Then I remembered Solly.
“Where’s my dog?” I said. The doc was stitching me. “Stop!” I said. “We have to find my dog! She’s going to hurt him!”
Then, to my surprise, the doctor stopped. He just stopped, midstitch. I looked at his fingers, holding the needle. Now some clear liquid ran on my leg, right next to the wound. Drool. A long strand of it spilled from his mouth. He swayed, very gently. “Solly,” he said, his voice sleep-thick. Now the nurse loomed up. The nurse took the needle from him, stuck it in my thigh. Not like giving me a shot, just stabbed me with it and left it there. I gasped and looked up. Her tall nurse’s hat sat crooked, it had been hastily put on. It wasn’t a nurse. Of course it wasn’t. You know who it was.
Margaret stood towering over me, glorious in victory, her teeth bared. She looked me in the eye, her eyes moons, cat’s eyes, each one of them a headlamp in the devil’s fastest car. “You won’t make a sound,” she said, and I felt my muscles go slack, felt myself start to drool. It was kind of a good feeling, getting charmed, like nothing could go wrong because you just weren’t in charge anymore.
“But you will have a look around, won’t you?” she said. “You’ll want to remember this night.” She put her hand on my chin and turned my head this way and that so I could see. My mother lay slumped against the wall, charmed, holding up a Life magazine that happened to be upside down, examining it like a strange dead bird. The actual nurse lay half-naked on the floor, her mouth opening and closing like a fish’s mouth, like she wanted to warn somebody but couldn’t. Now Margaret said, “Sit still, my little prince. Watch it all and then it’ll be your turn.”
My mom started to say “Joey” then, and she kept saying it like a broken record, soft and helpless-like. I think she really did love me in her way, as much as she could love anything. The vampire walked over to her, licked her neck good, then bit. I’ll never forget my mom’s gloved hands holding the false nurse’s back, saying “Joey” the whole time, moaning at the end like she was under my dad. Margaret pulled away, a jet coming from my mother’s neck, arcing up and spattering everything. Margaret stuck a sponge in her hand, put that to her neck. The wound was already starting to heal.
I saw Margaret look at the nurse, consider drinking from her, but I now know she needed room in her rotten stomach. Room for my blood. She walked over now, looked at me. Her big light-blue eyes in the yellowish sclera of the new vampire.
“Move aside, Doctor,” she said. He moved aside.
With a pale finger, she plucked open the stitch on my leg, pulled the thread out. Lipped the blood off it and tossed it down. I whimpered.
“Shut up.”
I shut up.
She bent and put her lips to the puncture, sucked hard. Sucked as much blood from that wound as she could get. But it wasn’t enough. So she shifted and slipped a sharp fang under the skin near the crotch, fished around until she found the femoral artery, punched a burning hole in it. Drank. She didn’t stop. She arched her back like a cat.
“Joey, Joey, Joey,” went my mom, her feet kicking weakly like an infant’s feet, letting her magazine drop.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Dr. Goldman?”
“I’m in surgery,” the doctor said, staring at nothing, leaning back now so his drool ran on his tie. “Stay out, please.”
“Sorry, Doctor.”
The room began to go black.
Margaret stopped drinking, let the blood jet from my leg while she said, “And now, you lying little bastard. Now you’ll die.”
Joey, Joey, Joey.
I heard my pulse in my ears weak and slow.
Then I heard the sound where my pulse should have been.
And I died.
HOW TO BE DEAD
If there’s anything as black as the inside of a hospital morgue drawer, I’m not sure what it is. Maybe the middle of a barrel of oil, maybe a mineshaft after a collapse. I returned to something like consciousness aware that it was dark, that I was cold and that my throat, stomach, and ass were raw and burning. Images played in my head, not dreams exactly and not memories, sort of in between, like what you see when you’re dozing off. Margaret was at my window, pale and puffy-eyed and dead, she was looming over me in a big nurse’s hat, and then I was running from her through a jungle. I came to a big chasm that dropped down a good mile through vines and rocks, but there was a fallen tree across it so I ran for that. A bunch of other guys were running for it, too, but no sooner had we gotten to it than King Kong came around the bend, bigger than life and blacker than hell, beating his chest and roaring. You probably know what happened next; he started rolling the log around and thumping it and guys started dropping off to their deaths, screaming all the way down. That was the scariest scene in that movie, to me at least. This big monkey has you trapped and he knows what he’s doing and there’s nothing to do but die, it’s just a matter of time. I saw it with my folks and Uncle Walt at the premiere—we couldn’t get into Radio City Music Hall like we wanted, but we did get seats at the RKO Roxy after a long, cold huddle in line, mostly handled by Dad and Uncle Walt while Mom and I went for doughnuts. Dad made nice with the people behind us by giving them doughnuts. And business cards.
So there I was in my dead-dream, about to get pitched off the log, feeling seasick from all the rolling, and then, as life imitates art, I became aware of actually feeling nauseated. I opened my eyes as hard as I could, I had never been fully certain they were open before, and thought about yelling, but some instinct told me that was a bad idea. I remember my eyes were puffy and sticky and that stuck-together feeling only made my nausea worse. So I barfed. I’ll spare you the details, not because I don’t remember them, but just, you know. Courtesy. Except one detail’s kind of relevant, so you get that one. Sorry. I thought I should turn over to keep from choking, I’d heard that about stew-bums, roll ’em over, but I wasn’t choking. Because I hadn’t been breathing. I felt scared then, like maybe I should see a doctor about this not-breathing thing, and then I realized my pulse should have been racing. It wasn’t even idling. Still. Everything was still in there, except the stomach. I puked again.
That’s when I heard voices. I didn’t hear them clearly through that drawer, but I heard most of it. Here’s how I think it went:
Deep-Voice Guy: Not in three, three has a resident. Put her in five.
Really Yiddish-Sounding Guy: Who’s in three? This must have happened last night.
DVG: Yes. Peacock, Joseph. Exsanguination following a stabbing. Date of birth January 9, 1919.
RYSG: Just a kid. Bad luck. May I see?
DVG: Sure. Three’s got a trick door—you have to jog it left first. You’d think a door would last four years. I’ll get it.
I got this really clear feeling that I should play dead. We’re good at that, by the way. Not real fidgety, high pain threshold, room temperature, no breathing or pulse. I lay as still as Abe Lincoln. The door went shhk-chunk, deep-voice guy grunted, and then my drawer slid out. I was aware of light on my eyelids. I know I stank and looked a mess. Yiddish-sounding guy said, “Oy.” I shit you not, he said, “Oy.” How I wanted to peek at him! Was he orthodox?
RYSG: Aside from the pallor and ejecta, he looks like he’s just sleeping.
DVG: Here’s the wound. Clipped the artery. Doctor removing the foreign body caused him to bleed out. Funny, the wound looked bigger earlier.
RYSG: What was it? The foreign body?
DVG: A sharp stick.
RYSG: Not your night, was it, young man?
I was scared as hell now. I wanted to move just to prove to myself that I could, that I wasn’t just a cold, dead kid getting talked over by doctors, but something told me to stay still, all but made me stay still.
DVG: You never know what you’ll see in here.
RYSG: Isn’t that the truth.
They slid me back in. I was thinking
Don’t shut the door, don’t shut the door, don’t shut the door, and they shut the door. They went back to talking about weird deaths they had seen and they put away some other stiff two doors down. Then they left. I had to know if I was really dead, so I moved my hand, or thought I did, then I pinched my own nipple and felt that, or thought I did. I was starting to panic. Then I did panic. How would I get out? Where would I go, what would I do, where was my dog, was my dad all right? I wanted to start screaming and kicking the insides of the drawer, that would have made a hell of a racket, but I couldn’t. I mean, I could have made myself, I guess, but the urge to bang and yell was less powerful than the need, the command, to remain quiet. It was like wanting to get away from bees, only you’d have to jump into a blazing furnace to do it. So I lay there. But the little movements I made in the dark, was I really making them? Was I thinking I had better stay still because the truth was that I couldn’t move and never would again? Before long my door went shhk-chunk again and a woman cleaned me off with a bleachy towel; soap must have been for the paying customers. She was talking to herself the whole time, half whispering, rehearsing some speech she was going to give her husband when she got home:
“I really don’t care what your friends think about it I won’t have you going to the bar where that tramp works like nothing ever happened between you something most certainly did happen even if you think kissing someone isn’t a big deal it is to me and there comes a time when you’ve just got to put your foot down so I’m putting my foot down it’s a certain kind of woman who works in bars to begin with and what I do may not be glamorous but it’s honest not that that cheap piece of goods knows from honest but you should Arthur you really should by the age of thirty-two you’re not a kid I won’t have it, I won’t have it. I won’t have it.”
Every time she said, “I won’t have it,” she gave me an extra hard wipe with the cloth. By the time she was done, I was pretty sure poor Arthur had been stepping out on her. Jesus, who wouldn’t? My skin stung from the bleach and she slid me back in.
After she left, I started feeling around for the latch on the inside, but I couldn’t find it. Because, of course, there wasn’t one. A corpse needs a door handle like a hamburger needs tap shoes. I felt the panic start again, but I fought it down. At least I wasn’t covered in puke anymore.
Not long after that, my bowels voided. I thought no, no, no! and went to say it, but couldn’t do more than move my lips. I had no air in my lungs. I hadn’t even noticed. So I just lay in the dark, though it didn’t seem as dark as it had before, and started having more dead-dreams. The next one was about ants. Everyone in my house was dead, mother, father, dog, Elise, Vilma. We were lying there chopped up like someone had gone at us with a meat cleaver, only there was no blood. Just sugar. Sugar ran out of us like we were burst sacks and countless trains of ants marched from the cabinets and cracks in the walls, little pain-in-the-ass black ants like at picnics. And even though I was lying there on the wooden floor, open-eyed with sugar running out of my mouth and a gash in my neck, I was also standing over me. I started trying to kill the ants, stepping on them with shoes, really nice shoes for some reason, but they wouldn’t die. It was like stepping on BBs. But you don’t want to hear this, other people’s dreams are boring, so who gives a shit?
One more thing, though—I remember ants crawling over my open eyes. I was watching myself not blink while ants crawled on my corneas and through my lashes. And it was just then that my morgue door went shhk-CHUNK and opened. I lay still. It was harder this time because my feet wanted to twitch from the memory of killing ants, but I made myself just lie there. My drawer slid out. The lights weren’t bright on the insides of my lids this time. This time the lights were out.
“Open your eyes,” she said.
Margaret McMannis’s voice, emotionless, like she was telling a stranger what time it was.
I wasn’t emotionless. I was terrified. I opened my eyes as instructed and tried to give a good yell, but my lungs weren’t working. Margaret stood there next to a drooly nurse and an equally charmed young man in shorts and suspenders, his upper lip shiny with snot. Margaret was still wearing her bloody nurse’s gear, which she now climbed out of, saying, “You, too,” to her hypnotized friends. They both stripped as well.
Even though the lights were out, I could see pretty well. Like everything was gently lit with candlelight though there was no candle. It was kind of pretty, though it would be a while before I learned to appreciate it.
“Get up,” she said to me, slithering into the nurse’s underthings. I sat up. Lazarus, I thought. This is what it felt like for Lazarus. I always liked that Bible story in Sunday school. I only actually attended Sunday school about ten times spread out over my whole childhood, but I got the story of Jesus bringing Lazarus back from the dead no fewer than three times. I guess God was giving me a hint. He does that. God or whatever’s sitting where God ought to be. I don’t think it’s what they told us in Sunday school.
I stood up, covering my nakedness as best I could with my hands. When the other boy was naked, she walked over to him and grabbed his chin and the back of his hair. She twisted his head violently, I heard a nauseating crack, and he jerked and went limp. I went to scream again and couldn’t. She piled him into my drawer and shut it. The naked nurse moaned a pathetic, helpless moan and drooled. Her glasses were on crooked.
“Look at me,” Margaret said. I had been staring at my pale, dead, veiny feet. Now I looked at her. Her eyes, which had looked like lamps to me before, looked more like regular eyes. I was shivering with fear. She slapped me. I stopped.
“No screamin’. No yellin’. I’m gonna give you yer breath back now,” she said. And she put her mouth to mine and blew hard. My lungs filled with her lukewarm, stinking air, and I took my first breath as one of the living dead.
“Just so you know, we’re even,” she said. “You took my life away, and I took yours. Now clean the shite offa yerself, put that kid’s clothes on, and let’s get out of here. I’ve got some things to tell you. And more to show you. Smile for me.”
I did.
“Yeah, they’re comin’,” she said. Then she leaned in close and looked at my eyes. “You’re gettin’ the sight now, too.” I made myself breathe in again, then forced the air out past my vocal cords.
“My stomach,” I said. “It . . .”
“Yeah, it burns, I know. All right, go bite that tart first and then get dressed.”
“What?”
“Don’t act innocent. There’s nothing innocent about you, and hasn’t been for a long time. Put your face near her neck and it’ll come to you.”
I walked over to the woman. She looked at me, mouth-breathing.
“She’s . . . she’s too tall.”
Margaret laughed a gravelly laugh.
“Look her in the eye and tell her to bend down. She will.”
She did.
Her glasses slipped off her head and broke.
I noticed she was sweating. I licked her. I got an erection. The nurse noticed and reflexively reached for it. Margaret slapped her hand away.
“Get on with it, it’s almost sunrise,” Margaret said. “And if you need to fuck something, you can fuck me. Later. In the dark where I can pretend you’re someone else.”
That sounded weirdly thrilling.
But not as thrilling as what was coursing through the awkwardly bent-over nurse’s neck. I smelled her. Instinct took over. I fed. Salty iron and warm, damp copper rushed into my mouth and I drank hard, grunting with how good it was, arching my back; I came all over myself and the nurse. That’s not unusual your first time. The first time’s great. And the rest aren’t so bad either.
I cleaned up and got dressed.
Just outside the door, Margaret put me in a wheelchair and wheeled me out the front door of Beth Israel and nobody gave us a second glance.
From the New York Daily Ne
ws, dated February 4, 1978:
CHILD DISAPPEARS FROM MADISON AVENUE HOTEL
A 12-year-old Maryland girl, Renotta Vogel, went missing from a Midtown hotel Thursday afternoon and may have been abducted. The police have no suspects and no motive, but two unidentified children are wanted for questioning.
Mark Vogel, an instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, brought his family to New York to see their first Broadway play, St. Joan. The Vogels report that Renotta befriended a couple of younger children in Central Park and invited them into the lobby of Manhattan’s popular Hotel Seville to play.
“I was right there the whole time,” said the distraught father. “Monica [Mrs. Vogel] went up to shower, I used the phone in the lobby to call our house sitter about the dog, but I never looked away for more than a minute. One second they were there, the next they were gone. Just gone.”
Umberto Pérez, 29, a bellboy at the hotel, remembers seeing the children. “Sweet-faced kids, they both peeked from under a big umbrella. I remember the umbrella because I thought it might snow, but not rain. Too cold for rain.”
Despite the freezing weather, both witnesses recall the children were lightly dressed and wore no shoes. “I wasn’t going to let them in,” said Pérez, “but the older girl [Vogel] said they were friends, and I knew she was a guest. Guest gets what she wants.”
Mr. Vogel at first told police that the children, a dark-haired girl and a blond boy, both between seven and nine years of age, never spoke to him, then changed his story. “I have the impression that she was a little foreign girl, maybe British, but I can’t base that on a specific memory. I can see her opening her mouth to speak, but when I try to remember what she said, there’s no sound there. It’s the strangest thing.”
The Lesser Dead Page 7