Charnel House

by Anderson, Fred

  13

  So much sound.

  Beep.

  Sssssssss-clack.

  Beep.

  Sssssssss-clack.

  The squeak of wheels, growing louder at first then fading until he was left with the incessant beeping and hissing and clacking again. Garraty floated blind in the void and listened to the sounds. Hushed whispers, somewhere nearby. The burring of a telephone.

  Beep.

  Sssssssss-clack.

  Beep.

  Sssssssss-clack.

  A muted, distant female voice intoned Aubrey Crawford 2-6-7, Aubrey Crawford 2-6-7. The voice had a tinny, electronic edge to it.

  Garraty opened his eyes. He lay in a bed, in a room with beige walls and a speckled drop ceiling. Towering over him on his left was a shiny metal rack in the shape of the letter T. From each arm dangled a transparent bag filled with clear liquid. High on the wall before him an ancient tube television balanced on a steel platform attached to a movable arm. Lower, to one side, a closed door of pressboard and laminate designed to look like solid wood. He knew there was a bathroom behind the door, but didn’t know how he knew. Not yet. Another door was midway down the wall. This one was open, and Garraty saw a small section of hallway outside it, more of the beige walls and another of the faux-wood doors across the way.

  Something was squeezing his finger. He raised the hand a little and saw a plastic clip gripping his index finger like one of the plastic clothespins Tina used when she hung the wash out to dry. He ought to know what this was, but his mind refused to make the connection for him. It was still lost in the black sea. The hand was heavily bandaged, thick white gauze held in place by even whiter tape.

  Beep.

  God, but his throat burned! He tried to swallow and gagged. Something was in his mouth, rigid and thick and smooth. It felt like a dead snake, pressing down on the part of his tongue that wasn’t numb and stretching down his throat to who knew where. Next to him, something hissed with the drawn out sssssssss he’d heard while he drifted in the darkness. His chest rose, pushed up not by an inhalation but by the air forced into him by the machine, cool and sterile and unstoppable. He tried to draw a breath of his own but his body wouldn’t obey. The machine clacked and his chest collapsed as the violating wind seeped out of him.

  In his head, the voice was full of wonder: Is this what getting raped is like?

  As panic swelled in him, the darkness pulled Garraty into its embrace once more.

  14

  “Mr. Garraty?”

  The voice came from the unlit sky above and rolled across the smooth black water in which he drifted, everywhere and nowhere at once. Are you there, God? It’s me, Garraty. He looked into the void but saw nothing, then closed his eyes again because keeping them open seemed like too much effort. He felt weightless in the warm caress of the water, like an astronaut free of gravity’s pull, and he sensed its depths went as far as the universe itself. How easy it would be to simply let himself slip beneath the surface and sink into eternity.

  “Mr. Garraty? Joe?”

  A hand grasped his left shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. This time when he opened his eyes he found himself in a room that seemed vaguely familiar, one with beige walls and a speckled drop ceiling. Sunlight filled the window in the wall to his right and fell in a bright yellow splash on the tiled floor. There was a man standing next to him, a young guy who looked like he was barely out of grade school, with thinning red hair and a freckled face. He was smiling.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Garraty. I’m Jim Redman, one of the staff physicians here. Do you know where you are?”

  The smiling man wore white and for an instant Garraty wondered if he was one of the angels his daddy thought every good Christian would find waiting to lead them to heaven when they died. But heaven didn’t have beige walls, did it? Hell, it shouldn’t have walls at all, just streets of gold and endless boring songs plucked on a harp. Besides, heaven has no place for murderers. You see an angel when you die, it’ll be Lucifer himself. He realized the man in white was simply wearing a jacket. A blue collar peeked out from the neck of the coat.

  Doctor. Hospital.

  He blatted this last word in a dry, cracked voice that sounded alien to him.

  “That’s right, Decatur Morgan,” Redman said, nodding. “It’s good to see you awake. It was touch and go there for awhile, but it seems you weren’t ready to leave us just yet. How’s your pain?”

  Things were coming to him now, little snippets of film in his head like the remnants of an explosion in the projection booth of a theater. A flash of face in a wash of headlights. The sickening babump of the tires as the Prius went over something. A dead boy, and an obscene act under the dilapidated house.

  The risen boy, coming for him with a knife.

  “Still with me, Mr. Garraty?”

  “Water,” he croaked. His throat felt like the arid ground he’d seen all over the news the previous year when the drought in the midwest was so bad, brown earth so criss-crossed with cracks it looked more like plated scales than dirt. He had a sudden memory of a bad dream, one where he was swallowing a snake whole, and his chest tightened. He could almost feel the thing going down. Must have been a tube. Thank God they took it out before I woke up.

  “I’ll have the nurse bring some ice chips for you to suck on,” the doctor said. He reached into one of his pockets and extracted a small tablet computer, which he swiped and tapped several times with one finger. “And a few glycerin swabs for your lips. Lemon-flavored. Be mindful of the stitches in your tongue.”

  The organ in question was a thick dead thing in Garraty’s mouth. He remembered the knife splitting it, and the way the blood had pooled in the basin of his jaw. Remembered his cheek folded back like the covers on a bed in an upscale hotel. Gonna have to change my name to Scarface. Say hello to my little friend. I call him Toomey. When he pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, he felt a line of hard bumps against the soft skin.

  The tablet vanished back into the lab coat pocket. “Frankly, you’re lucky to be alive, Mr. Garraty. A lot of people wouldn’t have survived your injuries.”

  He rambled on, saying things like penetrating trauma and pneumothorax and anterior and dorsal lacerations, but Garraty paid him no mind. He didn’t need ten-dollar words to know he was fucked up. Had Tina come by to see him? Did she even know he was in the hospital?

  Does she care?

  “You’re lucky your neighbor heard your screams and called 9-1-1. She probably saved your life.” As Redman spoke, the smile dropped from his face like dying autumn leaves. “Another couple of minutes and you would have bled out. We had to give you seven units of blood before we got you stabilized.”

  Garraty thought maybe he was supposed to be impressed by this, but he wasn’t. He was more impressed at the thought that the old bitch across the road called an ambulance instead of watching him bleed to death while she sucked on one of those foul cigarettes. He didn’t really give a shit one way or the other about how much blood he needed. He remembered the way it flowed out of him in hot gluts, the way his head seemed to float above him like a balloon bobbing on a string, and didn’t care to think beyond that.

  What he did give a shit about was the pain, which had wakened in him. Shards of glass grated in his chest with every breath, and his leg hummed like there was an electric current running through it. His hands ached. He tried a smile of his own.

  “Think I can get some pain meds, doc?” And maybe a couple of beers?

  “Of course you can.” Redman reached for Garraty’s lap and for a moment Garraty thought the younger man was about to give his dick a good honking, or maybe a quick handjob to take his mind off the pain, but instead the doctor rummaged in the bedclothes and came up with something that reminded him of one of the buzzers people in game shows used years ago, before computers replaced everything. The pen-sized device was designed to fit in a closed fist and had a single white button on one end. From the other a thick wire extended
and snaked over the rail of the bed to destinations unknown.

  Dr. Redman placed it in Garraty’s hand. “The button controls a PCA pump, and will dose you with morphine as you need it. Just press it anytime you’re in pain and you’ll get some relief. It won’t let you have too much.” Something unreadable flitted across his face when he said the last bit.

  Morphine sounded pretty goddamn good. Garraty depressed the button and heard a click from somewhere behind his head. Almost immediately he felt the black water beckoning, and he drifted away for a time. He didn’t know for how long, only that when he opened his eyes again the doctor was gone.

  He pressed the button and sank into the deep, where there was no worrying about his troubles, no pain from his injuries, and best of all, no dead boy trying to kill him with one of his own goddamn knives.

  15

  The light in the room had shifted when he woke. Sunlight no longer spilled through the window, and the sky visible on the other side of the glass had taken on the deep blue of twilight. He wondered what day it was. The kid had fucked him up but good. He wouldn’t be surprised if it was Thursday or even Friday. That would be a good thing, as far as he was concerned. That much more time healing.

  “You awake, esse?”

  The voice startled him, and then sudden guilt flushed his face. Christ, in his haze he had forgotten all about Luis, lying in the kitchen floor in a puddle of vomit, blood trickling from his ear. Slowly, feeling like an old man, he turned his head in the direction from which the voice had come. The muscles in his neck seemed to creak as he moved, and his face felt as tight as if he’d just had it lifted, like some old Hollywood crone.

  Luis sat in an uncomfortable-looking vinyl chair under the television mounted on the wall, nursing a can of Coke. He was leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands clamped around the drink. Garraty had half-expected him to be wearing a hospital gown and have his head swaddled in thick layers of gauze, but the handyman was dressed in the brown Dickies and blue chambray shirt Garraty had come to think of as his uniform.

  “You look good,” he said. “Thought you were a goner after that fall.”

  His tongue didn’t want to cooperate, and moved slowly in his mouth. Jesus Christ, I sound like Sylvester the Cat. Thufferin’ thuccotash! The thought brought a faint smile, and the movement hurt his face.

  “Take more than a knock on the floor to break this thick skull, amigo,” Luis said, rapping on the top of his head with a fist. He flashed his small white teeth in grin. “Wish I could say you look good, too, but you look like chit.”

  Garraty wheezed out dry laughter, which burned his chest. “I feel like shit, my man. Could be worse, though.”

  Luis nodded, but didn’t say anything. Weird. Why isn’t he asking me what happened?

  Uncomfortable silence unwound between them. Garraty wasn’t sure if Luis was waiting for something from him. An apology, maybe, for the sad state of the kitchen and what had happened there. God knew he deserved it, but Garraty wasn’t sure what to say. Sorry about puking my guts out and then leaving it for you to fall in, buddy, or perhaps I hope the stains came out of your clothes without too much trouble.

  Perhaps not.

  He tried a different tack. “How’s my face? Do I still have my boyish good looks?”

  Garraty lifted one hand, intending to see if he could get a feel for how bad the damage to his cheek was by running his fingers across the stitches—or heaven forbid, staples—but something caught his arm and held it. He tried with the other arm and found the same limited motion and resistance. What the fuck? With some effort, he raised his head so he could look down.

  Fleece-lined leather straps encircled each wrist, lashing him to the rails on either side of the bed. Like they think I might fly over the cuckoo’s nest. He yanked on each, hard enough to rattle the steel rails, but the restraints held tight. The only thing he succeeded in doing was waking up the slumbering pain in the wounds on his hands. Suddenly he felt panicked, trapped like a wild animal. Despite the fiery torment that lanced his injured body, he wanted nothing more at that moment than to stand up. To be in control of himself.

  “What the hell, Luis?”

  Luis averted his eyes, first casting them to the window, then to the floor, and finally settling on a spot on the wall behind Garraty’s head. He opened his mouth to speak, thought better and shut it, then opened it again and said in a soft voice, “What you expect, esse? They don’t want you to kill yourself.”

  The words hit Garraty like, well, like a late-model blue Prius hurtling through a fog-laced night. He thought he felt his chin bump against his chest when his mouth fell open. And here was the rub: they really did think he was crazy, so if he tried to tell them about the boy that would pretty much cinch the deal in everyone’s eyes. Better to remain silent and be thought a loon than open your mouth and remove all doubt. The little fucker had really put Garraty in a spot. There was no doubt that the kid was real. Despite almost bleeding to death and then being out for God knew how long, he remembered how goddamn solid the dead boy felt. Ghosts didn’t send shock tremors up your leg when you kicked them.

  “I didn’t try to kill myself, Luis. Do I strike you as the suicidal type?” When he blinked, his eyes felt grainy. “Is that what they told you?”

  Luis stood and crossed the room. He set the can of Coke on the overbed table—made of the same cheap veneered pressboard as the doors—and leaned in close so he could keep his voice low.

  “They din tell me nothing, man. I asked, but the doctor wouldn’t say chit. Hippo laws, or something. I overheard him talking to a policeman.”

  Garraty closed his burning eyes. Christ. Luis, the old lady, paramedics, doctors, and now cops. What next, a story on 60 Minutes?

  “What did he tell the cop?”

  “He say that you—”

  “I can take over from here, Mr. Mendoza,” said Dr. Redman from the doorway, and Luis jumped like he’d been goosed. The doctor flashed a too-wide smile at the two of them, and Garraty wondered if he knew it made him look about twelve. Doctors should be old and bald—though Redman was working on the latter rather admirably—with liver-spotted hands and lined faces. This guy barely looked old enough to shave. “If you’ll give us a few minutes alone...”

  Luis told Garraty he’d be outside, then slipped through the door and pulled it closed behind him, so eager to get away that he forgot his soft drink. Garraty waited until the door shut, then yanked on his restraints and rattled the bed rails again.

  “What the fuck, doc? I didn’t try to kill myself.”

  Dr. Redman’s eyes narrowed, and the too-wide smile slipped a notch. He doesn’t like the profanity. Maybe he should ease up a bit. Lots of Jesus freaks in this part of the country, ready to be offended at the drop of a hat by a stray word, and no one ever caught many flies with vinegar. Hell, his own daddy had been one, of a sort. When it suited him, anyway.

  “Let me try that again,” Garraty said, making sure he shitcanned the hard edge in his voice. He let his hands fall back to the mattress. “I’m upset at the accusation, Dr. Redman. Sorry for cussing at you. I’m not suicidal.”

  “Mr. Garraty, we know why you moved into the trailer park, and we know about your job.” The doctor looked pointedly at him. “Your wounds appear to be self-inflicted.”

  Redman reached into one of the pockets of his lab jacket and extracted the small paring knife with the pearled green handle and copper rivets, holding it between two fingers like a dead mouse he might have found in a dark pantry. The blade was clean and shiny now, as if it had never been painted with Garraty’s blood.

  “This is what you used,” he said, crossing the room. He wheeled the overbed table aside so he could stand right next to Garraty. “The paramedics found it in your hand.”

  “I was attacked, doc.” Garraty’s mind raced. He knew better than to tell the doctor about the dead boy, but maybe he could pull off something. Like a home invasion. Once more, he found himself thinking of the soli
dity of the boy when he had kicked him, how it sent a jolt of pain up his leg. There had to be some sign of him in the trailer. Had to. “Luis said you were talking to the police earlier. Didn’t they find evidence?”

  “If they did, they certainly didn’t mention it to me. I know I may look young, Mr. Garraty, but I assure you I’ve seen my share of self-inflicted wounds. I’d stand before the Almighty Himself and attest—”

  “And I’m telling you that you weren’t there. I was. I know what happened.” He riffled through his memories, making sure things were in order before he continued. The best lies were rooted in truth. Hadn’t someone famous said that? No problem. He could tell all kinds of truth. All he needed to do was leave out the part about his attacker being a ghost. “Look, you probably know Luis and I had been drinking, right?”

  Redman nodded. Garraty wondered if he knew about the vomit in the kitchen. If he were in the position of the paramedics and he’d seen something like that, he’d probably blab it to anyone willing to listen. Either way, someone had probably let slip that Luis was coated in puke, or at least that he reeked of it.

  “I tripped and landed on my coffee table, which broke. One of the splinters of wood did this.” Garraty pointed his chin at his left arm, which he lifted and turned so the bandaged underside was visible.

  “Mr. Garraty, there’s no way a piece of broken wood would make such a clean—”

  “Ask Luis. He saw.”

  Garraty remembered the way Luis had lumbered across the room, arms waving for balance as he cried chit, man, dat table fuck up your arm. He’d back Garraty’s story completely. At least this part of it. Dr. Redman was free to go fuck himself sideways.

  “He went into the kitchen for some paper towels, but fell and knocked himself out.”

  At this, Redman’s nose wrinkled slightly, like he smelled something unpleasant.

  “Right after Luis fell,” Garraty continued, “someone banged on the door. When I opened it, this wiry little guy—barely even a teenager—on the steps rushed me and knocked me down. I think he was high on something. Acting crazy as a rat. He ran into the kitchen, and I heard him slamming and banging around in there. I got up to see what he was doing, and the next thing I knew, he was coming after me with my own god—er, knife, trying to kill me.”