Children of the Island

by Wright, T. M.

  Again Joyce grinned. "Well, of course, Sam, a mother-daughter relationship–"

  "She's adopted, Joyce. I thought I'd told you that." A moment's pause. "No, you hadn't told me, Sam." Sam nodded. "When she was ten years old. She's been with me only a couple years, now."

  Joyce reached across the table and touched his hand. "I like that, Sam. I like that about you."

  He said nothing.

  BELLEVUE HOSPITAL

  INTERNAL MEMORANDUM: CONFIDENTIAL

  Addendum to post mortem performed Sept. 27 on body of John Doe, age 12-14 years, admitted DOA: Apparent drowning victim:

  File reference: 243846

  NOTE: Anomaly in the digestive system of this subject suggests an abnormal or hypernormal function. Very high levels of pepsin and hydrochloric acid plus extremely high levels of bile and pancreatic fluids: Inner walls of colon and small intestine display abnormalities—i.e., hypernormal functioning:

  NOTE: Dentition is that of an adult. All the subject's wisdom teeth are in place. Molars and premolars show abnormal wear for a child this age.

  Jaw muscles, particularly the orbicularis oris muscle and the masseter muscle, display a very high degree of flexibility and strength.

  Melanin levels in the epidermis: Melanin appears to be produced, also, within the sebaceous glands themselves, and although testing was difficult in this subject—due to the fact that the child had been dead for two days or more—it appears that the melanin was nearly fluid, which would lead one to speculate that the specimen's skin color could change dramatically, or at least appear to.

  Strongly suggest further investigation and testing of this individual.

  Please advise.

  Submitted,

  Dr. Urey C. Birnbaum

  Chief Pathologist

  Distribution:

  Sears

  Linholst

  Massane

  Chapter 46

  October 2nd

  He was forty-two years old, married, with three kids—a boy, two girls. He worked days as a pastry chef in a restaurant on West 150th Street, and nights as a bartender closer to his home in the North Bronx. He loved his wife and children deeply; he liked his mother-in-law and wished she'd visit more often.

  He left the restaurant where he worked every day at precisely 4:05. The restaurant, called Peter's, was located a good distance from a subway station, and leaving at 4:05 gave him more than enough time to get home by 4:30.

  He walked quickly, as most New Yorkers do, and he paid little attention to what was going on around him, unless it was an obstruction to his course of travel—a car, or a delivery truck, or someone passing out pamphlets of one kind or another. He usually detoured around such obstructions, if possible, or waited for them to clear.

  At 4:10, he was two blocks from his subway entrance. To his left, on West 150th Street, the traffic was heavy, noisy, and fast-moving—New York City traffic. The air was cool, in the high forties, and smelled vaguely of bagels and fresh ironing, as it always did in this part of West 150th Street. Ahead, about ten yards, a young man was asking directions from the owner of a newsstand. To the right, several old people were looking at a display of expensive cameras in a shop window. "I got an old Kodak at home, and I bet—" he heard as he moved past them, and wondered for the barest fraction of a second what the point of the sentence had been.

  Other than the old people, the young man asking directions, and two women just behind him—they looked like models—he wondered what they were doing around this part of the city—the sidewalk in his general vicinity was not particularly crowded. Fifty yards ahead there were little knots of people either waiting to cross the street, or waiting for taxis and buses.

  When he heard one of the women behind him scream suddenly, he didn't turn to look. The woman's scream had been low, harsh, and abrupt, much like a man's, and the quick mental image he got was of a transvestite having a seizure or a heart attack, and it made him very uncomfortable.

  He noticed then that his pants legs were fluttering, as if in a stiff wind, and his brow creased in puzzlement because the warm air was very still.

  "Tanya?" he heard then, from one of the women behind him, and he noted that there was the hint of panic in her voice. He turned his head slightly, until he caught sight of the two women out of the corner of his eye. He supposed that they had stopped walking because he could see that he was pulling away from them as he walked. He turned his head further toward them.

  "Tanya?" he heard again.

  He thought at first that he was seeing a dim reflection of the women in a small, dark shop window, but realized at once that the impression was false, because the women were in the middle of the sidewalk.

  He heard a scream again, much like the first, and he noted that the old people looking at cameras in the store window glanced over to see what the trouble was. One of them, a distinguished-looking man with a fine head of bright, white hair, stepped forward and said, "Can I help?"

  The man on his way to catch a subway train glanced at his watch: 4:12. He quickened his pace.

  After a few moments, when he heard another scream—louder and more shrill and extended than the first—he craned his head around again. He saw that the women, apparently, were gone. Several of the old people were standing near the spot where the women had been, and though it was difficult to judge at that distance, the man supposed that the look on the faces of the old people was one of awe, or shock, or revulsion.

  He turned back, glanced at his watch, and quickened his pace again. He caught his train at 4:20, and by the time he was halfway to the Bronx the incident on West 150th Street had faded far back into his memory.

  Transcript of a Portion of a Special News Bulletin Aired on Channel Three TV at 5:20 P.M. the Same Day

  A bizarre and grisly double murder occurred on West 150th Street this afternoon. At around 4:15, two female employees of the Welco Advertising Agency, on West 110th Street, were brutally knifed by as yet unknown assailants. The women, whose identities are being withheld pending notification of next of kin, were, according to investigators, knifed repeatedly and then dragged into an alley, where the brutalization continued.

  Witnesses to the crime have given police investigators conflicting accounts of what actually took place. One apparent eyewitness claims that "a very tall man in a dark blue suit" committed the murders, while another eyewitness, who watched from a restaurant across the street, says that she saw a man of medium height—in his early to middle forties—hurrying away from the scene . . .

  Thirty Years Earlier: On a Small Farm near Penn Yann, New York

  Rachel Griffin set the box of matches on top of the stove, went over and peered out the kitchen's small back window.

  Well, she thought after her eyes had adjusted to the sunlight, it was all rather pleasant, wasn't it? Something like Central Park, though, of course, a great deal larger. Larger, and far more colorful, and obviously wilder. Much wilder.

  She reconsidered. There was, she sensed, a kind of order, a kind of symmetry here. It was difficult to pinpoint, almost subliminal, but present nonetheless. A curious thing.

  She frowned. Take me back, she thought, Paul, come home and take me back to what I know. She realized—though she would not have admitted it—that the words formed a very gentle, unimpassioned plea. That she was vulnerable.

  This place, the land around the farmhouse, was moist with life. Life had been allowed to run rampant, unchecked, and it had sought its own level. There was a certain frantic harmony to it, understandably discomforting, she reasoned, to a person like herself, whose only previous acquaintance with harmony had been at Carnegie Hall, at the Metropolitan Opera, and in poetry. But those were imitations. The harmony of fields and forest and color had been their model. But, understanding this—albeit in a vague, oblique way—didn't make it any less discomforting. The frantic harmony she sensed here—had sensed, she knew, from her first moment at the house—was at odds with what she'd grown accustomed to.


  Chapter 47

  At The Stone: The Evening after the West 150th Street Murders

  Snipe said to one of his lieutenants, the one nicknamed "Cheese," "They all in their apartments; they all tucked in good and tight?"

  Cheese nodded. "Uh-huh." He came over and glanced at the TV Snipe had pulled his chair in front of. "What'cha watchin', Snipe?"

  "Nothin'," Snipe grumbled. "Just some show about predators, that's all. I'm thinkin'."

  Cheese pulled another chair over and set it next to Snipe's. "Oh, yeah? What're you thinkin' about? What're predators, anyway?"

  "I'm thinkin' that I'm bored. I been thinkin' about it since yesterday. Predators are like lions and tigers and wolves. Coyotes, too. Coyotes are predators."

  "You mean, like animals that kill other animals. Is that what'cha mean?"

  "Yeah, sure," Snipe answered, making a show of impatience with his lieutenant's ignorance. "Like lions and tigers. Like I said."

  Cheese thought a moment, then asked, "You think we're predators, Snipe? You and me and Tramp and Ding and the rest? You think that's what they'd call us?—predators?"

  Snipe harrumphed. "No, dumb shit, 'cuz we don't eat what we kill. Predators eat what they kill. That's what they kill for. Christ, you're dumber than used gum."

  Cheese sulked. "It was just an idea, Snipe."

  Snipe harrumphed again.

  Cheese shrugged. "I heard Mrs. Haritson movin' around inside her apartment today. I heard her banging some pots and pans around. I yelled through the door at her, 'You old slime bag,' I yelled. 'You come on outa dere!' Then I said if she didn't come out we were comin' in to fry her brains up and have 'em for our fuckin' supper, Snipe." He chuckled. "That's pretty good, huh?—'Fry her brains up and have 'em for our fuckin' supper!' Pretty damned good!"

  Snipe grinned at him. "You wouldn't eat no scuzzy old lady's brains. You're fulla shit!"

  Cheese seemed momentarily surprised by the observation. Then he shrugged, "Sure I would. Why not? I ate a pig's brain once. And a cow's tongue, too."

  Snipe continued grinning. He reached over, shut the TV off, and turned his chair around so he was facing his lieutenant. He whispered huskily, conspiratorially, "Yeah, and I still say yer fulla shit, and I'm gonna prove it, too." He paused; Cheese looked suddenly uncomfortable.

  "How you gonna prove it, Snipe?" he asked, conjuring up a little grin of his own that quivered with nervousness.

  Snipe chuckled shortly, silently, in the middle of his chest. He lowered his head and shook it slowly, as if in condemnation.

  His lieutenant said, "You want me to eat some old lady's brains, Snipe?" He considered a moment, then continued, "Which . . . which old lady's brains?"

  Snipe looked up slowly; his timing and delivery were perfect—under vastly different circumstances he might have been a comedian. "The bag lady's," he said.

  Cheese's nervous grin faded at once, then reappeared, quivering mightily. "But she's down at the bottom of the elevator shaft, with the super." Actually, she lay on top of the elevator itself, which was stuck almost at the subbasement level. The two sets of doors above it had locked themselves shut years before. "How I gonna get at her, Snipe?"

  "How do you think yer gonna get at her?" Snipe said.

  "Climb?" his lieutenant guessed. "I'm gonna climb down there to her, Snipe? Is that what I'm gonna do?" Snipe's grin broadened. He said nothing.

  "Jees, Snipe—you know I'm scared of heights. Jees, they make me wanta puke, Snipe! I get up on top of a building or I look out a window, and shit!—I wanta puke! And I can't do nothin' about it—"

  "Pussy meat!" Snipe growled.

  "No," Cheese protested, "I ain't pussy meat, Snipe." He looked away in search of some other excuse that would keep him from having to climb down the elevator shaft. He looked back suddenly. "And besides, Snipe—that woman, she's been lyin' down there for a week now. She's probably all rotten, Snipe, and if . . . I . . . I mean, she's probably full of food poisoning or something."

  "You are pussy meat, and I don't need pussy meat hangin' around me!"

  "Jees, Snipe, Jees—"

  "You understand what I'm sayin' to you?"

  "Sure I do, Snipe, but, Jees, it's like asking some guy with two broken arms to go and have a boxing match or somethin' . . . I mean, I gotta get ready for it, I gotta think about it—"

  "Think about it? You wanta think about it?"

  "Yeah, Snipe. Just for a day or so. I mean—I'm gonna do it and everything, I just gotta—"

  "You got till Saturday. After that, I don't want you around me. Okay?"

  "Okay, Snipe."

  Chapter 48

  At Bellevue

  Lenny Wingate was waiting. It had been two weeks now since she'd started working at Bellevue and she had been told, by practically every other employee she'd talked to, that the job would become pretty routine sooner or later. "If it doesn't," one nurse had told her, "let us know and we'll set you up in B Ward," which was the ward that took care of the very worst of "the crazies."

  But she was still waiting. Waiting for the job to become routine, waiting for the hour when the next patient who was brought in, no matter what his problem—a gunshot wound to the head, or delusions, or psychoses of one awful kind or another—would be nothing more than a crisp notation on the admittance sheet. She was waiting for that hour, and hoping that it never came. Because, as much as it drained her—and there were nights when she went home unable to do anything more than sleep fitfully—she did not really want to lose that ability to feel the pain and the, panic that these poor people felt.

  "You've got to forget about empathizing, Lenny," one of the doctors had told her. "It may seem noble to you, and kind, and good, but in the end it's self-destructive. Sympathize, yes, but don't try to empathize. Because it's impossible. There's a man up on the fourth floor—he underwent some pretty intensive microsurgery a couple days ago—who was there when that . . . accident (I don't know, are they still calling it that?), the one up in the Adirondacks, happened. I guess he saw the whole thing, but apparently remembers nothing at all. He just gives us some gibberish about monstrous children, and it's clear that his brain is turning into mush. Try to empathize with that, and you'll end up in the same boat."

  "Yes, you're right," Lenny had answered dutifully. "Good," said the doctor. "I like you, Lenny. I hope you can tough it out."

  But Lenny was rapidly beginning to believe that she wouldn't be able to "tough it out." Even the air itself, here, seemed oppressive with desperation and panic. She thought that if she could actually see the air she would see miniature storms swirling through the corridors—tight, little currents of darkness moving in and out of the rooms, wrapping themselves around everyone and everything in the hospital.

  It was an awful thought, and she shook her head briskly to get rid of it.

  She looked up suddenly, startled out of her reverie by the whirring sound of the double automatic doors sliding open. Two attendants wheeled a man in; the man was in a wheelchair; his head was bandaged heavily from beneath his jaw to around his skull—as if to keep the jaw in place—and his left leg was pointing out straight. He was dressed in blue hospital clothes, though not Bellevue's, Lenny realized.

  The attendants wheeled the man over. One of them said, "This is the transfer from Fort Lee. His name's William Devine—you should have a note on it."

  Lenny nodded. She remembered the name. "Park him over there, please." She nodded to her left, toward a corridor leading to a restricted area of the hospital. "Mr. Devine," she went on, "I'm afraid we're going to have to put you in a Psych ward for the time being; we don't have a bed for you on any regular ward. The doctors tell me, however, that it'll just be for a day or two at most."

  She thought the man nodded resignedly.

  Chapter 49

  The couple walking together on West Drive on Central Park, just east of a huge open area called the Sheep Meadow, drew many admiring glances. They were a beautiful couple, as beautiful as anything th
e earth can produce, and they walked with the smooth, sure grace of wild creatures.

  It was a bright, warm day, but the Sheep Meadow was not quite as filled with people as it normally should have been. Many who had planned to go to the park today were understandably nervous about the grisly double murders that had been committed on West 150th Street just two days before. One group, from a Christian school in Hempstead, Long Island, had cancelled an outing at the park not because of the murders—which, of course, they thought were bad enough—but because "streakers" had been reported in the area, and if anything would forever spoil the memory of a day at the park it would, of course, be the sight of a bunch of naked people running about, their private parts flapping in the breeze.

  The couple walking on West Drive, east of the Sheep Meadow, walked very close together, their hands touching lightly.

  Many of the children are going to die, Seth, when winter comes.

  Most passersby would have said the couple wore slight, pleasant smiles, though the more astute would have seen a whisper of pain, or even desperation on their faces, but would have dismissed the idea almost immediately. What could such a marvelous young couple, obviously very much in love, have on their minds but the very beauty of being alive, and being together?

  Seth's big, powder-blue eyes followed the long, slowly merging vertical lines and the contours of the great buildings surrounding the park.

  This city was a place of death.

  "The children will fend for themselves, Elena." And they did. "Those that will die, must die!"

  She understood that. Years before, she had watched her own "brothers" and "sisters" rise up from the earth with her, and wither and die in a season. Except for a few.

  If there was the hint of pain, it was from something romantic, passersby would believe, something timeless, a lover's quarrel, perhaps.