A Haunting of Words

by Brian Paone et al.

  Jonathan liked parties. He never did anything bad when people were having so much fun. That meant extra time in the corner.

  The music stopped and a Father started talking through the radio. He mentioned something about Europe and a war and surrender. The Fathers and the Mothers stopped what they were doing and started yelling and cheering. Jonathan thought a beehive had fallen down. He wouldn’t stand in the corner for that. When they stopped applauding, they began going inside again. They weren’t sad anymore.

  Jonathan tried to play some tricks. He left the water on in a bathroom. He knocked a lamp off a table. He hid behind doors and scared people when they walked by. No one seemed to notice. No one seemed to care. They were too happy. He thought about tripping Mother on the stairs again but that wasn’t fun anymore. He didn’t like it when Mother took a nap.

  Instead, he found Father resting in bed. Jonathan realized then that he was tired. It had been a long day. He lay down with Father and fell asleep, dreaming of the morning when he could play with new Mothers and new Fathers. He hoped there were other Jonathans as well.

  They were always the most interesting.

  In 1965 a new Father showed up. He was wearing all black, save a white collar he only took off when he was alone. He was ugly and scary, often scratching a hairy mole on his chin. Father had a thin stick in his hand that he liked to play with. When he swung it in the air, it made a sound like WHOOSH!

  Pouring through the doors behind him, an army of boys filled the vestibule. They didn’t all fit. Some had to stand in Father’s study. This made Jonathan angry. Only Father and Mother were allowed in the study.

  “You’re not allowed in there!” Jonathan yelled. None of the boys listened to him. They were all Not-Jonathans and Not-Jonathans rarely listened.

  He liked to play tricks on the Not-Jonathans. All day long he would hide their clothes. He would scare them in the shower, sending them scurrying through the halls without them. He lay under their beds when they were trying to nap. Jonathan kicked his feet against the mattress. The Not-Jonathans would cry the entire time.

  Some of them told Father, but Father got mad at them. He would make them take their clothes off so he could hit them with his little stick. This made their skin red and made them cry. Jonathan didn’t like this.

  “If Mother were here, she would stop you,” Jonathan said to Father. “Where’s Mother?” Jonathan became mad when Father didn’t answer. He had to get Father’s attention. “Where’s Mother?” he yelled louder. “Where is she?”

  Jonathan would jump on Father’s bed when he was taking a nap. He also broke glasses in Father’s room and knocked paintings off the wall. He even opened Father’s windows when it rained. This made Father mad. His room got all wet.

  The entire time, Jonathan screamed at him. “Where’s Mother? I want Mother!”

  He even pushed Father down the stairs. If Father took a nap, Mother might come. She didn’t. Instead, Father’s face turned red. He grabbed a Not-Jonathan with orange hair who was standing at the top of the stairs and took him to his room. It must have been hot in there. Both Father and Not-Jonathan took off their clothes.

  Father hit Not-Jonathan with his stick. He grabbed Not-Jonathan by his orange hair. He made Not-Jonathan kiss him all over his body. He made Not-Jonathan-With-the-Orange-Hair sit on his lap until Father became happy again.

  Not-Jonathan didn’t like this. He ran out of Father’s room. He ran down the hall and stumbled down the stairs. Jonathan followed him, laughing at the orange-haired boy. He went outside without his clothes. It was cold outside today, and he forgot his coat. If Mother were here, she would make sure he didn’t forget his coat.

  Later that day, more Fathers showed up. They had blue clothes and hats. Some of them wore silver stars on their shirts. Others wore gold stars. They tied Father’s hands together and took him away. The Not-Jonathans also left, leaving Jonathan all alone.

  He was upset. There was no one left to play with. Despite all his mischief, Mother never came. He missed Mother.

  “If I wait long enough, Mother will come back,” he said, taking his place in the corner.

  This day had been long. He needed to nap. So, he did. He took a really long nap. Mother and Father didn’t come back for a long time.

  In 1986 a Mother and a Father arrived.

  “Mother!” Jonathan was fidgeting in the corner, eager to end his punishment. “I apologize! I’m sorry!”

  This Mother was strong and beautiful. He imagined her spinning him around by his arms until he was too dizzy to stand. He ignored Father. He was bored with Fathers. They didn’t interest him at all.

  Jonathan followed Mother around the house. She went from room to room, scribbling notes in a thin black book. She would walk away from him when he tried to play with her. She was more interested in her black book. She liked the house more than him. When she was done with her notes, she talked into a strange metal box.

  Fathers arrived later that day. They began knocking down walls and putting them back up again. They changed each room into a bedroom. They added over twenty bathrooms! They even built a giant bathtub in the basement. When the Fathers were done, more people began to arrive.

  There were more Mothers, more Fathers, more Not-Jonathans, and the occasional Jonathan. They came to eat Mother’s food, sleep in Mother’s bedrooms, and play in the giant bathtub. None of them had time for Jonathan. They were all too fat and happy.

  He tried to get Mother’s attention, but she was always too busy making food. Father was too busy playing with the others. Sometimes, he went in a room with another Mother, and they played with all their clothes off. Jonathan didn’t understand why. Bracken Manor was never warm. They didn’t even have a fire burning.

  The Not-Jonathans also didn’t have time to play. They were running in and out of the manor all day. This made Jonathan angry. Why would no one play with him? He tried breaking things. They would just be replaced. He tried to shake beds, but they were already shaking—full of Mothers and Fathers playing together. He tried screaming at them. They never heard him. He tried leaving them gifts from the garden, begging for their attention. They didn’t care.

  Then one day a lonely Jonathan was playing in the giant bathtub. This gave him a good idea. He knelt by the side of the tub and splashed the boy in the face. The boy began to cough but kept playing. Jonathan jumped in and stood at the bottom of the pool. The boy was kicking his feet above Jonathan’s head. He reached up and grabbed the boy’s foot, pulling him down to the bottom.

  Jonathan held onto the boy, giggling and laughing until the boy finally noticed him. At last, he had someone to play with him. Jonathan let go of the boy. He floated up like a balloon. He pulled him down again. He did this over and over again until the other Jonathan grew tired and took a nap.

  Jonathan was upset by this. He never made another Jonathan take a nap before. He felt bad and decided to let the other Jonathan go. Mothers and Fathers jumped in the bathtub with him. They tried to wake the other Jonathan. He must have been too tired from playing. He stayed asleep.

  Later that day, everyone left. There were no more Mothers, no more Fathers, no more Jonathans, and no more Not-Jonathans. Only the normal Jonathan remained.

  He stood in his comfortable corner, ready to nap. He had been bad. He made everyone go away. The corner was where he belonged.

  In 2017 Jonathan woke up to the sound of crashes and booms. A giant metal ball was swinging through the manor. It knocked down walls and floors. It cut through wires and pipes.

  Jonathan was scared. He didn’t know what was happening. The ball wasn’t Mother or Father. It swung to and fro. It crashed through one room after another. Even Father’s study was destroyed. All that remained was the wall in the corner. Jonathan had nowhere else to go.

  He pressed his forehead into the wall, trembling from head to toe. He wanted Mother. When Mother didn’t come, he thought about the fun he had over the last few days, reviewing them out loud to comfort hims
elf.

  “Newport had a lot of Jonathans,” he said. “They were not Johns. They were not Johnnys. They demanded all three syllables …”

  Phaedra’s footsteps echoed down the hallway. Her brisk pace gave her enough momentum to burst through the double doors and arrive at the nurses’ station just in time for her shift. “Phew!” She tossed the file she was carrying and pulled a pen out of her pocket.

  The checkered nightmare of floor tiles stretched away from the nurse’s station into two wide sitting rooms with flat screen televisions screwed into the walls. Yellow wallpaper curled away from water-stained walls. In the ceiling, long bulbs hummed behind plastic screens, casting a dingy yellow light into the catty-cornered area between two halls. The scent of goat piss battled the antiseptic’s bitter smell. Screams and maniacal laughter echoed down the hallways that converged in the dayroom.

  In the dayroom itself, the patients barely noticed her arrival. A man sat rocking in a far corner, his hospital gown askew. His eyes darted about chasing shadows, and his mouth hung slack. His hair, graying, gnarled and matted, stuck out in odd tufts about his head. In the center of the room, a woman dressed in a white hospital gown, with long, flowing white-blonde hair, danced about in grand sweeping gestures to music only she heard; a distant look in her green eyes. On the opposite side of the room, a frail, tiny woman with lipstick that ran up her cheek sat in a wheelchair, singing hymns as loud as her thin voice would allow.

  A chubby man sauntered up to her, then offered Phaedra his hand. “Hi there!” his deep voice echoed.

  “Um … hi …”

  He seems sane enough, she thought to herself.

  “I’m the President of the United States!”

  Never mind.

  He made eye contact with her. A few minutes passed as she floundered, unsure of how to answer. He never broke eye contact.

  Just as she was about to respond, a heavy hand clapped down on her shoulder. She let out a soft mew of surprise, then twisted her head to find a familiar face.

  “Oh! Oh, hi, Dr. Romanstein. Nice to see you again.”

  “Ms. Kazan, nice of you to join us.” He turned to the president. “Ronald, now you leave my new nurse alone. You’re not to touch her, you understand?”

  Two male orderlies came up beside the doctor and stared pointedly at Ronald. Phaedra went to say something, then noticed her employer’s dark glance in her direction.

  “Ssshhhhh!” the doctor hissed at her.

  A tense moment passed as Romanstein and the president stared at each other with affected smiles that never reached the rancid fire in their eyes.

  There was something cold and predatory in Ronald’s smile. Eventually, his lips fell, the friendliness faded, and he nodded. “Yessir … Too bad though.” He bit his lip and traced her small form with hungry eyes. “She’s just my type.” He turned and waddled away.

  His eyes on her had felt like an assault. She felt dirty afterward. “Well, that was creepy …”

  The two orderlies faded away into the bustle of the nurse’s station.

  Dr. Romanstein turned to her. “Welcome to Belle Reves Sanitorium. Most of our patients, such as dear Ronald, are beyond help and quite possibly criminally insane. However, they have wealthy relatives that pay us large sums of money to keep them alive, and well … out of the public eye—meaning off their list of worries. Your job is to keep the inmates, I mean patients, from harming or killing each other or the staff … which includes yourself. Phaedra, these aren’t normal people. These people, even medicated, want to scare and hurt you. You’re on graveyard shift, so you’ll hopefully have limited contact with them. You’ve got to develop a thicker skin and a tougher demeanor, young lady. Or these people will literally eat you alive. Understood?”

  Realization spread over her features, and for a moment, she contemplated bolting, then thought better of it. Truth be told, she desperately needed this job, any job, to pay the bills after her recent stint in rehab. The past several weeks had been a flurry of forms.

  An arctic smile spread across her features. “Crystal clear, sir. I think I’ll surprise you.”

  She tried to act confident, crossing one leg over the other, then leaning out with her elbow in front of her, hoping for a counter to catch her. Instead, her elbow found the shoulder of another nurse that was just walking up. Startled, she spun around, her apologies quick and effusive.

  She found herself looking into ice blue eyes that confused her. She couldn’t tell if she found an almost maniacal brilliance in them, or if they were simply alert. By degrees, she became aware of auburn hair in a crewcut and a square chin above a short muscular male body. He shifted around her and sat down in a rolling chair at a computer. She noted how his red scrubs, the same as hers and all staff, hung over his chest muscles.

  Yummy! She hadn’t even realized she’d licked her lips until Dr. Romanstein bopped her over the head with a patient’s file he’d picked up.

  He pointed a stumpy, gnarled finger at her nose. “And none of that!” He turned and walked away in a flurry of his white overcoat.

  The male nurse she’d been consuming as eye candy followed the doctor’s exit. He gave her a quizzical look, to which she responded with a shrug, shaking her head.

  She walked over and offered her hand. “My name’s Phaedra.”

  “I’m Claude, the head nurse. You must be the new graveyard shift nurse that I’ll be working with tonight.”

  “Yup, that’s me. I—”

  A bellow burst from some location behind them. All heads turned toward the green double doors that sat closed to the side of the nurses’ station.

  “I. Don’t. Belong. Here!” A man’s voice, gravelly from years of drug abuse, echoed down the halls. He emphasized each word, the doors rattling from the impact of his kicking legs.

  The chatter of the dayroom died away. The screams down the hallway burst into a hungry silence. She felt a pressure in her chest. There came a crunch, then a cry and a sickening slurping sound.

  Claude stood up and walked over to the doors. He flashed his ID at a scanner, and the doors swung open. His look of determination spread to a grin that didn’t reach his eyes, then, as quick as a cat in water, it changed to a horrified expression. “Christ! Get your crisis gear!”

  The wing erupted into movement and sound. Nurses, doctors, and orderlies in red scrubs poured out of closed doors. Patients swung and jumped, screamed and howled like baboons—all except the white-haired dancer. She froze in place and stared toward the doors.

  Phaedra felt a chill crawl up her spine and the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Clouds of her own icy breath formed before her eyes.

  The medical personnel all froze in front of the double doors and stared. She walked over. The sight in the hallway washed her senses in gelid shock. Blood poured from open wounds and spread across the checkered floor. The bodies of the orderlies reflected defensive postures: arms out in front to fend off an unexpected threat; knees bent, indicating they’d tried to make themselves small. Their heads were turned toward the double doors, as if they’d watched in desperation for help to arrive. Their faces were frozen in expressions of sheer terror.

  He sat between the two orderlies, huddled and glaring like a cornered animal. Blood dripped down the front of his hospital dress and chin. His brown eyes held a wild anger, and his chin was thrust out. His mouth was clenched as tight as the muscles of a tiger ready to pounce. His eyes took in the crowd before him, then settled on Phaedra.

  “I told them I don’t belong here,” he growled as he sneered at her.

  “Um … Yeah. Yeah, you do.” She hadn’t even realized she’d thought her response before the words tumbled out of her mouth.

  “No. I. Don’t.” He began to crawl toward her. His sadistic sneer dominated his features as his eyes glittered with glee.

  She backed away from him and bumped into another nurse. She wanted to slink down, to hide. His sneer deepened to reveal bloodstained teeth. He locked eyes with her.
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  The song rang out through the ward in a voice soft, yet sweet. The walls echoed back the words in eerie rendition.

  Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,

  To see a fine lady upon a white horse.

  Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,

  She will have music wherever she goes.

  As the song faded away, so too did the predatory gleam in his eyes. His eyes glazed over, and his face went slack. It was as if the silly little nursery rhyme had sent him into a fugue state.

  Just then, medical personnel flooded the hallway and cut her off from the evil she’d confronted. However, she heard him hiss as they gave him a shot of Thorazine. She spun around to see the woman in white standing still and silently staring … at her. A crooked smile spread across the woman’s pale, youthful features.

  Phaedra had the desire to become invisible.

  Later, Phaedra and Claude sat at their respective computers, inputting patient status updates and logging activities. Dinner came and went. As evening passed, the other personnel completed their shifts and headed toward the elevator. Night fell, lights dimmed, and they put patients to bed. The faint hum of the overhead lights and clanking of keys were all that could be heard.

  Phaedra threw glances over her shoulder at her cute coworker.

  “What is it?” he asked and her heart dropped. She hadn’t realized he’d caught her.

  “That thing with the girl singing. And that out of control patient. What was that about?”

  “Oh, her.” He leaned back from the computer, then stared into the shadows of a corner in the room. “Phaedra … You’re going to see shit here … and it’s not going to make sense.”

  She snorted.

  “And I don’t mean the crazy kind of not making sense …” He went to say something, but thought better of it.