Zombie Drug Run

  Chapter 18: The Talk with the Doctor

  William pulled the Lexus up short in the parking space and fixed his eyes on the massive Doric columns standing sentinel alongside the sweeping facade, an elaborate gothic nightmare now aged and cracked to the point of seemingly murderous intent. The walls held the memory of white paint, but mildew had claimed domain in the many dank recesses surrounding the six-over-six windows and the fluted pilasters. Heaped pigeon shit encrusted a cracked-paned and empty dormer window on the third floor, and the steady flow of birds in and out of another vacant forth story window did nothing to soothe William’s already frayed nerves. The building was a nightmare, even in full light. An elderly lawn worker stood laconically, far back in the garden to the left, the only hint of his servitude rather than confinement, a uniform with his unintelligible name stitched across one breast. Take off the shirt and the man was, by all accounts, a patient. Either that or a statue.

  William reached for the door handle of the Lexus, fighting the temptation to use the cell phone. He wanted to know how things were rounding out with Lincoln, but didn’t feel up to the conversation. There would be enough inside to go around, he felt sure of that. A knot of tension pulled tight in his stomach. He closed his eyes and slowly counted to 10. “One goddamn thing at a time,” he said, popping the latch and getting out of the car.

  He uncoiled his full height with as much confidence as he could muster, and straightened out his pant legs and jacket front with hands that were too cold for the weather. He pretended not to notice them shake as he did so. Finally, he set his chin and started toward the recessed paneled doors with their dusty fanlight and surprisingly freshly-painted pediment. The painters obviously hadn’t gotten as far as the door yet either. And if one used the rest of the building as a standard, it might have a long wait ahead. As he got closer he imagined the entrance to Hell having an identical set of solid oak, ten-foot-high double doors with identical brass knockers pressed into the muddy side of some deep circle Dante had envisioned ages before. There, he’d figure them to be smoking. Here, they were not.

  Strange to have that called up now. His eleventh grade English teacher had assigned Dante’s The Inferno, and even though the majority of the class had bitched and moaned about it, William (who had never been anything close to an avid reader) soon found himself immersed in the fiery vision. With a sense of cloying dread he’d forced his way through the masterpiece, somehow comprehending the mixed-up wordplay with some uncanny sixth sense he’d been previously unaware of.

  But he’d never read it in the house. Not in his mother’s house.

  He’d read it sitting beneath a diseased elm near one corner of their vast lawn. And the nights that had followed were still clear to him in shades of orange and red. It was then Pandemonium became an actuality in his mind, and in each diabolical realm there was always his mother holding forth.

  He was sweating now as he approached the doors, and he paused to take a handkerchief out of his pocket. He wiped it across his forehead as he stood there. Glanced down at the linen, seeing the darkened, dirty swath his oils had cut across its clean surface. He didn’t figure much clean awaited him inside either. He looked back over his shoulder, seeking out the man in the garden. Yes, still there, unmoving, staring at the ground as if waiting for something to well up. Maybe he was a patient.

  Suddenly, the humiliation of peeing himself the day he’d found his mother and brother performing in his brother’s bedroom floated to the center of his mind like a stray chip an unwitting miner had knocked free from a colossal, richly imbued vein of coal. He swallowed down the rising bile and reached for the doorknob. Oddly enough, it was cool to the touch.

  Inside, the pristine lobby belied the belly of the beast. Smooth, polished tile reflected brilliantly from the second-story chandelier; replicas of some late Renaissance era painter hung high enough for the untrained eye to be fooled by their brightly copied extravagance. A wide, wrap-around balcony played along the upper two stories, funneling up to a Grecian dome protected from the sunlight by thick sheets of supposedly imported stained glass. In reality, the windows came from a glass-works shop in downtown Tupelo, from the cousin of a former state senator, but since no one questioned the mixture of Renaissance and Greco furnishings and artwork rampant all around, it took no extreme stretch to imagine the unschooled viewer transported to some European block country. The elaborate falseness of the entirety made William’s stomach turn. He was all too well aware of the true purpose behind this uneasy façade. This was a house of devils.

  He forced his feet to move him up to the receptionist’s desk. Uh huh, he thought, the same old black woman he’d met every time (she didn’t seem to remember a goddamn thing) sat heavily behind the walnut-covered veneer, her head bent down in an intense examination of the latest National Enquirer. William stood quietly before the sign-in sheet, letting almost a minute elapse before finally tapping his finger on the surface of the desk next to the absurd quill pen. Her obvious, and even self-righteous, disinterest was clear from her first glance. She didn’t know who he was and cared even less. William fought to hold his tongue in check.

  “I help you?” she asked, holding an arthritic finger to the place she’d left off in the magazine.

  “Yes, I hope you can. I’m here to see Mrs. Nadine Franklin.” Then when he didn’t get the needed response. “She’s one of your residents on the fourth floor.” That was the secret, really, to the building. From the lobby it appeared the structure had three working floors, with the dome capping the false European architecture, but it wasn’t so. The pigeons he’d seen from the parking lot were a testament to this fact. Part of the fourth floor was still functioning, a set-aside lock-down for the hopelessly lost, hidden from the public eye and padded by space and lumber against the mad sounds of the damned it contained.

  A strange look came over the old woman’s face as her hand slid slowly from its place in the magazine. At the same time a sharp knot formed up in William’s throat and he knew he wouldn’t ask again. He heard her say, slowly, “Mrs. Nadine Franklin?”

  He nodded. Looked her dead on.

  “Okay, sir…” she said, seeming to remember him now as she tried to hide her nervousness. This whole fucking crew just gave her the ever-living creeps. She broke eye contact. “Yeah, Miss Franklin. And you her…?” she didn’t finish but didn’t look up either.

  “Son,” he answered, suddenly aware of how tight his collar had gotten.

  “Okay, okay…” she said. “Just a second,” folding up the National Enquirer and pilfering mindlessly through another pile of shit on her desk that had absolutely nothing to do with his request. He watched her reach for a small tablet by a lipstick-stained coffee cup. She flipped through it quickly, her gnarled fingers moving surprisingly quick. William rubbed a hand across his dry lips and backed a pace away. She was scared to fucking death. His heart raced as he looked around, trying to be normal. Soon, the whole goddamn place would know her son was back. She pointed at something in the little tablet and put the phone to her ear, looking up at him finally with a timid, doleful stare. “It’ll jus be a minute, sir,” she whispered as if a conspiracy suddenly surrounded the two. “If you’ll jus sit down I get a doctor with you in a minute.”

  William gave her a laconic nod and turned around slowly on his heels. Straight ahead, past a couple of columns that did not need to be there sat a leather full-size sofa with two matching club chairs. It was obviously supposed to suggest a feeling of family and home but in the spacious, sterile surroundings the arrangement only magnified the isolation he already felt. A thick, Oriental-patterned rug provided a footing for this “comfort zone,” along with a thick, walnut table placed behind the sofa and holding a fake plant. The only other thing was a coffee table spilling magazines out on the floor.

  He walked over and sat down, purposefully selecting the chair that faced away from the receptionist. He found himself fidgeting with his hands and grabbed a magazine off the coffee table. It
didn’t take him long to qualify the selection. Goddamn Psychology Today, Cosmopolitan, and People, with a scattering of Popular Mechanic and one or two National Geographic. The old bat up front must have had the other one. It made him want to scream.

  He was checking his watch for the fourth time in as many minutes when he heard the voice from behind. It was a feminine voice, but used to authority. William turned his head and caught a glimpse of a set of well-proportioned, stockinged legs moving his way. His eyes traveled up the white coat. The first thought that hit him when he saw her face was, she’s too young. But by that time she was standing in front of him. “Mr. Franklin,” she said flatly, holding out her hand. She didn’t smile.

  He nodded in return, starting to his feet before she held out her hand to stop him. “No need to stand, Mr. Franklin,” she said, looking around as if half-expecting someone to be listening in on their conversation. William folded back into the club chair; the furniture, like everything else inside this mind-fuck place, was simple façade, nothing substantial.

  “I’m William Franklin,” he said.

  She held a folder in her left hand, but acted like it wasn’t there. “You’re the oldest son,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  She skirted the coffee table and sat down on the couch. Placed the folder on the pile of magazines. She looked him in the eye and said, all business, “I’m Dr. Marshall, Deborah Marshall. I’m in charge of the Fourth Floor residents.” William almost choked to keep from laughing. Residents, give me a fucking break, he thought. Call them what they are: lunatics. He crossed his legs and put both hands together in his lap.

  “What happened to Dr. Oslow?” he asked.

  She looked off for the briefest second, as if in consideration of some ridiculousness, and came right back to his direct gaze. “Dr. Oslow is no longer on staff. He retired two years ago.”

  William’s jaw tightened with the thinly-veiled rebuke, and he breathed out, careful to avoid blinking. He decided to let her do the rest of the talking. At least for now.

  She leaned back on the couch, arranging her hands in her own lap as if she were mocking him. “If you’ll pardon my asking, what brings you here today, Mr. Franklin? It’s been almost eight months since her last visit, and that was your father…if I recall.”

  William let sit for four full beats before he said anything else. But he never took his eyes off her. “As a matter of fact, Dr. Marshall, I do fucking mind. She’s my fucking mother and I’ll see her when I wish and you don’t have a goddamn thing to do with it. In case you didn’t know, she is a private pay case.” He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward in the chair.

  Dr. Marshall remained nonplused. In fact, William’s aggression seemed to please her, if anything. She kept her legs crossed and her voice never wavered from the edge of quiet authority that was, if anything, even more controlled now that she had his hackles up. “Mr. Franklin,” she said. “You misunderstand me. I’m not trying to be argumentative or prying. Neither am I attempting to keep you from your mother. Please,” and she smiled. “If I offended you, accept my apology.”

  William considered another cutting remark, but decided against it. He didn’t want his father to hear about any of this shit.

  She seemed to read his mind. “My curiosity is simply piqued today because your father called.” She was looking down at her folder and didn’t acknowledge him flinch although he found it hard to believe she didn’t catch it. He wiped a hand across his face and cleared his throat.

  She brought her eyes up to his, just stared silently for a moment or two. “Mr. Franklin. Would you mind if we continued this in my office?”

  His reply was as short as his temper “Not at all, Doctor.”

  “Good.” She picked up the folder and abruptly stood up. William clearly saw his mother’s name on the tag. “It’s right around the corner,” she said, motioning in the general direction of the hallway leading off to the right past the receptionist’s area.

  He let her lead. She walked quicker than most women and their matching footsteps raised a mild clamor from the quiet, polished floor. She let him into her office as she stood off to the side, and he took one of the two smoking chairs positioned centrally in the spacious room in front of her monstrous desk. On it, nothing was out of place; everything seemed to have an unseen outline beneath it. But he noted that there were no pictures of children or significant other either. Besides the massive desk, the rest of the room was largely spartan. The only thing on the walls was a thin bookshelf stuffed into a corner, badly in need of dusting. Above the space behind her chair, perfectly centered between two parallel windows thickly shaded with dark blinds, hung two sheep-skinned degrees: Milsaps and Boston College. William thought it an odd pairing, but then what the hell did he know about formal education?

  She came around the edge of the desk.

  He made sure to be the first to speak when she sat down. “Is there something I should know?” he asked.

  She didn’t look at him immediately. Instead she opened the file and glanced through it briefly while he thought of killing her. Then she closed it and turned her full attention on him. “Your brother also has a history of trouble,” she said matter-of-factly, ignoring his question.

  He leaned forward again. “I don’t see the point.” He looked around, raised his hands. “This why you brought me in here? Questions about my brother?” He was tired of this country fuck, regardless of her degrees. He would never be cowed by these mind-fucks, these slick assholes with the need to plaster what little self-worth they possessed in gaudy frames hanging above their heads. No one in the Franklin clan had ever been in for formal education; whatever high school diplomas there had ever been were long since disregarded. Money was the thing that spoke. This slick cunt was only another lackey, her automobile probably purchased through the huge sums of money families like his paid to forget their troubles, or at least to keep them safely behind locked doors. He was suddenly very tired of fucking around.

  All this ran through his mind in seconds while he stared at the top of Dr. Marshall’s nicely-shampooed hair. She obviously hadn’t decided how to stay on top of this particular bull, he determined. He asked again, “I said, ‘Is that the reason we’re in your office, Doctor?”

  When she jerked her steely glare upon him, the advantage he’d felt sure of withered like a mushroom in the sun. She roared ahead, as if finally glad the curtain of civility had been drawn aside. “Let’s get one thing straight right now, Mr. Franklin.” Her fuse had played out too. “You are not going to walk into my hospital with your New Orleans attitude and demand anything! There is no record of a visit by you for months, over a year, and now for some indeterminate reason you appear demanding this and that with your disgraceful attitude! I have been in close contact with your father about your mother, and he appears very satisfied with how she’s being dealt with. And he, sir, happens to be the one who pays her bills!” She actually brought her fist down in a small arc to her tastefully clean desk as punctuation. William’s mouth was an indecipherable line below his nose.

  He tried to hold his voice steady. “I don’t have to justify one goddamn thing to you,” he said. “I drove all the way here to see my mother, and so far all I’ve gotten is a bunch of beating-around-the-fucking-bush-bullshit!” His fingers lashed out and seized the smoothly-polished wooden armrests on his chair. Dr. Marshall proved quick on the uptake and decided to diffuse the situation. Her crude experiment had proved what she wanted to know.

  She held up her hands in a willing surrender, although her eyes remained hard and fixed upon the seething man barely restrained across from her. “Mr. Franklin…please, Mr. Franklin. I’m sorry to be so brusque, but—“

  “Brusque? Are you kidding me, Brusque? What the fuck kind of twenty-dollar word is that?”

  She took no opportunity to indulge him. Instead, she said, “There has been some trouble with your mother lately, Mr. Franklin.”

  William eased off. “What are yo
u talking about?”

  “It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep your mother as a patient here, Mr. Franklin. Perhaps that has shown in my attitude, and for it I apologize. Your mother is a very unique individual,” she added, nodding silently as if agreeing with something only she had heard.

  William leaned forward and let the words form slowly on his tongue so there would be no chance of misunderstanding. “Would you mind telling me what this is all about?” A methodical ticking started in his left eye lid.

  Dr. Marshall pushed the file she’d carried with her into the room across the desk to William but he made no move toward it. She let it remain where it was and continued. “Mr. Franklin, your mother is no ordinary patient, as I said. Even here. More and more, she is becoming…how can I put this? Very simply, she is becoming a liability.”

  “My father—“ William attempted, but Dr. Marshall waved him silent with a sweep of her hand. Very few people could do this, and even William knew it.

  “Please excuse me if I’m wrong, but I’m sure you don’t know how much your father is paying for your mother’s care here. From the look on your face it is obvious you have no idea what I’m talking about so I will lay it on the line. You seem the kind of man who understands such…directness.

  “Would you like to take a look at her folder?”

  William refused to take the bait. Instead, he plodded on, unmindful of whatever disaster was on the way. “Why don’t you spare me the sermon and get to the point,” he growled. His heart visibly pounding away in his temple. A thin line of sweat had formed at his hairline, but he did nothing to wipe it away now.

  “Very well. This facility no longer feels it is equipped to handle your mother as a ward. We don’t like to kid ourselves here with charlatan practices or any other form of hoodoo magic, but sadly that has even been considered. But it is with increasing urgency that the administration is realizing her need to be transferred.”

  William collapsed back in the chair. He felt a bead of sweat race down his cheek. “Transferred?” he managed. “Where?”

  “We are at a loss to say. However, we no longer feel adequate in the staffing and care of your mother. Your father has been informed of this, but each time he has offered to up the patient fee. Up until now the upper administration has bent to his wishes.” She folded her hands into a tent on the desks polished surface, and for the first time William noticed how red her fingernails were. Like a whore’s, he thought.

  “Bent to his wishes?” he repeated and laughed, pausing to look around the room in amazement. “For Christ’s sake, why won’t somebody in this nuthouse tell me what the fuck is going on?” The walls gave no answer and he looked back at the doctor, shaking his head slowly back and forth.

  Dr. Marshall didn’t even flinch. “I don’t like being patronized, Mr. Franklin.”

  “Why do you want my mother out of here?” he demanded. His patience was at an end.

  “We don’t believe there is anything left for us to do. She has, we believe, overstepped our bounds.”

  “Overstepped your bounds?” he repeated in disbelief. “Jesus, are all you people here as crazy as the inmates? Let’s knock this shit off and tell me exactly what the hell you’re talking about? My mother is a high-priced ward in your hospital” (and here he made his hands into hypothetical quotation marks), “very high-priced, I’m sure, although as you say, I don’t know the exact figure. But now I learn, unwanted, also. And here I sit playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with an equally high-priced” (again the quotation marks) “pill-pusher who only makes things more confusing. It doesn’t get any wilder in a tent revival!”

  Dr. Marshall’s eyes cut to thin slats and she glared at him with a ferocity that itself verged on violence. “An interesting observation, Mr. Franklin, and one you’re free to entertain. Nonetheless, it is a fact. It is also a fact, and I say this with all due seriousness, that your mother is probably in more need of a priest than any medical doctor.”

  William actually jumped when the ax finally came down. Another faint trickle appeared below his hairline and raced after the other. His voice, when he found it, was no more than a whisper. “A priest? Is this some more of your hocus-pocus bullshit, Doctor?” By this time he could actually picture his hands around her throat, just beginning to squeeze…and squeeze. He was suddenly afraid of what he might do, but could no more leave than walk to the moon. If it ended up that he smashed her office to bits, and threw her head through the plate-glass window, so be it. Destiny sat precariously nearby. “I want some goddamn answers,” he dead-panned.

  Again Dr. Marshall pushed away from her desk, as if instinctively aware of the potential danger sitting, razor-sharp, across from her. Now she took the time to notice the office door had swung shut, and there was nobody at hand. Of course, they would hear when she screamed, but God forbid—She could see a hint of the Thing in his eyes, the Thing that had grown to perfection in his mother, and most undoubtedly his brother also. She hoped the tremor she felt race through her body was not obvious.

  “Mr. Franklin—“ she said, fighting for the control he’d somehow wrenched from her.

  “Let’s cut the ‘Mr. Franklin’ bullshit, okay? I don’t pay the goddamn bills around here, remember?”

  She held up her hand, placating the furious man. His sweating had become disorienting and he was glad she was feeling a little of the same. “William,” she said, acknowledging his request. “This is really getting us nowhere.”

  He leaned forward, taking both hands off the chair’s arm rests. He placed them almost gingerly on the surface of her desk, with a careful consideration that belied their blunt presence. “You’re right,” he admitted, his voice dripping with poison. “So far this conversation has taken us nowhere. My time is money, and I’m tired of wasting both in this office cracking off insults to a woman I’ve never even met before.” He closed his mouth and put two fingers to his lips as he gazed off above the sheepskins lining the wall behind her. He nodded and slowly pulled his hands away from her desk like a crocodile sliding back into the mud. When he brought his gaze back down from the diplomas, he was smiling. “Why don’t you tell me about the priest?” he said.

  The quick shift in tone allowed her a few seconds to gain a tenuous foothold. Her unseen feet tapped nervously beneath the desk (thankfully on a thick carpet), her conscious telling her she’d just missed a catastrophe. She willed her own sweat to freeze. “What I can tell you, you probably don’t want to hear,” she said simply.

  “I’ve missed something?”

  She tightened her mouth and decided enough was enough. “William,” she began carefully, filing her pronunciation down to a point. “We believe your mother was involved in occult behavior before she was institutionalized. Do you have any opinion on this?”

  She saw William’s jaw tighten, his throat constricting as if he’d just swallowed a rock. She felt no satisfaction, and issued a short prayer to the god in charge of sweat secretion. William’s breath came in two short little drags, then stopped. His eyes found the floor around the base of the chair and his advantage disappeared like a leaf of paper in high winds.

  “Are we correct in this assumption?” Dr. Marshall prodded.

  Another second ticked away. The air condition kicked on in the room and a steady droning whisper eased the still contagion that’d taken root. William’s head was still turned toward the floor. “Do you have any information that would help us?” she tried again, feeling like maybe she’d chinked the armor.

  He didn’t raise his eyes when he spoke and his voice remained, surprisingly, in control. “You’re talking spooks? I’ve driven all the way from New Orleans to be handed some half-baked horseshit from Fantasy Land?”

  Dr. Marshall remained calm, but wondered how loud she’d have to scream for someone to hear her down the hall. She questioned her earlier confidence in dealing with the man. His mother’s face was too easily seen in the furrowed brow, the snarling set of his chin. “Mr. Franklin,” she began
. “Please don’t get upset. I’m just trying to make you see the situation through our eyes. We here are very aware of the troubles your m--“

  William pounded a fist on her desktop and stood up violently. As it turned out Dr. Marshall needn’t have worried about being heard down the hall; her guest provided all the amplitude necessary.

  “AWARE OF HER TROUBLES!!” he shouted as she shrank back, fighting for the recesses of her leather chair. Finally, her eyes peeled back in real, unabashed terror.

  He leaned toward her and she felt the spittle pepper her face as he planted both curled fists squarely in the center of her desk. “IT’S TIME YOU LISTENED TO ME, YOU GODDAMN WITCHDOCTOR! YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT ABOUT MY MOTHER OR ANY OF US, YOU FUCKING CUNT!” He was within inches of her face (and she could see the mother so clearly now, ghastly, remarkable) when the door to her office was wrenched open.

  “What the hell’s goin on in here?!” a rough, masculine voice bellowed from somewhere behind him. William ripped his attention away from the doctor with a snarl, and spun around with clenched fists. He instantly sized the man up, and for a moment he could barely hold back the Thing that now raged in his body. The other man saw it and backed off a step.

  “Now listen here, mister,” the orderly said, his hands out but his feet set. If there would be trouble, he looked ready. “I don’t know what this is about, but I believe it’s time you left.” He squared off. William looked at the man, closed his eyes for a moment to clear the stars from his vision, and when he did open them, his face broke into a smile. A smile that held only death and hatred.

  “No, you listen here, black man. You don’t know who the fuck you’re talking to.”

  The orderly seemed to stand a few inches taller. “I don’t know and I don’t care. All I do know is that you’ll be leaving now with or without the police. The choice is yours.”

  For another agonized moment William considered rushing the larger man and ripping his eyeballs out of his head. Only an incredible push of self-control kept him from it. He slowly brought his fists down (he found them banded together at his chest), and smoothed unseen wrinkles out of his jacket before letting them swing free.

  “The choice is mine, is it?” he mocked, turning his attention away from the big man at the door and focusing once more on the doctor quaking in the chair. “I was just telling the good doctor that I was on my way out, and now look at this. I have a ready-made escort.” Then he barged out of the room without another word, the orderly backing up to give him a wide berth.

  The doctor and the orderly remained in the room listening in tomb-like silence as William’s angry footsteps echoed on the marble floor as he surged toward the front door.

  “Thank you, Jeb,” Dr. Marshall whispered when the sound of the front door banging closed reached them. She was shaking so badly that her words hardly had form.

  “Did he do anything? Should I call the police?” he asked.

  “No, no.” She waved at him nervously. “Just give me a few minutes.”

  “Who was that?”

  She managed to look him in the eyes. Her fear evident. “William Franklin. We have his mother upstairs.”

  The orderly reached out for the back of William’s vacated chair. After a moment he felt it best that he sit down too. He mumbled the semblance of a prayer, “God help us…I knew I’d seen those eyes before.”

  William stalked from the entrance and crossed the parking lot. His eyes still held a deep menace that verged on the edge of explosion. His rational mind had kicked in there at the last, telling him to leave, just to get the fuck out. At least if he still intended on remaining a free man. “That fucking bitch,” he sneered, grinding his teeth together. “I’ll cut her fucking head off,” but this image did little to still his racing pulse. For a lost moment he stopped and almost turned around.

  “Cut the shit,” he warned himself. “You’ve got your hands full as it is.”

  Back at the Lexus he happened to glance again at the garden where he’d seen the black man staring. He was still there, but instead of standing as he had before, he was bent at the knees and hunched over close to the ground. Pawing at something William couldn’t see, apparently unaware of this long distance scrutiny. “Fucking loony bin,” William said, blowing air out between his teeth.

  Once inside the car he sat very quiet for several moments, collecting himself. The cunt was lucky to still be breathing and he felt she knew it. Not many people had ever fucked with him like that and lived to tell the tale. Some air head in a lab coat treating him like a bumbling redneck asshole from some shack in the woods. He savagely pictured her bent over the desk in her office, the lab coat thrown up around her head, her shiny white ass naked and round as he rammed his dick in and taught her who was boss. He knew how to fix cunts like her. And as he mused on this dark fantasy his pants suddenly grew very tight, until he finally had to let the image loose. He opened his eyes.

  What kind of a hospital was this anyway? With its talk of priests and ‘occult behavior’? Just what kind of a place was this?

  His father had not said a word--not one fucking word--about the potential of his mother being moved from the institution. But the good doctor had said she was riding on borrowed time. Undoubtedly a much shorter period now that he’d raised ten different kinds of hell in the bitch’s office. And he already knew there was no way this would slip the Old Man’s attention. She was probably on the phone right this minute.

  Oh yeah she’d gotten to him. Goddamn. He sat in the car shaking his head slowly as if working out a crick. She’d seen the truth. Whatever it was that lived in them, in all of them, the good doctor had touched it because William had seen the fear in her eyes. Pure, unadulterated terror. And this time it had come from him. There was really no way to throw off the shackles of heredity, even though one might try for years to sugar coat the poison, or to lock it away somewhere in the black recesses of the mind. It had peeked and she’d seen. After all, she’d known what to look for.

  He remembered how the piss had felt running down his leg that long ago, lost day.

  Yeah, she’d seen something, but she hadn’t seen that. He’d take that to the grave and let it molder alongside his corpse. It’d be a lock never opened.

  A dangerous thought suddenly railed back that he should go storming back inside, demanding to see his mother, and God help them if they pulled any more bullshit. But he knew it wouldn’t do. Already the image of his father, phone to his ear and eyes wide as he heard this story, came to his mind full bore, demanding some sort of explanation. No, he had to end this rampage; he had already caused enough trouble. The Old Man would be holy hell to straighten out, first with Samuel’s unexplained whereabouts and now with William skirting the lunatic fringe at the institution. It sounded like a fucking soap opera. Better to let this thing stand alone before it broke him completely.

  Because, let’s face it, he didn’t actually want to see his mother. He knew nothing positive would come from it, and as he sat in the car he wondered what had possessed him to come over today in the first place. With hardly a second thought.

  The Old Man, a voice told him coolly. He spooked you.

  Maybe so, he thought. But that still didn’t explain why he’d gotten his balls up for this sudden road trip. This looked like a shitstorm of major proportions. “Motherfuck,” he said. He glared out the windshield, his mind racing. Nothing looked good. He shook his head and fired the engine to life, backed away from his parking spot leaving rubber behind.

  But even as he fish-tailed out of the parking lot onto the highway, the bent, black gardener remained fixed, attending to whatever business called him to the dirt he pawed at.

  William had the phone jammed to his ear before he was even to the highway.