The Lost and the Damned (35 page)

“Merill,” I said suddenly. “That monster we saw. You saw its face, didn’t you?”

“I did,” he said.

“That’s not just some random monster. That’s someone Max knows. Right?”

“That’s a good observation,” said Merill tiredly. “Yes, it’s the only person Max fears.”

Inwardly, I was elated. It was making sense. Still, I had to be sure. “Who is that?”

“His father.”

That’s exactly what I thought. Merill had seen Max’s file and knew what his father looked like. But I had never seen a picture of Max’s father. I had seen the face of the man in the dream I kept having in the blackness. I had to see it again, but now I was sure. The face of the man who beat the young boy in the dream was Max’s father. It was as I suspected, that boy was Max.

“He’s afraid of his father?” said Katie. “Isn’t that some sort of classic psychological problem? Like, I-never-grew-up-osis?”

“Max has some mitigating factors, Kate,” said Merill. “Max’s father nearly beat him to death when he was just a teen. Based on my sessions with Max, he never recovered.”

I was barely listening at this point. It all made perfect sense. Max’s whole life was turned upside down by his father beating the ever living crap out of him when he was a teenager. Max goes into a mental institution where the nurses torture and mistreat him. He eventually gets out and lives a sub-par life, always living in the shadow of the beating. He misses out on promotion, misses out on girls, then gets some mystical fuck over that gives him the power to bend reality. He spends months being drugged so he can avoid it, then they take the drugs away, then they poke and prod him, experimenting on him and keeping him medicated just enough to be safe. Finally there’s a disaster and the safety’s off. The drugs wear off, nobody’s watching, and all hell breaks use. He sucks everything into his mind and starts wandering through it.

And that’s what Max was trying to do: he was trying to change his life. So many horrible things had happened to him, he was just trying to remove them from his life one by one. Violence was all he knew, so violence was the way he was getting rid of them. He was trying so hard to kill off all his tormentors, probably with the idea if he could remove them his life would be different.

But there was one tormentor that he couldn’t remove. He could remove the only one that mattered. No matter how much he changed, it didn’t seem like he could change the one act that started it: his father’s beating. Even possessed of all this power, his father still marauded through his mind as a monster. Max had the power to bend reality and some wicked looking knives, but he still feared his father.

I marveled at what that does to a kid. You’re thirteen, fourteen, whatever, and you have an abusive dad. Then one day he calls you in and beats the utter crap out of you. Max showed up in the hospital and his father in prison, so I’m guessing the aftermath included broken bones, blood, coma, the works. I bet most people’s lives would be fucked up by that. No wonder Max was a twisted fuck. He was fighting back the only way he knew how. His father introduced him to violence and that’s what he had to work with.

This all confirmed what I had been turning over in my head. I was the one person who could help him. Every time I went into blackness I had the same dream, the dream of his beating. I followed him, always going with him into that room. I thought it was a dream, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was just another memory, like the hospital? Max was trying to change his life by destroying his pain. What if I could stop the one pain that started it all?

I smiled. I just knew this was right. I knew this was what I needed to do. Without a further thought, I turned down the hallway, yanking open the first door I saw.  Merill and Katie stared, and a few moments later wandered after me. They said something, but I wasn’t listening. Behind the first door was a closet. I rooted around in the closet, not finding what I was looking for, before I left the closet and went to the next door on the hall.

“What are you doing?” I vaguely recall Katie saying.

“Looking for it,” I said.

This next door was an office. I knocked over a computer in my frantic search. I checked the closet and the cabinets, but nothing. I needed to find the blackness. That was my only link back to the dream. I ran back out into the hallway to the next room.

“Stop making so much noise,” said Katie, grabbing my shoulder. I shrugged it off, but she continued, “Max could hear us.”

The next door was a day room. It was a wide empty room with long tables and chairs. There were two board games on the table, plastic pieces strewn over half open boards. I scanned the room and saw a closet in one corner, probably where all the board games were kept. I ran to the door, flinging it open. On the other side was vast blackness. I laughed.

“I found it!” I said.

“But we just came from that,” said Katie. “It might not be any better!”

“You don’t understand!” I said, “I’ve figured it out! I know how to fix this whole thing!” The thought of what I needed to do burned in my brain so strongly that I must have been manic. Once I knew what to do, I was consumed by solving that riddle.

“What do you mean?” asked Katie. Merill looked over her shoulder, also concerned.

“Just wait, you’ll see!” I shouted triumphantly, then leapt into the blackness.

Falling through black space reduced some of my enthusiasm, as its thought-wiping vastness destroyed any excitement I had. But even as I sank through the ceiling to land on the floor of that dining room I had seen so many times, what I needed to do still burned in my mind. For once I remembered who I was and what I was doing when I stood in that room. The blonde girl said something to the boy, who only nodded. Then she turned to me.

“The choice is yours to make,” she said.

I nodded, finally understanding all the gibberish she had said to me.

The boy left the room and I felt the familiar tugging, gently pulling me into the room after him. This time I embraced it, as I swept into the room, not propelled by my feet, but by the intensity of will. It was at it always was, the man in work clothes that I now knew was Max’s dad. I came to rest behind the young boy, the young Max, standing behind him like a guardian angel.

As always, I remained unnoticed in the room as the father yelled at the son. The exact words were lost to me; I only heard the rage and emotion. I thought how disgusted I was that a man would let himself lose his temper and assault his poor defenseless son. My body was frozen as always. If I tried to move my arms, nothing would happen. Instead I sat and listened as the man’s voice grew and the rage grew hotter. I knew it would only be another few moments before he raised his hand to his boy.

As the father’s rage grew, he was surrounded by a red light that grew stronger. His words grew sharper and the light grew redder. Then he lifted his arm, red electricity crackling over the arm. He swung down at the boy. I did not need to move a muscle. I moved via willpower, pure thought and intention, grabbing the father’s arm and holding it in air. The father was confused, only vaguely seeing me. The boy smiled.  

“How could you do that to your son?” I screamed. Red electricity flowed down his arm and into mine.

“You are a father,” I screamed, red energy flowing into me, “You protect your family! You protect your son!”

Without thinking, I punched him. He was weak and still barely aware I was there, so he crumpled to the couch. Still acting without thought, I stepped forward and punched him again. And again. I couldn’t help myself as I kept striking him. He feebly held his hands up to block my punches, but it was useless. I hit him again and again, knocking out teeth and bloodying his lips. At a certain point I was even disgusted with my own behavior, but I kept striking him, sparks of red energy shooting everywhere each time I hit him. Finally I wrenched myself away, grabbing my own fist with my other hand and holding it back. I found myself exhausted, empty, my breath heaving.

I stepped back, swaying on my feet as I looked at the unconscious man in front of me. Did I say unconscious? Unconscious if I was lucky. If I was unlucky, he would be dead. I was disgusted with myself. Hoping to feel good about myself, I turned and looked at the boy. He had a big smile.

“Thank you, mister,” he said, showing those pearly whites.

I smiled weakly back, patting his head and ruffling his head. I took a deep breath and decided it was a job well done, even if I wasn’t happy with how I acted.

The world rippled like water or a cheap Hollywood flashback, and I knew we were done here. The rippling grew greater and I began to feel dizzy. Finally reality turned completely into water which fell to the ground and washed away, revealing a different world. It was strangely jarring, watching everything I knew as real just slip to the ground, revealing another world, like a curtain was dropped.

Everything was sharper, more real than before, as if I had grown used to blurry glasses and now truly saw. It was not a spectacular world I found myself in. I saw simple hospital corridors, the same Bellingham corridors I had seen so many times. But these were comforting, these were familiar. These were not corridors of peeling paint and disrepair, nor of fresh renovations and new psychological industry.  These were renovated corridors broken from explosion, the after effects of the pillar of light. The lights flickered like a strobe light. Plaster had fallen from the ceiling. This was the real hospital. This wasn’t Max’s mind. This was reality.

I was in a broad area where the corridors came together. In other wings, this was where the clear plastic doors were located, but this wing had none. Double doors stood at one end with a sign indicating Wing D. One of the double doors was half off its hinge, but the other looked stable. I was not alone in this area. It had about a dozen patients, still in bathrobes and sweatpants. They were crowded around a spot that I couldn’t see. I wondered if someone had fallen or had a heart attack.

“John!” I heard a familiar voice cry and I turned, having Katie in my arms before I knew what was happening. Everything else was forgotten as I held her in my arms. There was something so comfortable, so right while she held herself against me. I closed my eyes and let a warm feeling run through me. After what seemed like both an eternity and far too short a time, she pulled herself away from me. She stepped back from me, immediately distant, her face a mixture of confusion and tentative happiness.

“It was horrible!” she said finally. “Max found us! We ran as fast as we could, but he kept after us, shouting like a madman. We didn’t know where to run! We couldn’t find a door to the blackness and the monster never showed up. He almost had us. He stabbed the doctor in the leg!” She turned aside to reveal a less than thrilled Merill. He clutched at his thigh which had a dark stain. He had tried bandaging it, but I could tell that it wasn’t working very well. He winced whenever he put weight on it, which looked to be most of the time.

“Where were you?” she asked.

“How did you escape from Max?” I asked. Merill was limping, how could they get away from Max like that?

“Luck? Deus ex Machina?” she said. “Dunno.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Max stabbed the doctor and I stopped to help him up. I looked up and Max was right on top of us. He had that creepy fucking smile he always had! There were all those knives! I wanted to do something, I just couldn’t. I was scared. I should have kicked him or something. I just wasn’t myself. I was just so afraid. I just closed my eyes and waited.”

She just stopped talking, looking at me like I should understand what happened next.

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“I heard a noise that wasn’t my own death or stabbing. I opened my eyes and saw that the doctor was okay, so then I looked at Max. He was just on the ground, passed out.” She paused and then pointed at the crowd of patients. “Over there.”

I turned and looked at the crowd. A few patients had wandered off, so I could now see that there was a prone body in the center of the crowd.

“So where the fuck were you?” she asked, suddenly a little angry. “I was in danger and you were off somewhere else. Don’t you want the rescue money? I’m the damsel and I was fucking in distress, John.”

I let myself smile, which seemed to piss her off more. “I was setting things right. I think I’m the one who saved you.”

“Eh?” said Merill, looking up from his pain.

Katie jumped in before I could answer. “Isn’t that convenient? You bail, hear about our miraculous escape, then take credit for the miracle? Just like a man. I can’t believe that I trusted you, when you’re just like all the others.”

“No, stop, listen,” I said. “We were in Max’s mind, right? Well, I found the source of things. The original thing that fucked him all up. I was inside Max’s memories and I fixed things.”

“What?” asked Merill urgently.

I ignored him, focusing on Katie. “I put everything right,” I said, moving close to her, putting my arms around her. She reluctantly came close. “That’s why we were ejected from Max’s mind. That’s why it fell away. That’s why we’re here.” I pulled her in for full hug, pressing her against me. It felt nice. It felt right. “It’s all over.”

“Is it really?” she asked.

“What did you do?” asked Merill urgently behind us.

“It is,” I said reassuringly to Katie. “It’s over.”

Merill grabbed my shoulder, slowly and insistently saying each word to me. “What. Did. You. Do?”

I pulled partially away from the embrace. “Every time I went into the black, I had a dream. A dream of a young boy being beaten by his father. I didn’t think much of it until I saw the monster. It had the same face as the father. So I knew that I was seeing Max’s memory every time we went there.”

“You’re so smart,” said Katie.

I smiled, basking in the praise.

“What did you do?” asked Merill again, even more insistently.

“I realized that Max was fucked up because his father beat him. That ruined his life and turned him into a maniac. So I undid it.”

I expected Merill to say it again, so I turned to him and saw his expression. I sighed and continued.