Visitors? The fog over his thoughts lifted for a moment. He let the orderly force him out of the bathing room and back down the hall, where he was given a clean set of patient’s shirt and trousers and expected to change while the man hovered. Nobody allowed him to do anything on his own anymore except sleep. Not even the long-haired girl came to see him anymore. He didn’t miss her, but it felt like just one more abandonment.
To his surprise, the orderly did not secure him to the bed again but directed him to put on the thin, disposable shoes given to all patients. Then Ricky was marched out of the room and down the hall to the stairwell door. Ricky’s concept of time was wavering at best, but he guessed it had been at least two weeks since he had been below the third floor.
Even if he hated room 3808, it felt like an anchor. Now he was being taken down the stairs to the unknown. The orderly hummed absently to himself, nudging Ricky along, down a new stairwell to the first floor. It was one of two grand staircases that flanked the lobby, as if this building had once been for a lighter, happier purpose. Maybe it would be again one day. He didn’t want to guess; he only knew what Brookline was now.
They skirted the lobby and passed the dispensary. For everyone else it was just a normal day at the sanitarium. Two nurses whooshed by, their heads bowed in eager conversation. Both spared a quick glance for Ricky, saw he was with the orderly, and moved on. Laughter came from the cafeteria. The first-floor patient ward, where he had previously stayed, showed no signs of life. The patients were resting or elsewhere, outside gardening or in the recreation room.
Ricky indulged his vague curiosity. It felt like he was visiting this part of the asylum for the first time. A memory of whispering out of turn with Kay as they were brought outside to work seemed like a lifetime ago. He was no longer that person.
They had fed him much better this morning, but the richer food hurt his stomach as much as the meager scraps. His gut ached, bloated and tight, the bacon and eggs sitting in his belly like a sack of rocks.
When they reached the warden’s office, Ricky hesitated. “Why are we here?”
“Talkative now, are we?” the orderly chided. “Just get inside, Desmond. No more questions. It’s your Big Day, eh? Smile.”
Smile. The door opened and he was unceremoniously shoved inside. It felt like picture day at school, when his hair would be combed strangely and his clothes too new and starched. That same kind of false, forced grin came to him then, and he stepped inside the warden’s office to find two familiar heads turned away from him. Then they heard the door and looked.
Mom and Butch. Ricky froze in place, still grinning, and tried not to break down and cry.
“Oh, Ricky!” His mother stood, clutching her handbag to her chest, and broke into a relieved smile. She was wearing her nice yellow sundress with the pleats and the sunflower print. Sometimes she wore that to church, but only ever on special occasions. Butch was squat and square as ever, a football player’s physique with a protective layer of meat loaf and beer.
“It’s so good to see you, sweetheart!” She ignored the distressed grunt of the orderly and flung herself toward Ricky, gathering him into her arms and squeezing.
He didn’t know what to do. What could he do? Over his mother’s shoulder, he found the warden’s line of sight. Crawford hovered behind his desk, watchful, his expression oddly vacant. Ricky’s mother was here. Here! This was the last-inning miracle he had been waiting for and wanted more than anything else. Was it the end of summer already? That had to be the explanation.
Slowly, Ricky lifted one hand and put it on her back, comforting her. She trembled and hiccupped, sobbing, holding him tight to her chest. It was like being stoppered up. He wanted to feel relief, to explode in every direction with joy, but the warden’s influence prevented him. The pills. The hypnosis. There were two Rickys now, the old one and Patient Zero, and the latter always stood guard over the former.
“Hi, Mom.”
“His state is still very delicate.” The warden’s voice broke through their reunion, and his mother tore herself away, quickly dabbing at the tears on her cheeks with a handkerchief Butch produced. “This is probably all very overwhelming for him. His anger issues were very pronounced at the beginning, but now he is doing much, much better. One day at a time—order and discipline, routine, it’s what he needed.”
“Yes.” His mother took a step back, bumping into the chair across from the warden before sinking into it with a sigh. “Yes, I understand. Just a mother’s relief . . . You must know . . .”
“Emotion is natural,” the warden said, utterly devoid of feeling. He kept Ricky’s gaze and then motioned to the open space in the office near the window. “And your relief is matched with mine, I assure you. It’s always so rewarding to know a patient is improving. This is a new and improved son. Not violent. Not prone to acting out.”
The window was open. Birds chirped outside. The college adjoining the asylum was noisy with activity as people gathered for a barbecue, for Independence Day or Labor Day or whatever day they were celebrating. Freedom. It was right there. He could smell the barbecue smoke and fresh-shorn grass. Ricky looked at his mother, at her bright green eyes, the same as his, and her black hair, just like his, and never had he thought it possible to feel so alienated from someone he knew to be blood.
“He’s improving?” His mother turned toward the warden, resting her hands on the edge of his desk.
“We’ve heard that before,” Butch muttered. His hair was buzz-cut, flat enough to land a model plane on. Teenage acne had left his face mottled and pitted. He closed one giant paw over Ricky’s mother’s hand and shot a glance at him. “How do we know that ain’t a bunch of bullshit?”
“Butch.”
“What? It’s true. He doesn’t look any different to me. Skinnier maybe. Hey! Kid! You still a queer or did this one get through to you?”
“Really, he usually doesn’t speak this way, it’s just been such a difficult time for everyone in the family. It takes a toll on all of us—”
And now Butch leveled his gaze at Warden Crawford, jabbing a finger in his direction. “Because don’t think for one second we can’t tell if you’re lying. It makes me sick, you hear? It just makes me queasy to be lied to. Those other doctors said the same damn thing! He still liked to throw a punch after Victorwood and Hillcrest!”
Butch’s face, tomato red, subsided into a fleshy bulldog pout. He had sat up straight in his seat to say his piece and now he slowly eased back down, his temper fading as the seconds ticked by. Meanwhile, the warden regarded him calmly behind tented fingers.
“Tell them now how well you’re doing,” Warden Crawford said softly. Soft, yes, but it was a command. “Be honest, Ricky, and let them know how you feel your time at Brookline has been.”
The words started pouring out of his mouth before he could stop them. It was his voice, but he didn’t recognize it. “The warden has been working with me every day, Mom. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Nobody was worried,” Butch muttered, glaring.
Usually that smug tone of Butch’s would make him want to take a swing. And maybe that was the point. Maybe Butch was trying to goad him into a fight. He wanted to take him up on it, scream, but his rage wouldn’t rise. Everything inside had been walled off.
“Yes, we were.” His mother pressed her lips together. “We were very worried. We miss you, Ricky, we just want you to come home. The . . . old you.”
“I know, Mom.” He gave her a thin smile, feeling a headache build behind his right eye. A vein pounded there. Something was wrong, his face, his expression, the wobbly dam holding back a sudden flood of emotion. He chose words to say but others came out, ones he wanted immediately to take back. “I’ll be the old me in no time. You just have to trust Warden Crawford. He knows what he’s doing, I’m not cured yet but I’m better. I’m in good hands.”
Both Butch and his mother stared at him in dumbfounded silence. Then she sprang to her feet, rushing f
orward and collecting Ricky into her arms again. “My little boy wonder.” She squeezed him, hard, and he felt one of her tears smear across his cheek. “I knew it was just a matter of time. That if we just kept trying, kept praying . . .”
“Yeah. Well. Huh.” Butch frowned, his face looking even more lopsided and bulldoggish than usual. “Time will tell. You sure he’s not just putting you on, doc? He’s crafty like that.”
The warden appeared perfectly at peace with the accusation, unfolding his hands and spreading them open, inviting inquiry. “I do the work of ten lesser men on a bad day, Mr. Kilpatrick, and that work endures.”
“I was so worried, honey,” his mother said, holding him at arm’s length. She looked older, as if she had aged severely in the two months since she had dropped him at Brookline. “When you didn’t return my letters or my phone calls—”
“Which as I explained upfront is part of our process, of course,” the warden interjected.
“Still . . . a mother worries.”
“Well, Rick? Put your mother at ease. Tell her how much you’ve been enjoying your little journey with us.”
Another command. The words didn’t gush forward so easily this time. Letters? Calls? He had spent so much time convinced that his mother had stopped caring altogether. Even if her attention was slightly misplaced, anything was better than being forgotten. But she hadn’t forgotten him. She had written. And called. And now she was there grasping him firmly by the wrists, her eyes glazed with joyful tears.
Take me out of here. They’re torturing me. Destroying me. I don’t even know who I am anymore. Ricky Desmond is disappearing. Get me out of here before he vanishes completely.
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be at the moment,” Ricky heard himself say. “Just long enough for me to complete my treatment.”
“Guess miracles really do happen,” Butch grumbled. Then he stood, tugging Ricky’s mother away by her shoulder. “See? I told you everything was fine. And it’s about time, too. We’re just interrupting now. The warden has everything in hand. This is what we were praying for . . .”
“I know,” his mother said, her smile wavering. She cupped Ricky’s face even as Butch pulled her away. “I just . . . If he’s so much better already, maybe it’s time we took him back, you know? We miss having you at home, boy wonder.”
It even sounded like she meant it. Butch’s expression didn’t back it up, but then he had never liked Ricky, even before him and Martin.
“I’m not cured yet, Mom,” he repeated automatically. “But I’m in good hands.”
“Of course you are,” she said, but her brow rippled, a shadow of a grimace passing over her face, like she was trying to remember something. “But if you weren’t so sure . . .”
“I am.”
“He is,” the warden said firmly, then stood. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Mr. and Mrs. Kilpatrick, Rick should really be allowed to rest. His treatment is very intense, you see, but the results speak for themselves.”
They no longer cuffed him to the bed in his room. He hadn’t even noticed the permanent redness around his wrists until he was given a chance to examine himself. Of course, his mother wouldn’t have seen the marks on him. His long-sleeved shirt hid the evidence of the warden’s “results,” the ones that apparently pleased her and his stepfather so much.
He stared out the window while the warden put a padlock on the slat that covered the window to the other room. That was fine. Ricky had no intention of looking again, anyway. Somehow it was easier to get by thinking he was the only one under the warden’s care, and it was beginning to feel like that in earnest. He was isolated and alone, in a world of two people. Two men.
Two monsters.
Through the bars guarding the window outside, Ricky watched his mother’s car driving away. He followed its trajectory down the street and over the hill, pretending to observe it long after it had faded from view. His fingers wound around the bars, absorbing the cold. His last chance for escape had just pulled away, and he had been complicit in the loss.
“I think perhaps you deserve a reward for behaving so well today,” the warden told him, standing near the cutout in the wall. Ricky turned and stared at him, his fingers curling into loose fists. “Don’t look like that. I know the methods are extreme, but can’t you see the progress for yourself? It’s marvelous. Focused, calm, all your pain and confusion forgotten. And I did that for you. No lobotomy. No electricity.”
“Yes.”
“Now about that reward,” the warden said, chuckling. He paced for a moment, tapping his knuckle against his chin in thought. “How about something to read, mm? Wouldn’t a book be nice? Something to occupy your hours while I must see to other patients.”
“Tolkien,” Ricky said without thinking. “The Lord of the Rings.”
Ricky couldn’t even remember why he wanted that or how he knew the name. It must have come from somewhere deep in his mind, from beyond the wall the warden had constructed in his thoughts. Maybe his brain hadn’t been wiped clean after all. Maybe it was just dormant.
The warden didn’t seem the least bit surprised by that, and gave a short nod. “I think that can be arranged. Yes, I can do that for you, Ricky. After all, you have done so very much for me.”
Ricky didn’t bother starting at page one. He would, eventually, but for the moment he was interested only in what he could remember. It wasn’t much, but when he scanned the table of contents he felt certain he would find what he was looking for. And he did. Someone had told him about this.
The Scouring of the Shire
He recognized that. The rest of what he read mattered less than the fact that he knew it was somehow connected to a memory hiding in the locked vault of his personality. If only it could be turned from a vague inkling into a key. Ricky read the last pages of the story over and over again, hungry for clues. Terror turning to relief. Loss to victory. But he wanted more.
Lying on his bed, he turned back to the beginning of the trilogy compendium, reading every word from the copyright to the first chapter and onward. Clues. He needed clues. For some reason this particular title had sprung to mind, but why? He turned from chapter four to five and stopped, watching as an index card slid down the paper and onto his pillow.
Odd. Had someone left a bookmark behind? He turned down the page corner to keep his place and then flipped over the index card, finding a note written on it in frantic, uneven penmanship. Almost illegible. Ricky held up the card, squinting, piecing together the jagged letters.
Under the jacket. Don’t forget, we haven’t forgotten you—
The jacket? Under whose jacket? And that last instruction . . . Ricky had to laugh. Unfortunately for the note-sender he’d been doing nothing but forgetting lately. The jacket. Maybe they got it wrong and meant something else entirely. It didn’t hurt to check. He grabbed the pillow and swept a hand underneath it. Nothing. The pillowcase held nothing unusual. He slid off the bed and pulled up the mattress, but that too held nothing of interest.
Ricky sat down heavily on the bed, stymied. His gaze drifted back to the book and the note and he rolled his eyes. You idiot. Jacket. Book jacket. He slid the dense, papery covering off the novel and flipped it around, finding a card roughly the size of the mysterious note taped inside.
It was a patient card. A searing pain sliced through his head, practically cleaving his head in two. He hissed, pressing his palm between his eyes, trying to alleviate the agonizing pressure. Spots bled across his vision, then they lengthened into thick stripes. Was this what remembering felt like? Was this what it would take to slip out of the warden’s grip?
He blinked through the pain, though a scattering of minuscule white dots stayed with him. It felt a little better when he opened his mouth wide, as if to yawn, so he worked at his jaw, trying to ignore the pounding in his skull.
Desmond, Pierce Andrew
Self-Admitted
Insomnia, MPD, restlessness, suicidal ideation
Deceased,
1967
Ricky read it over a dozen times, and each time the pain spiked again. Then he flipped over the card and found a mad jumble of words scribbled in a hand that seemed to deteriorate the longer the ranting went on.
Close. So close! The closest. Yet failure. Again, failure. But I must try again—perhaps this time the blood is the key. Some patients take to the therapy better, I see it now, and the only link I have not tested is the bloodline. With the next I will not fail, with the next I will achieve my legacy. I will achieve it through the blood.
Slivers of memory came to him. Fragments. He could remember the moldy stench in the storage closet, the lightbulb swinging overhead, a haze of dust around him . . . Pierce Andrew Desmond. Pierce Desmond. A face returned to him—a man with his same prominent nose and thick brows. The same big, almost goofy smile. Dad. His dad. Then the face changed, growing thin and gaunt, the eyes sunk in, the goofy smile opening in horror.
He closed his eyes again, involuntarily, the pain so strong now he felt certain for a panicked moment that he was going blind. Why here? Why would his father be here? Wouldn’t his mother have known? It couldn’t be an accident that both father and son wound up at the same sanitarium just a year apart.
More returned, and with it? Rage. Kay . . . Nurse Ash . . . The note didn’t look anything like Kay’s handwriting. It had to be Nurse Ash. But there was that “we.” We haven’t forgotten you. They were working together on this. Was that possible? The details became more and more vivid, like a photograph developing in front of his eyes. Jocelyn must have found the journal scraps and the patient card when she cleaned his room. Yes. She had warned him to remember, always remember, and to never trust the warden. This was her way of reminding him, of bringing him back before he was too far gone.
He hid the note and patient card under the book jacket, making sure they were secured by the tape. It was risky, he knew, to keep them like that, but what if he forgot again? He would need something to keep being Ricky Desmond, joker and crab-lover, school skipper, rule breaker, kisser of guys and gals . . . The Real Ricky.