Below is the epilogue to The Height Chart, a short story found in the thriller anthology The Price of Entry
The world is dead: black lines brushed on a pure white canvas, shadows and shades of gray. No sound as the low-lying nimbus clouds insulate, threaten to add another inch of snow to the twelve-inch-thick blanket stretching to the tree line. All is still, and mute.
“Ry,” speaks Beth interrupting the quiet.
“I’m coming,” answers Ryan. He exhales a plume of vapor, watches the eddies swirl into oblivion. “Just a little anxious.” He’s been leaning, back to the car, for more than a few minutes, rehearsing his lines, editing the pages, and tossing the script in the trash bin in hopes that some stroke of inspiration would steel his nerves. “I just don’t know what to tell her.”
“Tell her the truth.”
“And what does that sound like? ‘Buck up little camper, ‘cause your son was actually killed by a murdering pederast and not by your gross negligence!’”
“Is that a first draft or are you married to that?” pokes Beth.
“You’re not funny, Elizabeth,” says Ryan flatly. He puffs one last cloud into the frigid air and turns to his wife. “Alright, let’s get it over with.”
Beth offers a hand, Ryan accepts it in his, and together they walk the icy blacktop parking lot to a sprawling brick facility. Decrepit, ominous, the center of the building — capped with a dome and spire — looms large and protrudes some fifteen feet beyond the flanking wings. Stretching in either direction for a hundred yards a piece, the left and right wings are stark — faded brick, three-story facades broken only by evenly spaced windows, each clad with its own set of rusted iron bars. The couple amble to the entrance tucked within the building center where a pair of steel doors offer little in aesthetics and nothing to welcome guests — wire-reinforced glass portals, no handles, a barricade forged to repel outsiders as affectively as it restrains the inhabitants. Hanging above the entranceway a rusting metal sign reads Taunton State Hospital in black on sepia white.
“Charming,” muses Ryan surveying the scene.
“If you keep on your bullshit, you’ll be checking me in here one day,” says Beth dryly.
“Ok, now that is funny,” he concedes. “So what, I guess we go ring a bell or someth…”
Ryan’s suggestion is abruptly cut short as he is violently startled by a blood-curdling shriek from the right wing, followed by a clamor resembling the crashing of furniture and the squalling voice of a wild and miserable soul begging to be unhanded.
Beth peaks at her husband’s pallid face. “I’ve heard it’s one of the best psychiatric hospitals in the state,” she assures him.
“Sure,” he says with a nod. “And I’ve heard there’s a dozen condemned halls on the premises haunted by the ghosts of maltreated former patients.”
“You don’t really believe in gh…”
A wide-eyed look of incredulity erupts on Ryan’s face.
“Right,” Beth corrects herself. “Well, we should be fine on this part of campus.”
A beep on the intercom, a rattling buzz at the door, and the two find themselves in a dreary foyer composed of a receptionist desk, a waiting area, and a set of doors opposite where they entered. Age-yellowed pamphlets keel over their holders. Orange pleather upholstered chairs wait unfilled, seemingly unemployed since 1975. The tile floors — doubtlessly chock full of asbestos — squeak with cleanliness, reek of chemicals. The entire room feels a time capsule — tidy and untouched. Even the receptionist — a bright-eyed, round-faced octogenarian with a gray perm — is dressed as if she’s stepped off the set of General Hospital, season one. Dottie, the name embossed in black on her gold name tag. Ryan and Beth approach the glass behind which she clacks at an ancient computer, Rosemary Clooney crooning soulfully from a speaker.
“Good morning,” Ryan almost questions.
“Good morning!” proclaims the receptionist brightly. “Checking in?”
“Oh! Ahh…um…no, actually…”
“She’s fucking with you, Ry,” Beth interrupts her husband’s stammering. With a head nod, she gestures to the receptionist’s wry smile.
”Right. Right,” says Ryan in a manner that suggests he is present, but not fully engaged.
“What’s the point of living, if you can’t have a little fun?” the firecracker from behind the glass posits with a chuckle. “Now, how can I help you, sweetheart?”
“Well, we are here to visit one of your…” he begins nervously, “inmates…”
“Ryan!” scolds Beth.
“Oh, um prisoners?”
“Patients, Ryan,” his wife corrects. “They’re called patients.”
“Right, we’re here to visit a patient.”
Dottie smiles, glances quickly in either direction. “It’s ok, honey,” she says softly, encouragingly. “I call them cuckoo birds.” She giggles, reaches for a brown clipboard. “Now, who are you here to see?”
“Jessica Pierce.”
For but a brief second the woman behind the glass pauses. The rouge hue of joy drains from her cheeks, and the bright blue spark of life evaporates from her old eyes. “That’ll be one quiet visit,” she speaks half to herself, have to the visitors.
“I’m sorry?” prods Beth.
Dottie shakes her head and flutters her eyes, as if dispelling some morose spirit that had landed upon her shoulder. The color returns to her features. “Let’s just say that’s one cuckoo bird that won’t sing.”
Ryan and Beth exchange a pair of raised brows before receiving the paperwork delivered through the opening in the glass. They retreat to the empty chairs, plop down and immediately begin to sink as the air lets out the seams in the pleather cushion. “Best in the state, you say?” asks Ryan without hiding his sarcasm. He darts his eyes about the outdated foyer to drive home his point.
“The appearance has nothing to do with the actual care provided,” she says defensively. “I’m sure the staff is fantastic. Look at the receptionist! She’s a hoot!”
“Did you say old coot?”
“Ry! She might hear you!”
“Doubt it.”
“What is she, five, ten years older than you?” snipes Beth.
“Yeah, ‘cause I’m ninety-three.”
“Such a dick.”
A piercing scream slices through the banter and Ryan jumps out of his skin. He clutches the arm rests to steady himself, swallows hard and eyes Beth who’s beside herself in a fit of schadenfreude.
“Do you need a Valium, sweetheart?” offers Dottie who, by her devious grin, also appears to have gained a full measure of satisfaction from Ryan’s skittish reaction.
“You gotta calm the fuck down, babe,” says Beth, placing a steadying hand on Ryan’s knee.
“I need to get the fuck out of this place,” he fires back before returning the signed documents to the front desk.
It’s more than a few minutes of anxious boredom before the doors at the end of the foyer open just wide enough for a woman in a white lab coat to slip through. Her straight, shoulder-length brown-gray hair hardly moves with the motion of her body. Her style-less glasses — perched on a thin, sharp nose —look to have come off a pharmacy bargain rack. “Beth and Ryan Anderson?”
“That’s us!” chimes Beth with an energy unbefitting the room. Ryan stands up beside her.
“Please, come with me,” the solemn, formal request from the doctor.
“Yes ma’am!” replies Beth, who snatches her husband’s hand and leans her forehead close to his. “Loosen up, babe. We’re here to bring some relatively good news.”
“That’s all well and good, but this place gives me the willies,” whispers Ryan, unwilling to acquiesce to any comforting words. “It feels like…” A beat. Ryan’s mouth flaps in silence, reticent to form the words necessary to convey his intensifying panic.
“Like what?”
“Like…him…”
Beth puts an arm around Ryan’s shoulder just as they pass through the doors. “That’s in the past, Ry. He’s resting. You can, too.”
A wild shriek.
Ryan jumps.
“Fuck!”
A giggle from the reception desk.
The doors close.
“I’m Dr. Clarke,” speaks the woman in white, sternly and without inflection; and Ryan is immediately longing for the left-behind levity of Dottie. The faded pleasantries of the foyer are exchanged for a grim, austere corridor. Gray rectangular tiles cover the walls, each reflecting flickering, fluorescent bulbs. Airborne bleach assaults the nose, almost as much as the eyes. And despite their footfalls echoing the length of the hall, an unsettling silence hovers about the ears — a silence, Ryan fears will be broken by another harrowing howl.
“Good morning,” says Beth. “Thank you for facilitating our visitation.”
“You’re welcome,” replies the doctor, her dry tone a stark contrast to Beth’s good humor. “Though, I hope you’re not expecting a productive encounter.” Their journey continues at a brisk pace set by Dr. Clarke. By a series of lefts and rights, past offices and common spaces, the three travelers wind deeper into the heart of the facility with hardly a word spoken.
“So why do you think our visit will be unproductive?” Beth labors the question over the weighty burden muteness.
The answer lags unnaturally behind the question, despite the doctor quickening her stride. The passage narrows with every turn. The lights shine with a noticeable dimming of intensity. Resident doors appear on either side, though seldom is another face seen, save the odd orderly guiding a catatonic wretch by wheelchair handles. “In the six years Jessica has been with us, she hasn’t spoken a single discernible word.”
“Well, maybe we can bring her some news that will change all that,” suggests Beth. “Right, Ry?”
But Ryan doesn’t answer. His consciousness has been hijacked by the dour surroundings, by the droning of patients behind barricaded steel, by a miasma of chemical vapor and malevolent ectoplasmic breath infiltrating his lungs. A diminutive form peaks around the corner — boyish in frame, lithe, featureless as a shadow.
“You guys keep kids here?” he abruptly blurts.
“This is an adult facility,” states Clarke flatly.
“Christ, I was afraid you’d say that…”
“What the hell has gotten into you?” A flash of genuine concern from Beth upon addressing the man beside her. “Oh my God, your drenched in flop sweat!”
“Don’t tell your father.”
“What’d you say, doc?!” barks Ryan.
“I haven’t said anything, sir,” replies the woman in a manner expectant of one who’s all too familiar with the rantings of lunatics.
“Was afraid you’d say that, too,” his voice tuned to a higher octave.
Beth pivots hard on a heel and grasps Ryan by the neck with both hands. “Talk to me, Ry,” she pleads as the doctor continues up the hallway. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“Don’t tell your father.”
Ryan jerks his head free of his wife’s grip in the direction of the speaker. There Dr. Clarke stands before a door, hands in coat pockets. Her face bears no emotion, but it is easily perceived that she is unimpressed with her lallygagging guests.
Beth refocuses her husband to her eyes. “Tell me!”
“It’s…it’s him,” sputters Ryan. He points to the door at the elbow of the impatient doctor. From the threshold pours a pitch black brume, obscuring the woman’s lower half. “He’s there, in that room.”
Beth espies the door, clocks nothing but a frumpish doctor huffing obnoxiously. “I don’t see anything.”
“Oh he’s there,” snaps Ryan. “And he’s talking to me. Just like that night.”
“What is he saying?”
“Don’t tell your father,” lilts a child’s voice, though steeped in pain and enmity. Ryan winces.
“Ryan! What is he saying?!”
“Don’t tell your father,” parrots Ryan.
“Jesus. What do you think that means?” ask Beth, presently beyond any state of doubt.
“The fuck should I know?!,” protests Ryan. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going in that room.”
Beth takes her husband’s hand in her own. “Nobody’s going to make you. Will you at least come speak to the doctor with me?” Ryan nods and the couple completes the last few steps on their journey.
“We apologize,” Beth says to the doctor.
“Welcome back,” sighs Clarke. “So you’re friends of Jessica’s?”
“So to speak,” replies Beth.
“Then you understand why she’s here, and how she checked herself in. That being said, since under our supervision she has been non-verbal. She may exhibit a few nervous ticks, vis-a-vis scratching at her legs, muttering indecipherable phrases repetitively, and the like. She’s displayed no violent tendencies toward myself, or any other staff member for that matter. Nevertheless, we ask that you interact with her calmly and respect her personal space. Do you have any questions before your visitation begins?”
“No,” Ryan says.
“Ok, then let’s begi…”
“No!” shouts Ryan, his eyes glassy, bloodshot. “I’m not going in there. I won’t let him pull me into the fires again. I did what you wanted me to do already! I won’t do it again!” he turns away, breaks free of Beth’s hold, trucks down the hallway yet murmuring to himself.
“Would you like to check him in after we’re through here?” asks Dr. Clarke without blinking.
“Let’s just do what we came here to do,” states Beth, unwilling to indulge the doctor banal attempt at comedy.
The door opens.
The room is a little more than a jail cell — a differentiation achieved only by the presence of a writing desk and a wooden chair. Otherwise, the rickety bed covered in threadbare linens and en suite stainless steel toilet together paint the stereotypical tableau of Rikers’ finest bungalow. A framed picture of the Mother Mary hangs over the bed, softening the cold walls with a touch of texture, and yet at the same time stirring a palpable guilt in Beth’s gut — as if the Madonna, herself, were judging the souls of all who passed through the doorway. A Bible lies on the desk, in case the condemnation from the Mother of God was not enough.
Wrapped up on the bed in the far corner of the room, beneath the scornful gaze of the Holy Virgin, a woman in sweatpants and a thermal shirt holds her knees tight to the chest. She glances once at the visitor, then turns her attention to nothing in particular, seemingly unaffected by the arrival of an unfamiliar face.
“She get many visitors?” Beth quietly asks the doctor.
“One visitor. One time.”
“One visitor in six years? Her husband?”
“No. A friend, supposedly,” explains Clarke. “A neighbor, if I remember correctly. Strange man. Terrible encounter. I’ve never seen her so disturbed. Had to have him escorted off the premises.”
The doctor was hardly into her second sentence when the gears had already started grinding behind Beth’s eyes. It was as if a box of jigsaw pieces had been tossed to the floor — half the image lying within her memories of a nightmare summer night, the other half lying in a bed not five yards away. Clarke fades into the obscurity of the living world, as Beth’s feet carry her instinctively into the cell, into a hell.
Good God, he was right, thinks Beth; for though she had witnessed her husband’s unimaginable encounter with the vexing spirit of a murdered boy not six months passed, she, herself, had been spared the paranormal ambush. But no more. The mercury in the cell instantaneously spikes. The walls — once gray, dreary — begin to radiate heat, waxing orange-red like smoldering coals. Tucked in her corner, Jessica Pierce remains, detached, whether oblivious to the inferno or accustomed to it, Beth could not tell.
A few steps closer. The inmate draws her knees in closer. A nervous scratch at a leg. Becoming difficult to breathe the suffocating air.
Closer still. White-hot walls are blinding, but a sable shadow materializes on the bed. The prisoner can’t pull herself in tightly enough.
“Don’t tell your father.” The phrase echoes in the cell.
Two more steps.
“Don’t tell your father.” Louder it rings with every inch traversed.
Beth reaches the bedside, fully entranced, thoroughly lucid.
“Don’t tell your father.” Deafening, bone rattling. A shadow child at his mother’s feet.
Puzzle pieces connecting. Beth stretches out a hand.
“Don’t tell your father.”
Her hand on the mother’s leg.
“Don’t tell your father!”
A picture fully formed. Grips the pant cuff. “You knew, didn’t you?” Beth accuses. “You fucking knew he was abusing your son.” Slides up the pant leg. Names and inches carved black into skin. “You fucking bitch.”
As if rudely, suddenly awoken, the mother snaps her gaze to the unsolicited guest. Savage, feral her visage. A demon incarnate. Obsidian eyes. Teeth bare. Beth staggers, steps back at the sight of the gruesome transformation. But her defensive posture is too little, too late. The ghoul lunges, pins Beth to the floor.
“Don’t tell your father! Don’t tell your father!” she shrills. Hands clasp Beth’s throat.
Beth struggles. Feet kicking, but no traction gained. Arms swinging, but the villain is unfazed by the blows. The flaring white walls begin to fade, and yet her attacker screams.
“Don’t tell your father! Don’t tell yo…”
The hideous refrain is momentarily interrupted, as simultaneously a gust of cool air rushes into Beth’s lungs. She breathes deeply, stares at the ceiling while the status of her extremities slowly report back to her consciousness. Ryan appears up-side-down in her defogging field of vision.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he quips.
Before she has a chance to chastise his typical poor timing, she finds herself being heaved to her feet. Just in front her, Jessica Pierce is restrained by Dr. Clarke and an orderly, still squirming, still screaming her sickening chorus. Though a terrible scene in and of itself, she bares no resemblance to the devilish form from but a moment ago. The walls are gray. The shadow is passed.
“Thought you might need a hand,” says Ryan, guiding his wife out of the cell by the waist. “You ok?”
Beth rubs a palm along her throat, swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I’m fine.”
“Good.” A tender pace down the long passageway to the car begins. “So…did you see him?”
Her response comes slowly. “I did.”
“I noticed mom had a pretty sweet tattoo on her leg.”
“Seems like everybody’s getting them nowadays.”
“Very cliche,” he adds. “Especially in our neighborhood. But they can be removed, if you’re not a huge piece of shit.”
“Then I guess that’s going to be her look for a long time.”
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