Eyes Wide Open Page 14

She paced back and forth on the tile floor in her bedroom, crushed by the memory. How could anyone do that to a child? How old had she been? Twelve. And younger, because while in that basement room she had the distinct sense that she’d been there a long time. Maybe her whole life.

  The thought sickened her. But there was more than deep self-pity flowing through her veins now. Bitterness and rage screamed through her mind, demanding some kind of justice.

  Nancy had comforted her with soothing words for half an hour, and had then led her back to her room with the promise that, however painful, this was all part of her healing. She would give her an hour to gather herself before meeting again.

  Healing? How could anyone heal from being born ugly to abandonment and abuse?

  She couldn’t get the song she’d heard under hypnosis out of her mind.

  Be careful little eyes what you see… Why? Because the father up above was looking down in love, of course. Her father.

  Evidently, she hadn’t been careful enough. Not good enough, not pretty enough. Thoughts of what kind of father hers might be made her cringe.

  What had she done? That’s what she couldn’t figure out. What could any innocent little girl have possibly done to deserve such a terrible warning?

  Something. And the truth was, she hated herself for doing whatever she had done to become what she’d become.

  Christy glanced at the bathroom door again. She had to pee, but the thought of going inside was too much. What if she opened the door and found the walls mirrored? Or, worse, saw the uglier Christy staring back at her? She was ugly either way, but coming face to face with the image she’d seen last night would be too much. That’s what they wanted, she knew that. But she wasn’t ready, not for that.

  She would rather pee her pants.

  The thought made her stop and stare at the door. You’re being pathetic, Christy. This is insane.

  Wasn’t that the point? She was insane. But insane enough to stand here and pee in her pants?

  There was no reason to think that when she opened that door she would actually find a room of mirrors. She was evidently a master of delusions. She would simply maintain the delusion—assuming it really was one—walk right in, go pee, flush, and walk out.

  Christy headed for the door before she had time to reconsider. She’d covered half the distance before time slowed enough for her to think twice, and in thinking again, her pace slowed.

  Another three steps, not six feet from the bathroom, the room began to grow fuzzy in her mind’s eye. What was she doing? She couldn’t face this!

  You don’t know what you’ll face, Christy. Keep moving. Just open the door, go to the toilet, pee, and run out.

  She pushed her feet forward, one after the other, if for no other reason than to prove to herself that she wasn’t who she feared she might be. They were messing with her head. There was no way she could be as jacked up as they were suggesting.

  No?

  She reached the door, lungs working like billows, long and deep. Placed her hand on the knob. Twisted.

  Oh be careful little eyes what you see…

  Christy closed her eyes and pushed the door open, half expecting to hear the little girl’s voice singing the song inside. But there was no song.

  Open your eyes, Christy. It’s going to be okay.

  She snapped them open, saw immediately that the walls were covered in mirrors, and, before she could slam the door shut, stared straight at the image of herself reflected back from the opposite wall.

  Her neck was thick, her nose flat and wide, her thighs massive, her face puffy and covered in pimples. Not just ugly. In her eyes: hideous.

  She tried to close the door but her muscles weren’t obeying.

  “Don’t like what you see?”

  Christy jumped at the sound of Lawson’s voice. She slammed the bathroom door shut with a loud bang and spun to her right.

  He stood in the doorway with one hand in his pocket, twirling a toothpick between the fingers of his other hand.

  She glanced down at her own fingers, sure they would be thick and stubby. But they weren’t. Not as thick and stubby as they really were.

  “It’s a delusion, Alice,” Lawson said. “Nancy gave me the good news. She said you had a real breakthrough. That we might be unraveling the events that initially triggered your disassociation with reality.”

  “Tell me what you see,” she demanded, pulse still racing.

  He smiled at her, then stepped in and shut the door.

  “The truth?”

  “Yes. Just tell me who you see standing in front of you right now.”

  “I see Alice. Someone who’s broken, inside and out. A girl who was born into a world so threatening that she now pretends to be someone else named Christy.”

  “What do I look like?”

  He hesitated.

  “Tell me!” she snapped marching toward him. “Just tell me! Just how ugly am I?”

  His pause more than his tone sealed the authenticity of his judgment.

  “Ugly,” he said. “Inside and out. Broken. But I’m here to make the appropriate corrections, once and for all. You just have to be patient and walk through the fire. I’ll be here every step of the way. I promise.”

  She lifted her hands to her head, dug her fingers into her hair, and paced, unable to hold back tears.

  “Not all would agree with my methods, my darling, but I get done in days what psychiatrists all over the world only dream about achieving in a lifetime. If ever.”

  “Achieve what?” she cried, spinning to him with her fists balled at her sides. “What?” She jabbed her forefinger at her head. “This? Proving that I’m a basket case?”

  He lifted the toothpick and slowly inserted it into his smiling mug. “For starters, yes. But it doesn’t stop there, my dear. I’ve only just begun. The real shift will come when you begin to trust me completely. That could be three hours from now, three weeks from now, or three years from now. Just depends on how quickly you want to be you. The real you, the beautiful you.”

  “I’m ready now! Now!”

  “Truth is, you hate yourself. You don’t feel like you belong. You don’t think you’re good enough for anyone, including yourself. You’re locked in a prison of your own making. The first step toward freedom is trusting me completely.”

  His words worked deep. She wasn’t good enough. She hated herself. She always had, deep down where no one knew or cared, because she had no one to know or care.

  “I said I’m ready.”

  Lawson chuckled. “A bit hasty, don’t you think? Patience, my dear. Patience. You’ve only just discovered who the ugly you is.”

  “I’m not this!” she cried, stepping toward him. “You hear me? I’m not this!”

  Lawson tsked. “You see? Still all wrapped up in denial.” He turned toward the door as if to leave, and the thought of being left alone with herself frightened Christy more than she was prepared for. “I was just checking on you. I can see our work is cut out—”

  “Wait!” She hurried forward. “Wait.”

  Lawson twisted back. “Wait for what?”

  “You said that I don’t have to be like this. That you can help me be beautiful. What did you mean? How? Not in three years but now. Anything… Just tell me how.”

  He turned and regarded her somberly. “I don’t think you’re ready.”

  “For what? Ready for what?”

  “For a jump start,” he said.

  “A jump start? What’s a jump start?”

  “Something not so different from hypnosis, or placing mirrors on the walls of the bathrooms. There’s no magic in it. They’re just shifts on the physical plane that can sometimes help us make mental shifts. Juice you up, so to speak, to get the healthy part of the brain running.”

  “Do it!” She snapped. And then, with some curiosity, “What kind of physical shift?”

  He eyed her over. “Well… You seem to be quite concerned with appearances. Quite natural, mind you.
You weren’t exactly born to make the beauty pageant circuits. Fixing you up a bit might help you see things differently.”

  “Fix me up? How?”

  “In your case, fix you up means cut you up. And frankly I don’t think you’re ready for that.”

  Cut her up? She balked.

  He saw her expression and offered an explanation.

  “Cut you up,” he said, drawing his finger over his face. “Make some minor cosmetic changes to your face.” His eyes dropped to her midsection. “Your body.”

  Cosmetic surgery. The idea made her cringe.

  “It’s amazing what we can do with a surgery or two these days,” he said.

  “What could you do?”

  He shrugged. “Your face. Nose. Give you a thinner neck. Stomach.”

  “What about fingers?”

  He looked at her with steady eyes, as dead serious as she’d seen him.

  “If that’s what’ll fix your brain, that’s what we’ll do.”

  Silence passed between them.

  What was she thinking? She glanced at the bathroom door. Beyond it, there were mirrors, and the images she saw in those mirrors were of a girl who’d been victimized in the worst possible way. Christy didn’t think she could live with that girl.

  “But like I said—”

  “I want to talk to Austin,” she said.

  “Austin?”

  “Scott. I mean. I want to talk to Scott.”

  Lawson cocked his right brow. “You’re thinking he might help you break free from your delusions.”

  “I’m thinking I need to think, and Austin helps me think.”

  He frowned. “An intelligent boy. You do realize that he’s as delusional as you are.”

  “The illusion is as powerful in its effect as the truth,” she said. “Isn’t that the way it goes?”

  “Impressive.”

  “What does it matter if he’s delusional? I don’t see him that way. I just want out of this”—she waved her hand at her head—“whatever this is.”

  Lawson rolled the toothpick in his mouth and grinned. “That’s my girl. Maybe you’re further along than I thought.”

  He dipped his head as if to take a bow.

  “I’ll talk to Nancy.”

  DEAD. THE stone cold reality seeped into Austin as he stood near Douglas Fisher’s motionless body. The man lay facedown in a pool of blood that seeped slowly across the floor, his eyes pried wide open by death’s cold fingers.

  Austin stood there, strangely detached from his body. The room seemed airless. He could not breathe.

  A part of him wanted Fisher to rise to his feet, walk up to him, and pound his skull in. At least then this nightmare would end with a well-placed blow to his head. But the other part knew Fisher had to die, that there was no other way, and that this man on the ground would never hurt anyone again.

  Not him.

  Not Christy.

  Not Jacob, not Alice. He had to believe that.

  Hold it together, Austin…

  The wheelchair still hung awkwardly behind him, its thick leather straps gnawing at his wrists. Mind reeling from the turn of events, he hunched under the chair to alleviate the pressure on his arms.

  He had to get out, but now, doing so seemed absurd. He had just killed a man! There would be an investigation. That might be good, but it might also seal his fate. No witnesses. No one to…

  Austin spun to his right. Jacob sat in his wheelchair, gentle eyes fixed on him. The boy had witnessed it all.

  The boy who had half a brain and could not speak.

  “Jacob.” The name caught in his throat.

  He slowly walked toward the boy, dragging the wheelchair, sidestepping Fisher’s body. Glanced at the doors to his right. Still closed, but for how long? The commotion had surely drawn someone’s attention. The building had too many electronic eyes and ears for something like a murder to go unnoticed. At any moment, a security detail would storm through that door. They would see Fisher, put the pieces together, and know what he’d done.

  Keep it together.

  “Look at me,” he said, turning back to Jacob.

  Jacob was lost in his head. Did he know what had just happened? He had to, but how would a mind like his process something like this?

  Austin stopped directly in front of him and sank into the wheelchair at his back.

  “I know you can hear me.”

  Jacob just looked at him.

  “I need your help.” He nodded toward his hands. “See these restraints? They’re tight and I can’t free myself. I need you to help me get them off. Can you do that?”

  Jacob blinked slowly.

  “Please.” A thick knot of desperation rose in Austin’s throat. “I won’t hurt you. I promise. What you just saw… I didn’t mean to kill him. I swear, Jacob.” He looked over his shoulder at the door again. “I need you to help me. Please.”

  The boy’s chest steadily rose and fell. If he heard Austin, there was no external sign of it.

  “I can’t do this alone, Jacob. I need you to unbuckle these straps.”

  He stared into the boy’s soft, unmoving eyes, keenly aware that no amount of encouragement would likely get him to move. He wasn’t even sure the boy could move.

  He closed his eyes. Think. Think! But what was there to think? There was no way to undo what he’d done, no way to free himself that came to him.

  He suddenly envied Jacob’s oblivion. The boy was at peace because of his ignorance. The thought of it now seemed like bliss. Ignorance was bliss. It had to be better than the hopelessness that shredded Austin from the inside out. What now?

  Soft fingers grazed his hand and he opened his eyes wide in surprise.

  Jacob reached toward him and drew his slender hands across the restraint that cinched Austin’s right arm. His fingers lingered. Then slowly, as if remembering the solution to a difficult puzzle for the first time, the boy worked the strap through the buckle, folded it back, and after several tries released it.

  “Good boy,” Austin breathed. “Good boy.”

  The pressure from the leather band eased and he carefully slipped his arm out. Working with trembling fingers, Austin quickly freed his left arm and stood.

  “Thank you.” He leaned forward and kissed the top of Jacob’s head. “Thank you.”

  Jacob’s head angled down, eyes staring blankly at the floor once again.

  Okay… Okay, one step at a time.

  Pushing the wheelchair aside, Austin stumbled toward a stack of surgical towels on a work stand next to the operating table. He had to clean up the blood and move Fisher’s body before they were discovered.

  The door was still closed. He still had time.

  Just one step at a time.

  He grabbed an armful of the blue rags, ran to Fisher’s prone body, and dumped them on the floor. Working feverishly, he spread them out in a patchwork that quickly soaked through with blood.

  The metallic scent was too strong to ignore, but he pushed the thought aside and mopped as fast as he could. So much blood. So much…

  By the clock on the wall, it took him nearly five minutes to get the floor clean, a task that required him to roll the director’s body over so he could wipe up under the head.

  Good enough. He dumped the rags, grabbed one of two gurneys along the far wall, and wheeled it next to Fisher’s body. Getting him onto the gurney wouldn’t be easy. It was all taking too long—way too long. And he still had to dispose of the body. He couldn’t shake the voice in his head telling him that it didn’t matter, he was a goner. The only thing that kept him going was that key Alice had spoken of.

  That key, located where she’d been, which could only be where he’d first seen her. He didn’t know what door it unlocked, but whatever it was, she’d been there.

  After lowering the gurney as far as it would go, he leaned over Fisher and grabbed the dead man’s belt. The guy weighed two hundred pounds if he weighed one. Too heavy to lift like this. Austin had to get him
up piecemeal, first his feet, then his legs, but when Austin tugged on the man’s head, his feet fell off the mattress.

  It took him several tries to wrestle the limp form fully onto the gurney, and by then his arms and shirt were matted with blood. There was no way he would make it through the halls searching for Christy or down to the basement looking like this.

  No shirts in the operating room that he could see. Better to go shirtless until he could find one. He’d just say he’d taken it off because it was scratchy. If he was capable of taking a pen to Jacob’s neck, he was capable of anything. After all, he was a nutcase, right? So then he could just play the part.

  He pulled off his shirt and stuffed it under Fisher’s body, then ran to a wide stainless-steel sink at the end of the room. After opening the faucet all the way, he furiously scrubbed his hands and slid his forearms under the water, desperate to get the evidence off his skin. Fisher’s blood stained the undersides of Austin’s fingernails, and it took some doing to get it out.

  A crimson swirl disappeared down the drain. There was so much blood.

  He stopped and gripped the sink with both hands. Nausea swept through his gut and he tried to swallow it back. But he couldn’t. He leaned forward and retched into the sink. Then again.

  Get it together, Austin.

  He coughed and wiped his mouth. Turned off the water.

  Austin pulled upright and looked into the mirror. Exhausted eyes etched with red veins stared back. Only yesterday he’d been in a classroom, mixing it up with grad students. Today he was just a skinny kid who had finally bitten off more than he could chew. Way more.

  His head still throbbed. Brain lesions in his frontal lobe, Fisher had said. What if it was true?

  He took a few steadying breaths and tried to gather his nerves. Christy was in a room somewhere on this floor. He knew what he had to do; he just had to do it—one step at a time. If he didn’t make it, he didn’t make it, but he’d gone way too far to give up now.

  Now or never.

  He ran for the gurney and wheeled it toward the door, aware of the harsh soap scent that lingered on his skin. They’d smell that. No they wouldn’t, because no one was going to be watching when the skinny, shirtless kid wheeled the gurney with the dead guy down the hall. That’s what he told himself.