Historical June 1987 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
He always enjoyed dressing for dinner, even though he ate alone.
He would turn on the bare bulb in the tiny bedroom and go to his closet and pick a tie and a shirt that he thought might match.
Sometimes he wouldn’t button any of the buttons on his shirt, but he always made sure he was wearing a tie.
He ate alone most of the time these days.
Oh, there were other people in the building, other people who would probably be willing to share a dinner table, but he never ate with them. It’s not right to say that he ate alone most of the time; he ate alone all of the time.
It had been this way for months now.
It had been this way since he had decided that he wasn’t just dreaming.
When he thought that they were nightmares and that it was because he was eating chili while watching Johnny Carson, then it was o.k.
For a while he was convinced that the microwave was doing something to the fillings in his teeth that was causing him to have the dreams. That was alright because they were just dreams.
But now he knew that they weren’t dreams.
He didn’t know what the voice was, just that it wasn’t a dream and that he had to do what it was telling him. That’s why he ate alone.
At first it wasn’t a voice, just a feeling.
Each morning he’d hear the alarm and awaken. Actually he’d usually be somewhat awake before the alarm.
He liked those last few minutes lying in bed, cheating the clock.
It was a habit left over from the days when he worked.
It was during the summer that he first noticed that he was angry, very agitated each morning.
This was puzzling because he could never remember why he was angry. What he did know is that each morning, before the alarm, he’d lie in bed and feel his heart racing.
Sometimes he would be sweating when he came to, almost like he had been exercising.
After this had gone on for a few weeks, sometimes he’d catch himself cursing before he even knew he was awake.
One time he awakened to find himself slowly stabbing the pillow with a steak knife.
It was one of those knives that you used to get when you filled up your tank with gasoline, back in the days when he drove before his eyesight went bad.
He didn’t remember getting the knife from the kitchen or starting to plunge and twist it, but when he caught himself the pillow had thirty or forty knife marks in it. That was when he stopped leaving his apartment.
He was retired and could have the groceries delivered, so it wasn’t hard to do.
This kind of thing didn’t happen every night at first. Often he would only have a “bad experience,” as he called it, once or twice a week.
He changed his diet, stopped watching television, tried staying up all night, and even unplugged the microwave, but nothing seemed to work.
In fact, the bad experiences started happening more often.
In October, after waking the third time with a knife in his hand, stabbing the pillow, he removed all of the knives from his apartment.
He didn’t really eat much except for soup and pop-tarts and donuts, so it didn’t make that much difference.
By Thanksgiving they were happening almost every night.
Sometimes in the morning he’d know he had been violent at night.
He could tell by the way the bed was ripped apart, the covers torn by his hands and the pillowslips taken off the pillows and tied in knots.
Once he knew by the pictures taken off the wall and thrown on the floor in the kitchenette.
In Your Ear It was just before Christmas, December 23, when he first heard the voice.
He was lying in bed about to drift off to sleep. “Henry” a voice whispered and he sat up in bed. Then he heard it again. “Henry, Henry, Henry” Three times he heard the voice calling his name.
As slowly and quietly as he could, he moved from the bed to look at the door to the apartment.
The small night light in the kitchen socket offered enough light that he could see the door.
It was still closed and the chain bolted.
The windows were closed, too, so no one could have come inside. Again he heard “Henry” but this time it was different.
At first it had been a whisper, barely audible, but now he could tell that the voice was that of a young woman and there was no doubt that his name was being called.
He seized all of his courage and answered, “Who are you and what do you want?” but the only answer was silence. Henry didn’t sleep at all that night.
He was afraid.
He thought of picking up the phone and dialing 911 or calling the police, but he knew that they would only laugh at him and call him an old man.
He lay very, very still in bed.
The voice didn’t come back until after the New Year.
By then he had kind of convinced himself that what had happened was just his imagination.
He was in bed, watching that contest program where people move their mouths to records, when he heard the lady’s voice. “Henry, Henry, save her.” He froze, afraid to move or breathe deeply, and waited, but nothing else happened.
This went on for weeks.
Each night, just before falling off to sleep he would hear the female voice saying “Henry, Henry, save her.” After a while he began to get used to the voice and it didn’t scare him any more.
Sometimes he’d answer “Who?” or “Why should I?” Once or twice, when he was feeling especially brave, he would turn out the light and say, “Well, let’s talk about something besides saves. How about losses?” It made no difference, the voice would just respond “Henry, Henry, save her.” It was near the end of January that he heard the voice in the middle of the night.
It was chanting, almost singing, and he awakened with a start.
This was new, this hadn’t happened before, and he was again very afraid. “Save her, Henry. Save her by killing her,” was what the female voice said. Over and over the voice said it.
The voice got louder and he put his hands over his ears, but it didn’t make any difference.
He put a pillow over his head and began humming and reciting things he had memorized, the Pledge of Allegiance, the tune for “Dallas,” but the voice stayed just as loud. Then he saw her.
At first the shape was blurry, but then it got clearer and he could begin to make her out.
He knew his head was under the pillow.
He knew that his eyes were closed.
He knew that she wasn’t there, he knew that he was only imagining her.
But in front of him, just like she was standing there, was Mrs. Edmonds from downstairs.
Mrs. Edmonds was standing there, in her grey dress with her cane, and the voice was shouting “Henry, Henry, save her by killing her.” The voice got louder and louder until he could scream.
He put his fist in his mouth and began to cry, but the voice kept yelling at him.
The next thing Henry knew, it was morning.
His hand hurt from where he had bitten it last night.
He had broken the skin on his hand and it was covered with dried blood. Henry was having trouble remembering what had hap pened and then he remembered thinking that he had seen an image of Mrs. Edmonds when the voice was screaming at him.
Mrs. Edmonds was retired too.
She kept to herself and never said much, although he would always see her at lunch or dinner in the rec room.
Sometimes her daughter in Illinois would send her cookies or candy and she’d come upstairs to share them, but that hadn’t happened lately.
Mrs. Edmonds wasn’t in the best of health, he knew. Whenever she brought food and they talked, they usually wound up talking about health and insurance.
They were both getting older. Their health was getting worse and the insurance was never enough.
He had the same vision nightly, hearing the voices screaming and seeing Mrs. Edmonds.
He called it a vision because he knew it wasn’t a dream and “bad experience” no longer seemed adequate to describe it.
Once or twice it even happened in the middle of the day, while he was watching “Wheel of Fortune” or “People’s Court.” He was afraid.
He was afraid of the voices, he was afraid of himself, and he was afraid for Mrs. Edmonds. That was why he stopped eating with others.
It happened on February 15, the day after St. Valentine’s Day as he always called it.
He was sitting in the kitchenette, watching the Weather Channel on cable television, when the voice came.
It was always loud, but it was even louder today.
He closed his eyes and started to wait it out, he knew that was all he could do, but the voice got even louder.
After what seemed like forever, Henry went and stood next to the refrigerator. Slowly, he began to rub his head against the refrigerator door like a cat rubs its head against a piece of furniture.
The door was metal and felt cool and he hoped that would make the pain in his head go away, but it did not. Slowly and softly, at first, Henry began to hit his head against the top freezer door to the refrigerator.
He started hitting his head faster and harder.
Each time his head hit the door the pain felt good because it let him ignore the voice for a second.
He hit his head faster and faster and harder against the door. Henry didn’t know when it had started, but suddenly he was aware of a slow knocking sound.
He stopped hitting his head against the door and he was surrounded with sensations: pain, a spinning, and a throbbing in his head, blood on his forehead and the door to the refrigerator, the voice shouting and screaming in his brain, and a slow knocking on the door.
He stood still for a moment, letting his hands slide down the sides of the refrigerator.
The knocking continued.
He knew who would be there and he knew what he had to do. Henry knew that it would be Mrs. Edmonds and that he must do what the voice demanded.
He picked up a hammer that was sitting on the kitchen counter and started towards the door. Henry’s body was hunched over from pain and exhaustion when he reached the door.
He took a deep breath and tightened his grip on the hammer, slowly opening the door as the voice in his head grew louder. Henry raised his head to see Mrs. Edmonds standing in the hall.
She was wearing her grey dress with a candy box tucked in her left arm and her cane in her left hand. What he didn’t see until it was too late was her right hand, holding a knife and striking it into his chest.
His eyes bulged and he felt pain running from his chest to his head and back again.
He fell backwards against the door and Mrs. Edmonds drew her arm back and continued to stab. Again and again the knife pierced his chest.
He closed his eyes and, finally, he could hear the voice no more.
The voice in Mrs. Edmonds’ head grew quiet too.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, June 1987.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1987_06.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
