WHAT LEADS A MAN TO MURDER Page 5

  I’d made my arrangements with Dr. Hellier’s receptionist, Belinda, and she greeted me at the door.

  “You made good time on the road,” she said, motioning me toward the west wing. She was short, with coarse, dark hair and oddly plastic features. I thought of the troll doll that had dangled from the rear-view mirror of my first car, a red Opel, faded to orange and sporting a bad clutch.

  As we traversed the halls, she pointed out portraits of former directors and finger-paintings done by some of the patients. I noticed she had a habit of speaking in dead-pan, assuming a facial expression at the end of her remarks, like an afterthought. That went into my mental notes, along with the moans and occasional screams emanating from some of the closed doors we passed. I had no experience of mental facilities, but I’d expected that advances in pharmaceuticals would have produced more vocal restraint.

  Belinda noticed my unease. “Don’t let the noise bother you. Doctor Hellier encourages freedom of expression. And here’s the lounge,” she said, gesturing me into a chair. “If you’ll wait here, I’ll see if the doctor is ready for you.”

  She left me standing, and I watched her disappear down the hall, her white lab coat brushing the floor as she walked. The patient’s lounge was decorated in soothing shades of mauve and blue, its walls laden with framed landscapes and a bulletin board pegged with ragged flyers and reminders. I sat, pulling into the chair like a turtle to its shell, but I soon relaxed when I saw that several uniformed aides were in attendance and the behavior exhibited by the patients was perfectly normal. Two women played ping pong, while another paged through National Geographic and an old man snoozed in a chair. I rose and stood gazing out the patio doors as the cook with the bloody apron came to clang the bell and feed the dogs.

  I watched the hounds snuffle over the flagstones, licking up every morsel of meat while the cook filled their water bowls from a spigot on the patio.

  “Pavlov was a behavioral scientist,” he said. “Our doctor Hellier subscribes to a different set of theories.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He smiled, closing the French doors, leaving the dogs outside. “I expect you’ll soon find out.”

  He flapped a hand in farewell and sauntered back to the kitchen. I sat and watched the dogs press their noses up against the glass of the doors, leaving prints and smears. A ping pong ball jumped into my lap and I flinched hard enough to snap a tendon. The woman who came to retrieve it gave me a pleasant smile. Leaning down to scoop the ball from my hand, she whispered, “Stay out of the tree.”

  So much for normal.

  “Dr. Hellier is ready for you now.” Belinda led me into a wood-grained office with crimson accents and introduced me to a large man with a ruddy complexion and merry blue eyes. He was not at all what I’d expected and the outlines of the story I would write came together in my head. He gave me forty-five minutes, during which I gathered enough material to craft a fascinating article. Some of the techniques he described struck me as extraordinary in the extreme, but he assured me they were effective.

  “Would it be possible to meet some of your patients and maybe watch you in action?” I asked.

  The doctor looked shocked. “Good heavens, no. These people need discretion and privacy. I thought you understood that.”

  “Of course, you’re right. My curiosity carries me away. There’s been so much secrecy surrounding your work. I was surprised, but very pleased, that you agreed to the interview.”

  He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Happy to help. I’d like more people to know what goes on here at Gladwell Hollow hospital.”

  He posed, and I snapped some photos, inviting Belinda in for a picture of the two of them together. His smile seemed genuine, but hers slipped onto her face one second too late, missing the shutter and leaving me with a strangely unbalanced photo. I looked up from my scrutiny of the camera to ask for another shot, but she'd gone, the door clicking shut behind her.

  “Thank you so much for your time, Doctor,” I said, shaking his hand in farewell. “Really, you are most innovative.”

  The permanent blush on his cheeks deepened. “It was my pleasure.”

  I met Belinda in the lounge and she escorted me through the hospital, to the exit. I thanked her and hurried to my car in the parking lot. Using the steering wheel to support my tablet, I transcribed my notes and sent them, with accompanying photos, to my assistant, Rhonda.

  Fastening my seatbelt, I dialed Rhonda’s number, putting her on speaker, and propping my phone in the cup holder so I could tell her about the interview while I drove home. I cranked the key in the ignition, but nothing happened. I tried again.

  “Rhonda, my car won’t start. Do you think it’s a dead battery?”

  “I don’t know, honey, but that’s not your only problem. The photos you sent—they’re not Dr. Hellier.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m looking at a picture of the man in the New England Journal of Medicine and these are two different men.”

  “You know how pictures are. Maybe he got a new hairstyle or shaved off a mustache.”

  “Dr. Hellier is black.”

  “Oh.” I sighed and opened the car door. “I’ll go straighten this out, but first, let me make sure I’ve got cables. I may need a jump start.”

  I popped the trunk, and that’s when I met the real Dr. Hellier. His throat was cut, the jagged wound gaping open and beads of blood, like tacky paint, stood out against the darkening flesh. One of his legs was missing. A surge of nausea hit me in the solar plexus, and I suspected I’d seen it when the dogs had eaten their evening meal.

  Gooseflesh sprang up on the back of my arms and an electric zing went through me, but I clamped down on the scream rising in my throat. I started back toward the cup holder to tell Rhonda to call the police but a deep, mournful baying descended upon me and I turned to see the hounds galloping across the yard.

  If I’d had one shred of reason to rely on, I’d have locked myself in the car and called for help. But the sound of those dogs stirred some ancient, ancestral terror. I lost all composure and ran.

  I fled toward the coppery sun, where it perched low on the horizon, casting deep shadows across the hospital grounds. The large, square building was bordered by deep woods and a cornfield. I opted for the corn, hoping the sheaves would close over me, the rustling husks confusing pursuers. Three rows in, I regretted my decision. My heels sank into the softened earth, forcing me to abandon my Ferragamos. And the furrows were perilous.

  The cornstalks were dry and rough, whipping my face and arms. The corn had been neglected, the ears rotted in the husks and hanging from the stalks like the decayed teeth of an enormous beast. I tried running perpendicular to the plowed trenches, but in the gathering dark I tripped and floundered on the uneven ground. I fell and bit my tongue, flooding my mouth with the taste of blood and fear. I heard the dogs, not howling now, but sending out short, sharp barks at intervals.

  Turning, I ran lengthwise down the furrow, but this was worse. In the open space, between the rows of corn, I was exposed, the wind at my back like claws that might, at any moment, tear into my flesh. Too terrified to look behind me, I focused my gaze forward where the distance stretched out, ever lengthening, becoming an endless furrow lined by towering husks.

  The cornstalks snapped in the breeze of descending night, a cheerless accompaniment to the frantic thrashing of my stockinged feet. The two-part harmony drove me forward until it was embellished with the renewed baying of the hounds, and the pounding of my heart crescendoed to a deafening roar. I’d lost my bearings and prayed the dinner bell might ring again, calling back the dogs.

  I stumbled down the row, choking back sobs of terror. An abrupt and unnerving lull settled over the cornfield. The wind died down, the dogs stopped howling, and this was the worst yet because I could hear their soft panting as they breathed my scent, closing in. Five rows away. Four.

  Then three.

  I wrenched myself f
rom a petrified stupor and burst through a stand of rotted ears to emerge at the edge of a forest. A gray tree with endless arms and fingers, devoid of any remaining foliage, loomed before me. Odd markings outlined a door, cut right into the trunk, and as I stared, it creaked open.

  I froze, stunned by the surreal scene in front of me, wondering if I’d gone insane. Belinda beckoned me from inside the tree as if all were normal. As if summoning me into the doctor’s office. I recalled the ping pong player and her whispered warning. Stay out of the tree. With a sob, I turned to run.

  But the dogs were there, growling now, the rumbling low in their throats and menacing. In their midst stood the man in the blood-stained apron, a meat cleaver clutched in one sticky hand. Strong arms grasped me from behind, dragging me down, into a chamber beneath the tree. The hand-cut door closed behind me, and I was swallowed in darkness.

  With my arms pinioned behind me, I was frog-marched forward, enveloped from behind with a hot, fetid breath. A light switched on and the sudden glare hurt my eyes, forcing me to squeeze them shut. My captor released his rough grip, and my eyelids fluttered like frantic butterflies until I could open them. I wished I hadn’t.

  I saw a pile of bodies, hacked, broken, and bloody, stripped down to the underwear. Someone had pinned a nurse’s nametag right into the fish-belly white flesh of one mutilated corpse, and I realized where the uniforms for the “attendants” back at the hospital had come from.

  “You wanted to know how Dr. Hellier treated his patients,” Belinda said. “He kept it a secret, but I think you’ve earned the chance to see.”

  She smiled and opened another door where a man with a ruddy complexion and merry blue eyes waited, dressed in scrubs and holding a scalpel.

  “The doctor will see you now.”

  ~~~~

  They keep me locked in a room at the back of the hospital. Every day, they bring me a tray bearing hospital fare like jello and oatmeal. And I eat it, though it’s difficult for me to swallow even those soft foods with only a stump of a tongue. The man with the merry blue eyes cut it out that first night, entertaining me with lively stories as he performed the procedure.

  I spend my days torn between fervent prayer and frantic ramblings. I’m sure Rhonda called the police when I failed to return from my interview. I can’t understand why they haven’t arrived and pray they will come for me soon.

  Sometimes the door rasps open, scraping across the rough cement floor, and the man with the scalpel visits me, only he brings a snipper with him now. He is always so jovial, telling me what’s new around the hospital and sharing amusing anecdotes. When he leaves, he takes one of my fingers with him.

  Only a single finger is left to me now. One finger, with which to tell this story. Once he takes this finger, I will die. I bow my head.

  Oh God, leave me this one finger, and deliver me from evil.

  I look up as the door rasps open.

  NOTES

  I laugh whenever I think about the origins of this story. I’d never written a horror story before and hadn’t really intended for this to be one, but it seemed to fit the requirements of the moment.

  Writer’s Weekly sponsors a quarterly 24- hour contest. On the dot of noon, Central time on a Saturday, the prompt is revealed and you have 24 hours to write and submit your story, based on the prompt, though it doesn’t have to contain the exact wording.

  I was living in Germany at the time I entered this competition, and since I don’t work on Sundays, that gave me only five hours in which to complete the challenge.

  So, seven p.m. my time and the prompt came in:

  The barren, tan corn stalks behind her

  snapped in the cold evening breeze,

  the only sound louder than the dry,

  fiery red leaves swirling around her tiny,

  shivering bare feet.

  She'd lost her bearings again and

  she hoped the dinner bell would ring soon.

  A gray tree with endless arms and fingers,

  devoid of any remaining foliage,

  loomed before her.

  She gazed at the odd markings on the trunk,

  which appeared to outline a hand-cut

  door of sorts. And, as she stared, it opened...

  I cast around for an idea, pounced on the mental hospital motif, and ran with it. I whipped the story out in about an hour and hit submit, commenting to my husband and son:

  “That’s got to be the stupidest thing I ever wrote.”

  It won a prize and an honorable mention in the contest and I’ve received a surprising amount of input from readers about how much they like this story.

  The original version was set in October, but I later made a springtime version for submission to a different magazine, and that’s the version I include here.

  A Simple Glass of Water

  _____________

  Pushed to the wall, Ruben commits a

  desperate act, planting the seeds

  of his own destruction.

  Then, everything changes—

  with a simple glass of water

  Chloroform is passé.

  Also, Ruben discovered, it burns your face. He took out the girl with roofies instead, which presented another set of challenges, but he made it work.

  For months, he’d watched Iris play tennis. She'd caught his attention during those early, warm days as the crocuses and daffodils pushed up from the sodden mulch, and he'd monitored her progress through the summer. Her swing grew more powerful, her steps more certain as she dodged and swayed across the court. The legs extending below her tennis skirt, pale and spindly in May, grew tanned and muscular as the weeks passed, her dark blonde hair lightening under the sun's caress. He thought she looked like the photo negative of what she used to be, except for the perpetual tennis whites.

  She was spoiled, of course. They all were, these country club girls. He knew her father was dead and her mother was rich, an interior design maven who commanded exorbitant fees from wealthy clients. He watched Iris simper and cavort with the other privileged youth, but he sensed something different in her, something deeper.

  Or maybe he was full of crap. Maybe he just sensed an easier target with a fatter payoff.

  The heavy air of late summer pressed around the abandoned cinderblock shed, promising rain to come. When it started, the ping and rattle on the metal roof would drown her cries. He could remove the rag he’d stuffed in her mouth and let her breathe. If she behaved.

  All the time he’d been watching her and her friends, he’d been invisible. Clipping hedges, cutting grass, dead-heading the roses, he was beneath their notice, not even human; a machine for the purpose of enhancing their pleasure. These people didn’t go home to a one-room slum apartment or brush their teeth over a cracked sink, stained and stinking from bad plumbing. They didn’t ration out a bag of potatoes or a pot of beans to last the week.

  He’d tried playing by the rules, working to get ahead, but the only thing he could count on was getting stomped down. They’d forced him to this, but even they had little choice in the matter, ragdolls like him, but with finer trappings. One lesson he understood—free choice is an illusion.

  He carried a chocolate milkshake in one hand, bagged burger and fries in the other. Most girls like chocolate, he’d noticed. The shed was at the very edge of the property, beyond the swimming pools, tennis courts, golf links, and walking paths. No one ventured this far, and it felt like another world as he pushed through the tall weeds and hanging vines.

  The building was locked, but he had a key.

  “Honey, I’m home,” he said, kicking the door shut and looking at the girl. She was handcuffed to an old iron radiator, hair disheveled, wrists bruised and swollen where she’d been tugging at the cuffs. Her eyes were deep-shadowed and full of loathing. He pulled the rag from her mouth and knew she’d have spit at him if she had a drop of saliva left to her.

  “What do you want with me?” Her voice sounded dustier than the rag. He uncuf
fed one of her hands and held out the milkshake. She batted it against the wall where it splatted, dripping to the floor like a wad of mud.

  Ruben felt a spike of heat. He took a breath and let it fade. The milkshake had been a stupid gesture anyway. He sat on an old folding chair, out of her reach, and opened the paper sack, eating her dinner with slow, deliberate bites, ignoring the threats and questions she threw at him. He finished, and brought her the bucket and a roll of paper before stepping out into the freshening wind.

  When he returned after emptying the bucket, she looked at him, her face contrite.

  “My name is Iris.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “Why’d you take me? Is it because my mom is rich?”

  Ruben regarded her silently.

  “I know you won’t do anything filthy to me. I can see you’re not like that.”

  He snorted, tossing her the tuna sandwich he’d made for his own dinner. She stripped off the waxed paper and tore into it, eating fast, talking with her mouth full.

  “What I don’t get is why you let me see your face. Does that mean you’re going to kill me?”

  Her tone suggested casual curiosity, but Ruben saw fear in the eyes that watched him through the tangled curtain of sun-bleached hair. He rose to leave. He wasn’t sharing his plans with her. Three steps from the door, her voice reached him, small and pleading.

  “I’m thirsty.”

  He raised an eyebrow and glanced at the mess she’d made with the milkshake.

  “I won’t do that again. I’m sorry.”

  He debated. He’d have to give her water, of course, but he thought she deserved to suffer a little first. He walked to the corner of the shed and ran the tap in the utility sink, watching the rusty water run brown before clearing up. He shut it off.

  “Please,” she said.

  He considered, then rinsed a dirty glass. Filling it with tepid water, he carried it to where she waited and placed it next to her free hand. In that instant, she kicked out her tennis-toned leg and with the force of a pile driver nailed him in the crotch.