by Mike Nappa
“Fine. Give me one of your guns.”
“What, so you can shoot me if I happen to lean too far out of the closet? I don’t think so.”
Trudi crossed her arms.
“Look, all we really need is a safe code. Some phrase that lets you know it’s me on the other side of the door.”
“What if it’s you, but you’re being coerced by some thug with a gun?”
“Okay. Right. Sure, that’s good thinking. So we’ll have both a safe code and an unsafe code. I say the safe code and everything is hunky-dory. You open the door. I say the unsafe code, and you know to jump out the window and run. Fair enough?”
Trudi fumed but couldn’t think of anything better to say at the moment.
“What safe code are you thinking of?” she said.
Samuel gazed around the room until his eyes fell on the Gideon Bible beside the telephone. “How about something from that?” he said, pointing. “You’re always telling me I should learn about stuff in there anyway.”
She thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Okay,” she said. She flipped open the book to Psalm 23 and read the words she’d just recited to herself. She showed it to Samuel. “For the safe code we’ll use the first line of this Psalm.”
He nodded. “Good,” he said. “And for the unsafe code we’ll use the last line: ‘I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’ Can you remember that?”
She was tempted to say something snarky, to remind him that agnostics weren’t likely to dwell forever in the house of the Lord. But instead she nodded. She didn’t feel like having that argument again, at least not right now.
Samuel clapped the Bible shut, satisfied. “Okay, then,” he said. He started unpacking egg rolls from the bag of Chinese food.
Trudi hesitated. It was good to have a safe and unsafe code, she knew. But she also knew she’d feel better if she had a gun. If she had her gun. And she was still angry at Samuel’s patronizing attitude.
She stared at him while he unpacked the food and let her mind run through scenarios for a moment. Then she made a decision.
“Okay, those will be our codes, if we need them,” she said, realizing as she said it that now it was almost an afterthought.
“Good,” Samuel said, smiling. “Would you rather have sweet and sour chicken or broccoli beef?”
To herself she said, I’d rather have my Beretta 3032 Tomcat. But to him she said:
“I’ll take the chicken.”
18
Annabel
Date Unknown
I’m starting to see things that ain’t there.
Ghosts mostly, I think, or something else like that. People who are plain in sight but missing substance of some kind, almost like a Hollywood special effect you’d see on a midnight movie around Halloween.
I am surprisingly calm about this new development.
I’d have thought it’d make me scared, but the dog seems untroubled as to their presence and somehow that makes me feel more comfortable with the situation too. Honestly, I think I’m likely just imagining them. It’s as if my brain is so bored by this undecorated purgatory that it’s decided to have a little fun at my expense, keeping itself busy by inventing invisible companions that pop in and out of existence. Keeps me on my toes, I’ll say that.
’Course, it also could be I’m going squirrel-nuts from this solitary confinement. But I think crazy folks don’t know they’s crazy, so I might be okay on that front. At least that’s what I been told.
I suppose there is one more possibility, but I don’t like to think too long on that one.
It’s possible these gauzy visitors really are ghosts, somehow left behind, somehow drifting through an afterlife. Maybe they’s something like me, hidden and lost, waitin’ to be found. But if they really are ghosts, then that means there really is an afterlife of some sort, and if there’s an afterlife, then every human has an immortal soul. How to explain that mystery? Only reasonable thinking is that some kind of God made it so.
If that’s true, then I may have a reckoning to face someday, and I’m gonna be honest: that scares me a little. So I’ve decided not to worry on it, not now at least. Someday maybe, when it don’t have to be so close at hand. When I can pick it up like a pretty flower or shiny rock, inspect it good and hard, and decide whether it’s worth keeping inside or leaving out in the meadow.
Instead, I’ve just been watching these ghosts, or solitary-cell hallucinations, or whatever they are, trying to see what stories they gonna tell.
The first one I seen was a youngish guy, light-skinned and light-haired. I was on the bottom mattress of one of the bunk beds, trying to remember a song about sunshine, when I suddenly noticed a boy was sitting ’cross the way from me on the floor.
He was wearing all black clothes, some kind of combat outfit, I think, and sitting cross-legged in front of my outhouse. His left arm hung limp beside him, and his right palm pressed hard against the left side of his ribs. He was rocking back and forth, just a little, and ever so often he’d pull out his right hand and look at the fingers, almost like he expected to see blood, but there was nothing there that I could make out. His eyes would wince and then go wide, and he’d press against his chest again, rocking and rocking.
“You hurtin’, mister?” I said out loud, but he didn’t hear me, or didn’t want to hear me. “What’s your name?” I said. Again, just looking at that palm, a-rockin’.
I don’t know how long I watched him, a few minutes, maybe an hour. And then he faced up like he was looking at me but could only see through me. He got a little hiccup in his eyes, some awful realization finally making sense to his brain. Then he sagged forward, both arms drooping, then onto his side, eyes still wide open.
He quit moving.
And I suddenly had to pee. Real bad.
I kept thinking that now was when ghosts should disappear, when his image should kinda dissolve and drift away. But I seen that guy lying there so long I was tempted to pee in the water bucket and pour it out later. It seemed wrong to cross the outhouse threshold if it meant I had to walk right over that dead boy. And then, finally, he just wasn’t there no more, and I couldn’t tell when he showed up or when he took gone. I couldn’t tell if I’d been awake or maybe dreaming, or if maybe I was dreaming while I was awake.
I looked over at the dog lying by the front door, and saw it was watching me as hard as I’d been watching that dying boy. I felt cold, even wearing my coat. I think I shivered, and I wondered when was the last time I’d actually taken a breath.
The dog stood up and took a step, looking hard at me, looking almost like it was afraid of me. It stepped again, and pretty soon it was standing directly in front of me. The animal sighed heavily, then dropped itself down at my feet. A minute later, its eyes were closed and its legs was twitching, dreaming of battle, I suppose. Or maybe talking to that ghost.
I don’t know.
I don’t see imaginary things all the time. Just sometimes. Boys with grim faces. An old woman looking like she was so thirsty she ’bout couldn’t move. Once I thought I saw Truck’s boy Kenny, grinning at something happening back behind me, but he was here and gone so fast I just couldn’t tell.
Then, when I wasn’t expecting it, Truck was here.
He was sitting at my table, both hands out, palms down on the surface. And unlike the other “visitors” in my mind, Truck stared right at me. He didn’t look happy.
“What’s goin’, Truck?” I said softly. “You comin’ to get me at last?”
He just frowned. And stared.
“Truck,” I said. “I ain’t got nothing here. You got to come get me now. I think I might be going nutcase down here. You ain’t . . .”
I felt suddenly angry at myself for my lazy nature. Truck used to chastise me for being a Southern girl, for taking on bad habits in the way I talk. I done learned all the wrong ways to talk just by hearing everybody around me talk that way, but I was still smart enough and educated enough to know the difference
. Leastways, I shoulda been.
Looking at Truck sitting there at my table, frowning at my face, I understood what he was tryin’ to tell me. Here in this shelter, I’d let my education slide. I guess that happens when I get nervous or scared. Still, I’d never be this lazy if Truck was here. So I tried again.
“You aren’t gonna leave me here to die, are you, Truck?”
A horrible thought crossed my mind.
“Truck,” I whispered. “Truck . . . you ain’t dead, are you? Aren’t dead? Are you?”
The creases in my uncle’s forehead turned soft, and his eyebrows eased back to normal. He didn’t move, he just kept his hands a-laying on that table, kept his eyes looking dead-on at mine.
I blinked.
And Truck was gone.
Resting on the table, in the place that would’ve been between his outstretched palms, there was that black book, that journal from Marelda Gregor. Waiting where I left it, sitting where I got lazy ’bout trying to understand it.
“I get it, Truck,” I whispered at last. “I got work to do.”
Sitting here feeling sorry for myself was gonna drive me crazy. Them random ghosts was proof of that. I got to keep myself busy.
I got to make myself a plan.
I got to get my head back into my German studies, learn whatever it is Marelda Gregor set down in those clean, handsome letters.
But first, I got to keep myself sane.
I got up from the bunk bed and walked over to the table. I opened that drawer and moved aside the gun. When I had a spiral notebook and one of them pens ready, I sat down to write.
This would be a book, my book. A collection of letters to myself, telling me who I am and what I am. Reminding me of what I been through, of things that seem far away, telling my soul that I have a soul.
I thought for a moment and brushed my hand across the first page in the spiral. Then I set that pen to work.
Uncle Truck keeps a German shepherd on his farm that’ll eat human fingers if you feed ’em to him just right . . .
19
Annabel
Date Unknown
I cut my hand.
I was opening a can of sirloin burger soup when it happened, taking a break from my work because I’d forgotten to eat earlier when I woke up.
I’d rolled off the bunk thinking of Marelda Gregor and, instead of eating, just sat down at the table and continued where I’d left off after my last awake time. I was thinking I’d grab me a bite in a minute or two. I don’t know how much time went by, but I know it was more than a minute because I started feeling light-headed and cranky from the burning in my gut. I figured it was time to feed the body so’s I could get back to feeding the mind without being distracted by a growling stomach.
I was in a hurry, twisting on the manual can opener and actually liking the canned meat smell that seeped out with every turn. Then I heard that dog snort in my direction, like it was hoping I’d share the soup. Like it was really hoping not to have to share with me.
We’d been getting along lately, sort of. It kept its way and I kept mine. I don’t know when exactly I started to trust it, but at some point I’d finally decided it wasn’t gonna eat my hands as long as I kept it fed, and it seemed to have agreed to that arrangement as well. Anyway, at that point, I didn’t want to be bothered by nobody unless it was Uncle Truck at the door hollering the safe code, come to let me out of this prison room.
I looked toward the dog and said “Geht.” It turned toward the bunks and slid into a spot on the floor next to one. I just wanted to stuff a few bites of food in my mouth and get back to Marelda Gregor’s journal, but when I checked to see where that dog was, I took my eyes off what I was doing with the opener. The can slipped. The razored edge of the half-opened lid sliced hard into my right index finger, just above the knuckle, spilling warm cranberry blood into my soup can.
I said a bad word in German, because it hurt like a rat bite. Then I figured that was kind of a good sign because it meant I was beginning to think in German. Except now I’d ruined my soup and was also casually dripping blood into a small pool on the carpet below me. I swore in German again, just because it seemed like the thing to do. Then I grabbed a napkin and pressed it hard into my hand, trying to stop the bleeding.
Funny thing about this bunker. It’s got all kind of supplies, even some rough toilet paper in the outhouse room. Books and food and knives and forks, all manner of things a body would want and need during a hideout. Only thing I could never locate here is a first-aid kit, which seems like a mighty oversight to me. I mean, seriously, did Truck think no one would ever find need of Tylenol or a Band-Aid? So I just kept pressing a napkin into my finger, waiting for the blood to start drying up over the cut.
Then I noticed the dog.
It was sittin’ up now, sniffing the air, very interested in what was going on over here in my neck of the woods. It took a step toward me and sniffed harder.
“No,” I said, “the soup is ruined. Give me a minute and I’ll open up another can for you.”
The dog just kept sniffing.
I figured I’d better start cleaning things up before the animal sneaked dinner out of the spoiled can. I squeezed the napkin between my thumb and finger, then scooped up the soup can and dumped it down one of the holes in the outhouse. I hated to waste a whole can of food like that, but there was plenty more on the shelf, and for some reason, I didn’t think I’d have to be in here before I got to the end of things up there.
When I came out from the outhouse, I froze.
The dog was over by the shelves, sniffing close to the little pool of my blood getting sticky on the carpet. It hit me that this dog was no stranger to human blood, that it’d probably eaten it before. That maybe it liked the way blood tasted.
I felt like I should say something, give it a command to aufhören or geht, to cease or go, but I couldn’t open my mouth. It was like watching an accident that’s about to happen, knowing you should be doing something, knowing you should be stopping it, but being helpless to do anything but watch and hope you ain’t part of the carnage.
The dog sniffed again. Then it looked over at me. There was a second or two while I could see its mind working things over a bit. Then the animal dipped its head and licked at the red on the carpet. It licked a second time, then swung its head quick-like toward me again. It licked more, and kept licking until most of the blood on the carpet was gone.
I felt like throwing up, watching that dog slurp up my blood, wondering if it was getting a taste of me that it liked enough to want more of someday. But I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I couldn’t do anything but squeeze on the soiled napkin in my hand, trying hard to stop myself from bleeding, to stop myself from watching that dog eat the life that had only recently been flowing through my body.
When it was done feasting, the dog looked at me again, waiting.
“Geht,” I croaked. “Geht.”
The dog obeyed without hesitating, trotting back over by the bunk beds where it lay down, blinking.
I felt my arms trembling just a bit, but I tried to act like nothing was out of the ordinary between me and that dog. I got a wet towel and used it to dab up the rest of the blood from the carpet. I didn’t want that dog comin’ back for seconds when I wasn’t looking.
I knew I should eat something, but I also knew that if I did, the grasshoppers flitting in my stomach would just hop it back out again. I decided to let my insides grumble just a little longer.
I went back to my seat at the table and tried to do my work. Truck always used to say, “A man needs a purpose,” and I figured that meant me as well, even though I’m just an eleven-year-old girl. But I’d found a purpose down here in this purgatory, and I wasn’t yet ready to give it up, even when a bloodthirsty German shepherd was eyeing me with unnatural curiosity.
The dog kept staring, but it didn’t move, didn’t growl or show any real emotion at all. Just kept its muzzle aimed in my direction, blinking slowly, watching.
>
I turned back to my notebook and allowed myself a little review. After Truck’s ghost, or whatever that was, had come a-calling, I couldn’t just eat and sleep and wait anymore. I had to do something, had to fill my time with more than emptiness. So I made it my calling to translate the journal left behind by Marelda Gregor. After that, I spent my time in two collaborative pursuits. Education and interpretation.
When I’d first wake up anew, after eating and taking care of bathroom business, I’d sit with a notebook on the table and begin making vocabulary lists just like the ones Truck had made me memorize. At first it came slow, like pulling taffy that’d cooled and hardened some in your hands. But with practice and persistence, the language began to submit itself to my memory.
I made a list of verbs, kept adding to it until it numbered more than fifty, then seventy, then one hundred. As I made the list, I circled words that might come in useful, say, to control a German dog. I practiced a few, discarded the ones that got no response, kept close to mind the ones that turned that dog this way or that. One or two of those verbs I didn’t say out loud because I was a little scared at how the dog would respond. But I kept ’em circled anyway.
Next I started lists of nouns. Household items. Office equipment. Kitchen appliances. Proper names of body parts and locations.
Then I tried to remember German sayings, slogans, and little wisdom nuggets unique to that part of the world. Was Hänschen nicht lernt, lernt Hans nimmermehr. What Johnny doesn’t learn, Johnny never learns. Unverhofft komt oft. The unhoped for comes often. Ein Mann, ein Wort. A man is only as good as his word. That kind of thing.
After a while I caught myself talking foreign in my head, holding entire conversations with myself in German. That’s when I knew it was time to go back into “the personal account of Marelda Gregor, psychiatrist, biologist, mystic.” So I done it.
The clean, crisp words written on the pages of Marelda Gregor’s journal are much less mysterious to me now, though sometimes it takes a little thought to work ’em through just right. I feel like a young’un just past learning how to read, finding the way but needing to work a bit before the letters unlock themselves.
