THE M.D. A Horror Story

by Thomas M. Disch

  “Why are you so sure that he’s lost? Children often dawdle on the way home from school. He might have stopped at a friend’s. Or gone into a store.”

  “What the principal told me,” Sondra explained, “is that he was sent down to her office with a note, but that he never went there, and he’s nowhere in the school building, though his coat is still in the cloakroom. They tried calling here, but your line was busy, so then they called me.”

  “You mean Billy is out in this weather without a coat?”

  “Apparently. Where is the phone?”

  Mrs. Obstschmecker, feeling resentful of the invasion but with no grounds for protest, showed Sondra to the phone, and Sondra dialed the school’s number, which was busy. Then she dialed her own home in Willowville, and her stepdaughter Judith answered and said there’d been no new phone calls.

  “Where is Madge? When will she be home?” Sondra wanted to know.

  “She should be here any minute now.”

  “Meaning? An hour? Half an hour?”

  “Meaning any minute now.”

  “What smells so funny?” Sondra asked, turning her head from side to side and sniffing. Her brown hair was frosted a silver gray to match the collar of her coat, and her clothes—a skirt of heavy brown wool and a bulky pumpkin-colored sweater with a velvety surface—looked like they’d cost a bundle.

  “The coffeepot probably. It… boiled over. But you don’t mean to say that Billy’s out in this weather without a coat? It’s starting to snow. It’s freezing out.”

  “That is why the principal is concerned, obviously.”

  “Why would Billy do such a thing?”

  “Apparently his kindergarten teacher, who has some ridiculous name I can never remember—”

  “Symphorosa.”

  “That one, yes. She told her kindergarten class that there is no Santa Claus, and Billy got upset. The principal didn’t go into any more details than that.”

  There was a sound of footsteps on the wooden porch, then a louder tromping sound, which Mrs. Obstschmecker knew to be her son-in-law cleaning off his shoes on the doormat.

  “Sondra,” Henry said, coming into the house.

  “Henry, do you know where Billy is?” Talking to Mrs. Obstschmecker, Sondra had spoken brusquely, her voice pitched low like someone in charge. Speaking to her ex-husband, her voice rose to a whine.

  “Goddamn it, you mean he’s still not home? They called me at the hotel, and I kept trying to call here, but the line was always busy.” He looked accusingly at Mrs. Obstschmecker.

  “I haven’t talked to anyone all afternoon,” Mrs. Obstschmecker said half truthfully.

  “Has anyone thought to look upstairs?” Sondra suggested. “Perhaps he came home and went to his room without saying anything.”

  “Why would he do a thing like that?” Mrs. Obstschmecker demanded indignantly.

  “Afraid of being punished, perhaps. Anyhow, you should look.”

  “You’re right,” said Henry.

  “Meanwhile,” Sondra said, “I’ve got my car outside, so I’ll drive around the neighborhood. Do you have any idea where he’s likely to have gone? Where would he usually go to be by himself?”

  “He wouldn’t,” said Mrs. Obstschmecker.

  “All children have somewhere to go, a hiding place, a tree house, somewhere private.”

  “I’ll check out the attic and the basement,” Henry said.

  “Oh, he wouldn’t go into the attic,” said Mrs. Obstschmecker. “He’s afraid of it.”

  “Do you have another jacket I can bring with me, in case I do find him?” Sondra asked.

  “We got him a new jacket for Christmas, but it’s wrapped up as a present.”

  “Well, unwrap it.”

  “Right.”

  While Henry looked through the upstairs rooms, Sondra phoned the school again. This time the line wasn’t busy, but the nun she talked to had nothing more to tell her about Billy.

  Henry came downstairs with one of Ned’s old winter jackets and gave it to Sondra, who set off to look for Billy in her car, while Henry went on foot along Calumet, looking into the various stores.

  Collapsing into the platform rocker, Mrs. Obstschmecker felt a brief flickering of friendship for her daughter’s stepson, who, by running off this way, would deflect attention from the melted coffeepot. But it was only a flicker and soon was replaced by Mrs. Obstschmecker’s inveterate dislike, a dislike based not just on the natural resentment anyone would feel who had to treat a stranger as a member of her own family but also on the undeniable fact that the boy was peculiar. While the light in the old house thickened to night, she rocked in the creaking platform rocker and thought of punishments and disciplines that she might suggest to Madge when Madge found out what had happened and started to fume.

  3

  Just as it started to get dark, the snow began to fall. Every time he saw a car go by beyond the stone fence enclosing Brosner Park, Billy would scrunch down inside his sweater like a turtle trying to disappear inside its shell. It was so cold that for a while he’d been crying from the sheer misery of it, but now except for his fingers, which were so stiff inside his pants pockets that he couldn’t move them, the cold didn’t bother him much at all.

  This part of the park—Nabisco Hill—was almost always deserted except when there was enough snow for sledding. Sometimes a dog, off its leash, would come zigzagging up to the top of the hill, snuffling at the dry grass, but the dogs’ owners usually didn’t follow them here. In the whole neighborhood Nabisco Hill was the best place to come to be by yourself.

  But it was cold. There wasn’t even a tree trunk to lean against to keep out of the wind. Last summer they’d cut down lots of the trees when they got Dutch elm disease. Trees could get sick the same as people, but when they did, they were cut down. Of course, you couldn’t very well send a tree to the hospital. That was a funny idea, a hospital for trees, the sort of idea his brother would have liked—or else made fun of Billy for having. Billy could never tell which way Ned would swing. Sometimes he was as nice as the people on TV, but other times he was so mean that Billy would have liked to bash him over the head, like Cain in the story of Cain and Abel. In fact, it wasn’t Cain who got bashed, it was Cain who did the bashing. But he should have got bashed, and Billy’s memory had a way of remembering things the way they should have been.

  It wasn’t really lying. He had seen Santa Claus, only it was a different way of seeing. Billy could only see things this other way when it was night and there were no lights on close by and he was by himself. He could have done it now if he’d wanted to, just by looking at the snow, and then into the snow, using his eyes like little drill bits digging into wood. At first the snow wasn’t any color in particular. Not white like people always said, but not like any other ordinary color that you could find in a box of Crayolas. At night, when you looked into it, the snow came to have all kinds of swirls and speckles like the TV when it wasn’t working, and the deeper you looked the brighter everything got, and the more details there were, until the dots made a real picture. They were doing that now in the little doily of snow spread on a big rock. The colors whirled in a melty way and then got hard until they made a definite shape, a shining ball like a Christmas tree bulb. The glitter in the snow became icicles, and then slowly a whole Christmas tree took shape, with tiny bright winking lights. It was as clear as a picture on TV. The one funny thing about it was it didn’t have any size. It was both big and little at the same time, and Billy felt the same himself, dimensionless. But the tree was real, as real as the snow it was inside of. Billy was not pretending. He could see it.

  Sometimes, though not as often, you could hear things too. A squeaky sound like someone whistling, only not very well. Ned whistled the same way. But you could only hear that when everything else was completely quiet. Here on the hill there was another sound that got in the way, a sort of low whoosh like a ceiling fan that never stopped, as though the whole city were one big car runnin
g on neutral.

  And then, above that whoosh, he could hear it, a faraway high-pitched wailing like an ambulance in another part of town, but coming nearer. The lights on the tree started to blink faster and then there was a kind of purple flash and there was Santa, there in the snow, looking at Billy and smiling. His beard, instead of being pure white, was the same fizzy pink and purple as the snow but otherwise he looked just the way he should.

  —Hi there, Billy, he said, in a rumbly voice. What are you doing out so late? You must be cold.

  “I am.”

  —Well then, maybe it’s time you headed for home. I’ll bet your mother is worried.

  “Sister Symphorosa—” Billy began, feeling he had to explain everything from the beginning for Santa’s benefit.

  But Santa waved away his explanations, and the smoke from the pipe in his hand made long snaky S’s in the air. —Never mind Sister Symphorosa. That’s no reason for you to freeze to death in the park.

  “Then you’re not angry with me?”

  —Oh-ho! You’re worried about your Christmas presents, are you?

  He shook his head. “She said that you…” He couldn’t put it into words.

  Santa smiled. The smoke from his pipe made a kind of halo around his head. —She said that I’m not real, I suppose.

  “And she tried to make me say so, too. She said you were like a pagan god.”

  —Well, I suppose I am in many ways. They had their good points, some of them.

  “She said that no one can live at the North Pole because it’s too cold.”

  —That shows how little she knows about the North Pole. The best thing to do with people like that is just ignore them.

  “I tried. But she wrote out a note to the principal and sent me to her office. And the note said I couldn’t come back to her class, even after the Christmas holiday, unless I said…” Billy’s voice trailed off desolately. It didn’t seem worth trying to explain things, even to Santa.

  —That I don’t exist? Well, you should have just lied and said what she wanted you to say.

  “But lying’s wrong.”

  —Not to someone like Sister Symphorosa. Lying is only wrong with someone you trust. If you lied to me, that would be wrong. But enough of this talk, you’ve got to get home, or you’ll get an even worse cold than you’ve got already.

  “I’d rather be here. With you.”

  —You can’t always get what you want. But don’t worry about Christmas. I’ve already got you most of what you asked for.

  “If I go home now, will you come and talk to me again, later?”

  —No bargains, Billy. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, it all depends. I like you, you know that.

  “I’ll probably get a spanking if I go home now.”

  Santa Claus looked at his wristwatch. —No, he said, I don’t think so. It’s too late, they’re worried. But when you do go home, you mustn’t tell them about talking with me. They won’t like that, you know, and telling them would only cause more trouble.

  “No bargains,” said Billy with a sly smile.

  Santa laughed, and his stomach, inside the tight-fitting red snowsuit, actually did shake like a bowl of Jell-O just the way it said on the record. —I’ll tell you what. You keep our talk a secret, and later I’ll tell you a better secret. How’s that?

  “What better secret?” Billy demanded.

  —I’ll tell you where your brother has hidden his poison stick.

  “Promise?”

  —Promise. And our secret?

  “I won’t tell anyone. But that doesn’t mean I have to say what Sister Symphorosa says I have to say.”

  —Oh, I don’t care what you do with her. So now you’ll go home?

  “Okay.”

  —Then close your eyes.

  Billy closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Santa was gone, and the snow was just ordinary cold blank snow. The ground was entirely covered, and it was coming down harder than ever. He stood up and rubbed at his cold cheeks with his cold fingers. Then he set off down Nabisco Hill in the direction of Calumet, slipping and sliding on the snow-slicked grass. It was terribly cold, and he had a ten-block walk home, but that scarcely seemed to matter compared to the secret that glowed, like a charcoal briquet, in his heart.

  4

  Sondra Winckelmeyer stood at the foot of Nabisco Hill in Brosner Park, feeling a bittersweet affection for the worn-out old neighborhood. She’d grown up only five blocks from here, and the duplex they’d lived in when Billy was a baby wasn’t much farther off. She’d wheeled the old dinosaur of a baby buggy back and forth between these wooden benches and the duplex practically every day during the summer of 1967. She wondered if the park had been this run-down back then, or if it was just seeing it at this time of year that made it look so drab and awful, the trees bare and the grass dead and the trash barrels overflowing with cans and bottles and newspapers. Affection curdled to loathing, not just for Brosner Park but the whole blighted neighborhood. It had become a slum, there was no other word for it, and poor Billy had to grow up here and go to a school that was more than half colored, and wear his stepbrother’s old clothes, and eat fat Mrs. Obstschmecker’s dreadful cooking. It was as though he’d been kidnapped, only there was no way to pay a ransom to the kidnappers. And Sondra had only herself to blame, since if she’d played her cards right, she’d still have Billy and everything would be squared away.

  “Billy!” she shouted into the darkness of the park. “Billy, if you’re hiding somewhere, come out. Billy?”

  There was no answer.

  From the foot of the hill it was possible to see only a small section of the park, but from the top she’d be able to see pretty well all of it. It didn’t seem likely that Billy would be in the park with a snowstorm starting and having no warm clothes, but having come this far, she might as well be thorough. Using the jacket she’d brought for Billy as a muff, she trudged up the path to the top of the hill. Whatever had that nun done to make Billy run off in such weather? They would probably never get a straight answer to that question. On the last school day before Christmas to be telling the children there was no Santa Claus! Children still in kindergarten. Sondra couldn’t fathom it.

  “Billy!” she called out as she got near the top of the hill. She stopped to catch her breath and called again, feeling futile and ridiculous making such a commotion in the empty park. The jacket wrapped about her hands came undone, and the wind slipped through its armholes and made the arms billow out like wind socks.

  Sondra concentrated on her footing, and so, as she reached the top of the hill, she noticed a large rock. Sondra was not ordinarily one to pay attention to the details of natural landscapes. Rocks and trees and even flowers were all generic entities to her uninquiring eye. And yet something in the conformation of this particular rock made her bend down and look at it closely. There was no snow on it, that was the odd thing about it. Instead a thin sheet of crackly ice covered the irregular convexities of its surface like a crystalline pie crust, and for a moment she was quite certain she could make out, in the swirls and crackles of the ice, the smiling face of Santa Claus. She blinked, but the face was still there in the ice, almost as clear as if it had been printed on a greeting card, smiling and seeming to wink at her, and yet not really friendly but somehow threatening. She touched the ice with one gloved finger and at once the icy mirage disintegrated. A shudder passed through her, as though the cold of the snowy hill had invaded every tissue of her body. Talk about the power of suggestion, she thought, making a deliberate effort to regard the apparition as a joke and so dismiss it.

  Sondra returned to where she’d parked the Buick by the entrance to the park. The vinyl seat was already stiff from the cold as she got behind the wheel. It suddenly got to her: this was serious. The kid could freeze to death. But no, really, that was impossible. Someone would see him out in the cold and take him home and call the police. This wasn’t the damned wilderness, this was the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, and
children didn’t get lost in blizzards on the city streets and die of exposure, for Christ’s sake.

  Reassured by her denial of such a possibility, Sondra started up the engine and headed back to 1350 Calumet. Coming to the first traffic light, she stopped and scanned the sidewalk and shop fronts hopefully. A gigantic full-color head of Santa Claus had been Scotch-taped to the window of the Rexall drugstore on the corner. His eyes seemed to glint with malicious pleasure. Jesus, she thought, I am cracking up.

  5

  After spending most of the early afternoon with an elderly parishioner dying of cancer, Father Windakiewiczowa returned to the parish church of Our Lady of Mercy to hear the confessions of forty-two third- and fourth-graders. To hear them whispering their little sins through the screen of the confessional was almost as restorative as a cold bottle of beer. Or better yet, given the state of the weather, a shot of peppermint schnapps. By the time the last penance of ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys had been meted out, Father Windakiewiczowa felt ready to face even Joan Zerby’s deathbed repinings and recriminations. Though what he was more likely to have to face was a frozen tuna noodle casserole, since Mrs. Hickey, the rectory’s housekeeper, had taken off for the week before Christmas to visit her sister in St. Cloud, leaving a freezer full of neatly labeled and mingily portioned dinners.

  No sooner had he got back to the rectory and hung his overcoat on the hook in the hallway than the phone rang. He waited four rings, hoping Father Youngermann would be on hand to answer it. Then, with the certain conviction that he was letting himself in for more trouble, he picked up the receiver and said, “Our Lady of Mercy.”

  “Could I speak to Father Windakiewiczowa, please,” a woman’s voice demanded.

  “Speaking.”

  “Father, this is Madge Michaels.”

  Father Windakiewiczowa flipped through the Rolodex of his memory. “Ah, Mrs. Michaels, yes. Your husband has been helping run our Bingo Nights. What can I do for you?”