The Whisper, page 18
One by one, the rest of the parasites filled the space around him. Most of them were no bigger than a full-grown salamander, but some reached the length of about three feet from head to tail. When the lake was left abandoned, Jasper could see how many of them there were. A couple of dozen, at least.
“We should probably…”
Jasper started getting up when Jane stopped him. The creatures were tousling her hair as they floated by.
“As I said, you can’t run away from them,” she said.
“What are we supposed to do?”
“You’ll go where you belong, and I... I’ll be waiting for you here.”
“You don’t know how long you’ll have to wait.”
“It doesn’t matter. Time is such a relative thing. You wouldn’t imagine. Only when we get to places like this—and I assure you, not everyone has that privilege—do we finally realize it.”
The whisper got rampant as the swarm was closing in around them. Jane had to speak a little louder, “You have my word I’ll be waiting for you for as long as it will take. I’m ready to wait forever. Let this be the strongest weapon in your fight against them.”
The mist rose above their heads. Jasper could vaguely see the features of Jane’s face through the dark, raging torrent.
“Jane,” he said, “there is no place for me in the world. I’m trying to see the meaning in it, but I can’t.”
“Maybe the world has no meaning unless we give it one.”
“I’ll keep that quote in mind.” He smiled. “What meaning do you think I should give it?”
“You’ll have time to figure it out.”
She put her palm on his cheek and gave him a gentle kiss.
BOOK 3: BLACK AND WHITE
WINTER, 1976
12
THE FRIGHTENING MELODY
There seemed to be no difference between dreams and reality. Jasper saw something surreal when he closed his eyes, but the same thing happened when he opened them.
When he came back to his senses, the first thing he felt was a devastating weakness in his body. No pain. His limbs were stiff as rocks, and his stomach felt as if it were digesting itself, but there weren’t any physical injuries, not the ones he could feel or see. It relieved and worried Jasper at the same time. In the dim light, the ward looked more cramped than it normally would. Two more patients occupied beds opposite his, and the unstopping beeps of their cardiac monitors alternated with the wall clock’s ticking. Jasper turned to the other side of the bed. Through the only window in the ward, he glimpsed snow quietly floating down.
The flakes looked whiter and fluffier against the dark sky.
An instant chill ran down his spine. Jasper remembered the road that had led him here. He remembered the autumn wind and the ground untainted by winter in Rosaline Park. The late October had given him the most perilous test in his life.
How long have I been in here?
The chill on his back turned into freezing cold. Jasper felt as if he was on ice-frozen ground, which pushed the weakness in his body into the background. He tried to get up from his bed but couldn’t even take his head off the pillow.
The whisper greeted him with fervor, clearer and sharper than it had been in his dream.
With his hands, thin as a pair of straws, Jasper grasped the sides of the bed. After half a minute of puffing and panting, he pulled himself up, and the world went black for a fraction of a second. He braced himself for the hardest part of the challenge. His feet stretched down to the floor and touched the cold tiles.
Okay, on one, two, three.
His legs turned out to be so frail that he tumbled off the bed.
Cripple.
The word broke through the gibberish of the whisper. Jasper wasn’t sure if it was an actual word or something his subconsciousness had made up. The longer he was looking at the outlines of his legs, the more likely the possibility of being a cripple seemed to him. Jasper shut his eyes tight, hoping it must’ve been some kind of mind trick, and when he opened them, the whisper was gone. Completely. It was that easy.
He crawled toward the switch of the key lights. Although a thought of screaming for help seemed reasonable, Jasper refused to resort to such measures. A scream for help meant something was wrong, and he desperately wanted to believe everything was fine. Jasper kept telling himself that he hadn’t used his legs in a long time—how long was still in question—so it was no wonder they were in such a state.
The switch was right beside the door, placed too high for him to reach. Jasper grasped a leg of the chair standing on his left, pulled it closer, and spent an eternity climbing into it. As the switch snapped, the room drowned in a blinding light. Each item in the ward recovered its normal shade: the walls were cold blue, the hospital gown on Jasper was of the same color, his roommates’ skin moon-pale.
Jasper was looking around the room in search of something he could use to call a nurse when his eyes stumbled upon a calendar hanging on one wall.
After recalling every event prior to his long sleep, Jasper wondered if he was supposed to feel lucky to be alive. A few seconds had passed before he saw something else. In smaller letters, enclosed in parentheses, the year followed the month name. Jasper leaned in a little, trying to make out the number.
1976.
The cold, the weakness, the whisper, it all seemed to ally into a disastrous unison as the numbers were sinking in. One. Nine. Seven. Six. One. Nine. Seven. Six.
1976.
Jasper felt the cold enveloping him, the kind of cold he could see—the thick black clouds, the mist. It wasn’t spreading indefinitely this time. It stopped once it had surrounded him. Jasper shivered and embraced himself with both hands. The clouds followed his movements as though the mist was emanating from every pore of his skin. The border between dream and reality was thinning out. Jasper turned his head to one side and saw a set of small, sharp teeth grinding as a parasite kept whispering. Its black head was peering out of the mist as if from behind a curtain. The other creatures of the kind were gradually emerging from within, composing one frightening melody. Their claws slightly brushed against Jasper’s skin, and the fear they were imposing was based on their very existence.
Yes, we’re here. Yes, we’re real.
Jasper wanted to shout, to scream at the top of his voice. He could no longer pretend everything was okay. He hastily slid down the chair, pulled the door handle, and slipped out of the ward, dragging the mist along. The hall he found himself in was like a tunnel connecting the light and the dark. Jasper turned toward the light.
“Somebody!” he cried. “Help me! Please!”
Pathetic.
The word got lost in the depths of his mind. Wrapped in the black veil, Jasper didn’t care how pathetic he looked at that point. Fear prevailed over any other senses. Like a wounded soldier on a battlefield, he was moving forward, looking for any living soul.
“Please! Help me!”
Some hasty footsteps followed his pleas, and in an instant he saw a pair of white slippers before his eyes.
“Sir, let me help you,” a deep voice came from above.
Jasper took his eyes off the slippers and raised his head to look at the orderly. That orderly was strongly built while the one standing behind him was as skinny as Jasper himself. The mist surrounding them contrasted sharply with their white uniforms, and somehow Jasper could perceive both colors with equal clarity, as if he were looking at two different pictures simultaneously.
A disease no one can avoid.
The orderlies certainly couldn’t, although Jasper had to admit their shares of the mist weren’t as substantial as his own, and the whispers of those few parasites each of them had were faint and came in short, broken sequences.
“What the hell is going on?” Jasper cried. “Why are they still here?”
The big orderly knelt down and extended his hand to help. Following his movements, his mist shifted in Jasper’s direction and made a brief connection. One of the numerous parasites from the opposite side briskly spiraled around the massive arm and joined the orderly’s pack. Jasper could easily sense the man’s anxiety rising.
“Why are they still here?!” Jasper kept screaming.
“Who?” the orderly asked.
Freak. Freak. Freak.
“This is not real!”
Jasper covered his ears, which seemed to be no obstacle to the whisper. The parasites, like jealous pets, were demanding their owner’s attention.
“Stop!” Jasper screamed.
“Sir, you need to…” the orderly began.
“Stop!”
Jasper curled up on the floor, hands over his ears.
“Call Dr. Shelby to ward 204,” the orderly said to his companion, who, all the while, had been trying to maintain a safe distance. Then, in a lower voice, the orderly added, “Bring forty milligrams of Librium.”
Dr. Shelby was a woman in her mid-forties. Her face reminded Jasper of Jane, except maybe for higher cheekbones and lighter hair. The second she got close to Jasper and their mists merged into one gigantic cloud, three of Jasper’s parasites inhabited her vicinity.
“Please!” Jasper cried. Dr. Shelby backed away a little. “Tell me what’s going on!”
Freak. Freak. Freak.
The doctor and the orderlies exchanged pitiful looks as they watched him writhe. The orderlies pressed his both hands against the floor, and Jasper’s screams turned into howling. It took Dr. Shelby a lot of patience to aim the syringe’s needle. Jasper felt a light sting on the left side of his neck, and the Librium made his consciousness wander off in about half a minute.
“Mr. Newman, do you know where you are?”
Jasper didn’t answer at first. He riveted his attention to a pair of black muzzles on each side of Dr. Shelby’s face. He noticed that every time he moved his hand or leg, even if it was a slight movement, her parasites became a bit more active, the whisper a bit more intense. That was how he knew she was still intimidated by him.
“Mr. Newman?”
His prolonged silence intimidated her even more.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said, do you know where you are right now?”
Jasper looked around. He was in a one-bed ward, and one bed was nearly everything that could fit in the room. Dr. Shelby was sitting a few feet away in a chair with a clipboard in her hands, cross-legged, trying to act as if she did not feel what her parasites were imposing. Jasper had come to accept the new reality, and in this new reality he envied the people who had only four, five, or maybe even six parasites, while his own mist was swarming with them.
“Mr. Newman?” she repeated for the third time.
“I don’t know what hospital this is,” Jasper replied at last.
“It’s the West Side Hospital. Do you know how you got here?”
The truck, the fight, the steering wheel, the unexpected turn, and pain, a lot of pain.
“I do,” Jasper said.
When he had nothing new to learn from the doctor’s parasites, he stared up at the ceiling.
“Could you tell me what happened?” Dr. Shelby asked.
“Throughout the last three years, you haven’t found out?”
“Trust me, I have, though I’ve been working in this hospital for only four months. However, asking these questions is standard procedure.” She waved the clipboard in her hand. “Unconsciousness as prolonged as yours can cause severe memory loss.”
“I remember everything. Unfortunately.”
“What exactly do you remember?”
“The car accident in Rosaline Park. From now on, I swear I’ll try to stay as far away from that goddamn place as possible.”
“What was the cause of the accident? Do you remember that?” Dr. Shelby asked.
Jasper looked at her and then back at the ceiling.
“You got me. That’s the part I hardly remember,” he lied.
“Do you remember the people you were driving with?”
“Yes.”
“How close would you say you were?” the doctor asked.
Jasper’s lips twisted quickly enough for her not to notice.
“Very,” he lied again. “Why?”
“I’m so sorry to tell you that, but they…” She gave a heavy sigh. “You’re the only one who made it.”
Jasper hesitated before distantly stating, “Well, we all end up in the same place, don’t we?”
The doctor frowned at him, and Jasper could see her mist grow the tiniest bit denser, as if he could see contempt dilute her fear. She opened her mouth to say something but then stopped. After a moment of silence, she continued with apparent sternness in her voice, “Tell me your full name.”
“Jasper Joshua Newman.”
She wrote something down on her clipboard.
“How old are you?” she asked.
Jasper looked at her accusingly.
“Is this question supposed to test my memory or my math skills?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Newman. How old were you when you got in the accident?”
“Twenty-three.”
“What was your last occupation?”
That question put Jasper in silence. His parasites huddled around him as if around a campfire, pressing his distant past on him.
“Okay, I think that’s enough questions for today,” Jasper said.
“We just sta…”
“Tell me, doctor, why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Caring for someone you barely know? Someone who, let’s be clear, intimidates and disgusts you.”
“I never said you…”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I’m doing my job.”
“You can write whatever you want. I will file no complaints to the hospital administration.”
Dr. Shelby looked at him for a moment and then put the clipboard aside, as if putting aside the formal tone she had been trying to maintain.
“What if I want to help you get back to your life? Is that a good reason?” she said.
“What if I don’t wanna get back to it? I don’t even know what’s happening in the world right now. It’s like jumping from one page of the book a hundred pages ahead. Tell me, is this a good or bad part of the story?”
“Life is not a book, Mr. Newman. In a book, you follow a story. In life, you create your own. It doesn’t matter at which point you are. You decide how it will go on.” Her voice was a perfect balance of confidence and compassion. She pursed her lips, observing him with benign concern. “I want to help you.”
“You don’t have to repeat it over and over,” Jasper said.
“I know, but the problem is I can’t help you without your contribution. Right now, your health must be your priority, and I’m not talking only about your physical health.”
“At last, you admitted that,” Jasper said.
“Pardon me?”
“You think I’m a nut job because of the tantrum I threw the other night?”
“No, not at all. Trust me, I’ve seen worse reactions when people get out of a coma… if they get out,” she added, as if that very fact was supposed to make Jasper feel privileged. “You had been unconscious for three years. It’s a lot for anyone to take. I want you to understand it yourself. Whatever is happening in your head right now is okay. It’s not something you can’t deal with. I’m sure you’ll feel much better once you get home, but before that happens…”
Jasper broke into a giggle. He couldn’t help it. The sweet, caring doctor was so carefully choosing her words without knowing how helpless she was making him feel. At first, the giggling was involuntary, but then, as he heard the whisper of her parasites intensify, he became rather curious. How long would it take for her fear to come to the surface? Jasper was determined to keep giggling until he found out. Dr. Shelby, to his surprise, remained incredibly cool.
“I’m sorry,” Jasper said with a faint smile. “I’m really sorry that, of all your patients, I was the one to wake up.”
Dr. Shelby let out a breath that she seemed to have been holding and stood up from her chair.
“Is there anyone you’d like to contact right now?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“If someone’s willing to pay your hospital bills for this long for a mere chance that one day you might wake up, I think the least that person deserves is a call from you.”
“Wait!” Jasper called out, the second before the doctor left the ward. “I think I’d like to contact someone after all.”
Glen was out of reach.
The first time, Jasper called him three times. An orderly had pushed him in a wheelchair— a temporary measure—to the telephone hanging on the wall beside the registration desk and left him there for a few minutes. It was noon, the time of the day when the humming in the main hall was at its peak. The line to the desk stretched nearly from the very entrance, and everyone who needed help had to speak a little louder to be heard.
Jasper didn’t like crowds, but once he realized how much time he had spent in complete loneliness, locked within the walls of his consciousness, all people became somewhat alien and hostile to him. His ability to see their darkness aggravated that feeling. To him, the main hall looked like a black sea with people drowning in it.
He dialed Glen’s number, the emergency number he had dialed so many times before he could recite it in his sleep. Not two seconds had passed before a woman’s voice declared the number was out of service.
Could he change the number? Yes, yes, of course he could. After all, three years would be enough to change his place of residence.
Jasper called two more times before he gave up.
The same day, during another conversation with Dr. Shelby, he found out there wasn’t a single record of the person named Glen Harding visiting him throughout the entire time he’d been unconscious, which meant nobody had visited him at all. As for the hospital bill payments, the money came from a bank account registered in the name of Jude Lawrence. Jasper gave an approving nod when the doctor mentioned the name, while wondering, “Who the hell is that?”
