Chapter 33
We pass through the second half of the silent ward. Walking past the unmoving men is just as harrowing as the first time, and I’m grateful when we enter the next ward, filled with ordinary madmen.
Rather than return to his cramped office, Dr. North takes us to a small examination room on the third floor, just inside a ward set aside for patients who need more intensive medical care.
The room is small, containing a stool, an examination table, a sink, and various cabinets and trays stocked with medical supplies.
“Lie down on the table,” North tells me.
“Mr. Evans, do you want to fetch another chair to sit? I’m afraid there’s only the one stool. ”
“I’ll stand.” Adrian positions himself near the door. “Are you all right, Sterling?”
My nerves are live wires under my skin, and my belly roils with acid. If this works, if I learn I’ve done terrible things…
Then I’ll have to live with it, somehow. Just as I live with the memory of Emerson, dying slowly beyond our reach. Then returning as a dead man, perhaps for revenge, perhaps for some other reason I’d never discover.
“I’m all right,” I say, though I doubt he believes me. I climb onto the table and lie down as instructed.
“Are you comfortable?” North asks. “Do you need a blanket or another pillow?”
I stare up at the light fixture above. “No, thank you.”
“Then let’s begin.” The doctor sits on the stool. “Just relax and listen to the sound of my voice.”
I do as instructed. When he speaks again, North’s voice is soft and soothing, with a cadence like gently lapping waves against my ears.
“Remember: you are in control of all that you see and hear. You’re safe in this room, in this time, and nothing you remember can harm you.
Should your memories become too distressing, however, simply say the word ‘blueberry,’ and you’ll return to ordinary consciousness. ”
That doesn’t sound too bad.
“Pick a spot on the ceiling to focus your gaze on,” he continues. “Just the first that catches your attention. Notice your eyes blinking. With every blink, your lids grow heavier, until you can no longer keep them open.”
I drift on the sea of his voice, my eyelids growing impossibly heavy, then gently sliding closed.
“You are now in a deep, pleasant state of relaxation. I will count down from five, and as I do so, you will sink further into the basement of your mind. Five…four…three…two…one…”
I float in a void, comfortable and relaxed. Everything seems impossibly distant, as though all my concerns have turned into smoke and blown away.
“There is a door in front of you. You can see it very clearly, from the details of the knob to the grain of the wood.”
Obediently, my mind conjures up a sturdy door with a glass knob.
“On the other side of the door are the memories you’ve lost. They can’t harm you in any way—they’re just memories. You’re perfectly safe. When you open the door, you’ll recall and describe them as best you can. On three: three…two…one. Open the door.”
I turn the knob in my hand and swing the door wide.
I’m in Hart’s Leap, inside the hidden room where Myers and Hart ambushed me. The sting of the needle still burns in my upper arm. My legs refuse to work, and I slide to the floor.
“Poor Mr. Caine,” Hart says. “Are you afraid? You should be.”
Something grips me, dark and implacable.
I struggle against the hold, but after the injection, even my thoughts are sluggish.
Unable to fight, I can only experience a surge of terror as some force tears me out of the scene in the hidden room.
I’m falling, falling, falling through vast black gulfs of infinity, while somewhere far off voices scream like a chorus of the damned.
I stop falling. My thoughts are everywhere and nowhere, scattered fragments that only slowly coalesce. My body feels even more removed, as though I’ve been pulled apart and badly put back together.
Where am I? My vision is more blurry than usual—did I get a knock on the head, perhaps? But it seems wider as well, wrapping around well to my periphery and showing the ceiling above.
I shake my head, but the movement feels wrong. I’m semi-standing in a stone room, with a window overlooking a sea of green. The air is humid, thick, but somehow not oppressive.
And in front of me is a monster.
The portion of my mind that knows I’m under hypnosis recognizes it, or ones like it, from my dreams. Five round, black eyes glare from atop its head, a trunk-like appendage held half-raised before it. Its segmented body is partly supported on a soft, mossy bed atop a circular stone.
I jerk back in instinctive fear, but the movement feels wrong. My face flexes, my body clicks up in segments, my arms—too many arms—wave. And the creature before me mimics every motion perfectly.
It isn’t another entity. The monster I see before me is my own reflection.