by David Jester
“We didn’t take him away from you,” Malcolm’s mother piped up, shifting her gaze from her son for the first time. “It was the hospital, not us.”
Doctor Hildenberg grinned and looked at Darren and Malcolm. “Believe me, the hospital and its staff has had its punishment. Isn’t that right kids?”
Neither of them answered but they knew he was right. The hospital had been torn apart from the inside out; the staff had been tortured, scared out of their wits, and then slaughtered. The hospital would never recover from an incident like this and the teenagers knew it, as did the doctor.
“They sent me to an asylum, sent me away from my child,” he continued. “But I came back. I changed my name, applied for a job, and these idiots took me. Within weeks I was working on my old experiments, manipulating the patients to my will.” He looked proud of himself, almost giddy as he relayed his accomplishments. “I created a Trojan horse in the mind of the patients. They were weak and susceptible; it didn’t take much. I gave them a trigger and released them all at once.”
“I don’t get it,” Darren jumped in. “If you wanted us alive, why did they try to kill us?”
The doctor shrugged casually. “A minor mishap. I couldn’t make them as selective as I thought, but,” he looked to the front of the stage, to where the two goons had returned to wait for their part in this sickening spectacle. “I drafted in a few bodyguards to help keep you alive, to guide you and bring you to me when everything was ready.”
The doctor turned to Malcolm and grinned widely, he was silent, as if waiting for Malcolm to speak, to admit; eventually he said, “Although it seems the patients weren’t the only murderers here. You killed one of my men, didn’t you?”
Malcolm glared. “It’s hard to tell the psychos apart in this place. They all wear the same clothes: pajamas, dressing gowns . . .” he paused to look the doctor up and down, “white coats.”
The doctor stared at Malcolm, lost in thought, a touch of awe on his smile.
“What about Red here,” Darren asked, nodding towards Marshall. “Why did he go all psycho, was that you as well?”
The doctor didn’t look towards Darren; he didn’t seem to want to peel his eyes away from Malcolm. Marshall took the lead instead, an expression of devilment on his face as he strode towards his former friend and watched him twitch and squirm in his seat.
“For years you’ve mocked me, toyed with me—”
“We were friends,” Darren spat, annoyed. “Mocking and toying was exactly what it was. It was harmless. You knew that then and you accepted it, but now,” he looked to the doctor and back again. “Now that Dr. Evil is on the scene; you’ve lost your shit.”
“He’s my dad.”
“What about your other parents, eh? They looked after you for years; they let you get away with murder.”
Marshall threw his head back and laughed. The doctor broke his stare with Malcolm and turned to grin at his son and then at Darren.
“Funny you should say that,” Marshall said eventually, the humor in his laugh was fake, so contrived and unnatural that it sent a chill up Darren’s spine. Something wasn’t right, whatever had once existed inside Eddie, whatever had once made him their friend and their companion, had gone—replaced by a soulless void, Marshall.
Darren waited for Marshall to elaborate, but no explanation came. “Why?” he asked, his voice croaked and he repeated himself, trying to hide the obvious fear that trembled through his words.
“Because I killed them,” Marshall shrugged as he spoke, as if the act had been easy and had meant nothing to him.”
“Bullshit,” Darren said.
“It’s true.” Hildenberg stepped forward, looking proudly at his son. “A little unexpected, but my son was feeling a lot of repressed rage, rather like you two were, only more so.”
“You brought them here, too?” Darren asked. “Why? What—”
Eddie was shaking his head, he held up a finger and Darren stopped speaking. “I killed them before we came here, before we left.”
Darren remembered Eddie waiting for them outside his house, he remembered the expression on his face, the glint in his eye; he remembered the way he had shifted from foot to foot, looking up and down the street with the suspicion of a criminal.
“Holy shit,” he said softly. “You knew all this time?”
Marshall shook his head. “Maybe deep down. But not really.”
“My son has gone through a lot, we both have,” the doctor clarified. “I didn’t ask him to kill his parents, but he did it and I’ll stand by him. He was acting on his own urges. He was drawn to kill them just like he was drawn here, just like he was drawn to kill some of the people in the hospital, people who had wronged me and, by definition, him. He did well. I guess I underestimated him,” he said softly, patting his child awkwardly on the back.
“This is like a Bates’ family reunion,” Darren said, shaking his head.
The smile vanished from the doctor’s face; he turned away from Darren, glanced briefly at Malcolm, and then addressed the small crowd, the waiting parents who had come to watch their children die. “I think we’ve done enough talking. I’ve been waiting a long time for this, what do you say we get this show on the road?”
Horrified faces stared back at him; the only one that agreed was Marshall, who was nodding with glee beside his newfound father.
39
“There was really only one way I could do this,” Hildenberg announced, soaking in the apprehension at the end of his sentence. “Death can be quick, it can also be messy, but I want it to be slow.” He addressed the parents in the audience. “I want you to suffer as I suffered, I want you to know what it’s like to be unable to help your child, to be unable to protect them, or to take away their pain.”
He moved to the side of the stage, Malcolm twisted his neck and watched him out of the corner of his eye. His heart was beating ferociously in his chest; it sank into his stomach when he saw the can of petrol in the doctor’s hands.
“You’re going to burn,” he told Malcolm and Darren matter-of-factly, before turning to the parents. “And you’re going to watch.”
“This is not the answer!” Malcolm’s mother shouted. “We had nothing to do with what happened to you, we’re sorry, but please . . . don’t do this to my boy.”
“Your boy?” He raised an eyebrow at her, Malcolm knew what he was thinking; he was thinking the same. “Is this the same boy that you abandoned for a cheap affair with a degenerate?” He shook his head. “People like you both amaze and sicken me.”
He turned to his bodyguards and gestured towards the parents. “Gag them again,” he ordered, just as Malcolm’s mother released a torrent of abuse towards the doctor, “I don’t want to be interrupted by their screaming.”
The bodyguards acknowledged the order and slowly moved to the end of the stage in tandem, a Laurel and Hardy double act, just as the doctor had ordered. He grinned at his creations. That grin disappeared when the spotlights crashed down on top of the two men.
They crumpled under the thunderous impact. The lights shattered on one of their skulls, showering splinters of glass down his face and spraying them across the stage. The second was hit by the pole that held the two lights together, it was a heavy, solid steel support and the impact was enough to crush his skull. They were both dead before they hit the floor.
The lights flickered madly on top of the two bodies as everyone in the room stared in disbelief. It was sudden, it was loud and it was deadly. They had fallen on top of each other, their limp bodies overlapping. A pool of blood spread around them, slowly oozing over the stage.
The doctor looked up to the rafters and then towards Marshall who was still staring at the two dead patients. “Go and check it out,” he ordered.
“What?” Marshall said, turning towards his father, a look of bewilderment on his face.
“That wasn’t an accident,” he said, hiding the trepidation in his voice. “Go backstage and check it out.”
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Marshall turned towards the backstage area. It was unlit and fed off the light from the main stage, but after a certain point the darkness seemed impenetrable and the turnoffs—into the dressing rooms and storerooms—looked menacing. He looked back at his father, uncertainty on his face and in his voice. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m fucking sure,” Hildenberg snapped. “Look at them!” he said, gesticulating madly towards the murdered henchmen. The spotlight was still connected to the mains and was flickering and fizzing on top of them, one of their legs was twitching madly, as if trying to tap out a tune to the rhythm of the hissing electricity. “That wasn’t a fucking accident,” he repeated.
“Okay,” Marshall nodded, hiding the apprehension on his face. He straightened his back and puffed out his chest. “You’re right. Someone’s fucking with us. I’ll go and check it out,” he said proudly, the tone of a kid trying to impress his dad.
Hildenberg smiled disingenuously, hiding his frustration. He waited until his son strode confidently into the darkness before he turned towards his audience. “A minor mishap,” he assured them.
“You call that minor?” Darren mocked, nodding towards the twitching leg of the dead bodyguard.
Hildenberg followed Darren’s eyes, he prepared a rebuttal, prepared to intimidate Darren and to remind him of what awaited him, but when his eyes fell upon the two dead guards his words caught in his throat. Inside he prayed that it was minor and that he hadn’t just sent his son to his death.
Marshall slowed as he entered the darkness. He slapped the wall, looking for a switch, but he failed to find one. He ventured onwards regardless, into the encroaching darkness, relying on a quickly developing night vision and the knowledge that if someone was waiting for him, they would be at just as much of a disadvantage as he was.
He heard the calls from the audience as the parents shouted at the doctor, abusing him. Marshall found them sickening, they were horrible people and they deserved to suffer; they deserved to die just as much as Malcolm and Darren did. He was indifferent to the deaths of his former friends—though he understood the reasons that they had to die—but he would happily watch the parents die. They deserved it more. He knew that they would be next, knew that after they had watched their sons being burned alive, they would be killed. His father would enjoy their pain for a while, he would revel in their agony, but then he would kill them in the same way.
He grinned in anticipation as he walked backstage. He walked past the suits and costumes, used for drama therapy by patients that were now dead or insane. He was so lost in his own head, wrapped in his thoughts, that he didn’t see the figure stepping out from behind the clothes. He didn’t see it raise the fire extinguisher and didn’t see it swinging down toward him.
40
Malcolm enjoyed the expression on the doctor’s face. He had watched and listened as the smug madman had recounted his story with the glee of a James Bond villain; he had suffered under his ego, listened to his stories of redemption and been forced to sit there as he told Malcolm he was going to torture him and kill him, but now the doctor looked terrified and that brought a smile to Malcolm’s face.
Malcolm had nearly jumped out of his skin when the spotlights fell on the bodyguards. He hadn’t been watching them at the time and had only seen the falling lights out of the corner of his eye—the noise had been alarming and the result was catastrophic. He had also heard the noise backstage: the grunt and the bang. He didn’t expect anything from it; he didn’t expect to be saved. There was no one else in the hospital that knew they were there, no one on their side ready to save the day. He knew there was no hope for him or Darren, but the doctor didn’t know that and Malcolm enjoyed the fear on his face as he pondered the possibilities on his night of vengeance being ruined.
Malcolm heard a shuffling sound. A slow, staggering sound that grew in volume with each ominous shuffle. It sounded like something heavy being dragged across a wooden floor and it was getting closer and closer. Malcolm stopped smiling and turned towards the backstage area, towards the darkness, wondering what would emerge.
The shuffling continued, capturing the attention of the entire room. Everyone was silent as they listened and waited, the fizz from the buzzing lights and half a dozen heavy breaths were the only accompanying noises as the shuffling increased.
When the source of the noise emerged, Malcolm realized that there was one person in the hospital that he knew, one person that knew he was there and might look upon him favorably, but he was the last person he had expected to see, the last person he would ever expect to see striding onto the stage with a knife in one hand and Marshall’s unconscious body being dragged in the other.
“Who the fuck are you?” Hildenberg said, staring at the newcomer as he made his way straight towards the doctor before stopping, dropping Marshall’s body behind him, and then planting a foot on his neck.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you don’t recognize me,” he said, grinning madly, the same grin that had been displayed on Marshall’s face for most of the night, the same grin that the doctor himself had expressed during his gleeful act. “Although I’m amazed you don’t see the similarities.”
The doctor shook his head. “I don’t . . .” He couldn’t find the words and seemed lost in the newcomer’s eyes.
“Neil?” Malcolm said, speaking for him. “What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry I’m late,” Neil said, glancing towards Malcolm but still trying to maintain eye contact with Hildenberg. “I was just waiting for the right time,” he added, nodding towards the two bodies at the edge of the stage.
“I don’t understand,” Malcolm said. The Neil he saw now wasn’t the same scared kid he had seen earlier. This one looked vibrant, mad. He looked stronger than he was before, much more confident. He seemed at ease with himself and with the world around him. Malcolm hadn’t seen the resemblance before but he saw it now. He didn’t look like him, his hair was a different color, he was a different build, but he saw it in the way he smiled, the way he stood. He looked like Marshall.
“There’s a lot to explain,” Neil said. “But, unlike the good doctor here, I’m not one for big explanations so I’ll keep it simple.”
He reached down and grabbed Marshall by the hair, yanking him upright. Marshall stirred, bringing a look of relief to his father’s face—who had considered that he might be dead—until Neil brought the knife to Marshall’s throat.
“This little prick here, is my brother,” Neil said, pressing the knife into Marshall’s throat, as if a mere mention of the fraternal link disgusted him. “You see, his mother, my mother, didn’t have just one baby. She had twins.” He told the doctor. “If you’d have stuck around a bit longer, you might have learned that.”
The doctor put a hand to his head, ran it through his hair. “This can’t be. . .”
“Ah, but it is. Not identical of course, I clearly got all the looks, but we’re twins.” He yanked Marshall harder by the hair, caused him to moan; his eyes fluttered, as if he was about to open them, but they remained closed.
The doctor was shaking his head, “But there was only one adoption certificate.”
“Because I wasn’t adopted. This one was lucky,” he said, yanking Marshall’s hair again, grimacing through gritted teeth as he did so. “I was sent to a home. I was a sweet little baby, I stood every chance of being adopted like him, but then word got out about my father and my mother.” He paused to stare at the doctor. “No one wants a psycho kid from a psycho family.”
Marshall stirred again; Neil kicked him hard in the ribs, a cathartic release of some inner angst.
“I spent my infancy in an orphanage and my childhood in a psychiatric hospital,” he shrugged. “Schizophrenic they said, I guess I’m a product of my father’s creation. You made me like this. You ruined my life. You raped my mother, ignored my existence, and then had the nerve to try to fuck with me. I was transferred here when I heard you had returned, I managed to fiddle
the files, to make sure I came here. I was hoping for some recognition, I was hoping that you would at least remember me before I killed you, but not only didn’t you recognize me, you actually had the nerve to try to mold my mind like one of your psychotic fucking patients.”
“Remember you? But I didn’t know, I didn’t—”
“Shut up!” Neil screamed, his voice breaking. “What about this piece of shit?” he said, his voice loud enough to tear his own throat. “You remembered him. You engineered your entire career to get him back. What about me, eh? Where the fuck did I fit into your plans?”
“I honestly didn’t know, I thought—”
“You thought nothing,” Neil snapped. He lifted Marshall up, pressed him against his torso, pointing him towards his father, and pressing the knife against his throat. Marshall opened his eyes and looked at his father, he looked confused, dazed.
“What do you want?” Hildenberg asked, switching his worried expression between his two sons. “I’ll give you whatever you want, just don’t hurt him.”
Neil laughed. A laugh that sent a chill through Malcolm and Darren, they had heard the same callous cacophony spew from Marshall’s lungs only moments earlier. “You don’t understand,” he said, staring at his estranged father over his brother’s shoulder. “This is what I want. I’m not here to negotiate; I’m here to see the expression on your face as I kill your precious little boy.”
Hildenberg’s eyes opened wide, he made a move forward, to dive at his sons and save Marshall, but Neil moved before he could. He dragged the blade across his brother’s throat, opening a large wound which immediately showered blood down his torso. Marshall’s eyes continued to stare into his father’s, continued to try to grasp what he had woken up to. He looked down, at the blood spewing from the hole in his throat, he tried to cup it, tried to lap at it, but the torrent continued. Eventually, with one last glance at his father—a trembling mess of rage and despair— Marshall slumped forward, facedown into a pool of his own blood.
