Close Read: Last Days

“Probably a hospital, he thought, eyes still closed.  Which could be good or bad.  But never as bad as if it isn’t really a hospital.” (Page 75)

Part Two of the novel Last Days by Brian Evenson opens with the protagonist Mr. Kline laying in a hospital bed after a violence-filled escape from captivity.  Escaping a group of self-inflected amputees known as The Brotherhood of Mutilation came at a price – three amputated toes, a bullet wound above his eyes and his existing partially-amputated arm (below the elbow) becoming fully amputated.  As Mr. Kline lays in the hospital recovering, Evenson uses continuity of consciousness to gripping effect.  The first example is in this exchange:

“Am I free to leave?”

“We’re hardly in a condition to leave, are we? …”

“Is that a threat?”

The doctor looked surprised again.  “What have I said to offend you?”

“Will you open the curtain?”

“The curtain?” asked [Doctor] Morand.  “Why?”

“I just want to see for myself what’s on the other side.”

(Page 77)

Taken out of context this exchange is ominous, but following Part One, where Mr. Kline was coerced/forced to join the cult, held against his will and placed in a larger game he could not understand, it is terrifying.  The line Kline views as a threat mirrors the type of wording people on the compound used when answering similar questions, as is the reluctance to open the curtain.  The fact that the doctor means Kline no harm (proven out in the ensuing text) adds strength to the paranoia, paranoia that advances in the hospital setting.

“We’ll just keep an eye on you,” Morant said absently.

“What?” said Kline, suddenly nervous.

“What?” said the doctor.  His smile came back.  “Nothing to worry about, Mr. Kline,” he said.  “It’s for your own good.”

(Page 78)

Again, Mr. Kline reads intent that isn’t there, and again his fear stirs from a rather innocuous exchange.  Because we the reader experienced what Kline experienced though, we share his paranoia and understand his concerns.  By sustaining this tension, and by repeatedly calling back to his time at the mutilate compound, the reader is put on edge – an edge the author doesn’t walk off.  This tension is important, because by not letting Kline’s guard down and not letting the reader’s guard down, the ensuing payoff scene down the road, but still in the hospital, is scarier.

After a while, the telephone began to ring.  It was on the bedside beside table beside him, on the same side as his missing arm…

So he didn’t reach.  Instead, he listened.  It rang six times and then stopped.  And then rang six more times, and then stopped.  And then rang six more times.  After that it didn’t ring again.

Six-six-six, he thought.  Mark of the Beast.  And then thought, they know exactly where I am.

(Page 79)

This passage occurs five pages and multiple tense exchanges in Kline’s hospital stay but is the first time objective evidence appears to warrant Kline’s paranoia.  From an author perspective, it would be an interesting thought experiment to wait even longer for a payoff, but my hunch is that this felt like the right amount of timing (not too much time and not too little time) for Kline’s paranoia to marinate before we first understand that all of it is earned.

If he held the dentist’s mirror just right, he could look into the larger mirror and have an unimpeded view of the doorway…

Kline hid the dentist’s mirror under the sheet, watched the tips of the man’s shoes just beneath the curtain.

“Mr. Kline?” the man said.

Kline didn’t respond.  He watched through veiled eyes…

(Page 80)

Evenson does not let up with the tension, with Kline stealing the doctor’s mirror so he could monitor potential visitors.  This seems to be almost a second-level continuity of consciousness in that it is not overt.  Kline is acting out a plan to prepare for and counter people visiting him who wish him harm, and does so despite very little evidence to the contrary.  This exchange, which serves as an introduction to a police officer, continues the high tension, refusing to settle for a simple introduction or an elimination of ambiguity.  Instead Evenson uses that ambiguity to maximum effect, again by keeping the paranoia alive and doing so through Kline, continually re-living in the fallout of prior scenes.  The effect, more so it as a series of effects, brings the tension to a high point before the ensuing payoff.

Nothing to worry about, he told himself.  He [the guard]’s just gotten up to use the bathroom…

But there was still the question of the sound.  What had he heard? 

He was still mulling it over when a nurse came through the doorway, tugging her scrubs straight… Her shoes were tracking in something, he realized, and then realized with a shock that it was blood.

(Page 87)

The tension Evenson has built through this scene, with each imagined horror (thanks to the continuity of consciousness through Kline) and each disturbing clue that leads both the reader and Kline to believe an attack is imminent pays off with this final bit of indisputable evidence.  Kline never let his guard down and therefore nor did we, the reader.  The horror of this scene is about to unfold, horror that’s going to play out in a murder attempt, a disturbing phone call from the people behind the murder attempt (The Brotherhood, as expected) and a blood-soaked escape from the hospital. 

The construction of these scenes is such that the hospital sequence could have played out with just the action and been strong, but it’s the thread of the past and how it lives in Mr. Kline(and readers) that takes frightful and action-packed scenes and makes them genuinely terrifying.