Chapter 9: Don’t Open the Door

Roche pushed the door open. He must have been unconscious for a long time. It was night now, stars scattered across the deep blue sky, and police cars marked PAA crowded around the entrance to the courtyard.

He carried Nunnally down a few steps before his legs gave way. He collapsed onto the ground.

Several uniformed officers ran over. He couldn’t bring himself to answer their questions. Instead, he grabbed one of them by the jacket and managed to get out, “Inside… there’s someone alive. Please, save him. Drake’s still in there. Help me—please, save him…”

Armed to the teeth, black-clad officers flowed past him in two streams and plunged into the strange building. Cold red and blue light flickered across the street. Roche stared at the police lights, dazed. Those same lights would reflect off his face countless times. But by then, he was sure, he’d be standing beneath them instead of helplessly staring at a symbol of hope.

Five years passed just like that.

After the Escher Manor incident, Roche was transferred back to the Medical Department. He went on with an ordinary life. After what he’d been through, he’d suddenly come to appreciate the daily grind. At least when he was busy, he didn’t have to face the possibility that a friend he’d been laughing with yesterday would be a corpse the next day.

Once Nunnally recovered, she left Carlton and vanished without a trace. Roche went looking for her several times, but every attempt came to nothing.

Maybe that was life. Everyone had their own path, and the people around them could only watch. They couldn’t step in and change it.

Roche wearily opened his locker. He’d just finished work and was changing before heading home. Koin had been right: the Medical Department involved plenty of overtime, and the work was exhausting. But as long as Roche stayed busy, the worst memories and the PTSD rarely came back to haunt him. Day after day, he numbed himself with work.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

“Dr. Linvanx,” a young nurse said as she hurried in. “The patient in Room 0357 has disappeared again.”

Roche paused in the middle of getting dressed. After a moment, he sighed. “I know. I’ll go find him. Don’t report it to the higher-ups yet.”

“I can do that, but, Doctor, this is the third time this year. Isn’t that getting a little too frequent? Mr. Drake’s episodes, I mean.”

“Yeah. I’ll figure something out.”

A deep sense of helplessness settled over Roche. He knew he was just saying that to placate her—and himself.

After his rescue, Drake had fallen into a severe psychosis. He seemed unable to believe he’d been rescued at all, insisting instead that he was still trapped inside Escher Manor. Worse, he believed Koin and the others were still alive. Once, Roche had gone to visit him. At first, everything had seemed perfectly normal. Drake had even offered Roche one of the oranges the nurse had left for him. But it hadn’t lasted. Drake had relapsed, and Roche had to call for the orderlies to restrain him in bed again. Trapped in his straitjacket, Drake had struggled so hard that it scraped his wrists and neck raw, leaving one bloodied wound after another.

Over time, those areas had become covered in terrible ridges of scar tissue.

They’d tried nearly every treatment available over the years, but Drake hadn’t improved. If anything, he’d only grown worse, losing his ability to understand the world around him. The thing he said to Roche most often, despite still being perfectly articulate, was, “Can’t you wake up? The world you see is the fake one!”

By now, Drake had probably memorized the hospital layout and the staff’s shift changes. He’d been trying to escape since the beginning of the year, and he’d already managed it twice. Once, he jumped into an abandoned stagnant pond and almost drowned in the foul, filthy water. Another time, he ran across the road and was hit by a car. They’d barely managed to save him, and he still had steel pins in his lower leg.

As a precaution, Roche had arranged for Drake to wear an electronic ankle monitor after the near-drowning. He knew it was the sort of thing used to track criminals, but he couldn’t think of anything better.

He opened his phone with his heart in his throat. Thankfully, Drake hadn’t gone far this time. He was in the PAA staff dormitory.

Roche hurried back to the dorms. The door to his own room stood open. Strange. He was sure he’d locked it when he left a few days ago.

He rushed inside and found the place looking as if a typhoon had swept through it. Everything had been dragged out and thrown on the floor: clothes, sofa cushions, fruit bowls, medicine. There was hardly room to stand. The refrigerator gaped open, completely empty. Roche hadn’t been back in a long time, and its former owner had died at Escher Manor long ago.

“Drake?”

He called out tentatively. To his surprise, Drake answered. He strolled out of the inner room with a bruise on his face—Roche had no idea what he’d hit—and a pizza box balanced in one hand. Roche recognized the brand. Koin used to buy it.

It all felt as clear as yesterday.

“What are you looking for?”

“Evidence to convince you,” Drake answered naturally, his reasoning clear and his thoughts coherent. The only problem was that the thing he was trying to prove was wrong from the start.

Roche covered his face and slowly slid down the doorframe. He was truly exhausted. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered looking after this madman. Drake’s whole family was dead. If he died in the hospital one day, no one would care. Koin had stabbed Drake once, and the only reason Roche had been angry was that he shouldn’t have stuck a knife in him.

Even if Roche counted their old friendship, five years should have worn the feeling down by now. Besides, Roche couldn’t even remember their past together.

He honestly felt he’d done all he could.

Drake stopped beside him and opened the pizza box.

“Look.”

It was a cold pizza topped with raw ground beef. The meat had been crushed into a pulp, and blood had soaked through the crust.

Without lifting his head, Roche asked, “Which store did you rob this time?”

Drake had done it before. The time he jumped in the pond, he’d smashed an ATM, taken the money, and bought a ticket to the abandoned park before diving into the stagnant water. The media had hounded Roche for weeks afterward. Drake, who’d stopped breathing until Roche resuscitated him, had coughed up a mouthful of foul green water and sneered, “It’s all fake anyway.”

“Who robbed anyone? I didn’t.” Drake crouched beside him. “Roche, can you stop lying to yourself and running away from reality?”

Roche replied dully, “I don’t want to hear this. I’m tired.”

“Good. I’m about done playing house with you in your made-up little happy world.” Drake didn’t bother hiding his contempt. “Keep pretending you’re a useless hero who tried his best to save people.”

“But the dead are dead. You can’t change the fact that Nunnally burned to death right in front of you.”

“What are you talking about? Nunnally’s fine. She just didn’t want to stay in Carlton.”

Drake stood up and looked down at him. “Believe whatever you want.”

“Come on. Tell me what happened to the Eschers.”

“What do you mean?”

“What happened to them? There’s no way something that big could happen without making any news. So tell me.”

“The Escher family… I think the news said—”

What had it said? They were dead? The whole family had been wiped out? Locked away? Had there even been a report? Roche racked his brain, but the memory was as hazy as a dream. No, that wasn’t right. He’d personally executed the two Escher children. He’d rescued Nunnally. He’d sat on the steps of Escher Manor. He was a doctor in the Medical Department, and Drake had gone mad. That was what happened.

He put on his white coat, closed his locker, and walked to Room 0357.

Drake was lying in bed. As soon as he saw Roche, he burst into hysterical laughter.

“You’re starting again, aren’t you? Now you’re going to pretend nothing happened and start over from the beginning?”

“Just cooperate with your treatment.” Roche went over and carefully inspected Drake’s restraints. “Once you’re better, you’ll be able to—”

“Be able to what? What? Tell me!” Drake roared at him. “How many times do I have to say it? You never got out! You’re still in this goddamn shithole of a house! Nunnally’s dead! Dead! She burned to death right in front of you! She was the one they burned—not me! Fuck!”

When he shouted the final word, Drake suddenly choked as though he couldn’t get enough air. He gasped for breath, then closed his eyes.

A nurse patted Roche on the shoulder. “Dr. Linvanx, the patient’s having an episode. Could you step out for a moment?”

“Sure. Of course.” Roche nodded, left the room, and gently pulled the door shut.

But he didn’t leave right away. He stood outside and watched Drake through the observation window, and the longer he looked, the more a cold dread crept over him.

He’d seen plenty of patients having episodes. Every one of them had their own peculiarities: chewing glass, riding around on broomsticks, or chasing people down to ask whether a heart could only beat fifty times a minute, and whether anyone whose heart beat faster than that wasn’t human. But Drake seemed different. He didn’t look like he was having an episode. It was more like someone invisible was hurting him.

He was clearly tied to the bed, with no one beside him, yet he suddenly seemed to be yanked upright by the hair. His head snapped to one side, as if someone had punched him in the cheekbone. The skin there swelled and reddened at once.

Then his nose. Blood streamed down, into his mouth. Drake laughed, his teeth stained red with blood.

“You must think you’re so great. So great, and so right.”

Bound and unable to move, he was kicked in the ribs and stomach by the invisible assailant. He couldn’t even curl up to protect himself. A smile still lingered on his face, but then he started vomiting. Vomit mixed with blood surged from his mouth, soaking the pillow and sheets.

“Give me a break,” he said through a cough—blood or vomit had clearly gone down the wrong way. “Don’t expect that piece-of-shit god of yours to protect you. And don’t dream that it favors you. You know who it would choose? Me. It would choose me.”

Then he lifted his head. Red welts appeared around his neck, as if someone were squeezing his throat, cutting off his breath. His face went from pale to red, then blue, but he still managed to speak in a hoarse voice.

“You’ve got too much to lose. You’re not like me. I’m trash.”

Blood seeped from his eyes.

Roche couldn’t take it anymore. He turned to the nurse and asked if she could give Drake a sedative. It had to be better than leaving him awake to suffer like that.

The nurse didn’t answer. No one did. The corridor was empty. Only Roche remained, one hand gripping the doorknob, as if someone had glued it there.

Don’t open the door. Don’t open it.

He heard someone speak and turned. The hospital courtyard was packed with people, all dressed in different clothes, none of them with faces. They spoke in unison.

“Don’t open the door.”

Drake said, “Get a fucking grip. Stop hiding in your own mind.”

A raven swooped down. It landed on the concrete windowsill, in the gooseberry thicket, on the rubber running track, in the cold wind, and on the spinning world. It cawed, raucous and relentless.

“Don’t open the door.”

Roche stood at the eye of this raven-storm, wings surging around him like a flood. Was this the beginning of the world’s collapse, or the graceful arrival of a new age?

Someone stood behind him, silent, making his absence impossible by never having left.