Crazy

In a waiting room of beige and bleached yellow, where a straw-bladed ceiling fan stirred muggy air to little effect, Alfred Spectre leaned against the backrest of a plastic chair to subtly scratch at the itch of sweat trickling down his back and watched the red-headed man two chairs down get up and head to the back for the third time. 

Of course, the man had not actually gone in for his exam three times now, but the echo of his departure had lingered unexpectedly long. Absurdly long, if Alfred was being blunt; how strong really could the emotions of the man have been in the examiner’s office? He was either in, or he wasn’t, but according to the longevity of his echo, whichever option he’d received had clearly, at least in his mind, changed the course of his life.

Perhaps he’d been a glory hound, Alfred mused, watching the red-haired specter rise for a fourth time and head to the back. There did seem to be a look of excitement on his face, as he pushed through the swinging doors into the exam room. Maybe he’d been rejected and just couldn’t handle it like a grown man instead of a schoolboy.

Alfred had no such delusions of grandeur; even when he’d been a schoolboy he’d had no such dreams of glory and combat as some of his fellows. War was either going to be terribly exciting or terribly boring and likely somehow both at once, not to mention messy, and quite honestly, none of those options sounded at all appealing.

What did sound appealing was three meals a day and steady pay, which was what Alfred had come here to enlist for. His hair stirred beneath the warm beat of the fan above, and he leaned forward again to let some air at his damp back. The condition of the enlistment office and the two-hour wait were making him rethink just how desperate he was, though.

Finally, the receptionist looked towards the back and nodded at some inaudible message before gesturing for him to go back, her ring flashing in a stray beam of sunlight that managed to infiltrate the slats of the window blinds. Alfred rose, stretching and grimacing at the damp cloth sticking to his skin, ambling towards the back and tossing a polite nod to the plain-faced woman.

The red-headed man rose for the fifth time and followed him in.

The army medical examiner, a balding, jowly man who greeted him with a tired smile and wiped sweat from his brow with a damp, yellowed handkerchief, introduced himself wearily as Dr. Faulkner. Beside the man, a faint echo greeted the redhead in the exact same way, seeming, perhaps, slightly more attentive than the man currently was several patients later.

Alfred ignored the time-displaced ghosts and answered the doctor’s first few questions blandly.

“Alright,” Faulkner finished scribbling notes down on his clipboard. “Off with your shirt, then. Let’s hear your heart and lungs.”

Unfortunately, the shirt coming off did not offer much relief from the mugginess of the room, though Faulkner’s hands and stethoscope were shockingly cold. Alfred wondered if the man had been spending much time in the ice room he’d noticed across the peeling, yellow hall. He hardly blamed him if he had, especially if the man had been here all day; any relief from the heat would be more than tempting, and surely the government could at least afford to pay for more ice.

The echo Faulkner deviated from the exam he was currently giving Alfred, taking out a penlight and peering into the redhead’s green eyes with interest, before using a comb to examine the roots of the man’s hair. Alfred hoped he hadn’t been looking for lice - or at least hadn’t found any; that was the last thing he needed to pick up here.

“Alright, open your mouth.” Falkner brought out the penlight his echo had used, peering down Alfred’s throat.

His echo seemed to be complimenting the redhead on something, judging by the way the ghost of the boy flushed dark enough to hide his freckles over a bashful smile. Alfred was glad he’d gotten the more business-like version of the doctor; he wasn’t a boy who needed to be put at ease, and he didn’t want to waste any more time on this than he already had.

Fortunately, the rest of his exam went quickly, Faulkner checking his eyes and reflexes, jotting quick notes down in his chart even as his echo shook his head regretfully at the boy, slowly scrawling “rejected” on the redhead’s chart.

“Now for your weight,” Fal;kner said, nudging him towards the chunky scale in the corner.

Alfred hesitated, watching the echoes playing out beside him. The boy didn’t look as disappointed as he would have thought from the strength of the echo, shrugging and reaching out to shake the doctor’s hand politely. He took a step towards the scale, but continued watching as Faulkner’s echo crossed to another table in the room and tugged open a drawer, pulling out a syringe and sliding it up his sleeve as he chatted amicably with the boy.

The room had gone strangely cold, despite the sweat still trickling down Alfred’s bare torso. He watched with a frown as Faulkner crossed back to the boy, syringe still hidden. He raised his hand as though to pat the redhead on the shoulder and slid the syringe out, jabbing the boy in the neck before he could even realize what was happening.

Alfred jerked in surprise as the redhead’s echo’s face went blank and he slumped to the floor, Faulkner’s echo standing over him with a smile of triumph and a strange, sharp hunger in his eyes.

“Sir, the scale?” Faulkner said at his elbow, trying to urge him along.

“What the hell did you do to him?” Alfred whirled on the doctor, still trying to process his surprise. Beside him, the specter of the boy lay limp on the floor, nearly as solid and clear as if her were truly there.

Faulkner stared at him in surprise. “Did to who?”

Echo Faulkner knelt beside the body on the floor, tugging one of the boy’s eyelids up with a rough thumb and nodding to himself at the sliver of green that rolled forward.

Alfred jerked back as Faulkner reached for him, the man still frowning in confusion.

“The redheaded boy,” he shot back, “What did you do to him?”

But the answer to that question was already filtering into his mind as echo Faulkner began to methodically strip the clothing from a body whose skin was pale and bloodless, whose lips were turning blue. Two things made an echo as clear as this: strong emotions and… death. 

“You killed him.” Alfred’s voice was low and strangled as he took a step away from the doctor whose face had gone pale. Alfred’s own face was bloodless, horror curdling in his chest as the shock cleared into fear, acrid and metallic on his tongue. 

“You can’t know that,” Faulkner breathed as his echo began to drag the redhead’s naked body towards the ice room.

“You killed him and stashed his body in the ice room!” Alfred yelled, the picture becoming all too clear as the boy’s pale foot disappeared out the door.

“Shut up!” Faulkner reached for him, and Alfred stumbled away on instinct, crashing into a cart of metal tools as the adrenaline pounding through his veins made him clumsy. It came tumbling down with a clatter so loud it left his ears ringing.

The door opened, and the redheaded boy walked in again, to die for the seventh time, as echo Faulkner went to meet him with a leer for a smile. Alfred’s stomach churned, and he swung for the red-faced man in front of him, sending the doctor crashing to the ground.

A scream drew his attention back to the door; the still-open door where the receptionist stared in horror at the doctor on the floor.

“Emma!” Faulkner yelled as Alfred tried to gather his thoughts, attention still half on the dead boy who smiled and obligingly pulled off his shirt as he chatted with his murderer. “Get the MP’s; this man’s having a psychic episode!”

“I am not crazy!” Alfred yelled back, whirling on the receptionist as she turned to dash away, “He killed that boy!”

“He’s crazy, and he attacked me!” Faulkner bellowed back as two men in uniform appeared at the end of the hall. “Somebody should get him a psych eval. He ought to be committed!”

Alfred swallowed down the tight horror in his throat, dragging his attention away from the boy who sat so placidly with his murderer’s hand in his hair, as his brain finally registered the threat closing in on him. 

“Sir, stand down,” one of the soldiers barked at him, the other already reaching for his gun.

Alfred held his hands out, trying to step back but clanging into the tipped-over cart again.

“I’m not crazy. He has a body in the ice room. Go check”

Beside him, Faulkner cleared his throat, pulling himself up with a red welt already starting to swell on his cheek.

“There’s no body in the ice room,” he said too calmly as his echo pulled open the drawer and retrieved the syringe. “This man is insane. And if you’re still not sure, you’re welcome to go look. But this man is a danger to himself and others.”

The soldiers glanced between the two of them. Their doctor and the unknown man whose fist mark was clearly bruising on the smaller man’s face. Alfred felt something very heavy sink in his stomach, and behind Faulkner, the redheaded specter slumped to the floor again, dead.

“Go check!” he demanded desperately, pressure building in his chest as cold eyes returned to stare at him. “Faulkner’s a murderer!”

The soldiers glanced at each other.

“I think we’re done here,” the first spoke again. “Put your hands up, sir, on top of your head.”

Faulkner’s echo walked right through him, dragging the naked body behind him, and Alfred could feel his hope leaving too, dragged out as limp and dead as the boy, as he saw Faulkner’s lips twitch with a smile.

“Hands up!” barked the other soldier, pointing his gun steadily at Alfred’s chest.

Alfred stared at the cold, black point of the muzzle and slowly raised his hands, whatever spark that had been pounding through his veins fizzling out beneath the icy water of that threat. The soldiers grabbed his arms and forced him out the door just as it opened and the redheaded man walked in for the eighth time.

“You just assaulted a military doctor,” the first spoke up again as they dragged him down the bleached, yellow hallway. “You’d better hope you’re crazy.”