The Devil in Silver

Wally Gambino worked himself up. A little chemical change to the mind and body before entering combat. A mechanism as old as battling. “You know what they call me back home?” he yelled. And then silence. He’d forgotten the answer to his own question. The kid was brave, but also terrified. In that frozen moment, Pepper ran up behind the Devil and clutched it around the throat with one meaty arm. Pepper’s eyes were shut. He whispered to himself, “It’s only a man.”

The Devil thrashed in Pepper’s grip. A trapped animal, a hemmed-up human being, the same beast at that point. It hissed and flailed. It bucked. Pepper kept his eyes closed and repeated those four words—It’s only a man—as he dragged the Devil backward. Away from all the others. Back toward the door he and Loochie had used minutes ago.

“I don’t need you protecting me!” Wally Gambino said.

But his voice, it wavered. He sounded so relieved. He turned to the Haint. He took her by the arm and quickly led her down.

Pepper slammed into the door with his back, using his momentum and the combined weight of two bodies to force it open. The filing cabinet on the other side groaned as it fell. When it landed it sounded thunderous in Pepper’s ears, like a skyscraper had been tipped over. Pepper pulled the Devil into the darkened room.

In here, alone, Pepper looked down at the figure in his arms. What did he see in the lightless gloom?

The same grand bison’s head. The gray-white eyes rolling in their sockets. The long, fat pink tongue shooting out of its mouth.

“I know what you are,” Pepper said. He moved backward with the Devil. Where was he taking it? (Him.) Pepper wasn’t sure. Maybe he’d stuff the thing (man) inside that air duct. Let it (him) stay there, stuck, until it (he) rotted away.

Pepper pulled the Devil out into the same hallway he and Loochie had just been in. Here and there he could still see Loochie’s small footprints in the dust. The bulb here cast new light on Pepper and the Devil. And when Pepper looked down, he finally saw it. Him.

No bison’s head. An old man.

Pepper grunted, triumphant. He looked down into the wild eyes of an old man. The old man had a head covered with graying hair that fell as low as his shoulders. The tips of his ears peeked through his hair. He had a full graying beard, the hair knotty and unkempt. The old man’s eyes were waxy and dry and red all over, with veins the color of bloodworms.

“Mr. Visserplein,” Pepper said.

The old man shook his head, but it wasn’t clear if he was refusing the name or trying to break free.

“You’ve got problems,” Pepper said. “I guess that’s why you’re here. But you’re hurting people. You’re hurting us.”

The old man puckered his lips. His eyes grew wet and weak tears ran down his cheeks. They dotted Pepper’s forearms. Pepper didn’t understand what the old man was trying to tell him. Finally, the man raised one hand and patted at Pepper’s arm faintly, the one around his throat. Pepper loosened his grip and the old man breathed.

The old man craned his head backward so that he looked up into Pepper’s face. And Pepper looked down into his.

Years ago, Pepper had dated a woman who had kid, a girl eleven months old at the time. Sometimes Pepper would hold that little girl just like this. She’d peer into his face, upside down, just like Mr. Visserplein did now. She’d seem confused by the angle at first, almost dazed, but sometimes she’d break into this smile, showing her handful of tiny teeth. And in those moments Pepper experienced such uncomplicated love for that child. She wasn’t his daughter but it didn’t matter at all. Her joy was a universal language. The memory of those times could make Pepper feel tender even years after he and the mother had stopped dating.

So maybe that’s why Pepper experienced a jarring swelling in his throat as Mr. Visserplein stared up at him. Because Pepper realized that even this man had probably shared that same kind of smile with his parents. He had been a baby in someone’s arms. That’s all he was once. Not yet this man. And had those parents ever dreamed their baby would be dumped in a place like this? How could they? And yet here he was. Here they all were. And who would ever have guessed?

“Now that’s sweet,” a woman said.

Pepper looked up to find the other patients hadn’t skedaddled back to their rooms. They’d regrouped. They’d followed Pepper’s tracks. They were all there in the second-floor hallway. Still Waters, Redhead Kingpin. Heatmiser. The Haint. Wally Gambino. Yuckmouth, Doris Roberts, and Sandra Day O’Connor. They crowded together. They stood around Pepper and the old man.

“Now that you’ve got him,” Redhead Kingpin said. “What are we going to do with him?”

Mr. Visserplein howled. And Pepper, without thinking, tightened his grip around the throat again.

“That’s it,” Heatmiser mumbled.

“Just choke him right here,” Sandra Day O’Connor said plainly.

The group crowded closer, all as one. Were they grinning or was that just a trick of the dark?