Them.
She knew, at some point, she'd have to peek into the bedroom.
Instead she put on the small television that sat on the kitchen table. The nightly news was on, and she lowered the volume just enough so that she wouldn't wake them up—so that she would hear them just in case they did.
Don't be afraid, Carrie. This isn't anything different than when you worked in the hospital. They're just old, black, senile human beings, suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's.
From the bedroom, another wheeze.
This time, it was louder.
She shut the television, stood up and crossed the small vestibule leading into the couple's room. She peered into the bedroom and saw them laying in individual bed-carts, a single ceiling dome light spotting the thin wisps of white hair on their heads. They were sleeping on their backs, empty mouths gaping, sheets hugging their frail bodies like shrouds.
A bone-limbed hand shifted under the sheet, followed by a high sucking wheeze.
Carrie staggered back. She gripped the doorframe, heart slamming, realizing she had no idea which one was Roberta's father, and which was her mother. They looked one and the same, each dressed identically in white gowns and bedsheets, neither holding any discernible features allowing her to tell them apart.
Finally she fled back into the safe distance of the kitchen. As her breathing quieted, she listened to the silence around her: to the faint buzz of the battery-operated clock on the wall; to the distant yelp of an alley dog blocks away.
To the couple, breathing, wheezing, sucking for air.
She begged the Good Lord above for his sympathy, to keep them both in their catatonic states, diapers as dry as tumbleweeds, bodies free of the yearn to agitate.
Carrie thumbed through the Spring issue of Better Homes and Gardens, keeping a wary eye on the digital clock atop the television. The red LED glowed 12:17. She sipped instant coffee and listened to the acidic protest of her stomach. She thought about exploring the refrigerator but triggering thoughts of Mr. and Mrs. Alzheimer and their slick and gaping grins kept her appetite on a very short leash.
They're graveyard hounds, withering away from malnutrition. Or mummies, unearthed after thousands of years, chomping at the bit to unleash their curse upon those responsible for waking them...
Carrie found some passing interest watching the empty street two floors below. Parked cars hugged the curb like sardines, opalescent street lamps casting sickly yellow auras across the sidewalk. She could count the last half hour's pedestrians on one hand, and wondered what each and every one of them might be doing at this ungodly hour, during the week when the rest of the world was sleeping.
You're not sleeping, Carrie dear. You're wide awake, in a strange apartment, eyeballing a couple of sleeping mummies primed to unleash their ancient curse on you.
She went into the kitchen, to the wall oven, back to the picture of Mr. and Mrs. Alzheimer. The locale was exotic, but this was no vacation picture she realized. They were seated on a large tree stump. In the background and alongside them were massive trees, thick trunks rising up into a dense canopy of leaves. The ground was a blanket of pure dirt that faded into the background. It looked as though they were in the jungle.
She took a closer look, and noticed something interesting.
The man's left wrist, just visible beyond the faded portion of the old photograph, appeared to be bound with hemp. The tether led down across the front of the stump where it disappeared beyond the span of the camera. Carrie wondered what might have occurred all those years ago at the time the picture was taken; it appeared the couple might've been held against their will. She eyed their faces again. No smiles. Perhaps content, but then again...well, maybe they were frightened, were being kept against their will, were being forced to comply with the demands of those on the other side of the camera. It was all a matter of interpretation.
"Robertaaa?"
The voice was more than a whisper. It was a yell, low and rasping and demanding of his-her-its daughter's presence. Carrie stood motionless by the oven, staring at the picture and wishing that the all-too-real voice had been a fabrication of her mind. Her stomach twisted into knots and her arms broke out in chicken-skin. She ran her hands across her arms in a useless effort to comfort herself, then peered towards the vestibule leading into their bedroom.
My father shouts out from time to time, periods of dementia, but only in the daytime. Other than that, they don't move, speak, even open their eyes.
They don't speak...
She felt a wave of nervous dizziness, then paced slowly to the stove, poured some hot water in her cup and sipped it. Her hands were shaking. Sweat formed on her brow, and the usual comfort of the warm water didn't seem like a good idea at the moment. Leaning against the counter, she felt as if she were on a train where every stop was the same place, and no matter how long she rode she'd eventually have to get off and face the music.
From the bedroom, where Mr. and Mrs. Alzheimer had spent the better part of three years, two voices loomed. One, a choking gag. The other, a whistling gasp.
Carrie sucked in a breath and held it, making a noise not too unlike the wheeze that came from the other room. She faced the vestibule leading inside, tried to move but found that her muscles had turned to cement. Her blood was like acid in her veins, burning, sending flashes of heat into her reeling brain.
What the hell was that? Those noises?
They arose again. This time the wheeze came first, then the choking. And then, the voice.
"Robertaaaa?"
The summons was stronger, more demanding, lower in tone with the last vowel dragged out like a dying engine. Finally she was able to move and went into the vestibule, peeking beyond into the dark room where the light from above cast its ghostly hue upon their dying faces. Her heart pounded, a lump rose into her throat like a furry animal seeking shelter.
The couple lay motionless, sleeping...sleeping...sleeping. That voice—it must've been some subconscious trigger of the vocal chords, that somewhere deep inside his-her-its brain had said that it was time for dinner and Roberta had better get her sorry ass to the table before she got a whuppin'.
But then she walked farther into the room and saw that the figure in the second bedcart had shifted, one leg dangling out from beneath the pale white shroud of the sheet, off the edge of the mattress like a bark-clinging branch the morning after a thunderstorm. Long brown toenails tapped the floor in a sickeningly methodic rhythm.
Carrie's first thought was to put the tape player in motion, walk over to the nightstand and press play. But no one seemed to be agitating. Or were they? She convinced herself that this was what Roberta spoke of simply because her nerves wouldn't allow much more of this to strike her senses.
She tip-toed across the front of the bedcarts—past that leg—to the tape player. A timid, hesitant finger sought out the play button...then stopped.
She looked at the one closest to her, stared for a while at the thick lines carved into its skin, shuttered eyes caved in like small craters, patches of foam thick in the corners of its gaping mouth. The dangling leg with its nearly imperceptible sway was only evidenced through the hairline scrape of the toenails on the wood floor. A stale gust of breath purled from deep within the caverns of its lungs, riding up to the skin on her neck, sending gooseflesh down her back.
She pulled her sights away from the graveyard hound, from the ancient spell-slinging mummy, and focused on the small tape player. Her finger pressed the play button. A quiet hiss emanated from the tiny housed speakers.
She looked at the drawer which was cracked open an inch now, and would have bet tonight's pay that the drawer had been completely shut just moments earlier. With a childish interest, a hasty need to seek out information that would hold no great relevance or do her any good, she pulled the drawer open, slowly, slowly, and found a neatly stacked set of timeworn photographs. She picked up the pictures, eyes focusing in the gloom, an immature reflection forcing her to
lean forward, absorb the contents they spilled unto her. A new horror dawned as the sepia-toned photos told a wicked tale, continuing the saga that began with the photograph taped to the oven in the kitchen.
Despite the tethered hemp (which was quite visible in these subsequent photos, a bond not meant to restrain the couple themselves as Carrie originally presumed, but to fetter a small pygmy woman, a young girl perhaps whose nonassuming face showed not even the slightest bit of knowledge or care as to the events about to transpire), the picture on display in the other room was the only one of the bunch fit for public display. The rest, set in that exotic locale to which no man in his right mind would choose for a week of 'R and R', perpetuated a series of ritualistic voodoo-like acts that included the sacrifice of live chickens, the dousing of babies in buckets of blood, and the tapping out of rhythms with human bones and tusk-handled knives.
Plus, the methodical skinning, gutting, and cannibalism of the small nonassuming native girl.
Mr. and Mrs. Alzheimer were at the crux of all primitive activities, not only as willing participants, but as pivotal instrumentalists as well.
Carrie trembled, the pictures falling from her hand and scattering to the floor, and the realization that she would have to crawl under the bedcarts to retrieve them wasn't even a consideration. The big picture had set some validity into her premeditated fear, had superseded all that would've mattered prior to her seeing those photographs, up to and including having to scour about and return them to the drawer.
The tape began to play, tribal drums (bones?), a dark chant in foreign tongue, the harsh whispers of flickering flames seeping out from two small speakers.
Entranced, she opened the drawer further, located other items that didn't belong alongside one's bed. A small skull, that of a rat's. A large pheasant's feather. For a moment she looked over her shoulder to the closet in the room and thought there might have been a slight scratching noise coming from behind the shuttered white door; but that could very well have been those horrible yellow toenails coming in more intimate contact with the wood floor. She dared not look at them—she was too taut with fear.
But her fear didn't stop her from going back into the drawer. She pulled out a small tome with a black leather cover and etched writings, oddly scripted and indecipherable. Thumbing through the gray parchment proved no relief to Carrie's mounting fear of Mr. and Mrs. Alzheimer, the letterings within just as alien as those on the cover, written in a staggering hand and brown ink that might've been blood.
Jesus Christ...what are these people about? Cannibalism? Blood rituals?
It was a picture bigger than Carrie could've ever anticipated, and now she was paying the price for snooping where she didn't belong. These people are witch doctors, she thought. For all I know those evil minds are still at work this very minute thinking about how they could prepare me for dinner.
She looked at them, two pictures of hell, thin waifish beings all brown and wrinkled and mummy-like, eyes like squirrel-holes in rotting trees, mouths exhaling poisonous breaths laden with harmful intent. And she imagined them breaking free of the wraps that'd held them for thousands of years, stepping free from their tombs in zombie-like lurches, their limbs creaking with every footstep, with every damning cast of their spell-slinging arms; and upon their shoulders black scorpions would sit with glossy chitinous armor and venomous stingers, with the horrible stench of sulfur and coal, sulfur and brimstone, sulfur and all things gone to rot, the floor smoldering beneath their footsteps as they lurched closer, closer, capturing their innocent victim, their caretaker, now frozen from the words spoken through the evil tome written in blood, and then those yellow nails would tear their victim apart, feeding their heinous gaping mouths from which brown knotted teeth spring from bloodied gums, and the victim's wails would awake ancient demons from the pits of hell who would also take part in the feeding frenzy, bones and gristle burning in the acids of their churning guts.
She thought she understood. These people were witch doctors. From somewhere deep in the bowels of Africa they came to be with their daughter who kept them safe from the element that nourished them for years. Now, kept alive through modern medicine and perhaps a little black magic, Hocus-Pocus, Walla-Walla-Bang-Bang, they lay in wait for death to take them while unwitting nursemaids like Carrie are scared shitless into thinking they might be cooked up for a midnight snack.
They can't move. Or eat. They have no teeth, for Christ's sake.
Carrie realized now that she couldn't stay here and spend the night. But that would mean having to leave them alone. If she'd never come in here in the first place, had never snooped around, then she would not have discovered the evidence of their wicked past. Jesus Christ, they ate people! Enough said. There would be no consideration in staying—the rational adult in her told her that. Fuck Roberta and her pygmy eating mummies for parents.
Carrie shoved the book back into the drawer then backed out of the room, all the while keeping her eyes on the sleeping couple. Only when she made it out of the room and into the kitchen did she finally breathe out, a long staggering exhale that made her feel like throwing up. She skidded to the sink and ran the faucet, splashed her face with cold water, shuddering as she used her palms to wipe away the imaginary germs racing across her skin. She tore a paper towel from the roll under the cabinet, was drying her face, when the voice called from the other room.
"Roberta...mugwumpai...wannitasca...toosobah..."
Carrie tried to scream, but only a pained whisper was able to force its way out from her lungs. The unearthly words continued coming from the bedroom. There were other sounds too. The sounds of movement: the sheets being tossed from the bed, the horrible yellow toenails scooping out nice thick lines in the wooden floor.
With horror she found her feet echoing the movement developing from beyond the vestibule, her legs denying the orders shouted by her common sense to about-face and ten-hut her way out the front door. One foot, then another and another, and in an instant she was back in the bedroom feeling like a prisoner whose duties must be performed lest she let down the commanding officer: She who wields the mighty paycheck, Roberta.
They're witch doctors, Carrie. Voodoo people. Houngans from Haiti or Zulu-Priests from Zimbabwe.
Back in the bedroom she was; and there they were, Mr. and Mrs. Alzheimer. But they weren't sleeping, not at all. They were very much awake, standing side by side at the foot of the closest bedcart, each of them gripping their respective IV tows, using them for support.
Alzheimers? Didn't appear that way anymore. Their bodies—one of them was still draped in a smock, the other had lost its shroud and was naked—were as emaciated and as wrinkled and frail as ever. But their acumen, well, it looked as though it'd resurfaced from the lower depths of their minds. You could see it in their eyes, still sunken like squirrel-holes but now open and staring, not appearing blind at all: they were focused, wet and glazed, like peeled plums. Their mouths hung wide open, strings of saliva pooling off their lips onto the floor.
"Robertaaa", the naked one on the left said in a grating whisper. He-she-it moved its arms as if grasping for a dangling rope. "Mugwumpai...wannitasca...toosobah..."
Carrie, frozen with fear and the uncertainty of what to do, tried to move away but could only flinch. She could feel every muscle in her body tightening, as though an electrical charge had been sent through her. Her thoughts raced like mad. They're senile, lost in body and mind. They need to be put back into bed.
Strapped back in is more like it.
My father shouts out from time to time, periods of dementia, but only in the daytime. Other than that, they don't move, speak, even open their eyes.
"Don't move," Carrie whispered aloud, and saw that the naked one slinging out the ancient mummy curses at her was father Alzheimer.
In a last ditch effort to salvage the night, to make good on her promise to take care of the couple, she stepped towards them. Maybe it was her sudden denial that nothing truly evil could go down
here and now. Regardless, she was upon them, touching father Alzheimer on his stick of an arm and trying to lead him back into the bedcart.
He wouldn't budge. She looked into his eyes, those horrible sunken orbs now filled with life and fully determined to peer deep into Carrie's anxiety-ridden soul. He shouted something indecipherable, spraying Carrie with spittle, and at that moment mother Alzheimer's IV pole fell to the floor with a crash. The gelatinous contents seeped out of the torn bag and moved under the bedcart...of its own accord. It looked like a swimming jellyfish seeking shelter.
Carrie screamed. She staggered back but suddenly it was Father Alzheimer who had her in his grip. He made a very odd noise, something like the sizzle of meat in a hot frying pan; his toothless mouth chomped up and down on foamy gums and he began to chant along with the tribal music on the tape.
She tore away from his grasp, but the crawling IV contents had seeped back out from beneath the bedcart and found her feet. She slipped on it and fell down to the wood floor. She tried to rise but Mother Alzheimer, in all her repulsive nakedness, crumpled down beside her, nearly on top of her, producing a hissing sound. She looked like a twisted bundle of sticks, a campfire before being taken to flame. Her legs and arms sought the flooring in arachnid-fashion, then tore at Carrie's clothing with remarkable strength. Carrie wanted to crawl backwards but the liquid mess on the floor had made it impossible for her to move; she was covered in it. The woman was upon her now, pulling Carrie across the floor inches at a time toward the closet, which all of a sudden began to open by itself. Carrie managed a fist and swung it towards the woman but found only air, and it wasn't until she tried this move again did she realize that Father Alzheimer had also brought his naked self to the floor behind her, and was now holding her shoulders, immobilizing her arms, skeletal fingers digging into her collarbone. Carrie's shirt came away and she could feel their icy cold embrace against her sweating skin. It sent dread through her body, her mind, and she came to the strong realization that the ancient couple weren't on their deathbeds after all. No.
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