New Fears--New horror stories by masters of the genre

by Mark Morris

  Inside, I had to navigate my way through rooms filled with crates and boxes to find the designated mortuary with the slab. Except that it wasn’t a slab; it was a billiard table, cast in the ubiquitous concrete (by those Italians, no doubt) and repurposed by my predecessor. The cotton-wrapped package that lay on it was unlabelled, and absurdly small. I unpicked the wrapping with difficulty and made the necessary check. A girl. The cord was still attached and there were all the signs of a rough forceps delivery. Forceps in a live birth are only meant to guide and protect the child’s head. The marks of force supported my suspicion that Laughton had been called at a point too late for the infant, and where he could only focus on preserving the mother’s life.

  Night had all but fallen when I emerged. As I washed my hands before going to make a last check on our dying shepherd, I reflected on the custom of slipping a stillbirth into a coffin to share a stranger’s funeral. On the one hand, it could seem like a heartless practice; on the other, there was something touching about the idea of a nameless child being placed in the anonymous care of another soul. Whenever I try to imagine eternity, it’s always long and lonely. Such company might be a comfort for both.

  John Petrie lay with his face toward the darkened window. In the time since my first visit he’d been washed and fed, and the bed remade around him.

  I said, “Mister Petrie, do you remember me? Doctor Spence.”

  There was a slight change in the rhythm of his breathing that I took for a yes.

  I said,“Are you comfortable?”

  Nothing moved but his eyes. Looking at me, then back to the window.

  “What about pain? Have you any pain? I can help with it if you have.”

  Nothing. So then I said, “Let me close these blinds for you,” but as I moved, he made a sound.

  “Don’t close them?” I said. “Are you sure?”

  I followed his gaze.

  I could see the shelter mound from here. Only the vague shape of the hill was visible at this hour, one layer of deepening darkness over another. Against the sky, in the last of the fading light, I could make out the outline of an animal. It was a dog, and it seemed to be watching the building.

  I did as John Petrie wished, left the blinds open, and him to the night.

  My accommodation was in the wooden barracks where the prisoners had lived and slept. I had an oil lamp for light and a ratty curtain at the window. My bags had been lined up at the end of a creaky bunk. The one concession to luxury was a rag rug on the floor.

  I could unpack in the morning. I undressed, dropped onto the bed, and had the best sleep of my life.

  * * *

  With the morning came my first taste of practice routine. An early ward round, such as it was, and then a drive down into town for weekday surgery. This took place in a room attached to the library and ran on a system of first come, first served, for as long as it took to deal with the queue. All went without much of a hitch. No doubt some people stayed away out of wariness of a new doctor. Others had discovered minor ailments with which to justify their curiosity. Before surgery was over, Rosie Kirkwood joined me fresh from the boat. Dr Laughton had not enjoyed the voyage, she told me, and we left it at that.

  After the last patient (chilblains) had left, Nurse Kirkwood said,“I see you have use of Doctor Laughton’s car. Can I beg a lift back to the hospital?”

  “You can,” I said. “And along the way, can you show me where the Tullochs live? I’d like to drop by.”

  “I can show you the way,” she said. “But it’s not the kind of place you can just ‘drop by’.”

  I will not claim that I’d mastered the Riley. When I described it as clapped-out, I did not exaggerate. The engine sounded like a keg of bolts rolling down a hill and the springs gave us a ride like a condemned fairground. Rosie seemed used to it.

  Passing through town with the harbour behind us, I said, “Which one’s the undertaker?”

  “We just passed it.”

  “The furniture place?”

  “Donald Budge. My father’s cousin. Also the coroner and cabinet maker to the island.”

  Two minutes later, we were out of town. It was bleak, rolling lowland moor in every direction, stretching out to a big, big sky.

  Raising my voice to be heard over the whistling crack in the windshield, I said,“You’ve lived here all your life?”

  “I have,” she said. “I saw everything change with the war. We thought it would go back to being the same again after. But that doesn’t happen, does it?”

  “Never in the way you expect,” I said.

  “Doctor Laughton won’t be coming back, will he?”

  “There’s always hope.”

  “That’s what we say to patients.”

  I took my eyes off the road for a moment to look at her.

  She said,“You can speak plainly to me, Doctor. I don’t do my nursing for a hobby. And I don’t always plan to be doing it here.” And then, with barely a change in tone, “There’s a junction with a telephone box coming up.”

  I quickly returned my attention to the way ahead. “Do I turn?”

  “Not there. The next track just after.”

  It was a rough track, and the word bone-shaking wouldn’t begin to describe it. Now I understood why the Riley was falling apart, if this was the pattern for every home visit. The track ran for most of a mile and finally became completely impassable, with still a couple of hundred yards to go to reach the Tullochs’ home.

  Their house was a one-storey crofter’s cottage with a sod roof and a barn attached. The cottage walls were limewashed, those of the barn were of bare stone. I took my medical bag from the car and we walked the rest of the way.

  When we reached the door Nurse Kirkwood knocked and called out,“Daisy? It’s the doctor to see you.”

  There was movement within. As we waited, I looked around. Painters romanticise these places. All I saw was evidence of a hard living. I also saw a dog tethered some yards from the house, looking soulful. It resembled the one I’d seen the night before, although, to be honest, the same could be said of every dog on the island.

  After making us wait as long as she dared for a quick tidy of the room and herself, Daisy Tulloch opened the door and invited us in. She was wearing a floral print dress, and her hair had been hastily pinned.

  She offered tea; Nurse Kirkwood insisted on making it as we talked. Although Daisy rose to the occasion with the necessary courtesy, I could see it was a struggle. The experience of the last week had clearly hit her hard.

  “I don’t want to cause any fuss, Doctor,” was all she would say. “I’m tired, that’s all.”

  People respect a doctor, but they’ll talk to a nurse. When I heard sheep and more than one dog barking outside, I went out and left the two women conferring. Tulloch was herding a couple of dozen ewes into a muddy pen by the cottage; a mixed herd, if the markings were anything to go by. Today he wore a cloth cap and blue work trousers with braces. I realised that the tweeds I’d taken for his working clothes were actually his Sunday best.

  I waited until the sheep were all penned, and then went over.

  I told him, “It would have been a girl. But…” And I left it there, because what more could I add? But then a thought occurred and I said,“You may want to keep the information to yourself. Why make things worse?”

  “That’s what Doctor Laughton said. Chin up, move on, have yourself another. But she won’t see it like that.”

  I watched him go to the barn and return with a bucket of ochre in one hand and a stick in the other. The stick had a crusty rag wrapped around its end, for dipping and marking the fleeces.

  I said,“Are those John Petrie’s sheep?”

  “They are,” he said. “But someone’s got to dip ’em and clip ’em. Will he ever come back?”

  “There’s always hope,” I said. “What about his dog?”

  He glanced at the tethered animal, watching us from over near the house. “Biddy?” he said. “That dog�
��s no use to me. Next time she runs off, she’s gone. I’m not fetching her home again.”

  * * *

  “A dog?” Nurse Kirkwood said. She braced herself against the dash as we bumped our way back onto the road. “Senior Sister Garson will love you.”

  “I’ll keep her in the barracks,” I said. “Senior Sister Garson doesn’t even need to know.”

  She turned around to look at Biddy, seated in the open luggage hatch. The collie had her face tilted up into the wind and her eyes closed in an attitude of uncomplicated bliss.

  “Good luck with that,” she said.

  That night, when the coast was clear, I sneaked Biddy into the ward.

  “John,” I said,“you’ve got a visitor.”

  * * *

  I began to find my way around. I started to make home visits and I took the time to meet the island’s luminaries, from the priest to the postman to the secretary of the grazing committee. Most of the time Biddy rode around with me in the back of the Riley. One night I went down into town and took the dog into the pub with me, as an icebreaker. People were beginning to recognise me now. It would be a while before I’d feel accepted, but I felt I’d made a start.

  Senior Sister Garwood told me that Donald Budge, the undertaker, had now removed the infant body for an appropriate burial. She also said that he’d complained to her about the state in which he’d found it. I told her to send him to me, and I’d explain the medical realities of the situation to a man who ought to know better. Budge didn’t follow it up.

  The next day in town Thomas Tulloch came to morning surgery, alone. “Mister Tulloch,” I said. “How can I help you?”

  “It’s not for me,” he said. “It’s Daisy, but she won’t come. Can you give her a tonic? Anything that’ll perk her up. Nothing I do seems to help.”

  “Give her time. It’s only been a few days.”

  “It’s getting worse. Now she won’t leave the cottage. I tried to persuade her to visit her sister but she just turns to the wall.”

  So I wrote him a prescription for some Parrish’s, a harmless red concoction of sweetened iron phosphate that would, at best, sharpen the appetite, and at worst do nothing at all. It was all I could offer. Depression, in those days, was a condition to be overcome by “pulling oneself together”. Not to do so was to be perverse and most likely attention-seeking, especially if you were a woman. Though barely educated, even by the island’s standards, Tulloch was an unusually considerate spouse for his time.

  Visits from the dog seemed to do the trick for John Petrie. I may have thought I was deceiving the senior sister, but I realise now that she was most likely turning a blind eye. Afterwards his breathing was always easier, his sleep more peaceful. And I even got my first words out of him when he beckoned me close and said into my ear:

  “Ye’ll do.”

  After this mark of approval, I looked up to find the constable waiting for me, hat in his hands as if he were unsure of the protocol. Was a dying man’s bedside supposed to be like a church? He was taking no chances.

  He said, “I’m sorry to come and find you at your work, Doctor. But I hope you can settle a concern.”

  “I can try.”

  “There’s a rumour going round about the dead Tulloch baby. Some kind of abuse?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Some people are even saying it had been skinned.”

  “Skinned?” I echoed.

  “I’ve seen what goes on in post-mortems and such,” the constable persisted. “But I never heard of such a thing being called for.”

  “Nor have I,” I said. “It’s just Chinese whispers, David. I saw the body before Donald Budge took it away. It was in poor condition after a long and difficult labour. But the only abuse it suffered was natural.”

  “I’m only going by what people are saying.”

  “Well for God’s sake don’t let them say such a thing around the mother.”

  “I do hear she’s taken it hard,” the constable conceded. “Same thing happened to my sister, but she just got on. I’ve never even heard her speak of it.”

  He looked to me for permission, and then went around the bed to address John Petrie. He bent down with his hands on his knees, and spoke as if to a child or an imbecile.

  “A’right, John?” he said. “Back on your feet soon, eh?”

  * * *

  Skinned? Who ever heard of such a thing? The chain of gossip must have started with Donald Budge and grown ever more grotesque in the telling. According to the records Budge had four children of his own. The entire family was active in amateur dramatics and the church choir. You’d expect a man in his position to know better.

  I was writing up patient notes at the end of the next day’s town surgery when there was some commotion outside. Nurse Kirkwood went to find out the cause and came back moments later with a breathless nine-year-old boy at her side.

  “This is Robert Flett,” she said. “He ran all the way here to say his mother’s been in an accident.”

  “What kind of an accident?”

  The boy looked startled and dumbstruck at my direct question, but Rosie Kirkwood spoke for him. “He says she fell.”

  I looked at her. “You know the way?”

  “Of course.”

  We all piled into the Riley to drive out to the west of the island. Nurse Kirkwood sat beside me and I lifted Robert into the bag hatch with the dog, where both seemed happy enough.

  At the highest point on the moor Nurse Kirkwood reckoned she spotted a walking figure on a distant path, far from the road.

  She said, “Is that Thomas Tulloch? What could he be doing out here?” But I couldn’t spare the attention to look.

  * * *

  Adam Flett was one of three brothers who, together, were the island’s most prosperous crofter family. In addition to their livestock and rented lands they made some regular money from government contract work. With a tenancy protected by law, Adam had built a two-storey home with a slate roof and laid a decent road to it. I was able to drive almost to the door. Sheep scattered as I braked, and the boy jumped out to join with other children in gathering them back with sticks.

  It was only a few weeks since Jean Flett had borne the youngest of her seven children. The birth had been trouble-free but the news of a fall concerned me. Her eldest, a girl of around twelve years old, let us into the house. I looked back and saw Adam Flett on the far side of the yard, watching us.

  Jean Flett was lying on a well-worn old sofa and struggled to rise as we came through the door. I could see that she hadn’t been expecting us. Despite the size of their family, she was only in her thirties.

  I said,“Mrs Flett?” and Nurse Kirkwood stepped past me to steady our patient and ease her back onto the couch.

  “This is Doctor Spence,” Nurse Kirkwood explained.

  “I told Marion,” Jean Flett protested. “I told her not to send for you.”

  “Well, now that I’m here,” I said, “let’s make sure my journey isn’t wasted. Can you tell me what happened?”

  She wouldn’t look at me, and gave a dismissive wave. “I fell, that’s all.”

  “Where’s the pain?”

  “I’m just winded.”

  I took her pulse and then got her to point out where it hurt. She winced when I checked her abdomen, and again when I felt around her neck.

  I said,“Did you have these marks before the fall?”

  “It was a shock. I don’t remember.”

  Tenderness around the abdomen, a raised heart rate, left side pain, and what appeared to be days-old bruises. I exchanged a glance with Nurse Kirkwood. A fair guess would be that the new mother had been held against the wall and punched.

  I said,“We need to move you to the hospital for a couple of days.”

  “No!” she said. “I’m just sore. I’ll be fine.”

  “You’ve bruised your spleen, Mrs Flett. I don’t think it’s ruptured but I need to be sure. Otherwise you could need emergency su
rgery.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “I want you where we can keep an eye on you. Nurse Kirkwood? Can you help her to pack a bag?”

  I went outside. Adam Flett had moved closer to the house but was still hovering. I said to him, “She’s quite badly hurt. That must have been some fall.”

  “She says it’s nothing.” He wanted to believe it, but he’d seen her pain and I think it scared him.

  I said,“With an internal injury she could die. I’m serious, Mister Flett. I’ll get the ambulance down to collect her.” I’d thought that Nurse Kirkwood was still inside the house, so when she spoke from just behind me I was taken by surprise.

  She said,“Where’s the baby, Mister Flett?”

  “Sleeping,” he said.

  “Where?” she said. “I want to see.”

  “It’s no business of yours or anyone else’s.”

  Her anger was growing, and so was Flett’s defiance. “What have you done to it?” she persisted. “The whole island knows it isn’t yours. Did you get rid of it? Is that what the argument was about? Is that why you struck your wife?” I was aware of three or four of his children now standing at a distance, watching us.

  “The Flett brothers have a reputation, Doctor,” she said, lowering her voice so the children wouldn’t hear. “It wouldn’t be the first time another man’s child had been taken out to the barn and drowned in a bucket.”

  He tried to lunge at her then, and I had to step in.

  “Stop that!” I said, and he shook me off and backed away. He started pacing like an aggrieved wrestler whose opponent stands behind the referee. Meanwhile his challenger was showing no fear.

  “Well?” Rosie Kirkwood said.

  “You’ve got it wrong,” he said. “You don’t know anything.”

  “I won’t leave until you prove the child’s safe.”

  And I said, “Wait,” because I’d had a sudden moment of insight and reckoned I knew what must have happened.

  I said to Rosie,“He’s sold the baby. To Thomas Tulloch, in exchange for John Petrie’s sheep. I recognise those marks. I watched Tulloch make them.” I looked at Flett. “Am I right?”