"Peter and the Crazies" Chapter 5

5

The front hall of the building was big and echo-y, bare and kind of boring. The walls were painted off-white with photographs of various people on the walls. Dr. Prescott was one of them, so Peter guessed that they were pictures of the doctors at Shadow Hills. The others all seemed to be much older than Dr. Prescott – women with white hair, men with thick glasses and beards streaked with grey.

About the only nice thing in the front hall was the dark woodwork of the stairs that led up to a second level. But to get to that they had to go through the first guard.

He was another man dressed in a policeman-like uniform. He stood behind a wooden barrier that separated the interior of the building side from the lobby. The only way to the other side was a conveyor belt x-ray machine and a seven-foot tall frame that Peter knew was a metal detector.

“Doctor,” the guard said politely.

Dr. Prescott barely acknowledged him before he turned to Peter, Dill, and Gwen.

“None of you are carrying any weapons, are you?” Dr. Prescott asked. “Gwendolyn?”

“Of course not,” she answered resentfully.

“Fine. Put anything metal, like cell phones or keys, on the conveyor belt for the x-ray, and then walk through when the gentleman tells you.”

Peter and Dill pulled their cells out and set them down. Then, one by one, they were waved through the metal detector, followed finally by Dr. Prescott.

The guard tapped on a keyboard next to the x-ray machine, and the conveyor belt started to whir. The guard watched on a white and purplish-looking monitor as the cell phones’ ghostly outlines paraded by and then emerged next to him.

As soon as Peter and Dill had their phones back, Dr. Prescott said, “Alright, let’s go,” and led them further into the building.

The hallways were the same boring off-white as the lobby. The doors were metal with glass windows set into them; doctors’ names appeared beside the doors on little plaques on the wall. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and their footsteps clicked on the white linoleum. There were no windows except at the very farthest end of the hallway, where sunlight peaked in almost a football field’s length away.

Dill looked around suspiciously. “Where are the crazy people?”

“As in our regular sessions, Dill, we don’t use the term ‘crazy’ around here,” Dr. Prescott said mildly.

“Riiiight…cuz they might get mad and try to chop us up,” Dill said as though he finally understood.

“No, because it’s disrespectful, biased, and usually inaccurate. The separation between ‘sane’ and ‘insane’ in our modern-day society is increasingly razor-thin.”

“Yeah, I’m not worried about…whatever you just said, I’m worried about getting chopped up. So where are the crazy people?”

Dr. Prescott gritted his teeth. “I think I’m walking with one of them.”

“Wha – oh. Haha,” Dill said without laughing. “That was funny, Doc.”

“Doctor,” Prescott corrected him.

“Where are we going?” Gwen asked.

“To start our group therapy,” Prescott answered.

“Yeah, but…weren’t those offices back there?”

“Those are administrative offices. My session area is further inside the building.”

“With the crazy people?” Dill asked.

“Yes, Dill, with the crazy people,” Prescott snapped.

They walked up a flight of stairs, down a hall, and up to another guard station, which was far more restrictive than the first. This one had metal bars from floor to ceiling, with a jailhouse door set in the middle. On the other side was a guard, who pressed some buttons and made the door swing open to let them through.

But they weren’t inside the facility yet; they were only in a small office with a few television screens, the guard’s computer, and a camera up in the ceiling. Across from them was a solid metal door set into a concrete wall.

Once the metal bar door CLANGED back into place, the guard typed a few commands into his keyboard.

SHUNK.

The sound of deadbolts drawing back – big, heavy deadbolts – vibrated through the floor. Then the guard walked over to the solid metal door and pulled out a ring of keys.

There’s two different areas, with a tiny tunnel between. Just like the two chain link fences, Peter realized.

“Why are there two different doors?” Gwen asked, her normally cool voice a little worried.

But Peter already knew before Dr. Prescott said anything. As soon as the guard swung open the heavy steel door, the answer was all around them.

Voices filled the air. Maybe it was more accurate to say sounds filled the air – because some of them were obviously human voices, and some were anything but. They were all muted, the way Peter had heard neighbors arguing back in his apartment building in California.

There were moans and shrieks and howls. Whining, whimpering, sobbing. Wails of misery, screams of rage. Babbling that was halfway understandable – “He said he would let me go in broad moonlight, the angels were there, they heard him, they asked for a book, too” – and garbled yammering that sounded like baby demons.

And because they were muted, they blended into one another like a faraway choir of pain and madness.

It was the sound of hell on earth as heard through a padded wall.

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Copyright © 2011 Darren Pillsbury. All rights reserved.