Searching for Mr. Thorazine

}He could have been a star, kind of like Brando could have been a contender. Instead of the docks and organized crime getting in Sid’s way, booze and drugs had done it for him. He’d gone out of his way to piss off every fan, promoter, and record executive who ever happened to cross his path. Before long he was toxic. His music was great, too bad almost no-one ever heard it. Eventually, he quit the bottle and the drugs. He didn’t quit because he wanted to, no he quit because he ran out of cash. A small disability pension from the Army wasn’t enough to keep up with his bad habits. Two determined shylocks, looking for their money, forced him to leave the big city and return to his hometown of Wearing, PA. with his tail between his legs. The seventies were long gone and the eighties and beyond didn’t hold out a whole lot of hope for him.

Even without the drugs and drink, most folks in his small town still considered Sid to be, to put it mildly, an asshole. His two ex-wives would have used stronger language. He tried, not very hard, to change his evil ways and live a normal life. He couldn’t do it. Jobs and wives came and went, the only constant and true friend he had was his Stratocaster. He still played every night, he even got to play an occasional gig at one of the local bars.

The call woke him from a fitful sleep. He hadn’t really slept well since he quit drinking. It was three in the morning and the person on the other end was calling from Wearing Hospital. The woman on the line told him that his wife was dead and his daughter was in stable condition. After his head cleared, he told the woman she was freaking nuts, because he had no wife or daughter. The caller was insistent. Ms. O’Shea, before she went into a coma and passed away, had given his name as the person to be contacted if she didn’t make it. The woman was Linda O’Shea, his second wife, who he hadn’t seen in years. Linda was a very sweet and beautiful woman, much too sweet and beautiful for the likes of him. A police officer got on the line and told him, not too politely, to get his ass to the hospital now.

What choice did he have? He’d dealt with the police in this small town for a long time. The cops all knew him and he knew all the cops. Sid knew if he didn’t show up at the hospital soon, two of Wearing’s Finest would show up at his door and drag him there. He drove to the hospital in a fog. Shit, he’d only been married to Linda for two years. It felt like a shorter time to him, but an eternity to Linda. There weren’t any kids. Could she have been pregnant when they went their separate ways? She didn’t mention it when she handed him the divorce papers and showed him where to sign. He’d been a mean drunk and he was even meaner sober.

Linda had gone back to her parents after leaving him. Sid believed her parents were nuts. They belonged to some cult up in the hills above Wearing. Of course, he was never very religious, but these people were freaking crazy. Linda had gotten away from all that insanity, went to college, had a good job, and then married him. Maybe the cult didn’t seem that insane after living with him. Officer Staub met him at the front door. Sid asked him what had happened, Evidently, the cop had watched too much NYPD Blue, because he began to speak to Sid in cop-speak. From what Sid could discern a driver, probably drunk, had tried to pass Lynda on Salisbury Road and misjudged when to come back in the lane. His car hit Linda’s, driving her off the road and into a large tree. Linda sustained multiple injuries that killed her. Her daughter had been in a car seat in the rear. She had a few cuts and bruises, but for the most part was all right. Sid asked if they had gotten the guy. No, they hadn’t yet. All they had were blue paint streaks on Linda’s Chevy.

Officer Staub asked him if he wanted to see his daughter. Sid informed the cop that he didn’t have a daughter. Staub produced a piece of paper and handed it to Sid. It was a birth certificate for a baby girl named, Mia O’Shea. The mother’s name was Linda O’Shea and the father’s name was Sid’s. Could the kid really be his? Looking at the date of birth, Sid saw that it might be possible. Mia O’Shea was ten years old, so the dates lined up. He told Officer Staub to lead the way. The little girl looked like she might be swallowed by the large bed she was in. Sid could see right away she was Linda’s daughter. The black hair, the deep blue eyes, and the perfect nose all screamed out to him that she was a carbon copy of her mother. The kid looked up, saw, Sid and asked, “What the hell do you want?” With that attitude, she just might be his daughter. He explained that he could be her father and that he wasn’t aware that he had a daughter.

Sid didn’t have much experience with children. Mia made conversation easy. The kid was bright and she didn’t hesitate to speak her mind. In personality, she was more like him than Linda. He was enjoying his conversation with the little person. Her expression changed in a flash. The kid looked scared to death. Sid turned to see the reason. It was Linda’s parents dressed like Ma and Pa Kettle. All it took was one look from daddy O’Shea and Sid knew things were going to get real ugly. “Bastard,” was the opening salvo from the old man.

“No, my parents were actually married. How are you, you pompous ass?” The old buzzard turned a nice shade of scarlet. Mrs. O’Shea was now hovering over Mia, frightening the poor little girl. Sid told her to get away from Mia.

“Who do you think you’re talking too, you drunken heathen?” Daddy O’Shea was still quite red.

Sid was going to try for purple. “You might be right about heathen, pop, but I’m not a drunk.” He almost made it to purple. Mrs. O’Shea was in the corner now, praying up a storm.

“We’re here to pick up our granddaughter. If you know what’s good for you, don’t get in our way.”

“Sorry pops, I never did know what was good for me.” Sid couldn’t believe what he was doing. He didn’t want a kid. Something about the look Mia had given her grandparents wouldn’t let him give the little girl up to them. Besides he hated these people. He’d only met them a few times during his marriage and every time he had been tempted to punch daddy O’Shea in his holier than thou face.

“You have no right to the child! We’re her grandparents, we will take her!”
“I don’t think so. Now get the hell out of my daughter’s room!” Officer Staub heard the raised voices and entered Mia’s room. “What’s going on folks?”
“This heathen is trying to take our granddaughter from us. He has nothing to do with this child. We’ve raised her.”
Officer Staub wasn’t the sharpest tool in the bag. “He’s the father, now if you want to pursue the matter you’ll have to take it to court. Now please leave, I can see you’re upsetting the child.”
It suddenly occurred to Sid that he didn’t have the faintest idea of how to raise a child. He turned to Mia for advice. “You don’t like the O’Sheas very much do you?”

“No, I don’t, where’s my mom?”

It hadn’t occurred to Sid, or anyone else, that no-one had told Mia her mother was dead. He bubbled, stumbled, and told his daughter that her mother was gone. She cried and cried and Sid tried to console her as best he could. The little girl finally fell asleep and Sid spent the rest of the night curled up in a chair in the corner of her room keeping watch.

Mia shocked Sid by how easily she took control of his life. She moved into his one bedroom apartment and took over the bedroom without any effort at all. Sid tried to sleep on the couch. Sid got her registered for school and the two strangers fell into a routine. Eventually, Mia told him about life in the cult that was run by Ma and Pa O’Shea. She almost brought Sid to tears telling him about the beatings and verbal abuse she, her mother, and the other members of the cult had to endure.

“That’s why Mommy was leaving.”

“What do you mean leaving? You can’t just leave a cult.”

“She said we had to leave, because Grandpa was getting crazier and might kill someone soon. She was afraid for me.”

“The old man hit you?”

“Yes, all the time. He said I had a fresh mouth. I tried to be good, I really did, but I couldn’t. When things come into my head I have to say them.”

Sid smiled, “I know the feeling kid. Did he ever hurt you?”

“Sometimes, he hurt Mommy too” Sid felt rage like he’d never felt before. If the old bastard was there right now he would kill him with his own hands.

“Well no-one is going to hurt you ever again.”

The summons to appear in court arrived a few days later. The O’Sheas were suing for custody of Mia. He knew his chances of keeping his daughter were slim. He didn’t have a job, lived in a small apartment, and had no family for a support system. The O’Shea cult had money and power. He had Mia’s birth certificate, that was it. The whole proceeding was like a Broadway play, everyone involved had played their part to perfection. With a wink and a nod from the judge, and in less than thirty minutes, he’d lost custody. He was given no visitation rights. A weeping Mia gave him a hug and was taken away for good.

Sid laid on his couch for days, doing nothing but watching re-runs of Adam 12 and doing his best to fight off old demons. He needed a drink, no better yet he needed a fix. The look on Mia’s face when the O’Sheas showed up at her hospital room haunted him, and was the only thing keeping him clean and sober. His daughter needed him. He needed to do something. He couldn’t just charge up the mountain and grab Mia. If the nuts in the compound didn’t shoot him, the cops might. Mia would be back with the O’Sheas and her best last hope would be in jail or the cemetery. Something Mia had said to him wouldn’t go away. She had told him that Linda was trying to get away from the cult. Was the car accident really an accident? Would the O’Sheas kill their own daughter and risk the life of their granddaughter? Maybe, they were insane as far as Sid was concerned.

Sid got up from the couch. He had nothing to lose by taking a look around the O’Shea compound. Maybe, inspiration would strike him when he got there, maybe a bullet would. It wasn’t really a mountain that he had to climb, it was more like a long steep hill. “No Trespassing” signs were posted prominently around the property. Sid worked his way around to what he thought was the rear. Several small structures surrounded a much larger building that sat in the middle. A bell began to chime. Sid thought he’d been spotted, but no-one made a move towards the trees he was hiding behind. Slowly, very slowly, figures began to emerge from the structures surrounding what he took to be the main building. There were about twenty people, mostly old men and women strolling towards the building. Sid didn’t see Mia or any other kids. For that matter, he didn’t see anyone young enough to have kids not in their forties. Once everyone was inside the main building Sid decided to poke around. He peered in every small building hoping to find Mia, but had no luck. With nowhere else to search, he peeked into the open door of the main building. He could hear daddy O’Shea giving some kind of fire and brimstone sermon to the assembled oldsters. Most looked too old to commit any kind of serious sin, so why yell? He could barely make out a tiny figure in the front row of the room; it had to be Mia. He resisted the urge to charge in and grab her. He needed to retreat and do some thinking. On his way out of the compound he noticed an old blue Mercury station wagon parked behind what looked like an out-house. On closer inspection, he could see damage to the passenger side of the car. Not only was there damage, but streaks of missing paint. He had no doubt the paint was now on Linda’s car. This had to be the car that killed his ex-wife and hurt his daughter.

What the hell could he do? He asked himself that same question all the way down the hill. He should go right to the cops. He knew from past dealings with Wearing’s Finest that they would laugh him out of the stationhouse. If he could someway get the O’Sheas banished from the cult, better known as The Church of the Perpetual Secret, he would have a chance to get Mia away from them. Papa O’Shea was definitely the leader of the church and he was too sanctimonious to ever be involved in a scandal. Ma O’Shea rarely said a word and her husband ordered her around like a red-headed stepchild. The woman had to have an outlet, she had to have secrets. Were her deep dark secrets related to sex, drugs, or rock and roll? Maybe she used a combination of all three.

The following two days were just as thrilling as the first. He sat behind the same tree and watched the same old folks make their way around the compound is slow motion. He wondered if they might be stoned. They walked around like zombies. They never even greeted each other. If he was going to make a movie about these people he would have to call it “The Silence of the Walking Dead.” He’d had about enough, and he wasn’t accomplishing squat up here. He getting up to leave when he heard something behind him. It was a slight ruffle of leaves. He turned in that direction and could see nothing in the fading daylight. It might be an animal or someone from the compound. He wasn’t too worried; a bear would be noisier and if one of the oldsters from the cult tried to sneak up on him it would take hours for him to get there. He heard it again, this time louder. He rose slowly from his sitting position. He walked towards the sound. Whatever it was had spotted Sid and took off. Sid gave chase until he tripped over an exposed root of a tree. He hit the ground hard enough to lose his breath. As he tried to get up he felt the cold steel of a large blade against his throat. “Don’t make a sound,” the figure commanded in hushed tones. The voice was female and stern. She was dressed in camo with a wrap that covered the bottom half of her face. She whispered for him to stand up and start walking down the hill. He could feel the tip of her knife poking his spine as he cautiously moved down the hill.

The footing was treacherous, especially in the half-light. Almost halfway down the slope he heard her slip on a mossy stone and hit the ground. The knife flew from her hand landing at Sid’s boots. He grabbed the knife and put it to her throat. Turnabout was fair play after-all. Every twenty years or so his Army training came in handy, or it might have been just plain dumb luck. They continued their slow descent, this time with the woman leading the way and Sid with the knife close behind. At the bottom of the hill Sid told the woman to remove her mask. He was sure he’d never seen her before. She was at least forty and couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. “What the hell were you doing up there? Are you part of the church?”

She explained that she was up there looking for her mother. She begged him to put down the knife and not hurt her. “Just let me go, please don’t take me to those people. I only wanted to see if my mother was ok.” Sid assured her he had no intention of hurting anyone and he wasn’t part of the cult. He put the knife down and told her about Mia and why he was spying up on the hill. Erica was her name and she sounded almost as desperate as Sid. She was the divorced mother of two grown children. Her mother had meant the world to her. The old woman changed when her husband died. She spent her time going from church to church looking for the one true God. She thought she found him at The Church of the Perpetual Secret. She packed her bag, left a note for Erica, and joined the church. Erica made several attempts to contact her mother, all were unsuccessful. Erica had seen her mother walking around the compound like a zombie. A few short months ago her mother was an energetic and vibrant woman. Something was wrong. The police told her there was nothing they could do; her mother was an adult and was with the church voluntarily.

They agreed to meet the following morning at Larry’s Diner. Over terrible coffee at the diner they agreed they had a common goal and would be better off working together. Sid thought that money had to be involved. The church had shown its power in his legal proceedings and power only came from money. He asked Erica if her mother was wealthy. Erica said no, her father had left his wife well off, but by no means wealthy.

Erica had been running surveillance for weeks and the only contact the cultists had with the outside world was a delivery truck that showed up every Wednesday morning. Supplies were brought into the back of the main building. She believed the cultists ate their meals in the main building. She’d seen smoke coming out of a chimney at the rear of the building so she assumed there was a kitchen there. They devised a plan to enter the main building by the back door sometime after midnight. Sid and Erica agreed that they needed to know what was going on in that building.

The door wasn’t locked. The kitchen was dark and deserted, the only sound they could hear came from a dripping faucet. They opened several cabinets and inspected them with their flashlights. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until Erica gestured for Sid to come over and take a look into a small cabinet. She pointed to the dozens of prescription bottles stacked neatly on three shelves. Sid took one of the bottles and read the label, then he looked at a few more, they were all for Thorazine. The drugs explained a lot. It explained why the residents were walking around the compound like the living dead.

“What the hell is Thorazine?” Erica whispered.

“I’m not sure. All I know is that it turns you into some kind of vegetable. Did you ever hear of the expression The Thorazine Shuffle? I think someone even did a song about it. It made sense, the O’Sheas were keeping their flock dazed and confused with the drug. They walked through a connecting door into what looked like a living area. Light from the lights in the compound filtered through the sheer curtains giving them good visibility. They could hear the canned laughter of a TV show playing in one of the three closed doors down a narrow hallway to the right. It took all of Sid’s willpower to not kick in those doors looking for Mia. They dared not go any further so they exited back out through the kitchen. They returned to Sid’s apartment to discuss what they had found. Erica had taken one of the prescription bottles and put it on the coffee table. She opened the bottle and poured out the orange pills.

“They look just like baby aspirin,” Erica observed.

“You think so?” Sid had never seen baby aspirin.

“Yes, I’m sure, I think the Babywise brand looks exactly like them.” Erica took a few seconds and said, “What would happen if we change out the Thorazine with the aspirin?”

“I don’t know Erica. I think they must be mixing the drugs in with the food. I don’t think it would be too good for the O’Sheas.”

“I don’t see how we could do it, there were so many bottles.”

“There were only a dozen or so on the bottom shelf. I don’t see anyone reaching up to grab a bottle if there is one right at eye level.”

“Ok let’s go to CVS and get some aspirin.”

The next night found Sid and Erica in the kitchen of The Church of the Perpetual Secret again. They grabbed the bottles of Thorazine from the bottom shelf and walked down the hill to Erica’s car. Exchanging the Thorazine for the aspirin was easier than they thought. They were back in the kitchen in an hour and placed the substituted aspirin on the shelf.

In the next few days they could see the cultists moving around the compound at a brisker pace. They were even speaking to each other. Erica’s mother and a few others eventually made their way back to Weaver. Sid felt great for his partner. Erica had her mother back. Now all he needed to do was get his daughter. He entered through the now familiar kitchen. A few steps in he heard blood curdling screaming. Fearing for Mia he entered the living area and ran to where he could still hear a woman screaming. In the first bedroom, he found Mrs. O’Shea on top of her husband bashing his head with a lamp. She turned towards Sid and screamed, “That’s right I killed the son of a bitch! Do you want to be next?”

“No, I just want my daughter.” Sid was ready to puke, Mr. O’Shea’s head looked like it had exploded. There was blood and other disgusting stuff all over the room.

“You better get that little brat, she’s next.”

Sid checked the second bedroom and found nothing. He found her in a closet of the third bedroom with a hammer in her hand waiting to defend herself. “Let’s go home, Mia.”

As they made their way down the hill they could hear blaring sirens getting closer to the compound. By the time they reached home and turned on the news they saw that the whole compound was engulfed in flames. Mrs. O’Shea had turned on all the gas jets in the kitchen and lit a match, sending herself and two other parishioners to their maker in many pieces.

The final body count was four dead and two badly burned. Sid and Mia fell into a routine. Sid found a steady job at the post office and Mia excelled at school, life was almost good. They didn’t live happily ever after, then again who ever does?