by Kevin Wright
Peter swallowed the pre-vomit saliva flooding under his tongue and stood, steady, or steady-ish.
“You okay, Pete?” Carmine asked.
“I can do this,” Peter said to himself. “Yeah, I’m okay.” He reached out his fingers to the woman’s neck; a black “X” was marked where Detective Winters said it would be. Peter placed his gloved fingers there, trying not to look at the woman’s face, and pressed in. For ten seconds, twenty seconds, he held his breath and his fingers there, pressed into that pale yielding flesh. He felt nothing. This time he was sure. Thankfully, she didn’t spring awake and try to kill him. He stepped back from the car and exhaled.
“Here you go, Pete.” Carmine’s face was pale. He unfolded a run sheet and held it out. “If you need a hand with it, I’ll help. Couple things we should write.”
“Thanks.”
“I shall require a copy before you leave,” Detective Winters stalked off. “This way.”
“The Benson Manor, cold brick asylum of old that it is, stands in the night like some lost obsidian ziggurat of the demon gods of Ur. A monument to misery. A garden of lost hopes, misspent youth, memories twisted by hate and neglect, by hope, by mad cackles in the night. Testimony to the influence of the dark, interference, modern society. Where the dead go who have yet to die, would want to die if they had the capacity to want. A factory of misery and human waste, polluting this river not with the toxins that the mills pump, but with emotional waste, psychic waste, toxic in its own right. A burgeoning—”
“Dude,” Peter slammed his pen down on his paperwork tin, “my dad’s in there. It can’t be that bad.”
“Delusions. Your father?” Detective Winters’ pale blue eyes bored into him. “Have you set foot within?”
Peter looked him in the eye for the briefest of moments, and then his gaze faltered, falling softly down to the concrete. “I … I haven’t had the chance lately,” Peter said. “I’ve been busy moving into my sister’s apartment. She’s gone for a while.”
“What room?” Detective Winters asked.
“One-eighteen.” Peter handed him one of the carbon copies of the report he had just finished.
“Nathaniel Reynolds, a lifetime working the steel mills, a craftsman, an artist, to end here. You should visit him,” Detective Winters said, eyes piercing in the night. “Did you get it checked, Peter?”
“What?”
“Your shoulder.”
“Uh, yeah, the ER doc took a look at it.”
“Good.”
Detective Winters stalked back toward the police tape, his eyes scanning the ground for only he knew what.
Chapter 4.
THE LONG NIGHT had ended. The screen door screeched like Godzilla as he stepped in through the back door of his sister’s three-family house, past his new neighbor’s cars, past numerous ‘A’s’ and ‘8’s’ spray-painted on the garage. Pausing, he stared at the graffiti. Whatever. The house once was immaculate, though that was five or six years ago. His sister and her husband had just moved in. It was cozy back then, clean. The neighborhood had gone downhill, though, and now gang markers and litter and a million other things poisoned the view.
Peter sighed; his socks were sopping cold with sweat. Definitely bring spares next shift. Up the stairs, he squished. He turned the key in the lock and stepped into his sister’s apartment. His keys jingled as he threw them onto the kitchen counter. He locked the door and slid the chain on.
Food? No. Sleep? Yeah. Shower? Maybe. The bright morning sun shone in through the windows. With his skin clammy, pale, and his eyes sore, and a vague feeling of nausea, he just felt crappy in general. Have to get used to the overnights. Damn, that sun’s bright. He tugged down the shades and felt immediately better.
Then he stripped his clothes off and threw them in the laundry basket in the bathroom. Way too much pink in here. Poor Kenny.
He took a shower.
He toweled off.
Laundry needed doing already, and he’d only been there a day. Winthrop’s litter box needed decontamination, too. Nasty. That could and would wait, too. He flopped on the couch, television remote in hand, even before he was comfortable. Scrolling through the television channels, he found a show about stocks and bonds narrated by someone who was, apparently by their tone, dead ten years. He left it.
Not even the fight his neighbors were having downstairs and the cries of their baby seeping up through the floors could keep Peter from where he wanted to be. Thin floors.
He fell asleep.
In his slumber, vaguely, he heard pounding.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
It was summer, now. His father and he had built a set of stairs to the porch in their backyard. Peter was small then and not much help, but his father had let him do some of the work, mostly pounding in nails, immediately followed by his father yanking them out and putting them in straight.
It was before his parents’ divorce, in their old house in Amesbury. Things were different then; Peter was happy, so were his parents. Hell, even his sister Michelle was happy back then, before she went off to college. That damn pounding again, frantic now, it wasn’t part of his dream; a baby was crying, too.
“What the—?” Peter muttered, lurching up off the couch. The pounding was from his front door. Someone was banging the hell out of it. “I’m coming.” Peter stumbled into the kitchen and to the front door. The Louisville slugger next to the fridge was in hand as he peered out the peephole in the door.
It was a woman. She had a baby in her arms.
“Ayudame! Ayudame!” she cried, looking frantically down the stairs. “Por favor!” She slapped on the door with her palm. “Ayudame!”
“One second, ah, uno, uh, momento, senorita,” Peter said, fumbling more with the Spanish than the chain lock. He turned the deadbolt, then the door knob. “What’s the matter, senorita?” And she blasted through him like a running back, knocking him into the refrigerator. “Jesus!”
“Can I help you?” Peter asked, but then he turned as footsteps pounded up the stairs from the hall. Large man, very large, tattoos, shit! MEAT CLEAVER! Peter fumbled the bat.
“I’ll fucking kill you, Therese! You and that baby, I’ll fucking kill you both!” roared the man. He saw Peter, and his eyes ignited. “You fucking him? Cabrone!”
Peter slammed the door, but the man’s tattooed arm snaked in first, crack, and the man screamed.
“Mother fucker!” the man screamed. “Mother fucking cabrone! You’re dead, too, Therese!”
It was all Peter could do to keep the door shut. With one foot on the floor and the other on the refrigerator, he heaved one last time, managing to link the chain lock.
“A chain?! A fucking chain!” The man pounded on the door. “You think that’ll keep me out you fucking bitch?!” His tattooed arm reached up towards the chain, when, whack, whack, Peter swung the bat.
“ARRRGG!” The arm slipped out.
Peter danced on the balls of his feet in front of the door, his hands choked up on the cocked bat. He glanced at the phone, “Call nine one — what the?”
“Oh, baby, baby, you alright?” Therese shouldered past Peter toward the locked door. “Oh, Carlo-honey, I love you!”
“Wait! Don’t—”
The baby wailed.
She undid the chain.
“Are you fucking nuts?” Peter grabbed at her shoulder. “He’ll kill y—”
Therese shrugged him off, flung the door open, and rushed out. “Oh, baby, baby.” She knelt. “He hurt you? Is it broken? Aye, dio!”
On the top stair, the man sat. He just grunted and cradled his arm across his lap. The meat cleaver lay on the ground. “I’m so sorry, Carlo, I’m so sorry,” Therese said. “Here, come, I’ll make you something. Ice.” Therese, baby and all, pulled Carlo to his feet, and they walked down the stairs.
“What the hell…?”
Peter lowered the bat.
The phone rang.
* * * *
The old man steppe
d a feather tread between the realm of coma and consciousness. Knights in armor galloped across fields of death and glory, though time records mostly the glory. Dragons were slain and damsels rescued, for that is the purpose and the way of knights. Names like Arthur, Tristram, and, of course, Lancelot. Men of action and destiny, driven men, hard men. Men like he had been, though he didn’t know it now.
Then he was on an island, or was it a desert? Sand blasted through the air, caking his flesh and uniform and the inside of his mouth as steel tanks roared across the flat scape toward him. And he led the men toward them, toward death, once again. Men? No, they were not men; they were boys, really. They followed and he led, led toward the churning beasts, the whir of bullets and bombs scattering his thoughts. They are all screaming, dying, and it is his fault. He must do something. The beast roars near, gears churning and then it is suddenly gone, washed out by voices. He heard voices, dim, irregular.
They meandered like a blind kitten down the vast corridors that lead from coma to consciousness. Alive still it was after these long years, though he knew not how many, would not have believed how many if he could believe. If he could do anything. The voice, the one voice, the soft voice was missing, missing after all these years. The voice, and a name to go along with it, Emily. It had been a comforting voice. Now it was gone.
Other voices, other voices now…
“Hey, dad, Dad? Wake up. Wake Up!”
“Please don’t shake him. He’s on medicine to help him sleep.”
“Why? He’s in here for rehab. He’s almost done.”
“It was a tough night last night.”
“I know, I was here. I’m an EMT.”
“Well, how nice for you. I guess with all the noise the ambulance and police cars made, your father had some, um, trouble. The night nurse felt it best to give him something.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll be going now, he needs his rest.”
“Nurse? What kind of trouble? Why’re his legs in traction again?”
“Apparently, your father decided to take a trip to the bathroom last evening, without telling someone. Fell flat on his face. Caught his legs on the bedrail. Reinjured them again.”
“What? Why the hell didn’t you call me? Did his doc see him? How bad are they?”
“I just came on.”
“Did he go to the emergency room?”
“And, as I was saying, I’ve never had him as a patient before. I’ll look through his chart. You can ask me on your way out. I didn’t write the notes, though.”
“Wait a second.”
“I’ll just leave you two alone.”
“Wait a second. I want to talk to … fucking bitch.”
“Well, I came to talk to you, Dad, some bad stuff happened last night. To you, too, apparently. I don’t know what to do. Work called me this morning, suspended me, some stupid violation, or something. Said it was clinical. And my partner wrote me up. After I — well, never mind.”
Silence.
“And I’d just gotten back from the hospital. Got checked out. Some psycho-dude bit me last night. On the shoulder, still freaking kills. ER doc says I should be okay, though. Tests were negative, he said. Gave me some antibiotics and stuff, too, just in case. Says he’ll call tonight or tomorrow. Says I have to go back in two days if I don’t hear from him. Got a tetanus, too.
“And then, get this, the doc tells me I have to fill out some exposure form that should’ve been done by the police on scene. Says they’ll want to talk to me. So I have to go to the police station, too, probably. Carmine lied to them. Doc said it wouldn’t have been a big deal if I’d have done it on scene. Some protocol thing. Now, I’m suspended and might be in trouble with the cops. I don’t even have any health insurance to pay for this. Fucking Carmine.”
Silence.
“Oh, Shelly sent a postcard, says she’s doing good. I forgot it, just thought you should know, though. She’s gonna send me some money, to help out; I have a bit. Sends her love. She and Kenny are doing good in Florida. Kenny Junior, too, though I guess he has the flu.
“Well, I gotta go, dad. I’m going to call your doc first thing tomorrow morning. Get you the hell out of here. We’ll find a real rehab place. I saw that nurse in here last time I was here. She’s a liar. I’ll see you later, or tomorrow, or whenever.”
More silence.
The man’s eyelids creaked open as though on rusty hinges. Under his wrinkled brow, his eyes looked left and right, sensitive to the light. It was autumn, though; he could smell it, crisp, cold. It would be a beautiful night. In the parking lot outside his open window stood trees, a few scraggly brown leaves still attached, he thought, squinting. It was tough to tell, everything was blurry.
There was a man snoring in the bed next to him.
“Ativan,” said the man; in the back of his mind, he thought he’d heard someone say it, sometime, recently? A woman?
Pushing up in bed, he took in his surroundings; his eyes were adjusting, less blurry now. He was in a hospital, though he didn’t know which one. Tubes and wires of various sorts ran underneath his sheets, and he felt them pull as he adjusted himself. He tore his blanket half-off. Underneath the skin over his stomach, like some burrowing brown worm, was a tube. Following it with his eyes, it was connected to a clear container on a hanger. In it was some sort of brown liquid. “What in—?” He pulled the tube from his stomach, held it up, dripping, and then tossed it aside.
Tied to the bedrail by a cord was a small plastic cylinder with the word nurse stenciled on it. On top was a button. He pushed it, waited, looking around, expecting something to happen.
Nothing did, so he pulled the blanket off and stood. The hospital gown he wore was powder blue, with hundreds of little red triangles on it. A rather painful pulling sensation suddenly jolted down to his — “Mother of God!” said the man, staring in deserved horror at the tube sticking out from the tip of his penis. At the other end of the tube was a clear, urine-filled bag, hooked to the bed.
Like the stomach tube, the man pulled it out. Unlike the stomach tube, it hurt. It hurt a lot. He grimaced, but that was all.
“Hey, old man,” a voice said; it was the man in the next bed.
“Old man?” The old man turned. “Reynolds, your name is Nathaniel Reynolds. I don’t know you.”
“You’re beautiful.” Nathaniel rubbed his eyes. “Wanna cookie?”
“What is my name?” the old man asked.
“Shirley,” Nathaniel answered.
“Shirley?” He shook his head. “Nay. I think not.”
“Yup, it is.”
“What place is this?”
“This is prison,” Nathaniel said. “We’ve been bad. My legs are busted. Wanna see?”
The old man looked down at Nathaniel. “Where is here?”
Nathaniel just grinned, knowingly, and winked. Then he started munching on his pillow.
“And, who is Emily?” the old man asked. “I have names, her name, and her voice, in my head, but I don’t know why. She’s not my wife.”
“I hear voices, too,” Nathaniel admitted.
The old man sat down on a chair positioned by the head of his bed. A book lay on the nightstand, a book of knights. “Knights.” He fingered the worn cover. “A quest.”
“She said you liked it,” Nathaniel said.
Then the old man opened it to a page marked with a Chinese food menu. “I know these stories. She read this to me. Emily.”
“Every night I’ve been here,” Nathaniel said.
“When will she be back?” the old man looked up.
“She … she won’t. She’s dead,” Nathaniel said. “She was murdered. Late last night. Some psycho. Been shooting a lot of people, lately. Best nurse, only nurse in this damn place. She was getting into her car. He was in it already. Shot her and then ate her soul. I saw it.”
“She was a good woman,” the old man said. “I wish I knew her.” He started, turned. “You say he ate her soul? You saw it?”
“I tried to stop him, but,” he started sobbing, “my legs.”
“Did you see him?” the old man asked. “What did he look like?”
Nathaniel told him.
The man’s eyes constricted. “I must leave this place, Nathaniel. Fear not. For I shall return for you, if and when I am able.” He strode for the door. The powder blue johnny he was wearing almost covered his knees in front; in back it covered less.
Nathaniel looked up at him, his pupils suddenly dilating in the light. He giggled, “You’re naked under those clothes.”
Chapter 5.
THE MESSAGE LIGHT blinked on the answering machine.
It was night. Peter balanced his pizza box in one hand, flicked on the light, and pressed play. A robotic voice told him, “YOU HAVE TWO MESSAGES. MESSAGE ONE,” then it changed to a man’s voice, “Hello Peter, this is Detective Mackenzie, Colton Falls P.D. I was just contacted by a Dr. Cummings of the Colton Falls General Hospital with regards to your failure to fill out a 69-A after an exposure last night. We need to talk. Come down to the station tomorrow morning at nine…” Beep! Another voice chimed in, “Hi honey, it’s mom, how you doing? Settling in good? How’s the job? Save anyone, yet? I just got out of work, I’m going out with Shirley tonight, seafood. I should be back around 8:30 or so. Call me, and be careful. Love you, bye.” Beep!
“Nine o’clock,” Peter muttered, looking at the answering machine. “Frickin’ cops. Frickin’ Carmine.” Peter placed the pizza box on the coffee table, opened a bottle of root beer, and turned on the television.
Buffy was on.
Peter opened the pizza box, and a balmy blast of pizza-goodness engulfed his face. He shook ample amounts of red pepper on it, then just gazed at it for a moment. It looked good. He kicked off his shoes and pulled off his socks and stretched his toes on the carpet. The sinews in his body, wound taut over the past twenty-four hours, finally were loosening, relaxing. With a fizz, he cracked open the root beer and took a swig. Mmmmm… He could feel the stress oozing out from his pores. Nothing till tomorrow. He settled back into the couch, a slice of pizza folded lengthwise in his hand.