Joseph led Aaron from his room, through the communal area, and to a conference room that was adjacent to it. He hadn’t noticed the room before, but that was due to the door being right beside the nurse’s station. A woman — the psychiatrist, presumably — sat in one of the chairs at a corner of the folding tables, going over a case file. She stood when Aaron entered and they shook hands before sitting back down.
“I’m Dr. Winters, it’s nice to meet you,” she said. “I was going over your file and it says you’ve been having a hard time lately. Can you tell me more about that and why it brought you here?”
“To be honest, I’m starting to feel pretty stupid about the whole thing. I’ve got some problems with anxiety but it’s usually not this bad. This weekend has been pretty severe, but now I’m not sure if coming here was the right choice.”
The doctor nodded, scratching a few notes. “Can you tell me more about how your anxiety has been more severe lately?”
“Well, I don’t know if I’d call it paranoia, but I keep feeling like I’m being watched or that I’m about to be attacked.”
“Have you had any significant life changes lately that might have triggered your heightened anxiety?”
Aaron took a moment before answering. He couldn’t talk about any of the stuff that had really been going on without sounding wildly delusional, but it wouldn’t be very helpful to say he couldn’t think of anything at all. Thankfully, he’d already given this some thought.
“I got roped into playing in an office softball league. My first game was yesterday afternoon and, uh, I felt like I was on display.” He took a breath. “Everyone was watching and I never really played baseball, so I was sure I’d make a fool of myself.”
Winters hummed thoughtfully. “How do you feel that might be related to feeling pursued or threatened?” The question wasn’t a challenge, but an invitation.
“There was this man there, watching the game from the park,” Aaron said. “I thought he might have been homeless — and maybe that says something about me that I could be afraid of a homeless person for no reason — but I could’ve sworn he was watching me. Not the game, me specifically.” He shrugged. “It made me feel like… like a target or something.”
More notes were added to the file, then the doctor said, “I can see how that might put you on edge. After the game, did your feelings of anxiety seem to be attached to anyone or anything specific? Did you have some idea about who might have been a danger to you, or why?”
“No, it was all very non-specific.”
“But you did have an altercation with someone,” the doctor said. “Can you tell me more about that?”
“I think ‘altercation’ might be a strong word, but it fits well enough and it was the thing that freaked me out the most,” Aaron said. “I went for a walk last night after I had a bad dream. I thought someone was following me and it turned out they were. They stayed on my tail through a bunch of random turns and ran to catch up with me after I ducked into an alley to hide. When I confronted them, it turned out it was someone I knew from around the neighborhood.”
Aaron paused for a moment and Winters waited patiently for him to continue.
“The thing is, in that moment I fully expected they meant to jump me. It could have been a mugging or just someone who didn’t like me, I didn’t know,” he said, taking another breath. “But I did know they were following me and I couldn’t think of any reason for that that wasn’t scary.”
“You say there was a confrontation,” Winters said. “Can you elaborate on that? I’d like a clearer picture of what happened.”
Aaron told her the story; how he’d felt like he was being followed, tried to shake the person behind him, and eventually jumped out of an alley to hold them against a wall. He left out certain things, like lifting Jeff a clear foot off the ground, of course.
The doctor listened, for the most part, but interjected the occasional question. Many of the questions were incredibly specific and didn’t always seem relevant. Aaron didn’t know why she wanted to know what bar he’d first met Jeff at years ago, but he tried his best to provide answers. It took five or six similar questions for Aaron to realize she was also establishing whether he had any significant problems with his memory.
“Just a couple more questions, if that’s alright,” Winters said. “Your medical history doesn’t indicate any current medications; have you had psychiatric meds in the past?”
Aaron nodded. “Yeah, but it’s been a while. I used to get antidepressants and meds for ADHD, but I stopped a little over a year ago.”
“Why did you stop?”
“Fell out of the habit, I guess,” Aaron shrugged. “Then it was like I wanted to prove I didn’t need them.”
“No meds for anxiety?”
“Once, in my senior year of high school. I didn’t notice any major changes, although that was when I finally learned how to swallow pills.”
“A lot of people have trouble swallowing pills,” Winters said. “Oh, before it slips my mind, I wanted to ask if you’ve been seeing or hearing anything that no one else seems aware of since this period of acute anxiety started.”
Aaron shook his head. “No. Well, I don’t think so, but I guess I can’t really know for sure. Nothing that seemed out of place, anyways.”
The doctor chuckled politely. “That’s fair. But nothing that stands out as unusual or that was there one moment and gone the next?”
Aaron immediately thought back to the first hidden figure he’d seen at dinner, the one holding the scary knife. He didn’t know why he’d seen that man or why there had been a moment when he was certain they had been in a fight. He definitely had no idea why the stranger disappeared while the other hidden person — the new patient — walked back to the dorm rooms.
None of that was the kind of thing you told a psychiatrist in a psychiatric hospital if you believed it was actually real. Aaron had gone to some lengths to get evidence he wasn’t imagining everything happening around him, so it wasn’t something he wanted to share with the doctor. He decided to just shake his head instead of answering out loud; less chance he couldn’t play it off well that way.
Dr. Winters seemed to accept his answer at face value because their meeting ended shortly after. She prescribed a low dosage medication for anxiety and told him to see the nurse’s station if he experienced any acute episodes. She also advised him to start seeing a doctor regularly again.
“On the whole,” she concluded, “I suspect you’re experiencing a spike in anxiety largely because you’ve let your overall treatment lapse. It most likely came on so strong because of the combination of recent lifestyle changes and the stress of this softball game. I’d say the game was what really got your anxiety going and left you feeling on edge. Add in the bad luck of a drunk friend trying to chase you down to talk to you, aggravating everything already going on, and it was a perfect storm to induce something resembling a panic attack.”
“That makes sense, doctor,” Aaron said.
“I think these meds will help even out your anxiety and avoid further strong responses, at least for long enough to start seeing a psychiatrist on your own, again. I don’t think we need to keep you on a hold, but I’d like to complete your forty eight-hour stay for observation, just to make sure we’re not overlooking anything. Does that sound alright to you?”
Two days locked in the hospital with a potential assassin didn’t sound alright, but it wasn’t the right time to press the issue. He wasn’t even sure if she was telling him he could check himself out or not and, besides, what the hell was he supposed to say? What Aaron needed was to make contact with Barrett and hope Mr. Private Jet could find some way to get him released.
“That sounds fine,” he replied. “I’m feeling pretty stupid about this whole thing, so I might change my mind later, but your advice is sound and there’s no point making a fuss over it.”
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After he said his goodbyes to Dr. Winters, Aaron sat in the common room with his book, pretending to read. He wanted to figure out a way he might get himself to sleep before he was tired, keep trying to remember the rest of that phone number, and, as an added bonus, it let him keep an eye on the lurking patient.
Asking for sleeping medication seemed like the most obvious solution, but Aaron knew it wouldn’t work. He’d proven heavily resistant to anything weaker than general anesthesia, and even that took longer than it should to put him out and didn’t keep him down as long as it was supposed to. There were more practical concerns, too. If he got sleeping pills that were strong enough to knock him out, he risked sleeping so deeply he’d be even more vulnerable to the lurker sneaking into his room again.
Eventually, Aaron just went to his room and laid down in bed. He’d fallen asleep easily enough after lunch, so he hoped he would drift off again. Hours later, he was both frustrated and excruciatingly bored. The time hadn’t been a complete waste, at least; he had a plan to wake himself up from the dream if he got another warning like last time.
It was a crazy plan, but dream logic was nine parts crazy and one part repressed memories. Or something like that.
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The stone hallway was broad and, unlike any previous dream, had a ceiling. Like the floor and walls, it was made of stone but included pointed arches in a Gothic style. The dragging sound of the Conspicuous Pursuer that had haunted his dreams was present, but distant. The hallway ended a few steps ahead at a T intersection.
Aaron strode towards it, picturing the white bangle the woman in robes had told him to focus on to make contact. When he reached the intersection, he found the metal door to the private jet set into a wall just a few steps away. He walked towards it and swung open. He took the steps two at a time.
Once he was inside the cabin, he turned to look behind him. Sure enough, the door was shut. The woman in the robe was kneeling on her mat, as before, but there was no sign of Barrett in the cabin.
“I’m here,” Aaron said.
The woman in the robe raised a single slender finger in an unmistakable gesture to wait, then a soft, murmuring chant filled the cabin. Warm, humid air washed over Aaron’s back and neck. He turned to face the door and found it gone.
Instead of a stone hallway or an airport tarmac, Aaron was looking out into a dense jungle in deep twilight. A man stood no more than twenty feet from the portal, silhouetted against the gloom. Even in the shadows of the wild land, the outline of the figure was unmistakable — a soldier carrying a rifle.
Most Americans would recognize the outline; they’d seen it in countless photographs, movies, and television shows. Aaron, after a second observing the figure, suspected it was a soldier from Vietnam, rather than World War II or Korea. The shape of the rifle alone gave it away, but the rolled-up shirt sleeves and dense jungle reinforced his conclusion.
Suddenly, flames bloomed, engulfing the entire vista in a hellish orange glow. Clouds of superheated death billowed out and upwards. The jungle disappeared, overwritten by a roiling inferno.
The light from the flames washed over the soldier, revealing more details as he slowly turned away from the burning landscape. He was a black man, taller than average, bulky with muscles, and sporting an impressive horseshoe mustache.
He looks like an action star coming right out of an over-the-top ‘80s movie, Aaron thought.
The soldier slowly walked towards the door. The fire was expanding behind him and looked like it might actually spread all the way past them. Aaron took a step to the side of the door, just in case, and a second later the soldier stepped through. Only it wasn’t the powerfully-built infantryman in the jungles of southeast Asia; it was a wiry old man with shots of gray in his close-cropped hair wearing an expensive suit.
“You, uh, you got rid of the mustache,” Aaron said, offering the only thing that came to mind and inwardly cringing at himself.
Barrett chuckled as he ran his fingers around the top of his mouth and stepped away from the — mysteriously closed — hatch. “Just couldn’t hang onto it, but I got used to my upper lip being cold.”
For a moment, Aaron wondered how much of Barrett’s dream was a memory and just how old the older man was. That was quickly replaced by immense relief that he’d commented on Barrett’s lack of a mustache and not on the far more noteworthy fact he seemed to be a few inches shorter.
How the hell does that even happen? Aaron wondered. He doesn’t look like he’s got osteoporosis or anything.
“Glad to see you again, son,” Barrett said, striding past Aaron into the cabin and taking a seat. “Gave us a right scare the way things ended last time.”
Aaron remembered how, the last time he had fallen asleep, he’d been talking with Barrett in this very cabin until his own voice started warning him to wake up. When he had, he’d found someone in his room with unknown intentions. That brought Aaron’s attention back to the moment and the reason he was here. He followed Barrett into the cabin and stood in front of him.
“My name is Aaron Abrams. I’m currently checked in at the Bidwell Center for Psychiatry on Folsom Boulevard in Sacramento, California. I suspect one of the patients here plans to try killing me and… and it might not be the first time someone’s tried that this weekend, although I can’t really remember any previous attempts.”
“What, uh, what’s the reason the hospital believes you have for being there?”
Too deep to hold back now, Aaron told himself. And there’s no shame in taking care of your mental health.
“I was worried I was suffering from paranoid delusions and might hurt someone,” he said after a long, steadying breath. “I’ve downplayed my symptoms significantly and might even be allowed to check out voluntarily, but they’re aware I’m having an episode of acute anxiety and want to keep me for observation.”
“We’ll be there in half an hour, maybe less,” Barrett said. “But if someone is after you, we can’t let you stay asleep, so my apologies for this.”
“Apologies for wha-” Aaron began, as Barrett stood up suddenly and gave him a powerful shove.
Aaron felt something press against the back of his legs and he started to lose his balance. Everything slowed and his mind kicked into overdrive. He assessed the space around him, head moving the slightest degrees to let him take in more of the cabin.
The mystery woman in the robe had snuck up behind him, on hands and knees, and positioned herself as the tabletop in the childhood prank. A whirlwind of memories assailed Aaron; all those times people had picked on him, pushed him around, or otherwise gotten physical when he was young.
Anger threatened to follow in the wake of those memories, a new conduit to let it out when others had been closed for so long. Only Aaron didn’t get angry (anymore) and he slammed that channel shut before it could turn into anything more than irritation.
His mind wasn’t the only thing moving fast; his body also reacted. Before he knew what he was doing, Aaron grabbed both of Barrett’s arms near the shoulders and took a step back to steady himself. He heard a soft grunt behind him then the sound of the woman tumbling across the cabin floor.
Smooth move, Casanova, Aaron chastised himself. Kicking the pretty girl is a great way to make a good impression.
He managed to stop himself from tripping, but the embarrassment mingled with his frustration — not anger, obviously; Aaron didn’t get angry — and he felt a quivering frost spread all the way up his spine, its icy fingers reaching out around the back of his head and grasping at the sides of his face. Not a good sign.
“Don’t shove me,” he growled at the old man.
Barrett was unabashed and merely shrugged. “Your life, and so much more, are on the line. A sudden fall is one of the best ways to wake up from a dream.”
Aaron took a deep, shuddering breath, pulling some of the warmth in the air into himself to fight off the cold.
“I’ve heard that, too,” he said, glad his voice sounded so even. “I even have a plan for waking myself up. I haven’t been looking forward to it, dream or not, but there wasn’t a lot of time to work out the details.”
Taking a step back towards the cabin hatch, Aaron took another steadying breath. “Hopefully, we’ll be meeting face-to-face in a few minutes.”
Without another word, Aaron pulled open the hatch as if it were a normal door. If the jet were in flight at any significant altitude, the pressure outside the cabin should have made that effectively impossible. But had Aaron somehow managed it, there should have been a sudden, explosive decompression. Instead, the cabin was eerily still. The night sky rushed past the opening.
Even more absurd, however, was that the door was hinged on the bottom and opened outwards. Aaron had pulled it open into the cabin, like a portal on a submarine.
“That’s impossible,” Barrett said.
“In more ways than one, I imagine,” Aaron replied, then leapt out into the night.
“The plane’s not even in the air right now,” Barrett muttered in the odd stillness of the cabin, watching Aaron plummet away from the plane and disappear into the darkness.
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Aaron woke up to see the flash of a knife. It was plummeting straight for his heart.
That’s not good, he thought.