Someone was working their way down the hall. Stopping at each cell before moving on.

It wasn’t Rainey, or the Samoan, or one of the other orderlies. I knew their footsteps by now. They had distinctive walks-jaunty, heavy, purposeful.

This was different.

I heard someone’s breath just outside my door.

The grill was moved to the side-the red poured in, turning my cell into a darkroom.

A strange sound.

Part speech and part moaning and part something else.

I sat up and stared at a single eye peering into my room.

That sound again.

Half-human.

Or maybe the opposite.

Too human.

“Dennis,” I whispered. “It’s me, Tom.”

The eye nodded.

I tiptoed to the door, put my face up against the open grill. “Look. They’ve locked me up, Dennis. They’re gonna throw away the key. Understand?”

Dennis stared at me without answering one way or another. It was possible that understanding and Dennis were mutually exclusive now.

“Your friend Benjy. That’s what they did to him. Then they killed him. There’s something they don’t want to get out.”

I couldn’t tell whether Dennis was digesting any of this. Whether I was as indecipherable to him as he was to me.

“Dennis, I need to get out of here. Help me.”

He made that sound again. A deaf person who’s never heard human speech. Like that. He could’ve been saying yes. Or no. Or maybe. He could’ve been asking for his meds.

“Dennis, you understand what I’m saying? They’re burying me.”

The eye moved. The grill closed shut. I heard that soft shuffling moving off down the hall.

I WAS ALLOWED A SHOWER.

The shower stall was open so they could watch you. It had metal hand-grips attached to the wall to keep doped-up vets from falling down and killing themselves.

On the way in, I passed someone on the way out.

Sluggish, heavy-lidded, and twitchy. He had Semper Fi tattooed on his arm.

Maybe this was the marine fucker Dennis had spoken of.

The one who’d gone AWOL searching for his kids’ bodies on Route 80.

I said hello.

The marine stared through me as if I wasn’t there. As if I’d turned invisible. I had.

No one could see me.

I was the invisible man.

I ASKED SETH HOW HE DID ON BOWLING NIGHT.

Who’d replaced my irreplaceable 132 average?

If he’d gotten his revenge on the Judas Priest-tattooed A-hole who’d sucker-punched him in the alley?

If Sam had successfully peddled any insurance policies lately?

Seth wasn’t really there, of course.

Which was kind of scary.

Seth answered me anyway.

Which was scarier.

ONE NIGHT I DREAMED I WAS BACK IN QUEENS.

The night of the blizzard.

When my mom put away an entire bottle of Jack Daniel’s. When I heard her muttering to herself about the toys Jimmy had left scattered around the living room. When I herded Jimmy into the bedroom and tried to shut the door, because I knew what was coming.

So did he.

Jimmy, who was smaller than me and therefore more vulnerable and much easier to fling around like a rag doll. Who looked more like my father, the father who’d deserted us for a younger and prettier woman who always brought us extra pancakes in the Acropolis Diner. Jimmy, who always took it from her with a stoic look of what… defiance maybe, even at 6, somehow finding that grown-up emotion within him-which enraged her even more. Of course it did. Made her do things to him with scalding bathwater, the bedroom radiator, my dad’s old belt buckle.

Things that eventually made Jimmy scream and wail and whimper, and me cover my ears in the false sanctuary of my bedroom, because defiance will get you only so far.

I herded him into the bedroom that night and shut the door. Thinking, this time, I will not let her in. I won’t. She’ll huff and puff but I will not let her blow the door down. I tried, tried as much as a 9-year-old can. Not enough. She pushed her way in and grabbed him by the arm, dragged him kicking and screaming out of the room.

And I could hear it.

I could hear all of it.

Even with my head in a vise of my own making, down on the ground, ears covered up.

The wind howling outside but an even worse howling coming from the next room. A blizzard outside and a blizzard inside, Jimmy being slammed against things. The whop of belt against skin.

That awful shrieking.

Which finally, oddly, and suddenly stopped. Just stopped.

In my dream, I do not walk out of the room, believing that it’s all over, that Jimmy will be sitting there, bruised of course, even bleeding, but still Jimmy, still alive.

I do not walk out and see him lying there on the floor, stock-still and strangely blue.

My mother does not order me to go back into my room and write down what happened. The story of clumsy Jimmy, of a 6-year-old who just could not get out of his own way. The story I will dutifully recount to the police and the caseworker from Children’s Protective Services and my own father, in all its awful and meticulous detail.

My brother Jimmy slipped on the ice and he hit his head.

He is always falling down and stuff like that.

He is really clumsy.

No.

In my dream, my father returns to save us. He comes back to his family.

I hear him shuffling up our front stoop.

Sloshing through the wet snow.

Banging on the front door.

He’s going to walk in and shake the snow off his slicker, and run to Jimmy and make him wake up.

The door opens.

Dad, I say. Dad.

But he can’t speak. The frigid cold, the swirling snow. He can’t speak.

He motions me to come closer.

I run to him in my Batman PJs, but they’ve somehow changed color. They’re drab and gray.

And my dad. Something’s wrong with him. He can’t speak. He’s talking but nothing’s coming out of his mouth.

He grabs me by my PJs and pulls me out into the snow.

But there is no snow.

Just an empty hall tinged in red.

Shhh…

He can’t speak, but he’s still able to whisper.

Dennis motions for me to follow him.

There’s a key glinting in his hand.

MAYBE I SHOULD’VE ASKED MYSELF HOW HE GOT IT.

The key.

You could drive yourself crazy with that stuff.

FIFTY-TWO

If you were the night garage attendant at VA Hospital 138, this is what you would’ve seen: a sleepy-looking orderly making his way across the deserted parking garage.

“Long day?” you would’ve asked him.

The orderly would’ve nodded and said, “Yeah.” Then he would’ve searched through his pockets, looking suddenly surprised and irritated.

“Jesus,” he would’ve said, after turning both pockets inside out. “I lost my parking ticket. It was right here this morning.”

You would’ve nodded in sympathy.

After all, the poor guy looked half out of it. If the truth be told, he stank a little-as if he’d been running a marathon. As if he’d spent all day wrestling unruly patients into submission.

As if he’d plucked his stinking blue work shirt out of the dirty pile in the hospital laundry room.

“What kind of car?” you would’ve finally asked him, taking pity and kind of eager to get his fetid presence out of your immediate breathing space.

“A Miata,” the orderly would’ve answered. “Silver-blue and kind of beat up.”

“Okay,” you would’ve said. “I’ll go find it.”

“You sure?” the orderly would’ve asked, not wanting to get you into any trouble. “I really appreciate it.”

“No problem,” you would’ve answered him, already walking out of your glass booth with a handful of numbered keys, on your way to the lower level, where, if memory served you correctly, you’d seen the silver-blue Miata with a lopsided bumper.