‘Wasn’t doesn’t, isn’t won’t.’ Lips set thin like pressed fingers, Nurse Woodbourne grabbed Eglantine’s arm with a deep pinch that would leave bruises for days. Nurse checked the pulse, putting Eglantine in her place with an iron grip and a rough exercise of authority. ‘Doctor’s coming at seven for an examination. The Terminal Exam. If we answer his questions the right way,’ her voice lowered for stress, ‘we’ll be fine. Otherwise …’
Nurse glanced at the syringe, poised on a linen-clothed silver tray upon the mantel. An enormous mirror framed in intricately ornamented gold leaf hung above it, implying a place of honour that in an ordinary house might have hosted a clock or funerary urn.
After Nurse left, Eglantine picked at the flecked paint of her iron-railed bed for a while. Her greasy hair was gathered between her teeth to suck as she imagined the Terminal Exam. One way or the other, Eglantine’s time in Isolation would soon be over. She would pass the Exam, surpass her sisters, and somehow set things right for the first time in her life.
Some weeks earlier Nurse Woodbourne had explained about air bubbles and embolisms. She’d brought a grey striped kitten for Eglantine to hold while the animal licked the salt sweat from her trembling fingers and stretched tiny claws into her forearms. Besides her caregivers, it was the first living thing Eglantine had touched in the long months since they’d brought her into Isolation from Crèche.
Then Nurse had drawn twenty millilitres of saline into the great glass syringe, with the slow patience of ritual and a rare smile. She introduced an air bubble, then injected the kitten. After a few moments, the animal spasmed, mewed once, then died in a spurt of urine and faeces on Eglantine’s lap.
‘I’ll leave this on the mantel,’ Nurse said, laying the syringe on the cloth-covered tray. ‘It should focus our mind most instructively. This is for our own good, missy.’ Nurse never called Eglantine by name.
Eventually Eglantine put the dead kitten in her bedpan, when she couldn’t stand the stench any more and the fur was too matted to pet.
Doctor Brockton came in, white coat dangling open over his tweed suit. He was a big man with a roast-beef face and wild white hair who always smelled of brandy. Unlike some of the other doctors, Brockton didn’t wear a stethoscope. Instead, he usually carried notebooks and little analysers to probe her nose or mouth. Today all he carried was a clipboard and a bottle labelled ‘Saline’. Doctor Brockton placed the bottle on the mantel next to the syringe before turning to favour her with a yellowed smile. His voice boomed, overflowing the space of her high-ceilinged room. ‘So how are we today?’
Mindful of Nurse Woodbourne hovering in the doorway, Eglantine smiled. ‘Fine, Doctor.’
‘Well, this is your big day.’ Doctor Brockton picked up the glass syringe, toying with it. ‘You’ve done well in Isolation. If your Terminal Examination is successful, you will be released to Training.’
If she was unsuccessful, well, the syringe had certainly focused Eglantine’s attention. And the world had done her no good at all. ‘No one has ever succeeded, have they?’ she said, in spite of better judgement.
‘Young lady,’ Nurse Woodbourne began, but Doctor Brockton halted her with a wave of his hand.
‘Wait, Nurse. My dear Eglantine, each Terminal Examination is unique to the subject. You will pass or fail on your strengths, into a brave new world of possibilities. If you come into your own, as we all hope, you will be a great force for good in the world. Any other outcome is just a case history. We don’t want to be a case history, do we?’ Eglantine realised Doctor’s tone was as false as his thoughts.
‘Case histories,’ Eglantine whispered. Once, just before being brought to Isolation, she had been allowed to see the graves of her sister-twins in the heat-withered elm grove behind Crèche. Adelaide the eldest and bravest. Bettina, who could walk almost like an ordinary person. Clothilde - pretty but for the odours of her uncontrollable anal fistulae. Desdemona, smartest of them all. Now her, Eglantine.
I am better than my sisters, Eglantine told herself. To hell with the world, I will survive so I can redeem their deaths.
Doctor Brockton sat in a wingback chair near her bed. He pulled a stopwatch from a coat pocket and consulted his clipboard. ‘Enough. What is the product of three hundred and forty-two and seventy-nine point five?’
The numbers were as natural to Eglantine as breathing. Perhaps more so. ‘Twenty-seven thousand one hundred and eighty-nine,’ she replied. Why did he even need to ask?
‘Point eight seconds,’ the doctor called. Nurse Woodbourne made a note on another clipboard.
‘The cube root of twelve hundred and thirteen?’
It went on for hours, questions rattling like summer hail.
Eglantine was so tired. Her jaw was sore. Her head hurt. Pain was back, in all her joints both good and malformed. She was hot. Even Doctor Brockton had removed his coat and tie. He and Nurse Woodbourne had taken breaks for water and body stretches, but Eglantine just lay in her bed, sweating into her linen gown and becoming dizzy without even moving. The syringe glittered on the mantle like the first star in the evening sky.
Doctor Brockton leaned forward on his wingback chair. His white hair was plastered to his head. ‘What colour am I thinking of?’
Colours thundered in her head. Eglantine suddenly knew, the way she knew primes. ‘Mauve.’ It was like discovering eyes and ears she’d never had before, opening a door she had never seen. Her senses sharpened even as she gasped.
Doctor glanced at Nurse Woodbourne.
Eglantine heard him as clearly as a shout, though he said nothing at all. ‘You think I’ve made it,’ she said. She could feel everything in the room, the lace curtains, the oxygen feeds in the wall, the dead cricket she hadn’t known was under the bureau. Nurse and Doctor, as if they were laid open before her.
Nurse Woodbourne set the clipboard down on the cricket’s chest of drawers and stepped forward to pat Eglantine’s cheek. ‘There, there,’ she said in a strained mockery of tenderness, lips tense with fright.
Eglantine stared into Nurse’s pale grey eyes. ‘You think I’m a waste of time and effort, toxic genes regrown over and over for no purpose.’ She glanced over at Doctor. ‘You’re thinking of the syringe and the saline, of the grey kitten. Nurse is afraid of what I might do. Doctor …’ Eglantine gasped, the painful years of her life drawn into angry focus. ‘This was all suffering, to force me to grow into my power. For the sake of this … this stress, you killed my sister-twins.’
Eglantine’s mind, now bigger than the room, flooded with cascades of memory - fear, loathing, panic - from Doctor Brockton and Nurse Woodbourne. Pain, her old friend pain, washed through her, but so much she could barely think. Her crippled body felt as if it would burst its bounds, legs uncrimping with the power of her mind. She was becoming free.
The floods in her mind opened new channels, powers to match her expanding sense. Eglantine reached out with a curl of emotion, shunting much of her pain to Nurse, who collapsed choking to the floor. As Doctor Brockton jumped for the syringe, Eglantine used a newfound mental hand to smash the gilded mirror, spraying his face with splintered glass. She made sure some got in his eyes.
Walking was hard, dragging her tiny gnarled feet and trembling legs over broken glass and Nurse Woodbourne’s slick vomit. Eglantine concentrated on keeping the metal door shut against the orderlies responding to the whooping alarms as she staggered to the mantel for the glass syringe.
‘Case histories it is then,’ she whispered to Doctor Brockton, who clutched lfists to his blind, bleeding eyes.
Still standing on her strengthening legs, Eglantine leaned down towards him with the empty syringe.
When she was done, carrying the syringe for luck, Eglantine left her room and strolled towards the graves underneath the withered elms to raise the dead.
Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon, with his family and their books. His recent fiction appearances include Beyond the Last Star, Clean Sheets, Frequency, Hour of Pain, I
deomancer, Strange Horizons and The Third Alternative. In addition to reviewing short fiction for Tangent Online, he is a Writers of the Future Finalist. ‘This story was always about the syringe,’ recalls the author. ‘All my life I’ve had a low-grade fascination with antique medical equipment, perhaps because my grandfather was a dentist back before World War II and kept that sort of stuff around the house. Old brass, cloudy glass and mysterious, grotty stains that didn’t bear further investigation. And believe me, that syringe took a beating from my first readers and my regular workshop. I stuck with it, out of sheer perversity and love for that gleaming artefact of medical priesthood. As for Eglantine herself, she is named after that cousin of The Borrowers who was eaten by the cat. So really, this story is about my childhood memories, I suppose. Enjoy.’
<
The Burgers of Calais
GRAHAM MASTERTON
I never cared for northern parts and I never much cared for eastern parts neither, because I hate the cold and I don’t have any time for those bluff, ruddy-faced people who live there, with their rugged plaid coats and their Timberland boots and their way of whacking you on the back when you least expect it, like whacking you on the back is supposed to be some kind of friendly gesture or something.
I don’t like what goes on there, neither. Everybody behaves so cheerful and folksy, but believe me, that folksiness hides some real grisly secrets that would turn your blood to iced gazpacho.
You can guess, then, that I was distinctly unamused when I was driving back home early last October from Presque Isle, Maine, and my beloved ‘71 Mercury Marquis dropped her entire engine on the highway like a cow giving birth.
The only reason I had driven all the way to Presque Isle, Maine, was to lay to rest my old Army buddy Dean Brunswick III (may God forgive him for what he did in Colonel Wrightman’s cigar-box). I couldn’t wait to get back south, but now I found myself stuck a half-mile away from Calais, Maine, population 4,003 and one of the most northernmost, easternmost, back-whackingest towns you could ever have waking nightmares about.
Calais is locally pronounced ‘CAL-us’ and believe me a callus is exactly what it is - a hard, corny little spot on the right elbow of America. Especially when you have an engineless uninsured automobile and a maxed-out Visa card and only $226 in your billfold and no friends or relations back home who can afford to send you more than a cheery hello.
I left my beloved Mercury tilted up on the leafy embankment by the side of US Route 1 South and walked into town. I never cared a whole lot for walking, mainly because my weight has kind of edged up a little since Heft the Army in ‘86, due to a pathological lack of restraint when it comes to filé gumbo and Cajun spiced chicken with lots of crunchy bits and mustard-barbecued spare ribs and Key lime pies. My landlady Rita Personage says that when she first saw me she thought that Orson Welles had risen from the dead, and I must say I do have quite a line in flappy white double-breasted sport coats, not to mention a few wide-brimmed white hats, though not all in prime condition since I lost my job with the Louisiana Restaurant Association which was a heinous political fix involving some of the shadier elements in the East Baton Rouge catering community and also possibly the fact that I was on the less balletic side of 289 pounds.
It was a piercing bright day. The sky was blue like ink and the trees were all turning gold and red and crispy brown. Calais is one of those neat New England towns with white clapboard houses and churches with spires and cheery people waving to each other as they drive up and down the streets at 2½ mph.
By the time I reached North and Main I was sweating like a cheese and severely in need of a beer. There was a whip, whip, whoop behind me and it was a police patrol car. I stopped and the officer put down his window. He had mirror sunglasses and a sandy moustache that looked as if he kept his nailbrush on his upper lip. And freckles. You know the type.
‘Wasn’t speeding, was I, officer?’
He took off his sunglasses. He didn’t smile. He didn’t even blink. He said, ‘You look like a man with a problem, sir.’
‘I know. I’ve been on Redu-Quick for over six months now and I haven’t lost a pound.’
That really cracked him up, not. ‘You in need of some assistance?’ he asked me.
‘Well, my car suffered a minor mechanical fault a ways back there and I was going into town to see if I could get anybody to fix it.’
‘That your clapped-out saddle-bronze Marquis out on Route One?’
‘That’s the one. Nothing that a few minutes in the crusher couldn’t solve.’
‘Want to show me some ID?’
‘Sure.’ I handed him my driver’s licence and my identity card from the restaurant association. He peered at them, and for some reason actually sniffed them.
‘John Henry Dauphin, Choctaw Drive, East Baton Rouge. You’re a long way from home, Mr Dauphin.’
‘I’ve just buried one of my old Army buddies up in Presque Isle.’
‘And you drove all the way up here?’
‘Sure, it’s only two thousand three hundred and seven miles. It’s a pretty fascinating drive, if you don’t have any drying paint that needs watching.’
‘Louisiana Restaurant Association … that’s who you work for?’
‘That’s right,’ thed. Well, he didn’t have to know that I was out of a job. ‘I’m a restaurant hygiene consultant. Hey - bet you never guessed that I was in the food business.’
‘Okay … the best thing you can do is call into Lyle’s Autos down at the other end of Main Street, get your vehicle towed off the highway as soon as possible. If you require a place to stay I can recommend the Calais Motor Inn.’
‘Thank you. I may stay for a while. Looks like a nice town. Very … well-swept.”
‘It is,’ he said, as if he were warning me to make sure that it stayed that way. He handed back my ID and drove off at the mandatory snail’s pace.
Lyle’s Autos was actually run by a stocky man called Nils Guttormsen. He had a grey crewcut and a permanently surprised face, like a chipmunk going through the sound barrier backwards. He charged me a mere $65 for towing my car into his workshop, which was only slightly more than a quarter of everything I had in the world, and he estimated that he could put the engine back into it for less than $785, which was about $784 more than it was actually worth.
‘How long will it take, Nils?’
‘Well, John, you need it urgent?’
‘Not really, Nils … I thought I might stick around town for a while. So - you know - why don’t you take your own sweet time?’
‘Okay, John. I have to get transmission parts from Bangor. I could have it ready, say Tuesday?’
‘Good deal, Nils. Take longer if you want. Make it the Tuesday after next. Or even the Tuesday after that.’
‘You’ll be wanting a car while I’m working on yours, John.’
‘Will I, Nils? No, I don’t think so. I could use some exercise, believe me.’
‘It’s entirely up to you, John. But I’ve got a couple of nifty Toyotas to rent if you change your mind. They look small but there’s plenty of room in them. Big enough to carry a sofa.’
‘Thanks for the compliment, Nils.’
I hefted my battered old suitcase to the Calais Motor Inn, changing hands every few yards all the way down Main Street. Fortunately the desk accepted my Visa impression without even the hint of hysterical laughter. The Calais Motor Inn was a plain, comfortable motel, with plaid carpets and a shiny bar with tinkly music where I did justice to three bottles of chilled Molson’s and a ham-and-Swiss-cheese triple-decker sandwich on rye with coleslaw and straw fried potatoes, and two helpings of cookie crunch ice-cream to keep my energy levels up.
The waitress was a pretty snubby-nose woman with cropped blonde hair and kind of a Swedish look about her.
‘Had enough?’ she asked me.
‘Enough of what? Cookie crunch ice-cream or Calais in general?’
‘My name’s Velma,’ she said.
; ‘John,’ I replied, and bobbed up from my leatherette seat to shake her hand.
‘Just passing through, John?’ she asked me.
‘I don’t know, Velma … I was thinking of sticking around for a while. Where would somebody like me find themselves a job? And don’t say the circus.’
‘Is that what you do, John?’ she asked me.
‘What do you mean, Velma?’
‘Make jokes about yourself before anybody gets them in?’
‘Of course not. Didn’t you know that all fat guys have to be funny by federal statute? No, I’m a realist. I know what my relationship is with food and I’ve learned to live with it.’
‘You’re a good-looking guy, John, you know that?’
‘You can’t fool me, Velma. All fat people look the same. If fat people could run faster, they’d all be bank robbers, because nobody can tell them apart.’
‘Well, John, if you want a job you can try the want ads in the local paper, The Quoddy Whirlpool.’
‘The what?’
‘The bay here is called the Passamaquoddy, and out by Eastport we’ve got the Old Sow Whirlpool, which is the biggest whirlpool in the Western hemisphere.’
‘I see. Thanks for the warning.’
‘You should take a drive around the Quoddy Loop … it’s beautiful. Fishing quays, lighthouses, lakes. Some good restaurants, too.’
‘My car’s in the shop right now, Velma. Nothing too serious. Engine fell out.’
‘You’re welcome to borrow mine, John. It’s only a Volkswagen but I don’t hardly ever use it.’
I looked up at her and narrowed my eyes. Down in Baton Rouge the folks slide around on a snail’s trail of courtesy and Southern charm, but I can’t imagine any one of them offering a total stranger the use of their car, especially a total stranger who was liable to ruin the suspension just by sitting in the driver’s seat.
Dark Terrors 6 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 12