by Ronald Malfi
“Yes,” Mendes managed. Despite the cold, his hands were sweating in the pockets of his coat.
Josh glanced up at the building, his long hair wet and hanging in loose strands in front of his face. He then looked back at Mendes. “I know,” he said.
Mendes was confused. “I’m…sorry?”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it, either,” Josh said. “Something’s been tugging at me.”
“What are you talking about?”
Josh looked around and spied the diner across the street. He jerked his head in that direction. “Come on,” he said. “I’m freezing my ass off out here.”
Josh ordered a plate of scrambled eggs, toast, hash browns, and burnt sausage links while Mendes only sipped at a cup of lukewarm coffee. He watched the younger man rub his hands together before shaking an obscene amount of salt onto his scrambled eggs, then shovel some into his mouth. When Josh offered him a slice of toast, Mendes only shook his head.
“I figured you’d show up sooner or later,” Josh said from nowhere. “I even thought about calling you at some point. Figured you might be going crazy. You feel it, right? Like we’re being drawn here.”
“I don’t know.” Mendes’s hand was shaking, causing his coffee to ripple. He let go of the cup and looked up at Josh with tired, searching eyes. The young man’s face was all the evidence he needed to see that this young man too had not been sleeping for quite some time now. Also, Mendes thought he recognized a trace of fear.
“Listen,” Josh said, “I’ve learned some things. But—and I’m going to sound crazy here—but I need you…I mean…”
“I’m willing to consider anything you have to tell me,” Mendes said. “I’m in no position to scoff at theories, believe me.”
Josh nodded, not taking his eyes off him. “Yeah, all right.” He leaned over and unzipped his backpack that he’d rested on the seat beside him. He withdrew two textbooks from it, placed them on the table. “What do you know about telepathy, Doctor?”
Mendes just stared at him. “You mean like psychic powers?”
“I mean the whole gamut. And these books are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s been studies done, been actual documented accounts. Recently I’ve been reading up on it and I’ll tell you, some of this stuff blows my mind.”
“This is about Miss Worthridge?”
“You have to keep an open mind and understand…”
“What you’re telling me is that Nellie Worthridge is telepathic?”
“To be honest, I don’t know what abilities that woman has. I mean, not fully. Maybe she doesn’t fully understand it either, I don’t know. But I will tell you this: I think I’ve recently been able to answer some of our previous questions.”
What about my son? Mendes wanted to yell. That’s the only question I have—what about my son?
“I’ve recently been spending some time with Nellie, since she’s come home from the hospital,” Josh continued. “Outwardly, there have been some strange occurrences—she talks in her sleep, she zones out for several minutes at a time, she breaks the prongs off plastic forks—”
“She did that at the hospital, too.”
“Right. And also—and I swear to God I’m being truthful when I say this—but I’ve seen her left arm move.”
“Her paralyzed side…”
“Just a bit, hardly noticeable. Hell, I don’t think she knows it, but I’ve seen her move it. Just like you said she did at the hospital.”
Mendes looked down at his fingernails. They were ragged and chewed down to the quick. Both hands were shaking. “There’s no explanation for that,” he said almost to himself.
“Explanation or not, it’s what I saw,” Josh said. “And you did too, right? I mean, I’m not losing my mind here, right? And if I am, at least tell me I’m not losing it alone.”
Mendes shook his head. “No,” he said. “No. I saw it too.”
Lips pressed firmly together, Josh nodded at him. He appeared to relax somewhat once he had Mendes’s concordance. Then he said, “There have been other things, too. More…I guess you’d say they’re more internal things. Her headaches, for one. She doesn’t say too much about them, but I can tell when they hit her, and they hit her hard. I’m not sure if they have anything to do with her abilities, but I think that there’s probably a pretty good chance—”
“Josh,” Mendes interrupted, “you keep saying ‘abilities’ and you mentioned telepathy, but what the hell is going on? I don’t understand how you’ve drawn these conclusions based on some migraines and restless sleep.” He exhaled unsteady breath. “I’m not criticizing, I just…”
“Right,” Josh said. “You remember the Wednesday night bridge game?”
“Yes. The one she lied about.”
“She wasn’t necessarily lying, Doc,” Josh said. “In fact, you nearly solved this one yourself some time ago, only we didn’t put the pieces together then, do you remember? It’s not our fault—how the hell were we supposed to know what to look for?”
“Tell me.”
“You checked up on the names of the women Nellie gave you and discovered that a Betty Shotts did live in the next building over and did in fact host a Wednesday night bridge game every week. Do you remember?”
He nodded. Of course he remembered. It was one of the many things that simply didn’t make sense, and that had sent him spiraling deeper and deeper into what had inevitably become this living, waking nightmare.
“It’s not unusual for Nellie to not hear me when I come to her door,” Josh continued. “She’s old and so I just let myself in. And this past Wednesday I did just that—opened the door while carrying in a bag of groceries, all set to make some spaghetti sauce, and I called out to her as I made my way to the kitchen. No answer. I quickly became nervous and moved down the hallway toward her bedroom. I paused just outside the door. It was closed almost all the way, and I knocked on it and called out to her again. But she still didn’t answer. But I could hear her in there, talking to herself.
“I pushed the door open and saw her—she was right there beside her bed in her wheelchair, and she would have looked like she were asleep if not for this really peculiar grin on her face. Her head was sort of tilted back and her hands were clenched together and pressed into her lap. In fact, she was about an inch away from leaning her head back against the bedroom wall.
“She frightened me, sitting like that with her eyes closed and her mouth working at the air, so I called out to her again. And when she spoke, I thought she was answering me, but she wasn’t. She said something about an eight of clubs, something like, ‘Watch out, Margie, she’s got an eight of clubs.’ As if in a trance or something.”
“She was playing bridge,” Mendes said, marveling at his own words, and at the situation that had evoked them.
“Yes,” said Josh, “she was playing bridge through her bedroom wall. She could see the cards, could even see the people—see into their heads so clearly she was able to learn their names.”
“Jesus,” Mendes muttered. He was suddenly aware of how wet and cold he was.
“After a few seconds, she snapped back to reality and saw me standing in the bedroom doorway. I must have been looking at her as if she’d grown an extra head, because she was quick to assure me that she was all right and she apologized for frightening me.”
“So this is real?” He didn’t know what to say.
“Real,” Josh said. “And yeah, I was…shit, I don’t know, I guess I was frightened. But it was more than just being frightened, you know?”
“You wanted to know what the hell was going on,” Mendes said, thinking: Just like I want to know.
“Exactly. I mean, what the hell, right?” Josh laughed nervously.
“Still,” Mendes continued, “that’s a hell of a conclusion to make based on just seeing—”
“She explained some things to me that night,” Josh interrupted. “She started with her accident—the one that had left her paralyzed and her father dead.
Said they were on some country road driving vegetables from somewhere to somewhere else when another car came speeding around a turn and drove right into the driver’s side of her father’s car, killing him instantly. Their car tipped and skidded along the road until it pitched down into a ravine where she lay trapped beneath the crumpled dashboard until some people came along and managed to pull her out of the wreck.
“Doc, she swears that she saw the accident happen a good five seconds before it did—saw it clear as day. And it scared her enough to make her open her mouth to her old man and tell him to turn the hell around, that today was not a very good goddamn day to deliver tomatoes, but she was too late. The accident happened so quickly. She never even got the words out.”
Mendes just shook his head. In almost a whisper, he said, “I don’t know what to say to that, Josh.”
“She says she’s been that way all her life. It comes and goes. Sometimes she picks up vibes from people, really strong ones, the way antennas pick up radio signals in the air. She just sucks them in, she says. Other times, with other people, she has to go searching for them.”
“Like with the women playing bridge.”
“Yeah. She had to lean her head back almost against her bedroom wall—the wall that is directly across from Miss Shott’s apartment in the next building over—to be able to see those women, see those cards.”
Their waitress returned, refilled Mendes’s coffee, and vanished like a ghost.
“That’s unbelievable,” the doctor said after some time passed.
“About a year ago I was shot twice in the chest by some kid robbing a convenience store,” Josh said suddenly. His eyes had grown distant; they now stared at some empty place in the distance between Mendes’s face and the tabletop. “I nearly died. And for several months after that, I was petrified of leaving my apartment. For a long time, I was only capable of going outside to get back and forth to work. I was sure I’d eventually suffer a nervous breakdown. Hell, I think I almost did once, right out in the open on a crowded street. For whatever reason, I told Nellie this story…but she admitted to me later that she already knew it, that she had searched inside my head and sniffed out all the details. And it was true—she could recall it as if she were there, man. She could see the gunshots, the two quick bursts of flames shoot out the muzzle, the number of people cluttered around the counter, the soda spilling on the floor. She even understood my pain, and I can’t even begin to fathom how something like that is possible. But she was there and she could do it. Suddenly, she put herself inside my memory and she was there.”
Unable to face Josh any longer, Mendes shifted his eyes to the two textbooks Josh had placed on the table. The Powers of the Mind, and the other, Brain Secrets: Finding the Door to Extra-Sensory Perception. He considered all that Josh had just told him and found that, surprisingly, it wasn’t too difficult to believe. Which meant there must be some truth to everything the woman had said, that her words were nearly prophecy…
That Julian, his son, would not survive his own birth.
“My son,” he said, unable to control himself any longer. “Has she said anything more about my son?”
Almost apologetically, Josh shook his head. “I even tried prompting her about it, but she couldn’t recall saying anything before, couldn’t recall anything about it. Maybe…I mean, just because she has this ability doesn’t have to mean that she’s always correct in what she sees, right?”
“Jesus, Joshua, I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” He could feel his heart beating so perfectly in his chest. “It is a boy, you know. She was right about that much.”
“Oh.” Josh looked away, down at his plate. “Oh.”
“Where is she now?”
“Her apartment.”
“I’d like to see her,” Mendes said.
“Yes. But maybe I should talk with her first. I’ve been trying to think of a way to bring this—”
“No, fuck that. I want to talk with her tonight.” He leaned closer to Josh from across the table. “Listen, you don’t understand what I’ve been going through since that old lady said those words to me. I feel like I’m just standing here watching my life fall apart around me. And maybe what she said about my son is true and maybe it’s not…but if it’s true, then maybe there’s something she can tell me that will help change the outcome. Maybe there’s something I can do.”
After a long moment of silence, Josh nodded. “All right. But I think…”
“What? What is it, Josh?”
Josh shook his head. “I think you should know something first.”
“What? Damn it, tell me.”
“I think,” Josh began, choked on his words, then started again: “I think she might be dying.”
In the bathroom of the diner, Mendes dialed home on his cell phone.
“Baby.”
“Come home, Carlito.”
“A few more hours.”
“They work you too hard. Tell them I said to send you home.”
He smiled. “Them who?”
“I don’t know. Them who is keeping you from me. I don’t like it. It isn’t fair.”
“I know, my sweet.” He caught his reflection grinning in the bathroom mirror and quickly stopped. He looked like a ghost, like the walking dead. “I won’t be much longer. Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m perfect. And fat.”
“Not fat.”
“Very fat. I feel like a watermelon. Big-big-big.”
“I think you look beautiful, sweet.”
“Well you are a strange man.”
“Isn’t that why you married me?” He couldn’t help but smile again. “How’s Mamma?”
“Asleep. Her leg’s been hurting all day.”
“I’ll bring home some aspirin.”
“There’s enough here. Just come home straight.”
“All right,” he said, “I’ll come home straight. In a little while.”
Josh was waiting for him outside. A fine mist was working its sluggish way along the ground. In the dark, Joshua Cavey somehow appeared older, almost wizened. His skin looked pale and sickly.
“You haven’t been sleeping,” Mendes said as he followed Josh across the street. It was not a question.
“Is that a professional observation?”
“It’s a friendly observation. Or maybe just an observation, period. You’ve been really going crazy with this, too?”
“More than you could know,” Josh said, and stepped up on the opposite curb.
The furnace in Nellie’s building was pumping ferocious heat, and it attacked them as soon as they stepped inside. To Mendes’s surprise, and for whatever reason, Josh opted to take the stairwell to Nellie’s apartment. The stairwell was a narrow, almost perfectly vertical maze of linoleum risers and pitted iron railings. Their feet made hollow thuds on the stairs.
“She’s close?” Mendes asked.
“Seventh floor.”
“Seventh?”
Josh, ahead of him on the stairwell, glanced back over his shoulder. Mendes couldn’t tell if he was grinning or not. “What’s wrong? Too many cigarettes on your lunch break?”
They reached the seventh floor and, upon stepping through the small stairwell passageway that communicated with it, Mendes froze. Josh noticed and looked back at the doctor again.
“What is it?”
“This hallway,” Mendes said. “I’ve been…”
“What?”
“I think I’ve dreamt of this place.”
Josh remained staring at him for a beat longer before turning around and moving further down the hallway. For a brief moment, Mendes could only watch him walk, powerless to lift his own feet, move his own legs. So vividly, he could recall his dream from the night before—the narrow hallway with what appeared to be subway doors opening and closing at one end; the vulgar words spray-painted on the apartment doors; the sounds of small children creeping into the hall behind him, their urgent little hands all of a sudden against his back;
and, worst of all, the fleshy umbilical cord that came slithering out from between those subway doors toward him…
You’re here, that same Marie-like voice spoke up in his head, you’re inside your dream now.
And on the heels of that he thought: Just what the hell is going on here?
“Come on,” Josh said and tried the knob of what was apparently Nellie Worthridge’s apartment. Locked, Josh withdrew a ball of keys and unlocked it, opened it.
They stepped inside.
The apartment was dark and stiflingly hot. It smelled of soured fruit, Mendes recognized. Fruit…and sweat, maybe. And there was a sound, too—a crackling, perpetuating sound which suggested a small fire roasting in a distant hearth. The sound was so peculiar, in fact, that he opened his mouth to ask what it was—and then the music hit him and he recognized it immediately: Duke Ellington striking up “Black Beauty.” They’d walked into the apartment between two songs playing low on an old record.
Josh snickered off to his left. “Startled?”
“Caught me off guard.”
“She likes the record player on all the time now. Always Ellington.”
“At least she has good taste.”
They were talking in unconscious whispers. His eyes slowly growing accustomed to the dark, Mendes saw Josh step into the small kitchen nook and switch on a single light over the sink. The bulb illuminated the countless orange curls that littered the countertop: orange peels. Seemingly hundreds of them. That explained the smell.
“What is this?” Mendes whispered.
Josh returned to his side. “I told you she’s sick.”
“You said you think she’s dying.”
“Yes. I mean, I think so. She won’t talk about it. Come on, she’s in the back bedroom.”
He followed Josh down the dark hallway and through a half-opened door just before the bathroom. In here, the stench of sweat and rotten citrus fruit was so ripe, Mendes felt his eyes begin to water immediately.
Like the rest of the apartment, the old woman’s bedroom was also cloaked in darkness. The shade was drawn across the single window opposite the bed. It glowed a dull white-blue. He could just barely make out the huddled shape beneath the bedclothes. It occurred to him that it was very possible the old woman had suffered another stroke. That would explain her inability to communicate her sickness with Josh.