THE M.D. A Horror Story

by Thomas M. Disch

  Henry snorted.

  It was a minuscule snort, as snorts go, but it might as well have been a full-scale guffaw. Mrs. Obstschmecker’s glare became a laser beam.

  Henry tried to look away, he tried to control his breath, but it was too late. He could feel the first tremors of laughter shaking his chest. He lowered his gaze to the camera in his hand, hoping to hide the smile he could not restrain. And then, irresistible now, it welled out of him. First a chuckle. Then the long inhalation of surrender, and at last the fatal, fated laughter.

  Mrs. Obstschmecker rose in fury from the platform rocker and grabbed the camera from his hands. “Get out of my room!” she screamed at him. “Get out!”

  “Mother!” Madge pleaded.

  “Get out of my house!” She hurled the camera at her retreating son-in-law. It struck a framed photograph of the late Mr. Obstschmecker that hung beside the door, then ricocheted to knock a small ceramic poodle off its perch on a knickknack shelf. The glass of the frame and the poodle shattered, and Mrs. Obstschmecker began to choke, and then to gasp, from sheer incapacity to express by words or gestures the extent of her rage. Her face—and scalp—had darkened from their natural rosy pink to a pale, mottled magenta.

  “Mother, please. Henry certainly didn’t mean to—”

  “He meant to, all right,” Mrs. Obstschmecker declared, all of a tremble. “And I meant what I said. He’s leaving.”

  “Mother, the best thing for you to do now is sit down and calm yourself. You’re overwrought. And that’s dangerous. We can discuss this again in the morning.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss.”

  The doorbell rang. A separate buzzer had been wired from the front doorbell to Mrs. Obstschmecker’s bedroom so that she would be able to hear the ringing of the bell even here. The force of the old woman’s fury was converted at once to abject fear. “Madge, who can that be? At this hour? Oh dear God, I can’t let anyone see me like this. Where is that hat? Madge? Madge, what’s wrong?”

  Something was indeed very wrong with Madge if Mrs. Obstschmecker, in such extremity, should have been aware of it. But Madge, who was as little inclined as her mother to be seen to suffer, only shook her head vehemently and tried to make it to the bathroom in time, walking doubled-over in quick short steps. She still held the cap with the furry earflaps she’d helped Mrs. Obstschmecker remove, and when the first spasms of vomiting began, halfway to the bathroom, her unthinking impulse was to hold it up to her mouth to catch the vomitus. Even as the vomiting went on, Madge continued, slowly, to head toward the bathroom and so managed to reach the toilet without having soiled either her own clothes or the carpet. She emptied the pea-speckled contents of the ruined cap into the bowl of the toilet and then knelt down beside it to await the next spasm, which came at once.

  Mrs. Obstschmecker, while Madge went on vomiting, stood outside the bathroom door momentarily forgetful of her own distress. “Madge,” she called through the door (for she would never violate the sanctity of an occupied bathroom), “Madge, what is it?”

  Madge made no reply, except further retching sounds, but at the other door there was a light tap, and Henry said, “Don’t mind the doorbell, it was just the first kids coming for tricks or treats.” There was a pause, and he said, “Grandma O., I’m sorry about my laughing. I didn’t mean to. It just burst out, I couldn’t help it. But I truly am sorry.”

  “Go away,” said Mrs. Obstschmecker, unrelenting. “Just go away and leave me alone.”

  Turning away from the bathroom door, Mrs. Obstschmecker saw, framed in the night mirror of an uncurtained window, her own transmogrified image and held her hands up before her eyes to blot out the sight. The image of her own skull laid bare by a surgeon’s scalpel could not have been more horrible. We can all imagine death more easily than we can live with shame.

  The doorbell rang again.

  20

  When his father had left the room, which was illumined only by the toothless jack-o’-lantern’s glow, Billy did not turn on the lights but plunked himself down cross-legged in the middle of his bed and regarded the newly carved face with the disinterested patience of a well-fed cat surveying a mouse hole, not really expecting anything to happen but ready if it should and meanwhile pleased to contemplate a sight innately beautiful.

  The flickering light of the candle flame diffused through the pierced rind of the fruit and gave a faint, jiggly sort of life to things about the room, especially to the jointed cardboard skeleton that Billy had paid $1.95 for from his own money and that now hung on the wall beside the bed just opposite the jack-o’-lantern. Until this very moment Billy had felt that he’d pretty much wasted his money buying the skeleton, it hadn’t seemed that spooky. But now, by jack-o’-lantern light, it was thoroughly spooky. Death, Billy realized with a sudden flash of insight, was something that was finally going to happen to everyone, and that was why people celebrated Halloween and All Saints’ Day the next day, to remind themselves of that fact, and that’s why you hung up skeletons and jack-o’-lanterns. A jack-o’-lantern is a kind of skull, a skull that’s got a candle stuck in it, and someday your own skull is going to have all its mushy brains scooped out of it, or probably just rotted down to black glop the way a compost heap ends up, and it’ll be as empty as the inside of a pumpkin, and you’ll be dead.

  “Dead and gone,” people said, as if they knew for sure where you went after you died. But did they? Didn’t Billy already know more than anyone else could about heaven or hell or whatever it was than any of the priests and nuns at school who only told you stories they’d been told themselves, who didn’t know, the way that Billy did, what it was like to talk with a supernatural being, face to face, and to receive power from that source?

  He smiled at the jack-o’-lantern. Tonight he was going to use that power. Why not? Why not show the kids who thought it was so funny to laugh at him what it was like to be laughed at. He could do something really mean to them, like give them all diarrhea. He only had to figure out a way to do it.

  —Good evening, Billy, said a voice from quite nearby. It was a raspier, older voice than Billy remembered from before, but he knew whom it had to belong to.

  Reverently Billy replied: “Hi.”

  —I see you have already begun to celebrate my solemnities. I am pleased.

  Billy saw a black snake, segmented like a worm, ooze out of the light-flooded eye socket of the jack-o’-lantern, which was now not just a jack-o’-lantern but a skull at the same time. Strands of seedy pulp hung down from the skull’s gap-toothed jaw and waggled about as the skull spoke to him and the jaw was jerked about. The last bit of the snake squeezed out of the eye socket and dropped with a plop to the hardwood floor.

  —I am altogether pleased. You have wielded great powers without incurring harm to yourself. That in itself is unusual and worthy of praise. But worthier is the way you have made that power increase. Now tell me—and quickly, for this is a busy night for Saman, Lord of Death—

  “I thought you said you were—”

  The snake that had been crawling across the floor with a slow undulant motion reared up and hissed loudly, just as a monitor would hiss for silence in a classroom.

  —I have many names, as you do. Sometimes you are William, sometimes Billy, sometimes Bill. And so it is with me. Tonight, on All Hallows Eve, I am Saman, Lord of Death, and I would have you tell me now, at once, why you have summoned me to you?

  “Did I?” Billy asked, but the question was put more to himself than to the skull, which now was no longer a skull entirely but halfway to being a jack-o’-lantern again.

  Saman made no reply, but waited in a dignified way for Billy to answer his question. As he waited, a late-surviving moth perched itself upon the smiling mouth of the jack-o’-lantern and peeked into its flaming interior.

  “Okay,” Billy said, “maybe you can help me think of a way that I can take care of those kids in my class. Especially Lyman Sinclair and those friends of his.”

  Skull-fac
ed Saman grinned.—Why yes, I know just the thing. It’s something your father mentioned, don’t you remember? He said, “Didn’t you know that candy rots teeth?” Those were his words exactly.

  Billy nodded. He knew what Saman had in mind, and it was nastier than diarrhea. “How can I do it?”

  The moth crawled into the jack-o’-lantern’s mouth and a moment later there was a sharp popping sound and a flash of light.

  —See where my familiar Rottencore has found a nest to sleep.

  Billy looked and could just make out, at the base of the closet door, the broken stethoscope where it had fallen to the floor. Intertwined with its rubber tubing, the black wormlike snake had coiled itself so that tubes and snake were tangled into a single snarl, like the extension cords that were kept in the lowest drawer of the pantry cabinet.

  —Go to him, Saman commanded, and take him in your hands.

  Slowly, as though he were indeed a cat stalking some careless prey, Billy got up from the bed and crossed the room to the closet door. He stooped and inched his hand toward the motionless snake.

  —Take him in both hands, Billy, the voice of Saman bade, with a firm grasp. Do you think young Dr. Frankenstein would hesitate to touch any shape of mortal flesh? You must be fearless.

  Fearlessly Billy took the snake up in both his hands. It was soft and wet and cold, but though the coils of its black body stirred in the bowl of his joined hands, and though its head lifted to issue a lazy hiss, it did not seem to resist.

  Billy turned, snake in hand, to face his god.

  And there he stood revealed in his entire being, a naked man. But somehow colorless, bleached as sometimes on TV the color switches to black and white. A dead body it seemed, but alive. He was Saman, Lord of the Dead, and Mercury, the god of magic and science.

  The god smiled down on his worshiper, and spoke: —Bravely done, young Frankenstein, bravely done. Now, do you know what more you must do?

  Billy knew, but just to be sure he said, “Tell me.”

  —Take Rottencore to the attic. Lend him the power of the caduceus and feed him the candies you would curse. The curse is yours to give: I cannot speak it. Trust Rottencore and trust yourself. Be strong, and be careful. Increase of power brings increase of risk. And Billy?

  “Yes?”

  The god had vanished. Only the glowing jack-o’-lantern remained, grinning its toothless grin.—Happy Halloween.

  21

  The trick-or-treaters were coming to the door at a regular rate. Every five minutes or so there would be another little pack of them, in costumes of all degrees of imaginative design, from the perfunctory (one boy, who was large enough to have been a teenager, appeared all by himself with no disguise but a paper bag with eyeholes in it and “BOO” crayoned across the forehead) to the perfectionist (matching three-foot-tall ballerinas in tutus and toe shoes). Henry tended to favor homemade ghosts and witches with extra rations of licorice and candy corn and to scant the Dr. Spocks and Batmen who’d been put together at the five and dime or by K-Mart, but even for those he favored there were no Heath bars. The Heath bars had vanished from the kitchen table before Henry had been able to pocket a single one for himself, which was a source of real regret since, though they were his favorite candy bar, he hadn’t tasted one in years. He wasn’t generally much of a candy eater, but with a whole $2.79 bag of them in the house…

  He thought of calling upstairs for Billy, but so long as Madge was holed up with her hysterical mother there was no point in having Billy under his feet. It seemed strange that Billy wasn’t already in his costume and pestering Madge to drive him to Our Lady of Mercy, and Henry wondered if the boy had had another mood swing and decided he didn’t want to go to the school party after all. In any case, until Madge was ready, Billy might as well stay upstairs. Seeing the steady procession of trick-or-treaters coming to the house would only make him fretful that he couldn’t be doing the same thing.

  Madge didn’t come out of Grandma O.’s room till almost a quarter past seven, at which point she announced that she would not be able to drive Billy to his party. She was too sick.

  Henry began to object, thinking this was her way to punish him for pushing Grandma O. over the edge. But then he caught a whiff of the vomit on her breath and took a second look and realized that she wasn’t putting him on. “Jesus, you are sick. What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know, I just started throwing up and there was no stopping. Food poisoning, I thought, but Grandma O. says her stomach feels fine. One small blessing is that my getting sick seems to have calmed her down a little, though she’s still threatening you with eviction, as of noon tomorrow. That was a dumb thing to do, Henry.”

  “I couldn’t help myself. It’s just like throwing up. Once a laugh starts to come, there’s no stopping it. But that’s not important. You look terrible: if it’s not food poisoning…?”

  “It’s probably just all the hours of stress, and then that last scene in Mother’s room triggered it. While it lasted it was so violent. I don’t remember ever, ever being sick in just that way. But I feel all right now. My stomach must be totally empty. It was awful.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry.” Henry pulled her close to him for a kiss, and then crinkled his nose with mock disgust. “Phew! You better go brush your teeth.”

  “My comforter,” Madge said sarcastically, but with a grateful smile even so.

  “Can you handle the trick-or-treaters, if I walk Billy to his party?”

  “Sure, I’ll just put buckets either side of the door. But you don’t have to do that. When he came home, he said he didn’t want to go.”

  “I know, but it’s Halloween. And Halloween is like… I don’t know, it’s a kind of national Be Kind to Children Day, right? If he can walk to his damned school and back five times a week, I guess I can do it one night of the year.”

  “You’re a noble, self-sacrificing man, Henry Michaels, and as soon as I brush my teeth I’ll give you an award as Father of the Year.”

  “Give it to me now,” he said, nuzzling his nose against her cheek. “I think I could get into vomit. As long as it’s yours.”

  “Don’t be disgusting,” she said, turning her head aside.

  Before Henry could advance his conjugal flirtation further, the doorbell rang again. “Saved by the bell,” he said, taking up the divided serving dish in which he’d put the two kinds of candy and heading for the door.

  He was greeted by a lighted jack-o’-lantern of heroic proportions that was held up mask-wise by a child robed in dirty brown burlap. “Trick or treat!” a girl’s voice declared from behind the mammoth pumpkin.

  “Madge, come and look at this,” said Henry, genuinely impressed. Then to the girl bearing the jack-o’-lantern. “You are definitely this year’s winner for most original costume. How in the world do you get that pumpkin from house to house? It must weight twenty pounds.”

  “Surprise!” said a grown-up standing in the shadows beyond the reach of the porch light.

  The jack-o’-lantern was lowered to chest level, revealing the familiar features (for all that they’d been whitened with powder) of Judith Winckelmeyer. “Happy Halloween, Mr. Michaels,” she said in a thin but still musical voice that seemed all of a piece with her physical appearance, the prim lips and chiseled nose, the dark eyes and hair, the elfin face so well suited to the present occasion. There was nothing in Judith’s appearance (or, so far as Henry knew, in her character) that seemed to stem from the genes of her father, plump, prosperous Ben Winckelmeyer. “And you too, Mrs. Michaels, Happy Halloween.”

  “Judy. Sondra. This is a surprise,” Henry said. “Come in the house.”

  “Please.” Madge echoed the invitation hollowly. “Do.”

  Sondra stepped forward into the porch light. She was wearing a knee-length coat of tawny orange suede and carried a large layer cake with frosting in exactly the same shade of orange. A jack-o’-lantern face had been painted with black icing on top of the cake.

  Sondra smiled
her smile that said, Let’s forget about everything in the past and just try and be nice. “Is Billy still home?” she asked, pausing at the base of the porch steps. “Or has he already gone to his school party?”

  “He’s somewhere upstairs,” Henry said. “Getting into his costume.” He stared at his ex-wife with the same kind of respectful and purely theoretical hunger he felt for the cake she was carrying. When she’d been married to him, she’d never looked so foxy. It was all packaging, all icing on the cake, all the effect of Ben Winckelmeyer’s money.

  “I brought a cake,” Sondra said, with the same placatory smile.

  “I see,” said Madge, regarding the layer cake with a hunger anything but theoretical. Her emptied stomach rumbled its longing, and her mouth lusted for a slice. “It looks scrumptious.”

  Sondra mounted the steps carefully. Henry noted the boots she wore: calf-high, semi-western boots in the same suede as the coat. There was no telling what the whole outfit must have cost. She handed the cake to Madge and followed her stepdaughter through the door that Henry was holding open.

  Madge and Henry followed them inside. Room for the jack-o’-lantern was made on the mantel over the fireplace, and magazines and ashtrays were cleared from the coffee table in front of the couch so that the cake could be properly admired.

  “Judith made it all herself,” Sondra said, wriggling out of the sleeves of her coat to reveal a black silk blouse decorated with a pearl pin, which, if the pearls were real, must have cost even more than the outer, suede layer of her outfit.

  “It’s fun to cook,” Judith said. She’d seated herself cross-legged on the rug just to the side of the coffee table. “I’m just starting to learn, but I like it, it’s like doing chemistry. And it’s pretty to look at, too.”

  “Now,” said Sondra with a nervous laugh, “if she’d only learn that the result is meant to be eaten!”