The little boy in the picture is crying. He has been ever since I saw him hanging up on the wall in the hall near my dorm. Not crying as in a soft, melancholy sob. But a roaring, throat-tearing, eye-reddening bawl. He could bury his face in his hands all he wanted, but that would never conceal the tears. But it isn’t the boy that troubles me, it’s the surroundings. All the other kids were happily parading around on the playground, chasing one another, sliding down the slide, swinging on the swing set. Why is he miserable? Of course, I know the answer.
The boy cries when I want to cry. And I want to cry because I am in the asylum.
Castle Falls Mental Asylum. It’s been both my home and prison for the past few weeks. Or, months? As one could imagine, it’s easy to lose track of time if your connections to the outside world are limited to food delivery trucks that drop off frozen greens and mashed potatoes every other week. Even then, all the inmates are separated from the trucks by a ten-foot-tall fence lined at the top with barbed wire. It’s understandable, I guess, considering I’m only a new guy but I’ve already seen six people try to escape using the food truck.
I’m Grant Colbert, or as they call me here, patient 007373. Thirty-six years old, six-foot-one, and diagnosed with schizophrenia at age ten. I never grew out of it, though I guess it isn’t the type of thing you can just grow out of. Mostly it isn’t too bad, and I don’t feel the effect of it, so it doesn’t influence my life that much.
Except when I’m stressed.
Or angry.
Or scared.
And then the Tall Man finds me.
As I walk back down the long hall to get to my dorm before curfew, he looms in my mind over all else. I never tried to figure out how tall he is or even what he looks like in general. I was always too afraid to get a good look. I was five when I first saw him, just after I fell off my bike. He surprised me, not because he was a stranger or bigger than me and looked like a walking shadow. But the air—oh, yes—the weight of the air. A ten-pound weight rolled around in my lungs as I inhaled. And the sound he made, that hiss that grew louder and louder. By the time my parents found me, I had climbed halfway up a pine tree.
Ever since then, he followed me everywhere. Always hiding in the deepest, most poisoned, most rotten part of my mind that I dared never go. No matter where I was, no matter the precautions I took, he always got out. The scary part is I knew I helped him appear. Every. Single. Time.
I’m now in my dorm. The rain pitter-patters outside; I’m too tired to tell it to stop. It never does, anyway. Always disobedient. Why do I even bother? I guess it’s my way of normalizing. Of course I have friends here. There’s Tellet, the skinny Swedish man who keeps his room spotless and always scratches his head every twenty steps he takes—exactly twenty. He counts. Then there’s five-foot-tall Jason, who won’t eat anything but celery and who walks in circles around the courtyard for hours on end. Not to mention baby blue-eyed Cooper, who insists that he was a Chinese general in a past life—of which he has six, and he will not let anyone forget it.
See, that’s what sets me apart from everyone else here. I know that I have a problem and that the Tall Man doesn’t exist. What I don’t know is why…just “why” in general, I guess. Why won’t I stop seeing him if he is just a figment of my imagination? Why can’t I just face my fear? Why does he only follow me and no one else? The list of questions went on and on into infinity. Before I go on, a piece of paper being slipped under the door catches my eye.
I know what it is, of course. The paper marks the upcoming quarterly psychoanalysis and exam. It’s the only chance anyone of us has of getting out of here. You pass, you get out with parole for a month. You don’t pass, it’s another three months at Castle Falls. The paper is given to the inmates twenty-four hours before the analysis. Which means, it’s twenty-four hours until I leave this place for good.
Mid-afternoon arrives, one day after the notice. I’m led to the testing room by two men in blindingly white clothes carrying nightsticks. I see Cooper, slouching as he is led out of the room. “Any luck?” I ask him.
His answers me by slouching a little bit lower and avoiding my gaze. I slouch back to show sympathy, and then proceed to open up the door to the testing room.
Inside the room is a white table, a white chair, and a man sitting on the side of the table opposite to me. I sit down in the bleached chair and calmly smile at the man. He has a square jaw, wide-brimmed glasses, and a tired face. A nametag on his shirt reads Dr. Alec Frederick: Psychotherapist. He takes a deep breath and sighs, “All right, Mister Colbert. Shall we begin?”
Nervously, I nod and the questions start flowing. How have your dreams been? Have you been eating normally? Have you had any hallucinations or nauseous sensations in the past quarter? Each question is relayed in the same robotic monotone as the last. Eventually, he states, “Well, it seems you have come a long way, Mister Colbert.”
I feel as if I’ve just won the lottery. “Thank you, sir.” I utter.
“I have just one more question.” He says, leaning forward. “Have you seen the Tall Man recently?”
My heart skips a beat; my palms as moist as my mouth is dry. Head rush after head rush batters my mind. “No, not recently.” I manage.
Just as I say this, it becomes a lie.
He’s found me. He’s found me again.
Looming behind the doctor stands a figure ten feet tall concealed in a cloak made of shadow, staring at me intensely. A smile creeps over his face, and the horrible hiss grows louder and more emphasized than ever.
“Colbert,” the doctor queries, “are you all right? Colbert?”
“Yes,” I lie, “everything is fine. Just fine.”
He sees through my ruse immediately. “No, Colbert. Everything isn’t fine. You and I both know it.”
“But…I…no, it’s okay.” I try to get a hold of myself.
“Where is the Tall Man, Mister Colbert?”
The Tall Man’s grin grows wider and wider. I try to reason with what I see. “He isn’t real. He’s never been real, he’s just an illusion. It’s all in my head!”
“But he feels real, doesn’t he?” asks the doctor, and of course he already knows the answer, “Try to focus, Colbert. Look at me!”
The grin splits the Tall Man’s face. Terrified, I obey. He continues, “Think about what he’s done to you, Mister Colbert. It has to end! He’s not real, you know he isn’t, and yet he’s a black hole, sucking up everything you have. Think about your family! Think about your wife and son, for Christ’s sake! Think about them!”
Then, it all comes back to me. The horrible incident I had been blocking from my memory since it happened. I had just been laid off. I came home in a rage and of course, I saw him again. Determined to drive him away, I picked up a kitchen knife and flung it at him. I reeled around, swiping at the air and furniture. My family watched me, scared and stupefied. When I finally got my bearings, I looked into their eyes. Into their minds. And they both were thinking the same thing, tears streaking down their faces. “What happened to Grant? Who are you?”
The next day, I arrived at the asylum. They never even said goodbye.
I rest my head on the table and bawl. For my family. For everyone I hurt. “I’m sorry.” I sob. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I look up, and the Tall Man vanishes. And I know instantly, he wouldn’t be coming back.
Long story short, I barely passed the test. But I did pass, and that’s what matters. I’m staring at the picture again, and I realize that the boy was never crying. Instead, he was laughing. A loud, joyous laugh as he plays enthusiastically at his favorite park with all his friends.
The little boy is joyful because I’m joyful. And I’m joyful because I’m going home.