by Stella Noir
This place is more like a mausoleum than a hospital, I thought as I rubbed my feet together under the covers, willing them to stop resembling ice cubes. As I lay there I thought about the dream with the phone call and Jake whispering into my ear and was surprised by how similar the two events felt when I thought about them together. I suppose the memory of Jake’s overwhelming effect on me was just really strong in my subconscious right now and that’s probably what caused the dream. But for some reason, the dream reminded me of something else that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Something from a long time ago.
I drifted in and out of consciousness with thoughts, or dreams, of Jake whispering in my ear, that then turned into Jake calling me on an old fashioned phone and telling me all the things he would do to me when I got better and got out of the hospital. He told me he liked to watch me walk around the big dark house in my nightgown and that he was always watching me, even when he was talking to me on the phone.
I woke up the next day to the sound of the nurse setting a domed tray down on a rolling table next to the bed. It was one of those hospital tables with legs on only one side that pushed across the bed in front of me so that I could eat where I was sitting. She used a button on the side of the bed to move the head up, then moved my pillows around behind me so that I straightened up.
“Where am I?” I asked, taking the cover off the tray in front of me and revealing a cup of coffee, a glass of orange juice, scrambled eggs and toast.
“You’re in the hospital, young lady. You were involved in a bad accident and you’ve been asleep for days.” She still had the old fashioned nurses uniform on and wore an old lady scowl with it.
“I’ve been asleep for days? How many? What happened to me? In the accident, I mean?”
“You were brought here in the middle of the night, oh it’s been 5…no, 6 days now. I can’t tell you anything about what happened before you got here, though. That would be something to talk to the doctor about.”
“The doctor? When will I see him?”
“Oh, he’s very busy. You’ll be seeing him soon, I’m sure. But what you need to do right now is rest. Go ahead and eat your breakfast and when you’re done I’ll be back in to get the tray.”
“But how will I let you know that I’m done? I can’t find a call button.”
“I’ll know,” she said as she slipped back out into the hallway. I sat there for a moment staring at the door. I had asked her all the questions I had intended to, but I still didn’t know a goddamned thing about where I was or how I got there. I pushed the rolling table away from the bed and tried, once again, to go out into the hall and find out where I was. I got myself into a sitting position, but after a few seconds of woozy swaying and a feeble attempt at standing, I got back under the covers.
Maybe I’m worse off than I realized, I thought as I inched my way back into bed and covered myself up. I pulled the rolling food table back over the bed and decided to give the eggs a try. They weren’t bad, especially when shoveled onto the buttered toast, and the coffee was actually pretty decent. I ate everything in the eerie silence I was getting used to, then put the cover back on the tray and pushed the table away from the bed. My eyes started to get heavy and my head fell back and to the side. I closed my eyes, thinking it would just be a few minutes until the nurse came back and that I would just rest them a bit. I wanted to ask her more questions and see if I could, at least, turn the TV on and break the overbearing silence for a little while.
The next thing I knew I was laying on my back again and the nurse was standing over me.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Scott. How are you feeling today?”
“Today?” I asked, rubbing my eyes and trying to get the face in front of me to come into focus.
“But I saw you this morning. I ate breakfast and…”
“That was yesterday, dear. You fell asleep after breakfast and haven’t been up since.”
“What? I slept for a whole day? What time is it?”
“It’s just after one o’clock, dear. You must be hungry by now. I’ll bring in a tray of lunch for you.”
“Wait. When can I see the doctor?”
“Oh, he’s already been in to see you today, dear. He was in yesterday afternoon as well. He took all your vitals and said you’re recovering very well. You just need your rest and you’ll be fine,” she said with an awkward smile that looked like it took a bit more effort than it was worth.
“Can’t he come back in so I can talk to him? I’d really like to know what happened and when I can expect to leave here.”
“I’ll put a call in to him and let him know that you’d like to see him. I can’t promise anything, though. He’s a very busy man. And I wouldn’t be worrying too much about leaving here anytime soon if I were you. What you need to be concerning yourself with right now is eating and resting and getting yourself good and healthy. I’ll be back with your lunch in a bit.”
And before I could get another question out she was gone. I just lay there, staring at the thousands of holes in the ceiling and wondering how it was that an old lady like that could get in and out of this room so goddamned fast. Maybe she has roller skates on that I can’t see, I thought as I fought the foggy feeling in my brain.
I had drifted off again but woke to the sound of the metal food tray being set down next to me. The nurse elevated my head and pushed the food table in front of me like before, and managed to make it out the door again before I even had a chance to collect my thoughts and find out what hospital I was at.
I picked up the domed lid and set it to the side of the tray. The shiny metal lid somehow felt heavier today than it had yesterday on the breakfast tray. I didn’t see how I could be weaker today though and thought I really should talk to the doctor and find out what, if anything, was wrong with me. But I also figured I should probably just eat and rest like the nurse had suggested, even though I wasn’t very hungry. Lunch was a brothy soup and a ground meat sandwich of some kind, which seemed like tuna, but didn’t have any kind of tuna flavor. I ate slower than usual partly because I wasn’t very hungry, and partly because I wasn’t particularly excited to put the unidentifiable sandwich meat in my mouth. About halfway through lunch, I started to feel extremely tired again. I was even having a hard time getting my hand up to my mouth and that’s when I started to wonder if my food was being drugged. It wasn’t even a normal tired feeling where you think maybe you’ll close your eyes for a minute or two and rest. It was a full on, room-tilting, eyes-closing-against-my-will tired that I had only ever felt since I had been in this crazy hospital.
But that’s preposterous, I thought as my eyes started to close. Why on earth would my food be drugged…
ABBY
T he dream came after I drifted into what felt like a drugged stupor. The telephone was there again, ringing that weird old ring that for some reason always sent chills down my spine. I guess because the only place I’d ever heard that kind of shrill ring was in old black and white movies, and mostly horror movies. Usually, in those old movies, the phone seemed to ring forever, probably because everyone knew that there was some creepy killer on the other end. And when they did finally answer the phone it was in a creepy voice with some strange old-fashioned accent.
I was in the same hospital bed in the same dark room I’d woken up in that first day, only the room was much bigger. For some reason I was afraid to move, but when I finally got up the courage to look to the left and then to the right, I realized that the room was enormous. It stretched on and on in each direction and became two long, dark hallways, each narrowing down on both sides until they came to an inky, blacked-out end. I turned my head to the nightstand and saw the big, black, old-fashioned phone that had been ringing for at least a full minute, then took the receiver off the hook. It was almost too heavy for me to pick up, but I dragged it to my ear and let it lay next to me on the pillow my head rested on.
“Hello?” I asked, but my mouth hadn’t moved. My eyes were opening and closi
ng very slowly as I waited with dread to hear who was on the other end. It had been ringing for a very long time so I hoped that whoever was calling had decided to hang up because I didn’t feel strong enough to hang the receiver back up myself.
“Hello, Abby. This is your doctor. I need you to perform some tests for me.”
The voice was dark and far away and almost had a sing-song quality to it. Like the person attached to it was smiling.
“Tests?” I said…or thought. I’m still not entirely sure which.
“Yes. Now, listen to me carefully. I want you to pull up your hospital gown and place the mouthpiece of the telephone receiver on your pubic hair. I want you to rub it around so that I can hear it.”
“What?”
“No more questions, Abby. Do as you’re told.”
This didn’t seem right, but I didn’t feel like I had any choice. He was the doctor. I pushed the covers down and lifted my gown. The air in the dark room was cool, but it didn’t bother me. I decided to try and fool him, though, because I didn’t believe that he would know whether I touched the receiver to my pubic hair or not.
“Are you doing what I asked, Abby?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think you can fool me, Abby? Do what I asked. Now.”
The voice was so firm and commanding, and yet so eerie and mocking. It scared me and I knew that I didn’t have a choice. I knew that I had to do what the doctor told me to do. I dragged the receiver down and rested the mouthpiece on my pubic hair. I could have sworn I heard someone walking toward me in the dark hallway at one end of the room, but I was too terrified to turn my head and look. I closed my eyes and prayed that this would all be over with, that if I just did what he said, the doctor would leave me alone.
“Good girl. Thank you for cooperating, Abby. Now I want you to put your fingers inside yourself.”
As I listened to the voice and contemplated what it told me to do I realized that I didn’t have the receiver up to my ear anymore. I didn’t understand where the voice was coming from or how I was still able to hear it so clearly, and my breathing became more erratic as I started to feel panicky.
“Did you hear what I said, Abby? Spread your legs and put your fingers all the way inside yourself. Now.”
The voice sounded like it was closer now, but I was too scared to open my eyes and find out if someone was standing near me. I did what the doctor told me to do and ran my hand down my stomach and over my pubic hair, then opened up the lips with my fingers and slid them inside my already wet vagina.
“Yes, that’s right. Now move your fingers in and out.”
The voice sounded like it was right next to me now and the combination of the fear I was feeling and the sensation of my fingers thrusting inside me sent tingles coursing throughout my body. I held the mouthpiece of the receiver in place so it wouldn’t fall away and I continued to thrust, hearing the sounds I made and knowing that the doctor was listening too.
“Yes, Abby. Keep going.”
The voice was becoming distorted, like on a phone with a bad connection and felt eerily dark and far away, but I could still somehow hear it right next to my head. Goosebumps ran down my spine as I felt someone’s hot breath on my neck, then a surge of warmth spread through my body. I opened my eyes and arched my back and as I came my head turned in the direction of the voice. I gasped and screamed at what I saw. There was Jake crouched down next to the bed, smiling the creepiest smile I had ever seen in my life.
I woke up completely covered in sweat, still feeling the scream in my throat, and once again the room was completely dark. I looked around and was relieved to see that it appeared to be its normal size, but felt paralyzed in the darkness that made the room look exactly the same in every other way as it had in my dream. I kept expecting to turn my head and see Jake, crouched and skulking around the side of the bed, with that creepy smile on his face. My mouth was dry and my eyes weren’t focusing properly and it took me a minute or two to bring everything together in my head. I thought about how I had felt like I’d been drugged before I fell asleep and between that and the horribly creepy dream I had just experienced, I started to panic.
Oh God! They’re drugging me! I know they are! I have to get out of here!
I pulled the covers to the side and swung my legs off the bed. My head was still woozy and every time I moved the room started to spin, but I just took it slow. Now that I knew something was wrong I was determined to get past that damned door and see what was out there.
I made it across the room by hanging on different pieces of furniture again and used all my strength to pull the door open. The hallway was dark and silent like it had been the other night, but I didn’t let my cold feet turn me back. I shuffled out into the hall and heard the door close behind me with a click. I steadied myself against the cold wall and slowly looked in both directions. In one direction it looked like there was nothing more than a bunch of doors to patient rooms and a small window at the end. But when I looked to the left I noticed that there was some sort of desk area not too far away, and I hoped that that might be where the exit was located. As I made my way down the hall, clutching and leaning as I shuffled along, I heard a faucet dripping off in the distance, which only added to the ominous atmosphere of the hallway.
All I need is for an old phone to start ringing and it’ll be like I’m in my very own horror movie, I thought as I walked around an old empty metal cart that was up against the wall in my path. The dream I had just woken up from flashed into my consciousness again as I crept down the hall and suddenly I remembered something from my childhood that I had not thought of for many years that made every hair on my body stand on end. When I was in grade school I did get a weird phone call. I was at my grandparent’s house in the country and they had one of those old phones. I stood completely still in the dark hallway as I was suddenly taken back to that time when I visited my grandparent’s house. They were in the garden and I was playing on the patio just outside the door to my grandfather’s den. I’d heard the phone ringing for a very long time and decided that I was old enough to answer it, and besides, it sounded so sad just ringing in an empty room like that. All I really remembered about the phone call was that there was a man on the other end and he asked me to do some things with the phone under my clothes. Then my grandmother came in and asked me who was on the phone with a concerned look on her face, but when she took the receiver from me and asked who it was he hung up. She kept asking me over and over who it was and what he had said to me on the phone and I just burst out crying, but mostly because she was scaring me. The way she was acting made me feel like what I had done was very bad and I never told a single person what he had asked me to do.
My memory of that event and the realization of what the man on the phone said to me sent chills down my spine. It was something I hadn’t thought about in years, but what that man on the phone and what the voice in my dream told me to do were the same crazy thing. They both asked me to put the mouthpiece of the phone on my pubic hair so that they could hear it. And in both cases, I lied and said I was doing it when I wasn’t. I tried to fool the doctor in my dream the same way I tried to food the man on the phone. But the man on the phone way back then in my childhood never realized that I was lying. The doctor in my dream knew, though, and he scared me so much that I finally did what he told me to. But the thing that startled me the most, the thing that had my head reeling, was how what they both asked me to do made me feel. I had never admitted it to myself back then and I almost couldn’t admit it to myself now, but being told what to do by both of them really excited me.
I couldn’t understand why I was having this dream now, though, and why Jake had been in it.
Maybe that was why I loved it so much when Jake whispered in my ear, I thought.
Even though I was fascinated by my memory and the dream, it was also incredibly creepy and unnerving and it wasn’t making the walk down this dark hallway and more pleasant. And what I needed to do right then was ge
t out of there.
I came to the first doorway past mine on my side of the wall and the door was open. I looked inside and the room was dark and empty. I kept walking and glanced into the room just across the hall to find the exact same thing, another empty room. I kept inching along the wall and, as I got closer, I realized that the desk that I had seen in the dark was, in fact, a nurse’s station and that there was an elevator across the hall. I wondered why no nurses were manning the station, why there were no lights on anywhere, and why there seemed to be no one around at all. I didn’t know if there were any other patients, but the two rooms that were closest to the nurses station that I had passed were empty and I still had never seen this doctor that was apparently feeding me drugs to keep me asleep. I didn’t really care what was going on in that crazy place, though. I just wanted to get on the elevator and get out of there and I was glad there was no one around to stop me.
Just as I approached the nurses station a door behind it opened and a silhouette of the nurse in the old-fashioned hat and dress appeared in the doorway.
“What are you doing out of bed, Ms. Scott?” she asked with a flat voice that made it sound more like a threat than a question. “You’re going to catch your death on this ice cold floor.” She walked toward me and as she stepped into the moonlight streaming through the window at the end of the hall, deep shadows made her stern face look like an evil mask.
“I want to see the doctor. Now,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster with a shaking, weak voice.
“That’s not possible, Ms. Scott. The doctor isn’t in the hospital right now. Please let me help you back to you room…”
“Don’t touch me!” I backed up and almost fell over, but grabbed the counter of the nurse’s station and stayed upright.
“Ms. Scott, I can see that you’re upset, but I think you’ll feel much better if you just let me help you get back to your room. You’ve been in a terrible accident and you really do need to stay in bed.” I reluctantly gave up fighting and leaned against her as she put her arms around my shoulders and ushered me back down the hall.