Shutter Island(45)

“Rachel,” Cawley said, his voice gentle, paternal.

“You’re all fucking rapists. Where are my babies? Where are my babies? You give me back my babies, you sick sons-a-bitches! You give me my babies!”

She let loose a scream that rode up Teddy’s spine like a bullet, and she surged against her restraints so hard the gurney rails clattered, and Cawley said, “We’ll come check on you later, Rachel.”

She spit at him and Teddy heard it hit the floor and then she screamed again and there was blood on her lip from where she must have bitten it, and Cawley nodded at them and started walking and they fell into step behind him, Teddy looking back over his shoulder to see Rachel watching him, looking him right in the eye as she arched her shoulders off the mattress and the cords in her neck bulged and her lips were slick with blood and spittle as she shrieked at him, shrieked like she’d seen all the century’s dead climb through her window and walk toward her bed.



CAWLEY HAD A bar in his office, and he went to it as soon as they entered, crossing to the right, and that’s where Teddy lost him for a moment. He vanished behind a film of white gauze, and Teddy thought: No, not now. Not now, for Christ’s sake.

“Where’d you find her?” Teddy said.

“On the beach near the lighthouse. Skipping stones into the ocean.”

Cawley reappeared, but only because Teddy shifted his head to the left as Cawley continued on to the right. As Teddy turned his head, the gauze covered a built-in bookcase and then the window. He rubbed his right eye, hoping against all evidence, but it did no good, and then he felt it along the left side of his head—a canyon filled with lava cut through the skull just below the part in his hair. He’d thought it was Rachel’s screams in there, the furious noise, but it was more than that, and the pain erupted like a dozen dagger points pushed slowly into his cranium, and he winced and raised his fingers to his temple.

“Marshal?” He looked up to see Cawley on the other side of his desk, a ghostly blur to his left.

“Yeah?” Teddy managed.

“You’re deathly pale.”

“You okay, boss?” Chuck was beside him suddenly.

“Fine,” Teddy managed, and Cawley placed his scotch glass down on the desk, and the sound of it was like a shotgun report.

“Sit down,” Cawley said.

“I’m okay,” Teddy said, but the words made their way down from his brain to his tongue on a spiked ladder.

Cawley’s bones cracked like burning wood as he leaned against the desk in front of Teddy. “Migraine?”

Teddy looked up at the blur of him. He would have nodded, but past experience had taught him never to nod during one of these. “Yeah,” he managed.

“I could tell by the way you’re rubbing your temple.”

“Oh.”

“You get them often?”

“Half-dozen…” Teddy’s mouth dried up and he took a few seconds to work some moisture back into his tongue. “…times a year.”

“You’re lucky,” Cawley said. “In one respect anyway.”

“How’s that?”

“A lot of migraine sufferers get cluster migraines once a week or so.” His body made that burning-wood sound again as he came off the desk and Teddy heard him unlock a cabinet.

“What do you get?” he asked Teddy. “Partial vision loss, dry mouth, fire in the head?”

“Bingo.”

“All the centuries we’ve studied the brain, and no one has a clue where they come from. Can you believe that? We know they attack the parietal lobe usually. We know they cause a clotting of the blood. It’s infinitesimal as these things go, but have it occur in something as delicate and small as the brain, and you will get explosions. All this time, though, all this study, and we know no more about the cause or much of the long-term effects than we do about how to stop the common cold.”

Cawley handed him a glass of water and put two yellow pills in his hand. “These should do the trick. Knock you out for an hour or two, but when you come to, you should be fine. Clear as a bell.”

Teddy looked down at the yellow pills, the glass of water that hung in a precarious grip.

He looked up at Cawley, tried to concentrate with his good eye because the man was bathed in a light so white and harsh that it flew off his shoulders and arms in shafts.

Whatever you do, a voice started to say in Teddy’s head…

Fingernails pried open the left side of his skull and poured a shaker of thumbtacks in there, and Teddy hissed as he sucked his breath in.

“Jesus, boss.”

“He’ll be fine, Marshal.”

The voice tried again: Whatever you do, Teddy…

Someone hammered a steel rod through the field of thumbtacks, and Teddy pressed the back of his hand to his good eye as tears shot from it and his stomach lurched.

…don’t take those pills.

His stomach went fully south, sliding across into his right hip as flames licked the sides of the fissure in his head, and if it got any worse, he was pretty sure he’d bite straight through his tongue.

Don’t take those fucking pills, the voice screamed, running back and forth down the burning canyon, waving a flag, rallying the troops.

Teddy lowered his head and vomited onto the floor.