Sundown Syndrome

Randle sat with his back up against the wall of the antiseptic little hallway in Mountain View Mental Hospital. The wounds on his wrists itched underneath the bandages. He rubbed them but the itching continued. He did not know how long he had been sitting on the wobbly brown stool, but his ass ached and his back was stiffening. If he had to guess, he would have said thirty minutes. It felt more like longer. The nurse’s station was empty. All the numbered doors that lined the hallway were shut. If Randle had not known better, he would have thought he was alone. A camera paned back and forth above his head. Its black eye watching his every fidget. A door slammed shut at the far end of the hallway. Randle twisted his head around and squinted at the person standing in the distance.

She was hard to see, just a vague figure that could have easily been mistaken for a ghost. The clicking of her high heeled shoes echoed off the cinderblock walls as she approached. The sound became louder and louder. For one second, Randle thought that he would scream if that horrible clicking did not stop. He had no idea why. She was tiny to the point of frail like a sick little girl. Her uniform looked like some antique left over from the 40’s. A white skirt with matching stockings and a cap bobby pinned on top of her blond hair. She smiled and spoke in a voice that matched her little girl’s body.

“You’re Randle, right?”

“Yes,” he said.

“My name is Lola.” She giggled and Randle’s brow furrowed.

“I’ll show you to your room,” Lola said. She motioned for Randle to follow.

As they walked down the hallway, Randle stole glimpses into the tiny windows built into the iron doors. Inside were plain rooms with simple beds chained to the walls. A few of the rooms had occupants. One of the occupants sat up in the bed and watched as Randle and the nurse passed. Randle felt a seed of dread growing in the bottom of his gut. Lola stopped at the room furthest down the hallway and opened the door. Its hinges sang out in rusty protest.

“This is your room,” Lola said, “You would have a roommate but he’s busy right now.”

Randle said nothing. The room was clean but in desperate need of a new paint job. The walls were peeling and the light fixture on the ceiling did very little to light the room with its pale amber glow.

“Go on now!” Lola said. She grabbed Randle by the top of the arm and, before his mind had a chance to register what was going on, threw him into the room with strength that her tiny frame could not possible have possessed. Randle turned around as the door slammed shut and locked. Lola’s pale face was up against the window. She was smiling. Then she was gone. Randle reached up and rubbed the part of his arm that Lola had touched. Her fingers were icy and left Randle covered in gooseflesh. He looked over his room. The bed was neatly made. The bathroom was just big enough to fit a shower, a toilet, and a sink. All of these things were stained but otherwise spotless. Randle took a seat on the saggy bed. On the nightstand there was an ancient copy of Reader’s Digest and a newspaper. Randle picked up the Reader’s Digest and flipped through its pages. As he did, he wondered when his roommate would return and what it would be like living in such close proximity with a stranger.

Although the bed was worn out, it still retained a measure of comfort. Randle eased himself down onto it and rested his head against the pillow. The sheets smelled of strong detergent. He rubbed his bandaged wrists and sighed. He wondered for perhaps the millionth time why he had did what he did. A perfect storm of depression, booze, and desperation had led him there, which was funny because he was never really much of a drinker. A cry for help, maybe? Well, he had called 911 right after doing it. What really amazed him was how he immediately regretted the decision even after all he had been through. It had not made much of a difference to the judge. It was…

The iron door swung open. It banged against the concrete wall and startled Randle out of his daydream. The towering monster of a man who had taken Randle’s vital signs earlier tossed a skinny, sniveling man in on his back. The man gasped for air and reached up towards the ceiling grabbing at nothing. The huge man, whose name tag read Arnold, scowled and slammed the iron door shut. Randle’s ears rang from the tremendous clank. It took a long time for Randle to realize that the man on the floor curled up into the fetal position was actually weeping.

“Are…you okay?” Randle asked. He had a hard time forming the words.

“Dios, por favor,” The man said,

Randle knew the man was not talking to him. For a long time Randle stared at the trembling man lying under the bed on the opposing wall. The man was Mexican with scars covering his arms and the little that Randle could see of his face. Had the man been bigger and not bawling, he might have been intimidating in a prison yard kind of way. Finally the man pulled himself up to a sitting position by the bottom of his bed. Randle saw that the man’s arms and neck were bandaged and that his white t-shirt was smeared with browning blood that had streamed down from his mouth through a tangle of black beard. The man looked up through the room’s window. Randle followed the man’s gaze to the window’s thick glass and saw that the sun was beginning to climb the sky. Without thinking, Randle looked down at the wrist where he usually wore his watch only to find white bandage. Randle guessed that it was about 7am because the sun was so low in the sky.

“Gracias, Dio,” the man mumbled. Tears, this time of joy, welled up in his eyes. Randle sighed again. He slumped back into his bed and closed his eyes. The night before had been long and no sleep had came. Randle’s mind began to once again drift.

The door slammed open again. The Mexican, now lying in his own bed, whimpered.

“Lunch,” a silhouette standing in the doorway said. Randle sat on the side of his bed and rubbed his eyes. A faint glow of sunshine filtered through the room’s window. Randle stood and walked out of the cell. The woman standing outside was tall with sunken eyes and stringy gray hair. She brought up a bony finger tipped with a filthy long finger nail.

“You’re new here,” she said, more a statement than a question. Randle nodded. The woman coughed and straightened out her pink and red floral scrub top.

“Alberto, come here,” she yelled. Her squinty eyes widened revealing blood shot whites. Randle heard Alberto shifting around on his mattress. He said something in Spanish.

“You know I can’t understand that shit!” the old woman croaked. She coughed into her hand and for a moment Randle saw dark brown spittle in her palm before she wiped it away on her pant leg. The women leaned closer to Randle. Her breath was a mix of coffee and cigarettes, and her face was covered in caked on make up. It was as though she wore a mask of the stuff.

“Pretty face, such a pretty little face you got there,” she said. Randle’s eyes narrowed. The woman’s smile was only half there. The few teeth that remained were tarnished with tartar. Her hand reached up and pinched Randle’s cheek. On impulse, his own hand swung up and seized the old hag’s by the wrist. Randle restrained himself before going further. Alberto cowered in the threshold of his room, hand clasped over his gaping mouth.

“Bad, bad, bad,” the woman hacked. She looked over her shoulder down the long empty corridor and then back at Alberto’s face. “You better be glad no one saw that.” She turned her back and walked down the hallway, motioning for Randle and Alberto to follow. After a moment’s hesitation, they did.

The woman led them past the nurses station that was empty as it had been earlier. The more he walked, the more nervous Randle became. Alberto’s incessant blubbering was not helping matters. The walls were so plain and white, so unlike any hospital or nursing home Randle had ever seen. Overhead, spaced every five feet or so, was a shop light that hummed electrically. Alberto’s face was deathly pale in the bright light.

The three of them passed through double doors that the old woman had to unlock to get through. On the other side was a cafeteria. Most of the round orange tables were empty, but a few in the back sat a few other patients. Randle’s heart jumped up a notch in rate. Each one looked as badly as Alberto--some of them far worse. One female patient screeched at the sight of Randle, holding her narrow arms up in front of her haggard face as if to ward off a blow. Randle saw an IV attached to a pole placed in her bony hand.

“This way, this way,” the woman who had led them to the cafeteria said. She walked behind the counter and got two lunch trays from a rack above the industrial looking sink. Underneath the glass sneeze shields were bowls full of mashed potatoes and fried chicken. The old woman used tongs to fill Alberto and Randle’s trays then handed them over the counter. Randle grabbed a small carton of orange juice on a table beside the counter. Alberto did the same and shambled over to one of the empty tables. Randle followed, not really knowing why. They both sat down. Alberto began devouring his food, shoveling it into his mouth with his bare hands like a starving monkey. Randle looked around at the room. It was the same anemic white that the hallway had been though not nearly as quiet. The six or seven patients inside the room were busy smacking their lips and occasionally mumbling to themselves. The seats around the tables were made of heavy steel and so was everything else. Two massive trashcans stood at the door. Beside of them was an opening in the wall and a sign stating that this was where to place your used trays.

The old woman who had led them there was sitting behind the counter staring into space. Most of the others in the room wore vacant out expressions on their bruised and bandaged faces. A few of them wore casts. One had an oxygen mask connected to a green tank on wheels. Randle had not seen so many wounded people since his short stint as an underground pit fighter. He opened his carton of juice and took a long drink. The food was bland, but Randle ate it anyway. He and Alberto finished at about the same time.

“Just what is going on here?” Randle asked the old woman as she led he and Alberto back to their room. She said nothing. Randle’s question hung in the air for a long time. The silence seeming to taunt him. It sat his teeth on edge. He looked around the white hallway. There was no one to be seen anywhere. The hallway was unearthly in its plainness, its soulessness.

“You’re going to tell me just what the fuck is going on here,” Randle said. His voice carried on forever down the hallway. His arms reached out and grabbed the old woman, spinning her around. Alberto screamed and ran down the hallway as far as he could to hunker down in the corner. The old woman caught Randle off guard with a back handed blow. Her knuckles were like lead and Randle instantly tasted that familiar copper taste. Without thinking, Randle returned fire with a upward blow to the woman’s belly, pushing it back so far that he was sure he felt her bony spine on the other side. A gust of fetid air whooshed out of the woman’s mouth into Randle’s face nearly choking him. She fell to the floor.

“You…you don’t know where you are yet, but you will learn,” she said between gasps. Randle heard the door at the end of the hallway burst open. Five men were running towards him. Randle put his fists up as they approached. The biggest one ran into Randle‘s knuckles, knocking him out cold. Before Randle’s arm could return to starting position, they had him and drug him to the ground, beating him all the way. Randle caught glimpses of their faces between their fists. Each wore a mask of cheap make-up much like the old woman‘s. They looked older than they were, like worn out drug addicts wearing hospital issued scrubs. Randle grabbed one of his attackers by the shoulders and pounded away as he had done some years back in the center of a cage amongst tens and tens of excited gamblers all crowded into some rich cat’s warehouse.

“You’re in Ward D,” he heard the old woman say, “You’re lost now.”

She said something else, too, just as one of the gaunt men jabbed a stun gun into Randle’s ribs.

Through Randle’s half cracked eyes, the room was blurry and thick fog like that from an open trench floated thickly in the air. He closed his eyes and opened them again. The room became less blurry. He remembered now. It was he and Alberto’s room. Alberto was gone again. No sunlight shined through the little window anymore. Randle realized with a groan that he was not alone. A white figure stood in the door way, and the old hag who had backhanded him sat on a stool beside his bed.

“Ms. Lola,” the woman said. The white figure approached the old woman with a hypodermic needle full of green liquid. Lola smiled at Randle, and Randle winced. Something was unnatural about that smile. The needle pierced the side of the old woman’s throat. Lola injected the liquid.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” the old woman said, her last words trailing off in ecstasy.

“Oh, you’re welcome!” Lola said. Her voice was high and quirky like a toddler that has recently devoured an entire bag of Heresy‘s Kisses.

“Old Margret here needs her medicine, Randle,” Lola said, “She belongs to us, you know.” Lola knocked the old woman to the floor and rushed over to Randle’s bedside. Her cold hands grasped the sides of Randle’s head bringing him within inches of her flawless, white face.

“This entire place belongs to us. The doctors, the nurses, the orderlies. Even you, Randle!”

“I don’t understand,” Randle said.

“You don’t have to, Randle,” Lola said.

Randle summoned his strength and made a lunge at Lola who grabbed his arm by the wrist and held it there as she would have a child’s. Randle squirmed in her grip totally helpless and confused.

“Randle, Randle, Randle. Always trying to solve your problems with your fists. Such a big strong man you are! But I don‘t want you to hurt yourself, okay, Randle? That‘s our job. No one really knows you’re here. No one that cares anyway. We know everything about you, Randle. Big strong Randle.”

Randle noticed that the big man called Arnold was standing in the doorway to his room. His body filled the doorframe. Arnold’s bald head was slouched down so to keep from bumping it against the top part of the doorway. Unlike Lola, Arnold was not grinning. His face was a blank piece of granite with beady eyes sunken deep into his mongoloid skull.

Lola’s tongue lolled out of her perfect mouth and licked Randle’s cheek.

“So please don’t be stupid,” she said. Lola smacked his face. The hit was stronger than any man Randle had ever faced in the ring. His head swam and his vision failed.

When Randle cam to, Alberto was whimpering again. He was naked save for a sheet wrapped around his middle. His stomach was heavily bandaged. New bandages had been applied to his throat and arms. Fresh scars and bruises littered his face. No light shone through the window, and there was no way of knowing the time. Randle climbed out of bed. His head ached and his legs were unsteady. Walking over to the door was a challenge. It was locked, as he knew it would be. Outside he saw only the plain white cinderblock wall on the other side.

“Alberto,” Randle said. Then louder, “Alberto!”

“Uh,” Alberto whimpered.

“Do you speak any English?” Randle asked.

“Yes,” Alberto said.

Randle’s head ached but his equilibrium had returned.

“What’s going on here. Alberto?”

Alberto rolled over in his bed and for a long time stared into space. Then finally he spoke.

“Vampiro,” he whispered.

“What?”

“This place is ran by them,” Alberto said, this time louder.

“Vampires?” Randle thought about how odd Lola’s smile had looked and how strong she had been for such a tiny little girl. It was a lot less far fetched than Randle cared to think. Then he remembered where he was and with whom he was talking.

“Vampires, eh?” Randle said.

“You think I’m loco, yes? Just another nut,” Alberto said. He was smiling now. Randle hated that smile.

Alberto’s smile faded from his mouth as he spoke. “They get us here, people with no one to care about them, no one to miss them. I know.” Alberto was undoing the bandages on his arm and wrist. Randle watched in disgust. The skin beneath was covered in needle tracks and crusty blood. Alberto held his pale arm up for Randle to see more clearly.

“Every night for the last week they’ve been bleeding me,” he said, “But that’s not enough for them. They‘re going to finish me soon. They‘ve got a new replacement, and I‘m not going to make it much longer!” Tears streamed down Alberto’s face. Randle opened his mouth but words did not form.

“They tell me that the pain makes it taste better. That the adrenaline makes it sweeter. Oh, God, I don’t think I am going to last much longer!” Randle stood with his back against the wall.

“Why are you here,” he finally asked Alberto.

“Drinking problem,” Alberto said, “Same as them.”

Randle looked out the door’s window again. Something ran by it. Randle tried to look down the hallway but could not. Looking out in any direction other than straight ahead was impossible.

“They’re coming again,” Alberto whispered. Something tapped on the window. Randle jumped back as the door swung open. Lola bounced in with Arnold lumbering behind.

“Alberto,” Lola said, “Time to play again.”

“No, no, no, no,” Alberto pleaded. Arnold’s huge arms scooped Alberto up like a baby too tired to kick or scream. Lola turned to Randle and hissed. Her teeth were perfect. Randle had met guys, veteran fighters, with false teeth that were perfect like Lola’s. It was always so obvious. No one has flawless teeth. Randle watched as they walked out. The room was silent again. Looking around, Randle saw nothing that could be used as a weapon. He knelt down and opened the nightstand’s drawers. They were empty save for a coloring book and a TV guide. The chains from which the beds were hanging were secured to the wall with large bolts. The sink was made from steel. Nothing in the room was of any use. Exasperated, Randle put his head against the glass window built into the door. He looked down at his wrists and wondered if dying from slashed wrists would have been better than what was in store for him now. A lump formed in his throat and with it came a deep fear that Randle had not felt since he was a kid all alone in his ratty room in the drug ridden part of town. It was not a rational fear but a primal fear that made Randle, in all his strength, feel small and weak and helpless. He grabbed the door handle, and it turned in his hand. The door fell open and a gust of cold, empty air rushed in.

For several seconds, Randle just stood staring. It did not seem possible that the two nurses could have forgotten to lock to door. That fear he was feeling doubled in intensity. He took a cautionary step forward, ready to spring back in a flash if necessary. Out in the hallway, Randle felt vulnerable. As he walked down the hallway towards the nurses’ station, the feeling became worse. The lights over head hummed, occasionally flickering. The nurses’ station was empty as usual, but Randle was cautious when he entered it. A few papers were scattered out on the desk. He bent down to look them over. They were his papers. A profile photograph was paper clipped at the top of one of the pages.

Randle picked up one of the sheets. The information was too thorough to be from any medical record. More photographs were attached to sheets of paper underneath other sheets. Some of them were very old. A few showed Randle fighting in the octagon. Just how they had gotten cameras into those fights, he did not know. Every spectator was patted down and waved over with a metal detecting wand. Every fight he had fought was documented. A detailed list of his usual daily routine was printed neatly on one of the pages.

The sound of running footsteps jolted Randle out of his concentration. He scanned the nurses’ station. There were two chairs on wheels, a filing cabinet, a clock on the wall that read 3:12am in red glowing numbers. He had been unconscious for a lot longer than he thought. It was possible that they had drugged him. That was not important right now, he knew, and finding something, anything, that could be used as a weapon was. The nurses’ station was little bigger than a walk in closet. Its walls were concrete and echoed every step or noise that Randle made. The entire ward was silent, and nothing in the nurses’ station was of any use. Randle walked to the corner of the station that opened up into the hallway. He peeked around just long enough to get a flash image in his head of the hallway.

On shaky legs, Randle stepped out. His footsteps seemed to echo loudly no matter how slow and deliberate his steps. The hallway had nothing on its walls to absorb sound. Through the window of each iron door he passed, he saw only empty rooms. The door at the far end of the hallway was unlocked as his room had been. He pushed it open. The feeling that someone was standing just around the door were he could not see was overwhelming. Randle stepped through the doorway in spite of the fear. Another hallway ran parallel to the previous one. This one had no doors lining its walls. The lights overhead shut off about as soon as the door behind Randle slammed shut. He turned in the darkness and found the door handle which was now locked. Randle yanked at the door and tried desperately not to scream. He knew that was what they wanted. He had dealt with people like them before.

Then the sounds came from up above him and to his sides, growls in the darkness and muted laughter, the sound of claws scraping against the ceiling and concrete floor. Randle put his hands up in defense. Something’s cold grip grabbed his wrist. Randle attempted to reach for whatever had him just as something else snatched up his other wrist. His legs were pulled out form under him. More hands groped in the darkness. They lifted him up and carried him with strength cold and machine-like. Randle could not contain it any longer. A long and deep scream rang out from his throat. Their claws dug into his skin. He felt the wounds weep with blood.

“No,” a voice hissed, “not yet.”

Some other voice replied with a feline yowl. Randle tried to figure out where the things were taking him. The darkness was alive with them. Then they released their grasp. He heard them retreat into the darkness. Their garbled voices and laughter dispersed. A dingy light clicked on overhead. Cockroaches scattered. Randle’s eyes adjusted.

“Randle,” a woman with a thick German accent cooed, “How are you tonight?”

“Where am I?” Randle tried to say. His voice was too shaken to speak properly.

“Somewhere awful,” she said. She was wearing a white uniform similar to Lola’s but trimmed in teal green. Her hair was shiny black and pulled up into a bun, and her cheekbones were high on her smiling face. Randle was immediately reminded of an BDSM porno he and a few buddies he had once watch what seemed like a million years ago when he was a much different person. Someone moaned to Randle’s left and Randle turned his head. There was Alberto naked in shackles with his arms stretch out. Alberto was wearing some kind of leather head harness that reminded Randle of a horse’s bridle. Chains were connected from the harness to a pulley which held Alberto’s head in an immobile position. Chains were also connected to Alberto’s wrist and ankle shackles. The pulleys themselves were freely hanging from a thick metal frame welded together and polished to a shine.

Dildos, thumbscrews, knives, and all manner of instruments with obvious and not-so-obvious intentions sat on a table to the woman’s right.

“Ms. Bahar,” Lola said, “May tonight be the night?” Randle had not noticed that Lola and Arnold had entered the room. Ms. Bahar looked over at Alberto who immediately looked away.

“Yes. Yes it may.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” Lola squeaked. She jumped up into Arnold’s big arms. Arnold looked down at her with about as close to an expression of exhilaration on his face as Randle had seen since his admission. Lola pulled Arnold’s head down and planted a slurping kiss on those big red lips.

“But first tend to little Randle here,” Ms. Bahar said, pointing a bony finger in his direction. Randle backed up as Arnold approached. He had fought guys as big as Arnold before and knew that allowing them an opportunity to get their big hands on you was a death sentence. Randle ducked underneath Arnold’s arm as he reached out, grabbing it firmly and bending it behind Arnold’s back as he did. Arnold made no sound as Randle heaved upward with all of his strength and felt the bones inside grind and pop. Randle felt Ms. Bahar’s and Lola’s eyes on him. If they attacked it, he knew it would be all over. Arnold’s other arm reached up behind and grabbed Randle by the hair. He lifted Arnold with the effort that it takes to pick up a sack of potatoes and sent him flying through the air. Randle crashed into the table. The table overturned and Randle was covered in a pile of rubbery sex toys and medieval torture devices. Randle pushed himself up to the sitting position, his hands cupping a small box cutter that had fallen to the ground. As he stood up, ignoring the pain in his lower back and neck, he dropped the box cutter into the pocket of his baggy sweat pants.

“We have no time for this. Dawn will be on us soon.” Ms. Bahar said. She stood ramrod straight with her eyes narrowed and her mouth turned down in a look of disgust. Arnold stomped over to Randle and pulled him up by the shirt collar. The struggle had gone out of Randle. His body was now one quivering mass of aching blubber. Arnold threw him against the cold, concrete wall and forced his arm up to where a shackle had been bolted. Arnold locked it into place. Randle’s body hung from it. His legs were unable to carry his weight. Arnold lifted Randle’s other arm next and locked it into place as well.

Lola was standing next to Alberto. Her face was less than an inch beside his. Lola looked up at Ms. Bahar questioningly. Ms. Bahar nodded her approval. Lola reached up and removed her false teeth and threw them to the ground. Her mouth yawned open. Randle’s stupor vanished as her jaws unhinged and two fangs folded down from the roof of her mouth. Like a snake, she struck Alberto’s throat. His eyes shot open so wide that for a moment Randle thought they might fall out. Lola ripped open the front of her shirt as she thrust her face into Alberto’s bloody neck. Arnold’s mouth lolled open as well reveling two long fangs. He trotted over, sinking his fangs into Alberto’s other jugular. Lola’s small but perky left breast disappeared in Arnold’s grasp. She moaned in pure ecstasy. Dark red blood flowed freely down Alberto’s chest and onto the floor. Ms. Bahar, who had been quietly standing in the center of the room, strolled over to the center of the two vampires. Lola tore her head away from Alberto’s throat. Ms. Bahar leaned in and kissed her. Drops of blood dribbled down from Ms. Bahar’s chin and splashed onto her snow white uniform.

Randle’s head throbbed. The entire scene before him was too nightmarish to be real but yet it was. Ms. Bahar forced Lola down onto her knees. Lola lifted Ms. Bahar’s skirt and went to work licking with much the same vigor that she had sucking up Alberto‘s blood. Ms. Bahar’s teeth slammed into Alberto’s throat. She slurped madly at the wound. All three grunted and moaned in orgasmic frenzy. Randle felt his consciousness slipping. He was not sure if it was from seeing the sight before him or the multiple hits his head had taken. He wondered how many times a man could pass out before serious problems arose. Before he could finish the thought, he was out.

Sun again. Its rays filtered down through that familiar window, though it was Randle’s hunger that aroused him from sleep. He remembered the box cutter. It was in his pocket where he had put it. He looked down at its black shape in his hands and wondered if it was a trick of some sort like last night had been. It was too good to be true. He tried to extinguish that hope that maybe the things that had killed Alberto had somehow forgotten to search him in their hast to beat sunrise. True, there was a chance that the drugged out assistants had taken him back to his room, but they were stupefied by whatever Lola had given the old woman in that hypodermic. Maybe they had forgotten too. Randle hated the feeling of hope. He hated it but clung to it for dear life.

The door to his room clicked and swung open. There was the same old hag from the day before.

“Lunch time again,” she said. “No more--” Randle was on her before she could finish. He threw her to the floor of his room and smashed her face into the concrete floor. Her nose erupted blood. She struggled to get upright only to be slammed to the floor again. Her body wiggled beneath Randle. She cursed him through split lips. Randle pushed her head down with all of his might one final time and felt her skull give under the pressure. The woman moved no more. Randle pushed himself back with his feet against the wall. He was hyperventilating. He checked to make sure the box cutter was in his pocket before crawling over to woman’s corpse. He flipped her over. Her face was a bloody, sunken ruin that leaked onto the floor. Randle dry heaved. In the woman’s front pocket were her keys. He took them and ran out of his room.

Randle cried out from a pain somewhere deep within his head. He was dizzy and his wrists hurt. He tore the bandages from his wrists. The stitches were gone and replaced with white steri-strips from where the vampires had bled him. Randle did not remember when they had done it. He was fumbling with the keys when a door at the far side of the hall opened. Two men ran towards him. The first one, Randle managed to kick squarely in the groin, sending him to the floor coughing. The other landed a glancing punch to Randle’s head. Randle returned with a wild haymaker that knocked the attacker out. Randle picked up the key and unlocked the door just as three men and two women came running. Once on the other side, he locked the door behind him.

“Keys, get your keys!” he heard one yell.

“Fuck, fuck I left them. Shit, we’re dead.”

Randy sprinted down the hallway. He brought out the keys again for use on the second door. The key ring held only two keys with the number 1 on the first and 2 on the second. The door’s lock clicked open. Randle bolted through it. He ran down another empty hallway past the elevators and down into the stairwell. His footsteps echoed as he descended. The stairwell smelled like cat piss and stale sweat. A door somewhere overhead opened, and Randle heard voices.

“He can’t get out,” one voice said, “They’ll kill us all if he gets out!”

Randle made his way down to the bottom floor and exited the stairwell into a large room. Here were vending machines and a waiting area. A secretary sat at a huge desk facing the glass doors leading outside. She looked up from a paperback she was reading and frowned. Randle glanced at her and nodded. He tried to seem nonchalant but was out of breath and sweating. He turned and walked out of the doors just as the secretary said something. It was daylight outside. His eyes hurt as they adjusted to the bright light. The hospital’s parking lot held only a few cars. Beyond the parking lot was forest. The leaves on the trees were turning brown, yellow, and red in the autumn air. Randle knew that the hospital was about three miles from town. He had ran much further than that in his training days and hoped that he still had a slither of that fitness he once had. Without another thought, he broke out in a jog towards the tree line. Leaves littered the ground out past the parking lot and crunched under his sneakers. Randle darted between the thick oaks and poplars as the hill began angling downward, growing steeper with every step.

From the looks of the sky, it was about three oh clock, though Randle had no way to be certain. He knew the vampires had tasted his blood and could find him in the darkness, and that his only hope was to get as much distance between him and the hospital as possible. So he ran and ran until he thought his lungs would pop and his heart would explode. He ran until he heard the sounds of cars passing by on the two lane road below. Randle walked down the side of the blacktop and savored the draft he felt every time a car or truck passed. It took him a long time to catch his breath. When the police car’s siren blared, Randle’s eyes squeezed shut and he fell to his knees weeping.

***

“Sundown Syndrome. Remember when we talked briefly about it in class?” An instructor of some sort stood in front of about ten nursing students who all were nodding. Randle looked up from his book. Anger, quickly extinguished by despair, gathered in his head. They had no idea.

“Can anyone tell me what it is?” the instructor asked. Three students’ arms raised.

“It’s a condition that people with dementia or mentally impaired people get when the sun goes down. It’s most common with Alzheimer’s patients.” one skinny student said.

“That’s true, but it doesn’t always affect just Alzheimer’s patients,” the instructor said, casting a fleeting glance towards Randle. The group of students moved on. Randle sighed. Thompson Mental Health Hospital was just now becoming familiar to Randle. He did not remember much about the first few weeks. The memories were blurry, like a bad dream that you cannot recall. Now things were much better. The fears of the approaching night were fading some. Never was there anything floating outside his window at night. No cold hands ever closed over his mouth as he tried to sleep. Still, the occasional nurse doing his or her nightly rounds evoked a gasp from Randle.

“Randle, you have a visitor,” a nurse said. Randle put his book down and turned in his chair to face her.

“A visitor?” he asked. The nurse nodded. Someone was standing beside her wearing a trench coat and a leather fedora. His face was scared and grinning. Randle felt his heart rate increase, pumping that hot, red stuff faster and faster through his vessels.

“What time is it?” Randle asked. He twisted his neck around and saw through the thick glass window that the sun had set. All the patients, including the student nurses, had cleared out of the recreation room leaving only two nurses and Randle’s scarred visitor.

“About 8 oh clock,” Alberto said, reaching up and removing his false teeth.

Randle screamed.