It knocked on the glass now.
Hey, you, over here!
Deciding it only existed if he let it exist, Will got up and went into the bathroom, emptied his bladder, then sat on the edge of the bed. He still refused to look in the direction of the window. He told himself there was nothing out there, the noises were explainable by other things. The hospital was old. Didn’t the brass plate out front say 1884 or something? Sure, old joint like that would have air in the pipes, bad plumbing, timbers settling, walls creaking—
The fingers were scratching at the window now.
The ragged nails made awful noises that went right up his spine.
“Stop it,” he said under his breath. “Just stop it.”
But it wouldn’t stop.
Since the scratching and tapping and knocking weren’t arousing him, it began to slap its hand against the glass again and again, louder and louder until the noise echoed through the room and the glass rang out.
The door opened.
A nurse stuck her head in. “Oh, hi…do you need anything? I heard you pounding or something.”
Will could barely form words and when he did, they sounded dry and squeaky. “No…no, I’m fine.”
“Breakfast in about an hour,” she told him and disappeared.
So, it was real then.
There was no denying it now. Hallucinations do not make noise that others hear. Psychoses are only loud in the sufferer’s head. He was shaking now, making a low whimpering sound in his throat.
There was a knocking at the window.
He didn’t want to look. Yet, his head turned almost of its own accord, eyes drawn by a horrible magnetism. He saw a pallid hand flattened against the glass like a huge white spider sucking up heat. He could see the smears it left on the glass from the seepage of decay.
Whatever was happening, it was real.
The ghost of his limb had returned and he had innocently told it to go and find its flesh and blood counterpart. Now they were one. Now they wanted to be part of him again.
It disappeared about twenty minutes later as if it had never been there at all. In his mind, he could see it creeping down the brick face of the hospital, then scampering through the grass, making for the drainage ditch across the road. It did not like the heat of day. The warmth multiplied the bacterial action of rot within it. It crawled through the cattails and glided through the brackish water, creeping into a culvert where things were dark and cool and dripping.
When a greasy sewer rat nipped at it, it seized it and snapped its little neck. Then it waited.
By one that afternoon, it still hadn’t come back.
That relieved Will, but also filled him with a gnawing anxiety; wondering when it would return, and what it would demand of him. Sitting there in his room after he came back from a tour of the ward for exercise, he felt perfectly ridiculous about it all.
You really, honestly think you’re being haunted by your missing limb?
The idea was ludicrous. It even made him giggle. It was the drugs and the trauma, because it couldn’t possibly be anything else. This was the voice of reason speaking and it made him feel optimistic. It pointed out why such a thing could not be. He listened. He listened well. It was rational and it made sense.
The only thing that upset the old apple cart was that the nurse had heard the noise it made. That was not imagination…but surely it could be explained away logically. He was freaking out, maybe he’d been slapping the bed or stomping his foot in his delirium. Was the idea of that so far-fetched?
The phone rang and he nearly slid out of his skin.
Who in the Christ would be calling him?
He plucked the receiver off its cradle and hesitantly said, “Hello?”
“Hi, Will. How are you doing?”
It was Erin. Oh, dear God, it was just Erin! Did he really think it was his arm giving him a jingle? No…yes…he didn’t know what he’d been thinking.
“It’s my day off and I just thought I’d check in. See how you’re feeling. See if there was anything you need,” she said. The sound of her voice excited him. It was like black silk. “And to see if you have given the idea of a prosthetic any thought.”
He sighed. “You just aren’t going to give up on that, are you?”
“Nope.”
He had to admire her patience. She was a very devoted, conscientious person. That made him like her even more.
“I know if you give it a try, you’re going to like it. They’re nothing like they used to be. Forget all that crap you’ve seen on old movies, they’re very much like real arms. You’ll be doing everything you used to do.”
He bit his lower lip.
No, no, I won’t, dear one. I won’t be holding Kim anymore and that’s the one thing that I can’t get past, he thought. Besides, what would my zombie arm think? What if it got jealous?
He giggled with a low, unpleasant sound.
“Is something funny?”
He swallowed. “Um…no. I was just imagining myself with a pirate hook.”
It was her turn to sigh. “It’s nothing like that, Will. You really need to think about this.”
The sound of her voice made him feel playful. “I told you, no date and no prosthetic. I’m firm about that. Really, really firm.”
She laughed coyly, but not too coyly. “I could take that as sexual harassment.”
“But you won’t.”
“Hmmm.” She made a wet sound and he could just about imagine her licking her lips. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you about Robert.”
“Robert?”
“Robert Hines.”
“Is that Duncan’s brother?”
“Ha! No, Robert lost a leg two years ago and had it replaced with a prosthesis. He was a runner. He never thought he’d run again, but now he’s not only running but he’s winning…”
At that point, he tuned her out because other things demanded his attention. Namely, the splashing coming from the bathroom. It sounded like a fish was jumping in the toilet bowl. From where he was sitting, he could see the toilet. He saw water splashing out of it and spattering the floor. His heart began to pound almost painfully in his chest and he felt sick down low in his guts.
It’s not fucking possible, a near-hysterical voice said in his mind. It can’t be coming out of the toilet. There’s no way an arm could do that. It wouldn’t fit.
But that was the voice of reason talking and it dealt with known quantities of space, time, and physics. The arm, apparently, was not encumbered by such things. He could imagine it slinking through a maze of pipes in the flooded darkness, seeking him out, inexorably drawn to the body it had once been part of.
The next thing he saw emerge from the bowl was not water but the splayed five fingers of the hand…though maybe four fingers would have been more accurate because the pinkie was just a stump. Peeled down to the bone in places, they tapped along the rim of the bowl as if searching for the proper egress. Having found it apparently, they gripped the rim and the entire arm emerged. It slid free of the toilet and slapped to the floor. For a few seconds, it just laid there as if it was stunned. Then it began to vibrate like the tail of a snake.
The fingers wiggled.
They pushed the arm up and off the floor. It waited there, straight as a post, balancing on its fingertips.
Will reached for the button to summon his nurse. The only thing that stopped him from pushing it was his fear that the arm might do something nasty to her.
Meanwhile, Erin was still chatting away in his ear, only he had no fucking idea what she was going on about.
The old bloodstains had been washed from the arm for the most part, probably from the stagnant water in the culvert, but now it was splattered with mud that looked almost black in comparison with its pallor. Sores had burst open on the back of the hand and the fungus that grew from the gashes and cuts was increasing its range. It was so thick it looked as if it had been knitted.
Will’s mind seemed to break free of its
moorings. It bounced around in his head like a rubber ball. This is what it must feel like when you go insane. He was dizzy, he was sweating, and his skin had gone unpleasantly cold. His ribs ached with a perpetual throbbing.
And when his voice came, it sounded like that of an eighty-year old man: “What the fuck do you want from me?”
Over the receiver, Erin said, “Take it easy, Will. I just thought it might be a good idea if Robert stopped by to see you.”
He nearly laughed. Oh, beautiful lady, I don’t think that would be a good idea at all.
“I wasn’t talking to you, Erin,” he said in a high, brittle sort of voice. “I was talking to my missing arm.”
That much was true.
“Your arm?”
“Yeah…um…phantom pains, you know.”
“Oh, I see. Those’ll pass. How do you feel about talking with Robert?”
“I’ll think it over.”
There was silence on the other end for a moment. “Will, are you all right? You sound funny.”
“Just tired, I guess.”
“I better let you rest. Think on what I said.”
He promised her he would. But prosthetic arms and inspiring stories of Robert Hines were of very little interest to him.
The arm was still there.
“Go away,” he said.
The arm tensed and he wondered if it was going to attack him like in some old horror movie. But it did not. He knew it just wanted to be joined with him again. Hurting him in any way was not on its agenda.
“I said, go away.”
The arm slapped down to the floor, almost sulking, it seemed. It crawled back up into the toilet bowl, the crook of its elbow hooked over the rim.
Will was still terrified, yet weirdly empowered. “Go away!”
There was a splash and it disappeared. How it could slip down the pipe and vanish, he did not know. But five minutes later when he worked up the guts to go in there, it was gone.
After that, there really was no denying the reality of what was happening. The voice of reason (and sanity) was no longer trying to convince him that it wasn’t real; it had simply given up. Early that morning, the nurse had heard it pounding. And he had seen the water it left on the floor and a sort of gray, gummy discharge it left on the toilet bowl rim. Not to mention the high, sweet stink of putrefaction that filled the bathroom.
Much as it might have relieved him, he could not imagine a psychosis or a delusion that could create that sort of physical evidence.
That night for supper, he talked the nurses into letting him go down to the cafeteria. Maybe if he was around people, he would be safe. Maybe it could not manifest itself when others were around.
His nurse—Joyce—insisted on pushing him down there in his wheelchair. He was to call her on his cell when he wanted to come back up. He took a table in the most crowded section. It was very busy down there with staff and visitors coming and going. He liked the commotion. He began to feel relaxed right away. The meal was beef stroganoff. He passed on that because burgers and fries were always available. He ordered a cheeseburger, heavy on the mustard and pickles.
This was going to be okay.
This was going to work.
He had a real appetite for the first time in days and although his stomach wanted him to wolf it all down, he ate very slowly, savoring every bite. He caught snatches of gossip that he wasn’t supposed to catch—Dr. So-and-so, who went ballistic because someone ate the last frozen pizza in the lounge; the intern that was arrested for trafficking oxycodone—and smiled secretively over it all.
People passed through the lines, examining the carts of fruit and salad fixings, the aisles of convenience food and the freezer of ice cream treats.
He chewed the last bite of his burger, swallowed, and then nearly spat it back out.
The arm was in the cafeteria.
He went cold, then hot. It felt like his skin was trying to pull off his skeleton. His scalp itched with prickly heat. It was right there. Right on top of the shelf where all the little boxes of cereal and breakfast bars were. People were passing right by it.
Will thought: No way, it can’t be here, it can’t be!
But it was. It lay there amongst the single-serving boxes of Frosted Flakes, Total, and Grape Nuts. It was bloated, the yellow dun flesh set with purple sores, blackened contusions, and a threading of mildew. It was decaying, splitting open from bacterial action. A dark slime drained from it and oozed down the glass sneeze guard over the fruit like droplets of blood.
“What are you doing here?” Will said, much louder than he’d intended because a couple people looked over at him.
As droplets of sweat ran down his temples and he shook with a chill, the arm trembled. It flexed its swollen mass and the flesh at the forearm split open. Several sores popped like bubbles and huge meat flies flew out of them, circling the arm which was like an open buffet to them.
Will nearly gagged at the loathsome, foul odor. It stank like ripe, greening carrion. As he watched, the fingers spread out and began flicking boxes of cereal off the shelf, one after the other.
People stared.
There was a guy over there appraising the fruit. He looked dumbly around. “It wasn’t me,” he said.
Two more boxes fell and one of the cafeteria attendants came over, picking them up and glaring at the poor, confused man with ire.
The arm lost interest in that game.
It slid down the sneeze guard, leaving a trail of ichor like the slime of a slug and dropped to the floor. Several bits of it broke off from the impact. A couple beetles crawled away from it. The fingers flexed as if they were working out a few post mortem cramps, then they began to drag the arm across the floor, ragged black nails scraping over the tile.
It was coming for him.
“Go away,” Will told it. “Go the hell away.”
But this time it was not listening. It was coming for him and this time it was not to be deterred in its mission. It was not going to let him boss it around. It had business with him and it crawled faster in his direction with grim determination.
Will turned in his wheelchair.
He had to get out of there. Propelling a wheelchair with one hand was ridiculously slow. The arm would overtake him. Fuck it. He abandoned the chair outside the cafeteria and hobbled down the long maze of corridors to the elevator. His leg was paining him some, his ribs aching, but he left that dead arm in his dust.
As he rode up, he wondered how long it would take it to find him.
But it didn’t find him.
That was the glorious part. It did not come that night or the next or the next. Maybe, Will reasoned, it was too damn rotten to come after him. Maybe whatever obscene life force that animated it had run down now and he would spend the rest of his life wondering what the hell had really happened.
A week passed and he was released from the hospital. There was no fanfare. He took a bus back to his boarding house and let his landlady, Mrs. Pettifer, fuss over him a bit. Finally, she left and he was alone and depressed and he had no idea what he was going to do. His savings would be depleted in a few weeks, but Erin told him he could get Social Security disability and his insurance agent said that the payout for the accident was going to be quite large. It would just take time. But when it came he probably wouldn’t have to worry about working anymore.
All of which was fine, but now it was up to him to put together the pieces of his life and face the future without an arm. There were far worse things that could have happened, he knew, but in his dejection and gloom he just couldn’t think of what they could possibly be. Everything was so much more complicated than it was before. Even simple things like putting on his socks or tying his shoes, making a sandwich or reading a book had become laborious. But he learned and he adapted.
One morning, feeling generous and forgiving and downright hopeful, he even called Kim and she was so very glad he was doing all right and very sorry that she hadn’t been able to stop by the ho
spital more. As he listened to her ramble on nervously, he could hear things beneath her words that she simply didn’t have the guts to say.
“Are you seeing someone?” he finally asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
He had suspected it. Hell, he had suspected she was seeing someone on the side even before they broke up. He was pretty sure it was Ryan Little, her boss. Kim was essentially okay, but Ryan was loaded and she had a little girl’s fascination of bright and shiny things. Maybe she didn’t have a price tag exactly, but if Ryan flashed his wallet around enough a girl like Kim was going to rise to the bait like a trout for a juicy fly.
It was time to move on. Something that was easy for Kim, but for Will it was difficult because he really had nowhere to move on to. Erin called every few days to see how he was getting on and Mrs. Pettifer was wonderful. She mothered him, making him meals and cupcakes and forcing him to come downstairs and watch TV with her. Nobody had treated him that good since his own mother had died. It gave him hope. It really gave him hope.
After a good night with Mrs. Pettifer which included a dinner of roast beef and cherry pie and an old Mel Brooks comedy, he went up to bed, brooded a bit, then closed his eyes. It had to get better. It just had to. Sleep came and he went with it.
He woke to a tapping sound.
Befuddled with sleep, he had no idea how long it had been going on. It seemed that the sound had become part of the tapestry of his dreams. He blinked his eyes open. The tapping came again. This was no dream. For a moment or two, he was certain it was coming from the door. Was it Mrs. Pettifer? No, the digital clock read 12:45. She would have been asleep long ago. The tapping came again and he tightened inside.
Not again, oh dear Christ, not again.
His brain tried to reassure him that it was just the pipes in the walls or maybe mice gnawing at the woodwork. Hell, even a big greasy sewer rat would have been a relief in comparison to what he was thinking which left him feeling cold from head to foot.
When the tapping came yet again, he knew it was coming from the window. Someone or something was out there and they wanted him to know it. Shivering, he swung his feet out of bed and placed them on the floor. Even a month after the accident, he was still stiff and sore like an arthritic old man. He stood slowly, uneasily.
Splatterpunk Fighting Back Page 11
