The Whisper, page 22
He picked it up with a flaccid hand and swallowed it to get rid of the evidence. By the time an orderly opened his cell, Jasper was sprawled on the floor unconscious.
When Jasper woke up, he couldn’t tell if he was where he’d been intending to get. At first, he didn’t care. His stomach felt as if it were floating in burning acid, and the hangover kind of dizziness filled his head.
Jasper propped himself up on his elbows and looked out the window. If it weren’t for the bars, the main building of Ashberry Field Hospital might look like a landscape picture hanging on the wall. It looked so distant, so not real, that Jasper actually found himself smiling. He had to pull a straight face though, when a nurse came in to check on him.
“How did I get here?” Jasper asked her by way of greeting.
Playing the victim as convincingly as he could, even when all facts spoke against him, was the hardest part.
“You had a medication overdose. Wouldn’t you know better how you got here?” the nurse said irritably.
This one was around forty. She moved with the posture and listlessness that made Jasper think that this job, these people, this world had already sucked all the life out of her. Her shadow fell on him as she approached his bed. There weren’t many parasites in her mist, which somehow contradicted her tired, distressed look.
“Overdose? How’s that even possible?” Jasper said. “I mean I took the usual share of my meds before I went to bed. Then I… I don’t know. I felt a little sick in my stomach and woke up here.”
“Would you like some water?” the nurse said, almost bored.
“Um… yes, that’d be great.”
She went out of the ward and returned with a cold perspiring glass. Jasper was uncomfortable feeling her unbroken stare as he was drinking. The nurse sat down on the edge of the bed and began to take his blood pressure, all the while keeping her eyes fixed blankly on his face.
“You don’t believe anything of what I said, do you?” Jasper said, when he could no longer stand the absent look on her face.
“We’re in a mental institution,” the nurse replied as she kept pumping the cuff around his forearm. “Not believing everything the patients say is part of my job. Besides, I’m not the one you’d want to believe you. My only bother in this part of the hospital is to keep your physical condition stable.”
She was right; she wasn’t the one Jasper needed to convince.
15
MUTILATED SOUL
Maybe I am truly insane. Maybe everything I think I know about this world is a madman’s delusion.
There was supposed to be a correlation between a mind and the whisper, but Jasper couldn’t tell if the whisper was making him laugh so hysterically at the moment. There was no reason for a laugh, and yet he could not resist it, as if all along there had been another person living inside him, waiting for everything to spill over the brim. And now it finally had.
He was probably laughing about the fact that there had been several ways to screw everything up, and he had managed to do that in the least expected way. Life had pointed a finger at him to let everyone see he was the luckiest bastard in the whole wide world.
Jasper was sitting cross-legged in complete darkness. The punishment cell didn’t have windows or any other source of light. Instead, it had foam-rubber-covered walls and limited space, so a patient—a bad patient—could take three steps in every direction without hurting himself. Jasper hadn’t seen anyone being sent to the punishment cell before. He had hardly known about its existence until he found himself in it.
He gave the last cackle of laughter as he felt a sudden sting of pain in his little finger, or rather what was left of it. Jasper didn’t laugh anymore…
The door to his ward was locked from the outside. He spent almost the entire time before the night fell thinking of a quiet way to get to Alan’s ward. Jasper couldn’t come up with anything, and eventually he had to go with the flow. He didn’t know if he would stay in the infirmary through another night. There was no time to hesitate.
He hopped out of bed and pressed one ear against the door. There were two people on duty. Jasper could hear one of them mopping the hallway floor, water dripping, mop shifting, slippers squeaking. The whole process took a total of twenty minutes, during which Jasper didn’t get away from the door even for a second. Some continuous shuffling, a few thuds, and at last he heard the orderly break his silence. Jasper could hear only parts of what the orderly was saying behind the closed door
“Yeah, I’m almost finished… On the top shelf… I left the keys in the inventory room… Mind if I get some rest?”
Jasper didn’t hear the nurse’s answer, but the sound of a closing door made him assume that she didn’t mind. The orderly left her alone for the time being. The moment finally came. Jasper knocked on the door lightly, and by the time the nurse entered the ward he was back in his bed.
“Can I help you?” the nurse said in the same dispassionate tone.
“I think I don’t feel well.”
“You think you don’t feel well, or you don’t feel well?”
“I feel terrible.”
“What exactly do you feel?”
“My head is bursting, the skin is like…burning.” Jasper put both hands on his face. “What’s going on?”
The nurse approached his bed and felt his wrist then his forehead.
“Your temperature seems okay.”
“No, it’s not. It’s not okay, trust me. Please, do something,” Jasper pleaded.
The nurse let out a sigh of exasperation.
Not even trying to pretend like she gives a damn, Jasper thought.
On went the backlights. He sat up in his bed.
“I’ll be back in a second,” the nurse said as she walked out of the ward. She closed the door but didn’t lock it. His heart raced as Jasper sensed the opportunity. He didn’t know where the nurse went or how much time he had. All he knew was that he wouldn’t have another chance.
Jasper tiptoed to the door, turned the knob with utter carefulness, and peered out. The hallway was narrow and twisty, each ward marked with a number. On Jasper’s right, it ended with a registration desk, currently unoccupied. He could hear distant footsteps but couldn’t tell where they were coming from. Once he slipped into the hallway, a rush of adrenaline slapped him wide-awake. With silent yet hasty steps, Jasper walked down the hallway, past a few wards and the recreation room, where he assumed the orderly was resting. By the time he reached the desk, his forehead was dripping with sweat. His parasites were more active than they had been in the last few weeks.
Jasper looked through some papers on the desk and found the notebook with the names of checked-in patients. Rhodes was in the middle of the list, number three. There was another number on the right of his name that indicated his ward. Eleven. Jasper turned around to look at the board hanging on the wall behind the desk, which comprised sixteen aluminum hooks with a key hanging from each one.
Suddenly, Jasper heard the flip-flop of the nurse’s slippers growing louder. He grabbed the key from the hook marked with the number eleven, rushed out of the desk, and ducked behind the nearest corner. He listened attentively to every step the nurse was taking. Flip-flop. Flip-flop. Flip-plop. Silence. A low door creak. A muffled voice filled with concern that made Jasper aware he was a minute or less shy of the impending tumult.
It took him a little under thirty seconds to find ward eleven, but it took him longer to unlock the door without making any noise. The lights in the ward were dimmed, but even under them Jasper could easily recognize Alan’s face, hollow and pale, sweat glistening all over. He took a moment to convince himself that he was ready to take responsibility for whatever was to come.
As Jasper watched Alan sleeping comfortably in his bed like an innocent child—probably pumped full of sedatives—doubts started creeping up on him. The mist floated around Alan like a thick thundercloud. Some of his parasites had grown significantly since the last time Jasper had seen him.
Alan was dreaming, and Jasper could tell the dream was far from pleasant. The dark clouds were blending as he came close to the bed, his parasites recoiling from the opposite side. Alan’s wrists were bandaged, and above the bandages his arms were strapped to the side rails. Jasper leaned over Alan and placed one hand on his shoulder. He closed his eyes and summoned all the human poison accumulated inside him—it didn’t take as long as it had last time. He was pleasantly surprised he had gotten so good at it. Alan’s parasites hissed at him as they felt the threat but after a while found the darkness Jasper had to offer somewhat tempting.
Small parasites gave in quickly, but the bigger ones demanded more.
Once again, Jasper concentrated on that destructive feeling he had experienced when he’d felt Jane’s heart stop beating. He concentrated on the constant fear of being chased. He recalled the image of the tree bark getting soaked with Ben Elliot’s blood, those sticky, soft pieces peeling off and falling to the ground. That darkness resonated with Alan’s subconsciousness, and soon Jasper could see his eyes shifting under the lids as the nightmare in Alan’s mind was turning to the darkest chapters of Jasper’s life. Alan jerked his head, mumbled something incoherent, and when the nightmare grew unbearable he woke up.
Jasper was ready for this turn of events. The fact that Alan had been asleep when he had walked into his ward was pure luck.
The tune of the whisper changed instantly. As he caught fear in Alan’s eyes, Jasper climbed onto the bed and closed his mouth tightly with both hands. Alan was beating his arms against the side rails but couldn’t move them far enough to confront. He was writhing under the pressures of Jasper’s body as his parasites struggled to choose sides. Jasper pursed his lips, concentrating. Only when he turned his head into a hell pit with an abundance of boiling poison did the rest of Alan’s parasites agree to his terms.
Everything was going smoothly—as smoothly as it could be under the circumstances—until the little finger of Jasper’s left hand slipped between Alan’s lips. Promptly, Alan grabbed the opportunity by clenching the finger between his teeth and biting hard on it.
Jasper moaned, fighting back a scream of pain, as the teeth were cutting through his flesh to the very bone. Blood painted Alan’s lips. Jasper tried to pull his hand away, but it only made the pain worse. Alan got him. He was in control of the situation. He clenched his teeth harder, and Jasper could no longer keep his voice down. He burst out screaming as he’d heard a mild cracking sound. For a second, the pain put him on the verge of fainting.
Alan bit off his finger right through the ligament. The white sheet over him bloomed with crimson spots. Something triggered Jasper at that point, anger accelerated by the whisper of his new addition to the swarm. He took a good swing and punched Alan in the jaw, taking that kids’ pleasure in fighting back. The next second, he heard someone banging on the door. The orderly’s voice behind it sounded frantic. Jasper was glad he had locked the door from the inside, his own little precaution.
To hell with that, he thought, if everything is going this way, the least you can do is to finish what you started.
Jasper pressed Alan hard against the bed. Spots of blood were everywhere, all over the bedlinen, all over the clothes. He was doing his best to ignore the attempts of his adversary to shake him off, the pulsing pain in the stump, and the orderly that was about to break in. By the time the door hinges could no longer tolerate heavy blows, Alan’s mist was devoid of the biggest part of its dwellers. The lock cracked, and the orderly walked in with the nurse cautiously hiding behind his back.
They saw Jasper sitting in a corner of the room with an absent face.
It was time to pay the price. Jasper knew there was nothing he could do about that. Still, he wanted a few moments to enjoy his victory. He provided Alan Rhodes with a cure nobody else could, and if it wasn’t for the disastrous tumult in his head, Jasper would probably find that thought much more enjoyable. The whisper of the thick swarm around him was penetrating his brain, but he didn’t know that the worst part was ahead.
Alan’s screams didn’t stop, but that was only a matter of time. Without most of his parasites, it wouldn’t take long for his mist to thin, which in turn would soothe his mutilated soul.
Jasper knew it, but how could he prove that to anyone?
The stump had been sterilized and bandaged, and Jasper was back in Ward D.
Home Sweet Home.
The majority of the doctors insisted on putting him in the punishment cell for at least three days, and when its door was closed, the laughter Jasper had been holding back all this time finally broke free. He didn’t care to keep his voice down, didn’t care to look sane. Jasper let the orderlies passing by the door take him for what they all thought he was—a lunatic.
The punishment cell was so small and its ventilation system worked so poorly that after a few hours in there the air became damp and hot from Jasper’s breath. When he was let out of the cell—as a rule, it happened twice a day—the light in the main hallway cut through his eyes like a razor, and the abundance of fresh air made him almost dizzy. Orderlies always made sure they put a straightjacket on him before letting him out.
They walked him to the bathroom, the dining room, and back to the cell. If Jasper had the urge to relieve himself in the middle of the night, he could either keep it in until the scheduled time or do it right on the floor and have the term of his punishment prolonged for a few more days. Judging by the smell, Jasper could tell, most of the patients who had been there before him had chosen the latter.
His body was exhausted, but not nearly as exhausted as his soul. Jasper did his best to resist the raging force of all the parasites he had acquired, and to his credit he handled it a lot better than Alan Rhodes, especially considering that the swarm around Jasper now was twice as dense. He had been aware that the effect of the whisper would be much stronger once he took the parasites from Alan, but he couldn’t have imagined it would be this unrelenting.
Every second of being alone in the punishment cell was pure torture. In the closed space, the whisper seemed to bounce off the walls and come back to him with more intensity. As minutes passed, the parasites were growing in size, creating so much human poison that his head was beginning to throb with actual physical pain.
Jasper watched his and Alan’s lives on repeat, all of their most painful and fearful moments, reliving them all at once. At some point, Jasper couldn’t quite tell if it was in his head or actually happening to him. The blood on the foam-rubber walls, piles of dead bodies at his feet, people threatening him, people lecturing him on what was right or wrong. It was like a tumor that kept pulsing somewhere inside. Jasper would be willing to do whatever it took to get rid of it—grab a knife and single-handedly cut it out.
All he did, however, was wait, endure, and hope that soon enough it would all be over.
Jasper lost track of time and counted days by those rare times he left the cell. As the sixth time indicated his upcoming release, time got unbearably slow. He spent the remaining hours walking around his cell, brushing the foam rubber walls with one fragile hand, praying for that goddamn door to open.
Two orderlies came for him early in the morning. Once he was out of the punishment cell—no straightjacket this time—Jasper realized that the day in Ward D hadn’t started yet. The doors to the other cells were still closed, and an unusual silence floated in the hallway.
He wanted to go to the bathroom so he could finally wash off three-day sweat and take a good look at himself in the mirror, but the staff no longer cared about what he wanted. Yet if Jasper had a chance to see his reflection at that moment, he’d see a pale, corpse-like face, heavy bags under his eyes, and veins vividly showing through on his neck.
The orderlies led him straight to the room at the end of the hallway, where Dr. Donovan was already waiting for him.
Jasper knew how outraged the doctor was. His parasites were shaping up that outrage diligently. Jasper heard each fragment with sharp clarity, and their encrypted tale was as old as time.
Dr. Donovan, a mental health professional, took responsibility for Jasper’s treatment and accomplished results no other psychiatrist could only to find out he’d been fooled all along.
This time, Jasper couldn’t care less about what the doctor had to say to him. When Dr. Donovan began to speak, his tone was as formal as always, but to Jasper it came through in deep, intermittent echoes.
“This is not how I wanted everything to turn out.” The doctor sighed heavily. “Rhodes has quite sharp teeth, doesn’t he?”
Jasper snorted, and even that sound echoed in his head. He lowered his half-closed eyes and took a few big gulps of air. He felt like pressing his forehead against the cold surface of the table to cool his burning mind.
“Are you okay, Jasper?”
“I’m…” Jasper took another deep breath. “I’m fine.”
“What are you thinking about right now?”
“I’m thinking… I’m thinking I did the right thing.”
“If you call breaking all the hospital rules, committing assault, and losing a finger the right thing, you’ve done a hell of a good job.” The doctor paused for a few seconds. “I’m tired of trying to figure you out, Jasper, and I’m saying this because I know you know exactly what you’re doing. I think you’re too self-conscious to share it with me. You keep hiding something, and I keep believing you.”
“Maybe you’re not as good at your job as you think.”
“Maybe,” the doctor said, his mist charged with contempt.
“How’s…” Jasper stopped to rub his forehead with both hands. “How’s Alan doing?”
“What makes you think I’m going to tell you now?”
