The Home

by Scott Nicholson

  The others watched Starlene take her seat at the head of the circle: Vicky, pale and wide-eyed, whose dress hung about her as if draped from a clothes hanger; the new boy, Freeman; Mario, in too-short trousers, who rarely spoke; Isaac, who nurtured a serious persecution complex; and Cynthia, who called herself "Sin." Cynthia seemed to have recovered from her recent treatment, but a suspicious defiance sparked her eyes.

  Ready for a good jousting match, Starlene?

  Starlene loved Group. The setting was perfect for teaching socialization skills while also gaining the children's trust. In group therapy, she could be a "facilitator," though she hated that word for it. A facilitator was someone who was structured and inflexible, who "empowered" others while not taking much personal risk. She thought of her job as more like "witnessing," showing others the blessings she'd discovered and which all could share in.

  "Hey, guys," she said looking into each face in turn.

  "You're late," Deke said.

  "And I apologize. Adults have to apologize sometimes, too, don't they, Freeman?"

  Freeman winced, twitched one corner of his mouth, and said nothing.

  "You going to make us talk about something, or do we just got to sit here for an hour?" Deke said.

  "I think it's better when we get things out in the open," Starlene said.

  "Because sharing is caring," Freeman said.

  She ignored his sarcasm. Many placements came to Wendover with a wall around their hearts. You couldn't hammer through the wall; battering at it only made the wall stronger. Love was better. Love seeped through the cracks and melted the wall away, eroded its base until the stones crumbled. "We do care, Freeman."

  Deke glowered at Freeman, then at Starlene. He looked around the circle, at the children sitting in their straight-backed chairs, making sure he had an audience. "Not all of us care, Freaky Freeman."

  Starlene was about to quiet Deke, then decided the group dynamic might be more interesting if she let the children lead the discussion themselves. If only Deke's natural leadership skills didn't turn nasty so easily. Six years in therapy, according to the case file, and Deke was no closer to adjusting to society than he'd ever been. Still, the Lord and her professional obligation required her to have hope for him.

  But patience was a demanding virtue. That was one of the warnings that her psych teachers had burned home, that occasionally you'd feel like slapping little Johnny across the face. No matter that he had been abused and suffered a neurochemical imbalance and was diagnosed with an adjustment disorder, you sometimes had to wonder if a particular kind of vermin was, and always would be, a rat.

  "Why do you think Freeman is 'freaky'?" Starlene asked Deke.

  "He's weird. He likes books and stuff. He sits by himself. He don't talk much, and when he does say something, it's big words nobody understands."

  "And how would you respond to that, Freeman?"

  Freeman shrugged and slouched more deeply into his chair. "Do unto others."

  "Ah, something from the Bible. That's a good rule to live by."

  "Actually," Freeman said, straightening, "that's a basic tenet of many religions: Scientology, Buddhism, Islam."

  "See what I mean?" Deke said. "Weird."

  "He's a thief, too," Raymond said.

  "Let he who is without sin," Freeman said.

  "Hey," Cynthia said. "What about 'she'? Girls can sin as good as you can."

  Raymond let loose with a wolf whistle. "And you ought to know, sweet cheeks."

  "Like you'd ever be so lucky," she responded.

  Starlene cut in before the verbal barrage turned crude. "Why do you accuse Freeman of being a thief?" she asked Raymond.

  Raymond and Deke exchanged looks. Vicky, who had been silent thus far, watching the conversation as if it were the ball at a tennis match, finally spoke.

  "Because they feel threatened," she said. "They're insecure and overcompensate by trying to dominate the other boys. Any time a new guy comes here, Deke and Raymond and their gang have to knock him down in order to build themselves up."

  "I ain't insecure," Deke said.

  "Dysfunctional. Both psychologically and physically. Remember on the rocks?"

  "At least I don't throw up every time I turn around," Deke said.

  Vicky turned even paler, if such a thing were possible, though two red roses of anger blossomed on her cheeks.

  "Guys," Starlene said. "Remember that we're all here for each other. We're all in this together."

  "Bull hockey," Deke said. "Don't give me that 'brothers and sisters' crap. We get enough of that in chapel."

  "Remember that part in the Bible about not coveting thy neighbor's ass?" Freeman said.

  "That's not in there," Deke said, then turned to Starlene. "See how weird he is?"

  "It's there," Freeman said. "The unexpurgated version of the Ten Commandments. The long form that usually gets trimmed down when they get posted in the courthouse or the classroom. Lots of other good stuff, too, about slaves and how God is a jealous God. The Big Guy said so himself."

  "You seem to know a lot about the Bible, Freeman," Starlene said.

  "He probably swiped a copy," Raymond said.

  "Yeah, Weasel-brains," Deke said to Raymond. "I got one personally autographed by Jesus. Want to buy it?"

  Raymond glowered, fists clenched. Deke held up his palms and smirked. Starlene left her chair and stood between the two boys. "Jesus said to turn the other cheek."

  "His other ass cheek?" Freeman said. The kids erupted in laughter, even Deke, and finally Raymond.

  Starlene sighed. Dirty jokes and sacrilege. Things were going to be very interesting with Freeman around. Not to mention having a ghost in the Home. The good thing about doubting your sanity was you didn't have to worry about dying of boredom.

  ELEVEN

  Bondurant didn't believe in ghosts. No sane man did, no holy man did. But the incident with Starlene at the lake was the third of its kind in recent weeks. Each of the three people had claimed to see a man in a dirty gray gown.

  The first report had been from a kitchen worker, a wrinkled Scots-Irish whose family used to own the farmland where Wendover had been built in the 1930s. The man said the ghost was dressed just like the patients who had shambled down these halls when it was a state mental hospital during the Second World War. He'd been a boy back then, and as Bondurant had interviewed him, a childlike fear had crept into the old man's eyes. Bondurant had written him off as a superstitious hillbilly.

  The second report was from a counselor, Nanny Hart-wig, who had worked at Wendover for eight years. Nanny was a reliable sort, thick-bodied and dull and as patient as a cow. She'd never been rattled by the children, even when they threw food or cursed or spat. Nanny could slip a child into a restraint hold as smoothly as if it were a choreographed professional wrestling move.

  But Nanny had shown up one morning to begin her three-day shift as a house parent, then disappeared. The other counselors noticed her missing and found her several hours later, huddled in a closet, gripping a mop handle so tightly that her knuckles were white. Nanny muttered incoherently about the man in the gown who had walked right through her. Bondurant had given her two weeks' vacation and hinted that she might consider therapy. In a church, not a clinic.

  But this last sighting, with Starlene today, was the worst. Bondurant believed that the third time was a charm. The third time meant that the sightings couldn't be written off as imagination or drunkenness, because Starlene was of good Christian stock. Bondurant could lie to the Board of Directors, give positive spin to the grant foundations and private supporters, even snow the Department of Social Services if it came down to it, but quieting rumors among the staff was like trying to keep water from flowing downhill.

  He'd considered approaching Kracowski about the sightings. Kracowski had an easy answer for everything. Usually the doctor could open one of his journals or spew some charts from his computer and Bondurant would be left standing dumbfounded, overwhelmed
by terminology and formulas. Bondurant was always comforted by the doctor's confident manner. The very lack of humility that made Kracowski irksome also made his explanations believable.

  Bondurant leaned back in his chair. The office was quiet except for the faint ticking as the clock hands moved toward nine. Darkness painted the windows and a few dots of stars hung above the black mountains beyond. The children would be settling down for evening prayers, boys in the Blue Room, girls in the Green Room. Except for the house parents on duty and the night-time cleaning lady, the staff was gone, either in the on-site cottages or far beyond the hard walls of Wendover to Deer Valley.

  Bondurant opened the bottom drawer of his desk. His Bible lay next to the wooden paddle and a purple velvet bag. He lifted the bag. Crown Royal. The first sip bit his tongue and throat, the second burned, the third warmed him so much that he shivered. Someone knocked on the door.

  Bondurant traded the bottle for the Good Book, slid the drawer closed and parted the Bible to a random chapter. The Book of Job. That was one of his favorites, with suffering and a defiant and unrepentant Satan, and someday he was going to get around to understanding it. That and the damned parable of fishes.

  "Come in," he said.

  Nothing. He pressed the button on his speakerphone. The receptionist's office was left unlocked at the end of the day in case the staff needed to get to the patient files.

  "Hello?" he said, listening as his amplified voice echoed around the outer office.

  Still nothing.

  Bondurant rose, annoyed that he should have to answer his own door. He swung the door wide. No one there. He crossed the receptionist's office and looked down the hall. There, in the dim angles leading to the cafeteria, a shadow moved among the darkness. One of the boys must have sneaked out of the Blue Room, probably on his way to swipe a treat from the kitchen.

  "Hello there," Bondurant said keeping his voice level. Even if you were angry, you had to feign calm. Otherwise, you ended up yanking the little sinners by their ears until they cried or bending the girls over your desk and paddling them and paddling them Bondurant swallowed. The person had stopped blending into the shadows. The hall was quiet, the air still and weighty. Bondurant's lungs felt as if they were filled with glass.

  "Aren't you supposed to be getting ready for Light's Out?" Bondurant said stepping forward.

  The figure crouched in the murk. Bondurant cursed the lack of lighting in the hall. The budget never seemed to cover all the facility needs, though administrative costs rose steadily, along with Bondurant's salary.

  As he drew nearer, Bondurant realized that the figure was too large to be that of a client. What was a staff member doing creeping around the halls at night? The house parents were supposed to stay with the children, to act simultaneously as guardians and jailkeeps. The cleaning lady would be cleaning the toilets in the shower rooms in the boys' wing, the same schedule she'd used for as long as Bondurant had served as director. Maybe it was one of Kracowski's new supporters, one of the cold and shifty types who acted as if they needed no permission or approval.

  "Excuse me, did you know it's after nine?" Bondurant saw that the person was plump and squat, drab in the half-light. Nanny? Had she gotten headstrong and come back to prove she had in fact seen something that couldn't exist?

  "Everything's going to be okay." Bondurant wished he'd studied psychology now, because he sounded to himself like a TV cop trying to lure a suicide away from a ledge. He held out his hand and closed the twenty feet of distance between them. What if she broke down and did something crazy, like bite him?

  "You can tell me all about it," he said.

  Fifteen feet, he wasn't sure the person was Nanny after all. Ten feet away, and he was still uncertain, though he could tell it was a woman.

  She huddled face-first in the corner, shoulders shaking with sobs. But no sound came from the woman. She was aged, her hair matted and gray, her legs bare beneath the hem of her gown. The gown was fastened by three strings clumsily knotted against her spine. The skin exposed in the gap was mottled. The woman was on her knees, her broad, callused feet tucked behind her.

  Bondurant hesitated. Perhaps he should get one of the house parents, or call the local police. But the police had long complained about Wendover's runaways and the extra security calls. This was different, though; kids ran away all the time, but how many grown-ups ever ran to Wendover? Before Bondurant could make up his mind, the woman turned.

  Bondurant would have screamed if not for the numbing effects of the liquor. The woman's face was twisted one corner of her lip caught in a rictus, the other curved into a crippled smile. Her eyelids drooped, and her tongue moved in her mouth like a bloated worm. What Bondurant had taken for sobs now seemed more like convulsions, because the old woman's head trembled atop her shoulders as if attached by a metal spring.

  Worst of all was the long scar across the woman's forehead, an angry weal of flesh running between the furrows of her skin. The scar was like a grin, hideous atop the skewed mouth and slivers of eyes. The woman held out her shaking arms. The tongue protruded like a thing separate from the face, as if it were nesting inside and had just awakened from a long hibernation. The lips came together unevenly, yawned apart, spasmed closed again.

  Oh, God, she's trying to TALK.

  Bondurant took an involuntary step backward, forcing another breath into his chest. Sour bile rose in his throat, a quick rush of heartburn. He would have broken into a run if his legs hadn't turned to concrete. The woman scooted forward on her knees, a shiny sliver of drool dangling from her warped chin. Her soiled gown was draped about her like an oversize shawl. Her lips quivered again, the worm-tongue poked, but she made no sound.

  Bondurant shouted for help, but he couldn't muster much wind and the cry died in the corners of the hallway. Bondurant gave up on mortal assistance and sent summons to a higher power.

  He remembered the tale of the Good Samaritan, how the Samaritan had helped Jesus on the side of the highway. Or maybe it hadn't been Jesus, maybe it was somebody else, or Jesus might have been the one doing the helping. Bondurant was fuzzy on the details, but the long and short of it was that a Christian reached out his hand when someone was down.

  Even if that someone was a twisted shambling wreck that the Devil himself might have cast out from the lake of fire in disgust.

  "It's okay now," Bondurant said his voice barely above a whisper. "What's your name?"

  Again the lips undulated the sinuous tongue pressed between the teeth, but still no words came out. The woman raised one eyelid and Bondurant looked into the black well of an eye that seemed to have no bottom.

  "Let me help you up," he said. He closed his eyes and reached for her hands. A cold wind passed over him, shocking his eyes open.

  The old woman stood before him now, arms raised.

  The woman brought her hands to her face, curled them into claws and began raking at her eyes. In her frenzy, the gown came loose, one shoulder showing pale as a grub.

  The woman's mouth gaped open, the tongue flailing inside, and her fingers pulled at the skin of her eyelids. Bondurant could only stare, telling himself it wasn't real, that Jesus and God would never allow something like this in the sacred halls of Wendover.

  And even through his fear, he was already scheming his cover-up, planning the story he would give to local authorities.

  She broke in, I tried to stop her. No, I've never seen her before…

  The woman's gown fell farther down her shoulders, and Bondurant could see more scars criss-crossing the flaccid breasts. Still the gnarled fingers groped and the flesh gave way beneath her fingernails. The lips trembled as if trying to shape a scream, but only silence issued from that dark throat.

  Bondurant had been trained to handle violent or aggressive clients. He knew a half-dozen different restraint techniques, from the basket hold to the double wrap. If he could only grab her, pin her arms behind her back, then Then he only had to wait either for her to get tired o
r for help to arrive.

  He reached for her elbows and came away empty. She was moving away from him, retreating back into the shadows. Except she wasn't running away, he saw. She was floating, her obscenely-swollen toes inches above the floor.

  The deformed mouth vomited its silent scream as she continued to rake at her eyes. Just before she disappeared into the wall, the forehead scar curved slightly, as if giving Bondurant a smile of farewell.

  TWELVE

  Freeman was dreaming of his dead grandparents' farm, a hundred and twelve acres of rolling woodlands, the green valleys pocked with cattle, a silver creek winding through the belly of the land. Freeman was in the garden near the barn, the smell of drying tobacco, manure, and hay dust hanging in the warm summer air. Broad leaves of zucchini plants and wires of runner beans surrounded him. He drove his shovel into the black earth, turning up nightcrawlers.

  He turned the shovel and the worms spilled out, slimy and as thick as pencils. The shovel blade dipped again, and the ground fell away, becoming a huge black cavity. A monstrous worm reared up, glistening with mucus, its blind head probing the sky. The worm continued to swell, its girth like that of a rubbery tree.

  Suddenly, the worm grew a hundred arms and the dark mouth opened: "Hey, Shit For Brains, what the fuck you doing jerking off in here when I need you?"

  Now the worm wore Dad's head, and Freeman struggled against his blankets as the worm's millipedic arms reached for him, strangled him, slapped at him, smothered him, and, worst of all, hugged him "Psst. Hey, new guy. Freeman."

  Freeman shoved away, cried out, the sunshine of his dream gave way to six walls of shadow, and still the Dad-worm clutched at him.

  "Whoa, man. Take it easy."

  Freeman groaned and opened his eyes. In the muted night light of the Blue Room, he could make out the face of the mossy-eyed boy, Isaac, from Group. The boy was shaking him awake.