A Friend of the Devil

by David Beers

  Abel sat with a cup of coffee in his hand. His sixth of the day. It was 11:00 in the morning.

  He thought some of the orderlies were starting to notice—not just the coffee, they all probably recognized that, but they knew the symptoms when Abel stopped sleeping. He wasn’t the only patient who fell into long periods without sleep, but his episodes were more … severe. For the most part, the orderlies gave Abel space. He was here voluntarily, and not actively schizophrenic or otherwise psychotic, and so they pretty much let him do as he wanted.

  Unless he stopped sleeping.

  Then they would give him pills.

  Ambien.

  They’d give him Ambien for days, maybe as long as a week, and Abel would have to take it.

  That was the system. He could stay voluntarily, but he had to listen to the orderlies, the nurses, and his doctor. If he didn’t, then he was out.

  Above all else, Abel knew he couldn’t ever leave this place. Sunny Acres Psychiatric Hospital was his home. It had been for the past thirteen years and would be for the rest of his life.

  Even so, he didn’t want to take the Ambien, because then he would sleep and for a long, long time. If he finally knocked out on his own, Abel could wake up. When the dreams took him deep, deep down, coming in full force, he would practically have to wake up.

  Abel took a sip of his coffee.

  He hadn’t spent much time considering why they were coming for him now—sometimes there was a reason, but most of the time not. Or rather, they always had a reason … one nearly a hundred years old. Yet, sometimes something stirred them, bringing them up from their rest to torture him. Abel didn’t know if that was the case now, or if he was simply in the throes of a normal episode.

  He hoped it was normal. He hoped nothing was stirring them. Normal was good. Normal he could understand.

  “How are you doing, Abel?”

  He closed his eyes for a second, knowing Geoffrey Brooks’s voice.

  He opened them as the man walked across the porch.

  “Cold out here, isn’t it?” Geoffrey said.

  Yes, it was cold, and that’s exactly why Abel had come out. The colder the better—if he could drop the temperature to 10 below, he would. Anything to help him stay awake.

  “Yeah,” Abel answered. “Just wanted some fresh air.”

  Geoffrey walked to the rocking chair next to Abel’s. They were alone on the porch. He sat down, the metal chains which kept the chairs hooked to the porch rattling a bit.

  “How are you sleeping?” Geoffrey asked.

  “I’m going to sleep tonight,” Abel said. He didn’t lie to the orderlies, nor anyone else in this place. That was part of the system, too.

  “You’ve seen Dr. Thoran about it?”

  “No.”

  Geoffrey nodded, his chair rocking back and forth slowly. “Do you think you should?”

  Abel smiled. “I think you think I should, but I also think you know what I think.”

  “I suppose that’s all true. How long haven’t you been sleeping?”

  “This is day four.”

  “You know what happens, Abel. We all do.”

  He took another sip of his coffee and looked out at the yard—yellow grass now, but in the summer it would be a perfect green, just as it had been the last 10 plus years he’d been here.

  “I’m going to sleep tonight.”

  “Are you sure, Abel?”

  “You know I don’t lie, Geoffrey.”

  “Okay. I’m going to trust you on this. If I don’t think you got any sleep tonight, I’ll have to speak with the nurses, and you know what they’ll do.” Neither needed to use the word. Ambien.

  Another sip of the coffee. Abel swallowed. “Thanks.”

  “Slow down on the coffee, then,” Geoffrey said as he stood up.

  “Trust me. It won’t matter.”

  Twelve hours passed and Abel found himself in his room. Much of his adult life had been spent in episodes like this, not sleeping, and he knew that the longer one went without resting, the hazier the world grew. He didn’t remember much of the day, could barely keep up with the present moment. His coffee mug was empty and sitting on the dresser in front of his bed.

  He lay on the bed, fully clothed, with the light burning bright above him.

  He’d told Geoffrey he would sleep for two reasons, the first being he didn’t want Ambien. The drug would put him under for eight hours, and that was far too long for what was coming. The second reason he agreed to it was because he didn’t think he could stay awake any longer.

  Three and a half days was just about Abel’s max, and he knew it.

  You know what happens, Abel. We all do.

  Geoffrey wasn’t lying. Because the ones waiting for him to sleep wouldn’t be held at bay forever. If Abel could somehow stay up longer, they would simply step out of his head and into this world. Geoffrey didn’t believe that, of course. No one in Sunny Acres did. Abel’s sleep deprivation simply caused delusions—that was their story.

  It wasn’t the truth, but Abel would never convince them. He understood that and was fine with it. In its totality, Abel was fine with his life, this sterile, relatively sane thing. He didn’t have any other options. Abel was here voluntarily, but if he went back into the real world, he wouldn’t last long. He’d be mandated to a place like this, and then a lot of the ‘freedoms’ he now had would disappear. He remained here on his own volition … but when you got right down to it, the staff thought him crazy just as they did the rest of the patients.

  Abel hadn’t even taken his shoes off when climbing in bed.

  He didn’t know how long he would have to sleep; it would be a struggle between those waiting on him, and his mind. Those waiting wouldn’t want him to leave, though his mind would try to pull him out.

  Truly, though, it was a moot point, because they would have their say. Abel knew that. In life, they’d been denied, so in death, they would speak for all of eternity—or, at least as long as Abel lived.

  He stared up at the ceiling. Sleep weighed on him, feeling like tiny anchors were hooked to his eyes, a constant reminder that he should close them.

  Go on then, Abel thought. Get it over with. You get a couple hours sleep now, and maybe you can fool the staff for a few more days.

  That answer wasn’t complete, though, and his mind knew it.

  You can stay awake as long as you want, but once they’ve awoken, they’re going to have their say.

  Abel closed his eyes, and sleep came to him.

  First, there was blackness, but that only lasted a few moments. The dream swam up from the bottom of the darkness, a colorful tableau exploding through the surface of an ink filled pool.

  And then Abel understood where he was.

  Sunny Acres Psychiatric Hospital.

  He wasn’t on the porch, nor his room. Instead, he was in the common area, the chairs all facing the large television against the wall. Abel always avoided this room if he could help it … but now, he couldn’t.

  His arms and legs were strapped to a chair with long lengths of white rope. Abel wouldn’t struggle against them, because even if he did break free, he knew what would happen. Those running the hospital now, in this dream, would let him run as far as he wanted, but in the end, they held all the keys. They controlled the doors and the lights. They controlled everything in here.

  Two women walked in front of Abel. He saw his sister, Mary—forever 16 years old. His eyes moistened as he looked at her, seeing her elongated neck, stretched from the noose that had killed her.

  The woman with her was little more than a skeleton, and anyone would have recognized her. Well, maybe not her per se, but those like her. When World War II ended, the world looked on with horror as images and videos poured out from the defeated Third Reich. Thousands and thousands of bodies, all of them mere bones with skin wrapped around them.

  The woman in front of Abel looked just like that.

  Her eyes were sunken deep into her face, the skin
across her cheekbones looking like it might split, only to reveal white bone beneath.

  Her actual eyes were black—completely. Pitch black globes that sat in her skull.

  She wore a Sunny Acres nurse’s uniform; she didn’t look at either Abel or his sister.

  Mary sat down in a chair about 10 feet away from Abel, the nurse moving behind it. Mary wasn’t strapped in, but she didn’t try to leave. She could never leave this place, nor any of the others the dead brought her to. She was with them now and would be forever.

  The emaciated nurse took a step back from the chair. She stared at the far wall as if blind, though Abel knew that wasn’t true. She saw everything very, very clearly.

  “We have your sister, Abel. We have your great-grandfather, your grandfather, and your father. Your mother will be here soon, as well. Have you spoken to her?”

  Abel never knew how much the dead understood of his life outside of these dreams. Of course they knew where his mother was, but did they know he hadn’t spoken to her in a decade?

  Abel said nothing. He knew them, perhaps better than they knew him, and to say anything would only invite more pain.

  “That’s okay,” the black-eyed woman said. “I’ll be back.”

  She turned and walked out of the common area, her feet echoing in the room’s silence.

  Abel stared at his sister, her neck impossibly long and making her look alien in nature. Even after so many years, Abel didn’t understand everything in these dreams—but he didn’t think the dead lied. They did own his family, and when Abel died, he’d be cast down to this hell just the same.

  The dead owned everyone going back to his great-grandfather, and that included his mother, even though she came from a different lineage. They owned the entire family, and anyone who thought the family worthy enough to join it.

  “I …,” Abel started, wanting to say something to his sister, but unable to find any words. He’d seen her before and he would see her again, yet each time, he just wanted to speak to her. To give her hope. To say anything that might ease her torture.

  She only shook her head and brought one finger to her lips.

  “Shhh.”

  Abel closed his eyes, hot tears resting in them.

  Someone grabbed his hair and wrenched his head back. Another hand reached for his forehead, all hard bones pulling his eyelids open.

  He strained against the hand, but it was impossibly strong, ligaments made of steel.

  Abel looked straight across the room at his sister. A man in a doctor’s coat stood next to her now. His head was bald and one ear missing. It’d been sliced off his head, and Abel knew that he must have died shortly after because there was no scar tissue. Black, dead meat sat in its place, with white bone poking randomly out from beneath. Abel could see the man’s pulse through the black flesh, beating at a steady rhythm.

  The doctor’s eyes were just as dark as the nurse’s had been.

  Everyone in this place, everyone but Abel and Mary, had the eyes of the dead.

  “We’re waiting on you, Abel,” the doctor said, staring down at the floor as if he didn’t actually know where anyone else was. A stream of black blood ran from his ear down his neck. “You keep running from us, but we’re waiting. You don’t have to watch these dreams anymore if you’ll just come. Your sister found the truth and now she’s here. No more dreams for her. No more running. You can do the same.”

  The doctor looked up then, his boney face finding Abel’s.

  The black eyes saw everything at once, and Abel couldn’t close his own. The hand was too strong, jutting his head back so that he was forced to look on.

  “We’ll make it stop if you come to us, Abel. We won’t hurt her anymore. We won’t hurt your father anymore,” the doctor said. “We’ll make it all stop.”

  Abel managed to shake his head. NO. He said nothing, though.

  A sick smile crept across the dead man’s face, spreading over crooked and missing teeth. It kept growing as if it might never stop, far too large, just like Mary’s neck was far too long.

  The doctor turned, not dropping an inch of his huge smile. He pulled out a needle from his white jacket.

  “Here we go,” the doctor said. He brought the needle to Mary’s neck, poking it just underneath the skin. She grimaced slightly.

  Abel struggled against the hand, trying to jerk his head away. He grunted and pulled at the straps holding him to the chair. Neither the rope nor the hand budged.

  Fingers held his eyelids open, unable to close them or look away, he stared forward.

  The doctor pushed the plunger down, a black liquid from inside the needle’s barrel emptying into his sister’s neck.

  Her mouth opened slightly as if feeling some immense pleasure.

  The doctor took two steps back.

  His sister was still for a moment, her breathing normal. A sound started low in her throat, almost like a rough yawn. Her mouth stretched open wider, the noise growing with it. She bared her teeth, and her jaw kept dropping like an anaconda preparing for a massive meal.

  Her fingers started twitching, dancing around on her lap while her eyes blinked rapidly—but not in concert, as if they were getting different impulses from her brain

  Mary’s mouth stretched even further open, looking like it might rip her jaw from its hinges. The rough yawn was now a guttural growl, echoing off the walls around Abel. In between the incongruous blinking, he saw unimaginable pain resting in his sister’s eyes, that and an inability to understand what was happening to her. She was lost inside such tremendous hurt.

  The twitching moved up her arms and down her legs, her entire body dancing in jerky movements as if filled with electricity.

  Abel heard her jaw snap—the lower half dislocating from the upper—and watched as it flopped down against her neck.

  “Stop it,” Abel said. “Make it stop.”

  Mary’s head whipped to the left, her jaw swinging as she did. She held it there for a second, and then it jerked to the right just as quickly. Her legs kicked out from beneath her and she slid down the chair, her body rattling and her growl now a scream that pierced Abel’s ears.

  “STOP IT!” he yelled.

  Foam leaked from Mary’s mouth and she twitched on the floor. A stream of blood trickled from the corner of her eye. The doctor stood above, his wicked smile presiding over all.

  “No,” he said. “We’re just getting started.”

  Abel’s eyes flashed open. He saw the wall of his bedroom, his nightstand, his blanket. Sweat drenched the clothes across his body, causing them to stick to his skin. He was laying on his side, his legs curled up almost to his chest and tears streaming from his eyes.

  He moved his head slightly and looked at the clock on his nightstand.

  Three in the morning.

  He’d gotten four hours of sleep.

  His body felt weak and he was shivering despite being fully clothed.

  They have her, he thought. They have Mary and they’re going to have you one day.

  The dreams had gone on and on, getting progressively worse until his mind simply couldn’t take it anymore. It’d pulled him roughly from the dreams and the dead intent on torturing him. He hadn’t seen his father this time, only his sister. Abel knew they weren’t done yet; there was more they wanted to say.

  He sat up in his bed, swinging his feet off and to the floor. He looked down and saw that he’d kicked off one shoe during the dreams.

  Exhaustion gripped him. His eyes still wanted to close, even as terror trembled through his limbs.

  Abel brought his hands up to his face and rubbed hard, trying to wipe away the weariness.

  That was different, he thought. That time was different.

  He swallowed, placed his hands down, and stared at the small window in front of him. The blinds were drawn, off white plastic looking back at him. He stood and walked to the window, grabbed the string to the right and lifted the blinds. He could see the main road far away. Sunny Acres was set
back on a large piece of property that had been donated by the Brand Foundation some years previously.

  Abel saw no corpses walking around on the lawn, nothing but moonlight and dead grass.

  It was different because you saw Emi, he thought.

  Seeing other people in his dreams wasn’t unusual, but seeing Emi Laurens was. Abel hadn’t spoken to her in a long time, probably longer than his mother. Yet, she’d been in the dream. The dead had moved him to another room, his sister hanging by her arms from the ceiling, ferocious dogs chewing on her feet as she shrieked; Abel had managed to glance at the door to his right.

  Emi had been walking by. Her back was to him, but Abel knew it was her all the same. He would have known Emi even if dogs had been eating his feet.

  “Why was she there?” he asked as he stared out at the empty lawn.

  The people who ran this hospital didn’t take Abel’s notions seriously—not outside of what they might mean for his health or the health of others. That Abel was haunted by dead Holocaust victims was absurd—that his father had been haunted as well, and his sister killed over them even more insane. The world outside this hospital wouldn’t even listen to such things; they were more than happy to let Abel live his days out hanging around people who hardly knew they were alive.

  Abel didn’t need any of them to believe, though; neither the people in charge of Sunny Acres nor those outside of this self-imposed prison.

  Emi Laurens might have believed him at the end of their friendship, but he didn’t need her belief either.

  Yet, she’d been in the dream, and that worried Abel. Because he knew he rubbed off on people. That the curse he carried—that his entire family carried—left dark, oily stains on other people. Abel had been at this hospital for 13 years, and he’d kept up the best he could with the staff that left. Especially those who came in contact with him a lot. The vast majority of people had no problems, but at least once, someone’s life had changed drastically. Abel wasn’t talking about babies and weddings and divorces. Something far more sinister happened to her, and she’d been in his dream too.