The Devil in Silver: A Novel

by Victor Lavalle

  He raised his butt as high as it would go and Miss Chris slid his wrinkled pants down. She slipped the bedpan underneath him. She pulled the top sheet over him and as she left the room she said, “I’ll give you some time.”

  The back of the bedpan rose higher than the front so it aimed his pelvis at an angle. This allowed all waste to remain in the bowl. Pepper had to shit so that’s what he did. Miss Chris didn’t return to the room for half an hour.

  Pepper balanced on the bedpan while one wrist and both ankles were still attached to the bed frame. His body wracked into a bit of a corkscrew. The bedpan dug into his skin and the small of his back closed like a fist. The smell of his own shit rose to his nose. He breathed through his mouth.

  Miss Chris wasn’t even the first one back in the room. It was Coffee, blue three-ring binder in hand. He walked in and saw Pepper’s forehead beading with sweat. Pepper waved Coffee closer with his free hand. For a moment Coffee looked stricken, concerned, but then his face dropped all expression. He entered the room and pulled a fresh pen from the plastic cup on his dresser. Then Coffee left.

  “That’s cold, Joe!” Pepper shouted.

  But a minute after that, Miss Chris returned to the room. “I hear you’re ready for me.”

  Pepper said, “I was ready for you twenty minutes ago.”

  Miss Chris said nothing, only reached into her pocket and brought out a packet of wet naps. She wiped Pepper’s privates clean and did it thoroughly.

  When she was done, she slipped the bedpan from beneath him and set it on the floor. She pulled his pants back up, slipped the pillow from behind his back and, without asking permission, grabbed his free wrist and slipped it back into its restraint. He didn’t even try to stop her. She slid the wedge pillow under Pepper’s bed. This is when Pepper realized they meant to keep him tied up for a while longer. Why leave the pillow in the room, otherwise? He didn’t have any reaction to this. The stiff pain in his back took his attention.

  At lunchtime Miss Chris returned with his food. She undid the strap on his wrist, slipped the pillow behind his back, held out his two pills and watched him swallow them. Then she set the tray down on his thighs, and from this position, Pepper had his meal. He ate everything. Even the cookie. It took a while because he only had one free hand.

  Miss Chris returned and set his tray on the floor. Slipped the pillow from behind his back and under the bed. Without asking, she grabbed his wrist and pulled it back into its restraint. Pepper knew this step was coming this time, but that didn’t seem to help him. His arm was attached to his body, but it no longer seemed like his property.

  Pepper remained in restraints for a second night and learned how to sleep in this position. The meds could still knock him out quickly, if he let them. If he didn’t fight the effects by being active. He complied with the general will of the psychiatric hospital: Shut up and don’t cause trouble.

  Only once did he wake up. Around two in the morning.

  A woman screamed on Northwest 3. Two women, actually.

  Pepper looked to Coffee, to corroborate that the sound was real, but Coffee’s messy bed remained empty.

  The women on Northwest 3 screamed until the staff huffed down their hallway, burst into their room. That must’ve been what Pepper and Coffee sounded like, weeks ago, when they were visited.

  Better them than me, Pepper thought.

  He was too demoralized to even feel ashamed of the sentiment.

  12

  BY THE THIRD morning, the restraints no longer seemed like a punishment. Pepper had just been forgotten. When a shift ended, the staff were supposed to chart any changes in the patients’ health or behavior, but no one was going to note that they’d kept Pepper tied to his bed for the whole eight-hour stint. (And they sure as hell weren’t going to note that he’d been pinned down for over forty-eight hours by now.) To avoid making notes about Pepper, the staff avoided him. They brought his meds and meals, and if he called for a bedpan, they obliged. But the rest of the time it was as if Pepper had disappeared. Lost in a fog. When staff members passed room 5, they averted their eyes. None of this was conscious. The staff didn’t know they were doing it. Besides, there was so much else to handle at New Hyde every day. Every hour. Like charting. Plus fifteen other patients with needs. Pepper didn’t slip through the cracks; he was stuffed behind a couch cushion.

  And for the third night, Coffee seemed to be sleeping elsewhere, too. Where had Pepper’s roommate gone? Were patients allowed to change rooms? Or was Coffee so stubborn, he’d rather sleep in the television lounge than bunk with Pepper anymore? Pepper tilted his head backward and peeked at Coffee’s messy bed. He really missed that malt ball–headed bastard. Forget giving the guy a quarter; if Coffee had come in and just talked with Pepper for a while, Pepper would’ve given Coffee the credit card in his wallet. Coffee could even burn out the card’s five-hundred-dollar limit (secured) if he wanted! Just come in here. Pepper watched the room’s door and willed it to open.

  His body had stopped communicating with him in the usual ways. Sometimes it sent an angry throb from the middle of the shoulders or the hips or the ankles. These felt like bursts of static. The small of his back had stopped feeling like a curled fist a day ago and now was just a pocket of cold fire burning through his waist.

  He ignored all this and willed the room’s door to open.

  Just come in. Just come in. Come in and talk with me.

  Pepper was so preoccupied with this silent petition that he didn’t notice the ceiling tile in the far corner of the room when it buckled. The same tile that had fallen so many weeks ago. Pepper didn’t notice when it bent. When it cracked.

  Only when the two halves of the tile smacked on the floor did Pepper look from the doorway to the corner. From the ceiling, a pair of feet dangled out. They were long and wide. They kicked faintly and slid down.

  Now a pair of legs came into view. Draped in the hospital-issue blue pajama pants. The cotton billowed loose around the thin legs as the figure continued to descend.

  Pepper heard this hoarse wheezing, a congested person’s breathing.

  The upper body appeared next. An old man’s naked torso, the skin sallow and mottled, a little paunch that jiggled as it moved. The hands clung to the ceiling frame, a pull-up in reverse. This thing wasn’t falling. It was lowering itself.

  Its wheezing continued, grew more forced, louder, with each move.

  Its arms looked thinner than kindling, the shoulders soft. Pepper could even make out the fingers on its hands as it let go of the ceiling frame. Each finger was twiglike, gnarled at the knuckles and curled.

  Then it landed.

  And when its heels touched the tiles, they clopped like horseshoes on cobblestones. It huffed and tilted forward, stumbling, but righted itself.

  An old man’s frail body, but its head was massive, covered in matted fur that hung down to those small shoulders. In the moonlight its fur looked as gray as shale. It had a bison’s head. Pepper saw this and couldn’t deny it. But its body, from the shoulders down, remained gangly and feeble. Hairless. Human.

  Somebody else’s myth, somebody else’s nightmare, had plunged into Pepper’s room.

  It watched Pepper. It huffed again and its wide, wet nose wriggled. Just below the nose, the fur parted and Pepper saw its mouth as a deep, wet pit. The hoarse wheeze sounded even louder now. It breathed and it watched Pepper. He couldn’t hold its gaze. He looked away, in a panic, to the door. He willed Coffee into the room. Or Dr. Anand. Even those three cops—Huey, Dewey, and Louie—would be welcome.

  But the only one who’d come to see him was this monster.

  Pepper only looked back at it when he heard that clopping sound again.

  Its feet lifted and fell. It stalked toward him.

  Pepper would’ve liked to struggle against his restraints, but his limbs had stopped listening. He felt trapped inside his own body, the numbed vessel holding a panicked mind.

  As the thing moved toward him, its bo
dy slumped forward again, stumbling. That massive head seemed too heavy for its body. The shoulders shrank, the small paunch quivered, the head dipped down until the thing seemed to bow.

  But then it huffed again and righted itself. And Pepper saw its face again: those dead white eyes, the nose sniffing the air like a predator tracking prey. The mouth opened again and from this close, Pepper could finally see its teeth. They looked like stone arrowheads.

  It wheezed again but this time, when it exhaled, he thought he heard his name.

  “Peter,” it whispered, or was that just its breath playing through those jagged teeth?

  It shambled closer and again the clopping of its heels echoed.

  At that moment Pepper’s body shivered. It mirrored the fear in his mind. Finally! It was such a strange relief to have his body and his mind coordinating again. His fingers dug into the sides of his mattress. His feet kicked at the bottom of his bed. They hit the metal frame so hard it sounded like a temple bell.

  Gong.

  Gong.

  Gong.

  Someone would hear that, right? Hear that and come to him.

  Then it was there. Right by his bed. Over him.

  Pepper looked out the window, at the moon. He would’ve prayed to it, if he thought that would help.

  The thing grabbed the restraint on his right wrist and yanked at it. Pepper’s whole body shook. The bed creaked under him. Three tugs and the rubberized restraint snapped off the frame.

  The thing moved down to his right ankle and did the same again. Grabbed on to the strap and pulled. This time, it took only one great effort and the restraint shredded, as simple as pulling apart a rubber band.

  Now the thing stopped and heaved and wheezed there at the foot of the bed. Out of breath. Pepper’s right arm and right leg, finally free, just lay there limp. He tried to shake them, get the blood moving, but before he could, the attacker grabbed Pepper’s left ankle, lifted the leg, and brought its nose close, like a cook inspecting a cut of meat. It grabbed the restraint and with two pulls the leg was free.

  It wheezed as it moved back around the bed, heels striking the floor in uneven tempo. It grabbed the top of Pepper’s head and yanked. Pepper’s left shoulder howled in the socket because his wrist was still in a restraint.

  The thing pulled at his hair even harder. For a moment Pepper’s upper body actually rose off the mattress, the restraint and this monster battling for him.

  Finally the restraint tore and Pepper’s body crashed to the floor. He couldn’t see for a moment. Everything went gray. A loud blast seemed to play in his ears. Cold rose up through the floor, into Pepper’s clothes. His skin puckered all over. His upper body shot up at the waist, like he was doing a sit-up. But he was pushed flat against the floor again. A foot on his chest.

  Pepper looked up at his attacker, but from here he could only focus on its foot. The one pressing against his sternum. Its heel gray and hard as a hoof.

  The thing’s thin leg trembled as it stomped down and Pepper swore he heard his sternum creak. In his ears it sounded like a Styrofoam cup being squeezed.

  Pepper had a mouth, but he couldn’t scream. He had no air in his lungs. His lips parted and his tongue stuck straight out. His feet rose and slapped against the cold floor.

  Pepper looked up and saw the beast’s great head pitch forward, the weak body out of balance again. Its white eyes seemed to be looking at him and through him, both at once. What could he call this creature? He wasn’t a religious man, but only one name came to him.

  The Devil.

  The Devil stomped down on his chest again and snorted.

  You don’t want to be awake, aware, when your rib cage breaks. When your rib cage breaks you want to be passed out.

  But somehow, Pepper hadn’t.

  It didn’t hurt. He’d already gone into shock, which is the human body’s last line of defense. Your body loves you too much to let you really feel trauma like that. So it wasn’t pain that made the breaking rib cage such a terror for Pepper. It was a sound.

  He’d heard the creaking of his sternum, so he almost felt prepared for the final crack, the tune of grinding bones, but he absolutely was not prepared to hear the ocean. That thing smashed his rib cage and suddenly Pepper heard the sea.

  His gasping breaths, the snorts and wheezing of the Devil above him, even the thumps as the back of his head rose and fell, rose and fell while he thrashed on the floor. All of that was drowned out.

  His ears filled with the splash of an ocean rolling toward the shore and breaking. If he shut his eyes, he would’ve sworn he was at Jones Beach. Or the dirty curl of Coney Island. Maybe it was just the sound of liquid filling his brain cavity, Pepper didn’t know and he didn’t care anymore.

  Let the sea roll over me, he thought.

  See the sea?

  So when the room’s lights snapped on, Pepper wasn’t prepared.

  Not just because of the brightness, or because the pressure on his chest suddenly stopped, but because he’d forgotten about psych units and shatterproof windows and meds three times a day; all the tortures of New Hyde. He’d inhabited a different world. He’d been on that shoreline.

  So by the time he returned, drawn back into the hospital and his room and his own body on the floor, by then Pepper’s life had already been saved.

  Not by a nurse or orderly.

  Not by his roommate, Coffee.

  It was Dorry.

  Dorry!

  She stood over Pepper’s body.

  Wielding her bath towel as a weapon.

  She had it rolled tight and snapped it like a whip. She aimed it at the corner where the ceiling tile had fallen in, but Pepper couldn’t see around her. Couldn’t focus well enough to see much of anything except that beautiful, badass old woman standing between him and his end.

  “Hyah!” Dorry shouted.

  She snapped her towel at the corner as if facing a lion in a cage.

  “Bad boy!”

  Somehow the staff on duty hadn’t heard Pepper kicking his bed frame, but they sure couldn’t ignore that old lady.

  “Hyah!”

  The towel’s snap echoed in the room again.

  “Dorry!”

  The night nurse stood in Pepper’s doorway. She looked at the big man, flat on the floor, and her mouth fell open in horror.

  “What in the hell did you do to him, Dorry?”

  Pepper shook his head, or at least he thought he did. He wanted to clear Dorry’s name, but to everyone else it looked like he was having a seizure.

  Dorry said, “I didn’t do that and you know it!”

  Scotch Tape, on night duty, stood behind the nurse, as stunned as his coworker.

  “Don’t back talk,” he said.

  Dorry snapped the towel at the corner again. This time, instead of snorting and wheezing, the thing only whimpered softly, like a whipped dog. A sound that everyone in the room seemed to hear, not just Pepper.

  The nurse put one foot into the room. “This is a male hall, Dorry. How you even get here? You been sneaking?”

  Dorry dropped the big towel and it landed across Pepper’s legs. He felt its weight on his thighs. Scotch Tape and the nurse surrounded Dorry. Pepper curled up as best he could, afraid one of them would kick him in the head by mistake. This movement made his rib cage stab sharply and he gasped.

  But before the nurse gave Dorry any tranquilizers, before Scotch Tape checked on Pepper there on the ground, before all other concerns, came the thing in the corner. It was practically mewling over there.

  Scotch Tape stooped over Pepper and pulled the big body towel off him. Scotch Tape unfurled the towel and walked over to the corner where Dorry had been aiming her attack. A moment later Pepper watched Scotch Tape escort that thing out of the room.

  Pepper couldn’t see the head, or much of the body, because Scotch Tape had draped the towel over it. Only the pajama bottoms and those calloused heels. The soles slapped the floor tiles loudly as Scotch Tape led it out of the room
. The Devil leaned against Scotch Tape for balance. Scotch Tape whispered soft assurances to it.

  The Devil was there.

  Even once the lights came on.

  Even with the staff in the room.

  No delusion. No dream. It was real. Pepper almost howled at the terrible truth of it, but he couldn’t muster the sound.

  “Okay now,” Scotch Tape whispered to it. “We’ll get you back. Come on.”

  Dorry looked down at Pepper.

  “Maybe you feel like they’ve pushed you off the cliff already,” she said.

  The nurse peeked at Pepper, too. She saw him watching Scotch Tape and the thing under the towel. And the nurse shifted her body to block Pepper’s view! In the same movement, she put an open hand to Dorry’s mouth. Pepper knew what the nurse had in her palm. And Dorry didn’t argue, she took the pills and swallowed them.

  Dorry looked at Pepper once more, lips pursed in a sympathetic frown.

  “You have to climb back up,” she said.

  The nurse sucked her teeth and squeezed Dorry’s upper arm.

  “Enough foolishness, Dorry. Why you come to this boy’s room anyway? You forgot you’re an old woman? He too young for you!”

  The nurse laughed loudly, as if she could make everyone (herself included) forget what had just happened in this room. She pulled Dorry out.

  The pair stepped into the hallway, and the nurse looked back at Pepper, who was still on the floor, on his back. His breathing stayed weak but at least it came steady.

  “I’ll be back to help you, soon come,” the nurse promised.

  Who would ever doubt her return? It just wasn’t possible that Pepper would be left after such an attack.

  But forty minutes later, no one had returned to check on him so he finally had to pull himself off the floor.