And music! God, he had forgotten . . . Melodies flooded his head, the joy and shock of it as intense as if he were hearing them for the first time. He lay back on the bed, humming, tears filling his eyes. “Tears of a Clown,” that was one of his favorites. He wondered if his dad would have liked that one. Probably. He had gotten Ricky onto the Beatles, the Stones, Ella Fitzgerald, Coltrane . . .
His father. His father had died here because of the warden’s sick experiments. This time Ricky couldn’t forget. He might not have everything back but he had enough. Enough to survive. Enough to fight.
Enough to fight, after his mother had come, after she was right there and he could have told her everything. Tears burned down his cheeks. He had been so close, so damn close, and now he was stuck. He had told his mother with his own words—no, the warden’s words—to leave him at Brookline. And worst of all, she believed him.
He woke to small, cold hands on his face, shaking him.
The little girl stood over his bed, nudging him awake, still pale and fragile, but with eyes and a nose and a mouth. As soon as he tried to cry out in surprise she shushed him. A horrible, vivid scar could be seen just through the filthy fringe of hair over her face. She beckoned silently, gliding across the floor with unnatural speed.
Ricky followed, watching her effortlessly open the padlocked door and turn the corner. Now he had to hurry to keep up, jogging, finding just the ends of her hair as they whipped down into the staircase. Voices drifted like clouds through the atmosphere, jumbled and nonsensical, dark mumblings that seeped from every wall and door.
Down they went, past the first-floor lobby, past the offices, down into the basement. Ricky hesitated, but she was moving so fast . . . If he didn’t keep up, he would lose her. He plunged into the cold, wondering if he was mad, wondering if he had a choice. This strange little child had haunted him for weeks now, why did he insist on giving her this power?
But he went, determined, keeping pace now. Whenever he got near she sped off, unreachable.
Shadows with sharp, toothy grins slid across the walls, there in the fringes of his sight and gone when he turned to look. He focused again on the girl, giving chase, and soon they were in the lower ward. The girl flew by every patient cell, ignoring them, going instead to the tall, metal door at the very end of the hall. Through it she went, deeper, deeper into the asylum than Ricky had ever ventured.
The darkened corridor stretched on and on, endless, exhausting, until at last they reached a final door that opened onto an amphitheater-like space. An operating theater. Somebody lay prone on a gurney, skeletal scaffoldings for lights and trays set up around them like silent metal sentinels. The girl had vanished, but Ricky knew that he was still moving forward, compelled to look, compelled to know . . .
The body on the table was covered with a sheet, a strange deformity jutting out from where the head would be. Trembling, Ricky took the edge of the sheet and pulled. His stomach tumbled, and he didn’t want to see anymore but it was too late . . .
It looked so like him, but older. Bigger. Dad. The corpse was almost blue with cold, the mouth open slightly, frozen in a surprised cry. A spike had been sunk deep into the left eye socket, jammed halfway in.
Ricky covered his mouth with both hands and tried not to scream. His stomach tightened again and he was going to be sick.
The head fell toward him with a thud, the spike sliding out slowly, inexorably, hitting the tiles and spinning, jangling . . . The one good eye blinked. “Don’t forget,” he whispered with cracked, purple lips. “Don’t forget, Ricky. Don’t run, don’t hide. Fight.”
All smiles, the warden whistled his way into Ricky’s room the next morning with Nurse Kramer behind, hustling to keep up. She delivered his breakfast and medicine, the striped red and blue pills that Ricky had dreaded since waking. Usually the nurses held his nose closed and waited until he was gasping and choking to shove the pills down his throat. Lately, with his cooperation, they had simply watched while he downed the medication.
But today Nurse Kramer distractedly set down his tray of eggs and bacon. There were no sharp implements allowed, so he ate instead with a spoon, breaking up the strips of bacon as best he could with the blunted edge. She whirled to face the warden at once, ignoring Ricky as he tucked into his food.
“We need more staff, sir,” she was saying in a heated whisper. “Yesterday Mosely broke a wrist trying to unload one of those trucks. And now with Nurse—with the other loss of staff, we’re all spread so thin. It’s simply not feasible to—”
Ricky picked up on that little self-interruption. Nurse Ash. Something had happened to her. Hiding that note in his book might have been her last act of rebellion. Oh God, and Kay had helped. Were they okay? He pretended not to listen, eating despite his lack of appetite.
“Now is not the time or the place for this discussion,” the warden replied sternly.
“But you said everything was progressing—”
“Time. Place. Inappropriate.” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, his mood taking a sudden plunge. “We can approach this problem this afternoon in my office, Nurse Kramer.”
Inspired, Ricky picked up the little cup of pills and rattled it noisily, making a big show of gulping them down while the warden bickered with Nurse Kramer. He palmed the pills before they could get to his mouth, sliding them smoothly under his pillow and into the opening of the case.
He finished miming the process, taking a huge swallow of water.
Don’t run, don’t hide. Fight.
“This is truly disappointing,” the warden was saying, gesturing toward the door. “Today is a big day for Ricky. For us. For this institution. His graduation, if you will, and you’ve already tarnished it with your constant, insipid complaints. Mosely’s wrist will heal, and as to your other grievance, the temporary solution must suffice until a permanent one presents itself.”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
His voice had risen loudly enough to echo, and both Ricky and Nurse Kramer shrank from the warden when he crested the bellowing crescendo of his speech. Then the nurse scuttled back to Ricky, taking his breakfast tray—he wasn’t yet finished—and his medicine cup and leaving.
“I apologize for her making a scene,” the warden said when the door closed. He opened his hands invitingly to Ricky. “If only our work was my one and only duty. Alas.”
“Yes,” Ricky parroted as mindlessly as possible. The prick. “Alas.”
He still felt a little foggy that morning, and he knew the medication was probably still affecting him in one way or another, but he was already feeling better, either from the food or from his returning memory. From his father. Fire simmered inside him.
But he had more immediate problems. Whatever “graduation” meant couldn’t be good for him. Wasn’t lying to his parents’ faces enough? God, his mother had been in tears, overjoyed that her son had been turned into an emotionless shell-person, because even that was better than who he was before, and it was up to them to say what “healthy” looked like in their child. The rage inside him surged, and for once he didn’t want to cool it back down.
Not again. Shell-person, Patient Zero, would be banished. When the warden took a few big steps toward him and his courage wavered, he pictured his father’s patient card in front of his eyes. He pictured Kay in that dark and horrible little aversion therapy room. He pictured Nurse Ash dashing off a note to him, doing whatever she could to assist.
“I need to show you something, my subject. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s important that you see it. Come with me.”
Ricky stood and followed, glancing at the pillow to make sure none of the pills had trickled out of the fabric case.
The warden’s good cheer had returned, and he whistled a song Ricky didn’t recognize, leading him to the door and out of it. Ricky expected another trip to the office, but instead they went right and just a few feet, to the room directly next door. With his memories return
ing and his body bouncing back from the medicine, he had to control his face before it gave him away.
Why would he have to go inside that room?
He steeled himself, forcing a nervous fidget out of his leg while the warden unlocked the cell and held the door for him. A few orderlies down the hall, including Lurch, noticed the commotion and looked on curiously. They weren’t invited inside.
He thinks I’m completely under his control. He thinks I’m declawed.
Ricky couldn’t have prepared himself for seeing the little girl or her room. It was spotlessly clean, but also sad. Almost empty. Her bed was much smaller than his and looked less comfortable. One threadbare sheet lay rumpled on the end of the mattress. She was small and fragile, like he remembered, with a simple white nightdress that ended below her knees. Her long, long hair hung in front of her face, almost brushing the floor.
She didn’t seem to notice them, standing very still in the middle of the room.
Warden Crawford took a few confident steps into the room, unconcerned by the heartbreaking bleakness of it all. How could he keep a girl in this state? What could a child that small even do? Her legs barely looked thick enough to hold her upright. He stopped five scant inches from her and leaned down, speaking in a slow, overly loud voice, as if he were addressing a simpleton.
“Hello, Lucy, I’d like you to meet a very special young man. His name is Ricky, why don’t you tell him ‘hello’?”
Seeing the girl from his visions now, in the flesh, filled him less with fear and more with pity. She was so tremendously thin, a frail husk of a child, malnourishment making her skinny body and big head into doll-like proportions. A vivid scar crossed almost the entire width of her forehead.
Besides the bed and the girl herself, there was nothing else in the cell except for a tiny music box near the door. It was tipped on its side, and the warden went to collect it, still whistling that absentminded tune as he scooped it up and wound up the key, the loud hrash-hrash of the geared mechanism cutting through his whistled song.
“It usually calms her,” the warden explained. A dirty porcelain ballerina pirouetted on top of the music box, the song slow and slightly broken, the refrain stumbling over itself in places. It was a miracle the thing even worked. “She’s one of my failed attempts. As you might expect, the quest for science is not without casualties.”
The girl’s voice surprised them both, low and rasping, the ghost of a child’s once sweet voice. “Can’t live forever. Can’t do it.” Her English was heavily accented, Spanish maybe, so much so that Ricky could barely understand the words.
“Ah, I see we’re feisty today,” the warden chided, setting down the music box and striding back to the girl. He leaned down again, holding his hands behind his back as he spoke. “A body might not endure, little Lucy, it’s true, but an idea? An idea once planted in the right soil can grow forever.” The warden turned to face them both at once. “Lucy here was out of control like you, Ricky. At home, she would scream for hours and hours, until they thought she was possessed. When their priest couldn’t help them, her parents brought her here. They gave her to me and then forgot all about her, just like your parents did with you.”
“Weeds,” she whispered, stirring. “Rot.”
Ricky wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand it in the room. A strong protective instinct flared in him at the sight of her, so small and alone; what had she done to deserve this fate? Probably as little as he had. Or Patty.
Or my dad.
“A pleasant visit with you as always, Lucy, I’m glad you could make one last friend,” he drawled. Then he straightened and beckoned Ricky over, smiling so coolly and calmly that Ricky dreaded every forward step. He’d known “graduation” would be something terrible, and now that instinct flooded his body with adrenaline. “Now that you have seen one of my mistakes,” the warden said, fishing something out of his coat pocket, “I want you to correct it. She might be like you in some ways, but you’re far superior, Ricky, which is why she won’t be much of a loss.”
Lucy only moved enough to look up at them both, but even with her hair in the way Ricky knew she was fixated on the warden, who held up something that flashed in the meager light creeping in through the blinds.
A knife. The scalpel.
“Correct the mistake, Ricky,” the warden said resolutely, holding out the knife to him. Lucy froze. “You’re free of mind and body. Your loss of ego and id complete. This shouldn’t be any trouble for you at all. Take the knife. Yes, good, your father held it just the same way.”
His father again. Ricky hesitated. Had the warden made his father do this exact thing? He thought of that sad, huddled man hiding among the costume boxes, his bloody hands, and the scalpel tucked inside them.
Ricky would do it—he had to. Deep in his subconscious he could feel the warden’s influence tugging him back in the wrong direction. Obeying was simple. Defiance only brought pain. He couldn’t go back in the chair again, he just couldn’t . . .
Ricky took the scalpel, making sure his hand didn’t quake and give him away. The still sadness of the room no longer registered. His mind had blanked in the face of so much unbearable pressure. A little girl. She was just a little girl.
Look around. Does she seem okay? You’d be doing her a favor . . .
The warden beamed down at him, proud as a father on his son’s first day of school. He nodded, once, giving permission. Giving encouragement.
“Correct the mistake, Ricky, we can tolerate only perfection.”
The scalpel, tiny, light, felt suddenly leaden in his grasp. He raised the knife and saw the girl’s eyes flash toward him, huge and dark. Afraid. Those big eyes shut tight as his hand lashed out, drawing blood.
Don’t run, don’t hide. Fight.
He would never forget the warden’s scream—first of agony, then of surprise, and finally of betrayal.
Lucy gasped and took one step back, her hands flying to her face, covering the sounds of her sudden delighted giggling. But the warden wasn’t laughing. He reeled back, roaring in outrage, the scalpel still sticking out of his bicep. Blood seeped through his white doctor’s coat, spilling down to his elbow as he grabbed for the blade.
“No!” He kept screaming it, over and over again, and in a moment’s time the door was bursting open. “Wasted! How could it all be wasted? Just like your father, a waste! I was so sure this time, so sure. Another failure at the moment of triumph.”
Ricky had cast his lot and now he saw clearly what it would cost him. The orderlies tackled him even though he hadn’t tried to move or escape. The warden bellowed as he yanked the scalpel out of his arm—it was the last thing Ricky saw before the orderly sitting on his shoulder clocked him, his vision spinning rapidly into oblivion.
“You’re dead!” the warden said between gasps. Lucy laughed and laughed, clapping, giggling, pounding her little feet on the floor. “Dead! Do you understand me? Dead, and I’ll finish you myself!”
“You’ve done it now, genius.”
Ricky groaned. He could swear he was dreaming. He had been in a little girl’s empty cell. The warden had gone straight off the deep end, trying to force Ricky to kill the child because she was some kind of mistake. Too bizarre to be reality. But then he blinked and lifted his aching head, finding he was lying on his side in what felt like a dungeon.
The stone ground was unbelievably hard, digging into his ribs, but his head was on something soft. He blinked again. It was Kay’s leg.
“Where am I?” he whispered, his throat and mouth bone-dry.
“Oh, the Ritz-Carlton, didn’t you hear? The good old warden had a change of heart and felt bad for all the trouble, so he set us up in a palace,” she said, patting his head. He winced, tender from the orderly’s blows. “Sorry. You’re in the basement with the rest of us. You really don’t remember?”
“I . . . I was with the warden, and he was trying to make me murder someone.”
“Yeah, and instead you went ahead and
stabbed him in the arm. We’d throw you a parade but the only confetti we have is some dead flies.” She chuckled mirthlessly.
Ricky could see her better now. She was thinner than he remembered, and her hair had grown out, a dark, soft halo around her head as she leaned back against the wall. In spite of the darkness, her voice was lighter than he’d ever heard it, like maybe she’d finally decided she had nothing left to lose. Her fingers sifted lightly through Ricky’s hair and it just about put him back to sleep.
“I couldn’t kill a little kid.”
“Ordinarily that would go without saying, but I hear he was really doing a number on you.”
“Who told you that?” he asked. “It was only a few days, I don’t know how it could go so wrong so fast.”
Kay gaped at him. “A few days? Try a month. We thought you were dead. Nurse Ash was keeping me in the loop for a while, but then someone ratted her out and . . . Things haven’t been going well for her since then.” Kay bit her lower lip, eyes straying somewhere over his head. “He dumped us all down here after you tried the shish kebab method on him.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, desperate for water. He closed his eyes again, thinking maybe it would all just go away if he wished hard enough. “This is all my fault.”
“Uh-huh. I don’t think so. Did you go and brainwash anybody?”
“Not that I can recall, no.”
“Chain them up?”
“No . . .”
“Starve them? Electrocute them?”
Ricky snorted. “Nope. It’s just . . . It feels like my fault.”
“You get exactly ten minutes of moping and making this about you, but then you gotta move because my leg is all pins and needles,” she said, easing her shoulders in a circle. He heard a soft pop as her spine adjusted. “I thought you were dead, Ricky.”