“Well, it might. But I’ve not observed any young children carrying these symptoms. They’ve all been as old as the ones in the car, or older. Maybe the symptoms are only triggered by the onset of puberty.”
“Well, even if it only rules out a congenital defect, it still adds to the information we have. In the meantime, I’ll look around the town. Try and talk to anyone who looks like they have symptoms, see if they’ll open up.”
“You might find people here quite hostile to ... strangers” warned the examiner.
“Doesn’t matter. If they don’t want to talk to me there’s not much I can do, but I should try. It might help us build up a list of the features of the disease, might even help us pinpoint other things they all have in common.”
Khalil looked at his watch. “I should go” he apologised. “I have a meeting at half past ten. I will start looking through birth records this afternoon though.”
“That’s OK.” Carla extended her hand and the medical examiner shook it. “Thankyou for coming to meet me. And for presenting such an ... interesting problem.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Dr Edwards. I will speak to you again soon.” He turned to go, but paused and called over his shoulder. “And be careful, Dr Edwards.”
*****
Carla watched him jog back across the road, turning the collars of his coat up against the stiffening breeze and the first spattering of rain. There was still nobody else around. She decided to walk further down the seafront, past the darkly decomposing warehouses.
One of them was in a far better state of repair than the others, with fresh cement cladding and glossy, PVC roofing membrane. It had no windows and only one visible door. A state-of-the-art security camera fixed to the eaves stared down expectantly at this point of entry. A large, though faint, wooden sign above the door declared the place to be home to the “Evangelical Order of David” - clearly the church group that Dr Khalil had mentioned. There were smaller words beneath in gaudily elaborate lettering. Carla had to cross the road to read them.
Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known.
Carla recognised the line instantly, even without wanting to. Psalm 77. A favourite of her mother, who would recite it at breakfast time whenever the rent was due. Even as a child, Carla had found it rather a plaintive and obsequious verse.
She forced her mind back to the matter at hand. The makeshift church might be a good place to get information if she could find whoever was in charge - though there was no sound or sign of life at that moment. She considered trying the door but decided against it. It was early in the morning; there wasn’t likely to be anybody answering anyway.
With a final glance up at the security camera, Carla moved on. The rain had grown from a light drizzle to a steady shower and was growing in intensity every second. She quickened her pace and fished a knitted, woollen hat out of her coat pocket. Wearing it would probably do her hairstyle no more harm than the rain otherwise would. Even so, within a hundred paces the water had begun to soak through the wool. She resolved to look for shelter until the downpour passed.
The rough-looking bar on the corner had not been open when she passed it with Dr Khalil, so there seemed little point in heading back to it now. Nor was there any obvious refuge ahead of her. There was, however, a collapsed warehouse to her left. The ground was cluttered with broken bricks and chunks of mortar that had not been cleared, but fifty or sixty feet of graffiti-garnished wall was still intact, and in the far corner a remnant of the ground-floor ceiling still offered the prospect of shelter.
Carla picked her way warily through the wreckage of the wall that had abutted the road, and trotted gingerly through the debris field beyond. It was only when she reached the far corner that she noticed the child.
He was squatting by a pile of bricks with his arms wrapped around his knees, facing the vandalised wall and rocking slowly on his haunches. His face was hidden beneath the hood of a parka. A seam on the back of the coat had torn, as had the knee of his grey trousers. The sole of one of his scuffed and muddy trainers was coming away too. With a large and grubby bandage dressing his left hand, he looked like a poster child for inner city deprivation. He didn’t acknowledge Carla at all.
She tried to get his attention. “Hello? Are you alright there?”
The boy stopped rocking, but remained visibly tense, ready to spring up. “Look, why don’t you come under this bit of roof, out of the rain? You’ll get soaked.”
The boy gave a violent shudder, then leapt to his feet. Something fell from his hand, hitting the concrete floor with a metallic clatter, and then he was sprinting away, the loose sole of his trainer slapping like an applauding sealion with each step he took.
Carla called after him – “Wait, you don’t have to” – but before she could finish the sentence he had reached the road and disappeared around a corner, his footsteps lost in the wind and the rain.
Carla rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh. Apparently, Innsmouth folk learned their mistrust of strangers at a young age. What he thought she might do to him that would be worse than sitting, alone, in a ruined building during a cloudburst, she couldn’t imagine.
Her eye was caught by a dull, oblong object on the ground where the boy had been sitting. What had he dropped? She squinted, trying to identify it through the curtain of water dripping from the edge of the ceiling above her. Some piece of debris? A metal fixture of some kind? In the end she decided that she was sufficiently intrigued to justify a few seconds more exposure to the elements, and hurried reluctantly across to the spot, intending to pick the thing up and examine it once safely back under the roof. Face screwed up against the rain, she reached for it – and froze.
It was a boxcutter. Next to it was a severed finger. Small. A child’s finger.
Carla instinctively drew back and looked around. There was no sign of anybody else in the area. She looked again at the finger. Detached just above the knuckle, it looked pale and bloodless now. The dust beneath it had been churned into gory sludge by the pounding rain.
Shocked and repulsed, Carla nonetheless crouched down and moved to pick it up. At the last moment, she changed her mind and picked up the knife instead, wanting to confirm her worst suspicions. Her hand shook with apprehension and cold as she slid the blade out. It was coated in fresh blood which the rain immediately began to rinse away. Carla closed her eyes and retracted the blade. The boy had done this to himself.
Without further hesitation she picked up the finger, wincing slightly. It was cold, and slightly shrivelled from the loss of blood. Carla turned it over in her hand. Most of the nail seemed to be missing. All that remained was a small crescent overgrown by long, fleshy cuticles. On the other side the fingerprint friction ridges seemed unnaturally deep, the whorls and striations almost frill-like.
The finger flexed easily as she examined it. Too easily, like a stick of pepperoni. Feeling queasy, she examined the stump end. It had been a clean cut, straight through. The bone protruded slightly where the bleeding flesh had contracted, but it was too thin, even for a child’s finger. Instead, the spindly phalange was surrounded by a thick layer of shiny, fibrous cartilage.
Carla looked away. Dr Khalil’s alarming words about atavism echoed in her mind. The only cartilage in the finger should be a light sheen at the joints, not replacement for healthy bone like this. Not like this at all.
Standing up, she wondered what to do. The boy must have lost a lot of blood, was probably in shock. She ought to inform the police.
Her eye was arrested by the graffiti the boy had been staring at. The entire wall was daubed black and red, with layer upon crudely-scrawled layer of tags, slurs, abstract pictures and obscure, teenage hieroglyphics. Here, an ovoid, bow-legged man with a shark’s mouth and fin, and prominent erection. There, a mermaid with tentacle arms and a lamprey’s scolex for a mouth. The unknown artist had labelled these gruesome figures “Cthulhu fthaghn!” in dripping red letters. Some later critic had scor
ed through this in black, adding “FUCK CTHULHU” for clarity.
The aquatic theme continued through the other pictures. A stick man with the barbed tail of a manta ray snipping the heads off two rudimentary women, using giant, crustacean claws. A bloated female figure, head covered with dangling photophores, surrounded by kneeling fishmen with “Ia Ia!” written in the speech bubbles coming from their mouths.
The same hand that had written “FUCK CTHULHU” had defaced some of these designs as well, finishing with “FUCK ALL U FREEKS” in letters a foot tall. Someone had retorted with “NO FUCK U RAMRAM” and a string of incomprehensible runic symbols.
It took Carla a few seconds to make the connection. RAMRAM. Ramone Ramsgate! He must have hung out here. There was a good chance the others did too. She stared at the deformed finger, images from the autopsies floating to the front of her mind. Maybe the other Innsmouth kids would be able to tell her whether the crash had been a suicide. And why.
*****
It was still raining four hours later, when she arrived at Rowley hospital. She had managed to fasten a sheet of plastic over the broken window of the Honda, but it had come loose almost as soon as she set off. Dr Khalil was waiting for her on the medical admissions ward. He greeted her warmly as she peeled off her wet gloves.
“Dr Edwards. You look frozen. Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Yes!” exclaimed Carla, gratefully. “Tea, coffee, anything! Is he here?”
Khalil led the way through to a small kitchen area behind the receptionist’s desk. “He is. After you called, the police found him unconscious in the street. He was given an emergency transfusion, but they have been unable to do any more for him.”
“Why? I gave the finger to the police. Were they able to reattach it?”
“The finger was ... badly disfigured. I doubt it would have been possible. It is speculative in any case. The parents would not allow more intervention than necessary to stabilise the boy.” His tone was almost apologetic.
“What? Really?”
“Indeed. They are on their way here now. The police are bringing them. I think they will take him home.”
“Can they do that? Is he well enough to leave?”
“There are arguments for keeping him here, certainly, but not against his will. The child protection services do not wish to pursue the case.”
“He cut off his own finger! Surely that points to some kind of intervention!”
Khalil shrugged. “He says it was an accident, playing with knives.”
“Bullshit! Accident, my foot.” She moved closer to him, dropping her voice to an urgent whisper. “Did you see the finger? It was deformed. Hardly any skeletal tissue in it, missing a proper nail, overgrown with cartilage ... did you see it?”
Dr Khalil spooned instant coffee into hospital mugs, not looking at her. “Yes, I saw it. I agree. It was most strange. Like the others, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would!” agreed Carla, earnestly. “Have you looked the boy over? Has he had a full physical?”
“He does have other injuries consistent with a pattern of self harm. Also with ... the abberations we have seen elsewhere.”
“Like what?” asked Carla, taking a cup of steaming black coffee from him and warming her hands with it.
“His other hand, for instance, shows fresh wounds between three of the fingers.” Khalil turned back to her and held his own hand up to illustrate. “It is as if he has cut between them.” – drawing the index finger of his right hand between the second and third fingers of his left, then between the third and fourth – “You remember the syndactyly we saw in the Ramsgate boy?”
“You mean, as if he cut through – ugh, as if he cut them apart? Jesus.”
“That is not all. There is – forgive me, but there is only a wound where one of his nipples should be. He has very bad abrasions on his legs, as if he has scrubbed them obsessively, until they are raw and scarred. Part of his earlobe is missing. A large part. And he has burns all over, quite deep. Perhaps a soldering iron or similar implement? Either this boy is very careless and accident prone, or he is hurting himself very savagely.”
“Well then, surely CPS can step in, have him taken away, hospitalised, put in care, anything!”
“I am afraid it is not so. There is no suggestion that the parents are hurting him. As long as they agree to take him to talk to a psychiatrist, the social worker thinks to move him would do more harm than good.”
“Well, the parents may not be the ones doing the cutting but they clearly aren’t doing a very good job of stopping it!” Carla massaged her forehead in frustration. “How long have we got until they arrive?”
“The parents? Probably twenty minutes. Half an hour maybe.”
“If he’s awake, I’d like to talk to him before they get here.”
Khalil nodded. “I’m sure that can be arranged. Come.”
He led the way into the ward and held a muttered conversation with the nurse in charge before beckoning Carla forward and ushering her towards the door of the boy’s room.
“His name is Gary. Gary Taub. Good luck!”
He knocked on the door and opened it for her without waiting for a response. Carla exhaled deeply and walked past him into the room.
Gary Taub was staring out of the rain-sprayed window, and did not turn to look at her as she entered. He looked very small in the big hospital bed, his arms spindly and emaciated against the crisply-turned sheets. Carla automatically made a mental note: `possible eating disorder’. It would at least fit with his history of presumed self-harm.
“Hello, Gary” she ventured, looking for a response. He ignored her. She waited a few seconds and tried again. “My name’s Carla. Is it OK if I sit down?”
The boy sighed pointedly and slowly turned his head to look at her. “Who are you?” he wanted to know. “Social worker?”
“No” replied Carla, gingerly taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “I’m a Doctor. Doctor Edwards. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions before your parents get here?”
Gary winced in annoyance. “I already told the other doctor everything. I was messin’ around with a blade, got a bit careless. No big deal.”
Carla decided to play it casual too. “Uh huh. So I hear. I was actually hoping to ask you about someone else though.”
That got his attention. He focussed his eyes on her properly for the first time. He looked tired. Exhausted, actually. The skin of his face was spattered with constellations of angry-looking blackheads – not too unusual in a teenager, Carla reminded herself. However, further down, on his throat, were what looked like self-inflicted wounds. Parallel scars, three on each side of his neck. Old, but badly healed by the look of them. Beneath them bulged visibly swollen lymph nodes. Did he have an infection? Or were they the result of excessive vomiting? Bulimia?
“You’re the woman I saw earlier. Who?” asked Gary, watching her intently from beneath lowered lids. “Who’d you want to ask me about?”
Carla gambled. “Your friend – RamRam.”
Gary immediately turned his face back to the window. “He’s dead. Car wreck.”
“I know” replied Carla, scooching a little further up the bed. “What I want to know is: why did they kill themselves?”
Gary looked back at her. His drowsy eyes were glistening as if he was about to cry. “How’d you know they killed themselves?”
“You don’t seem very surprised at the idea, so maybe the same way that you do.”
Gary passed a hand across his face and spoke without looking at her. “I know because Ramone told me. Told me they were going to. He wouldn’t let me go along with them.”
“Wouldn’t let you – are you saying that he told you what they were planning to do? Did he say why?”
“Din’t have to say why.” He looked back at Carla, searching for understanding, and finding it absent became annoyed. “For fuck’s sake, look at me! Look at any of us!” His remaining fingers scrunched and twisted the bedsheets
as he spoke. “It’s not so bad for the others - they fucking look forward to it – but it’s not like we get given a choice! It’s not like we did something wrong, or something to deserve it, or that we’re out there praying for it with the rest of them. So, maybe we don’t want it, maybe we just want to be normal – not a fucking chance. RamRam –“
He swallowed and looked as though he wanted to stop talking, but the words came flooding out anyway. “RamRam wanted to take me with them. Wayne wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t like me cos of my mom being high-up in the Order, like it was my fault. Said I’d have to make my own arrangements. Said maybe I should do my mom in as well. So we said goodbye and Wayne went and stole the car – and they left me alone.”
Tears leaked down his pockmarked face and he let out an anguished, throaty sigh. Carla could feel a lump in her own throat. “Thing is” the boy continued, “I’m not as brave as them. But I know soon I won’t care enough to do it. In a few years I’ll be like the rest of them, sick in the head. So, why put it off? It’ll only get worse and worse until it doesn’t matter anymore.”
The Innsmouth Syndrome Page 4