Author's Note: yay! Chapter one is here, since everyone seemed so eager to get it. Not much you really need to know, except I don't own any part of Secret Window. I wish I owned Mort, but I don't. Everything up to 'Eight Months Later' is ©Stephen King, and not mine. You can find it in the anthology, Four Past Midnight.
Author's thanks at the end.
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"Mort? What's wrong? What's –"
"You got you a wrong number, woman. Ain't no Mort here. Mort's dead." The gimlet eyes never wavered. "He did a lot of squirming around, but in the end he couldn't lie to himself anymore, let alone to me. I never put a hand on him, Mrs. Rainey. I swear. He took the coward's way out."
"Why are you talking that way?" Amy asked.
"This is just the way I talk," he said with mild surprise. "Everybody down in Miss'ippi talks this way."
"Mort, stop!"
"Don't you understand what I said?" he asked. "You ain't deaf, are you? He's dead. He killed himself."
"Stop it, Mort," she said, beginning to cry. "You're scaring me, and I don't like it."
"Don't matter," he said. He took his hands out from behind his back. In one of them he held the scissors from the top drawer of the desk. He raised them. The sun had come out, and it sent a starfish glitter along the blades as he snicked them open and then closed.
"You won't be scared long." He began walking toward her.
For a moment she stood where she was. Mort would not kill her; if there had been killing in Mort, then surely he would have done some that day at the motel.
Then she saw the look in his eyes and understood that Mort knew that, too.
But this wasn't him….Amy turned and bolted for the door….She struck the screen door with her hands, then tripped and fell full-length on the porch, the breath whooshing out of her. She fell exactly where Shooter had left his manuscript.
She rolled over and saw him coming. He only had his bare hands now, but they looked like they would be more than enough. His eyes were stern and unflinching and horribly kind beneath the brim of the black hat.
"I am so sorry, missus," he said.
"Rainey!" a voice cried. "Stop!"
She tried to look around and could not. She had strained something in her neck. Shooter never even tried. He simply came on toward her.
"Rainey! Stop!"
"There is no Rainey h –" Shooter began, and then a gunshot rapped briskly across the fall air. Shooter stopped where he was, and looked curiously, almost casually, down at his chest. There was a small hole there. No blood issued from it – at least, not at first – but the hole was there. He put his hand to it, then brought it away. His index finger was marked by a small dot of blood. It looked like a bit of punctuation – the kind which ends a sentence. He looked at this thoughtfully. Then he dropped his hands and looked at Amy.
"Babe?" he asked, and then fell full-length beside her on the porch boards.
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Eight Months Later:
There were only three things in Carly Beckham's sphere of influence she had no control over: her hair, the weather, and her mother. She chose not to accept responsibility for random or deserved acts of God.
On this particular spring day, the weather was as beautiful as it ever got in Augusta, Maine, in early spring, and her hair was being unusually cooperative. But despite these two normally good portents for the day, she was already exasperated. The reason for that was on the other end of the phone.
"No Mother, this is not a good time for you to visit." Carly struggled to get out of her car without dropping her coffee, her bagel, her briefcase, or without raising her voice as she talked to her mother on her cell phone. "I just got a new case load at work….No, they're not overworking me. I always put in extra time when I get a new patient. I like having a battle plan….No Mother, I am not stressed. Yes Mother, I'm aware of what stress does to your heart. No Mother, I'm not tempted to go get a drink, and no, I don't need you to come up and help me with my spring cleaning." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as her coffee slipped from her hand and spilled all over the ground. "Mom, I gotta go. I'm going to be late for work. Yes, I promise to call soon. Yes, yes, and I'll call Brian. Good-bye, Mother."
Looking down at the fading remains of her mochachino frappe or whatever it'd been that she'd ordered, Carly did indeed feel the urge to track down something with alcohol in it, but she ruthlessly crushed it. She'd worked too hard for control over her life to ruin it now. "Seven and a half hours and I can go home," she told herself. "And a job to do in the meantime. So get to it."
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"Hey, Dr. Beckham. Bad morning?"
"You've no idea, Leo. My mother decided this was a good time to call." The office staff was familiar with her mother's calls, since she managed to call the Maine psychological facility – otherwise known as Briar Ridge – where Carly worked, several times a month.
"Ouch." Leona McWade was a pixy-like woman of forty-five. Sweet, tiny, and with hair that'd gone grey very early in life, she looked like someone's sprightly grandmother, not the terror of lazy office staff. "If she tries calling again, I'll make sure she accidentally gets disconnected.
"You're a treasure, Leo." Carly grinned, pouring herself a cup of lukewarm coffee in the empty break room, gasping as she realized how strong it was. "Leo, you've got to start cutting back on how much coffee you use. This brew would take the wax and varnish off a dance floor."
"Stop complaining. You could use the pick-me-up. Besides, it keeps the temps and first-years from draining the pot." Glancing out the door, the head secretary said, "Gotta go. Half my staff is out with spring fever and the phones are ringing off the hook."
Carly nodded a good-bye and took this rare moment of inactivity to compose herself before facing yet another day of work. Briar Ridge was a good psych hospital – it had high success in treating and rehabilitating patients, the grounds were well tended, and the staff well-educated and dedicated to their work. On the outside, things ran smoothly. Unfortunately, on the inside, personalities tended to clash, and Carly admitted to doing nothing to help the situation. She'd never given a damn about office politics, and regrettably, her isolationist mentality had made her few friends. But then again, she wasn't in this to make friends. She was in this to cure diseases and treat mental imbalances.
Yet it was with a sigh that she drained her coffee and crumpled the cup.
Leaving the break room and moving to the staff room, Carly stripped off her light jacket, putting it in her locker. Her purse went on the hook after she made sure that her cell phone was turned off. A large scruntchy was used to pull back her uncontrollable mass of curly, mouse-brown hair. Since this was a government run facility, she didn't have an office, so she dug out the files she needed and grabbed her clipboard. Her pager was on the top shelf, and she picked it up and attached it to the waistband of her jeans. Looking at her watch, Carly noticed she was already fifteen minutes late for her first meeting of the day. Sighing, she slipped on her required white overcoat, and attached her nametag and security clearance tag to the lapel. A pen in the pocket of her coat, and she was set.
Walking down the hallway in a pair of Adidas that were nearly silent on the waxed tiles, she made her way to the administrator's office. Dr. Holshack was one of three people on staff to have their own office. The other two were Dr. Gable, the head doctor, and Dr. Marchman, head of the criminally insane ward. A ward she'd be visiting today.
She was five feet from the door when she heard the raised voice. "You can't do this! Patient 3357 is on my caseload, and I've made progress. What right do you have to take everything I've accomplished in the past three months and throw that away? Everyone knows that Dr. Beckham doesn't treat people. She treats diagnoses. What he needs is a human touch, not the ice that springs from her fingers!"
"If Mr. Rainey needed nothing more than a human touch, he'd be better by now? Wouldn't he Steve?" Carly leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over clipboard and chest, a calm look on her face. As if his outspoken comments hadn't hurt. "Well, you know what they say . . . to err is human." Moving into the room, she took a seat, ignoring the look of anger on her colleague's face. "And your gentle touch can't be too human if you're still referring to the patient by his case number."
Breaking in, Dr. Holshack took back the reigns of the conversation before things could escalate. "Dr. Beckham's record with non-communicative patients is exemplary. You've had this guy for eight months, and all you can say is he hasn't tried to hurt anyone for three of them." The other man took a seat in the chair next to Carly's, the anger on his face turning into defensiveness.
"By all means, I'm not sure what else you expect. The man is charged with arson, attempted murder, and two counts of murder in the first degree. He's a kook. This is the best you're going to get. And if he spends any time with Dr. Beckham, I'm afraid he'll regress."
"Regress into something other than the shell of the man he used to be? Is that what you're afraid of, Steve? And he wasn't charged with attempted murder. His ex-wife refused to press charges." She'd done her homework the night before, and was well aware of the facts surrounding the case.
"You know, Beckham, I'm getting real tired of your holier-than-thou attitu –"
"That's enough, children." Leaning back in his chair, Dr. Holshack exercised his authority. "Carly has the case, Steve. That's final. Mr. Rainey has a court date in a little over three months, and it'd be nice if he could say a few words for himself by that time. You can go now."
Carly looked down at her lap as Steve got up, his face white with suppressed anger. "Nice chatting with you, Steve," she drawled as he left the room. The door slammed and she winced, but didn't regret her actions.
"You're not helping matters, Beckham."
"It's hard to be helpful when you're the staff ice queen, Adam." In private meetings, Dr. Holshack preferred to let protocol drop. "It's even harder when you can hear that being proclaimed from five feet down the hall."
"Still, it'd be nice if you at least made an effort to be professional."
"I was being professional. I didn't make a point to emasculate him, did I?" There was a wry smile on her lips. "I'm sorry. I'll try to be on time to the next meeting and forestall some of the unpleasantness."
Adam Holshack merely shook his head. He didn't understand why Carly didn't let her humor show around her colleagues. If she did, she'd win more of them over than she offended. "Fine. Go. Treat your patients. But don't give anyone else a reason to come crying to me today."
Excused, Carly got to her feet with an ironic salute. "Aye-aye, sir." Glad to be sprung with only a mild reprimand, she left the office and made her way to an elevator that would take her to the third floor and the criminal ward.
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Exiting the elevator at the third floor, Carly felt like she'd stepped into another world. No wonder Rainey hasn't shown any progress, she thought, looking around. The walls were gunmetal grey, there were security guards at the intersection of every corridor, and there were large gates to get in and out of the ward. It was like a prison. Which theoretically made sense since every patient here was deemed criminally insane.
Walking up to the check-in point, Carly showed of her employee identification. "Dr. Beckham, here to see Mr. Rainey?"
A bored receptionist looked at her through the wall of bulletproof glass before pushing the intercom button. "Patient ID number?"
"3357-249B"
"Just a moment, Dr. Beckham." Making a note of the time, patient, and doctor, the woman looked back up. "Are you wearing any hairpins or jewelry – such as necklaces, bracelets, or earrings, or pins – that could become a hazard?"
"No." Carly was surprised by the question. She'd thought that Rainey had been non-responsive to any sort of stimuli.
"Are you carrying anything that could be construed as a weapon?"
"Just my pen. Is there a reason for this? I thought Mr. Rainey was nonviolent."
"Procedure, ma'am." The woman kept making notes. "Reason for the visit?"
"Observation and treatment." I obviously need to come up here more often.
"Thank you." There was a buzz and one of the guards opened the gate that would let her into the ward.
"Thank you." Shaking her head, Carly walked over to the man, waited as he closed the door and unlocked the next one. "Tell me," she looked at the man's nametag, "Ralph. Is all this really necessary?"
"It has been at times, Dr. Beckham. We've got a quiet lot at the moment, but even one change can upset the group dynamic. And that includes you." Yes. She'd known that. She'd even dealt with violent patients before. But most of them hadn't been suspected of murder either. "This way, doctor."
The guard led her through a series of corridors to the room she wanted. There was a nurse waiting for her outside it, a large woman who looked like she'd been cooped up on this floor for far too long.
"You must be Dr. Beckham."
"Yes. And you are…?" Carly held out her hand to the woman, raising her eyebrows at the firm handshake she got in return.
"Nurse Ratchet." The name was said with aplomb, as if the woman expected Carly's reaction. "But I prefer to go by Betty. I'm the head of the nursing staff on this floor."
"Pleased to meet you, Betty." Carly turned her head to look in the door's Plexiglas window. "And that, I take it, is Mr. Rainey."
"So we assume. When he came in, he swore he was a man named John Shooter, but we haven't heard a peep out of him for months now."
Carly observed the man in the room. He was sitting under the room's barred window, the window itself overgrown with ivy so little light entered through it. He was . . . something else. Long, uncombed hair covered his face, his clothing didn't exactly look clean, and he was barefoot. Not the most threatening figure she'd ever seen. "What's he on?" she asked absentmindedly.
"It's all on his charts." Betty handed them over, and Carly perused them, growing agitated by what she saw.
"Why is he still on large doses of sedatives when he's no longer displaying violent behavior?"
"Dr. Wright believed that the sedatives were what finally caused Rainey to quiet down."
Atta boy, Steve-o. Drug 'em up until they can't even walk straight? Is that your philosophy? Carly was less than impressed with this news. "I want the dosage here cut in half. If his behavior shows no change, then I want him off them completely. We're not here to dope our patients to the gills." Turning the page, she continued. "It says here that he's also on some industrial strength antidepressants." She thought for a moment. "Again, cut the dosage in half and see what happens. I'll decide later whether or not to change the medication itself." If she was going to make any headway at all, Rainey was going to have to at least be aware of when she was in the room.
"Okay, I think I'm ready to go in." Straightening her jacket, she moved to open the door, glancing at Ralph as he shifted on his feet. "Something for you?"
"I'm not sure you should go in alone, doctor. Whatever his state now, Rainey does have a history of violent behavior."
"He also has a history of being a gifted author." Biting her lip, Carly nodded in acquiescence though. "But we'll play it your way this time."
Ralph opened the door for her, but no one entered the room. "Oh my god," Carly breathed as they all took a step back from the stench that emerged from the open door. She briefly turned away, before looking back, her nose and mouth covered by one hand. "What. . . ?" She had to stop as anger built up inside her. "When was the last time anyone checked in on him?"
"Last night at midnight rounds," Betty said, her face turning red with what Carly thought was rage.
"Can that be confirmed?" she snapped. The smell of human by-products was overwhelming.
"I'll have to talk to the staff and find out who was doing rounds," Betty said slowly. "One of the new girls we hired a few weeks back was fired from her last position for neglecting patients while she was canoodling with her boyfriend on the jobsite."
Carly shook her head. "I want the job of whoever is responsible for this. We're running a mental hospital, not a zoo. This is just inhumane." She closed the door. "I also want Mr. Rainey washed and . . . groomed . . . before I come back." She handed over her patient's medical charts to the nurse. "Use the picture in his file for a guideline in how short to cut his hair. Call janitorial staff on the double and get this mess cleaned up. I'm off to speak to the groundskeepers. There's no reason for any windows to be covered." Nearly angry enough for her blood to be boiling, she stalked down the hallway, Ralph and nurse Ratchet behind her. "Page me when Mr. Rainey resembles a human being again."
The gate buzzed letting her out, and she gladly went.
This day just keeps getting better and better.
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Just a repetition: Everything up to 'Eight Months Later' is ©Stephen King, and not mine. You can find it in the anthology, Four Past Midnight. 'Briar Ridge' is also owned by Stephen King. It's the name of a hospital in one of his books.
Author's Thanks: CaptainJackSparrowsGirl (oh, I've got all sorts of things planned. Too many really, so I can't wait to see where I go either. ^_^); smoochies221 (I hope this was soon enough for you.); Merrie (I like dirty tricks, and you're starting to sound like Jeffrey . . . INTERVENTION!!!! ^_^); pandagal (I hope the rest of the story lives up to the prologue.); Dawnie-7 (thanks for the compliments.); Jackie Rose Sparrow (thank you, although, I hope that opinion doesn't change as the story goes on.); Cayenne Pepper Powder (I love your name! And the fact that you found the beginning intense? Well, I can only hope the rest of the story lives up to it.); Ashley (Well, I don't know if I was born to do this, but I am enjoying it. You're right, the opportunity to write in this fandom was rather tempting. I only hope that 'Life' doesn't suffer because I'm writing this one.)