The Devil in Silver: A Novel

by Victor Lavalle

  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.

  Pepper pulled the Devil out into the same hallway he and Loochie had just been in. Here and there he could still see Loochie’s small footprints in the dust. The bulb here cast new light on Pepper and the Devil. And when Pepper looked down, he finally saw it. Him.

  No bison’s head. An old man.

  Pepper grunted, triumphant. He looked down into the wild eyes of an old man. The old man had a head covered with graying hair that fell as low as his shoulders. The tips of his ears peeked through his hair. He had a full graying beard, the hair knotty and unkempt. The old man’s eyes were waxy and dry and red all over, with veins the color of bloodworms.

  “Mr. Visserplein,” Pepper said.

  The old man shook his head, but it wasn’t clear if he was refusing the name or trying to break free.

  “You’ve got problems,” Pepper said. “I guess that’s why you’re here. But you’re hurting people. You’re hurting us.”

  The old man puckered his lips. His eyes grew wet and weak tears ran down his cheeks. They dotted Pepper’s forearms. Pepper didn’t understand what the old man was trying to tell him. Finally, the man raised one hand and patted at Pepper’s arm faintly, the one around his throat. Pepper loosened his grip and the old man breathed.

  The old man craned his head backward so that he looked up into Pepper’s face. And Pepper looked down into his.

  Years ago, Pepper had dated a woman who had kid, a girl eleven months old at the time. Sometimes Pepper would hold that little girl just like this. She’d peer into his face, upside down, just like Mr. Visserplein did now. She’d seem confused by the angle at first, almost dazed, but sometimes she’d break into this smile, showing her handful of tiny teeth. And in those moments Pepper experienced such uncomplicated love for that child. She wasn’t his daughter but it didn’t matter at all. Her joy was a universal language. The memory of those times could make Pepper feel tender even years after he and the mother had stopped dating.

  So maybe that’s why Pepper experienced a jarring swelling in his throat as Mr. Visserplein stared up at him. Because Pepper realized that even this man had probably shared that same kind of smile with his parents. He had been a baby in someone’s arms. That’s all he was once. Not yet this man. And had those parents ever dreamed their baby would be dumped in a place like this? How could they? And yet here he was. Here they all were. And who would ever have guessed?

  “Now that’s sweet,” a woman said.

  Pepper looked up to find the other patients hadn’t skedaddled back to their rooms. They’d regrouped. They’d followed Pepper’s tracks. They were all there in the second-floor hallway. Still Waters, Redhead Kingpin. Heatmiser. The Haint. Wally Gambino. Yuckmouth, Doris Roberts, and Sandra Day O’Connor. They crowded together. They stood around Pepper and the old man.

  “Now that you’ve got him,” Redhead Kingpin said. “What are we going to do with him?”

  Mr. Visserplein howled. And Pepper, without thinking, tightened his grip around the throat again.

  “That’s it,” Heatmiser mumbled.

  “Just choke him right here,” Sandra Day O’Connor said plainly.

  The group crowded closer, all as one. Were they grinning or was that just a trick of the dark?

  “Choke him and let us listen,” Redhead Kingpin said.

  Pepper inched himself and the old man backward down the hall.

  Wally Gambino moved to the front of the group. He landed a damn powerful kick right into Mr. Visserplein’s thigh. Yuckmouth followed Wally’s example, kicking Mr. Visserplein in the ribs.

  Pepper tried to get up off the floor. while keeping hold of the old man and pushing backward. The other patients followed. They didn’t speak but only made sounds. When Pepper looked down at the figure in his arms, he got confused. One moment, he looked down and saw the same gaunt, bearded man. But in the next, he saw the bison’s head again. And the more confused he became, the more scared he felt. Mr. Visserplein was becoming the Devil again.

  Heatmiser and Doris Roberts landed punches against Mr. Visserplein’s chest, his spindly arms. At this point, Pepper realized he was holding the old man still so the others could pummel him. It was an old-school beatdown. Eight on one. They meant to kill the old man. They’d open him up, just like Frank Waverly. But what was the last thing, the only thing, Frank Waverly had said?

  Pepper rose to his feet and dragged Mr. Visserplein backward, yoking the old man off his feet. He turned so the others couldn’t land any more blows on Mr. Visserplein. So instead they hit him. They didn’t care now. They probably didn’t even notice. Pepper got to room 5. Because he’d left the door half open it was easy to slip inside. And just as quickly, he slammed the door shut with his butt. The rest were on the other side instantly, their grunts and cries muffled. Hands slammed against the door and feet kicked. The wood rattled.

  “You’re safe,” Pepper said to the old man. “You’re okay.”

  But Mr. Visserplein had recovered. Pepper tried to calm him, but the old man only hissed through his clenched teeth. Then, of all things, he laughed, as if this was the most fun he’d had in decades.

  That was when Pepper grasped just how far gone this old man must’ve been. So detached from this reality that maybe all of them seemed like figments of some grand dream. As Mr. Visserplein’s laughter grew louder, Pepper understood why Dorry must’ve snuck out of her room every night. Why she brought nourishment, even, to him. Because Dorry saw that this man wasn’t monstrous, he was tragic.

  The pressure on the other side of the door only increased. There were eight people over there determined to get through.

  The door didn’t splinter, it bent.

  Pepper couldn’t wait. Whatever he was going to do must be done now. But what? He guessed it had to be five or six a.m. (Six thirty-three, actually.) The morning shift and the overnight shift might all be in the building. He needed to introduce a new element. He needed to get them all—including Mr. Visserplein—away from this floor, this room. Suppose the others did kill this old man. How soon before they turned on him for helping the Devil? Then on one another?

  Pepper lifted Mr. Visserplein. He carried the old man in front of him, like a baby being cradled. He ran toward the great old chair sitting in the middle of the room. The door finally gave up. The upper half cracked from the attack on the other side. The patients crowded, climbing over one another to get through the broken door.

  Pepper moved around the far side of the chair. When he reached the proper spot, weak from leaked rainwater, he jumped up and down just once, as if he and Mr. Visserplein were playing on a trampoline. The floor couldn’t hold their combined weight.

  The floor caved in. The two of them fell through. Down to the first floor.

  They landed back in Pepper’s room. Mr. Visserplein provided Pepper with a bit of cushion because the old man hit the floor first. He cried out like he’d been struck by the Holy Spirit, but it was just Pepper’s elbow. Considering the circumstance, Pepper didn’t feel too bad about bashing the guy once in the nose.

  The other patients reached the hole but had the good sense not to drop. They looked down at Pepper and the Devil and, for that moment, in the light coming through the windows of Pepper’s room, even they s
aw an old man, lying on his back, blood running from his nose and across his cheeks and chin so profusely that it looked like he wore a red kerchief.

  The door to Pepper’s room opened. The morning shift hadn’t clocked in yet, but the night shift was still there. Miss Chris, Nurse Washburn, and Scotch Tape entered the room. They saw Pepper and Mr. Visserplein from Northwest 4 on the floor. They saw a hole in the ceiling the size of a washing machine. They walked closer, looked up through the hole and saw eight other patients peering down.

  “I gonna quit,” Miss Chris said.

  And she might. But not just then. Order must be restored and she was still on duty. The three staff members had to corral those upstairs, see to Mr. Visserplein’s bloody face injuries, and call Dr. Anand to report all this wildness. Eventually they would discover the bodies of Frank Waverly and Mr. Mack, both men dead from brutal injuries. Both, somehow, would be written up as suicides.

  Because of all this, no one paid attention to the enormous smile on Pepper’s face for the rest of the morning. He did his best to hide it while helping the others down once Scotch Tape retrieved a service ladder. Pepper kept his face near his armpit as he reached up to steady patients on the ladder. He looked out the window, at the sunlight crossing the tops of the trees, rather than at anyone in particular. But he couldn’t stop grinning.

  It had taken a while, he’d certainly failed and fumbled along the way, but right now Loochie at least might have escaped, Mr. Visserplein—that malevolent nut—was going to live, and the other eight patients had all survived this terrible ordeal. He’d done more right than wrong tonight. He’d helped as much as he could and many had come through.

  42

  EVERYBODY FELT WELL rested.

  This was mostly because Dr. Anand had the staff replace every patient’s blood with an equal amount of tranquilizer. Or nearly that much. What else was he going to do? The fallout of the rebellion was a storm cloud of scrutiny. You’re not going to lose two patients (Frank Waverly and Mr. Mack), have another five suffer serious injuries, and experience property damage that totaled $82,000 and not draw some attention.

  The harm done to the building caused the most uproar. The board of New Hyde Hospital wasn’t pleased to see such trouble coming out of a department that, frankly, didn’t generate enough in profits. The slapdash security room for Mr. Visserplein was of particular concern. Who had allowed such a thing? It was time to appear concerned. Someone would have to be punished. That person was the legal rep who’d sat in on Pepper’s meeting with Dr. Anand. Mr. iPad. He became a martyr to the cause. The cause being protecting New Hyde Hospital from myriad lawsuits. The man was, metaphorically, burned and buried in an unmarked grave. Only a day after he’d left New Hyde, no one at the hospital could remember the dude’s name. (His name is Robert Paulson. His name is Robert Paulson.)

  Dr. Anand quickly figured out that if that guy could be let go so easily, then maybe he could, too. The doctor figured he needed to prove he could get the unit back to full compliance, not running but coasting. Release the sedatives! With the patients sufficiently stupefied, he shuffled them. He turned the conference rooms in Northwest 1 into the women’s bedrooms. And the long-unused rooms of Northwest 4 were aired out and turned into the men’s hall. Repurposing like a motherfucker. He transferred Mr. Visserplein to New Hyde’s geriatric unit, far off in the main building; pawning his troubles off on those staff members (and patients!) without a word of warning. He even oversaw the construction crews who were brought in to permanently seal off the painted-over doors and patch up the ceiling in Pepper’s old room.

  There was still the question of how Mr. Visserplein had been able to climb up to the second-story door. An old man doing something like that, how had he managed this? It wasn’t magic. The stairs in the stairwell had been removed, yes, but not the handrails. (You son-of-a-bitch you left the bodies and you only moved the headstones! You only moved the headstones! That kind of thing.) (Anyway, why would they have taken the handrails out? Who, in all sanity, would imagine a patient having the determination—and the Crazy Strength—to pull himself up to the second floor that way? Nobody, that’s who.) In the aftermath they finally removed the railing from the former stairwell, too. They cleared out the thousands of cookie wrappers. They scrubbed out lines from a song the old man had scrawled on the wall beside his bed (Welcome to where time stands still, no one leaves and no one will). In other words, Dr. Anand did some heroic reshuffling at Northwest, and he hoped this would let him keep his job. (For all his despondency earlier, he needed the salary.)

  When the patients finally awoke from their medicinal slumber, became truly aware again, they didn’t realize how much had happened while they were out.

  Pepper lay in his new bed in his new room. He missed his old room. The view from this window offered little but the single tower of New Hyde Hospital’s off-white main building in the distance. It looked like a giant vanilla wafer. Pepper missed seeing the tops of the trees.

  He got out of bed. He wore pajamas, top and bottom, and slipped on his light blue slipper-socks. He looked at the ceiling and listened for the creaking sound. Pepper heard nothing but the low buzz of the lights.

  He went to his dresser. Had he brought all his things with him when he transferred rooms? He’d been so medicated, he could hardly remember. One set of outdoor clothes? Check. Coffee’s binder? Check. Sue’s blue accordion folder? The folder was there, but nothing sat inside. The two words were still there. “Nice Dream.” He’d have to fill it with something new.

  His boots stood beside the dresser, upright and at attention. He left them there for now.

  Pepper stepped out into the hallway, and instinctively, turned left instead of right, thinking he was still on Northwest 2, but he was on Northwest 4 now. The silver door was at the end of the hall, propped open.

  Pepper flinched and held his breath as he braced for the Devil (Mr. Visserplein) to come bounding out of the room. But that didn’t happen. Pepper caught his breath again. He stared at the open door.

  A light glowed inside. He walked toward the room cautiously but nobody came to stop him. He looked over his shoulder but no one paid attention. He reached the silver door. He touched the stainless steel.

  He looked inside.

  Imagine a concrete stairwell without stairs (and now without railings). Twenty feet up, in the ceiling, a single strong bulb cast light that filled the room. No shadows. No bed. No evidence at all that anyone had ever lived in here. Been kept here.

  Pepper looked at the concrete floor, almost expecting to see Mr. Mack’s small crumpled body. Or at least a bloody stain. But the floor was clean. Power-washed. All the surfaces were so bright because they’d all been repainted.

  He left the room and paced back down Northwest 4 slowly. His feet hurt. So did his knees and hips. How long had he been underwater? That’s how he felt. Like a man walking out of the ocean. All but drowned. His nose and eyes even stung. When he reached the nurses’ station, it looked a little different. Another change courtesy of Dr. Anand. The lower half of the nurses’ station was the same split-level rectangular desk but the upper half was no longer open. Shatterproof plastic panes had been installed. The nurses’ station now looked exactly like a ghetto Chinese-food counter.

  Pepper walked up to the station. Nurse Washburn sat inside.

  Pepper knocked on the plastic with a little force. He wanted to believe this new partition had been put up as a joke. He’d tap it and it would tumble down harmlessly. But that didn’t happen. He knocked and the plastic rattled but stayed firm. Nurse Washburn looked so small inside that clear cage.

  “I’ll take the General Tso’s chicken,” Pepper said. “Gimme an extra-spicy mustard.”

  Nurse Washburn, to his great surprise, grinned at him.

  “You haven’t seen all this yet.”

  “How long has it been since …”

  He gestured toward Northwest 2, his old room, with his chin.

  “Two months,” she said,
and looked embarrassed to tell him.

  He felt a little shocked, but only a little. He remembered the passing of days. Meals eaten. Television watched. Showers taken. Smoke breaks under the maple tree. He might even have had a few conversations. Two months. Was it June?

  Nurse Washburn tilted her head to the right, a look of real sympathy.

  “It’s no surprise,” she said. “The doctor just lowered everyone’s meds back to normal.”

  “How is Dr. Sam?”

  She shook her head. “Not him. He’s gone.”

  None of the improvements had helped Dr. Samuel Anand. The board of New Hyde Hospital voted to terminate his contract. He was replaced. The Devil had vanquished the doctor, too.

  Aside from the new plastic shielding, the inside of the nurses’ station looked largely the same. The desk phone had been returned. Nurse Washburn sat in front of the same outdated computer screen. On either side of it were more stacks of patient records.

  Pepper leaned forward. He read the names on the tabs. Gerald Mack. Frank Waverly.

  “What are you doing with those?” Pepper said. “Those men are dead and gone.”

  Nurse Washburn, Josephine, looked down at the paperwork and back up at Pepper. “Dead, yes,” she said. “But not gone, not with Equator Zero.”

  “Dr. Anand talked about that,” Pepper said. “But he didn’t explain what it meant.”

  Josephine rolled backward in her chair. She gestured at the computer screen. “Equator Zero is a program for filing patient records.”

  Pepper nodded. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Not just for keeping records. But for filing them.”

  Pepper raised both hands, like a scale. “You like Clamato and I like Clamahto.”

  “New Hyde is a public hospital,” Nurse Washburn said. “That means it gets city, state, and federal money to take care of its poorest patients. Which is just about all of you. No offense.”

  Pepper doffed an invisible cap. “Thanks.”