The Devil in Silver: A Novel

by Victor Lavalle

  This was also the time when Vincent began his commitments to mental institutions. In 1889 Vincent’s neighbors became tired of him and his antics, and they signed a petition to have him put away. Involuntary commitment, nineteenth-century style.

  Vincent got out but soon after he commited himself to an asylum in Saint-Rémy. He stayed there for a year. While the paintings from 1888 show the style that would make him legendary—rich with color, sensory and explosive—the ones he made in 1889 began to show another side. The colors became duller here and there. A deep and lasting sadness seemed almost visible on the canvas.

  In 1890 Vincent returned to Paris where he visited Theo, who had married a woman named Johanna. (The woman who would, really, take up the mantle of her husband and expose Vincent’s genius to the world.) There he also met Theo and Johanna’s first child, a son, named Vincent.

  In May of 1890 Vincent left Paris. He went to Auvers to paint again.

  On July 27, 1890, Vincent walked out into a field alone and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. (There have been rumors Vincent was shot by someone else and Vincent didn’t name names, allowed everyone to think his death was pure suicide. Is it true? The evidence is sketchy at best. But the bullet wound is no rumor, nor is its effect.) The bullet didn’t kill Vincent out in the field, so he dragged himself back to his home. A watch was kept as he lay in agonizing pain. Theo made it to town in time to see his brother still alive. On the morning of July 29, Vincent died of his wounds.

  Of course now, over a century later, this end (and the death of Theo, from a complete breakdown six months later) is cast as some epic denouement. But imagine the article that might’ve run then. Or now. One that might’ve been creased and clipped by three (soon to be two) women late at night in the television lounge of Northwest. Maybe the headline would read this way: “Drifter Commits Suicide.”

  But, really, something like that wouldn’t even be considered news.

  31

  PEPPER AND SUE fell asleep holding each other and stayed that way for another hour. Pepper woke first. To a familiar sound over his head. The faint creaking. Directly above their makeshift double bed. Over them.

  Sue stretched next to him as she woke up. Even in the gray morning light she looked lovely to him. Who would’ve called either Pepper or Sue beautiful? Maybe his mother; her sister. Besides them? Just each other. Which was plenty right then.

  “How long have you been awake?” Sue asked him.

  “You hear that?” He pointed at the ceiling with his left hand.

  She lay quietly. “I don’t know what I’m listening for.”

  “Like a creaking sound. You don’t hear it?”

  Sue shut her eyes. She pursed her lips tight so she wouldn’t breathe too loudly.

  “I know that sound,” she said quietly.

  As soon as she said that, the creaking stopped.

  She opened her eyes. Pepper scanned the ceiling and she joined him. They lay there, vigilant, for quite a while. But the creaking didn’t return. Finally Pepper felt less fear and he remembered their talk from only hours ago. Pepper said, “What do you need, then?”

  Sue looked at him, her mouth open with confusion.

  “I was listening,” Pepper said. “What do you need now?”

  Before she could even answer him, she just flushed with happiness that he’d asked the question. He’d heard her. She kissed him for that.

  But, of course, that didn’t mean he could actually do anything. She wasn’t going to take him up on the offer of a prison break. Look how well the fugitive plan had worked out for her before. Anyway, she didn’t want to do that to Pepper. He’d come in to New Hyde with a local case, no need to leave with something federal. Besides, she didn’t really like being an outlaw. It was exhausting.

  “I need my sister,” Sue said.

  “So let’s get in touch with her.”

  Sue said, “I’ve tried that. I called the number I had for her in Portland. Then I tried every number I could with my last name in the whole city. Do you know how many Hongs there are in Portland? Too many. But I never reached her. I think she must have left. And I don’t know where she might have moved to now.”

  “Why would she leave?” Pepper asked. “Wasn’t she expecting you?”

  “A year and a half ago. That’s when she expected me. She probably thinks I’m dead. Maybe she left Portland so she could forget me. If she did, I don’t blame her.”

  And Sue really wouldn’t blame her sister. Sometimes hope just fades out. But that generosity, that pragmatism, didn’t make the next steps of Sue’s life any less frightening. The United States government would send her back to China, and maybe she’d find her aunt and uncle waiting at the airport. They’d see her, deep in a depression (compounded by great confusion if they didn’t supply her with her meds during the trip), and what would her aunt and uncle do for her? Think the United States has a bad way with the mentally ill? Holy shit, you better check out the rest of the world. Here’s what Sue could look forward to in China: arrive at the airport, likely be thrown into some kind of detention center, and someday she could look forward to dying. Any wonder the lady had turned tense?

  Pepper was still focused on a solution. He said, “If she left Portland, where do you think she might go?”

  “How would I know?”

  “You know her. Think about her. Would she move east?”

  She wanted to tear the lips off Pepper’s face right then, but she knew that anxiety, the anger, wasn’t about him. He was just talking things through. Why not humor him? “I think she’d stay out west. She liked it out there, except for the weather.”

  “Okay. So she stays on the West Coast, but she wants to be somewhere warm. Los Angeles?”

  “There’s a lot of Chinese, which she would like, but I don’t think she’d go that far. Maybe San Francisco. Or somewhere near there. That’s where we were supposed to end up at first, anyway. But what does it matter? God, Pepper, you’re doing it again! Stop trying to fix things! Just shut up. It’s like even you’re trying to kill me.”

  “You make me sound like a monster,” Pepper muttered.

  She took a breath and when she came back, she put her head on his chest. She listened to the thick thumping sound of his heart.

  “I’m sorry, Pepper. I am. Hard times make people scared. And scared people see monsters everywhere.”

  Pepper nodded, he wasn’t offended, but before he could explain he caught himself. He lifted his head.

  “Isn’t Oakland right next to San Francisco?”

  Which is the moment when the room’s door blasted open. Pepper wouldn’t be blamed for having flashbacks to when the NYPD’s tactical unit had powered through the front door. Both Pepper and Sue recoiled like they’d been sprayed.

  Miss Chris stood in the doorway.

  Sue grabbed the sheets and pulled them up to her neck. Pepper stammered, just repeating the word we until it didn’t even sound like itself. Just a stream of noise.

  “We, we, we, uh, we …”

  But Miss Chris wasn’t even looking at them. She’d opened the door and reached in to flick the lights on. (Didn’t even have to turn her head to find the switch, that’s how well she knew the rooms.) Miss Chris shouted, “Wake-up hour! Come for breakfast!”

  Then she walked to the door across the hall and did the same.

  Door banged open, light flicked on. “Wake-up hour! Come for breakfast!”

  Then Miss Chris moved ten feet down the hall to rooms 8 and 9.

  Pepper and Sue still shivered there where they were. Sue took another moment before she let go of the sheets and Pepper still hadn’t stopped blabbering.

  “We, we, uhhh, we, uh …”

  Sue touched the side of his face and that calmed him down.

  “Stop talking,” she said.

  They looked at each other quietly. From down the hall they heard the routine.

  Door banging, the click of the light switch being flicked.

 
“Wake-up hour! Come for breakfast!”

  Which is when Pepper and Sue laughed. All that fear turned to its happy opposite. They clutched each other as Miss Chris awakened the patients in room 10. And rather than getting up, getting dressed, Pepper and Sue settled down again. Just enjoy the last minute, fuck it. They spooned one last time. “Whose room is that?” Sue asked, pointing to the one across from his.

  “Room six. That’s … Japanese Freddie Mercury.”

  Sue lay quiet a moment. Down the hall, they heard Miss Chris, at room 11.

  Sue said, “You mean Glenn?”

  “Is that his name? How would I know? The guy never speaks.”

  Sue laughed quietly. “That’s not right, Pepper.”

  Pepper raised himself on his right elbow, so he could lean over and see her face. “You don’t think he looks like a Japanese Freddie Mercury?”

  “Because of the teeth?”

  “Well, it’s not because he’s a great singer.”

  They watched the open door of the room across the hall now. Pepper and Sue wanted to see him, since they’d just been talking about him. Pepper even wanted to call him out by name. Hey, Glenn! If Sue knew his name he must be able to talk, the man just hadn’t spoken to him. Then he thought maybe Glenn only spoke to other Asian people like Sue. Which seemed kind of racist to him. Then Pepper just had to admit he’d never introduced himself to the guy, probably he was just shy and maybe that—the simple, clear explanation, as Dr. Anand would stress—was the truth.

  They watched Glenn’s room, but could see little more than the floor and a pair of blue footies that Glenn had probably kicked off before going to sleep. They saw the same double windows as in Pepper’s room but Glenn’s faced the New Hyde parking lot, a sight much worse than Pepper’s lawn and trees. Then one of the ceiling panels in room six shook.

  “What?” Sue whispered.

  The wood-fiber ceiling tile buckled. There was a weight, on the other side, pressing down.

  “No,” Pepper said.

  Miss Chris reached room 12 (there were sixteen rooms in each hall). The door slammed open. From this far off, they couldn’t hear the light switch flip up. Miss Chris gave the same call as before.

  “Wake-up hour! Come for breakfast!” Her breakfast call camouflaged the sound of the ceiling tile when it snapped. The two pieces of the panel dangled for a moment before tumbling to the ground.

  Sue and Pepper watched but couldn’t speak now. They couldn’t move. They forgot about Miss Chris. What could her wrath compare to the sky falling in?

  Just a moment later, they watched as something plopped out from the darkness overhead. It landed on the tiled floor.

  A rat.

  It was as long as Pepper’s forearm if you included the tail. Its fur was gray. It fell and stayed there on the floor, on its side, stunned from the impact. Its paws were curled close to its body. The long whiskers on the right side of its face stood up slightly. Every few seconds, they quivered.

  “That thing must weigh twenty pounds,” Pepper said. “To break through the ceiling like that.”

  And yet, despite his disgust, Pepper felt such relief. It was a rat, yes, but only a rat. At New Hyde that almost seemed like a happy ending. “People say there’s thousands of them living up there,” Sue said.

  “Rats in the walls?”

  “On the second floor,” Sue clarified.

  The rat’s whole body shook once now. Its paws clawed the air. Slowly at first, but then more frantically. Until it worked up enough momentum to rock itself upright.

  Miss Chris reached room 14 now, and Pepper wondered if there were even any patients in all these rooms. Maybe it didn’t matter. Do every room quickly and you’ll get everyone. Stop and check, room to room, and you’ll waste more time.

  “Wake-up hour! Breakfast!”

  Now that it was up, the rat scurried right out of Glenn’s room. It crossed into the hall, hustled into Pepper’s room, shot under the bed, came out the other side, and went right for the box of Cocoa Puffs Pepper had brought to the room the night before. It had been close enough that he could’ve reached for it if Sue had been hungry. Now the rat had sniffed it out.

  The rat reached the box of sugared cereal. Pepper and Sue watched, absolutely gobsmacked. It bumped the box so the box fell flat. Then in one swift motion, the rat clamped its teeth into the nutritional-information chart. Prey captured, the rat plowed right back under the bed. It came out the other side, wobbling a bit. It kept its head up so the box didn’t drag on the floor. Imagine a man carrying a sofa in his arms on his own. Better yet, imagine a man carrying your sofa off like that. That little rat gangster shuffled through the open doorway and into the hall.

  “Vermin!” They heard Miss Chris shouting from down the hall. The rat didn’t return to room six, it fled down the hall, away from Miss Chris, headed for the nurses’ station. In a moment, Miss Chris, moving with more agility than Pepper had seen her employ in more than two months, came shuttling past the open doorway.

  “Vermin!” she shouted to the staff members at the far end of the hall. “Get the broom!”

  Who would win? The staff or the rat?

  Hard to say which side Pepper was rooting for.

  Sue and Pepper lay there in shocked silence.

  Sue finally looked at Pepper. “Why do you keep cereal on the floor?”

  Pepper laughed and thought about how to explain, but any response was interrupted when he looked over Sue’s shoulder into Glenn’s room and saw a pair of feet dangle down from that hole in the ceiling.

  Pepper opened his mouth but nothing escaped.

  Sue turned in time to see the legs appear. Thin and pallid. The skin mottled and loose. They swayed, forward and back, floating in Glenn’s room. The soles of the feet looked gray and hard.

  Then the figure dropped. They saw the lean, cadaverous body. The impossible, monstrous head.

  The Devil stood in room six. It gazed at them. “Do you see that?” Pepper whispered.

  “Yes,” Sue said.

  Even from across the hall they heard it breathing, heaving.

  And if Miss Chris, the rest of the staff, the rest of the world was making any noise, they sure couldn’t hear it now.

  Pepper held Sue’s left arm and she grabbed his hand tightly.

  The last time he’d seen the Devil it had been bleating with panic; Loochie’s hands had wrestled its horns back and Pepper had been draped across the backs of those skeletal legs. It had seemed so weak for a moment. Spent. All the vigor knocked out of it. Maybe Coffee could’ve blinded it with those two needles.

  If only Dorry hadn’t been there!

  Then maybe it wouldn’t be here now.

  But there it was.

  The Devil pulled its lips back, exposing teeth the color of oyster shells. The tangles of fur below its chin were clumped and wet; they swung like curtains of moss. Pepper heard a muffled sniff. But it wasn’t the monster this time. Sue was crying.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered. He kissed her cheek.

  “I heard you cry once,” Pepper said loudly. “You were scared.” He wasn’t talking to Sue.

  The Devil turned its enormous head sideways, as if to see Pepper more clearly. One gray-white eye fixed on him. It inhaled deeply. It took two steps toward them.

  It grabbed room six’s doorknob for balance.

  “You’re not getting her,” Pepper gloated. “At least she’s leaving.”

  Sue sniffled. When she spoke, she whispered.

  “There’s a Devil waiting for me in China, too. If this one doesn’t get me, that one will.”

  The Devil’s head tipped forward, then lifted again. It seemed to be nodding, agreeing with Sue. But if that was the case, if Sue was meant to be taken, why not just come into this room and try? Just fucking try it! Pepper’s arms and legs got stiffer, his chest filled with hot air, his face felt like it was vibrating. He was getting amped. It was going to come in here for Sue. Win or lose, he was going to fight. He was rea
dy.

  But Pepper wasn’t prepared for what happened next. The Devil didn’t come out for them. It stayed over there.

  The Devil slammed Glenn’s door shut.

  When that happened, Pepper and Sue had the same thought: We’re safe.

  Pepper and Sue watched Glenn’s door. They didn’t move. They didn’t touch each other. Each was too shocked, too ashamed, by how relieved they felt.

  “Vermin!” Miss Chris shouted again from the end of the hall. The squeaking sound beneath her cry might’ve been the rat getting bashed or the soles of Miss Chris’s old Crocs.

  “Maybe Glenn’s not even in there,” Pepper offered.

  “Maybe,” Sue agreed, though neither of them was convinced.

  Pepper hopped out of bed and was in the hallway before he remembered he was naked. No time to turn around for a costume change! Pepper went through the door. What did he find?

  Glenn’s body being pulled up into the ceiling.

  The man’s head and neck and shoulders had already gone through the open hole. The rest of him dangled, four limbs flailing as they rose. Picture a large fish being yanked into a boat.

  Pepper rushed toward the man, a guy he hardly knew, and threw his arms around the thighs. Pepper bear-hugged them and pulled.

  Glenn’s body slipped down. Everything from the shoulders up reappeared. A bedsheet had been tied around Glenn’s shoulders, pinning the arms against his sides. The sheet ran into the crawl space, into the dark. The tension on the sheet fell slack. Pepper still held him up, arms around the thighs. Glenn’s eyes fluttered and opened. He saw Pepper there. He grinned, showing all those fucked-up teeth, and the overwhelming beauty—the spark of life in that grateful smile—made Pepper’s breath catch in his throat.

  Pepper heard a gruff snort from the crawl space. Then the sheet went taut and Glenn’s body rose toward the shadows again.

  But Pepper squared off. He tightened his hold on Glenn’s legs. He spread his feet and planted himself. One time, in a fourth-floor walkup, an upright piano had slipped loose from Pepper’s partner on a flight of stairs and Pepper had steadied himself like this. That day he’d stopped a piano that should, by all rights, have crushed him.