The Lost and the Damned (24 page)

“Okay. We saw Max here just a little while ago. And he was younger. Not a teenager, but not in his thirties. You saw him, he looked what, twenties?”

“Yeah, youthful, but still not cute.”

“Alright, twenties. Maybe in college? So this would be somewhere between these two.” In the large space on the line in between 1985 and The Well I made another notch and labeled it Library. “So, we have this timeline now, showing the estimation of where we’ve been.”

“Yeah? So? Where does that lead us?”

I looked down at the diagram. “Uhhh. I don’t know. This is as much as I’ve figured out.”

“Grrreat,” she said.

“But I’m convinced it’s about Max. This timeline seems to be Max’s life.”

“But why? Why are we travelling in time,” she said the phrase with such distaste, “in Max’s life?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe… Maybe we’re supposed to do something. Maybe something went wrong in his life and we have to fix it.”

“This isn’t fucking Quantum Leap! We’re not angels, we’re not life-fixers. This is not some corny TV show,” she said, angry.

“Yeah?” I said, ready to fight my point. Then I noticed my own idiocy and calmed down. “Yeah, it’s not. Why would we even be picked to help him out? That would give us so much purpose. Why us? Were we picked? By who?”

“Don’t say God,” she said. “Don’t even fucking say God! You’re not turning this into a religious thing. I won’t accept it.”

“I wasn’t going to. I’m just lost. So if we’re moving around in Max’s past, then what? What does it mean?”

“Sure beats the hell out of me,” she said, “It’s your theory.”

“We don’t know why we’re here; we don’t even know how we got here. Somehow we’re travelling through time, a situation we got into through the hospital. While I heard some messed up stuff happening at the hospital, I didn’t hear anything about time.”

“Messed up stuff?” asked Katie, raising an eyebrow.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, suddenly wondering if Katie had been involved in Dr. Ashborn’s work. “I heard that some very unorthodox experiments were going on in the hospital. But I don’t know any specifics.”

“Oh,” she said, going quiet.

“Were you involved in any?”

“I don’t… I don’t know,” her lips were tight and she stared off into space.

“I know the experiments were conducted by Dr. Ashborn,” I said, trying to volunteer anything to discount the possibility she had been experimented on. “Was he your doctor?”

“No,” she said, but she didn’t sound confident. “My doctor was… Merill?”

“Ah, the nervous Dr. Merill.”

“You know him?”

“I’ve met him,” I said. “He’s a cagey one. Doesn’t seem like a bad person. I’m actually pissed at him for not telling me more about what was going on. I think he knew about this. He at least had an idea.”

“About what?”

“This whole Max thing. He was worried about something in this hospital, something he wasn’t sure about. I just can’t help but feel he knew something.”

We both lapsed into silence, our minds pouring over what we knew. It was Katie who broke the silence.

“I just thought of something! Someone’s going to die here!” she started looking over the railing at people in the library.

“What?” I said, tensing in my chair. My hand immediately drifted to the pocket with my gun.

“If things follow the same pattern,” she said. “If things follow the same pattern, someone’s going to die.”

“Who?”

“Someone. I don’t know who or how.”

I relaxed. “How do you know someone’s going to die?”

“It’s the pattern. In the old hospital, you saw Max and a little later found someone dead. Then the monster showed up. At the Well, we saw Max and then found someone dead. Then the monster showed up. We just saw Max, so someone’s going to show up dead.”

“And then the monster comes?”

“You bet,” she said.

“That’s an interesting theory,” I said, “but I’m not sure I buy it.”

“It’s fucking genius, but that doesn’t matter,” she said with a smile. “Just you watch, somebody’s gonna die.”

“That’s a horrible thing to be hoping for. You’re actually betting in favor of someone dying.”

“I’m not betting, I just think that’s going to happen,” she said. “Besides, what do you care about people here? Besides, they don’t have real faces.”

“I care about them because they are human beings! They have just as much right as we do to – wait, what do you mean they don’t have real faces?”

“Look at them,” she said, pointing to the people two tables to my left. The table in between was empty, but the table beyond that had two people studying. I had looked at them quickly before, and to a quick look, they appeared fine. They had hair, flannel shirts, T-shirts, and ripped jeans, their heads bowed, reading their books. Anyone doing a quick scan of the room wouldn’t think much of them. After Katie pointed to them, I stared more closely at them. It took me a second, but I saw it.

She was right, they didn’t have any faces. Their faces were almost completely smooth, their features basic. These were not the faces of those with deformities from birth; these were faces that were never formed. Instead of eyes there were vague sockets with something like an eye but not an eye within. They had no mouth except for a basic slit. While I had seen the faceless creatures in the steam tunnels, these were different. While the creatures looked malevolent, these people looked harmless. These unformed faces were more a cartoon sketch of a human face, a replacement face to be stuck in amongst a crowd to not be noticed with a quick glance.

“What… the… hell…” I said, not believing my eyes.

“Oh good, you see it too,” she said. “I was wondering if it was residual from the hospital stay.  That makes me feel better. I’m going to be fucking double-guessing myself for years after this hospital stay. Takes all the fun out of drugs.”

I stood up, still not believing, walking near the intermediary table to get a better look. Things still looked messed up when I got closer. “Hey!” I said, waving my hand near their table. “Hey! You there!” I waved my hand as close as I was willing to get.

No reaction.

I decided they were at least harmless and walked back over to Katie and sat down. “That’s messed up.”

“I’ve been seeing them for a while now,” Katie said. “I thought since you hadn’t mentioned them it was just me. I’m glad it wasn’t just me.”

“Yeah…” I said, sitting there, just trying to conceive of why those people had no faces. Maybe I was wrong; maybe they simply had a birth defect. And when I went over there and waved at them, they ignored me because of my insensitivity to their condition. But I would have at least thought their heads would have moved slightly. Instead, they showed no reaction, as if I wasn’t there.

“Yuck!” said Katie, reaching under the table. She came back up with one of her slippers in her hand. It was stained grey and brown. “You don’t know how good it feels to get that off! Walking around with wet slippers in dirty tunnel water. Ew!” She reached under the table and came up with her other slipper. “Ugh, this one stuck to my foot and came off with a horrible sucking sound.” She threw that second slipper over the railing, not caring where it landed. “I’m not wearing those fucking things again.”

She stood up on bare feet and walked around, looking down the aisles. “While barefoot feels nice here, I don’t think we’ll have this flat carpet everywhere. I’m not sure I want to go through rusty steam tunnels with bare feet. I need new shoes. Hmmm.” She continued looking around, stalking through the immediate area as if she were hunting the Wild Library Shoe.

Reaching the intermediary table, she put one hand on the top of the table, then swung her head upside down, looking under the table at the two faceless people. “Ah ha!” she said, “Chucks!”

She walked up to one of the faceless people and said, “Hey you!”

No answer.

“Hey!” She poked the person, achieving no reaction.

“Hey!” She poked him twice.

“Hey, I’m taking your shoes!”

No reaction.  

She waved her hand in front of his head, then poked him a few more times. When there was still no reply she turned to me and smiled.

“Score! The shoes are mine!”

What followed was one of the ballsiest moves I had ever seen. She crouched down and literally took the shoes off him. She untied each one and pulled them off while the faceless person sat motionless. And then she took off the person’s socks too. There was no movement from the person during this entire time. They might have been a mannequin for all the reaction they had. Then she sat on the floor next to the table and put on the socks and shoes. Afterwards she walked back to me, showing off red high-top sneakers.

“Converse all-stars! Not so great support, but always stylish, always good when there’s nothing else. I’d rather some nice ass-kicking boots, but I’ll take Chucks if that’s all that’s available.” She sat down across from me, a huge grin on her face. Her eyes sparkled and almost all the fatigue had disappeared from her face. I watched her, almost mesmerized. I realized just why her album skyrocketed to the top of the charts even in her absence.

As if reading my mind, Katie asked, “John, you said my album did well, right?”

“Yeah, very well. Top of the charts, I think. Well enough to have your picture in record stores. I’m guessing that’s gold or platinum or something.”

“That is good,” she said. “Have you heard it?”

I had meant to pick it up somewhere along this job, listen to it in the car or at the hotel, just somewhere. I figured that the lyrics might give me a lead if I had nothing. Unfortunately, I never got to that spot. “I’m afraid to say I haven’t.”

“Not a music lover? Or not your genre? What are you, R&B, Gangsta Rap, Boy Bands?”

“What?” I said, confused. Boy bands? Gangsta rap?

“I’m just messing with you. You shoulda seen the look on your face.”

I tried to smile but I’m sure it came out more like a grimace. “I’m not much of a music person. I always mean to check out more music, but I don’t get around to it. My college friends were always music nerds, so they had all these indie bands that maybe needed a more refined palate than I have. I just never know what to buy. I end up listening to old Sinatra albums and eighties music.”

“Nothing wrong with Old Blue Eyes, other than the womanizing and being a prick. Music’s good, though,” she said. “Do you want recommendations?”

“Sure, you’re a musician, tell me what’s good.”

It was somewhat of a loaded request and I knew it. From all the marketing and record magazines I had seen, her music had definite rock and punk roots. I expected her to suggest something indie and rocking, something filled with electric guitars and hatred for the system. The answer I got surprised me.

“Johnny Cash.”

“Really? The country musician?” I said, with genuine surprise.

“You can’t toss out a whole genre of music based on a few people on the radio you didn’t like. There’s worthwhile stuff in every genre.”

“I don’t know…”

“If you’re country-phobic, Johnny Cash is a good test drive,” she said. “Check out his American recordings. Some of those are covers of younger rockers. You can appreciate the darkness and sadness in his voice.”

“I’m not sure –“

“- Try it. Give it a try before you discount it. I’m sure even a guy like you could appreciate it. Everyone can appreciate a little darkness.”

“Sure, why not?” I said. What did I have to lose? Just ten bucks and some time. I already spent enough time in my car that music was fine. I filed away the Cash recommendation for later. Maybe Johnny Cash albums would go well with white sandy beaches, assuming I ever got out of this. I leaned back in my chair, lolling my head back so I could relax. If Katie was right, all we had to wait for was a murder. Without realizing it, I drifted off to sleep.

“Evening, Helen, are you ready for our date?” I heard the loud voice drifting up from below, waking me from the half sleep I had drifted into. I jerked up in my chair, looking at Katie who was staring at me. I tried to get my bearings.

“Any murders?” I mumbled, but Katie shook her head no.

“Brad, they’re wonderful!” This time it was a female voice drifting up. I craned my neck to look down over the railing. The same woman at the circulation desk had just received a bouquet, held by a tall man in his twenties.

“Looks like someone got flowers,” I mumbled, still becoming fully conscious.

“I wish I got more flowers,” said Katie.

“You’ve been catatonic for months,” I said, “How do you know you didn’t get flowers in that time?”

“Stop casting sunshine on my rainy day,” Katie said. “If I wasn’t awake when I got them, then I still need some flowers.”

I nodded noncommittally, looking down at the circulation desk.

“Thank you for these!” said the librarian, standing up to give the man a peck on the cheek. “You’re early though. It’s still fifteen minutes til I get off.”

“That’s fine, I’ll hang around,” said the man. “In fact, I think I’ll go ‘freshen up’ as you girls call it,” he said with a smile. She smiled back and the man walked off.

“He’s much better for her,” said Katie.

“How do you know? You’ve seen him for maybe thirty seconds,” I said.

“Longer than that, I saw him strut in here before you woke up. But still, I know. For one, she actually likes him. Reciprocity goes very far for dating. And two, he’s cute. Max was not the right guy and not even cute.”

“So a cute guy who’s not the right guy is better?”

“A bit better. At least nice to look at,” she paused and noticed the look I was giving her. “Hey, girls like eye candy too.”

“Sure,” I said, not wanting to get into another Katie relationship rant. I rubbed my eyes, trying to fully wake up. I hadn’t realized I had begun to drift off until I found myself waking up. You’d think with the amount of time we had spent unconscious I would not be tired. I think the disorientation and the fear of the day wore me out. I didn’t feel refreshed but some of my muscles were less sore.

I stretched my arms.  My shoulders were killing me. I stood up and stretched more. I looked down at Katie who was staring off into space with a smug look on her face.