Jackson Bell - Trigger Finger

“Where was I?”

“Pardon?”

“I guess I went to the hospital after the cops or whoever found me down in the basement. Where did I go after that? Did I go straight to the booby hatch or what?”

The light turned green. He began to drive.

But he didn’t answer.

“Well?”

A slight shake of the head, a pursing of the lips.

“No,” he said.

“No, I didn’t go straight to the booby hatch?”

“No.”

“Okay… so where was I? Did I go home?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

He slowed down to pull into the circular driveway. “I mean, I don’t know,” he said. “Nobody does. That’s one thing that’s really never been resolved in this case. You weren’t released from the hospital; you just left. And six months ago, we found you wandering on the road…”

“In Glen Raven,” I said. “On Highway 87.”

Just like Brandon Cross.

“Yes.”

He paused, breathing through his nose. I recognized a ki breath as he brought the car to a stop.

“You had leaves all over what remained of your clothes,” he said. “You had apparently just emerged from the woods. But as far as where you were before that…”

He trailed off into a shrug.

“…is anybody’s guess. When you figure it out, give me a call. Because I’d really like to know.”

I woke up in my room late that night; exactly when, I couldn’t say. I enjoyed a private room roughly the size of the one in which I had lived in Hinton-James Hall my first year at Carolina, only this one didn’t smell like sweat and gym socks. No cinderblocks, either, just smooth, white drywall. And air conditioning. When I opened my eyes, I found myself face-up to the ceiling, staring at a solitary vent that blew cool air across my face.

The room was sparsely furnished, with only a wardrobe, a nightstand and a single chair accompanying the twin bed in which I lay. The doorknob was of the heavy industrial variety; I doubted it would open. The staff remained concerned about the possibility that I might disappear again, Dr. Koenig had told me—hence the lockdown. I had started out in a lower security wing, but I had gotten out. They always found me, eventually, sitting on that bench in the courtyard. But sometimes it took them awhile, and they didn’t want to go through that every week, so I would remain in lockdown for the foreseeable future.

My room must have been easy to access from the outside, though, because when I rolled over on my side, I found Allie sitting in the chair. I sat straight up.

“What are you doing here?”

“Good evening to you, too.”

“What… what are you doing here?”

She grinned. She wore blue jeans and a simple purple blouse beneath a black jacket. Her hair was full and healthy. She didn’t look dead.

How did she get in here? Visiting hours are over and I’m in lockdown, so how did she get in here?

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Uh, yeah, but…”

“But what?”

“But you’re dead.”

She pursed her lips. She looked up at the ceiling.

“You’re dead,” I said again. “I’m deluded.”

“Funny,” she said, “I don’t feel dead.”

“But Dr. Koenig…”

“Dr. Koenig is the worst quack in the State of North Carolina,” she said. “He’s bad. Very bad. I am going to kill Tom Spicer for that referral. Seriously.”

I swung my legs off the edge of the bed, frowning. My feet touched the hardwood floor. I felt its cool solidity. Allie reached out and took my hands; hers were warm. Real.

“But I testified,” I said. “I remember…”

“You don’t remember a thing,” she interrupted me. “You remember what you were told by your quack of a shrink. You can listen to him, or you can listen to me. I want you to listen to me, Kevin, but you need to listen very closely.”

Ki breath.

I listened.

“There was no trial. There was no rape. There was no murder. Nobody’s dead except for Leon Pinnix and Trayshaun Ramseur. They’re dead because you killed them.”

I blinked. She reached into the cavernous maw of a purse she produced from underneath the chair. She pulled out another copy of Southern Rifleman . My issue.

“Read it,” she said. “Read your story in the Hero of the Month column. Go on.”

I took the magazine in my hands. The slick, glossy cover was in perfect condition save the deformation wrought by Allie doubling it over to fit in her purse. I flipped to the back. I flipped on the lamp beside my bed and stared at the words. I read them exactly as they appeared.

“Kevin Swanson, an attorney with the law firm of Carwood, Allison, Spicer and York, P.A., in Burlington, North Carolina, successfully defended his home when Leon Pinnix and Trayshaun Ramseur gained entry through an unlocked window in the basement.”

Allie smiled. The lamp hadn’t changed her appearance any. Still there. Still real.

“Pinnix and Ramseur attacked Mr. Swanson, who had been watching a basketball game in his basement man-cave, by striking him over the head with a softball bat before leaving him for dead and proceeding upstairs.”

I stopped reading.

“See?” She said. “You did it. You’re a double Hero of the Month.”

I stared at the words on the page. I closed the magazine and rolled it into a tube. I looked at the end table upon which the lamp sat and squinted at the grain of the wood. No telltale black line around the table’s edges; this appeared to be solid wood.

“What is all this?” I asked.

“You suffered a nervous breakdown,” she said. “You got hit on the head, and that didn’t help any, but it wasn’t a very good whack. You’ve been deteriorating ever since this happened, and you suffered a nervous breakdown because you couldn’t get over how narrowly we escaped the exact fate that Dr. Koenig managed to convince you was the truth. And I understand that. It was a close call.”

“Why would Dr. Koenig want to do that?”

“A form of aversion therapy,” she replied. “So he said. You were terrified of what could have happened, so he thought it would be a good idea to take you through it. And show you that you could survive it. Let these fears run their course, he said, so that Kevin can put them away. I went along with it because you seemed like such a wreck. I wish I hadn’t.”

I looked down at her hands. They were soft, delicate. Like her face.

“It sounds so elaborate,” I said. “I mean… I did testify, which means this is…”

She rose suddenly, and I stopped mid-sentence. We locked eyes and remained that way for a long moment. I saw no fear in her eyes, but I knew she saw it in mine. Dark waves rose and fell within me, a deep and black seascape where nothing stayed level and a person could dive forever and never reach bottom. I thought of the Bald Man, and I thought of golems, and I thought that maybe he wasn’t the only one who could conjure things.

But I said none of this.

“It’s over,” she said. “I’m taking you home.”

“Now?”

“You’re not in prison. You’re not under an involuntary commitment.”

“Bobby’s not dead?” I asked. “Wasn’t killed in the war like Koenig said?”

She laughed. The sound washed over me like a warm shower in the middle of January.

“Very much alive,” she said. “And he’s at the house with Kate. I told them I was bringing you home tonight, and they wanted to be there. Bobby bought a case of beer. It’s probably half gone by now, but if we hurry you might still get one or two.”

“Abby?”

“Right now, she’s at home sleeping,” Allie said. “Unless she’s gotten up and gotten on her phone again.”