The Curse of M

by Stevie Barry

  "'Course I'm nervous, you twat," she retorted, scooting even further away. "I'm in the same room as you. Why d'you do it? Why d'you go out'v your way to be so blasted creepy? What's the point?"

  He tilted his head, regarding her inquisitively. "And what makes you believe it is intentional?"

  "What else'd it be?" she demanded. "Nobody's that creepy without years'v fuckin' practice, but why?"

  There was a definite edge of hysteria in her voice now, and sure enough, there went one of the light bulbs. Lorna ducked and swore, but before she could crawl under the exam table, Von Ratched grabbed her by the wrists and hauled her upright again.

  "I wondered what it would take to drive you to that," he said, and once again he sounded unsettlingly delighted.

  "Get off!" she cried, and now she did kick him, though her bare feet rendered the action useless. "I mean it!"

  "Of course you do," he said, entirely too calmly for the present situation. "Now unless you want to kill us both, I suggest you hold still."

  And there he was, in her head again. He was in her head, and then there was rage and heat and Lorna was no more.

  --

  Now this was intriguing. Von Ratched had expected anger, but he hadn’t expected this...blankness...again so soon. He set her down on the exam table, wondering how such a small woman could be so heavy, and eyed her for a moment. Curious, he ventured into her mind.

  He searches for some wellspring that might produce the mindless wrath she’d demonstrated on their first meeting, and now again -- the primal, inhuman fury that takes away rational thought and leaves nothing but feral instinct.

  But no. No, it’s not quite feral, is it? It lurks there, deep in the depths of her mind, formless and limitless and without, so far as he can tell, any real source. It is part of the bedrock of whatever passes for her soul, but there is an edge of malice to it. Her brother calls it ‘the thing that lives behind her eyes’, and it is this which she fights against, why she struggles on behalf of those she loves. Deep inside, she fears herself, fears what she could become without those loved ones, her living morality chains.

  What is she? What is she, this tiny ball of wrath and fear?

  He isn’t sure, but oh, he looks forward to finding out.

  Chapter Four

  Thankfully, the explosions ceased once Donovan was well under. Von Ratched set her on the exam table and dabbed at his lip, unsurprised when it came away bloody. He'd thought she was bad enough drugged; sobriety, it seemed, made her downright violent. How could so much anger be contained in such a small creature? Even when he'd only touched the surface of her mind, he felt it simmering in her subconscious.

  She had a spot of his blood on her forehead, and he wiped it away with the pad of his thumb. He hadn't intended to start his first experiment on her yet, but it would probably be wisest to get it out of the way now. If he was ever to properly block off her telekinesis, he had to know just what he was dealing with.

  He summoned Nurse Grieggs, who gave his split lip a startled look. "Take her to F wing," he said. "And when I am through with her, allow the patients into the common room. I want to see if they've learned to behave themselves."

  She nodded, and went to fetch a gurney while he attended to his lip. This was the second time Donovan had drawn blood on him in as many days, and he didn't like that at all. Bad enough the inmates had seen him wounded once -- they couldn't be allowed to see this. DaVries and Duncan would have to wait. Unfortunately for Donovan, that meant she was his pet subject for the next few days, and he had to be careful not to push her too hard at once. Damn.

  He left for F wing when Grieggs returned. Very few people were allowed in here, and fewer still knew what he did with all the peculiar machinery it held. Von Ratched was a man who liked to conduct his true work in private.

  The particular device he intended to use now had never been tried before. He'd built it on the off chance he should ever find another such as himself, and he was glad he had. It saved him the bother of trying to design something on the fly.

  It looked deceptively simple -- a plain Formica table with a nylon head strap at one end. Two prongs holding wire-thin needles sat to either side, the steel bright in the glow of the overhead lights. No fluorescents in here; if he was going to spend an extended amount of time somewhere, he preferred the space be at least marginally appealing.

  He loaded the still-unconscious Donovan onto the table, strapping her head in place and securing her arms in the table's padded restraints. Mindful of how hard she could kick, he tied her feet down, too. It was always possible she'd wake up in the middle of the procedure, and if she did she'd panic. Drugging her was out of the question just yet; he didn't want to risk tainting the results. On with the leads that would monitor her vitals, pulse and blood pressure and oxygen level: he needed to know how far this was physically pushing her as well.

  Her hair was going to be a problem. He finally just let it hang off the end of the table, the ends brushing all the way to the floor. Logically he really should just cut it off, but he didn't want to imagine the kind of tantrum she'd throw if he did. Half the hospital might not survive.

  The point of this exercise was to determine what, if any, defenses she had. Von Ratched could have used his telepathy, but he'd much rather observe from the outside, in his own controlled environment. Once he knew how much she could or could not do, he'd know how hard he could push her without causing actual damage. Then he could set about properly leashing her telekinesis, if not the telepathy. That would be a problem all on its own.

  He took off his gloves again when he went to the instrument panel, turning the first dial. There were six of them, five controlling sensory input, the sixth essentially a telepathic hammer. They would have to see how that worked -- or didn't, as the case may be.

  A faint whirring filled the air, and no sooner had the needles pierced her temples than Donovan did wake.

  "Don't move," he ordered, before she could even open her mouth. "So long as you remain still this will not harm you, but if you try to get up I won't be responsible for what happens to you."

  She swore, but for what had to be once in her life did as instructed. Her blood pressure was already elevated, her cardio-monitor beeping frantically, but for a former addict she was a remarkably healthy woman. She wasn't going to go and die on him for no reason. The speed of her pulse ratcheted up a notch when he added auditory input -- this was, he imagined, something like an acid-trip for her. At least it would seem marginally familiar, if in no good way.

  Her hands twitched, and he glared at her. "Stop moving, you foolish woman."

  "Focáil leat," she ground out, and he reflected that he really was going to have to study Irish Gaelic soon, if he was to deal with her on a regular basis. She'd gone pale as her smock, sweat beading her forehead, and when he added tactile hallucinations, she screamed. Ordinarily he founds his subjects' screaming vastly irritating, but there was something almost musical about hers, even if it threatened to split his eardrums.

  He dialed that one down for now, leaving her to choke and wheeze. If he was fortunate, perhaps she'd pass out again. Already he'd decided she was much easier to deal with unconscious, if rather less entertaining.

  Leaving the sensory stimuli as they were, Von Ratched turned to the sixth dial, shifting it just a fraction. As he'd suspected, she was too busy reacting to her artificial hallucinations to notice its effects, so increment by slow increment he turned it up. Now was the time to add the drugs; hopefully they would shut her up.

  No sooner had he gathered his assorted chemical cocktails, though, than she screamed again -- a cry not of pain but of pure animal terror. He turned just in time for every light in the room to explode, right as Donovan ripped out all her restraints and half-fell, half-scrambled off the table.

  The room plunged into darkness only for a moment before the yellow emergency lights kicked in. He raced over and grabbed her shoulders, at first thinking she might be having some kind of seizure,
but no; her hands were tearing at the needles in her temples, both snapped clean from their moorings. Blood welled from the two small wounds, so dark it looked black in the dim light, and still she screamed, a note of unimaginable grief joining her fear. What had happened to her?

  "Donovan," he said, prying her hands away from her temples and replacing them with his own. Her blood welled hot between his fingers, and he swore inwardly. "Donovan. Lorna, look at me."

  To his relief she did, insofar as she was able, but it wasn't him she saw. Her wide blank eyes looked on some terrible inner hell, and her screams gave way to a low, agonized keening. She'd go insane at this rate, if he didn't do something.

  He pressed his forehead to hers, diving into her mind with all the care he could summon. Chaotic though it was, he could at first find nothing that should draw such an extreme reaction from her --

  He hit it without warning, as abruptly as though he'd slammed headlong into a wall in the dark. This, this had to be it, but how? He'd run up against a mental block so deep it was likely she wasn't even aware of it, a block so impenetrable he couldn't so much as dent it. All he could do was regard it in something perilously akin to shock, almost unwilling to believe in the thing's existence. There was simply no way she'd created the thing herself; it was far too old and well-established, embedded into the very bedrock of her psyche. Something possibly stronger even than he had placed it there, and what on Earth was he to make of that?

  As gently as he could he disengaged his mind from hers, and found her still staring at some inner hell. Her keening had stopped, but she was rocking back and forth, silent tears mingling with smears of half-dried blood. It turned her face into something like a ghoulish mask, and he stared at her, for once unsure what to do. If he simply knocked her out in this state, she might well remain in it when she woke again. He wouldn't be able to do anything with her if she stayed this close to catatonic indefinitely.

  "Sleep, Donovan," he said, casting about for some pleasant image to force on her. He had to wipe this entire incident from her mind, though there was no knowing how much damage such a drastic excision might cause. It was surely better than the only alternative.

  He skimmed a finger over her wounded temple, taking all that he dared. Whatever was left she would think of as nothing more than a nightmare. She doubtless had enough in this place as it was.

  Sleep she did, all the tension draining from her in less than a minute, and now he could allow himself to be annoyed. That was an expensive machine she'd just annihilated, and who knew what she'd done to his other instruments. This damn woman might be more trouble than she was worth after all.

  He lifted her and returned her to the table, ignoring the tangle of wire from her vital leads. She looked vulnerable in a way that seemed quite wrong for her; there was no fire in her now, and he wondered if this disaster had put it out permanently. Donovan might be irritating at best, but he found he didn't like the idea of diminishing her. She was aggravating, but she was a fighter, and if anything was going to break her, it should be something nobler than this. And it would preferably wait until he had performed more tests.

  "I still don't know what to do with you, Donovan," he sighed. "Something has to give, and it will not be me."

  ----

  Ratiri was incredibly surprised at how soon they were all allowed out of their rooms. After something like the previous night, he would have expected the whole place to be on lockdown for a week.

  He didn't count it as a good sign, and neither did many others. Von Ratched, they'd discovered, never did anything without a reason, and there was no way this was motivated by benevolence.

  "He let us out, but he is not here. That is not comfort."

  He looked at Katje, seated beside him on one of the rec room's long couches. Even she looked unsettled, and she had one of the best poker faces he'd ever seen. She was a little too pale, and though she sat still enough, her hands kept twisting the hem of her smock. "You're beginning to understand," he said, a little sadly. She'd only been here a few days, and until now, she'd outwardly adapted almost suspiciously well. She made connections left and right, was funny and flirty in equal measure, but her aura gave her away. Whatever her outward behavior, she didn't truly trust anyone, not even him. At least she'd quit hitting on him; that had been awkward for him, if not for her.

  "Shouldn't have to learn. It ain't right."

  Ratiri leaned around Katje to look at the couch's other occupant, an older man who had been brought in the day before Lorna. "Nothing's right, here," he sighed. "This entire place is the epitome of wrong."

  He glanced around at the rest of the inmates, most also huddled on various couches. The Institute's recreation room -- this one, anyway; Ratiri was positive there had to be more -- was a large place, the only room he'd yet found that wasn't stark beyond belief. They let the inmates paint and write on the walls, and the result was a hodgepodge of graffiti that made it literally look like the proverbial room full of crazy. The windows weren't as large as those in the cafeteria, but they were much better than the tiny things in the private rooms. They looked out on flat, harsh scrubland, low-growing tundra patched here and there with frozen puddles. Wherever they were, it was very far north: he was wagering either upper Canada or Alaska.

  "Katje, how did you get here?' he asked, turning back to her. "They didn't take you in Amsterdam, did they?"

  She shook her head. "They catch me in airport in Montreal, almost as soon as I was off plane."

  "What about you?" he asked the man. On closer inspection, the old man wasn't actually old; he was perhaps in his late fifties, but so weathered and worn he looked more like seventy. He still had plenty of hair, a shaggy thatch of salt-and-pepper in desperate need of cutting, and surprisingly piercing, faded blue eyes.

  "Seattle," he said. He rubbed his jaw, and Ratiri noted with mild horror that both his hands were twisted with old burn scars. They couldn’t possibly have been properly treated when the injury happened -- it was a wonder he had any use of his fingers at all.

  Ratiri looked away, not wanting to ask. So far, everyone he'd talked to had been caught in either the States or Canada -- it was probably safe to guess this place wasn't a global venture. All the staff sounded American to him, though for all he knew a few might be Canadian as well.

  And most of the 'orderlies', he was sure, weren't any kind of medical personnel. They moved more like soldiers, and seemed ill at ease in their scrubs. But even they weren't as bad as some of the staff -- he was quite sure some of them were cursed themselves, and they were most definitely not on the inmates' side.

  Doctor Hansen, who Ratiri had only met recently, might be promising. He looked very young for a doctor, possibly just out of medical school, and he was so new Ratiri would bet he didn't know what was really going on here just yet.

  It was almost as though Katje herself was a telepath, because no sooner had he thought of Lorna than she said, "The little explosion woman was put in my room last night, but they come and get her again this morning. She seem okay, though very…" she mimed jabbing a needle into her arm.

  "Drugged?" he offered.

  "Yes. I think she will not disappear forever like the others."

  He wasn't surprised Von Ratched hadn't killed her -- not if her curse was as similar to his as it appeared. What was unexpected was that she'd been put with another inmate at all, however briefly, and that it was an inmate she'd spoken to.

  "I see circles in your head spin," Katje said. "What are you think?"

  "I'm not sure how safe it is to say." He was thinking that he should be glad Lorna's unintentional outburst might provide a shade of hope -- that it had demonstrated that, terrifying or no, Von Ratched was human -- but he wasn't. In the short amount of time he'd spoken with her, he didn't think she'd be able to handle having that level of focus put on her, and he didn't want her to have to try. And God only knew what Von Ratched was doing to her; she was too valuable to be physically harmed, but the doctor had made it abun
dantly clear he didn't need to touch someone to hurt them. If his curse was truly like hers -- if he was a telepath as well as a telekinetic -- it would explain a lot, and not in a good way.

  The not-really-old man snorted. "Probably not safe to even think in here."

  Ratiri leaned around Katje again. "Why would you say that?" This bloke hadn't been anywhere near Lorna -- surely he hadn't heard her mention her telepathy.

  "I see things. I think the word's precognition or something. Done it for years, but it's damn near useless 'cause I can't control it. Makes me forget shit, too; hell, I don't even know my own name. Gone by Geezer as far back as I can remember."

  Suddenly, Ratiri's own curse didn't seem so bad at all. "Nice to meet you, Geezer," he said. "I'm Ratiri, and this is Katje. Does anyone else know what it is you do?" Heaven help him whenever he came to Von Ratched's attention.

  Geezer snorted again. "Somebody does, or I wouldn't be here. They've gotta have some of us working for 'em."

  "Kapo," Katje said.

  "Huh?" Geezer asked.

  "Kapo," she repeated, and paused, apparently searching for the English to explain. "In second World War, the camps would sometimes let prisoners work with guards. They call them Kapo, and my grandmother say they could be worse than SS."

  Katje looked awfully young to have had a grandparent who'd survived a concentration camp, Ratiri thought. "She told you that?"

  "She did. And I think maybe we go that way again. You think it is bad in America -- in Holland, they shoot us if they catch us. Is why I ran away."

  "Jesus," Geezer muttered. "Dunno, though, getting shot might be better'n being in here."

  "Lullepraat," she retorted. "I think it translate as 'bullshit'. There are always ways to -- I think you say work the system. You just must know how."

  She seemed to be doing that already, Ratiri mused. There didn't seem to be anything calculated in the way she made friends here, but it definitely wasn't hurting her any. She was flirty by nature, and even without make-up she was gorgeous, but it was more than that. There was just something eminently likeable about Katje, even if he was convinced a lot more went on in that blonde head than she ever let on. He wasn't about to give her away; if she preferred to let most people think she was shallow, that was her business. Being underestimated probably had its advantages.