As soon as Allen got back to the apartment, he flopped into bed …

And David woke up. He didn’t know why he was feeling so bad. Something was wrong around here, but he didn’t know what. He wandered around the apartment and tried to reach Arthur or Allen or Ragen, but nobody would come. Everybody was mad at everybody else. Then he saw the bullets from Ragen s gun in the plastic bag under the couch, and the gun under the red chair, and he knew that was very bad, because Ragen always kept his guns locked away.

He remembered what Arthur had always told him: “If there’s ever any trouble or somebody’s doing something bad and you can’t reach anyone for help, call the bobbies.” He knew “bobbies” was Arthur’s way of saying police, because Arthur had written the police number on the paper beside the telephone. He picked the receiver up and dialed the number. When a man answered, David said, “Somebody is doing bad things around here. Something is going on. Everything’s wrong.”

“Where you at?”

“Old Livingston Avenue, the Channingway Apartments. There’s something awfully wrong. But don’t tell nobody I called you.” Then he hung up. He looked out the window and saw how foggy it was, sort of spooky.

After a while he left the spot. Danny came and started to paint, even though it was getting late. Then he sat down in the living room to watch TV.

When he heard the knock on the door, he was surprised. Through the peephole he saw a man with a Domino’s pizza box in his hand. He opened the door and said, “I didn’t order pizza.”

While Danny was trying to help the man who was looking for Billy, the man slammed him against the wall and put a gun to his head. The police came in through the door with guns, and a pretty lady told him he had the right to remain silent, so he did. Then two men put him into a car and drove very slowly through the thick fog to the police station.

Danny had no idea why he was arrested or what was going on, but he sat in the jail cell until David came to watch cockroaches running in circles. Arthur or Ragen or Allen would come soon and get him out of there. David knew he hadn’t been a bad boy. He hadn’t done anything bad at all.

Beyond madness

Chapter Twenty

(1)

In the early weeks of 1979, the writer visited Billy Milligan frequently at the Athens Mental Health Center. As the Teacher spoke to him of the past, describing what the others had seen, thought and done from the beginning, they all— except Shawn, who was deaf—listened and learned their histories.

Now answering to the name of Billy, the Teacher became increasingly confident. Though he still switched from time to time when he wasn’t talking to the writer, Billy felt that the longer he could remain fused, and free of the hostility and fear that led to the mix-up times, the sooner he would be able to hold himself together and start a new life. Money from the sale of his paintings would enable him to start a new life after he was cured.