Delirious (30 page)

Charlie had kept vigilant watch over Maxim. The boy’s jaw hadn’t moved at all. His mouth had stayed closed the entire time. But the voice was as loud and clear as if the person was seated on the edge of his bed.

“Are you some sort of ventriloquist?” Charlie scowled.

Maxim turned to Charlie, his thin, weak frame and sunken eyes suggesting both innocence and confusion. “I’m not talking to you,” Maxim said.

Those were the first words Charlie had heard him speak. His voice was high-pitched and weak. It sounded nothing like the voice he’d heard.
Could he be a master of both ventriloquism and imitation?
Charlie thought. It was doubtful.

“Do you want to know the secret of your mind?”

Charlie’s heart sped up. That voice. He knew it now. How could he have ever forgotten?

“Everything can be explained. But you must get out, Charlie. Leave here now and everything can be explained.”

“Stop it! Stop it! You’re dead!” Charlie shouted to the ceiling.

“
Yes,
” the voice said, “
I am dead.
”

“He answered me,” Charlie said to himself. “I’m not just hearing this.”

“I’m dead, Charlie. You killed me. And the only hope you have of saving your life is to trust me. You must leave this place.”

Charlie shook his head in a futile attempt to get the voice to stop. “You’re not real,” he muttered. “I know what is real. You can’t be real.”

“
All can be explained. You must believe me,
” the voice of Eddie Prescott hissed.
“Leave this place now so I can help you.”

“I can’t leave!” Charlie cried out to the air. “I’m locked up here.”

“I can help you explain everything—Rudy Gomes, the kill list, Anne Pedersen. Everything has an answer, and nothing is as it seems. Leave here tomorrow. And trust that you will be guided.”

“Who are you talking to, man?” Maxim asked. “You’re really freaking me out.”

“You can’t hear that? Tell me you can’t hear that voice,” Charlie said.

Maxim bolted from his bed, ripped open the room door and tumbled into the dimly lit hallway. “Hey!” he cried. “Get me outta here! This guy’s a freak!”

“But you’re dead.” Charlie sobbed into his hands. “You’re dead, Eddie. You can’t talk.”

“Yes.”
Eddie’s voice echoed in Charlie’s mind.
“I’m dead, and the only hope you have to survive.”

Dr. Shapiro barged into the room, followed by two imposing orderlies. Maxim stood in the hallway, safeguarded behind Shapiro and his entourage, and didn’t follow when they stepped inside. Charlie lay on his bed, curled in a fetal position.

“Charlie. Charlie!” Dr. Shapiro said. “This is Dr. Alan Shapiro. Can you hear me?”

Charlie leapt to his feet at the sound of Shapiro’s voice. He began pacing in frantic, erratic circles around his bed. Shapiro moved to calm and restrain him. The orderlies gripped Charlie by the shoulders. It took the full strength of both men to muscle him back down onto the bed.

Once Charlie was seated, Shapiro jammed a needle through the thin fabric of Charlie’s pajamas, breaking the skin of his thigh. Charlie barely flinched.

“I need you to calm down, Charlie,” Shapiro said. “It’s important that you regain control. Can you do that for me, Charlie?”

Charlie looked up at Shapiro, his eyes wild with confusion and fear.

“
You have to get out of here if you want to survive, Charlie,
” Eddie said.
“They’re trying to kill you.”

“Did you hear that? Did you?” Charlie pleaded.

“No, Charlie,” Shapiro said. “There is nobody talking to you. The only voice you should hear right now is my own.”

“
Oh, but he’s wrong, Charlie. There is someone talking to you,
” Eddie hissed.
“And I’m the only friend you have left.”

As the chemical surged through Charlie’s body, a smile broke out across his face. Somehow, someway, Eddie Prescott had found him. Before this descent into madness, ghosts and phantoms had held no sway with him. But Charlie was certain of one thing. Eddie Prescott’s ghostly voice was as real as their days together. Eddie spoke as clearly as if he were sitting on the bed next to him. Except that nobody else could hear the conversation. It was meant for Charlie alone. How Eddie Prescott had broken through the other side was of little consequence now. Charlie preferred getting answers over questioning the impossible. Eddie’s words were a call to action. Charlie couldn’t wait any longer to act.

T
he drugs had worn off. Charlie awoke with a splitting headache, his mouth parched and sticky with sleep and his stomach roiling with sickness. Flashes of the night before sent waves of confusion through him. Charlie wasn’t the type to believe in spirits or in the afterlife. If something didn’t have a logical explanation, Charlie assumed it to be some sort of hoax or misunderstanding.

Now his foundation was shaken to the core. The dead had contacted him.

As he lay on the bed, his mind raced to come up with a logical explanation. Perhaps it was the hypnosis. Something Rachel did opened up a part of my mind, he thought. Hypnosis was the only thing that made sense, but he struggled to accept that Eddie’s voice was merely a figment of his imagination. He had heard Eddie Prescott speak, and each word had ripped away his belief in logic and rational thought.

“
Wake up, Charlie. It’s a big day today. It’s leaving day,
” Eddie hissed in his ear
.

“Shut up!” Charlie shouted skyward. “Leave me alone.”

“
Get your bags packed …,
” Eddie hissed again.
“Your life depends on it….”

Charlie’s roommate had been relocated during the night. Charlie was alone in his quarters, but that didn’t matter. Even if Maxim had been in the room, he wouldn’t be able to hear Eddie Prescott’s voice. That privilege was Charlie’s alone. Why Eddie was trying to help him, Charlie didn’t know. What he did know was that Eddie was a wake-up call. For too long now, Charlie had played the part of a victim. Charlie
wasn’t accustomed to playing by other people’s rules. He was the one who made the rules. Now all of that was about to change—thanks in large part to his dead partner’s prodding.

Dressing quickly, Charlie left his room. His legs ached from the narcotic and carried him with the sure-footedness of a seasick mariner. The common area was mostly deserted. Breakfast was still in progress.

Good,
he thought.
That makes finding him easier.

Charlie headed toward the stairwell, where he would be greeted, then escorted, by a duty nurse down to the basement-level cafeteria. There he was certain he’d find George Ferris eating his morning eggs. And with George’s help, freedom would be mere hours away.

Charlie entered the cafeteria and took no more than a few seconds to spot George seated alone at a corner table. He was careful to avoid being seen by any of the on-duty psychiatrists—not wanting to answer for last night’s incident. They would come and find him soon enough, he reasoned.

George hadn’t shaved or combed his hair. In fact, he hadn’t made any noticeable attempts to civilize his appearance, despite claims that his medication changes had substantially improved his reasoning. Charlie surmised it was part of a mad professor mystique that George was cultivating.

Taking an empty seat at George’s table, Charlie watched as the man scooped up a mouthful of egg onto his plastic fork and then shoveled it indiscriminately into his mouth. The utensils provided by Walderman were rounded and dull. Everything accessible to patients was plastic and carefully manufactured to ensure they couldn’t use them against the staff, or themselves.

“You look spry and refreshed,” George said after he finished chewing.

“I’m guessing you’re being a bit sarcastic,” Charlie said.

“Just a bit.”

“Well, you’re not much of a sight for sore eyes yourself, George,” Charlie said.

George laughed. “I may be wild-looking, but at least I’m happy. You, on the other hand, seem troubled this morning. I can see it in your eyes.”

Charlie took a deep breath. Shame passed through him over how he had first judged George. Now the person he had once reviled proved more insightful than himself and might be the one to help set him free. If what Eddie Prescott had said was true and Charlie’s life was in danger, it would be fitting that George be the one to help save him.

Charlie wasted no time. “I need your help, George,” Charlie said, leaning in close, nearly whispering the words.

“My help? With what?”

“I need to get out of here.”

George laughed. A few patients eating nearby turned and took notice. Charlie shook his head and held his finger up to his lips.

“No need for secrecy, my friend. Why don’t you just leave?” George asked. “Your time here is up.”

“It’s not that simple anymore,” Charlie said. “Apparently they found a note in my handwriting, threatening to kill my former bosses. I demanded a court ruling on my commitment, but the judge is unavailable. I’m involuntarily committed until I can get that hearing.”

“Well, that’s not a problem,” George said, talking while chewing, offering Charlie an unpleasantly unobstructed view of the contents of his mouth. “You should get a hearing in the next day or two. It’s pretty uncommon to keep someone locked up who hasn’t committed a crime.”

“I don’t have a day or two,” Charlie said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie replied. “I just know that somebody contacted me and told me that I needed to get out of here. Today. He said that everything would be explained once I did, and that my life was in danger if I stayed.”

George twirled the long hair of his beard. “And who told you this?” he asked.

“You’d think I’m crazy if I told you,” Charlie said.

George laughed and covered his mouth to keep food from spilling out. “Well now, that’s a new one,” he said.

“Are you mocking me?” Charlie asked.

“No. I’m merely highlighting the irony of your situation,” George
said. “Fear of being judged crazy by a crazy person in a mental hospital. It’s really precious, if you think about it. So tell me, who gave you this warning?”

Charlie’s mind churned through his options. If anyone would understand and believe him, it would be George.

“My dead business partner. Okay?” Charlie tried, unconvincingly, to mask the absurdity of the statement. “He started talking to me last night. I’d just finished hypnotherapy. The session was related to Eddie. Perhaps something about the hypnosis made it possible for him to contact me.”

“From the grave?” George asked.

Charlie stared into George’s eyes, searching them for any sign of doubt and condemnation. “I guess. I don’t know. He’s the one who gave me the warning. And yes, he died years ago.”

George didn’t even flinch at the audacity of the story. “And let me guess,” he said. “You’re the only one who heard him.”

“That’s right,” Charlie said.

“And what do you make of this, Charlie?” George asked.

“It sounds crazy, I know. But trust me, George, this is different.”

“Why?” George asked, his eyes suggesting that he already knew the answer. “Because it happened to you?”

“No,” Charlie said. “Because it happened. I heard it. Eddie told me that I’m not crazy. There is an explanation for everything that’s been happening, and he wants to help me figure it out.”

“And what about other people who hear voices?” George asked. “Are they equally sane?”

“It’s different. I can’t explain it. It was as real as this conversation is now. He’s trying to help me.”

“You don’t think that a deep hypnosis could have unlocked something you’ve been suppressing for years? As a result, to combat the guilt or shame, or whatever you suppressed, you’ve manifested the voice of Eddie yourself.”

“It wasn’t like a voice in my head, George,” Charlie said. “It was no different than you and I talking now. I didn’t make it up.”

George rested his elbows on the table, clasping his hands together and using his thumbs to support the weight of his chin.

“Have you ever read Joseph Heller?” George asked.

Charlie laughed a bit, having likened the book to his situation on
several occasions already. “Sure. Back in high school.
Catch-Twenty-two
.”

“Think about it. A crazy person locked in a mental hospital hears voices. If the voices are real, then he’s not crazy. It’s miraculous even. If he says that he hears voices nobody else can hear, then he belongs in the mental hospital. Now tell me, Charlie, what’s a person to do with that?” George took his elbows off the table and went back to eating.

“I am out of options, George. This is the first opportunity since everything bad started happening to me that I can actually do something about. If I don’t listen to what I heard, if I don’t act on it, I may be passing up the only chance I have to save myself. I’m not ready to go down without a fight. So what’s it going to be? Will you help me or not?”

George sat upright. He set his fork down on his half-eaten plate of food and looked into Charlie’s eyes.

“Well?” Charlie asked again.

“Of course I’ll help,” George said. “After all, that’s what friends are for.”

T
he common area was the usual buzz of activity. Patients played board games. Some watched the televisions mounted high on the walls, while others paced up and down the halls. Some talked to themselves, and several sat in chairs, waiting for visitors. Charlie kept his usual low profile, even though today would be anything but usual. He hadn’t heard from Eddie since leaving his room, but that didn’t much matter. He knew what had to be done, and with George’s help it would happen.

The last person Charlie wanted or expected to see that morning was Rachel. She tapped him on the shoulder. Charlie spun around, startling her.

“Hey!” she said. “A little jumpy today?”

Charlie could hear his blood pounding in his ears. He needed to be alone. Rachel had the capacity to ruin everything.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said. “Perhaps a little, after the other night, I mean.”