Gary Brandner

by Doomstalker (v2. 0) (epub)

  CONVALESCENT HOME

  "We're here," he said.

  Chapter 13

  The name Good Shepherd Convalescent Home always brought a sour taste to Kettering's mouth. As far as he knew, nobody who was brought in here ever convalesced. Nobody got better. People were brought here to be housed in reasonable comfort until they died.

  The setting, at least, was pleasant. Once inside the gate, the road curved gently through grounds that were green and leafy with a profusion of bushes and shade trees. The Spanish colonial buildings, white with red-tile roofs, were backed up against the Topatopa Mountains. The ocean was close enough to provide a tang of salt when the wind was from the west.

  The patients, most of them old, old, sat in wheelchairs along the curving walkways. Despite the warmth of the day, plaid blankets were spread across their laps. Their gnarled hands lay inert upon the blankets, their eyes dimly focused somewhere else in time. White-coated attendants lounged nearby, ready to move in if anyone died.

  Charity clung to Kettering's arm as they walked up the long, white stone path to the main building. He was keenly aware of the energy of this woman, her youth and vitality. It sparked like a current of life in this place of old age, infirmity, madness, and death.

  A gray-haired nurse with sad eyes greeted them in a clean, unused-looking living room. Through an archway they could see two ancient men sitting like frozen corpses across from each other over a checkerboard. There were no checkers on the board.

  When Kettering gave his sister's name, the nurse led them into a small office. There she consulted a timetable.

  "Your sister is in locotherapy right now."

  "Is that what it sounds like?" Kettering asked.

  The nurse gave him an indulgent smile. "From the Latin loco, movement. It involves an attendant helping the patient move her limbs. Without it her muscles would atrophy."

  "How soon can we see her?"

  "She'll be back in her room in twenty minutes. You can wait in our game room if you like." She caught Kettering's expression. "Or you may prefer to wait out here in the parlor."

  "The parlor is fine."

  Kettering and Charity took seats next to each other on a couch. He picked up a magazine, saw the title, Golden Years, put it down.

  "Locotherapy," he said, shaking his head.

  "You were telling me what happened to your sister that brought her here," Charity said.

  Kettering started to light a cigarette, saw there were no ashtrays in the room, shoved the pack back into his pocket.

  He said, "Jessie's pregnancy was hell for all of us. This was just before the era of free love and let-it-all-hang-out and if-it-feels-good-do-it. Anyway, in a small town like Prescott, having an illegitimate child back then was a major scandal. Probably still is."

  "So she had the child," Charity said.

  "Jessie was determined. I was only twelve at the time, but I knew what an abortion was and I pleaded with her to get one. Naturally, nobody listened to me. What with my mother's religious convictions and Jessie's stubbornness, the pregnancy ran its course. It wasn't a happy time for any of us. Jessie was sick most of the time. People stopped coming to Mom's shop, and money got short. Neither Mom nor Jessie were talking to me, and I had this terrible feeling that we still hadn't seen the worst of this mess."

  "And were you right?"

  "God help me, I was right."

  "Tell me about it. "

  ***

  The fateful telephone call, he told her, came in the last week of March. It was a day that had started out with a promise of spring, and Jessie, eight months pregnant, had made one of her few trips downtown alone. Mostly, she just slouched around the house getting bigger and more surly. It was a relief to Brian to have her out of the house for a while, but his mother kept returning to the window, watching for the girl's return.

  In the middle of the afternoon a wind came down from the north, bringing with it angry clouds and a hard, granular snow. Brian's mother pulled a sweater around her shoulders and worried aloud whether Jessie was dressed warmly enough.

  When the telephone rang, Brian and his mother looked at each other with a sudden shared foreboding. Lucille Kettering picked up the instrument reluctantly, as though it were some loathsome live thing.

  She said hello and listened. Brian saw his mother grow older as he watched. Her face sagged and the light dimmed in her eyes. Finally she hung up and turned to him.

  "Your sister is at the hospital. She's been badly hurt. I'm going to her now."

  "Hurt?"

  "Yes. They wouldn't give me any details."

  "I want to come too," Brian said.

  "I - I don't know if you should."

  "Mom, I want to."

  Lucille Kettering was in no condition to argue. Together they went out to the garage and got into the rusting '51 Ford they couldn't afford to trade in. Mrs. Kettering backed out onto Bailey Street and drove off toward City Hospital, seven miles away.

  Just enough snow had fallen to make the streets slippery. Visibility was bad as the tired windshield wipers struggled against the snow. Condensation on the inside of the glass made it even harder to see, yet what appeared in the street dead ahead of them was clearly etched forever in Brian's memory.

  It came from nowhere. Just all of a sudden it was there in front of the car. Tall, maybe seven feet. Big, hunched-up shoulders, long arms that reached toward them with taloned hands.

  Doomstalker.

  Brian could not remember whether his mother spoke or cried out or made any sound at all. He knew she hit the brakes and the car slid toward the waiting figure, angling to the right and seeming actually to pick up speed. He saw the big shadow shape filling the windshield, shutting out all light. Then the impact.

  ***

  "I didn't know until much later what we were supposed to have hit," Kettering said. "A light pole, they told me. Somehow it came through my mother's window. Crushed her skull. Killed her instantly.

  "I was thrown out the other side of the car. Hit my head, I guess. I couldn't remember much of anything for a long time. Traumatic temporary amnesia they called it."

  "How awful for you," Charity said. "What happened to your sister and ... the baby?"

  "She had the baby. That's all I knew for sure. I spent some time in the hospital getting my head patched up, then they sent me to live with my aunt Alice in Milwaukee. I still didn't have any clear idea of what happened or even, for sure, who I was. Gradually, over the next five years or so, my memory came back, but there are still blank spots."

  "Did you find out what happened to the baby?"

  "Jessie had taken an ugly beating when they found her in an alley. Massive injuries - head, body, internal. Ugly stuff, they tell me. She was in a coma for a month. Nobody thought she'd live. But she did. Sort of. The kid was okay, but Jessie was in no shape to take care of it, so they put it in a foster home."

  Charity was thoughtful. "Did you ever see your Doomstalker again after the car crash?"

  "Never. Never even thought much about it until a month ago, when things started to go sour in my life."

  Charily nodded. "That's when it found you."

  Kettering stared at her. "You've got a theory?"

  "How old would that baby be now?"

  "Thirty."

  "Any idea what became of him?"

  "No. I never wanted to find out."

  "If only you could get your sister to talk ..."

  They looked at each other for a long moment. Finally Charity spoke.

  "You know, I've got a real crazy idea knocking around in my head."

  "I wonder if it's the same one that's been giving me headaches," Kettering said.

  "That Jessie's baby, conceived in that devilish orgy and born in an ugly storm, is - "

  Kettering finished it for her. "Doomstalker."

  The gray-haired nurse came in on silent rubber soles. She said, "You can see your sister now. She's in Room 216 right at the top of the stairs."

 
Kettering and Charity rose and started out of the room.

  "I hope you're not expecting too much," the nurse said.

  "I've been here before," Kettering told her.

  They climbed the wide stairs together, and when they reached the room, Charity plucked at Kettering's arm. "I think you ought to go in alone this time."

  "But coming here was your idea," he said.

  "Jessica doesn't know me. If she's going to talk at all, it will be to her brother, not some stranger. I'll wait down there at the end of the hall, where it looks like a sitting room."

  She gave Kettering a quick kiss on the cheek and walked away from him. He looked after her a moment, then drew a deep breath and entered his sister's room.

  Jessica shared the room with two other women who occupied the beds on either side of her. One of them looked old beyond counting. Her face had collapsed inward, pulling her forehead and chin together toward her nose. She held a large drawing tablet in one bony hand. In the other she gripped a felt-tip crayon and drew shaky lines on the paper. She hummed very softly from somewhere inside her scrawny chest. She gave no sign that she was aware a man had entered the room.

  The other woman was grossly fat. She lay on her back, a mound of moist, doughy flesh, her mouth open, snoring juicily.

  Jessica sat propped up by pillows, staring straight ahead. Her skin was smooth, pale, and without wrinkle or blemish. She might have been coated with epoxy. The blue veins stood out on the backs of her hands and crawled up her wrists to the cuff of her long-sleeved nightgown.

  "Hello, Jessie," Kettering said. He felt foolish, as he always did when talking to what remained of his sister.

  "You're looking good." Jesus, that was dumb. She looked lost, was what she looked. Lost and blank and empty.

  He pulled a chair over close to her bed and sat.

  "Jessie, I'm in some trouble." I must be crazy talking to this vegetable.

  No response.

  Kettering cleared his throat and went on. "Remember how when we were little kids and I would mess up sometimes, you would help me if you could? I think you can help me now, Jessie. If you're ever going to talk again, please do it now." Oh, God, please make Jessie hear me.

  Nothing.

  "It's very important, Jessie. Please help me." A waste of time. An idiotic waste of time.

  Not a flicker of expression showed on Jessica's waxy face. Her mouth did not twitch. Her eyes did not blink.

  Does anything go on in that poor blasted mind? Anything at all? What sensations, if any, got past that wall between her and the real, living world? Did she feel? Did she think?

  ***

  Brian had grown up to be a fine-looking man, Jessica thought. He could stand to lose ten pounds, but then, he had always been stocky. Or Was he thinner when he was little? She could not be sure. Time splintered and came together for Jessica in odd fragments, like colored bits of glass in a kaleidoscope.

  He was asking her for help. That was funny. She would laugh if she could. There was no way she could help him or anybody. She couldn't even help herself back when she needed to so desperately.

  Like at the party of the Greasers.

  Going to that party had seemed so important to her. She would show everybody that she was her own person. People started treating her differently after Papa died. Like she had changed somehow because of it. All right, she would show them what changing was all about.

  There had been a small sting of guilt on that night long ago as she slipped out of her bedroom window. It had been so easy. Mama had forbidden her to go out, and had believed her daughter would, as always, do as she was told. It was so easy. But once she was out of the house, the doubts began to nibble at her. She began to wonder if this was really going to be as much fun as she had thought. If it was really worth what she was risking.

  By the time she got to the corner and stood under the streetlight waiting for Wildman to come and get her, she was cold and afraid. She didn't really know him. Wildman wasn't even a real name. None of them had real names. They were Wildman and Red and Stork and Fazer and Dill. The girls were Tootie and Jugs and Panther and Moon. As she stood there shivering on the corner, she had almost turned back and run for home and her warm, safe bed. Almost. How different her life would have been if she had.

  But then Wildman was there straddling his heavy black motorcycle, making the engine rumble, and she was climbing on behind him, gripping the front of his leather jacket. He roared away and the wind snatched at her hair and filled her nostrils with the rank odor of his body.

  They gave her pills at the campground. And something sweet to drink. They passed around marijuana, or something stronger to smoke. Jessie took everything they offered her. In a little while she felt wild and free and like she was one small part of a huge body that contained all of them.

  The music thumped and whanged. The fire leaped into great towering shapes that were alive. The fire looked down on them with eyes of flame as they danced.

  And how they danced. Wildly and without restraint. Clothing flew off. Sweating bodies all mixed up and tangled together, grunting, straining, yelling, screaming.

  How many of them did it to her? Jessica never knew for sure. Wildman, Red, Stork, all of them had her. Fucked her. Over and over pumping away at her until she was raw down there and her insides felt like they would drop out.

  ***

  Brian was talking to her again. His voice was nice. Deep and strong, like Papa's. He was asking her about ... about ... about...

  Oh, Jesus God, the baby.

  She had known it was about to come on that day in April. She felt it squirm inside her and she knew it was coming. And she didn't want it to come at home, and she was afraid to have it come at a hospital. She had gone out and she just walked around and around feeling it wriggle in her belly trying to burst out. Jessie had walked and cried and wished she could die.

  And then the wind turned cold and it started snowing. And the baby came. With a great tearing convulsion. she fell down in the alley behind the Tastee Freeze. Her body cramped and she pushed and whimpered while the baby wriggled itself out of her.

  Blinded for a moment by tears and sweat, she groped around on the rough blacktop surface, searching for her child. She found it. Red, wrinkled, ugly beyond imagination, it was still her baby. She pulled it close, compelled by the mother's urge to hold and nurture her offspring. She lifted the tiny body, looked into its face, and screamed.

  After that there was a pain-blurred interval filled with tiny teeth that slashed at her, small, hard fists and feet that pounded and kicked her with a strength that was not human. Unbelieving, Jessica still tried to clasp the monster to her breast. She was not strong enough to keep its teeth from her flesh - teeth such as no earthly child should be born with.

  Jessica's world dissolved then into pain and silence. Her poor mutilated psyche crawled back into the shadowed recesses of her mind, there to hide away from everyone and everything for as long as she had to go on living.

  ***

  "Where are you, Jessie?" Kettering said softly. "Way off by yourself somewhere? I know you can't hear me, and so you can't help me. Maybe it's better for you this way. Life has not treated you well. I guess you deserve to hide, if that's what you want."

  He stood up and leaned over the bed. Jessica continued to stare at the far wall, seeing pictures that no one else saw. Kettering kissed his sister lightly on the cheek. Her flesh was smooth and waxy and cool.

  "Good-bye, Jessie," he said. At the door he stopped and turned. His jaw creaked with the words, but he got them out. "I love you."

  A single tear oozed from Jessica's right eye and slid down her cheek, leaving a wet silvery trail. But her brother was gone and the door was closed. No one was there to see.

  Chapter 14

  The drive back down from Ojai was completed largely in silence. Charity made sporadic comments about the scenery or the fine weather; Kettering answered in grunts and monosyllables. He parked on the street in front of
his apartment and they climbed the wooden stairs together.

  Inside they sat together on the sofa. "I'm sorry," Charity said. "I know that couldn't have been easy for you. I guess it was a bad idea."

  Kettering shrugged. "I've seen my sister quite a few times over the years. There wasn't any reason to think this time would be any different."

  "Don't worry, we'll get you out of this yet."

  Charity gave him a hug. He felt again the surprising physical strength of the slim body.

  "I'm not even sure what I have to be got out of." Kettering backed away from her and looked around the room, frowning.

  "Something wrong?" Charity asked.

  "Nothing important."

  "Well, let's hear it," she said with a touch of exasperation.

  "It's just that I miss my chair. It was nothing but a beat-up old recliner, but I could always get comfortable in it. The furniture in this place looks like it was recycled from a cheap motel."

  "Hey, you don't have to stay here," she said. "There's plenty of room at my place."

  "This place is all right," he said. "I don't really mind the tacky furniture, and I don't need any more space, I just miss my chair."

  "I've got plenty of chairs. I mean, it would just be temporary. It would be a lot ... handier."

  Kettering grinned at her. "Cozier too. Honey, I appreciate the offer, but I think we'd better leave things the way they are. At least for now."

  "If you say so. Consider it a standing offer."

  "Be careful or I might grab it one of these days."

  "Wouldn't you like to grab something else too?"

  "Aren't you being a touch aggressive?"

  "It's my journalistic training. You want to do something about it?"

  Kettering moved toward her to accept the challenge but was interrupted by a knock at the door.

  He looked a question at her; she shrugged. He said, "Hold the thought," crossed the room to answer the knock.

  Al Diaz stood outside on the landing. He looked at Kettering, then at Charity, then back to Kettering.

  "I'm not interrupting?"