Bathwater Blues: A Novel

by Abe Moss

  “Can I do anything to help?” Addie asked, when really all she wanted was to flee like Joanna had done.

  The doctor didn’t answer or give any sign of having heard her. After a while longer of dabbing and wringing, he dropped the washrag in the bucket and sat quietly on the floor next to Nuala.

  “She let me do it…” Addie muttered. “She didn’t defend herself at all…”

  The doctor turned to her, the faceless burlap disturbing in its mystery. Could he see her?

  He stood and she straightened like a hair caught in static. He disappeared down a dark little hall for a moment and then returned with a folded blanket in his arms. He shook it loose and laid it over Nuala. Then he left to the other side of the room, where Addie only now noticed there was a staircase. It was so dark in just candlelight…

  The doctor stopped, faced her, and beckoned her to follow him up.

  She followed a few steps behind, nervous to get too close. On the unlit stairway, she could tell their distance not only by the sound of his weight on the sleepy, snoring stairs above her, but by the scent trailing after him. Something spicy, like a sharp cologne, almost familiar, and something earthy beneath it like old wood and dirt. Not unpleasant.

  At the top was a hallway, and down the hall they walked until Addie found herself standing in a doorframe. The doctor made noises in the dark and then there was light.

  It was a bedroom. His bedroom, she guessed. A small cot sat in the corner, not unlike the ones they slept on in the guesthouse. There was a nightstand next to it with a large kerosene lamp on top which lit the room bright. The floor was cleanly swept, with a plain black oblong carpet in the center. Nothing hung on the walls save the single window facing the yard outside. Against another wall was a large wardrobe, tall and wide, and finally against another wall was a simple wooden table accompanied by a simple wooden chair, and a small metal filing cabinet next to it. On the table sat what looked to be an old-fashioned black typewriter…

  The doctor, after lighting the lamp, immediately crossed the room and sat at the typewriter. He removed a sheet of paper from a thick ream sitting on the table’s corner and after some fiddling began typing.

  Addie never took a step beyond the doorway.

  The doctor didn’t type for long before he stopped and turned his bagged head toward her. He waited. She wondered why he didn’t just speak… She passed through the room and stood by his side at the table. She bent and read the freshly inked words on the page.

  She was testing you, it read.

  Addie shook her head. “Well yeah, I could have guessed that.”

  The doctor typed some more.

  What do you think she was testing for?

  Addie thought. “To see how long we’d patiently wait, I guess. To see if we’d take matters into our own hands.”

  And what else?

  Addie thought some more, took longer this time. “Maybe she wanted to see how afraid we were. Of her, apparently. Was that it?”

  The doctor didn’t respond directly to her question. Instead he asked another of his own.

  Do you feel afraid now?

  “Of you?”

  Yes. Or anything else.

  “I feel nervous, I guess. Not afraid. I feel too far removed from myself anymore to feel very afraid. I guess I’m mostly curious about things now.”

  What are you curious about?

  “This place. You. Nuala doesn’t answer my questions very well…” The doctor began typing something else but Addie interrupted him. “Why don’t you speak?”

  The doctor bent his head. Addie, standing so closely, observed the cloth sack around it, saw the way it was cinched around his throat somewhere beneath the collar of his coat. She wanted to press her hand into it, to feel the shape of his head under the cloth.

  He abandoned whatever he’d started writing and answered her newest question instead.

  I haven’t a mouth to speak with.

  Addie’s body erupted in goosebumps. A mild dread settled over the room. That scent, mossy and perfumed, was much stronger so close at the doctor’s side.

  “What are you, then?”

  He typed two words: A doctor.

  She reached toward him, dared to touch her fingers to the rough cloth. Quickly but gently, he took hold of her wrist. His hands, she noted, were perfectly human. Almost pretty, in fact, in their largeness. She let her hand fall at her side.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The doctor typed. Addie looked over her shoulder at the bedroom doorway, expecting to see Nuala watching or something else. But it was dark and empty. The doctor’s fingers left the typewriter and Addie read his final message for the night.

  The others are waiting for you outside. You should go back. We’ll meet again soon. I promise.

  When she finished reading, he removed the sheet of paper, crumpled it up, and tossed it into a wire waste bin. She remained next to him for a short moment, and he rested his elbows on the table, hands clasped as though in thought, and didn’t address her further. Addie looked around the room, studied him once more, and then left.

  She found her way down the hall, down the stairs, and to the front door. Nuala was still on the couch unconscious under the blanket. She opened the door and stepped outside. Just as the doctor had said, the others were in the yard waiting for her.

  “Addie?” Bud asked.

  She closed the door behind her and went down the porch steps to meet them. Bud came to meet her while Joanna and Lyle stayed behind.

  “What happened?”

  “I met him,” she said. “I spoke to him.”

  “And?”

  Addie peered back at the house, at the upstairs window still lit bright by the lamplight, and turned to the three of them, each watching her wide-eyed, afraid and curious. She knew how they felt and she wouldn’t be able to give a comforting answer.

  “I feel like I know even less about him than I did before.”

  STRANGE REMEDIES

  PART THREE

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was the sixth day since their arrival.

  There was an envelope on the couch in the foyer the next morning. The four of them sat together while Bud read it aloud.

  “Dear friends,” Bud read, and he paused to share a raised brow with the others. “My assistant is a bit under the weather this morning…” He paused again, and Addie fidgeted as the others smirked in her direction. “… and won’t be in to see you until later. However, I’ve left some food in the kitchen which should hold you over for a while. I apologize for our absence these last two days. I wish I could give an adequate excuse for the absence—”

  “We know why,” Joanna said, and settled deeper into her seat, arms folded. “They were testing us again like guinea pigs, like Addie said.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Addie jumped in. “He just didn’t say I was wrong…”

  Bud continued: “Just know that you’ll be seeing more of me very soon. I look forward to getting to know each other more closely in the future.”

  “None of this feels necessary anymore,” Joanna said. “I got emotional and slipped up. I’m over it already. I just want to go home…”

  She got up from the couch and went to the kitchen, where she started rummaging through the cupboards in search of the aforementioned food. The others stay seated, quietly looking from their own laps to the others’. Bud folded the letter and placed it on the arm of the sofa.

  “I think the doctor knows us better than that,” Addie said. “I’d say I feel the same as you, Joanna, but it could also be wishful thinking.”

  “It’s not wishful thinking for me,” Joanna said, only partly paying the others any mind as she fished a loaf of bread from one of the cupboards and some jars after it. “It was a one-time lapse in judgement. It’s not happening again.”

  Addie shook her head, thinking to herself. “The doctor isn’t any ordinary person. He knows things that should be impossible to know. I don’t think he picked us for no reas
on.”

  “Oh, because you met him last night you suddenly think you know everything about him, and everything about what’s happening here?” Joanna set an armful of groceries on the counter in a noisy heap. “I don’t care what the doctor thinks he knows. Only I know me.”

  Addie left it at that.

  After they ate—meals consisting of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, potato chips, apples, bananas, and beef jerky—they resumed their waiting for Nuala.

  Lyle didn’t seclude himself in his room any longer. He didn’t separate himself from the others by sitting on the other side of the room, either. He sat with them in the foyer, or followed them outside if they decided to take in some fresh air, though he didn’t speak or socialize. He didn’t even make his insensitive or sarcastic remarks. He just tagged along silently. While the others noticed his change in behavior, none of them commented. Not even Joanna.

  Eventually Nuala came. They were outside gathered around the water pump, not speaking much but taking turns glancing up at the doctor’s windows when the front door opened and she came slowly down the steps. She shielded her eyes from the sun, hand placed over the bruise. Addie jumped to her feet to meet her. She opened her mouth to speak, intended to apologize, and Nuala spoke first.

  “I don’t want to hear it, Addie,” she said. She smiled softly. “Let’s just pick up where we left off.”

  Nuala moved her eyes over each of them. She looked surprised.

  “Not a word from any of the rest of you? Not even you, Joanna?”

  Joanna froze, looked at the ground. Then she said, “A question occurred to me, yeah. But when do you suppose we can start asking questions and getting straight answers?”

  “Not every question has a definite answer.”

  Joanna sighed. “What makes you think we all need to be here?”

  Addie sensed their earlier exchange had wormed its way deeper than Joanna let on. Obviously.

  “The doctor picked you all for a reason.”

  “A straight answer would be telling us what that is exactly. How did he pick us?”

  Nuala’s gentle smile grew. “He reaches into a tall black hat and pulls out little slips of paper with your names on them. Does that work?”

  Joanna couldn’t help but smile; it was uncertain, though, whether it was borne of humor or contest.

  “How does your face feel this morning?” Joanna asked next.

  “Worse I’m sure than if the stone had been left in your shaky hands.”

  Joanna opened her mouth to laugh and then realized what had actually been said. She gaped.

  “Wait—”

  “Enough talk this morning,” Nuala said, and with a graceful gesture of the wrist she started across the yard and the others followed behind, Joanna standing puzzled for a moment before hurrying after. “Dr. Lull seems to think it would be best if we moved on with your treatment, rather than get to know each other better like I’d been attempting. I can’t say I agree, but… he knows best…”

  She led them around the doctor’s house into the fields, the same direction Addie and Joanna had run their first night. They rounded the house, walking single file, Addie in the lead, then Bud, then Lyle, then Joanna. The sun was hot on the backs of their necks. After they walked a ways, leaving the doctor’s house far behind them, they arrived at the edge of the pond. There they stopped. In the light of day Addie saw just how murky the water was.

  “We going for a swim or what?” Joanna asked.

  “Addie, you asked about this the other morning. Both you and Joanna happened upon it your first night out of the guesthouse…” Across the pond the bathtub still waited, smooth and white. “We won’t be starting quite today, but I thought it’d be best to introduce you all now, to build a level of familiarity. Let you get used to the idea.”

  “Idea of what?” Addie asked.

  Nuala, pleased with their curiosity, turned to face the pond, grinning.

  “I told you the pond, and the tub, aren’t suitable for bathing. Not regular bathing, at least. The water here is special.”

  Joanna shuddered. Only Addie seemed to notice. Nuala kicked a pebble into the water. The four of them tensed, expecting something to occur by it, but nothing did.

  “It’s healing. It helps to remember things. Sometimes they’re things you’ve completely forgotten, or other times they’re things you can’t bring yourself to remember. In this water, someone could relive an important event in their lives, for instance. Study it without the distraction of being a participant. Doing that can help remember something in a healthier light. There are other uses and benefits as well.”

  “So we get in the water and have hallucinations?” Addie couldn’t help being skeptical, despite the number of strange things she’d already seen. “How does it work?”

  “You can’t just get in the water. Not the pond, at least. That’s what the tub is for.” She started around the pond and they followed. They neared the tub and stopped. Nuala bent and thumbed a smudge of dirt from its lip.

  “So what’s special about the tub, then?”

  “It’s unique,” Nuala said. “It’s been here so long, it’s developed a kind of presence of its own.”

  She stroked its surface with one finger, like admiring something sweet and precious. Addie, standing with the others and not wishing to get any closer, stood on tiptoe to get a view inside. From what she could tell, it was scrubbed clean inside and out, unmarred by dirt or anything else. Even the drain—connected to nothing underneath—had a freshly polished glow.

  “I’m not getting in that thing, or that water,” Joanna said. “You couldn’t pay me enough.”

  “How does it really work, though?” Addie asked. “How does the water…”

  “You’re assuming it’s even real,” Joanna said.

  “I’m not asking you…”

  Just then Nuala looked like she remembered something.

  “Oh! I have a surprise for you all. I meant to give it to you sooner, but as you know, things these last couple days haven’t gone according to schedule.”

  She led them back to the yard, where they waited out front while she fetched something inside the doctor’s house. When she returned she carried a large woven basket in her arms.

  “Clean clothes!” She pushed the basket toward them. “I assume you’d prefer to bathe before changing into them. I’m sorry you’ve all had to endure wearing your pajamas for so long.”

  “Do we really have to bathe out here in the open, with water from that pump?” Joanna sounded distraught. “Isn’t there anywhere more private? Or clean?”

  “There’s nothing unclean about bathing outside.”

  Joanna, annoyed, shook her head but looked into the basket nonetheless. She pulled an article out. It was a plain white t-shirt, bright and new.

  “Like that’ll fit me.”

  “There’s a large in there for you,” Nuala said. “I got all different sizes. And I got several for each of you for every day if you wish to change that often. Just bring me your dirtied clothes when you’re done and I’ll wash them when I have a full basket.”

  Besides the white t-shirts, they were also given black gym shorts. It reminded Addie of being in high school gym again. Joanna remarked on this, too, about how she thought she might be in her own personal hell.

  Lyle was the first to bathe. He filled a bucket and took a washcloth around behind the doctor’s house, out of sight for anyone in the yard. Nuala also provided them with bars of soap if they wished. After Lyle it was Bud, and after Bud, Addie. Joanna refused a little longer than that. But as evening drew nearer it wasn’t long before she was around the corner with her own bucket and cloth.

  During all this, Nuala changed their beddings and tidied up the guesthouse and prepared a stew for dinner that night. She also heaved a large cardboard box into the foyer and dropped it loudly at the side of one of the sofas.

  “I know it can get boring around here on days like this. Hopefully this can help a bit.”<
br />
  The box was full of paperback books. There may have been fifty or more. Addie dug through them and pulled out the first she thought sounded interesting. It was The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. She thought something frightening would keep her mind off the real terrors around her. It was worth a shot, anyway.

  Bud also looked over a handful of books and decided he wasn’t in the mood to read anything. Instead he passed the time the same as Joanna, lounging on the sofa. Lyle looked through the box as well, and when he found something, he quickly took it to his room, away from the others and their distractions.

  They sat at the table eating their stew together that night, Nuala included, by the light of a lantern set in the table’s center. Its flame quivered inside the glass, throwing shadows over the table. Quiet and calm.

  “Your face,” Bud said, gesturing with his spoon toward Nuala. “Your bruise is nearly gone. Or is it only the light?”

  Nuala touched the back of her hand to her forehead. She smiled warmly. “I heal fast, that’s all.”

  Addie stirred her stew in silence, avoiding anyone’s gaze.

  “How do you like the stew, Lyle?” Nuala asked.

  He looked up from his bowl, passed his eyes along the table at them all. He shrugged, nodded.

  “I’d like to start the next stage in a couple days,” Nuala said. “I know there are things we still haven’t worked out… some trust issues…”

  “No shit,” Joanna said, and dropped her spoon into her empty bowl with a clang. “I don’t think there’s any fixing that.”

  “I don’t think so, either.” There was no humor in Nuala’s eyes. “Not entirely.”

  “How would you say we’re doing compared to other groups?” Addie asked.

  Nuala thought. “You’re nothing we haven’t seen before. Everyone is different, yes, but there are only so many shades of melancholy. Or willfulness.”