The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson

Author:Maureen Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-12-28T05:00:00+00:00

DIDN’T EXACTLY RUN OUT OF THE HOSPITAL WHEN WE finished, but I came pretty close. Once we were outside, I tipped back my head. The drizzle went up my nose, along with the smell of wet leaves in a parking lot. I loved everything about this wet parking lot. I loved the fog that smothered the landscape. It wasn’t the hospital itself that was bad. It was a perfectly nice and modern hospital—it was that it made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.

“I told you it wouldn’t be pleasant,” Stephen said.

“I’m fine,” I replied.

Stephen took me at my word. We returned to the car, but he didn’t start the engine right away.

“There are two possibilities here,” Stephen said. “One, Sam beat his employer to death with a hammer. Or, two—”

“He saw an actual flying hammer beat his boss to death, and now he’s in a hospital for the criminally insane.”

“That’s the other one.”

“Which one do you think it is?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” He rubbed at his hairline. “The forensics fit. The blood splatter on his clothes and body indicated that he had been standing about two feet away from the victim at the time of the attack. The pattern on the hammer was a bit more confusing. His fingerprints were on it, but they seemed to be old prints—the blood was over the top of them. The way the blood ran down the handle, someone’s fingers should have interrupted the stream, but they didn’t. The best guess was that he held the handle very low, and possibly with something like a cloth, but that was never recovered. The oddities about the grip patterns on the weapon could be overlooked because he said he did it.”

“So it could have been a flying hammer?” I said.

“So it could have been a flying hammer. Or it could have been a weird way of holding the hammer. And if you’re bashing people’s brains in with a hammer, you might hold said hammer in a strange way, because it’s a strange activity . . . Are you sure you’re all right?”

As far as I knew, I was being completely normal. I wasn’t screaming or crying or twitching uncontrollably. And I was feeling increasingly better every second we were out of the hospital. Clearly, though, I was giving off a vibe that indicated I wasn’t okay.

“Just, you know, being in there makes me feel like it might be me, you know? Weird in the head.”

“You’re not weird in the head.”

“There’s a giant talking chicken next to me that would say otherwise.”

“You are not weird in the head,” he said, more firmly. “You went through something horrible, and you survived, and you’ve done amazingly well. You’re strong. Stop making jokes about it. There is nothing wrong with you.”

I wasn’t expecting this little outburst, or the anger that edged his voice.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t do it. It’s important. Because of what we do, it’s important to always remember that there is nothing wrong with you.

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