"Sunglasses After Dark v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Collins Nancy A)

Sunglasses After Dark
By: Nancy A. Collins
c 1988

** SCANNED BY LUPINIV FEB 01 **
v1.0


1
Claude Hagerty's watch played "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Grumbling to himself, he stuck the dog-eared Louis L'Amour paperback in the top drawer of the desk and produced the keys to the Danger Ward from the depths of his orderly's whites. Three o'clock in the morning. Time for his rounds.
Claude had been an orderly for most of his adult life. He'd originally intended to go into pro football, but a bad knee injury in high school put an end to that career before it had the chance to begin. He later discovered that standing 6'3" and tipping the scales at 280 pounds had its distinct advantages in the healthcare field. However, even at the age of thirty-eight, with high school twenty years gone and his midsection devolved into flab, Claude Hagerty was still an impressive specimen.
He started work at Elysian Fields seven years ago, and as funny farms go, it was an okay job. It sure beat the hell out of the state hospital. Elysian Fields didn't waste time on charity cases. The hospital's clients were the sons and daughters, mothers and fathers of prestigious families. The sanitarium specialized in "dependency problems," but for those with relatives whose difficulties tended to be far more serious than a fondness for tranquilizers and vodka, there was the Danger Ward.
The reinforced steel door, painted a festive pastel for the benefit of the visitors, separated the nursing station from the rest of the ward. Claude rolled the barrier back enough to squeeze through. He remembered an old cartoon from his childhood, where a mouse ran in and out of the jaws of a sleeping cat. Funny how he always thought of that when he did his rounds.
He walked past the dayroom, where the better-behaved inmates were allowed to watch television and play Ping-Pong during the afternoon. Most were so heavily medicated all they could do was sit and stare at the tube or out the windows. There was no attempt at rehabilitation in the Danger Ward, although no one came right out and said it. Just as no one mentioned the exact reasons why these people were locked up. That was what you paid for. All in all, Elysian Fields wasn't any different from any other private asylum. Except for her.
He grimaced involuntarily. Hell, this used to be an easy shift. Except for a patient having the odd nightmare now and then, there wasn't much for him to worry about. He could catch up on his reading, watch TV, even nap if he felt like it, without worrying about being disturbed.
That was before they dragged her in, six months ago. It had been during his shift; she was bound in a straitjacket and, God as his witness, a length of chain, with four strong men handling her. And still she lashed about, yowling like a wild thing. For a minute it looked as if she would get loose. Claude could still hear the sharp snap of the chain breaking. Then Dr. Wexler was there, syringe in hand, jabbing the needle through the canvas into the woman beneath. She collapsed immediately, motor nerves severed. Judging from the size of the dosage, she should have died. Claude was ordered to carry her into Room 7. That was the first time he touched her. It was enough.
That's when his job got tough. Since that night, his shift had yet to go by without one of the inmates waking up with the night horrors. They all claimed the woman in Room 7 walked into their dreams. They couldn't-or wouldn't-elaborate on the details. Claude described the dreams to Dr. Morial, the ward's on-call psychiatrist. Morial asked him if he liked his job. Claude let it drop.
Life was complicated enough without trying to figure out why a bunch of loonies should fixate on a fellow inmate they had never seen. Or how they could describe her so well. He wondered if the patients were as restless during the day. He didn't think so. She wasn't active during the day.
I hear the warder's heavy tread as he checks his charges one by one. It is night and the doctors have fled, leaving the patients alone with their dreams. It's been too long since I could think this clearly. It took me two months to crawl out of madness. Another three passed before my biosystem began to break down the narcotic cocktails they pump into me every day. Their drugs won't do them any good; with every night that passes my immunity grows stronger. My mind is my own again. It's been so long. Perhaps too long.
I fear irreparable damage was done while I was away. The Other has been doing . . . things. I'm not sure what, but I can feel the changes deep inside me. The Other has been free to move unchecked. I have to get out of here before something horrible occurs. I may have already done something. Possibly hurt someone. I can't remember, and I do not want to scan the Other's memory for clues. I'm still weak and could easily become lost in its personality. I cannot risk that. Not now.
The Other's been dream-walking, of that I'm certain. It hasn't gone unnoticed, although I should feel lucky they're only lunatics. No one believes them. No one wants to believe them. I've got to get out of here before I lose control. I haven't fought the Other this long in order to surrender in a madhouse. But I'm so tired. Too receptive. I can feel their dreams pressing in on me, like some great unseen weight. I've become a magnet for their nightmares. That worries me. I've never been able to do this before. What other changes have occurred during my lapse?
The guard is nearing the end of his rounds. I can hear his footsteps echoing in the hall and his ragged breathing. He's a big man. I can smell his sweat. I can taste his fear. He's checking on the inmate next door. It'll be my turn next. He always saves me for last. I guess it's because he's scared of me. I don't blame him. I'm scared of me, too.
Claude's frown deepened as he watched Malcolm whimper in his sleep. Even without medication, Malcolm usually enjoyed the slumber of a child. Now he writhed under the bedclothes, his face blanched and perspiring. His lips moved in feeble protest to some unknown command. He'd be waking up in a few minutes, screaming his lungs out, but Claude knew better than to try to shake the boy awake; the last time he'd tried it he'd damned near lost a finger. Malcolm liked to bite.
Locked in his dream, Malcolm moaned and knotted the sheets with blind fingers. The muscles in his clenched jaw jumped as his teeth ground together.
Claude shook his head and shut the observation plate set into the face of the metal door.
There was only one patient left to check. The one in Room 7. Claude wasn't even sure of her name. The charts and medication logs simply read "Blue, S." She was the last one on his rounds every night, simply because it took him that long to work up the nerve to look at her. Maybe it was different during the day. Perhaps in the sanity of daylight she was just another loony, but he doubted it.
The door to Room 7 was the same as the others, a cheerily painted piece of metal strong enough to withstand a two-ton battering ram. An observation silt, covered with heavy-gauge wire mesh and protected by a sliding metal plate, was set into the door at eye level, although Claude had to stoop a bit to look through it. The interior of Room 7 was radically different from the others on the ward. The other inmates had rooms that-except for the heavy padding on the walls, the narrow high-set windows, and the naked light bulbs locked in impenetrable cages of wire-could be mistaken for suites found in a typical Holiday Inn. Elysian Fields furnished the rooms with unbreakable fixtures and beds with matching designer sheets and restraining gear.
Room 7 was bare of everything but its occupant. There wasn't even a bed. She slept curled up on the padded floor, tucked into the far comer, where the shadows were deepest, like a hibernating animal. At least that's how Claude imagined it. He'd never seen her asleep.
Taking a deep breath, he flicked back the latch on the observation plate and slid it open. Yep, there she was.
Blue crouched in the middle of her cell, her face angled toward the high, narrow window set ten feet from the floor. She was naked except for the straitjacket, her bare legs folded under her as if she were at prayer.
It was hard to tell how old she was, but Claude guessed she couldn't be more than twenty-three. Her filthy hair hung about her face in rattails. None of the nurses wanted to touch her after what happened to Kalish. Not that Claude blamed them.
She knew he was watching, just as he'd known she'd be there, crouching like a spider in the middle of its web. He waited silently for her to acknowledge him, yet dreading it at the same time. It had become a ritual between them.
She turned her head in his direction. Claude's stomach tightened and there was a thundering in his ears. He felt as if he was barreling down a steep hill in a car without brakes. Her eyes locked on him with a predator's guile. She inclined her chin a fraction of an inch, signaling her awareness of his presence. Claude felt himself respond in kind, like a puppet on a string, and then he was hurrying back down the corridor.
In the darkness, Malcolm woke up screaming.


2
The scene opens on a vast auditorium, its floor jammed with row upon row of metal folding chairs. Wheelchairs clutter the aisles. Behind the raised stage hangs a mammoth banner bearing the likeness of a smiling man. His nose is strong and straight, the cheekbones high, and his wide, toothy grin does not extend to the hawklike eyes nestled beneath the bushy white eyebrows. His silvery mane would be the envy of an Old Testament patriarch.
The eternally smiling man is Zebulon "Zeb" Wheele: Man of God, Healer of the Sick, Speaker of Prophecy, and founder of the Wheeles of God Ministry. The superimposed electronic graphics explain, for those viewing at home, that this "healing event" has taken place in Dallas, Texas, three months previous.
The audience, most of whom are encumbered by canes and walkers, clap and sing hymns while awaiting their chance to be touched by the divine. Many study the huge portrait tapestry, comparing it to the reduced likenesses printed on the back of their programs. The air is heavy with sweat, hope, and anxiety.
Suddenly, the lights go down and a spotlight hits the stage. The organ music swells and a figure strides from the wings. It is a woman in a gold lame pantsuit, her hair shellacked into a Gordian knot. The applause is thunderous.
The woman is Sister Catherine, widow of the late Zebulon Wheele. It is she they have come to see.
Catherine Wheele accepts the welcome, smiling broadly and throwing kisses to the crowd. She takes the microphone from the podium and addresses the faithful.
"Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! Hallelujah! It gladdens my heart to know that the words and deeds of my late husband, the Reverend Zebulon Wheele, are still manifest in the healed flesh and joyful spirits of those who felt the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ through his loving hands! Every day I receive hundreds of letters from y'all out there, telling me how Zebulon changed your lives. The sick made well! The deaf to hear! The blind to see!
"But I also hear from those who say they are forlorn. They are afraid they'll never know the miracle of Jesus' divine mercy, that they'll never see salvation, because Zebulon was"-she struggles to suppress the hitch in her voice "called to God. Are these poor souls doomed to live their lives in pain and torment, never to know the grace and forgiveness of Our Lord? Say no!"
"No!" Only a few voices respond.
"Is it? Say no!" Her voice becomes harsh and demanding.
"No," the coliseum answers.
"Is it? Say no!"
"No!" Two thousand voices-shrill and pure, baritone and falsetto, weak and strong-join together.