Stern face yielded to forgiving smiley face. He reached out: offering a hug.
Hayley stood up and stepped forward. She stood rigidly and let him hug her. His arms patted her back consolingly, even though she wasn’t weeping, nowhere near it. No inappropriate touching took place however. No hand on the arse.
Maybe he’s just being nice?
‘Good girl, Hayley,’ he whispered, his head close to hers, and his lips brushed her hair.
Oh Jesus.
Larry let go. Stepped back. Still smiling. ‘Mop, dissection room, I think you know the drill.’
‘Yeah sure, Larry.’
He was looking her up and down. What did he want?
‘You might say thank you,’ Larry said, aggrieved.
‘Sorry. Thank you, Larry.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Later that day, at the end of the afternoon, Hayley read the pathologist’s post mortem report on Carter, Jane Allison with astonishment. Same findings: larger organs than might be expected for a woman of this size, highly developed musculature. Cause of death cerebral haemorrhage, consistent with the massive trauma of being hit by a lorry at speed and hurled through a car windscreen, combined with blood loss due to the severing of the carotid artery. Damage to internal organs, three broken ribs, bleeding into the lungs. Arms and legs broken in several places.
But the physical sectioning and analysis of the brain had revealed no foreign objects. No egg-like thing. And yet the MRI image was crystal clear. No room for doubt. So what was going on?
Would the pathologist have seen the virtopsy? Hayley wondered. Did he know what to look for? And could he just have missed it, the egg-like thing?
But he couldn’t have missed it! That was impossible! Unless – unless –
A resolve formed in Hayley’s mind.
Too many scary movies?
I’ll fucking show ’em.
Hayley went home at 6pm then walked back to the hospital again at 10pm. The mortuary was locked up but Hayley had keys, she didn’t have to break in. She had no legal basis for re-entering her place of work, however. And even when she was on duty she wasn’t allowed to touch the bodies except to strip them. She felt weird; she’d never done anything like this before. But it was exciting. Telly-thrillerish, really.
The dissecting room had fluorescent lights dating from the 1970s that leeched the sheen from the stainless steel of the autopsy tables and the sinks. She blinked, gagging on the stench of the vicious detergent the cleaners laid down each night.
Hayley blinked again. The overhead lights always irked her good eye; they gave her migraines sometimes. She was wearing jeans and a hoodie but she took the hoodie off and underneath she had an old T-shirt she’d once used to paint the hall. Smeared and filthy and not washed since she’d stuck it in the wardrobe.
She put on latex gloves and disposable overalls and with a flourish, donned a face mask and goggles. Then she strode into the next room where the cold chambers were housed, and identified the correct door from the hand drawn map sellotaped to the wall. She opened the top right chamber where CARTER, JANE ALLISON was being stored. Once a junior manager with an insurance firm. Now, naked and ice-cold on the silvery body tray. Her pale flesh marked with scars from the crash and the pathologist’s probing knife.
Hayley used the hydraulic trolley to transfer the body out of the chamber. She wheeled it back into the dissecting room. She was trembling now from proximity to the freezer-chilled air, and from fear. She could be sacked for what she was about to do. She could go to jail.
Why am I doing this?
The answer was obvious. Her pulse was racing, her hearing was unnaturally acute, she could smell every rank trace of the body and the chemicals in the dissecting room, and she was even able to feel the crackle of the air from the fluorescent lights. She’d never been good at sports but she knew this must be what it felt like to run the hundred metres at a record speed, or score the winning goal. Adrenalin high; endorphin rush: it was the thing she’d heard so much about but never experienced. It was the buzz.
Okay, so danger turns me on. I never knew that.
She zippered open the body bag to expose the head. Same woman; same raven-black hair; definitely dead. Like a waxwork dummy, not sinister, just unreal. The fissure on the skull was visible, running from ear to ear; this was where the pathologist had opened up the cranium to remove the brain in order to dissect it.
Hayley picked up a scalpel and hacked at the old cuts, chiselling away clumsily, tugging at the bone as if she were levering up an old floorboard.
Then, latex gloves slick with blood, she rocked the skullcap until it came away. She removed the dura mater, a scary little thing, and put it on the sink. The brain was now exposed, as pinkly raw as a wrinkled peach. Hayley blinked. She was sweating but didn’t want to wipe her brow.
She lifted the brain out of the cranium, carefully; it was in parts, in a plastic bag. She placed it on the metal sink that was a built-in part of the autopsy table. Now she wiped her brow, with a bare forearm.
She remembered to breathe: and did so, swiftly.
She took Jane Carter’s brain out of its plastic covering. It had been sectioned with a brain knife, then put back together like pieces of a jigsaw. She eased the pieces apart until it resembled a loaf sliced by a greedy child.
She tried to remember the placing of the foreign object in the MRI. Middle of the brain? She inspected each section in turn. Then she took off the goggles and looked each part of the cerebrum through binocular loupes. Still no trace of any foreign object. Finally, exasperated, she picked up each slice of brain in turn and fumbled inside the cerebral matter with her fingers, like a toddler searching for the threepenny bit in a Christmas pudding. And on the third go she felt a lump. She pulled it out.
An object, hidden inside the victim’s brain.
Oh boy.
She could visualise the headlines: LEEDS WOMAN FOILS TERROR PLOT.
It occurred to her that if this were indeed a bomb, it might blow up. Time, perhaps, to exit at haste, and call the cops.
But she had to find out more. She peered at the object. It was like a very small egg. Exactly the same diameter as the brain slices she had cut. That in itself was bizarre. She dabbed at the object with a latexed fingertip. Soft to the touch. Not metal, then. Not a bomb, then. So was it just a tumour? Had this woman been carrying an undiagnosed tumour the size of a pigeon’s egg?
She looked closer. She lifted the scalpel and went to cut into the surface –
The egg-like thing moved.
She put the scalpel down. The egg-like thing was still. She picked it up again. The egg-like thing moved, slithering away from her on the metal table.
This must be how it had avoided detection. It had moved around inside the dead woman’s brain, wilfully, to avoid the pathologist’s probing knife.
Good news: Mystery solved.
Bad news: Bigger mystery now in its place.
Fuck me. This is seriously spooky shit.
She took off a glove and cupped the egg-like thing in her palm. It was warm. Soft. And she could feel it – it was pulsing. Hayley placed the object carefully back on the work surface. She washed her hands in the sink of the autopsy table, rinsing blood off both hands, the bare one and the gloved one. She could see crumbs of brain tissue in the sink. She swallowed. She told herself she wasn’t allowed to puke.
Danger turns me on, huh?
It also makes me want to crap myself.
Careful, Hayley, careful.
She plugged in the halogen light and aimed the beam and took a closer look. The tightly focused ray lit the egg-like implant with extraordinary vividness, like headlights dazzling a rabbit. Hayley could see the surface of the ‘egg’ was marbled, flecked with green and purple. The pulsing was unmistakeable. Hayley could see a shadow inside. The shadow was throbbing, rhythmically; like a pulse. Like a –
An egg.
The egg-like thing actually IS an egg.
; What kind of person has an egg in her brain?
Hayley stifled a laugh. By this point, it was more surreal than terrifying.
‘You came back to help me. Thank you.’
What?
A whisper; a murmur; like hearing a phone ring two rooms away.
‘Thank you so much. Here, I’m over here.’
Hayley turned. The corpse was sitting up on the autopsy table. Its pale face was leering. The top of its skull was missing, creating a flat altar above its staring eyes, like Boris Karloff in the old movies. Its ice-cold dead lips were murmuring to her:
‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’
Hayley stifled a scream, and took a step back.
Not again!
At that moment she realised that something had happened to the hacked-up brain on the stainless steel work surface. It seemed different somehow. She looked at it more closely. What was different?
It dawned on her that the sections had rejoined. It was now a whole brain again, with scars like painted on lines where the pathologist’s knife had cut it up.
Optical illusion?
No, it was real. The slices of brain must have reached out to each other and merged, like jelly voluntarily clambering into a jelly mould.
And now the re-formed brain was shimmering; the pinkish-beige surface of the cortex was trembling. She wondered if it was going to explode, like some kind of comedy brain. Instead, and worse, a stalk of protoplasm shot out of the rear of the cerebrum, the spot where the stub of the spinal cord was located. It was like a tiny pink finger. Or a limb. Then another stalk emerged from further along the brain. The trembling became more intense. More stalks were sprouting out, like eyes on a potato in a damp cupboard, then they were expanding, twitching. And now the stalk-tips were touching the work surface like fingers exploring a lover’s body. It was undeniable: the brain was growing legs.
‘Speak to me,’ said the corpse.
It was a tennis match of horror; what the fuck was she supposed to look at? The talking corpse? Or the animate brain with legs?
Hayley looked at neither; she stared at the floor. ‘What you want me to say?’ she mumbled, so quietly that even she could barely hear it.
‘Tell me your name.’
No!
‘I’m Hayley.’
‘I’m Jane.’
Hayley tilted her head up a fraction. She was looking at the corpse at an angle now, that made it better somehow.
‘You’re dead,’ Hayley said aggressively.
‘It takes a lot to kill my kind.’ Its lips were twisted – was it snarling? No, the corpse was smiling, perhaps in an attempt to reassure her.
Don’t smile. Please don’t smile.
‘What exactly is your kind? Who are you? Why are – Fuck,’ said Hayley, interrupting herself, as she made a brilliant logical leap.
The brain controlled the body; that’s what brains did, right? Hence without its brain the body would die.
And so she grabbed the organ knife; and with a double handed downwards strike, she stabbed the brain. She hacked at it. She ripped off chunks and they spilled on to the floor. And then she smashed the crumbs with the flat of her hand: Bang, bang, bang! The metal echoed. Her hand was damp and sticky with what once had been cells generating thoughts.
‘You would do that, to me?’ the corpse said, nastily. The scattered brain parts were twitching still, but it was no longer functioning, no longer a whole entity. But that made no difference to the talking corpse. It slid off the autopsy table. It tottered, got its balance. It stared at Hayley. It raised up its dead, cold hands and reached out to her. ‘How could you do that to me?’ it wailed.
It’s going to kill me. It’s going to fucking kill me!
Hayley snarled and with knife in hand she lunged at the corpse, intending to gouge the eyes then hack it to pieces.
The half-headed corpse dodged the blow with preternatural speed and grace; and Hayley swung at air and narrowly missed hitting the steel table with the knife.
The corpse took a pace back and assumed a defensive stance, fists clenched. Its dead face could bear no expression, yet it exuded anger. The remainder of its body, naked and icy and utterly sexless, looked like butcher’s meat under the pitiless fluorescent light. Snakes of blood were slithering down its neck and shoulders from the burst veins in the face and the eerily flat head.
Time was moving slowly for Hayley. She felt a calm, an ease, that she had never known before, as she computed the next moves in this battle with the undead.
The corpse attacked Hayley with a roar of rage. But Hayley stepped aside. Fists whistled through air; the corpse’s punches were powerful and fast. Hayley slashed with the knife and the corpse blocked and the blade dropped out of Hayley’s numbed arm.
The corpse threw a punch and Hayley’s nose erupted with blood and she fell. The corpse leaped in the air and descended with fists outstretched, to deliver the killer blows.
But Hayley rolled away and leapfrogged over the autopsy table. And took six fast paces and picked up the fire extinguisher, and came running back at the corpse fast and furious.
She hit the creature in the face with the bottom end of the extinguisher. She felt bones crunch. It fell. She hit it again and again, using the extinguisher as a club, until the skull was broken into shards.
But the brainless monster was still alive; it was writhing on the floor.
Oh my god.
The brainless monster stood up. It tried to smile but the bones around its mouth were too badly broken. It held out its palms, like Jesus offering redemption. The lips moved again.
‘It’s time,’ the lips said. But Hayley couldn’t understand.
‘I’m sorry,’ Hayley said ‘I didn’t mean –’
‘My fault. I lost my temper. I got scared. No matter. It’s time.’
The creature’s lips were reforming. The bones were mending – Hayley could see it happening. The broken nose straightened up. Jane Carter was healing itself.
‘It’s time.’
This time Hayley understood the words:
‘It’s time.’
‘Time for what?’
Hayley heard a door slam, outside the mortuary. She heard footsteps. ‘Someone’s coming,’ she said.
‘It’s time.’
‘Shit, it’s the cops. I –’
‘It’s –’
Jane Carter was staring at something. Hayley followed her gaze. It was the egg. It had grown to the size of a grapefruit. The marbling had turned pink and ochre and it was throbbing. Then throbbing faster.
It cracked.
It exploded.
But there was no shrapnel; just an explosion of light. Hayley was dazzled. There were spots in front of her eyes, like blood corpuscles. The air around her shimmered and burned. Then the blazing lightshow ebbed and when the air cleared the egg was gone and Hayley was breathing in dank fog. She choked on it. She ate it – she drank and chewed thick fog!
A handle rattled. Someone was at the door of the mortuary, which Hayley had bolted from the inside. The door was banged by something hard. It was made of steel and didn’t budge. There was a pause. Then the banging resumed. A battering ram or something similar was being smashed against the door.
And finally, Jane Carter’s body collapsed. She lay in a sprawled heap on the floor of the dissecting room. She no longer twitched. She no longer spoke. The banging at the door got louder.
Hayley ran. She went out the back door, through the corridor and out of the building. There were cars parked outside the mortuary, she stayed in the shadows to avoid them. They weren’t cop cars. Who were they?
Ten blocks away from the hospital she dumped the T-shirt and overalls in a bin.
When she got home she washed off in the shower and when the blood and brains were off her skin and hair, and she was reaching for a towel, she abruptly lost control of her body and fell over in the bathroom. And that’s when trembling and the puking and the explosive diarrhoea began.
An
d, in the midst of the rank shitty trembling horror of it all, she thought: Fuck. This is it, then.
I’m dying.
Two
Gwendolyn woke and her body ached. Her hands ached. Her throat was dry. Her eyelids were stiff and hard to open. Her legs were rigid, and every joint throbbed. She felt as if she’d been thrown off a cliff at low tide.
This was how it felt to be old.
She took a light breakfast – orange juice, half a bowl of cereal – and had her morning tablets. The big tablet always made her gag. She’d forgotten, more or less, what the tablets were called, or even what exactly they were for. One was for her heart, she knew that much, one was for her brain. One was for arthritis. The others were – she took them all.
Then she got up for her usual long morning walk, but she had to go to the toilet for a pee first and that added forty-five minutes to her journey. She splashed herself a bit which was mortifying but she’d learned that a little piss on the knickers could be safely ignored, and she wasn’t yet ready for incontinence pads. That really was a step too far.
It took her another hour to climb the hillside path. She loved the view of the castle you got from up there. You could see the contours of the old moat, and the ruins of the original Norman walls dotted here and there. The castle itself was mostly Victorian, though Hugh was always ready to debate about which bits were authentic and which weren’t. He always claimed to know more than the actual historians who had studied this period. That was Hugh for you.
The morning light was elusively brilliant. The blue sky was scudded with cotton wool clouds.
She could hear the cooing of the wood pigeons above all the other sounds. For her it was even more evocative than the sound of wind through Scotch firs; though, in fairness, that was a sound she had not truly been able to hear for more than twenty years. She could see the greenery stir, but the wind itself had to be deduced. That was age for you. It was stripping her of sensations one tiny step at a time. She couldn’t even feel it when she burned herself in the bath water; hence, her trusty thermometer.
Morpho Page 4