Maureen Johnson - The Madness Underneath

I realized my nails were digging into my thighs.

“Charlie thought I was on something, but I wasn’t. I didn’t take nothing, I promise. And I was trying to tell him that…”

Sam had started to shake, an all-over quiver that rattled his arms and pulled on the restraints that bound him to the table. Tears trickled freely from his eyes.

“What happened next, Sam?” Stephen asked quietly.

Sam shook his head.

“Sam,” he said, “we will believe you.”

“I don’t want you to believe me.”

It was horrible to watch, this tormented man, chained into place.

“Charlie started to wipe the cross away,” he said. “He was down on his knees and saying, ‘We’ll just clean this up and have a cup of tea and we’ll talk…’ He thought I was high and things were going bad in my head. And then, the hammer…It did it on its own. I promise you, it went right for him, on its own. Right through the air. I didn’t believe what I was seeing. I would have stopped it, but I didn’t understand what was going on…but that didn’t happen, did it? The hammer didn’t move by itself. I must’ve done it. It was just me and him, and I picked up the hammer when it fell to the floor, and…it must have been me. I must’ve killed him. I must have—”

He broke down entirely, his body shuddering. He was chained to the table and weeping in agony.

Stephen stood and indicated that I should as well.

“You’ve done the right thing, telling us. This is a good place. They’ll look after you here.”

Sam turned away from us to face the wall, and the tears streamed hard and fast again. His sobs filled the room, and the air got thick and humid. The horror of it all was in this room, in sweat and tears and adrenaline—the pain of a mind rejecting something that seemed unnatural, something that had no place in this world. Something violent that had no face or body.

“Sam.” Stephen’s voice had gone very soft, softer than I had imagined it could go. “You’ll be looked after. You don’t need to be afraid.”

“I did it,” Sam moaned. “I did it. I must have. Please tell me. Please. Please tell me what’s happening…”

“What’s happening…” Stephen paused and looked for something to say. But how did you explain a thing like this to a man who’d seen his boss die right in front of him? A man who believed he committed a murder, and was now in a hospital chained to a table?

“I’ll speak to someone outside,” Stephen said. “They’ll give you something. It will be all right. You will get all the help you need. Thank you for talking to us.”

He nodded to me, and I stood up slowly and we left the room.

14

I DIDN’T EXACTLY RUN OUT OF THE HOSPITAL WHEN WE finished, but I came pretty close. Once we were outside, I tipped back my head. The drizzle went up my nose, along with the smell of wet leaves in a parking lot. I loved everything about this wet parking lot. I loved the fog that smothered the landscape. It wasn’t the hospital itself that was bad. It was a perfectly nice and modern hospital—it was that it made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.

“I told you it wouldn’t be pleasant,” Stephen said.

“I’m fine,” I replied.

Stephen took me at my word. We returned to the car, but he didn’t start the engine right away.

“There are two possibilities here,” Stephen said. “One, Sam beat his employer to death with a hammer. Or, two—”

“He saw an actual flying hammer beat his boss to death, and now he’s in a hospital for the criminally insane.”

“That’s the other one.”

“Which one do you think it is?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” He rubbed at his hairline. “The forensics fit. The blood splatter on his clothes and body indicated that he had been standing about two feet away from the victim at the time of the attack. The pattern on the hammer was a bit more confusing. His fingerprints were on it, but they seemed to be old prints—the blood was over the top of them. The way the blood ran down the handle, someone’s fingers should have interrupted the stream, but they didn’t. The best guess was that he held the handle very low, and possibly with something like a cloth, but that was never recovered. The oddities about the grip patterns on the weapon could be overlooked because he said he did it.”

“So it could have been a flying hammer?” I said.

“So it could have been a flying hammer. Or it could have been a weird way of holding the hammer. And if you’re bashing people’s brains in with a hammer, you might hold said hammer in a strange way, because it’s a strange activity…Are you sure you’re all right?”

As far as I knew, I was being completely normal. I wasn’t screaming or crying or twitching uncontrollably. And I was feeling increasingly better every second we were out of the hospital. Clearly, though, I was giving off a vibe that indicated I wasn’t okay.

“Just, you know, being in there makes me feel like it might be me, you know? Weird in the head.”

“You’re not weird in the head.”

“There’s a giant talking chicken next to me that would say otherwise.”

“You are not weird in the head,” he said, more firmly. “You went through something horrible, and you survived, and you’ve done amazingly well. You’re strong. Stop making jokes about it. There is nothing wrong with you.”

I wasn’t expecting this little outburst, or the anger that edged his voice.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t do it. It’s important. Because of what we do, it’s important to always remember that there is nothing wrong with you. Don’t make jokes about your own sanity. You didn’t like being in there. Neither did I. It’s scary because when you have the sight, you wonder if you’re going to end up in one of these places.”

“Who knows?” I said. “If I’d told Julia what really happened, maybe I would have. Maybe I would have liked it in there. I think you get to do a lot of crafts. I like crafts. Crafts are good. I can make a mean God’s eye. And I bet you get to eat a lot of pudding. Give me pudding and give me crafts and I’m going to be content for a while…”

“They’re not bad places. I liked my time in one better than school in many ways.”

It’s not a good feeling when you realize you’ve been making jokes about something that the person you’re talking to has actually been through.

“I didn’t mean…”

“I know you didn’t. I’m just telling you. If someone needs mental health care, they belong in a facility like this. But what you have is not a mental illness. I didn’t go into hospital because I saw ghosts; I went because I attempted suicide. And that suicide attempt had nothing to do with the sight.”

I’d never heard someone just come out and talk about their suicide attempt so matter-of-factly. Come to think of it, I’d never heard anyone talk about a suicide attempt at all . Something about the fact that we had just gone into that hospital together had opened a conversational door. I could feel his willingness to talk creeping out like a reluctant cat from under a sofa.

“It was because of your sister’s death,” I said.

“And my inability to deal with it. Or my family’s refusal to do so. Whichever you like. Both apply.”

“How long were you there?” I asked.

“Just over a month.” He pinch-wiped his nose. “My parents sent me to the Priory. No NHS for me. Posh hospital, and as far away as possible. I don’t know if they really thought I needed to go or if they were just trying to get rid of me for a while. I went to hospital. They went to Greece. There was a reason my sister did so many drugs.”