Dr. Winston Carlisle smoked his pipe as he read the patient’s chart.
Name: Clifford Walker
Age: 32
Was stationed in Singapore in 1942 when the Japanese took over
Spent the next 2 years in a POW camp in Burma until liberated by an Indian detachment
Has been living with his mother in Bristol since his release in Burma to the autumn of 1949
Voluntarily checked himself into the Sparrow-Head sanatorium due to vivid nightmares most likely attributed to war neurosis
Patient does not sleep yet is not a danger to himself or to others
Has requested to be lobotomized
Thus ended his predecessor’s scrawled notes on the man.
Winston puffed smoke to the gloomy ceiling of his office. Watched it ascend until it broke on the sickly yellow and flickering light fixture. He could see dead flies entombed in the dirty glass casing.
If he tried hard enough, he could imagine their buzzing.
He had taken up his post at Sparrow-Head last week, having transferred from a quite comfortable stint over at his private practice in London. But times were tough, and he soon lost all he had built in the city.
He shut his eyes and thought of Martha’s smile.
So back to a sanatorium it was for him. He detested lobotomies and other barbaric remnants of an older time. Felt his stomach twist in on itself upon reading Mr. Walker’s request.
Mr. Walker was to be his first patient here. A man who had spent the last three months—on his own volition—locked up in this horrid excuse for a bastion of mental hygiene.
And now he was seeing Winston to obtain recommendation for a most invasive and irreparable procedure.
Winston resolved himself, rose, and opened the door. “Lucy! Bring in Mr. Walker, if you please.”
He sat back in his tattered leather chair. Sighed. It was like he had just given up the ghost just then.
The patient entered the room under the watch of a pudgy orderly with a menacing face. Winston was sure he was abusing the patients, especially over at the woman’s ward.
“That will be all,” Winston said curtly to the orderly. He scowled, yet his eyes were vacant as he left. Winston made a note to keep watch on the man.
“Please, take a seat,” Winston said.
Mr. Walker stood behind a plastic chair, his skeletal fingers grazing the headrest. His eyes were stark red. A slight tremor ran through his frame like wind through paper. Winston was at once reminded of opium users in the Orient and how their bodies fell into disrepair due to that accursed drug.
Mr. Walker glanced at Winston. Eyes then darted to the corners of the room, as if expecting something to lunge out at him.
“Mr. Walker, we cannot proceed until you take a seat. If you please.” Winston waved his wrinkled hand at the chair. The patient finally sat down, yet his body was tense, as if he might spring up at any moment.
“Cliff,” the wraith of a man whispered.
“How’s that?”
“Me name’s Cliff.”
“Very well then. Cliff. What would you like to discuss today?”
Winston was not one of those psychiatrists of days gone by. The ones to introduce their patients to the blade and to barrels of chemicals at first glance. He believed in the power of talking things out, much to the shaking of his colleagues’ heads.
Cliff’s lower lip twitched. His head jerked slightly upwards. Winston noted that the man hadn’t blinked yet.
“Oi… Oi want you ta lobotomize me.”
Winston swallowed his spit. “A most unusual request, Mr…. Cliff. Why, may I ask, would you want me to do that?”
“Don’t matter why. Oi just wants it mind. Needs it, more like, yeah, needs it mind.”
He spoke in sputtering jerks and stops. A bit of drool coalesced around his lips like froth.
“No, I don’t think I shall entertain this, Cliff. Not unless you talk to me. Does this have to do with the nightmares?”
Cliff laid his dried scarlet eyes on the doctor’s. Winston felt his shoulders tense. He thought he could hear a buzzing…
“Yes!” Cliff suddenly screamed. “Oi wants ‘em to end.”
His voice broke out into a strangled sob.
“I empathize with you, Cliff. I really do. I will do all in my power to help you through these maladies. But lobotomies are really a last resort.”
“The last doc promised me.”
“Ah yes. Doctor Maxwell. He is no longer with us I’m afraid.”
Cliff’s eyes stretched even wider, if that were possible.
“No,” he let out in a barely audible puff of air.
Winston thought about pursuing the man’s obvious shock at the news. But he really needed to get back to Martha. All this talk of lobotomies was upsetting his mood.
“What kind of nightmares are you having?” Winston asked.
“Can’t tell ya.”
“May I ask why not?”
Cliff looked at the wall to his right. As if he could see through the grandfather clock and into the cafeteria next door.
“Cliff, if you won’t speak with me, I will just have to send you back to your room—”
“No! Oi’ll talk. But not about dem dreams. Oi told Maxell and ee’s gone now ain’t ee? Just like me Mum.”
Winston arched an eyebrow at this. “I’m terribly sorry. I was not informed about your mother’s passing.”
“Er came ta see me last month. Told ‘er about the dreams. Then er was gone.”
A single tear sparkled to life in the sea of red that was Cliff’s right eye. It looked like the wetness stung him. His eye warbled and flinched. Winston, despite his impatience, was growing sorry for the man.
Cliff cleared his throat. “Okay. Oi’ll talk. Say what Oi can but not everything. For yer protection mind.”
Winston nodded and readied his pen.
“And if Oi talk, ye can promise to scoop out my brains so ‘em vision don’t come back no more?’
Winston swallowed the stomach acid rising in his throat.
“Sure,” he lied.
Cliff nodded and wrung his hands.
“It ‘appened back in the war. Me an’ the boys got taken prisoner by dem Japs. You wouldn’t believe the evil things them animals done to us. Me mate Richard ‘ad bamboo shoved right under his fingernails. Proper popped each of ’em right off. You ever seen violence like that?”
“Not quite. I was stationed as a soldier in Palestine for a year when I was a younger man. Saw quite a few riots but nothing like what you saw.”
“Right. Right. That’s good. The Japs weren’t always so bad. Sometimes dey would give us extra rice an’ if we was real good like dey’d even let some of us out of work duties for a day. Cept poor sods like Richard. The ones who couldn’t keep their mouth shut.”
Cliff showed Winston his dirty nails. Mimed pulling them out one by one with a sadistic grin.
He still hadn’t blinked yet.
“Anyway,” Cliff continued. “One day we was out diggin’ trenches for ‘em ‘round the camp in case our blokes were to come an’ spring us one day. Filled ‘em up with these little bamboo sticks we sharpened into spikes. Did this for a good two weeks. Diggin and fillin’ and our skin gettin’ sliced up by all manner o’ crazy bugs.”
Cliff blinked.
In a moment he went from gleefully, if not morbidly, recounted his story to full on panic. He leapt out of his chair and kicked it over. Flattened his back to the wall. Eyes open again. Body shaking like that paper in a hurricane now.
Winston was used to outburst like this. Even so, this one unnerved him. Seemingly out of nowhere. All the man did was close his eyes.
“Oi’m sorry. Oi’m okay.”
Cliff picked up his chair and sat back down.
“If you would like, we can always reconvene tomorr—”
“No! Today. This has to end today.”
“Very well. Would you care to explain what just happened?”
“Oi will, mind. Let me tell the story first. There we was, diggin’ ‘em trenches of sticks. One day, the good ol’ blokes did come. Gunfire 'explodin’ all ‘round us like Jesus were coming back in the sky with all His angels. Oi thought this was it, God had come to save us.”
He crossed himself.
“Then Oi heard the screamin’. Not the Japs, dey was quiet though, like dey was listenin’ to those screams in reverence. Me and me mate Bob dug out a hole in our hut to see what was ‘appenin’. And there dey were, our blokes, good ol’ British boys. Impaled like sausages on those stick we been whittling for the Japs. I saw this one boy, no older than me, a stick pokin’ right out through his chest. He were still alive and lookin’ at me. Dead in me eyes. Until he was dead. I think it was my stick that killed ‘im. Don’t ask ‘ow I know Oi just do.”
“Dear God, that is awful. No wonder your mind suffers.”
Cliff smiled, tightly. So tightly it seemed his teeth would crack apart.
“That ain’t 'what did it Doc. And I can’t tell ya what did, less ya want what Oi got. That boy, I think ‘ee ‘ad it and passed it ta me. ‘Ee saw it and that’s why Oi saw it then too. Like the clap, mind. Passing it along like some fucking disease. And now Oi sees it. Every time Oi close me eyes.”
Winston leaned forward. “See what, man? Tell me.”
Cliff smiled but the gesture only served to sadden the air itself. “The dead are a river. And deys is all ‘round us doc. All the time. That’s all Oi gots ta say on the matter. Now, if ya please, scoop out me brain now.”
He sat back in the chair and somehow it seemed his skeleton had vacated and left his body a loose rag of flesh draped over the seat.
“Mr…. Cliff. I cannot lobotomize you. You are unwell and do not deserve the life—the lack of life—that procedure would leave you to. Meet with me everyday at this time and let’s talk you through this. I can help help you.”
Winston thought of Martha at home. Lied up in bed and paralyzed. Waiting for him to relieve the nurse and wash her body and keep her company. He would help her to.
He had to.
Cliff said nothing. His sunken cheeks fell further into his skull.
The only sound was the buzzing—yes, the distinct buzzing now—from the flies in the light.
Winston jerked his head to the light and saw nothing.
Looked back at the patient and he was now mere inches from Winston’s face. He grabbed onto the doctor and spit in his face.
“Ya lied ta me! Please! Take it away! Dey’ll get me, mind? When I shut me eyes I see ‘em crawlin’ in the walls. Gettin’ closer ta me!”
Winston pried the man’s hands off of his jacket. Cliff was a very weak man and couldn’t hold on. “Get a hold of yourself man.”
Cliff broke down into sobs. Shut his eyes as the tears streamed down. Then he was screaming.
“In the walls! Under the floor!” He kept his eyes shut. “Behind you Doc! No face. Pushing through! It knows your name now. It knows who you are!”
The orderly burst into the room and laid his hands on Cliff’s shoulders.
He kept his eyes shut.
“Yer makin’ me do this! I sees it! In the walls! Rat teeth. Moaning. Wanting! Slithering! Pinned on sticks! Oi’m so sorry!”
The orderly pulled Cliff out of the office and back to his cell. Winston could hear him screaming all the way until his voice dimmed to a muffled groan behind many padded walls.
His heart rammed into his sternum and he felt lightheaded. Too much excitement for one day.
Winston jotted down his final thoughts on his notepad. Smoked his pipe until he calmed down. Thinking of that poor soul and how he could be of assistance to him. Stood and put on his winter coat.
As he was leaving the office, about to shut the door, he heard full on buzzing.
Winston lay in bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark. Martha was down the hall in her specially made bed. Tonight had been a rough one. He hardly recognized her. Had soiled herself immediately after the nurse had left. Spent the last hour screaming for her mother until she finally calmed down and went to sleep.
It was some time after midnight now, and Winston was utterly exhausted. Yet he couldn’t sleep.
In the walls. Under the floor.
Rat teeth.
The ravings of a lunatic, to be sure. Though even a full grown man, one educated in the scientific arts of reason at that, can be susceptible to bumps in the night.
And there was that buzzing.
Winston searched for its source but couldn’t find it. There must have been a fly—or two, maybe even three of them—hiding in the corner of his room and out of sight.
The phone out in the main hall rang.
Winston cursed and groaned and got out of bed. He never received calls at this hour unless it was some dire news. He answered it.
“Doctor Carlisle?”
“Speaking."
“My apologies for the late hour. This is Marcus at the Sparrow-Head. The constabulary are here and are requesting your immediate presence.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to explain yourself fully first. I cannot leave my wife unattended at this hour.”
“Right, of course. It’s your patient, Clifford Walker. He is dead.”
The words struck like a gong in a hollow night. As if they were being spoken by a ghost and received by someone who was not him.
“I’m sorry?”
“As is the orderly Wilkins. Both men were found in Walker’s room. Nobody noticed them until a few hours ago, but Walker apparently had a knife hidden away on his person. He slit Wilkins’s throat and then… forgive my crassness… he carved out his own eyes.”
“Scooped them out,” Winston whispered.
“Beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. Why do the police wish to speak with me.”
“Walker wrote your name on his wall in the orderly’s blood. Some queer phrase as well, In the Walls Now. I know this is all sudden and bizarre, but you must come down right away.”
Winston agreed and ended the call.
Got dressed in his room and snuck in a peak on Martha.
She was there in her custom made bed. Not making a sound.
But something else was.
A scratching from the corner near the window.
Winston stepped into the room, not turning on the lights to disturb Martha. It was like mice scratching at wood.
In the walls.
Rat teeth.
Despite his winter coat, Winston shivered at the thought. Grew colder still thinking that Cliff had been inches from his throat, holding a secret knife on his person the whole time.
The scratching stopped.
Maybe it had never been there.
Winston turned to leave, looking at his wife one last time.
Noticed her chest wasn’t rising as it should have been.
“Martha?” He rushed over and flipped on the lamp by her bed. The light cast its pale blue glow on her face, making it appear corpse like.
Appear, yes, only appear.
He shook her shoulders. “Martha!”
She didn’t wake.
Winston checked for her pulse, but felt none. Only the powdery coolness of her skin.
“Martha!” He applied the Silvester method and moved her arms up and down to restart her heart.
But she did not move. Did not breathe.
Buzzing from the lamp.
Scratching from under the floorboards.
“Winnie?” came Martha’s voice, cold and distant. But she did not move her lips.
The lights went out.
“Winnie, I can’t see you.”
Winston squeezed her lifeless hands and let out a prayer to a God he hadn’t spoken to in decades.
He shut his tear-filled eyes.
And saw it.
What poor Cliff must have seen.
With his eyes shut, he saw Martha’s bed, yet she was not on it. Something underneath the bed pressed itself into the mattress like a man straining against latex. He saw a bulge that could have been a malformed head pushing its way through. Could hear the gnawing of teeth on wood and the moaning of a heartbroken woman.
Then he opened his eyes, and there was nothing.
Nothing save for the dead body of his wife.
He shut his eyes again.
They were everywhere. The pressing things. There was one under the mattress. Several under the floor, in the walls, and even one in the ceiling.
“Winnie!” his wife screamed, but the sound came as if she were at the bottom of a mine shaft.
The pressing things moaned and shuffled under the surfaces. Flowed on by like they were a…. like they were a river just under the material world.
Screams of hundreds of souls. Crying out for their loved ones.
He couldn’t hear Martha anymore. She had flowed on down that river out to a dark sea.
“Ya lied to me!” came Cliff’s enraged accusation. The he, too, went on down that river.
Winston couldn’t open his eyes. He was morbidly glued to the experience.
Something clawed at the wall. He saw dark hands scrape through the wallpaper and rip it open. Saw two tiny red eyes peering out from the infinite dark. He saw teeth glint in that red light of the eyes.
Rat teeth.
Winston opened his eyes. The room was as it had always been, no more than an ordinary room. Quiet.
Martha dead on the bed.
And two tears in the wallpaper. No darkness beyond, just wood. Nevertheless, it was torn.
Winston almost blinked, but forced himself not to.
Now he understood.
The dead are a river.
Around us all the time.
And there was no comfort in that thought.
He went straight to the kitchen and grabbed a knife.
The dead are a river cool title to an awesome story.
Hi, Shawn, in the AI age, I have to ask if you use it in any way for your writing. I'd like to include this story in Wednesday's Scary Summer post but only if entirely human created. Thanks.