by Ray Garton
With cold fear clutching her throat, she wondered, What else have I done?
At that moment, there was another scream in the large room, a woman, high and shrill and filled with fear and pain.
The crowd around Amelia began to break up and look for the source of the scream.
When they found it, Margaret put a hand over her mouth. Her purse dropped from beneath her arm as she groaned, “Oh, dear God, what have I done?” into her palm
30
“What the hell’s going on?” Dr. Plummer asked Derek as they met up in the corridor and both headed for Lynda’s room.
“She’s been vomiting,” Derek said, speaking rapidly. “At first I thought it was just all that food she’s been eating. Now it’s mixed with some blood. Blood pressure’s low, pulse is weak, and so is she. Very weak.”
“I was about to send her home,” Dr. Plummer muttered, frowning and clearly puzzled as he entered Lynda’s room with Derek right behind him. He went to her bedside, smiled down at her and said, “Hello, Lynda. I understand you’ve been disobeying house rules by not feeling well.”
She was pale and drawn. The very act of breathing seemed to be an effort for her. “Yeah,” she whispered, “I’m not . . . feeling well.”
Dr. Plummer lowered the side rail, took her blood pressure, felt her pulse in both her wrist and her foot.
“Can you sit up, Lynda?” he asked.
She made a grumbling noise in her throat and turned her head slowly from side to side.
Dr. Plummer sat on the edge of the bed and felt under the edge of her jaw. He made a low “Hmm” sound. Then he reached beneath her arm, probing her armpits with his fingers. He stood quickly and turned to Derek, stepping away from the bed with him, their backs turned to Lynda.
“Somehow, she’s gotten much worse,” he said. “Her lymph nodes are larger than ever. If she’s throwing up blood, I think we should — ”
There was a sudden thick, wet sound behind them and they both spun around.
Lynda had vomited all over herself and the bed.
This time, she had vomited nothing but dark, glistening, red blood.
“Call OR!” Dr. Plummer barked as he rushed to Lynda’s side. “Tell them we’re bringing down an emergency GI bleed stat!”
Derek hurried out of the room.
His eyes were wide, his smooth brow wrinkled with a frown, and his face had paled slightly.
“What the hell has happened?” he whispered to himself . . .
31
It was Natalie who was screaming. She was on the floor about three yards away from the group that surrounded Amelia.
She was kicking her legs and flailing her arms as people gathered around her to help, to see what was wrong.
“My God, Margaret!” Marty hissed, jerking his hands away from her shoulders. “What the hell’s going on?”
Margaret was unable to speak, so she couldn’t have replied even if she’d heard his question. She didn’t even turn to him. Instead, she pulled away from him and moved toward the second group that was forming around Natalie.
Margaret leaned between two people as a woman screamed and ran away from the group with both hands over her mouth, zigzagging through the Queen’s Parlor and out the door.
At first, Margaret could not comprehend what she was seeing. If she’d looked around at the other faces staring down in sickened horror — some of them looking away, and others running away in the direction of the screaming woman — she would have seen that she was not alone. No one seemed able to understand what they were seeing . . . not for several moments, anyway. Then, what was happening to Natalie became clearer, even though it still made no sense, and was no less horrifying.
Natalie lay on her back, her entire body jittering as if she were lying on a cheap motel bed that had been fed several quarters. Her arms and legs were stiff and trembling and jerked occasionally, sometimes violently, as if she’d lost control of them.
Her skin was tightening rapidly.
Actually, “tightening” did not seem to Margaret to be an accurate description. Yes, the skin on her face, neck and hands had tightened so much that those parts of her body looked like the grotesque mask and gloves of a Halloween ensemble.
But it was more accurate to say that the skin was shrinking, because it was beginning to split open. First, over Natalie’s left cheekbone. Then her chin. Then the back of one hand opened up, followed by a section of her scalp just above her forehead. Blood ran from the openings, and began to flow more freely as the cracks in Natalie’s shrinking flesh grew larger and larger, their edges peeling away from her face and head and neck and hands and wrists.
Two things happened at once. First, Natalie’s screams became ragged, wet gagging sounds. Second, her left cheekbone seemed to be crushed, as if by some invisible weight. It made a moist, crunching sound as it made her left eye bulge from its socket. Then her chin seemed to fold slowly inward, into her mouth, with a hideous crack, as her right hand folded in half, right down the middle, until all four of her fingers were pressed together.
As Natalie’s skin continued to peel away, shedding more and more blood, her body began to curl backward, as if she were having a seizure. The popping and breaking sounds that came from all over her body sounded like firecrackers going off in rapid succession.
There was more screaming — from women and men alike — as people continued to turn away, walk away, run away.
Someone, a man, shouted, “What the fuck is going on here?”
Margaret backed away as well, confused, frightened and sickened by what was happening to Natalie on the floor . . . but mostly frightened. She turned away, clamping her hands over her ears to block out those horrible cracking and popping sounds. She closed her eyes as well as she stumbled along, putting some distance between herself and the tortured woman on the floor.
What did I do? she thought as tears fell down her cheeks. What did I do to Natalie to cause that? I hardly even talked to her! I didn’t say anything to her, I just —
She froze, opened her eyes and stared at nothing, holding her hands an inch from her ears as her mouth opened in realization.
Margaret had said nothing threatening to Natalie, but she had thought some awful things as they spoke. And she remembered exactly what that thought had been:
. . . I hope you shrivel up and die, you cunt, I hope you shrivel up to the little doll you always thought you were, and I hope it hurts, too!
The words kept running through her head sharply, cuttingly: I hope you shrivel up and die . . . I hope you shrivel up . . . shrivel up . . .
“Oh, no . . . no, no . . . no,” Margaret whispered.
A hand touched her shoulder and she spun around to see Marty.
“Margaret, what’s wrong with — ” His words got caught in his throat as he stumbled backward, away from Margaret.
“Marty, please help me,” she said quietly, her voice barely audible above the yammering voices in the room. “Something’s wrong. Please help me.”
He stared at her in horror. His face became pale as he continued to back away.
“Marty?”
Finally, he turned his back to Margaret and stumbled away, glancing over his shoulder only once as he disappeared into the thinned-out crowd that seemed to be wandering around the room, talking, constantly talking, their voices combining to form a jittering hum.
He was gone.
Margaret stumbled forward. She was unable to control her legs as well as she had just minutes earlier; they felt heavy and artificial, as if someone had removed her own and attached wooden legs to her body.
She slammed into a chubby man with a nametag on the lapel of his suit, but she didn’t have time to read the name.
“Hey, lady,” he said, pushing her away gently, “this is a high school reunion. You shouldn’t even be in here!”
She started to give a nasty response, but he was already gone.
What did he mean by that? she wondered. That is was a high school reu
nion . . . that I shouldn’t be in here?
Margaret decided the best thing to do was to get out of the room, as soon as possible. In fact, she decided to get out of the hotel, to get back into her car and put it all behind her.
It was a mistake, that’s all. Just a horrible, horrible mistake. She hadn’t really meant to do anything to anyone. She was still unaware other abilities, unaware of whatever it was this “gift” allowed her to do, so it wasn’t her fault, it couldn’t be her fault because she hadn’t meant to do anything to anyone!
It was all just a mistake, and she had to put it behind her as soon as possible . . .
32
Lynda had been rushed into the operating room only minutes after vomiting blood all over herself and her bed.
Everyone moved quickly, smoothly and professionally, until Lynda was lying anesthetized beneath the bright lights of surgery.
Dr. Plummer — talking constantly, asking for Lynda’s vitals, giving orders — opened Lynda’s abdomen.
He usually had Bach playing in the operating room as he performed surgery, but he hadn’t taken the time to slip a disk into the stereo.
Even if he had, he wouldn’t have heard the music . . . not as he looked inside Lynda Donelly. In fact, none of the others in the room would have heard the music either . . . not over the sound of Dr. Plummer’s voice.
“Jesus Christ!” he blurted, his eyes gaping over his surgical mask, his forehead beaded with perspiration. “Holy Jesus Christ!”
Then, he just stared silently down at his patient, at her insides, his mask puffing out then sucking in with his rapid breaths . . .
33
In the lobby of the Royal House, people were hurrying back and forth frantically; some of the women were crying; some of the men looked horrified; nearly all of them were wearing nametags, but they passed Margaret this way and that so quickly that she recognized none of them. She felt like a city girl on a dude ranch caught in the middle of a stampede of cattle.
As she headed for shelter in the restroom, she stumbled in her heels. She suddenly felt very uncomfortable in the tight velvet sheath. In fact, it felt tighter in places than it had before; her hips felt squeezed by the material, as if they might rip through at any moment. She pressed a hand on the strapless top, afraid that it might drop down over her breasts.
Margaret pushed through the restroom door, vaguely noticing that it seemed much heavier than it had before. Once inside, she heard two female voices, one crying while the other spoke frantically, trying to sound soothing. They echoed slightly in the large tiled room. As she walked along the row of sinks, she saw no one else around, and assumed the voices were coming from a stall.
“Now, stop crying, stop crying,” one woman said. “I’m sure it’ll stop, I’m sure it’s just . . . oh, God . . . okay, we’ll get you cleaned up and call a doctor and — ”
“But it’s not stopping, Beth, it’s not!”
Margaret recognized the voice of the woman who was crying: Libby Shore.
“My God, it’s not stopping!” Libby cried, her voice shrill and cracked.
“Please, calm down, Libby, I’ll have to leave and get to a phone and — ”
“No, God, no, please don’t leave me!”
As they went on — Libby crying, the one named Beth consoling but sounding very nervous — Margaret bent forward, one hand on the edge of the sink as she stepped quietly along, looking beneath the doors of the stalls.
She saw the blood first. It was puddled and spattered on the beige and white tile floor in the last stall, the one against the far wall of the restroom. And it was running down the unmistakable stick-like legs of Libby Shore, running over her almost frail-looking calves and shins in rivulets.
“I think I’m gonna faint, Beth, I really do, I do,” Libby said, beginning to pant instead of sob.
Margaret stood up straight, frowning as she leaned her hips back on the edge of the sink, her hand still pressed to her chest.
Her heart thundered inside her as the crying and the talking went on and on . . . and the bleeding.
Bleeding, she thought. My God more bleeding. What . . . have I done now?
She closed her eyes and thought back to her conversation with the three women in the Royal Lounge.
“You’re so beautiful!” Libby had said just before embracing Margaret.
And Margaret had thought, while hugging Libby Shore, the once beautiful, popular Libby Shore, who had always been so proud of her periods in a complaining way, Margaret had thought, Oh, yeah, you too, you fucking twat, and I hope the next period you have gushes like a river and you drop dead in the puddle! Let’s see how proud you’ll be of that one!
Margaret’s eyes moved down slowly as she covered her mouth with a hand, moved down until they were looking at the blood that was gathering on the floor of that stall.
She started to move sideways, hips still pressed to the lip of the counter, hand still over her mouth.
“You’ll have to stay here while I — ”
“No, please, don’t leave me alone, I’m gonna be sick, I’m gonna faint, I swear!” Libby babbled.
“Just sit down on the toilet and try to relax,” the woman named Beth said. “I’ll just be a few seconds. I just need to find a phone — ”
The stall door opened and a non-descript woman with silver-streaked brown hair stepped out. Her eyes widened when she saw Margaret standing against the sinks, staring at the stall.
“Oh, thank God,” the woman said. She blinked a few times and looked Margaret up and down quickly with what looked like disgust. But she recovered quickly. “Ma’am. I’ve got a sick woman in here, could you get help? Find a doctor? Or better yet, just go to a phone and call an ambulance, okay? She’s really sick.”
Margaret just kept moving along the edge of the counter, walking like a crab, her heels making staggered clicks on the tile.
“Ma’am, could you please do that for me?” the woman asked. “Ma’am?”
Margaret reached the end of the counter and stumbled slightly.
“Are you all right, honey?”
There was a sound from the stall then, from behind Beth.
Libby fell. The sound of her head cracking on something hard was loud and unmistakable, and more than a little sickening.
Her bloody legs slipped out beneath the door of the adjoining stall having slid under the partition, and began to kick rapidly. Her heels made a clickety-clattery sound on the tile, the sound of a drunken tap-dancer, except that it was a moist sound, cushioned by the blood that now clung to Libby’s shoes like a skin.
“Oh my God!” Beth cried, spinning around and looking down at the now limp form on the bloody floor. Without looking at Margaret again, the woman bent over Libby and shouted, “Get someone! Please get someone!”
Margaret staggered through the restroom’s small lounge and back into the lobby.
The ambulance had arrived and its lights were spinning outside the glass doors of the entrance. Paramedics were rushing through the crowded lobby with a stretcher and their equipment.
Margaret turned away from them and began to walk, just walk as quickly as she could. But that was not very fast. She could hardly take a steady step. Surely she hadn’t had that much to drink, had she?
Her dress felt tighter around her hips, so confining that it was difficult to walk. And the top felt even looser than before. She knew that if she took her hand away, it would fall open.
She kept walking, stumbling, staggering, until she found herself in a narrow, dimly lighted corridor.
She smelled food cooking. There were muffled voices nearby, and the sounds of clattering metal and plates.
The kitchen, she thought. The kitchen’s around here somewhere. Maybe there’s a back way out. Yeah, I won’t have to go through the lobby again. Just get the hell out of here, get to the car and leave. Yeah.
A shaft of light came from an alcove up ahead and to the right. She hurried toward it, turned, saw the big door with the window in
it, saw people scurrying around inside, in the kitchens and she moved forward, hand out to open the door.
Her foot kicked something and she tripped, falling against the wall to the left of the door as she looked down.
A man was sprawled on the floor, sitting up with his back to the wall opposite her. His legs were spread, but not very far, because his pants were pulled down to mid-thigh.
He was murmuring, voice garbled, words unintelligible.
He was covered with blood.
Margaret saw that he was holding something in his bloody right hand, something small and limp and glistening with blood.
She looked at his face.
His eyes were wide and his mouth was working in a rubbery sort of way. He was white as flour.
It was Brandon Lyons.
“Oh, no, oh God no!” Margaret groaned. She spun around the corner of the alcove and into the corridor, doubled over and vomited onto the carpet. Her hand dropped from her chest and when she finally stood and leaned against the wall, exhausted, the top of her sheath crumpled down around her breasts. But she didn’t notice, and she wouldn’t have cared if she had.
She knew only one thing: she had to get out of the hotel.
Margaret turned and went back the way she came, though she wasn’t quite sure where she was. She ducked into one corridor, then another, realizing they were the wrong ones, all the while wondering what else she had done, what else she had thought, what other use she had made, however inadvertently, of what Mrs. Watkiss had called a “gift”.
As she finally staggered into the lobby, a woman screamed.
Margaret remembered a thought she’d had while hugging Vikki Robinson earlier, a thought that had been hidden behind a gushy smile:
. . . I hope you lose that figure, you cunt . . .
There was another scream.
. . . I hope you blow up like a balloon — your fucking sagging cheeks, too . . .
As Margaret made her clumsy way to the lobby’s entrance with the top of her dress sagging beneath her bare breasts there was a third scream, this one sounding as sickened as it sounded horrified. It was quickly joined by others.