I looked questioningly at the old man, my embarrassment growing. Without a word, he dragged me to my feet and pushed me towards the road. I stumbled a few paces, then turned back to look. He had already walked on. He hobbled down the central reservation between the trees. He clutched his rough coat about him and turned his head from side to side as he walked, watching the piles of snow as if looking for something. I thought to call after him, to thank him for what he had done, for rescuing me from whatever it had been, but he was already too far away.
I shook myself and staggered across the road and on to my hotel. I went straight to my room and collapsed on my bed. Who was my benefactor, and why had he done what he had? I didn’t know whether to be grateful or to curse him. The sensation still throbbed inside me and I remembered. I’d felt the desperation and despair from the instant I’d arrived; it had twined itself around me from one moment to the next, draining hope. And now, somehow, I had been wrapped anew by something given form. Despite the energy it had filled me with, I felt drained and hollow. Exhaustion swept down and within moments I was asleep.
I spoke to no one of what had happened that night. I flew out of Moscow the following day, barely daring to remember what had happened. When I left, I carried a little of the city with me, and I knew I always would.
I’m not sure what is born in the streets and darkness of a place like Moscow — that which desperation breeds. Who can guess at the power in the despair of so many millions? I was there, and I saw outlined in blackness the marks of our own creation. And I wonder how many nameless creatures stalk the streets of other cities awash with the energy of fear and faded hope.
The next time I visit that city, if there is a next time, I’ll know better. It’s not the cold that kills you. They say it’s the vodka and the cold, but I for one, know better.
Jay Caselberg is an Australian author based in Europe. His work has appeared in multiple venues worldwide at several lengths and in several languages. It generally tends to a dark edge. More can be found at http://www.jaycaselberg.com/.
Story illustration by Stjepan Lukac.
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Herbert West in Love
by Molly Tanzer
It was the last day of the last week of the fall semester. Outside the smudged panes of the classroom’s high rectangular windows snowflakes were slowly accumulating in the boughs and hollows of the trees; drifting down from the leaden sky to carpet the quad. Inside the classroom, most of the students dandled their pencils over their notebooks as they ignored the lecture, choosing instead to watch the slow transformation of the bland, institutional buildings of Miskatonic University into a Christmas picture-postcard.
Most, but not all.
A boy called West sat in the back row, hand aloft, arm quivering with tension. Behind his thick spectacles his eyes were firmly fixed upon the professor as the man scrawled “voluntas aegroti suprema lex” across the board. When the chalk squeaked halfway through suprema, West was the only student who did not flinch.
“I know we covered this fundamental of medical ethics—respecting the supremacy of the patient’s will—in our very first unit,” said Dr. Masheck Quinley, his tweed-swathed back still turned to the class, “but since you will be essaying on this idea as part of your final exam, I feel it would behoove us to review it.” Without turning around, he sighed as he scraped the final hatch-mark of the x in lex and said, “Yes, Mr. West?”
The classroom momentarily transformed into a viper pit as sighs hissed out of many, many mouths. West, undeterred, lowered his hand, cleared his throat, and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his aquiline nose before speaking.
“Will we also be asked to essay on salus aegroti suprema lex?” he asked.
Dr. Quinley’s voice was clipped and precise when he answered. “Of course, Mr. West. We covered ‘beneficence,’ or acting in our patients’ best interest, in that same unit.” He smiled unpleasantly. “Don’t you remember? How surprising; all semester long we’ve heard so much about your amazing powers of recollection.”
“It’s not that I don’t remember,” snapped West, “it’s that we never resolved how to negotiate the intersection of these, as you put it, fundamental concepts. I still don’t understand why a patient’s opinion is considered more important than his physician’s! How can we, as doctors, possibly be expected to accept the idea that any random, uneducated person is more qualified to make decisions about his health than someone with an advanced degree in medicine? How could letting a patient make those decisions be acting in his best interest?”
“Don’t let him get started, please,” said a boy off to West’s left. It was Reginald Gurganus, another first-year medical student. Physically the reverse of West, he was tall and placidly handsome, just the sort of fellow who would put a sick person at ease. West openly despised him, and the feeling had become mutual over the course of the semester. “He’ll take over the whole class if you let him, and a bunch of us want to review that human experimentation case where—”
“I have the floor!” West’s voice, never deeper than a tenor, rose into a girlish alto as he spoke over his colleague. “I shall not be interrupted by the likes of you, Gurganus. Your father might have donated enough to secure your acceptance to this university, but not all of us are so … lucky.”
“What the hell are you saying, pencil-neck?” shouted Gurganus, his normally bovine appearance becoming bullish as he turned around in his chair to glare at West.
“I’m simply saying that unlike you, I cannot depend on hobnobbing my way into a position at a hospital. I will be forced to get one the old-fashioned way: Earning it. Thus, I must pass this class—and I cannot do that if I am not properly acquainted with the material.”
“Silence!” Dr. Quinley held up his hands. “I concede that the field of medical ethics can be tricky to navigate, Mr. West, but before you say another word, remember that your insistence that there is some … irreconcilability between these ideas has already been noted during class-time.”
“Noted, perhaps—but never addressed.” West sneered as he spoke, no mean feat. “While I was able to discern what you obviously considered the ‘correct’ answers on the midterm, there’s a difference between circling a number on a multiple-choice test and forcing one’s hand to parrot those ideas at length in essay form.”
Dr. Quinley’s face was crimson with anger. “That is enough!” He withdrew a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed at his forehead. “Mr. West, throughout the semester you have disrupted class with your pedantry and casuistic reasoning. I can see I hoped in vain that you would absorb some of the wisdom I believe can be found in the lectures and texts I have provided for your consideration.”
West sniffed. “And I see Thomas Paine was right when he said that to argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.”
Nary an eye lingered upon the winter afternoon beyond the windows; a boring review session had suddenly become a battle of wills. All through the classroom excited whispers slithered from ear to ear as incredulous looks were passed like notes.
West sat behind it all, above it all. He had the look of a man who knows he has won an argument … until Dr. Quinley recovered enough to clear his throat.
“You say you must pass this class if you wish to become a doctor,” he said, so quietly that the classroom instantly followed suit. “Well, Mr. West,” Dr. Quinley continued, his voice rising like the winter wind, “you shall not pass this class. As of now, you have failed it.” West tried to protest, but Dr. Quinley shouted him down. “I shall be speaking to the dean about your performance, and advising him that you repeat this course in the spring. And if Dr. Hallsey has any reservations about this course of action, why, there are plenty of witnesses to verify your statement that your answers on the exams in this class were mere parroting, not true learning. That alone should be sufficient to prove you have need of further instruction.”
Wh
ile West, shocked, opened and closed his mouth like a hooked fish gasping out his last, a pleasant voice came somewhere off to West’s right.
It was Tristan Langbroek, a sweet-faced divinity student who had played peacemaker between West and Gurganus before, on the few occasions they’d really gotten into it during class. “Dr. Quinley,” he said, “please, I’m sure Mr. West is simply overburdened by the strain of studying. The end of the semester puts enormous pressure on medical students, so I’m told, and—”
“I should have read my horoscope this morning,” said Dr. Quinley. “There is no other way I could possibly have anticipated that today I would be insulted to my face by a student—something that has never happened to me in twenty years of teaching—and then be reprimanded, in my own classroom, by a member of the clergy.” He mopped his brow again. “I suggest, Mr. Langbroek, that you close your mouth if you do not also wish to be failed.”
The classroom went completely, utterly silent following Dr. Quinley’s pronouncement. Tristan looked studiously down at his notebook, eyes shining with tears. West, on the other hand, sat up straight in his chair, his gaze fixed upon Dr. Quinley. He did not look like a reprimanded undergraduate. Chin held high, jaw set, shoulders back, he looked triumphant.
After a few more deep breaths, Dr. Quinley smiled. “My apologies to the rest of you for that momentary unpleasantness. Let us now continue to discuss the idea of respecting the will of one’s patient. Mr. Gurganus,” he said, startling the strapping stripling who’d been grinning at West, “you mentioned wishing to further discuss a case of human experimentation. I believe we covered two such incidents in depth this semester.” Dr. Quinley then canted his head to the right, uttering an incredulous tchah when he noticed a hand raised aloft, hanging above the heads of the students like a crescent moon. “Mr. West, lower your hand—and remove yourself from my classroom. You are no longer a student, so you have no further right to disrupt our discussion.”
“But—”
“But nothing! You have failed, and—”
“I have not failed!” West was on his feet, all ten fingertips tented on the desk in front of him. “You are the one who has failed! You have failed to consider any number of relevant ethical quandaries posed by your students, you have failed to acknowledge the possibility that—”
“Mr. Gurganus, will you please assist me by showing Mr. West the door?” interrupted Dr. Quinley.
West drew himself up. “I can see where it is,” he said with dignity. “Unlike you, Dr. Quinley, I have a brain capable of processing the sensory input my eyes provide. I shall leave, but I assure you, I am not through with you.”
“Indeed you are not,” said Dr. Quinley sweetly, as he turned back to the chalkboard. “You shall be repeating this class next semester. Have a merry Christmas, Mr. West.”
Tristan Langbroek felt just awful about what had happened in Dr. Quinley’s class. Not that it had been entirely his fault. He knew that, of course he did. West had made his own bed, had been making all semester, really. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that his attempt to speak on West’s behalf had further enraged the professor, causing Dr. Quinley to really dig in his heels. If only he’d kept his mouth shut! Then, perhaps, they might have settled things more amicably.
He sighed, and his breath steamed out of his mouth as he hurried carefully along the frozen sidewalk toward the cafeteria, head down against the light but persistent snowfall. Usually weather like this, at this time of year, raised his spirits. There really was nothing like a white Christmas to enkindle the spirit of love and charity in people.
But that afternoon, Tristan paid little heed to the weather or the season. He was preoccupied with thoughts about how his father had been right about him. There was no doubt about it, he was, as dear old Dad had always said, a busybody. And now his urge to be helpful had harmed someone.
Come to think of it, that was something his father had always said would happen, too.
The road to hell, thought Tristan, hugging his schoolbooks so tightly he could feel the buttons of his pea coat pressing into his chest. His intentions had been good, but what did that matter?
Maybe he shouldn’t have signed up for that medical ethics seminar. He’d had reservations, but his advisor had strongly recommended it, for Tristan had wanted to become a hospital chaplain ever since the one at St. Mary’s had refused hear his mother’s final confession on the grounds that she was Anglican. The injustice of a clergyman turning away someone who needed comfort had disturbed Tristan deeply at the time. More than it might an ordinary man, as Tristan had always felt God calling to him from an early age, telling him to go forth and help people understand Christ’s eternal love. And now, when it was very nearly Christmas, he’d gone and injured a fellow man.
Tristan eyed the holly-wreath adorning the cafeteria door with despair as he pushed it open, but when the tip of his nose began to unthaw in the warm cafeteria, his spirits rose a little. Winter weather was always more enjoyable when you were warm and dry, and problems seemed less problematic, too. What he needed was to relax, get a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee, and watch the snow until it was time to don his front-of-house Riverside Catering uniform so he could go serve champagne and hors d’oeuvres at the faculty Christmas party.
Then he spied West eating by himself in the darkest corner of the cafeteria. Tristan’s spirits rose even more, and he thanked God for giving him the opportunity to apologize for his part in the disastrous review session. And better to do it sooner rather than later, so he padded over to where West was alternating between taking tidy little bites of his ham sandwich and wiping his nose with a handkerchief.
“Ah, hello, excuse me,” Tristan mumbled, as he nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other. West looked annoyed by the disturbance, which made Tristan self-conscious. “I just, I wanted to say I was sorry.”
“For what?”
“For …”
West made an irritated sound in the back of his throat. “Say what you want, and then leave me be. I’m very busy.”
“Busy eating a sandwich?”
West’s spectacles glinted as he looked up. He seemed to really see Tristan for the first time. Tristan felt something very like an electric shock when their eyes met, and found himself blushing.
“Oh, it’s the preacher,” said West, bringing Tristan back to himself. “No pamphlets, please. I hate seeing paper wasted.”
“I’m not trying to give you a pamphlet,” said Tristan. “I’m trying to apologize.” He gripped his books tighter with his left arm as he extended his right hand to shake West’s.
West made no move to return the handshake. “For what?”
“I further antagonized Dr. Quinley,” said Tristan, awkwardly lowering his hand. “I only meant to help. You know that, don’t you, West?”
West’s smile unsettled Tristan, the way he pinched his lips together in the center and lifted only the corners of his mouth. “Herbert,” he said, in a clipped but friendlier tone. “Sit down, will you? And don’t trouble yourself further about Quinley. It was my fault. That ratfink’s been looking for an opportunity to destroy me all semester; today, foolishly, I gave him one.” He shrugged irritably. “You meant to help, and I’ve never believed all that rot about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.”
It startled Tristan to hear his recent thoughts repeated by another. “No?” he asked, setting his books down and sitting across from West.
“No. It’s not paved at all. It doesn’t exist.” West smiled that heinous smile again. “I believe neither in heaven nor hell, Mister …?”
“Langbroek. But call me Tristan.”
“Well, Tristan, that’s why I said your pamphlets would be wasted. To my mind, only what can be proved empirically is worthy of consideration. A boogeyman below the earth’s crust and another above the clouds fighting over my soul, whatever that is … I have never seen any evidence of it.” He looked Tristan right in the eye. “Does that shock you?”
West shrugged back at him. “Not particularly, though I do enjoy seeing the various ways surprise manifests on the human face. Right now, all I want is to figure out how to persuade Quinley that I should be allowed to take the final and progress in my coursework. Spending another semester with that insufferable man is too much for anyone to endure.”
Tristan had rather liked Dr. Quinley, but he decided against mentioning that. “Have you gone to his office and apologized?”
West chuckled with his lips closed. “I went to his office to reason with him. I owe him no apologies.”
“And how did that go?”
“He wasn’t there; I expect he’s gone home for the day already.” He snorted. “Tenure. Must be nice.”
“I’m sure it’s just he’s gone home to dress for the faculty Christmas party tonight.”
West looked at Tristan keenly. “Are you sure of that? How do you know?”
Tristan felt a chill at that moment, as if death had just kissed him upon the nape of his neck. He shivered, and turned around just to make sure no one was there. It reassured him to see the door to the cafeteria slamming shut; just a draft, of course.
“Tristan?”
“Oh,” he said sheepishly. “Sorry. I—ah, what? Oh, the party. I work as a server for the catering company that’s providing everything.”
West looked thoughtful. “Indeed? Where’s it being held?”
“The Pornelles Room, in Lemmington-Jekyll.”
“Hmm. Good to know. Were I to crash the party, I could get Quinley alone and convince him that we actually agree on a very important matter.”
“What’s that?”
“That we’d rather see less of one another than more.”
Tristan laughed. “It’ll be hard. They always post a guard at the door.”
“Why?”
“Free hooch,” said Tristan. “Can’t have the riff-raff drinking up all the wine. The professors would revolt if the sauce ran out before they did.”
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 - Issues 10 through 20 Page 73
