scared all the time.
Even the most experienced nurses and ward attendants would not be able to distinguish her behavior from that of a genuine psychopath. No one could doubt that she belonged here, in the ranks of the insane.
Cray reached the end of the hall and turned down the intersecting corridor. Rows of numbered doors passed him on both sides. Not every door was locked, even in Ward B, and not every room was occupied. Many of the patients, including a few who had displayed violent tendencies, were allowed to mingle with the others in the day hall, and to return in the evening, just before the lights-out bell.
The policy was humane and modern. Contemporary medical standards discouraged the practice of shutting a patient away in an isolation room. Cray accepted these standards. Hawk Ridge was not a prison, after all.
Except in Kaylie’s case.
The institute would be her prison for the rest of her life.
Still, as matters had developed, she would not be a prisoner for long.
47
Kaylie heard him coming — the rapid clack of his hard-soled shoes on the corridor’s tile floor.
A moan escaped her. She knelt on the bed, hugging her knees, waiting.
There was a soft thunk as a pneumatic bolt released, and then the steel door opened, and Cray was there.
“Hello, Kaylie.”
That smile. How she hated that smile.
“It’s so good to see you again,” he went on, stepping inside, carefully leaving the door ajar. “I really do look forward to our daily talks.” He came closer, studying her, then put on a sympathetic face. “I’m quite concerned about you.”
This was too much to bear.
“Just shut up,” she snapped, despising the childish petulance in her voice.
Cray made a tsk-tsk noise. “That isn’t very nice.”
Grinning, he sat in the chair, a yard away from her. She drew back slightly on the bed, wanting more distance between them.
“I hear you’re not eating,” Cray said. “You should. No matter what our emotional travails, we should always maintain our bodies at optimal efficiency. Our bodies are the only part of us that matters, in the end. Mind, ego, personality, all these pretty layers of decorative embroidery that we knit around the primal essence of our being — all of it is an illusion, nothing more. A kind of mask.”
“The mask of self,” Kaylie murmured, watching him with narrowed eyes.
Cray registered surprise with a subtle lift of one eyebrow. “You’ve read my book? How delightful.”
“Didn’t read it. I wouldn’t — I would never…”
She had to take a breath. It was hard to speak in complete sentences. Her thinking was all cloudy. Her head ached.
“I’m disappointed to hear it. I’d hoped to include you among my readers.” Cray leaned back in the plastic chair, and his smile widened. “Now, of course, there’ll be no chance of that. No chance and no hope, Kaylie — no hope for you at all.”
Such familiar words, an echo of her memories from twelve years ago.
Back then he had been a younger man than the John Cray who sat in the room with her now, a John Cray with a goatee and bright mischievous eyes. He had come in for therapy three times a week, and in each session he had told her there was no cure for her illness, no hope of improvement, and no chance that he would ever let her go.
And though she had been shell-shocked by trauma, though she had been numb inside and confused — even so, she had sensed the undistilled evil in him, and the hatred, raw and pungent. Only later had she thought to ask herself why he hated her, and why he was so desperate to keep her at Hawk Ridge, away from the outside world.
“You’ve been our guest for one week,” Cray was saying quietly, hands folded in his lap. “Doesn’t it feel longer? How desperately you must yearn for your freedom. For escape, Kaylie. Escape — a sweet dream, isn’t it? Or perhaps not a dream after all.”
This surprised her. It was not what she’d expected him to say.
“Why not?” she whispered. “Why not… a dream?”
“Because there may be a way out.”
She tried to draw a breath, but her throat was tight, and she managed only a cough.
Cray rose abruptly from the chair. Smiling, he approached her. He reached out with one hand, and though she tried to retreat, he was too fast for her. With his long fingers he cupped her chin and tilted her head to face him.
“That’s what you want, I’m sure. A way out. To flee all this, to be liberated. What’s the alternative? Only to linger in this sunless, airless room for months and years and decades. And you know what will happen in that case, don’t you?”
He bent lower, his eyes locked on hers.
“You’ll go insane.”
A shudder ran through her, a spasm of the fear that seemed to come out of nowhere at times and harass her. Involuntarily she shook her head.
Cray smiled. “No? You don’t think so? But it’s true, Kaylie. It will happen. It’s happening already. Isn’t it?”
He released her chin and stepped back, but even now she could not look away from him, because he had named it just then — named her real terror.
Not death. Death was nothing.
Insanity.
“You know I’m right,” Cray said. “You’ve been hearing voices, haven’t you? Perhaps seeing things that can’t be real? You try to think, but your thoughts are all tangled. After so many years of telling yourself you’re not crazy, it turns out that you are.”
Anson, who’d deserted her. Anson, who was in her head, calling her names like
“You’re losing your mind,” Cray said, and Anson echoed him:
“Not true,” she muttered, and finally she found the strength to break eye contact with Cray. “Not, not, not.”
Cray paced before the bed, remorseless as a shark. “Of course it’s true. You’re sliding into the precipice, and who’ll save you?”
She squirmed farther back on the bed, until she was pinned against the wall, Cray before her, roving, roving.
“Will I?” Cray asked. “Will anyone? No one can save you, Kaylie.”
At the foot of the bed, he stopped abruptly, his voice dropping to a hush.
