Over the Edge – Alex 03
Jonathan Kellerman
Many thanks to Michael Tolwin, M.D., tour guide
IT WAS my first middle-of-the-night crisis call in three years.
A thousand days out of practice, and there I was, bolted, upright in the darkness, clutching the receiver with sleep-slowed fingers, queasy and drowsy but ready for action -my voice soothingly professional even as my brain struggled for a toehold in its climb toward consciousness.
Slipping into the old role with autonomic ease.
There was a stirring from the other side of the bed. The phone had wrenched Robin from sleep, too. A blade of lace-filtered starlight striped her face, the perfect features restfully blank.
'Who is it, Alex?'
'The service.'
'What's the matter?'
'I'm not sure. Go back to sleep, hon, I'll take it in the library.'
She looked at me questioningly, then rolled away in a swaddle of covers. I threw on a robe and left the bedroom.
After switching on the lights and wincing at the glare, I found paper and pencil and picked up the receiver.
'I'm back.'
'This one sounds like a real emergency, Doctor. He's breathing real hard and not making much sense. I had to ask him several times for his name before he caught on, and then he screamed it at me. I'm not sure, but it sounded like Jimmy Catmus or Cadmus.'
'Jamey Cadmus.' Uttering the name brought me completely awake, as if by incantation. Memories that had been buried for half a decade surged forth with the clarity of yesterday. Jamey was someone you didn't forget.
'Put him on,' I said.
The phone line crackled.
'Hello, Jamey?'
Silence.
'Jamey? This is Dr. Delaware.'
I wondered if the connection had gone through.
'Jamey?'
Nothing, then a low moan and laboured, shallow breathing.
'Jamey, where are you?'
The reply was a strangled whisper: 'Help me!'
'Of course, Jamey. I'm here to help. What's the matter?'
'Help me hold it together. Together. Together. It's all . . . coming apart. The stink of it. Stink flesh of all seasons ... stinking lesions... ripped apart by the reeking blade - '
Until then I'd conjured an image of him as I'd seen him last: solemnly prepubescent, blue-eyed, milky- skinned, hair black and shiny as a helmet. A twelve-year-old boy. But the voice on the telephone was a tortured baritone, undeniably masculine. The juxtaposition of visual and aural was bizarre, unsettling - the boy lip-synching the words of an adult ventriloquist.
'Easy, Jamey. It's all right.' Taking special care to be gentle: 'Where are you?'
More silence, then jumbled spurts of words, as erratic and staccato as automatic-weapons fire: 'Stop telling me that! Always telling me that stink. I hear you lying telling me the sudden burst of valve arterial . . . plumes of the nightbird ... I am so ... - Shut up! I've heard enough stink! The dark has gone stink - masturbating master . . . '
Word salad.
A gasp and his voice trailed off.
'I'm here, Jamey. I'm staying right with you.' When there was no reply, I went on: 'Have you taken something?'
'Dr. Delaware?' Suddenly he seemed calm, surprised at my presence.
'Yes. Where are you - '
'It's been a long time, Dr. D.,' he said mournfully.
'Yes, it has, Jamey. It's good to hear from you.'
No answer.
'Jamey, I want to help you, but I need to know what's going on. Please tell me where you are.'
The silence stretched to an uncomfortable length.
'Have you taken anything? Done anything to hurt yourself?'
'I'm in hell stink, Dr. D. Hell's bells. A glass canyon.'
'Tell me about it. Where is this canyon?'
'You know!' he snarled. 'They told you! They tell me all the time! An abyss - a piss! - glass and steel stink.'
'Where, Jamey?' I said softly. 'Tell me exactly.'
His breathing quickened and grew louder.
'Jamey - '
The cry was sudden, wounded, a pain-filled whisper.
'Oh! The earth stinking, soaked scarlet . . . opening lips . . The plumes are rankstink . . . They told me so, the stinking liars!'
I tried to break through, but he'd retreated absolutely into a private nightmare. Maintaining the eerie whisper, he held a rambling dialogue with the voices in his head, debating, cajoling, cursing the demons that threatened to engulf him until the curses gave way to abject terror and impotent sobbing. Powerless to stem the hallucinatory flow, I waited it out, my own heartbeat hastened now, shivering despite the warmth of the room.
Finally his voice dissipated in a funnel of sucking breaths. Taking advantage of the silence, I tried to reel him back.
'Where's the glass canyon? Tell me exactly, Jamey.'
'Glass and steel and miles of tubing. Serpentine . . . Rubber snakes and rubber walls . . . ' More shallow breathing. 'Goddamn white zombies bouncing bodies off the walls .. . needle games
It took me a moment to process that.
'Are you in a hospital?'
He laughed hollowly. The sound was frightful. 'They call it that.'
'Which one?'
'Canyon Oaks.'
I knew the place by reputation: small, private, and very expensive. I felt momentary relief. At least he hadn't overdosed in some dark alley,
'How long have you been there?'
He ignored the question and started crying again.
'They're killing me with lies, Dr. D.! Programming painlasers through the tender flesh! Sectioning the cortex -draining the juices raping the tender gender flesh - stink-piece by stink piece!'
'Who-'
'Them! . . . flesh eaters . . .white zombies . . . dead-climb all up out of the towerful torrent-shit. . . shit plumes . . . shit birds . . . out of the wetflesh . . . Help me, Dr. D. -fly here help me hold it together . . . beam down! Suction me into another sphere into clean . . . '
'Jamey, I want to help you - '
Before I could finish, he was at it again, his whispers as agonised as if he were being boiled alive. I drew my
