The Devil in Silver

Pepper steadied himself and breathed deeply as he walked. Trying to catch up to Coffee, who was already halfway down Northwest 2, almost at their room. First Loochie, then the staff, the Devil and now even Coffee. What was the point of being as big as he was if no one respected it? He didn’t realize how much it would rattle his confidence to lose the power of his size. Besides that, what did he have? Other things, surely. But what?

He caught up to Coffee, standing in the doorway of their room.

Pepper stopped right behind Coffee and said, “What’s the holdup?”

Coffee pointed. Up.

Pepper said, “Ah, shit.”

The ceiling had sprung a leak.

Right over Pepper’s mattress.

A rust-colored stain, about the diameter of a coffee mug, could be seen in the ceiling tile above his bed.

They watched as a drop fell from the ceiling and landed directly on Pepper’s pillow. It wasn’t the first. There was a reddish blot about as big as a half-dollar.

Pepper put one hand on Coffee’s shoulder, for balance. His chest throbbed, his throat tightened. He whispered, “Should I report this?”

Coffee looked up at the ceiling and down at the pillow. Sadly, he knew this place much better than Pepper. He’d been at New Hyde a year.

Coffee said, “You should just move your bed.”

The spot in the ceiling seemed to darken for a moment, then a bead of moisture gathered and dangled and descended. They watched it fall. As if they hadn’t already seen what would happen. They watched it hit Pepper’s pillow. The reddish blot grew.

“That’s disgusting,” Coffee said.

True. But how disgusting? What was it? Pepper took his hand off Coffee’s shoulder. He looked down at Coffee with a look of pleading. Would Coffee go in first? But Coffee just shook his head. Coffee sure wasn’t going in to investigate on Pepper’s behalf. He wasn’t about to be that black guy. (You know, the one who scouts ahead and gets his ass sliced in two. Somewhere near the first ten minutes of the horror movie. Although, to be fair, moviemakers have largely stopped that practice. Now there’s usually one amiable but forgettable white person who dies first, and then they kill off all the nonwhite cast members.)

The ceiling dripped again. The drop fell. The pillow caught it. The reddish blot bloomed.

Coffee stepped aside and Pepper cautiously moved toward his bed, his eyes on the stain. He reached the pillow and pulled it away from the bed. He looked back at Coffee, who hadn’t stepped any farther into the room. His roommate looked poised to book back down the hall.

Pepper lifted the pillow to his face. Up close the stain looked almost the color of a sunset, reddish brown. He thought of Sammy. Was her body right there on the other side of the ceiling tiles? Had that thing dragged her body into the darkness and done to her what it had meant for him? And brought her husk back to Pepper, like a cat presenting a dead bird?

Pepper brought the pillow to his nose.

He sniffed the fabric.

“Rainwater,” Pepper said. “I think it’s rainwater.”

He wasn’t just saying this. That’s really how the pillow smelled. Musty, with a faint whiff of corroded metal. A backed-up rain gutter maybe. This was a worthless old building that hadn’t been well maintained even when it was an ophthalmology ward. Standing water and poor construction and a rusty metal rain guard equals orangish musty water backing up, leaking through the ceiling. Onto his pillow. Obviously he didn’t know that this was true, but it did make sense. Also, it was the preferable explanation. It wasn’t blood.

Rainwater.

Pepper dropped his pillow on the floor. At the very least, they’d have to give him a new one, right? Then he moved to the foot of his bed, clamped one paw around the bed frame and pulled. It hardly moved. He tried again and his rib cage filed a protest. It sent shock waves of pain up into his skull. He actually saw small flashes of light in his eyes. Pepper let go of the bed and breathed and patted his chest and let the pain subside. Then he looked to his roommate—his friend?—Coffee.

“Will you help me?”

Pepper grabbed the bottom end of the bed again and waited there. Coffee watched Pepper for a moment and finally tossed his copy of Jaws onto his mattress. Coffee walked to the head of Pepper’s bed and grabbed the frame with his one free hand.

Pepper gestured at the three-ring binder and said, “I won’t swipe that from you again.”

Coffee nodded. “Okay.” But he didn’t put the binder down.

And Pepper, still aching, decided not to push it. He and Coffee lifted and together they got the bed off the ground. Pepper nodded toward the opposite wall and they moved together, kind of crab-walking.