He had been screaming for them to bring Stroud to him for hours. Even with his hands tied, he would find a way to kill Stroud, he promised ... promised himself? No, not himself ... someone else, but he couldn't recall who.
He had rammed the door continually since finding himself here. He recalled very little of the tortures the bestial, vile things that were his captors had done to him; he felt no pain, only an enormous disgust and hatred for them--for all of them--but for Stroud in particular. Stroud was their wizard, their leader.
"Use your spittle on Esruad," a voice inside his head kept telling him. But what good would spit do against a creature of Stroud's enormous strength and those bulging fangs and lower teeth like a wild boar, his body crawling with living parasites feeding over him.
"Spit," commanded the voice inside him.
Wiz did so, splattering the padded door with a burning brown syrup that sent up a smoke cloud. The smoke curled about the chamber, getting thicker and thicker, the feathers and tick inside the pads turning the smoke into a thick, ugly black cloud that made Wisnewski cough and cough and cough until it finally set off an alarm. The bells exploded in his ear and the door was thrown open, two of the vile creatures, their boars' heads heaving, their tentacled limbs reaching for him and gaining hold.
"Stroud! Bring me Stroud!" he called out as they forced him through the choking smoke and outside.
"Spit! Spit on them!" came the voice within.
But Wisnewski suddenly felt dopey, dropping to his knees as the drug from the hypodermic sent him under. The last thing he felt was the hideous hands of the monsters grabbing him up by the middle, his arms still strapped tightly about him, alarms sounding in his brain, drowning out the voice there.
Later Wisnewski awoke in another white, empty, padded cell. On the floor beside him was a huge globule of the syrupy liquid he had spat out at the pads in the other room. Wisnewski felt drained, weak, woozy and confused. He tried desperately to remember who he was and where he was ... what had happened to him ... why he was in a straitjacket.
His mind felt like a blank tablet and when he looked at the reinforced glass window in the door, he found people staring in at him as if he were a lunatic.
He fought to regain his mind, his memories, but they were fleeting, as if they'd only been stains wiped away with a washcloth. Who was he? Where was he? Who were his jailers?
He felt that a deep chasm inside of him had been opened up, and somewhere in the void was his identity and the events that had brought him to this place.
"Where am I!" he shouted at the eyes staring in at him. He got up, rushing at the eyes. "I demand to know who you are and where I am! Who's in charge here? I want to talk to whoever's in charge!"
But the eyes just stared in, locked on him as if watching a bug and quite fascinated with the useless dance he was doing before they might squash him.
Angry, frustrated, Wisnewski rammed his small body again and again into the door, pleading for help, but nobody came...
-7-
The scene at Bellevue was chaos, the halls littered with more zombies than they had beds for. People were beginning to get nasty, their natural pity for the dummies around them turning into loathing, fear and hatred. Doctors and nurses were working night and day in what seemed a useless effort to keep up. Dr. Cline was angry, seeing the suffering and feeling that she ought rather to be in her laboratory, that every moment that passed was opportunity lost. She was quite unhappy being in the company of Nathan and Stroud.
They stood just outside the padded cell where Dr. Wisnewski was now. "He's a strange one," said the orderly, a large, powerfully built man who looked capable of crushing Wisnewski without even knowing it.
"How has he been?" asked Stroud.
"Very unruly ... kicking at the door ... shouting to be released."
"Open it up," said Stroud.
The orderly said he had no authorization to do so. Nathan flashed his badge. "We've cleared it with your superiors. It's out of your hands, Mr. Gilliam."
"Well, if you say so. Your funeral."
"Open it," said Stroud, who had brought the bones from the pit with him in an open box. "The rest of you wait here," he told them.
Nathan took exception to this, saying, "Stroud, he's got a straitjacket on, but he still has teeth, so..." and he offered up his gun.
"No, I won't need that."
Perkins offered to go in with him.
"No, I have to do this alone."
Kendra Cline said, "Maybe you're the one who's mad, Stroud."
"Maybe."
He slipped through the door while the others crowded around the small porthole of a window. The moment Wisnewski realized someone was in the room with him, he rolled over and sat up on the bed of mattresses allowed him. There were no bedposts or springs, no unpadded metal whatever in the room, including the door. When he looked up at Stroud he cocked his head to one side and squinted his eyes.
"Dr. Wisnewski? It's me."
"Esruad," said Wisnewski, wide-eyed. "You ... you're alive!"
Stroud was astonished for the dual reason that Wiz spoke as calmly and surely as any sane person and that he had used the same name that the demon had used.
"No, my name is--"
"Stroud ... yes, A-Abe ... Abe Stroud."
"And your name, sir?"
"Wisnewski ... Wiz, I'm called."
"Do you remember what happened to you, Dr. Wisnewski?"
"No ... Woke up here ... asses treating me like a fool! I could just strangle them!" He got up and rushed the door where he saw the faces staring in. "Sick to death of being treated like a bug in a glass!" He kicked out at the door with all his energy. "Bastards!"
"Do you remember these?" Stroud asked.
His arms twisted about him in the straitjacket, Wiz went to his knees over the bones in the box Stroud had brought with him. Also in the box was the parchment that Leonard had come away from the ship with. "Oh, God ... oh, yes ... we ... we were in the ship."
"Yes," coaxed Stroud.
"And then we came back ... stepped out into ... into the rain, and the smelly fog began rising up."
"Do you remember anything else?"
"No ... nothing ... except the decontamination."
"Anything after that?"
"Leonard carried off in a stretcher."
"And?"
"You ... You fell out."
"Yes."
"That's all I recall."
"Nothing more ... nothing about an ax?"
"An ax?"
"You picked it up."
He shook his head. "No."
"Raised it over me."
"No, Abe."
"Went out of control."
"I don't remember it; not a bit of it."
Stroud tried a new tack. "Dr. Wisnewski?"
"Yes?"
"Why did you call me Esruad?"
He looked queerly at Stroud. "Did I? Esruad, indeed?"
"Does that name mean anything to you? Anything at all?"
"I ... I must consult my ... my books ... must get to my laboratory, Stroud ... Stroud ... can you get me the hell out of here?"
Stroud began to undo the straitjacket, peeling back the layers. As he did so, he could hear the rumbling of concern just the other side of the door. He feared that Wiz--or the demon within--would make some attempt at killing him, causing the others to rush in and destroy Wisnewski. Stroud felt as if he were holding on to the man by a thread. He wondered how he could win Wisnewski back from the ship's curse.
"Dr. Wisnewski, you must fight this thing. Fight with all your strength!"
"I have! Christ, Stroud, I have! All this time in here, nothing to feel, no one to speak with! Nothing but the sound of my own voice. I swear, you leave me here and I will go mad!"