Unwed (Dovetail Cove, 1976) (Dovetail Cove Series)

by Jason McIntyre

  Doc let her leg go and circled around Roi’s back, heading for the mass that had been ejected. He crashed against the light rig and over it went. A heel kicked the box that ran the suction curette and it tipped over with a loud bang. It fell off the edge of the altar, separating from the hose that ran to where Roi had dropped the curette in a bloody, broken mess. Blood sprayed from both ends, coating everything, coating the white privacy tent over the girl’s knees and lower body.

  Doc angled himself and picked up the heavy box of switches, a fluttering filter and heavy bag fitted on one end. He heaved the wheeled box over his head and brought it down on the floor, crushing the squirming, throbbing piece from inside Mary Smithson.

  He did it two more times for good measure. It crunched each time, but less so with each successive impact. Bexy had no idea but she didn’t think there would be bones or teeth, not at this size, not this early. But what she had to remember is that it was five months along. Not three. The size of the fetus on that Octoson monitor had told Doc the size was closer to that of a first trimester. But that didn’t mean everything else hadn’t moved along at a normal rate.

  Doc collapsed on the floor beside the machine over the pile of crushed, bodily muck. He huffed and looked up at Mary. The girl had finally fallen silent. Roi peered into her white tent while gingerly cupping his gauze-covered hand. He got up and moved away to his tray of supplies. He swapped out the soaked material for a new piece.

  Bexy wasn’t sure, but she thought that her and Doc saw it at the same time.

  A dribbling gush from the communion table. Not wine, blood. Thick and red and pooling fast under the table at Mary’s tent. Her knees buckled and fell together. Bexy gazed into the girl’s face, begging the God to make the girl open her eyes. All colour drained away from Mary’s cheeks and forehead. This was not Mary pretending to sleep.

  Bexy said, “Is that...normal?” It croaked out of her, the first real words spoken in a matter of minutes, as this madness had consumed every rational sound or thought.

  Doc said, “No,” and hurriedly got up. He took two big steps to the girl and lay his head on her chest. Shaky fingers found her throat.

  Clack-clack-clack.

  It was the stones. Mary’s hand fell from the other side of the communion table. Fell absolutely lifeless and open. Six flat, colourful stones all clattered to the plastic sheeting on the wooden floor of the bloody altar.

  “Mary?” Bexy said. She squeezed the girl’s hand. Mary didn’t squeeze back. “Mary?”

  Roi saw the confusion. His attention returned to the girl’s spread legs. “Intrauterine haemorrhage?” he said to Doc. His voice wasn’t even and cool this time.

  “Maybe,” Doc said. “Seems…off. This early in the term. But nothing’s normal here. Swap out your glove. Get in there and massage it out.”

  Roi did so. With a cringe, he peeled off the blue-red rubber glove from his bloody hand and grabbed another one. He pulled it on. He was so slick it seemed much easier to get it settled.

  To no one, really, Doc said, “Her uterus isn’t contracting fast enough. We need to help it along. Get this bleeding under control—”

  Bexy said, “If we don’t—?”

  “If we don’t,” Doc said. “She dies.”

  Bexy looked at the plastic-covered floor. She saw the four stones, nearly identical in shape and size, but all different in their marbling of colour. Then her eyes moved to the growing drool of blood in the pool at Roi’s end of the table.

  “Oh God,” Bexy said. They were going to get this far and then Father Frye would be right. God Almighty Above would smite Mary Smithson, not just for the sake of their sins committed here in His house…but to admonish Bexy herself.

  Doc’s hands pressed down into the girl’s stomach, smearing even more of her own blood into the fabric of her shirt. Doc pulled it up exposing her smooth, white belly. He pressed. And he pressed harder.

  Finally, the girl’s eyes blew open. She howled. Doc made a face of relief, but still bent into his work. He massaged. She screamed. On Roi’s end, he worked and applied more gauze.

  “Not contracting,” Roi shouted.

  Oh no oh no oh no, Bexy thought. We can’t go all this way for her to die. We can’t.

  Doc climbed up on the communion table. Bexy only had time to say, “What are you—?” before the Doc drove the knee of his wool slacks into the girl’s gut.

  “Have to!” he shouted over the girl’s moans and hollers. “Need her uterus to contract!”

  He ground his knee into her. She heaved out more and at one point shouted, “Missa make it stop it hurts so bad!” The doc was treating her belly like a giant toothpaste tube, squeezing the paste down and out towards her legs.

  And all that Bexy could do now was watch. She held Mary’s hand. There was no time and no presence of mind to pray. Maybe Bexy was past that now—

  Finally, Roi spoke again. “I think we’re okay. I think it’s easing.”

  Doc stopped applying pressure.

  Roi craned his neck and his face disappeared below the tent.

  The girl’s shouting ended.

  “Yes,” Roy said in his formal, jerking English. “There is barely a dribble now. Using gauze. I don’t need sutures.”

  Doc used his arm to wipe at his brow. The big man was drenched in blood and sweat.

  He climbed down. And promptly dropped to his ass against the wall behind him. Down on the floor, he blew out a massive breath of exhaustion.

  He looked up at the ceiling, the hanging chandeliers, the dim shades of stained glass and quietly, he said, “Thank God.”

  Bexy felt the girl return her hand-squeeze. She had stopped shouting and now it was only whimpers. Bexy rubbed her face and her cheeks. She was hot, pasted with her own sweat and droplets of blood. Bexy probably was too. Mary burst into tears and she embraced Bexy, burying her face into the older woman.

  “It’s okay,” Bexy said. “You’re going to be okay now.” She looked over at Doc who nodded breathlessly, then over at Roi who gave her one nod of his chin too.

  “You are, sweetheart. You really are.”

  17.

  The cleanup was brutal. It took four hours. And every inch of scrubbing retold the tale of how it had been undone. It was into the wee hours of Wednesday morning by the time everything was scooted out the hidden door of the crying room and vanquished back to the cold night from where it came. Doc staggered like a broken man, but he and Roi got every last piece of equipment wiped and cleaned and hauled out to Ian’s waiting car.

  She’d likely never see Roi again. She wanted to give the man her thanks.

  He wasn’t able to shake her hand. His was wrapped in gauze and tape. But Bexy started to tear up and put her arms out for the stranger to give her a hug. He did.

  Bexy saw Roi yawn as he drove off with Ian. The specialist’s quiet demeanour had returned. He looked tired but not as bad as Doc did.

  When he was gone, the Doc went out and checked out the neighbourhood with a load of things for his car. He wanted to see who was still lurking about.

  After some heavy painkillers, Mary had fallen asleep in one of the recliners in the crying room. Bexy had wrapped the girl in all the clean towels and sheets Roi had brought that were left over from the cleanup. Doc rolled a huge bundle of everything soiled into the plastic sheeting and took that out the side door to an alleyway dumpster.

  Syringes and other medical materials went in another bag, which Doc stowed in his trunk. The last thing he did was call and wake up his replacement, Dr. Stanten, a man who was young and nice and could write prescriptions just as Doc had when he was the town doctor for all those years.

  Doc told Stanten that Father Frye had an accident and was at the church. He should come quickly but it wasn’t an emergency. Father Frye had lost no more blood and there weren’t signs of infection. He remained sleeping, fitfully lolling about on the front pew, but with no fever. After he’d taken Frye’s blood pressure and vitals again, Doc assured
Bexy that the man would be okay. She had some relief at that, but still turned over the images of the night in her mind. The last showed Doc poking the small fetus with the priest’s blue pen and discovering that he had been right. On Sunday when he’d fallen off his chair at the tiny grey and black image of the fetus on the Octoson, it had been at seeing something that didn’t seem possible to his tired mind.

  Tiny, claw-like fingernails and sharp, pointed teeth.

  Using the weapon Bexy had stabbed Frye with, Doc had pointed out to her the sharp, bony bits in the crushed fetus, the one the specialist had painfully removed from the girl.

  “It fought us,” Bexy had whispered to Doc. “Fought us not to be taken.”

  Doc only nodded, then silently wrapped the mound up to be removed from the church with the rest of the night’s carnage.

  Fought us not to be taken. She forced that idea out of her tired mind.

  Bexy looked at Doc now as he picked up the girl in her white cape. After removal of the flag posts, she wheeled out the double doors of the sanctuary onto the red carpet of the foyer. She went down the ramp and pushed open the big doors of the cathedral showing her the cold street, clad in wintery darkness.

  She wheeled out into the crisp breeze. Behind her, the door drew closed in slow silence. She easily passed its threshold and it didn’t thump her chair on the way out.

  The crowd was gone, just as Doc said it was after his preview out the side door. She was sure it had dwindled hours ago. The blast of January hit her now, and that likely had something to do with the thinning of the herd. It was getting cold again; the day-and-a-half reprieve from winter was gone. Bad weather was coming.

  A light, dusty snow had begun to fall. She wheeled through it, leaving a set of dark trails where she had been.

  Behind her came the doc, toting his last, tired act of charity for the night. In his arms, he carried the sleeping Mary Smithson, and headed past Bexy to his Plymouth across the street.

  The only one left out here was Gladys Troyer. She was in her Honda, down the road a ways, running it to stay warm. Now, the headlights came on and the engine revved. Bexy drove her chair out onto the slick, sparkling road.

  Ahead, Doc got the shrouded girl into the back seat of his car.

  There was a split-second when Bexy though the Honda would peel out and mow her down. It didn’t.

  Instead of striking Bexy’s wheelchair in the road in front of St. Dominic’s Catholic Cathedral, the rattling Honda pulled up beside her and the window came down. Gladys, who wore a wide, pale bandage on her chin squawked at her from the heated cab. “I know what you did.” She leaned out her open car window to say more but Bexy kept rolling away. As she went, Bexy looked down at the blanket in her lap. Laying there was a plastic bag filled with sopping red juices. Hidden within were torn towels holding the lifeless, toothy thing that Roi and Doc had pulled out of Mary Smithson. And beside that on her lap, lay the six glittering stones. In spring, Bexy would take Mary out into Predis Field and bury the contents of the bag, leaving the flat, smooth stones as a marker only the both of them would remember. Mary wouldn’t understand why they were doing it. But Bexy would.

  “You did it right there, didn’t you?” Gladys Troyer spat. “You did that merciless act right in our house of God. Father Frye was right. Shame!”

  No reaction from Bexy McLeod. She put the heels of her hands down on her handrails and made for Doc’s Plymouth. He’d gotten Mary settled. Now he had his things packed in and he turned over the engine. The car coughed to life. It was a peaceful night, except for Gladys.

  Her volume rose. And she called after Bexy, slowing and letting the Honda come to a stop. “I know what you did!” she shouted after Bexy again.

  “Good,” Bexy called back. “Everyone else should know by morning.”

  “I hope you’re happy,” Gladys called out again, venom in her words.

  “I am,” Bexy said quietly, wheeling away from the idling car and not looking back at the church—or at Gladys Troyer. “And I hope Mary is too.”

  ~ fin ~

  We give Thee thanks

  for all Thy benefits,

  O Almighty God,

  who livest and reignest

  world without end.

  Amen.

  May the souls

  of the faithful departed,

  through the mercy of God,

  rest in peace.

  Amen.

  The Dovetail Cove saga doesn’t end here. In DEATHBED (1971), go back in time and discover how the madness began in Dovetail Cove. In BLED, journey to 1972 with Frank Moort and Teeny who serve up more than pineapple cheesecake at the Highliner Cafe. In ZED (1975), Tom Mason learns what evil truly looks like. In UNWED (1976), Bexy McLeod faces off against the entire town. In SHED (1977), we find Simon and Rupert dealing with the trials of a new stepfather. And in DREAD (1978), Mac and Dave McLeod return home to the island and embark on a murder mystery of sorts, revealing even more terrible truths about the island.

  *All Dovetail Cove books tie to each other but can be read in any order.

  DEATHBED (Dovetail Cove, 1971) LEARN MORE >

  The Dovetail Cove saga begins here—in July, 1971. Farrah’s on summer break and she’s sure to tell you she’s NOT twelve, she’s TWELVE-AND-A-HALF, thank you very much. And tonight, she’s sneaking out to visit her Gran and show her a ‘mystery box’ she’s stumbled across at the Main Street Summer Market, dead certain there’s a story hidden within. And she’s right. Events reach back to 1956 and a shadowy ‘incident’ that started the darkness on the island. Only a handful know the true details of the incident. And even fewer have witnessed this new darkness, but Farrah will catch a glimpse of it tonight…at the edge of her Gran’s DEATHBED.

  BLED (Dovetail Cove, 1972) LEARN MORE >

  Tina McLeod is on the cusp of a new life. Extraordinary change is rare in her world but this newsflash means she can finally leave her small island town for good. No more pouring coffee for townsfolk in Main Street's greasy spoon, no more living under the weight of her born-again mother. That is, until Frank Moort comes in for his usual lunch and dessert on an ordinary Friday in May.

  FLED (Dovetail Cove, 1973) LEARN MORE >

  In this noir chapter of the Dovetail Cove saga, it’s May Day, 1973, and Charles Scobie finds himself hitched to Chrissy Banatyne, the daughter of the wealthiest and most talked-about power couple on the island. And, of all the rotten luck, Chrissy’s honeymoon destination of choice brings her home, while bringing Charlie back to an icy batch of memories he’s trying to leave behind. Desperate to finally outrun a violent childhood, a disastrous start to his career, and his estranged family, Charlie believed he could finally set everything right after one last backroom deal, executed on a snowy night—right here in this very island town. Now, Charlie’s gotten used to the high life. Newlywed and wealthy, he has everything going for him. Still, it seems, no matter how fast Charlie runs, he finds himself right back where he started.

  REDHEAD (Dovetail Cove, 1974) LEARN MORE >

  “My name is Frances Margaret Banks and I’ve killed two men.” So begins the account of Dovetail Cove’s most notorious Lady of The Red Light in her rented room above Lowballs Pub on Beacon Street. When she meets Sean, a seemingly noble client who takes her services despite his beautiful young family waiting at home, she knows the relationship needs to end. And yet, drawn into his world of security, mystique and, yes, even love, Fanny is compelled to maintain ties with Sean, even if they turn out to be fatal.

  ZED (Dovetail Cove, 1975) LEARN MORE >

  It’s the waning dog days of August, 1975 and Tom Mason’s in Dovetail Cove for the last few weeks of his summer job at the group home. His boss and the home’s owner is Karen Banatyne, one of the wealthiest folks in town. It seems like she’s got it in for Tom; she's the only one standing in his way as he scrimps for a new camera. But Karen has her own problems. A regulatory agency might cut off her funding, plus her hubby hasn’t been seen in a few weeks, and
she’s not saying why. Most ominous of all, it seems as though something’s hiding in the hot spring north of the main beach and one of Karen’s ‘houseguests’ is about to come face to face with evil. Tom is too.

  UNWED (Dovetail Cove, 1976) LEARN MORE >

  It’s January, 1976 and Bexy McLeod gets roped in to helping Dovetail Cove’s retired doc as he deals with St. Dominic’s latest problem. Having tangled with the town’s church-going community for years, Bexy knows she shouldn’t get involved. Wheelchair-bound after an accident left her a paraplegic, she might be the least-sensible choice. Trouble tends to follow the widow and the last thing Bexy needs is confrontation. But now she’s finding herself enamoured with the young woman she’s helping. Bexy may just have to go toe-to-toe with one of the most prominent members of Dovetail Cove’s upper crust…and its head priest.

  SHED (Dovetail Cove, 1977) LEARN MORE >

  Simon and Rupert spend their days playing in the fields out near the old power station but at night, a visitor comes for them. Older brother Simon shoulders the burden of their stepfather Everett and his greedy dominion over their Mama. But the brothers must now stand together to heal the wounds of their real father’s departure and brace themselves for a harrowing showdown with Everett.

  DREAD (Dovetail Cove, 1978) LEARN MORE >

  Mac and Dave McLeod are thirty-something bachelor brothers, back in the tiny island town of Dovetail Cove after more than a decade away. They're here for a funeral, despite Mac's looming feeling that things aren't quite right in their childhood home, nor anywhere else across town. It doesn't take long for a mysterious visitor at the wake to embroil the McLeod boys and the island doc in a game of whodunit involving one of Police Chief Birkhead's unsolved files. Things get macabre when the boys discover a link to their parents in the mess. And the visitor who starts it all might just be a walking cadaver gone missing out from under the coroner's nose.