already taken place, but somehow, in the wildly fluctuating, erratic world of the mental hospital, the context had been hidden.
Francis looked over at Peter, who was dashing cold water onto his face at a washbasin. He will never see what I can see Francis told himself. There was a chorus within him of agreement.
But before he could go any further with this thinking, Francis saw Peter pull himself off the basin, look up at himself in a mirror and shake his head, as if displeased with what he saw in the reflection. At the same time, Peter saw Francis hovering behind him and smiled. 'Ah, C-Bird. Top of the morning to you. We have survived another night here, which, upon reflection and on balance, is no small feat and an accomplishment that should be celebrated with a hearty, if not all together tasty, breakfast. What do you suppose this fine day will bring?'
Francis shook his head to indicate he was unsure.
'Maybe some progress?'
'Maybe.'
'Maybe something good?'
'Unlikely.'
Peter laughed. 'Francis, buddy, there's no pill and certainly no shot they can give you in here to reduce or remove a sense of cynicism.'
Francis nodded. 'None that can give you optimism, either.'
'Touche,' Peter said. He lost the grin he wore, and leaned toward Francis. 'We'll make some headway today, I promise.' Then he smiled again, and added, 'Headway. That's a little bit of a joke. You'll get it soon enough.'
Francis had no idea what he was talking about, but asked, 'How can you promise that?'
'Because Lucy thinks a different approach might work.'
'A different approach?'
Peter looked around for a moment, then whispered, 'If you cannot bring yourself to the man you're hunting, perhaps you can bring the man to you.'
Francis recoiled slightly, as if pummeled by the noise within him of dozens of voices screaming danger. Peter did not notice the sudden shift in Francis's appearance, like the abrupt approach of a storm cloud on a distant horizon, as the younger man chewed over what Peter had said. Instead, he clapped Francis on the back and sardonically added, 'Come on. Let's eat soggy pancakes or runny eggs and see what starts to unfold. Big day, today, I'm guessing, C-Bird. Keep your eyes and ears open.'
The two of them stepped from the washroom, to where the men of the dormitory were starting to stumble and shuffle out of the doorway into the corridor. The start of the daily routine. Francis was more than a little unsure what it was that he was supposed to be watching out for, but any questions he might have had were instantly erased in that moment by the high-pitched, shrill and desperate scream that furiously echoed down the hallway, reverberating in the air around them with a complete helplessness that chilled everyone who heard it.
It is easy to remember that scream.
I have thought about it many times, over many years. There are screams of fear, screams of shock, screams that speak of anxiety, tension, and some even of despair. This seemed to mingle all those qualities together into something so hopeless and terrifying that it defied reason and comfort, amplified by all the terrors of the mental hospital rolled together. A mother's scream of danger closing in on her child. A soldier's scream of pain as he sees his wound and knows it speaks of death. Something ancient and animal that emerges only in the rarest and most fearsome of moments. It was as if something fixed firmly in the center of things was suddenly, abruptly gone, and it was too much to bear.
I never learned who emitted that scream, but it became a part of all of us who heard it. And stayed with us, no matter how much time had passed.
I pushed out into the corridor directly behind Peter, who was moving quickly toward the sound. I was only peripherally aware of some of the others, who were shrinking to the sides, hugging the walls. I saw Napoleon pushing himself into a corner and Newsman, suddenly not curious in the slightest, huddling down as if he could cloak himself from the vibrant noise. Peter's footsteps resounded against the corridor floor, as he picked up his pace, and hurried down the path of the echo toward the source of the scream. I caught just the smallest look at his face, which was set with a sudden harshness and clarity that was unfamiliar in the hospital. It was as if the sound had triggered some immense worry within him, and he was trying to outdistance all the fears that accompanied it.
The scream had come from the far end of the corridor, past the entrance to the women's dormitory. But the memory of the scream was as real in my mind as it was that morning in the Amherst Building. It curled around me, like smoke from afire, and I grasped my pencil and wrote furiously on the wall of my apartment, fearing every second that the Angel's great mocking laughter would supplant it in my recollection, and I needed to get it down before that took place. In my imagination, I could see Peter, running headlong fast, as if he could outrace the echo.
Peter rushed forward, sprinting down the Amherst Building corridor, knowing that only one thing in the world could generate that sort of despair in a person, even a mad one: death. He dodged the other patients, who were shrinking from the sound, near panicked, unsettled, and filled with explosions of anxiety and fear, as they tried to escape a noise that terrified them. Even the Catos and the retarded men, who so often seemed oblivious to the entirety of the world around them, were pushing to the walls, trying to hide. One man was rocking back and forth in a squat, his hands held tight over his ears. Peter could hear the doleful drumbeat of his own shoes slapping hard against the flooring, and he understood that there was something within him that always drove him hard toward dying.
Francis was right behind him, fighting the urge to flee in the opposite direction, swept up and carried along by Peter's headlong rush. He could hear Big Black's deep voice, shouting commands, 'Get back, please! Get back! Let us through!' as the attendant and his brother raced down the hallway. A nurse in white uniform came out from behind the wire mesh station. Her name was Nurse Richards, but of course she was called Nurse Riches instead, but the elegance of her nickname was ruined by the look of unaccustomed distress and outright terror in her eyes.
By the entrance to the women's dormitory, a disheveled woman with wiry gray hair was rocking back and forth and keening to herself. Another was pirouetting about in circles. A third had put her forehead against the wall and was mumbling something in what Francis thought might be a foreign language, but might also have been gibberish; it was impossible to tell. Two others were wailing, sobbing, and had thrown themselves to the floor where they twitched and moaned as if possessed by devils. He could not tell if any one of the women he saw had issued the scream. It might have been any one of them, or someone else whom he had not' seen But it seemed to him that the noise of despair was still in the air around them, an unrelenting siren's call dragging them inexorably forward. Inside his own head, his voices were shouting warnings, trying to get Francis to stop, to retreat, to run away from danger. It took a strong physical effort to ignore them, and he tried hard to keep pace with Peter, as if the Fireman's sense of reason and understanding might actually carry him along as well.
Peter hesitated only for a moment by the doorway, turning rapidly toward the disheveled woman, and demanding forcefully, 'Where?' in a voice that bellowed authority.
The woman pointed toward the end of the corridor, to the stairwell behind what were supposed to be locked doors, and then burst out in a cackle and laugh, that disintegrated almost as swiftly into a series of wracking sobs.
Peter stepped forward, Francis directly behind him, and reached out for the handle on the large steel door. He pushed it open in a single, unafraid motion, then stopped.
'Holy Mary, Mother of God!' he burst out.
Peter gasped in a deep breath, then whispered the second part of the prayer,'… Pray for us sinners in this the hour of our death…' He started to raise his hand to make the sign of the cross, all that Catholic School training coming back to him in an instant, but he stopped in mid motion
Francis craned past him, felt all the air drain from his chest and recoiled sharply. He
