by Неизвестный
The day after the head was sent, Calhoun stopped by to watch Oliver work, stirring, straining the meats.
“What did you think when you saw the head?”
“Nothing.”
“No, how did it make you feel? Was it someone you knew?”
“No.”
“Were you upset? Did you think you’d become an animal?”
“I am what I am.”
“Are you an animal, Oliver?”
Oliver scraped a layer of grease from the top of the cauldron. In the corners of his vision, in the shadows of the pines, skeletons jeered and pointed at him. “I am what I am. Go away, let me work.”
* * *
He hid across the street from Doctor Calhoun’s house until twilight, crouching among the hedges of a well-tended garden. He had not seen the doctor leave, only his companion, but Oliver would not go up to the house and knock. The confrontation had to be in the open; Calhoun could not have an escape into his home.
Late-season flies hovered around him, knocking into his face, crawling on his sleeves. He thought of the faces of the men in the stockade, trying feebly to brush the flies away, and of the men in the dying ward, no longer able to move a hand against the insects. He shut his eyes for a moment, and saw flies dancing greedily in the oily air above the cauldron in the pines as the meat bubbled and turned.
Damn you to the worst of Hell, Doctor Calhoun!
He opened his eyes as a wagon rumbled past, and though it was filled with pumpkins, Oliver saw heads with eyes wide, gazing at him, glaring at him, as their brittle lips attempted to speak.
Then – there. The door to the house opened and Doctor Calhoun stepped out onto the stoop, dressed in a nice overcoat and top hat. Oliver clambered from the hedges and darted across the street, one hand inside his jacket, fingers around the revolver.
“Doctor Calhoun, sir!” he called.
Calhoun looked over his shoulder at Oliver. There was no recognition in his expression.
“Go away, boy, I don’t give to beggars.”
Oliver stopped two feet from the man. He stared, struggling to breathe, his hands slick with sweat as the memories of Andersonville, one upon another upon another, slammed into his mind.
“You,” he managed, “you don’t remember me.”
The doctor sneered. “Should I remember you?”
“You must remember.”
The doctor tipped his head, tugged at his chin, and then said cheerfully, “Ah, wait! Yes! Fate has reunited us! Prisoner O’Donnell, if I live and breathe!”
“I found you.”
“Was I lost?”
“We have business.”
“Do we? I don’t think so.”
“Unfinished business.”
“War is over, son. War is in the past.”
“It’s not in the past. It’s never in the past. The war is over but the torment isn’t! It never leaves me. I’m never free of it.” Oliver pulled the revolver from his coat and pointed it at Calhoun. It shook wildly in his hand. “Never free of what you made me do.”
Calhoun grinned. “I didn’t make you do anything. You did it of your own free will.”
“You would have had me hanged!”
“No, I would not have.”
“What…no?”
“I’m not a killer, boy. I’m a healer.”
“Healer! You’ve destroyed me!”
Calhoun crossed his arms and stepped closer to Oliver. He leaned in. “Tell me, then. You are still in agony over what you did for me? You have nightmares?”
“Of course!”
“They’ve not abated over all these months?”
“They’ve grown worse! Ghosts! Phantoms! I dream of tins of foods splitting open, and of hands grabbing me and pulling me into inescapable maws! I dream of the screams of the men who have been consumed! I dream of those hapless souls we reduced to meals for unknowing hundreds, maybe thousands! The terror does not end, Doctor!”
“Ah!” The doctor clapped his hands. “Yes! I shall write this in my study! What a twist of fate we’ve found each other.”
“No twist of fate.” Oliver panted, swallowed hard. “I’ve hunted you. I will kill you for what you’ve done, and then myself. You and your brother have tinned the flesh of helpless prisoners for profit. You made me part of your hideous scheme!”
“So, young friend, do you fear eternal fires of Hell for what you’ve done?”
“What? Yes, of course!”
“Are you able to work? Do you have appetite or is it hard to eat chicken or pork? Beef? What is it like to be so troubled?”
“Shut up!” screamed Oliver. “Why are you asking me such questions? What difference does it make in light of our mortal sin?”
Calhoun made a tsking sound, then said, “We’ve done nothing, boy. There is no canning factory. I haven’t even got a brother.”
Oliver stared.
“The raw meats I sent you to cook were just parts of bodies bound for burial. I wanted to know what would become of the mind of a man if he thought he was committing an atrocious act, something unforgivable in the sight of God. Ah, and you were so dutiful. What a fine job you did with the meat. It smelled almost good enough to eat, but heavens! That would be ghastly, indeed. I learned that a man might become numbed to such an act, as you seemed to have. But now, now I see that the numbness was only temporary, and the anguish lingers in the mind. It bores in and remains much like a beetle in the soft wood of a pine tree.”
Oliver stared. “You did that to me? I was an experiment?”
Calhoun said, “I will add this to my journals. Thank you, Mr. O’Connell. And let your worries go, now that you know the truth.” He turned and strode off through the darkness of approaching night.
Oliver stared. The revolver slipped from his hand to the walk.
Oliver followed it, down to his knees.
All was Hell.
Elizabeth Massie is a Bram Stoker Award- and Scribe-Award winning author of novels, short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels and collections include Sineater, Hell Gate, Desper Hollow, Afraid, Homegrown, Sundown, Wire Mesh Mothers, the Ameri-Scares series, and more. Her free time is spent knitting, geocaching, and drawing cartoon zombies and hippies. She lives in the Shenandoah Valley with her husband, illustrator Cortney Skinner.
THE WHOLE OF THE WIDENESS OF NIGHT
by
NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN
(First appeared in Strange Attractions, edited by Edward E Kramer, an anthology of stories based on the sculpture of Lisa Snellings, 2000)
I lay in bed for a while with my eyes shut, listening. My head was still full of nightmares, giant rabid rats like the ones my brother Chris told me about last night right before Dad sent us to bed. Red-eyed rats with disease-drool bubbling out of their mouths, chasing me down dirty alleys where trash tripped me and slime coated my hands and knees every time I fell. Chittering noises and the scrabble of claws, the smell of sewers, always coming closer no matter how fast I ran.
The dream’s terror still gripped me even though I was awake. I tried to calm down enough to hear something besides my heart.
All I heard was my own room. The clock hummed. Nothing else. No rat chitters, no claws on the floor, no dark city noises. No older brothers breathing.
I sniffed. No really disgusting scents — decaying dead bodies, puke, Brussels sprouts.
I reached under my pillow and found my lizard stone. It fitted perfectly into my hand. I held it and opened my eyes.
I screamed.
A skull lay facing me on the pillow, white bone, white teeth, shadowed cheekbones, black nose holes, eye sockets. Except, in the middle of the eye sockets, bright green eyes; and ratty brown hair on top of the head. I screamed and screamed and screamed, even after I realized this was my very own baby doll, Patty, painted to look like a skull.
How could they do that? I stopped for breath. My throat hurt. I picked up Patty and touched her face. Painted on — with acrylic paints, the kind that didn�
�t come off. Skull-face Patty. She’d be like that the rest of her life. I hugged her to my stomach, my right hand still closed on the lizard stone. My favorite doll, the one Daddy gave me when I was five, the one I slept with every Christmas Eve. How could they?
My bedroom door opened and all three of my brothers looked in. “Gooooood morning,” Ray said. They grinned, looking like sloppy copies of each other: shaggy dark hair, narrow blue eyes, and wide mouths, especially when stretched into mean smiles. At fourteen, Ray was oldest. Will was thirteen, and Chris was eleven and a half.
I felt sick to my stomach. Probably Ray planned this. Will was the artist — I bet he did the actual painting. Chris, the best sneak, most likely put Patty on my bed.
“Get out of my room,” I said. My throat was sore from screaming.
“We couldn’t help it,” Ray said, still smiling. “You have the best scream in the world.”
“Get out! And close the door!” I wanted to throw something at them, but the only things in reach were Patty and my lizard stone.
“Come on, Lizzie, don’t be like that. It was really funny!” said Ray. Will had lost his smile, though. Chris turned and left. Finally Ray got the message too. He slammed the door.
I studied Patty. I spat on my finger and wiped it on her white cheek. No, this wasn’t the kind of paint that came off.
I did cry a little while I was getting dressed for school. I put Patty on the dresser by the play makeup kit Mom had given me for my tenth birthday a couple weeks past, and the little gold unicorn Grandma gave me last Christmas. Patty still looked scary, but if I stared really hard I could see her smiling friendly face under all that paint.
How could they?
Easy. They did stuff like this all the time.
At least it was daytime now, and night was hours away. During the day I did all right. As long as I could see things clearly, I could get over being scared. It was night, when you woke up with nightmares in your head and you couldn’t look around and be sure they weren’t true, that was the worst. Sometimes night went on forever.
I sat for a minute looking at my lizard stone. It was a brown stone with a lizard painted on it in black ink. My aunt Elizabeth, my dad's sister who I was named after, gave it to me for my eighth birthday. She said she knew what it was like to be the only girl in a family of boys. She said Indians painted the lizard, and it had secret powers to protect me. I wasn’t sure I liked it at first. Ray and Chris called me “Lizard” when they wanted to be mean. But I liked the stone more and more as time went on. I took it everywhere with me. Even when I was scared, I could hold the lizard stone and find calm. I started getting other lizard things after that.
I stuffed my notebook and a couple textbooks into my iridescent lizard-skin backpack and added tights, my toe shoes, and a leotard. Mom was supposed to take me to my ballet class after school. Half the time she forgot. Sometimes I got a ride with my friend Galina’s mom. I practiced ballet moves every day at a barre Dad had put up in the basement, but it was hard to improve when I didn’t get to class half the time.
The recital was coming up. I had a really neat outfit for the big corps de ballet number, but with all my misses, I wasn’t even sure Madame Inessa would let me be in the dance.
I opened the bedroom door and jumped and screamed. A big black construction paper spider with red jellybean eyes dangled from a thread right where it could hit me in the face. Before I really saw it, I thought it was covered with fur and had glowing eyes. My heart thumped hard and fast. When I could see straight, I tore the spider down and ripped it up. If I didn’t, they could use it again, and for sure it would scare me again. No matter how many times I told myself to ignore all the stuff my brothers put me through, they scored a scare off me every time. I was so totally ticked and tired of it.
I heard Chris laughing down the hall. My stomach started grinding.
“Kids! Breakfast! Eat it now or it goes in the garbage!” Dad yelled.
I stomped down the hall and then down the stairs, anger heating me all through. Why was I afraid of every stupid little thing? If only I could stop screaming!
I went to the counter and grabbed the lunch bag with my name on it and stuffed it into my backpack before I sat down at the table. If I didn’t, some brother would steal all the good stuff. “Hi, sweetie,” Mom said to me, plopping a plate with two runny fried eggs on it in front of me. I can’t stand runny eggs. I don’t mind wet yolks, but I hate wet whites. She gave me two pieces of dry toast, something else I wasn’t fond of, but she was always putting me on a diet, and then telling my brothers to eat eat eat and grow big and strong. I spread the egg yolks on the toast and ate that.
Luckily Dad was reading the newspaper. Maybe he wouldn’t notice I was wasting the whites.
I was just about to slip the egg whites down the garbage disposal when Will said, “Hey, Dad, is Lizzie supposed to be doing that?”
“What are you doing, Lizzie?” Dad asked, looking up from the paper.
“Nothing.” I stared at the runny whites on my plate. I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t stand the thought of that stuff coating my tongue. I would throw up for sure. I looked up at Mom, and she looked scared, so I shoved the egg whites into my mouth and tried to swallow them before I could feel them, but I gagged instead.
I ran to the downstairs bathroom and coughed them back up, along with the rest of my breakfast. My mouth tasted like acid.
“Lizzie! Bus!” Dad yelled. “Be on it now or be grounded for the weekend!”
I washed out my mouth, then ran for the bus. We were going to the carnival tomorrow. No way did I want to miss that.
Chris and I went to the same school. Will and Ray were in middle school and caught a different bus. I raced up the steps onto the bus right behind Chris and prayed with all the lizard power I had that I could find a seat next to somebody else, even Pinchmaster George. Chris and I were almost the last kids the driver picked up, and sometimes we had no choice of seats.
I found a seat next to Galina. She always tried to save me one, but sometimes she couldn’t. Chris sat way in the back with some other skater boys.
I hadn’t managed to finish much of my homework. I got so sleepy after dinner, but then I never got any real sleep because of the nightmares. I felt really stupid in class. Nothing new about that.
At first recess I was checking my lunch for something small and edible to replace the breakfast I hadn’t managed to hang onto when this guy from sixth grade, Oscar, caught me, knocked me down, and took my lunch away. This was around a corner where no teachers were.
But Chris saw it, and he rushed up and kicked Oscar down and got my lunch back for me. He grabbed my arm and dragged me around the building to a safer place in case Oscar got to his feet again — Oscar was half a head taller than Chris.
For once in my life I was happy to see my brother. “Wow, thanks,” I said.
Chris smiled. “Us Wakefields got to stick together,” he said. Then he went through my lunch himself. He took my cherry pie and my banana, but he left me carrots, a bologna sandwich, and a juice box.
Pretty good, considering.
I ate the carrots.
I wished Mom would let me put a lock on my door. A padlock, anything. But she wouldn’t.
When I opened my closet to put my school clothes away after school (and another missed ballet class), this dusty white thing dropped down over my head and tangled me up. I screamed and screamed, trying to fight loose, but I was enveloped in cool, white, webby, ghostly stuff. Panic stung me and stung me while I thrashed around, screaming. I couldn’t think.
After I tired myself out I managed to wriggle loose and found out it wasn’t anything but an old torn sheet with fake Halloween cobwebby stuff on it, sprayed with Pam or some nonstick stuff so it was slippery and clammy.
I just broke down and cried for a while. I was too tired not to. I had thought a ghost swallowed me whole and I was stuck in its stomach forever.
Why did they do this? Which brother set
this one up? How could I make them stop?
Complaining to Mom did no good. She said it wasn’t ladylike to scream so much. Dad said he hated a snitch, and boys would be boys. People always said that. Was it ever not true? When was a boy not a boy? How did you get that to happen?
I ripped up the sheet and stomped on it. Dad yelled through the floor for me not to make such a racket. For a couple minutes I jumped up and down even harder, wishing I could stomp a hole right through the floor and fall through to my death. Wouldn’t that show everybody a thing or two? Yeah, I’d break both arms and legs and stove in my ribs so the bones stuck up from the shattered, bloody flesh. Blood would bubble from my mouth as I gurgled my last. They’d be sorry then.
“LIZZIE, STOP THAT JUMPING NOW OR YOU ARE CONFINED TO YOUR ROOM FOR THE REST OF THE MONTH,” Dad screamed.
Oh, man, oh, wait a minute. The carnival was tomorrow! I stopped jumping. I had to stop misbehaving at least long enough to get to the carnival. Last year they had had these really neat stuffed lizards at the concession booth, but I had used all my allowance on rides before I saw the lizards. This year I was going to buy a lizard first. Who needed rides? My whole life was one big carnival ride.
I shoved the shreds of ghost sheet under my bed and lay down. I was so tired I slept through dinner, but Ray came and woke me up in time to do the dishes.
* * *
I had asked Mom to hold onto my allowance for two weeks. It was no use my trying to save any money myself. No matter where I hid it in my room, somebody else in the house found it and stole it, unless I spent it as soon as I got it.
I tried to get her to bring her purse into the living room when she gave me the money so Ray and Will and Chris wouldn’t see, but, as always, she was oblivious to hints. “Here you are, darling,” she said right there in the kitchen at the breakfast table. She handed me two five-dollar bills. “Have a wonderful time.” She gave me another six dollars for the entry fee, and handed money around to my brothers too.