They’d never been able to control him as well as the others. They had no use for people they couldn’t control. The kid thing had been a frame; Erik hadn’t done any of it. He’d dug for them, sure, and he’d snatched some people. But he hadn’t murdered those kids.
Duke was another story; he was crazy. Not like the schizoaffectives or the delusional psychotics. He was just plain don’t give a shit, mean ass crazy. Ganser syndrome, it was called, He belonged in prison, not here. He’d made up a story in court about how aliens from the Orion complex communicated through a transmitter that had been implanted in one of his fillings. “The dentist was in on it,” he’d told the judge. “They forced me to do it.” He raped a sixteen year old girl and cut off her arms. “They said they needed the arms,” Duke had informed the jury. “Never said what for, though. Just bring us the arms.” He’d been found not guilty by reason of clinical insanity. In a state like this, Duke would never walk the street again.
But neither would Erik. They’d seen to that.
Erik knew what they were doing. He’d been one of their ilk once. Brygorwreccan. Digger.
I’ve got to get through, he thought.
“You don’t hurry it up, you’ll have to do it twice,” Duke informed him.
There were four classes of patients here. Precaution, Class I, Class II, and Class III. Precautions were restricted to the observation dorm. Mostly autistics and suicidals. Two techs were in the room at all times, and most of the pats remained restrained, either in Posey bed nets or Bard Parker straitjackets. Class I’s couldn’t leave A Building, the main wing; their world was a dorm and a dayroom. But Class II’s got to live in B Building and were allowed to eat in the cafeteria. II’s also enjoyed the luxury of supervised field trips, outside volleyball, and full roam of Buildings B through E. They could go to the rec unit which had a library, a music room, and an automat—provided they signed out with a tech or a Class III patient.
Last week Erik had passed his board review for Class II status. And Duke had been Class III for almost a year.
The two of them made a deal.
Another luxury of the higher class status was that you got to use the pay phone in the rec unit anytime between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. Duke’s deal was this: he’d use his Class III escort privilege to take Erik to the pay phone, and he’d also give him change to make calls. Duke had an uncle who sent him money and cigarettes every month. In the automat II’s and III’s could buy anything they wanted from the machines: microwave sandwiches, candy bars, Cokes. The Diebold magnetometer at the entrance would prevent any sharp metal objects like bottle caps and pop tops from being brought back into the dorm. “So here’s the deal,” Duke had proposed. “One trip to the phone and thirty-five cents per nut.”
The first few times had been awful, but Erik forced himself to get used to it. He had money on the outside, but there was no one to bring it to him. How else could he earn money here? Several times Duke refused to pay. “Not till you get it right, fairy. Keep your lips over the teeth.” Eventually, Erik learned to “get it right.”
“Just ’cause I let you do it,” Duke had once verified, “I don’t want you thinking I’m some kind of faggot. I think about all the chicks I reamed while you’re gettin’ down on it.”
Duke was what the doctors called a “stage sociopath with unipolar hypererotic tendencies.” He bragged about the sex crimes of his past. He’d raped dozens of girls, mostly “bar rednecks and druggers,” he called them.
“Killed a lot of them too.”
“Why?” Erik had queried with his shredded voice.
“Aw, shit, fairy. Killing them’s the best part. Ain’t no kick if ya don’t kill ’em.” He’d cackled laughter. “One time I picked up this skinny blond bitch. I got her in the back of my van, see, and I’m cornholing the shit out of her. Man, she was so fucked up on drugs she didn’t know which way was up; I coulda stuck a leg of lamb up her ass. Anyway, just as I’m gettin’ ready to come, I blow the back of her head off with my Ruger Redhawk.”
“That’s disgusting, man,” Erik replied. “You’re a fuckin’ monster.”
“Look who’s talking,” Duke came back. “You snuff a bunch of babies and you call me a monster. The fact is, bitch, we’re all monsters on the inside.”
It was almost funny the way he’d said that. Erik knew some people who were monsters on the outside as well.
Please be home, he prayed. The change fell into the slot. He held his breath as he dialed.
“Got a big nut for my bitch tonight,” Duke said, and laughed.
The phone was ringing.
Please be home.
—and ringing—
Jesus, please.
Twenty rings later, he hung up. He retrieved the quarter and dime.
“Who you callin’ anyway?”
Destiny, he thought. “Just someone.”
Duke chuckled. “Don’t matter none to me.”
“Listen, Duke, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Fuck talking, fairy. You’re out of time. Ping Pong’s startin’ and you got something to take care of first.”
“It’s important, man. It’s about the lawn contractors.”
“The fuckin’ what?”
“The people who cut the grass. They come out every day with their mowers and do the hospital grounds. They park right out—”
“Quit stallin’, faggot.” Duke shoved him toward the hall. “You’re just tryin’ to get out of the suck.”
They left the rec unit and crossed to B Building via the promenade. It was dark now. Above the trees, Erik could see the moon.
Almost spring, he realized.
The moon was pink.
They signed back in on the ward after walking through the metal detector and passing their change through in a plastic bucket. “No Ping Pong tonight, Duke?” one of the techs asked. Duke was the champ. “I’ll be in. Gotta hang a piss first.” But Erik was already walking down the hall.
“How’s your eye?” Jeff asked. Jeff was a delusional narcomaniac.
“My eye?” Erik grated back.
“Yeah, I saw it hanging out of its socket yesterday. I was concerned that your brain might get infected.”
You had to go along with these people. “Oh, right. It’s fine now. I just popped it right back in.”
“Good, good,” Jeff said, and shuffled away.
Nurse Walsh was tapping up a needle full of chlorpromazine in the med station while a bunch of burly techs four pointed Christofer the hydrophobe. “Four pointing” was just more psych ward rhetoric. “We’ll four point you if you don’t cooperate” was a polite way of saying, “These goons will pin you to the fucking floor if you don’t stop acting like an asshole.” “Tech assisted med administration” was executed when a patient “physically resisted chemical therapy.”
In the dayroom several pats were vegged out on the couch. Ten years of antipsychotics will take the zing out of anyone. All they made Erik take were mild tricyclics, none of the heavy stuff like Stelazine or Prolixin. “Zombie pills,” the pats called them. Many of the heavily drugged patients had to take large doses of Cogentin in conjunction with their psych meds, to offset the accompanying dyskinesia.
He went into the john, into the stall. You could always tell a psych ward bathroom from a normal one: there were never any locks on the stall doors, and the graffiti took diverse turns. “Do the Thorazine shuffle,” someone had written. “God stole my brain but He can have it,” and, “ECT, what a rush!”