Cashmere Hospital- The Man Made of Stars

"I can't get it out of my head. I don't know what to do. Mark said you might be able to help me, but I don't know how."

I was sitting by the fountain in the outdoor garden, which most people used as a smoking area. The angel statue held a jug that constantly burbled out water, and I found the patter soothing. I came here to think sometimes, to collect my thoughts, and it was a great comfort to me since the incident with the elevator. I found myself here more and more often these days. Writing this book about the things I've seen and heard in Cashmere Hospital is taking a toll on me, and I think it's impossible to not wonder why I stay in the belly of the beast as I write more and more about the things that go on here.

I was asleep when Mark called me today, dragging myself from the depths to ask what he wanted?

My plans had been to sleep till noon, so I could get up and write a little before going back to sleep tonight. It was my day off, and I wanted to catch up on some sleep so I could spend all day tomorrow writing before going back to work on Wednesday. Instead, I listened to what Mark had to say and got up to make myself a coffee, so I'd be in the right mind to listen to this fellas story.

"He wants to know if you'll meet him at eleven. He sounds pretty bad, and I'm afraid he might not be in the right place to tell you this story for much longer."

The guy's name was Jerry, a "sitter" who'd struck up a friendship with Mark a few months ago.

Sitters are what we call them, but their title is "non-medical caregivers." They sit with patients for six to eight hours daily, and the work is voluntary. Sitters usually hang out with coma patients, patients suffering from catatonia, dementia patients, and most patients who just need someone to sit and talk with them. That was where Jerry came in. Jerry lived primarily off a trust fund, but as he grew older, he wanted to do something with his time besides sit around. So, he committed himself to sit with patients a few times a week, leading him to where he was now.

"They keep calling me to see if I want to sit with another patient, but I can't think of anything besides what he said to me."

I looked up owlishly at him, taking a sip of the coffee I'd bought in the cafeteria before telling him to go on.

"It all started with Mr. Vogner."

* * * * *

Jerry looked at the starring old man without much interest. He was sitting in a bed on the second floor, the long-term stay unit, and staring at the same long crack in the plain white paint that covered a ceiling that had likely not been painted since Reagan was in office.

"This is Mr. Vogner. He's in a coma, but we think he might feel a little better if he just had someone to talk to."

Jerry nodded, "Well, let's get acquainted then,"

After several hours of having a one-sided conversation with the man in the bed, Jerry sighed. He didn't know what he was expecting. Most of the patients in a coma or in a state of catatonia were like this. It was like talking to a brick wall, but you ultimately did it for them. You gave them a voice they could latch onto, a lifeline that might pull them back from whatever sea they are stranded in.

Just because it was dull didn't mean it wasn't noble work.

Jerry had been doing this sort of thing for about a year, and he had never seen anything described by some of the guys in his group. There was a collection of guys in the Sitter program who sometimes got together for drinks and talked about their experiences. Some of the guys talked about watching patients slowly come out of their silent state. Some talked about hearing a patient speak for the first time in years. Some talked about the tear-spotted letters they got from their families or the happy embraces from family members who hadn't seen them move or speak in years. Jerry didn't have anything like this. They told him it would happen, that he would get his own story to tell one day.

He doubted any of them could have known that this dried-up husk of a man would be his one and only story.

Jerry tried another conversational gambit, asking Mr. Vogner who he thought would win the Super Bowl this year?

Mr. Vognar just kept staring at that crack in the ceiling.

Jerry reached for the remote then, thinking some Tv might loosen his tongue. Flipping through the channels, he finally settled on an episode of Pawn Stars and started watching the adventures of Rick and his son, Big Haus. Jerry asked Vogner if he liked Pawn Stars, but he got no answer. Whether he approved or disapproved, Jerry never knew. He turned back to the show, commenting on some of the things they were showing, and the two let the show play out.

They were halfway through the episode, Rick's father talking to a man about silver coins, when Jerry heard the mumbling. He turned the volume down, thinking it might be part of the show, and realized it was coming from the man in the bed. Mr. Vogner was mumbling to the crack in the ceiling, and Jerry turned off the tv as he slid his chair a little closer. The man's chapped lips were mumbling the same thing repeatedly, and as Jerry got closer, he realized it was the same five words.

"He came through the crack."

"Are you okay, Mr. Vogner?" Jerry asked, looking at the door as he thought about calling a nurse.

"He came through the crack."

"Do you need some water?" Jerry asked, hoping for more than muttering.

"He came through the crack."

"Who came through the crack?" Jerry asked on a whim, wondering if it was something more than a random phrase.

When the old man turned his sunken face towards him, his chapped lips flaking as he made the words of an answer, Jerry wished he hadn't asked.

"The man made of stars."

Jerry wanted to pull away but leaned in closer, curious to hear the man's words.

"Tell me about him."

It all began when things started going missing.

It was little things. My paper weight, the pen the college gave me after teaching for twenty years, the pendent from LSU that hung on the wall of my own dorm, and I was becoming angry. I blamed my kids, and I blamed my wife, but they all claimed they had nothing to do with it. I was working on a manuscript and complained that all of this was cutting into my time, but still, things continued to go missing.

When my manuscript started going missing, I fell into a rage.

I changed the locks on my office. I forbade people to go in there, even when I was there. I spent more time in my office, typing and typing and typing away, and barely saw the people who mattered the most to me. I would slink out to get food in the dead of night when everyone was asleep, and even then, I would lock the door and get back to work as quickly as possible.

I was typing one night between midnight and dawn when I discovered what had been stealing from me.

The old man wet his lips again, his head shifting slowly as he looked back at the crack in the ceiling. His voice sounded like a rusty hinge in a haunted house, and Jerry wondered how long it had been since he had spoken? Jerry wanted to get him some water, but he was pulled in by the weird story and the sound of his haggard voice.

"Have you ever considered what we would look like to a two-dimensional creature?"

Jerry was surprised, shook his head, shocked into a response by the strangeness of the question.

"Few do. A three-dimensional creature could reach right into a safe that a two-dimensional creature had secured and take anything they wanted. The two-dimensional creature would have no idea how its valuables had been stolen, and it might not even be able to conceive of a three-dimensional creature."

"Pretty heavy stuff," Jerry said, chuckling weakly.

"Indeed," said Mr. Vognar, "Especially when it's exactly what's happening to you."

I was sitting at my computer, banging away at my missing pages as I tried to recreate them when something caught my eye. It began as a sparkling, like a gem that caught the light, and I turned to look at the crack that had appeared on my wall. It was nothing special, just a normal crack, but there was something trying to push its way through. I… can't…have you ever looked up at the stars on a clear night? Have you ever looked at the constellations and seen the shapes? That one bear, that one a dipper, that one a huntsman? Well, I saw a man made of stars! That's as close as I can describe him, but it looked like a constellation had stepped out of my wall.

I was speechless. Was this the thing that was stealing from me? I was like a statue as it moved across the room. It's hard to describe how it moved. It almost seemed to vanish and reappear with each "step." It was, then it wasn't, then it was again. Watching it move gave me the worst feeling of nausea, and I felt the air hang in my lungs as it came right up to the desk. It stood not five feet from me, and the air hummed with power. I spent a summer working for the power company before college, hanging power lines and helping plant telephone poles. When the wires were live, they felt just like that, and I was afraid that if it touched me, I'd be burnt to a crisp.

I must have made a sound when he picked up the picture on my desk because it turned and looked at me. I say turned, but I'm not quite sure what it did. It folded itself in my direction, and when its shining visage fell on me, it sounded like animals being cooked alive. It sounded like the loudest speaker reverb you've ever heard mixed with a pig being butchered. It made my ears bleed, and I felt blood oozing from my nose and eyes as I stared at it. I watched it lean in closer and closer as the noise fell on me like a heavy weight, and at some point, my mind just couldn't take it anymore.

When I returned to myself, I was here, and I've been here ever since, thinking about the nature of that creature that came through my wall as if it was no more a barrier than the door over there.

Jerry leaned away from the man slowly, the oldster still staring at that crack that stretched across the flat plane of his ceiling.

"Have you seen him since?" Jerry asked, not wanting to know but needing to.

Mr. Vognar never looked away from the crack, but Jerry felt sure that he could see him peeking out of her peripherals.

"Sometimes, late at night, I see colors from that crack up there. I know he's watching. I think he enjoys seeing me suffer. And now you know, too. And now it will eat away at you as well."

He started to laugh, a deep and hateful sound, and it took all of Jerry's strength to fumble out of the chair and run from that room. It wasn't just his fun house laughter or the corpse that was creating it. The idea of some creature that could move freely through his world, seeing it as little more than a game board or a picture made of rice and glue, terrified him the farther it wormed into his brain. They called his name at the nurse's station when he passed, but he kept running. He didn't stop running until he was in his car in the parking lot, but that was when it all truly started.

He saw a crack in the windshield, a simple star made by a stray rock.

He had thought he might be done shaking, but it seemed he had a little more in him as he fell out of the car and scrambled through the parking lot, leaving his vehicle open and abandoned in the parking spot.

* * * * *

"I haven't gone back to check on it since. I assume security has either towed it or secured it for me. I spent the last two weeks spackling every crack in my house. I never realized there were so many until I started. Then I looked at the corners, wondering if they could get in there. Who's to say what a door is to them? They could come anywhere and at any time."

"What will you do?" I asked, unsure how to help this man.

It was hard having knowledge that you didn't ask for.

"I don't know, but every day I think about it, I'm pretty sure I'm one step closer to losing my mind. I wonder now if that's what happened to Mr. Vognar. Did he lose his mind after seeing that thing, or because the thought of things coming in drove him crazy?"

He left soon after that, and I never heard from him again.

I did look up Mr. Vognar when I got to work the next day and discovered he had passed the day after Jerry's visit. The report said he had a heart attack, but they also reported strange burns on his chest during the autopsy. It was written off as an allergic reaction or some odd occurrence, but I can't help but wonder if the strange creature he spoke of finally came back to get him?

Cashmere just gets weirder and weirder the longer I look into these things.

I hardly need an otherworldly being to make me feel like I might be losing it the longer I remain in this Bermuda triangle of strangeness.