by Sam Starbuck
"Fuck," I said under my breath, and flipped the sign to Closed. "Come on."
The rain got harder even as we stepped outside – the most miserable kind of rain, intense and merciless. It fell straight down with no wind to soften it and had wet the pavement within minutes, washing dirt out of gardens and piling it in gutters for innocent pedestrians to slip on. The boy started running to keep up with me, and then I started running, dodging around muddy patches and darting across streets with hardly a look to see if there were cars coming. Other villagers, taken by surprise in the rain, stood under awnings or hurried into shops to find shelter. There were more than a few puzzled looks as we went racing past.
I didn't think we'd be able to run the entire way there, but as long as the boy was running, I could. We turned on the road leading out to The Pines and kept going, even though my breath was hitching and I figured any moment my heart would probably decide it'd had quite enough of this nonsense.
By the time we reached the rutted dirt road we were both wet to the skin. Rain ran down the back of my neck and soaked my coat, flattened my hair, dripped off my eyebrows onto my cheeks. The boy didn't complain even once, though the fields we were running through were perilously slippery. It seemed like whenever he slipped and was about to fall he'd catch himself, and the speed carried us both along, though the mud splashed around our ankles and flicked up at times to coat our pants as well.
I couldn't even see The Pines through the curtain of rain around us, and I tried not to think about what Lucas might have done to cause this. Instead I thought of anything else. My life in the city, full of trains and small apartments, street markets in the summer, the spires of the downtown buildings and the sharp wind that blew between them. I thought of my shop, warm and brightly lit. I thought of the titles on the literature shelf, the chaos of the children's' books. I thought about the comic books and the magazines.
The hill loomed up suddenly before us, so abruptly in the storm that I skidded to a stop in the muddy tracks left by the Friendly, already gone again. I couldn't quite keep my balance and I fell, scrambling to get up again in the mud. The boy thrust his shoulder under my arm to help, and together we staggered up the slick path to the kitchen door.
"It's locked," I said, leaning against the door for what meager shelter the wall provided from the rain.
"Try it again," he urged.
"Did you hear me? It's locked – " But even as I said the words, I jiggled the knob and the door opened.
I staggered inside and was met with an odd silence. The rain had been pelting my body for so long that to be free of it was almost like silence in itself, though it still drummed on the roof.
"Lucas?" I called, dripping mud on the floor. "Lucas? "
The boy ran under my arm, into the kitchen and through the door that led to the living room. I followed cautiously.
The living room had changed drastically. No light or heat danced in the fireplace. Most of the furniture had been pushed back into its proper place. The worktables were gone, the masks piled haphazardly into boxes in a corner. Even the little planter-box on the window-sill was empty.
In front of the bare fireplace sat a battered sofa. There was a body lying on it, and for a moment the world stopped.
Then I saw his hands, artist's hands with calluses and paint-marks and cuts, twitching convulsively against the blanket he was wrapped in. They clutched and released uncontrollably, in time with spasms that were shaking his body.
"Go to the telephone," I said without thinking. "Call 911. Tell them to contact any hospital in Chicago and have them send a helicopter. Can you give them directions?"
The boy ran into the kitchen while I grabbed Lucas by the soft white shirt he wore and pulled him up into a sitting position. His eyes were rolled up in his head.
I glanced at the window-box again. The empty window-box, where he'd been growing hemlock for Socrates.
"You bastard," I said.
A year before, two of Leon's horses had died from eating hemlock that was growing wild in a field near his farm. I knew the symptoms well enough. I'd heard them described every day for a week after it happened.
Two good horses lost. Should have seen them shake. Teeth chattering, kept falling over – couldn't puke it up and too late for charcoal. Such a mercy when they finally dropped. Two good horses.
I got an arm around his chest and lifted him to his feet, dragging him into the kitchen. The boy danced anxiously around us as I bent the limp body over the sink.
"Look for a first-aid kit," I said, turning on the taps.
"I've called the hospital."
"Good, now find me a first-aid kit. Look for ipecac or something labeled emetic. Ee em ee tee eye see. Or charcoal," I added, bracing Lucas against the sink and lifting his head up slightly with one hand.
"What's happened? What are you doing?"
"He's taken hemlock," I said, and the boy's eyes widened. "Go find the damn ipecac!" I shouted, wrapping my right arm around Lucas's forehead. His teeth were chattering but his jaw wasn't yet so tense I couldn't work my hand into his mouth.
I pushed my fingers past his tongue, as far back as they would go. His teeth latched into my palm and he bit me, hard enough to draw blood. I waited until his jaw loosened, jerked my hand away from his teeth, and pushed again. This time, his jaw couldn't close as tightly and he gagged. I could feel the spasm low in his chest – once, twice, and then he heaved and finally threw up. He shuddered and his hands came forward, gripping the edges of the sink as bile and grit and flecks of green landed wetly in the swirling water.
I took my hand out of his mouth and held it under the tap, gritting my teeth as the cold water poured into the bloody bite-mark. The imprint in the skin looked oddly canine, a sharp crescent across the back of my hand.
Lucas heaved again, and there was another sickening wet smack as more hemlock came up. It smelled vicious and foul, and I had no doubt some of it had gotten into the wound, but I couldn't be bothered to care just then.
"I can't find anything!" the boy wailed, running back into the kitchen. Lucas, now half-conscious, was mumbling curses under his breath.
"Get out of here; go as fast as you can back to Low Ferry and find Charles," I said. "Tell him what's happened and that I'm going to the hospital with Lucas. Ask him to close up my shop. Then go home and stay there, all right?"
He nodded and ran for the door. I turned my attention back to Lucas, whose twitching convulsions were subsiding. I cupped my uninjured hand under the tap and brought water up to his mouth, but it leaked back out again. I tried a second time, but his legs gave out so suddenly that I had to lunge to catch him.
We fell to the kitchen floor in a heap, his legs loosely splayed, my arms around his chest, his head knocking against mine. We were both smeared with the mud I'd fallen in and I was shivering with cold; I pushed myself up against the cabinets below the sink and held him across my lap. He'd passed out, but at least the terrible shaking had stopped.
I counted ten breaths, then loosened my death grip on his chest and made sure he was breathing too. That done, I eased him down to the floor and turned him on his side, shedding my coat and sliding it, mud and all, under his head for a pillow. When I was sure he wouldn't roll over and choke if he threw up again, I staggered into the living room.
His sculpture supplies were in an open box next to the masks, including strips of burlap he used for reinforcing plaster castings. I soaked one with liquid soap from the kitchen and tied it around my hand as well as I could, then looped another around the first.
Then there was silence of another sort, and I looked up through the kitchen window.
The rain had stopped.
There was snow in its place, falling peacefully to the ground in little eddies but increasing in speed every second. It wasn't normal or rational or natural, but then neither had the world been, not since – since New Year's, since Halloween, since Lucas.
I didn't dare turn around to see if he was still alive. Th
e thaw and the rain had both been his doing, and this wasn't the kind of snow we should be seeing this late in the year. I didn't know what it meant, but either way I couldn't turn around.
I stood at the window, watching the snow fall, until I heard the hospital helicopter in the distance – until the paramedics began to pound on the kitchen door.
At the hospital in Chicago they took the makeshift bandages off my hand and disinfected it, then stitched up the worst of the ripped flesh. I didn't see what had happened to Lucas, but I assumed they were doing whatever it was they did to poison victims. The doctor in the emergency room, once he saw the shape of the bite mark, ordered them to give me three or four bruising injections, including a Rabies vaccine. They took my muddy shirt away but left me my pants and my dignity, more or less.
I nursed my needle-wounds for a while, my hand wrapped in a proper white bandage and throbbing distantly through the painkillers, until someone brought me a scrub shirt. I put it on, then slipped away from the exam bed and found a pay-phone.
I called Charles in Low Ferry, intending to let him know where we were, but nobody answered to accept charges. I tried Paula and then Richard but I guessed the phones had gone down when the snow blew in. I tried Eighth Rare Books and got no answer there either, which was surprising until I checked a clock on the wall and found it was past eight in the evening.
After wracking my brain I managed to remember Marjorie's home number. To my relief, she answered the phone and accepted the collect-call charge.
"Christopher, is that you?" she asked in greeting. "Why are you calling collect?"
"I'm at the hospital," I said.
"Oh, my god, your heart – "
"It's not my heart."
"Well..." she trailed off. "Were you mugged?"
"I wasn't mugged," I said. "I'm fine, Marj, just shaken up."
"You sound exhausted. I didn't know you were in Chicago."
I laughed, which probably sounded horrible. "I wasn't, this afternoon. I was airlifted in."
"What do you need? Money? A ride home? If you need a kidney, sweetheart, I'm good for it."
"No, Marj, nothing like that. Can you come down?"
"Of course. What hospital? I'll leave now."
"Can you bring me a book?"
There was a long pause on the other end of the line.
"Did you just ask me for a book?" she asked.
"Yeah. Sorry – "
"Any particular book?" she said sharply.
"Yeah, um. Plato. Anything with Phaedo in an English translation. Please."
"Christopher, what – " she started, but I was already hanging up. It must have frightened her, and I still feel bad about that, but I wasn't trying to be rude or obscure. I was tired, and I didn't have the mental strength to explain any further.
A young doctor with a clipboard in her hand was standing nearby, watching me patiently. When I let go of the receiver, she smiled.
"Mr. Dusk?"
"That's me."
"I have good news," she said. "Your friend's in intensive care. They've pumped his stomach for good measure, but he should be fine."
I slumped onto a nearby bench, suddenly finding it difficult to stand. "Well, that's something," I said. She frowned, then dismissed it.
"You're fast," she continued. "The paramedics said you told them you made him vomit, which was smart. Although I have to say, it doesn't seem like you were very gentle about it. He has some bruising on his chest and face."
"I was more worried about the poison."
"Well, that's good thinking. I hate to have to ask this right now, but..." she tapped her pen against her clipboard. "Are you his next-of-kin?"
"I doubt it," I said. "Don't you have this stuff on file somewhere?"
"Well, that's the thing. He hasn't got any ID on him, so we haven't been able to find his records yet. If you could fill out his information, that would be really helpful."
She held out the clipboard and I took it, looking down at the admission form. Height and weight I could estimate, hair and eye color I knew, and I was pretty sure he didn't have any allergies. It was the bit at the top that was giving me trouble.
"I don't know his last name," I said finally.
"But you do know him?" she asked.
"We're friends. I thought we were, anyway."
"What about his address?"
"He doesn't really have one. He was living outside of town, he never got any mail. I don't know what his address in Chicago was, but he used to live here. I can find out," I added, when she tried to take the clipboard back. She let go when she saw I wasn't going to release it. We sat in silence for a while.
"Mr. Dusk, he didn't eat that hemlock accidentally, did he?" she asked.
It wasn't that I didn't want to admit what he'd done. He was going to get an earful about it from me when he woke up, and I was the reason he was going to wake up at all. Well, really the boy was. But the point was that I wasn't in denial. I just didn't want to make any trouble for him.
"Do we need to put him on a suicide watch?" she asked gently.
"He's shy," I said. "He's private, he doesn't like people bothering him. I don't want them to try and commit him. He's not crazy. He's just a little messed up."
"You'd be surprised how often I hear that," she said. "Though not usually from someone who nearly lost a thumb being heroic. I'll have the nurses keep an eye on him, how's that sound?"
"Good," I said. "I'll...fill this out and give it back to you."
She patted my arm and left me there, pen clenched in my fingers, cheap plastic clipboard resting on my knee. Nearby, in the waiting room for the ER, a shabbily-dressed man was sleeping in a chair and a woman with three small children was plying the older ones with crackers and trying to rock the younger one to sleep. I set the pen down and twisted the hospital bracelet around and around on my wrist. I didn't really have any confidence that I could find someone who knew anything more about Lucas than I did – and I didn't think the doctor believed I could either. If I didn't know his last name, who in Low Ferry would?
Marjorie arrived while I was still pondering it. She looked worried and a little furious as she swooped down on me, hugged me, forced me back into the seat I'd just stood up from, and picked up my left hand, cradling it carefully.
"My poor Christopher," she said, wrapping her other arm around my shoulders. "What happened?"
"I was bitten," I said, wiggling my thumb. It burned a little.
"By what?" she asked. "A horse?"
"Another person," I answered.
"For god's sake, what do they do in that evil little village? I hope you've had all your shots."
"Yeah, they gave me a bunch," I said. "It's not what you think."
"Good, because my first thought on hearing that a presumable adult bit you in the hand is that you were nearly a sacrifice in some kind of ghastly Satanic rite," she replied.
"Did you bring the book?" I asked. She sighed, rummaged in a bag slung over one shoulder, and produced a small, paperback copy of Plato's Phaedo. I turned through the pages, searching for the passage I thought I remembered.
He walked about until, as he had told us, his legs began to fail. Then he lay on his back in the way he had been told, and the man who had given him the poison examined his feet and legs. Soon he pressed his foot hard and asked him if he could feel it, and Socrates said "No"; then he pressed his leg, and so upwards, showing us that he was cold and stiff.