The Madman's Tale (13 page)

Lanky nodded, complacent in that moment, although Francis saw that he eyed Short Blond, working at the rear of the station, warily. Whatever doubts Lanky had about Short Blond’s capacity to be a child of Satan, it was clear to Francis that they had not been resolved by medication or persuasion. The tall man seemed to quiver from head to toe with anxiety. But he did not fight Nurse Bones, who approached him with a hypodermic dripping with medication, and who swiped his arm with alcohol and stiffly plunged the needle into Lanky’s skin. Francis thought it must have hurt, but Lanky showed no signs of discomfort. He stole a final long look at Short Blond, before allowing Big Black to lead him away, back to the dormitory room.

O
utside my apartment the evening traffic had increased. I could hear diesel sounds from heavy trucks, the occasional blare of a car’s horn and the constant hum of wheels against pavement. Night comes slowly in the summertime, insinuating itself like a mean thought on a happy occasion. Streaky shadows find the alleys first, then start creeping through yards and across sidewalks, up the sides of buildings, and slithering snakelike through windows, or taking purchase in the branches of shade trees until finally darkness seizes hold. Madness, I often thought, was a little like the night, because of the different ways in different years it spread itself over my heart and my imagination, sometimes harshly and quickly, other times slowly, subtly, so that I barely knew it was taking over
.

I tried to think: Had I ever known a darker night, than that one at the Western State Hospital? Or a night filled with more madness?

I went to the sink, filled a glass with water, took a gulp, and thought: I’ve left out the stench. It was a combination of human waste battling against undiluted cleansers. The stink of urine versus the smell of disinfectant. Like babies, so many old and senile patients had no control over their bowels, so the hospital reeked of accidents. To combat this, every corridor had at least two storage rooms equipped with rags, mops, and buckets filled with the harshest of chemical cleaning agents. It sometimes seemed as if there was someone constantly swabbing down a floor somewhere or another. The lye-based cleaners were fiercely powerful, they burned
your eyes when they hit the linoleum floor, and made breathing hard, as if something was clawing at your lungs
.

It was hard to anticipate when these accidents would happen. In a normal world, I suppose, one could more or less regularly identify the stresses or fears that might prompt a loss of control by some ancient person, and take steps to reduce those occurrences. It would take a little logic, a little sensitivity, and some planning and foresight. Not a big deal. But in the hospital, where all the stresses and fears that ricocheted around the hallways were so unplanned, and stemmed from so many haphazard thoughts, the idea of anticipation and avoidance was pretty much impossible
.

So, instead, we had buckets and powerful cleaners
.

And, because of the frequency that nurses and attendants were called upon to use these items, the storage rooms were rarely locked up. They were supposed to be, of course, but like so many things at the Western State Hospital, the reality of the rules gave way to a madness-defined practicality
.

What else did I remember about that night? Did it rain? Did the wind blow?

What I recalled, instead, were the sounds
.

In the Amherst Building there were nearly three hundred patients crowded into a facility originally designed for about one third that number. On any given night a few people might have been moved into one of the isolation cells up on the fourth floor that Lanky had been threatened with. The beds were jammed up next to each other, so that there was only a few inches of space between each sleeping patient. Along one side of the dorm room, there were some grimy windows. These were barred, and provided a little ventilation, although the men in the bunks beneath them frequently closed them up tight, because they were scared of what might be on the other side
.

The nighttime was a symphony of distress
.

Snoring, coughing, gurgling noises mingled with nightmares. People spoke in their dreams, to family and friends who weren’t there, to Gods who ignored their prayers, to demons that tormented them. People cried constantly, weeping endlessly through the darkest hours. Everyone slept, no one rested
.

We were locked in with all the loneliness that night brings
.

Perhaps it was the moonlight streaming through the barred windows that kept me flittering between sleep and wakefulness that night. Perhaps I was still unsettled over what had taken place during the day. Perhaps my voices were restless. I have thought about it often, for I am still not sure what kept me in that awkward stage between alertness and unconsciousness throughout the dark hours. Peter the Fireman was groaning in his sleep, tossing about fitfully in the bunk next to mine. The night was hard for him; during the daytime, he was able to maintain a reasonableness that seemed out of place in the hospital. But at night something gnawed steadily away within him. And, as I faded back and forth between these
states of anxiety, I remember seeing Lanky, several bunks distant, sitting up, legs folded like a red Indian at some tribal council, staring out across the room. I recall thinking that the tranquilizer that they gave him hadn’t done the job, for by all rights he should have been pitched into a dark, dreamless, drug-induced sleep. But whatever the impulses that had so electrified him earlier, they were easily battling the tranquilizer, and instead, he sat, mumbling to himself, gesturing with his hands like a conductor who couldn’t quite get the symphony to play at the right tempo
.

That was how I remembered him, that night, as I slipped in and out of consciousness myself, right to the moment I had felt a hand on my shoulder, shaking me awake. That was the moment, I thought. Start right there
.

And so, I took the pencil and wrote:

Francis slept in fits and starts until he was awakened by an insistent shaking that seemed to drag him abruptly from some other unsettled place and instantly reminded him where he was. He blinked open his eyes, but before they adjusted to the dark, he could hear Lanky’s voice, whispering softly, but energetically, filled with a childish excitement and pleasure, saying, “We’re safe, C-Bird. We’re safe!”

The tall man was perched like some winged dinosaur, on the edge of the bed. In the moonlight that filtered past the window bars, Francis could see a wild look of joy and relief on the man’s face.

“Safe from what, Lanky?” Francis asked, although as soon as he asked the question, he realized he knew the answer.

“From evil,” Lanky replied. He wrapped his arms around himself, hugging his own body. Then, in a second motion, he lifted his left hand and put it to his face, placing his forehead in his hand, as if the pressure of his palm and fingers could hold back some of the thoughts and ideas that were springing forth so zealously.

When Lanky took his hand away from his forehead, it seemed to Francis that it left behind a mark, almost like soot. It was hard to see in the wan light that sliced the dormitory room. Lanky must have felt something, as well, because he suddenly looked down at his fingers quizzically.

Francis sat upright in the bed. “Lanky!” he whispered. “What has happened?”

Before the tall man could respond, Francis heard a hissing sound. It was Peter the Fireman, who had awakened, and had swung his legs over the edge of the bunk, and was craning toward them. “Lanky, tell us now! What has happened?” Peter insisted, also keeping his voice as low as possible. “But be quiet. Don’t wake up any of the others.”

The tall man bent his head slightly, agreeing. But his words came out in an excited, almost joyous rush. Relief and release flooded his words. “It was a vision, Peter. It must have been an angel, sent right directly to me. C-Bird, this vision came straight to my side, right here to tell me …”

“Tell you what?” Francis asked quietly.

“Tell me I was right. Right all along. Evil had tried to follow us here, C-Bird. Evil was right here in the hospital alongside of all of us. But that evil has been destroyed, and now we’re safe.”

He breathed out slowly, then added, “Thank goodness.”

Francis didn’t know what to make of what Lanky had said, but Peter the Fireman moved over and sat at the tall man’s side. “This vision—it came here? In this room?” he asked.

“Right to my bedside. We embraced like brothers.”

“The vision touched you?”

“Yes. It was as real as you or me, Peter. I could feel its life right next my own. Like our hearts were beating in unison. Except it was magical, too, C-Bird.”

Peter the Fireman nodded. Then he reached out slowly and touched Lanky’s forehead, where the soot marks remained. For a second, Peter rubbed his fingers together.

“Did you see the vision come in through the door, or did it drop down from someplace above?” he asked slowly, first motioning toward the dormitory entranceway, then up to the ceiling.

Lanky shook his head. “No. It just arrived, just one second, right by my bed. It seemed as if it was all bathed in light as if directly from heaven. But I couldn’t exactly see its face. Almost like it was cloaked. It must have been an angel,” he said. “C-Bird, think of it. An angel right here. Right here in this room. In our hospital. Helping to protect us.”

Francis said nothing, but Peter the Fireman nodded, his own head bent slightly. He lifted his fingers to his nostrils and whiffed strongly. He seemed to be startled by what he smelled, and he took in a sharp breath of air. For a moment, the Fireman paused, looking around the room. Then he spoke in low, direct words, his voice carrying all the authority that it could, giving orders like a military commander with the enemy close by and danger in every shadow.

“Lanky. Go back to your bed, and wait there until C-Bird and I come back. Don’t say anything to anybody. Absolute silence, got that?”

Lanky started to speak, then hesitated. “Okay,” he said slowly. “But we’re safe. We’re all safe. Don’t you think the others will want to know?”

“Let’s make absolutely sure, before we get their hopes up,” Peter said. This seemed to make sense, because Lanky nodded again. He rose and maneuvered back to his bunk. He turned and held up his index finger, the universal signal for silence, when he got there. Peter seemed to smile at him, then whispered, “C-Bird, come with me, right now. And be quiet!” Each word he spoke seemed taut with some undefined tension that Francis couldn’t quite fathom.

Without looking back, Peter the Fireman began to creep gingerly between the bunks, moving stealthily in the meager spaces that separated the sleeping men. He slid past the toilet, where a little bit of harsh light sliced under the doorway, heading toward the sole door to the dormitory. A few of the men stirred, one man seemed to half rise as they crept past his bunk, but Peter merely shushed him smoothly as they went by, and the man shifted about with a low groan, changing sides and then descending back into sleep.

When he reached the door, he looked back and saw Lanky, once again, sitting cross-legged on the bunk. The tall man saw them and waved before he lay back down.

As Peter the Fireman reached for the door, Francis joined his side. “The door’s locked,” Francis said. “They lock it every night.”

“Tonight,” Peter said slowly, “it isn’t locked.” And then, by way of proof, he reached out, grasped the handle and turned it. The door pushed open with a small swooshing noise. “Come on, C-Bird,” he said.

The corridor was darkened for the night, with only an occasional weak light shedding small glowing arcs across the floor. Francis was taken aback momentarily by the silence. Usually the hallways of the Amherst Building were jammed with people, sitting, standing, walking, smoking, talking to themselves, talking to people not there, maybe even talking to one another. The hallways were like the veins of the hospital, constantly pumping blood and energy to each central organ. He’d never seen them empty. The sensation of being alone on the corridor was unsettling. The Fireman, however, didn’t seem concerned. He was staring down toward the middle of the hallway, where the nurses’ station was marked by a single, faded desktop light, a small glow of yellow. From where they stood, the station seemed empty.

Peter took a single step forward, then stared down at the floor. He dropped down to a knee and gingerly touched a splotch of dark color, much as he had the soot on Lanky’s face. Again, he lifted his finger to his nose. Then, without saying a word, he pointed, gesturing for Francis to take note.

Francis wasn’t precisely sure what he was supposed to see, but he was paying close attention to everything Peter the Fireman did. The two of them continued to creep down the hallway toward the nursing station, but stopped midway, opposite one of the storage closets.

Francis peered through the weak light, and saw that the nursing station was indeed empty. This confused him, because he had always assumed there was at least one person on duty there round-the-clock. The Fireman, however, was staring down at the floor by the door to the closet. He pointed at a large splotch that marred the linoleum.

“What is it?” Francis asked.

Peter the Fireman sighed. “More trouble than you’ve ever known,” he said. “Francis, whatever is behind this door, don’t shout. Especially don’t scream. Just bite your tongue and don’t say a word. And don’t touch a thing. Can you do that for me, C-Bird? Can I count on you?”

Francis grunted a yes, which was difficult. He could feel the blood pumping in his chest, echoing in his ears, all adrenaline and anxiety. In that second, he realized that he hadn’t heard a word from any of his voices, not since Lanky had first shaken him awake.