Shutter Island

  “Marshal?” He looked up to see Cawley on the other side of his desk, a ghostly blur to his left.

  “Yeah?” Teddy managed.

  “You’re deathly pale.”

  “You okay, boss?” Chuck was beside him suddenly.

  “Fine,” Teddy managed, and Cawley placed his scotch glass down on the desk, and the sound of it was like a shotgun report.

  “Sit down,” Cawley said.

  “I’m okay,” Teddy said, but the words made their way down from his brain to his tongue on a spiked ladder.

  Cawley’s bones cracked like burning wood as he leaned against the desk in front of Teddy. “Migraine?”

  Teddy looked up at the blur of him. He would have nodded, but past experience had taught him never to nod during one of these. “Yeah,” he managed.

  “I could tell by the way you’re rubbing your temple.”

  “Oh.”

  “You get them often?”

  “Half-dozen…” Teddy’s mouth dried up and he took a few seconds to work some moisture back into his tongue. “…times a year.”

  “You’re lucky,” Cawley said. “In one respect anyway.”

  “How’s that?”

  “A lot of migraine sufferers get cluster migraines once a week or so.” His body made that burning-wood sound again as he came off the desk and Teddy heard him unlock a cabinet.

  “What do you get?” he asked Teddy. “Partial vision loss, dry mouth, fire in the head?”

  “Bingo.”

  “All the centuries we’ve studied the brain, and no one has a clue where they come from. Can you believe that? We know they attack the parietal lobe usually. We know they cause a clotting of the blood. It’s infinitesimal as these things go, but have it occur in something as delicate and small as the brain, and you will get explosions. All this time, though, all this study, and we know no more about the cause or much of the long-term effects than we do about how to stop the common cold.”

  Cawley handed him a glass of water and put two yellow pills in his hand. “These should do the trick. Knock you out for an hour or two, but when you come to, you should be fine. Clear as a bell.”

  Teddy looked down at the yellow pills, the glass of water that hung in a precarious grip.

  He looked up at Cawley, tried to concentrate with his good eye because the man was bathed in a light so white and harsh that it flew off his shoulders and arms in shafts.

  Whatever you do, a voice started to say in Teddy’s head…

  Fingernails pried open the left side of his skull and poured a shaker of thumbtacks in there, and Teddy hissed as he sucked his breath in.

  “Jesus, boss.”

  “He’ll be fine, Marshal.”

  The voice tried again: Whatever you do, Teddy…

  Someone hammered a steel rod through the field of thumbtacks, and Teddy pressed the back of his hand to his good eye as tears shot from it and his stomach lurched.

  …don’t take those pills.

  His stomach went fully south, sliding across into his right hip as flames licked the sides of the fissure in his head, and if it got any worse, he was pretty sure he’d bite straight through his tongue.

  Don’t take those fucking pills, the voice screamed, running back and forth down the burning canyon, waving a flag, rallying the troops.

  Teddy lowered his head and vomited onto the floor.

  “Boss, boss. You okay?”

  “My, my,” Cawley said. “You do get it bad.”

  Teddy raised his head.

  Don’t…

  His cheeks were wet with his own tears.

  …take…

  Someone had inserted a blade lengthwise into the canyon now.

  …those…

  The blade had begun to saw back and forth.

  …pills.

  Teddy gritted his teeth, felt his stomach surge again. He tried to concentrate on the glass in his hand, noticed something odd on his thumb, and decided it was the migraine playing tricks with his perception.

  don’ttakethosepills.

  Another long pull of the sawteeth across the pink folds of his brain, and Teddy had to bite down against a scream and he heard Rachel’s screams in there too with the fire and he saw her looking into his eyes and felt her breath on his lips and felt her face in his hands as his thumbs caressed her temples and that fucking saw went back and forth through his head—

  don’ttakethosefuckingpills

  —and he slapped his palm up to his mouth and felt the pills fly back in there and he chased them with water and swallowed, felt them slide down his esophagus and he gulped from the glass until it was empty.

  “You’re going to thank me,” Cawley said.

  Chuck was beside him again and he handed Teddy a handkerchief and Teddy wiped his forehead with it and then his mouth and then he dropped it to the floor.

  Cawley said, “Help me get him up, Marshal.”

  They lifted Teddy out of the chair and turned him and he could see a black door in front of him.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” Cawley said, “but there’s a room through there where I steal my naps sometimes. Oh, okay, once a day. We’re going to put you in there, Marshal, and you’ll sleep this off. Two hours from now, you’ll be fit as a fiddle.”

  Teddy saw his hands draping off their shoulders. They looked funny—his hands hanging like that just over his sternum. And the thumbs, they both had that optical illusion on them. What the fuck was it? He wished he could scratch the skin, but Cawley was opening the door now, and Teddy took one last look at the smudges on both thumbs.

  Black smudges.

  Shoe polish, he thought as they led him into the dark room.

  How the hell did I get shoe polish on my thumbs?

  12

  THEY WERE THE worst dreams he’d ever had.

  They began with Teddy walking through the streets of Hull, streets he had walked countless times from childhood to manhood. He passed his old schoolhouse. He passed the small variety store where he’d bought gum and cream sodas. He passed the Dickerson house and the Pakaski house, the Murrays, the Boyds, the Vernons, the Constantines. But no one was home. No one was anywhere. It was empty, the entire town. And dead quiet. He couldn’t even hear the ocean, and you could always hear the ocean in Hull.

  It was terrible—his town, and everyone gone. He sat down on the seawall along Ocean Avenue and searched the empty beach and he sat and waited but no one came. They were all dead, he realized, long dead and long gone. He was a ghost, come back through the centuries to his ghost town. It wasn’t here any longer. He wasn’t here any longer. There was no here.

  He found himself in a great marble hall next, and it was filled with people and gurneys and red IV bags and he immediately felt better. No matter where this was, he wasn’t alone. Three children—two boys and a girl—crossed in front of him. All three wore hospital smocks, and the girl was afraid. She clutched her brothers’ hands. She said, “She’s here. She’ll find us.”

  Andrew Laeddis leaned in and lit Teddy’s cigarette. “Hey, no hard feelings, right, buddy?”

  Laeddis was a grim specimen of humanity—a gnarled cord of a body, a gangly head with a jutting chin that was twice as long as it should have been, misshapen teeth, sprouts of blond hair on a scabby, pink skull—but Teddy was glad to see him. He was the only one he knew in the room.

  “Got me a bottle,” Laeddis said, “if you want to have a toot later.” He winked at Teddy and clapped his back and turned into Chuck and that seemed perfectly normal.

  “We’ve gotta go,” Chuck said. “Clock’s ticking away here, my friend.”

  Teddy said, “My town’s empty. Not a soul.”

  And he broke into a run because there she was, Rachel Solando, shrieking as she ran through the ballroom with a cleaver. Before Teddy could reach her, she’d tackled the three children, and the cleaver went up and down and up and down, and Teddy froze, oddly fascinated, knowing there was nothing he could do at this point, those kids were dead.
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  Rachel looked up at him. Her face and neck were speckled with blood. She said, “Give me a hand.”

  Teddy said, “What? I could get in trouble.”

  She said, “Give me a hand and I’ll be Dolores. I’ll be your wife. She’ll come back to you.”

  So he said, “Sure, you bet,” and helped her. They lifted all three children at once somehow and carried them out through the back door and down to the lake and they carried them into the water. They didn’t throw them. They were gentle. They lay them on the water and the children sank. One of the boys rose back up, a hand flailing, and Rachel said, “It’s okay. He can’t swim.”

  They stood on the shore and watched the boy sink, and she put her arm around Teddy’s waist and said, “You’ll be my Jim. I’ll be your Dolores. We’ll make new babies.”

  That seemed a perfectly just solution, and Teddy wondered why he’d never thought of it before.

  He followed her back into Ashecliffe and they met up with Chuck and the three of them walked down a long corridor that stretched for a mile. Teddy told Chuck: “She’s taking me to Dolores. I’m going home, buddy.”

  “That’s great!” Chuck said. “I’m glad. I’m never getting off this island.”

  “No?”

  “No, but it’s okay, boss. It really is. I belong here. This is my home.”

  Teddy said, “My home is Rachel.”

  “Dolores, you mean.”

  “Right, right. What did I say?”

  “You said Rachel.”

  “Oh. Sorry about that. You really think you belong here?”

  Chuck nodded. “I’ve never left. I’m never going to leave. I mean, look at my hands, boss.”

  Teddy looked at them. They looked perfectly fine to him. He said as much.

  Chuck shook his head. “They don’t fit. Sometimes the fingers turn into mice.”

  “Well, then I’m glad you’re home.”

  “Thanks, boss.” He slapped his back and turned into Cawley and Rachel had somehow gotten far ahead of them and Teddy started walking double-time.

  Cawley said, “You can’t love a woman who killed her children.”

  “I can,” Teddy said, walking faster. “You just don’t understand.”

  “What?” Cawley wasn’t moving his legs, but he was keeping pace with Teddy just the same, gliding. “What don’t I understand?”

  “I can’t be alone. I can’t face that. Not in this fucking world. I need her. She’s my Dolores.”

  “She’s Rachel.”

  “I know that. But we’ve got a deal. She’ll be my Dolores. I’ll be her Jim. It’s a good deal.”

  “Uh-oh,” Cawley said.

  The three children came running back down the corridor toward them. They were soaking wet and they were screaming their little heads off.

  “What kind of mother does that?” Cawley said.

  Teddy watched the children run in place. They’d gotten past him and Cawley, and then the air changed or something because they ran and ran but never moved forward.

  “Kills her kids?” Cawley said.

  “She didn’t mean to,” Teddy said. “She’s just scared.”

  “Like me?” Cawley said, but he wasn’t Cawley anymore. He was Peter Breene. “She’s scared, so she kills her kids and that makes it okay?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I don’t like you, Peter.”

  “What’re you going to do about it?”

  Teddy placed his service revolver to Peter’s temple.

  “You know how many people I’ve executed?” Teddy said, and there were tears streaming down his face.

  “Well, don’t,” Peter said. “Please.”

  Teddy pulled the trigger, saw the bullet come out the other side of Breene’s head, and the three kids had watched the whole thing and they were screaming like crazy now and Peter Breene said, “Dammit,” and leaned against the wall, holding his hand over the entrance wound. “In front of the children?”

  And they heard her. A shriek that came out of the darkness ahead of them. Her shriek. She was coming. She was up there somewhere in the dark and she was running toward them full tilt and the little girl said, “Help us.”

  “I’m not your daddy. It’s not my place.”

  “I’m going to call you Daddy.”

  “Fine,” Teddy said with a sigh and took her hand.

  They walked the cliffs overlooking the Shutter Island shore and then they wandered into the cemetery and Teddy found a loaf of bread and some peanut butter and jelly and made them sandwiches in the mausoleum and the little girl was so happy, sitting on his lap, eating her sandwich, and Teddy took her out with him into the graveyard and pointed out his father’s headstone and his mother’s headstone and his own:

  EDWARD DANIELS

  BAD SAILOR

  1920-1957

  “Why are you a bad sailor?” the girl asked.

  “I don’t like water.”

  “I don’t like water, either. That makes us friends.”

  “I guess it does.”

  “You’re already dead. You got a whatchamacallit.”

  “A headstone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess I am, then. There was no one in my town.”

  “I’m dead too.”

  “I know. I’m sorry about that.”

  “You didn’t stop her.”

  “What could I do? By the time I reached her, she’d already, you know…”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “What?”

  “Here she comes again.”

  And there was Rachel walking into the graveyard by the headstone Teddy had knocked over in the storm. She took her time. She was so beautiful, her hair wet and dripping from the rain, and she’d traded in the cleaver for an ax with a long handle and she dragged it beside her and said, “Teddy, come on. They’re mine.”

  “I know. I can’t give them to you, though.”

  “It’ll be different this time.”

  “How?”

  “I’m okay now. I know my responsibilities. I got my head right.”

  Teddy wept. “I love you so much.”

  “And I love you, baby. I do.” She came up and kissed him, really kissed him, her hands on his face and her tongue sliding over his and a low moan traveling up her throat and into his mouth as she kissed him harder and harder and he loved her so much.

  “Now give me the girl,” she said.

  He handed the girl to her and she held the girl in one arm and picked up the ax in the other and said, “I’ll be right back. Okay?”

  “Sure,” Teddy said.

  He waved to the girl, knowing she didn’t understand. But it was for her own good. He knew that. You had to make tough decisions when you were an adult, decisions children couldn’t possibly understand. But you made them for the children. And Teddy kept waving, even though the girl wouldn’t wave back as her mother carried her toward the mausoleum and the little girl stared at Teddy, her eyes beyond hope for rescue, resigned to this world, this sacrifice, her mouth still smeared with peanut butter and jelly.

  “OH, JESUS!” TEDDY sat up. He was crying. He felt he’d wrenched himself awake, tore his brain into consciousness just to get out of that dream. He could feel it back there in his brain, waiting, its doors wide open. All he had to do was close his eyes and tip his head back toward the pillow and he’d topple right back into it.

  “How are you, Marshal?”

  He blinked several times into the darkness. “Who’s there?”

  Cawley turned on a small lamp. It stood beside his chair in the corner of the room. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Teddy sat up on the bed. “How long have I been here?”

  Cawley gave him a smile of apology. “The pills were a little stronger than I thought. You’ve been out for four hours.”

  “Shit.” Teddy rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  “You were having nightmares, Marshal. Serious nightmares.”

  “I’m in a mental institut
ion on an island in a hurricane,” Teddy said.

  “Touché,” Cawley said. “I was here a month before I had a decent night’s sleep. Who’s Dolores?”

  Teddy said, “What?” and swung his legs off the side of the bed.

  “You kept saying her name.”

  “My mouth is dry.”

  Cawley nodded and turned his body in the chair, lifted a glass of water off the table beside him. He handed it across to Teddy. “A side effect, I’m afraid. Here.”

  Teddy took the glass and drained it in a few gulps.

  “How’s the head?”

  Teddy remembered why he was in this room in the first place and took a few moments to take stock. Vision clear. No more thumbtacks in his head. Stomach a little queasy, but not too bad. A mild ache in the right side of his head, like a three-day-old bruise, really.

  “I’m okay,” he said. “Those were some pills.”

  “We aim to please. So who’s Dolores?”

  “My wife,” Teddy said. “She’s dead. And, yes, Doctor, I’m still coming to terms with it. Is that okay?”

  “It’s perfectly fine, Marshal. And I’m sorry for your loss. She died suddenly?”

  Teddy looked at him and laughed.

  “What?”

  “I’m not really in the mood to be psychoanalyzed, Doc.”

  Cawley crossed his legs at the ankles and lit a cigarette. “And I’m not trying to fuck with your head, Marshal. Believe it or not. But something happened in that room tonight with Rachel. It wasn’t just her. I’d be negligent in my duties as her therapist if I didn’t wonder what kind of demons you’re carrying around.”

  “What happened in that room?” Teddy said. “I was playing the part she wanted me to.”

  Cawley chuckled. “Know thyself, Marshal. Please. If we’d left you two alone, you’re telling me we would have come back to find you both fully clothed?”