The Ex

1

The pole-mounted sirens throughout Edwinsville emitted a constant, synchronized wail. There were few people on the rain-slick streets, and the rain driving down from the low, dark clouds discouraged anyone who might have thought about defying the dire warning of the wailing sirens. Lightning fractured the western night sky as wind sheered through the trees and cut along the business loop of State Highway 103 where it became Main Street, knocking over the Alison’s Auto Service sign, scattering sheets of plywood stacked behind Builders Hardware and Home Supply. An empty Budweiser can pinged and clattered along Main, airborne as it skipped over curbs and bounced off building fronts, skittering along the wet pavement as if frantically seeking shelter.

On the hill beyond Edwinsville, a ten-foot-high chain-link fence topped with razor wire ran through the thick woods. Except where it stretched away on each side of the ornate wrought-iron gates that were the entrance to the State Institute for Mental Health, little of the fence could be seen, but it completely encircled the large brick building that was the Institute, wherein those wards of the state determined to be potentially violent were incarcerated and, in most cases, treated for their psychoses.

The synchronized, urgent wails of the sirens weren’t so ear-splitting on the hill, but the lightning-illuminated black clouds, the steadily increasing wind, and the almost horizontal rain lent the same sense of dread and near-panic that gripped the town below. Patients in identical drab gray uniforms were assembled in the mess hall, where white-coated attendants scurried about trying to calm them. Some of the patients were beyond being calmed and had to be restrained. Others were numbed by what was happening and simply sat hunched over in chairs and on the floor, hugging their knees, keeping their heads lowered, withdrawing into some safe interior space of the mind.

“God’s vengeance!” an old man with a shaved head kept shouting as he eluded two attendants-a big man named Sam and a stocky woman named Dora-who were trying to restrain and reassure him. Dora distracted him with a smile and Sam attempted to grab the old man and pin his arms to his sides, but the man slipped away again and leaped nimbly up on a table. “God’s terrible vengeance! I warned my wife and uncle when they put me in here! Warned that fool of a doctor why they wanted me out of the way! She didn’t sell it cheap-that’s what God knows!”

A terrible hammering sound began, and glass shattered as one of the barred windows gave. Large and irregularly shaped hail was driven with the rain, battering the roof and west side of the building in fusillades with each burst of wind. An assault by a thousand machine guns.

Then, abruptly, the rain and hail stopped, the wind ceased, and all was silent except for the distant sirens.

Even the old messenger from God was struck dumb by the perfect stillness, the thick, charged air that made breathing a chore and caused a prickling sensation on exposed skin.

The patients somehow knew before the attendants. Hands rose to lips and temples in horror. Eyes widened. Mouths opened as if to scream but didn’t. There was no time.

Outside the Institute a dark funnel cloud had dropped from the night sky and roared eastward. Debris that included trees, and a tumbling and hapless van with headlights still glowing, swirled around the base of the tornado. As it bore down on the Institute, the chain-link fence in the woods coiled skyward like a striking snake and disappeared in the blackness.

The roar became deafening, the lights dimmed, then the west wall of the Institute exploded outward. Over the turmoil and howl of the beast from the clouds screams couldn’t be heard. Time and people and stone and earth and sky all whirled together in the dark. There was nothing to do but hold on. There was nothing to hold.

In the aftermath, the warning sirens in the town below were silent. The wind had died down and the rain was reduced to a cool, steady downfall that pattered on the wreckage of the Institute. In the moonlight now filtering through the dark clouds lay a field of wreckage, scattered bricks, jutting wood and wallboard, serpentine coils of chain-link. The only sounds were the rain and the moans of those still alive among the debris. A few shadowy figures were visible staggering about in the night, wandering through another dark and tragic dream.

A hand gripped a splintered two-by-four stud and shoved it aside. What was left of a wooden mess hall table was also moved aside, but slower and with more difficulty.

Loose bricks scraped and clattered, and up from the wreckage stood a tall woman with wild hair and wild eyes. Beneath smudges of mud and a dark trail of blood snaking down from her hairline, her face was strong-featured, with wide-set eyes and prominent cheekbones, a determined sweep of jaw. Under other circumstances she might have been beautiful.

She stood still for a moment, gazing about, her dazed expression gradually changing to a look of comprehension. Then she began slowly picking her way through the wreckage, ignoring the moans and occasional raised hand seeking help.

She was almost beyond the ruins of the Institute building when something stopped her. She glanced down and saw a white sleeve, a hand gripping the pants cuff of her gray Institute uniform. She recognized Sam the attendant, pinned beneath a pile of bricks and splintered wood. Only his head and right shoulder and arm were free. He looked up at her with pleading in his dark eyes.

“Deirdre!” he moaned. “Don’t leave this place. Don’t do it. Please!”

The tall woman gazed down at him with cold green eyes. She attempted to walk on, but his grip on her pant leg was iron and unyielding.

“Deirdre…stay where you belong!”

She stopped trying to escape his grasp, then bent low and attempted to pick up a brick from the debris at her feet. It was actually two bricks and half of another, still firmly bonded by mortar. She used both hands to raise the bricks over her head, then looked down at Sam.

He understood her decision and his fate and merely stared up at her with frightened but resigned eyes. He closed his eyes then, and his face was calm as she hurled the bricks down at his head. Blood black in the night spotted the right leg of Deirdre’s gray uniform, and the hand clutching the material slowly released its grip.

She continued on her way, faster now, more resolute in her movements.

Within minutes she disappeared into the dark woods beyond the twisted and uprooted fence.