Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

I could. Go out to the woods. Get in a sleeping bag nice and warm. And hopefully, would just never wake up.”

“Oh. So you’ve given it lotta thought then?” he lifted his eyebrows comically, almost like he was imitating Lucinda.

“I’ve thought about it every day for the past five years.”

His plate was empty, but he stayed at the table.

“What about you?” I asked.

“Aw no. Not me. I’d be scared of consequences.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, ell of course. The bible says it’s a sin.” He jumped in before I could reply, “You ever come close t’ it yet?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I’ve came close a few times… What makes you believe in sins and hell?”

“Ah see things.” He said matter-of-factly. “That’s why ah think I know that there are evil things, which ah just take t’ be form of hell. And if there’s hell then there must be sin, right?”

“I don’t know.” I said. “Is that how you ended up in here?”

But his eyelids closed over as he yawned again. His eyes were like two half-shut knives looking back at me. His head swayed to the right and he lifted his shoulder and brought himself back.

 “You really need to come off that stuff.” I said. “Look what it’s doing to you.”

“No, ah need it! That’s what I was bout to say. It really elps’. I’m knackered but it stops the allucinations. It’s small price t’ pay. Elps’ me sleep too.”

“You can’t sleep?”

“No. I only sleep during the day, but these new tablets av really elped change that.”

“Oh, sorry.” I said. I looked at his empty plate. “..Am I keeping you up?”

He shook his head. “I can ang’ on five minutes.”

I nodded. “What kind of hallucinations do you get?”

“Lotsa things. Angels. Spirits. Red eyes that appear at t’ end of bed and watch me for ages. Just depends.”

“Is it scary?”

“Well, yeah, course it is. That’s why ah can’t sleep. Nurses tell me it’s not real, they say it’s out but delusions, but it looks real t’ me. I see it all as clearly as I’m seeing you. But then I do wonder, because I can’t see em’ as much when am on the drugs.”

I recognized the tune on the TV. Some woman was murdering Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.

“What are the eyes like?” I asked.

He yawned again, and covered his mouth. He’s polite about that, I thought, but he’s been eating the whole time with his mouth open. I could see his tiredness getting a firmer hold, he looked like he’d just done ten rounds in the ring and was about to drop. But still he stayed, holding eye contact. “Well, sometimes am just lying there int bed, and they just appear at bottom, and stare at me. Sometimes the eyes are on a figure. A kind of black figure. Sometimes in a hood and other times they are all on’t their own, staring at me int dark. Sometimes ah tell it to go away and it does, but other times it don’t. They’re always red. Like, blaring red. And really narrow, slanted, like pigs’ eyes or summit. That’s why ah can’t sleep. Or couldn’t sleep before. Usually all that stuff appens at night, when it’s dark, and when am on ma own. It’s just easier t’ sleep durint day when it’s light and feels safer.”

“Like night terrors.”

He looked at me, confused. “What are they?”

“Well, it sounds a bit similar but not quite as creepy. Sometimes, when I’m sleeping, a darkness will come and hover above me in bed, and it seems to hold me down so I can’t get up. I do everything I can to move but I can’t open my eyes. They’re glued shut. Can’t even move my fingers. It’s like I’m frozen stiff.”

“Oh, night-terrors.” he said slowly, as if it was a foreign language, “Yeah ah get them too. When I av them it’s always same thing, it’s orrible. There are all these figures int room and they all have on same black ooded cloaks, and they keep comin out the floors and passing through the room and going back out t’ walls. And I can never do out but ope to wake up as soon I can. I just keep asking God, “please elp me, please elp me”, and after a few seconds ah can open ma eyes again, and am awake, covered in sweat.”

I nodded. “So how longs it been since you seen anything?”

“Bout ten days or so.”

“And before your medication?”

“Pretty much every night.”

“Jesus.” I finished the last bit of pie and rounded up the remaining beans. “Do you ever hear voices?”

“No. But Dean over there does. He gets it quite bad.”

I followed his eyes to the guy he had called Dean- a man in his sixties with a gentle face.

Sandy didn’t elaborate. The “oohs” and “aahs” of the karaoke singer got louder.

“What load it’ shite, eh?”

I smiled back at him. The noise got louder and louder until the song drew to a finale. “Hah-lee-loo-eya, hah-lee-loo-eeyaaa, hah-llee-looo-lieeeyaaaaa!” the singer shrieked. A round of applause burst out from the TV. But the patients hardly moved. Ward four seemed more like an old folks’ home than part of a mental institution.

“THAT’S TEN TO EIGHT PEOPLE, START CLEARING YOUR PLATES.”

Sandy stood up to leave. “Goodnight.” he said.

“Goodnight.” I replied. “I enjoyed talkin’ to you.”

“What? Oh, yeah, you too.” He looked ready to collapse. He pushed in his chair and walked away to the stacking trolley. Nina got up too, as the whole room filtered out like clockwork.

I rolled over yet again and adjusted the pillows. I thought I must have gone past the point of tiredness. I hadn’t known what to expect. I hadn’t expected anything. But I wondered if this place was any worse than jail would have been. In the darkness of the room, in the