The Curse of M

by Stevie Barry

  All awareness momentarily ceased, and when it returned she found Von Ratched had pinned her to the wall, one long, ungloved hand laid across her forehead. Lorna panicked, but she couldn't move, and no flying objects came to her aid this time.

  "Interesting," he said, regarding her with that terrible detachment. "You cannot summon it of your own will, and it only summons itself in times of great distress. Don't move."

  Like I have a choice. He was in her head again, she could feel it, yet somehow even that felt less violating than the hair-brushing. Possibly because this hurt, and she was no stranger to pain. "What're you doing?" she demanded, wishing she could flinch.

  "Turning it off," he said, as though it should be obvious. "As best as may be, at any rate.”

  He was in her head. He was in her head, she could feel it, and with that feeling came terror, terror mixed with molten wrath. Her mind stilled, and then there was only rage.

  ----

  Von Ratched watched this tiny woman, intrigued in spite of himself. He’d seen this before, but rarely -- rage so complete it crowded out all capacity for rational thought. It had always heralded a lack of self-control that he could, if he played this right, use quite well.

  For a moment she was quite motionless, staring at him -- the lights were on behind those eyes, but whatever was home, it was not Donovan. This was primal, ancient fury, downright inhuman, and he wondered just what quirk of evolution had led to something that would be such a liability. And then she moved, or tried to, and he thought he understood.

  Had he been a normal man, her sudden, seeking fingers would have found his eyes with little trouble, or at the very least given him some impressive scratches. There was absolutely no finesse in the kick she aimed at his gut, no forethought in the way she sank her blunt nails into his hand, and yet her ire loaned her a measure of strength she might not otherwise of have possessed. Unfortunately for her, she appeared to have no real skill to go along with it.

  Well, this could be dealt with later. He severed the thread of her consciousness, setting her down on the sofa, and summoned two orderlies. Once Donovan had been packed off to her room, Von Ratched surveyed the mess that had become his office.

  This place seemed full of never-ending kinks, as his superiors were so terribly fond of reminding him. Of course it was, he'd retorted. What they were attempting here was something that, so far as he knew, no one in history had ever tried before, simply because the opportunity had never arisen until now. You couldn't jam this many people with magical abilities into one place and expect to find no problems. It wasn't as though he'd hit anything he couldn't deal with, and he'd make damn sure he never did.

  Donovan, though…she was going to be difficult to manage, simply by the very nature of what she was. If he was going to find another such as himself, why did it have to be a foul-mouthed, foul-tempered, stubborn little creature? There was next to no chance she'd cooperate.

  He picked up the shattered remains of his lamp, musing. Logically it would have been safest to put her in isolation, but Von Ratched knew already that would be a bad idea. He didn't want to have to break her, but if he had no leverage over her he'd have no choice. She needed to form attachments, make friends -- give him something to threaten that wasn't her. Unless he was very much mistaken, she wasn't likely to cooperate on her own, and direct threats to her would likely get him nowhere. The fact that she could feel it when he delved into her mind was going to make his job very complicated. Complicated, but intriguing.

  He shook his head, locking his office and returning to his own quarters. The inmates had been penned for the night; it was quiet in the bland hallways, the lighting muted, and the rest of the staff had gone to their apartments. The quiet was soothing.

  His apartment was only one wing away from the main hospital. The others were housed as far from the inmates as they could get, but Von Ratched wanted to be near enough to deal with any emergencies. And he'd made quite sure everybody knew not to disturb him unless there was one.

  It was very unlike the rest of the Institute. The walls were a soft cream instead of stark white, the floor covered in heavy pale carpet. Simple mahogany furniture, a few pictures here and there, and a wall-sized bookcase filled with journals. In some ways he was very old-fashioned; he preferred to keep his notes on his patients in hard copy rather than on a computer. There were quite a few binders, too, containing their personal records. He didn't want those accessible to anyone but himself.

  He took down a blank notebook, writing Lorna Donovan on the square of pasteboard on the cover. Once he'd fixed himself a drink he sat at his desk, and momentarily paused.

  Subject Donovan presents the telepathy/telekinesis combination. At present she can control neither facet of her ability, and unless I find a permanent solution, she might well kill herself and everyone around her. And I must control it, not her: the last thing I need is for her to learn how to create wholesale destruction at will. She wrecked much of the cafeteria without even trying.

  I will work with her tomorrow, and see what might be done. I am unwilling to tell her that I have surprising difficulty in reading her mind, and just now I am hesitant to force the issue for fear of doing irreparable damage. She is a singularly stubborn creature; were she to find out about my difficulty, I have no doubt she would exploit it to the best of her ability. I must see what may be accomplished with the aid of drugs, though most definitely not the combination I used today.

  She is easily the most intriguing specimen I have ever found, and I wish she was likely to prove at all cooperative. Unfortunately, at present I believe I will have no choice but to break her eventually.

  I have assigned her the same room as Katje DaVries, who I hope will prove a mellowing influence. I must work with her soon as well, and continue observing Ratiri Duncan. Thus far he seems the best candidate for experiment 617, but I must make certain he is as stable as he seems. I do not want a repeat of my previous results, and I do hate having to kill an otherwise promising subject.

  ----

  Lorna woke every bit as disoriented as last time. She no longer felt sick, but she hardly felt human.

  It took her a moment to realize she hadn't gone blind. It was just very dark in here, wherever 'here' was; she was lying on what felt like a rather uncomfortable bed, under a few thin blankets. For one terrible moment she thought she was back in prison in Dublin, but when memory caught up with her, she wished she was still there.

  She blinked a few times, hard, and when her vision cleared she discovered there was a little light -- moonlight, very faint, filtering in through the room's lone, high window. It fell on a bunk opposite hers, which contained a vague lump that was probably a person. A tangle of shadow-darkened blonde curls on the pillow told her it was likely Katje.

  She tried to speak, but at first her voice was nowhere to be found. Her throat was desert-dry, and she had to cough a few times before she could form anything like words. "Are you awake?" she said quietly.

  "Ja. I mean, yes." Katje rolled over to face her. "You were gone a long time. What happen?"

  Lorna was a while in answering. She really didn't want to relate most of what went on in that office to a total stranger. "I found out the doctor's a right gobshite," she said at last. "What happened in the cafeteria after I'd gone?"

  "More people disappear. The send us all to our rooms early."

  There was a quiver of fear in her voice, and it took an errant thought for Lorna to realize it wasn't brought on by the cafeteria -- it was brought on by Lorna herself. Katje was bloody terrified of her.

  "Hey, don't be scared'v me, now. Sure God I’m shot full'v so many drugs it's all I can do to blink. Besides, I don't think Von Arsehole would've put me in here if he thought I could still hurt you."

  Katje relaxed, if only marginally. "How did you do that? In the cafeteria?"

  "Honestly? I haven't got a bloody clue. I don't think any've us knows how these curses work."

  "That? Not encouragement."

/>   Nothing in this place is, Lorna thought. Sleep was already dragging her relentlessly down again -- true sleep, not her earlier drugged stupor. If Katje said anything more, she didn't hear it.

  The nightmares found her immediately. They always did, no matter where she was, but in here they were exponentially worse. Surrounded by so many people who were already afraid turned her dreams into an absolute playground of horrors.

  She caught flashes of someone else's capture, the beatings and needles, a terrible churning mix of confusion, fear, and pain. Another young man who almost burned his girlfriend alive when he woke up with his curse, his memory of the stench of her charred flesh almost overpowering. A woman who had blown out the fuses in her entire apartment building, and who electrocuted the neighbor that ran in to see why she was screaming.

  On and on, in and out of too many people's personal hells, until her freewheeling mind latched onto the one person who wasn't drowning in their own horror.

  This was a good dream. It held a warmth and a light that was inexpressibly comforting. She was on a green field in what could easily have been Ireland, under a pale morning sky scattered with popcorn clouds. It was a little chilly, the grass beneath bare feet not her own soaked with dew. There was a heavy book in her hand -- a very brown hand, and that of a small child. Whoever was dreaming this had an amazing memory; she could feel the texture of the canvas cover under her fingers. This was a memory, a sweet childhood recollection rendered all the more beautiful by nostalgia. She had no context for it, but she didn't need one.

  Something of her own appeared on the horizon: her grandmother's cottage. Her grandmother had been an ancient woman by the time Lorna met her, and she stubbornly clung to the equally ancient cottage she'd lived in all her life. Rough stone walls, a low, sloping roof, and an herb garden that was now mostly tended by her herd of great-grandchildren. She'd had electricity put in because her eldest daughter badgered her so, but refused to heat the place with anything but her old iron woodstove. The floor was bare wood made silky-smooth by decades of hard scrubbing, the walls whitewashed rather than painted.

  Whoever's sleeping mind she shared found it curious, unaware that it was not the product of his or her own subconscious. She rode along unnoticed when they opened the door, exploring. She herself had always had very vivid dreams, and many details of the place now appeared. She'd been an adult when she first beheld the place, but she saw it now through this child's eyes.

  Other things melded in, pieces of a different home; a brick fireplace replaced the woodstove, and the walls shifted to white plaster. It was darker now, the sky outside the window heavy with clouds, but a sense of coziness suffused everything around her. A fire crackled brightly on the grate, dancing red and orange over heavy oak furniture. Somewhere a woman was singing quietly in a language she didn't know, and she let herself be buoyed by it, her own fear and anger melted away by the cadence of the alien song.

  ----

  Lorna woke in the morning remarkably clear-headed. It was still very early, the sky beyond the grated window just barely light, and in spite of her surroundings she felt immeasurably better than she had yesterday.

  Katje was still sound asleep, and Lorna was careful not to wake her when she got up. Someone had changed her clothes before putting her in here last night -- she now wore a long, pale grey T-shirt and pants like hospital scrubs. They were too big for her, pooling around her bare feet, which were instantly chilled by the tile floor.

  To her surprise, the little room had an adjacent bathroom. She would have expected this place to have communal showers like a regular prison, but she was glad to find it otherwise. While she had little use for modesty, she drew the line at showering in public.

  The shower itself was little more than a cubicle, containing soap and shampoo, but no conditioner. Great. Brushing her wet hair without it was going to take eons. At least there was a brush, as well as toothpaste and two toothbrushes.

  The hot water felt glorious, sluicing away the accumulated grit and sweat of the last two days. When she dried off, she actually felt human again. A pair of heavy white bathrobes hung on two hooks beside the shower, and she put one on over her scrubs before attempting to wring out her hair.

  Katje was awake by the time she returned to the room, blinking and rubbing blearily at her eyes. It wasn't fair -- even first thing in the morning the woman was gorgeous. There were no bags under her eyes, and her tousled hair looked artful, unlike the rat's-nest that Lorna's inevitably was.

  "Should still be some hot water," Lorna said, picking at her hair with the brush. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn't been able to eat much before the cafeteria descended into hell. "How're they going to feed us?"

  "Probably bring food to the rooms. I am thinking they will not want us many in one place for a while."

  Brilliant. Maybe she'd die of boredom, and be spared any more time here.

  Sure enough, breakfast arrived while Katje was in the shower -- oatmeal, orange juice, and a little plastic fruit cup. Lorna had it polished off in five minutes, and wished like hell she could have some tea. She was a halfway morning person: she liked getting up early, but only if she was fortified by a lot of caffeine.

  "I am going to get fat on this diet," Katje groused, when she emerged from the bathroom. "And I need conditioner."

  Lorna held up the wet, still highly snarled mass of her own hair. "You and me both. I wonder who we have to choke to get some."

  "Good luck," Katje snorted. "I cannot even get hand lotion."

  A stray thought told Lorna she wasn't griping out of vanity. Katje maintained her appearance as a matter of professional pride -- it was part of her business regimen as a prostitute. The idea of wanting to be a prostitute was so alien Lorna couldn't begin to understand it, and she wondered if there was any polite way to ask.

  She never got the chance. After a perfunctory knock, an orderly opened the door. "Come on, Donovan. Doctor wants to see you."

  "What, already? It's arse o'clock in the morning," she protested. She wasn't even close to ready to face him again.

  "Just be glad it's not earlier. Come on."

  She scowled, but went, wondering uneasily what drug he'd try on her now. Once upon a time she'd had no objection to drugs, but she'd got clean several years ago, and she didn't want to be forced back into being a total junkie.

  The sun had risen high enough to wash the sterile hallways pale gold. Katje, it seemed, was right; no other patients were about, and only a few orderlies. Now that she was fed and rested, she was better able to take in her surroundings. This place was as featureless as a real prison; most hospitals she'd seen at least attempted some kind of décor. Here there weren't even any pictures on the walls, and the lights were all harsh fluorescents. One of them buzzed erratically, and for some reason it irritated her chipped tooth.

  She was led to an exam room and there abandoned, which was somehow worse than it would have been if the orderly had stayed. It looked like exam rooms everywhere, with a papered table and blank white Formica cabinets. Having nothing better to do, she rifled through them, and found nothing out of the ordinary. Boxes of rolled gauze, plastic-packaged needles, tongue depressors, and a host of implements she recognized, even if she couldn't name them. It reassured her a little; whatever tests he intended to perform would probably be fairly standard. No dissection, at least not today.

  "Most people consider it rude to snoop, you know."

  Lorna jumped, dropping a canister of tongue depressors with a crash. "You people left me alone in here," she said. "What the hell else was I supposed to do?"

  Von Ratched crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. "Sit still," he said dryly. "Though it seems you are constitutionally incapable of doing so."

  She thought a rude word, fortunately remembering to do so in Irish.

  He didn't do anything as plebian as roll his eyes, though she suspected he wanted to. "Sit," he said, gesturing to the exam table. "Cooperate and you'll get out of
here sooner."

  Her first instinct was to argue with him, and she wondered what was wrong with her. Yes, she could be pretty belligerent by nature, but it would get her nowhere now. It was probably just because he made her so very uncomfortable.

  But she went, and even managed to keep her mouth shut while he fixed a blood-pressure cuff on her left arm. It was probably going to be through the roof thanks to him, and she hated that he'd have such concrete evidence of how much he unnerved her.

  Sure enough, when he noted the numbers he gave her a look of very faint amusement, and she fought the urge to kick him. It seemed he was aware of that, too.

  "I'm going to draw some blood, Donovan. Please refrain from blowing out all the lighting fixtures."

  Lorna almost wished she could. Apparently she wasn't upset enough, because nothing happened even when he inserted the needle. He paused to inspect her arm and she sighed, knowing what was coming next.

  "Track-marks," he observed. "No wonder you reacted so oddly to the drug I gave you."

  "What's your point?" she demanded, and when he looked at her he arched an eyebrow.

  "Are you always this combative?" His pale eyes were regarding her with an intensity she didn't like at all. His air of energy was too intense as well; it made his very presence exhausting.

  "Only when I'm around someone I don't like. And will you quit bloody looking at me like that?" God, it wasn't just the energy -- he was too damn close to her, invading her space to a degree that would have got most people punched. Strangely, she suspected that wasn't calculated, and wondered why she should think so.

  He straightened, taping a cotton ball over the puncture on her arm. "Like what?"

  "Like I'm some kind'v bug. I'm a human being, not a thing." Lorna finally gave in and scooted away from him, desperate to regain her personal space.

  Von Ratched set aside his blood sample, and when he turned back to her his intensity was even worse. "Interesting," he said. "You grow more belligerent when you are nervous."