The Devil in Silver (37 page)

The Devil stood in room six. It gazed at them. “Do you see that?” Pepper whispered.

“Yes,” Sue said.

Even from across the hall they heard it breathing, heaving.

And if Miss Chris, the rest of the staff, the rest of the
world
was making any noise, they sure couldn’t hear it now.

Pepper held Sue’s left arm and she grabbed his hand tightly.

The last time he’d seen the Devil it had been bleating with panic; Loochie’s hands had wrestled its horns back and Pepper had been draped across the backs of those skeletal legs. It had seemed so weak for a moment. Spent. All the vigor knocked out of it. Maybe Coffee could’ve blinded it with those two needles.

If only Dorry hadn’t been there!

Then maybe it wouldn’t be here now.

But there it was.

The Devil pulled its lips back, exposing teeth the color of oyster shells. The tangles of fur below its chin were clumped and wet; they swung like curtains of moss. Pepper heard a muffled sniff. But it wasn’t the monster this time. Sue was crying.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. He kissed her cheek.

“I heard
you
cry once,” Pepper said loudly. “You were
scared
.” He wasn’t talking to Sue.

The Devil turned its enormous head sideways, as if to see Pepper more clearly. One gray-white eye fixed on him. It inhaled deeply. It took two steps toward them.

It grabbed room six’s doorknob for balance.

“You’re not getting her,” Pepper gloated. “At least she’s leaving.”

Sue sniffled. When she spoke, she whispered.

“There’s a Devil waiting for me in China, too. If this one doesn’t get me, that one will.”

The Devil’s head tipped forward, then lifted again. It seemed to be nodding, agreeing with Sue. But if that was the case, if Sue was meant to be taken, why not just come into this room and try?
Just fucking try it!
Pepper’s arms and legs got stiffer, his chest filled with hot air, his face felt like it was vibrating. He was getting
amped
. It was going to come in here for Sue. Win or lose, he was going to fight. He was ready.

But Pepper wasn’t prepared for what happened next. The Devil didn’t come out for them. It stayed over there.

The Devil slammed Glenn’s door shut.

When that happened, Pepper and Sue had the same thought:
We’re safe
.

Pepper and Sue watched Glenn’s door. They didn’t move. They didn’t touch each other. Each was too shocked, too ashamed, by how relieved they felt.

“Vermin!” Miss Chris shouted again from the end of the hall. The squeaking sound beneath her cry might’ve been the rat getting bashed or the soles of Miss Chris’s old Crocs.

“Maybe Glenn’s not even in there,” Pepper offered.

“Maybe,” Sue agreed, though neither of them was convinced.

Pepper hopped out of bed and was in the hallway before he remembered he was naked. No time to turn around for a costume change! Pepper went through the door. What did he find?

Glenn’s body being pulled up into the ceiling.

The man’s head and neck and shoulders had already gone through the open hole. The rest of him dangled, four limbs flailing as they rose. Picture a large fish being yanked into a boat.

Pepper rushed toward the man, a guy he hardly knew, and threw his arms around the thighs. Pepper bear-hugged them and pulled.

Glenn’s body slipped down. Everything from the shoulders up reappeared. A bedsheet had been tied around Glenn’s shoulders, pinning the arms against his sides. The sheet ran into the crawl space, into the dark. The tension on the sheet fell slack. Pepper still held him
up, arms around the thighs. Glenn’s eyes fluttered and opened. He saw Pepper there. He grinned, showing all those fucked-up teeth, and the overwhelming beauty—the spark of
life
in that grateful smile—made Pepper’s breath catch in his throat.

Pepper heard a gruff snort from the crawl space. Then the sheet went taut and Glenn’s body rose toward the shadows again.

But Pepper squared off. He tightened his hold on Glenn’s legs. He spread his feet and planted himself. One time, in a fourth-floor walkup, an upright piano had slipped loose from Pepper’s partner on a flight of stairs and Pepper had steadied himself like this. That day he’d stopped a piano that should, by all rights, have crushed him.

The Devil wanted Glenn?

Well, it couldn’t fucking have him.

Pepper held on tight and leaned backward. That brought Glenn’s body back down again. But this time, the sheet stayed tense, and the grunting in the crawl space was followed by a scratching sound, like the Devil was bearing down, and the sheet slipped from around Glenn’s shoulders. But it caught around his throat. It had become a noose.

Glenn opened his mouth to shout but only spit came out. The man’s cries were being choked off. Pepper didn’t have enough weight to win this tussle alone.

But he wasn’t alone. Now Sue was with Pepper. She clambered around him until she’d grabbed Glenn’s ankles. She squeezed them in her arms just like Pepper did with Glenn’s thighs. And in the darkness of the crawl space they heard another snort, but this time it sounded weaker.

And in a moment, Glenn’s body fell toward them. Pepper and Sue tried to hold him up but he slipped and his back slapped
hard
against the tiled floor. At least it wasn’t his head. The sheet came spooling down after him. It gathered over Glenn, cloaking his face. Sue let go of his ankles and Pepper set his legs down. Sue pulled the sheets from Glenn’s face. His mouth lay open, his tongue fat. His eyes were closed and his skin as purple as a plum. Sue put her fingers under his nose and held them there. She whispered, “He’s breathing.”

Sue and Pepper were on their knees like attendants preparing
Glenn’s body for mummification. The sheet remained tied around Glenn’s neck. Sue touched it, but wasn’t sure if she should untie it. Would that hurt Glenn more?

“Now how you like
this
?”

Pepper and Sue found Miss Chris there in the doorway. The red plastic key chain was around her wrist, and the keys dangled near her knee. They swung loosely and clinked against the door frame.

Pepper and Sue hopped to their feet. Naked, they looked like John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the cover of
Two Virgins
. But less attractive. Pepper said, “We found him like this.”

Miss Chris looked at Glenn, who looked dead. Miss Chris’s face betrayed no emotion. She alerted the rest of the staff by calling out the code for a suicide attempt.

“Red Jack! Red Jack! Red Jack!” she yelled. “Northwest Two! Room six!”

Miss Chris waved Pepper and Sue out of the room. “Move now!” she said. “They coming with the cart.”

Pepper and Sue did as told. Miss Chris grabbed Sue’s arm as they passed her.

“You get dressed and you come back to me, hear?”

Sue dropped her head and nodded.

Miss Chris now ran into Glenn’s room. She kneeled, she looked into his eyes, and grabbed his wrist. Pepper didn’t keep watching. He went back into his room with Sue. He pushed the door shut.

“You think he’ll live?” Pepper asked as they dressed. His eyes were bright and wide. He still felt charged.

“I guess he’s got a chance,” Sue said. She almost sounded jealous.

Pepper held her. He slouched so his chin rested on the top of her head. She pressed her face into his chest so she could smell him.

Miss Chris walked into the room without knocking.

“Let’s go now. Let’s go.” She had one hand on her hip but her voice hardly sounded angry. Just tired, like an aunt who’s been put in charge of her fast little niece.

“I have an idea about your sister,” Pepper said. “It’s kind of wild, but
Coffee—
”

Sue kissed Pepper. Even while Miss Chris watched. Pepper laughed
and returned the kiss. He squeezed her with the kind of hug that nearly every human being loves. An embrace.

When she pulled away, he said, “Coffee had this number. It was in Oakland.”

Miss Chris grabbed Sue’s wrist and led her away.

He said, “Wouldn’t it be crazy if …”

But now Pepper spoke to an empty room.

It didn’t matter. He figured he’d get in some trouble for sneaking her in—maybe they’d throw him in irons for a bit—but they’d probably let him up for dinner. And he’d have Coffee’s binder with him, the one Coffee left behind. He’d pull Sue into the phone alcove and show her the last phone number Coffee had scrawled on a sheet of paper: 5102821833. It
would
be Sue’s sister. Pepper believed it. And Pepper would help Sue with the conversation, just in case she got confused. He’d put the two sisters back in touch and the older sister would come through. How would that save Sue? He couldn’t guess yet. Not exactly. But he’d listened to Sue. Heard what she needed. She needed her sister. Good enough. He’d get her that much. And let the sister do something he couldn’t manage from in here.

Pepper didn’t realize he would never see Sue again.

Actually, that wasn’t quite true.

He would see her one more time.

In an article, clipped from a newspaper.

PEPPER WAS WRONG
about his punishment, too. They didn’t snap him into restraints, lash him to the bed. Miss Chris had enough to do with inputting her notes about Glenn’s “episode” into the computer. The inappropriate program, Equator, had been swapped out for the proper record-keeping program, Equator Zero. Instead of “charting,” the staff would now spend much of their shifts “logging.” Even Miss Chris, the stalwart, had been trained well enough that she could log in, find “Incident Report” on the main menu, and type out, however slowly, the facts about Glenn. She left out the part about Pepper and Sue. As for the Devil’s role in this, she made no mention. She hadn’t seen it, after all.

The staff put all the patients on lockdown. Keeping them in their rooms for as long as it took to move Glenn to the ICU. Pepper spent the time clutching Coffee’s binder as if it contained ICBM launch codes. Inside he found the pages and pages of meticulously kept records. Coffee had done some formidable charting of his own. He’d reached out to government representatives at every level: neighborhood council members, community reps, borough presidents, city-wide officeholders, state and federal representatives. No success with any of them.

Coffee had reached members of the press as well. And had better
luck teasing them with the catnip of exposé and scandal. Since New Hyde was a New York City hospital, he’d had particular interest from a reporter from
The New York Times
. A woman who, even from Coffee’s notes, clearly worked hard to use Coffee as a source. But inevitably, the ties were severed. Relationships with reporters lost. In his notes Coffee entertained the paranoid fear that all these journalists had been visited by thugs from “Coffin Industries.” Told to button up or, even worse, killed. What were the chances he’d come up with that company’s name randomly? Dorry probably spun the same tales to every new admit. The tour, the stampeding buffalo, the cliff, and Coffin Industries. Like a speech given to incoming freshman by a college president. The ward’s common myths.

But all that really mattered now was scrawled on the last page in the binder. Ten digits in blue ink. The last number Coffee ever dialed. Pepper could even
hear
Coffee just now.

Washington, D.C.! The nation’s capital. No that’s not where
I
am. That’s where
you
are! What do you mean “Oakland”? The President doesn’t live in Oakland
.

Pepper spent the morning in the makeshift bed he’d shared with Sue. Every wrinkle in the sheets, each indentation in the pillows seemed to hold a trace of her. Pepper lay in the bed, dressed in his street clothes. The binder held tight in the crook of his right arm. When staff let all the patients out of their rooms for lunch and midday meds, Pepper was the first in line. He swiped his little white cup out of Scotch Tape’s hand. He swallowed the pills so eagerly that Scotch Tape and Nurse Washburn suspected a trick. After he slugged the pills, Nurse Washburn put her hand out. “I’ll throw out your cup.”

When Pepper handed it back to her, she peeked inside.

But Pepper felt too good to take insult. Today he was going to help Sue, and nothing could break his great mood. “You don’t trust me?” Pepper asked.

Nurse Washburn, the former Josephine, looked at Pepper coolly. She closed her fingers around the empty white cup, crushed it into a ball, looked over Pepper’s shoulder and said, “Next.”

Pepper went on his way, almost
dancing
toward the television lounge. Where he found a new orderly manning the lunch rack. Pepper
accepted his lunch tray and took the far table. Where he’d first kissed Sue, first touched her. Pepper practically bounced in his chair. He didn’t even eat.

The regulars rolled through for their food. Wally Gambino bopped along and Heatmiser shuffled. The Haint appeared, somehow looking as spiffy as ever even though she wore the same purple pantsuit and matching hat every day. Yuckmouth showed up, too, took his lunch and sat alone. He might’ve been bereft at the damage done to his friend but who could say? His expression was as impassive as always. Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly arrived together. No one had claimed the television, so Mr. Mack flipped to the station, and the show, he loved most. Mr. Mack clapped when that stone idol, Steve Sands, filled the screen. Frank Waverly huffed like an agitated mutt.

Mr. Mack glared at his roommate. “Oh,
hush
.”

And there were the two new admits. The older women Pepper had seen on the night Dorry attacked Loochie. They weren’t Sam and Sammy, he could see that clearly. Older and a bit more professional-looking in their air. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Doris Roberts from
Everybody Loves Raymond
. That’s who they looked like. Sandra Day O’Connor and Doris Roberts.

They sat down one table over from Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly.

“Now everybody listen to this man,” Mr. Mack announced. He raised the volume on the set. “He grew up right here in Queens!”

“Yo,” Wally Gambino said, with a mouthful of macaroni. “How’s this motherfucker’s show
always
on?!”