Whispers in the Night Read online

  “This has seen better days,” Daniel said with a gallows chuckle, holding the soiled gown as if it threatened to rear up and bite him. His friends often wondered what made him choose to work in a retirement home, the Devil’s playground. He grew up in a close-knit Bible-believing church that bordered on religious fundamentalism. So when the demons revealed themselves in order to openly live among mankind, he recognized it as a change in Satan’s tactics and rejoiced.

  The end days were upon them.

  In the meantime, he had to be about the Lord’s work. Daniel always had a heart for the elderly; recalling his lessons that whoever mistreats the least of these, widows and orphans, mistreats Him. However, the Regional Healthcare Center, home of the damned, was a repository of the best forgotten. Daniel had three nights of orientation for being a certified nurse’s aide, which meant that he had to be paired with someone. Tonight, he toured with Jake. Jake was “high yella,” Daniel’s mother would’ve said. He had a large forehead, exaggerated by his receding hairline, quite visible despite his shaved head. And he had a slim, though muscular, build.

  “Thank God you a dude,” Jake said.

  “I’m pretty grateful.” Daniel didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. All of those Hollywood types and rappers thanked God. God didn’t seem to really matter to them; like God bless you, it was something to say.

  “Nah, I mean it. The rest of the staff is women.”

  “Kind of what I expected, you know, being a nurse’s aide and all. Is that so bad?”

  “You ever listen to a roomful of women cackle? Plus, I’m still with my baby’s mama, so it’s not like I’m looking.”

  They peeked in the next room. A rather obese man breathed with a wheezing snore. A teddy bear rested next to him.

  “That’s Mr. Reams. If he’s asleep, let him sleep,” Jake said.

  “But shouldn’t we check to see if he’s wet?” Daniel asked.

  “How long have you been an aide?”

  “Tonight is my first night of clinicals. After ten days, I can take my CNA test.”

  “Yeah, you sound like you just got out of those state board classes.” Jake sighed. “He got a catheter due to his . . . condition. No legs and shit. So if Mr. Reams is asleep, let him sleep. Same with his roommate, Mr. Black. Let them sleep, or they stay up all night bugging the shit out of you.”

  Daniel followed him back to the lounge area and plopped down next to Jake, not noticing the man on the other side.

  Jake leaned forward to say, “Hey, Mr. Black.”

  “Hurm,” a razor-sharp, yet gravel-filled sound replied. “You gotta cigarette?”

  “It’s too early for cigarettes, Mr. Black.”

  “Baby, you gotta cigarette?” Mr. Black said to Sh’ron, another CNA, who sat across from them, wrapped in a blanket.

  “Baby, you gotta cigarette?” Jake mimicked, silencing him. Daniel felt a pair of eyes on his back. Mr. Black. He kept studying him when he thought Daniel wasn’t looking. Whenever Daniel turned back to him, Mr. Black looked away. Not that Daniel stared at him too long; there was an ugliness to his yellowed, bloodshot eyes and wrinkled, flabby jowls, like a fat man who had lost his fat and was left with extra skin.

  “No one told me we had such a good-looking man up in here.” Sh’ron’s voice had an annoying nasal rasp; a beautiful picture spoiled by talking. Her deer-brown eyes studied him like he was the last rib at a barbecue. A mole accented her left cheek in an intriguing way; bright red lipstick anointed her full sensual lips.

  “Thanks,” Daniel said.

  “You in church?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I could tell. I bet you in pretty deep, huh? Guess you off-limits.”

  He smiled, both embarrassed and flattered. Mr. Black shifted noisily.

  “C’mon, man, let’s go get a Coke or something. Anyone else need anything?” Jake stood. Muffled half grunts and shrugged shoulders were their only response. In the silence that accompanied the slow elevator ride, Daniel noticed the tattoo on Jake’s forearm: a heart, with wings on either side of it, with a pair of horns on top and a tail extending from its tip. Twin pitchforks crossed in the background. Three letters inscribed the heart: B G D.

  “Black Gangsta Disciples,” Jake said.

  “Huh?” Daniel felt stupid, as if caught peeping in his sister’s window.

  “Yeah. Black Gangsta Disciples. I used to run wild in the streets. You know how we do, deal a little. But I’m through now, walking a different path.”

  The elevator spat them out at the lobby entrance. A statue of Mary greeted them. Her fingertips were broken and cracked, another neglected mother. Bits of wire peeked through her worn hands. Her hollow and dead eyes held Daniel’s gaze for a moment. He could see how a fallen Mary might amuse the guests. A nurse cleared her throat, looming over them with a toxic glare of instant dislike, like a cat tossed amid a pack of hyenas.

  “I see that no one’s told you the rules.” She pointed to the silver cross dangling from Daniel’s neck. “Those may agitate the residents.”

  “That kind of goes against my First Amendment rights.”

  Jake rolled his eyes.

  “That’s why we usually don’t take your kind,” the nurse said.

  “What kind is that?” Daniel asked.

  “You have the stench of a Jesus freak about you.”

  “Don’t mind her, she’s all right,” Jake said once they were out of earshot. “She’s a little uptight, but a good nurse.”

  Daniel didn’t pay her any mind. She was the least of his concerns. Here, surrounded by the sick and the possessed, he would be tested. It was one thing to have faith in the unseen spiritual; it was quite another thing to know, to confront the reality of belief. The opposite of faith was certainty.

  “How do you like it so far?” Jake warmed up a burrito.

  “It’s different. A lot of people to remember.”

  “Don’t worry about it. This place works short every shift. Never enough people because they don’t wanna pay shit. State would shut this place down in a second if they knew how this place was run.” The microwave’s ding interrupted his thought. “Gotta have a balanced meal.”

  “This is all the balanced meal I can keep down.” Daniel raised his Coke can.

  “Daddy, Daddy! No, Daddy, please, don’t make me,” Ms. Mayfield, a wisp of a woman, cried out. Coarse black hairs sprouted from her chin. She reminded Daniel of his mother, in a way, what his mother might become. His mother, too, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. At some point she’d stop being that little girl who trusted Jesus. She’d have lost her mind, no longer there in any real way, simply a body.

  Ripe for them.

  Daniel lived with the constant fear. The possibility that he would grow old and forget who he was and what he believed. He knew the Devil was real. Daniel always thought it curious that Jesus was always casting out demons, and yet these days doctors were quick to diagnose people as mentally ill. Then demons appeared in their midst, telling them what their doctors were too smart to see. Only the sadness of the situation kept Daniel from making any “I told you so” pronouncements.

  Ms. Mayfield winced in pain, then touched her forehead. A calmness overtook her face. She reached for him with one of her wrinkled, skeletal hands, startling him with both her suddenness and her strength. She pulled him close. Images of her withered desires sent him reeling back. However, she chanted something in what sounded like a mix of Latin, a north European dialect, and gibberish. Yet her tones were cautious, almost concerned. Her eyes virtually shone with clarity. As quickly as it started, her “lucid” outburst ended and she fell back, exhausted.

  The odor was utterly appalling, so he removed her sweat-and-urine-soaked gown. Her age-laden breasts fell flat against her chest. He found himself unable to look away, at once revolted and drawn to the sight of her full, wrinkled nakedness. Daniel mulled over her wardrobe selection, settling on a pink, flowery housedress suitable for milling about with the other reside
nts. She curled into the fetal position, almost pleading to be let back into some unseen womb, murmuring to herself. On her nightstand was a photo album. Curiosity got the better of him and he flipped it open. Pictures of crows from magazines had been placed like scrapbook photos.

  “We’re all crows. My children and I. All crows,” she said with a burst.

  He pushed her wheelchair to join the elderly gathering in the television cul-de-sac, like the set of a geriatric sequel to a zombie movie.

  “You come in tomorrow?” Jake asked.

  “They have me scheduled to work Monday through Friday this week and next week. They want my clinicals to be over with quick so they can transfer me to Southside.”

  “Yeah, but you coming back?”

  A nostalgic wave of melancholy washed over him, unbidden, with memories of Aaron. The two of them grew up in the church together, best friends since they graduated into the church youth group. Daniel’s friendship with Aaron revolved around the two of them being bad influences on each other. Aaron, ever the pastor’s kid, enjoyed slumming with Daniel, mostly because hanging with him annoyed his parents. For his part, Daniel enjoyed the cool status reflected onto him by Aaron’s presence. Aaron was the envy of all the kids: the pastor’s son, tall and athletic, blond curly locks, handsome with a clever wit about him. Daniel’s parents insisted that he go to church even if they didn’t. He had been unnoticed by the other kids and knew only the distracted attentions of his Sunday school teachers. Somehow it came up that his father drank and smoked, two of the bigger sins in their little corner of church, and Daniel noted the sudden interest stirred in others about him. On occasion, he raided his father’s cache of alcohol, and he and Aaron whiled away long evenings talking about girls and life. That was about as wild as they ever got, but in their circles it was wild enough.

  Life had a way of falling into place for Aaron. He married his high school sweetheart right after graduation and had a beautiful son. Then one day, they were about to go to “Friends and Family” day at the church. They were in a hurry as they usually were (it wouldn’t look good for the pastor’s son not to be there early). He was going to pull the minivan around front to meet her. She’d left the baby unattended for only a minute, not realizing it lay in Aaron’s blind spot.

  He never saw the baby carrier.

  The accident shattered them. Oh, the couple said all the right things about God’s will, about all things working for good. They were allowed to grieve, but even Daniel felt the pressure for them to put it behind them, to move on, to never question or doubt. It was as if everyone was afraid that real grief—real faith-shattering tragedy—might expose the house of dogmatic cards that they called faith for what it was: a series of failed homilies that they depended on to guide them, rules without love or anything real to offer.

  Watching everyone walk around with plastic, “everything’s for God’s glory” smiles left Aaron stumbling after his faith. He confessed to Daniel (begging him for faith, it seemed, looking to him to restore the shattered remnants of belief), asking what he’d do when he woke up screaming in the night from the silence of his unanswered prayers.

  That was the night before Aaron shot himself.

  “Lord, I believe. Help me with my unbelief,” Daniel whispered. A call button from one of the empty rooms was jammed—and with maintenance not due in until morning, the signaling bleat snapped him from his revelry. The incessant drone stabbed Daniel through the front of his skull, fraying his nerves. He filled out ADLs, Activities of Daily Living, which on the third shift meant logging what time he turned each resident. The splatter of dribbling water drew his attention. At first, he wondered who’d left the sink running, until he noted how close the sink sounded and that the water smelled like piss. Mr. Reams, with his subdued wheeze, slept through his bladder release. Daniel hadn’t realized how young Mr. Reams was, at least compared to the others. Daniel found out Mr. Reams had lost his legs in Vietnam. He came home from the war and got into a fight with someone who shot him point-blank with a shotgun. The wound left his side horribly scarred and him barely able to see; he had to force his eyelids apart to detect any image. Still asleep, he cuddled his bear tighter.

  “Him and that damn bear,” Sh’ron said.

  “You ever hear him when you put him to bed?” Jake said to Daniel, who shook his head. “ ‘Cover the bear. It’s the type of woman I like. Don’t want shit, don’t ask for shit.’ ”

  Daniel grew a little uncomfortable with the conversation since he feared where it might lead. Spying Mr. Black creeping out of Ms. Mayfield’s room provided the perfect reason to excuse himself from the conversation. Mr. Black liked to pretend he was a CNA, except that he deposited an article of clothing at each stop. He was down to a T-shirt and his boxers.

  “Why don’t you go watch TV, Mr. Black?” Daniel asked.

  “Hurm. I wouldn’t enjoy that.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if you are doing this on purpose.”

  “No, I’m not doing this on purpose.” He took off his boxers.

  “Come on, Mr. Black. I don’t have time for this.”

  “Why are you here, then, surrounded by old folks?” Mr. Black asked with a rising sharpness to his voice.

  “Morbid curiosity.” The words spat out more sharply than Daniel intended.

  “Tell yourself that if you want.” Mr. Black’s eyes alit with dark perspicuity. “You live in a world of the weak and the wounded. Being here lets you feel superior to your fellow believers.”

  It dawned on Daniel how difficult it was to tell the demon-possessed from the mentally addled. He thought he had Mr. Black—still standing naked from the waist down, a collection of wrinkled flesh—pegged as merely senile.

  “I’m not afraid of you. My soul is safe,” Daniel said, comfortable in such tiny leaps of faith.

  “Your soul? Hurm. Your soul is barely worth a dollar to me. What am I going to do with it? I can’t compete with the magic of being saved. Take comfort in your manipulator, accepting Jesus every time you doubt or feel doomed, while finding yourself alone after every prayer. I prefer the certainty of clean sheets and three meals.”

  With that, Mr. Black shambled down the hall.

  “Who’s there?” Mr. Reams growled. He sat up, his stubby fingers on either side of his eye, stretching it open. It darted about like a scavenging rat, bloodshot with a cloud pooling over it.

  “It’s me, Mr. Reams,” Sh’ron said.

  “Who’s that with you?”

  “He’s only been here a few days. Can we do anything for you?”

  “Just empty my urinal,” he snarled. It came out “Emy mah urnal.”

  Mr. Reams rolled away from them. Huge swatches of bandages covered his backside, shielding the pink raw flesh, a succulent sponge oozing blood from its center. Decubitus ulcers were fairly common; though caught early, the bedsore had fingernail marks around the wound.

  As they walked back to the lounge, Daniel could feel the mental pull of the place weighting him down. He hoped to lose himself in some reading. Forget the despair, the subtle groaning of the soul, the environment that gnawed with teeth of confusion, apathy, doubt, futility . . . the gamut of nightmares that were his activities of daily living. He recognized the handiwork of the Devil when he saw it. He knew Satan’s many voices when they spoke: Mr. Black, his mother, his own. The voices that spoke of the cracked and fragile thing that he called faith as being little more than a trick of the weak mind. Though raised in the church, Daniel had never quite made the faith his own. It was more like other people’s expectations of it in him. Still, it was easy to put on the show; the show was reflex ingrained in him, and that was all anyone looked for. If you parroted the right answers, you were in. And you learned not to ask the tough questions, or your soul was in danger of damnation. Questions like why a good God would allow any of His people to be flesh puppets for the fallen. This place, Daniel believed, was a test. Once and for all his doubts would be put to rest; unquenchable fires purifying the qu
ality of his faith.

  His doubts scared him the most, plaguing him most whenever he thought of Aaron.

  “How’s Aaron?”

  “What’d you say?” Jarred from his thoughts, Daniel felt like a man in the throes of a nightmare startled to full wakefulness. It took a moment for his eyes to focus, for him to recognize Jake.

  “I asked, ‘What’re you reading?’ ” Jake stared at him with mild concern. “Your test is coming up soon.”

  “A book on unseen spirits. You know, angels and demons, that sort of thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Jesus was always running around dealing with demons.”

  “And look where it got him.” Jake’s fingers danced with antsy frustration along the end table’s edge.

  “We only fear the spirit world because we don’t understand how it works. That’s why I’ve been studying. Haven’t you ever wondered how demon possession works?”

  “Sometimes, I guess.”

  “All right, check this out. Say you’re driving in your car minding your own business. Pretend that your car is your body and you, the driver, are the soul. Possession is like being carjacked.” Daniel paused to let the lesson sink in. The weight of his book shifted from hand to sweaty hand.

  “Carjacked. I like that.”

  A balding woman wheeled herself down the hall, inching along by her foot pulling her, an eerie, determined intelligence in her eyes. She slumped forward in her wheelchair. Concerned, Daniel rushed to kneel alongside her. She bolted upright in her chair, glared through him, and let loose a barrage of expletives and ravings that caught him so off guard that he fell over.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to them. They’re so . . .”

  “Real?” Jake offered.

  “You know, my girlfriend used to have to drive by a cemetery on the way home from school. Then one day, the city put up a stop sign right in front of the cemetery. A friend told her that one time, when he stopped at the stop sign, he looked into the cemetery and saw a ghost coming toward him. My girlfriend laughed this off, so I asked her, ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ She said, ‘No,’ so I asked, ‘Have you ever looked into the cemetery since then?’ She said, ‘No, if I looked, I may see a ghost, and then I’d have to believe in them.’ ”