Little Emmett

by Abe Moss

  He peeked beneath under the curtain. Across the harshly lit room, Zachary’s curtain was shut.

  A groan. Pained. Opening his curtain halfway, checking that they were alone, Emmett leaned out.

  “Zachary…” he whispered. Then, a little louder, “Zachary!”

  The moaning quieted. A sharp intake of breath. “What?”

  “Are you okay?”

  A pause. “No… not really.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Zachary let out a great, deep sigh. “It’s my stomach.” He gasped, another brief moan as he tried to contain himself during another wave of whatever ailed him. “I feel like…”

  In one fluid motion, Zachary threw the curtain to his bed open as he slipped out of it like liquid, falling both hurriedly and gracefully onto his feet which were already running as they met the ground. He dashed toward the toilet in the corner and batted the curtain there aside as he went to his knees and vomited into the bowl just in the nick of time. Emmett watched all of this in morbid amazement.

  “Are you okay?” he asked again, when it sounded as though Zachary was finished. Obviously he wasn’t, but it only seemed appropriate to ask.

  “I think so,” he answered, catching his breath. “I… think so…”

  Zachary leaned against the wall beside the toilet—a quick rise and fall to his shoulders. His face was pale as chalk.

  “It’s making me sick.”

  “What’s making you sick?”

  He swallowed, his eyes lingering on the toilet. “The medicine.”

  “The blue medicine?”

  “The medicine Dr. Marks gave me…”

  “What for?”

  “Something’s wrong with me. She’s trying to make it better, but…” Zachary’s face pinched, an attempt to hold back tears. “They don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  Carefully, he picked himself up and returned to his bed, where he climbed in and pulled his curtain shut, not another word to Emmett. Emmett fought his impulse to ask more questions, now his head raced with frightening ideas—better than the horrors he’d been haunted by earlier, at least.

  He only worried that Dr. Edwina Marks might find something wrong with him, too.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE MEMORY CROWN

  I’m not hungry.”

  Officer Hollings stood between their beds where they both lay, looking from one to the other, a weary irritation in his eyes.

  It’d been a couple days since it first started. The vomiting. Still, Zachary felt worse each morning, until he hardly wanted to leave their room. Despite Zachary’s protests, Emmett decided to stay with him in case his illness became worse than simple nausea. Truthfully, there wasn’t anywhere else he wanted to be, anyway. In their short time together, vague and cold as their interactions were so far, Zachary was the closest thing to a friend he’d found in this place.

  “You need to eat,” Hollings told him.

  “It’s the medicine she’s giving me,” Zachary pleaded. “I don’t think it’s working… but she won’t listen…”

  When Hollings couldn’t decide what else to say, he turned his attention on Emmett.

  “And what’s your excuse?”

  “I’m…” He hesitated. “I didn’t want to leave him by himself.”

  “Thoughtful,” Hollings muttered, sounding unimpressed. “Not a good enough reason, I’m afraid. You go on. I’ll take care of your friend.”

  Emmett looked to Zachary, waiting for any sign at all that he wished for him to stay. But his eyes were closed, too nauseous for much else.

  “Now,” Hollings urged.

  With that, Emmett left them. He stood in the hallway briefly, peeking in until Hollings noticed him there and demanded he continue on with a curt nod of his head.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  It was a funny thing. A funny surprise. As he found a place to sit alone in the cafeteria, thinking of nothing but Zachary—fearing he wouldn’t be there at the end of the day, that something terrible might happen to him, that his illness would somehow worsen and they’d take him away and he might never see him again—something unexpected caused him to forget about Zachary entirely.

  “Emmett!”

  He swiveled, eyes darting from head to head. He knew the voice, the face he searched for, but—

  “Emmett!”

  He flinched as the voice was suddenly right beside him.

  “Tobie?”

  His face alight with a similar disbelief, Tobie smiled.

  “I knew it was you,” Tobie said, so full of happy relief his voice trembled with mania. “I was already sitting down… over there…” He pointed meaninglessly over his shoulder. “I can’t believe it’s you. I didn’t think… I didn’t think I’d see you again. Or anyone…”

  He sat next to Emmett, smacking his tray loudly on the table. Emmett noticed the number on his uniform read ‘350’.

  “So you haven’t seen Jackie?” Emmett asked. “Or Clark?”

  Tobie shook his head. “Not since they caught us all in the street. Jackie made it the farthest. She was still running when they got me…”

  “When did you get here?”

  “Yesterday. They kept me at the police station for a while…” He started eating his breakfast, speaking with his mouth full. “You haven’t seen them either, then? Jackie?”

  “No. Jackie could still be here, though. The girls are on the other side of this place.”

  Tobie looked a little hopeful at that.

  “Which ward are you?” Tobie asked. Emmett pointed toward the door with the Ward C sign above it. “Oh. I’m Ward A. I don’t know what the difference is.”

  “Me neither. But the library’s in A. And you can go outside from B.”

  “I was in C earlier,” Tobie said. “To see my ‘health specialist’.”

  Emmett perked up. “The doctor? Did you speak to her, too?”

  “Her? No, it was an old guy. Dr. Preston. Is yours a girl?”

  Emmett shrugged. “I don’t really like her. I had to talk to her at the police station, too, before I came here.”

  “Hmm. I had to talk to Dr. Preston at the station, too. I wasn’t expecting to see him when I got here. We must have been assigned, or something…”

  “What did he talk to you about?” Emmett asked. “Did he ask you about the Holmes?”

  “A little, yeah. He asked a lot about my family, too. My brother. Apparently my mom and dad are still around, in an asylum somewhere. I asked about Jackie, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. I mean, he said she was ‘okay’ but I don’t know what that really means…”

  “Have they made you take any medicine?” Emmett asked, thinking again of his roommate, Zachary.

  Tobie had to think. “Not really. I mean, I had to drink that blue stuff to get breakfast. The lady said it was just… well, it’s like…”

  “It’s supposed to relax us,” Emmett said.

  “I guess.” Tobie’s eyes were all over the place, watching the other children, the guards at the doors. Nervous, just as Emmett had been. “Seems to me it just makes everyone act like zombies…”

  “My friend…” Emmett paused, caught himself. That wasn’t the right word, he thought. “The other boy in my room… he gets a different kind of medicine. Our doctor makes him take it. Now he’s been sick for two whole days. He can’t even eat.”

  “Huh. No, they haven’t made me take anything else…”

  They talked more as they ate the rest of their meal. Emmett felt great relief at running into Tobie. What he almost considered a friendship with Zachary barely compared, and all at once he felt infinitely less alone. He noticed, however, that Tobie’s initial optimism wore off rather quickly—his mind dwelling on other things.

  “I just want to know she’s okay,” he said, thinking of his sister. “I barely slept all night. The beds here are weird, and that was part of it, but… I want to see her again.”

  “Let’s go outside when we’re done,” Emmett said. “We ca
n sit by the fence and watch the girls’ yard. Maybe we’ll see her.”

  The air outside was cool and smelled of woody pine, the forest around the facility reaching them on the morning breeze, altogether unseen and forgotten otherwise. There were fewer children, Emmett noticed, after breakfast. It was rather peaceful.

  They ventured to the fence. Like the boys’ side, the girls’ was rather deserted this time of morning, too. Disappointed, Tobie puffed air from his nostrils and kicked the grass with his bare feet.

  “Where is everyone?” he asked.

  “Still eating, maybe,” Emmett said. “Or sleeping in the library…”

  “You think the girls have a library like ours?” Tobie said.

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t get why they need to separate us.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Uninterested in the soothing forest air, Tobie turned back and Emmett followed him inside.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  They spent some time in the library. Tobie wandered the shelves, browsing the books, uninterested in reading but too restless to sit still.

  “Jackie might like it here. She’d just read all day, like before…”

  “We’ll see her soon, I bet,” Emmett said. “Outside.”

  “Maybe.”

  “She’ll be looking for you, too.”

  The intercom chimes announced it was time for lunch. Once more, Emmett was incredibly grateful to have found Tobie. He wouldn’t have to wait in line alone any longer, or eat alone. Even so, he decided when Zachary felt better enough to eat again, he might introduce them, and they could all be friends together in this place.

  “Who do you share a room with?” Emmett asked.

  Tobie craned his neck to search the throngs of sloth-like children around them.

  “I don’t see him,” he said. “Big, dumb kid. Older than both of us. About Tyler’s age, I think…”

  Hearing his name tied Emmett’s guts in knots. Judging by the look on Tobie’s face, he probably regretted it as well. They said nothing for a minute, letting the obvious ghost in the room dissipate.

  “Anyway, he’s kind of a dick. I avoid him if I can.”

  “The boy in my room is okay,” Emmett said. “Except he says there’s something wrong with him…”

  “Like what?”

  Emmett opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted as someone leaned over top of them, towering with authority.

  “Three-fifty,” the man said—a less familiar guard. Tobie paled as he turned to see him. “You’re scheduled for an appointment with your doctor now. Follow me.”

  “Again?” Tobie said. “I was just there this morning! And I haven’t finished eating…” The guard stood erect, peering down with cold, unwavering eyes. Tobie regarded the food still left on his tray, his unopened carton of milk. Reluctant, he stood obediently. As he went, he said to Emmett, “You can have the rest, if you want.”

  Emmett watched them wind through the tables until they disappeared into Ward C.

  Lo and behold, he would eat alone regardless.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  When it became apparent Tobie wouldn’t be returning for lunch, Emmett took their trays to the drop-off, and then headed outside to see if he couldn’t find Jackie on his own.

  It’d grown much hotter outside. The pavement was blistering on the bottoms of his feet. He strolled across the lawn toward the fence, shielding his eyes from the sun as he began his search. He paced the fence from one side to the other a handful of times, and saw no sign of her anywhere. Once or twice he saw girls with resemblances, but that was all.

  Failing to see anything, he lay in the grass a while, soaking up the sun while he listened to stray children wandering by here and there. Some of them spoke to themselves as they passed and he eavesdropped. It was usually nothing more than gibberish. He wondered fretfully how long it might be before it was him talking nonsense to himself…

  Worry-wart…

  Before long, the sun became too much. His skin was hot and sweat ran down his temples in streams. He decided it was time to return inside.

  On his way toward the blacktop, he passed another exhausted boy like himself, lying flat on his back in the grass, arms and legs spread like a starfish. He seemed to handle the heat better than Emmett did, basking in it like a dog.

  Only…

  Emmett paused. In the buzzing sunlight, a shiver ran up the back of his neck. He looked around the yard at the others going about their business, no one taking notice of him or the boy lying at his feet. The boy whose skin was cherry-red.

  Emmett bent a little, watching the boy’s unresponsive face. Then he noticed something else. Something that made him tense. Wince.

  The skin on the tip of his nose was purpling. Blistering.

  “Hey.”

  The boy’s eyes were closed. Emmett stepped toward him, crouched a little. From here, he saw the rolls of bubbling skin around his forehead. The cracked, peeling lips. He saw that the blisters on the tip of his purple nose were open and oozing.

  “Hey!” Emmett shouted. “Wake up!”

  He spun in place, toward the booth at the edge of the yard, and waved his arms. He screamed. The sun reflected on the booth’s window so that he couldn’t tell for sure if anyone stood inside, if anyone saw him calling for help. He peered over his shoulder once more, at the crisping boy in the grass under the buzzing sun, and before his mind could decide it, before he realized he willed them to do so, his feet were already carrying him away, away from that boy, across the grass toward no certain rescue.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Welcome back, Emmett.”

  Emmett took a seat in the same chair as before, across the desk from hers. She sat with her pen at the ready—prepared to write another novel about yet another of their fifteen-minute meetings.

  “How are you feeling today?”

  Based on their previous meetings, he was beginning to suspect she derived great joy in his misery, in poking and prodding his emotional wounds for her own satisfaction. So he was very pleased with himself to give her what he thought she least expected.

  “Great,” he said. He beamed.

  “Oh? That’s excellent news.” She scribbled, scribbled, scribbled, never lifting her eyes to him. “And what’s so great about today?”

  “My friend is here,” he said.

  “I’m very glad to hear that. Must feel much less lonely than before. It’s good to have friends…” Scribble, scribble, scribble. “You’re of course referring to Tobias, then.”

  Emmett gulped. “You mean Tobie? You know him?”

  “He’s not one of mine, but I know of him. I know you were together at the Holmes residence. His sister, too, I believe…”

  Emmett was on the edge of his seat. “Jackie? Is she here?”

  Dr. Marks, continuing to stare only at her notes, smiled. “I’m afraid I don’t know that much. You see, I only deal with children here in the boys’ wing of the facility.”

  Emmett sat back, deflated.

  “It’s not unlikely, though,” she said. “I don’t see why we’d place her anywhere else.”

  He chewed his lip, thinking. “What about Clark? Is he here?”

  “To tell you the truth, Emmett, I’m not sure. For now, let’s talk about you. Is that all right?” She finished writing for a bit and set down her pen. Her eyes pierced him, pinning him to his chair. “It’s time we start getting to the bottom of you. What do you think?”

  He rubbed the arm of his chair, digging the nail of his thumb against its smooth surface.

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  He struggled looking at her. Now he wished she would just focus on her note-taking…

  “Because you think my mom is crazy,” he said. “And me, too.”

  “I don’t think you’re ill,” she said. There was sympathy in her voice. “Not at all. But I worry about the potential. That you could become ill. Yes, because of your mother, there is that possibility. That’s w
hy it’s so important that you tell me things. Not for me, but for you. I need you to process things for yourself. Do you understand?”

  Emmett shrugged. The room was unsettlingly quiet as Dr. Marks waited for a real answer. Yet the longer the silence went on, the more determined he was to keep it.

  “How long were you at the Holmes residence?”

  What would she do if he refused to participate, he wondered? What might she say? Eventually she’d need to move on to someone else—the next helpless child to be barraged by an upsetting interrogation.

  “Emmett, I’ll make this clear just this once. If you refuse to speak, you will be prescribed medication that will help you do so. It’s not a pleasant experience for either of us. Is that what you want?

  He thought of Zachary and his vomiting. He thought of all those children stumbling around like sleepwalkers, clearly not in their right minds.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said.

  “You don’t know what?”

  “How long I was there.”

  Dr. Marks appeared pleased. She picked up her pen, bent her head over her notebook once more, and Emmett felt greatly relieved.

  “How long did it feel?”

  “I don’t know…” He knew he couldn’t get away with ambiguity forever, either. “Like a year, I guess.”

  “You were there for about six to seven months. Does that sound about right?”

  “I guess so.”

  Scribble, scribble, scribble.

  “What did your mother tell you was the reason she took you there? Do you remember?”

  “She said people thought there was something wrong with her, and… and they’d think something was wrong with me, too.” He paused, and Dr. Marks instructed him to go on. “She said she was scared they would take me to a place like this.”

  “To The Cradle, you mean?”

  Emmett shrugged.

  “What did she say about this place?”

  Emmett thought. “That they do bad things to kids.”

  “Do you agree with that so far?”

  He wasn’t sure about that, yet. He’d definitely seen and heard things, but… was it enough to fault the facility?

  “No one’s happy here,” he said.

  “Oh? I thought you said you were happy? You said you were feeling ‘great’ today. Is that not true?”