“I need an addition put on,” he told the contractor. “I plan to start renting out rooms to fellow doctors who need a quiet place to relax. However, I also need a suite of rooms designed to ensure maximum security.”

“Plan on keeping criminals in your lodge, Doctor?” the contractor from Connecticut asked.

“I believe our agreement includes confidentiality but does not require full disclosure. Am I correct?”

“Tell me what you want, and it will be done.”

His patient was nearly thirteen-years old before the modifications were completed at the lodge. The timing was perfect, as the state of New York informed Straus that many of the buildings that comprised the Hilburn campus were already being leased to start-up companies. The main building was to remain open until all the patients were placed in community group homes, smaller state-run facilities, or psychiatric hospitals. What happened, however, was that some of the patients that once called Hilburn home were simply released into the public and left, for the most part, to fend for themselves.

Most of the Hilburn staff were offered transfers or early retirement packages. Straus and his core team were all given the choice of transfer or to accept a rather healthy severance package. Curtis and Straus took the severance while Lucietta accepted a transfer to a state hospital in Manhattan.

Straus’s favorite nurse, Michelle Pettingal had resigned her position when Alex was only three years old. Though she never admitted it, Straus learned that she had married Doctor Stanley Mix and had moved somewhere in Upstate New York. Straus tried to keep track of Michelle as his desire to “have” her remained. But that desire eventually faded, and Michelle became nothing more than a pleasant memory.

On her last day of work, Straus made sure that Michelle would honor her commitment of keeping the story of Alexander Black quiet.

“I won’t say anything, Doctor. Honestly, no one would believe my story, and I would rather just forget everything about this place.”

The outlook of being forgotten struck Straus deeply. After all he had done for her, how could she simply “forget” him? He had suspected that Stanley Mix and she were keeping in contact but never thought their contacts would turn romantic.

“I hope you keep your promise, Nurse Pettingal,” he said to her as she handed in her staff badge and completed her exit interview. “But I do hope that you retain some pleasant memories of our time here together.”

His time in the lodge, though confined to two rooms for the first several months, was when he began designing, testing, and refining his plan. While he continued acting as the willing associate to Straus and those who remained a part of his team, he continually looked for opportunities to expand specific knowledge. He knew that, despite his intelligence, he would be lost in the world. He lacked the skills needed to blend in, to properly engage others, even to find sustenance. He knew that his plan needed time, and time demands patience.

The first time he was allowed to leave the walls of the lodge was at night. The night sky was brilliantly clear. He sat on the damp grass behind the lodge and stared up at the stars for well over an hour, saying nothing and remaining perfectly still. He had read about stars, about constellations and the folk tales surrounding them. He had studied the moon and the planets, and had read several books filled with theories and speculations about the universe. As he sat, staring up at the night sky, he grew more convinced that life could not be learned from a book. That no matter how talented a writer may be, describing the simple light of a star with words was as futile as him trying to escape and live in the world he had only read about. That night, he decided how his plan would conclude. He also decided that the first steps of his plan were still many years away.

Over the years, he often asked to be allowed to walk to the shore of Piseco Lake. Each request was denied.

“There are too many risks involved, Alexander. While we have grown to trust you, we don’t trust what others may do if they see you. I hate to have to remind you of this, but your appearance, Alexander, you don’t look like the others.”

He knew what he looked like, and he knew that his appearance would certainly disturb the public. He had been told, countless times, that the public would never understand him. They would, out of fear, restrain him and subject him to tests, much more severe and invasive that what he had grown accustomed to.

As the years rolled past, he continued to expand his understanding of the world outside of the lodge. Occasionally, he earned the reward of going outside, feeling the sun warming his face, watching a storm cloud releasing its anger, or seeing the stars, reminding him of their mysteries.

As Straus had planned, the lodge became a popular place for big city doctors to spend their vacations. During the summer and fall months, it was common for Straus to have at least one guest staying in the guest rooms, one floor above his rooms. Each guest was told the same thing about him.

“I have a patient who lives here year round. He is an especially challenging and interesting patient; highly agoraphobic, paranoid, and extremely private. He pays me to ensure that he is left alone. I ask that you understand and respect his wishes and that you do not enter the first floor hallway. I assure you, he is as harmless as a butterfly, but his emotional stability would, I fear, crumble if anyone he hasn’t learned to trust makes contact with him.”

The few times that all of the lodge’s rooms were filled with guests, he was sedated and either kept in his bedroom or relocated to a rented cottage in the nearby hamlet of Oxbow Lake. The days in the cottage were usually spent unconscious and always included an armed guard who liked to promise him that he would not hesitate in the use of his gun.

“I don’t know what your story is, and I don’t care. If Straus wants to pay me to babysit you for a few days, so be it. But I promise you that if you try anything, your head will explode.”

He was strapped to the cottage’s bed and secured with enough rope and wire to make any attempted escape impossible. And all the while he would lay in the bed, his babysitter would sit a few yards away, pointing his high powered rifle towards his head and telling him what a freak he was.

As unpleasant as those days were, he used them as opportunities to study and to learn. The more exposure he had to the world and to those who lived in the world, the closer he became to fulfilling his plan.

For him, the passage of the years did not bring him closer to his own end but rather to his own beginning. The more agreeable he was, the more rewards and privileges he was given.

Several weeks before his plan was launched, Straus awarded him with a privilege that seemed too perfect in its timing.

“Alex, I know how much you want to go outside. To go feel the lake as you have wished for. As long as you agree to my terms, I will allow you to walk with me to the lake. But I assure you, if you do anything that I even remotely think is an attempt to leave, I’ll shock you.”