally having the balls to see this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, but Darren wasn’t standing behind him, the shadow he had chased through half of the hospital was.

  Eddie stared at it, looking into where he thought its eyes should be. He didn’t speak, didn’t ask it any questions. He didn’t lunge at it, threaten to stab it, or tackle it to the ground. He didn’t want to grab it anymore, didn’t need to know who or what it was, he knew what it was there for and he knew what he had to do.

  When it moved away from the door, Eddie followed it.

  32

  The shadow led Eddie to the corner of the room, past Darren—bent-double by the entrance, a stringy line of vomit-tainted saliva stretching from his mouth to the floor—and past the open door to the bathroom. It led him to a small alcove and to the smaller boy who was waiting there, mumbling softly to himself with his head buried in his knees like some feeble-minded dimwit who had given up on life despite having never really gotten his start.

  It loomed over the boy, as if the walls themselves were reaching out to grab him, and then it dispersed and the boy looked up at Eddie.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I’ll ask the fucking questions,” Eddie said. “Who the fuck are you, and what the hell went on back there?” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the room of death, the boy looked towards it but didn’t seem interested. There was no emotion on his face, though he seemed very interested in Eddie.

  “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stuttered in reply.

  “Bullshit.” Eddie pointed the knife at the youngster and warned him, “Start talking or things’ll get messy.”

  The kid looked at the knife and nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said. “I did it.”

  “You killed all of those people?”

  The youngster nodded and looked away shyly. Eddie had a hard time believing that someone so feeble could have butchered so many people, but it didn’t surprise him.

  He turned around and saw that Darren was still struggling to hold down his dinner. He was still hovering outside the room of death, still retching and trying to get away from the smell and the memory, both of which threatened to linger for an eternity. Eddie turned his attention back to the kid in front of him; he was looking at him, ready to meet his gaze. Eddie stared into his eyes for a moment, the kid was trying to look soft and naive, trying to feign a childish innocence, but Eddie could see it now; he could see the evil, the blackness in his soul. He had seen the same in the man on the staircase and he had seen the same in the two men that had threatened to kill him and Darren. He knew that no matter how weak and pathetic this kid looked, he was capable of horrific things and he needed to stop him.

  The double doors led into a short corridor, flanked by two large wards. At the end of the corridor was a large room. The door was a heavy security door, but it had been battered and dented, the handle had been broken and the lock snapped off. The door hung open, no longer able to fit in its frame.

  Malcolm wasn’t afraid, he knew that nothing pleasant awaited him on the other side of the door, but his chances of encountering anything worse than what he had already seen were slim.

  A security guard lay sprawled on the floor inside the room. He had put up a fight, two of the fingers on his right hand pointed in opposing directions; his nose had been broken and one of his top teeth poked through the flesh on his upper lip, the blood around the wound had dried into a thick, congealed mustache.

  He had been beaten heavily, his face was swollen and his body bent at awkward angles, but it was the stab wounds that had finished him off. Malcolm side-stepped the blood on the floor, the room was small and—along two toppled chairs and some broken equipment—the body took up much of the floor space. Malcolm sat down on one of the chairs in front of a large bank of monitors, only then did he see the second corpse in the chair next to him. This security guard was fatter and older; it looked like he was only a few months away from a heart attack before a shape blade had carved a wide smile into his throat.

  Malcolm turned away from the dead bodies and tried to ignore the heavy stench of blood and decay that clogged the unventilated room, a stench that he had become so accustomed to that his senses were already starting to ignore. He set his sights on the array of monitors in front of him. Some had been broken in the struggle and others had been ripped out of the wall, but a few of them still worked and in one of them he saw Darren and Eddie.

  They were standing in the room he had just been inside, he was less than thirty feet away from them, but something stopped him from running out to greet them. Something worried him, and the longer he stared at the screen, the more worried he felt.

  “Get up,” Eddie ordered, gesturing with the knife, a reminder that he was armed and in control.

  The youngster looked at the knife and then into Eddie’s eyes. He shook his head and looked away.

  “Get. The. Fuck. Up.” Eddie said, taking a step towards him.

  Still the kid didn’t move, still he remained curled into a ball with his head buried in his knees, seemingly hoping that if he didn’t see the world then it wouldn’t see him.

  Eddie kicked him, softly at first, aiming a toecap at his thighs, but when he didn’t respond beyond a soft and muffled yelp, he kicked him harder, driving his foot into his stomach and forcing him to recoil. The youngster toppled sideways, kicked out his torso, and released a strangled cry. He righted himself instantly, threw out his arms in front of Eddie to deflect further blows and then rose to his feet, using the wall as a support and keeping his eyes on his attacker.

  “What the fuck?” the youngster spat. “Who do you think you are?”

  “Excuse me?” Eddie said.

  “Kicking me like that,” The boy spat. “You fucking ginger tosser. You think you’re all that, but you’re just a pathetic little prick.”

  Eddie’s mouth hung open. He felt his hand tighten around the knife. Darren put a hand on Eddie’s arm but Eddie flinched, backed away, and nearly swung for his friend.

  “Calm down,” Darren said.

  “Calm down?” Eddie spat. “Did you hear this fucking cunt?”

  The youngster was still murmuring; his words were rapid mumbles and his face was a mess of nervous tics. He looked like he was ready to cry, “I didn’t say anything,” he begged, his eyes pleading with Darren.

  “I fucking heard you!” Eddie spat, pointing the knife at him and taking a step towards him. The youngster backed up until he was against the wall, Eddie had him cornered.

  “I’ll show you who’s a ginger tosser,” Eddie said.

  The youngster looked appalled, a tear rolled down his cheek, his face was flustered, his head beading with sweat, his eyes ready to pop out of his skull. “I didn’t—” he looked at Darren, begging. “I swear—”

  “Kill him,” Eddie heard Darren say.

  Eddie turned to his friend. “What?”

  “You heard me,” Darren said. “He’s mad. You’ll be doing the world a favor. Kill him.”

  Eddie looked at the youngster again, he expected a startled response, expected him to be in tears over Darren’s words, but he seemed to have settled, the words had seemingly calmed him down. Maybe he knew he was mad, Eddie thought, maybe he knew he was a danger to the world and maybe he knew there was only one way of fixing that.

  “Okay,” Eddie said with a nod, half to himself. “I guess there’s nothing else for it.”

  Malcolm watched the scene unfold through the monitor. He saw Eddie talking to Neil and he knew something wasn’t right with his friend. He no longer recogn
ized the voice, the face, or the attitude of his former friend. He sensed something amiss with his tone and with the way his eyes darted around, as if they weren’t even looking at the kid in front of him.

  He was enthralled by what was happening on screen and, though he knew a storm was coming and he knew that he needed to stop it, he couldn’t drag himself away. He didn’t hear what Neil said to Eddie, but he heard the reaction and he heard Darren’s intervention. Darren begged Eddie to leave the kid alone, trying to convince him that this feeble, frail youngster had done nothing wrong, but Eddie didn’t seem to understand.

  Malcolm knew something bad was about to happen and this time he managed to drag his eyes away from the screen. He took two strides before he burst into a run, heading for the room at full speed to save Neil’s—and possibly Darren’s—life.

  33

  Eddie picked the kid up by his collar. He felt light in his arms, nothing more than skin and bone. The heaviness that lurked in his soul, the evil that had murdered those people, didn’t weigh a thing and didn’t fight against him as Eddie lifted him up and rammed him against the wall.

  The kid squealed like a stuck pig, his eyes opened wide and looking into Eddie’s with horror. Eddie felt resistance on his shoulder and turned to see Darren tugging at him; he shrugged him off, dropped the kid and then waved the knife at his friend.

  “I’m doing it!” Eddie yelled at him. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

  He turned back to the kid, in the split second that Eddie had looked away, he hadn’t moved. He had a chance to run, but he hadn’t budged an inch. The killer instinct in him was telling him to stay, he probably enjoyed the fight and the struggle as much as Eddie did, and even though he was going to be on the losing end of it this time, he clearly wanted to stay and experience it.

  Eddie tossed the knife from his right hand to his left and then drove a fist across the other kid’s face. He reveled in the feeling of his fist crunching against jawbone and grinned maliciously as the vibration reverberated through his knuckles and along his forearm.