The Walls of the Castle

by Tom Piccirilli

  “You’re going to give yourself cancer,” Kasteel told him.

  “I already have cancer. Cancer of the soul. Cancer of my life.”

  They sat side by side in the small waiting area outside radiology, where patients were stacked up with various tumors and growths and blooming mold inside of them. The joke was that the doctors didn’t give a damn about X-Rays anymore. If they saw something or didn’t see something they always said that to get a really good luck inside of you they needed to send you down for an MRI. After that it was the CT Scan. You had to go to each one, in order, least expensive to most, no matter what was growing inside of you.

  “You know what my father says is the worst part of being dead?”

  “Please don’t tell me it has anything to do with ham sandwiches.”

  “No, no of course not. Dad says it’s the fact that he knows all the answers to all his questions now, the things that haunted him his entire life, the yearning, the craving, the curiosity. All of that has been sated. And he’s thankful for that. He’s only sorry that he wasted so much time worrying about all those things. He wishes he knew then what he knows now.”

  “And he knows everything now.”

  “Basically.”

  Kasteel tried to imagine if that would be heaven or hell. To get all the answers to all your questions, to know all the things that went wrong, why and where you and the rest of the world went off track, and to finally understand your own humanity, make sense of your own life, only after you were dead.

  They continued to sit there, watching the young and the old, the ones who looked healthy and those clearly dying, the cancer kids and the punks who’d busted their arms in the skate parks, coming and going endlessly. No one paid any attention to Kasteel or Hedge.

  “What do you know about someone in the Castle called Abaddon?” Kasteel asked.

  Hedgwick was staring at a bald girl of about seven. The kid beaming, the kid radioactive. As she passed, Hedgwick reached out and ran his palm over the tiny knots on her crown. She flinched and turned to glare at him while her mother, also glowering, opened her mouth to say something.

  Then she caught a look of Kasteel there, staring calmly at her, his eyes full of pity, commiseration, and condolences for all she was going to have to endure when the kid was dead, and the woman visibly shivered. She grabbed her daughter’s hand and tugged her out of the room.

  “You’ve been talking to someone with a bad brain,” Hedge said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Only people with bad brains talk about Abaddon.”

  “Don’t you have a bad brain?”

  “I’ve got schizophrenia with a tendency toward psychotic breaks, but I wouldn’t necessarily call my brain bad.”

  Kasteel didn’t have a response to that. He waited. He let Hedgwick think it over. Hedgwick clearly knew something. Maybe it would help.

  “Abaddon always wins the death matches on the wards.”

  “He a patient?”

  “He is and he isn’t.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean, he’s like you.”

  Someone who shouldn’t be here, but who couldn’t leave. The hospital wouldn’t let him go either. He was another child of the Castle.

  “What’s he look like?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “We can’t remember. None of us on the wards can remember.”

  “Explain that.”

  “We can’t remember what Abaddon looks like. The same way you can’t remember your name.”

  “I could remember it, if I wanted to.”

  “But you don’t want to. And we don’t want to remember what Abaddon looks like. What he does, who he kills.”

  “Who does he kill?”

  “I just told you I can’t remember.”

  “What do you remember?”

  Hedge remembered a lot.

  “I know that it’s a Hebrew word meaning ‘destruction’ as in a place of destruction and ruin. In the Book of Revelation an angel called Abaddon is shown as king of an army of locusts, translated as ‘which in Greek means the Destroyer.’ There’s an additional note in the Latin Vulgate not present in the Greek text. ‘In Latin Exterminans,’ with ‘exterminans’ being the Latin for ‘destroyer.’"

  “You remember all that.”

  “I remember weird things.”

  “Hedge, why would you know all that about Abaddon?”

  “I don’t know. The Christian scriptures contain the first known depiction of Abaddon as an individual instead of a place. In Revelation 9:11: And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.”

  “Apollyon.”

  “In Revelation 9:7‑11. Abaddon is described as ‘the angel of the abyss, and king of a plague of locusts that resemble horses with crowned human faces, women's hair, lions' teeth, wings, and the tail of a scorpion.’”

  Kasteel laid his head back and pictured that. He tried to see the thing eating Merilee Himes’ chart, and then later on, devouring her.

  “I can see why you wouldn’t want to remember that.”

  “Now you have to forget all of this too. Forget Abaddon like you’ve forgotten yourself.”

  “I don’t think I can,” Kasteel said.

  “Of course you can,” Hedge said. “You have a bad brain too.”

  Kasteel stood at the top of the Fool’s Tower, blinded by the glare of the setting sun, and phoned Kathy.

  She answered without any kind of a greeting. No hello, no nothing, just the silent waiting. He wondered if it was because she knew it was him or if, like him, she’d begun to lose all the usual social conventions in the wake of Eddie’s death.

  “It’s me,” Kasteel said.

  Still, the silence.

  She’d always been stronger than him. Whenever he had floundered on a job or afterwards, while the take was being split and his own men sometimes got edgy and planned to double-cross him, she’d whisper in his ear the heart and truth of the matter. “He’s going to betray you. Watch.” And he’d have his eyes on the guy when the rip-off was about to go down, the prick about to shoot up the place with a ludicrous, long-barreled .357, and Kasteel would already have his gun in the other guy’s face and say, “No. No. Wrong time, wrong score. Rip off your next partner instead, all right?”

  She was intuitive, smart, sharp-eyed, and she’d kept him from killing at least a half-dozen guys over the years, just because she knew when something was going to go down, and him always greedy, thinking about the money, counting the money, excited, heated, instead of keeping cool and keeping watch. Him always in the life and always wanting out of the life, so they could move to the suburbs, start a family.

  He wondered what kind of shit the shrink was telling her.

  The sun dipped beneath the vanishing point, sparking gold and crimson for a last second before dipping away into darkness. With the night came a cold breeze that worked its way across his throat and down his chest and into him.

  “Kath?”

  “Why are you still there?” she asked. “Better yet, why are you calling? If you don’t want to come home then why are you reaching out?”

  “To–”

  “To hear my voice? Because you want me to tell you about Eddie’s funeral? What I chose to bury him in. Who attended? What the weather was like? No, you don’t want to hear about that. You didn’t want to show up. You left me alone.” No anger at all, no rage, no chance of tears, still cool, still sharp. “You’re still leaving me all alone. I had to make all the arrangements. I have to deal with circumstances. I have to figure things out by myself. I had to stab a guy in the arm the other night. You want to know why? Because he got it into his head that you’ve been playing low because you pulled a major score. He wanted to grab a piece for himself. So I stabbed his ass. Let him tell his crew about that instead.”

  He ste
pped to the edge of the tower, looking down at the gardens where others had suicided, where the ashes of at least a few hundred cholera victims had to be buried. He wondered if he was just waiting for Abaddon or somebody like Abaddon to sneak up behind him and give him a push.

  “Stop it,” she said. “I know what you’re doing. Just stop it. You don’t want to die. You don’t want to kill yourself. You don’t even want to be there, even though you might think you do. You want to come home. You want to come back to me. But you can’t, and you don’t know why. But I still have some hope you’ll be able to figure it out. And when you do you’ll come back. Until then, don’t bother calling. Don’t ask how I’m doing, I’ll make out just fine, you know that. Get better. Get strong. Watch your back. Protect yourself. Fight.”

  “Yes,” he said, and hung up.

  While stealing food from the cafeteria Kasteel ran into a contingent of homeless who were living in the stairwells and pilfering what they could from the trash. He helped where he could. He’d cue distractions and sneak meals out to them. It usually went off like clockwork. But there were several children among them who needed regular meals.

  Kasteel slipped into the cafeteria to find that one of the mothers had tried to sneak some milk from the big refrigerators at the back of the kitchen. You had to be really fast to steal from those fridges without being seen. She hadn’t made it. One of the cooks went batshit and started chasing the woman around with a spatula. A couple of helpful doctors thought to detain the lady and tried to corral her.

  Two pulmonary specialists making five mill a year and a fat cook tipping the scales at maybe three-fifty, six-one, squaring off on a twenty-five-year-old young woman with a toddler in her arms, a couple of small boxes of milk in each hand. She wore worn, thin, stained clothes. The kid was a girl wearing a boy’s blue jumper. The kid squealed, laughing, as her mother turned and turned again, stepping away, until she was backed into a corner. The rest of the kitchen staff ignored everybody. They were used to this sort of action, the homeless begging, and snatching fruit and sandwiches off the food line.

  The girl giggled some more. The woman glanced left and right, stuck in the corner, finally noticing Kasteel there, knowing he was different, and staring at him plaintively. Kasteel stepped in between the two doctors. As he passed them he tapped each of them on the back of the hand with his forefinger. He smiled at the woman, turned and stood in front of her. He told the doctors, “If you don’t back off? First thing I do is? I’m going to break your thumbs.”

  The doctors backed away. It wasn’t their fight in the first place. Pulmonary specialists getting involved with some poor lady shoplifting. The fuck business was it of theirs.

  The cook put down the spatula and picked up a meat cleaver. Humongous guy, protecting the milk as if he’d been charged this duty by God. He’d sworn solemn oaths before a dozen cardinals, bowed down on his tubby knee, blessed by the Pope, don’t let anyone take the milk.

  The woman said, “Wait, I’ll put them back. Please, I’m sorry.”

  “Dirty hippies are always desperate,” the cook said, facing off against Kasteel, the cleaver swaying. “Get a job then.” He flipped the cleaver and caught it by the handle. One of those guys who practiced maneuvers in the kitchen like he was twirling guns, getting ready for a duel. He’d been waiting for a chance to cut somebody, to chop somebody up, to move up from steak and veal and pork ribs. Killer for morality, murderer for God, vicious for middle class America. Everybody just wanted the self-righteous excuse to maul somebody else, to threaten, to scare somebody else the way they’d been scared their entire lives.

  “Please, there’s no need for this,” the woman said.

  “I think there is,” the cook responded, glowering, waiting, stepping closer. He kept watching Kasteel, thinking him another homeless wreck, which he was in his way, but not their way.

  The woman trembling, the baby smiling, the milk being milk and much more than milk, precious as gold in some circumstances. The rest of her clan hiding in the deep corners and dark pockets of the Castle, running, dying, damned. How ironic was it that a kid could be ill from lack of milk in the largest hospital ever built? The Castle had once had its own dairy.

  The cook angled the cleaver towards Kasteel and said, “I don’t like the look of you.”

  “You shouldn’t. And you shouldn’t try to take on women and babies all alone, fatso. You should call security. Get them down here too.”

  “I already did.”

  “Good. They sending Conrad and Watkins?”

  “You crazy, smelly bastard.”

  “I’ve been using the industrial grade cleansers in the shower, fatty. No stink on me.”

  That doughy face squeezed into a caricature of real fury. “I don’t like the way you talk to me.”

  “I don’t blame you. I’m talking mean to you. Put down the cleaver and go make yourself a stuffed chicken. If you see anybody pilfering some milk or juice or salads or maybe a turkey sandwich, look the other way. There’s no skin off your fat ass. Show some generosity. Show some kindness. Show a little mercy. Look, I’ll show you how.”

  Kasteel moved. He jumped the cook, who didn’t know how to fight or defend himself at all, and gave him three quick, mean hooks in his tubby belly. Kasteel wanted to do more, wanted to hurt the prick more, but he was good to his promise and showed mercy. The guy’s face went purple, then white. He clutched the cleaver more tightly to him, fell over backwards, and rolled to a stop against one of the counters. The rest of the kitchen staff finally perked up and took notice.

  Kasteel said, “Go back to your work, you lot. And put less vinegar in the tuna.”

  The kid went squeeee and the lady moaned. After a moment she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  “It’s all right,” he told her. “You didn’t do anything wrong. People are in need. The Castle can provide.”

  “No no, now security will come looking for us. They...they use their billy clubs, they’re so cruel...”

  “They’re not going to find you. Go on, head out the exit there and go back to your group. Do any of you have a cell phone?”

  “No.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Use one of the hospital phones. There’s hundreds of them all over.” He said his number aloud and made her repeat it back to him until she had it memorized. “Call if you need any help, for anything.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything. What’s your name?”

  “Mary.”

  “And your little girl?”

  “Edie.”

  Of course it would be Edie. Of course it would be something close to Eddie, so that the grief would hit him again under the heart and make him that much more certain of why he was here, of what he was doing here. Of course the girl would giggle and reach for him, and he would tickle her under the chin and listen to her guffaw. Of course he would escort them to the exit and Mary would kiss him, trying for his cheek as he turned, her moist lips coming together with kindness and no passion on his throat, under the ear, in the same place where, when Kathy kissed him, threw fuel on his fire.

  The fat cook was still down. The kitchen staff had backed off, way off to the other side of the kitchen, some of them watching him, some of them cooking, some of them smoking where they clearly couldn’t smoke. Everyone broke the rules. The Pope was just gonna have to tell God about the missing milk, send divine signals up his big Pope hat, “Jesu, sweet Jesu, some milk got away today.” The cook would have to tithe twice as much this month, stick a chicken leg into the collection plate.

  Kasteel backed away, headed down the nearest hall, could feel gravitational and tidal forces carrying him closer and closer, as he sped up his step and turned a corner and there stood Conrad and Watkins with their truncheons already in their hands.

  They squeezed a little more drama out of the scene, waiting to beat on some people who had already been beaten down as low as they could go, with no mone
y, no house, no future. All they had to offer now was blood, and they’d willingly trade it for the health of their children.

  Watkins said, “Hey, look, it’s the happy asshole. And he’s still happy.”

  “And he’s still an asshole,” Conrad said. “And he’s still here. Despite our escorting him out.”

  Kasteel smiled and said, “Yes, I’m still here.”

  They were a good team. They knew how to work together. They came at him from two sides, staying clear of each other. Kasteel stood his ground, calm, patient, with only a little anger flowing through him, his heart still full of mercy. The two bitter, icy-eyed guards swung at him in short, tight arcs, going for the sweet spots, the stomach and the ribs. Kasteel dodged and slipped fluidly left and right, almost dancing between them, his fast strong hands fast and strong again, the vitamins rushing through him, the sunlight having ignited health, his now tan skin hiding some of the worst scars so that as they moved down the hall fighting, he saw himself in the reflections of room windows, the shining chrome runners. He saw who he was and who he’d been. He saw himself being beaten by these two men, and saw his blood dripping in his beard, and saw how he’d been without purpose, without any provided definition, with nothing to make him feel self-righteous. He was the same now and he was very different.

  They eased down toward the labs where they ran the bloodwork. Doors open, docs drawing test tubes full of blood, checking cholesterol, triglycerides, glycemic indexes. Obese men worried about their hearts, staring down at their own blood and knowing it would kill them, nobody looking up as Kasteel parried Watkins’s truncheon, turned and clipped Conrad on the chin, a short nice nasty chopping blow. It made Conrad’s eyes tear up, and the tears made him sneeze.

  While his body locked Kasteel snatched his billy club and rapped him hard in the back of each thigh. Conrad cried out and hit the floor like he was dying. Watkins was swinging wildly now, trying to catch Kasteel in the temple. Kasteel parried the truncheon easily, jabbed out and hit Watkins twice in the chest.