Ben Soul

by Richard George

She knew, intuitively, that Dr. House wouldn’t yield much more. “When can you begin?”

  “Tomorrow at nine.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes, my surgery’s in the back.”

  “I’ll be here,” Vanna said. She went back to her rooming house. Someone had left a copy of the Las Tumbas Epitaph on the stairs. A small headline caught Vanna’s eye.

  Strange Fungus in Park

  A strange fungus has infested a park bench in Little Cowpoke Park. A group of children smelled it (it gives off a strong earthy odor) and went to investigate last week. Alarmed at its resemblance to an old woman, even to being dressed in a dress and scarf, the children alerted their parents, who called the Sheriff’s office. Sheriff Dan Druff called in mycologists from the local junior college. To date, they have been unable to identify the species of the fungus.

  Experts have tested it for mycotoxins. None hazardous to human health have been identified. The fungus does not appear to have attacked the bench, which is made of wood and steel. Scientists state categorically there is no perceptible danger to the public at this time, or when (and if) the fungus spreads spores.

  Vanna tossed the paper aside, and went to her apartment. At daybreak, she got up and went to Dr. House’s office. When he came in, she gave him ten thousand in cash. He put it in his office safe right in front of her. She noted where he kept the combination in a locked desk drawer. Then she submitted herself to his knife. During the post-operative phase, she lay about her apartment, her nerves tingling. It was two weeks of pain before Dr. House unveiled his handiwork. Vanna stared in grim amazement at the changes he had wrought.

  She had bee-stung lips, all right. They were enormous. Her cheeks, too, that had always been lean, and rather on the hollow side, puffed like pink balloons. Her augmented breasts protruded from her slim thorax like two steroidal watermelons. Her back ached holding them sufficiently upright so she wouldn’t fall on her face.

  “I look like Betty Boop gone mad,” she said to Dr. House.

  “A work of art, my dear, a work of art.” He beamed at her. She smiled a tight little smile.

  “I’ll have the rest of your fee in a few days,” she said. “I’m waiting on an inheritance.”

  “Not too long, my dear, I can’t wait too long.”

  “I quite understand,” she said. On her way home, Vanna stopped to harvest beans from several Castor plant she had observed growing on a fence around an abandoned lot. She took these home, dried them, and crushed them to a very fine powder outdoors. She carefully poured the powder into a small jar, and put it in her purse.

  She returned to her apartment, took time to dye her hair red, took her few belongings, packed them in her battered suitcase, and left for the last time. Her rent was due in three days, so she left the key on the bureau before she went out and locked the door. She stopped a thrift shop to buy a few garments that would fit over her new bosom. She selected a moss green dress, which must have been someone’s office outfit, and a beaded party dress in turquoise. Nothing else in the shop would fit her freakish new shape. Contemplating herself in the mirror, she was certain none of her old associates would recognize her.

  The small matter of Dr. House’s fee did not trouble her. Her ten thousand dollar down payment did. She broke into the surgeon’s office, broke open the desk drawer, and took the combination to the safe. She opened the safe, extracted her ten thousand, plus another three thousand the doctor had put away some other time. Then she rigged the small jar of ricin powder to spill its fine powder when the safe was opened the next time. She closed the safe. She returned the combination to the drawer and closed it. The good doctor should be very sick, indeed. Vanna left to seek her vengeance on others who had wronged her.

  Val Talks with Dickon

  Princess Valiant came to see Dickon and Ben in their expanded cottage. Ben inquired how Hyacinth’s lessons were progressing.

  “Quite well,” the Princess said. “She’s a clever young miss, and already wise beyond her years. I won’t be able to teach her much more.”

  “She’s not five, yet,” Dickon said.

  “True,” the Princess replied. “That troubles me. She will need protection for many years to come, until she can grow into her own full strength. It should take about fifteen to twenty years.” The Princess shook her head. “We don’t have that long,” the Princess said. “An old evil nears us.” The crow tattooed on her shoulder fluttered its wings in agitation. Today the Princess wore a bodice that exposed her shoulders.

  “Should we be posting guards on the house on the hill?” Dickon said. “Willy’s up there, and Haakon’s around quite a lot. DiConti’s there when his job allows.”

  “And don’t discount Notta’s ability to defend her little one,” Ben said. “She’s tougher than her mother, and that’s saying a lot.”

  “Physical harm is less likely,” the Princess said, “though it’s wise to guard against it. It’s psychic damage that’s the most worrisome. We’ll have to pull together as a community, join our minds, as it were, to meet the attack that’s coming.”

  “This is Vanna, isn’t it?” Dickon said. Fury washed over his face. “Will I never be done with that woman?”

  “I need to talk with you about Vanna,” the Princess said. “Ben, I need to talk to Dickon alone. Do you mind?” Ben looked at the Princess for a long moment.

  “It’s up to Dickon,” he said. “It’s not my place to mind.” He looked at Dickon.

  “I can handle myself,” Dickon said. The crow on the Princess’s shoulder spread its wings, as if it were drying them in the sun after a rain.

  “Shall we walk?” the Princess said, wrapping a soft woolen shawl around her shoulders. Dickon wondered if the tattooed bird felt like a blanket had dropped over its cage. Then he reminded himself it was only pigment scarred into skin.

  “Okay,” Dickon said. “Where to?” Dickon took a light jacket out of the closet. The mist, though thin, still swirled outside the cottage.

  “Let’s go down to the beach, and toward the ocean,” the Princess said. “I haven’t been that way for a while.” Butter got up to go with them, but Ben called her back. She whined. She loved Dickon, and she was quite fond of the Princess, too. Ben promised her a treat, and took her to the kitchen as the door closed behind Dickon and Val.

  The fog had not left the cove yet. Dark swirls of gray-black mist twirled and twined against a lighter gray background of higher cloud. One heard the surf before the mist thinned enough to see. Val led Dickon down the cliff trail. The mist thinned as they got to the water level. Val and Dickon placed their feet with care on the rocky path that led along the base of the cliffs. Dickon judged they had about three hours before the rising tide covered the path completely. Val didn’t try to carry on conversation against the surf-song of the sea. When she and Dickon had arrived at a narrow strip of sand that faced outward toward Obaheah Rock, still shrouded in mist except for a few feet at its base, she stopped, looked around, and found a small niche in the cliff-side to lean against. Dickon found a similar place to support himself.

  “I haven’t been here in a long time,” Dickon said. “How did you know it was here?”

  “I discovered it one day when I was out walking,” Val said, and waved her hand to dismiss the subject as unimportant. She frowned, concentrating her gaze on her sneaker-shod feet. “I have to ask a great favor of you,” she said. “I ask it only for the good of the village.”

  “Oh?” Dickon said, suddenly wary.

  “I need to explore your connection to Vanna,” Val said. “Your emotional and psychic connection, I mean.”

  “We’ve been divorced over twenty years,” Dickon said. “I don’t have any connections to her.”

  “You were married to her for how long?”

  “Nine years, eight months, and eight days,” Dickon said. “That’s what the lawyers wrote on the divorce papers.”

&n
bsp; “You have psychic connections, then,” Val said. “It’s inevitable. We can’t discard the people we’ve been intimate with, not entirely.”

  Dickon gripped the rock behind him. The gray hair in his sideburns pulsed with the stress of the jumping muscles in his jaw. “I’m well rid of that vicious woman,” he said through clenched teeth. “I don’t want connections of any kind with her.”

  “Do you hate her?”

  “Frequently.”

  “Then you still have connections to her of the most basic emotional kind.” Val stood upright, wrapping her arms around herself. “You’re human, Dickon, and subject to frailty like any other human.”

  “Oh, hell!” Dickon said, and kicked at a small shell on the sand. The shell spun out over the water and sank into the surf.

  “When we gather together to oppose Vanna on the psychic plane, we can’t include you. Hate can’t destroy hate. Hate only feeds hate.” Dickon glared out to sea. Then he turned and glared at Val.

  “Isn’t there any way to change the situation? I feel like it’s a fight I should be part of.”

  Val looked at him with compassion. The shawl had slipped from her shoulders. The crow tattoo had drooped its head and was dragging its wings, as though it were injured. “No, there’s no way to change the situation. The time for change was before you got involved. But that wasn’t meant to be.”

  “I loved her, for a while, you know,” Dickon said.