by Shaun Hutson
Harold watched as the tiny bodies were born away for disposal his body shaking.
The voices inside his head had begun to chatter once more.
Thirty
Harold sat nervously in the outer office, his hands clasped on his knees. The room was large, a white-walled enclosure which he shared with just three leather chairs and a secretary who sat across from him hammering away at the keys of an old Imperial type-writer. The constant clacking sounded like dozens of tiny explosions. The secretary herself was a woman in her forties, a plump lady with greying hair swept back from a face coated with far too much make-up. It seemed to shine beneath the banks of fluorescents set into the ceiling. There was a mug on her desk with a slogan written on it in large red letters. Harold wondered if it was her name as he saw the word June on it. She glanced up at him every now and then and when she did, he would self-consciously touch the scarred side of his face as if trying to shield it from her gaze. She smiled at him warmly and he returned the gesture sheepishly. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat which made a sound like someone breaking wind, as is the wont of leather chairs. Harold tried to sit still but it was a difficult task. He glanced up at the wall clock above the secretary’s head. It showed 4.26 p.m. Below it was a painting which Harold could not make out. It was just squares, all painted different colours, forming no pattern or shape. Not unlike the paintings Harold himself had done in occupational therapy.
The memory of those days seemed so distant now. Then he had felt as if he belonged at the hospital. He had friends and, more importantly, he was not burdened with responsibility as he was now. It seemed like a million years ago. Now he sat in the outer office, waiting, remembering back to just a few hours ago when he had helped to disinter the foetuses which he had spent so much care saving in the first place. Saving was the word to describe his actions but now he feared that they would punish him for it. He closed his eyes and allowed his head to rest against the wall. Immediately, the buzzing in his ears became the rasping voices which he had come to know so well.
Harold sat up, his eyelids jerking open. He looked around, as if expecting to see someone sitting next to him but then he realized that the voices were inside his head.
He swallowed hard.
There was a loud bleep and a green light flared on the console beside the secretary. She flipped a switch and Harold heard her say something into the inter-com. When she’d finished speaking she looked up at Harold, smiled and told him to go in. He nodded, got to his feet and made for the varnished door to his right. It bore a nameplate:
Dr Kenneth McManus, R.C.S.
Harold knocked and received the instruction to enter. He walked in to find Brian Cayton in there as well as McManus who was shielded behind a huge mahogany desk. He motioned for Harold to sit down and brief pleasantries were exchanged. McManus was a big man, tall but muscular with sunken cheeks and lustrous black hair which was brushed back, accentuating the widow’s peak he had. His eyes were set close together, rather like fog lamps on the front of a car, only these particular lights glowed with a pale grey hue as Harold found himself pinned beneath their gaze.
“Pierce, isn’t it,” said McManus, smiling thinly.
Harold nodded.
“How long have you been with us?”
“Two months, sir,” said Harold, lowering his head, slightly. “Perhaps a bit longer.”
“And you were entrusted with the disposal of aborted foetuses on a number of occasions during this time. Correct?” The words had a harsh, almost accusatory ring to them.
Harold nodded.
“Did you in fact complete the disposal procedure?” McManus wanted to know.
“I did as I was told, sir,” Harold insisted, a slight pain gnawing at the back of his neck.
McManus nodded in the direction of Cayton who was sitting to Harold’s left.
“Mr Cayton tells me that you tried to prevent him from disposing of a dead foetus,” said the doctor. “Is this true?”
“I didn’t feel well that day,” Harold said, blankly, his one good eye staring right through McManus. He appeared to be in a dazed condition, his mouth forming words which his mind had not formulated.
“How many other times have you tried to interfere with the disposal procedure?”
“I haven’t done . . . I didn’t try to stop anyone else.” The words were coming slowly, monosyllabically. As if each one were an effort. Something not unnoticed by either the doctor or Cayton.
“Are you all right, Pierce?” asked McManus.
“Yes, sir,” Harold insisted.
Doctor and porter exchanged puzzled looks.
“Did you bury those bodies in the field, Pierce?” McManus wanted to know.
Harold hesitated, closing his eyes for a moment.
He shook his head.
“Why do the children have to be burned?” he asked, looking straight at the doctor with a stare which made the other man recoil.
McManus sucked in a troubled breath.
“Could you wait outside for a while please, Pierce?” he said, watching as the porter got unsteadily to his feet and walked to the door, closing it gently behind him.
“Pierce was the only one who could have prevented the disposal of the five foetuses we found in the field. Correct?” said McManus.
Cayton nodded.
“Yes, sir, but God knows how he did it,” the porter confessed.
“I think it’s more to the point, why he did it? Although his past would go some way to explaining that I suppose.” The doctor exhaled deeply. “I don’t see that we have any alternative other than to dismiss him. It’s unfortunate but I’m just grateful the papers didn’t find out about it.”
“Wasn’t there a similar case in Germany a few years ago?” said Cayton. “Only there, they’d been making soap out of the remains.”
McManus raised one eyebrow.
“He lives on the grounds doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” Cayton told him. “In that old hut.”
“Well, I’m afraid he’ll have to leave there too.”
“What if he’s got nowhere to go, sir?”
“That’s not our problem, Cayton. The man is obviously unbalanced in some way. He’ll probably end up back in an institution. Probably the best place for him. I just don’t want him in my hospital.” The doctor was already reaching for a switch on the console before him. He flipped it up.
“Send Pierce back in will you, please,” he said, settling back in his chair, hands clasped across his lap.
Harold re-entered and sat down, listening unconcernedly as McManus explained that he was to lose his job. It wasn’t until the doctor mentioned leaving the hut that the older porter showed any trace of reaction. His one good eye seemed to bulge momentarily but the moment passed and he sat in silence as the reasons for his dismissal were reeled off. But Harold wasn’t listening to McManus, his attention was focused on the voices which spoke to him from within. The doctor finally finished and leant forward in his chair, glancing first at Cayton and then at Harold.
“I’m sorry things turned out like this, Pierce,” he said. “I realize your problems. Perhaps you would be better off. . .” he was struggling to find the words, rummaging amidst the welter of bluntness for a few morsels of tact. “It might be best if you returned to the institution. I can contact doctor Vincent, I’m sure, if you have nowhere else to go, he would understand.”
“Thank you,” said Harold, blankly, absently touching the scarred side of his face. It felt dry beneath his fingers.
“Do you have somewhere to go, Harold?” asked Cayton.
“Yes.” The word came out almost angrily. “I have somewhere to go.” He got to his feet, a new found strength filling him. “I have somewhere to go.”
A hissing, sibilant command sounded so loud inside his head that he almost winced but he turned and walked towards the door, moving as if each step were an effort.
“Goodbye,” he said and left them.
It was a long time be
fore either McManus or Cayton spoke.
As Harold stepped into the lift he looked straight through Maggie Ford. She smiled at him but the gesture provoked no response. His one good eye looked as glassy as the false one, his skin was the colour of rancid butter.
“Harold.” Maggie put out her hand to touch his shoulder.
He looked at her again, some of the mistiness vanishing from that blank stare. He touched his face and swallowed hard.
“Harold, are you all right?” she asked him, as the lift doors slid shut.
He opened his mouth to speak, his lips fluttering noiselessly.
The words inside his head became warnings.
Harold looked squarely at Maggie, his brow furrowing slightly. She released her grip on his shoulder, much as someone would let go of a dog when they’d just discovered it was liable to bite them at any minute. The doctor regarded Harold warily, somewhat relieved when his expression changed to its customary calm blankness.
“I’m leaving here,” he said, softly.
Maggie looked puzzled.
“Leaving? Why?”
“They told me to leave. Because of the children.”
“What children, Harold?” she demanded. “And who asked you to leave?”
“Doctor McManus told me to leave.” He gazed at her with that seething vehemence once more, his face darkening.
“They kill the children,” he hissed.
Maggie was almost relieved when the lift reached its appointed floor and she could step out and away from Harold. She glanced back at him, watching as the doors slid shut on his disfigured visage. She waited a moment then took the stairs up to the fourth floor and Doctor McManus’s office.
Maggie didn’t rime how long she was in the senior consultant’s office but she guessed later that it couldn’t have been more than five minutes. She tried to persuade her superior that Harold was in a bad way both physically and mentally.
“He’s ill,” she insisted. “He should be taken into care, not thrown out onto the streets.”
McManus was unimpressed.
“He committed a breach of hospital regulations,” the older man said. “He’s lucky he’s not being prosecuted never mind dismissed.”
When she asked what he meant, he explained about the foetuses, the grave in the field, how Harold had hidden the bodies and then interred them in secret rather than incinerating them.
“Oh God,” murmured Maggie.
“Now do you understand why he has to go?” said McManus, irritably. “The man’s disturbed. I should never have taken him on in the first place.”
“Well then that’s all the more reason to take him into care,” Maggie insisted.
“He needs psychiatric help, not medical help.”
She told him about the cuts on Harold’s body but McManus was obviously tiring of the conversation and it showed in the sharp edge which his words acquired.
“As far as I’m concerned, Miss Ford, the matter is closed. Pierce will be out of the grounds by tomorrow morning.” He looked at his watch, tapping the glass. “Now I suggest you return to your duties. I presume you have patients to attend to?”
“Yes, doctor,” she said, her face flushed.
She left the office, closing the door just a little too firmly behind her. There was something badly wrong with Harold and she was determined to find out what it was. She glanced at her watch. It was 5.30 p.m., in another two hours she would be off duty. When that time came, she decided she would go to Harold’s hut and speak to him.
Thirty-One
Harold moved slowly about the hut collecting what few possessions he had, bundling them into the battered old suitcase he’d been lent. Every now and then he would stop still and glance towards the kitchen, as if trying to catch sight of something. The voices whispered insistently inside his head, like the wind rustling paper.
He heard scuffling sounds coming from the cupboard in the kitchen. There was hessian laid out before it and, when the last item was dropped into the suitcase, Harold passed into the other room and knelt before the door, his hand quivering slightly as he slid it open.
A vile, cloying stench billowed from the hiding place and Harold recoiled at the ferocity of the odour. He gazed into the cupboard, mesmerized.
All three of the foetuses had doubled in size.
Maggie Ford glanced at the clock on the wall of her office and noted that it was approaching 7.40 p.m. She sat back in her seat, slipping the cap back onto her pen. Her neck and shoulders ached and she reached up with both hands to perform some swift massage. Outside, the sky was mottled with rain clouds and a thin film of drizzle covered the office window like a gossamer shroud. Maggie yawned and got to her feet, remembering that she’d promised herself a visit to Harold’s hut before she went home that night. She took off her white coat and hung it up on the hook, pulling on a lightweight mac in its place. She glanced at a chart on the office wall and noticed that she was due in surgery at eight-thirty the following morning. Maggie took one final look around the office then flicked off the light and left.
She took the lift down to the ground floor, mumbling a few hasty “goodnights” on her way to the main entrance. When she reached it she paused, pulling up her collar to protect herself from the worst ravages of the icy wind. The chill in the air was turning the drizzle into particles of sleet and Maggie shivered, turning to her left, heading towards the open stretch of ground which would take her to Harold’s hut. Almost invisible in the gloom, she could see that no lights burned inside and she wondered if perhaps he’d gone to bed. As far as she knew he didn’t go out at nights so it was more than likely that he was in the small dwelling. She muttered to herself as her heels sank into the soft earth but she struggled on towards the still and black shrouded hut.
She found herself shivering but the movements were not merely a product of the cold weather. She felt an unaccountable fear rising within her as she drew nearer to the building. Perhaps it had been Harold’s reactions in the lift which had unsettled her, she thought, angry with herself for feeling the trepidation she now experienced. It was pity she should be feeling for Harold, not fear.
Maggie found that the door of the hut was slightly ajar. She knocked all the same, simultaneously calling the older man’s name. When she received no answer, she cautiously pushed the wooden door which swung back on its hinges with a high pitched shriek. Maggie called Harold’s name once more then stepped inside.
The smell of damp was almost overpowering but mingled with it was a more pungent odour which she had difficulty identifying. She looked around the interior of the place. The bed had been stripped, the sheets and blankets gone but, on the mattress she noticed a dark stain. Now dried and powdery, the substance seemed to crumble beneath her probing fingers. She wet the tip of her index finger and on withdrawing it from the mysterious patch she found that it was congealed blood. Maggie swallowed hard and looked around. The door to her right, the one which led through to the kitchen, was closed.
“Harold,” she called, moving towards the door.
The hut greeted her with silence.
She pushed the door but found that it was stuck.
Maggie tried again and, this time, it budged a few inches. She put her weight against it, realizing that the door was a fraction of an inch too large and was sticking. Eventually, she succeeded in opening it and found herself standing in the tiny kitchen.
The door of the cupboard beneath the sink was open, the handle splashed with blood.
Maggie squatted before it and squinted through the gloom at the crimson liquid. It glistened in the half-light and she could see that it was fresh. There was a fetid stench coming from the cupboard and Maggie paused for long seconds before deciding to look inside. She gripped the handle, trying to avoid the blood, and pulled it open.
There was something inside the cupboard, something which she couldn’t see in the blackness. Something moving.
She could hear a faint scratching too, an agitated skittering which stopp
ed abruptly. The cupboard was large, large enough for a fully grown man to climb into but Maggie certainly had no intentions of crawling inside to see what was making the noise. She coughed, her eye suddenly caught by something which lay on the wooden floor beside her. She picked up the matted strands, turning them over in her fingers.
There was a sudden movement from within the cupboard and Maggie screamed as something soft and furry brushed against her leg. She dropped the stiff fur, almost overbalancing.
The mouse scampered away, past her and disappeared through a hole in the wall.
Maggie sucked in a deep breath, held it for a second then exhaled.
“God,” she murmured and got to her feet.
She ran both hands through her hair and blew out a troubled breath. Harold Pierce was gone, no doubt about that. But exactly where, she had no idea.
The old Exham Mental Hospital now stood deserted and already dust had begun to accumulate in thick layers on the floors and window-ledges. Some of the windows had been broken, the dirty glass lying in the wards which were now empty of beds. It was as black as pitch in the empty building and Harold blinked his one good eye repeatedly, as if the action would somehow give him the power to see through the darkness. But he had lived at the hospital for so long he knew every inch of it and he moved with assurance through the long corridors, his tired footsteps echoing loudly in the silence. He was aware of nothing but the musty smell of the place and the aching in his legs where he had walked for so long. He had no idea what the time was but, outside, a large watery moon gave him some light and illuminated his stumbling progress somewhat.
He had left the three foetuses in a room on the first floor while he himself explored the remains of the deserted asylum. For the first time in months he actually felt happy. It was like a homecoming for him. He belonged here in this place, in this empty Victorian shell which smelt of damp and was thick with dust. It had been his home for so many years before and now it would be his home again.