Flashback

“Uh-huh. Some people say they remember when they were babies. Sign of intelligence, they say.”

Jack did not respond.

“I can’t remember before I was ten,” Theo snorted. “Guess I must be pretty dumb. How about you?”

Jack eyed the man. “No. No. Nothing.”

Suddenly things turned strange. In a protracted moment, the man became a still life, freezing in place on the ladder with the hammer raised, his mouth moving in slow motion, pulsing out queer utterances, the syllables stretched to alien phonics. As the man’s eyes bore down on Jack for a response, Jack felt something like an eel slither through his gut.

Bad feeling.

“Don’t remember stuff from when you were small? Me, neither, but I wish I did.”

Jack couldn’t speak—as if what had slithered through him shot into his brain and bored a hole in the language centers, leaving him gasping for words and quaking with an irrational sense of dread.

“Hey, you all right?”

“Mmmm.” Which was all Jack could squeeze out.

“You looked a little …”

God, what the hell is this? What’s passing through me?

His lungs caught some air and he sucked it up to his voice box. “I’m okay,” he rasped. “Little dizzy.”

“Uh-huh.” And the guy turned back to the shade.

Jack’s head was soupy and he closed his eyes as the man tapped away. Outside, the thunder was growling out to sea, the lightning flickering through Jack’s eyelids. The man hammered away, and with each smack a small seismic crack shot through Jack.

Jack opened his eyes. Something about the image of that guy on the ladder clawed at Jack’s consciousness. Something not right. But he couldn’t grasp it. Whatever, it flitted across his mind like a bird coming in to roost, then just at the last second shot away.

Jack was positive he had never seen this Theo before because the man’s face didn’t fit any memory template. Then again, Jack had not laid eyes on a lot of faces of late. Maybe all the toxins had turned sections of his brain into Swiss cheese. A reasonable explanation, except the guy would surely have said something.

So why the dark sensation? Maybe someone from a dream. And he’d had a boatload of those of late.

“You want some water or something?”

“I’m okay.” Jack could hear fear in the breathy scrape of his voice.

The man eyed him suspiciously, then nodded and went back to banging something in place, his mouth still moving.

Jesus, what’s happening to me? Jack asked himself. What the hell is going on in my head?

Without expression, the man locked hard eyes on his. “I asked you a question.”

Jack didn’t remember the question. Maybe he’d nodded off for a moment and just dreamed he had. He looked up at Theo to reply, but the sensation was back, and worse—leaving him thinking that he had lived these moments before. Some wicked deja vu.

In an instant an inexplicable anxiety set Jack’s diaphragm in spasms. His throat constricted as if a snake were coiling around it. His forehead was a cold aspic of sweat, and his chest and neck were a flash of prickers.

Heart attack. I’m having a heart attack.

“Hey, you want me to call the nurse?”

Jack could not answer.

Shit. Worked yourself into cardiac arrest. A killer surge of self-inflicted anxiety, and you won yourself a permanent flat line.

But another thought cut across that one: No. Not a heart attack. His heart was strong, they had said, and at the moment was pounding so hard that his shirt was pulsing. No, something else. What had passed through him was a bolt of black horror.

Something about this repairman.

He wants to hurt you.

The guy glared down at him. And in Jack’s mind, he jumped off the ladder and smashed his head with that shiny ball-peen hammer.

“You having a seizure?”

A skim of panic formed over Jack like ice. Seizure. How did this repairman know about seizures?

But the other voice was back: You’re being an asshole. The guy’s perfectly friendly in his Mr. Fixit overalls and body shirt, up there on his ladder being chatty and doing his business with the blinds. And just because he’s a repairman doesn’t mean a limited vocabulary. You’ve got the problem, pal, not him.

The repairman continued to stare at Jack, the individual slats making razor-edged slashes of light and shade across his features. He look demonic, his mouth a black gash in his brown face, his features jagged. And hot black auger eyes boring through him.

Suddenly the guy climbed down, the hammer in his fist.

Oh, Jesus! God, no. No! his brain screamed. A faint squeal pressed out of a clenched larynx.

The man took no notice and came up to the bed, the hammer still in his hand. Jack let out a gasp and in a flash he saw the hammer come down on the crown of his head with a sickening crack, blood and brain matter splattering all over the bed.

Under his pillow Jack’s hand scrabbled for the nurse-call button.

“This will take care of you,” the guy said.

Jack pressed the button and closed his eyes against the blow.

Nothing.

“Here you go,” and Theo handed Jack a glass of water.

“Everything okay?” Marcy said.

Jack opened his eyes. Theo was standing over him with a glass of water, Marcy by his side. “You okay, Jack?”

Jack grunted. “Can’t sleep.” Theo went back to the blinds.

“No problem.” And she produced a pack of pills. “Theo looks about done, right?”

“Just about.” And he slipped the hammer into his holster and popped the blinds in place and pulled the strings. They were fixed. He dropped them closed to darken the room.

“Great.” Marcy gave the lorazepam to Jack.

Theo gathered his things. “You hang in there, buddy.” And he walked out of the room.

In a matter of moments, the horror had flushed from Jack’s mind.

There, asshole. There’s your crazed psychopath in farmer johns.

Jack sipped more water and closed his eyes, concentrating on the liquid flowing down his parched throat. Damn lucky the proverbial cat had your tongue, or you’d have some fancy explaining to do.

So just what was that? Jack asked himself as he lay there. Just your hot imagination—like those dreams of misshapen creatures killing people.

But that didn’t satisfy. There was something he couldn’t put his finger on. Maybe the guy looked like somebody else. Maybe someone in a movie. Maybe someone in a dream.

A dream. His mind kept on coming back to that.

Like the dream about someone sneaking in here one night and trying to squirt some bad juice into your tubes.

But the other voice was back: The guy’s just some friendly innocent you’re hanging your loonies on. Period. The meds. It’s all the crap they’re giving you, playing crazy dreams when you sleep, giving you the ooga-boogas when awake. That, or you’re losing your mind. Spent six months in the Twilight Zone and came out with half your luggage. Could be worse. Could be sleeping with the jellies.

Nothing made sense, but the incident had left him weary and yearning for oblivion. Marcy dimmed the lights,