The June Selected Writer is Thomas Joyce
You can visit Thomas at: tjoyce10@gmail.com
ODD SOCKS
by Thomas Joyce
Joe sat in the faded, high-backed armchair facing the garden behind the care home. He was replaying moments from the nightmare that had so suddenly awoken him.
In the dream, he had been lying in bed in the home he had shared with his wife, Emmy, for thirty years or more, the home where they had raised their two sons. It was in that house that Emmy had first succumbed to the illness that had attacked her mind and robbed her of her memories. In the end, she had forgotten who he was and had fled from him, straight into the accident. But it had begun with small things, lost things, things like…
“Hey, Joe.” It was one of the younger nurses, pointing at his feet and smiling. “You know you’re wearing odd socks?”
“Of course I’m not,” he said, momentarily forgetting the dream. “They’re both white, just like every single sock I own.”
“But you’ve got the red stripes and the green stripes mixed up.”
“Don’t be ridi...son-of-a-bitch!” said Joe, staring down at his feet. “None of my socks have color. Who’s been messing with my stuff?”
Cliff, Joe’s only real friend among the residents, sighed. “She got ya good, old man.”
Ignoring this last comment, the nurse addressed Joe. “Now Mr. Hendricks, there’s no need for that kind of language.’
“But someone’s been in my room, going through my sock drawer!’
“It is against our policy to enter a resident’s room without their consent,” said the nurse, the business-like language slipping off her tongue like smooth, silky lawyer’s lines. “Especially prohibited for the purpose of going through their personal property; even their sock drawer.”
“How else do you explain this?” Joe gestured towards his mismatched socks. He found odd socks to be uncomfortable in a different, deeper way than the obvious.
“Perhaps an innocent mistake on your part?” Cliff, his face almost the perfect image of condescension, chimed in.
“Perhaps an innocent mistake on your part?” repeated the nurse.
“Yeah, that’s what he just said,” Joe said. “But I can assure you I know how to fold socks in correct pairs. I was doing that long before you were born, young lady.”
The nurse frowned, opened and closed her mouth once or twice before she spoke. “I understand your frustrations, Mr. Hendricks. I’ll look into it personally and I assure you that nobody will enter your room without your permission and attendance. In the meantime, why don’t you come along for some oatmeal?”
Joe sighed and headed for the dining room. Behind him, he heard Cliff mutter “Oatmeal? Boring like a son-of-a-bitch!”
But Joe wasn’t in a laughing mood. Instead, he turned to go back to his room, and Cliff followed.
“Look at this mess,” Joe complained, throwing another pair of odd socks onto his bed. “Not a single correct pair. Innocent mistake, my ass! Someone’s messing with me.”
“They’re just socks, buddy,” said Cliff, sitting in the single chair next to the table by the window. No view of the garden from this room, but if Joe had been a car enthusiast maybe he could have appreciated the view of the parking lot. He kept the thin curtains drawn most of the time. “You shouldn’t let something like this upset you.’
“I’m not upset,” said Joe, flopping onto his bed and angrily separating the socks, divorcing green stripes from red, black from yellow. “These colors aren’t even close. What happened to all my plain white socks?”
“I’m sure it’s just someone pranking you.”
Holding a blue-striped sock in one hand and an orange in the other, Joe fixed his friend with a long, hard stare. “Was it you?”
“Not me, buddy,” replied Cliff, staring down the barrel of Joe’s penetrating glare, showing no signs that the accusation shocked or hurt him.
Joe grunted and shifted his attention back to the socks. Before he allowed himself to be distracted by the mundane task, he remembered something else. “How did you know what that nurse was gonna say?”
Cliff shrugged and flashed that impossibly white grin. But Joe was not about to let him off easy this time, not when his privacy, his sock drawer, was at stake. He gave him the most penetrating glare he could muster.
“I guess I just knew the kind of thing she was going to say,” said Cliff, his voice calm and even. “I’ve known many nurses and the way they think. I have been in this place for a very long time, after all.”
Joe’s glare disappeared. He felt that he could trust Cliff. His friend certainly seemed to have been here long enough to be regarded as a permanent fixture, like the comfy chairs by the garden window or oatmeal for breakfast. He returned his attention to the pile of disorganized socks atop his bed. “Probably the nurse herself did this. Wait until I tell the manager. She’ll wish she hadn’t messed with my socks.”
“She got you good, but it wasn’t the nurse.”
Joe stopped again and turned to his friend, his brow furrowed. “You said she got me good. She.”
“Not the nurse, dummy,” said Cliff. “I meant her.”
Joe looked to where Cliff had pointed, to the far corner of the room and for a second he thought he could see someone, a phantom in the shadows. But when he blinked all he could see was the shadow cast by his wardrobe.
“You nearly had me…” he began, turning back to where Cliff had sat. The chair was now empty.
Dozy old fart, he thought, you upped and left. Maybe you are going senile. I know I’m not. I’m not!
He looked around the room, alone with only the frantic chattering in his head and the knowledge that the goose pimples now crawling up his arms and down his back had nothing to do with the temperature.
*****
The next morning, Joe awoke to a fear that he was following his wife down her dark path of senility; his socks had been folded with the same lack of organization as before.
After hunting through almost every single pair, he triumphed with two that had matching black stripes and stormed off to breakfast, the same sentence repeating in his mind: I am not crazy and I am certainly not senile.
He went into the dining room, sat in the same chair as he always did, and stared out of the same window he always did at nothing in particular. His arms were crossed and he could feel a scowl darkening his face like a thunder cloud.
“Want some breakfast, Mr. Hendricks?” asked the same cheerful nurse from the previous morning.
“No,” he replied, his expression never changing.
“Why not?”
He turned his head and looked up at her. “How would you like it if someone entered your bedroom without your permission and went through your personal belongings?”
“Now, now, Mr. Hendricks,” she said, reaching out to gently pat his hand. “We spoke about this yesterday. Nobody has entered your room, I can assure you.”
“I am not senile, you know!” he shouted, thinking of his wife Emmy and the frightened, unknowing look that had haunted her eyes towards the end. He tried to hide his own fear with anger. “And you know where you can stick your assurances!”
Dumbfounded and seemingly surprised by this uncharacteristic outburst, the nurse simply stood in the doorway.
“Oh, forget it,” said Joe. He could feel the blood pounding rhythmically in his head (thump, thump, thump) and knew he had the beginning of a nasty headache. He could hardly be surprised; a practical joker on the care home staff and a “friend” who baled on him when he was needed the most.
Joe looked around the dining room but could see no sign of Cliff. He scanned every table once, twice, ignoring the troubled expressions of those close enough to the door to have heard the culmination of his frustration.
He was interrupted during his third attempt when he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. He turned to find the nurse from before accompanied by a senior nurse, sporting a warm smile.
“Can we have a chat, Mr. Hendricks?” the older nurse said in a voice as smooth and as soft as velvet. “Maybe I can help.”
With a sigh of surrender, Joe slumped in his chair. “I’m sorry,” he said, doing his best to look dogged while steering well clear of loony. “I know I should not have raised my voice before. I guess I haven’t been getting much sleep since I’ve been here. You know, I’ve never been very good at sleeping anywhere other than the bed I shared with Mrs. Hendricks, God rest her soul.”
“Of course, of course.” cooed the senior nurse, her expression changing to that of sincere condolence as she reached out and patted his hand. Joe thought that people in her profession were probably trained to wear the correct expression like it was just another part of their uniform. “We’ll see if we can find something to help give you a good night’s rest. And, as for your socks, I will look into it personally and you have my guarantee that the only people who will be permitted access to your room shall be employees of this facility and only with your permission and attendance, of course.”
Joe nodded. Another personal guarantee. He was not hopeful.
As the senior nurse straightened up, she paused and gestured towards Joe’s feet. “I can see you’re still having a little trouble with your socks.”
Joe glanced down at his ankles only to find two black bands on his left sock and two red bands on his right. “Son of a bitch!” he exclaimed.
“Perhaps you need to go back to your room and start your day over,” the senior nurse advised, this time a grim expression on her face.
Angrily, he stomped back to his room. When he entered, he struggled to stifle a scream. The curtains had been ripped from the rod above the window so that only ragged pieces of fabric remained, the larger parts lying across the top of his desk. When he looked down, he saw that the wastepaper bin had been overturned, the tightly wadded balls of tissue and notepaper arranged on the floor to spell two words: OLD MAN.
Socks were strewn all over the floor. There was still an ominous little area left where the two walls met, untouched by the silent tornado, an area no bigger than where someone—I meant her —could stand.
“She really got you good this time.”
Joe jumped and his head snapped towards the voice and found Cliff leaning against the back of his room door. “Jesus Christ, Cliff! You scared me. Look at this mess. And you know who did it, don’t you?”
Cliff shrugged but the trademark grin had been replaced by a sober seriousness. “I suppose it’s about time I gave you the whole story.”
“Yeah, you’re damn right!I don’t appreciate pranks, especially when the perps are my so-called friend and the goddamn people who are supposed to be looking after me!’
Cliff held both hands up in a calming gesture. “I told you, it wasn’t me. You know I’ve been here a very long time. The truth is…this is where I died. In this very room.”
Joe gave him an incredulous glare. “That’s it. I’ve had enough of you. The manager’s gonna hear about this.”
Ignoring that, Cliff explained, “My name is Clarence Clifford and I was a resident here a long time ago. I don’t know exactly when, it’s not exactly important for me to keep track of time.”
“Oh, of course,” said Joe, rummaging through the piles of socks and trying to sort them. “I don’t suppose ghosts have any pressing engagements.’
Cliff ignored the sarcasm and continued, “I had been here for a few years, had no family to speak of, and I knew I wouldn’t be around forever. I still hadn’t lost my marbles. Then strange things began happening to me.”
Joe spared a moment to glance back, to look in Cliff’s eyes as he nodded to the room in general.
“Small things in the beginning, like you and your socks. Only, with me, she was hiding my watch and my wedding ring.’
Joe looked down at his own old, yellow band that had never left his finger since the day his wife had put it there, fifty-two years ago. So tight and comfortably constricting. The only way to get that sucker off, he thought, was if you took the finger too.
“Well, I had lost a bit of weight in my later years so my own could slip off on an especially cold day. But I’d always notice it if it came off,” Cliff said. “Of course, at first I thought the same; that someone was messing with me or trying to steal my stuff. But then I’d find them in the strangest places and that’s when I began to question myself, just as you have. Then things like this would happen.”
Joe watched as Cliff waved an arm at the carnage that had been visited upon him and he caught a glimpse of something in the adjoining bathroom.
“What the hell!” Joe shouted, storming towards the door and kicking it open. Protruding from under the closed lid of his toilet like the long, thin tongue of a serpent, was one end of the blue belt from his dressing gown. Joe turned to face his friend and said, “Enough bullshit, Cliff! You’re doing this, you crazy old coot, and now you’ve ruined my belt. I’m going to report this. Get out of my way.”
Joe attempted to push Cliff aside, and nearly fell straight through him. He stumbled but managed to halt his forward momentum and stop himself from crashing headfirst into the chest of drawers. Instead, he placed one open palm on its surface and raised his fearful eyes to where Cliff now stood, translucent against the light coming in through the uncovered window. He opened his mouth, meaning to ask how this could possibly happen. But no words escaped from him, his mouth only opening and closing.
Cliff offered his friend that same old shrug, this time accompanied by a sympathetic smile. “I’m a ghost. And so is she.”
Already scared out of his wits, Joe followed Cliff’s gaze to a woman now standing in the corner, that corner. She was a terrifying vision of frenzied anger. Her hair was as white as a bone that had been stripped clean and left at the mercy of the desert sun. Her face seemed to be held in a frozen snarl, her teeth bared and her skin tight as though she were ravenous.
“She’s hungry,” said Cliff. And Joe had that feeling, and not for the first time, that his friend had lifted the thought straight from his head. “She feeds on the insanity of the living.”
“My chest…” began Joe, unable to tear his gaze away from the ghoul in the corner, a clenched fist moving up from his side.
Why doesn’t Cliff do something? thought Joe, panicked and scared. How can he just stand there?
“I can do nothing to stop her,” said Cliff, answering the question Joe no longer had the strength to voice. “That’s not why I’m here.”
As Joe continued to stare at the grotesque figure straight from a madman’s nightmare, he felt one last burst of pain from his dying heart and then he felt Cliff’s hand on his shoulder and, all at once, he was both falling forward and standing still. The agonizing pain disappeared in a flash of white light and Joe felt weightless, as if all of the dread and despair he had just experienced had been a physical weight bearing down on him and Cliff had just removed it.
He cast a furtive glance at the corner and was relieved to see that the ghoul was gone, no doubt to torment fresh victims before scaring them to death. He turned to see Cliff wearing a more characteristic smile and he could see that the weight he had been carrying, he had not been carrying alone. He smiled back.
Who is she? he asked, without moving his lips.
I don’t know, replied Cliff, but she craves insanity. We’re susceptible to her because we’re so afraid of senility.
*****
Two of the residents watched as a senior nurse showed two paramedics towards Joe Hendricks’s room.
“I heard he went peacefully,” said one man to the other. “I guess it was a blessing. I heard he was starting to lose his marbles. Was weird over socks.”
“No,” said the second man. “He was as sharp as a tack.”
“You knew him?’
“He hadn’t been here very long,” the other man said. But we spoke a couple of times. Nice guy.”
They were silent for a couple of minutes, the first man surveying the dining room of his new home while his new acquaintance leafed through a paperback.
“Hey, what do they serve for breakfast around here?” asked the new resident, looking back to his friend, failing to notice how the occupants of nearby tables nudged each other and pointed in his direction, speaking in whispers.
“Usually oatmeal,” said Cliff, shrugging and offering an impossibly white grin. “Boring like a son-of-a-bitch.”
Thomas Joyce lives with his wife and their daughter in Dumbarton, a small town in the west of Scotland. He writes in his spare time, but there are never enough hours in the day. "Odd Socks" is his second story accepted for publication in The Horror Zine. His first, "From The Infinite Abyss", can be found in the archives under July 2013 and was also selected for The Horror Zine Summer 2013 print edition.