What Goes On In The Walls At Night: Thirteen tales of disgust and delight

by Andrew Schrader

  My daily consumption of alcohol had grown enormous. Three to four bottles of bathtub gin a day, simply to stop the shaking. The morning was the worst; you’d find me vomiting for a good hour before I could keep any food or liquid inside me. I wasn’t drinking for the fun of it. That was over with many years ago. I’d tried most everything to stop for good. I tried to regulate the amount, or the type of drink, or the time of day at which I started drinking, but nothing worked. It was impossible. Obtaining the gin wasn’t too hard, not in San Francisco. Underground joints were everywhere. Still are. Back of barbershops, pool halls, you name it. So much of our money went to the booze, and many times, to my shame, I raided her purse when she slept.

  One day Maggie saw an old friend at the grocery. Thomas was from the inner part of the city where the real drunks and dope fiends live. Maggie said Thomas was the worst kind of drinker, boozing since grade school. But now he had a fresh glow about him, and he told her a story that was just goofy. Long story short, Maggie brought him home to me later that day, and he told me how he escaped the bottle.

  He said there’s a fella named Lazarus. A spiritualist who’d apparently found some solution for alcoholism. No doctors, for thousands of years, have ever had a real cure. Even today the patients get locked up or killed.

  Well, anyway, I was hopeless that day they caught me, and Thomas took me to this supposed miracle man. What could it hurt? He brought me near downtown, you know, the bad part of town, to an opium neighborhood where broads deal mickeys, and jackals with peeling hairlines and rotten noses sell bean shooters.

  There was this old poorhouse, and steps leading up, which were hidden under a blanket of filth and human waste. The door opened on its own. The windows inside the flophouse had been boarded over with rotting wood. It smelled awful.

  This Lazarus fellow patted a spot next to him on the couch. I can still smell the grease in his sweat, the pork and lamb in his teeth . . . And his eyes—it was too dark to make out anything else at this time—were a violent shade of yellow. Not bright like headlamps. Bright like a cat’s eyes.

  He took my hand in his, smelled it. “Gin,” he said in a gruff and wheezy voice. I could hear his smile. “You like gin.” He gave me back my hand. “Do you know why you drink?”

  “Because I want to,” I answered.

  He laughed long and hard at that one. “Idiot, if you drank because you wanted to, you wouldn’t be here. You’ve tried everything to stop, haven’t you? Switched liquors, kept it out of the house, blah blah blah.

  “Everyone tries those things, believe me. And more. Much more. Some lock themselves up in asylums. Others make the final sacrifice. But, a few others, like you, find their way here. They’re the lucky ones. You, you’re one of the lucky ones. You don’t want to drink, but you do anyway. You have no explanation, so you say you choose to, but that ain’t right. And the damage you do while drinking should be enough to stop you, but it doesn’t. So, why do you drink?”

  Finally, I shook my head and admitted, “I have no idea.”

  Lazarus leaned forward and patted me on the hand like a father explaining something important to a young boy. “What if I told you you are possessed?”

  Before I could answer he raised a bottle of green, brackish liquid. The bottle was heavy and full of depth. “Alcohol is called spirits for a reason,” he said. The room grew hotter, quieter, as if his voice were a great switch, dimming the roar of the world outside. “For years there has been no cure for your disease—except this one.”

  He sloshed the liquid around. “This potion can enter you and banish them from your body. You see, the spirits inside of you are the real reason you drink. Once you have drunk enough, you’ve crossed the gateway to the spirit world, and the spirits begin drinking for you. The cravings intensify. This,” he said, gesturing to the liquid, “will cast them out, and keep them out.”

  Of course, this was goofy. I didn’t believe in spirits, God, the devil—any of it. It was insane . . . Only, it wasn’t. Maybe on the surface it was, but underneath that, well . . . it felt real. It felt like a key had turned inside my heart. Even if this were all some joke, all this some delusion, what did I have to lose?

  “All I have to do is drink this?” I asked.

  “Yes. It will cast them out of you. But—and listen carefully, this is important—maybe in a week, maybe a month from now, maybe in fifty years, or maybe never—there may come a day when the spirits inside you will reveal themselves in the flesh. At first, they will only appear in the outermost corner of your vision. You may feel drawn to look at them. It may feel like a scratch on the top of your mouth you most desperately want to scrape, must scrape—but you can’t.

  “You must never stare. You must never stare at who goes there.

  “When you drink this—your cure!—the entities will shoot out of your body. I don’t know where they go at first or if they will ever return to you in the flesh. If they do—don’t look!—they feed off your vision. The more you look, the more physical they will become. They will get closer, and closer, and closer still. And they will grow in shape and power, until they overtake you.”

  He leaned in, his withered nose almost touching mine. “If they can’t get you from within, they’ll get you from without.”

  And then I voiced my larger question. “And if I don’t take the cure?”

  “You are infected. You have a cancer. Can’t bargain with cancer. Neither can you bargain with the spirits inside you. They will not stop. You have no control over them. When you take a drink, they take two. They must have more! What you are experiencing is not a moral failing, a weakness of will or a choice you make; it is a compulsion caused by those who go there. And if you continue to drink, you’ll drink until you die.”

  He raised the vial again. “This is the only solution I have for you.” He pressed it into my hand. Soon after, we left.

  I had to admit at the time his explanation made a certain kind of sense. Why else couldn’t I stop drinking? Why, when my brain would scream out to put the bottle down, would I pick it back up? Why couldn’t I control my temptations? Was it true?

  Was I possessed?

  Three days later, I got a job at a warehouse. A real job. I hadn’t drunk, and for that I was grateful. But as my first day ended, and I stepped outside into the foggy afternoon, a sudden terror gripped me, and a voice rang out in my head—Go get a drink. I knew it was a terrible idea, but more and more the desire for a drink began to overpower me. One drink, I told myself. Just one. It would be okay.

  And I did. I remember taking one drink. Only my thoughts began to race, out of control, for another. As the bartender poured the second one, the voices quieted. So I drank it. And for a few moments they stopped completely. But they came back in full force. So I had another drink. And another . . .

  Several days later, I woke up in an alleyway. The sun had burned my face red. When I got home, the police were waiting. Maggie was there, sobbing uncontrollably, and I realized I must have done something terrible. Apparently I had nicked a gun and robbed a shop. I remember nothing.

  Sixty days later I was released from jail, for no other reason except Maggie had called up our lip and worked out some kind of deal. Our family connections paid off, again.

  I was done. I could never again drink. I began to believe Lazarus’s crazy story. I was not in control. I decided he was right. Hell, even if he wasn’t—even if there were no such thing as spirits—what would be worse than this?

  So I drank that man’s potion right there in the doorway of our smelly apartment. It tasted like soot and burned like nail polish remover on the way down, but instantly the fog of liquor that plagued me so many years was gone. It was a miracle.

  We moved here. For a while, life was good again. The days appeared brighter, and we were happy. I had absolutely no cravings for liquor. I was free.

  A fresh wind blew past my face at top speed, momentarily drowning out Charles’s voice. He kept staring right at me, not breaking his speech,
even for a second. For a moment I saw his mouth moving, with only the wind screaming in my eardrums. Then his voice returned.

  “One morning I woke up and walked from the bedroom, past the courtyard here—and something passed through my vision. What was it? Whatever it was, it had disappeared.

  “I heard footsteps to my right. I whirled around and caught a glimpse of it, this time of something so outrageous and unnatural, Brother, that it defies description!

  “The thing was upright, a tall, gray figure with long ears that stood straight up. And thick hair, fur, all down its body. It was some kind of rabbit man.

  “Far off, I remembered Lazarus’s warning. I tried to look away, but couldn’t! The rabbit walked directly into my field of vision, then stopped abruptly and looked at me straight on.

  “Long, blunt teeth hung down over its lower jaw. Its eyes looked like a black mesh filter. The whiskers were long and gnarled and thick like vines. Its arms were those of a child born with flippers instead of arms—short stubs that fanned out on both ends.

  “I screamed. This farcical vision had gone far enough. I fell to my knees and prayed and yelled and sobbed and wept. Minutes, hours, decades later, Maggie found me and held and shook and begged me to calm down. When I looked up again, the rabbit man was gone.

  “But I don’t go into the courtyard anymore, dear Brother. The rabbit man—the place is his now.”

  Chapter Seven

  I remained stone-faced. “This . . . rabbit man . . . is the intruder you wrote about?”

  Charles looked at me, his eyes loose and wobbly in their sockets. “They’ve taken Maggie. She is somewhere in the house. She moans in the night.”

  “Somewhere in the house,” I repeated. Charles stared past me, unfocused. “There are more . . . spirits in the house?”

  Several minutes passed as I tried to crab this. I still figured my brother had suffered an alcoholic delusion and killed Maggie. I said a silent prayer. The poor redheaded sweetheart who had stood by Charles all these years, only to be thrown off the cliff, or stabbed—or worse. I spoke up: “If you have hurt Maggie, we can work through this together. Do you understand?”

  Charles’s shoulders slumped; he sank farther into the muddy grass. Finally, he saw he hadn’t convinced me. “Okay, Brother. You win. Follow me into the house, so we can finish this business.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder, providing my brotherly reassurance that I would take care of him. I would protect his secret. I wouldn’t rat.

  Chapter Eight

  The feeling of being dragged underground grew thick as we entered the house. Charles went to the window and flung the drapes open, revealing the Spanish-style courtyard.

  “Brother, do me a favor? Would you look out there for me?”

  I did. From the brick walls on the back side of the courtyard to the house is about two hundred feet long, the width of the yard about the same. In the center of the courtyard was our circular stone bench with floral patterns carved into its sides, and in the middle of that the large oak tree that marks the exact center of the courtyard. On the right side of the yard were the entrances to the master and guest bedrooms. All the bedrooms, in fact, have glass doors leading to the courtyard, which makes for an elegant stay in our home. Pink and red perennial roses that require little attention to bloom each year lined the outer walls to the rooms, though this year they were all but wilting.

  “There . . .” Charles whispered. He pointed into the courtyard, his hand shaking. “Are you looking, Brother?”

  I saw nothing except the roses and chrysanthemums waving at us.

  “Keep staring.” His voice weakened. Tears spilled down his face. “I love you, Brother. Please forgive me . . .” He shook harder. He mumbled. Saliva dribbled out his mouth.

  I looked back to the courtyard.

  “Do you see?” Charles sobbed. “It’s getting closer. Please tell me you see it, Brother, I can’t hold on much longer—dear God!”

  I focused on a line from Charles’s forefinger, outwards to the outer edge of the wall of the master bedroom. A small gap was there, behind the wall, where Charles and I used to run and hide from our parents, so they couldn’t see us—from the very spot we now stood, trying to glimpse the . . .

  “Do you see!” Charles cried louder. I stared, strained harder, and then—

  Yes!

  There was something. An outline, perhaps? Hard to tell. Sunlight outlined a shadow as it stepped out from behind the wall.

  “Brother, do you see?”

  I stammered. “Yes. B-by God, I see—”

  “Look away!” Charles dropped to the floor and buried his head between his knees. “Before it’s too late!”

  To go into too much detail, to give you a vivid picture of the rabbit man, could be a grave mistake. What if you saw it in your mind, stared at it with your third eye within the confines of your skull? And what if you trapped him in there, and he never came out? No, it is too risky to trust yourself not to think about this grotesque creature.

  Charles knocked me to the floor and broke my near-trance. We sank to the floor, cheeks to the tile, staring at each other. But, there! Out of the corner of my periphery the rabbit man still lurked.

  Closer it crept. A hundred feet away. Ninety. Eighty. I shut my eyes. My mind’s eye wouldn’t let the image go.

  Seventy feet. Sixty.

  Fifty.

  When I opened my eyelid a quarter, a tenth, a hundredth of an inch, the rabbit guy was no more than ten feet away. His rusted, clawed toenails, thick with scratches and gangrene, sprang out of his half-man, half-rabbit paws. The feet were long and boatlike and covered in matted fur and green pus.

  The sun’s arcing away over the ocean now cast a horrific shadow, the blackened ears of the rabbit man stretched closer to the house than his body, imprinting themselves miles long in the courtyard brick.

  Charles and I stayed there, on the floor, until the sun had long left us and we were sure the nighttime had swallowed the shadow up.

  Chapter Nine

  I still can’t explain why I could see the specter, as I hadn’t been infected. Was the force of Charles’s demon so strong it crossed over into my vision? I can only assume this is the case. I’ve also determined that this was the point at which the spirits must have chosen me next. It was my first point of contact, and as we’ll get to shortly, my life was soon changed.

  As I watched Charles on the floor, eyes shut, praying, the feeling of homesickness shot through me. I longed to be in our home as children again. This house was forever tainted. I wished for our parents, our grandparents, our friends. They were all gone now, and we were alone and helpless.

  Something else happened, too. My perception of Charles shifted. The longtime boozehound, the hopeless case he was . . . I realized that none of this was his fault, that he’d been out on the roof battling something so far out of normal reality he was rendered impotent. I decided then and there to do all in my power to help him, to help us, to defeat whatever this thing was, once and for all.

  “Are there more?” I asked later, huddled in a blanket next to the fire. “Spirits?”

  Charles poured us tea. “Many more. I’ve often thought of leaving, but cannot go without Maggie.” The fire threw up sparks and smoke. “They must have taken her somewhere. I can’t leave, in case they follow me. What right do I have to infect the world with this?”

  Later that night, Charles and I shared a bed for the first time since we were boys. I don’t think either of us could have withstood sleeping alone.

  “They don’t like us here together,” he said drearily. “They gather in strength in the dark.”

  Still, we slept. I did, at least—a little. Things went bump in the night. All night. I could tell by Charles pulling on the blankets that he saw things strange and ghoulish in the dark, but he had the courtesy not to tell me.

  The next morning we made coffee. The sun was bright and lovely again. “I’ve been up thinking,” he said. “The fella who gave me
this potion, he must know more.”

  I agreed, and asked if he would go see him.

  “No.” He threw a rock into the yard. “But you should.”

  “Me?”

  “Like I said, I can’t leave. But you can. Go see him. I’ll gladly die from this disease, but I don’t want to stick someone else behind the eight ball.”

  “But—”

  “You have no choice. They are upon you now, too. The rabbit man. He saw you yesterday. That’s how it starts, I think. That’s how it was with Maggie.” A look of horror came over my brother’s face.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “They are watching you. Right now. They don’t like us speaking about this. You’ve got to go. Find the spiritualist. Get him to free me, to free Maggie. Get him to talk. Please.”

  “How do I find him?”

  Charles slipped me a piece of paper with an address scribbled on it. Apparently he’d already thought this through. “His name is Lazarus.” He raised a balled fist. “He has no fingers. The tops of his hands are folded over onto themselves. Reminds me of a crab, maybe . . . no, like dough, like biscuits. A man with biscuit hands.

  “Go to this address in San Francisco. You must get to him before it’s too late for us. Quickly, leave now!”

  Chapter Ten

  After a long and arduous drive south, I finally arrived at my San Francisco hotel around 10 p.m. I was too tired to visit the address on the little piece of paper in my pocket, so I thought it best to get some sleep.

  What happened next is a little fuzzy, but I’ll do my best to tell you what happened.

  I remember handing my things to the clerk and browsing the dinner menu posted near the hotel dining room. Honey-roasted duck breast with pork belly sounded about right, I thought, when the thought sprang into my mind: “How about a highball?”