David Cronenberg's The Brood

by Richard Starks

  THE BROOD WILL TAKE YOU

  BEYOND FEAR, BEYOND TERROR,

  BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES

  OF THE MIND . . . AND WILL

  DEVASTATE YOU TOTALLY.

  More frightening than the unknown is something you know you can’t control.

  Inside some of us, it’s hiding . . . screaming to get out.

  If it’s ever unleashed, it will destroy anything that gets in its way.

  THE BROOD

  Something was waiting . . .

  Carveth was passing the open bathroom door when he saw the smear of blood on the tiled floor inside.

  Slowly he entered.

  There was a second smear of blood on the floor and the shower curtain had been pulled across the bath.

  He raised the scissors over his head, moved towards the motionless curtain, and with one hand tore it from its hooks.

  The tub was empty.

  Trembling, Carveth turned away. He did not see the linen closet door ease open behind him.

  Too late he heard the mad shrieking as the creature leapt . . .

  Copyright © 1979 by David Cronenberg

  and Richard Starks

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  ISBN 0-920528-06-6

  First printing, June, 1979.

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Published by Virgo Press

  103 Church Street, Suite 209

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5C 2G3

  Printed in Canada by Ronalds Federated Graphics

  Typeset by Action Print

  Design and Production by FIRST IMAGE

  “Inside some of us, it’s hiding . . .

  screaming to get out.”

  —Dr. Hal Raglan, The Shape of Rage

  T H E

  B R O O D

  C H A P T E R

  O N E

  The lecture hall was already full by the time Frank Carveth arrived. He stood in the doorway for a moment, uncertain, then pushed his way up the broadloomed stairs to the rear. There were a few spaces there, wedged behind the pillars, but by forcing his way over legs and around knees, he was able to find a seat where his view of the stage would be unimpeded.

  A bearded youth, one of Raglan’s students perhaps, reluctantly shifted position to give him room.

  Carveth nodded at him. “Thanks.”

  “All right.” The youth spoke curtly, as if his concentration were already focused on the stage and any distraction was naturally to be resented.

  Carveth folded himself into his seat and looked around him. The lecture hall was a semi-circle, the storied benches forming a raised horseshoe around a platform-stage. Already there was a sense of anticipation in the air, a crackle of excitement. Tense faces. Eager. Expectant. Even the hum of conversation was subdued and deferential.

  Carveth tried to capture some of the tension himself, to share in its vitality. But he still felt distinctly out of place. An agnostic among the converted.

  He wondered if he weren’t just wasting his time.

  Psychoplasmics. It was the new wonder science—if that wasn’t too fine a word for it—that was supposed to go beyond the conventional limits of of modern psychiatry, reaching deep into the mind, into the body, digging and poking into the darkest corners.

  Maybe it really did achieve the miraculous results that its proponents claimed for it. And maybe it did enable the mind and the body to break free of their inhibitions. But to Carveth, it was still unproven.

  ‘Operating on the borders of human knowledge.’ That was how Nola’s former psychiatrist had described it. But that was just another way of saying that it was a novelty that no one properly understood.

  Still, an open mind. He had promised himself he would give it that much of a chance at least. View the demonstration, then make a judgement. If Nola could benefit, and if psychoplasmics could help them get together again, then that in itself would make it all worthwhile. Anyway, he thought, what else would he be doing with his Sunday afternoon: since he and Nola had formally separated nearly six months earlier, his Sundays had been gaps in his life like those of an amnesiac, doing little to bridge his weeks together.

  There were about a hundred people seated around him. Most of them seemed to be students, younger than Carveth, but there were a few faces his own age. He wondered if they too were followers of Raglan, or whether, like him, they were relatives or friends of Somafree patients.

  The lights in the hall dimmed, then faded to blackness. The conversation died, as if cut off by a guillotine. Carveth felt, rather than saw, the bearded youth beside him lean forward in his seat.

  Overhead a single spotlight came on, was joined by another, then a third, until the stage below was bathed in a diffuse white light, unnaturally bright.

  A man strode onto the stage through a door that Carveth couldn’t see and took up a position in the centre. He turned, facing the audience, then bowed slightly, just an inclination of the head to acknowledge that he wasn’t alone. Then he waited. For effect, Carveth couldn’t help thinking.

  “Welcome,” the man said finally. “Welcome to Somafree. Institute of Psychoplasmics.”

  His gaze wandered over the audience as if he were trying to make eye contact with each individual. Whether by accident or design, Carveth couldn’t tell, but the position the man had chosen on stage was directly beneath the central spotlight: the light, as a result, gave an unnatural glow to his eyes, as if they had been fired by an inner source of their own.

  The man took a step forward and the light shifted across his face, changing its character. The eyes deepened into sockets and the planes of his face stood out in relief.

  “My name,” he said slowly, “is Dr. Hal Raglan.”

  The voice, easily carrying to the rear of the hall, was strong like the face. Masculine. To Carveth’s ears it held a trace of arrogance. It was a redundant self-introduction by someone who well knew he was instantly recognizable.

  Raglan spread his arms in a theatrical gesture that would have been pretentious in a smaller setting. He was wearing a loose-fitting, judo-style tunic, with a knotted cord holding it tight at the waist.

  “The mind and the body,” Raglan said. “Those two entities lie at the root of our existence. And their inter-relationship holds the key to our individual and collective well-being. For most of us, they are in harmony, operating in tandem in a kind of symbiotic union. But for some of us, an unfortunate few, they are out of phase. In conflict. Fighting, struggling against one another so that, if left unchecked, they ultimately achieve nothing less than their mutual destruction.”

  Carveth glanced quickly around him. The audience seemed held by the forceful presence of the man on stage. And Carveth, sitting alone with his doubts, couldn’t help thinking how much Raglan owed his popularity and his following to this physical presence. The strong, tangible aura; the powerful features, the large head. And the hands too. Photographed on the jacket of his latest bestseller, on the covers of national magazines, and in the pages of newspapers and medical journals alike, the hands were always there, always raised to either side of that large head in a commanding gesture of force.

  “We are all familiar,” Raglan was saying, “with the theory that our bodies respond to our mental state. As doctors, or even as lay observers, we have all been told that the mind, acting under stress, can generate physical symptoms: migraine headaches, muscular spasms, rashes, hives. Symptoms that supposedly disappear as soon as the source—the mental stress—is alleviated.

  “In conventional psychiatry, so we are told, the cure for such ailments is to be found in
the mind: remove the stress and the symptoms will disappear of their own accord.” He stared out at his audience. The lights overhead had subtly shifted, throwing a glow behind him so that his body stood out in near-silhouette.

  “Conventional wisdom?” He shook his head. “Conventional stupidity. It is primitive psychiatry that tells us that the mind is dominant over the body; that when the body rebels, it does so in response to the mind.” He raised his voice and punched the air for emphasis. “But I tell you now that when the body and the mind are in conflict, it is the body that is dominant. It is the physical being that is the stronger, that talks to us, speaks to us, tries to communicate. And when the mind resists and refuses to act as a go-between, then the body speaks to us directly. It finds its own means of self-expression.”

  He folded his arms, visibly relaxing. “My views,” he said, “as some of you know, sometimes run counter to prevailing medical thought, and as such have generated considerable controversy. They have, at times met with scathing rejection—a rejection, I might add, that comes mainly from those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.” He paused.

  “So can I prove what I say? Can I show that my theories are founded on fact? Can I illustrate that the body is capable of direct expression?” He took a step back, once more letting the lights show up his features. “I think,” he said, “that I can.”

  The lights dimmed until only the overhead spotlight was left. A white-coated male nurse led a man onto the stage and positioned him just left of centre. The man, about forty-five years of age, as near as Carveth could tell, was plump and jowled like a puppy. He allowed himself to be guided without protest, and as he came under the light, Carveth could see that he was holding onto the sleeve of the nurse like a child clutching his parent.

  The nurse loosened the man’s grip, spoke to him quietly, then pushed him gently to the floor. The man sat, pulling his legs under him and gently rocking back and forth. Like Raglan, he was wearing a judo-style tunic tied at the waist.

  The nurse left, and the man picked up one corner of his tunic, pulling at the hem as if plucking petals from a flower. A slight smile played around his lips. He was, Carveth could see, completely oblivious to his surroundings and quite unaware that he was the focus of interest.

  Raglan waited a moment, then moved to the right, to the edge of the circle of light, pulling the attention of the audience with him.

  “Our patient,” he said, “is Michael Trellan. Early forties; balding slightly as you can see and a little overweight. Outwardly, he is a fairly normal specimen of the middle-aged, North American male.” He turned to look at Trellan, who sat in oblivious silence. “But only outwardly,” he said.

  Raglan swung back to face his audience. “You see, Michael Trellan is fighting a battle with himself. The mind against the body. It is a battle that is generating considerable turmoil inside him, a turmoil that can be a powerful source of energy—dangerous if not controlled, but healing if properly applied. Most of the time it is latent, but it can be woken from its sleep and brought out into the open.

  “When that happens, we have to ask ourselves: what exactly are we seeing? Are we witnessing the mind expressing itself through the body? Or are we witnessing the body finally breaking loose from the constraints of the mind, for once being allowed the luxury of free, untrammelled self-expression? Are we, in other words, witnessing the phenomenon of psychoplasmics?”

  He turned slowly and walked toward the man on the floor, stopping directly beneath the overhead light.

  “Michael,” he said. His voice was stern, authoritative.

  The man on the floor ignored him.

  Raglan’s voice grew harsher. “Michael. Stand up. Stand up when I talk to you.”

  Trellan glanced around him, then giggled.

  “Stand up, Michael. Try to act like an adult. Try to act like a man.”

  Again Trellan ignored him. Then, slowly, he got to his feet, staring at the ground in front of him.

  “Look at me, Michael,” Raglan ordered. “Look directly at me.”

  Trellan swung sideways, away from Raglan, a silly, immature smile on his face.

  Then he spoke.

  To Carveth, the shock of Trellan’s voice was not that it was so youthful; it was that it had the clear, unbroken pitch of a little girl’s. Coming as it did from Trellan’s adult body, it was the most incongruous sound that Carveth had ever heard.

  “I could look at you, Daddy,” Trellan said. “But I just don’t want to.”

  Raglan watched him in silence for a moment. “You’re showing weakness, Michael. Are you really that feeble? So feeble you can’t even look me in the eye?”

  Trellan shuffled his feet.

  “Perhaps,” Raglan said, “you should have been born a girl.” His voice hardened. “A little girl who could wear frilly hats and dresses and carry a doll under her arm. Would you like that? Would you?”

  As Raglan’s voice cut into him, Trellan visibly began to shake. Even from the rear of the hall, Carveth could see beads of sweat breaking out on his face.

  “You shame me, Michael,” Raglan said. “I can feel nothing but contempt for you and your weakness. Maybe we were wrong to name you Michael, a boy’s name. Perhaps we should have called you Michelle. Our little Michelle. Would you have preferred that, Michelle?”

  Trellan’s fists were clenched. “Don’t, Daddy,” he pleaded. “Please don’t.”

  “What was that you said?” Raglan, still on the attack, was pushing harder. “Speak up, Michelle. I can’t hear you. Such a soft little voice, I can hardly hear what you say.”

  Carveth found it difficult to watch: the total subjugation of another human being. Beside him, the bearded youth shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but was unable to tear himself away.

  Trellan’s face suddenly crinkled, his mouth turning down. He lifted his head into the light. His face was purple, bloated.

  “I don’t want to, Daddy. I don’t want . . .” His voice rose to a wail, a child’s cry of abject misery. He started to cover his face with his hands, but Raglan’s voice lashed out to stop him.

  “No. Look at me.”

  “I don’t want . . . I don’t want . . .”

  “What don’t you want? What is it you’re fighting?” Raglan took a step toward him and held out his hands, beckoning. “Come on. Show me. Show me what you feel.”

  “Don’t make me. Please don’t make me. It hurts. All over, it hurts.” He was sweating freely now, the muscles of his jaw tightly clenched. “I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Do it,” Raglan ordered. “Do it now. For me. You can, you know you can. Show me, show me.”

  Trellan moaned softly. Suddenly he reached up to the neck of his tunic and tore the jacket open.

  Carveth stared in horror. Trellan’s body, from waist to shoulders, was covered in a welter of lesions. Deep cuts that even Carveth could see were sore and angry.

  His whole body was shaking uncontrollably. Raglan took another step toward him, urging him on, offering encouragement. “Do it,” he said. “Do it. Do it for me now.”

  Trellan was trying to resist, the sores on his body growing larger, darkening in colour. His chest rose and fell as he struggled to hold back his tears. Then suddenly he went rigid, his arms pressed to his sides.

  “Go through it,” Raglan said. “Go all the way through it. Don’t fight it now. Let it all go. Show me.”

  As Carveth watched, Trellan’s pectoral muscles slowly began to tighten, then pushed outwards, physically swelling into a grotesque parody of a woman’s breasts.

  “I’m doing it, Daddy.” Trellan’s words were torn from him. “I’m showing you.”

  “I know. I know. I can see you.”

  “This is me, Daddy. This is me inside.”

  “Go all the way through,” Raglan said. His voice was low now, rewarding Trellan with its softness.

  “I want to, Daddy. I want to.” Trellan suddenly shrieked, a piercing sound that echoed around the hall.
<
br />   Raglan tried to reach him, to break his fall, but Trellan had slumped to the floor. Raglan gently lifted his head and cradled it in his arms. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s over. I’ve seen you now. I’ve seen you inside.”

  “Did I do right, Daddy?” The little girl’s voice again. “Did I do what you wanted?”

  Raglan leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. “You did well, Mike. You did just fine.”

  As the lights dimmed, Trellan buried his face in Raglan’s lap, his body shaking in a series of dry sobs. And slowly the lesions on his body began to fade, gradually losing their anger.

  C H A P T E R

  T W O

  The lights in the lecture hall came on in full force. For a moment there was a stunned silence. Then someone started clapping, a smattering of applause that gradually rose in volume as more and more people joined in. In the front row, a man got to his feet, clapping his hands high over his head.

  The male nurse reappeared through the side door. Trellan reached for his hand and meekly allowed himself to be led away.

  Raglan nodded once to the audience, held up his hands to acknowledge the applause, then marched out of the lecture hall.

  “That man’s a genius. An absolute genius.”

  Carveth turned to the bearded youth beside him.

  “You’re a disciple then.”

  “After what we’ve just seen? How could you fail to be? It’s unbelievable. I just wouldn’t have thought it possible, not unless I’d actually witnessed it.”

  Carveth stood up. “No,” he said. “Nor would I.”

  “You a student” the youth asked him “or a doctor?”

  “Neither. My wife’s a patient.”

  The youth nodded. “Well, she’s in good hands. And lucky to be here at all. There’s a waiting list you know.”

  “I just hope she’s faring better than that Michael Trellan.”

  “It’s self-expression. Don’t you see? Trellan was able to talk to us in a way he’s never been able to before. The relief that brings, that’s his reward. He’ll be getting it now.”