The Devil in Silver: A Novel

by Victor Lavalle

  “What if we pop this door,” Wally asked. “And get outside and some alarm goes off?”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Mr. Mack said.

  Pepper had moved to the jerry-rigged clothing rack, eyeing the changes of clothes with envy. “How do you know that?” Pepper asked.

  “Because this door doesn’t lead outside,” Mr. Mack said matter-of-factly.

  Frank Waverly had already chipped away the paint at the top of the doorway and moved on to the right side. Though he’d seemed hesitant, though he was at least as old as Mr. Mack, he moved quickly and with vigor.

  “Best I can tell from Dorry’s map”—Mr. Mack patted the breast pocket of his sport coat—“the space on the other side of this wall used to be the front of the building. Maybe from when it was an eye clinic. The front of Northwest faced the sidewalk. People could just pull up out front and drop off the patient who would walk right in. But when it became our Northwest, for mental patients, they sealed that entrance off. It was like the building turned its back to the neighbors.”

  “Like it was ashamed,” Wally said.

  Frank Waverly worked hard but remained as quiet as ever. He didn’t even grunt as he chopped at the doorway. The only sound was the sawing of the screwdriver against old paint. The way the chips flew, you would’ve thought Frank Waverly was using an electric saw.

  “Now Dorry has this map all laid out,” Mr. Mack continued. “She drew it by hand but it’s detailed. She was in fifteen on Northwest 3, last in her row. She didn’t have a roommate. So who knows how many times she was back there. Plenty, I’m guessing.”

  “Why would she?” Pepper asked.

  “Maybe she’s been leaving the building whenever she wants,” Wally said.

  Mr. Mack said, “I don’t think so, Mr. Gambino.”

  An address that made Wally smile.

  “That wasn’t Dorry’s way. Each one of us got the greeting and the tour from that woman. She never just thought of herself. She could be a trial sometimes, but she was never selfish.”

  You should see a friendly face first. That was one of the first things she’d said to Pepper. And so he had. So had all of them.

  Frank Waverly moved to the other side of the doorway and got to chopping. They watched him quietly for a moment. As hard as Frank Waverly was working, each man willed him to go even faster.

  “But because Dorry was a soft touch,” Mr. Mack continued, “I’m going to tell you what I think she was really doing back there all these years. The map shows a way to get out of this building. Through an air duct on the second floor. But the map also shows a back path that leads to one room in particular. One that’s off-limits to patients, normally.”

  “The silver door,” Pepper whispered.

  Mr. Mack reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, but instead of pulling out that map, he revealed something else.

  A key.

  Mr. Mack said, “I think she took care of that thing like she took care of all of us.”

  Wally slapped his own leg. “She took care of a fucking monster?! Nah, that ain’t right.”

  Pepper looked at the ceiling. “She always said it was just a man.”

  “She even wrote his name down,” Mr. Mack said.

  Frank Waverly continued to chip and Wally Gambino laughed.

  “That old bitch was double crazy!”

  Mr. Mack pulled out the map. The sheet of paper had been folded into a small square. He handed it to Pepper.

  “Why are you giving this up?”

  “I got it memorized already.”

  Pepper unfolded it. Wally couldn’t help himself, he went up on his toes and tried to see the map, too. They looked like two boys who’d just found a page ripped out of a porn magazine.

  “Now what we’re going to do,” Mr. Mack announced, “is break through this door and then move over to the other side of the men’s hall and get the two fellas there. Then we go to the women’s hall and we do the same. Everyone’s expecting us. It’s going to take us awhile, I know, but everyone needs to be involved.”

  “Involved with what?” Pepper asked.

  Mr. Mack pointed at the door, slowly being revealed. “We’re going to teach that thing a lesson or three.”

  Pepper scanned the map. Dorry was so good that she’d even detailed the number of steps they would find on the staircase that led from the first floor to the second. (Dorry had a bit of that OCD going strong.) The route to the air duct looked simple enough. As did the path to the Devil. She’d also scribbled a note. Funnily enough, the note wasn’t addressed to Pepper. Not to anyone specifically. Which made Pepper wonder how long Dorry had been planning to pass on this knowledge. How long she’d been hoping to take her rest.

  Hello, my friend,

  I’ve been in here a very long time, and I don’t want to be here anymore. I’ve stayed this long not for myself, but for everybody else. How much longer can I give until there’s nothing left? If you’re reading this, then I guess you have the answer.

  This is the last thing I’m going to do. Giving you this map and this key. If you want to leave, there is a way. I’ve marked it. But let me ask you this: Where will you run? I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned over my long life. This is the world, my friend. As much as anyplace else. Our trials don’t change, only the court.

  This key opens a second silver door. I hope I’ve passed this on to the right person. Please don’t hurt Mr. Visserplein. If you look into his face, truly see his face, you’ll understand.

  Please forgive me for my weaknesses.

  Doris

  Mr. Mack made each of them chip and crack a doorway open. The men and the women. All in a spirit of fair play. Everyone’s hands getting dirty. The group learning to act as one. The only doorway they didn’t have to crack open was the one that led into Dorry’s room. She’d opened that one many, many years ago. The doorway was so well trod that the doorjamb dipped in the middle.

  By the time every patient had been gathered, it was three in the morning. All of them were sweaty. All of them were out of their rooms and standing in the darkened chamber once known as the New Hyde Hospital Ophthalmology Welcome Pavilion.

  (Though nobody had ever really called it that. This was Queens; people just said “the eye clinic.”)

  The pavilion had been stripped down decades ago, so now it was like being in the shell of a structure waiting to be finished or torn down. The skeleton intact, but no organs. The only nice touch that remained was the gray granite floors.

  The windows along the far wall had all been removed (once there’d been a bank of them, each twenty feet tall). Now it was all dry wall. The center of the ceiling, two stories above, showed an enormous oval pane of glass. It looked vaguely like a single almond-shaped eye. That had been intentional. Moonlight drifted down through the glass and caught the speckles in the granite tiles. This made the floor seem to glow, as if a layer of low fog filled the room.

  “So here we are,” Mr. Mack said.

  Twelve patients. Pepper and Loochie, Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly, Redhead Kingpin and Still Waters, The Haint, Heatmiser, Wally Gambino and Yuckmouth. Even the two newer admits, Doris Roberts and Sandra Day O’Connor. They gathered in a tight circle directly beneath the great glass eye in the ceiling.

  Pepper couldn’t help but imagine Dorry in this cavernous space—how many times?—alone at night. Back here on a mission much too batty to believe. To comfort the Devil. (What the fuck was a Mr. Visserplein?!)

  They stood in the large empty space, in the circle of direct moonlight, and none of them dared to step out of the circle alone. There used to be two sets of double doors not fifty feet in front of them, the front entrance to the clinic, but the doors had been sealed over just as surely as the windows. The moonlight lit the room, but only so much. There were shadows on all sides. Mr. Mack was the first one to step out of the moonlight alone. All of them, even Pepper, held their breath.

  Once he was out, he spread his arms wide. “I’m fine,”
he said. “You’ll be fine.”

  With that, more of them moved. Just a few steps. Fanning out. Until only Frank Waverly remained under the moonlight.

  “There’s a staircase over here,” Doris Roberts called out.

  “Here, too,” mumbled Heatmiser.

  Two sets of staircases, at either end of the lobby. Leading up to a second-floor landing. Everyone followed Doris Roberts’s voice and used her stairs.

  Only Heatmiser went his own way. His low, affectless voice could be heard in the dim hall.

  “That’s fucked up,” he muttered as the others moved off.

  Then the lonesome yelp of his sneakers, alone, on his set of stairs.

  The patients gathered all together again on the landing and looked down at the first floor. Because the room was so dark, the hall so stark, the granite tiles looked much farther below them. Fifty feet instead of only ten. A railing ran at about waist height on the landing. The braver patients leaned over it to give themselves the thrill of faux vertigo. They were having a little fun, playing tag in the graveyard.

  Finally, Mr. Mack called them to order.

  “We’ve got things to do and there’s no point in waiting,” he said.

  Their eyes had adjusted enough to understand the layout here. It was exactly like on the first floor. They stood before the doors that would lead to the second-floor version of Northwest 2 and Northwest 3. The rooms above their rooms. They’d all known this second floor was up here, of course, but the idea had remained academic. Now, standing on this landing, looking at the actual doors, it was like coming across an alternate universe and being shocked because, all along, it had been this close.

  Mr. Mack walked farther along the landing. They followed him. And right there in front of them, they saw it, another silver door. Mr. Mack slapped it. The sight of him actually touching the door caused every patient to tense up, recoil. They expected staff members to appear and tackle the old man.

  But that didn’t happen.

  Mr. Mack left his hand on the silver door because he, too, couldn’t quite believe Miss Chris wasn’t running toward him with a needle. Now the others wanted a touch. They didn’t take turns. They mobbed the door. Each one placing a hand where he or she could. When Pepper did it, up near the top, he expected the silver door to feel cold or hot. Maybe that smell again, of piss and filth. Something. But a different surprise awaited them.

  Wally Gambino shouted, “Yo!”

  Even though they were as far from the nurses’ station as they could be, Wally’s voice still sounded too damn loud there in the pavilion. Everyone flinched or curled up expecting some kind of attack. But Wally remained oblivious, too excited by his realization to feel afraid.

  “It’s a fucking exit door!” he said.

  “Keep your voice down!” Mr. Mack snapped.

  Wally looked around, as if he’d just stepped into traffic and someone had called out that a truck was bearing down.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said more quietly. “My bad.”

  But now that Wally said it, all the others could see the door more clearly. As he’d just described it. Before it had been repurposed. The stainless steel door of a stairwell exit. Only silver from a distance.

  “They’ve got it living in a stairwell?” Redhead Kingpin asked.

  She almost sounded sympathetic. Even in the dimness Mr. Mack saw the spark of pity burnishing her face.

  “I want to remind you what’s on the other side of this door,” Mr. Mack said. “I don’t care if it has a lazy eye and a wooden leg. That damn Devil has been feeding on us like we were the sheep! And it is the wolf at the door.”

  He knocked on the door to make his point. The sound echoed across the landing and the patients drew closer to one another.

  “Before you get all weepy about where this beast makes its bed,” Mr. Mack continued, “please remember a few names. Dennis Drayton, who we all called Fogey. Miss Grace. And Sam. Coffee. Dorry. Maybe Glenn, too, if he ends up dying in the ICU. Remember them before you go feeling sorry for their predator.”

  Mr. Mack reached back and knocked on the silver door lightly. Then he reached into the breast pocket of his sport coat. He pulled out a small gold key.

  “I’m not going to tell you what to do,” he said. “I’m going to ask you a question. How long have you been scared?”

  They watched Mr. Mack silently, but each seemed to lean toward him, his voice so full of gravity.

  “How old is that fear we all been feeling?” he asked. “Sometimes I think I’ve been afraid my whole life. Like I got born with it and didn’t realize it was with me all along.”

  The moonlight streaming through the great glass eye in the ceiling couldn’t reach them on the landing. Standing in the dark, they appeared nearly like phantoms, even to one another.

  “Well, I’m tired of that feeling,” Mr. Mack admitted. “And more than that, I’m angry. I find myself wanting to send a message. You’re not going to abuse me no more. I don’t care what is on the other side of this door, I only know it is my enemy. And I want to finally fight what’s out to kill me.

  “I vote for taking a stand.” Mr. Mack raised one hand. “Who’s with me?”

  When Pepper looked at Loochie he was surprised to find she’d already raised her hand. And she looked just as startled, because his big paw was in the air. He hadn’t even realized he’d done it. Other hands rose as well. Seemed like everyone’s went up.

  Then Frank Waverly reached out from the crowd. He plucked the little key right out of Mr. Mack’s fingers.

  Frank Waverly put his body between the crowd and the silver door. When he turned to the crowd, what did he see? So many angry faces. Stupified with rage. Not shouting or cursing but seething silently. They weren’t really looking at him. Their eyes locked on his right hand, the small gold key.

  “Don’t be dumb,” Mr. Mack barked. “You can’t save nobody.”

  Frank Waverly’s mouth opened, the lips hung open for just a moment. “But you can help,” Frank Waverly finally said.

  It was the first time any of them—even Mr. Mack—had heard old Frank say a word. His voice sounded raspy from disuse, it wavered and showed he was scared. But everybody heard him. Surprise kept them rooted as Frank Waverly lifted the key to his lips. And then, do you know what he did?

  He swallowed it.

  Suddenly, it was like Mr. Mack’s spell had been broken. At least for Pepper. He didn’t wait a beat. He grabbed Loochie by the arm. He yanked her sideways, hard.

  She stumbled into Pepper, looked up at him with confusion.

  “Let’s go,” Pepper said. “This is about to get ugly.”

  Consider Loochie and Pepper the breakaway vote. Loochie went with Pepper when he pulled her. Who else did she trust as much? Only herself. And even she wasn’t sure what to do just then.

  They ran along the landing. Leaving the others behind. They reached the door to the room that sat right above Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly’s room.

  Pepper pushed at it, but couldn’t open the door all the way. Just wide enough to fit his head and shoulders through, but no more. Pepper peeked inside but couldn’t make out what might be blocking the doorway because the windows had been boarded over. His eyes had adjusted to the level of darkness on the landing, but in here he found darker shadows.

  Pepper reached inside, too keyed-up to be cautious. His hand caused a clang when it connected with some enormous piece of metal. Pepper strained and finally slipped into the room. Then Pepper reached out of the doorway and clapped a hand around Loochie’s wrist.

  “Stay with me,” he told her.

  Pepper’s plan was simple: Enter this room, then slip back into the hallway that ran right above Northwest 2. Book it until they reached the hallway directly above Northwest 1. Find the air duct marked on Dorry’s map. The one mentioned by Mr. Mack. Climb up, climb out, escape.

  Now that she was inside the room, too, Loochie’s eyes adjusted. She could see that the big metal thing blocking the doorway was
just a filing cabinet. An old-school model. Back when they made everything out of lead or something. When even forks and knives weighed five pounds each. Loochie pulled her hand from Pepper’s grip so she could feel around the dark room and get her bearings.

  There were four of those enormous filing cabinets in here. Two desks that had been stacked in front of the boarded windows. How many typewriters on the floor. Ten? Twenty? All this in one room.

  The second floor had been turned into a warehouse. Storing the office equipment of decades past. It occurred to Loochie that all this stuff might be valuable in an Antiques Roadshow sort of way. She even tried to lift one of the typewriters, like some brave knight from a fairy tale, trying to take just one piece of treasure out of a dragon’s cave. But that machine seemed to weigh fifty pounds, and Loochie couldn’t see how she could haul it easily. She set it back down, and when she turned, Pepper had crouched down right beside her.

  “I thought of doing the same thing,” Pepper whispered, patting her shoulder consolingly.

  But now, down that close to the floor, another thought occurred to both Loochie and Pepper. In a space like this, so dark and full of nooks, there should’ve been pests everywhere. Pepper had seen one giant rat, so why wouldn’t there be thousands more? Wasn’t that how rats rolled? In great numbers?

  But there were none.

  Nothing scurrying underfoot. No roaches moving along the walls. No spiders spinning webs in the corners. No flies. No mosquitos. The room was cluttered and chaotic, but lifeless.

  Then a howl came, from the landing. A man.

  “What if they’re hurting Frank Waverly?” Loochie asked.

  Pepper rose to his feet. “They’re definitely hurting Frank Waverly,” he said. He patted his surroundings, feeling for the nearest wall.

  “What should we do?” Loochie asked, still crouched.

  Pepper had found the door he wanted. Not the one they’d just come through, the one that led back onto the landing. The other one. The one that would take them farther away. It led out into a hallway. Pepper opened it.