by Ivan Blake
“I...I just thought chiropractors did, you know, massage.”
“That’s because the cowards who practice the discipline today have abandoned the real science behind chiropractic. Today that’s all they are, masseurs.”
“But that’s not how you see it?”
“The man who founded our discipline in the 1890s discovered that vitalistic energy constantly passes up and down the spinal column.”
Meath marched right up to Chris and ran a finger down Chris’s spine; the sensation made his skin crawl. Chris tried to hold his breath against the man’s overpowering stench.
“And he also discovered that if our vital energy is blocked, our health suffers. He called such blockages, ‘subluxations’. These blockages create a breeding ground for disease, and the higher up in the spine the blockage occurs, the more serious the disease.”
Meath stepped away with a look of self-satisfaction.
“Chiropractic,” he said, “is concerned with identifying these blockages and removing them through spinal manipulation.”
Chris couldn’t hold his breath any longer. “Spinal manipulation?” he said, then faked a sneeze to cover his gasp for air.
“Adjusting the spine to eliminate subluxations—that’s the chiropractor’s role in medicine, no matter how dangerous the adjustments may be.”
“So these adjustments can be dangerous?”
“Of course; the higher up the spinal column the blockage occurs, the more dangerous the manipulation. There are two arteries right here.” Again he marched forward and pinched the back of Chris’s neck at the base of the skull. “They flow into the brain, and if we rupture either of them, well then, let’s just say, terrible things can happen.” Again he backed away. “But perfecting dangerous manipulations is what real scientists in our discipline are supposed to do because if we can perfect the truly dangerous manipulations, we can free mankind from its most terrible diseases.”
“So if you were a scientist—”
“I am a scientist.”
“Then why did your colleagues dismiss you?” Oh crap, he shouldn’t have said that. Meath’s going to know Chris had been checking him out. Meath barrelled on oblivious, becoming increasingly excited in the process.
“Because none of them has the courage to follow me in my efforts to perfect the most dangerous manipulations. They’re cowards.”
“That’s it? They wouldn’t follow you?”
“And they tried to stop me.”
“Stop you how?”
“They threw me out of their associations. They took away my license. Means nothing. What do I care if they don’t approve of me?” Meath was almost yelling now.
“I know what that’s like,” Chris said, almost to himself.
“Yes, Mr. Chandler, I rather thought you might.” Meath smiled. “You’re a loner, like me.”
“Not by choice.”
“We loners, we chart our own course. We make our own rules.” Meath marched up and down the tracks almost yelling. “Übermenschen, Nietzsche called us, beholding to nothing and to no one, not to history, not to convention. With only the power of our imagination, we create the entirely new.”
“Über what?”
“I’m only interested in scientific truth, and I shall be constrained by nothing and no one in my pursuit of it.”
“Ronald,” his wife called from the house. “Who are you talking to?”
“No one and none of your business!”
“Uh, I should be going,” Chris said, backing away. “Nice to have—”
“Ronald, lunch!
“Shut up, woman! I’ll eat when I’m ready!”
“Well, don’t blame me if it’s cold!”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Chris interjected, “but I have to go too,” and he headed for home.
Behind him, the goatman muttered, “That woman! It’ll give me such pleasure to break her neck one day.”
* * * *
Mallory walked into Rudy’s room wearing nothing but panties and a bra. Rudy had just finished showering and was seated on the bed with only a towel across his groin. He was struggling to bandage his right forearm.
“Get out,” he cried. Mallory ignored him.
She marched to Rudy’s side, and with hands on hips, said, “My guest will be here soon. You’ll be nice to him, and you’ll eat dinner with us. Clear?”
Rudy Dahlman was sixteen, short, skinny, with an angular face ravaged by pimples. His hair, still wet from the shower and plastered to his scalp, was a dirty blond. It appeared almost gray in the dim light. In Rudy’s own estimation, he was the most pathetic person on the planet. The first words he recalled his father ever having said to him were, “Not my kid,” and “He’s got a face like a rat.”
“Mother’s a mess already,” continued Mallory, “and I want us to look like a normal family, so I need you at the table. You’d better not screw things up, you little creep, or you’ll be sorry.”
Mallory terrified Rudy; she always had. “But I…I’m not hungry…my arm…,” he whined.
“Let me see.”
He eased the bandage away from the wound near his elbow. What had started out as some kind of bite had become a nightmare of infection stretching the length of the forearm.
Mallory bent forward to have a look, her breasts just inches from Rudy’s face. “Oh it’s looking much better.”
What the hell was she talking about? The whole arm was yellow and hot and throbbing, and the area right around the bite was green and black and smelled like crap. And she was to blame. She’d poisoned his arm somehow, and all because of the incident with her underwear. Well, she’d gone too far this time.
“Wash it with some salt water,” she said. “It’ll be fine in no time.” Then she squeezed his swollen wrist—hard.
“Ow! God! What did you do that for?”
Mallory straightened up and gave him a look of such disdain. “So you know I’m serious. You’ll come to dinner, or else.” Then Mallory smiled, touched his cheek, and whispered, “Oh, and after Chris leaves, you can come to my room if you want…”
They both heard the car. “He’s here,” and she ran out of the room.
Rudy didn’t doubt for a minute Mallory was responsible for the poison in his arm, the same way she was responsible for all the pain and the poison in his life. She was always telling him he was a bastard and somebody else’s kid, telling kids at school his mother breastfed him until he was seven; pretending to like him and dressing him up in her underwear and clothes, and then taking pictures for the whole world to see; forever walking around the house naked and flashing her boobs and crotch at him. No, all the loneliness, all the humiliation, all the pain in his life stemmed from Mallory, of that fact Rudy Dahlman was absolutely certain.
And yet she had this strange hold over him. Somehow she managed to get him to do things for her, weird, dangerous things, whatever she wanted. And he was powerless to say no, like he was her puppet. No surprise actually, and no real magic to it though. All she had to do was flash those huge breasts of hers or let him fondle something and he’d do whatever she asked. Sometimes they even had fun together. Like the times they terrorized the old lady. Or when they took the pictures of the girl from the restaurant making out with her boyfriend.
Then, as soon as he’d done what she wanted, she treated him like crap again. No, he didn’t trust Mallory as far as he could spit, and somehow, someday he’d get even.
Now Chris Chandler was coming for dinner. Chandler rubbed him the wrong way, always looking down his nose at everyone. What gave Chandler the right to judge anybody? Everybody hated Chandler. Fuckin’ bastard, with a nasty sneer on his face all the time, pretending like he was better than everybody else. So maybe Mallory and Chandler did deserve each other.
Then again, you had to feel sorry for the guy. Christopher Chandler didn’t have a clue what he was in for. Mallory was going to eat him alive. The guy was toast.
* * * *
Chris’s father drove
him to his date. The whole situation felt weird. They rode in silence up the long lane to the huge Dahlman house.
The scale of the place was impressive. Its overall appearance was not. The middle portion was a story and a half with long single-storied wings on either side. Flanking the double front doors were two enormous columns, which somehow failed to give the place any sort of grandeur; instead they seemed out of proportion, overbearing, cold. The front of the house had few windows to soften its almost institutional look. The three-car garage to the left of the main building, by contrast, was covered in busy Victorian gingerbread and crowned with an oversized cupola and huge red weather cock.
“Odd place,” his dad said as he stopped the car by the front doors.
“Thanks for the ride.” What else could Chris have said? He wished to hell his parents didn’t know about the date. He wished they weren’t making such a big deal of it. He’d count this evening a success if he didn’t get ambushed by Mallory’s crazy boyfriend.
“If you need a ride home...”
“No, I’ll walk.” And his dad drove away.
Chris rang the bell; it chimed like Big Ben. After a moment, Mrs. Dahlman opened the door. Makeup and clothes can conceal a lot of things but not, it seemed, drunken despair. Chris noticed Mrs. Dahlman’s eyes first; they were dull grey and vacant. Her eyelids drooped, her mouth sagged open, and a line of drool dangled from her chin as though she’d just woken up from a deep sleep. Her hair, which looked like a rigid black helmet, was crushed flat on the right side and had a pronounced white stripe down the parting. She wore a strange combination of jungle print skirt and floral blouse with a wide gold belt. The effect was appalling. Oh, and she carried a full highball glass.
“Good evening, Mrs. Dahlman. I’m Chris Chandler here to see Mallory.”
She stared at Chris then shrieked, “Mallory!”
She turned and walked unsteadily across the room. “Mallory’s getting dressed. You can wait there.” She gestured to the longest sofa Chris had ever seen. “Can I get you something while you wait?”
“Uh...Coke?”
“The drink?”
“Um…yes.”
The room was cavernous with its high ceiling and enormous windows, and cold, like a gymnasium. It didn’t help that the tiled floor echoed sharply as Mrs. Dahlman crossed it in three-inch heels. The word squalid came to Chris’s mind. The room had three distinct areas: on one side, an open kitchen cluttered with dirty dishes, bags of groceries, many liquor bottles, and stacks of empty tin cans; on the other, an immense dining table in dark wood covered in clutter and ringed by twelve ornately carved chairs; and in the middle of the room, the enormous couch and several chairs with stained upholstery. Around the room were many strange wooden sculptures and paintings of dark jungles, twisted figures, and colorful houses. The art was all quite menacing. And dust, dust everywhere! Did no one ever clean this place?
“Your house is—”
“Idiotic!” Mrs. Dahlman’s speech was slurred. “Building a house like this, with so many windows, in Maine! It’s impossible to keep warm. We have to have space heaters in every room,” she rambled on from the kitchen. “I sleep in that wing with my son, Rudy,” she said pointing to the left, and then pointing to the right, she added, “That wing is Mallory’s. Her father has an office down there too. Stupid, having rooms so spread out. Costs an absolute fortune to heat.”
Chris tried a different tack. “Well the art is—”
“My husband’s taste, all Indonesian. I think it’s horrible.” She returned to the couch and handed Chris his coke. “I refuse to clean any of it.” Chris took a sip...and gagged.
“I put a little vodka in it, to warm you up.” She dropped down onto the couch beside him, took a sip from her own glass, and let out a long sigh.
“Okay, thanks,” Chris croaked as the vodka burned his throat. Vodka and coke, God!
Mallory entered the room. Chris expected her to be decked out in something glamorous, some slinky satin thing with shoulder pads because Mallory loved shoulder pads, or maybe a huge beaded sweater because there’d been a picture of Princess Di in a huge puffy sweater in the Bangor paper the other day.
The vision that emerged from Mallory’s wing was about as unDiana-like as one could imagine. Her tiny black leather skirt strained to contain her ample bottom. Beneath her short, wine-colored jacket, of the sort bullfighters wear, a black lace corset pushed her huge breasts up and over the top like huge white silk pillows. The fishnet stockings were trashy and thrilling at the same time; the long lace gloves were just plain weird, like she’d found them in some kid’s dress-up trunk and couldn’t resist. And her hair, usually big and stiff anyway, was now enormous and added six inches to her height; and it sparkled!
“Like it?” she asked as she sashayed across the room and pirouetted in front of Chris.
“Incredible!” For some reason, he recalled the words of Felicity Holcomb at that moment: “Pretty…in a buxom, chunky, cheap kind of way.”
“My father sent it from London. This is the new style. Like Madonna wears.” She pulled open the jacket. “It’s a bustier. Do you think it flatters me? Everybody over there is wearing them. Mother won’t let me wear it to school.”
“Your father may like trashy clothes on his whores,” Mrs. Dahlman said, “but I won’t have you…,” and her voice trailed off.
“And these stockings, they’re pantyhose, even though they’re fishnet, see?” She raised the hem of her skirt up to her hip.
“Stop exhibiting yourself,” Mrs. Dahlman said as she dragged herself off the couch and headed for the kitchen. “I need a refill, and dinner is probably getting cold.”
They moved to the table, set for four with brightly colored, mismatched plates. Mallory pulled Chris into the seat beside her. Mother brought dinner to the table. Chris hadn’t known quite what to expect, something unusual perhaps, given Mallory’s stories about Indonesia. Instead, dinner turned out to be a Macaroni Cheese and Hot Dog Casserole with a wedge of iceberg lettuce.
“Mother doesn’t usually cook,” explained Mallory. “We used to have a lady who did everything, but Mother fired her.”
“She was stealing from me.”
“No, Mother, I told you, Rudy was stealing from you,” Mallory said.
“Uh,” Chris gagged. His first mouthful of casserole tasted like a lump of rock salt.
“I take it you’re Mallory’s new interest,” Mrs. Dahlman asked and then drained another highball.
“We’re just friends, Mother.” Mallory grinned at Chris.
“And are you still friends with the other boy, Mallory? The Balzer boy?”
Chris wanted to hear that answer for himself.
“I’m not sure.”
“So, Chris, what do you do?”
“I...I go to school.”
“Well, of course you do. What else?”
“I...read...and I try to write.”
“Mother reads. That’s all she does,” Mallory said.
“That’s not true. I have my committees.”
“Maybe once a month,” Mallory whispered to Chris.
“What do you like to read, Mrs. Dahlman?”
“She reads romances, nothing else,” Mallory said before her mother could answer.
“I can speak for myself, young lady. What about you, Chris? What do you read?”
“Well, I like Poe...”
“Poe?”
“...the American writer?”
“No, don’t know him. What sort of books does he write?”
“He’s dead...but he did invent the murder mystery.”
“Can’t stand murder mysteries, too complicated. Rudy, now he loves murder stories. Where is Rudy?”
“Re-bandaging his arm. He’ll be here soon.” Mallory turned to Chris and explained, “He has some sort of infection. A bite of some kind according to the doctor. It’s not clearing up.”
“Rudy thinks Mallory’s responsible,” Mrs. Dahlman said, “that she put
a spell on his arm.”
“He’s such a child.”
Rudy appeared looking pale and shivery; even so, he sat down next to his mother. The large cloth bandage on his arm was coming loose and beginning to slide toward his hand. “You were talking about me?”
“I said what a child you are,” Mallory said.
“I’m not. You did do this.” He pulled the bandage away from his elbow. The flesh beneath was black, and either terribly bruised or gangrenous.
Chris gasped. “That’s awful.”
“Oh, it’ll be all right,” Mallory said. “In a day or two, I’m sure the pain will be gone.”
“No, it won’t. You killed my arm.”
“I didn’t touch your arm. If I had, then it would have been to teach you a lesson. I caught the little pervert going through my lingerie.”
Chris had little interest in eating another bite.
“Mother, Chris is here to see me. I think we’ve had enough dinner. I’m going to take him to my room…for dessert.” She stood up and pulled Chris up too.
Mrs. Dahlman’s chin had fallen forward onto her chest. “I’m tired, all this cooking,” she mumbled. “I’m going to bed.” She struggled up from the table and walked away, leaving Rudy alone to fumble with a fork in his left hand.
“Nice meeting you, Mrs. Dahlman,” Chris called after her.
“Rudy, will you help Mommy to bed?” she replied.
“Oh, all right.” Rudy threw down his fork and followed his mother from the room.
“I hope your arm gets better soon,” Chris called to Rudy.
“Little chance of that,” Mallory whispered with a grin.
* * * *
Mallory’s enormous room had its own wall of glass facing the bay, a large bed, a gigantic armchair by the window, and in the back corner of the room, her own bathroom. “I love my room,” she said. “And the view! I never close these curtains, not even at night.”
Chris was amazed at all the strange stuff around the room: dolls and stuffed animals, pictures of angels and horses, and posters of Princess Di and Madonna. There were also carved heads and bell jars and strange paintings and a large statue of a god with an enormous penis. Against the back wall stood a long work table piled high with beakers, test tubes, books, drawings, herbs, carved wooden figures, and filthy rags.
