John Hart - Iron House

“You’re scared of him.”

She didn’t know where the certainty originated, but it was real. Jimmy’s talk of pride and fatherhood was bluster. He was frightened, and now that she’d said it out loud, it was all over him. His posture. His face.

“Don’t say that again.”

He made the words a threat, but Elena had been electrocuted and taped up, tossed in the back of a trunk and terrorized. This knowledge was the only power she had, and as small as it was, it was seductive. Her mouth opened, and Jimmy’s eyes went dead before the words had formed in her mouth. He caught a fistful of her hair and pulled her off the bed, the same deadness on his face as he dragged her across the floor.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

The words were glass in her mouth as he dragged her into the living room and across the filthy carpet. Men rose and stared. Skin burned off the backs of her hands and then she heard hollow thumps as Jimmy’s shoes landed hard on the boards of the porch. Sunshine struck her face, and he dragged her down the stairs and onto the soft, pungent dirt.

“Please…”

He hauled her to the back of the car, rolled her with a foot. Someone said, “What’s going on, Jimmy?” But Jimmy ignored him. The trunk popped with a small sound and Jimmy leaned in, pulled out a gasoline can and emptied it onto Elena. The smell hit some primal part of her, so that even as her eyes burned and her mouth filled with the bitter taste of it, she tried to crawl away.

“Who’s scared, now?”

His voice had an inhuman quality, an indifference that was too studied to be real. When he lowered the gasoline can, she saw nicks in the bright, red plastic, fine stitching in the seams of Jimmy’s leather shoes. Elena blinked against the burn in her eyes, saw the lighter in his hand. It was brass. He spun it between his thumb and four fingers, opened it, closed it. Bright metal winked and she saw the charred, black wick inside.

“Don’t.” She curled around the baby in her stomach.

“Don’t what?”

The lighter spun, clicked open.

“Please…”

Jimmy looked up, squinted at the high, blue sky. “Hot out today.”

Elena began to cry.

Julian disliked drugs, in general, but when he needed them that changed. When he was scared and cold in the darkness of his mind, he liked everything about the drugs. He liked the intensity of the doctor’s face as the needle went into the little bottle, the way light shone through the glass. He liked the sound of a fingernail tapped against the syringe and the sight of the narrow stream shot out into the air. His eyes went very still when the needle came out.

The needle made the voice in his head go quiet.

The needle helped Julian hide.

It started as a burn where the needle slipped in, but the burn was brief and faded to warmth that spread from his arm into his chest, then down his legs and into the metal of his skull. Into the giant, dark space from which the voice descended when the world was too big or Julian too scared, when Julian knew he was being weak.

That’s the right word, isn’t it?

Julian shied from the sneer. He was frightened of so many things: of his life and of life’s expectations, of the threat of failure and how that failure would ripple into other parts of his soul. He was afraid people would see too deep, that twenty years of illusion would simply implode and everyone would know he was a shadow man. But that was a big fear-a lifelong terror-and those fears were not always the worst. There was the fear of minutes and seconds, the fear of a coward’s million tiny degradations. The voice saw all that fear. It was why Julian hated the voice, and why he needed it. The voice hurt, but kept him strong. And, Julian needed to be strong.

You need everything I have…

It was loud, in spite of the drugs, angry after so many months of absence. Julian tried to remember what had happened to bring the voice back, but his mind wasn’t working right.

Something bad…

He tried to remember. He imagined fingers squeezed on the gray coils of his brain.

Something bad…

He squeezed a little harder.

Worthless…

“Stop it.”

Palms pressed the sides of Julian’s head. When had the voice come back?

He didn’t know; it was too much.

We don’t need him…

The voice was a thin wire this time.

Say it with me…

“No.”

We don’t need Michael…

“No.”

Say it!

Julian rolled into a ball even as a faint noise stirred in the world outside his mind. It was a familiar noise, a murmur of words that had power of its own, because the voice turned away. It grew high and faint until Julian was alone in the dark. He huddled on an island in the blackness, watched as Michael and his mother came through the door and spoke with the doctor. He saw them stop by the bed, and he heard the questions they asked. He wanted to speak to them, but was unable. They heard what he heard, a voice that sounded like his own, but was not.

The voice was laughing at them.

And the sound was insane.

Michael stopped at the bedside, and felt Abigail slip into the hollow place beside his right arm. Beneath them, Julian lay on his side, his hair matted, his skin like wax. His arms were pale under a summer tan, his fingers curled beneath gauze dotted red at the knuckles. Michael leaned closer as a faint sound slipped past Julian’s lips.

“Julian?”

The sound welled into brittle, ugly laughter. Michael straightened. “Why is he laughing?”

“I have no idea,” the doctor said. “He’s been talking a bit. This is the first laugh I’ve heard.”

“What has he said?”

“The same thing, more or less. I suspect you’ll get a taste soon enough.”

Michael squatted next to the bed and put his hand on Julian’s forehead. “No fever.”

“No.”

“Then what?” Abigail’s voice showed a mother’s fear.

The doctor clasped his hands, and titled his head so that soft flesh rounded out beneath his jaw. “Perhaps you can tell me.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, the senator still won’t release his medical records. That makes my job difficult. Frankly, I’m becoming angry. Clearly, there is more I need to know.”

“My husband has worries most men do not.”

“Medical records are confidential. There is no conceivable way I would betray a patient’s trust. The very thought is insulting.”

“Yet, mistakes are often made.”

“Not in my practice.”

Abigail paled at his anger, but did not back down. “His medical records are sealed.”

“Sealed?”

“By the courts.” She cleared her throat. “As part of a juvenile matter.”

“I don’t understand.”

Abigail was torn, Michael saw. Her eyes flicked from Julian to the doctor, then found Michael’s face. Whatever she was afraid to discuss, it was serious; the doctor seemed to understand. “Let me phrase this a different way.” Cloverdale stepped closer, his voice calm. “Have you ever heard of chlorpromazine? It’s a drug.” He waited, eyebrows lifted, but Abigail was frozen, mouth half-open. The doctor nodded, sadly. “How about loxapine or haloperidol? Clozapine?” No reaction. “How about ziprasidone or olanzapine?”

Abigail looked away, and Michael said, “Those drugs are antipsychotics.”

“That’s right.”

“Why are you asking about antipsychotics?”

The doctor pointed at Julian as the laughter came again. “Look at him.”

They all looked, and Julian’s eyes went wide and black, the laughter suddenly frozen in the cavern of his mouth. “We don’t need…” Julian spoke in a reedy voice.