I volunteer part-time at a homeless shelter in my city. When I first started ten years ago, it was part of the community service I had to do for my drug conviction. I remember hating it back then—part of it was shame, part of it was not wanting to be told what to do. I looked at both the people that worked there and the people who came there for help as obstacles, things keeping me from living my life. Things I had to get past so I could finally start being happy again.
But at some point over that year, I started realizing that I was happy again, and that a big part of it was the time I spent at the shelter. I don’t mean to make it sound like it’s always fun—there are times when it is really sad or boring. A few times that it’s been scary or even dangerous. But generally, it makes me feel better. It helps remind me that we’re all in this together—not obstacles to get around, but people all traveling down the same dark and uncertain roads.
Thanksgiving and Christmas Day are our two busiest days of the year. The cold weather brings in tons more sleepers and we’re running a meal line all day too. It’s usually pretty chaotic, but this year wasn’t as bad. It was still busy, but not as much as I’m used to. At first I thought it was my imagination, but by early afternoon, all the volunteers were talking about it. It would normally be going wide open until seven or eight at night on Thanksgiving, but this year we had slowed to a trickle by three. It was a bit weird—especially when we started comparing notes and realized that we hadn’t seen a lot of our regulars all day long.
You have to be careful working at a shelter. The goal is to be friendly and helpful to everyone, but in a detached way. It may sound cold, but you can’t become friends with everyone that comes through the door, and getting close to anyone who comes to the shelter for help is generally discouraged. I’d thought it was a bullshit rule when I started, but over the years I’d seen a couple of bad situations that developed when people didn’t keep professional boundaries, and so I made sure to treat everyone the same and not get too chatty with anyone in particular.
That being said, there are always going to be people you see more often and talk to a bit more. Regulars that are more outgoing or that you just get along with. People you miss when they aren’t there any more.
Between the ten of us, we were all throwing out multiple people we’d expected to see this year—some of which had been staying at the shelter within the last few days. The topic bothered me more than it should have, a slow-turning dread shifting its weight in the peripheral darkness of my mind. I tried to ignore it, but then Phyllis, one of the oldest and most senior of the volunteers, gave it a voice.
“The ones that were here acted funny too.”
I felt my skin prickle at her words as I looked around the old gymnasium that contained both our food line and the bedding area for families. There were a pair of couples, both with two kids, sitting together at one table on the far end of the gym. They’d both been staying with us for a few days and I’d helped one of them get signed up for temporary housing just that morning. And they’d all seemed perfectly nice and normal since they’d arrived. But then I looked over to the eating area.
There were just over a dozen people there, clustered together at two tables and eating silently. That wasn’t that strange by itself, though we were all used to more noise during holiday meals. It was that it had been the same all day, even when there had been over a hundred people in the room. Rows upon rows of people eating silently, their eyes meeting and then flitting away, like dark birds sharing a secret before fluttering off in separate directions. I’d noticed it unconsciously earlier, but I’d been busy and preoccupied. But now that I thought about it, I thought I knew exactly what Phyllis meant.
“You mean the way they’ve been all quiet?” Jordan was a newbie—he was pulling community service himself, though he did it with a lot more enthusiasm than I’d shown at his age. “Just looking around and staring and stuff?” He caught my eye and seemed to be encouraged by my nod. “I mean, it’s kind of creepy.”
Richard gave a short snort. “You people. So sorry that the traumatized homeless don’t conform to your perfect ideals. Maybe they’ve got other things on their mind than acting chatty for some weekend warriors who don’t have anything better to do,” he glanced at Phyllis, “or have to be here,” he glanced at Jordan before raking his eyes toward me. Phyllis went to respond but I beat her to it.
“Wow, Richard. You’re so enlightened. Please teach us how to be better people. But speak up, will you? It echoes a lot when you’re that far up your own asshole.”
Jordan’s eyes went wide as Phyllis and some of the others started laughing. Richard’s face flashed red and for half a second I thought he might actually swing at me, but then he just turned on his heel and stalked off toward the storage room. Phyllis reached over and patted my arm.
“Good one, girlie.”
The brief confrontation had broken the tension, and after another minute or two, people started meandering off to clean up or get ready to go home. I quickly forgot about how spooked I’d felt just a few minutes earlier, and by the time I was carrying out bags of trash to the dumpsters, it had left me completely.
That’s when I saw Eddie Camp in the alleyway.
He’d been one of the people I’d missed that day. A regular for the last five or six months, he had a long salt-and-pepper Santa beard and always wore a red baseball cap that said “Alabama”, though I’d never been sure if it was a reference to the state or the band. And he had a deep, rich voice that he claimed had once belonged to one of the premier radio show hosts in Seattle. I could believe it—he was friendly, funny, and great at telling stories in that jolly but soothing way he had. He would only come into the shelter to stay on especially hot or cold nights, but he rarely missed a meal when it was offered, and despite everything, he’d always looked remarkably healthy and happy when I saw him—full of energy and never complaining or asking for anything except what was offered.
When I saw him last Thursday afternoon…well, I hardly recognized him. He looked like he’d lost thirty pounds in the two weeks since I’d last seen him, his eyes small, darting stones sunk deep into pits of yellowed skin beneath the brim of his red cap. His lips were dry and cracked, and he licked them nervously as he eyed me from the shadows of the alley.
“J-Jenna? Is that you?”
I frowned. Was something wrong with him? He’d talked to me a dozen times, and now he seemed to barely recognize me. “Um, yeah, Eddie. Is everything okay?”
He stepped forward, and in the better light I could see how his clothes hung on him now. I went to say more, but he was already nodding and talking. “Yeah, yeah. Sure. I’m just real hungry. Got something in there I could get?” Eddie pointed a trembling finger toward the garbage bags I was carrying.
I started shaking my head in confusion. “Eddie, what are you talking about? Come in and get something to eat. We’ve got plenty left.”
His pebble eyes darted toward the rear door and then back to me as his lips began trembling. “No, no, I can’t do that. Just…just if you’ll leave this here, I’ll find something good. It’ll be okay. I’ll put the rest in the dumpster when I’m done. I promise.”
“Eddie, just come inside and…”
“No! I can’t, I said. They won’t let me in there.” His eyes widened and he reached out to grab my wrist. “Oh, please don’t tell them I said anything. Please.” Looking down, he seemed to suddenly realize he was holding on to me. He let go, trying to smile as he stepped back. “I’m sorry, girl. I’m just hungry.”
I was a little freaked out, but I still wasn’t afraid of him. Not really. He’d always seemed safe enough, and at the time I was more worried about what had him so clearly terrified. “Eddie? Talk to me, man. Who won’t let you in there? Let me help you.”
He started to shake his head, but then he stopped. He looked at me again, seemed to really see me finally. And for the first time, he seemed a little like his old self.
“Jenna, this isn’t a good place. Not any more. People are turning here. Turning mean and strange.”
I nodded, confused. “Yeah, people can be assholes. Is someone messing with you?”
He shook his head. “I’m doing a bad job explaining because I can’t really explain. But…something is taking over here. I see it in the street folk. People I used to be friends with, they have either disappeared or…they belong to that group now.” When I frowned at him, he glanced at the rear door and then back to me. “It’s…a religion maybe? Or a gang? I don’t know. They call it The Crooked Way. They want everyone to join, and if you don’t, you get disappeared. I’ve been panning for days to get up bus fare. I’m gone first of next week.”
I felt myself getting angry. “Eddie, that’s not right. They shouldn’t run you out of town. And they sure as shit aren’t going to keep you from going in and eating at the sh…” I stopped as he grabbed my arm harder than before, his voice low and breaking with terror.
“You aren’t listening. They’re not right any more. I’ve seen things the last few nights…You’d just think I’m crazy. But look for the signs. They all have a little mark on them somewhere. Their back teeth…they go black, but it isn’t rot. And they smell like…” He looked past me, his face hardening into a mask of fear. Glancing my way a final time, he then turned and ran away, stumbling down the alley and out of sight.
When I looked around, I saw two figures standing at the opposite end of the alleyway. I couldn’t be sure at that distance in the dimming light, but I thought I recognized them from the shelter. I raised my hand in greeting, but then they were gone.
I haven’t been back to the shelter since Thanksgiving—I was supposed to work on Sunday, but I wound up calling in sick instead. And I haven’t felt well lately, that much is true, but a lot of it is lack of sleep. I keep thinking about Thanksgiving and how strange it all was. And I worry for Eddie too. I hope he’s on a bus headed to somewhere warm and friendly where he won’t be hungry or so afraid.
But I don’t think so.
Because this morning I went out to get some groceries and found a man sitting on the steps of my apartment building. The guy looked to be in his late twenties, but with the worn-down, stretched-thin look of someone who’s had it hard. He stared up at me as I passed, his face unfamiliar and oddly expressionless. I barely noticed.
I was busy staring at his red Alabama hat.
“Miss, are you familiar with The Crooked Way?”
I blinked, half-walking, half-stumbling down the remainder of the steps backwards as I tried to put distance between myself and the man. My heart was thudding in my chest as I turned to cross the street and get away. “N-no, I’m not. No…no thank you.”
I heard the man laugh behind me as I began to run. Laugh and say the thing that still scares me the most hours later as I sit writing this in the public library, unsure of where I’ll go when it closes.
No worries, Miss. You will be.
Comments