Keepers ch-2

by Gary A Braunbeck

  The animals had been sleeping, but stirred awake when we entered. The sheep bleated and the pigs snorted, both sounding almost human, and circled their small pens. I’d never been so close to either sheep or pigs before, and they seemed enormous, like creatures that the scientist experimented on before accidentally creating a giant spider that broke loose and did all sorts of yeechy things.

  Pigs have very human eyes, blue, with round pupils. After staring at you they’ll look away and you can see the whites of their eyes. Something about the pigs and the sheep seemed wrong to me, and I didn’t want to get any closer to them.

  The three of us just stood there in the doorway. I remember that things were said, but exactly what and to whom I can’t remember. We’d come this far, we’d survived the Descent into Darkness and the Hallway of Frozen Ghosts and wouldn’t turn back until we had something to show for it.

  A tough bunch, us.

  As the sheep paced around I saw that sections of fleece had been shaved away in squares for recently sutured incisions. One of them had what looked like a plastic bag sewn to its side. It was filled with something thick and dark and swirling with small chunks. I turned away.

  We moved on to the next room, where dogs had started barking. Half a dozen of them in large cages greeted us joyously as we entered. One of them looked sad and sick and ignored us, but the rest pushed all their weight against the bars as we approached.

  As I neared the first one’s cage, however, he stopped barking and growled at me. Beth heard this and warned me not to get any closer to the dogs, most of whom looked desperate for attention-just a rub, a touch, a sniff of your hand so I can lick it, please, oh, please-please-please.

  At that moment I both loved and despised them, with their shrill yelps and wagging tails and bright eyes. Sorrow and discouragement soaked the room in those loud cries, pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I was overwhelmed. On each cage door was a chart with handwritten details about the dog, filled with alien words and baffling mathematical and chemical symbols. Instead of water dishes they had bottles attached to the cages with tubes they could lick, giant versions of the ones used by the gerbils at school. Despite the warnings and my own confused feelings, I decided to let one of the dogs lick my fingers through the bars. I knew it wouldn’t bite me; it seemed far too lonely.

  It was friendly and warm and I just wanted to open the door and take it back to my room. I took a chance and pushed my hand a little farther into the cage so I could scratch the back of its neck. There was a light-blue plastic tag attached to the back of its ear. I bent its ear down, gently, and saw the tag had only three words on it: PROPERTY OF KEEPERS. Below that was a series of numbers. I pulled my hand out and looked back at the silent dog. It was staring at me, unblinking, as if it either recognized me or was waiting for me to figure something out. I smiled at it, feeling sorry for the poor thing, and took a step toward it.

  It shook its head back and forth, once, quickly: an emphatic no.

  Beth and the orderly didn’t seem to have noticed, so maybe I’d imagined it. Shaking your head no like that was something people did-mostly parents and teachers when they didn’t want you to accidentally have fun; cold stare, tight lips, head back and forth once and once only: No, absolutely not.

  I took another step toward the silent dog. This time I watched carefully. This time I did not imagine it. This time it definitely looked at me and shook its head No!

  I remained still, then mouthed the word Why?

  The dog looked away from me for a moment, making certain that no one else was watching, then with its front left paw reached up and bent forward its left ear, holding it like that so I could see the plastic tag: PROPERTY OF KEEPERS.

  A sense of adventure almost emerged for a few seconds. I knew what was really going on here. They were making the animals smarter, smarter maybe than people, and this dog was trying to let me in on the secret. Maybe because the animals were planning a revolt and would need human friends once they were outside and free? Could that be it? I started to mouth the question but then my silent conspirator blinked, suddenly just a dog again, twisted around, lifted its legs, and began licking itself down there.

  Beth’s hand on my shoulder nearly caused me to shriek. “Hey, don’t wander off on me, okay? I’d be pretty lonely if I lost you.” Even as a child of ten-okay, okay, nine -I could’ve swum a hundred raging rivers on the memory of those words.

  The next room was lined with cages.

  The wall directly across from the door was filled with cages containing white mice, and to the right was an entire wall of cats, cage after cage stacked on top of each other. I’d never seen so many cats in one place, yet it was so quiet. The cats crouched in their cages and stared at us. As we got closer, some of them came up to the bars on their cages and rubbed against them, opening their mouths soundlessly.

  “Why are they so quiet?” I asked Beth.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, shit-I do!” said the orderly, proud of himself.

  He went over to one of the cages and worked the door open with a paper clip he took from his pocket, then pulled out one of the cats-a brown Tom-and brought it over to us.

  “Look here,” he said, grabbing its head none-too-gently and pulling it back.

  The fur underneath its neck had been shaved all the way across, and running through the middle of the pink skin was a long scar.

  “What happened to it?” said Beth, sounding as if she were going to cry.

  “You think the folks who work here want to listen to bunch of goddamn cats yowling all day long?” said the orderly, throwing the cat back into its cage and closing the door. “You get this many cats, you cut their vocal cords so they don’t make any noise.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Beth, and I could tell she was trying to hold off the tears.

  The cats had the same type of water bottles and charts as the dogs, but their cages were much, much smaller. A lot of them had matchbox-sized rectangles with electrical wires implanted in their skulls. The skin of their exposed scalps was crusty and red where it joined the metal. There were plastic blue tags attached to the backs of their ears, as well, only these were much smaller than those worn by the dogs. It didn’t matter; I already knew what they all said.

  I gripped my IV pole with all my strength. I looked at all the tubes and wires running into the silent cats, then at the thin clear tube running from the IV bottle down into my arm. I think that was the first time in my life when I realized that, eventually, all of us will be put in a situation where we will be treated as something less than human.

  Welcome to puberty, you dumb dork.

  One of the cats gently swatted at my hand through a space between the bars, working its mouth as if begging to be petted. I remember how wide its open mouth was, how dark, how if you looked into it long enough you might fall in and be swallowed and then both of you would be quiet forever, never able to ask anyone for a hug or food or to refill the water bottle. I squeezed its paw and quickly let go.

  There was the sound of monkeys in the next room, but I wanted to leave. I was scared and sad and my stitches were hurting.

  “You bet we’re leaving,” said Beth, putting her hand on my shoulder and looking at the orderly. “Well?”

  “Well, nothing,” he said. “You two pussies can leave if you want, but I’m gonna go look at the monkeys. I hear they’re doing some really weird shit with them.”

  Beth glared at him. “How are we supposed to find our way back?”

  The orderly shrugged. “Getting you back wasn’t part of the deal. You put out, I bring you and the squirt over here. You want me to take you back the same way? You know what it costs.”

  “You are such a fuck-stick,” said Beth.

  “Yeah, well… you didn’t seem to mind it the other day in the linen room.”

  Beth shook her head, her eyes suddenly so bright. She looked angry, and sad, and… something else that I couldn’t pin down. Ashamed?r />
  “Come on, Gil, we’ll find our own way back.”

  So we left the orderly to his monkeys and whatever else was back there.

  She did not hold my hand this time.

  At the breathtaking windows, neither of us spoke.

  The same in the elevator.

  In the tunnels, not even the ghosts said a word.

  Once or twice I sneaked a look at Beth, who seemed to be trying not to cry in front of me. I wished she would so I could hold her hand again. It would make me feel better and maybe her, too.

  I looked at the tube from my IV.

  I thought of the girl I’d seen and the way she’d screamed as she knelt by the body.

  I thought of the cats and how they wanted to talk to us but couldn’t.

  The wires.

  The charts.

  The dog shaking its head No.

  Back on the ward, the lunch trays were just arriving and the aroma of sloppy joes, my favorite bestest yummiest lunchtime food ever, filled the halls. I had no appetite. When a nurse asked where we’d been, Beth replied that we’d gone outside for some fresh air because this place smelled like a hospital, and did the nurse have a problem with that because if she did Beth would be more than happy to step outside with her.

  I just stood there, staring down at the floor, feeling sick and thinking about the way that dog had shaken its head at me.

  Now, as I pulled onto the side road that led to Audubon’s Graveyard, I tried to remember whether or not that dog’s eyes had been red.

  I parked the car, popped the trunk, and killed the engine and headlights.

  Everything was swallowed in darkness. Even the lights and sounds from the road a quarter-mile behind me couldn’t reach in and break the night.

  I gripped the steering wheel and lay my forehead against my hands, still trying to steady my breathing.

  (I’m telling you, pal, if you’d just stop fighting it and let yourself remember, this would all go a lot easier…)

  I didn’t feel like arguing.

  It’s not that I “hear voices” or anything dramatic like that; no formless demon from New Jersey tells me that God wishes I’d grind up my neighbors into dog food because they haven’t accepted Abe Vigoda as their Lord and Savior or anything like that. I live with-or try to live with, anyway-a condition that some doctors and psychologists call “minimization,” a fancy term that means (as far as I understand it) you’re constantly talking yourself out of something you remember. Think of it as denial’s more vicious and immovable first cousin.

  In my own case-if the doctors are to be believed-I have spent decades convincing myself that this one particular memory is of something that never happened, and in the process have forced myself to forget it.

  Even now, I’m damned if I can tell you what it is.

  The only problem with minimization is, if you’re successful at it for long enough, you unconsciously begin questioning the validity and even the reality of other memories.

  I thought it was all so much bullshit until about five years ago, when I began getting these physical jolts for no reason. I’d be sitting in a chair reading a book, and the next thing I know my whole body has just sort of snapped forward like a rubber band and the book’s on the floor and I’ve knocked over the glass on the side table and I’m shaking like I’ve got the DTs.

  Nerves, I told myself. Just nerves.

  Then I started talking to myself internally, in two different voices; one of them my own (or what I imagine it sounds like to other people’s ears), the other belonging to the smartass me of age eighteen.

  And I began having these monstrous dreams, filled with violence and death.

  Each of them separately was worrisome enough, but then they began clustering on me; the jolts, the voices, the dreams.

  I honestly thought I had a brain tumor for a while, but a series of tests quickly ruled out anything physiological.

  So I began seeing doctors, most of whom went right for the SSRIs-selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors-like Lexapro, Paxil, even good old Prozac. Each of them helped for a while, but the jolts and dreams always came back. My current doctor, whose offices are in Columbus, is the leading psychopharmacologist in the state. She determined that the reason none of the SSRIs were having their desired effect was because they needed to be “accentuated” (the word she used, hand to God) with a mood stabilizer such as Lemictol. It took us about six months but we finally hit on the right combination: Seroquil at night, Lemictol and Lexapro in the morning. For the past three years that combo had been doing the trick.

  Until the last couple of weeks, when she started talking about trying anti-psychotics.

  Christ.

  I gripped the steering wheel tighter and rolled my forehead back and forth across my knuckles; the poor man’s face massage.

  Just a few moments to rally my sorry ass, that’s all.

  I’d get Carson, take him home, and we’d get through this.

  We’d get through this because everything was going to be fine.

  I was fine. I was fine. I was fine.

  Just a few moments to rally and catch my breath, here in the safety of my car, my forehead against my hands, my breathing getting slower, steadier, steady… steady… there you go…

  TEN

  … I wake to the sounds of moaning and bleating. I blink my eyes and stretch my arms, pulling in the first breath of the day. I nearly choke from the fetid stench of wet straw and urine-soaked dirt. I press my hands into the floor to raise myself. I feel something warm and deep. I look down and see the trail of liquid filth that has squittered from the bowels of one of the sick animals chained in this place. Rising, I find a cloth hanging from one of the stable doors and drape it over my shoulder.

  Walking outside, I climb the small rise to the side of the building and stop when I reach the well. I work the water pump beside it and soon the spigot spits out a heavy stream of something lukewarm but wet. I lean down my head-careful not to catch either of my horns on the iron-and drench my face and chest. I rub until I feel the filth of the night wash away, then use the cloth to dry myself.

  In the distance, from a place just over the rise, I can already hear the groaning of the machinery, smell the metallic smoke rising into the air from the chimneys.

  Overhead I hear a crow calling and there is the faint odor of rotting flesh in the air.

  Suddenly one of the men is behind me, prodding me into movement with a long device that cracks and sizzles when it touches my flesh. The electricity jolts through my tail, my legs, and up into my chest.

  “Get your ass moving, pal!” he shouts, then holds the device above his head, smiling, filled with glory; Jason showing his Golden Fleece to the masses.

  It is the orderly from so many years ago, the one who guided Beth and me through the tunnels and to the animals. He looks even meaner than I remember as he snarls, “I got plans to meet some buddies for drinks and I’m not gonna be late on accounta you!”

  He makes the device hiss and crackle once again. I twirl the cloth like a rope and snap it forward, knocking the device from his grip. It flies out of his hand and lands in a puddle of liquid excrement. Before he can pull his other weapon from its holster I grab him by the throat and lift him off the ground. I am very strong. He kicks and chokes. It amuses me, the way his dangling feet twist and move in the air. Is he trying to dance on air?

  Another voice says, “Please put him down. He’s an idiot. It’s not worth it.”

  I turn my head. Carson stands nearby. His hand rests on the butt of his holstered weapon.

  I release my grip on the orderly’s throat and he drops to the ground with a heavy, wet noise. He coughs, rubs his neck, then looks up at me. “I swear to God, I’m gonna kill you one of these days.”

  “That’s enough,” says Carson.

  “My ass,” shouts the orderly, stumbling to his feet. “I don’t see why the rest of us should have to put up with this shit- you’re the freak-lover!”

  Car
son glares at the orderly. Here, in this place, he is the man he might have been, strong, brave, articulate. “One more word out of you and I’ll turn him loose. There won’t be enough left of you to feed to the pigs.”

  The orderly glowers for a moment, then spits on my front left hoof and begins to walk away.

  Carson looks at the puddle of excrement and says: “Forgetting something, aren’t you?”

  The orderly stops. For a moment it looks as if he might respond in anger, then a shadow crosses his face. In that shadow I see his wife and children, their too-thin bodies, their dirty clothes, the hunger in their eyes.

  He nods his head and walks to the puddle. I offer him the cloth. Wordlessly, he takes it, covers his hands, and retrieves his device from the puddle. He leaves without saying another word or looking at me.

  “Are you all right?” asks Carson.

  I nod.

  Carson begins walking over the rise and I follow him. Behind me the other animals, the sick ones with whom I share the building, begin their moaning anew.

  We see the dance of life, rippling, flying, running by. There was a time when we were part of the dance, before the fields were plowed over and we were taken to these rooms.

  I wish that I could find some pity in my heart for them, but I cannot. They are ill, their flesh tainted. They can only wait for the walk to the bloody chamber.

  As I top the rise I look down and see them in the fields. They graze and sleep. Two are by the fence, one mounting the other. They rut and grumble as one plunges into the other. I look away and see Carson staring at me.

  “One day,” he says to me, “Zeus looked down from Olympus and saw a mother weeping over her dead child. Not quite grasping the concept of human suffering, Zeus chose to come down to Earth as a child himself in order to find out more about it. The other gods were irritated with Zeus at this time and so played a trick on him-they turned the Earth while Zeus wasn’t looking. He landed in the middle of a desert. He wandered as a child for days, then weeks, and began to weaken from starvation. The gods had temporarily stripped him of his godly powers; he was totally human.