Psychopathia: A Horror Suspense Novel (25 page)

‘It is very unusual, I know. I’m rather perplexed over it too.’

She shook her head. ‘He was never that confused before you had him. He just talked a lot of nonsense. And I don’t mean nonsense like you’re telling me.’

‘As may be, Tully, but I’m afraid this is what we’re now dealing with.’

‘What are you doing for him?’ She didn’t want the doctor to call her Tully anymore but didn’t know how to tell him to go back to saying Miss Collins. She did know she wanted to see her brother though.

‘Everything we can, Tully, I assure you.’
He looked like he was about to launch into some long speech but she’d had enough. She stood up.

‘Take me to see him.’

She thought he was going to say no, but after a pause, he nodded instead. ‘It may be good for him,’ Stebbins said, and Tully wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to himself. ‘To be confronted with the irrefutable evidence of you might shake him back onto the right track again.’

Since when was shaking someone back onto the right track a medical term? Tully hoped her face didn’t show her newfound scepticism for the psychiatric world, and just nodded as the doctor led the way to the door.

The ward was locked. Tully leaned against the wall and tried to catch her breath while Stebbins chatted with a security guy and had the door unlocked for them. She hadn’t expected her brother to be held behind a locked door.

‘Why’s he in a locked ward?’ she asked. ‘This isn’t a prison, is it?’

Stebbins’ smile again, and she realised it wasn’t meeting his eyes. ‘Ward B is a locked unit providing a safe and therapeutic environment for clients in an acute phase of a mental health disorder who are unable to be managed in a less restricted area.’

They guy sounded as if he was quoting from a brochure. In fact, when Tully had looked up the address of the hospital online that morning, she was pretty sure she’d read exactly that in the description of the psychiatric hospital. There were three wards, and one of them was locked. She’d never for a minute expected to find Toby behind the locked doors of Ward
9B. At least it was a far cry from what the old Seacliff Mental Asylum must have been. It was institutional, and somehow managed to smell of antiseptic like every other hospital she’d been in, but it was no gothic horror house.

‘Your brother is in here,’ Doctor Stebbins said.

Tully caught a glimpse through a fire door of what looked like a lounge, but she backed away in fright when a figure appeared at the reinforced glass and pressed their face against it. The doctor caught her arm and herded her through a different doorway.

It was her first time in a psychiatric hospital and she didn’t know what to expect. In fact, it was her first time in any sort of hospital, really, except for the time Toby had broken his arm when they were six – and she hardly remembered anything of that, but they probably didn’t get any further than the emergency room.

Toby had his back to them, sitting at a small desk under a window so high it showed only a slice of sky, white-washed and as hazy as Tully felt. He didn’t turn around when they came in the room.

‘Toby, your sister is here to visit you,’ Stebbins said. ‘Turn around please and say hello to her.’

He was wearing pyjamas – the bag Tully held had some of his clothes in it, though she’d been under strict instructions not to include belts, shoes with laces, and to check the pockets before she packed anything. It had been inspected before she even got as far as seeing the doctor, and it was her first inkling that a psychiatric hospital was a version of prison.

Toby turned around, talking as he did so. ‘I told you, I do not have a…’ He saw her and stopped.

‘A what, Toby?’ Doctor Stebbins asked.

‘Never mind,’ Toby said and stared at her.

Tully cast a worried glance at the doctor, but he was looking curiously at her brother. But the trouble was, Toby didn’t look like Toby. Or rather, Toby did look like Toby, but not the Toby she knew so well. She blinked, knowing even as she was thinking it, that she made no sense.

But she shivered anyway, and couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Something was very, very wrong.

Maybe this was what mental illness did to people. It changed them around the eyes so that when they looked at you, the brother you’d always been so close to, the one you’d confided in – before you even told your best friend – when Jonny Matheson, your first date turned out to be a lousy kisser, all slobber and no style. There was nothing of that brother in the man sitting in front of her. She bit her lip and tried to stop the sting of tears.

Toby rose from his chair, eyes fixed on her. In a moment he was across the small room and putting his arms around her. She flung a panicked glance at the doctor, but he stood looking as though this was a good thing. Toby leaned against her, and he was warm, and although he didn’t smell entirely like usual, he felt the same. Relaxing, she
dropped the bag and wrapped her arms around him too and closed her eyes.

‘Oh Toby, I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘Are you okay?’

He didn’t answer, unless sliding his hands up and down her back, pausing on the flare of her buttocks a moment too long before stroking her waist counted as a response. Suddenly uncomfortable again, she pulled herself away.

‘What’s
wrong with you, Toby?’ she whispered. ‘I’m your sister, for crying out loud.’

‘What’s the matter, Tully?’ the doctor asked.

She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She edged nearer the door but forced her eyes back to her brother. He stared at her, but as though he wasn’t really seeing her, or was imagining her…she didn’t know what. She didn’t want to know what. She turned to the doctor.

‘I want to go now,’ she said.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘But you only just got here.’

‘And now I want to go.’ Her lower lip trembled and she trapped it between her teeth.
She’d come back again when Toby was feeling better, when the drugs had kicked in or something. His stare was unnerving.

But Stebbins had sat himself down on the bed, as though settling in for a cosy chat. ‘It’s important that you try to connect with your brother, Tully. Our relationships tether us to reality – he needs you.’

‘No, I want to go now.’

‘Can you tell me why? Can you tell Toby what is making you so uncomfortable?’

She didn’t want to. She pushed the sports bag with her foot. ‘I brought you some of your own clothes, Toby,’ she said. He flicked a glance at them, but then returned to looking at her. She wanted to hold her arms in front of herself, to stave off his look. He was looking at her as though imagining her naked. She shook her head again and went for the door, giving the doctor no choice but to follow her.

Half way down the corridor he caught up with her.

‘I’m sorry you found that distressing,’ he said. ‘It often hits family members that way.’

She jerked her head from side to side and pressed her lips together.

‘I meant what I said though – it is greatly beneficial if the family can be involved in the client’s recovery.

‘Client?’

‘We prefer it to patient these days. Did you call your father?’

She had, and it had been painful. Painful but at least brief, she supposed. ‘He didn’t want to know,’ she said. ‘He won’t be coming to visit.’

There was a frown in the doctor’s voice. ‘Perhaps I should call him.’

Tully shrugged. ‘It won’t do any good. He’s wiped his hands of us this time.’ They reached the doctor’s office. ‘I’ll try to visit again in a couple of days,’ she said. ‘Will you let me know if he gets better?’

‘It doesn’t really work like that, I’m afraid. There’s no overnight recovery, though sometimes the medications can work very quickly, but usually it takes a while to see some stabilisation. But please do visit Toby again.’ He cocked his head at her. ‘What made you so uncomfortable, if you don’t mind me asking?’

She did mind him asking, because she didn’t know how to answer. It would sound silly to say that the man in that room wasn’t her brother. He looked like him, but
Toby had never looked at her like that – like he wanted to…eat her. She shook her head.

‘I guess he didn’t seem like himself,’ she said.

A sympathetic smile. ‘He’s not really himself at the moment. He’s confused, his brain is having trouble sorting and processing information. It’s very hard for him to tell what’s real and what isn’t.’

‘Why doesn’t he think he has a sister?’ She sniffed, and plucked at a loose thread on the hem of her top.

‘I think he recognised you when he saw you, though. As to not thinking he had a sister before that, he’s fairly deep within his delusion at the moment. One of the most entrenched I’ve seen in a good while, actually.’

She raised her face and looked at him. ‘So he’s schizophrenic, then?’

‘It does seem likely at this stage.’ Doctor Stebbins smiled at her. ‘But we will be keeping an eye on him, and doing all we can. With proper support and supervision, there’s no reason why your brother won’t go on to live a productive and fulfilling life.’

Well, that was something, she supposed. Thanking the doctor for his time, she turned away and retraced her steps out of the hospital. The open air was a relief, and she sucked it in, greedy for a sky not framed by a tiny, high window.

The visit was a disaster, she decided while she unlocked the car. With a shuddering glance at the hospital, she climbed in the car and started the engine, wishing she could call up Lara and tell her about it. But she hadn’t heard a peep from Lara since that last night at the pub, and she was too hurt about being abandoned by her friend, to pick up the phone and risk the same treatment again.

Her hands trembled on the steering wheel when she turned out onto the highway. The way Toby had looked at her – it was unnatural, that’s what it was. Something was terribly wrong with him.
At least the doctor seemed to realise how serious it was, just how sick Toby was. She hoped he was good at his job; she really needed him to be.

Tully headed back into the city. She had to find somewhere to live today. The lease was up on the
cabin and she had all her gear – and Toby’s – in the back seat and boot of the car. And if she didn’t find somewhere to live, she’d be sleeping in the car.

Toby was sick, but at least he was someplace safe. Tully was alone and afraid, and had nowhere to go.

Toby didn’t feel safe.
Rough hands slapped at him, jerked him from the darkness, a voice yelling at him to open his eyes. Shrinking back, he did, and a leering face met him, teeth yellow and breath ripe with the stink of garlic. He cringed away but the hands grabbed him by his shirt and shook him until his teeth rattled in his head.

‘Look at the mess you’ve made!’

What mess? Where was he?

A sharp slap to the face again, loud, rocking his head to the side
. Someone grabbed him down below and unable to help himself, he squealed, as something was torn from his penis. He tried to reach down to protect himself, but his hands were tied.

Someone was laughing at him. Spitting curses, and laughing. He wanted to roll over, curl up in a ball, try to figure out what was going on, but he was tied down, and his mind couldn’t make sense of any of it. He’d been asleep, dragged from the safe place and sent to sleep. Now everything but the pain was a muzzy haze.

The voice went away, and he closed his eyes, lay in the darkness behind his eyelids, listening to the flare of pain in his groin, and groping around in the shadows and contusions of his mind.

A voice spoke to him from the shadows in his mind, and he wanted to run and hide. But his safe room was gone, he couldn’t see the glow of its bright lights anywhere.

‘Don’t scream,’ the voice said. ‘It only makes them come back.’

He licked his lips. They were dry and cracked. He wanted a drink of water. ‘Who?’ he croaked.

‘Them.’ He heard the shrug in the voice. ‘Does it matter who they are? They’re not the ones tied down, that’s what matters.’

‘Where am I?’

‘In my head.’

Toby didn’t understand. He pulled against the restraints, but the leather bit into his wrists. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

The voice laughed, and stepped out of the shadows, showing him his face. Toby found himself looking at his own face.

‘I’m dreaming,’ he said. ‘I’m still asleep.’

‘No. They finally woke you up. Two weeks they had you under this time. Not bad, really. Last time it was two months.’

He really wanted that drink of water. Opening his eyes, he looked around, discovering himself in a small room.

‘It’s not a room,’ the man with his face said. ‘See the bars over the window and the peephole in the door? It’s a cell. A prison cell.’

‘I’m in jail?’

‘No. That would be better.’ He laughed, harsh and bitter. ‘There, we would only have the beatings. Here, there is so much more. So, so much more.’

The door opened and a large man bustled in, carrying something Toby very much didn’t like the look of. He li
fted his gaze from it and begged the man with his eyes.