Mania (19 page)

“I don’t know, Laura.”

The editor took a deep breath. “Are you all right?”

Nick shook his head. “I can’t really say. I’m pretty confused. We decide to co-opt Van Gundy to take Hamlin down, and the very same day he ends up dead. You have to admit, it’s a pretty huge coincidence.”

“What are you suggesting? You think Jason’s behind this somehow?”

“It sure looks that way.”

“The report said that the police have taken a homeless man into custody.”

“I heard.”

“And I just can’t imagine Jason Hamlin doing something like this.”

“You don’t know what he’s capable of,” Nick said, thinking of Sara.

“You sound pretty upset, Nick. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Nick didn’t respond.

“Anyway,” Daly continued, “even if Jason is somehow responsible, how could he have found out so quickly what we were planning? You and I only talked about it this morning. And except for Johnnie, no one else knew what we were planning to do.”

After hanging up the call, Nick stood up from bed and walked to his desk. He opened his laptop and brought up a picture of Sara.

Standing in the pitch blackness of his windowless bathroom, Nick tried to remember if he had looked at the clock when he had dragged himself out of bed. He was in a blind daze, and he had no idea what time it was. The door was closed behind him. His heart was palpitating in his chest.

There was someone else in the bathroom with him
. He was certain of it. Someone just next to him, cloaked in the impenetrable darkness.
Was it Sara?

Nick stopped breathing, hoping to catch the intruder out, but the roar of blood coursing through his veins filled his ears, too loud for him to hear anything else. He reached a hand out next to him. The room was suddenly huge. Too huge. He took a tentative step, feeling for the toilet with his toes.
Nothing
. Maybe he wasn’t in the bathroom at all. But where the hell was he, then? The light switch—he had to flip the light switch. Panting, he reached in front of him, where the sink was supposed to be, shocked when his fingers smacked into its cold, hard porcelain surface, then reflexively raised his hand to the wall to find the plastic switch.

The overhead lamp lit the room with the violence of lightning.
There was someone standing in front of him, looking directly back at him
. Nick opened his mouth to scream. His eyes were wide with terror. And then he relaxed. He was standing in front of the mirror on the old, rusty medicine cabinet. The person in front of him was no one other than himself. Relief washed over him, and he started to laugh. The cackle of his laughter echoed through the small, cramped bathroom. And then it stopped, just as soon as it began. A hand had gripped him by the throat and was strangling him.

Nick fought with the hand, trying to pry the fingers from his throat. The harder he pulled, though, the tighter the hand clamped his windpipe. He choked for air. He couldn’t breathe. He kicked a foot backward, trying to push the attacker away from him. His foot struck out into the air, feebly. His vision was beginning to darken. He was losing consciousness. He couldn’t seem to pry the goddamned fingers loose from his throat.

He needed to know who was attacking him. There was a sour stench in the bathroom.
It must be one of the homeless men from the shelter.
His vision had become black and white, though, and he couldn’t see anything in the mirror. Nothing but his own image, and then the hand on his throat. He struggled, trying to turn himself around. Trying to get a view of his attacker. His hip banged hard against the edge of the sink, bruising him. The pain was intense, but he used the sink’s leverage to twist to the side. The attacker’s arm came into view in the mirror. And then, finally, the attacker’s face. Nick’s heart leapt into his throat.
It was Sam.
Sam was standing behind him, his fingers wrapped around his throat, strangling him to death.

“Sam, no,” he managed to say. “No, please, Sam, no.”

It must be a dream.

The stench in the bathroom was the smell of Sam’s rotting corpse. Nick’s neck was wrapped with a skeleton’s fingers, razor sharp and cold and superhumanly strong.

“It must be a dream,” Nick said out loud. “It must be a dream.” He let go of the hand on his throat and flicked off the lights. The hand was gone. He leaned forward onto the sink in the pitch blackness that again engulfed the bathroom, gasping for air. “Somebody help me,” he said, and he began to cry.

He fumbled across the bathroom in the dark, battling with his sense that the room had once again become infinitely larger than it should have been, and leaned over the bathtub and twisted the knobs to turn on the shower. A few seconds later, when the water had warmed up, he stepped into the spray, raising his face to the showerhead. The warm water rushed over him, down his body in the darkness, pummeling his head, reviving him, waking him up and bringing him to his senses. Then the stream on his forehead crescendoed into a roar, and the water got so hot that it was scalding him. He took a step backward, sliding unsteadily on the slippery surface of the tub. Sharp jets shot from the showerhead with tremendous force, threatening to pierce his skin like so many knives. His feet were slipping. He was losing his balance. Blindly, he reached out to try to steady himself, grabbing the shower curtain, narrowly avoiding a dangerous fall.

When Sara found him two hours later, Nick was leaning against the tile wall at the back of the bathtub, holding his arms around himself and shivering. The water had long since gone cold, and he was shaking so violently that he could barely stand.

“My God, Nick,” she said, pulling the curtain back. “What are you doing in there?”

Nick didn’t move.

“Nick? Please, Nick. You’re scaring me. Nick!”

At last he turned, and when she saw his face she hardly recognized him. His lips were blue. His eyes were bleary and unfocused, so bloodshot she thought they were cut, bleeding. Sara backpedaled in shock. “Nick,” she said, mouthing his name again and again. “What is it, darling? What is it?” She recovered herself and reached her hand toward him tentatively, afraid despite herself that he might leap out at her or try to hit her hand away. He allowed her to take hold of him and to lead him from the cold water. She wrapped a towel around him and took him back into the bedroom.

It was still dark. Nick looked at the clock as she tucked him in under the tangle of his dirty covers. It wasn’t yet four
A.M.
When would this night end?

“Shhh,” Sara said. “Shhhhhh.” He realized he was crying. “Shhh, Nick. You sleep now. Everything will be okay. You’re just exhausted, darling.”

“I need help, Sara,” he said.

“I know, darling. I know you do.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that, darling. You just go to sleep. There’s a doctor I know. The best psychiatrist in Seattle. Dr. Alan Barnes. I go to him, too, sometimes. I’ll take you there myself. I’ll take you to see him first thing in the morning.”

Oh my God. Oh my God, Sara, what is happening?

Nick sat inside the huge Mercedes, folded like a rag doll against its door, unconscious of its luxurious comfort. The city of Seattle whizzed by in a montage. The rain had stopped, and bits and pieces of sunlight were sneaking down through a thinning layer of clouds, dotting the ground and sides of buildings with a patchwork of strange, brightly lit geometric shapes. Like puzzle pieces, Nick thought, dipped in a different vat of dye from the rest of the landscape. When the small chunks of color started to take flight, twisting and leaping into the air as though sucked up into the vortex of a cyclone, Nick closed his eyes. He didn’t wonder whether the world was shattering. Instead, he wondered why Sara couldn’t see the colorful tornado, too.

The directional signal was blinking. When Sara pulled the car to a stop at the intersection just in front of the Four Seasons Hotel, Nick’s gaze traveled listlessly to the white zone in front of the hotel. He took in the doorman dressed in black, standing at the curb with a silver whistle in his mouth, a top hat on his head, waving his hands for a taxi. Hazily he remembered watching Sara disappear into the hotel through its plate-glass doors, arm in arm with a tall man whose face he hadn’t been able to glimpse.

“How do you know Barnes?” Nick heard himself ask.

“I told you already, honey,” Sara said. “I see him, too.”

“Why?”

Sara laughed. “That’s personal. It’s complicated.”

“Because of your father,” Nick said. He had the feeling that he wasn’t able to control his own voice.

“Because of my stepfather,” Sara acknowledged quietly. “Yes.”

“This is the third time.”

“What?” The traffic light changed, and Sara tapped the accelerator, easing the car across the intersection, toward the garage in the basement of the high-rise directly across the street from the Four Seasons. “What do you mean—the third time?”

“Did I say that?”

Sara turned to glance at him.

“This is the third time that I’ve heard that name,” he said. “Dr. Barnes.”

“Well, he’s pretty well known, darling.”

“In just the last few weeks. I never heard his name before.”

“You’re going to like him. He’ll be very helpful, you’ll see.”

“Sam told me to come see him. Then after Sam was killed, I actually saw him. Down at the Hudson Hotel. I saw Barnes there that same night I saw Jackson Ferry.”

Sara was navigating the giant car down the granite-paved ramp into the bowels of the tall building. A valet wearing a red polyester jacket was standing next to a stop sign tacked to a concrete pillar, waiting for her with a parking ticket in his hand. “Good morning, Ms. Hamlin.”

“And now you,” Nick said. He thought about waiting for Sara to come around to the passenger door to let him out, then realized he was capable of opening the door himself. He yanked on the latch and stood up onto shaky legs, proud of the small achievement.

Nick was aware of the handsome doctor scrutinizing him. It felt as if the man’s eyes were able to penetrate his skull. He was convinced that the psychiatrist was able to see everything that he was seeing. The thought scared him at first, but then began to comfort him. It would be nice to have an ally, someone who understood what he had been going through since his brother’s murder. Nick clung to the edge of the cashmere daybed where he was lying down, one foot on the floor, his head propped up on a comfortable cushion, his eyes wide open. The doctor had begun the session by pulling the blackout shades closed, but Nick had asked him to open them again. He wanted the daylight. He had begun to fear darkness of any kind.

“You knew my brother,” Nick said. He tried to remember why he had spoken the words, then recalled the doctor’s first question:
So what brings you down here to see me, Nicholas?
“People call me Nick,” he said, only vaguely aware how scattered his speech sounded.

“Yes, I did know your brother,” Barnes said. His voice was soft but very firm, and once again Nick found himself comforted by the doctor’s presence. This man would not let him stray.

“Were you friends?”

“I wouldn’t say so, no. We knew each other professionally. Your brother was developing a series of drugs based on some genetic coding his company had under patent. It’s groundbreaking, really, the research he was doing. I was working with the company on the psychiatric side. As a consultant. I got to know your brother that way.”

“He wanted me to come here and see you, too.”

“Did he?”

“The night he was murdered, he mentioned your name to me. I don’t remember much from that night. Just images. Visions.”

“It’s not unusual for a person to suppress the memory of a traumatic event, Nick.”

“But I do remember Sam mentioning your name to me,” Nick continued, as if the doctor hadn’t spoken. “Telling me that I should come talk to you.”

The doctor didn’t try to fill the silence. He was sitting in a large leather easy chair, one leg crossed over the other, a pad of paper in his hands. With his long hair and broad, handsome face, he didn’t look like a psychiatrist. He looked more like a movie star, Nick thought. When Nick at last closed his eyes, the image of the doctor reclining in his chair, entirely relaxed, waiting for him to continue, remained with him.

“And then I saw you. Down at the Hudson Hotel. Do you remember?”

“Yes, I remember you.”

“In the bathroom, with those three men. You came in, and they backed off.”

“I remember.”

“Did you know Jackson Ferry?”

“Yes.”

Nick opened his eyes. The doctor’s demeanor hadn’t changed. His legs were still crossed, and he was holding the pad of paper in front of him on his knee, doodling something that Nick couldn’t see. “You did?”

“One of the things I do, Nick,” Barnes responded, “is run a clinic for the city of Seattle, in conjunction with the emergency shelters. Basically, we offer counseling and treatment to people who can’t afford psychological help themselves. Jackson was one of my patients. I saw him personally a few times, in fact, before referring him to one of the other residents.”

When Nick once again closed his eyes, the image of Ferry’s ravaged face emerging from the shadows leapt from the recesses of his mind. The homeless man’s breathing was short, raspy. Determined. He grunted as he reached the two brothers, raising the knife in the air. Nick put himself in front of him, but Ferry wasn’t coming for Nick. He stabbed the knife deliberately at Sam. Nick intercepted him, grabbing the homeless man’s wrist. The stench of the man’s filthy clothes filled Nick’s nostrils. He wanted to vomit. The rags on the man’s hands felt oily and wet, his red, puffy cheek grazed up against Nick’s as Nick fought to stop him. Nick opened his eyes. For a moment the vision continued to blind him, and he twisted abruptly on the daybed, dropping his other foot to the floor.

“What is it, Nick?”

The doctor’s voice yanked Nick back into the present. A thin shaft of sunlight was streaming through the sheer curtains, reaching weakly across the parquet floor. Barnes must have been aware of Nick’s distress, but he remained at ease. Nick relaxed. The doctor’s calm radiated from him with palpable warmth. Nick stretched his neck and tried to loosen his shoulders. He balled and then unclasped his hands. “I don’t know, Dr. Barnes,” he said. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“You’re fighting it,” the doctor said to him.

“I’m scared.”

“Stop fighting it.” The doctor spoke without inflection. “Whatever it is that’s happening, it’s something your mind wants. Something your mind needs. It’s like jumping into a cold pool of water. If you fight it, it only gets worse. Once you relax and accept the cold, you’ll get used to it. You’ll be able to swim. You’ll be able to see what it is that your subconscious mind is trying to tell you.”

Nick became aware of his hands digging into the soft cashmere upholstery of the daybed.

“Relax, Nick. Relax your hands.”

Once again Nick was struck with the impression that the doctor was able to see inside him.

“Why don’t you start by trying to remember what happened to you that night? The night your brother was killed. Tell me what you see. Tell me what it is that’s haunting you.”

Nick had Jackson Ferry by the wrist. He was squeezing so hard it felt as if he would crush the homeless man’s bones. Nick’s eyes were fastened on the steel knife. The light from the street lamp overhead was glistening on the blade, giving it an oily sheen. Nick had caught Ferry’s other arm with his free hand, but the man twisted free. He was larger than Nick, at least a few inches taller. Ferry made a strange noise in his throat. An animal sound, like a baboon’s vicious growl. Everything was happening so fast. Ferry had come at them out of nowhere. Nick was losing his grip. “Get him, Sam,” Nick managed to say. “Help me.” A second later, the homeless man overpowered him. Nick was on the ground underneath him, and the taller, stronger man was kicking him in the ribs. He wasn’t wearing shoes, but Ferry’s feet felt as sharp and heavy as clumps of steel. It felt to Nick as if the man was breaking his rib cage. There was a blur of motion above him, and he raised his hands to protect his face.

“Jackson!” Sam was shouting. “Stop it, Jackson. Stop it. You’ll kill him.”

How was it that Sam knew the man’s name?

Ferry turned, and the blade of the knife scintillated like a jewel as it arced through the black air. Nick heard it slice into his brother’s stomach. Blood splattered into Nick’s eyes. Sam stumbled, then fell. Nick clambered to his knees. Turning on him once again, Ferry’s foot seemed frozen for a split second in front of his face. Nick had the feeling he should be able to avoid the kick. Then the foot was connecting with his forehead, splintering his skull. And Nick lost consciousness.

When he awoke, he was facedown on the asphalt of the parking lot, a few chunks of gravel stuck to his cheek. Something was caught between his lip and his teeth, and when he tried to move his mouth to speak, sharp needles of pain shot through his jaw. He became aware of a rustling sound behind him, and then the sensation of movement at his feet. When he began to turn around, the homeless man plunged an iron foot into the small of his back, shoving him down into the asphalt again, grinding his cheek against the gritty pavement.
You and I are brothers.
Nick tried one more time to twist around. He had to know whether the man was actually speaking these words to him or whether he was imagining them.
You don’t know what’s real and what isn’t
, the voice said, and Nick became convinced that it was just a hallucination. How else would the man have known what he was thinking? The man’s foot was still resting on the small of his back, and he shoved him forward again, even more violently. Nick felt the skin peel from his face.

He turned over when the man let him go, but he didn’t try to stand. His ribs were bruised, and he was having difficulty breathing. He raised his head off the ground and watched the man sit down on the asphalt between Sam and him and strap on the Nikes he had yanked from Nick’s feet.

Nick closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he was hunched over his brother’s body. Ferry was gone. The knife was lying on the ground beside him. Sam was bleeding profusely, his head twisted to one side, a trickle of blood leaking from his mouth. Nick’s hands were shaking as he reached down toward his brother’s battered face, thinking to caress him, perhaps to look for a pulse. His fingers were just above his cheek. He was about to touch Sam’s face when the cell phone in Sam’s jacket began to ring.

And Sam opened his eyes.

“Sam was still alive,” Nick said. “Ferry didn’t kill him.”

“Are you sure?” Barnes asked him.

Nick closed his eyes, trying to remember. “The knife was lying on the ground next to him.”

“Ferry is a strong man. Maybe Sam didn’t die right away. But if Ferry stabbed him, the wound was probably enough to kill your brother.”

“No.” Nick shook his head. “When the police arrived, the knife was in my brother’s chest.” Nick opened his eyes. “With my fingerprints on it.”

“I’m not sure how much faith you should place in your own memory, Nick. It’s possible that your mind is inventing the images you think you’re remembering. Like when you dream.”

The rush of images that had washed over Nick had released him from the daze he had been in, at least temporarily. “What’s happening to me?”

The doctor looked down at the pad of paper in front of him, propped still on his knee. “Honestly, Nick?”

Nick waited.

“There’s no way to sugarcoat this. What you have described to me sounds like the onset of schizophrenia.”

Nick let the import of Barnes’s words sink in. “But I’m twenty-nine years old, Dr. Barnes.”

“It’s not uncommon for schizophrenia to manifest itself in males in their late twenties. Normally, there are some warning signs, but not always.” The doctor narrowed his eyes. “Are you telling me that you’ve had no forewarning? A traumatic episode in your childhood, perhaps? Some indication that you might be predisposed to a change like this in your psyche?”

For a split second Nick was standing on the frozen lake in his skates, his hockey stick in his hand. The man in black was sinking beneath the surface of the icy water. Then Sam was fishing his hockey stick from the hole and prodding the corpse, forcing the lifeless body under the slab of ice.

“I’m not saying it
is
schizophrenia,” Barnes said. “Listen to me carefully. I’m saying that it sounds like the early onset of the illness, that’s all. There are a series of tests and evaluations we have to do. And then, if it is schizophrenia, you’ll receive treatment. In the meantime, what you need more than anything else is rest. You’ve been through incredible stress. You’re exhausted. It’s evident in your face. In your eyes.” The doctor stood up and walked to his desk, where he picked up a small brown bottle with a white cap. He wrote a few words onto its label in a difficult-to-read scrawl. “These are pretty powerful tranquillizers. Take one at night before you get into bed.” He smiled. “You’ll be asleep in a few minutes, and you’ll sleep the entire night.”

Nick looked at the clock on the wall. He couldn’t quite believe that two full hours had passed. “Sara will be waiting for me,” he said, straightening up. He took the small bottle from the doctor’s hand.

“You’re lucky to have her. She’s been through quite a bit herself. So she knows what it feels like to be you, Nick. Don’t be afraid to trust her with your feelings. She’ll take care of you.”

Nick turned to leave the room.

“Millicent will make another appointment for you on your way out. I’d like to see you tomorrow.”

“I don’t have medical insurance.”

“Forget about it. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Doctor,” Nick said. Barnes had already sat back down at his desk, though, and was shuffling through a few papers, and he didn’t seem to have heard him.

Nick felt a wave of gratitude course through his body when he opened the door to the outer office and found Sara still seated there where he had left her. She could so easily have moved on. She could so easily have had anyone else she wanted. Nick knelt down in front of her and took her cool, smooth hands in his and brought them to his lips. “You make me want to be a man you can be proud of,” he said.

“I am proud of you, darling,” she said. Then she pulled him up off his knees and locked her arms around his neck. “I need you, too. Just as much as you need me.”