‘Man this is rank… OK lift up your feet Mrs Hurrel. That’s good, much better. Now try and relax a bit because this is going to be cold, but it’s the only way. Got her nice and tight there Karen? OK, you’ve been lying in it for a while so this might sting a little. Alright, one… two… three…’
Lucille cried out as Jenna’s hand forced its way between her legs clutching a warm, wet flannel. Karen tightened her grip in response and pushed herself against Lucille’s back to keep her from bending double, as Jenna vigorously went to work cleaning her up with little regard for dignity. For what felt like several minutes she scrubbed and wiped, returning the flannel over and over to a bucket of soapy water that was soon filthy, its wafts of steam carrying a foul scent all the way around the room. When Jenna was finished she tossed the flannel into the bucket and snatched a pair of clean knickers from Lucille’s drawer, then pulled them onto her so quickly they pinched the skin of her legs.
‘Right, going to have to leave the sheets for now. Karen, pop her back in bed.’
Karen dropped Lucille heavily onto her backside and took hold of her legs, tipping her backwards and shoving her until she was lying straight in her tangled sheets. Lucille felt her feet hit the wall next to her bed but she said nothing, letting out on a whimper as her sheets were thrown over her and pushed down too tightly at the edges.
‘Someone will be along in a while, Mrs Hurrel,’ Jenna said, smiling warmly as she spoke to Lucille as one might speak to a particularly idiotic puppy. ‘They’ll get you talced and ready for sleep, OK?’
Lucille nodded sadly as the two girls left, off to the washroom to empty their bucket and get ready for the next bed bath. As the door closed she took hold of her blankets and pulled them a little more tightly under her chin. She knew that her next visitor would be along soon. Sure enough, as soon as the girls entered the room next door, her door creaked open and a familiar, sneering face hove into view.
‘I hear you’ve made a mess again,’ Joshua said, holding up his bottle of talc. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get you all cleaned up, but first… Better make sure you don’t wake anyone up...’
The day room was peaceful for the moment. Most of the residents were sleeping and the porter had left Lucille near the television, where she sat quietly and watched Countryfile with the sound off. The views calmed her, the staff said. Stopped her having her flights of fancy.
‘Hello mum,’ a familiar voice said.
Lucille moved her head slightly as her daughter sank into a chair beside her. She looked so different to her now, the happy girl that she had raised now wearing a mask of perpetual concern that never seemed to slip.
‘It’s me… It’s Sarah.’
Lucille nodded. ‘Mmm, Sarah. Hello darling.’
Sarah waited for a few seconds before speaking again, partly in the hopes that her mother was feeling communicative that day, partly because she was struggling to keep a tremor from her voice. Her mother had been a picture of health for a woman of her age when she first came to Barnfield and now she was deteriorating so quickly she could almost see her dying before her eyes. Gone was the sparkle of life in her eye, her quick wit and her love of telling stories of the past. After the war had ended, Lucille had become a history teacher. Along with the seemingly endless supply of anecdotes from her own life, Lucille had memorised countless tales of heroism from the accounts of others during the war, along with simpler, more beautiful stories of loves won and lost, of places where children played and of songs left behind by the advance of the compact disc. In her mother’s place there was now a woman that Sarah’s daughter had compared to a raisin, so shocked had she been at the rapid decline in her grandmother’s health.
‘I’m afraid it’s looking like another placid day today,’ Joshua announced, making his way over to Sarah. ‘It’s a shame, but sometimes it’s better than the alternative. I’m afraid that when Mrs Hurrel is having a bad day it becomes quite upsetting for all of us.’
Lucille turned her head towards Joshua’s voice. He smiled back politely, but she did not return the gesture. Her legs were still sore and her stomach was bruised, and she could still taste the talc. Of course, he had told the others that she must have been eating it, but she knew the truth.
‘Today may be especially hard for her,’ Joshua went on. ‘You see her neighbour, Bernard, he passed away last night.’
‘My gosh, that’s terrible! Were they close? Did he have any family?’
‘No family anymore,’ Joshua lied. ‘But he and your mother were the best of friends while she was lucid, always playing cards and telling me their stories. I’m afraid he fell in the end, kept getting up after lights out and it looks like he tripped over something and hit his head. It’s such a shame you know, we do everything we can but we can’t be there every moment.’
As Sarah nodded, Lucille glared. Oh he had been there alright, she thought. Bernard was his next port of call once he had finished with her and she had heard the way he spoke to him, much quieter than before, in case someone should overhear and Ms Reynolds should remember the report that was either still in her drawer or perhaps had long ago been consigned to her shredder. She had heard him hiss something, then there had been the sound of a chair turning over and a thud, followed by Joshua swearing under his breath. He had made sure he was gone by the time anyone found Bernard and raised the alarm, in fact he had simply closed the door on gone on his rounds from what Lucille could tell, feigning horror when the alarm was raised.
‘I’m afraid I can’t stay long,’ Sarah said. ‘I just thought I’d swing by and see if there’s anything you need. Is there, mum? Is there anything I can get for you?’
Lucille managed a smile and scraped her dry tongue across her still-perfect teeth, then coughed softly to clear her throat.
‘Memories...’
‘If only it were that simple,’ Joshua sympathised, patting her on the shoulder.
‘Memories, mum? I wonder if she means her memory box… is that what you want?’
Lucille nodded as enthusiastically as she could, the effort sending fresh waves of discomfort through her bruised stomach. ‘My… memories…’
Sarah smiled and took hold of her mother’s hand, clasping it as tightly as she dared.
‘Of course, mum. Dave’s at home today so I’ll have him dig it out and bring it straight over. I’m so sorry but I really have to go, but I’ll see you soon mum. I love you.’
‘Goodbye, Sarah,’ Lucille managed, clutching Sarah’s hand and looking her straight in the eye. ‘Goodbye.’
Sarah felt herself shiver as her mother spoke, more clearly than she had for months.
‘I’ll be back on Tuesday, mum. Bye bye… I love you.’
Sarah was as good as her word, and when Lucille was returned to her room that evening she found the box waiting for her on a side table. She and Dave had never seen eye to eye, that being one of many reasons that she had ended up in a nursing home rather than staying in the care of her daughter, but he always did what Sarah asked of him. Now she came to think of it she couldn’t blame him for thinking she’d be better off in a nursing home. Lucille hadn’t been keen at first, but once she had seen their representation at a local hotel and toured the grounds she had been pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t until the first incident with Bernard that she had come to realise the truth.
As Lucille’s gaze rested on the simple, powder blue shoe box, wrapped in a tatty length of green ribbon, she felt more herself than she had done in a long while. Conditions at the home had rapidly taken their toll, peeling back the layers of who she was and leaving behind little but the frailty and the ghost of her former self. Yet, as she pulled the ribbon and removed the lid of the box, the lure of the past coaxed her from the mists that shrouded her waking hours.
There were letters, so many letters, some from her late husband and even a few from other suitors, and some that she had received from her
parents when she had been moved further afield to be trained to do work that she had never, ever talked about once the war was over. Beneath the stack of neatly folded letters was a dried bundle of heather bound with string, and alongside that was a tiny locket that contained a picture of each of her daughters. This she opened, and she spent a good while looking down at Sarah and at Jennifer; her youngest daughter who she had lost to pneumonia when she was twenty-three. Lucille wept happily as she looked down at two smiles frozen in time, neither of which she thought she would ever see again.
Eventually this too was cast aside and she gently lifted a sheet of acid-free paper and took out the two items beneath; one a tapered cylinder wrapped in waxed cloth, the other a small book wrapped in brown paper and sealed in a small, zip-top plastic bag.
‘Glasses,’ she mumbled, feeling around on her table and finding the cheap set of reading spectacles Sarah had brought her to replace one in a long line of sets that kept mysteriously vanishing from her room. Once they were in place, Lucille shuffled her way carefully over to her chair and flicked on the lamp. The book and the cylinder lay on her knees as she blinked to clear her vision, before opening the book to the first page. As she started she glanced up, seeing that she had perhaps two hours until the rounds started. It was the weekend, and that meant that Karen and Jenna were at home with their families, leaving Joshua to do all of the checks on his own. She harboured little ill-will towards the two girls, or even to Ms Reynolds she thought, though she knew she had every right. They struggled and seemed to think that they were doing their best under the circumstances, and for that she had decided she would forgive them. As the news of Bernard’s death had reached her, yanking her roughly from the fugue state she had been inhabiting, she had seen everything clearly for the first time in a long time.
By the light of her bedside lamp, Lucille took out her old field manual and opened it to the first page, where two men sketched in black silhouette were duelling beneath the names of misters Fairbairn and Sykes. Had she the time she would have read from cover to cover, savouring the memories good and bad that arose from the time-weathered pages, but her task was singular and her window of opportunity narrow. With arthritic fingers she flicked to the section she needed and removed the lid from the cylinder, then sank a little into her chair as she settled down to read.
‘That fucking buzzer!’
Kenneth shook his head from his corner by the radiator.
He was older than Joshua and couldn’t stand the lad, but he was far too afraid to say anything, Instead he came to work every day, worked his shift and went home, keeping himself to himself and saying nothing. As far as he was concerned it was the only way he could function somewhere like Barnfield, though quietly he promised himself that if things ever got too bad, he’d be the first one to blow the whistle. In his more introspective moments, Kenneth wondered how many others who worked at Barnfield regularly told themselves similar lies.
Joshua stamped down the corridor and let the door slam behind him. The hallway was dimly lit and the light above Lucille’s door was a beacon, blinking on and off and bathing everything in red light. Joshua shoved her door open and flicked the light on impatiently, quietly hoping that the old bitch had fallen and broken her hip, or worse. Instead, as the energy saving bulb warmed up and threw brighter light on the scene, he was met with a neatly made bed upon which was lying the controller for the buzzer. It was resting on top of a small stack of folded letters, next to a sprig of dried heather. To Joshua’s surprise, a pair of tights had been tied around it, holding the button in the “on” position.
‘What the fuck are you up to?’ he muttered, before a sharp jolt of agony robbed him of his voice.
He had barely felt Lucille’s cold left hand snake around his shoulders as he stooped over the bed, coming to rest firmly on his forehead and pulling so that his chin lifted clear of his chest. What had come next, he felt very clearly indeed.
Joshua tried to cry out, but the rapid flow of blood down his throat prevented it. As he blinked, the room pirouetting through his panicked vision, he could just make out a thick, double-edged knife jutting diagonally from just behind his collar bone. With shaking fingers he reached for its ringed, matt-black grip and pulled it free, holding it in front of his face as a torrent of blood poured down his chest and he felt the strength flowing out of him with it.
The knife was horribly familiar. One just like it had been found in his grandfather’s house after he passed away – a memento of his time serving in Africa long before Joshua was born. Joshua still had that blade in a drawer somewhere; one of many issued to British soldiers since the middle of the Second World War, and one of them into the hands of a young Lucille Hurrel. As he stumbled and began to fall he saw Lucille, stepping backwards into her chair with a small, yellow book in one hand. She was grasping at her chest and her left arm, swaying as she sank onto the cushion and Joshua fell. Their eyes met as he choked, pressure building in his skull as his body screamed out for oxygen, his chest heaving as his heart struggled to pump a rapidly diminishing supply of blood through his veins.
‘For… Bernard,’ Lucille gasped.
Joshua sobbed thickly as his eyelids grew heavy and began to close. He shook for a moment in a widening pool of crimson, then fell still. Lucille watched with no satisfaction. The pain in her chest was getting worse, and she felt her heart fluttering painfully as footsteps slap-slap-slapped along the corridor towards her room. As the door flew open and Kenneth yelled for help, Lucille Hurrel closed her eyes and slipped into a dreamless sleep.
Carlos
K. A. Laity
From: Shapeshifters
Carlos awoke with a groan. He wiped the muck from his mouth and shuddered. It had happened again. No, no, no, ayúdame, virgen! But he knew there was no way she could help him. His prayers unanswered, he rolled out of bed, feeling the aches in his bones. The change always hit him like a truck.
He stumbled to the bathroom to swallow a few aspirin. Carlos avoided catching his reflection in the mirror. He knew too well the blood-shot eyes that awaited him, the ravaged face. Instead he cleaned his teeth with exacting care.
The teeth were the worst part.
His uncle Mandy had warned him. Ran in the family it did, this terrible curse. As a boy back in Columbia he had feared Mandy’s big teeth. They were like something from abuelita’s fairy tales. But his tio had given him the only practical advice that had paid off.
‘Get yourself a hot tub, mijo.’
His job at the Page Museum didn’t pay all that well, but he scrimped until he could afford one. It meant taking the bus from Burbank to the La Brea Tar Pits every day, but he got a lot of reading done that way. He could have moved nearer to work, yet Carlos could not resist the allure of Burbank.
It was the lawns, of course. Verde, que te quiero verde, as the master wrote. A part of him thought it was a sick sense of guilt to put himself in the midst of so much temptation. Nevertheless as he grabbed a towel and slipped out into his backyard Carlos inhaled the rich fragrances of freshly trimmed grass, mulch and budding flowers and his determination returned.
He would find a cure. The curse would be lifted.
Carlos closed his eyes as settled into the warm waters. The jets eddied the water and the ache began to depart from his limbs.
‘Oh, tarnation!’ A silky voice next door broke his reverie.
‘Good morning, Ms. Prevost,’ Carlos said waving to his neighbour. The elderly woman with the tiny dog had once been an actress or so she said. Right now she looked ready to spit nails.
‘Did you hear about Miss Vale’s yard?’ She strutted through the hedge to walk up the handicap ramp to the tub, her little dachshund trotting behind her. Carlos winced at her words, feeling guilty. The woman gave him an extra leer that always made him want to reach for his towel.
‘No, I —’
‘Ripped all to shreds! Third one this week.
You wouldn’t believe the devastation!’ Marie Prevost seemed more interested in Carlos’ legs than her tragic news. He squirmed under her gaze.
‘What a shame,’ he agreed, the words sounding lame in his ears. ‘That’s awful.’
Ms. Prevost snorted. ‘Someone’s sabotaging the finest lawns suspiciously close to the opening of the Chamber of Commerce Best Front Garden competition. Shocking. But predictable I suppose.’
Carlos clutched at that straw. ‘Oh, you think that’s what’s behind these... vandalisms?’ Relief flooded through him like a cold mountain stream in the Andes.
His neighbour leaned in, her gaze sweeping his crotch. ‘It’s that Pierce woman, I’m sure,’ she said confidentially. ‘Nothing but the best for her and that daughter. Pity their dahlias look so pathetic.’
Carlos decided he would help push his neighbour’s theory to anyone he chanced to chat with around the neighbourhood. He’d just as soon have skipped walking past the Vale house, but it was on the way to the bus stop. A small knot of people gathered at the hedge and a lawn service van sat in the driveway like a hunched creature ready to leap.
He tried to get by with just a friendly nod, but Bert Potts pulled him by the arm to join the fervid discussion. ‘Did you see this! Can you believe it?’
Carlos winced. Miss Vale’s yard was devastated. Her beautiful koi pond had been denuded, all its lotus flowers and lily pads gone. Huge swaths of the lawn were torn up and her decorative reeds broken and strewn across the adobe brick of the patio.
‘What sort of horrible person would do this,’ Carlos said, ready to build on the theory.
‘It wasn’t a person,’ a firm but unfamiliar voice said with decision.
All their faces turned to regard a woman in a green uniform. The name ‘O’Shea’ was embroidered over her pocket and her platinum blonde hair was sculpted like a hedgerow around her head. Carlos found her blue eyes piercing and nearly hypnotic.
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