The Devil in Silver: Monsters in the maze of a poisonous mental health system

The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle

Victor LaValle had The Devil in Silver published in 2012. The book is set earlier than that; around 2010/2011. Starting with a Greek myth of Theseus in the labyrinth, LaValle layers horror after horror, and maze after maze, onto this scary, dread-inducing story that looks hard at the nature of powerlessness and the systems designed to keep people that way.

Pepper is a big man—that’s how he’s described in the early sentences of the book. He lives in Queens. When Pepper defends himself against three plainclothes cops who do not identify themselves, he knows he’s going to jail. That’s just the way things work. To his confusion, the cops take him instead to the New Hyde Hospital, which specializes in treating the mentally ill. It turns out Pepper’s altercation with the cops happened just before shift change; the cops don’t want to stay to fill out booking paperwork, so they dump him on a 72-hour hold. Clearly, it isn’t the first time they’ve done this.

Once Pepper figures out what happened, he believes he can put up with anything for 72 hours, but in his room, he is attacked by a bison-headed man/creature that appears to have climbed down from a shifted ceiling tile. The staff won’t talk about it. Soon, Pepper has been forced onto lithium and other psychotropic drugs, and the seventy-two hours are long gone. Pepper is trapped. He talks to other residents, who all know about the monster, but when Pepper approaches the locked silver door that holds the monster, the staff guide him away. They know about it too, and are protecting it.

Despite an early introduction to the creature, which some residents call the Devil, the book moves slowly in other ways. As readers, we experience the disorientating routine Pepper does. His roommate Coffee shows him that New Hyde, formerly an ophthalmology clinic, is a literal physical maze. Doors in the patients’ rooms have been nailed shut and hidden behind furniture. The second floor is off limits… and there’s that locked silver door. In the meantime, some patients vanish. Maybe they’re released? Or maybe something more sinister has happened. Soon Pepper himself is attacked by the Devil again, and nearly killed. He decides to take the fight to the Devil, and a small group of other patients join him.

A maze, a monster with a bison’s head, seems like standard myth-retelling fare, but LaValle is interested in much more; the behavior of the staff; the question of “insanity;” and a piercing look at the mental health system, (which 12 years later, hasn’t improved much).

Pepper is a big guy who is used to using his bulk to influence people. He’s not a bully, although he gets close sometimes. Basically, he wants to help, but the New Hyde doctor labels this desire “narcissism.” Loochie, a teenaged resident, basically struggles every day to stay alive; Dorrie lives in her own world, and Coffee, who seems smart and educated, is fixated on one thing—letting the Powers that Be know about the monster. He carries a binder with meticulous notes of his attempts, and he frequently hogs the pay phones as he tries to call the mayor, the governor and even the president to get help. He looks obsessive, not to say crazy, except that there really is a deadly creature stalking the halls of New Hyde.

Who can Pepper trust? Can he trust his fellow patients? Can he even trust himself? Is the creature a monster, or simply another victim? The book dissects each of these questions, veering down interesting detours, like a long subplot about Vicent Van Gogh.

The story did feel episodic, although I never lost interest. A love story that blossoms late in the book seemed misplaced, although it’s really important to the book, and based on a real case. Still, as close as we were to the end, I was distracted by it.

One thing I loved was Pepper’s chivalry, and his misplaced attempts to practice it. It’s what brought him into conflict with the cops in the first place, but as the story unfolds and Pepper’s world shrinks, he gets more opportunities to truly help people.

LaValle has an amazing eye for human behavior, and ways of describing things that just click into place. The sheer monotony of the mental health routine grinds into us as much as it does his wonderful fictional characters. People in this book are real; they disagree, they make each other mad, and some of them are mentally ill. Despite the love-story detour, the ending is thrilling and suspenseful, and Pepper’s ultimate resolution seems accurate, given the set up, and the whole story.

I’d recommend the book as a strange horror story, but also as an historic read, especially now. If a system cranks out the same result, and no one power moves to change it, is it “broken,” or functioning exactly as expected? The book asked this question in 2012, and it’s asking it again now.