Haunted Worlds Page 5

  “Well,” Kent said doubtfully. Once he would have agreed with his brother, but with Ruth in his thoughts he said, “I know that, but sometimes it isn’t good to be so alone.”

  *

  Where in the past Kent might have waited weeks to visit his mother again, he did so the following Saturday, without calling first in order to surprise her.

  On his way, he lucked out and caught a green light, but he spotted the homeless man stranded on that narrow traffic island as he drove past. The man had set his sign down on the ground and seemed to be slapping at his own body and staggering about wildly. Delirium tremens, Kent thought, with an uncomfortable mixture of sympathy and dread.

  *

  His mother was indeed surprised, and of course happy to see him, but he was alarmed at her appearance. She had stopped wearing her dentures decades ago, but her face looked more sunken than ever, her haunted eyes in dark hollows. Worried, he asked her, “Mom, aren’t you sleeping better now that Ruth’s gone?”

  It was quite plain that Ruth was gone: the other side of the room was vacant. The bed stood empty. Ruth’s TV and even the single greeting card that had been tacked to the bulletin board were missing. He felt a strange stab of guilt, as if he had forcibly ejected the woman from the room himself.

  He was surprised they hadn’t moved another patient in here yet, and more than a tad concerned about it. What was the holdup?

  “Well . . .” his mother replied to his question, in a helpless tone that sounded self-pitying and childlike. “Some nights I still hear Ruth screaming somewhere . . . wherever they took her. At least it’s not as loud as before.”

  “Oh, wow. I wonder if they should sedate her or something. Maybe someone should call her niece, so she can come visit her. She should see someone.”

  “I know,” his mother said, still in that self-pitying and childish tone. “It gets so lonely here.”

  That went straight to Kent’s heart. “I’m sorry about that, Mom. You know Greg and I would never want you in a place like this, but you’re just so weak. Look what happened when you fell the last time. You can’t be left alone while Greg’s at work.”

  “I know,” she sighed. “It’s just . . . it gets scary at night here sometimes. I know Ruth was noisy with her nightmares and all, but I almost wish they hadn’t moved her.”

  “Oh, Mom, come on now. And why should it be scary here? There’re attendants on this floor all the time—you only need to buzz for somebody.”

  “I know, ” his mother said. He realized she had been staring past him for several moments. He pivoted in his chair to follow her gaze and saw the blank institutional wall with the empty cork bulletin board.

  “What is it, Mom?” he asked, facing her again.

  “Well, it’s just . . . I’m sure I was dreaming . . .”

  “What?” he pressed.

  “Last night I woke up . . . I heard Ruth screaming again . . . it came from the next room, I think. Maybe that’s where they took her.” His mother pointed at the wall with the bulletin board. “And when I looked over there, well, it was dark, but I thought I saw something moving around on the wall. A big black crawling thing.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Kent said.

  She looked sheepish. “I told you I was probably still dreaming.”

  “You just heard Ruth carrying on and it made you remember her hallucinations. Try not to think of all that stuff again, okay? You know it isn’t true.” He stood up from his chair with fresh determination. “Listen, I’m going to go talk to the nurses’ station to see if they’ll let me take you out for a couple hours, so we can have lunch at that seafood place you like, and then we’ll go sit in the park and have some coffee. How’s that?”

  His mother’s eyes looked less haunted already. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I’ll go arrange it right now.” He wagged a finger at her. “Don’t you go anywhere—I’ll be right back.”

  At the nurses’ station at the end of the corridor, Kent told the attending nurse of his intentions. The tight-faced woman with her platinum-dyed hair said they’d help him get his mother ready, but rather stiffly advised him that next time he should do as his brother always did, and give them advance warning before taking his mother outside the center. He promised that he would.

  Leaning on the counter, he said, “When do you think my mother can have a new roommate? I thought she’d have one already.”

  The nurse replied with thinly veiled sarcasm, “I thought you and your brother wanted your mother to be alone so she could sleep better.”

  “Not alone, necessarily. We were just worried that Ruth was keeping her up with all her nightmares.”

  “Well, your mother won’t have to worry about Ruth anymore. She passed away two days ago, in her sleep.”

  “What?” Kent said.

  “Heart failure, poor woman.”

  “But—but my mother said she heard Ruth just last night, having her nightmares again in the next room.”

  “The next room?” said the nurse. “Ruth was moved to the third floor.” She pointed above their heads. “Your mother herself must have been dreaming.”

  *

  The next day, Sunday, Kent’s wife told him she was moving out of their house and in with Matt.

  In the kitchen of the house that had once been a dream come true—a proud achievement fulfilled, the place where they had raised their daughter, whose living room had known a long succession of Christmas trees and whose bedroom had known countless nights of comfortable intimacy—the two of them now paced around each other restlessly, agitated and on the verge of ferocity or tears or both.

  “Ronnie,” he said, “I don’t know if you’re going through a midlife crisis or menopausal episode or what, but—”

  “I already went through menopause!” she shouted. “Do you think this is only some kind of temporary insanity?”

  “I just don’t think you’re thinking this through.”

  “Kent, I’ve been thinking this through for the past few years .”

  “What about our daughter? Aren’t you thinking about how this is going to hurt her?”

  Veronica stopped pacing to bug her eyes at him wildly. “Amy is a woman now. She wouldn’t want to see you and me stay together if we weren’t happy. She’s not selfish like that.”

  “Selfish—what an interesting word.”

  “Isn’t it, though, Kent? And you’re accusing me of selfishness? But you’re not selfish, wanting me to stay even though I’m not happy? Well, if I am being selfish, I’m sorry, but so be it.” Now her pent-up tears were liberated, and she thumped her chest for emphasis. Somehow the gesture reminded Kent of that homeless man beating at his own body. “I’m only fifty years old! My life isn’t over yet! I’m still here!”

  “For now,” Kent murmured, turning away from her and gazing out through the little window over the sink, at the back yard where the three of them had shared cookouts. Where he had built a swing set for his daughter, and where his wife had used to keep a tomato garden, both of which were now gone. Just bare neglected grass, in need of cutting, overcast with the deep blue shadows of encroaching evening. He said to himself, “We’re still here for now.”

  *

  Kent called the nursing home from work on Monday, and again on Tuesday, and emailed his brother to pester them about getting his mother a new roommate. Increasingly nervous about the situation, Kent even considered taking his mother to come live with him, now that Ronnie had moved out of the house. Maybe he could use his vacation weeks now, or even request a leave of absence from work. But finally on Tuesday night, when he arrived home, Greg called to tell him the good news.

  “They did it,” he related. “They got Mom a new roommate. I don’t know if it’s going to work out, so let’s keep our fingers crossed. I’m leaving to visit Mom in a couple of minutes, so I’ll get to meet her myself, but on the phone Mom said she’s Italian, and she met the lady’s daughter and son-in-law, and said they all seem very nice.”


  “That’s great to hear. I’m relieved.”

  “I agree: I do think it’s good for Mom to have company.”

  “And I need to thank you, Greg, for going over there as often as you do. You’re a good son.”

  “Thanks . . . but you are, too.”

  “Yeah, well, not like you. But I’m going to try to be a better son. I’m trying.”

  Greg could sense his mood and asked, “How’s it going? With Ronnie and all?”

  “She moved over there Sunday night, after we had a big fight about it. She still hasn’t taken much of her stuff yet.”

  “Do you think she’ll go all the way with this, or do you think she’ll have a change of heart?”

  “Who knows?” Kent said. His cell phone held to his ear, he paced alone through his house, from the kitchen into the living room. He found himself staring into the empty corner where they had always put their Christmas trees. Live trees in the early years, but they found the needles turned brown and dropped off too soon, so later on they had switched to a tree of dead plastic. It currently lay hidden in the basement, in its coffin-like box.

  “You ought to ask Amy to come home this weekend and spend some time with you,” Greg suggested. “She should give her Dad a little company.”

  “I won’t push her about that,” Kent said. “She’ll see me if she wants to. Anyway, I’m going to go visit Mom again this weekend. Then I can get to meet her new roommate, too.”

  “Really?” Greg said. “Great. Hey, why don’t I arrange for you and me to take Mom out for lunch on Saturday?”

  “Sounds nice,” Kent said. He realized then how much he loved his brother, and how much he missed him. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  They said their goodbyes, and Kent pocketed his phone. Evening had descended, and he had yet to switch on any of the lights in the living room. As he turned to head back toward the kitchen and microwave something easy for supper, his eyes trailed again past that corner where they used to set up the Christmas tree.

  Peripherally, he had caught a glimpse of movement—a glimpse of something like a living shadow, with a long obsidian body and probing feelers, slithering across the wall. But when his gaze locked directly on the spot, the crawling thing was gone, as if it had burrowed swiftly back into the wall, to some place behind the wall, where it and its ilk would continue to wait patiently.

  *

  On Saturday, as Kent drove out to meet his mother and brother for lunch, he pulled to a stop at the signal near that familiar scrap of traffic island. The homeless man was not to be found, but before the light turned green and Kent moved forward again, he spotted something lying in the island’s mangy grass. It was a crudely scrawled cardboard sign, and its words nibbled at Kent’s mind as he continued on.

  ALONE. THEY’RE EATING ME. GOD HELP ME.

  Mr. Faun

  When she’d been a young girl—before city leash laws, when one could still let their dog run around the neighborhood freely—once Jeannie’s dog had come home grinning and reeking of an animal carcass it had been rolling around in. The smell that announced the approach of the man behind her flashed that childhood incident back into her mind.

  She was standing in front of two large paintings, nearly spanning the space from ceiling to floor, by the acclaimed young artist Jorge Nada. They were portraits done in a primitive style, with huge flat eyes, painted in murky dirty colors and splashed and streaked with more mud brown and rust red on top of that. When she turned toward the odor, startled and suppressing her gag reflex, it was to be greeted by a face that might have been painted by Jorge Nada, though this visage more realistically approximated that of a human being . . . if not by much.

  The face of the man who had come up behind Jeannie—in this particular gallery of the Contemporary Art wing of the city’s Fine Arts Museum—was caked in dirt and grease, as if he too had been rolling around in an animal carcass, or at least sleeping in a dumpster. His shoulder-length hair and thick beard were impossibly matted, with bits of food or garbage snagged in their knotty weave. His clothes were so layered in stains that their original colors were impossible to guess. Guessing his age was a trick, too: thirties or forties? or fifties?

  “Sparafhudullahs?” the man croaked.

  Under other circumstances Jeannie would have asked the man politely, “Excuse me?” Instead, drawing back in revulsion so abruptly that she almost bumped up against one of Jorge Nada’s looming faces, she blurted, “What?”

  “Spare a few dollars?” the man repeated. This time she made out the words, which like his face seemed glued together with dirt. His blue eyes blazed at her like the flames of butane torches jetting through his mask of filth. They didn’t blink.

  Jeannie held her breath and turned to one side as she dug in her pocketbook in case the man made a grab for it. Meanwhile she was asking herself in a wild inner voice, “How did this guy get past the front desk?” Had he found another way into the museum—some maintenance access door or such?

  She held out a five-dollar bill to him, pinched by its end so their fingers wouldn’t touch. If her hand had closed on a twenty before the five, she would have given him that just as readily, to be rid of him.

  “Thankoo,” the grimy man mumbled, turning away, still never having once blinked his vivid blue eyes . . . as weirdly unsettling as those of certain dogs.

  A guard had drifted into the gallery, trying to look inconspicuous as he hovered at the far end of the spacious room with his arms folded, but he was tall and imposing in his black business suit. Jeannie met his eyes as the derelict shuffled out through the same doorway the guard had just come in through. She was amazed the guard didn’t even turn his head to follow the other man’s passage.

  Jeannie found herself walking toward the guard, her shoes clicking loudly against the glossy floor. The man arched a brow inquisitively as she approached.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Well,” Jeannie said haltingly, in a lowered voice. She motioned with her head toward the doorway. “That man . . . I mean, I have a lot of sympathy for the homeless, I do, but . . . you know, to come up to people in a museum . . .” She let her words trail away, feeling too guilty to continue.

  The tall guard smiled. “That’s not a homeless man—that’s Mr. Faun. He’s one of the exhibits.”

  *

  Jeannie had been married for twelve years, and she still called her husband Bobert, as she had in college. Back then she hadn’t known whether to call him Bob or Robert, so she’d settled on both and stuck with it—probably because his own sweet sense of fun hadn’t diminished over the past dozen years. One Sunday morning recently, while shaving, he had suddenly and loudly proclaimed, “I am Lord Maldomor!” Throughout the entire day he had remained in character, speaking in the same booming stilted tone. “Lord Maldomor demands eggs!” That night, after making love, he had announced, “Another wench quenched by Lord Maldomor!” The next morning as they quietly prepared for work, Jeannie had remembered the day before and asked, “Hey, what happened to Lord Maldomor?” Bobert had simply glanced over at her innocently and said, “Hm?”

  Jeannie had an alternating work schedule at the nursing home, and today had been her day off—hence her trip to the Fine Arts Museum. When Bobert had come home from the data storage company where he worked as an engineer, and as they stood at the kitchen counter preparing dinner together, she told him about her encounter with Mr. Faun in the Contemporary Art wing.

  He laughed. “That’s so cool!”

  “When I came home I looked on FAM’s website to read about him, but there’s nothing about him.”

  “And you don’t subscribe to their magazine anymore.”

  “No, though there might be back issues at the library. Assuming they did a feature on him. I couldn’t find anything about him on the Web at all, even outside the FAM site.”

  “Maybe he’s a brand new exhibit.” Bobert chuckled. “I like that: he’s an exhibit, not an artist.”

  “I guess h
e’s both.”

  “Maybe FAM doesn’t want to discuss him to avoid breaking the sense of verisimilitude.”

  “Talk about verisimilitude,” Jeannie said, “you should have smelled him.”

  “Oh, I want to! I want the full experience. Next day off that coincides for us, I want us to go there together. I hope he’ll still be there.” Bobert swept a handful of chopped scallions off the cutting board into his palm. “So you didn’t see him again after you gave him the money?”

  “No. To tell you the truth, he kind of freaked me out, so I left shortly after that.”

  “Huh. Sounds like a fun gig. Not only does he get to play a bum all day, but he makes a little cash while doing it. He reminds me of those fake beggars who drive home in a nice car at the end of the day.”

  “Fake is the word. He’s one of those bogus artists I hate so much.” Jeannie muttered this more to herself than to Bobert, as she poured some oil into a frying pan.

  “I know what you mean, honey,” Bobert said.

  Jeannie was an artist herself, having attended the Rhode Island School of Design while Bobert had focused on literature under the school’s Department of Literary Arts and Studies. She painted, but rather preferred drawing in pencil. Her style was an almost photographic realism, and she was just as adept at portraying animals as she was at human faces. She had participated in a few art shows over the years, and one of these had been sponsored by and housed within the Fine Arts Museum itself, an event that she’d been immensely proud to be part of . . . until she met the museum’s director, Diane Segler-Frost. Segler-Frost had briefly passed her gaze over Jeannie’s framed series of drawings, smiled thinly, and said, “Pretty.” She had then turned away to take in another artist’s work, a young woman with hair dyed candy pink. This artist drank from jugs of milk dyed a variety of bright colors and forced herself to vomit it up onto large canvases.

  Diane Segler-Frost had rhapsodized over the vomit paintings. “A more visceral Jackson Pollock!” she had cried, gesturing exuberantly. “Your body is your brush!”