Boone Read online

  Brandon Berntson

  Boone

  Print: 978-1539196020

  ASIN: B01M7MRX6L

  Copyright 2016 by Brandon Berntson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied or sold.

  Cover art by Kealan Patrick Burke

  This is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, places, characters, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  BOONE

  PART I:

  THE SILENCE MAKER

  Chapter 1

  Frankie Solomon Boone sat in the common room of the Shepherd’s Grove Psychiatric Hospital as the storm moved in. The rain pattered lightly against the windows. Lightning flashed, and the first crack of thunder ripped across the sky, making everyone jump.

  The storm moving in over the Wide River Valley on that evening of March 12th, 2016 was going to be a record breaker. The National Weather Service had been issuing a flash flood warning since 5pm on Friday, and it was now Saturday evening. The first raindrops began to fall. Residents from Old Hartford, Wheatridge, and Shepherd’s Grove Counties began to evacuate, leaving a congested line of cars along Main Street and the Junction 21 Turnpike heading north and south. The rest had underestimated the size and strength of the storm, along with the threat of the Miramac River. At two hundred and fifty feet wide, it cut straight through Shepherd’s Grove and into the heart of the Wide River Valley. Volunteers were already sandbagging areas threatening nearby neighborhoods.

  The storm was coming for Boone.

  He was sitting with a handful of other residents in the common room watching Swiss Family Robinson. Everyone was enjoying the movie except for Boone. It had been making him uneasy for a while now. It wasn’t the G-rated version from 1960. It was some macabre, horror movie version he’d never seen before. Boone was inventing it . . . only he didn’t know it. For most of his life, he’d been suffering from both visual and audible hallucinations. The doctors had put him on lorazepam, a mood stabilizer that also calmed his nerves. Three years ago, Boone had stood up, grabbed the television, and thrown it out the window because the television had been tormenting him. The doctors said he had ‘acute agitation,’ which was only partly true. Boone simply didn’t like the sound of screaming.

  In the version they were watching, Bertie, Ernst, Turk and Duke were being flayed alive by pirates. The entire family was dead, roasting away in a coal oven the pirates had built over the sand. They were smacking their lips, enjoying their ale, laughing, and having a genuinely good time. It was a Swiss Family Nightmare, and Boone (quiet since the storm moved in) shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  The room was filled with ten other patients, some in wheelchairs with blankets and afghans over their legs and feet. Boone sat on a barstool in the very back, because he was six and half feet tall and 247 lbs. No one could see past Boone, so he always sat in the back.

  Nurse Agrippa, a tall, Amazonian brunette, moved though the common room, making sure everyone was all right. She put her hand on Boone’s shoulder, sensing his agitation. She thought he was upset because of the storm.

  “Looks like it’s gonna be a doozy,” she said. “Don’t worry, Boone.”

  The television episode three years ago had been revealing, but it had been his only ‘agitated’ episode in seventeen years. He’d been fine up until then. The only time Boone exhibited violent tendencies had been when he was ten.

  Maybe it was the storm. Maybe after three years, the lorazepam wasn’t working anymore. But when Nurse Agrippa spoke, Boone didn’t hear, “Looks like it’s gonna be a doozy. Don’t worry, Boone.” What he heard was, “Looks like I’m a dead floozie. Kill me quick, Boone.”

  He’d been seeing people as television sets for a while now. They had no heads, no eyes, ears, noses, or mouths. Instead, they had thirteen-inch television screens on top of their necks with two antennas sticking out the back, like strange, 1960 Martians.

  Boone hated them all, giant squawk boxes with their volumes turned on high, acerbating speakers of white noise and pain. They unnerved him, and he wanted to smash them into a million pieces.

  Frankie Solomon Boone had spent the last twenty years at the Shepherd’s Grove Psychiatric Hospital for killing his mother. He’d grown up in Shepherd’s Grove just a few miles away and had become somewhat of a local celebrity. Kids wrote his name on bathroom walls. They composed poems and sang songs about him: “Boone, Boone, a troubled young man . . . killed his mother with his own two hands.”

  He’d been ten years old at the time and a big boy for his age. He’d turned himself in afterwards. The authorities didn’t believe him, not at first. But after investigating, seeing the footprints, two different sets on the banks of the Miramac River, they’d changed their minds.

  They’d never found her body.

  He’d spent time in a foster home before being moved back to Shepherd’s Grove. He’d almost killed a boy there for making fun of him. The boy had called him Booner the Boner. Boone tried to kill him by shoving dirt down his throat.

  But that was years ago.

  Now, with the storm moving in, and the television showing one horror after another, Boone felt a shift in the atmosphere. His propensity for violence was being triggered, and the storm—what he believed was of divine origin—was urging him to act.

  Soon.

  ~

  “Boone, are you okay?” Nurse Agrippa asked. “Is the storm bothering you?”

  Boone nodded, his long stringy black hair falling into his face. He did not hear the word ‘storm.’ He heard the word ‘television,’ which was why he nodded.

  “You want me to get Jacks for you, Boone? He can take you back to your room, if you want.”

  Somehow, without him noticing, some of the other residents had already left the common room. The television was still on. He’d been thinking about his childhood and the flies again.

  It was still early, though, not quite 7pm, but he wouldn’t mind staying in his room.

  Swiss Family Robinson was over, and he could hear the rain against the window.

  Thunder rumbled.

  “Here’s Jacks, Boone. He’s gonna take you back to your room, okay?”

  One of the orderlies, Jacks Kelly, a black man almost as big as Boone, smiled, happy to see him.

  “My main man, Boone,” Jacks said, grinning broadly. “You found yourself all alone again, din’tcha? How many times this week you zone out in front of the television? I wonder if you ain’t seeing yourself in there winning Academy Awards and Best Picture. Am I right?”

  His audible hallucinations came and went of their own accord. He’d never heard Jacks say anything upsetting. The man had a big toothy smile and a jolly gleam in his eyes.

  Jacks led him down the hall, past several doors, until they came to Boone’s room. Jacks opened the door and steered Boone to his bed. It was a cozy, simple room with a lamp, a dresser, bed (big enough for Boone) and a window overlooking the back lawn of the hospital. Jacks turned the covers down.

  “You get yourself a good night’s sleep, Booner. Okay? Tomorrow will be a new day, and maybe this storm will pass. They say it’s gonna be a doozy, but we’ll have to wait and see. You get me?”

  Boone smiled again, but there was that word again. Doozy . . . like floozy. He wasn’t sure what to make of it.

  He didn’t want the storm to pass. He wanted it to go on forever.

  Jacks tucked him in like a big kid. He smiled when he closed his eyes and said, “Fly-kabob.”

  “Whatever you say, Boone. Whatever you say,” Jacks said, and shut an
d locked the door behind him.

  ~

  “Frankie? Frankie?”

  As a child, all he ever understood was pain. Pain so terrible, he couldn’t tolerate another second.

  “Frankie? Frankie, where the hell are you?”

  Something was calling, a giant monster in the form of his mother.

  “FRAAAANKIIEEE!!!!”

  She’d found the fly-kabob. Boone was huddling in the basement by the washing machine under the clothes. He grabbed the clothes and put them over his head, pressing them to his ears.

  He’d been upstairs in the living room catching flies against the window. He’d impaled them on a needle, then set the needle on the bathroom sink for her to find. He remembered catching them, cupping them against the window with his palm. Some were still kicking and their wings buzzing when he left the needle on the sink.

  He stayed in the basement. They didn’t give him a room of his own. This was where he took his meals because his mother had been trying to destroy him since the day he was born.

  “Frankie, you get up here this instant, young man! I want to talk to you!”

  She knew where he was. She’d come down the stairs, stomping loudly like she did, grab the clothes, tossing them every which way until she unburied him. When she found him, she’d drag him upstairs, puncturing the skin of his wrists with her nails.

  He knew he was going to get in trouble but didn’t care. He felt no remorse. It was a game. She traumatized him, and he, in turn, displayed disturbing behavior. It amused him because even though she inflicted pain, even though she screamed and screamed, there was a part of him she could never get to. It was The Divine Source, the thing guiding him, keeping him safe, proving he wasn’t a devil child at all.

  He unraveled himself from the clothes, knowing she’d find him anyway. He crept upstairs to the kitchen. He walked through the living room, to where she stood in the bathroom waiting for him.

  She was still attractive, a short, petite woman with brown hair and brown eyes. She always looked mad. She was a mean woman. It was a good look for her. She could be attractive while looking pissed off, and she used it often. Boone realized it was just who she was: an angry, pissed off woman.

  The look she gave him when he came around the corner could have set him on fire. He wanted to smile, but he repressed it. He wasn’t much smaller than she at the time, but there would come a summer two years from now where he’d grow in one big spurt, and he would kill her.

  But for now, she was the ruler of his universe.

  She wore a thin, purple nightgown. There were flies in the bathroom, too. She must’ve brought them in with her. He had a feeling if he went to the window in the living room, he wouldn’t find any left. They would all be gone. He looked in that direction now, as if seeking their comfort.

  “Look at me when I’m talking to you, young man!”

  She grabbed his head and spun it where she wanted him to see the fly-kabob on the sink. He was facing her, but his eyes were trying to go back to the window in the living room. He squirmed under her hand.

  “Look at me, goddamnit, Frankie, you heathen-lunatic!”

  He looked at her.

  “Did you do this?”

  She pointed to the fly-kabob on the sink. Was it his imagination, or were they still buzzing and kicking their wings and legs?

  His eyes were trying to go to the window, but his head stayed where it was under her vice-like grip. Her tiny fingers were strong. He was squirming, making whimpering sounds, not because she had his head under a vice, but because he wanted to see the flies in the living room.

  “Frankie, goddamnit!” she said, and slapped his face.

  He looked at her, tears welling in his eyes, not with pain, but hatred. In her hand was the fly-kabob. She brandished it in front of his face. His face stung, and he gave her a look that—for a second—frightened her. He was only eight years old at the time, but he had a wise look already. He looked like he wanted to kill her.

  “You made this disgusting thing, didn’t you? Are you some kind of fucking sicko, or something? What the hell’s the matter with you? You deranged? You want to go live out at the fucking asylum? Do you need a doctor to examine your lunatic head?”

  She smacked him hard again, and he spun away from her, hitting his nose against the bathroom door. It started to bleed. He wiped his nose and looked at the blood smeared on the back of his hand. He looked at her, and one side of his mouth turned upward.

  “Answer me when I’m talking to you, you little rodent!”

  He didn’t answer. Boone’s dad walked in. He didn’t seem to mind that his mother had just clocked him and given him a bloody nose.

  “What the hell’s going on in here, for God’s sake?”

  “This! This!” she cried, brandishing the fly-kabob in front of him. “Look at this filthy thing, made by your God-forsaken devil child!”

  “I didn’t know I had a devil child.” He smiled, turning to Frankie and winked. Boone smiled even though there was blood on his face. It didn’t seem to bother either of them.

  His father took the fly-kabob and studied it, chuckling softly under his breath. “Why it’s a fly-kabob! We could probably use this to go fishing, catch us a monster, aye Booner?”

  Boone felt like clapping his hands in sheer joy.

  “Are you serious?” his mother asked, her hands on her hips. “Are you even looking at it?”

  “Yeah, looks like Booner was just getting your breakfast ready. Why don’t you show some gratitude instead of smacking him around all the time?”

  “I think you’re both warped,” she said, and stomped out of the bathroom, but not before taking the fly-kabob and flushing it down the toilet.

  ~

  When he was twelve, he’d been assigned a psychologist by the state: Rueben Spencer, a big, portly man with a beard and mustache and tiny round glasses. Rueben made Boone feel uncomfortable right away. He would touch Boone in ways that made him question Rueben’s professionalism. Sometimes, he would leave his hand on his knee for a few seconds too long, or he would smile in ways that made Boone feel like he was talking to a demon hidden in a clown suit.

  One thing Boone had learned in life was that you didn’t have to speak if you didn’t want to. No one could make you talk. There was the boy in the foster home who’d tried that, and he’d almost lost his life to a handful of dirt.

  Boone took full advantage. You could sit there for as long as you wanted, and you didn’t have to say a word.

  “Tell me about your childhood, Frankie.”

  He didn’t like being called Frankie. That’s what his mother called him. He liked being called Boone, because his father called him Boone. He liked the way Boone sounded. It was a name you had to honor and grow into. Many of the staff and patients at the hospital knew this, which was why they called him Boone. Rueben didn’t know, and no one had told him.

  Boone stared out the window, not saying anything. He looked down at his hands lying in his lap like two dead birds. Sometimes, he’d look up and see Dr. Spencer’s head leaning back and his throat gushing blood. Most of the time, Boone saw him as an old television set, one with the circular dials you had to turn that went up to 13. There was no remote, but Dr. Spencer would just sit there like a static screen with white noise blaring and antennas for ears. The t.v. head would turn one way, then the other, but it would only make one sound. It was sometimes loud enough that Boone had to put his hands over his ears, then he’d lean forward and put his head between his knees.

  “You know why you’re here, right?” Rueben said.

  Boone barely heard this through the static.

  “Why did you kill your mother, Frankie?”

  He heard this loud and clear. It was the only time he’d ever spoken to Rueben Spencer:

  “Because I wanted peace,” he said, and that was it.

  The doctor never got another word out of him, and Boone’s sessions soon came to an end.

  ~

  The Shep
herd’s Grove Psychiatric Hospital sat in the middle of the Wide Water Valley, named in part, due to the Miramac River. Small mountains hemmed in a handful of towns in a geographical locale filled with rivers, cottonwoods, oaks, elms, maples, and ash trees. There were plenty of farmlands, wide pastures where cattle and sheep grazed, and horses roamed freely.

  The hospital had been built in 1897 in the Kirkbridge style, with sprawling east and west wings across lush green lawns. Much of the hospital had been boarded up because there simply weren’t as many patients as there used to be. The patients’ rooms, the common room, activities room, and examining rooms were all positioned in a central location, branching off from the main nurses’ station, which was directly in the middle of the hospital.

  Elms and maples offered plenty of shade throughout the lawns. A creek meandered through a long patch of cottonwoods a hundred years behind the hospital, and the setting (when it wasn’t raining) was bright and green.

  Boone lay in his bed, listening to the storm, and watched the rain run across the window in squiggly blurs. A single lamp was on beside the bed. The door had been locked on Jacks’ way out. From the main station on an electrical system, all the doors could be controlled from the switchboard. In case of an emergency, the doors unlocked automatically, leaving the patient free to safeguard him or herself in case of a fire or other hazards. The locked doors were in regulation to patients who exhibited violent tendencies like Boone. Not all patients had their doors locked, but Boone did. Although he’d not displayed any violent tendencies in three years, the staff optioned on the side of safety because of his size and strength.

  The rain pattered steadily against the window, a rhythmic sound that lulled him. Lightning flashed, followed by a low crackle of thunder.

  Boone closed his eyes and dreamed of his childhood.

  ~

  He was in the basement of the house on Ashbury Lane, not a room but a giant concrete, damp and moldy box filled with mice, spiders, and dirty clothes.