Charnel House (13 page)

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 solidity 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.”

Garraty set his jaw in defiance. Who was this little fuckball to question him, anyway? Sure, the story might not be the
exact
truth, but it was close enough. There was something crazy going on here, something
supernatural
, and he didn’t have time to sit around jawing with this teenager to keep himself out of the nuthouse. What he needed to be doing was getting the fuck out of here. Back to the trailer to pack his shit and blow town faster than a ten-dollar whore. North, maybe. The Chevy plant up in Tennessee might hire him. Surely all the years he put in with GE would be worth something to them. He might have to live in another trailer for a while, but with a little time he could save up a down payment for a house, even if alimony and child support payments slowed him down. Who knew? Tina might even want to get back together eventually, to start a new life in a new place where Garraty didn’t drink too much and there wasn’t a dead kid trying to gut him. Distance would fix things. It had to.

“I realize your story might
seem
real to you, Mr. Garraty, but you yourself admitted that you’d been drinking. It was more than a little, wasn’t it?” The look on the doctor’s face belied his easy tone. “I think maybe it was a
lot
.”

“Son, I don’t give a good goddamn what you think,” Garraty said. He felt the anger rising in him. This smug little prick didn’t know shit from shinola, and while Garraty may not have known much more, the one thing he
did
know was that he hadn’t done all this damage to himself. No matter how much beer he’d had.

“There’s no need to use—”

“You get these fucking things off of me
now
,” Garraty roared, his eyes flashing. He jerked on the restraints that tethered him to the bed. “Then you go call the police to come take my statement, and I’ll consider not suing your sorry ass for malpractice!”

Dr. Redman recoiled as if he’d been slapped. His butt bumped against the overbed table and sent it rolling across the floor. It banged into the wall and the can of Coke toppled over, glugging its contents out over the veneered pressboard surface. The two men stared at one another, each waiting for the other to back down. A thin caramel stream of cola ran over the edge of the table and spattered on the tiles below.

Finally, Dr. Redman sighed and said, “I’ll have someone remove the wrist restraints. For now. I’m ordering a psych eval, but if you give me any trouble I’ll have you involuntarily committed. Don’t test me, Mr. Garraty. Sheriff Langston will back any decision I make, of this I am certain. I only want to help you, even if you don’t agree.”

“Fine. Just get these things off me.”

Two minutes after Redman left the room, an orderly entered and unbuckled the padded straps encircling Garraty’s wrists, then set about cleaning up the spilled drink.
Much better.
Garraty raised his arms and stretched as best he could, relishing the feel of freedom the simple act brought. Maybe in a while he would try getting out of bed and going for a walk. But first, he needed to concoct a better story for the cops. They wouldn’t be as forgiving as the good doctor. They were trained in bullshit detection. He thanked the orderly and let himself sink back into the pillows. As he thought, he mindlessly traced the knotty stitch-line that traversed his cheek with one finger. Before long, he drifted away to a place without dreams.