by Holly Black
Exavious did not reply. He stopped by a broad door of corrugated metal that opened on a loading dock, and thumbed the button of the freight elevator.
“One moment, please, Mr. Hartshorn,” he said.
They waited silently as the doors slid aside. Exavious gestured Gerald in, and pressed the button for six. With a metallic clunk of gears, they lurched into motion. Gerald stared impassively at the numbers over the door, trying to conceal the panic that had begun to hammer against his ribs. The noisy progress of the elevator seemed almost to speak to him; if he listened closely, he could hear the voice of the cockroach, half-hidden in the rattle of machinery:
She’s dead, Gerald. She’s dead and you’re responsible.
Exavious knew. Gerald could see that clearly now. He wasn’t even surprised when Exavious reached out and stopped the lift between the fifth and sixth floors. Just sickened, physically sickened by a sour twist of nausea that doubled him over as the elevator ground to a halt with a screech of overtaxed metal. Gerald sagged against the wall as a wave of vertigo passed through him. Sara. Lost. Irrevocably lost. He swallowed hard against the metallic taste in his mouth and closed his eyes.
They hung suspended in the shaft, in the center of an enormous void that seemed to pour in at Gerald’s eyes and ears, at every aperture of his body. He drew it in with his breath, he was drowning in it.
Exavious said: “This conversation never occurred, Mr. Hartshorn. I will deny it if you say it did.”
Gerald said nothing. He opened his eyes, but he could see only the dull sheen of the elevator car’s walls, scarred here and there by careless employees. Only the walls, like the walls of a prison. He saw now that he would not ever really leave this prison he had made for himself. Everything that had ever been important to him he had destroyed—his dignity, his self-respect, his honor and his love. And Sara. Sara most of all.
Exavious said: “I have spoken with Dr. Schwartz. I should have done so sooner.” He licked his lips. “When I examined your wife I found no evidence to suggest that she could not carry a child to term. Even late-term miscarriages are not uncommon in first pregnancies. I saw no reason to delve into her history.”
He said all this without looking at Gerald. He did not raise his voice or otherwise modify his tone. He stared forward with utter concentration, his eyes like hard pebbles.
“I should have seen the signs. They were present even in your first office visit. I was looking at your wife, Mr. Hartshorn. I should have been looking at you.”
Gerald’s voice cracked when he spoke. “Schwartz—what did Schwartz say?”
“Dr. Schwartz was hesitant to say anything at all. He is quite generous: he wished to give you the benefit of the doubt. When pressed, however, he admitted that there had been evidence—a bruise on your wife’s face, certain statements she made under anesthesia—that the miscarriage had resulted from an altercation, a physical blow. But you both seemed very sorrowful, so he did not pursue the matter.”
Exavious turned to look at Gerald, turned on him the terrific illumination of his gaze, his darkly refulgent eyes exposing everything that Gerald had sought so long to hide. “A woman in your wife’s superb physical condition does not often have two late-term miscarriages, Mr. Hartshorn. Yet Mrs. Hartshorn claims that her fall was accidental, that she tripped over a pair of shoes. Needless to say, I do not believe her, though I am powerless to act on my belief. But I had to speak, Mr. Hartshorn—not for you, but for myself.”
He punched a button. The elevator jerked into motion once more.
“You are a very lucky man, Mr. Hartshorn. Your wife is awake and doing well. She is recovering from the epidural.” He turned once more and fixed Gerald in his gaze. “The baby survived. A boy. You are the father of a healthy baby boy.”
The elevator stopped and the doors opened onto a busy floor. “It is more than you deserve.”
Sara, then.
Sara at last, flat on her back in a private room on the sixth floor. At the sight of her through the wire-reinforced window in the door, Gerald felt a bottomless relief well up within him.
He brushed past Dr. Exavious without speaking. The door opened so silently on its oiled hinges that she did not hear him enter. For a long moment, he stood there in the doorway, just looking at her—allowing the simple vision of her beauty and her joy to flow through him, to fill up the void that had opened in his heart.
He moved forward, his step a whisper against the tile. Sara turned to look at him. She smiled, lifted a silencing finger to her lips, and then nodded, her eyes returning to her breast and the child that nursed there, wizened and red and patiently sucking.
Just a baby. A child like any other. But different, Gerald knew, different and special in no way he could ever explain, for this child was his own. A feeling like none he had ever experienced—an outpouring of warmth and affection so strong that it was almost frightening—swept over him as he came to the bedside.
Everything Lake Conley had told him was true.
What happened next happened so quickly that Gerald for a moment believed it to be an hallucination. The baby, not yet twelve hours old, pulled away from Sara’s breast, pulled away and turned, turned to look at him. For a single terrifying moment Gerald glimpsed not the wrinkled child he had beheld when first he entered the room, but … something else.
Something quicksilver and deadly, rippling with the sleek, purposeful musculature of a predator. A fleeting impression of oily hide possessed him—of a bullet-shaped skull from which glared narrow-pupilled eyes ashine with chill intelligence. Eyes like a snake’s eyes, as implacable and smugly knowing.
Mocking me, Gerald thought. Showing itself not because it has to, but because it wants to. Because it can.
And then his old friend the cockroach: Your child. Yours.
Gerald extended his hands to Sara. “Can I?” he asked.
And then he drew it to his breast, blood of his blood, flesh of his flesh, this creature that was undeniably and irrevocably his own child.
By the Mark
Gemma Files
All naming is already murder.
—Lacan
Hepzibah, she called herself, mouthing the syllables whenever she thought no one else was looking. Hep-zi-bah. A powerful name, with strength in every note of it; a witch’s name. She whispered it in each night’s darkness, dreaming of poisons.
Outside, across the great divide between schoolyard and backyard, she knew her garden lay empty, sere and withered, topsoil still bleak with frost. Snow festered, greying, on top of the trumpet-vine’s dead tangle. Behind that, the fence; further, a sloping away. Down past graffiti in full seasonal bloom, down into the mud at the base of the bridge, into the shadows under the pass, where the “normal” kids fought and kissed and loudly threatened suicide.
Into the Ravine.
One month more until spring. Then the nightshade bushes on either side of the property line would be green, each leaf bitter with possibilities. But here she sat in Wang’s homeroom class, textbooks laid open on the desktop in front of her: Fifth Grade English like an endless boring string of Happiness-Is-To-Me, When-I-Grow-Up-I, My-Favorite-Whatever Journal exercises, Fifth Grade math like hieroglyphics in Martian. Real reading matter poking out from underneath, just barely visible whenever she squinted hard enough—Perennials and Parasites, A City Garden Almanac; roots and shoots, pale green print on pale cream paper, a leftover swatch of glue from where she’d ripped the school library slip off the inside back cover still sticking its back pages together. She sat there scanning entries while Mr. Wang reeled off roll-call behind her, desperately searching for something, anything she could recognize from that all-too-familiar tangle of weeds along the winding path she usually took home, wasting as much time as possible until Ravine finally turned to driveway and the house—
—“her” house—
—that place where she lived, on Janice and Doug’s sufferance, reared itself up against the sky like a tumor, a purse-lipped mouth
poised to pop open and swallow her whole.
“Diamond, Jennifer,” Wang droned, meanwhile, back in the world nine people out of ten seemed to agree was real. “Edgecomb, Caroline. Garza, Shelby. Gilford, Darien. Goshawk … ”
Daffodil (Narcissus pseudonarcissus); Looks like: Star-shaped bright yellow corona of petals around a bonnet-shaped bell, with long, tulip-like stem and leaves. Toxic part: Bulbs, which are often mistaken for onions. Symptoms: Nausea, gastroenteritis, vomiting, persistent emesis, diarrhoea, and convulsive trembling which may lead to fatality.
“Often mistaken for onions … ” like the kind Doug insisted on in his micro-organic salad, maybe. So no one’d be likely to question her having them, even away from the kitchen. Even hidden somewhere in her room …
She frowned, tapping the textbook’s covering page. “May lead,” though; not good enough. Not nearly good enough, for what she had in mind.
“Herod, Kevin. Hu, Darlanne. Isaak, Stephanie.”
Oleander (Nerium oleander); Looks like: Smallish, widespread pansy-like blooms on thin, tough stems with floppy leaves. Toxic part: Entire plant, green or dried—when a branch of an oleander plant is used to skewer meat at a barbecue, the poison is transferred to the meat. Symptoms: Nausea, depression, lowered and irregular pulse, bloody diarrhoea, paralysis and possibly death.
Nausea, depression—nothing new there, she thought, with a black little lick of humor. But Jesus, wasn’t there anything in here that didn’t come naturally (ha, ha) attached to having to roll on the floor and shit yourself to death? Anything that just made you … God, she didn’t know … fall asleep, sink into peaceful darkness, just drift off and never wake up?
Aside from those pills in Janice’s cupboard, the ones she’d probably miss before you even could swallow ’em? a little voice asked, at the back of her mind. No, probably not. ’Cause that’d be way too easy.
And if she wanted easy, then why play around with plants and leaves and tubers at all? Why not just straddle the rough stones of the St. Clair East bridge, shut her eyes and let go, like any normal person? Choose her spot, avoid the trees, and there wouldn’t be anything to break her fall but gravity. A mercifully short plunge, brief downward rush of wind and queasy freedom, with maybe one short, sharp shock as her head met the rocks below—
“Jenkins, Jason. Jowaczyk, William. Lien, Elvis.”
Deadly Nightshade (Atropa belladonna); Looks like: Drooping white bloom over broad, veiny leaves, berries couched in beds of wispy leaflets. Toxic part: Entire plant, especially bright black berries. Symptoms: Dry mouth and difficulty in swallowing and speaking, flushed dry skin, rapid heartbeat, dilated pupils and blurred vision, neurological disturbances including excitement, giddiness, delirium, headache, confusion, and hallucinations. Repeated ingestion can lead to dependency and glaucoma.
Not exactly deadly, then, is it? She thought, annoyed—and raised her head right at the same time that Wang raised his voice, all eyes already skittering to check her reaction: “Heather Millstone.”
(You mean Hepzibah. Don’t you?)
“Present.”
Name after name after name, a whole limping alphabet of them—the roster of her “peers.” She watched Wang’s chin wag through the remaining call-and-response, counting freckles: Two faint ones near the corner of his mouth, one closer to the centre—a lopsided, tri-eyed face. From upside-down, it almost looked like he was smiling.
Mr. Wang paused, apparently out of breath; sweat rose off him in every direction—a stinky heat haze, like asphalt in summer. He wore the same pale blue pin-striped shirts every day, and you could usually mark what time it was by how far the matching yellow circle at either armpit had spread. Whenever he gestured, waves of cologne and old grease spread in the direction of his ire. She was vaguely aware of having spent the last few minutes experimenting with his voice, even as her conscious mind turned lightly to thoughts of suicide—turning it up, turning it down, letting the words stretch sideways like notes of music. Shrinking it to a breath, a hum …
“ … Heather?”
Aware of his attention, finally, she looked up, met his eyes. And: “Yes,” she replied, reflexively—knowing that usually worked, even though she hadn’t been listening well enough to really know what she was agreeing to.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes—Mr. Wang?”
An audible giggle, two desks to the right: Jenny Diamond, self-elected Queen of Normal, Ontario. They’d been friends, once upon a time—or maybe Jenny had just tolerated her, letting her run to keep up with the rest of the clique while simultaneously making sure she stayed pathetically unaware how precarious her status as token Jenny wannabe really was. The last to know, as ever.
“I said, you’re up. Yesterday’s journal entry?” Another pause. “Sometime this week might be nice, especially for the rest of the class.”
Oh, I’m sure. Especially for them.
The particularly funny thing being, of course, that she actually had done the work in question (for once). Poem, any subject, any length. She could just see the corner of it poking from her binder, if she strained—an uneven totem-pole of assonant paragraphs, neat black pen rows on pale blue-lined sheets, whose first lines went like so:
Always a shut door between us
Yet I clung fast
out here on the volcano’s rim
For five more years or a hundred,
Whichever came last;
How tall this pain has grown.
wavering, taking root
At the split mouth of bone.
Your love like lava, sealing my throat.
Words, piling up like bones …
“Well, Heather? You know the drill. Stand up, and let’s get started.”
Students normally stood to read, displaying themselves; the class listened, kept the snickers to a minimum, clapped when you were done. Big flourish. Good mark. Centre of attention, all that—
But. But, but, but.
Staring down at her own lap, caught short like some idiot fish half-hooked through the cornea. Staring at her poem, the binder’s edge, one blue-jeaned leg, the other. The edge of her peasant shirt, only barely hiding the area between, where well-worn fabric slid first to blue, then pale, then white along the seam. Normally, that is.
Tomato-red flower blooming at the juncture now, spreading pinky-gross back along the track of her hidden zipper, her crotch’s bleached denim ridge. Evidence that she had yet once more left the house at that particular time of the month unsupplied, probably because her mind was frankly elsewhere: Choking on the thought of how unexpectedly soon Doug might return home from his latest “buying trip,” maybe. Spitting it out like an unchewed cud of cereal into her napkin …
And: “8:30,” Janice had said, grabbing her bowl; the chair, pulled out from under her, shrieked protest. “Up and at ’em, pie.”
Muttered: “Whatever.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
Janice had turned, abruptly—a bad move, considering how you didn’t ever want her full attention on you, not more than you could help. Best just to stay background noise, an optical illusion: The amazing vanishing kid, briefly glimpsed from room to room. Because backtalk inevitably set Janice thinking of stove burners set on one, or pepper rubbed in the nostrils—enough to hurt, bad, yet too little to leave a (permanent) mark.
“Seems to me there’s been a bit too much ‘nothing’ said around here, lately,” Janice had said. “Seems to me, somebody might want to keep that in mind.” Pause. “Well?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
The exchange woke another surf-curl wave of memory, washing her right on back to the moment at hand—homeroom, Mr. Wang, her poem. The impossibility of movement, without flashing her shame to the room at large. Her breakfast placemat’s pattern swum briefly before her eyes, just for a second: A laminated rose-garden under improbably blue skies. Here and there, wherever the lines blurred, faces peeped out—pale and wizened feat
ures, ginseng death-masks, leering back up at her like tubers left to dry.
Thinking: Yes. Yes, Mr. Wang. Yes …
… Mom.
Her tiny store of delaying tactics worn through at last, she swallowed hard and felt the vise inside her throat snap shut—tight, and hot, and dry. Jenny’s clique were snickering openly now; the rest of the class just leaned forward, mouths slack in anticipation of tears. Nothing quite as amusing as a post-pubertal monster hemmed in by pre-teens, after all: Face stretched and straining, eyes aflutter while a grown man impatiently panned for public apologies.
And: Oh yes, you’re so right, I’m so sorry, sir. Like anybody but him really gave a shit.
She stared down at her own feet, the one knee visible through a rip in her jeans, scabby from crouching in the back yard—head bent, intent, waiting for monk’s-hood to flourish. Then looked up again to find herself suddenly risen, blood-spotted ass flapping free in the wind, face to surprised face with Wang himself.
“Ask her,” she meant to say, giving a pert flip of the head towards Jenny—but the words came out in a scream, and took her desk with them.
A general flurry ensued: Much ducking, the desk hitting the nearest window dead centre, with a concussive thump. Cracks rayed.
By the time Wang had uncrouched himself, she was already gone.
So who knows?
It is well-fed.
And once it has tasted blood,
Who knows
What seeds this thing may sow?
But when the door closes this time,
I won’t look back. Won’t check
To see how little time it took
For me to be erased.
No longer plead my case
Or tear my hair,
That black engine behind your stare
Pulling me away into darkness:
I’m nothing now but air.
Not even fit to disappear.
Two rats stuck together at the sewer-grate’s mouth: Carcinogens sprayed right and left as they thrashed together, squealing. She sat watching on the far bank, her fresh-washed jeans clammy against her thighs, burning with pollution. A stream of waste cut the Ravine’s heart in two uneven halves, like a diseased aorta; here it shrank to a mere grey trickle over stones. A doll’s face stared up at her from the nearest tangle of weeds—one eye gone, the other washed blind by the current.