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A NIGHTMARE IS COMING
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The black cat meowed softly. He approached, intrigued.
A little girl lay against the wall. She had short, dark hair and a pale, triangular face. She was dressed simply: jeans and a baggy green sweatshirt. A drop of saliva dripped from her half-open mouth onto the ground.
The girl's fingernails were dirty and broken, drawing blood.
The cat meowed softly again.
Suddenly, the girl opened her eyes and, with incredible speed, lunged at him. The black cat was faster. He jumped and climbed the fire escape. Animal instinct told him to flee, but curiosity won out. He perched on the iron step and glanced down, ready to flee at any moment.
The girl looked at him, and the cat saw the red, inhuman irises in her eyes. Then she turned and walked away, and the black cat trembled for a moment with fear and tension.
She didn't like cats.
She'd eat something else.
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Tommy Sparks lay in the parking lot of Grandy's, bleeding and screaming unthinkable things.
"They're comin'! Beware, they're comin'! It's all true! All human nightmares are true! Beware!!!"
Someone called the police. A police car arrived almost immediately. A fight had just ended at a bar a block away.
Two middle-aged cops got out of the car, one fat and bald, the other a little thinner and mustachioed. Both were very tired. It had been a rough night.
They walked slowly up to Tommy.
"Hey, Sparky," the fat and bald man said. He looked at the mangled arm and face of the man lying on the ground. "Who did this to you?"
Tommy looked at him blankly.
"Monsters! Beware! They're comin'!
" "Yeah, right, monsters," the mustachioed man muttered, trying to pick Tommy up. The man lunged at him. He dug his fingers into the policeman's hair and brought his bloodshot eyes close to his face.
"Run, the nightmares are coming! Run!!!"
The bald man pulled Tommy away from his partner, barely knocked him to the ground, and twisted his arm behind his back.
The mustachioed man took a deep breath and scratched his head. The areas where the hair had been ripped out itched like hell.
"That such a weakling has so much strength," he said. Tommy gurgled something incomprehensible. He couldn't do anything more. Not with his face pressed against the concrete.
The bald man groaned and shifted on Tommy's back.
"Call the mental hospital and tell them we found their missing body."
Fifteen minutes later, the ambulance arrived. Two crew-cut thugs stepped out. They were wearing white coats. Typical orderlies from a psychiatric hospital. They expertly put Tommy in a straitjacket. He tried to resist, but with little conviction. They were bigger and stronger than he was. And they knew what they were doing.
"Come on, Sparky, we'll go home. They'll feed you there and bandage up those nasty cuts," the orderly said soothingly as he loaded Tommy into the ambulance. The second one approached the police.
"I'm sorry about him. This is his third escape this month. Everyone's wondering how he manages it. He always finds a way to get out and have some fun.
" "That's how it is with crazy people," the bald man smiled understandingly. "And Sparky is an old friend of ours. He always starts causing trouble on our shift.
The bald man overdid it a bit." Tommy never caused any trouble, at most he'd accost people and try to convince them to leave. The paramedic knew this, but for the sake of formality, he said,
"If he caused any damage, the hospital will pay for it all…"
"No, there wasn't any damage. He just lay there, shouting nonsense about monsters."
The paramedic nodded in farewell and got into the ambulance too. They drove off, and the police returned to their duties.
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The ambulance reached the gates of John Brown Psychiatric Hospital fifteen minutes later. A guard opened the gates when the paramedic showed his ID, and the car pulled into a park surrounded by a high concrete wall, dotted with trees and wooden benches. In the center of the park, well hidden under a cloak of wild vine, stood the large, clunky hospital building. The building was one hundred and fifty years old, and from the outside, it resembled the forgotten residence of some wealthy, lonely old gentleman, with its many rooms full of cobwebs and old, threadbare, once-expensive carpets. However, appearances were deceptive. Inside, it housed one of the most modern, best-equipped psychiatric hospitals in the country. The interiors were sterile, decorated in optimistic colors, and completely safe for patients. No sharp edges, no glass, no nails, all the furniture was plywood, and the floors were soft, blue carpeting. The treatment rooms were white and clean, like those in a regular hospital, except that all medications and instruments were locked in cabinets. The psychiatrists' offices and consultation rooms were spacious, welcoming, and elegant, decorated by top interior designers. The common rooms were well-equipped, and the patient rooms were cozy and safe, with a bed, a nightstand, and a light bulb protected by a special shade. There were not even bars on the windows. They were replaced with a thin titanium mesh, which was only noticeable upon closer inspection.
Tommy Sparks used to actually like this place. It was quiet, the bed was warm, the food was good, and the so-called treatment wasn't too bothersome. That was before they started this new treatment. That was three years ago, when he was first given Neopsen. The medication seemed to be working, and his schizophrenic symptoms disappeared. Tommy stopped hearing the voices telling him to hurt himself and began behaving normally. But after a week, the voices returned.
And they weren't the only ones.
The paramedics brought Tommy in through a side door. The fugitive was calm, having long since stopped resisting. He looked exhausted.
Blood was dripping from the left sleeve of his straitjacket.
"Give him something to calm him down, just in case," one of the paramedics said to the red-haired doctor when she took over. She'd only started working here a week ago, and although she must have heard Sparky's story, she might not have believed the rumors.
Unfortunately, they weren't just rumors.
The paramedic decided he needed to inform the doctor.
"He seemed calm last time too, but as soon as we took off his straitjacket, he broke free and ran outside. Then we chased him around the park for an hour. Sparky is unpredictable. Besides, like all the crazy people here."
"I understand," the doctor smiled wryly. And yet, she obediently gave Tommy the injection.
The patient had completely mellowed.
"Take it off him," she ordered.
The paramedics freed Tommy from the straitjacket. The doctor leaned down and examined the wounds on his arm. She carefully cut away his torn shirt.
"Who did this to him?
" "Uh," one of the paramedics "answered.
" "We suspect he did this himself," another one rushed to his aid. "It's one of the symptoms of his illness, Dr. Reiner. Self-inflicted."
The doctor examined the wounds again and pulled a camera from a drawer. The paramedics looked at her, surprised.
"For documentation," she explained. She took several photos of the patient's arm and face. Tommy looked at her blankly and mumbled something. The sedative was working. Then she washed the wounds. Only now could their shape and arrangement be clearly seen. Dr. Reiner took the photos again.
"What did he do to himself?" she asked the paramedic, who seemed more intelligent to her.
He was surprised. This doctor was asking idiotic questions.
"Probably with his fingernails."
Dr. Reiner shook her head.
"No, that's impossible. It's true that these wounds here"—she pointed to his forearm—"look like nail wounds, but their spacing and width rule out self-inflicted wounds. The hand that inflicted them must have been much smaller than this one."
The doctor lifted Tommy's left hand, dirty and cracked, to confirm her theory.
"The wounds on his face are also spaced differently. Of course," she added, "he could have done it with some kind of tool, like..."
"But look," the other paramedic interrupted, the one she'd initially suspected of having a brain cell deficiency, "there's blood and tissue under his fingernails!"
"Hmm," the doctor muttered, "indeed."
She took a sample.
The paramedic grinned at her. He'd known from the start they were right. Self-harm, of course. That doctor might have been pretty and thought she was smart. Maybe she actually was smart. But she wasn't a psychiatrist and had only worked here for a week. He'd spent half his life with these lunatics and had seen all sorts of self-mutilation cases. Once, for example, one of the patients "drawn" a smiley face on his back with a razor blade, as straight as a compass. That was extraordinary, God only knows how he did it. Dr. Vernier, the chief psychiatrist, always said that the human imagination has no limits, especially when it comes to the imagination of the mentally ill.
Dr. Reiner seemed unaware of this.
"There's also the matter of those wounds on his arm. They look like bites. He couldn't have bitten himself on the arm. And the shape. The pattern of the wound suggests a human, but the individual teeth marks are more consistent with some animal, probably a carnivore. I've never seen anything like this in my life.
" "That's because," the orderly explained calmly, "you've never worked in a mental hospital before. Things happen here. It's best not to be too surprised. "
Dr. Reiner frowned.
"What are you suggesting?"
Sparky relieved the orderly of his duty to answer. He began thrashing on the couch, babbling.
"What's he saying?"
The doctor leaned forward. Tommy grabbed her by the lapels of his coat and brought his mangled face closer to hers.
"Get me out of here! They're coming!!!"
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In the kitchen of a single-family home in the suburbs, a woman was slicing bread. She was tall, slim, in her early thirties. Pretty. One might even call her very pretty, were it not for the expression of tension frozen just beneath her face. She was dressed simply but elegantly, in a light brown suit made of soft, flowing material. Her hair was dark brown, cut into a pageboy style. The hairstyle suited her face.
She was slicing bread.
Suddenly, somewhere above her, on the second floor of the house, a piercing scream rang out. It began, then quickly rose to a higher pitch, and continued like that for a moment. It ended just as abruptly.
The woman seemed to have noticed nothing. She calmly cut another slice, then carefully wiped a large kitchen knife on a striped cloth and placed it on a knife rack, along with the other knives.
She smoothed her hair with her hand and went upstairs.
She climbed the stairs, took a few steps, stopped, and smoothed her hair again. She smiled.
At least she tried.
She stopped before the door at the end of the hall. She hesitated. She muttered quietly, "Idiot," pushed the door open, and went in.
In the room, in a large bed, amidst a pile of teddy bears of all shapes and sizes, lay a boy. He looked about ten years old, slim, almost skinny, with dark circles under his large brown eyes.
The woman smiled at him. This time, she'd done a pretty good job.
"You had another nightmare."
She walked over to the bed, pushed the teddy bears aside, and sat on the edge. Right at the edge.
The boy nodded.
"Yes, Mom."
She sighed. He'd been having these nightmares for three months. Every night. The psychologists said it was the shock, they said it would pass. Someday.
"We'll visit Dad today," she said in a fake cheerful voice.
"Do we have to?
" "Yes, Sammy, we have to." Daddy misses us.
"I don't like going there, Mom."
"I know, honey. Now be a good boy and get dressed."
She handed him his pants, T-shirt, and sweatshirt, kissed him on the top of his head, and left. When the door closed behind her, she took a deep breath. Then she went back downstairs and finished slicing the bread.
Sammy came downstairs while she was spreading peanut butter on the last sandwich.
"I don't like peanut butter, Mom."
"I know, honey. These are for Daddy. I made pancakes for you. They're over there, on the counter. "
The boy grabbed a plate from the drainer and helped himself to two pancakes.
"Do we have to go there?" he asked after finishing the first one.
"Yes, honey, we have to.
" "I don't like going there.
" "I know, honey."
Before they left the house, the boy repeated his question six more times.
He repeated it another eleven times as they drove. He always got the same answer.
After a half-hour drive, they arrived. A man of indeterminate age, dressed in a dark uniform, emerged from the guard booth in front of the gate. He approached the car.
"Good morning. What's your business?
" "Visiting a patient. I had an appointment. Paulina Johansen.
" "Please wait a moment, I'll check," the guard flipped through the notebook attached to his belt. "Oh, indeed, Paulina Johansen with her son, Samuel Johansen."
The guard returned to the guard booth, and a moment later the gate opened. Paulina drove onto the grounds of the Johan Brown Psychiatric Hospital. She drove straight down the alley, turning into the parking lot in front of the clunky hospital building. She got out of the car, walked around it, and opened the door for Sammy.
"I don't like coming here, Mom.
" "I know, honey."
She took her son's hand and entered the building through the main entrance. Immediately, as always, she was struck by the sweet, cozy atmosphere of the place.
The plump receptionist smiled at her. Paulina approached. The receptionist emerged from behind the desk, crouched down in front of the boy, and asked warmly,
"Hey, Sammy, are you here to visit your dad?
" "Yes, Mrs. Jane."
Mrs. Jane patted his head.
She could afford the pat and the tone. They had been here often enough over the past three months to have become friends with the receptionist.
"Is Dr. Vernier here?
" "Yes, in his office. He had an appointment with you, after all. Will you come yourself?
" "Of course. Could you look after my son while I talk to the doctor?
" "Of course, I'd be happy to. Sammy is such a sweet kid.
" "Thank you," Paulina said, trying to mask the brief pause she allowed herself after Mrs. Jane's words with a pleasant smile. Fortunately, the receptionist didn't seem to notice. "You're very kind.
" "Come on, Sammy, I have some delicious chocolate candy in my desk. Do you like chocolate candy?" Paulina heard before turning the corner.
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Dr. Vernier's office was spacious and bright. The floor was carpeted with a simple geometric pattern in several shades of green. The walls were also a pleasant greenish color. Watercolor landscapes hung on them. The furniture was beige, all perfectly matched, from the heavy desk to the chairs and the inviting chaise longue against one wall.
"Please, sit down."
Paulina carefully perched herself on the edge of the heavy chair. Lately, she'd developed a habit of sitting on the edges of various pieces of furniture. It irritated her, so as soon as she realized what she was doing, she sat back and relaxed.
"Last time you talked about this new treatment," she began, immediately addressing what worried her most. "Why bother so much—about this drug, whatever it's called… Neo-something…
" "Neopsen.
" "Yes, exactly. Neopsen. You said it often helps in such cases and that the risk is small. That in only one percent of patients does it have the opposite effect than intended and cause symptoms to worsen. I was going to think about it.
" "And you've thought about it?
" "Yes. I understand this drug hasn't been officially approved yet."
Dr. Vernier nodded. He was a tall, well-built man, in his fifties, with gray hair and a short, wiry beard.
"Yes, the drug hasn't been approved yet. What we're doing here are so-called clinical trials.
That's why you need to give written consent to your husband undergoing this treatment."
Paulina sat still for a moment, but didn't hesitate. She'd made her decision long ago.
"I agree.
If there was any chance of returning to a normal life, she would take it.
Besides, the risk was small, after all..."
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