Insanity (9 page)

Nobody but her knew how she got burned the day my grandfather died, but we did know there had been some kind of explosion. The flames cooked Eff Leer to ashes and scorched Grandma, too. Mama said it was a miracle Grandma survived. As for my grandfather—good riddance.

Grandma’s mental troubles started after that fire, there were spells when she’d have nightmares and shout and try to run off, but Mama and Dad kept her at home. Good thing God saw fit to make me big. At eighteen I was pushing six foot five and weighed two-fifty, so I handled Grandma until she got sick and forgetful and took to smacking me when I tried to keep her safe.

“Don’t go yet,” I said, my chest aching from not wanting to lose her. “Wait for Mama. She’s getting lunch.”

But that was stupid. Death didn’t care that I loved my grandma, or that she had taught me how to sing and shave and sew buttons on shirts even though I had giant fingers. It didn’t care that she had fought her cancer and dementia three years past when doctors said she couldn’t. Death smelled like mushrooms growing in dark corners, and it sounded like the rattle in Grandma’s breathing.

“What I started, you got to finish,” Grandma told me, so quietly I barely made out the words. That didn’t make any sense, but Grandma hadn’t been making sense the last two weeks. Too much of the morphine she needed to keep her from screaming with pain.

When I didn’t answer, she got angry, or maybe she was scared. “Darius Hyatt. You listening?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I squeezed her fingers and let her hold me by my thorn necklace.

My nose almost touched hers. Her breath smelled like ripe strawberries, probably because of the ice cream I fed her earlier. I was so close she looked blurry. For a few seconds she seemed young, and she had eyes again, and they stared straight into mine.

The thought of my blind grandmother looking at me made my heart beat funny.

“You always see the truth,” she told me as the life washed out of her. “Look hard.”

She took one more whistling breath. Her arm jerked, yanking my hot cheek against her cold, cold skin as she went way too still in the bed.

Then she said something else.

I swear she did.

Her dead mouth moved, and her dead voice wheezed her last words into my ear.

“This time, it’ll be
hungry.
”

Chapter Nine

“Can’t believe you took a job at Lincoln.” Mama frowned at me, then wheeled her chair square in the middle of my bedroom door so I’d have to run over her if I wanted to leave. “Both your grandmas
died
in that hospital.”

“Both my grandmas were old, and their minds had left them.” I pulled on my yellow Lincoln Psychiatric Security shirt, size four-x-extra-tall, short-sleeve since it was June and ten miles past hot in Never, Kentucky. “Wasn’t the hospital that killed them.”

“Don’t bet on that,” Mama muttered. “Death treats that hell-hole like a playground.”

The dark skin around her eyes tightened like she was winding up for another bunch of argument, so I cut loose with, “Tuition’s up five hundred dollars at Community next semester. Got to do something better than flip burgers.”

She puckered her face until her lips looked three times bigger than they ought to. “Your dad’s benefits should have been enough to put you through school.”

I grabbed the black ball cap that went with my new uniform, bent down to Mama, and kissed the top of her head. No reason to say anything about Dad. That was an old bunch of fussing, and nothing I could fix. Dad had been a civilian contractor over in Afghanistan, and he got killed when I was six. Civilians don’t get the same benefits as soldiers, so his company paid us enough to cover his funeral, then left us on our own. Mama kept teaching at Never Elementary until diabetes took her feet two years ago. I got a few small scholarships when I graduated last month, but I needed more to pay for books, save up for spring semester, and help meet our bills.

“Can you let me out of the bedroom?” I tried to look calm so Mama would stop worrying. “I don’t need to be late my first day after orientation.”

She shook her head no. “You look like a big old bumblebee in all that black and yellow. No son of Lela Hyatt is going out of this house dressed up like a bug.”

My grandma Betty’s presence seemed to whisper through our old house, weaving through the wooden floors and the white painted walls and wrapping itself around me like a hug. The hurt from missing her made my smile twitch, but I kept it on my face. It had been two weeks since we buried her. Time to get past it. Except the older Mama got, the more she sounded like Grandma Betty, and reminded me of her, too. I just hoped Mama never ... you know. Got loopy like Grandma.

“Move, or I’ll have to scoot you out of the way,” I told her. “I know you’ll smack me when I do it.”

Mama let out a loud sigh, then rolled back enough to let me
out of my bedroom. “Not like I could stop you. I haven’t been able to pick you up since you were two.”

I checked the clock on my nightstand: second shift started in half an hour. It only took ten minutes to drive to Lincoln, but I had to pick up Jessie, and I wanted time to grab some coffee.

Mama caught my hand as I moved past her, and when I looked down into her dark eyes, she got a little teary and asked, “What did Mama say to you before she died, Dare? Tell me again.”

The thorn around my neck seemed to get hot enough to cook through my skin and wrap fiery roots around my heart.

Hungry.

The word echoed through my mind in my grandma’s dead, raspy voice. It tried to force itself out of my mouth, too, but I wouldn’t let it. I squeezed Mama’s fingers gently, ignored my crazy thinking about the thorn, and repeated the same lie I’d been telling since the first time she asked.

“Grandma said to tell you she loved you.”

Chapter Ten

“You sure you want to work at the nuthouse?” Jessie Sullivan leaned back in the passenger seat as my old Ford truck chewed up road between Starbucks and Lincoln. “Your family’s got a lot of history with crazy. I’m just sayin’.”

“Shut up.” I shot a fake glare in his direction, but he was right, and so was Mama. Both of my grandmas died at Lincoln, and I had some cousins who kept getting sent to the funny farm for months at a stretch. As for my grandfather, he should have been locked in a prison cellar and fed through a hole. Electrocuted. Injected. Something.

Did everybody with a family history of crazy have to worry they’d catch it sooner or later?

Jessie fooled with his ponytail full of red hair as he snickered at me. “You got the easy job. Walking around, shining your flash-light, looking huge and pretending to keep the peace and all. I got stuck with direct care. Going on the wards, getting folks to eat and stay dressed and act right.”

“You hate it so bad, stroll your tall self back to Mickey D’s and make two dollars an hour less than me.”

This time Jessie laughed. He needed money even more than I did, because he didn’t have any scholarships and hadn’t saved enough cash for his first semester.

My cell phone played a song, drowning out the King of Mouth. I had my earpiece in, so I punched it and said, “Hey, baby.”

“I’m bored up here, Dare.” Trina Martinez’s voice sang like music in my ear, shoving Jessie and crazy grandmas and money right out of my mind. “When are you coming to visit me?”

I kept my eyes on the road, but all I saw was her sweet curves, wrapped in faded jeans and a bright-blue University of Kentucky T-shirt. She was already up at UK in Lexington because she started during the summer semester, studying biology on a full-ride scholarship. She was that smart in science, and that good in everything else, too. I liked her mind. And her wild, curly hair and her big, dark eyes and her sweet, sweet smile. She had been my girl since our first middle-school dance.

“Maybe Sunday,” I told her. “If I can swing the gas.”

The happy sound she made set my heart to beating faster, and I knew I’d be digging gas money out from under couch cushions if I had to. Trina was the one thing I let bust my budget. She’d been gone for four weeks, and I missed her too much to talk about. She started telling me about her classes and going to get burgers with her friends and how everybody liked to drink way more than she did.

“Don’t whiz past the turn,” Jessie said, but I almost did anyway. I hated to, but I told Trina I had to go, then punched off the
earpiece and pulled it free as we drove through the gates of the hospital campus. I kept my eyes off to the side, watching the lines on the road instead of paying much attention to Tower Cottage. Lincoln Psychiatric’s bell tower rose above everything in town, and I didn’t like to look at it. Always seemed off to me when I was little, like the top was blurry or shaped wrong or something. My whole life, I’d heard if the bells rang, the crazies were coming to get you. If they rang at night, you better stay inside and lock your doors.

“Didn’t your grandma Betty always say we had too many murders and too many disasters around here to be normal?” Jessie asked.

I shrugged as I turned into a spot and parked. “Like you keep reminding me, Grandma Betty was one of the crazies.”

“That’s harsh, man,” he said.

“You talk too much.”

He quit talking and started laughing lots of different crazy-folk laughs, trying to bug me.

I ignored him as I went toward the back entrance where we were supposed to clock in. I had done okay keeping the creepy stuff out of my head during my week of orientation, but thanks to Jessie, it was on my mind now. I was here at Lincoln, and I couldn’t leave for the next eight hours. The thorn around my neck started feeling warm again, but I tugged its cord and dug at it to shift its position. It had been doing that since Grandma died, changing temperatures whenever it felt like it. Either necklaces could be haunted, or I was starting to imagine weird stuff. I probably didn’t need to be taking a job at a psychiatric hospital.

It’s either work at Lincoln or wait a year to start college.

Had to keep a grip on that.

But something
was
wrong at this place. Lincoln Psychiatric felt ... prickly.

“One day, Dare, you’re just gonna turn crazy, too. You know that, right?” Jessie made another stupid laugh.

“Not before you, fool.” I turned the thorn loose, went through the door, and let it swing shut before he could grab it. “See?” I hollered through the glass, giving him a grin the whole time. “You’re already talking to yourself.”

Then I took off, walking fast to keep in front of him on my way to the time clock. When I busted into the long, windowless security hall and let that door lock Jessie out, too, it was my turn to laugh out loud at him. He fussed and cussed and finally got his key in the lock as I swept my badge through the clock and recorded my existence.

Most of the doors in the hallway were closed, and one of the big hall lights was off, plunging part of the way into shadow. The place seemed kind of empty until Jessie clattered inside, still cussing at me for locking him out. He got his badge swiped before he was late, then said, “Well, I’m outta here. I think I’m on the third floor this afternoon.”

I gave him a one-finger salute. “Hope you get to change a few diapers.”

“Screw you, Dare.” He grinned, and then he was gone, pushing through the security door and jogging toward the elevator.

The door banged closed, and the shadowy hall got silent again. I shook my head at Jessie, then turned around to find my own
assignment. When I set my eyes on the dry-erase board next to the time clock, the taped lines on it seemed to shimmer in the low lighting.

I frowned. I seriously did not have time for this crap. Why did my brain have to do this to me? Weird stuff had been happening to me since I was little. Grandma called it seeing the truth, but I figured it was just the family crazy showing up and trying to invite me to the nut club. I shook off the crawlies, put my finger on the board, and found my name.

Darius Hyatt.

And beside that, a single word.

Tunnel.

The letters flickered at me, and my insides lurched, and for a second everything blurred like the bell tower did whenever I tried to focus on the top.

A hand grabbed my shoulder and I nearly yelled.

“Tried to give you an easy first day,” Captain James said from behind me in his loud drill sergeant voice.

My heart kept thumping double-fast as I turned to him ... and his face looked wrong. Too sharp. Like skin on a skull, stretched tight enough to snap. He was grinning, which didn’t help, but I made myself smile back.

I had liked the guy when I interviewed, and all during training. Why did he look so mean now?

Except he didn’t.

Now he was just himself again. An old guy in a black hat and yellow shirt. Lots of freckles like Jessie, and age spots on his nose.

One breath. Two breaths. I kept smiling. I could do this. I wasn’t losing it like Grandma had.

“Come on.” Captain James jerked his thumb toward the door. “I’ll show you the way.”

Don’t bet on that.
The thought came in Mama’s voice, but also Grandma’s, sarcastic and nervous.

For one tick of the time clock, Captain James looked like skin on a skull again.

I followed him anyway.

Chapter Eleven

“Each building had access to the tunnels before we started closing the entrances,” Captain James explained as he walked me down a long, twisty piece of pavement toward the Recreation Hall. “The main access is in the Boiler House, and the offshoots run like a warren under the whole campus. Sealing them off is like working a giant puzzle. This hole broke open when we tried to close the tunnel next to it. It’s too wide to fix in a hurry, so we’ll have to keep somebody posted to be sure no patients get hurt.”

I fiddled with the security radio clipped to my belt and tried to sound cool when I asked, “Do the patients come around back of the Rec Hall much?”

“Aren’t supposed to leave the game room without staff, but things happen.” The captain walked with longer strides. Dude was old, but he was ex-military, taller than me, and he moved fast. I was starting to break a sweat. It was almost two miles from the front gate to where we were headed.