Beneath Claire's House (Mount Herod Legends Book 1) Read online

  Four other patients sat in the juvi rec room, none of which I’d ever spoken to. A girl named Tammy suffered from multiple personality disorder, an illness the doctors and nurses called DID, which actually didn’t seem to be the correct acronym. Ben and I shrugged it off a long time ago.

  Stuttering Chuck was a victim of grandiose delusion. He thought he was William Wallace, whoever that was.

  Two others, Melanie and Angry Gary, were schizophrenics, the same diagnosis DeLuca pinned on me. Statistically, it affects one percent of the population.

  Did DeLuca really believe I was like Melanie and Gary? Both suffered from extreme paranoia, and both were on the same hardcore drug called clozapine.

  Clozapine caused a bunch of side effects, the most unflattering of which was drooling. It also required weekly blood tests. Something about white blood cell counts. Or maybe it was red blood cell counts. Who cares? I was on a completely different drug anyway, and I hated DeLuca for stuffing me in the same pigeonhole with those two.

  Mel’s suspicious eyes were always darting back and forth on the lookout for the CIA or FBI or whatever agents she was convinced were following her. And sometimes her conversations were just random words strung together with no structure, meaning, or purpose.

  Angry Gary believed aliens had implanted a computer chip in his head. They were recording his daily life for some type of study. It was just a matter of time before they returned for his brain, he’d say. His only protection was Randal, a Man-in-Black who was always at his side. No one else could see Randal, of course, and that served to only magnify Gary’s paranoia that everyone else was ‘in on it.’

  How could DeLuca drop me into the same category as these two? I caught myself glaring at them and quickly looked away. Gary was prone to fits of verbal rage, and if he caught me staring him down, it could set him off. Sometimes he’d pitch a fit so obscene it would land him in the Quiet Room for hours.

  The Quiet Room. What a stupid name for that room. No one they ever locked in the cell was quiet. They should have called it the Screaming Room. If you didn’t cooperate, or if you were caught dodging your meds, or if you pitched a fit, they locked you in the Screaming Room. Once inside you could flop around as much as you wanted. There were no windows or mirrors to break and no bedposts on which to impale yourself. It consisted of four padded walls and a mattress on the floor. It was as if they locked you inside a pillow. When you were quiet, they let you out. Looking back now, I suppose that’s how it really got its name.

  I saw Angry Gary snarl and say something short to Stuttering Chuck. Gary looked irritated. Nothing unusual about that.

  I returned to my own problems and the prior night’s events. I considered whether or not Father Delevan could have been a Godsend. If an almighty God existed, did he send Father Delevan to deliver the name ‘Spencer Hawkins’ to me? Yet, that would have meant He was on my side, and I had a life’s worth of experience to know better.

  Across the room, Chuck and Gary were at it again. I couldn’t make out what they were bickering about, but Gary got louder and grew more upset. Red-faced with teeth clenched, he stood over Stuttering Chuck with his hands balled up in fists.

  Chuck curled himself into a ball on the couch. “Y-y-you can take my life!” said Chuck. “B-b-but you can’t take my f-f-freedom!” He said that a lot.

  Ben had once said, “If Angry Gary was a real physical threat, the hospital would never allow him in the rec room with the others.” Regardless, I got nervous every time the guy moved. Something was different this time, too, because Ben had moved away from the group as soon as the commotion started.

  “Leave him alone,” Danny said.

  At some point, the nurses must have made a call, because three orderlies in blue scrubs entered the rec room. It meant bad news for Gary. They would restrain him and throw him into the Quiet Room. It probably also meant a loss of privileges.

  Then it happened, and my stomach turned at the site of it. Angry Gary swung at Chuck. I couldn’t watch. I shifted my eyes to the window.

  By the sound of the screaming and commotion, I could tell the orderlies were on Angry Gary. I heard a thud, like a chair hitting the floor. Someone shouted a stream of vulgarities.

  “CIA! CIA!” Mel yelled.

  “Freedom!” Chuck cried.

  It sounded as if more furniture overturned. Then one of the boys screamed.

  The whole thing seemed to last an hour, but it was probably more like twenty seconds. I looked back at the group. Gary had his hands bound behind his back with restraints, and Nurse Linda was tending to Stuttering Chuck, who didn’t appear to be hurt. I’m not sure Angry Gary even landed a punch.

  As the orderlies hauled Angry Gary out of the rec room, I scanned my group of peers. Danny cried, Cathy was stoic, and Mel straightened the furniture as she babbled on. My eyes fell on Ben. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head. It seemed we thought the same thing: this place sucks.

  Ben walked over to me and sat down.

  “What was that all about?” I asked.

  Ben shook his head. “Gary kept getting the prices wrong on TV. After he overbid the Showcase Showdown, Chuck called Gary ‘nuts.’”

  I laughed at the absurdity. Ben smiled as he watched everyone return to the television.

  “We won’t be seeing him for a while,” I said, referring to Angry Gary.

  “Nope.”

  I didn’t really consider any of my fellow patients friends, but if someone forced me to choose one, I’d pick Ben. Despite his phobias, he was as close to ‘normal’ as anyone in the ward. The interesting thing about Ben was he’d accepted his phobias as pure nonsense. He sincerely wanted to get better. According to Ben, Dr. DeLuca told him if he continued to make progress, they’d discharge him into a day program within the month.

  And at that very moment, in a single instant of time, like a sudden flame appearing at the end of a match, I knew what I needed to do.

  “I’m going home,” I said.

  Ben snapped his head towards me. “They’re discharging you?”

  “They will.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Dr. Anthony DeLuca

  ONCE, IN JUNIOR high, I had faked a stomachache in order to stay home from school and miss a test. I closed my eyes, curled up in a ball, groaned a bit, and complained my stomach hurt. It worked.

  But how could I go about convincing someone they’d cured me?

  Dr. Anthony DeLuca’s stuffy office smelled like leather and fell short on light. He always kept the shades drawn, and the dark wood in the room caused the air itself to look brown.

  An enormous desk sat on one side of the room. It must have been mahogany or cherry or some kind of fancy wood. Regardless, it looked like it weighed a ton. If DeLuca sat behind it, he would face the door. He’d also face two cushioned, wood-trimmed, guest chairs. But DeLuca never sat behind it, and I never sat in the guest chairs.

  The two of us always sat on the other side of the room in the space that looked like a living room: me on the couch and him in a big-armed leather chair. It was uncomfortably formal. The first time I had been in DeLuca’s office, I wondered if any of his patients had lain on the couch like I’d seen in the movies. Part of me wanted to try it, if not to just experience life inside a cliché.

  Between us sat a coffee table displaying some sort of ugly, abstract stone statue. The shape reminded me of a squashed treble clef. DeLuca must’ve had a thing for abstract art because similar paintings hung on the walls. None of it made any sense. Where were the pictures of people, houses, and landscapes? A blindfolded monkey holding a paintbrush in its mouth could have painted any of the junk.

  DeLuca was perhaps a bit older than my father and not nearly as fit. I wouldn’t have described DeLuca as fat, but whenever he sat across from me, I couldn’t help but notice a pudgy white gut pop out from under his faded yellow polo shirt.

  He wore his hair very short, and a tightly manicured salt and pepper goatee wrapped around his chin and upper lip
. He had huge sideburns. What did they call them? Lamb chops, muttonchops, pork chops. It didn’t matter. He looked as out of touch with my generation as any old man could.

  His lips were thin, barely visible. In fact, maybe he didn’t have lips at all, because of all the times I’d sat in his stupid office, DeLuca had never shown me a smile.

  Today would be no different.

  “Quite a storm last night,” he said, peering over the top of his glasses.

  “Yup,” I said with a nod. I popped the ‘P’ as I said it. I knew he didn’t want to talk about the storm. I figured word had gotten back to him I’d been visited by Father Delevan. Mentioning the storm was DeLuca’s way of steering the conversation where he wanted it to go.

  My father was due for a visit later that day. If I could show DeLuca some improvements and play my father just right, I would be able to convince both of them to release me. Once discharged, I could begin my search for Spencer Hawkins.

  I knew my case frustrated DeLuca. Even the diagnosis of schizophrenia seemed like a last resort. It fit, but it didn’t fit perfectly. Stuff like that bothered guys like DeLuca. Even as I write this, I still remember DeLuca’s doubtful eyes the day he gave me and my father his diagnosis and put me on quetiapine.

  The drug, he said, was an “atypical anti-psychotic med.” I didn’t need a medical degree to know only psychotic people received anti-psychotic drugs. He’d explained that “atypical” meant it was a new generation of drug. My unusual case had become his pet project, his lab experiment, his future article in Psychiatry Today—if there ever was such a magazine.

  The worst part of all? DeLuca was entirely capable—and seemingly willing—to keep me at Saint Thomas forever. I decided I wasn’t going to allow any more prescription adjustments, no more diet changes, and no more discussions of the nightmare or the basement. It was time to leave Saint Thomas.

  “How have you been feeling lately?” he said.

  “I’m feeling good.”

  DeLuca wrote on his pad.

  A bookcase covered the entire wall behind him, and from my perspective, it rose around him and his chair like a picture frame. He was as much a part of this office as the paintings and sculptures, an abstract work of art himself. “Good. How about feelings of being special?”

  “Being special” was a key symptom of schizophrenia. The delusions accompanying the disease often placed its victims in highly unusual circumstances, like Mel and the CIA, or Angry Gary and his aliens. Or, as far as DeLuca was concerned, me and my ghosts.

  “No, I don’t feel special.”

  DeLuca nodded. “What about the ghosts. Any visits?”

  I had told DeLuca many times the visitations stopped when I entered the hospital, not when I began taking the medication. He was tracking the wrong cause and effect. But either he wasn’t listening or was just hung up on the medicine. Rather than explain it again, rather than seem hostile or defensive, I decided to let it go.

  “No.”

  “Why do you suppose the ghosts have stopped visiting you?” he asked.

  I looked down at the floor and began my lie. “Maybe I imagined it all.”

  “That’s not what you said last week.” He flipped through his notebook. “Just last week you said, ‘I’m not a schizo. The ghosts are real. They want to kill me. They want to kill my father.’” DeLuca looked up and fixed his eyes on me. “Do you remember saying that, Claire?”

  “Yes.”

  If monotone were a language, DeLuca would’ve spoken it fluently. “What happened in the last five days to change your mind?” He brushed his hand over his giant, gross sideburns. “Why do you believe the ghosts are no longer real?”

  He was either suspicious or needed his ego pumped. The fact was I had no idea how schizophrenic patients broke through. I didn’t know whether to describe a slow progression or a sudden revelation.

  So, I stabbed blindly. “I don’t know. Just in the last few days I started to feel foolish about it all.”

  DeLuca raised his chin and wrinkled his forehead. “I see. If the ghosts weren’t real, where do you think they came from?”

  I shrugged. “My head, maybe? I think it was my imagination. I don’t see them anymore.”

  DeLuca eased back in his chair and pressed the clicker end of his pen against his temple. “Schizophrenia,” he began, “is primarily a physiological disease. Quetiapine hinders dopamine and serotonin receptors in the brain. If it’s true you’re no longer hallucinating, the medicine is working, and we’ve reached a milestone in your treatment.”

  I nearly leapt for joy. Maybe DeLuca wasn’t entirely convinced I was recovering, but he was happy to consider it.

  “Let’s talk about your nightmare,” he said.

  “OK.”

  “In the dream, you find your father standing on the basement stairs, correct?”

  “Right.”

  “Start there,” he said.

  I closed my eyes and built myself a nice thick wall between my analytical and emotional selves. I hated to cry, especially in front of people. Thankfully, the nightmare itself was fuzzy, and my memory afterwards was even fuzzier.

  “He’s covered in blood.” My voice unintentionally trembled. “He’s standing on the steps looking at me and he’s scared.” This was probably the most upsetting part of the whole dream. My father was a rock. Nothing frightened him. The dream destroyed my perception of him.

  “Then what?” DeLuca asked.

  I had told him all this before. Why did he need to hear it again? “Something comes up the stairs from below—”

  DeLuca interrupted. “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Man or woman?”

  “I don’t know.” It was nothing more than a form in my memory. A shadow. A ghost. But I dared not use that word.

  “I see.” DeLuca backed off. “Then what happens?”

  “You know what happens next.”

  “Tell me again, please,” DeLuca said. “I want you to stand up to this dream, Claire. It is just a dream. It’s a manifestation of your inner insecurity. You lost your mother. You’re afraid you’re going to lose your father, too. These are normal emotions that you’re suppressing and internalizing. What happens next?”

  “He tells me to run back to my room. He’s afraid for me.”

  “Then?”

  “The shape grabs him from behind and I wake up.” My wall held. I hadn’t dropped a single tear.

  DeLuca let the room fall silent. Then he spoke slowly and deliberately as he ran his thumb and forefinger along the binding of his notepad. “What’s in the basement, Claire?”

  I became warm. I knew exactly what was in the basement. It was full of killer ghosts. So, I said, “Nothing’s in the basement.”

  “Last time we met, you said the ghosts were in the basement. It’s where they live. They’re coming for you and they’re coming for your father. Last time you said your father even keeps the basement door padlocked for your peace of mind.”

  It was true.

  DeLuca continued. “So, as of today, there are no longer any ghosts in your basement?”

  He was totally on to me. Maybe I could still save it. “Look. You’re right. It’s just a dream,” I said.

  “You once called it a premonition.” He pointed at me as he said it.

  I wanted to spit on him. “Well, I was wrong. It’s a dream. I know that now.”

  “Are you still afraid of the basement?”

  “No.” A better word would have been ‘terrified,’ but why wordsmith at this point?

  “Do you think you could go in your basement?” he asked.

  Never, I thought. “Sure,” I said.

  DeLuca shifted in his chair and shook his head frantically. “Claire, people just don’t get better like this. It would be perfectly normal to be afraid of the basement for months to come. What’s going on?”

  I folded my arms. I had a good plan. I just needed to see it through. “Nothing. I just feel a little dumb.
”

  “Why do you feel dumb?”

  “Because there’s no such thing as ghosts.” The statement hurt. It echoed inside me like a ghost itself. If ghosts didn’t exist, what was haunting me, stalking me, and terrifying me in my own home?

  DeLuca stared at me. A day earlier, I’d have looked away when his gaze hit mine, but today I returned his stare. Maybe he was looking for body language. Maybe dilated pupils. Sweaty palms. It didn’t matter. I gave him nothing. I was a rock, just like Dad.

  Then it happened, and when it happened, I knew he’d won.

  “Let’s talk about your mother,” the scumbag said.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Games Patients Play

  “QUETIAPINE MAKES ME fat and tired,” I said as I leaned my head against my fist, my elbow on the table.

  “I’ll say,” Ben joked. In his cupped palms, he shook five dice.

  “Shut up and roll, loser,” I said.

  The two of us sat at a sun-drenched table in the rec room. I had agreed to play two games of Yahtzee with Ben. In return, he owed me one game of Life.

  My plan to convince DeLuca to release me not only failed, but also resulted in an increase in my dosage of quetiapine. I felt foolish and regretful. Lying to a psychiatrist sounded like a good idea only because I was desperate to get out of Saint Thomas.

  Ben let the dice spill onto the table in front of us. Three twos, a five, and a one. “Maybe I’ll go for twos,” Ben said as he pushed the twos aside and scooped up the other dice.

  “What do you think they’re talking about?” I asked.

  “You,” young Ben replied.

  I rolled my eyes. My father met with DeLuca in the psychiatrist’s office at that moment. Ben was right, no doubt. DeLuca probably told my father how I wasn’t making any progress, how I tried to lie to him, and how he’d increased my dosage of quetiapine as a result.