David Cronenberg's The Brood

by Richard Starks

  Carveth was in the living room of the town-house his company was renovating when the phone call came through that afternoon. For the past few days, he had felt like a juggler trying to balance too many plates in the air at once. His business still needed his constant attention: he had two renovation projects underway, scheduled to be completed by the end of the month, and unless he kept a close eye on them, both would be late. Already he had fallen nearly two weeks behind on one job—the result of a delay in City Hall approval of a plumbing permit he needed—and it looked as if he was going to be held up on the other by the sudden illness of one of his carpenters.

  He stood watching as a workman installed insulation in the walls on both sides of an exposed brick fireplace. If it had been just the work that was bothering him, he probably would have been able to cope. But he still hadn’t managed to put together a case against Raglan, which might have prevented Candy visiting Somafree the following Sunday. And as things were now going, it seemed that he never would—especially since there were now only three more days until her next scheduled visit.

  A workman came down the stairs behind him. “Mr. Carveth? There’s a phone call for you.”

  Carveth turned. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

  He climbed the rail-less stairs and made his way down a broad, dusty hallway, treading carefully around the joists and the cuts in the floorboards.

  The phone was in a room at the back. He picked up the receiver. “Yes?”

  “Frank Carveth?”

  “Speaking.”

  “It’s Jan Hartog. From the nursing home. Your office told me where you could be reached.”

  “Sure. How you keeping?” He had a sudden memory of Hartog’s swollen neck, and realized how tactless his greeting must have sounded.

  Hartog said, “Are you still building a case against Raglan?” His voice had a slight wheeze to it.

  “Trying. Though I haven’t got very far with it.”

  “Well, I’ve got someone here who can help you,” Hartog said. “A witness. You want to come see him?”

  Carveth hesitated. “I don’t know. Will it really help?”

  “If you want to get Raglan, it will. But if you’re just looking for some cheerful company, then you’d better forget it.”

  “All right, Jan.” Carveth looked at his watch. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  As he left the house, he thought: To hell with it; the business would just have to take care of itself.

  Jan Hartog was waiting for him in the foyer of the nursing home. As Carveth entered, Hartog rose painfully from the couch on which he’d been sitting and hobbled towards him, leaning heavily on an oak cane. In spite of his apparent pain, he seemed to have an air of excitement about him.

  “Frank. Glad you could come. Excuse the cane, but I’m having an off day.” He smiled bleakly.

  Carveth nodded.

  “I’ve got him upstairs,” Hartog said. “Our witness. He’s in bad shape, so he has to be treated gently. Raglan must have really worked him over. He’s scared, scared of his own shadow. I left him alone with a bottle of rye to cheer him up; then I called you.”

  Hartog moved to the stairs, leaning on Carveth’s arm.

  “How did you find him?” Carveth asked.

  “I didn’t. He found me. Remember I told you I was in touch with some of Raglan’s patients? Well, this afternoon, just after lunch, I’m told I have a visitor. Now, I don’t get many visitors, do I? So I’m wondering who it can be, and I’m hobbling down the stairs to find out, when this man grabs me, clutches on to me as if I’m some kind of rock he can cling to. He’s one of Raglan’s all right; you can tell, just by looking at him.”

  Hartog opened the door of his room and ushered Carveth in. A man was sitting on the far side of the bed, his arms wrapped tightly round him. He was rocking backwards and forwards, moaning softly to himself. A bottle of rye, half empty, stood on a table beside him. The man’s clothes were dirty and dishevelled.

  As Hartog closed the door behind him, the man on the bed turned and seemed to shrink further inside himself. His face held an expression of fear, as if he were facing a situation that was far beyond his control.

  Carveth studied him. The man looked older than when Carveth had first seen him; older and evidently under considerable strain. But there was no mistaking him: it was Michael Trellan, the man Carveth had seen at the Somafree demonstration.

  Hartog approached him carefully, as if trying to coax out a timid animal. “Mike,” he said gently, “this is Frank Carveth, the man I told you about. He’s come to see you, Mike.”

  Trellan’s eyes flicked from one to the other. He seemed to be gauging the distance to the door, measuring his chances for escape. He lit a cigarette from the stub of the one he’d been smoking, his hands shaking so that ash tumbled down the front of his shirt. He made no effort to brush it away.

  “Hello, Mike,” Carveth said. He moved sideways into the room, circling the bed so that he wouldn’t get too close; wouldn’t appear too threatening.

  Trellan watched him. He was pushed back against the head of the bed, as if he’d been cornered.

  Hartog said quietly, “He’s in a bad way, Frank. Didn’t I tell you? He wouldn’t help Raglan much if we put him on display. What do you think?”

  Trellan crawled across the bed towards Carveth. “Will you help me please?” he begged. “Will you?” His voice was like a child’s, shrill and unbroken.

  “He talks like that all the time,” Hartog said. “Like a girl. He really wants to be a woman, you know. Always has done. His body wants to be, even if his mind won’t allow it.”

  Trellan suddenly slid off the bed and knelt on the other side, peering over the edge of the bed.

  Hartog took a step towards him. “Mike, this is Nola’s husband. You remember, we talked about him. He’s married to Nola. At Somafree.”

  “Nola?” Trellan’s puzzlement gave way to a sly grin. Then he giggled. “Sure, I know Nola. The queen bee, right?” He hunched his shoulders in a caricature of guilt, like a little kid who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  Hartog turned and looked at Carveth. “He may be too far gone.”

  Carveth said, “Mike, what do you mean when you say Nola’s the queen bee?”

  “Will you help me if I tell you?”

  “Sure, Mike. We’ll do the best we can, whatever we can. We’ll help you.”

  Trellan’s face crinkled. “The rest of us don’t count any more,” he said. He crawled round the side of the bed. “Nobody cares, nobody wants to help us.”

  Hartog said, “Tell him what happened it Somafree, Mike.”

  Carveth glanced sideways at him. Hartog leaned unsteadily on his cane. But his voice was strong, commanding. Like Raglan’s had been at the demonstration.

  “Tell him, Mike. Don’t just lie there grovelling like a child. Tell him.”

  Trellan’s face was twisted as he fought an inner battle with himself. “I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t. It’s too painful.”

  Hartog roughly pulled him to his feet, lifting him under one arm and hauling him upright. “Tell him, Mike.”

  “He locked the door on us,” Trellan said. “All of us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Trellan slumped on the bed and buried his face in his hands. “He just threw us all out. Every one of us.” He looked up at Carveth, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Every damn one of us, except your wife.”

  Hartog leaned on his cane. “It’s true,” he told Carveth. “Some of the others have been in touch with me. Everybody’s been moved out of Somafree and all therapy has been suspended. No warning. No explanation. The only one left is your wife.”

  “Does anyone know why?” Carveth asked.

  Trellan swung round at him. “She’s the star, that’s why. She’s the one who’s going to prove Raglan’s theories. And he wants her to himself. Raglan wants to be alone with your wife.”

  Raglan circled the boathouse
, approaching it from the rear. On this side, the boathouse seemed only a single story, the ground sloping up so that it came close to the roof.

  He left the path and pushed his way through the trees, paralleling the wall until he came near to the lake. The ground was lower here and, close to the wall, he had difficulty seeing up to the second floor. He stepped back, craning his neck, trying to see the roof.

  But then he noticed the broken window. It had been hard to detect at first, because only one of the panes was missing and it had been completely removed so there were no jagged edges. But there could be no doubt. The bottom half of the window had gone.

  He pulled his gun from his pocket and opened the carriage, checking that there was a bullet in each of the chambers. He flicked the carriage closed, then went round to the boathouse door and let himself in.

  Chris was at his desk.

  “Are all the patients out?” Raglan asked him.

  Chris nodded. “Every one of them.”

  “How did they take it?”

  “Badly. I had to tell them it was all part of their therapy. They still trust us, most of them. But they won’t for much longer. Not unless we can get them back.”

  “What about Nola?”

  “I looked in on her a while ago. She was tossing and turning a lot, but she was still sleeping.”

  Raglan opened the door to her suite. Nola was resting on the couch, her head turned away from him. He closed the door behind him and quietly locked it. As he sat on the couch beside her, Nola stirred restlessly.

  He watched her in silence, careful not to disturb her.

  C H A P T E R

  T E N

  The Krell Street School yard was empty when Carveth arrived, but through the glass front doors, he could see a group of children in the hallway, pushing and shoving, taking their coats off the pegs that lined each wall. Carveth wathched them, envying their innocence and narrow perspectives in which there was only today, the moment in which they were living—never a tomorrow and never a past. It was a carefree time of life, only appreciated after it had gone.

  He caught sight of Candy’s blond hair at the back of the throng, and waved. But she was immediately lost in the crowd around the coatpegs. He was resigned now to the fact that he would not be able to stop her next visit to Somafree. Trellan’s story that the institute had effectively been closed put a different slant on the situation; but it didn’t really change anything. Nola was still at Somafree, and until she signed herself out, Carveth was legally bound to take Candy there to see her.

  He felt a tug at his elbow and turned to find another parent standing beside him.

  “Frank? Frank Carveth?”

  Carveth searched his memory for a name. “Hi, Wendy,” he said.

  “My God, I haven’t seen you around in a while.”

  “I guess not. I’ve been kind of busy lately. Out of circulation.”

  The woman, about Carveth’s age, was the mother of one of Candy’s class-mates. Carveth remembered her from a parent-teacher meeting he had attended in the summer. A bright, aggressively modern woman, full of neurotic energy, she had seemed to Carveth to be affected and shallow. Even today, with a chill in the air and winter not far away, she was wearing an overly large pair of sunglasses with tinted plastic frames. Reluctantly he allowed himself to be drawn into brief conversation.

  Inside the school, Candy caught sight of him. But she was pushed aside in the crush and soon lost him from view. She fought her way to the coatpegs and tried to reach for her jacket. Two kids already dressed in their coats—English-style duffle coats with their hoods pulled over their heads—were blocking her way.

  Candy pushed between them, and they moved aside, watching as she struggled into her jacket, zipping it up the front. They shifted position then to stand behind her, pinioning her against the wall. She tried to fight her way past them. But the kids wouldn’t move. She struggled between them, trying to squirm through, but one of them pushed her roughly against the wall. She looked up in shock. Then they turned and she looked into their faces under their hoods.

  She froze.

  The two kids took up position beside her. Neither of them touched her; but they started to walk away from the coat-racks, away from the crush, and Candy walked between them, moving through the throng of other kids, who stepped out of their way, falling silent as they stared into their soft, formless faces.

  The child-creatures marched in step, Candy moving between them. They went down the corridor, away from the front entrance of the school towards the classrooms.

  The door of Candy’s classroom was open. The creatures stopped outside. Through the door, Candy could see Ruth Mayer at the blackboard, writing up the next day’s lessons. A number of her classmates were tidying up at the rear of the room, putting crayons into boxes and washing paint from their hands at a sink in the corner.

  Candy moved forward, the creatures either side of her. She stopped at the first row of desks, but the child-creatures continued to the front of the class, to the blackboard where Ruth was working.

  From the play area, one of them picked up a wooden hammer used to pound pegs into holes; the other chose a pair of blunt-ended scissors. Candy watched them in silence.

  Ruth heard a sound behind her and glanced quickly over her shoulder. “Hello, you two. Forget something, did you?” She continued writing, rubbing the board clean ahead of her.

  When the first of the creatures attacked her, stabbing at her with the blunted scissors, it was surprise that showed first on her face, surprise at the viciousness of the attack and the strength with which it was delivered. But as she slumped to the floor, and the second creature brought the flat of the hammer down on the side of her head, it was pain that clouded her eyes. The children watched, some whimpering, some crying, some too stunned to react.

  The creatures increased the fury of their attack, beating and stabbing at Ruth as she lay helpless on the floor.

  Then suddenly the attack was over. The two creatures stood and walked towards Candy. They stopped on either side of her, then moved slowly towards the door. Candy turned and kept pace with them, walking between them.

  A boy ran from the room, down the corridor, past the group of kids still by the coat-racks and outside into the yard, yelling at the top of his voice, “They’ve hurt Miss Mayer. They’ve hurt Miss Mayer.”

  Carveth grabbed him, holding him by the shoulders. “What’s the matter? What’s happening in there?”

  “It’s Miss Mayer,” the boy said. His eyes were squeezed shut. “The bad kids hurt her. They made her fall down.”

  Carveth pushed his way into the school, sprinted down the corridor and into the classroom. Ruth way lying beside the raised platform at the front of the class, one arm draped over the edge. Carveth tried to turn her over, moving her head gently, but it rolled under its own weight, turning much too easily.

  He search for a pulse in her neck. Ruth’s eyes stared up at him. He brushed hair away from her face, then laid her head on the floor.

  For a moment, he was unable to move. Then he turned. The room behind him had filled with parents, kids, teachers, who had followed him into the room.

  “Candy?”

  He stood up.

  “Candy?” His voice rose, urgent.

  One of the teachers knelt beside Ruth, then covered her face with a sheet of paper.

  Carveth went into the hallway, his eyes searching the faces of the silent children.

  Candy was gone.

  Raglan watched as Nola came slowly awake. Under heavy sedation, she had slept until late afternoon. He’d expected her to be anguished again, but instead she seemed rested and calm.

  She blinked quickly against the light, then turned over on the couch to face him.

  “Hal? Is that you?”

  Raglan sat beside her.

  “Where’s Chris?” she asked. “He usually wakes me.”

  “Chris had to go into the city.”

  She looked away. “I was dreaming,�
� she said. “A wonderful dream.”

  Raglan took her hand. “It’s important that we talk, Nola,” he said. “Do you feel strong enough?”

  She smiled at him and pulled herself upright. There was no fear in her eyes, no tension. “My daughter,” she said. “She was coming back to me. In my dream. And I think Frank was too. Yes,” she said, “the three of us. We were going to be together again.” Her voice faded away.

  “Nola, we have to talk.”

  “Talk?”

  She smiled and gently touched his cheek. “You look tired, Hal.” She pushed back his hair, away from his forehead.

  “Nola, was Ruth Mayer in your dream? Was she?”

  Nola frowned slightly. “Candy’s teacher?”

  “Was she part of your dream?”

  “I don’t know, Hal.” She shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes, Nola, it matters a lot. When we last spoke you were threatened by her, challenged by her, as if your position as Candy’s mother and Frank’s wife was in jeopardy. Do you remember? You said you hated her.”

  Nola shook her head. “That must have been before. Before the dream.” She leant back against the cushions and closed her eyes. “I feel so rested,” she said. “So much at peace.”

  Raglan shook her shoulder. “Nola, we must talk. Listen to me. I’m worried. About Ruth Mayer.”

  “You needn’t worry about her, Hal. She’s fine.”

  “It’s important, Nola.”

  She opened her eyes. “Hal, I really don’t feel like talking. I don’t need to. I feel strong again. Now, please. I don’t want to talk any more.”

  Carveth sat slumped in a chair, his elbows resting on his knees. For six hours he had been scouring the streets around the Krell Street School, knocking on doors, asking strangers, friends, neighbours, anyone at all, if they had seen Candy or seen anyone who even looked like Candy.

  He’d called Bruno Markle and insisted that he organize a search for her. “This is no ordinary missing child,” he’d told Markle. “No runaway. Christ, she’s only five, and she’s never run away before. She’s been taken. Kidnapped. Those kids came into the school, right into the school, and they killed Ruth Mayer and they took away my daughter.”