Title Forgotten

“You can’t kill me ‘cause I’m already inside you.”—Slipknot

Meeting Sky
A maggot inched its way from between his thin lips to his ear and crawled in. Another drop of blood made its way down the lobe of his ear and stained his white pointed collar. Somehow, the man did not seem to notice as he sifted through some paperwork. He finally looked up. “Ah, welcome. My name is Dr. Stosser, and yours is...” He peeked at a piece of paper within a folder. “Schuyler Raz?”

The boy sitting motionlessly in the chair offered no response, not a blink.

“I see. Your parents have been telling me about some of your drawings in art class. You have a lot of talent—if only you would draw some more appropriate subjects. Can you tell me anything about them?” When the child failed to twitch a muscle, he added sympathetically, “I am not going to reprimand you. Quite the opposite; I want to understand them. Like this one, for instance.”

Dr. Stosser pulled a creased paper from a yellow envelope and presented it to Schuyler. The boy saw that it was one of the many colored pencil sketches he’d drawn and nearly rolled his eyes. Nearly. Still, Schuyler sat like a stone. It was a disturbing sketch depicting an emaciated man hanging from a rusty chain. Open wounds pocked his back and ribs, torn red flesh ringed his wrists where the chains met them, and a mixture of some unknown effluence and blood matted down the man’s dark hair. The anguished figure’s face was somehow as emotionless as Schuyler’s own stoic countenance as he glanced at it.

“If you are unwilling to cooperate, at least humor me. Is there a reason you like to draw these?”

Just when the doctor was about to end the session, Schuyler’s voice cracked. “Sk.. Sky. I don’t like being called Schuyler.”

There was a look of satisfaction on Dr. Stosser’s face. “Alright, Sky. Does it make you feel better when you make these drawings?” He indicated the envelope.

There was a long pause, and the doctor thought he’d lost the boy again. “No.” The balding man sitting behind the cherry wood desk nodded, prompting Sky to elaborate. “I don’t do it for a reason,” the boy said after sighing. “Sometimes I just make up stuff for the hell of it.” He smirked as if it was an inside joke.

Dr. Stosser folded his arms over his chest. “At least you didn’t say ‘I don’t know.’ That seems to be the most common response.”

Throughout the session, the doctor sought to make the boy more comfortable. It usually took more than one daily hour to break the ice, but Sky didn’t seem all that reclusive compared to most that so often came through his office door. He counseled despondent delinquents from all over Pennsylvania. The doctor knew when a child had problems, but he could not find a character flaw within the boy in front of him. If one looked at Sky offhand, he would not presume anything untoward about him. Even observing the boy’s behavior with other children in the psychiatric ward would not reveal his supposed “morbid, idiosyncratic quirks.” He was quiet and patient. Sky never challenged the others when in the common room, and he never spoke of his condemnable actions.

Sky was quiet, Dr. Stosser realized rapturously. The only nameable quality about him that felt fundamentally wrong was the silence. Like an intangible aura, the people around Sky sensed the strangeness about him and gave the boy leeway.

The other children in the ward avoided talking to him, or sitting next to him in the lounge. Some of the boys whispered amongst themselves, glancing at Sky every so often. If Schuyler was bothered by any of it, he didn’t show it.

One day when the doctor was observing Sky in the common room, another twelve-year-old by the name of Jacob approached his most curious patient. “How come you’re so quiet?” he asked. When Sky didn’t speak up, Jacob said, “You’re always sitting in here or in your room like you’re retarded.” As usual, Sky was less than forthcoming. Jake towered over Sky, staring him in the eye. Being ignored was really starting to tick him off.

Jake was in the ward for getting into serious fights, so Dr. Stosser was unsure of his decision to stay objective and out of sight.

Jake pointed to a girl sitting on a chair, reading some cheesy vampire novel. “Are you like her?” he questioned, trying to provoke some kind of response. “A pill-popper? Like cutting?” Sky blinked. “What’s the matter, did your daddy smack you?” Jake screamed, “Say something!”

Sky looked into the other boy’s eyes coldly, as if he was contemplating the consequences of murdering him on the spot. The doctor almost thought he saw Sky glance at the pen on the table behind Jake.

“Dormir dans la paix.” Sky didn’t waver as Jake leaned closer.

“What was that?” Sky almost backed away as he smelled the boy’s breath.

“He said ‘sleep in peace.’ Now just go,” the girl said.

Jake huffed and started walking away. “I can’t stand it here. Everyone’s a freak.”

When the room had quieted down—the doctor still observing them—Eslin, the gothic girl reading the book, offered a handshake to Sky, but he didn’t move. Despite his curtness, the cold stare was replaced by an utter lack of emotion. She looked hurt and turned away after several expectant seconds.

Finding the Child
“You are now in a deep sleep. I’m going to ask you about some of the things that have happened to you, and I want you to try to remember them in as much detail as possible. Do you understand?”

Sky’s body was deathly still. His lips quivered as he mumbled, “Yes.”

“Good,” Doctor Stosser said. “Let’s begin. I want you to tell me about the day you burned the tree in your back yard.” His voice was comforting, not accusing. “Where did you get the gasoline?” he asked.

“A shed,” the boy said sleepily. “I don’t remember.”

“Was anyone with you?” He heard a faint “No.”

From what Sky’s parents had told him, nothing had spurred him to immolate his tree. He got up one morning and strayed outside. Fifteen minutes later, a bright orange light had Mr. and Mrs. Raz running to see what was going on. They left the back door of their two-story house to see their large oak ablaze on that cool, moist Saturday. The boy was kneeling next to the gas can, arched back, basking in the heat of the air-rippling conflagration.

Sky told him as much. He mentioned the worms crawling out of the hot ground nearby, writhing in the dry air. The tree had snapped and popped and shriveled until it was put out by the fire department, Mr. Raz having called 911.

“I want to understand why you did what you did, Sky. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

The boy’s closed eyes flickered back and forth. “Something made me remember. I’m not sure.”

A puzzled expression flashed on the doctor’s face. Did he always speak this cryptically? “Remember what?” he asked.

Sweat trickled down the hypnotized boy’s forehead. Dr. Stosser knelt over and wiped it off with a Kleenex. “I don’t know.”

“Please,” the doctor pleaded, “try to remember. What were you thinking about when you poured the gas on the tree?”

A chilling moment of silence ensued. Sky’s breathing slowed considerably, and his muscles relaxed. “Two friends from school. Joe and Max. They didn’t see. But they told me how,” Schuyler began. The doctor listened intently as the boy detailed a rainy Friday the night before the gasoline incident.

Both Joe and Max were sitting in Sky’s room, playing Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64, listening to something on the stereo that would shock their parents. With a great boom and an intense flare of light from both lightning and the light bulbs in the house, the power went out. Max yelled his complaint when the screen went dark, along with everything else.

Sky’s parents were at work. Joe got up, stretched, and said, “Well, now what?” Max’s mouth curled up in a grin. He went over to the schoolbag he’d brought and dug out a dark bottle. “How about some Bermuda Black?” he asked, uncapping it as he spoke. They passed it amongst themselves until it was gone.

Sky could feel his face get hot, and his head swam. The three of them were laughing about something stupid as Joe drunkenly turned the stereo up too high. Someone was singing about self-mutilation, sparing them no detail.

“Uh... turn it down,” Sky said, his words a little watery. Joe turned it off altogether and went to put the CD back in its case. “Hey, look at this,” he announced. “Some kind of weird ritual shit behind the disc.”

Sky wasn’t really interested in actually trying it, but his friends convinced him, themselves not wanting to mess with “something we don’t understand.” He was standing in the bathroom with the light off, a pink candle in front of the mirror. He read something in old English he barely understood from the inside CD cover. “I don’t think anything will happen,” he said after he’d finished. “The candle is pink, for crying out loud.” Max laughed and slammed the door on him as a joke.

Sky’s body convulsed violently and Dr. Stosser had to hold him steady as he counted up to ten, bringing the boy out of the trance.

Without Windows...
The door looked as heavy and impeding as a huge wall. Smoke filtered into the little room under its solid titanium shape, smelling of sulfur. Sky ignored the spiders that crawled on his clothes, one on his face and another in his hair.

He wasn’t quite sure how he’d gotten in the room. Perhaps he’d blacked out. And why was he curled into a ball on the floor, back against the wall, facing the locked door? Sky looked around; there were no windows, the only light coming from a grilled light bulb above him. A bed squatted in the corner next to him, a toilette and sink across from that, and...

“A mirror,” he choked aloud. He squirmed back away from the horrible thing, pushing his back against the edge of the bed and nudging it into the wall. Its metal legs scrapped the floor with an ear-aching screech.

Already he could see the hearth-red glow in the mirror’s pallid reflection.

†††

David Fuller stuck the key into the hole, turned it with a frantic jingle, and burst into the cell. The boy, Schuyler according to the plaque on the door, was huddled in the corner of the room, shivering. “What’s wrong,” he said. “I heard noise... what the...” The security guard stopped and looked down at the cement floor.

“With freedom tempted, for the self attempted, look through the mirror into the well and see the wretched pits of Hell,” he read aloud, a bone-chilling sensation making its way up his spine.

Unraveling Terror and Truth
Doctor Stosser was scared. Everyone was. The death of Mr. Fuller had caused a lot of attention, and half of Chambersburg was spooked. The doctor didn’t know what to think of the disturbing suicide. Thinking about the gore spread about the room still left him speechless and afraid, the blood from his gouged wrists sprayed on the white walls of the restroom in thin droplets, his face left split and partly caved in. David had thrashed around from the self-inflicted pain of his ruined wrists, and then he had slammed his head down onto the toilette bowl repeatedly until his brain could no longer compel him. The men from the crime lab had not found the other half of the pencil used to dig into his arms, although it was suspected that the thing was imbedded deeply in the opened flesh.

Dr. Stosser didn’t look when they had carried David’s body away. He would have thrown up like Mrs. Webber from the front desk.

As he looked at his patient, he wanted to ask the boy what the hell had happened. One of the clinic’s employees killed himself in a brutal and horrifying way immediately after entering Sky’s cell. The boy sat on the couch in the doctor’s office, staring out the window.

The doctor wanted nothing more than to see the world through his eyes and hear his thoughts. What possessed the boy to scratch the strange rhyme onto the ground? He should not have been assigned to the small room, even temporarily. His fear of mirrors was even included in his file. Something had gone wrong. But wrong enough to make a happily married man slaughter himself?

“Your father is coming to check on you later today,” he said to the boy offhandedly, eliciting no response. “It might be that he will check you out of here for a couple hours.” Again Sky didn’t seem to care.

“I don’t know why that man died,” said Sky, as if he was trying to drown out a raging storm but could only speak in the meekest voice. His eyes kept darting to the carpeted floor in the corner of the room.

Sky’s transfixion confused Dr. Stosser, who was unable to see the rug swelling slowly and rhythmically, rising and sinking like the chest of a sleeping old man in the last moments of his life. The boy could almost make out the scratchy sound of forced inhalation.

“What do you see?” the doctor pleaded, angry.

For the first time, he saw Sky’s eyes wet with tears. Maybe there was hope in continuing his sessions. “Alright,” he conceded, “You can go back to the lounge or your room. I’m sorry for raising my voice, but I hope you understand my frustration. After David’s death, things have been rough.”

After Sky had gone, the man whose profession is to cure the sick of mind desperately tried to find an answer. He went through the boy’s file again and found nothing. Then he opened the yellow envelope with the morbid drawings in it and studied them once again.

There.

In light of recent events, one picture stuck out above all the rest. Two men in suits were talking in some sort of hallway, standing next to a row of paintings in lavish golden frames. The painting immediately between them garishly displayed a woman in an Elizabethan gown; her throat was one wide open wound, and the blood spilled down her dress and onto the wall under the painting itself. The two well-dressed men talked casually, not noticing the strange sight.

The way Sky nervously stared at the carpet struck him profoundly as well.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “He’s seeing hallucinations.”

Doctor Stosser picked up the phone and dialed out of the building. He would have to reschedule Sky’s meeting with his father. Perhaps he could authorize a few medical tests to determine if a drug treatment would help.

What Is Not Seen
The lounge was a comfortable place, but it was dim in the late evening hours. The only wall with windows faced east, and a row of broad pine trees filtered the waning daylight.

Sky sat in one of the many chairs that encircled short, round tables placed strategically about the room. He once again gazed out the window, wondering if he should be afraid of death or not. For a minute or two he thought himself crazy—that he really only saw fabrications of his subconscious mind, and not the suggestive images from beyond life itself.

That was when the lights went out, leaving him utterly alone.

No one screamed, and no shouts of surprise ensued. Light came in from the two windows, but it failed to reach into the lounge far enough to provide any comfort. It felt so very far away, as if the dark area was actually holding the light back.

Sky stiffened as someone passed quickly between the windows and himself, the blur of someone’s silhouette. He bit his lip, wishing the moment away. It grew colder, but his face felt hot.

Something crashed to the floor behind him, shattering into little glassy pieces. As Sky tried to stand, a clammy, slippery hand latched onto his throat. His scream was cut short, and he felt himself being thrown back to the chair.

Schuyler Raz struggled with all his might. He thrashed in the chair from side to side, kicking and punching his assailant. It was no use; the hand’s long, bony fingers wrapped almost all the way around his neck. With every violent motion, it held his throat tighter. Soon, even the light from the window darkened; Sky was losing his breath, his windpipe being crushed.

Then Sky was afraid to die. Images of a dark place filled with the mind-scratching cries of terror and unimaginable agony flooded the boy’s thoughts during his last breath of life.

The fluorescent lights in the lounge flickered on. Three nurses were holding him down in the chair, calming him. Slick blood covered his chin and neck, and he threw up more blood. Still the boy couldn’t draw breath. A needle made its way into his arm. The lights went out again, mercifully.

The Well
With white sheets draped over his body, the cardiograph streaming by at a steady rhythm, Sky looked incredibly serene. His mind, though, was a hurricane. Sky’s hallucinations had always been something visible, and nothing more. His throat still burned, a perturbing reminder that he was getting worse.

Outside of the medical room, Dr. Stosser and Dr. Brook discussed the boy’s treatment. “The sedative should wear off in a few minutes. Have you called his parents?”

“Yes,” Dr. Stosser replied. “Mr. Raz should be here shortly. I wonder if it isn’t too soon. The clinic is supposed to separate him from memories of home. Whatever is causing his psychosis has something to do with his past.” The psychiatrist thought again to Sky’s friends, Joe and Max. The memory of being locked in the bathroom in the dark—in front of the mirror—had almost made him go into shock during hypnosis.

Both doctors watched over him for the while it took for Sky’s father to show up, Dr. Brook checking his pupils when he woke up and giving him a glass of water.

Mark Raz was a tall, broad shouldered man with a comb-over and sharp, hazel eyes. He was dressed in a charcoal pinstripe suit with a grey shirt and silver-blue tie. Dr. Stosser observed that he strongly resembled one of the two men talking next to a bloodied painting he’d pointedly seen before.

“What happened?” Mr. Raz demanded as soon as he saw his son. Sky was awake, but he offered no greeting. “Is he going to be alright?”

“He’s fine now, but he had some sort of attack earlier,” Dr. Brook said as he stepped away from the boy.

“Attack?” Sky’s father looked to Dr. Stosser. “How is he getting worse? I don’t think this is right for him.” Talking more to himself, “This is a mistake.”

Though he didn’t want to be the one to tell Mr. Raz, Dr. Stosser felt it was best. “I’m afraid he has no choice to be here now.” The doctor responded to Mark’s intense stare by pointing to the entrance to the hall. A police officer, no longer a security guard, stood by the door. “Until they’re done with their investigations, Schuyler will have to remain at the ward.”

Sky watched the heated discussion from behind the glass on the door of his room after they stepped outside. Whatever it was about, they didn’t want him to hear. Sky was afraid, but not of the men in the hall.

A nurse came in and looked over the computer hooked up to him. “Are you feeling okay?” she asked, though she knew that the boy lying down beside her was far from okay.

Sky nodded. “I have to go to the bathroom,” he said. The nurse—Amy by her name tag—unplugged Sky from the cardiograph and led him to the second door in the room, which lead to his own private restroom.

He closed the door behind him. Like every other time Sky entered the bathroom, he kept the mirror to his back. The fluorescent lights were too bright, and the glare from the pearly white tiles hurt his eyes. When the boy had to wash his hands, he looked ever away from the mirror.

When the lights above his head made a slight buzzing sound, he froze in terror. Sky didn’t know if he was insane or not, but he hoped that he was. Nothing happened. It was just the electricity playing tricks, he reminded himself.

The running water warmed his hands, and he began to relax. The water was very warm, and it quickly got hot. Sky recoiled from the sudden heat, looking to the spout and seeing nothing unusual, other than the steamy fog rising from the sink.

He had unintentionally turned the nozzle too far to the left. Sky’s sigh of relief echoed in the small room.

The mirror was gone. In its place gaped an open tunnel that lead into some unfathomable darkness. Its walls were rough and jagged, long shadows obscuring them. Sky stood there blankly; he was too frightened to call out, as though that would help. His voice just cracked and faltered. The water still ran, still fogging the sink’s surface.

The breeze in the boy’s face wasn’t cool, like one would expect from the inside of a cave. It was sticky and hot, and it smelled of sickly sweet death.

Sky tried to turn away, but he blacked out.

After what seemed like hours, he awakened—or, he thought so. Everything was dark. Sky felt around him tentatively. Stone on three sides.

Sky shouted. His voiced echoed from one way, the sound shrinking away in a gradual descent. Sky cried for a long time, more alone than he’d ever been.

Then Sky crawled forward and was never seen again.

It was September of 1998 when Dr. Stosser stepped down from his position of lead psychiatrist for early retirement. The police never resolved either the death of David Fuller or the disappearance of Schuyler Raz. The child’s father and mother moved away to somewhere in Wisconsin, where they are currently unlisted.

The mysterious riddle on the floor of cell room A14 never came off; any attempts to remove it caused further disturbances.

April 19, 2006

Dear Mr. Raz:

         I regret to inform you that the search for your son, Schuyler, can no longer continue because of the time he has been missing and the lack of evidence from the incident. The state has no choice but to close the case due to the likelihood that Schuyler ran away, and was not kidnapped. In addition, the words “I have passed my father’s door” written on the foggy mirror indicate—not conclusively—that no murder or abduction has been committed. Because of the eyewitness accounts, you have been formally absolved of the implications of the message. A letter of acquittal will be sent to your home address in short notice.
I am sorry for your loss, and I encourage you to seek the services of private investigators. In some cases, children that have run away do turn up in the long term. There is every reason to believe that Schuyler is still alive, and the state apologizes for its inability to find him.

Sincerely,

Donald C. Crawford,
Chief of Chambersburg, PA Police Dept.