Psychopathia: A Horror Suspense Novel (26 page)

‘Please,’ he said. ‘I need some water.’

The man, buttoned up into a white jacket, smeared with stains that could have been blood, looked at him and laughed. ‘Don’t you worry, it’s feeding time all right. Feeding time at the zoo.’

‘Where am I?’ Nothing made any sense. ‘Am I sick?’

The laugh again, a raucous sound with no humour in it. ‘Are you sick? You can say that again. Sickest bastard I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. Now open up.’

Toby blinked at him, tugging a hand at the restraints. Open what up?

That question at least was answered. Hands in thick gloves leapt to his mouth and pried it open, and wedged it there with something cold stuck between his teeth. Toby shrank back against the bed, but the hands weren’t finished with him yet. They pressed a tube in his mouth and he gagged on the rubber, tears springing to his eyes as it was shoved to the back of his throat.

‘Swallow it!’

He couldn’t. It was too big, and he retched, trying to cough it up, but the man leaning over him simply pushed it further down his throat until there was nothing to do but let his throat convulse around it. Deeper it went, down into his stomach, and he could feel the length of it, thick and cold. He tried to speak, but it was too thick, even when the wedge was taken away from his jaw, the rubber tube stuck from his mouth and threatened to suffocate him. He scooted back in the bed, but there was nowhere to go, and his hands were tied, there was no way to pull the tube from his mouth. And the man laughed at him.

‘Didn’t get to bite me this time, did you?’ Gloves removed, sharp fingers pinched him on the cheek. ‘Now I’ve got me orders, and you’ll not be making any messes this time. Not with your food anyway.’ He fiddled with something and Toby widened his eyes, trying to see what he was doing.

‘Bottoms up!’ He lifted a bottle, attached to the tube now, and tipped it upside down. Toby’s staring eyes saw the liquid drain from it, down the tube, down his throat, down into his stomach. In a minute he was drowning, leaning forward against his restraints, coughing, choking as his stomach overflowed. Eyes stinging, he breathed some of the liquid in and coughed again, but his throat was blocked and…

The tube was pulled free. Toby retched and gagged, unable to sit up, only able to turn his head to the side, the liquid streaming from his mouth, soaking into the sheet under him.
He coughed, found a gasp of air, sucked it in, spat some more of the liquid, vile tasting, sour milk, and tried to breathe.

He looked up at the man standing above the bed. ‘Well,’ the man said. ‘That’s feeding time over with then. Until tomorrow, of course, when we get the pleasure of doing it all over again.’ He waggled the brown rubber tube at Toby, then turned and let himself out.

‘Fun times here,’ Toby’s double said from the corner of the cell. ‘You’ll be lying in that sour milk for the next week. Until they decide on the next round of torture.’ It sniffed. ‘Still, at least they took the tube from your willy. Things get really fucking bad when you’re hooked up there and they forget to empty the bag.’

Toby winced at the pain in his grazed throat. ‘Who are you? Where am I?’

The hallucination – for surely, wearing his own face, it must be a hallucination – stepped away from the wall, and sat himself down on the side of the bed, neatly avoiding the spilled milk.

‘Well, let’s see,’ it said. ‘I’m you. Now. Which means, unfortunately for you, you’re me.’ He cocked his head to the side. ‘Or at least my memories. It’s a little complicated. I stole your body, and you are trapped inside my memories.’
He looked at his hands – Toby’s hands – and turned them over as if admiring them. ‘Vivid memories, aren’t they? Sorry about that, but there’s nothing I can do about that. People like me weren’t held in much esteem, even by the medical community.’

Toby wasn’t following, his forehead creased in confusion. ‘What?’ he said.

‘What?’ the hallucination mimicked. ‘What? I’ve waited so long to find someone like you, and all you can do is bleat like a lamb caught in a fence.’ It shifted its weight on the thin mattress. ‘Let me spell it out to you. I have narcissistic tendencies, so I really don’t mind so much.’

Toby blinked, the sour milk under his head forgotten. He wanted to reach out and touch the man sitting beside him, but his hands were still restrained. This was his twin, obviously. His real twin. Weren’t twins supposed to look just like you?

‘Now, we have swapped places, you and I, and for that I thank you very much. It was a long wait for someone like you.’

Toby didn’t know what his twin was talking about, but the voice was soothing. He swallowed, winced at his raw throat, and nodded for him to go on.

‘I knew as soon as I saw you that you were the one. And I was right – it was easy to hitch a ride with you.’ He laughed. ‘I even got to tell you what I was doing, gave you all a nice scare when I threw the glass against the wall.

And now, thanks to you, w
ith your fractured little mind – your disturbed little mind – all ready and waiting for me, I am now you, and you are trapped in the hellhole of my memories.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ It was hard to speak; Toby thought maybe the man with the rubber tube and the garlic stink may have damaged his vocal chords.

His twin patted him on the shoulder. ‘Never mind, lad. It doesn’t matter what you know, or don’t.’ He leaned over and stared at him from only an inch away. ‘You’ve got a nice sister though,’ he said. ‘I did a few ladies as well, you know. In my little house by the railroad.’ He sat up again, a beatific smile stretching across his face. ‘I liked the boys better, and they were easier to lure home, but the few ladies I introduced myself to were very sweet. Very sweet indeed.’ He looked at Toby, and dropped one eye in a slow, sly wink. ‘I think your Tully is going to be a very good first taste of freedom.’

Tully. Toby tried to sit up at the thought of his sister. A small area of fog cleared in his poor addled mind, and he reached through it to see his sister.

‘Tully!’ he cried, and turned back to his evil twin. ‘What are you going to do to my sister?’ The restraints cut into his wrists.

His twin leaned over him again, and pressed a kiss to his lips. ‘Why,’ he said. ‘I’m going to do nothing but be a very good brother.’ He smiled. ‘Until I’m out of here, anyway.’ He got up from the bed, looked down at the jeans and tee shirt he wore, then flashed Toby a smile.

‘You’ll probably stay lost in here forever,’ he said. ‘And you’re too sick to even know what I’m talking about.’ His smile widened. ‘But don’t worry. Around here, you get lots of electroshock therapy. You never know – it might even work for you.’

A high-pitched giggle, and he was gone. Toby laid on the bed, and stared at the spot where he’d been.

Tully had postponed her studies. She
’d withdrawn from all her courses, and got herself a job selling bubble gum and ice creams at the local dairy instead. It meant she didn’t have to think about anything except Toby. Studying had been too much when she was visiting the hospital every second day, and spending a couple hours with him there, if not longer on many days.

Now he was coming home. Tully looked around the little house and grimaced. As if you could call it home. There was little about it that resembled their father’s house, or the one they’d grown up in, but she’d done her best. The furniture was all from the Salvation Army, but she’d picked the best stuff she could find.

The palms of her hands were sweaty, and she wiped them against her jeans and checked her watch for the eleventy hundredth time that day. But finally the big hand and the little hand both pointed to time to go. She plucked up the car keys and gripped them tight enough that they bit into the fleshy pad under her thumb. One last look around, and she was out the door, dashing through the rain to the car.

It was a
lmost an hour’s trip to the hospital. That didn’t matter though – in fact, Tully liked the drive. It gave her time to clear her mind before and after her visits, helped her stay calm, concentrating on the road, and her breathing, listening to the thrum of the tyres on the road and the solid beat of her heart in her chest.

Today though, Toby would be sitting in the passenger seat beside her. Six months after his admission, and he was finally ready to come home. Tully had never felt so nervous in all her life. She’d told him
about moving out of the city, about finding the little house to rent in the Port, how peaceful it was, and he’d been enthusiastic. He said the peace and quiet would be good for him. They could go for lots of walks together. Maybe she could pick up her studies a bit later. She’d already checked out that she could do them in the evenings by correspondence.

And the house was by the beach. She’d
put his surf board in his room, propping it against the wall. He’d want to use that, come summer, she thought. He loved surfing.

The wipers splatted the rain from side to side of the car windscreen, and Tully leaned forward over the steering wheel, unable to stop the churning of her stomach. Nerves. She’d
been suffering from them since the night she’d phoned those people to come around and take her brother away.

She knew she’d done the right thing, but it ate into her like corrosive acid. That’s why she’d gone to so much trouble with the house and everything. It was just her and Toby, and he needed her, and she wasn’t going to let him down. After that first, horrible visit, she’d pulled herself together and visited Toby
every second day. Everyone else had deserted them, she was going to make sure he wasn’t on his own.

The nurses knew her now, and she wasn’t afraid of the patients anymore, though she couldn’t quite bring herself to call them clients. Toby wasn’t a client. For the last six months, he’d definitely been a patient, whether they wanted to call him that or not.
She was willing to admit it, even if they weren’t. She’d had to.

Lois, the psyche nurse, smiled and nodded at her. ‘Ready for the big day, Tully?’

‘I’m a bit nervous,’ she said, and peered in through the door to the ward. Toby had moved from the locked ward a couple of months ago, and this one was a lot less scary.

The nurse patted her on the shoulder. ‘You’ll be fine. I think it’s really great what you’re doing for your brother, Tully.
He’ll be fine, and so will you.’

Tully took a deep breath and counted to three before letting it go. She was getting better at not leaking tears all the time, but tod
ay was a special day. One rolled down her cheek.

She swallowed. ‘Is he ready?’ she asked.

Lois laughed. ‘Dressed and packed since eight o’clock this morning. Doctor Stebbins has just been in there to take care of the paperwork, and now he’s all yours.’ She ticked off her fingers. ‘He has his prescriptions, you’ll need to get them filled before you go home, and he has the phone numbers of the support team he and Doctor Stebbins have put together for him.’

Nodding, Tully was still staring at the door through to the ward. ‘I’ve got them too,’ she said. ‘I think we’re good to go.’

Another pat on the shoulder, then Tully’s arms were full of nurse as she gave her a hug. ‘It’s been lovely getting to know you,’ she said. ‘You give the team a call if there are any problems, you hear?’ She set Tully back on the ground.

‘Yes, I will.’

‘Okay, are you ready?’

Another deep breath, and this time the smile on Tully’s face was genuine. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s time to take my brother home.’

The ward doors swung open under her hands, and she stepped through. Toby’s room was the third on the right, and its door was open. He sat on the bed, one sneakered foot tapping on the tiled floor. His eyes lit up when he saw her.

‘Tully!’

She grinned. ‘Hey bro. They say I can take you home now. You ready?’

‘You better believe it.’ He stood up, clutching a sheaf of papers and shoved them at Tully. ‘Can you do something with all these?’

She took them and checked that they were his discharge forms, and more importantly, his prescriptions. Her brother was a walking pharmacy, and none of it was recreational anymore. There was a nagging worry nibbling at her that Toby would want to go back to his pot smoking ways, but she’d talked that over with him and the doctor in one of their sessions, and Toby had said he wouldn’t. Didn’t even want to, in fact. She hoped not.

Tucking the scripts in her bag, she looked up and smiled at her twin brother. ‘Car’s out the back,’ she said. ‘Shall we go?’

He nodded and picked up his bag of clothes. Tully remembered bringing the bag in for him six months ago. Toby had freaked her out that day, but she’d done well since then. Mental illness was scary – for family as well as the sufferers – but she’d tamped down on her fear and come back the next week, determined not to abandon her brother.

‘I had a party yesterday,’ Toby said as he and Tully stepped through the doors to outside.

‘You did? A leaving party?’ That was kinda cool.

But Toby didn’t answer. He stopped on the path and stared around him, lifted his head to the sky and closed his eyes. She could see him taking deep breaths and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

‘Come on,’ she said, bopping him on the shoulder. ‘It’s raining, fool.’