The Rampant Reaper

by Marlys Millhiser

  People were half-dressed, their caretakers underground or gone somewhere else. Charlie had slipped out of the one-time kitchen behind Gladys’ wheelchair. No one came after her, which was a bit confusing. But everybody in this place, including Charlie, was pretty confused.

  Once she had her bearings, she’d headed straight for the nurses’ station and the phone. The jack was there but no phone. Now, would senile, demented, semimobile folks think of something like that themselves? Abigail and Ben would. And then the lights had dimmed for sleeping and the wandering increased and Charlie had hunkered until she could come up with another idea. Ideas came fast and furious but she didn’t dare dart out into the open. And of course with her luck, Dolores the tomcat chose this time to return to bedlam through the special door only he and Marlys found convenient.

  Cats are true geniuses at sensing things—like which people don’t like cats. Cat lovers can pat their laps for hours to entice a feline to recline there. But those who have no fondness for cats are smothered in unwanted attention from the first opportunity.

  Being scrunched into the knee space of a desk area made Charlie the perfect victim of this portly critter, and because her lap was unavailable, he insinuated his considerable self into the niche between her butt, under her bent knees and the calves of her legs. His claws proceeded with astonishing ease to knead her underthighs through her jeans, and his purr sounded as if she were hand-feeding him bits of lobster and filet mignon with platinum tweezers. The grateful purring drowned out sounds coming or going or, in this place, possibly flying overhead. Sounds that could warn her of danger. There must be a way to pillow a cat—soundlessly.

  Charlie and Dolores seemed to realize at about the same time that she was in added trouble. He stopped purring and started sniffing. The drawer with the critical supplies was still there if only she could dislodge the cat. Once she moved, he moaned like Elsina Miller and took off. She uncoiled frightened muscles and peered over the desktop while searching in the drawer. And watched the wandering, mesmerized.

  The hall was quite full, the wanderers silent but for sniffles and grunts as they came down on sore joints and mostly bare feet. And was it getting chilly in here? Maybe it was simply Charlie’s growing feeling of being trapped. Of not making her plane back to her own life, which grew more dear by the moment. She had never been good with panic.

  Finally, she took off running with a stolen plug for the ladies’ room, fearing the worst, not sure what it would be, dodging silent, lost souls who paid little attention to her or each other, hoping she wouldn’t slip on any surprises on the way. A drug cart stood with cabinet doors left open, drawers pulled out and emptied. Loose pills and pills still sealed in bottles lay strewn all over the floor. Now the lunatics were sacking the asylum.

  Those too feeble to wander called for help from every other room. Be careful what you ask for, people. Only roaming lunatics with pillows to help tonight.

  Maybe the caretakers were all locked in one room and she could free them. “Illegally understaffed” didn’t mean no staff at all, surely. Maybe the other nursing station had a working phone, or Elsina’s office.

  Charlie darted into the ladies room, only to find Sherman there, along with Flo and somebody she didn’t know. They were lighting up. No wonder even the ciga-riga-rooo bird was quiet.

  The first stall she tried was occupied. By the deputy sheriff of Floyd County. That’s where the smokes came from. “Hi.”

  The next stall was empty. There were only three. Charlie locked herself in, feeling sick again. First things first. She might not get out of here alive, but—

  Why the “Hi,” for godsake? Even her good sense was rattled.

  What was I supposed to say, “Good-bye?”

  The deputy’s pants had been down around his ankles, but his lap and things were covered by the pillow used to suffocate him. He was in sort of a sprawling sit Charlie would not have thought possible. Oh, boy.

  She was supposed to have been next. Herman, the deputy, how many others had been sandwiched in first? The lunatics were on a rampage in this asylum. Cigarette smoke drifted over the stall door. What to do?

  Well, I’m not about to stay in here and wait for the pillow, that’s for sure. When she had herself together, she shoved the door open to find the trio happily puffing. Sherman even winked at her. Charlie didn’t stick around to find out why.

  Those people should not have matches, or stolen meds. Or pillows. The hall looked innocently the same. The calls for help had quieted, Charlie hoped not because of more pillows. Rose’s walker had lost one of its green tennis balls and made screeching noises on the floor. She wore one bedroom slipper that was probably not hers and a big brown stain on the seat of her pink sweats.

  “I just want to get out of here. Go home,” Charlie told her and hurried to the door to the lobby. It opened before she got there when an old lady with an ankle bracelet walked in from the lobby and set off the alarm. Oh, great. Charlie tried to switch the mechanism in the cream-colored box that had turned off the racket for Harvey Rochester and Cousin Helen, but couldn’t find a way to make it work.

  That cold sweat again. And the dry mouth. Kraut-gin afterburn. Charlie turned to find the wanderers had stopped wandering to watch her. The smokers had come out of the john still puffing, and several wheelchairs with oxygen bottles not attached by their clear-plastic umbilical cords to people’s noses less than two feet away. Most of these people weren’t wearing their eyeglasses but they stared straight and true and accusingly at Charlemagne Catherine Greene. Maybe every fifth one had the black Myrtle eyes.

  This place was even more terrible without staff than with it. And far more dangerous. Lunatics should definitely not run the asylum. Message there for voters.

  Charlie slammed the door shut on the smelly part and rejoiced at the sound of a phone ringing from the administrator’s office. She almost tripped over Gladys’ extended leg.

  “Gotcha now.”

  “Oh no you haven’t.” Charlie raced across the lobby and into Elsina’s office, slamming the door on Gladys and her leg. Jesus watched her every move, front and back, as she watched Marlys Dittberner answer the phone.

  “Because, because, because.” The ancient woman still wore the ancient dress, much the worse for wear by now. She gave Charlie that toothless grin, threw the handset down on the desk and leaned over to pick up her suitcase from the floor. “I’m going home. I’m all packed.”

  “Marlys, may I borrow the phone?” Charlie crossed the floor as calmly as she could, Jesus’ blue eyes on the wall behind Marlys following her.

  “Help yourself.” Marlys even handed her the handset.

  Charlie, forcing what she hoped was a reassuring smile, punched nine-one-one, heard her heart pounding in her ear against the earpiece, and one ring—before Marlys Dittberner leaned over, unplugged the phone, and yanked the plastic cord from the jack.

  Humming “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” sort of, the old woman calmly stuffed the phone’s power to communicate in her suitcase, grabbed a pen and pencil set off the desk to add to her stash, and slammed the lid shut. But not before Charlie heard the familiar mewing of a cellular coming from the suitcase. “What are you doing, you crazy old bat? That’s my phone you’ve got in there, probably my purse and everything. Give me that.”

  Charlie raced around the desk to grab the woman or the suitcase, whichever she could get a grip on first, and arrived just as the ancient crone yanked the bag off the desk and swung around with it. The burden was so heavy it kept swinging and nearly toppled its owner. The sound of breaking glass inside did not bode well for oodles of dusty eyeglasses, and probably dentures and hearing aids as well. Nor did it bode well for Charlie Greene, who stopped the momentum of the swinging luggage with her stomach and went down like a pregnant hippopotamus.

  “There’s a land that I know of where dreams really do—” Marlys lugged the suitcase, with obvious effort and both hands, to the door but had to use one hand to turn the knob. �
��Come along, Toto.”

  Charlie had just sucked some breath back into her crushed innards and pushed herself to one knee when Dolores the tomcat dashed out from behind the desk to follow Dorothy somewhere over the rainbow.

  “That’s a good dog.” And the door closed behind them, leaving Charlie alone. But the rheumy buzz from the lobby was ominous and she staggered across the room to lock herself in against it. One of her cracked ribs felt like it was going into remission. The lock demanded a key she didn’t have and had a knob that kept trying to turn even as she held it.

  There wasn’t time to drag furniture over to block the door from opening inward. Jesus watched her from both walls still. The cold sweat had turned hot.

  “Why then, oh why can’t I?” Marlys crooned grotesquely out of tune from the other side of the door.

  There was one window in the room, with a view of the front porch and the drive beyond. Two, three, and then four wanderers, half-clothed, toothless, came to peer in at her from the porch, squinting. Could they see anything? Could they remember enough to have a clue to what was happening, or care through their confusion?

  Charlie turned around to hold the doorknob still with both hands behind her back, leaned her weight against the door, and dug both heels into the carpet for leverage.

  And watched her heels slowly skid across the floor as the door pushed open behind her. “Oooohhhh, shit!”

  “We got plenty of—”

  “Oh, shut up!”

  CHAPTER 39

  “SHUT UP! SHUT up! Shut up!”

  “Bad girl.”

  “That’s naughty.”

  “She should take a pill.”

  “Now be a good girl and take your pill.”

  It was too late to change lanes. Or was it?

  Charlie heard herself screaming and cursing as she wormed the little crushable Toyota over between two SUVs. The one in front of her climbed the semi’s hood.

  “There she goes.”

  “Who?”

  “The one with all the hair. Grab her.”

  “Did she take her pill?”

  “What pill?”

  “The one you said to give her.”

  “You old crazy woman you don’t know what you’re talking about. Who’s that screaming?”

  Charlie screamed but managed another worm into the next lane over, where two old men in wheelchairs tried to block her way. Uncle Elmo hugged her. “Don’t cry, little Charlie, this ain’t none of your fault.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You weren’t raised to drive on ice. Ask old Marlys, she knows everything. She’s responsible for it all.”

  “All what?”

  “All the babies,” Marlys said.

  “For saving them?”

  “For selling them. People pay real good money for little white babies from Iowa. Edwina paid top dollar for you. Couldn’t believe she had that kind of money. Being a teacher and all.”

  “She is a professor, goddammit.”

  “That was naughty. She should take a pill.”

  “White babies from Iowa come from real pure stock. Farm-fed. Pure and innocent. Top dollar.”

  “Bootleggers. Patriarchal murderers.”

  “Didn’t have much protection for little girls then. They felt guilty just being born, way back. I was here serving the public long before Family Farms. Didn’t use no hormones or pesticides neither.”

  Charlie needed food again. Probably because she hadn’t kept much of her dinner down on the yellow brick road. That buzzy feeling began to overcome her fear of the wanderers, a return to her nightmare, and the pain in her middle where Marlys had slugged her with a loaded suitcase. At least her migraine had gotten sidetracked somewhere. Maybe she did take a pill.

  Through the plethora of sensation and confusion, it finally occurred to Charlie that she was being herded rather than led. No one was actually touching or restraining her. Could she worm out the cat door? Was there maybe a spare snack in the drawers of the nurses’ station? Could she take off running and get to a door that would open or to the storeroom that had been a kitchen and push the washing machine off the trapdoor, let the others out of the basement or tunnel to help her? Where were Great-aunt Abigail and Ben?

  Marlys Dittberner, she noticed, walked beside her. Rose’s uncovered walker wheel screeched somewhere behind her. Was Rose bringing the pillow? The dimmed nightlights above, staggered along the hall, made elongated shadows on the floor until you came up under the next one.

  Charlie glanced over her shoulder at the shadows. They seemed to stretch forever, like all the lost souls who took forever to die had joined them, all those who couldn’t walk had found a way. No going back down that hall. “I must go forward.”

  “That’s always wise,” Marlys agreed. “Everybody knows that.”

  “Did you really sell the babies?” Charlie decided to head for the kitchen/storeroom.

  “Why not? Top dollar, white Iowa babies. Better than selling groceries. Now they go to China for yellow babies. Serves them right.”

  Charlie, we are going to make a run for the storeroom, and we need food.

  “How did you know they go to China for babies now?”

  “Saw it on the television. I’m going home, you know. I’m all packed.”

  “I am, too.” Charlie took off, dizzy or not, and realized the alarm had stopped its cacophony. When did that happen?

  She passed the door to the storeroom and had to fight her way through the first wave of wanderers and their shadows to get back to it. The light was still on. The washer was moved aside. And the mat. The door to the basement stood open. No Harvey or Elsina, no barkeep or marshal. Not even Ben or the Great Witch Abigail. The hole in the floor was dark and deep and scary. “Where’d everybody go?”

  “To see the wizard. Because dreams really do come true. That’s the storm cellar. I wouldn’t go down there. No lights. Darker than a grave.”

  Sometimes Charlie was hearing Marlys Dittberner, sometimes Judy Garland. Judy Garland was dead. Marlys wasn’t. Go figure.

  “I just want to go home.”

  “Me, too.”

  “What if we go get your suitcase? And we can go home together.” Maybe Harvey, Del, Kenny, and Elsina were in the building after all and just waiting for a chance to rescue Charlie. They could be hiding somewhere close. At least Charlie could retrieve her cell, call for help. “Marlys, where are Abigail and Ben? Besides off to see the wizard.”

  “Ain’t seen either one in weeks.”

  “You and Ben were at Abigail’s house today. Brought me here in the marshal’s Jeep.”

  “That’s right, we did. Forgot all about it.”

  “But you remember selling Iowa babies years ago.”

  “Groceries, too.” Marlys’ museum-piece dress was way too large. The skirt had ripped away from the waist and she held it up with one hand and still kept tripping on it. It had long, button sleeves that hung down over her hands. Its built-in bosom kept trying to hook her chin. Either Marlys or the dress smelled like someone’s attic. “Abigail lent this to me when I lost my shirt.”

  “And Myrtle’s grave in the cemetery, do you remember talking to me there?”

  “I talk to everybody there. That’s home. That’s where I’m going. Told you, didn’t I?”

  “Why is that home? Because Myrtle’s there?”

  “Her and them babies that didn’t get sold. Hardly any of them died, you know. I’m a good midwife.”

  “You buried the stillborns and those you couldn’t sell in Myrtle’s grave?”

  “All her fault from the beginning. Her curse—why not? Some of the children who were mothers, too.”

  “But why is that home to you?”

  “That’s where I belong, and you, too. The curse must end with you. Abigail said so.”

  “You watch television. You must know how dumb all this is. It’s not true or real or even—uh—okay, scratch the television part. But, Marlys, you are wise in so many ways—surely
you can see the mistake here. How weird it is that either one of us could be responsible for or even related to a curse pronounced on the town generations before either of us were even born. And we aren’t responsible for what happened before birth.”

  “That’s why they have curses. So the dead can get back at the living when they need revenge. Don’t you know nothing?”

  This time, Charlie led Marlys by the arm, hurried her through the confusion in the hall. People made way for them because of Charlie’s determination and obvious sense of purpose. She had a plan and they didn’t. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? These poor people were not planners or leaders. They wanted to be led.

  They turned to follow her and Marlys Dittberner the other way down the hall, Rose’s screeching walker right behind them again. Charlie felt so foolish to have allowed herself to be afraid of these people. Great-aunt Abigail and Ben yes, but not these poor lost souls who didn’t know what they were doing even as they did it. Elsina Miller was right.

  “Where do you think you’re going, now?” Gladys, her wheelchair and her extended leg helped by an overturned meds cart, blocked their way.

  “Going home,” Marlys said.

  “We’re going to the cemetery. But first we have to pick up her suitcase,” Charlie added.

  “Didn’t you forget something?”

  “I always forget something, you old bat. Now get out of my way … oh, that’s right, wait a minute.”

  Rose’s walker finally caught up with them and stopped screeching. Charlie turned to see the pillow balanced on its top bar and noticed they’d stopped in front of the shower room.

  CHAPTER 40

  CHARLIE WASN’T EXACTLY shoved into the white-tiled shower room where Darla Lempke was murdered, more like crowded into it by the sheer force of numbers eager to witness what would happen there. Or would they even know? No cheering like there would be at a football game or a public hanging. More of a mass expectation that, with this crowd, came as whispery breath, punctuated ever so faintly with the rheumy growl of weary lungs.