We Are Monsters (30 page)

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Angela could hear Bearman charging towards the door. He would burst inside any second now. She tried to push herself up off the ground but collapsed on her dislocated arm, crying out in pain. She flipped onto her back. “Bar the door!” she yelled.

The two women turned, but didn't move. All three of them watched the door as the foot stomps closed in. They heard the door open, and then silence descended. The door on their end remained shut.

The women turned back towards Angela, both looking nonchalant. Angela was hyperventilating. Her head fell back and hit the floor and she fought to catch her breath. Looking up at the ceiling, she realized where she was. Back in the conference room.

The two women leaned over, emerging into Angela's upside-down field of vision.

Those eyes. God, how do they see through those eyes?

“You're safe now,” the patient said. When she spoke the black veins running up her neck pulsed darker. She held out a hand.

Angela took it. It was placid and cold.

Angela stood and turned. Sure enough, she was back in the conference room. Linda, Steve and Eli still sat with their catatonic stares. It was heart wrenching to see Eli in this state. He looked old and senile and a little bit scared.

“What is going on?” Angela asked, mostly to herself.

“We're here for Eli,” the two women said as one.

Angela shook her head. “None of this makes any sense.” She looked at them. “Who are you? You're both…you're both dead.”

The blonde patient chuckled. “There is no death, sweetheart. Just dying.”

“But how are you real? This must be a hallucination.”

The patient pointed at Angela's arm. “Does it feel like a hallucination?”

Angela grimaced. “What, then?”

“To be honest, we're not entirely sure. We're just as surprised to be here as you are to see us. It's true, we're both dead. At least, this version of us is. Eli brought us back.”

Eli's face was blank. He blinked, and then it went slack again.

“How?”

“We don't know. We don't understand it all. It's still a mystery, even on the other side. But, somehow, reality is being manipulated on this level. In this dimension. We're all capable of manifesting our own reality; we just don't know how to control it. There must be a conduit, someone who has altered the frequency of this material plane. All we know is that Eli manifested us. And now we've found him.”

The women walked towards him. They sat on either side and stared at him. There was a calmness that descended. A sense of peace. Perhaps even love. They shared the same look of happy adoration, evident despite their horrific appearance.

“My sweet Alpert-fish,” said the burned nurse.

“My adoring doctor,” whispered the one with blonde, frizzy hair.

They placed their hands on his arms, stroking him. They ran their fingers gently down his face. They spoke in low whispers that Angela couldn't hear, and didn't want to.

“It's okay,” they said, alternately and together. “It wasn't your fault. There's nothing more you could have done. We forgive you. We love you still. We love you always. Come back to us. Come back, please.”

They continued like this, caressing him, whispering their words of love while he maintained his vacant gaze.

And then the blonde one spoke alone. “You did it,” she sighed. “Just like my letter said. You loved so hard it drove you insane.”

Eli's chest began to hitch, his breath catching in his throat. His eyes glistened with tears. One fell and splashed against his cheek. He blinked. And then he came back.

Angela gasped, her good hand rising to her gaping mouth.

Eli blinked as though clearing debris from his eyes, looking around. He did not appear shocked or confused. His face lacked emotion. He was merely observing. He gazed at the woman with the blonde, frizzy hair. He turned to look at the mask of burned flesh. He revealed nothing, not even fear.

He peered up at Angela. “Extraordinary,” he said.

She nodded. “Yeah, you could say that.”

He turned back to the women. “I've let each of you die. So many times.” His voice trailed off, turning into a contemplative whisper. His gaze went inward. “So many times. Why do you always return?”

“You're worth dying for,” they said.

Tears returned to his eyes. “Why?”

“Because you have so much love to give,” the nurse said.

“But you don't offer it to yourself,” the patient continued.

“We'll keep coming back until you do.”

Eli let that sink in. For a moment, he looked catatonic again. “But what good is love if it only leads to death?”

“It's all a part of learning. But, through it all, you always continue to love.”

Eli remained stoic. Again he looked to Angela. “What have you learned?”

Angela mashed her knuckles against her mouth. Her face crumpled with emotion. “Much,” she said. “A lifetime's worth.”

Eli inhaled through his nose. He turned and looked at Linda and Steve. “What about them?”

Angela took her hand away from her mouth. A saliva bubble broke when she spoke, “Still learning?”

“And Dr. Drexler? The others?” Eli said.

Angela's eyes shot wide. “Alex!” she said.

She shuffled towards the door, then stopped and listened. “What if he's out there?”

“Who?” Eli asked.

“Bearman. He…he's changed. He came after us. He hurt Alex. Maybe killed him.”

“Don't worry,” the blonde woman said. “He can't come in here.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he's not welcome,” the nurse said.

Angela frowned. Her brows came together Her lame arm hung limply. She reached out with the good one and grabbed the door handle. She braced herself as she eased open the door and looked out. She let out a relieved sigh. The hallway was empty.

But there was blood. A large pool of blood with a wide swath running away from it and bending around the corner.

“We've got to go help Dr. Drexler.”

“Can we?” Eli asked.

“We can try,” answered the nurse.

The two women stood. “You asked who we were,” they said to Angela in unison.

Angela stared in stunned silence.

“I'm Meredith,” said the patient. She curtsied.

“I'm Lacy,” said the nurse in her scorched voice. Her marble eyes smiled.

“But we're both really the same,” they said.

“Okay,” Angela said. “I'm just going to pretend like this will all make sense later. And concentrate on helping Alex for now.”

Eli stood and stretched. “Sounds like the right attitude.” He shook his head as though clearing it of cobwebs. Then his face went still, his eyes resolute. “Lead the way.”

Chapter Fifty-Nine

The trail of blood thinned as it progressed down the hallway, narrowing to two streaks where Alex's feet had dragged along the floor.

“It's not enough blood for him to have bled out,” Eli said.

“Wow, quite the observation, Sherlock,” Meredith said and snickered. “The more obvious clue may be the lack of a body.”

Lacy elbowed her. “Stop it. Ghosts are supposed to be scary.”

“Sorry, you're right. Whooooo—” Meredith held out her arms in a pantomime of Frankenstein's march.

Angela figured it was supposed to be funny, but it was one of the most frightening things she'd ever seen.

The trail of blood disappeared altogether around the next turn, except for occasional drops and smears, which were hard to detect in the dim and flickering light. “Where would he have taken him?” Angela said.

“Anywhere he wants,” the burned nurse said. “This place is malleable. This reality isn't fixed.”

“Is that why the conference room changed places?”

Meredith skipped ahead, twirling as she went. “Convenient when you need a shortcut. Not so much when trying to track someone down.”

Angela turned to Eli. He was focused on finding blood drops on the floor. She sidled up next to him. “How are you not freaking out right now? This is the most insane nightmare ever imagined and you act like it's completely normal.”

He didn't answer for a while. Even after Angela prompted him again.

Lacy and Miranda were scouting ahead, giddy like two schoolgirls out on a class retreat.

Finally, he said, “I've had time to adapt to the insane. This
is
normal compared to where I've been, what I've been through.”

Angela considered that for a moment. Yes, this was indeed saner than what she experienced during her fugue state. “You mean, in the dream, or whatever?”

“That was no dream. I've lived lifetimes between now and then.”

“You could have ended it at any time,” Miranda chirped in from ahead. “You were always in control.”

“There was no way to control that place. I did the best I could.”

Lacy turned her head. The twisted skin of her neck stretched like it was about to split. “For others, not for yourself.”

Angela was dismayed. “So this makes sense to you?”

“Of course not. But I'm trying to make sense of it.”

They were nearing Eli's office.

“Hey, stop here,” he said.

The name tag to the right of the door lay in shards on the floor. There were divots in the stone wall where it had hung. Angela thought they could have come from Bearman's instrument.

Everyone quieted as they approached, Eli leading. He tried to peer through the pebbled glass but couldn't see within. Without further hesitation, he pulled open the door and walked through.

Everything was as he had left it. Or, it was how it had once been. In another lifetime that felt like millennia ago. Since then, it had taken on several forms. It had offered respites from grisly scenes of death and suffering. But, no matter what, it had always been a place of safety. A place to regain his sanity. He hoped it would be that once again.

The room was dark, quiet. But it warmed as they walked in—a subtle luminescence seemed to radiate from the walls. They shuffled around in a daze. Then Lacy broke the silence with a gasp. They all turned and watched her approach the wall ordained with Eli's pictures. The one with the two of them together.

Miranda came up behind her. “Ah, lucky,” she said. “You got to have all the good times.”

Angela came closer. “Is that you?” she said.

Lacy nodded. Her marble eyes were staring at a space above and to the left of the picture frame. “It was.”

Eli was at his desk, gazing down into the intricate swirls of its wood, trying to comprehend the complexity of the current situation. “Tell me all you know,” he said.

Angela waited to see if the two women would speak, but they remained fixated on the photos. She broke away from them and began filling him in on all that had happened since they had all fallen into their dream state. She told him about her dream, about how it had seemed to have been dredged up from her subconscious and pertained to a traumatic event from her past. She relayed Alex's dream, and it's more significant points regarding his guilt surrounding his brother and the strange circumstances of his death. She told him about their speculations that Crosby was somehow involved with what was happening, and their encounter with the bloody and surgically scarred Bearman. She told him about the inhuman howls and the rumor of the strange woman roaming the halls.

Eli stood statuesque, listening, not once interrupting until Angela reached the end of her tale. And he stayed like that for minutes after, staring deep into the swirling pattern of the wood.

Finally, he raised his head. “There's another incident that's connected to this.”

“What?”

“After Jerry had his last psychotic episode, Alex was in charge of his care. Then he made that miraculous recovery, like he was one hundred percent mentally sound. Now we know that was a result of whatever medicine Alex administered. His experimental compound.”

Eli thumped his index finger against his lips—once, twice—then continued, “I met them for dinner. To see how Jerry was doing. I was amazed by his condition. That kind of recovery was completely unprecedented. I should have been more incredulous, but I was…preoccupied with other thoughts at the time.

“There was an incident at dinner. I noticed some anomalies with Jerry's eyes—extreme pupil dilation and contraction. And then, I don't know how best to explain this, but I experienced a hallucination. I thought that one of the servers resembled someone from my past. It was impossible, of course, but it was utterly convincing at the time. Had I not been having other stress-related issues, I would have given it more attention. Instead, I chose to suppress it. But now it makes a bit more sense. I don't think it was a case of mistaken identity or a stress-induced hallucination. I think it was the same thing that's happening here.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“I'm not sure yet. But I believe it is connected to Alex's formula. We know he administered it to both his brother and to Crosby, and that both patients have been subject to similar experiences. Jerry admitted as much to Alex in his dream. Or, that alternate dimension—I'm convinced it was no simple dream.

“Alex's wife identified Devon as the killer, and what was it that Jerry told him, ‘You conjured my killer'? It seems as though he must have manifested it somehow.”

Eli's words were picking up pace as he streamed his thoughts together, but he remained composed as he spoke. “Just like with Crosby. Alex told you that people with disfigured shadow selves are prowling the hallways. That fits Crosby's psychotic profile. The woman who chased after Alex could be Crosby's abusive mother.” He stopped, seeming to run out of steam.

Angela had been nodding along, expecting Eli to follow the trail of crumbs all the way to its final conclusion. She held her breath as Eli paused, pleading for him to continue. She deflated when he didn't.

“But what about us? How does that account for our experiences? How does that account for them?” She pointed towards Lacy and Miranda, who were still marveling over the photos on the wall.

“You said Alex thought this may be shared psychosis? Folie à deux?”

Angela nodded.

“That's close. It's something like that. I'm just not convinced that this is all mere hallucination. It's too elaborate. It feels too real.”

“Isn't that what our patients say?” Angela placed her good hand on her hip. It felt like the tables had been turned. The insane turned psychiatrist.

“But your dislocated arm isn't imaginary. Dr. Drexler's blood trail isn't a hallucination. The abandonment of the hospital isn't made up.”

“We're all dead here. We're caught in the in-between.”

Angela shrugged, and winced as pain shot down her injured arm. Eli arched a brow as though to say “see”.

“Somehow reality is being manipulated. At least our perception of it. But hallucinations are rarely shared. The answer lies in Dr. Drexler's formula. We need to find him, or his formula, to learn more. And, unfortunately, we can't do that from here.”

“Maybe we can,” Angela said.

Eli furrowed his brow. The wrinkles on his forehead looked like dried riverbeds.

“It's like they said about this place being malleable. About our ability to manipulate our reality. We moved the location of the conference room to serve our purposes. Those women seem to have been manifested by you somehow. Maybe we can locate Dr. Drexler from here.”

“Smart girl,” Miranda said from afar. “You better not have designs on our man.” Lacy laughed, and it sounded like the rustle of dry leaves.

“Interesting,” Eli said. “But I'm not consciously controlling any of this. I couldn't bend the reality to my will in that fugue state. It may be possible. I just don't know how to do it.” He paused, contemplating. “Do you?”

Angela shook her head. “No, I've never felt less in control in my life. I feel like I'm losing my mind.”

Eli walked around the desk. He gripped her good arm. “You're not,” he said. “I'm in this with you. You're doing remarkably well.”

“Okay, lovebirds, that's enough pep talk. Let's shit or get off the pot.” Miranda turned from the wall. Her face was starting to sag, decomposing further on the spot.

Angela stared up at Eli, her eyes wide and glistening wet. “I don't know how you do it,” she said. “But I feel better having you here. No matter how crazy it is.” She wiped tears from her eyes and sniffled, composing herself. “I just know I'm going to wake up in a straightjacket. And it's going to be the biggest relief of my life.”

“I've thought that before,” Eli said. “That insanity is the ultimate freedom. It's the people who adapt to this crazy world that we need to watch out for.”

He released Angela and walked to the door, gripping the handle. “Should we split up?” he said.

“I'm going with you!” they all said at once.

He fought to keep the smile from his face. “All right then. Let's go.”