by Brett McBean
The funny thing is, the bad man doesn’t even know who it is that’s humming. He doesn’t know where it’s coming from. Some days he thinks the humming is in his head.
The man’s heard the change in the bad man over the five years. Heard the bad man become angrier and more confused. Without even seeing the bad man, he’s noticed the change. More and more the bad man is put in restraints. More and more the bad man yells and bangs things around. Yet no one knows. The men in the white clothes don’t know what it is that’s causing the bad man to act so angry. They don’t hear the man’s humming through the hole in the wall. They know he hums, but they don’t know he hums to the bad man. Don’t know that every day, every hour, every moment he’s filling the bad man’s head with his lyrical madness.
It’s a secret. Between the bad man and himself, (and maybe the black man – but he won’t tell).
The man hears the bad man crying. Soft sobs that drift up through the hole in the wall.
“Why won’t you stop? Please just stop.”
But the man keeps on humming.
The bad man keeps on crying.
It makes the man happy, content. Almost as happy as when he slit the throats of Julie and Sam and little Debbie.
Now all is quiet. The man can’t hear the bad man’s crying.
Still the man hums, but he listens. Listens hard to what lies beyond the hole in the wall and Julie’s smiling face.
A period elapses, a period of about five minutes before the man hears noises coming from behind the hole in the wall. Noises that are distant, yet distinct.
Humming, the man listens. And hears screaming. Lots of it. But he also hears the bad man – who is also screaming, but they’re inaudible cries – the only word the man recognises is “stop”.
The man wonders just what’s going on. He’s never heard anything like it before, not in the five years he’s been humming to the bad man.
The commotion lasts a good twenty minutes. Faint screaming, chairs and beds crashing, voices lost and found, then lost again. It all rolls around in the man’s head and for a moment he loses his timing and stops humming.
Visions of Julie’s body, torn and bloody fill his head. Pictures of Sam writhing around on the floor, clutching at his spurting throat. Images of little Debbie cowering in her bed, the covers pulled tight around her face, her scared, wet eyes peering over the top of the sheets. They all meld into one glorious specter of blood and flesh.
When the vision fades, the man hears that the commotion far away has stopped. No more screams or furniture crashing.
The man feels his stillness beginning to wane. Realising he has stopped humming, the man starts up and immediately he feels good again
All is quiet now, except for somebody sobbing. The man knows instantly it’s the bad man crying. Only this time it’s a different crying – happy, resolved; not the angry sobbing the man is used to.
Perhaps the bad man has been subdued again.
However, when the man hears the cries, cries he’s certain are the white men, from behind the hole in the wall, cries like, “Oh my God!” and “What in the hell happened!” the man knows something bad has happened. The bad man has done something terrible.
But then, the man already knew that.
It’s what he has been expecting to happen. He wasn’t sure when it would happen, but knew it would happen. It’s what he’s been hoping for, praying for, planning for.
And the best thing is – nobody knows. It’s just his little secret.
His and the bad man.
The man continues to hum, not looking at anything in particular.
After…
Standing just inside Ward D’s recreation hall, Stelig scanned the room, then shook his head. “We’re wasting our time. Warren’s nuts. He’s a liar.”
“He may be a cold-blooded killer, but he’s no liar. Hell, he ‘fessed up to his crimes the second the cops caught him.”
“Yeah, but blaming someone else for what he did today…Christ, what a nut job.”
Adams shrugged. “I just don’t see why he would lie about a thing like that.”
“Because he’s bonkers, that’s why.”
When Stelig had gone to the infirmary to question Warren, he found the man strangely calm. He was tied down to the bed, bandages over his ears, and answered all of Steligs’s questions about what happened. Stelig had to write each question down on a piece of paper, but Warren, still able to talk, had told him the same thing over and over again – that he wasn’t to blame. It was somebody else in the building. They had done it. They had killed all the people. They were responsible for his ears.
So, along with Adams, Stelig had searched the entire hospital – every floor, every ward, every room. He didn’t know what he was expecting to find – one of the inmates cowering in one of the bedrooms, clothes covered in blood, gory knife clutched in his hand, perhaps. That would’ve been something. An answer.
So far, with Warren not claiming responsibility, he had turned up squat.
This was the last ward, the last floor. The top floor. If he found nothing here, then he would have to go back to see Warren.
Stelig spotted the cleaner, Sam Goodfrey, and called him over. The elderly black man placed his mop against the wall and shuffled over. “Yessir?”
“Sam, you see anything unusual here today?”
“Like what, Sir?”
“Any of the patients acting weird, any of them missing for awhile?”
The cleaner looked down at the floor, licked his lips, then looked back up. His eyes reminded Stelig of a puppy’s – only this puppy had bags the size of large suitcases under them. “No Sir. No strange business. Why?”
“Well, I suppose you might as well hear about it. You’re gonna hear about it eventually. There was some nasty business in Ward C.” Stelig paused before saying, “All the inmates were killed. As were three nurses.”
The old man gasped. He put one wrinkled hand over his mouth. “Good lord. That’s horrible. How did it happen?”
“Warren Spencer.”
“He killed them all?”
Stelig nodded.
“Well we’re not entirely sure yet,” Adams said. “Warren claims it was somebody else. Another inmate. We’re looking around the hospital, trying to find information on who else could have done it.”
“I’m positive it was Warren,” Stelig said. “Still, be on the look-out for any of the inmates acting…out of the ordinary.”
“I will. Yessir, I surely will.”
“Okay. Thank you. And I don’t need to tell you that this goes no further than this building. Nobody needs to know unless absolutely necessary. Understand?”
The old man nodded. “Of course, Sir.”
“Good. Continue with your work.”
The cleaner nodded, turned then walked slowly back to his mop and bucket.
“Was it just me, or did that old fart look happy with the news?”
“Maybe, I dunno,” Stelig said, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger.
“You think he knows more than he’s letting on?”
“Don’t be fucking ridiculous. He’s an old man. He’s a cleaner. What could he possibly know?”
Adams shrugged his round shoulders.
“I’m telling ya, this is a waste of time. These patients up here, they’re about as harmless as…” Stelig thought of the first thing that came to mind, “as a bunch of puppy dogs.”
“Might I remind you, Sir, that they are criminals.”
“Most of these patients are just crazy. Harmless, but crazy.” Stelig looked down at the stubby Doctor. “Might I remind you that this is the good ward, the quiet ward? The patients here haven’t displayed any signs of violent behavior since committing their crimes. Hell, they’re not the least bit violent. Not now.”
“How about Harris over there?” Adams pointed to the man sitting in the far corner of the room. “He butchered his entire family.”
Stelig huffed.
“That was five years ago. He hasn’t displayed any signs of violent or aggressive behavior since. He went willingly with the cops, never even put up a fight. Hell, Harris is more harmless than anyone here. All he does is sit in that corner humming to himself.” Stelig stopped and looked over at Harris. Watched the man stare into space, grinning stupidly to himself. He listened to his humming.
“Christ, think I’d go crazy listening to that all day,” Adams said. “He sings the same three notes all day. Nothin’ else. Can you believe it?” Adams chuckled. “Enough to make anyone crazy. Don’t know how the doctors and nurses up here can stand it.”
Stelig sighed. He had always felt sorry for Harris. Wasn’t sure why, but there was something pathetic about him. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Still, it proves my point. They’re all harmless in here. Nuts, but harmless. We’re wasting our time. Warren did it, and he knows it. Doesn’t want to take the blame, that’s all.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t see why he’d lie, that’s all.”
Harris looked at Stelig then. Turned his head and gazed into the Doctor’s eyes. Unease shot through Stelig’s body. The man still hummed the same three notes, but now he was wearing a lopsided grin. It would’ve been almost comical were it not for the intelligence in his eyes.
It unnerved Stelig, although he would never admit it.
Stelig turned around and tried to shake his discomfort. “You’re too trusting, Adams. That’s your problem. Come on, let’s go. There’s nothing here.”
As the two men walked down the corridor, Stelig began humming.
“Catchy tune,” Adams said with a smile.
“Huh?”
“You were humming the same three notes as our resident singer.”
“Was I?”
Adams nodded.
Stelig’s unease grew. He smiled, but when he spoke his tone was serious. “Well I just hope I can get the damn tune out of my head.”
NOTES:
I wrote this story for the anthology Asylum Volume 3: The Quiet Ward. For those of you who don’t know, the Asylum anthologies were a wonderful group of books that dealt with, funnily enough, stories set in and about asylums. Each book was about a different ward, or a different type of mania – there was the violent ward, the psycho ward, and the third and last book, the one this story appeared in, was the quiet ward.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, yes, I did pinch the title from the song of the same name by Led Zeppelin.
TEMPTATION OF THE RIGHTEOUS PATH
Screaming. All around him people were screaming. Incomprehensible wails and darkness pressing down like a giant’s foot destroying everything that got in its way. It’s the end. Really and truly the end. But there was one last decision that had to be made, one last act of indulgence and then it would all be over…
He jerked awake as a hand grabbed him. “Huh? wha’?”
“You’ve been chosen. Come on, get up.”
Aleister P. Donaldson squinted up at the person whose arm was latched onto his Armani jacket and vomited.
“Whoa, hey there, now, fella. That’s no way to greet your saviour now, is it?”
Aleister hocked the last of the vomit to the alley floor and tried to get his head around what was going on. Did the old man just call himself my saviour?
Now the old guy was pulling Aleister up, and managed to do so with remarkable strength. “If I didn’t feel like shit right now, you’d be dead, old man,” Aleister garbled and then a headache exploded like a thousand nuclear warheads had just gone off in his head.
“Come on, hurry.”
“I ain’t going no…” Aleister was pulled across the alley into an open door and was inside a gloomy room before he could finish his feeble protest. He felt queasy and almost vomited again, but suppressed the urge and fixed his crooked tie instead. Once his mind had stopped spinning, he collected his groggy thoughts and said, “Okay, tell me just what the hell is going on here. Have I been kidnapped?”
“Peaches!”
Aleister jumped at the sudden cry.
“No peaches,” the old man who had dragged Aleister into this place said to some other old man sitting on a crate marked peaches. “We have to discuss our destiny.”
“Destiny?” croaked a female’s voice. “I can tell you about destiny. I was destined to become a star. Broadway Queen they called me. Had the looks, the voice, the talent, the…”
“Peaches!”
“No, I didn’t have any fucking peaches,” the woman barked. “But I did have a nice set of melons.” She laughed, loud and wet.
“Melons,” the peaches man said and giggled.
“Quiet please! The Saviour wishes to speak.”
Aleister felt dry, weak and horribly filthy. However, he was used to all that. Being woken from a dream and dragged into some dingy room was something new.
That’s right, I was dreaming, wasn’t I? People were screaming, and I had to do something before the giant’s foot squashed everyone. Christ, what did I have to drink last night?
Now the headache had settled in for the long haul and his mind was beginning to blow the drunken cobwebs away, he saw he was in a bar, a very old and very much disused bar, but a bar nonetheless. He didn’t recognise it – the place must have closed down before Shauna left him and he started on his long and bleak spiral to the bottom. Aside from the Saviour five people were sitting on either empty crates or discarded chairs. They all looked unwashed and wore layers of ratty clothes and aside from the two women, all had long gray beards.
I was kidnapped by a bunch of bums?
Aleister chuckled, but doing so hurt his head, so he stopped.
“Listen, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna leave and go home.”
“No, you can’t go,” the Saviour said. “No no no, not good at all. You have been chosen. As we have all been chosen. No, you can’t go. The world depends on you.”
Aleister gave a rummy grin. “The only thing that depends on me are the bars. I keep them in business you know.”
“I was in show business,” Broadway Queen said. “Yep, could’ve been a star.”
Aleister noticed the dreamy gaze in her eyes, then the mouse she was stroking. It didn’t look too active.
“Say, that’s a nice mouse you’ve got there,” Aleister said, tucking in his shirt and slowly backing towards the door. “What’s its name?”
“Rat,” Broadway Queen said.
“That’s a strange name for a…” His stomach squirmed. “Oh.”
“Where are you going?” the Saviour said. He rushed from his position near the long and dusty bar over to Aleister. “You can’t leave. The world needs you.”
The skeletal looking bum stepped up to Aleister. Aleister stopped. He didn’t want to piss this guy off – he looked old and frail, but there was no telling what kind of mental state he was in. “Look,” Aleister said. “You’ve made a mistake. I’m not one of you. My name’s Aleister P. Donaldson and I work on Wall Street. I had a, well, let’s say a rough night…”
Rough couple of months is more like it.
“…and I must’ve fallen asleep in the alley out there. Now, I don’t know what it is you people are doing in here, and I’m sure it’s great and really important, but I feel like crap and all I want to do is go home, puke my guts out and sleep. Okay?”
The Saviour gazed at him with intense, piercing eyes. He reeked something terrible – a combination of garbage, urine and alcohol – but when he opened his mouth to speak, Aleister stumbled backwards.
Good Christ! The stench that wafted from his maw was not of this world.
“He spoke to me and told me to find six people,” the old man said, softly. “Six people who will be spared the wrath of His almighty. He told me I would know them, and indeed I found them all, except for one. Until now. You are the last one, Mr. Donaldson. I am your saviour and you will stay here and do as I say.”
“He? You mean…?”
The Saviour nodded. He then picked out what looked like a
baked bean from the tangle of his beard and popped the little morsel into his mouth. “Come, sit.”
By day Aleister was a powerful broker, someone who knew what it meant to be on top, and most definitely knew how to stay there. He was good at barking orders, at getting someone else to wipe the shit from his ass; so why in god’s name was he letting some old vagrant lead him to a vacant crate? Why was he sitting beside some stinking garbage-feeder who looked like Abe Lincoln’s great grandfather?
Either I’m still dreaming or I’ve gone completely crazy.
No, I’m just going to rest up for awhile, sober up and then get the hell out of here. No harm in that. Hell, this might even be amusing. A good story to tell on Monday.Aleister turned to the bum sitting next to him. The gangly old codger turned, farted and extended his hand. “Hi boss. Name’s Jack.” He had cold eyes set deep within a very thin and filthy face.
Aleister declined the offer of shaking hands. He may have been a cheating, bombastic prick, but he was no diseased wino. “Nice to meet you, Jack. I’m worth millions.”
Jack frowned and took back his arm.
“You got a last name, Jack?”
Jack smiled and it wasn’t a pretty sight. “Surely do. The Ripper.”
It took a moment for Aleister to put the two together. He nodded. “Right. Okay. Just don’t slit my throat.”
“Why would I do that?” Jack said, frowning again.
“Never mind,” Aleister said.
“I say we get this meeting started,” one of the bums that had yet to speak said. “Court’s now in session.”
“I don’t see a judge or any bailiffs,” Aleister quipped.
The man turned and faced Aleister. He looked a tad younger than the others and had a stern glare. “Well then, sir, you are an idiot. The Saviour is the judge and we are the bailiffs.”
Something vaguely familiar about this man…
“Who’s the defendant?” Aleister inquired.