Then Loochie thought about that rat. Like rats fleeing from a sinking ship. That’s the cliché, right? But the point of the line, really, is this: Life wants to live. She didn’t know her way around an air duct, but she bet that rat did. If she followed it, where would it lead? Right back into the building, maybe. But in that case she wouldn’t be doing any worse than she already was. But the rat might also make its way outside. And she would come tumbling after it.
Loochie followed the rat, at a distance. She could barely make it out ahead, its claws scritching on the air-duct metal as it moved. But she managed. And in this way, for once in his life, LeClair the Rat helped someone without being a prick about it.
Loochie reached the end of the air duct. The panel here had been knocked off by hordes of fleeing rats long ago. She saw the big gray rat slip right out. She saw the starry night ahead. She peeked out. A Dumpster sat directly below the duct, lid closed. A one-story drop. Dangerous but manageable. Even if she would have to go out hands-(and head) first.
Loochie watched the rat where it lay on the Dumpster. It surveyed the open parking lot. She shifted in the duct, making noise. The rat looked up at her. Then it shot off the Dumpster and ran into the parking lot. She watched it dart between parked cars and off into the distance. As silly as it sounds, she wished that big old rat well.
She slipped partway out of the duct. She inhaled the air, hoping it would be fresh, but nothing so poetic awaited her. She was right over a Dumpster. She smelled garbage. She hadn’t reached the last step, but the next step. She looked down at the drop. She tried to breathe slowly.
She would curl into a ball, protect her head with her arms. She imagined that was the best way to do it, but she’d never tried anything like this before. Unbidden, she saw herself falling at the wrong angle. Flailing. Her head smacking the Dumpster. Her body crumpled on the ground. Bleeding out, alone. Just some trash. She couldn’t stop imagining it now. She talked to herself, trying to calm down. But there is only so much that talking can do. She had to move. Right now. Right now.
Lucretia Gardner went out.
41
PEPPER LEFT THE air duct and tracked his way back down the hall. He passed the single off-kilter chair in the oval room. He reached the hall right above Northwest 2. He passed the room right above his own, the one with the machine inside. The half-open door made him scurry past, as if the big machine inside might reach out to snatch him. Then he entered the room with all the old equipment. As he felt his way through the filing cabinets, stepping over errant typewriters, he hoped Loochie was safe. Then he reached the other door. He stepped back out to the second-floor landing. Moonlight still filtered down in a beam cast through the glass eye in the pavilion’s ceiling. Pepper felt as if he’d been gone from here for quite awhile. That was because Pepper didn’t hear anything. Meaning that the screaming, those howls, had ceased. Just a heavy silence now.
His valiant urge had already ebbed. He should have gone with Loochie. She was probably getting on a bus right now. Already a guest of the MTA. They were shuttling her to safety. Meanwhile he was here. You volunteered to return to this? he asked himself. You must be fucking crazy after all.
Pepper walked with hunched shoulders, his head swiveling left and right. He didn’t see the others until he was practically on top of them. Their backs were to him. He counted six standing together. And farther back, in another clump were three more. He couldn’t say who was who. They were all so still, so quiet, he felt like he’d stumbled across a crew of sleepwalkers.
“It’s Pepper,” he said, just to avoid startling them.
They didn’t answer. The six people with their backs to him stood adjacent to the silver door. When Pepper got closer, he could finally hear something. This group breathed hard, grunting and panting. Their shoulders rose and fell.
Pepper walked around the group. He stood between the cluster of six people and the clump of three others. He wasn’t sure who he should be wary of. From his new position he could make out the trio: Redhead Kingpin, the Haint, and Wally Gambino. Proton, neutron, electron, that’s how tightly packed they were. They didn’t even seem to notice Pepper. Their gazes trained intently, guardedly on the six: Doris Roberts, Heatmiser, Still Waters, Sandra Day O’Connor, Yuckmouth, and Mr. Mack.
Pepper moved toward the larger group. His boots squelched, like he’d stepped in jelly. The floor between him and them was slick.
Pepper’s eyes followed the trail of slickness, more like oil really. To their feet. All six of them were standing in it. There were blotches of it, like dark paint, on the fronts of their clothes. Their hands were so wet they dripped.
Of those Pepper had accounted for, Loochie and he made eleven.
“Where’s Frank Waverly?” Pepper demanded.
No one answered. No one moved.
Pepper padded to the edge of the landing and looked over the railing, but Frank Waverly wasn’t down there. The moonlight brightened Pepper’s boots here at the edge of the landing. The soles, the toes, they were almost a reddish brown. The stuff he’d just stepped in almost looked like mud. Pepper returned to the others. Stood in front of Mr. Mack directly.
“Where is Frank Waverly?”
Mr. Mack raised a fist slowly. It looked like it had been dipped in balsamic vinegar.
The fingers opened. A small gold key sat on Mr. Mack’s palm.
“They just …” Redhead Kingpin whispered.
Pepper looked back at her.
“They just … opened him,” she said blankly.
It wasn’t possible. Pepper couldn’t move.
“They just …” Redhead Kingpin began again.
Where was Frank Waverly’s body? Tossed aside, in some dark corner, like a torn candy wrapper? If breathing wasn’t an involuntary function, Pepper would’ve choked.
Mr. Mack walked to the silver door. Triumphant. Not only did the man have numbers on his side, he also had insanity. Not mental illness, but true madness now. Mr. Mack slipped the key in the lock. The other five members crowded closer to Mr. Mack. Imagine trying to talk them down at this moment, to bring them back to the rational, even if ill, human beings they’d very recently been. Pepper doubted that even a volley of tranquilizer darts could stop those six now.
The silver door unlocked with a click as loud as a grandfather clock.
Mr. Mack waved the others back so he could open the door.
The doorway was as dark as an elevator shaft.
Pepper hadn’t realized he’d stepped backward until he was beside Redhead Kingpin, and the Haint, and Wally Gambino. Those three were holding hands. Pepper joined in.
“Don’t hide now,” Mr. Mack taunted the darkness. “Don’t run.”
No movements inside the doorway. No sounds. This made Mr. Mack feel bolder. He took a step toward the open doorway, the darkened room.
“Wait.” One of Mr. Mack’s group called out to him. Hard to tell which one. That one seemed to be speaking for all of them. And even for the other four, watching from farther back.
Another step.
Wait.
But the caution of the others only fueled Mr. Mack’s brashness. One more step and his foot passed through the doorway.
Then Mr. Mack lost his balance. He fell, headfirst, into the shadows. He didn’t even yelp when he fell.
Mr. Mack was there and then he wasn’t.
Everyone, all nine of them, just stood there, dumbstruck.
Wally Gambino was the first to break the silence.
He laughed.
And not a little laugh, either. A real gut-buster. He had to let go of the Haint’s hand. He leaned forward with his hands on his thighs for balance. And he kept on laughing.
“Old boy took a lump,” Wally shouted.
And that was that. The cloud that had been hanging over all of them parted. The others didn’t laugh, not at all, but they’d all been teetering over a precipice just then. Wally Gambino’s utterly inappropriate reaction bonked them from that edge.
“Be quiet,” Pepper said, after a moment. “Listen.”
They heard this low, insistent huffing coming from the darkened doorway. As a group they moved closer. The ones at the front had the good sense to brace their hands against the door frame to keep from falling in, too.
“Mr. Mack?” Pepper called.
The huffing sound rose again. Its pace quickened but then slowed. A deep breath taken. “I landed hard,” a weak voice said. “On my leg.”
The huffing again. Then a crinkling noise, hard to place.
“What’s that other sound?” Pepper asked.
The same thing—huffing speeding up, then slowing down. A deep breath.
“I landed in a pile of plastic,” Mr. Mack said.
“Plastic?” Doris Roberts asked.
“Wrappers,” Mr. Mack grunted. “From those goddamn cookies they’re always giving us. Got to be thousands in here.”
“That’s probably what broke your fall,” Pepper said.
Pepper remembered Dorry tucking those cookies into her lap at every meal. She must’ve been bringing them to the Devil for years. Of course the Devil would like them, they were as vile as he was.
“How far down are you?” Doris Roberts asked.
“About ten feet, I think.”
Mr. Mack had fallen to the first floor.
New Hyde Hospital, in its relentless penny-pinching, had indeed repurposed a stairwell and made it into a room. When they’d closed off the second floor, they’d seen that this stairwell would essentially go to waste. (There was a main stairwell already, on the other side of the secure door.) And they needed a room where a violent patient could be kept. Now contrary to most news reports—and the storylines of commercial television and movies—the vast majority of mentally ill people weren’t remotely violent. If they hurt anyone it was usually themselves. But it was true that a very small number of mentally ill patients did cause others harm. For those patients, it was necessary to have a room where they could be sequestered. In the case of Northwest, that would’ve meant constructing a reinforced room. And do you know what that costs? Much more than New Hyde Hospital was willing to spend. But they were already repurposing so much of the building for its transition into a psychiatric unit, so why not be creative. Someone who worked with the board (it was actually that legal rep guy who’d used an iPad at Pepper’s meeting after Coffee’s death), suggested that a concrete stairwell could serve their needs as a holding room for any violent patient. The space already had a stainless-steel door, much more resilient than wood, and the walls were reinforced as per the fire code. All New Hyde had to do was remove the stairs. As simple as pulling teeth. Then they’d have one secure room, as legal standards demanded.
“Do you want us to try and get you out?” Pepper asked.
They listened to the huffing and let it play out its natural rise and fall. But after the inhalation of breath, there was no response.
“Mr. Mack?” Doris Roberts called.
“I’m not down here alone,” he finally said.
They heard shuffling. Then a hard clopping on the concrete floor. Then a deep inhalation followed by a short puff of air, like a bodybuilder lifting a great weight up over his head. A moment after that, a heavy whomp, like a fully packed suitcase being slammed to the floor.
A moment after that, Mr. Mack whimpered softly.
Then in the dark, the Devil inhaled deeply again, lifted the old man up with a short puff of air. And again, the heavy whomp of Mr. Mack’s body hitting the floor. Mr. Mack whimpered once more.
“Stop it!” one of them up on the second floor landing shouted.
“Please,” another said.
“Why won’t you leave us alone?”
The same routine again, ending with the whomp of Mr. Mack’s body against the floor for a third time. Every patient strained to listen, but Mr. Mack didn’t even whimper this time.
They waited. What to do? Forget rescuing the old man. What about them? Each of them wanted to run, in their minds they were already sprinting, but they couldn’t make their bodies move.
They heard the sounds of some new exertion from down below, in the dark room. Puffing and straining. Who else could it be but the Devil? One quality of the noise had changed, though. It was much closer now.
They all saw a shape moving down there, in the darkness. It seemed to be floating. Up from the depths. Down by their feet a pair of mottled hands appeared, gripping at the very bottom of the doorway.
It wasn’t flying. It climbed.
Yuckmouth lifted his foot, as best he could in the crowded space, and stamped down on one of the hands. He landed hard with his heel. He might’ve done it again, but already the Devil was emerging from the open doorway. It seemed to catapult out, headfirst out of the shadows. It rammed right into Yuckmouth’s guts and that was it. Yuckmouth soared backward, right over the people behind him. He landed on his side and wasn’t even stunned. His survival instinct took over. Yuckmouth scrambled away on hands and knees.
And now the Devil was among them.
It moved so fast. Bashed right into Sandra Day O’Connor’s back. The poor woman went facedown, hard, and the Devil trampled over her. His hooves did the most damage. One came down—clop—on her hand.
Doris Roberts turned back when her friend cried out in pain. That’s when Doris Roberts got clipped. Not full-on impact, more like she got grazed. But one of the Devil’s horns tore her exposed forearm, a gash that ran from elbow to wrist.
Now the patients were all hollering. The Devil seemed to be coughing loudly, or was it laughter? Moonlight had turned to the first rays of dawn. That new light burned the first floor orange.
Heatmiser, poor Heatmiser, he ran along the landing toward the far staircase. He took the first step down and the Devil reached him. It had built up speed. When its head connected with the small of Heatmiser’s back, that mumbling kid got clobbered. His body went into the air and hit the wall, then he bounced off the wall and skipped down the stairs like a stone expertly tossed across a pond. Five hops and Heatmiser lay motionless on the first floor.
Still on the second floor, Pepper stood alone.
Unlike the others, he hadn’t tried to flee down one of the staircases. He’d held close to the shadows along the landing.
Pepper watched as the Devil descended the far staircase. It stood over Heatmiser and snorted at him. It bumped the body with the side of its head, rolling Heatmiser onto his back. Heatmiser shivered and sputtered. The Devil looked down into its victim’s face, almost daring the body to move again.
It’s just a man.
Pepper said this to himself. He tried to play Dorry’s voice in his head. She’d been so sure when she said it.
It’s just a man.
But Pepper’s eyes just wouldn’t agree. Here in the pavilion, the chaos like a toxin in the air, the fear a hallucinogenic, he couldn’t say what, exactly, he saw. Reality, or the reality they’d all agreed upon?
Heatmiser remained still. This disappointed the Devil. It bumped his body one more time, then abandoned it. It rushed back up the staircase to the second floor. When it did, Redhead Kingpin and Still Waters moved to Heatmiser and tried to help him up.
The Devil returned to the landing. Come to see who else it could hurt. He found the Haint, too shocked to move, too old to run. She stood there in her purple pantsuit. Her matching hat had been lost. Her hands were crossed in front of her, daintily, as if she were waiting for a streetlight to change from red to green. The Devil didn’t even charge her. It didn’t have to. He could lean on her and she’d snap in two. It stalked toward the old woman slowly.
But someone stepped in between the Devil and the Haint.
It was Wally Gambino.
“Nah!” he shouted at the Devil. “That’s out. You ain’t fucking with this old bird. Not while I’m around. You wanna fuck with me? When I was twelve I went to hell for snuffin’ Jesus!”
The Haint hardly seemed to notice Wally’s chivalry. She kept the same po
se, hands crossed in front of her, patiently waiting. But the Devil’s stance switched. Lowering its head so the horns could gore the brave kid’s flesh.
It’s just a man, Pepper repeated in his head. It’s just a man.
Wally Gambino worked himself up. A little chemical change to the mind and body before entering combat. A mechanism as old as battling. “You know what they call me back home?” he yelled. And then silence. He’d forgotten the answer to his own question. The kid was brave, but also terrified. In that frozen moment, Pepper ran up behind the Devil and clutched it around the throat with one meaty arm. Pepper’s eyes were shut. He whispered to himself, “It’s only a man.”
The Devil thrashed in Pepper’s grip. A trapped animal, a hemmed-up human being, the same beast at that point. It hissed and flailed. It bucked. Pepper kept his eyes closed and repeated those four words—It’s only a man—as he dragged the Devil backward. Away from all the others. Back toward the door he and Loochie had used minutes ago.
“I don’t need you protecting me!” Wally Gambino said.
But his voice, it wavered. He sounded so relieved. He turned to the Haint. He took her by the arm and quickly led her down.
Pepper slammed into the door with his back, using his momentum and the combined weight of two bodies to force it open. The filing cabinet on the other side groaned as it fell. When it landed it sounded thunderous in Pepper’s ears, like a skyscraper had been tipped over. Pepper pulled the Devil into the darkened room.
In here, alone, Pepper looked down at the figure in his arms. What did he see in the lightless gloom?
The same grand bison’s head. The gray-white eyes rolling in their sockets. The long, fat pink tongue shooting out of its mouth.
“I know what you are,” Pepper said. He moved backward with the Devil. Where was he taking it? (Him.) Pepper wasn’t sure. Maybe he’d stuff the thing (man) inside that air duct. Let it (him) stay there, stuck, until it (he) rotted away.
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