by Ellen Datlow
“No, ma’am,” replied the nurse, even though Orando had really been talking to herself. “Uh, he broke a strap before, ma’am. That’s not supposed to be possible. We’ve got six tight on him now, and he’s still moving against them.”
“Hysterical strength,” said Orando. She tilted the video camera on its tripod down a little, making sure it captured Broward’s wriggling movements under the restraints. His arms were rippling like a snake pinned down by a shovel at the head, and the stubs of his fingers were trying to tear at the sides of the bed.
Scratching, Orando realised. Broward was trying to reach his chest. That was the target for his scratching. His own heart.
“Nurse, I’d like you to cut the patient’s robe down from the neck to reveal the sternum, please.”
“Doctor? Cut his robe?”
“Yes, that’s what I said. This psychosomatic scratching is so developed I am wondering if it’s capable of producing a physical effect. I saw some signs of a rash yesterday. A reddening of the skin, though it was transient. I want to see if it has developed further.”
The nurse nodded, picked up a pair of scissors, and approached the bed. As he did so, Broward’s struggles intensified. The IV tube in his arm shivered, constant small movements of Broward’s arm making it vibrate. The restraining straps creaked and groaned, the clips screeching as they were slid back and forth against the metal frame of the bed.
The nurse got the scissors in position and started to cut, but he’d hardly slit a few inches when the fire alarm went off, a siren out in the corridor echoed by many others throughout the three buildings. A quick, strobing whoop-whoop-whoop.
All the lights went out. When the red-framed emergency lighting came flickering back, the nurse was by the door. He’d dropped the scissors in his hasty retreat.
“Go to your fire station in the main ward,” snapped Orando. She snatched up the phone by the bed and dialled the hospital control centre. No one answered. After six rings she hung up and redialled, stabbing the buttons with her penlight. This time her call was answered by a breathy, clearly discomfited guard. There should have been two on duty, but a lot of the staff had called in sick that day, something Orando was going to investigate. Probably people wanting time off to be with their kids for Halloween, but they were going to have to pay for it out of their regular holiday entitlements when they got back tomorrow.
“This is Orando. What’s going on?”
“Uh, two heat-detector trips in Building Three, and the main power and CCTV is out across the complex, which is weird because they should be independent….I can’t see what’s going on,” gasped the guard. “The board says all the inter-building automatic fire doors are closed, and City Fire and the police have been automatically notified. I was just…uh…Now there’s another detector trip, also in Building Three—”
“Make an announcement: Building Three is to be evacuated according to the plan, all other buildings to lock down, staff to their fire-emergency positions,” said Orando. “Get the closest orderly in to help you go through the checklist and then get them to call in all the off-duty staff. Patients are to be corralled on the south lawn as per the contingency. I’m on my way over.”
She put the phone down and looked back at Broward, eyes running over the monitors to make sure he was still stable. He continued to writhe against the restraints, the clanging of the buckles a counterpoint to the whoop-whoop of the fire siren. For a moment, Orando considered whether she should order this building evacuated too, but with the automatic fire doors closed and the relatively new sprinkler system in Building Three, she considered there would be time enough to evaluate whether that was necessary, and it would be far better to keep everyone inside if they were not actually at risk from fire or smoke.
Certainly, she considered that Broward should not be moved while he was still being infused with anaesthetics, and though he seemed stable enough, intervention might be required, which could not be done on the lawn.
“I will be back shortly, Mr. Broward,” she said. Orando often spoke to patients, even ones apparently far more deeply sedated than the old man jerking and struggling on the hospital bed in front of her. “Remember. You are not itchy. You do not need to scratch. Relax. Let yourself fall into a deep, healing sleep. All is—”
At that moment one of the straps broke, just broke, with a sound like a gunshot. Orando flinched but calmed herself. She approached the bed, glancing over at the video camera to be sure it was recording what was happening. Broward had got one arm free, and his mangled hand had gone instantly to his chest, stubby remnant fingers digging deep into his flesh.
Orando blinked. There was an odd, fuzzy glint of red under those desperately scratching fingers. A reflection from the emergency lighting, no doubt.
She came closer, careful to keep to the end of the bed, out of reach of that scratching, scrabbling hand. Orando had worked with the dangerously insane for many years and would not risk getting too close. But she had never had such a fascinating patient, and she couldn’t help but lean forward….The fuzzy, red glint was clearer now, almost as if a kind of tendril of suspended desert-red dust was rising between the mutilated joints of the man’s hand….
Orando didn’t realise she’d been holding her breath, in the excitement of observing a case that would give her not only a great leap in her professional career but probably a popular nonfiction book as well.
She breathed in.
A few moments later, her fingers twitched. Unlike Broward, her fingers were long and she had nails. Sensibly varnished, well-trimmed nails. But nails, nevertheless.
There was an itch on her chest. A really annoying, deep-seated itch along her sternum. She started to scratch, just with one hand. But the itch could not be assuaged.
“Help,” groaned Orando. Broward was forgotten. There was only the itch. “I need…I need help!”
She ran out of the room. Scratching with both hands, nails digging deep into her own flesh, long streaks of blood spreading across her blouse, the pearls in her necklace washed red before her frantic scrabbling broke the string and they fell to go rolling across the floor.
A puff of ochre dust went with Orando, twining in and out of her mouth and nose with every inhalation and exhalation, as she ran sobbing and scratching, out to the lawn where all the patients and staff from Building Three were beginning to gather….
—
THREE MINUTES LATER, McIndoe appeared out of breath and trembling in Broward’s room. He was not in his orderly’s uniform. The hood of his tracksuit was up, pulled over an unusually long–billed cap, completely hiding his face. He had a bag of tools in his left hand, the end of the kitchen blowtorch he’d used to spoof the fire detectors just visible.
He stopped when he saw Broward sitting up on the bed, all the straps broken or undone, trailing by the sides. The old inmate was hunched over, cradling himself.
Broward’s stubby, remnant fingers were finally still. Not twitching, not scratching. At rest.
But they were red, the old man’s hands were red, soaked to the wrists with his own blood.
McIndoe froze in the doorway. The fire alarm was still whooping, rising and falling, but in the moments between its wails he realised the sound he’d unconsciously been hearing for a few minutes was now identifiable.
Screaming.
Screams, coming from outside the double-glazed security windows, coming from the lawn between the buildings. The designated evacuation area.
There was often screaming in the hospital, but this was different. McIndoe had never heard such screams, never heard so many people screaming, all at once.
“I couldn’t…,” muttered Broward. “I couldn’t hold it in. Seventeen years, and It knows, It knows. Halloween.”
He looked up at McIndoe, his gaze older and more defeated than anyone’s the warder had ever seen.
“The itch…the itch…I just had to scratch.”
“What…what is It?” asked McIndoe. He didn’t even really know
what he was saying, what good it would do to know. He’d hated himself for staying away, and he hated himself for coming back and trying to do something, and most of all he hated himself for being too late. He should have got Broward into the sphere earlier, no matter what it took.
“I don’t know,” whispered Broward. “I’ve never known. Something ancient, something terrible. People knew it before, but we’ve forgotten. All Hallows’ Eve. Old Scratch. You’ll see. I’m sorry, McIndoe. I’m sorry, sorry…”
“You tried,” said McIndoe. “Hell, whatever’s happening isn’t your fault.”
“Not that,” whispered Broward. “I’m sorry for you. It will be back here soon.”
“Yeah,” said McIndoe. He shrugged wearily, knowing that this time he’d irretrievably fucked everything up. His life insurance was paid. The grandkids would make it, maybe they’d even do better without him along to try and guide them. “Don’t worry. Like I said, you tried. I saw that, every time. You fought. I’m almost seventy, I could drop dead any moment. Not your fault.”
“It comes back when it’s had enough. Looking to be reborn again, to hide and grow,” whispered Broward. “It likes a familiar place. Familiar. It was called that, sometimes. In my family…”
He leaned over as if in great pain, and when he straightened up, there was a pair of sharp surgical scissors clutched between his palms, stubby fingers folded over to keep it tight. “I’m so sorry, McIndoe, but I…I can’t do it anymore. It has to go to family, and you’re the closest I got. The itch…oh, the itch—”
McIndoe lunged, but he was too late. Broward had shoved the scissors as hard as he could into that itchy spot, right under his sternum. He was already good as dead. All the warder could do was help him lie back as the blood blackened the old man’s chest and his eyes became dull. Curiously, his face continued to hold an expression McIndoe had never seen before. The attendant had seen plenty of men die. He’d never seen one look relieved before.
The orderly sat down in the chair next to the bed. The screaming was fainter. He could hardly hear it now. Just isolated, fading wails and cries under the constant up-and-down whooping of the fire alarm, and the sharp, frantic beeping of the monitors that had detected the absence of Broward’s pulse and blood pressure.
Air moved in the corridor outside, a wind whistling through, though there were never windows open here, no way for a breeze to get in. The door creaked and moved a few inches. McIndoe tensed, trying to remember the words of a prayer he hadn’t said since he was a very young man, lying wounded in the mud. It had been hot and very humid then. Now it was cold, air-conditioned cold, but he was sweating, and he wanted to move but he couldn’t.
There was a red glint in the air, the hint of dust carried on the wind, or a flight of tiny red insects flying all together like a little cloud, coming straight at McIndoe, straight at his chest—
McIndoe screamed as a white-hot wire thrust through his heart and out his back. He clutched at his chest, frantically lifted his tracksuit top and the T-shirt beneath. But there was no wound, and the pain was gone as quickly as it had come.
He stared at his breastbone. It looked no different from before. His skin was wrinkled and old, a few remaining hairs wiry and white. McIndoe thought it looked like someone else’s chest, but he’d always thought that, at least since he was sixty.
Now it didn’t just look different. His skin felt different. Like there was something there, something just under the skin, though it was not visible.
It was a little itchy. Just in the middle. Only a little bit now, but it was bad enough. Hard to imagine how much worse it would be in seventeen years….
McIndoe automatically moved to scratch but stopped himself. His face set hard, and he sat for a while, thinking. Then he got up and found the tool bag where he’d dropped it on the floor.
There was a big screwdriver in there that would serve as a chisel, broad enough to sever a finger at the joint. And he had a hammer. The floor would be his workbench, and there were plenty of bandages close by he could use to stem the blood.
Painkillers too, but he didn’t think he’d use them.
The pain would be a good distraction.
A distraction from the itch.
A Flicker of Light on Devil’s Night
Kate Jonez
I SUPPOSE I SHOULD CARE MORE, but little by little all the ordinary cares I had before got chipped away.
The girl’s teddy bear is wedged in the corner of the floral sofa that was the least ugly one at the thrift store. She’s rearranged the cotton cover that’s supposed to hide the hideous thing. I’d wanted furniture that would be as pretty and elegant as the old house had been before it had been cut up into apartments. When I first moved in, it seemed possible.
A beam of October light that seems transported from a Crate and Barrel catalog makes the earth tones I’ve been trying to decorate with look like they’ve been rolled around in actual earth. I guess you have to be rich to successfully dye fabric with tea and have it look good. I’m about as broke and beyond glamour as the old turn-of-the-century house, I guess.
The bear is wearing the only good pair of earrings I ever owned, will probably ever own if I’m honest about it. They are gaudy and haven’t been in style for years. For a minute, I think I can hear the Pink song that was playing the night my ex gave them to me. That night his eyes glittered hard as the little stones with his excitement about all his big plans, all the crazy wild things we were going to do.
Nostalgia is stupid. It makes me physically sick. I never listen to old music anymore. I should probably sell the earrings. I forgot I even had them. I’ve got more important things to care about.
The living room windows vibrate like a bomb just created a concussion. Construction-paper Halloween bats the girl made twirl on their fishing line. Their wings cast long shadows across the braided rag rug. I can almost hear wings flapping announcing the arrival of the dark angel of the cold times. I imagine the whole neighborhood dropping to the pockmarked ground with hands over their bleeding ears. I guess I’m not in a festive mood. There’s no reason to look out the window. There’s not a chance the angel dropped a bomb. Nothing as definitive as that. It’s only kids fighting. They’re stomping and thumping around hard enough to rattle the windows. Why can’t they be happy for ten consecutive minutes?
I stomp through the living room and yank open the door to the attic. “What are you doing?” I try to modulate my voice so the situation, if it is a situation, and it probably is, doesn’t escalate.
The girl’s siren howl barrels down the stairs. It’s not the worst kind of scream, the kind that evokes a pool of blood or a bone poking through skin, but it’s alarming enough.
“Shut up, you fat-ass cockhole,” the boy yells. The attic is his room now because he’s too old to share with a kid, and he doesn’t care about the spiders. That’s the least of what he doesn’t care about. “Get out of my room.”
“I don’t have to. Mommm!” the girl wails.
I march up the stairs. They are hardwood and still shiny at the edges where no one walks on them, remnants of the days when the whole house was a showplace for robber barons or shipping magnates and no expense had been spared, even in the attic. They’d be nice if I sanded and refinished them.
“What is the problem?” I demand as I squint into the gloom.
The floor is rougher up here. It would take a lot to make it nice. A lot more than I could justify spending on a rental. Like fixing a floor is even one of my options.
The October sun barely squeezes in through the dormer window. Outside, across the street, a fire burns in a green plastic trash can. The Devil’s Night ceremonies are starting before the sun even goes down. I listen for sirens but hear nothing. One little fire is hardly the worst of it. The trash can is one the city owns, heavy and durable. It won’t melt right away. Maybe someone will put it out soon. Maybe someone will catch it in time.
“He’s going to cut my arm off,” the girl says, her voic
e hitching with her sobs. “He’s got a knife.”
“How’s she supposed to be Furiosa for Halloween if she’s got two arms?” The boy pulls his dreadlocks, dyed white even though his hair is naturally blond, forward and strokes them. The gesture reminds me of the baby blanket he’d always insisted on draping over his head when he was little. He’s shirtless even though the attic is chilly. His lack of concern for personal comfort troubles me. But that’s the least of the things that trouble me. He grins at me with that cocky smile he uses when he’s sure he’s winning an argument. “It’ll grow back, anyway.” He lounges back on the filthy black-and-white-checked futon he dragged in from the eviction trash heap next door in spite of my warning about bedbugs and slides the tip of a folding knife under his fingernail.
“I don’t want my arm cut off,” the girl cries. “Even if it’s going to grow back.” She hugs herself but doesn’t run away.
“Arms don’t grow back,” I say. “You can be whatever you want for Halloween.”
Her crying escalates.
“Give me that.” I reach for the knife.
The boy snatches it away. His hair swings back revealing an angry “X” carved over where most people think their heart is. The lines of the symbol are crusted black as though he’s rubbed dirt in the wound. The ridges are raised and puffy looking.
I am concerned, but it isn’t serious enough for an emergency-room visit. Antiseptic will fix this. And he’s got an appointment with a counselor. It’s not all that bad. It can’t be. The appointment is in January, so the doctor must think it’s okay to wait three months. He wouldn’t make him wait if the boy was really sick, if this self-harm was a symptom of something bad.
“What happened to you?”
“The angel Ariel came down and cut out my heart. She said I’d be better prepared to do my work without it.” He lifts his chin and stares at me as if daring me to contradict him. His voice is as deep as his father’s. When did that happen?
