The Big Dark

  I set my sights on the motel office, but as I attempted to cross the parking lot, two men slid out from behind a snowbank. Or rather, a man and a boy about my age.

  The man had a Remington pump shotgun, and the boy hefted an ax.

  “Turn around while you got the chance,” the man said. “Can’t you read? We’re full up. No room at the inn.”

  “I’m not looking for a place to stay. All I need, directions to the hospital.”

  “This isn’t the chamber of commerce,” the man said. “Be on your way.”

  “Dad,” said the boy plaintively.

  The man glanced at him, shrugged. “Okay. Fine. Hospital is half a mile over that way, but it won’t do you any good. It’s closed. Empty. Nobody home.”

  Closed, empty. That hit me like a punch to the gut. Had I come all this way for nothing? I needed to see it with my own eyes.

  As I started to leave the boy called out, “Where are you from?”

  I turned back to face him. “Harmony.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Up in the mountains. Small town.”

  “I know it,” the man said, sounding slightly less suspicious. “What do you really want?”

  “Medicine for my mother.”

  “Looters took everything,” the man said, shaking his head. “Stripped the hospital clean. I doubt there’s an aspirin left.”

  “There has to be,” I said. “There just has to.”

  The boy said, “Dad? Maybe ask Mom? She’s a nurse,” he added with pride. “Used to work at the hospital, before it closed.”

  “Shut it,” the man said, glaring at the boy and at me. Then he relented. “Go on. See what she says.”

  When I tried to follow, the man raised the barrel of the shotgun and said, “Harmony boy, you stay right there. If my wife has something to say, she’ll let us know.”

  We waited in the frozen parking lot for five minutes, or maybe it was a thousand years, with him not quite pointing the shotgun at me, and me not quite having the courage to run away.

  The fact is, I was too scared to move. Not of the shotgun—he wouldn’t shoot me, I was pretty sure of that—but of what his wife, the nurse, might have to say.

  “Nobody knew what to do,” the boy’s mother explained.

  Her name was Ida Mae Rand. The man with the shotgun was her husband, Joel—he managed the motel—and her son was JJ, for Joel, Jr. She was wearing an oversized skimobile suit and about three layers on top of that, including a fur-lined hat that covered about half of her chubby, freckled face.

  Mrs. Rand’s nose was running, and instinct made me back up. Couldn’t afford to get sick. She smiled—she knew why I’d backed away and didn’t blame me. Her bloodshot blue eyes were sad, as if she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, and I guess she was, once I heard her story.

  “We had ninety-four patients in the hospital as of New Year’s Eve. That’s light—believe it or not, quite a few patients asked to be discharged so they could celebrate with families at home. The big show in the sky, you know? God’s fireworks. Anyhow, we lost ten in the first forty-eight hours after the power went out. All of the pumps and monitors failed, so it was difficult and sometimes impossible to medicate correctly, or keep them warm. No heat, of course. Backup generator system didn’t work. At the time we kept assuming they’d fix it, but of course they couldn’t. No one could. And so patients started dying.”

  Mrs. Rand gave a deep, shuddering sigh and wiped her nose on the back of her mitten.

  “Basically the hospital froze, okay? Nothing we could do. Relatives and friends started to trickle in, at least those who lived nearby, and collected their loved ones. Heaven knows how some of them got home. One had a sled, I know that, an American Flyer. Well, the weaker patients began to expire from exposure—we just couldn’t keep their body temps up. After five days the hospital was like a walk-in freezer. We had to get the remaining patients someplace warm or they would surely perish. Staff who could take them into their own homes did so. I got the last five, brought ’em to the motel, did the best we could. Three have survived, and one is feeling so good he’s been helping Joel with the heating system they jury-rigged.”

  “Gravity feed, like a big kerosene camp stove,” her husband chimed in proudly. “We’ve got enough fuel oil for another month or so, so we’re praying for an early spring.”

  He was no longer pointing the shotgun at me, but he wasn’t putting it away, either.

  Mrs. Rand continued. “A week or so after we abandoned the facility, this gang shows up. I say gang because some of them were wearing biker colors. Must have been twenty men, well armed. Some towing big toboggans to carry what they looted. They stripped the place clean. Medical supplies, furniture, sheets and towels and blankets. They took it all, including the pharmacy. I know because I went back there looking for medication for one of my patients. Nothing. Bare shelves.”

  “Told you,” her husband said. “Those boys didn’t leave so much as an aspirin. Stole everything useful and towed it back to Manchester, or wherever they came from.”

  “There was nobody to stop them,” Mrs. Rand said. “We hadn’t organized ourselves yet, and most of the police had left, you know, to care for their own families as best they could. State police, local police, first responders, gone. Can’t blame them. Everybody in the same boat, worried about their loved ones freezing to death. Maybe it wasn’t so bad out in the north country, a lot of homes heat with wood pellets and such, or have backup woodstoves. But here in the city it’s a different story. Mostly oil heating systems, modern burners and thermostats. Electricity required. So nothing works.”

  She sighed and shook her head, as if ashamed. “I want an early spring like everybody else. But I dread it, too, because it won’t be until the weather warms that we know how many people died of exposure. Froze to death in their own homes. More than a few, I imagine.”

  “Right now we’re not thinking about it,” her husband said firmly. “Deal with today, let tomorrow take care of itself.”

  But it was obvious his wife was thinking about it even if he wasn’t. And probably that’s why she dragged herself out into the frozen parking lot, to talk to a stranger in need.

  “How about drugstores?” I asked.

  “Sold out or looted. Shelves empty.”

  “There must be something,” I said, my voice cracking.

  “Might be,” Mrs. Rand said warily. “What exactly is the medication your mother requires?”

  I fumbled around in my backpack and showed her an empty pill bottle. She squinted at it and nodded to herself.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” she said. “But I know a place might have a stock of that drug, or the generic equivalent.”

  Then she told me where the medicine might be located.

  Oh no, was my first thought, anywhere but there.

  Gronk had a dumb joke he’d try out on anyone who would listen.

  How many crazy people in New Hampshire? Enough to fill a loony bin, and one left over—you!

  What he didn’t mention was that his grandmother had died at the state mental asylum. I don’t know exactly what was wrong with her, but it was bad enough so his family couldn’t take care of her. Maybe that’s why he made jokes about the loony bin, because it hit so close to home.

  Unlike Gronk, I’d never known anyone with serious mental illness. So I didn’t have any excuse for why the idea of a mental hospital gave me the creeps. But it did. I mean it’s not like Freddy Krueger was in there, or Slender Man or Jigsaw. I’m not that stupid. And it’s not like the failure of electricity hadn’t made everyone at least a little bit crazy—look at Mr. Bragg with his wack ideas, or King Man with his made-up radio broadcasts. Or me thinking I could ski fifty miles in one day, just because I wanted it to be true.

  So if we’re all wack, what was the big deal, right?

  * * *

  Mrs. Rand had given me a map, carefully drawn on a scrap of paper. Eleven blocks down the main s
treet, then a right for six more blocks, then look on the left for a red brick building with nine narrow windows facing the street.

  “Kind of Gothic,” she said.

  I didn’t know what that meant, except old.

  “What do I do when I get there?” I had asked.

  “Knock on the door. Ask for Lydia. Tell her I sent you.”

  On Mrs. Rand’s advice I kept to the center of the street, moving at a brisk pace. Slow down, or approach any of the occupied buildings, and you’d likely be challenged by neighborhood patrols. Folks had banded together for heat and mutual protection. Outsiders were not welcome.

  “You see a smoking chimney, keep your distance,” Mr. Rand had said.

  Good advice, as it turned out. With skis and poles slung over my shoulder, I trudged along with a purpose. Men with rifles watched from doorways, or from behind piles of dirty snow, but nobody challenged me, not so long as I kept moving.

  I had never felt so all alone, not even when the coyotes were stalking me. It was worse, somehow, to know that fellow humans wanted you gone from their sight.

  Following Mrs. Rand’s map I came to what looked like a college campus. Kind of pretty, or would have been if the trees hadn’t all been cut down, leaving rude, hand-chopped stumps. Firewood, no doubt. Anyhow, all these stately brick buildings with ice-frosted windows glinting in the lowering sun. For the most part they looked abandoned, some with doors standing open and snow drifted inside.

  The red brick building with nine windows facing the street was smaller than some of the others, and looked older, with a high-peaked slate roof and a tall brick chimney. Maybe that’s what Mrs. Rand meant by Gothic. The roof was free of snow, which meant the building was warm inside. I knew for sure it wasn’t abandoned because someone was watching me from the center window on the second floor.

  A hairless man with a round, moony face and eyes that didn’t look right. When I glanced up, he covered most of his face with a curtain. But not his eyes, which seemed to be lit from within, as if by some glowing lamp inside his mind.

  It was all I could do not to run away.

  Mental illness is an illness, I know that. Nothing to cause this much fear. But me and Gronk must have downloaded too many horror movies, because my hands were shaking as I knocked on the heavy wooden door. And I was almost hoping no one would answer, so I could give up and find my way home. Tell everybody I tried but failed, then wait for the world to fix itself so it wouldn’t matter about the medicine.

  The door opened a few inches, secured by a thick brass chain.

  “Yes?”

  “Ida Mae Rand s-s-sent me. I’m looking for L-l-lydia.”

  The chain slipped off and the door opened.

  “Quickly, mustn’t let in the cold. Your teeth are chattering.”

  I stepped inside, holding my skis upright, shedding gobs of snow from my boots.

  The woman who answered the door was small and slender and had a plaid wool blanket wrapped over her nurse’s uniform like a cape—it wasn’t freezing inside, but it wasn’t that warm, either. Her silvery white hair was short and tufted, as if she cut it herself. She was as pale as the snow, and obviously wary of strangers, but her eyes were kindly. “I’m Lydia,” she said. “How is Ida Mae?”

  “Good, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “I only met her today. At the motel. She said maybe you could help me.”

  Lydia looked from me to the skis and back. “You’re not from around here.”

  So I told her where I was from, and how I got there, and why. Words tumbling out.

  “Oh my,” she said. “That’s quite a story.” She locked the front door behind us, clunk, and said, “You need something hot to drink. That will help with the chattering teeth.”

  She beckoned, and I followed her down a dark-paneled hallway with high, shadowy ceilings, barely illuminated by the waning daylight. At the end of the hall she paused, raised a key from a chain around her waist, and unlocked a heavy door.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said before pushing it open. “Some of my residents may say things you find strange, but they won’t harm you. Best just to nod and agree.”

  I nodded like a bobblehead doll as we entered the asylum.

  There’s a show my mother liked about this rich British family that lives in a castle, except they call it an “abbey.” Like rich people will call some humongous mansion on the lake a “cottage.” Yeah, right. Anyhow, the characters on the show talk like they have their jaws wired shut, but Mom loved it, and dabbed her eyes with a Kleenex at the sappy parts.

  If you’ve ever seen the show, you may remember it has this big, lovely kitchen with high ceilings. A huge oven takes up most of one wall, and there’s a long wooden table the servants sit at when they’re finally allowed to eat.

  This kitchen was like that, except with mental patients instead of servants. Or residents, as Lydia liked to call them.

  My first impression: relief that the man with the moony face and the shining eyes wasn’t among them. The ones I did see looked normal enough. They weren’t wearing pajamas and bathrobes like in a regular hospital—everybody was dressed in layers, because even with the oven going it was almost cold enough to see your breath.

  Okay, to be honest, some of Lydia’s residents were a little twitchy, but then I was pretty nervous myself.

  “People, this is Charlie Cobb. He has traveled all the way from the north country looking for help.”

  “He’s only a boy boy. Too young to be crazy crazy.”

  “Tammy, what did we discuss about the use of that word?”

  “Crazy is lazy, find a better word, bird. Yadda yadda yadda.”

  “Thank you, Tammy. Could you heat up some water for tea? I promised young Mr. Cobb a cup of something hot. He’s come a very long way on a very cold day.”

  There were seven residents gathered around the long table, as close to the stove as they could get. A few were playing cards and barely looked up when I entered the kitchen. One appeared to be asleep with his head in his arms. Another was at work on a box of candle stubs, trimming the wicks with a small pair of scissors—she glanced up quickly and looked away without making eye contact.

  The only really talkative one was Tammy, a gaunt woman with hair braided tight to her forehead and bunching out around her Red Sox cap. Her mouth was always moving in this strange way, as if she was trying to shape words, and she kept stroking her face with her fingertips. Always moving restlessly. As she waited for a kettle to warm she danced from one foot to the other. “Watch pot never boil,” she said, singsonging. “Boil toil, double and trouble. Yadda yadda yadda.”

  Tammy said yadda yadda yadda a lot.

  Lydia smiled tolerantly and lowered herself into a wooden chair on the opposite side of the stove, indicating that I do the same. “What did Ida Mae tell you about us?” she asked.

  “Not much. She said it was, um, a mental hospital, and that you still had a pharmacy.”

  “Mmm. Hospital would be too grand a term. More like a refuge. The actual psychiatric facility has been abandoned and most of the patients dispersed elsewhere. Either back to their families or placed with volunteers. The city may look like an armed encampment—and in some ways it is—but there are still plenty of good people out there. I would argue the vast majority. As for this place, it dates to the last century and was most recently a student nurse dormitory. We are, or were, associated with the medical school in Hanover. The students left, needless to say. We needed smaller and warmer quarters, and this old kitchen, as you can see, has an antique stove that will run on kerosene, and some of the rooms have fireplaces that still function. So here we are, making the best of a difficult situation.”

  Tammy made a noise like a whistling teakettle as she poured water into a pot. “Two for tea, not for me,” she said in her singsong voice. “Yadda yadda yadda.”

  Lydia noticed my unease and said, “Tammy’s quirks are the result of tardive dyskinesia. Damage to her nervous s
ystem from powerful medication she was given as a child. Mistakenly, as it turned out. But the short version: she can’t help it. Trust me when I tell you she has a good head and a better heart.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling ashamed. “Sorry.”

  “No need to apologize. As for a pharmacy, when we vacated the main facility, I gathered up all the medical supplies I could find and brought them here in cardboard file boxes. Mostly meds required by the residents—antipsychotics and antidepressants and the like. But long-term residents suffer from a variety of physical ailments, so we have quite a selection. Type 2 diabetes, you said?”

  I handed her the empty pill bottle.

  “Might be, might not,” she said, very casually. “I’ll check first thing in the morning.”

  Seeing my expression, she explained. “If I find what you’re looking for, you’ll be out that door in ten seconds. Out in the dark and freezing cold in a place that can be very dangerous to strangers, even a young stranger with the face of an angel. I will not have that on my conscience. So. We wait until morning.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Drink your tea. Honey?”

  Tammy sang, “Buts and bees, buts and bees, buts and bees and honey trees. Yadda yadda yadda.”

  * * *

  So that’s how I ended up spending the night in a mental asylum and playing cards with the residents. I begged Lydia again to check for the medicine right away, and promised to stay the night no matter what, but she insisted on waiting until morning. Finally I gave up. She wasn’t that much bigger than me, but she might as well have been made of platinum and steel. Plus she was as stubborn as my own mom would have been in a similar situation. Beg all you want, the answer was no.

  Anyhow, playing gin rummy with the residents made me a little uneasy at first, but all in all it was pretty cool. One of the guys, Paul, he was really funny, cracking jokes about now that electricity was gone he no longer had to wear an aluminum foil hat to protect his brain from radio waves. Like he wanted to put me at ease by joking, which reminded me of Gronk, so it worked. This other dude, Edgar, had a lot of trouble focusing on the game—he blinked a lot, like there was something wrong with his eyes—but he explained how his medicine silenced some of his anxiety problems and made him realize he wasn’t alone in the world. He said struggling to survive had given them all a sense of purpose, and the understanding that in many ways they were lucky.