Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 62)
Rating: M for graphic violence and language
Fandom: The Mentalist
Summary: Patrick Jane has lived his life obsessed with the capture of Red John ever since finding his beloved wife and daughter slain by the maniac's hand. Now, 10 years to the day after that horrific night, a young woman appears in Patrick's life, someone who threatens to destroy everything his life has become in the interim… if not his sanity, itself.
Author's Note: Fairly long, but important, Author's note this chapter. Scroll down if you want to get straight to the story... Thanks for the reviews (like always, I am always extremely grateful for them). Yeah, I know MK ultra was a real thing. It was started in the 50s in Montreal, Canada, in a psych hospital under the direction of a shrink named (Donald) Ewen Cameron, but funded by the CIA. If you follow the bread crumbs, it appeared that a lot of MK ultra scientists were Nazi war criminal doctors, brought over during something called "Operation Paperclip" (they worked for the US government in exchange for not being prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials).
The New York Times wrote about piece about the MK ultra experiments in December of 1974, and there was a fairly prominent trial involving many of the original Canadian victims in the '80s (they eventually settled for pennies, because the survivors were pretty old by then and the CIA had the money and power to draw the trial out indefinitely). If you dig into this stuff, though, you'll know MK ultra had other off-shoot programs- such as Bluebird (the deliberate creation of what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder and is now called Dissociative Identity Disorder), MK-NAOMI, Operation Mockingbird, Operation Midnight Climax (you can look all of these up). It's speculated by many, many people that Marilyn Monroe was one of the first "beta" victims of early MONARCH programming ("betas" are often referred to as "sex kittens" and even today, you can see the sex-kitten programming stuff almost everywhere, especially in fashion magazines).
My personal opinion is that these types of mind control experiments using torture to break the minds of victims never ended. Why would they? A government willing and capable to do this shit once upon a time wouldn't just stop, especially after getting such promising results.
A lot of the LSD experiments of Timothy Leary from the 60s (such as the Harvard Psilocybin project) also appear to be- at least partially- funded by the same dark, deep state that funded MK ultra and its off-shoot programs. Author Ken Kesey (he wrote "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and Canadian poet and writer Leonard Cohen were both fairly well-known MK ULTRA test subjects (apparently, they volunteered). I've also read about various experimental "medication" programs and human experimentation on children, many in orphanages and residential schools, ranging from the 50s up until present day. It's enough to make you follow the direction of the early X-Files intros: TRUST NO ONE.
If you've read any of Whitley Strieber's works (you know, the guy who wrote "COMMUNION" in 1987 which kick-started the entire obsession with "visitors" abducting and experimenting on people?)... well, if you read him, he speaks in one of his books (The Secret School) about a program for gifted children on a military base near his home, how they selected gifted, imaginative children, and related some weird memories about being imprisoned in a cage or box of some sort with other kids. He is not the only writer out there who has written, in the non-fiction sense, about government-funded military programs involving kids in the 50s and 60s. I've spent a lot of time wondering if his apparent-alien abduction memories are not, perhaps, screen memories from some sort of mind control. I just don't know.
If you search the web, there are a fair number of people who claim to be survivors of such experimental programs, and a growing trend of people who claim to be TI's (Targeted Individuals) who are gang-stalked by various government agents. It sounds completely schizophrenic (trackers in teeth-fillings, B & E's into the victims' homes in the middle of the night to drug and torture them, etc) until you really research the incredible evil that has been done in the name of "scientific advancement". Nothing reported is physically or technologically impossible, and given the apparent sanity of many of the self-professed survivors, I suspect this sort of thing is MUCH more widespread than most people would ever guess.
I've seen some videos posts by self-proclaimed TI's which do, indeed, seem to show people surveiling and following them round the clock and from a distance (pretty convincing, chilling stuff). I also believe in high-ranking Luciferian societies, and that, perhaps, some of this is tied into that, and that pedophile groups, child porn, snuff films (all of which are worth billions of dollars a year in profit to the deep state) are perhaps tied in, too. I know that sounds completely nuts. I would have thought so, too, once upon a time. Half a decade of investigating this subject and reading about it, listening to interviews, emailing people... and I am thoroughly convinced this shit never stopped, and simply evolved into a more insidious form.
Anyways, on the with the show (er, fan fiction). If you'd like to discuss these matters with me in greater detail, please feel free to shoot me a private message through your fanfiction dot net account, or email me at: survival dot lex at gmail dot com
"No one can ever follow
No one can ever know
Wind up the spinning top and watch it go, watch it go
Never gonna be easy, was it?
You didn't think it'd be so much fun
Smile comes despite the danger get some get some"
- "I Won't Let You Go" by Snow Patrol
"I always feel like somebody's watching me.
And I have no privacy.
Whoa, I always feel like somebody's watching me.
Who's playing tricks on me?"
-'Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell
Story starts below...
The drive home was uneventful. Jane asked Lisbon to make a detour on the way home, and they stopped by Pier 39 and walked around. Charlotte was sleepy from food. She'd eaten most of her large cheese pizza, all by herself, and had earned herself (miraculously) enough tickets to buy most of the cheap crap she'd wanted- the T-shirt, a large Chuck E. Cheese plush, the insulated lunch bag.
She hadn't had enough tickets for the other toys, but had decided they didn't really matter so much, afterall. She'd been drowsy, coming down from a sugar high and heading into the abyss that was a sugar crash, by the time they were getting ready to leave the madhouse which served as a kids' arcade and play centre hybrid, overseen by anthropomorphized, animatronic overlords playing god-awful country music on a stage and grinning their strange grins while they surveilled the youngsters in close proximity with plastic, unblinking eyes. Damned things creeped Jane right the Hell out. Why on Earth did kids like them?
Charlotte's eyelids were closing and she was rubbing her eyes as she told her father that she didn't need all the prizes she'd originally wanted, too tired to keep playing, to keep "earning", all those cheap Chinese trinkets.
"Good. So we can leave now?" Jane said, slightly buzzed from his beer, as the worker behind the prize counter pulled Charlotte's picks off the wall, declared her name loudly (apparently one's name was called when you earned enough tickets to earn the "big" prizes) and handed them to her. Charlotte nodded as she accepted her prizes and held them to her chest like brightly-coloured shields.
Lisbon and Jane had finished off the Hawaiian pizza together, and Jane had consumed most of the beer, since Lisbon was driving and couldn't be anywhere near what most people called "buzzed". He'd come back from the bathroom to find Lisbon sleeping in their booth and Charlotte finishing off the last of the beer in his glass. She shot him a devious grin and he raised his eyebrows, not impressed but not willing to make a federal case out of the issue. Chuck E. Cheese's had been a nice- if not somewhat hectic- distraction to the earlier revelations of the day.
Charlotte had decided the three left over pieces of her cheese pizza probably wouldn't taste good after an extended car ride home, so she handed them over to one of the older boys who had been paid to watch Dixon.
Only one kid was left when they exited the Chuck E. Cheese's, and he was sitting on the curb near a very bored Dixon, stroking the pitbull's square head. The kid looked, Jane decided almost immediately, more than just a little bit high. His eyes were bloodshot and incredibly glassy. And more to the point, he smelled heavily of weed. The cheap stuff, skunk weed.
Good old California marijuana culture. Where would the world be without it?
The destruction of so many brain cells through chronic pot use probably had a fair bit to do with the inane surfer lingo which still clung to the Southern coast of California like a good-natured but mentally challenged relative who doesn't understand when he's overstayed his welcome. But Jane had a soft spot for potheads. Usually, they were loners and misfits, often too bright for their own good, seeking to numb the stress of adolescence the only way they knew how, and trying to look cool at the same time.
As far as coping mechanisms went, marijuana was one of the less destructive, and the inane ramblings of potheads amused Jane, somewhat, even if he would never publicly share that fact.
"Cool dog, dude," the youth said when he saw Jane, then Lisbon, then Charlotte. He stared at Charlotte for an extended period of time, either high and unable to think clearly and thus avert his gaze after an appropriate period of time, or, possibly, struck with sudden hormonal lust for Patrick Jane's traumatized child-in-a-teen's-body. Jane wasn't sure. But either way, it was time to go.
"Thanks," Charlotte said to the kid, and went over to Dixon, kissed the canine's forehead, and unlocked the bike lock from around Dixon's torso with the little key she carried on a shoe lace around her neck (also on said shoelace lanyard was a copy of the apartment key and her bus pass with a hole punched out through the top of the plastic, even though altering one's bus pass in any way was expressly prohibited on the back in fine print and could render it void).
"I couldn't eat all my pizza. You want these?" Charlie asked the older boy, shyly, as Jane got his wallet out to pay the kid. The boy nodded, grinned, took the box of pizza with the three left over slices, opened it, mumbled something about having "the munchies", grabbed a slice, and wolfed most of said slice down in front of them while they watched.
Jane handed him a twenty, looked around.
"Where's your buddy?"
The kid pointed to his buddy, a lanky kid of about 19, who was doing tricks on his skateboard at the far end of the parking lot.
"We took turns," the kid explained.
"Ah," Jane said, and fished out another twenty. "For your buddy."
The kid nodded, pocketed both bills, and called to his friend.
Charlotte gently encouraged a now-hyper Dixon to walk without pulling on the leash as the three humans and the dog made their way across the parking lot to Lisbon's vehicle.
Then they were back in the car again, pulling out of the parking lot, Charlotte miraculously silent and drowsing with her face smushed up against the glass of the back passenger window. So much for her book report.
The sun was low in the sky as they hit Pier 39 and began to walk around, burning off the pizza and pop and beer calories, Charlotte, wide-eyed and over-tired, snapping random photos with her digital camera like someone might suddenly outlaw photography and every tiny detail she saw was worth preserving for a photographically-deprived posterity, Dixon straining on the leash as Jane walked the beast, Lisbon walking alongside Jane, silent and somewhat brooding after the disclosures of the day. Where did they go from here? How did Red John's youth affect his behavior, how did it change his moral culpability?
The piers at Pier 39 were almost entirely covered in large, fat, roly-poly California sea lions basking in the late-day sun and enjoying their beauty sleep, and Charlotte laughed out loud at the sight of them all, her sleep-buggy eyes bulging a little in her stunned delight- and, before Jane could stop her- she sprinted off towards the wild animals as if, just maybe, she planned to cuddle them or join them in their large pile on the piers.
The smell of creosote and sea water was strong and strangely pleasant. Soothing and reminiscent of times in Jane's life before things had gone to Hell. In this very moment, right here and right now, he was mostly at peace. There was a deep ache in his core, a slow, burning sadness. But it was under control and contrasted with the beauty of the light on the green water pooling around the piers, the blue of the sky, the clouds, the image of his miraculous daughter running and carefree as a toddler...
Jane sucked in a lungful of sea-salted air and breathed it out slowly, enjoying the last few minutes of the day, here, in San Francisco. Finding his little niche of peace and quiet, right here and...
"Charlotte... not too close, okay? They might be aggressive," Jane called with the confidence that comes to a man when most humans in his life comply with his demands for an extended period of time. It was habit, now, more than an actual belief that Charlotte would comply.
Charlotte shook her unbrushed, golden curls, made a "shush" motion with one hand as if the idea of carnivorous sea mammals possibly having an aggressive streak was just plain lunacy, thank-you-very-much, and continued on her way. Undaunted.
Dixon, upon seeing the sea lions, went absolutely ape-shit and began pulling on the leash as if everything in the universe demanded he, too, get up close and personal with these particular sea lions. Right here and now. RIGHT NOW.
Jane sighed. Suddenly, he felt very tired. The moment had passed. He had a slight headachy developing, and what seemed to the be the start of a sore throat. His neck muscles were tight as stone, bunched up from strain he hadn't consciously considered, beginning to throb.
"I think I saw a youtube video of a little girl getting dragged into the ocean by one of those sea lions," Lisbon mused, looking at Jane with solemn intensity as the seconds passed and Charlotte only got closer to the sea lions.
Whatever ease was left drained out of Jane's smile.
"Seriously, Charlotte! That's close enough! No closer! I mean it!"
"Yeah, yeah!" She called back, and continued to inch her way forward, face plastered with a goofy, enraptured grin. Jane swore under his breath and looked at Lisbon, tired and a little annoyed.
"Her obedience is absolutely stunning," Lisbon muttered as consolation, walking towards the teen at a pace that was a little too fast to be considered a comfortable stroll. The sea lions weren't exactly criminals or well-known man-eaters, and they appeared to be content to do nothing more than soak up some primo California rays and be left alone by the coppers... but wild animals were unpredictable.
If there was one overall lesson Jane had learned during his life, it was that you never knew what was going to happen, how another lifeform might respond to you, what dangers might be lurking in wait on a bright blue-skied day.
"I think sometimes that- apart from the Red John stuff- Charlotte's view of reality is like something from a Disney movie," Jane said mildly as he broke into a jog in the direction of his daughter.
Charlotte was crouched down now, a second away from moving into a crawling position, and had her camera out in front of her in both hands. She took a number of quick shots with the flash on and one of the sea lions- apparently annoyed by this inconsiderate interruption to its "me-time"- opened its large mouth and made a strange barking, growling noise.
Charlotte was up in a standing position almost instantly and ran back to Jane and Lisbon, grinning like an idiot. Pleased as punch with herself, too.
"Check out this photo!" She declared, and turned the screen so both grown-ups could see the fruits of her labor. It was a close up of a group of the slumbering sea-beasts, eyes half open, one with its tongue sticking out. Cute.
"What did I say about getting so close? Seriously, Charlotte..." Jane chastised.
"I was fine. Don't have a heart attack, Patrick," Charlotte remarked, annoyed at her perception of Jane as the uptight, overprotective father.
"Yeah, you just happen to be fine. Apparently they had enough fish to eat today or else-"
"We should have brought the extra pizza for them!" Charlotte exclaimed, looking back at the sea lions wistfully.
Oh, what could have been...
She gently smacked herself on the side of the head to reinforce her point that the pizza would have served the wild sea lions better than the pot-head humans. Of course, when she'd given away her pizza, she hadn't known she'd be seeing sea lions.
"Yeah, that would have been just awesome," Jane said with mild sarcasm.
"I bet they would have liked it! Who doesn't like cheese pizza?"
"Okay, you saw them. Want to go now? It's a long drive home."
Charlotte wanted to protest, stay longer, maybe try her luck with those adorable sea lions one more time (maybe if she didn't use the flash next time, they'd be more congenial?), but she'd worn herself out whacking moles and riding video game dirt-bikes and playing Dance Dance Revolution with Lisbon and pestering her father for just "one" glass of beer...
("We're at Chuck E. Cheese's, how alcoholic can it really be, Patrick?")
...and combined with all the sugar and pizza in her system? She was feeling sleepy again.
"Hmmm. Yeah... okay. Am I going to school tomorrow?"
"Yes," Jane said, shooting her an amused look. "Why do you think you wouldn't be going to school tomorrow?"
"Because... it will be late by the time we get home, and I haven't done my homework," the girl tried, grinning at the absurdity of her own comment. Her cheeks were almost fuchsia from excitement, sugar and a touch too much sun, and she starting to develop something of a tan.
"Laaaaame," Jane said as they began to walk back towards the parked car. "Just lame."
"It was worth a try," Charlotte said, glancing over at Lisbon with a crafty smile.
"I bet Lisbon would let me stay home from school if she were my legal guardian. Wouldn't you, Lisbon?"
"Ha! Not a chance," Lisbon said, smiling back at the teen.
Charlotte shrugged.
"I thought you wanted to increase your fun-factor, Patrick?" Charlotte taunted as they got in view of the car. Lisbon took her keys out of her pocket, used the remote to unlock the doors.
"Now you're just pushing your luck, kid," Jane said mildly.
"What happens if I push my luck over the edge?" Charlotte wondered aloud, still in teasing mode.
"I haven't decided yet," Jane said, still mildly buzzed. "But it would probably involve the television remote control disappearing for an extended period of time."
"That doesn't sound so bad..."
"You say that now, but a month without Netflix might change your mind."
"A MONTH?!" Charlotte yelped as she opened up the car's rear door and let Dixon jump in.
"A month of classic literature and, I don't know, maybe there is a teen reading group at the library... maybe a local ballet troupe that might like to have you join their ranks..." Jane mused, as if seriously considering any of the spoken options. Lisbon was trying not to laugh, Jane could see, but the corners of her mouth twitched as she tried to keep her composure.
"Ha. Not a chance in Hell. Ballet? No chance in Hell," Charlotte said drowsily, making direct, sustained eye contact with Jane, as if he'd suggested enrolling her in the marines. Jane laughed.
Charlotte got in the car then, Jane in the passenger side, Lisbon in the driver's side. The car started and they were back on their way to Sacramento, and their normal life, and whatever the future held.
It was almost ten at night before they pulled into Jane's apartment parking lot. Charlotte had fallen asleep in the back seat against Dixon, who was also, apparently, asleep. At the lack of movement from the car, the dog slit his eyes open, yawned widely, licked his lips. Seeing that none of the adults moved immediately, Dixon let his eyes close again.
"You want to stay over?" Jane asked, gesturing the outside of the apartment building, the outdoor walkways leading to each individual unit.
"I should probably go home and shower. Have to be up early, tomorrow," Lisbon said, looking out the windshield. She had been spending a lot of time with Jane and Charlotte lately, and it was nice, but sometimes she needed her own space.
And... this day... there was just so much to process. Lisbon had always preferred to be alone when troubled, or when she had to think. She was a private person by nature.
"You okay... I mean... with everything that happened today?" Jane asked softly. He could hear the rock music on Charlotte's mp3 player leaking out of her expensive wireless headphones. She really had to start turning the music down, or she'd be deaf by 30.
"I'm okay. This doesn't change anything, you know," Lisbon said with equal softness.
"Change anything?" Jane echoed.
"About Red John's... culpability. What he was. He was still a monster."
"A created monster," Jane said, and Lisbon could hear the conflict in his words.
"A dog that is directly infected with rabies is still rabid, and it will still rip your apart," Lisbon said, hoping to lessen some of Jane's angst.
"I know that. It's just... how much control did he actually have? How much of what he did was actually... him?"
Lisbon was quiet, searching for words that might help. But what words were there?
"We'll probably never know that. Maybe some part of him was innocent, and that part of him is as much a victim of what he endured as the victims he later claimed for himself," Lisbon said, turning sidewise to look Jane in the eyes.
Jane sighed. Nodded.
"You sure you don't want to stay over?" Jane asked again. Lisbon shook her head, smiled.
"Nah. I sort of miss my own bed. Yours is comfortable, but..."
"We get attached to our beds, I get it," Jane added. Lisbon nodded.
"And I need to feed my fish."
"Since when did you get fish?" Jane asked, mildly surprised.
"After we got back from Mexico. Read in a book... how soothing they are. They are. Soothing, I mean."
Jane nodded. Tried to hide the sudden, overwhelming guilt he felt. He had done this to her. His life, his drama, and his insane twin brother. This stress in Lisbon, in the soft lines of her face, and the newer, stronger darkness in his eyes? It was his doing. He had infected her with whatever tragedy ran throught the blood of his family, just like he had spread that tragedy and pain on to Charlotte.
And the guilt was sharp as a knife, a pain under his ribs, in his lungs and heart. He pushed a hand into his chest, sucked in a breath and held it. Finally spoke.
"I'll wake the sleeping dragon," Jane said, glancing over at Charlotte, looking back at Lisbon.
He reached over to hug Lisbon, stopped. He was suddenly filled with the desire to just... grab her. Kiss her. Let her know how much she meant to him.
Instead, he hesitated.
Lisbon smilled, leaned forward, hugged him instead.
He kissed the top of her head, smelled her shampoo, wondered about the strangeness of existence, that there could be a soul like Lisbon in such a dark world, a soul that smelled of coconut shampoo and who acted tough to hide her compassion in the good old boys' club that was the CBI.
A soul that would go home, day after day, week after week, month after month and stand in the shower and try to scrub away the dirt and sweat of the day, and all the bad ju-ju which came from hunting sadists and psychopaths and simple, greedy people who had momentarily lost their sense of moral direction. A soul, he knew, who sometimes lost it in the shower when the case had been unusually unfair and brutal, a soul who would weep into the hot spray of the shower and get out with red, puffy eyes and wander into the living room, and watch sitcoms and drink coffee into the late hours of the evening, because sleep was impossible.
That same soul would come back the next day, and work just as hard, because the world was painful and dark and unfair, and because she felt she had a moral duty to be on the side of the light, and the angels, and whatever goodness a mind like Lisbon desperately needed to believe in to keep going. She'd suffer, and she'd pick herself up, and do it over and over, just because she could, and because she was strong, and because others weren't willing to do the same.
Knowing full well, all the while, that she was only making the slightest dent in the insanity... but what else could she do? Doing nothing when she could do something was not in Lisbon's nature.
How could a soul be this compassionate, and strong, and to-the-bone-goodand decent, in the same world where the likes of people who tortured little boys with electroshock and sleep deprivation and pins-under-the-fingernails existed, the same world where fathers raped their infant daughters with curling irons and mothers drowned their little boys in the bathtubs prowled the streets?
Jane suddenly felt a strong, overwhelming, dizzying urge to scream. Knew it was anxiety, maybe the start of full-blown panic disorder. Even he had his limits, it would be a stupid mistake to think he was immune.
He shut his eyes against the soft waves of her coconut-scented hair and just rested for a moment, and she let him.
He finally pulled back, smiled at Lisbon, what he hoped was a smile which conveyed strength and compassion and stability. She looked to him, he believed, to be strong and have his emotions and thoughts together, and the least he could do for her, when his own thoughts got choppy, was at least attempt to present that front for her. He owed her at least that much.
"Jane..." Lisbon trailed. The day had been dizzying in its emotional intensity and revelations, stunning and disturbing and heart-breaking in a way that was hard to emotionally process.
This was the sort of day that was superficially easier to endure than the conscious mind knew, because the subconscious couldn't process the full magnitude of the disclosures and stress all at once. He knew he was running on fumes, he knew this would hit him later. Lisbon knew it, too. He looked at her, smiled again, less sure of himself, less confidence in his smile.
"It's going to be okay. This doesn't change what Red John... what he became. It only explains, maybe, the incredible... depravity... of his actions. And, perhaps... why he got away with them for so long, even when he was relatively sloppy." Lisbon's voice was strong and warm and helped to center him. Jane nodded, found himself wanting to rock, just a little, just to rock and listen to her speak. He forced himself to be still.
Jane processed her words again, ran them through his mind two, three, four times. Finally nodded again, a stronger nod. His heart felt like it was pounding too hard and too slow in his chest. He found the unpleasant and not completely unwarranted thought come to him, that maybe something might be wrong with his heart, that maybe the stress of everything from the past ten months or so had done some damage? The thought scared him, and he could almost feel the sudden flood of adrenaline in his veins, sharp and biting as a shot of ephenephrine straight into a vein.
"I know that, and thank you... for trying to comfort me, Lisbon. But... I... I used to think I knew what life was. I don't think I do anymore. And that is... I don't know what to do, when I don't understand things. I have always understood things. It's what I do. It's what I thought I did." He smiled at her, a sardonic, slightly self-deprecating smile.
Lisbon looked at him carefully, the man she'd come to love with a fierce intensity which sometimes scared her. His voice was so soft, and so low. She'd heard people in shock use the same lost, soft, careful tone of voice, usually right before they fainted. She reached out a hand, put it on his arm, moved it to his tanned hand. Squeezed his hand. She was here with him. He wasn't alone. If he began to fall, it wouldn't be like his first breakdown. He wouldn't be alone. It wouldn't get that bad.
Because she was here, and she had his back.
"It's still the same as it always was, Jane. Greedy, evil, cruel people doing horrible things for profit and power. Stupid people following orders and absolving themselves of any personal, moral responsibility because they have managed to convince themselves that following orders is the same thing as not having a choice."
Jane nodded at that. He felt so achy. Even his eyeballs, ached. The fluid in his eyeballs, the aqueous humour, seemed to hurt, and that was just plain crazy, that thought. But he found himself thinking it all the same. His muscles burned deep in their fibers, a build-up of lactic acid and stress hormones.
"I... we should go in. She... she needs a lot of time to respond to changes in her environment and I think she shoudl go to school tomorrow," Jane said, looking back at over at Charlotte, who was flushed and peaceful in sleep. She looked almost like an infant, except the thin skin over her eyelids was incredibly dark. Her mouth twitched a little in her sleep, and he could see her eyes move under the lids as she dreamed.
Lisbon looked back over at Charlotte fondly, and smiled a soft, maternal smile. Nodded at Jane's comment.
Jane turned around in his seat, and leaned over, gently shook his daughter.
"Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey..." Jane said softly, shaking Charlotte a little harder when she failed to respond. She made a face, moved in her sleep, turned her face into Dixon's side as if he was a pillow.
"Charlotte? We're home. Lisbon has to go home, now. Come on, get up, get your Chuck E Cheese toys and backpack. Come on."
"I- doan... doan wanna go to school..."
"No, that's not for a bit, yet. We're at home. Charlotte?"
He shook her a bit harder. Her eyes opened, blinked hard, fuzzy and disoriented and still half asleep and full of the phantom images of dreams. She licked her lips. Looked around the dark interior of the car for errant personal belongings, reorienting herself to her physical surroundings. Finally noticed both Lisbon and Jane looking at her, smiling.
"What time is it?" She said, yawning, stretching, picking her bag off the floor where it had fallen in her sleep. Or, rather, where she had kicked it in her sleep.
"Time to go to bed," Jane said conversationally. "Come on. Say goodnight to Lisbon and get your stuff."
"Night, Lisbon..." Charlotte mumbled, and Jane saw her tug on the door handle. The door clicked and opened and she scrambled out into the cool night, Dixon right behind her. She adjusted her backpack on her shoulders, scanned the back of the seat for anything she may have forgotten or not seen initially, collected the Chuck E Cheese lunchbag and Chuck E. Cheese plush. The T-shirt she'd stuffed into her backpack, apparently.
"Bye, Lisbon, see you tomorrow," Jane said as Charlotte slammed the back passenger door as hard as Jane suspected was possible. Charlotte seemed to have some issue with believing car doors didn't lock properly unless she slammed them with all her might. Lisbon nodded.
"I want the shower first," Charlotte announced to Jane, standing beside him in the parking lot as he crouched down to speak to Lisbon. Jane glanced back at her, nodded, turned back to Lisbon.
"Yeah. See you tomorrow. Have a good sleep," Lisbon said, smiling, as Charlotte pulled on Jane's sweater's sleeve like a toddler and asked something about if he would make her lunch in the morning, and could it be peanut butter and jam and a snack pack and...
"You, too," Jane said, and shut the front passenger side door. Lisbon waved through the tinted window glass, pulled out of the parking lot, tail lights winking an eerie red in the cool night as she turned the corner and departed from view. Charlotte had walked Dixon over to a spot of grass next to the sidewalk where there was an old fire hydrant standing sentry duty, in bad need of a new paint job. As Jane watched, Dixon lifted his back, right leg and pissed all over the hydrant.
When the dog was finished, he straightened up, grinning a relieved, doggy grin. Charlotte was grinning back, bent down, praised him, kissed his head.
"You're such a good boy, Dixon. Good job going pee-pee. Such a good boy!" Charlotte's praise sounded awfully young and innocent under the orange sodium street lights, in the dark night, in the dark world. But Jane had her back. This little one.
Jane smiled at the sight of her, crouched down next to her goofy, grinning dog. Suddenly, Lisbon's belief in a loving God didn't strike him as so absurd.
"Okay. Bed now. Let's go inside," Jane said with as much determination as he could muster. Charlotte was already starting to wake up fully, now, and that could mean a requested detour with him to the corner store or the 7-11, or something, if he didn't corrall her quickly.
Instead, Charlotte just nodded, followed Jane over to the stairs and started up with him.
"Are you going to marry Lisbon?" Charlotte asked, suddenly, when they were still 2 flights of stairs from their floor.
"Marry Lisbon? Where is that coming from?"
"You love her," Charlotte said simply as they kept walking up the stairs. As if love was everything. As if life was that simple.
Jane nodded. "Yes, I do."
"And she loves you," Charlotte said simply, right behind Jane on the stairs, leading Dixon on his leash. Jane smiled at the comment. Nodded.
"Yes, I think so," Jane confirmed.
"So why don't you get married, then? Maybe have kids? Start a family?"
They were on their floor now, headed towards their front door. Jane glanced over at his daughter, raised his eyebrows.
"You'd want me to have kids with Lisbon?" He said, voice tinged with laughter. The idea that Charlotte loved Lisbon that much, that she was even saying these things, delighted him. He suddenly wanted to laugh at the pale sliver of moon hidden behind cloud cover and light pollution, just laugh and laugh and laugh. He bit the inside of his cheek, instead. No need to get crazy, here. The poor kid was full up on crazy.
"Always wanted a little brother or sister," Charlotte said brightly, darting a furtive grin at her father. Jane nodded, considered this new piece of information, stored it away for later consideration.
"Useful information, kid. Thanks," Jane said, pulling his keys from his pocket, unlocking the steel front door. Charlotte pushed past him without asking him to move or excusing herself as he went to the alarm system and keyed in the code to disarm the unit.
"Shower is mine!" Charlotte reminded Jane a little too loudly for comfort, running down the hall in her mismatched, neon socks, dropping her backpack on the way, as if Jane might actually try and beat her to it. Jane watched her affectionately, amused. Closed the front door, turned the first deadlock into place, the second deadlock, then the slide lock. He entered the code into the alarm system again to secure the place while they slept. The night code. Even Charlie didn't know it, and that was just as well.
He heard the shower start up- the soothing susurrus of running water- what seemed like ten seconds later. Record time for Charlotte, it seemed.
Jane wandered into the living room, turned the television on, surfed channels until he found the local Sacramento news.
He sat in his armchair, watched the news blankly, considered the day and all that had happened in this single 24-hour unit of life, of time, mind drifting off into a fractured pre-sleep.
Charlotte's words, her endearing smiles, the sound of her laughter on the piers, the sight of her ash-blonde hair with the setting sunlight shining on the edges of each wavy strand, bright orange and yellow flame like a burning halo edged around her small silhouette.
The smell of creosote and ocean water and cigarette smoke and seaweed, the cries of gulls and the barks of cranky sea lions. Charlie and Lisbon playing video games together, eating pizza together, the mischievous grin Charlie had given her father when he came back to their table and caught her chugging the last of the cheap, watered-down beer, and the old man's revelations about Red John, and what Red John had endured for years until no human mind could endure any more of the same... and who he'd been at the start of it all, just a troubled, hurting little boy.
All this pain... could have been avoided. It was unncecessary in the truest sense of the word.
And that made it all the more horrific.
Affection and love and grief and fear and a strange sensation of losing one's bearings and sense of reality all mixed and danced in the mentalist's mind, each emotion seemingly more intense and potent than the last. Jane drifted in the hypnotic and hyper-real space before sleep, the world of hypnagogia, a place where deeply buried subconscious emotions fluttered to the surface like butterflies... butterflies capable of stinging like wasps. Where past, repressed memories blossomed and overlaid themselves with subconscious fears and doubts, where the voices of the dead could speak life into the room as real and vivid as any physical person. This was the realm Patrick Jane mastered in controlling in other humans during his waking hours, and now, floating in the same, malleable head-space, lost in his memories of his daughter, and of his deranged twin, the smiling eyes of a young Peter Jane came to him, sparkling and upturned in laughter.
"I couldn't let you go, Patrick. You mean that much to me."
A child's voice, a little boy's voice.
The voice filled the room, as clear and real as a church bell.
They called the sensory impressions recieved during this sort of conscious state "hallucinations", because they didn't know what else to call them.
The same doctors who called such voices and visions hallucinations did not believe in the world which had driven Red John in his madness, or sustained Charlotte through her dark night of the soul.
Such neurologists did not believe in the spirit world, and ergo, all anamolous sensory impressions were disregarded as hallucinatory and unreal.
Jane startled a little, moved, jerked back into temporary wakefulness at the shock of hearing that strong, real, young voice and wiped drool from his chin, his neck. Smacked his lips. Looked into the gloom and the shadows in the apartment, the places where the shadows seemed to undulate and play tag with the glowing flicker of the television light, as his mind fell back into the early stages of sleep despite his reservations.
So much to take in, and he was stunned into sudden, incredible fatigue as his thoughts and memories formed a vivid collage in his mind's eye, swirling and overlapping as sleep crept nearer and nearer and his body began to undergo the first, tentative stages of sleep paralysis.
Fatigue beyond fatigue.
He could sleep a decade and still feel this exhausted, he was suddenly certain of that.
He could sleep a hundred years. A thousand.
This fatigue would never go away.
It was burned into the very core of his being, into his soul, like a metaphysical brand.
His little girl.
His little, stubborn, petulant twin.
His young, pretty, kind wife.
Faces and screams and pain untold.
Blood and screams and the putrid stink of dead bodies turning that god-awful rancid green-black colour, rotting in the Californian summer heat like forgotten bags of garbage. Behind woodsheds, under metal garbage cans, in lonely bathtubs no maid had ever touched... The swarming, humming buzz of literal clouds of flies delighting in their newest putrescent meal. Maggots wriggling like thousands of pieces of translucent fishing line in all the soft places...
The terrible shock and convulsions of electricity passed through the temples of a little boy tied down to a gurney, his mouth filled with a rubber mouth guard with a breathing hole cored through the middle, his eyes bulging in incoherent terror...
Jane opened his eyes woodenly, watched the flickering images on the flatscreen, the mundane minutiae of the day, what other people thought was important...
He needed to sleep. He was so damned exhausted. He needed to sleep.
But he knew all too well what waited for him in sleep, when his subconscious opened like a transitory, nocturnal lotus of the mind and the nightmare gas started to fill the internal projection screen of his sleeping mind.
Conflicting needs pulling him in two directions at once. The need to rest, to recharge. And the need not to face any more of this nightmare.
He forced his heavy eyelids open again and stared at the flatscreen, at the pixelated feed of the local news.
Maybe it was important, these prosaic little tidbits of life. These were the small details which helped ground a person, helped bring them back to the moment. Maybe they were important, precisely because they were relatively so unimportant.
On the television, the local news was running a feel-good story about a blind, autistic woman who donated her time and fed orphaned and injured wild animals from a bottle. She'd helped to save the lives of over 50 baby animals, mostly raccoons and deer. Cute.
Jane fell into fitful sleep.
Charlotte stood naked under the shower. The day had been long, and weird. It had been fun to hang out at Chuck E. Cheese, but Lisbon and Patrick had been off... weird. Charlotte wasn't the best in the world at figuring out social niceties, but her time with Red John had taught her to pick up changes in people, even subtle ones. How to react to said changes was still a life-skill she was honing, but she was excellent at noticing when aspects of a person's demeanour shifted. When they were stressed. Angry. Upset. Distracted. Lying.
Patrick had gone to interview some old geezer about Red John, when Red John had still been a boy. The drive down had been weird, unnaturally light and full of inane little comments that seemed more for Jane's own benefit than her's or Lisbon's. Like he was trying to keep his own inner thoughts from taking hold. It had been weird.
She'd felt more or less safe in San Francisco, because Red John couldn't know they were there. But then she'd considered that he did, somehow, know they were there, and the hair on her arms had stood up, her body had felt cold through and through, even the blood had felt suddenly chilled. She'd gone to the Dairy Queen, but it hadn't seemed crowded enough. Even the sunlight coming through the glass had looked cold, too white, too sterile. She'd eaten her Blizzard in a hurry, wolfing it down like a starving child, and then gone to the Chuck E. Cheese's. It was big and crowded and loud and full of dark, shadowy nooks and crannies, and that both soothed and scared Charlotte at the same time.
Minutes had passed slowly. She'd focused on the video games, trying to relax, to be semi-normal. to believe Patrick's comments that her fear was paranoia, that her visions were trauma-induced stress responses. But that felt wrong, too.
She'd felt safer when Patrick and Lisbon had joined her, later, almost manic in her relief to have them near her. Themn, there'd been the trip to see the sealions, and that had delighted her, and by the time they were back in the car heading back to Sacramento the fear and uneasiness and excitement of the day had taken their toll, and she'd fallen asleep.
School, tomorrow. Patrick had been clear about that. And she wanted to be clean. Wanted to wash away what she'd come to mentally refer to as the "creeped out" feeling, an insidious, all-pervading sense of nowhere in existence being safe, of everywhere being a trap, of light and heat lacking true warmth and comfort, of faces in cartoons looking sinister, even evil. She'd read about such perceptual distortions taking place in some people when they used hallucinogenic drugs, but she wasn't a druggie. She just felt like this sometimes, a scared, all-encomposing slow-burning fear which wasn't potent and acute enough to be a panic attack, but was too unnerving and disorienting to earn itself the label of generalized anxiety. "Creeped out" feeling fit it best. It scared her, how dark and sinister the world looked when her brain saw everything in these gloomy tones of fear and potential threat and potential sadism. You couldn't turn it off, you couldn't turn the channel like you could if you were watching a horror movie and got scared, because your mind was the one messing with reality, and all the channels were suddenly horror movies.
Even Disney cartoons could seem sinister in such a head-space. Mickey looked like he was grinning over homicidal thoughts; Goofy had the oafish congeniality of a dim-witted cannibal who has just feasted on his friends.
Charlotte turned the water a bit more to the left, to the heat, until her skin became dark pimp. She needed to feel warm. She needed to feel safe. She was using L'oreal kids shampoo, and it smelled nice. This particular version smelled like blueberries. She tried to focus on the smell, a smell meant to be soothing to little kids, but it wasn't helping too much.
Her neck muscles were tight and ached. She dug her fingers into the tense muscles in her neck and shoulders. It was like pressing into stone. Her feet were dark red below her, body too-hot from the water, and yet, the inner cold terror persisted.
She rubbed body wash on her chest and belly. Considered the shiny, stretched scarring Red John had left her with, the curve of the smiley face's "mouth" right below her navel and just above her pubic bone, grinning out from her abdomen. Ugly scars. Despicable to look at, and no way to get rid of them.
The eyes had been first incised with a scalpel and then burned for added torture above her areolae. Her breasts had been non-existent when Red John had branded her in this way, but now parts of each "eye" stretched over the small curves of her breast tissue.
So ugly. So ugly.
She rubbed the body wash into the tight, shining burn scars and rubbed it in. Washed off the lather and repeated the washing. Again and again. The burns did not lighten with time. They would not go away.
She was so ugly. Red John had made sure she would never wear a bikini, would never feel comfortable in the nude.
She shut her eyes against the spray of hot water and the smell of the body wash and the L'oreal kids shampoo. She was feeling a little bit dizzy, now, from the heat. And maybe the thoughts. And yet, the creeped out feeling persisted. With eyes closed, she moved her hand along the wall of the shower, till she found the little plastic shower shelf which held the loofah brush and the shave gel, the small bottle of Scope mouthwash and her toothbrush. She took a swig of the Scope and gargled for a full minute as the water continued to pelt her body.
She knew that the outside of her body felt scalded, and yet, she didn't care. The cold inside was so terribly cold. The bathroom was full of steam.
She gargled until she couldn't hold the mouthwash in her mouth any longer, then spit it into the spray of the water. Mint-smell mixed with the fruity scent of her shampoo and the coconut smell of the body wash.
Next, it was time to brush her teeth. She used a ton of toothpaste, brushed and brushed and brushed, thought of all the plaque bacteria she was killing, how every minute under the hot water, in the soap, was killing more and more germs.
She liked the idea of the germs, disease-causing germs, dying in the heat, and the soap, and the toothpaste, being brushed off her teeth and gums and tongue and spat into the swirling water.
Eventually the heat was too much. The room seemed to tilt. She felt like she might faint. She reached forward, turned the shower off, then turned the water spigots off.
Her head was buzzing and spots of white and gray blurred her vision. Her body was scarlet, but the smiley face scars were almost white against the bright pink of her chest and belly. Sparse pupic hair (ugly!) and slightly rounded thighs. She had changed in the last two years or so, no longer a child, not quite yet a woman... and with the realization came a strong revulsion, a horrid sort of self-loathing.
She didn't want to be grown up. Not yet. Not when grown-up meant sexually mature and eyed by random strangers, expectations of a certain level of social skills, when thumb-sucking was no longer something she was "too old" for but was, with the passing of each year, more and more pathological.
She hadn't had a childhood! It wasn't fair! She wasn't ready, and she didn't want to be a woman.
But she could never go back. Never be five-going-on-six again. Never be innocent again. Or... untouched. Clean. Never again. Charlotte stood in front of the mirror in the little bathroom, breathing in the steam, reached out with her hand and wiped the steam from the mirror. Her face was dark red, eyes wide and that compelling, primeval green. More beast than girl, more wild-animal than human, that was how she saw herself. One of the smaller species of larger, wild cats, maybe a young mountain lion. Or a young wolf. Wild and semi-feral, scared and on-edge, trying to live a civilized life.
Doing it badly. Her eyes watched her from the mirror, that intent, animal gaze. She didn't even trust herself, her own mind, her own hands... how could she ever trust another human?
Damage beyond damage.
She swore lightly, under her breath, got a towel from the bar bolted to the wall and quickly dried off the shower water. She got dressed in her Pokemon pajamas in a hurry, mildly satisifed when her god-awful breasts and belly and Red John's handiwork were hidden from view by the brightly coloured anime figures.
Fucking Red John.
She turned the bathroom fan on, then, and cracked the door open. The air from the hallway felt noticably cold after the heat of the shower. Dixon was waiting by the door, like a good, loyal dog, and he grinned his doggie grin at his master when he saw her.
"Hey, Dixie. Waiting for me?" She said to the dog in the special tone she reserved for him. Dixon craned his head to one side, listening intently. Charlotte smiled at the animal, padded down the hallway and into the living room.
Patrick had fallen asleep in his armchair with the television on. His arms were wrapped around his torso, like he was trying to give himself a hug in sleep. Charlotte stood at the edge of the hall and watched him. Looked at him, the fine lines of his face, the way his chest moved as he breathed.
He looked so damned much like Red John, and she felt a sudden spike of fear, chemical fear, adrenaline. Her teeth felt chattery with it. She shook her head. Reminded herself of just how different Patrick was from his brother.
So different. So entirely different. Yet, watching him, with a face so much like Red John's, a body so much like Red John's, she felt a strange sort of grief.
She'd hated Red John, and been terrified of him. But despite everything, she'd wanted his approval, and his love... if he was capable of that. Such an odd mix of emotions. If she had never felt anything like love for Red John then maybe, maybe, moving on and healing would be easier.
But when you- or part of you- loved the same monster who had tortured you and almost killed you? How did you begin to heal from that?
She watched Patrick a moment longer. His face twisted in sleep, as he dreamed something, and he muttered something in his sleep. Charlotte took a tentative step towards him in her bare feet.
Another step. Another. She walked up and stood beside him, looking down on him as he slept and the light from the television (now playing infomercials for bullshit products people who weren't high or drunk or sleep deprived probably would never buy), as the light from the television danced over his features.
He said something again. It sounded like a "no".
Charlotte hunched down, forced herself to listen intently.
He said it again. A sad, forlorn, much-younger voice. He was regressed in his sleep.
"No," he said to the room, and his hands and fingers tightened around his torso.
"No, what?" Charlotte murmured softly, hoping she wouldn't wake him. She didn't.
But he didn't respond.
"No, what?" Charlotte said again.
"No... Peter... no... don't go... I... I... am... Peter... the monsters... there are monsters waiting."
Charlotte considered this. The shaky, adrenaline-fueled fear got worse. Her teeth felt shivery in her mouth, her arms felt goosebumpy and cold again. The "creeped out feeling" got much more intense.
"What monsters, Patrick?" Charlotte said to her father's sleeping form. His face twisted and he moved to the side slightly, as if trying to avoid her words, or what was represented by her words.
"Patrick? What monsters?"
"The monsters... monsters are coming for you, Peter. Peter... Peter... run!"
He was breathing faster now. Tormented. Charlotte considered him. Felt dazed. The idea of reaching out and touching him, right now, felt too intimidating. She walked into the kitchen, loudly, smacked the fridge door open. Opened up a kitchen cupboard and pulled out a new box of Cookie Crisp. Fished the almond milk out of the fridge, got out a plastic cereal bowl and placed it much harder than necessary on the laminate countertop.
She turned her head, listening. Finally, she heard a cough. Heard footsteps. There he was, coming into the kitchen, tired and drained looking, eyes bloodshot.
"What time is it?" Jane said, as he rubbed his eyes. Charlotte shrugged, gestured her head in the direction of the digital clock in the stove face. Jane yawned and looked in that direction.
"Almost midnight. You... you just wake up?" Jane said, trying to make conversation.
Charlotte shrugged. "Hungry for Cookie Crisp," she finally said around a spoonful of processsed carbs. Either he'd failed to notice that her hair was still wet from the shower, or he was still half asleep and hadn't done the math on how long she'd actually stayed in the shower. Which was just as well, as she wasn't in the mood for a paternally-driven therapy session right now.
"Okay. Put your bowl in the dishwasher when you're done. I'm going to get a shower," Jane said drowsily as he wandered away. Charlotte nodded, even though he was already gone.
She ate the rest of her cereal in silence, ruminating over her father's words, and the look of fear on his sleeping face, the way he had been hugging himself in his slumber, so lost and forlorn looking.
What monsters? Red John was the monster. Wasn't he? So... what monsters?
Probably just a nightmare. People dreamed all sorts of bullshit when they slept that had nothing to do with reality, especially when they were under stress.
And yet, the words niggled and ate at her as she worked her way through the large bowl of cereal, and drained the cereal-sweetened almond milk from the bowl like it was a syrupy soup. The look on Patrick's face, and the way his body twisted in distress as he slept, the little jerking movement of his head.
His command to his younger brother... the brother who had become Red John... run?
Run from what?