by Amy Cross
"You're luring her toward you," I point out.
She shakes her head. "If I wanted her in here, don't you think I'd have opened the door by now?" She pauses for a moment. "Whatever's driving her, it's nothing to do with me. Anyway, what do you care? The old woman bit you and scratched your face. Are you really so worried about her? If she wants to come in here, why not just let her?"
"Because I -" Suddenly the padlock opens itself.
Gasping, Ruth makes one final effort to reach the handle, but I push her hand away and she falls flat on her back. I immediately kneel next to her, worried that I've hurt her, but she quickly starts trying to get up again. It's as if she's some kind of junkie, and the abandoned ward is her fix; she seems filled with an overwhelming urge to get through the door, and she won't let anything stand in her way.
"It's not happening," I say, grabbing the padlock and forcing it shut again.
"What are you scared of?" Jennifer asks, still taunting me from the other side of the door.
"I'm not scared of anything," I reply, "I just don't want to chase her any more. I'm taking her back to her room."
"Spoilsport," Jennifer says. "Aren't you curious? I know I am."
"That's not how it's going to work tonight," I say, stepping around Ruth and finally putting my hands under her arms. Making sure I'm behind her, and that she can't reach me with her teeth, I slowly start dragging her along the floor. It feels totally wrong to be doing this, and completely disrespectful, but I figure it's better than just letting her remain out here. "I'm taking you back to your room," I say, "whether you like it or not."
"Come and see me again soon!" Jennifer calls out.
Although Ruth struggles a little as I pull her back along the corridor, she doesn't put up as much of a fight as I'd expected. It's almost as if the exertion required to get all the way to the abandoned ward has drained her, and she seems to be slipping back into her non-responsive state. Struggling a little, even though she's hardly a heavy woman, I eventually manage to get her back to her room. Realizing that she seems docile again, I decide to take the risk of getting closer to her, and I'm finally able to haul her up and back onto her bed. After a few minutes, I've got her tucked in again, and it's almost as if she never left the room in the first place.
"Where the hell was she?" says Lizzie, hurrying into the room. "Why didn't you call to let me know you'd found her?"
"She was up near the red ward's rec room," I say, deciding to skirt around the events concerning the abandoned ward. Reaching into my pocket, I find that my phone is looking fine, with no signal problems. "I think I need to get a new phone," I add. "This one isn't quite working normally."
Lizzie busies herself with Ruth, checking her over. "She seems okay," she says after a moment, "but I don't understand how she could have got out of bed. She's been half-dead for so long, there's just no way she could..." She sighs. "You know what? It's not a problem. Juliet, I'm going to say something that could get us both in a lot of trouble, but I hope you'll be smart enough to realize it's by far the best approach. If we write about this incident in the logbook, we'll get asked a heap of questions. We might even end up on suspension. It's going to cause nothing but trouble, and it won't benefit anyone. Not you, not me, and certainly not Ruth."
"So you want to keep it quiet," I say, realizing where this conversation is headed. I pause for a moment. "Sure. I won't mention it."
"Okay," she replies. "That's perfect. I'm going to go check on the other residents, and you need to just sit here and resume your watch. If she moves again, if she even flinches, you get out of here and you lock the door behind you, okay?" She fishes a key from her pocket and hands it to me. "You're not supposed to have this, but just keep hold of it for the rest of the shift. If she does anything, you lock her in and come find me." She sighs. "When the sun comes up, if she's still alive, she's someone else's problem."
"Sure," I say.
Once Lizzie has left the room, I walk over to the bed and stare down at Ruth. She's back to her former condition, with her eyes closed and her breathing becoming slow and heavy. Whatever sparked that brief flurry of activity, it seems to have passed.
"I'm sorry I dragged you," I say, keeping my voice down. "I didn't mean to hurt you, but I couldn't leave you there." I look at the bite marks on my hand; at least Lizzie didn't notice my injuries. "Trust me," I continue, "you really didn't want to go into that ward. There's nothing there. Nothing good, anyway."
I turn and walk over to my chair, but after a moment I hear the sound of movement and I glance back at the bed. To my shock, she's opened her eyes again, and she lets out another deep growl. I make my way over to the door, but something tells me that whatever's happening this time, it's different somehow. I walk back over to the bed and realize that she's not getting up; she's dying. From the depths of her throat, she emits a grinding death rattle that sends a chill down my spine. She blinks a couple of times, and then she just stares up at the ceiling. I keep my eyes focused on her face, and after a couple of minutes I realize that she's dead. I wait a little longer, but eventually there's no doubt at all.
"Bye," I say quietly, immediately realizing that my choice of words sounds kind of flippant. "Rest in peace," I add.
Turning and walking out of the room, I walk slowly to the reception area. I grab the logbook from the top of the office filing cabinet and I open it to today's date. Apart from the change of the last shift, there's nothing mentioned, not even in the column that's reserved for any unusual notes or comments. I check my watch and see that it's 4:55am, so I carefully enter Ruth Brown's time of death. Once I'm done, I put everything away, take a deep breath, and make my way through to the blue ward, figuring I need to find Lizzie and tell her what happened. I guess that now, with the death watch over, it's time to get on with my normal duties.
Chapter Eight
Eleven years ago
Once my father has put me to bed, I stay awake in the darkness and stare at the window. It's barely 9pm and I know my father will still be awake for a while; even now, I can hear him shuffling around downstairs, doing whatever he does when he's alone at night. Before my mother died and I came to live with him, he used to go out a lot, drinking in bars; now he has to spend his nights in the house, at least until he's managed to find a babysitter. He spends a lot of time on his computer, mostly either playing chess or going on dating websites, and I'm pretty sure he has a couple of glasses of wine. Everything about the situation seems temporary; even my bedroom is really just a store-room, with shelves running along all the walls, containing hundreds of old vinyl jazz records. It's better than nothing, but I can't help wondering how long it'll be before he decides things have to change. Soon, hopefully.
After staying awake for a few hours, I hear my father coming upstairs and going into his room. I wait a little longer, until I'm sure he's asleep, and finally I reach over and switch on my bedside lamp. Climbing out of bed, I pull my backpack out from the cupboard and open the top. Fortunately, the dead cat hasn't started to smell yet, so I carefully remove him and place him in a plastic box I took from the kitchen. I carefully pull the scissors out of his head, and a small dollop of blood comes out, but not too much; I guess he's started to congeal, now that he's been dead for a few hours. I arrange him so that he's as spread out as possible, and then finally I place the lid on the box.
Sneaking out of my room, I go over to my father's door and immediately hear him snoring. I head downstairs, open the back door and go into the garden. It's pretty overgrown out here, and my father only ever comes out to smoke, so I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be too hard to hide the box containing the cat. I hurry around to the side of the house and sit on the cold grass, before opening the box and looking down at the corpse. So far, to be honest, it's a little disappointing: it looks just like a regular cat, and apart from the wound in its head you wouldn't even know that anything was wrong. As it's large, dead eyes stare up at me, I start to feel a little guilty. I mean, as far as I know, the cat did
n't do anything to deserve being killed; I just hope that there wasn't too much pain as the scissors entered his brain.
"Sorry again," I whisper.
He doesn't reply.
Reaching into the box, I move one of his paws, and I can immediately tell that he's starting to get stiff. I managed to go on a website on my father's computer earlier, and apparently bodies get hard when they've been dead for a few hours. There's no sign of maggots, but I'm sure they'll come soon. Although everything looks normal, I'm fairly sure that inside the cat, the process of decomposition has already begun. It'll be slow at first, but gradually the skin will start to get eaten away. Smiling in the moonlight, I imagine what it would be like if it turned out the cat wasn't dead at all; I imagine him suddenly leaping out of the box and running off, having faked his death so he'd have a chance of escaping. Fortunately, I've already made double sure that there's no chance of anything like that happening. His body is dead, and his soul... Well, I don't believe in souls. When the body dies, the mind dies too.
"Your death won't be in vain," I explain as I stare at him. "I'm going to keep a diary of everything that happens to you. This is a big project, so we'll be doing this for a few months, okay?" I pause for a moment. "If you're really good, and if you get lots of nice juicy maggots, I might even take you for pancakes and an ice cream. You'd like that, wouldn't you?" I hesitate for a moment, and then I reach down and ruffle the fur around his ears. "It's okay," I add. "I know you're a little shy." I smile. Obviously I know the cat is dead, but I bet some people would be stupid enough to believe that it could still be alive. It's kind of fun to imagine a zombie cat roaming across the grass, trying to eat everything it finds.
Although the dead cat is fun, I can't help thinking how much more fun this whole situation would have been if I'd been able to get hold of my mother's body. I'd have needed a much bigger box, and it would have been harder to get her back home from the cemetery, but then I'd have been able to feel her arms get stiff, and I'd be able to watch as her body slowly decayed and rotted to nothing. Smiling, I imagine the flies and maggots crawling across her flesh; a human body must be a big feast for bugs, so the flies would probably end up being really big and meaty. Maybe it's a little morbid to be thinking about this kind of thing, but it'd still have been something fascinating to watch. Human bodies change so slowly when people are alive; when they die and finally get interesting, they're immediately hidden away in the ground or, even worse, they're burned. Sometimes I wonder why adults make the decisions they make; if my father had just been a little more thoughtful, I could be sitting here with my mother's dead body at this very moment.
Realizing that there's little chance of anything interesting happening to the cat's body tonight, I carefully place the lid on the box and slide it into a small gap behind the woodshed. I hurry back into the house, making sure to lock the door so that my father won't realize I've been outside. I walk over to the kitchen counter and see an empty wine glass next to the sink. After I've wiped my feet on a tea towel, I go back upstairs. My father is still snoring, which means he's got no idea that I ever got out of bed. I like feeling that I can do things that he doesn't know about; it makes me feel good to realize that he's not completely in control.
I push his bedroom door open and stare into the darkness. Creeping across the room, I stand by his bed and stare straight at his sleeping face. After a moment, I'm able to ignore the snoring and imagine what it would be like if he was dead. I stand there for a few minutes, and apart from the snoring, there's no sign of life: I can't see the bedsheets moving as he breathes, and it's as if he hasn't sensed that I'm here at all. The whole room stinks of garlic and clarinet reeds, mixed with a little body odor and flatulence, and to be honest it's a bit gross being in here, but I want to test how close I can get to him before he wakes up. I reach my hand out, keeping it hovering close to his face for a moment, but nothing happens. I guess maybe he had a couple of glasses of wine and now he's passed out for the night. I take a deep breath and finally I poke his shoulder. I figure that if he wakes up, I can always claim to be scared or something like that, but he doesn't even stir. It's useful to know that he's such a heavy sleeper, since my experiments with the cat's dead body are going to have to take place mostly at night. I prod him a couple more times, just to make sure, and although he finally shifts a little under the duvet, he doesn't actually wake up.
Finally satisfied that he's fast asleep, I turn to walk out of the room, but at the last moment I spot a pair of nail scissors on the bedside table. After staring at them for what feels like the longest time, I go back to my room.
Epilogue
Today
I usually only visit my mother's grave once or twice a year. This morning, I'm back for the second time in as many days. Although the sky is a dull gray color, and a biting wind threatens rain at any moment, I'm determined to sit here for as long as it takes until I get some kind of emotional reaction. So far, I feel absolutely nothing, but I'm convinced that if I sit here long enough, eventually something will happen. I just have to be patient. I mean, what kind of monster wouldn't cry at her own mother's graveside?
"Come on," I whisper quietly, staring at the spot where the ashes were buried. "Come on." I feel something, maybe, but it's little more than a slight heaviness behind my eyes. It's as if my body wants to cry, but my mind is holding the tears back; or maybe it's the opposite, and my mind wants to cry, but my body is... Sighing, I close my eyes and listen to the sound of the wind tearing around the cemetery. After a moment, I feel the first cold drops of rain on my face and hands.
"Fine!" I say, standing up and walking over to the spot where my mother is buried. I kneel on the cold, damp grass and stare directly at the patch of grass. I still remember the funeral, all those years ago, and how I was upset by my father's decision to burn the body rather than bury my mother properly. It's hard to believe that so many years have passed, but in many ways I still feel exactly the same way. I'm still pissed off at him, and I still think it was a lousy thing to do. Besides, when people cremate a loved one, they usually scatter the ashes somewhere meaningful. I don't know why my father chose to bury my mother's burned remains, but I guess he was probably just being cheap; I mean, he didn't even pay for a headstone, which means I only know the exact spot where she's buried because I made a conscious effort to commit it to memory.
Just before she became ill, my mother was considering moving us to California. I can't help wondering how different life would be if she'd stayed healthy, and we'd gone off to the west coast. I'd probably have seen my father just a couple of times a year. Maybe life would have been better out there.
Standing up, I take a deep breath and realize that this isn't working. There's no way I can just sit around in the rain all day, on the off-chance that somehow I'll end up crying. Whatever's wrong with me, it's going to take a lot more work to get it fixed, and shivering in a freezing cold cemetery isn't going to help. As I walk across the grass, I find myself thinking more and more about the abandoned ward and about the outpouring of emotion I experienced on my first visit. Although Jennifer tried to use that emotion to make me kill myself, I can't help wondering whether I could use her powers to unlock my true feelings in a more controlled and ordered way. I've delayed the moment long enough, but now I have to start planning my return to the abandoned ward. Instead of being scared of Jennifer Mathis, I see her as an opportunity, but it's an opportunity that I have to approach carefully in order to make sure I don't get hurt.
As I'm nearing the cemetery gate, I glance over at a nearby spot and I stop in my tracks. A few meters away, a small black headstone pokes out of the ground, almost as if it's calling me over. I walk toward the spot and stare down at the inscription. This is where Martina Hopkins, my father's girlfriend from the funeral home, is buried. At least she got a full coffin rather than being cremated, but then my father wasn't in charge of her funeral, even though they were very close by the time she died. Just as I remember the details of my mo
ther's funeral, I also remember Martina's. Everyone was so shocked and upset following her sudden death, and my father was viewed with great sympathy. He didn't deserve that sympathy, but it was kind of funny to watch him muddle through another close death. As a faint smile crosses my lips, I turn and walk out of the cemetery.
Book 3:
Bandages
Prologue
Today
"You off to work?" my father asks.
"Yeah," I say, putting my backpack on the table as I wander over to the fridge. It's close to 9pm and I'm supposed to be at the retirement home in an hour. Since my father has decided to stop giving me a lift every night, I have to take the bus, which means heading out into the cold and waiting at the nearby stop. I know it might make me sound like a pampered little princess, but I really wish he'd get off his ass and give me a lift rather than lounging around in his dressing gown, proving some pathetic point. He thinks he's making me understand the realities of the working world, but he's doing it in a totally self-satisfied way.
"You don't sound very enthusiastic," he says, biting into a slice of garlic bread. He's got a book open on the table in front of him, and he seems to be looking at pictures of boats. Typical. The two great loves of my father's life are boats and jazz, and if he's not engaged in one of those passions, you can be sure it'll be the other. Once I'm out the door, he'll probably spend the evening fantasizing about the boat he keeps saying he wants to buy while listening to some old jazz albums, and then maybe looking at some of the dodgy websites I once found in his browser's history.
"It's a job," I say. "Why should I be enthusiastic?"
"Depends," he says, looking down at his book.
"Depends on what?" I ask.
"On how you want to present yourself at work." He looks back up at me. "One of the most important things you can learn, Juliet, is the value of comportment. Do you even know what comportment is?"
