Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [162]
Slade shrieked, covering his ears with claw-like hands and shaking his entire body violently, the IV drip line flailing back and forth. The sound ripped through the stillness, shockingly loud, and Slade’s entire body seemed to convulse.
“That is why you will kill yourself, Mr. Slade,” Pendergast said. “Because you can. I’ve provided you with the means to do it. In your hand.”
“Yaaahhhhhhhhh!” Slade screamed, writhing, the tortured movements of his body a kind of feedback from his own screams.
Pendergast rocked more quickly, the chair creaking, rolling the balls ceaselessly in his hand, faster and faster.
“I could have done it anytime!” Slade cried. “Why should I do it now? Now, now, now, now, now?”
“You couldn’t have done it before,” Pendergast said.
“June has a gun,” Slade said. “A lovely gun, gun, gun.”
“No doubt she is careful to keep it locked up.”
“I could overdose on morphine! Just go to sleep, sleep!” His voice subsided into a rapid gibbering, almost like the humming of a machine.
Pendergast shook his head. “I’m sure June is equally careful to regulate the amount of morphine you have access to. I would guess the nights are hardest—like about now, as you’re quickly using up your allotted dose without recourse for the endless, endless night ahead.”
“Eeeyaaahhhhhhhhhh!” Slade screamed again—a wild, ululating scream.
“In fact, I’m sure she and her husband are careful to limit your life in countless ways. You’re not her patient—you’re her prisoner.”
Slade shook his head, his mouth working frantically, soundlessly.
“And with all her ministrations,” Pendergast went on, “all her medication, her perhaps more exotic means of holding your attention—she can’t stop all those sensations from creeping in. Can she?”
Slade didn’t respond. He pressed the morphine button once, twice, three times, but apparently nothing more was coming through. Then he slumped forward, head hitting the felt of the desk with a loud crack, jerked it back up, his lips contracting spastically.
“Usually I consider suicide a cowardly way out,” Pendergast said. “But in your case it’s the only sensible solution. Because for you, life really is so much infinitely worse than death.”
Still, Slade didn’t respond. He banged his head again and again onto the felt.
“Even the least amount of sensory input is exquisitely painful,” Pendergast went on. “That’s why this environment of yours is so controlled, so minimalist. Yet I have introduced new elements. My voice, the smell of the charcoal, the curls and colors of its smoke, the squeaking of the chair, the sound of the billiard balls, the ticking of the clock. I would estimate you are now a vessel that is, so to speak, full to bursting.”
He continued, his voice low and mesmerizing. “In less than half a minute now, the cuckoo of that clock is going to sound—twelve times. The vessel will burst. I don’t know exactly how many of the cuckoo calls you’ll be able to withstand before you use that gun on yourself. Perhaps four, perhaps five, perhaps even six. But I know that you will use it—because the sound of that gun firing, that final sound, is the only answer. The only release. Consider it my gift to you.”
Slade looked up. His forehead was red from where it had impacted the table, and his eyes wheeled in his head as if set free of each other. He raised his gun hand toward Pendergast, let it fall back, raised it again.
“Good-bye, Dr. Slade,” Pendergast said. “Just a few seconds now. Let me help count them down for you. Five, four, three, two, one…”
78
HAYWARD WAITED, PERCHED ON A GURNEY, in the gleaming room full of medical equipment. The other occupants of the large space—June Brodie and her silent husband—stood like statues by the far wall, listening, waiting. Occasionally a voice would sound—a cry of rage or despair, a strange gibbering laugh