Twist: Any movement during a dive that occurs when the diver rotates around an imaginary vertical axis that runs from the head to the toes of a diver.
I USE the fifteen-minute drive over to GP’s to fill Iris in on what happened at the meet and hospital. I finish up with the confrontation I had with Phil Maddox right before I march through the front door, calling out to let him know I’m home.
“Maybe he’s in his office.” I knock on the locked door. “GP, you in there? I’ve got Chip and Iris with me.” I try the door knob.
Nothing.
“Where’s the key?” Iris asks. “Can’t you just walk in there?”
“My grandfather keeps it on him. He’s been sick and goes in there for privacy. He hasn’t been looking so great the last few days. I’m supposed to call Curtis if something happens to him.”
“Sick with the flu?” Iris asks cautiously.
“Cancer.” It’s incredible how fast and easy it is to hate that word.
“Oh.” Iris makes a pained expression. “Maybe he fell asleep. Pick the lock. That’s what I’d do if it were my grandfather.”
“She has a point,” Chip says. “It wouldn’t be the first time. I’ll go hunt down a nail clipper.”
“Wait. Try this first.” Iris removes the bobby pin holding back the front of her hair and hands it to me.
I bend the end so it has a little handle for me to wrap my fingers under, then pause with my hand on the doorknob, dreading what I might find. I blow the air in my lungs at the door and insert the bobby pin, jiggling and pushing the lock until I hear an almost imperceptible click. The bobby pin inserts farther, but the lock isn’t giving way. I repeat the jiggling and it clicks again, and then a third time. The pin is all the way inserted when the knob gives way.
“Holy shit,” Chip says. “You should have been a cat burglar.”
“The Cat and Mouse are working in tandem,” Iris says. “Those are the cards you were dealt together.”
“I remember. But losing anyone else isn’t an option for me. That’s never gonna be in my cards again.”
She gives me a sad smile and I push the door open. I let it bang against the wall with a thud, and stand silent at the threshold before snapping on the light. GP isn’t inside.
Seconds pass in silence as we take in the room: desk, recliner, crappy TV and VCR. This time, there isn’t a single Jack Daniel’s bottle in sight. But the room has transformed. Tacked to the paneled surface of my grandfather’s office is an assemblage of information: pictures, maps, notes torn from random sheets of paper, articles. And at the nexus of everything sits a bulging photo of Phil Maddox. Lines are drawn in red Sharpie making connections across documents and photos, creating a web of connections.
“Looks like your grandfather’s been working on your family tree.”
“Not my grandfather,” I tell Iris. “This is my dad’s handiwork.”
I pull the pushpins holding Phil’s photo in place to see what’s causing it to bulge and find a press release from a psych journal, dated March 7, 1997, boasting his succession to head psychiatrist at Green Hill Psychiatric Hospital. Along with the board of directors’ praise and ‘high hopes Dr. Phillip Maddox will produce breakthrough research in the area of abnormal psychology. Putting Green Hill on the Map.’
As I pin the release back on the board, I notice clippings from local newspapers reporting on the fire that claimed my grandmother’s life when Dad was a senior in high school. Morbid curiosity moves me to flip the newsprint and I find an arson report attached. I scan the page quickly, picking up bits and pieces, enough to get the gist: juvenile firebug, name withheld, willful and malicious intent, arson in the first degree, juvenile detention. I flip again and discover a duplicate report for the same fire, same date, same dwelling, same everything. Except the cause of fire: ACCIDENTAL. This is the other suspicious fire.
My hands and neck leach sweat as I keep flipping, only to find the report from the night my own house burned to the ground. I’m looking for one thing: cause of fire. And here, in black and white, I find the parallel: ACCIDENTAL. The asterisk drawn in Sharpie on this report matches the one on the picture of Phil Maddox. I flip the pages and compare official signatures. Bruce Mackey, Fire Chief, and Curtis Jacobs, Fire Marshal signed off on all three.
Jeezus.
These are cover-ups. I’m the reason GP lost his job. Heat rises from my chest to face, building until my head feels like it might detonate.
I place a flat palm on the wall and glance behind me with no set focal point. “You guys should see this.”
They don’t answer and I turn more fully.
Iris and Chip are on their own islands of intrigue. Chip is riffling through a box on the floor. And Iris is engrossed by a stack of papers on my grandfather’s desk to the point of deafness.
I refocus on the collage. Mom’s adoptive parents—the Rogans—are haphazardly tacked together on the far left of everything else. A sad pair of parental specimens, tossed aside like trash and disregarded by big black X’s drawn over their faces. After everything GP told me, it’s more than they deserve. I barely give the Rogans a second’s glance, because Mom’s biological parents, Bohden and Lena Dudyk, catch my eye. I follow their photos to a handwritten note:
Lena Dudyk is a descendant of famed Ukrainian psychic Elena Balanchuk. E.B. was accused of witchcraft in the late seventeenth century, tried, and hanged. Historical research shows possible multigeneration link to psychic ability throughout the Balanchuk line. Children in the Balanchuk family, particularly those with light hair and eyes, are given up for adoption, even today, due to fear of religious or social persecution.
Whoa.
“Thank you, Madame Balanchuk,” Dad said. “But this outcome you think you saw coming takes the fucking prize.”
GP was right. My dad had unintentionally gathered everything I’d ever need for a stellar family history project including psychics, crazies, and European witch hunts. Give or take a few blows to my psyche.
I join Iris at GP’s desk to look for more information. There are two folders labeled PATIENTS and OTHER sitting under the heavy clay elephant I made my grandfather in third grade. Inside there are more labeled photos. Not all of them familiar, but the few that are include Lianne and Luanne Cole, one as a young girl, the other almost the same as I saw her at Green Hill; and Valentina Gabor, the old woman at the hospital who claimed to recognize Iris. I come across a photo of a woman with dark hair and light eyes like Iris and flip it over. Ioana Dalca. Iris and her mom look so much alike you’d think she time traveled.
“Um, Theo,” Chip says hesitantly. “I found your birth certificate.”
“I already have that,” I mutter.
“Not this one, you don’t.” He swallows uncomfortably and hands it over.
I put the photos down and take it from his hands, my eyes lingering on his anxious face before I read the pertinent information. Mother: Sophia Mackey. Father: Phillip Christopher Maddox.
Reality clicks like the cock of a gun and I stumble backward into the desk. I want to say something, react, but the truth is creating a wailing chorus in my head that erases external sound and motion.
“Nobody did this to hurt you, Mitch. But we thought it was your right to know.”
“What can I tell you; the heart wants…”
“Blood doesn’t lie.”
“Get out, both of you, before I do something I’ll regret.”
“It is possible for a person to love two people at the same time,” GP said. “After you do some growin’ up, though, you realize you can’t have both. At the end of the day, choices need to be made.”
No wonder my dad was angry.
Chip shakes me. “Say something, man. You’re freaking me out.”
“Phil Maddox is my father?” I laugh, even though my stomach is clenched. “Tall, green eyes, same build, the similarity in our smiles. You said that yourself, Chip. And it’s true. Maybe I never noticed because of his dark hair, but I look nothing like the Mackeys. Jeezus.”
Iris gasps but it’s not from my news.
She’s holding the file labeled PATIENTS, opened to the photo of her mom. “I don’t know why I’m so surprised. I mean, I know now, but…” She looks over at the stuff tacked on the wall like she might make another connection to her own family. And then she gasps again. “Do you know what that is?” she says, pulling me toward a map tacked to GP’s wall. Two rectangles are circled in red pen.
I shake my head.
“It’s a burial plot map. Each rectangle represents a grave. Usually the last names of the deceased are written on them, as well. But these are just numbered.” She takes a pen and writes 856 + 857 on the inside of her wrist. “In case I need to ask my dad.”
“Maybe they’re family plots. Don’t people do that sometimes, in advance?” I wonder if GP was making provisional plans, if things go south.
“They do,” she says. “But these numbers are too high for Mount Pleasant. There’s only one place in town with this many plots, Theo. Ward Hill Cemetery.”
“Why would my dad care about a couple of unmarked graves?”
Her eyes dart to a thick bundle of paper on the seat of GP’s recliner. “Shit.”
It’s the first time I’ve heard Iris swear.
“I swore I wouldn’t tell,” she says. “I wasn’t even supposed to know, but I overhead my dad talking to your grandfather and Curtis Jacobs, and I made him tell me everything, including what he said to you the day you came to my house about the whole ‘freebie psych treatments’ thing. Do you remember that?”
“He said a lot of crazy stuff that day.”
“And I know why. After my mom died, Dr. Maddox agreed to forgive her steep psychiatry treatment bills if my dad was willing to find him two private burial plots he could use at his discretion.”
“To bury someone?”
“Or something,” Iris says. “I’d like to believe my dad wouldn’t let him bury a person. But it might explain why your grandfather has a brand new shovel next to the door.”
I follow her eyes to the door.
Jeezus.
“GP was gonna see what he could dig up.” Literally and figuratively.
Iris goes to GP’s chair and picks up a bundle of papers.
“What is that?” I ask uncomfortably.
She gives me the same wary look I saw when she read the article about my mom. “A research paper written by Dr. Maddox about the effects of Philomax. At first I thought it was about my mom, because the names are redacted, but now it makes more sense that it might be about you and your mom.”
I take the bundle from Iris, watching her closely as I stretch off the rubber band binding, wondering what she’s already read. The first few sheets are typical: title, subject, patient information. Then I start reading.
Removing the Roadblock Between Traditional and Parapsychology
A Gene Mutation Study
By Phillip C. Maddox, PhD, PsyD
Female Subject A, Inpatient [BL-08]
Inpatient [BL-08] erroneously presents with psychosis, current episode [F31.2], characterized by remaining presence of strong delusions and hallucinations, with a seemingly psychic connection to Male Subject B, Outpatient BL-09 [BL-09], due to genetic connection and parental bond. Administration of Philomax in BL-08 with addition of amphetamine salts and increasing microdoses of psilocybin shows a significant increase in precognitive abilities, as well as shortened time span between precognition and proof of vision.
Male Subject B, Outpatient [BL-09]
Beginning trials of Philomax in combination with amphetamine salts and psilocybin to test precognitive ability increasing with age and final maturation stage out of puberty thus far successful. Subject B presents as unawares, as yet, of chemical changes in compound and has not made connection to pharmaceutical and his own precognitive ability.
Revisit research paper. Maddox, Phillip. Parapsychology and Athleticism: A Case for Believing in Mystery. Journal of Psychiatric Phenomenon. (1994).
I skim a few more pages to grasp the central point and the one thing absolutely clear is that the paper is about Mom and me. Not only that, the sonofabitch has been giving us Philomax, some experimental Doors of Perception shit. The same psilocybin-based drug Iris said her mom was taking.
“Are they maladaptive, Theo?”
“Are you seeing something now?”
“Believe me, I’ve put people under observation for far less.”
I’m sure you have, you motherfucker.
(Pun definitely intended this time).
There is some humor to it, though, because I’m a complete idiot. GP warned me. Les tried to warn me. Even Coach Porter saw it in my eyes. I’m the only one that didn’t see.
The irony in that is a fucking joke.
I keep scanning pages of psychobabble until I get closer to the end and find a patient transcription that makes my blood freeze.
080103 102
Onset: Age ten. Patient involuntarily committed, by parent/guardian. BL-08 to Boston Public Psychiatric Hospital for inpatient care, 11/12/79. Patient believes she predicted the death of her teacher. Estimated stay, one month.
Second admittance: Age sixteen. Recommended by parent and physician, Dr. Charles Aldridge. BL-08 involuntarily recommitted to Boston Public Psychiatric Hospital for inpatient care. 8/13/84. Patient believes she predicted the death of a friend.
I swallow hard and turn the page, skimming pertinent patient information to read a transcription.
MED-SCRIBE 1.3
MED-SCRIBE TRANSCRIPTION SERVICES
SYSTEM PARAMETERS: Language detection: English. Delay 3.2 seconds. Silence threshold: -6. Frequency Rate: 20–22kHz.
TRANSCRIPTION PARAMETERS PER [GHPH]: ↑Raised Voice, Anger. ↓Soft Voice, Whisper. Verbatim w/ omit Patient Names. Format: MS Word
CLIENT: GREEN HILL PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL
THERAPIST (TH): DR. PHILLIP C. MADDOX
OTHER PERSONNEL (OP1): Nurse, Janice Fletcher
OTHER PERSONNEL (OP2): Psych Technician, Darrell Banks
PATIENT (PT): BL-08|ADMIT DATE: 8/1/15
DOB: 7/11/71|S: Female|W: 135|H: 5’10”|Age: 32
HAIR: Blond|EYES: Green
DATE OF RECORDED SESSION: 8/6/15
DSM-IV AXIS: 296.43, 296.44, 296.65
[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]
[SHUFFLING PAPERS]
TH: You’ve been involuntary committed for recurring hallucinatory episodes.
[PAUSE]
TH: [PATIENT NAME REDACTED], do you understand what I’m telling you?
[SCRAPING SOUND]
PT: No. I don’t understand. You have to let me out of here, right now.↑ I have to know if [NAME REDACTED] is okay.
[PAUSE]
[FOOTSTEPS]
[JANGLING]
TH: He is. Please, sit down, [PATIENT NAME REDACTED]. The door is locked.
[POUNDING]
PT: Let me out.↑
[JANGLING]
PT: You have to let me see him. He’s going to have nightmares, horrible nightmares, because of you. I know. I saw. Can’t you see what you’re doing?↑
TH: If you don’t take a seat and gain control of yourself, I’ll be forced to have you restrained. Is that how you want to do this?
[PAUSE]
[FOOTSTEPS]
TH: I brought you here because a seventy-two-hour observation is the best course of treatment until you’re well enough to exercise sound judgment.
PT: You sonofabitch.↓
TH: I’m trying to keep [NAME REDACTED] safe from knowledge until it’s time. Isn’t that what you and [NAME REDACTED] ultimately want for him?
[SIGH]
PT: No. Not this.↑ Oh, God. I should have seen this coming.
TH: Seen what coming?
[PAUSE]
PT: This. Are you crazy? [INDISCERNIBLE]↓
TH: I’m not the one on seventy-two-hour psych observation, [PATIENT NAME REDACTED].
TH: Let’s go back to [NAME REDACTED] that first time he jumped from the cliff. Weren’t you concerned for his safety?
PT: No.
[PAUSE]
PT: But I am now. Is that why you brought me back to this hellhole? [INDISCERNIBLE]↓ Have you just been waiting for [NAME REDACTED] to show his ability? You bastard. You promised I’d never see the inside of a hospital again.
TH: You made promises too.
PT: Tell me if he’s the real reason you brought me here?
[PAUSE]
PT: Answer me, Phillip.↑
TH: I must insist that you call me Dr. Maddox during our sessions.
[PAUSE]
[SINGLE LOUD BANGING SOUND]
PT: Answer me, damn it.↑ Is he the reason?↑
[SCRAPING SOUND]
[FOOTSTEPS]
[SHUFFLING PAPERS]
[SINGLE BUZZING SOUND]
TH: Nurse, I need a restraint in room 301 five two one cocktail.
PT: Don’t you dare. You bastard.↑
TH: [PATIENT NAME REDACTED], the pot shouldn’t call the kettle black. Now let go of me and sit down, or I’ll make it so you never see [NAME REDACTED] again. That is within my power.
PT: You wouldn’t. I thought you loved me. Us?↓
TH: I could say the same thing until you turned the other cheek.
PT: [NAME REDACTED] is smarter than you think. He’ll figure it all out. You’ll see. Or he will. I didn’t raise a weakling. I raised a champion.
TH: [NAME REDACTED] will see what I help him see, when I want him to see it. So will you. I’m trying to help us all. You do understand that, don’t you? I only want what’s best for him.
[PAUSE]
[DOOR OPENS]
OP: We’re here, Doctor.
PT: No.↑ Don’t. Get that away from me.↑
[SCREAM FEMALE]
[OP]: This will be much easier if you cooperate, Miss. Otherwise Darrell here will have to use physical restraints.
[OP2]: Your choice, Miss.
[PT]: Ouch. No. For God’s sake, Phillip. He’s your son.↑
[PAUSE]
TH: Bring her to her room once she’s sedated. Then bring me the file on Outpatient BL-09 [BL-09]. I’ll speak to her again once she’s calm.
[CLICK]
[END TRANSCRIPT]
I flip back to the title of his paper. “I can’t fucking believe it. He’s working on proving a link between traditional and parapsychology, saying my mom and I share some gene mutation that predisposes us to precognition that reads like—fucking hallucinations.”
“You mean like your freak-outs?” Chip asks.
“I mean exactly like my freak-outs. I thought everything ended the night of the fire, but that’s when all of this began.”
“The most important thing I’ve learned as a psychiatrist is that it’s never too late for anything.”
Seeing Iris on the cliff when I was a kid was the kickoff, which means adding the Philomax after Dad died was his long-awaited rocket booster. I go back and look at the date on the footer of the research paper and my breath hitches. “Jeezus-fucking-Christ. My mom might still be alive.”
“At Green Hill?” Iris’s eyes grow wide as she registers what that means.
She reaches a hand out to comfort me, but the voice of a child fills the room and startles us. We turn to see Chip kneeling in front of an old TV and VCR.
“Sorry,” he says. “The label said PHILLIP CHARLES MADDOX, EASTER, AGE SEVEN. DEPARTMENT OF CHILDCARE SERVICES. I pushed the tape into the machine at the same time I heard what you said about your mom and it started to play. Give me a sec to stop this stupid thing.”
The face of seven-year-old Phil Maddox fills the screen, and despite the sickness growing in my stomach over the revelation that my mom may still be alive, I say, “Don’t. Let it play.”
“Whatcha doing there, Phil?” says a man with a deep voice whose face we don’t see. Only his acid-washed jeans and work boots. A foster parent, I assume.
“Killing spiders.”
“Why on earth would you do that, son?”
“I’m not your son. Spiders are gross-terrible-evil. They have to die.”
“Who told you that?”
The video zooms in on Phil Maddox’s childhood fingers as he reaches behind him and presents a book of matches, igniting a spider excised of its legs before the man realizes what’s happening.
“Oh, hey, hey, hey, wait a second.” The video shakes around as the man stomps on the flame with a heavy boot. “Whoa now. Where did you find those matches?”
“I keep them under my mattress.”
The video cuts to static and the white noise fills my head like a hundred matches struck at once. I keep them under my mattress too. Another secret. Too many to count.
A wave of headlights cuts across the doorway and we all freeze like scared rabbits.
“Maybe that’s my grandfather. He said he was gonna try to talk to Phil in the parking lot before the meet, but then all that stuff happened with Rocco. Maybe he decided to go to his house or something.”
I go to the kitchen and split the blinds. Phil’s charcoal Escalade is pulling up to the curb across the street. My moment of hope explodes into frenzy.
“It’s Dr. Maddox. We gotta go.”
“We can’t just run out there and let him see us,” Chip says. “Look around you.”
“Take everything you can. Tapes, the research paper, whatever you can carry and we’ll sneak out the back through the garage.” I rip articles and photos off the pinboard, shuffling them into a messy pile. Iris dashes next to me and grabs whatever she can.
“Wait!” Iris stops abruptly and touches my arm. “Do you smell that?”
It’s not until I hear a splash that the smell of gasoline hits me. “Shit! Take whatever you’ve got. We have to move.”
I peek through several windows before leading us to the living room, hoping we can sneak past Phil but it’s too late. He’s walking inside from the back deck, holding a red gas canister. Normal buttoned-up attire swapped for jeans, a pullover, and gloves.
When he sees us barrel into the room, arms loaded with as much as we can carry, an acid grin claims his face.
“Oh my God,” Iris yelps. “It’s you.”
“Was this not in the cards?” he asks.
I don’t remember mentioning Iris’s card reading to him.
Chip tugs my sleeve and nudges his head behind us, but I don’t look. I don’t even move because I’m too busy watching Phil Maddox toss the contents of the canister around the room with his steely gaze locked on mine.
GP’s gruff voice booms behind me and I jump out of my skin before stepping aside.
“You don’t have to do this, Phil. We can still let bygones be bygones,” GP says.
“I don’t think we can, but you are tenacious. Following me from the parking lot to the hospital. It’s a wonder you didn’t get here first.”
“Nice trick with the battery.”
“An oldie but goodie,” Phil says.
I narrow my eyes, thinking of Bumblebee sitting with a dead battery in the parking lot at school.
“I honestly can’t decide what impresses me more. The fact that you climbed your way out of a bottle to finish what Mitch started so many years ago, or how quickly Theo caught on to the triggers I dropped like breadcrumbs along the way.”
“Had to,” GP says. “He’s my grandson.”
“Is he?” Phil’s eyes land on me. “You should have listened when I said you were making a serious mistake. Don’t you know blood is thicker than water?”
“Not always,” I say. “Nature versus nurture.”
“The oldest and most debated argument in the history of psychology.” He pulls the Zippo lighter Dad gave him from his pocket and strikes the flint. “Which side of that argument do you think your propensity for starting fires comes from, nature or nurture?”
I see Phil Maddox for what he is, what he’s always been, and hold my ground next to GP. It isn’t until Phil fixates on the pointed yellow flame, and I recognize myself in his gaze, that I realize the true danger.
“Stop.” GP barrels forward to tackle him before he drops the lighter, but he’s too weak from his cancer treatments, making it easy for Phil to put him in a stranglehold.
“Clearly I didn’t give Mitch enough credit considering the amount of information in your possession.”
“Let him go.” I push the documents in my arms on Iris and Phil glares at me, challenging me to make a move.
“Go!” GP demands of me. “I ain’t the one that needs saving, kid. My clock’s already punched. Take what you got and get outta here.”
“No!” Iris roars.
And she’s right.
“You’re all the family I’ve got.”
“We both know that ain’t true now, don’t we? Go now,” he says. “Before you get us all killed.”
I spin against a heavy conscience, pushing my friends toward the door. “You heard the man. Go! Get to my truck.”
“You could stay,” Phil proposes. “There’s still time for you to make the right choice, son. Let your friends go. We can work something out.”
Hearing Phil Maddox call me son puts a hitch in my step. I wheel around with so much fury in my eyes he tightens his grip on GP.
“You made me a promise, Theo,” GP says. “You know who to call. And you know what you gotta do. Go, goddammit. Make me proud.”
I nod. I’ve never made a promise I couldn’t keep. Maybe that’s nature versus nurture too.