Carveth recounted the details as best he could. As he finished, there was a knock on the door. Markle nodded at the man who entered, but he did not get up. “Dr. Birkin. This is the girl’s father, Frank Carveth.”
Carveth asked, “How is she, doctor? Is she all right?”
“Sure. I think she’ll be fine.”
Carveth frowned. “What do you mean ‘think’?”
Birkin sat on the edge of Markle’s desk. “To be honest, I’m not sure your daughter escaped this incident completely unscathed. She’s unharmed physically,” he added quickly, “but mentally, I don’t know.”
“You think she saw what happened?”
“It’s possible. I think she may have seen something that upset her, confused her. She won’t talk about it, won’t really say much of anything. But she was found in a deep sleep, the kind that a lot of people use to escape something too painful to face.”
“You mean she’s hiding something.”
“Not in the sense that most people would mean. She just doesn’t want to remember what happened. If she’s hiding anything, she’s hiding it from herself, not from us.”
“What happens if she remembers?”
“I feel it would do her good, no matter how traumatic the experience may be. You should encourage her to remember. Talk to her, ask her. Otherwise she could find herself in trouble. And the longer she delays in remembering what happened, the more serious the risk becomes. Even five-year-olds can get ulcers. I’ve seen them. As bad as any middle-aged businessman’s.”
Carveth stood up. “Okay. Now, I’d like to take her home.”
“It’s all right by me.”
Markle nodded agreement. “But remember what I said, Mr. Carveth. If you can think of anything that might help, give me a call no matter how insignificant you think it is. There’s someone on the loose out there, and the sooner we get him, the better.”
Candy was silent on the drive back home. Carveth wasn’t in any mood to talk either, but he tried to draw a response from her, first obliquely, then, when that proved a failure, with some direct and penetrating questions. But Candy remained distant, pulled back into a world that Carveth was unable to enter.
When he parked outside his home, Candy wouldn’t get out of the car. He spoke to her, shook her gently, then lifted her out and carried her, leaning against his shoulder, up to her room.
He helped her undress, then brought her a glass of milk from the kitchen. She sat up in bed and sipped at it for a moment, then held it out in front of her until he took it away.
“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me anything?” he asked. “About what happened at Grandma’s? I’m sure you’d feel better, honey, if you did.”
Candy didn’t answer.
Carveth looked at her for a moment, then tucked the sheets up under her chin. “Shall I leave the light on?” he asked.
She nodded, then turned over on her side to face the wall, her back toward him.
Dr. Hal Raglan was working late that night in his Somafree office. Earlier, he had addressed yet another fund-raising dinner, and he still wore his dinner jacket and black tie. The speech he had given had been simple enough—little more than an edited version of a chapter of one of his books. A routine speech that he could have delivered by heart.
The case study he was writing up now, however, was far more dramatic, and much more stimulating. He wrote slowly in long hand, stopping occasionally to play back his tape to make sure he was transcribing it faithfully. Ordinarily, his secretary would have handled the transcription, but in this particular case, Raglan wanted to keep the content of his notes strictly private.
Although the hour was late and Raglan had already put in a hard day’s work, he was easily sustained by a feeling of inner excitement. Nola Carveth was turning out to be an even better patient than he had dreamed possible, and he knew that if there had ever been doubts about his theories before, those doubts would soon be swept away. Nola’s case would make a book by itself. And it would certainly win him the respect that he sought from the medical profession.
He could still hardly believe his luck. In a new science, a new field, he could have stumbled around all his working life and never found anything like this. Nola was perfect. An ideal patient, and an ideal subject on which to test, and ultimately prove, his theories.
He’d long since known that she was something special. But during that afternoon’s session, when she had talked about her early childhood, he had discovered something new, something that Nola had previously kept hidden.
At first, the pattern of the session had been as expected. He’d explored the hurt she’d experienced and the punishment she had received at the hands of her mother. And Raglan, in the role of her mother, had been able to draw out the hate and the anger that she still kept locked up inside her.
It was ground he had covered before, but he had nonetheless been pleased with the results. The fact that he was able to retrace his steps was in itself an indication that he wasn’t just groping around in the dark.
As he had pushed and probed, urging her to express her innermost feelings, she had shown him the physical shape of her rage.
But then suddenly she had gone limp, her body relaxing, the tension flowing out of her. He had attempted to rekindle the fire, but no matter how much he tried he could not get a response. The anger she had aimed at her mother no longer seemed to be there. The shouting, kicking, and the snarling backbiting had gone, replaced by a new serenity.
She had started then to talk about her childhood in a different way altogether, lyrically, peacefully, as if no harm had ever been done to her and no harm could ever have been done.
And she no longer acknowledged Raglan in the role of her mother. He could assume any other character he wanted and she would appropriately respond. But when he tried to continue the role of her mother, he was confronted by this new sense of peace.
Raglan had been about to call the session to a halt, when Nola had casually mentioned the hospital. At first, he had paid no attention, thinking she was referring to the hospital she had been in before coming to Somafree.
But when Nola persisted, he began to question.
“The hospital? Why were you in a hospital?”
“I was always so sick.”
“Oh? Why? Had you been punished by your mother? Hurt so much you had to get medical care?”
Nola laughed. “Don’t be silly. People don’t go to hospital because they’ve been punished. They go there to get well, if they’ve been sick.”
“So what was wrong with you, Nola?”
It was then that Raglan had made his discovery. From a very early age, Nola had told him, she had suffered from a disease or infection that had never properly been diagnosed. In a child-like voice, the voice that would have been hers as a five or a six-year old, she had described it to him, described the symptoms. Her arms, she said, had often been covered with sores when she had been a little girl. Bumps, she called them; small, translucent buds that had pushed up from her skin, pushing aside the delicate blond hairs. They had started when she’d been five, and they had continued until her early teens, when they had disappeared of their own accord. Their appearance, initially, had been sporadic, coinciding for the most part with her bouts of anger. No tangible reason for their existence had ever been established, and although the hospital doctors had treated her, and occasionally operated, the sores had remained a mystery. Her doctors had never seen anything like them before.
But Raglan had.
He’d seen the sores on her arms, and on her body. They were a manifestation of her inner emotion, a function of her psychoplasmic treatment. But from Nola’s description, the sores she had suffered as a child exactly matched those that she exhibited now. That meant that, right from an early age, Nola had developed an ability to express her feelings in a physical shape.
It was little wonder that she was proving to be such an excellent patient. She had, unknowingly, been practicing psychoplasmics for mo
st of her life. She hadn’t had to learn how to use psychoplasmic techniques; she’d already known.
Raglan finished writing, and was replaying the tape when his intercom buzzed. He picked up the phone and punched the button for the line that connected him to the boathouse.
“Yes, Chris. What is it?”
“Dr. Raglan? I’m afraid we may have some trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“It’s Nola. She tried to break isolation. I think I stopped her in time. But I’m not sure. Perhaps you’d better come have a look.”
Chris met him at the boathouse door.
“Okay,” Raglan said. “What happened?”
“She tried to make a call.”
“On the phone? Who was she trying to reach?”
“Her mother.”
“Her mother? She doesn’t want anything to do with her mother. She never even speaks of her unless I force her to.”
“She didn’t get through,” Chris said. “At least not to her mother. That was the strange thing. A policeman answered.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I saw the light on the phone and realized she was making a call. I went in and found her on the phone. She says she was calling her mother, but when I took the phone away from her, I listened for a moment, and there was a policeman there. He identified himself.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“No.”
“What about Nola? Did she identify herself?”
“Maybe. I heard her mention the institute.”
Raglan shook his head. “It could set us back several months if she breaks isolation.”
“I know,” Chris said. “I got to her as quickly as I could.”
Raglan opened the door to her room and went inside. Nola was renting on her couch, looking as serene as when he had left her that afternoon.
“Hello, Nola.”
He approached her slowly. “You’re supposed to be in isolation. No calls. We agreed, remember? It’s for your own good.”
She didn’t answer.
“Who were you trying to call, Nola? Who was it? Were you trying to call your mother?”
Nola smiled and turned towards him. “Yes,” she said dreamily, “I was trying to call my Mommy.” Her face suddenly clouded. “I was worried about her. I thought something bad had happened to her. I wanted to make sure she’s all right. And Candy too,” she said. “I was worried about her.”
“It’s okay,” Raglan said soothingly. “Nothing bad has happened. And Candy is fine. You saw her yourself, just yesterday. And anyway,” he added, “Frank will be with her. He’ll protect her.”
Nola laughed bitterly. “You think so? Like my Daddy protected me?” She leaned against the back of the couch, closing her eyes.
Raglan watched her for a moment. She seemed rested, at peace with herself. But Raglan couldn’t be sure.
As he prepared her a sedative, she suddenly spoke. “Daddy? Daddy? Is that you?”
Raglan looked at her. He could see her restlessness now. It’s too soon, he thought, too soon after her last session to start another one now.
But Nola wouldn’t be stopped. She reached out a hand. “Daddy? Are you there?” Her voice was pleading.
Raglan yielded. “Yes, sweetheart. It’s Daddy.”
“You’ve come to protect me?”
“Of course. To keep you from harm. You know that. You can trust me.”
Nola opened her eyes and glared at him. And Raglan was taken aback by the baleful intensity of her gaze, the hate that showed in her eyes.
“You never protected me,” she said. “You never helped me. You let Mommy do whatever she wanted. You never stopped her locking me up, using the hook. You were always out. You only came home after I’d been put to bed. I used to lie awake and hope you’d come in to see me. But you never did. And you never came to see me in the hospital, not even when I was really sick. You never came once.”
“Nola, what do you mean? Of course I came to see you.”
Nola opened her mouth and screamed. “No you didn’t. Not once. But you should have done. You should have been there when I needed you. I wanted you to help me, to love me. But you were never there.” Her voice hardened, then dropped to a whisper. “I hate you for it, Daddy. I hate you because you just let her hurt me.” She paused, then spoke in a child-like voice. “Didn’t you love me?” she said plaintively. “Didn’t anyone love me?”
C H A P T E R
S I X
Barton Kelly’s flight had already arrived by the time Carveth reached the airport. Carveth parked in a no-waiting zone and ran across the street into the terminal.
It had been more than seven years since he had last seen Kelly. In the brief time they had known each other, they had established a common bond that was stronger than just a mutual attachment to Nola. Under different circumstances, Carveth had always felt, he and Kelly would have grown close. As it was, their friendship had been prematurely cut short; now their only contact was a few sporadic letters and token greetings at Christmas.
Even so, Carveth had no difficulty recognizing his father-in-law. Though not a tall man, Barton Kelly was well-built, and his handsome, rugged features stood out in any crowd.
Carveth found him pacing restlessly up and down outside the first-class lounge. Always impatient and conscious of time, Kelly was not one who liked to be kept waiting. Carveth pushed through the crowd towards him.
“Hello, Barton. Sorry I’m late.”
Kelly shook his hand. “It’s okay. The flight was on time for once.” He stood back. “It’s good to see you, Frank. You haven’t changed much in, what, seven, eight years?”
“Something like that.” Carveth picked up Kelly’s suitcase. “I’m only sorry we had to meet again like this. It was a hell of a shock, I can tell you.”
Kelly nodded. “I know. How’s Nola?” he asked.
“No better.”
Carveth led the way out to the car and lifted the suitcase into the trunk. “Where are you staying? Downtown?”
“At the Plaza.”
“You can still change your mind, you know. Stay with Candy and me.”
“No, it’s okay. I won’t be in town very long. We could have the funeral tomorrow, although Juliana’s niece still might want to fly in. And there’s that sister of hers out west. We’ll just have to see.”
As they drove onto the freeway, Kelly asked, “They don’t know who did it, I suppose?”
Carveth shook his head. “They’ve no idea. It wasn’t pleasant, Barton. They think Juliana may have been attacked by a psycho. There was just no reason for it. None at all.”
Kelly stared out the window. “We had some good times, Frank. You only saw us near the end, when things were falling apart and we were just waiting for the divorce to come through. But there were other times, before you knew us. She was okay.”
“I think she felt the same way about you. She wasn’t always happy living on her own.”
Kelly was silent for a moment. “What about you and Nola? Any chance of you getting back together?”
Carveth swung out round a truck, into the fast lane. “I’m trying,” he said. “But sometimes I don’t think there’s much of a chance. We’ve grown apart, more than I’d realized. And now Nola’s under a different kind of treatment—psychoplasmics, it’s called—and I just don’t think it’s doing her any good. I can’t even get in to see her.”
“Psychoplasmics? I’ve read something about that. The shape of rage, is that it?”
Carveth nodded. “A doctor called Raglan, Hal Raglan. He started it all. He’s got an institute here, and he’s working on Nola.”
“You don’t sound too keen.”
“I’m not,” Carveth said. He turned off the freeway and drove to the Plaza Hotel.
Kelly got out of the car and brushed down his coat. “I’ve got to go see the funeral home,” he said, “then contact the rest of the family. Suppose I give you a call tonight. We can talk then.”
&nb
sp; Carveth nodded. “Any time after six. And Barton,” he said, “I’m really sorry about Juliana. It’s a hell of a thing to have happen.”
“Yeah,” Kelly said. “Yeah, I know.”
Carveth drove straight to the Krell Street school, arriving just as the bell was ringing for lunch. He fought his way upstream against the rush of kids that tumbled out of the school and into the yard, and made his way to Ruth Mayer’s classroom. He found her scrubbing the alphabet and the numbers one to ten from the classroom board.
“Mr. Carveth,” she said, turning around. “I’m glad you could come. I hope I’m not breaking into your work day.”
“It’s okay,” Carveth said. “I’ve taken some time off. I . . . well, something came up.”
Ruth Mayer nodded. “I just thought we should have a talk,” she said. “About Candy.” She brushed chalk from her hand and opened a drawer in her desk.
Carveth pulled up a chair, then realized it had been built for a child. He turned it around and leaned against the back of it.
“We could have talked at the next PTA meeting,” Ruth said. “But I felt you should see these pictures before then. Candy drew them, all of them. And quite honestly, they disturb me. I didn’t think we could afford to wait.”
She took a number of pictures from the drawer, selected one and slid it across the desk. “This is one of Candy’s older drawings. The kind of thing she used to do.”
Carveth looked at it. The drawing was in bright crayon colours. Trees. Flowers. Circular sun with a smiling face. And a man waving from the doorstep of a house.
“It’s pretty much what you’d expect,” Ruth said. “It’s cheerful, happy. It’s . . . well . . . it’s normal. It shows a well-adjusted child. All Candy’s pictures were like that. It didn’t matter what she was drawing. They were all much the same.” She handed Carveth three more pictures. “These are fairly representative of what Candy was doing. You’ll see that the people are all smiling. Whether they’re waving or standing or walking along the street, they’re all essentially happy.”
David Cronenberg's The Brood Page 6