FicWad

The drive to Mikey’s felt like forever. Every set of lights were against me and the evening traffic was still heavy, which moved even slower thanks to a torrential downpour that had begun only five minutes into the journey. I thumped the wheel and screamed my frustration as the line of cars in front of me ground to a halt, again. I was beginning to feel that I could have walked faster, when finally I was able to turn off the jammed road and head into the residential area. Finally, after forty minutes, I pulled up outside Mikey’s house.

The police had long since stopped coming and going as if it were their own and, thankfully, the press had ceased to camp outside looking for a juicy story. Bloodsuckers! And not in a good way; like vampires. No, those freaks were leeches, draining the very life from the people who gave them a livelihood. They would always conveniently forget that we were entitled to a modicum of privacy, just like anyone else. Even before the police had confirmed to us that we may have whatever access we needed again, I had torn down the Police: Do Not Cross tape. Call it a fit of pique, if you like. That’s what the press said, but I resented their intrusion. Why? Because they weren’t trying to prove he was innocent. They didn’t care, just as long as they got the unsolved crime statistics down. Anyone would do, so long as it was a conviction.

I jumped from the car, barely pausing to lock it and headed for the front door. With hindsight, I should have been suspicious about the deadbolts being unlocked, but I was just so keen to get inside and find his diary and any remaining medication that I scarcely gave it a moment’s thought. I knew Mikey far too well to worry about not being able to find the diary. I knew exactly where it would be and it gave me pause when I opened the drawer only to find it empty. I frowned but refused to be beaten.

“Come on, Gerard, think!” I ordered myself.

Mikey had been behaving very strangely. Paranoia didn’t seem an unreasonable possibility. Okay, where would a delusional paranoiac hide a diary? There were so many possibilities; most of them far too obvious to even consider. It had to be easy to retrieve, be undamaged but hidden to prying eyes. I folded my arms, cursing his ingenuity, but if anyone could second-guess Mikey, surely it had to be me? My eyes scanned the room; nothing leapt out at me… until…!
I almost laughed at the simplicity. A line of books sat at shoulder level within a large shelving unit. Pulling at each one in turn, I found it, slightly to the right of centre a book with a dust cover indicating a sports book of some kind; baseball, I think, and within lay his diary. Who would look for a book that didn’t want to be found, right slap in the middle of a display? Normally, no one, but I knew his mind, even when it was torn and tattered.

Opening its pages at the relevant dates I gasped at the details contained written in Mikey’s increasingly erratic handwriting. The book drew me in as I read page after page, slowly unfolding the mental torture that Mikey had been subjected to. Each entry in the diary seemed to be yet another meeting with Doctor Brandt and each session described in phenomenal detail with an entire page or more devoted to each appointment. Slowly the content was changing until eventually it was clear that Mikey was writing only what he had been told to write. And then the diary entries stopped abruptly the day before we set off on the signing tour.

I didn’t know what methods he was using on Mikey, but all I knew was that Brandt had tortured my brother, finally making him stand helplessly by while he killed those poor girls, before forcing his own images and memories on him. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. Mikey had been almost programmed. He feared us. His implanted conscious memories left him believing that we had committed the murders while his subconscious mind implicated himself as he wrote. This was the work of a sick, callous but undeniably ingenious mind. Worse still, this man was still treating him at the clinic. There was no time to lose; I had to get there fast! Pulling the cell phone from my pocket, I began to dial Frank’s number. As I did, I gasped in surprise as a man’s hand grabbed my hair and pulled my head down to my chest simultaneously pulling me backwards against his body. Dropping the phone, but still clutching tightly to the diary, I dragged at his fingers, trying desperately to release myself from his grip. Only seconds later, if that, I felt a scratch on my neck and an icy cold sensation as he forced the liquid from what I now realised was a syringe into my vein. The cold liquid continued to spread up my neck and down my back and I felt him let go of me. I couldn’t speak; I could barely hear anything apart from the sound of my blood rushing around inside my ears. It was just like listening at the mouth of a giant seashell, but with an unpleasant added sense of nausea. I felt the diary being pulled easily from my rapidly weakening grasp and with an almost soundless sigh I crumpled to the floor at his feet. As I hit the floor, I could just about make out Frank’s concerned voice coming from the cell phone lying nearby. The last thing I remember was the heel of a shoe crushing the phone only moments before my eyes closed and all was still and black.