The other side.
A dark object moves through the light.
“Took a little breather there, did you?” the object says, and I recognize the man’s voice, see his fuzzy outline, but before I can get a better fix on him, darkness snatches the opportunity away, falling over me, and again, my world disappears.
Again, I am gone.
I’m not sure what day it is. I’m unclear how long it’s been since I first woke up, and I certainly don’t know the length of time I was lying here before that.
I don’t even know where here is.
Well, I know it’s a hospital, and the man with kind eyes is a doctor of some sort. Someone might have explained more, but if they did, it eludes me. Time and memory are flexible in my grasp.
The next minutes, or hours, or days, continue this way. Periods of light—or life—followed by periods of darkness. During the times I am present, the man reappears. This man tells me things, and while I have a hard time retaining most of them, there is one that sticks with me.
You’ve come a long way, Christopher.
But on this morning, or this afternoon, or—I can’t really tell the time of day—I feel significantly better. My mind is less cloudy, sight clearer, limbs a little sturdier. And I see . . .
Sunlight?
My vision wanders through the clearing haze and finds a window. I blink and squint as my eyes adjust to harsh rays bending through the pane. There are blue skies, and as I drop my gaze toward the ground, shiny reflections of light dance and bound back at me.
Cars. I’m looking at cars, lots of them lined up in neat little rows.
A parking lot.
I’m about to look back into the room, when something on the windowsill captures my attention. A book of some kind—no, it’s actually a notebook, and now my curiosity widens, because I wonder what’s on its pages. Curiosity that brings my legs to the floor and feet moving toward the window in slow, unsteady steps.
I reach for the notebook, open it.
And there I find sequences of numbers and letters running down the paper in orderly columns. I flip through the rest, and page after page, line after line, it’s all the same—a seemingly endless array of alphanumeric codes in handwriting that looks familiar.
My handwriting.
I have no memory of jotting down this information, but there isn’t much I can recall these days. I stare out my window at the parking lot, wondering what this all means, then do a double take at one of the cars. I look in the notebook, then at the car, then back inside the notebook. The vehicle’s license plate tag matches one of the entries on this page.
I study the rows of numbers, stare out at the parking lot with its rows and rows of cars, and a vague wave of familiarity rolls through me.
I return to bed, and an overwhelming yet inexplicable sense of heartbreak fades into darkness.
86
“How are you doing there?”
The man is back. I am back.
“What . . . where have I—?” It’s easier to speak now.
“Everything is okay,” he says. “All of this is normal.”
I’m not sure what normal is, because my world feels so indescribably abnormal.
“Tell me what’s happened,” I say. “Tell me how I got here.”
“You’ve come a long way, Christopher.”
“But where have I been?”
“That story,” he says, “is even longer.”
After pulling a chair close to my bed, he sits, and for the first time I notice the badge clipped to his shirt.
Dr. Donald Raymond.
Also for the first time, I realize how pale his blue eyes are.
“Donald Raymond,” I say. “Donny—” My body stiffens.
“It’s okay.” He places a hand on my arm to offer comfort. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
And something in his voice tells me I don’t.
“It was . . .”
“Go on,” he encourages, watching me with care.
“Like looking in a mirror . . . you were my . . . everything was . . .”
“Reversed,” he says with a nod of gentle acknowledgment.
Doctor Raymond clasps his hands together and peers out through the window across my room. I can tell he’s thinking that where we’re going won’t be easy.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Christopher, do you understand where you are right now?”
“A hospital.”
He nods. “Do you know which?”
I shake my head.
“This is Loveland Psychiatric Hospital.”
The name jogs my memory as images lift through the entrenched layers of my mind. “I . . . I think I remember being here.”
“I expected you might. The thing is, those memories are going to be flawed.”
“Flawed?”
“Mired by distortions—most of them, anyway. Now that you’ve come out of your previous state, we can straighten those out.”
“Out of what state?”
“The one you went into a year ago.”
“Wait . . . A year? I’ve been here for a year?”
“Your body was. As for your mind . . . that’s a different story.”
A vision streaks through my memory. I can’t identify it. Something dark and swift, much like a bounding shadow. “It’s like my brain keeps turning the memories on and off, and they happen so fast, I have trouble grabbing hold of—”
No sooner does the last word leave my mouth than it happens again. Another phantom memory slips through my consciousness, and a floodgate breaks open, images and sounds firing through it.
I see Loveland’s dark walls swelling, pulsating, and closing in all around me. I see the shadowy hallways of Alpha Twelve, every door swung open, eerie white light spilling out through them. I hear screams, mad cries, and . . .
This place is broken!
I try to chase it all away, but sitting directly across from me now is a psychopath named Donny Ray Smith, drilling me with those eyes. He rises from the chair and reaches toward me. I lurch back, but before he gets close enough, like falling and glittery dust, Donny Ray dissipates.
Dr. Raymond returns.
“Christopher?”