Eldritch Care
Jerry lay in his bed, staring up at dusty white ceiling panels. The first light of morning shone through large rectangular windows, muted by yellowed curtains. He drew in a deep breath, tasting the mild odor of disinfectant in the air.
“Another day in paradise.” He sighed. He’d never get used to that smell. He rolled awkwardly onto his side and fought the numbness in his aging body to sit up on the edge of the bed. “Goddamnit.” He’d never get used to that, either.
He patted around on the nightstand for his glasses. They sat in a leather box with his service medals. The box was the only decoration besides an old telephone and two pictures. One of his younger self in uniform, and the other of him holding Herman on the day he was born.
There was a knock on the door.
“Yeah,” he said, startled.
Charlene opened the door and rolled a cart into the small room. The back left wheel squeaked and juddered as she maneuvered it. She was short and stocky, wearing tight-fitting magenta scrubs, with a thick head of curly black hair pulled into a tight ponytail.
“How’d you sleep?” She smiled.
“Like shit. The damn noises from that basement have been keeping me up for weeks.” He lifted his glasses and rubbed one eye.
“Language, Mr. Gladstone,” Charlene clucked. “And it’s probably just that old boiler.”
“Sorry. I’ve just never heard a boiler growl like that before, even on the fritz.”
“All right, Jerry. That’s enough plumbing talk. Let’s get you dressed.”
Jerry felt her fingertips dig into his biceps, and she raised his arms over his head. He jerked loose. “I can do this. Just hand me the shirt, please.”
“You won’t hear me complain.” Charlene laughed.
“I’m glad you think it’s funny that I can still put on a shirt.” Jerry shook his head and chuckled.
“You gotta find whatever humor you can in a place like this.” She handed him a thick, long-sleeved green shirt and watched him wriggle his arms and head into it.
“I suppose so.” Jerry put his glasses back on.
“Hey.” Charlene’s tone turned somber. “I’m sorry about Walter. I know you two were close.”
“Yeah.” Jerry pushed up his glasses. “I guess that’s just what happens around here.”
“He was a good man.”
“He was. It’s just…it’s weird what happens. How people just disappear. You know? Did they tell you what happened to him?”
Charlene sighed. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, Jerry. Too long, and I can tell you, it happens in all the homes. Not just Seaside.” She pulled a wheelchair from the corner of the room.
“Do I have to?”
“For now. If they see you hobblin’ down that hallway, it’s my ass. I’m back on probation, and I’m gettin’ too old for this crap. I can’t be interviewing for a new job.” Charlene nodded and pursed her lips.
“All right.” The mattress creaked and Jerry raised himself up, sliding over into the chair with Charlene holding his arm. “I’m not normally this obedient, ya know. But you’re the only one I can stand. I can’t have them get rid of you.”
“I ain’t leavin’ Jerry. And I’ll keep your secret. You can be a jerk to everyone else as much as you like.” Charlene chuckled and wheeled Jerry toward the door.
Seaside Manor had seen better days. The nursing home was bleak, with dimly lit corridors and the smell of disinfectant permanently hanging in the air. The flat-roofed concrete building sat like a grim sentinel overlooking the edge of a sharp eighty-foot drop into the Atlantic. At night, its windows could’ve served as a makeshift lighthouse if anyone was crazy enough to navigate a boat near the jagged rocks the waves crashed upon. The staff was cold and distant, and most of the residents were lost in their own worlds, their spirits broken by tepid monotony.
Jerry arrived in mid-August, and the small town of East Quay was bustling with tourists and beach goers. They made Seaside’s decrepit appearance even more stark, but after Labor Day, the vibrancy of summer had passed, and the old nursing home reclaimed its right to oversee a lifeless town for the colder, darker months. It was nothing like the brochure Herman had shown him. Maybe it had looked like that in the 1980s, but probably not.
Trick photography, Jerry said to himself, and resigned to make the best of a bad situation. Leaves turned hues of amber and yellow, then brown, each dying a quiet death as they drifted from the decades old maple and oak trees scattered through East Quay. All but the most stalwart restaurants and businesses had shuttered for the season, and a chill began to creep in most evenings at sunset.
Charlene rolled the chair into the common room. Its white cinder block walls stood on a sickly green and yellow checkerboard floor. It served as a cafeteria, rec center, and impromptu medication dispensary.
“Thanks, Char. What’s on the menu this morning? Smells mediocre.” Jerry rolled his eyes. The food at Seaside was better than MRE’s, but not by much.
“Your favorite. Cream of Wheat. Try not to throw up,” she whispered in his ear and chuckled. “Behave, though. Simmons is on shift.”
Jerry groaned. The cream of wheat was the worst. Raul, who ran the kitchen, made it with no butter or salt. “Gotta keep the diabetes in check,” was his answer every time Jerry asked for either. It was the consistency of wallpaper paste but tasted less appetizing.
Getting up from his chair and dreading breakfast, Jerry managed his way over to a small side table where he used to sit with Walter and play Backgammon.
Jerry stared at the unfinished game. He fidgeted with the black and ivory disks, and sipped his coffee, eyeing the bowl of cool beige slop on a red plastic tray. Jerry felt a pang of sadness, knowing Walter wouldn’t show up today. He was never late, which Jerry had appreciated. Walt had also seen time in Korea, and called Jerry a “young buck”, which he also appreciated. Jerry hated backgammon, but there was a strange comfort sitting across that little board from someone who had seen the same kind of things. Things no person should have to experience in a lifetime. They never talked about it. Mostly just stories about their families and friends, or fishing, but there was a quiet understanding and mutual respect that Jerry found solace in.
“No board games today?” a shrill voice broke Jerry from his reverie. He looked up and saw Simmons scowling down at him.
Charlene warned Jerry about Simmons on day one. Her reputation preceded her as the cruelest nurse in Seaside. In her late forties, she had grown up in town, been prom queen, and become a nurse when her modeling career ended abruptly. They explained to him how she had traveled to Providence for a nose job but didn’t have the money to hire a decent surgeon, so things came out…wrong. The botched procedure had left her otherwise pretty face disfigured; what cartilage remained was upturned and gave her the appearance of a bat. Her hair was dyed ruby red, only the roots peeking out auburn, and she had red nails to match against bleached white scrubs. Her abuse of residents was common knowledge. Rumor was Al Lawson had called her fruit bat when she gave him a soured cup of peaches with his lunch. The next nurse on shift found him in the corner of his room, confined to his wheelchair for thirteen hours, crying and soaked in his own piss and shit.
“No. Not today. How’d he go?” Jerry asked.
“Can’t say. HIPAA violation.”
“Really? I don’t think…”
“HIPAA. Violation.” She glared.
“He went. At night. This is a nursing facility, Mr. Gladstone. People die here. Finish your breakfast.” Air flowed from her mangled nostrils like a draft from a cave mouth.
“It’s just a shame, is all. He was a good man. A war hero,” Jerry replied.
“Yeah. I bet. Finish your food.” Simmons turned and marched away.
“Well, Walter,” Jerry picked up the scoresheet left over from their last game, “looks like you won this round. Probably the least I can do is give you that.” Jerry crumpled the paper and dropped it back on the board, then noticed something on the back. Walt tended to sign their scoresheets to “keep an official record”, but this looked different. Jerry smoothed out the paper and read the note penciled on its dented topography. Jerry. Down in the basement. They know. RUN.
What the hell? Jerry stared at the note, wide-eyed. It was Walter’s handwriting. “I still see porridge,” Simmons' shrill voice made Jerry leap out of his chair. “What is that?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing. Just a scoresheet,” Jerry quickly crumpled the note and stuffed it into his pocket, “Just a memento.”
“Pffft. Everything is eventually forgotten, Mr. Gladstone.” Simmons' voice was icy. “Now finish up. It’s almost time for some fresh air.”
“Fresh air” was code for Simmons and the other nurses to take an extended break. They corralled the residents out into the open grass field that made up most of the grounds. They smoked and gossiped, occasionally taking headcount to ensure no one met the cliff’s edge.
Jerry hobbled toward the drop, keeping a healthy distance from the loose ground at the rim. Whitecaps ran across the dark Atlantic waters and crashed unseen eighty feet down. A cave had been borne into the cliffside by time and tides, and at least once a season the newspaper ran a story that some foolhardy tourist or drunk towny drowned trying to explore it. Sucked in, or out, by the uncaring riptide and smashed against the rocks.
Jerry breathed in the cool salt air to scrub his mouth and lungs of Seaside’s disinfectant odor. Even on a sunny day, the home’s gray concrete walls were a dismal backdrop to watch the old folks mill around the grass like zombies or sit—doped up on some pill or another—and stare at nothing. Visions of La Drang clawed their way out of the deep psychic graves Jerry had buried them in. His buddies, numbing themselves with booze and pot and pills. Anything they could stuff in their bodies to try to cope with the slaughter they’d witnessed in that godforsaken valley. His eyes warmed as tears welled up. Jesus, Walt. Why’d you have to up and leave me with these people? And what the hell was with that note?
A rusty horn perched on Seaside’s roof blared. It’s siren song droned across the field, commanding the wranglers in white to round up their chattel. Simmons and the others took the last puffs and spread out to corral the residents back inside, single file.
“I gotta get the hell outta here,” Jerry said, and began the long hobble back toward the door.
Over the next few days, Seaside consumed the time and lives of its residents uneventfully, but Jerry couldn’t stop thinking about Walter’s note. Maybe he hadn’t died. Were they keeping Walter, or anyone else, down in the basement? And what the hell were those noises that kept him awake every night? Jerry’s obsessing was interrupted by a rumbling growl that shook his room.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Jerry started and fumbled for his glasses on the nightstand. The room came into focus, illuminated by moonlight cascading through the window.
“That’s no goddamned boiler.” He sat up and maneuvered his legs over the side of the mattress, then stabbed with numb toes until he felt his slippers and pushed them on. Another loud growl, followed by a disgusting gurgle, echoed through the room. Jerry grabbed his cane and hobbled over to the floor vent. He could hear more strange noises echoing up through the old metal shaft. “What the hell is going on down there?”
He needed to try to find Walter and uncover the source of that noise. Even if it was just for his own peace of mind. Jerry gripped his cane and marched toward his door.
The main hallway was quiet. Jerry had memorized the rotating night shift schedules. If you hit a buzzer at 2am because you were dying, it helped to know if anyone might answer. This week was Perkins’s shift, and he wasn’t the type to reply. Late thirties, out of shape, and indifferent to everything; Perkins was the kind of guy who would’ve never made it out of basic.
He seemed to enjoy the night shift, though. It afforded him time to sit behind the main desk, snacking and watching porn on his phone. Jerry shuffled down the hallway, following the path of sickly yellow, fluorescent lights that hummed and flickered along the ceiling. With a bit of stealth and luck, he could slip right past Perkins while the smut-loving oaf was distracted by a glowing rectangle. He shuffled his slippers, and deftly pushed his cane; its rubberized tip gently plodding against the dirty tiles.
Jerry approached the main hallway intersection. He crept carefully and heard the faint sound of a girl moaning through a tinny speaker. He drew even closer, gripping the edge of the wall to round the corner. The moaning from the phone speaker got louder, and Jerry craned his neck. He heard heavy, labored breathing, and the rhythmic creaking of an office chair. Oh, yeah. He’s definitely distracted.
Pulling himself around the corner, Jerry slid down the side hall. He stood in front of the windowless metal door to the basement. Perkins and the other night staff usually unlocked it early for cleaning staff to do laundry before sunrise, and tonight was no different. Jerry clutched the metal doorknob, and it turned without hesitation.