The figure stopped a few feet away and the rheumy eyes studied me, seemingly without emotion. When that broken slit of a mouth opened to speak, the voice was high-pitched and raspy, and so querulous that it might have belonged to someone who was more than a hundred years old.
‘You’re here,’ it said. ‘At last, you’re here.’
33
I was in shock, couldn’t speak. And the figure just watched me.
In the periphery of my vision, other shapes stirred on the narrow beds. I heard murmurs, the rustlings of bedsheets, saw forms slowly disengaging themselves from the shadows. I took a step backwards, and the hump of my back shook the closed section of the double door.
‘Who . . . who are you?’ I finally managed to stammer.
‘I don’t know,’ came the rasping reply. ‘But I have a name and I have a number.’
The figure pulled at the sleeve of the loose robe it wore, a grey nightgown affair that reached to the ankles, and revealed a painfully skinny arm. I saw some blurred markings on the inner wrist and, curiosity overcoming other emotions, I took out my torch. The figure before me obliged by extending the arm towards the light.
I saw a smudged line drawn across the flesh of the wrist and as I peered closer, I realized it was a row of tiny, faded numbers. An old tattoo. A concentration camp identification tag. I felt sickened and now it was not just because of the room’s foul stench.
‘We have names for each other though,’ the figure said. ‘I’m called Joseph.’
There was more movement in the shadows behind the old man, but nothing came forward, whoever was there remained hidden.
‘You are the one, aren’t you?’ the man called Joseph asked, and his voice was almost pitiful in its hope.
More murmurings came from the darkness, incoherent sounds that might have risen from – I felt faint at the thought – from lunatics.
‘Please tell us,’ the little man pleaded. ‘You are the one?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, unsure of the question. ‘I’m . . . I’m just not sure what you mean. What is this place?’
‘This? This is our home.’
I thought of the door behind me that had been locked. ‘Are you being kept here against your will?’ I asked, concerned that I had broken into a dormitory full of disturbed people, perhaps patients whose senility had necessitated their confinement. I was becoming increasingly uneasy. This one, this Joseph, might appear aged and fragile, but what of the others . . . ? I began to slide towards the open section of the door.
‘Please . . .’ Without moving closer the old man reached out a hand towards me. His ancient face looked appealingly at me. ‘Please . . .’ he said again.
A sudden noise to my left caused me to shine the torch in that direction. Its beam lit up a bed tucked away in the corner and at first I couldn’t make out the thing that lay on top. But when it moved I understood what it was and a wave of revulsion swept through me.
It was naked, naked and pale in the torchbeam. Naked and pale and huge, a great swelling from which emaciated arms and legs seemed to sprout. The woman – the long hair and pointed breasts resting atop of the mound told me it was a woman – was propped up by pillows so that she could see over the lump that at first I thought was her overblown belly, and I could see the terror in her eyes, a terror that perhaps was equal to my own. It occurred to me that she might be pregnant with some gross foetus, but I quickly realized this was no normal stretching of body flesh, for the lump was too massive and misshapen, the skin looked too hardened and was too rutted. No, this was a massive anomalous ovarian cyst, one that dominated its host body, rising from the rib cage and distending over the groin area almost to the knees. Its veins seemed to be embossed on the surface, a network of cannula-like tubes, some thick, others so fine they resembled massed cotton threads, and stiff, prickly hairs covered parts of it, springing from deep fissures in the flesh.
I stumbled back from the sight, almost falling.
‘We won’t harm you,’ came the ancient’s strangely distant voice again, but I was already heading for the open door. ‘Please . . . !’ he wailed.
And I faltered. Half-way through the door something – perhaps the heart-rending anguish in his frail voice – made me stop and turn my head.
‘Please,’ he said again, more quietly this time, but nonetheless in agonized entreaty. ‘Don’t leave us here.’
It was as if the moment for me to flee that place had come and had gone. I didn’t know why – at the time I didn’t know why – but I went back into the long dormitory. I turned the torch beam on the little old man called Joseph. His weary eyes blinked against the glare and I lowered the light.
‘He doesn’t allow lights,’ he said. ‘Not at night. They only switch them on from outside during the day. We’re supposed to sleep.’
‘Who d’you mean by he?’ I asked him, nervously looking over his shoulder at shadows moving in the darkness. ‘Is it Dr Wisbeech? Is he the one who keeps you here?’
‘The Doctor. Yes, the Doctor.’
Although I must have been shadowed by the light at my back, he seemed to sense my apprehension.
‘Don’t be frightened of what you see here,’ he said, but I could hear the nervousness in his own voice. ‘After all,’ he added, ‘you are like us.’
I couldn’t help but gape at this shrunken little man in his loose gown, at his almost-bald, wizened head set on narrow shoulders that sloped away from the scrawny neck, at those washed-out jaded eyes that so mournfully watched me in return.
‘I don’t know what . . .’ I began to say, but his thin, wavery smile interrupted me.
‘We called to you,’ he said, taking a step forward. ‘Didn’t you understand that it was us? We sent you wings. It was the only way we could hint at Momma’s name.’
‘Hildegarde Vogel?’
‘Momma. She was good to us, she was always good to us.’
Someone moaned in the blackness behind him.
‘Now she’s gone,’ Joseph said. He took another step and was no more than a yard away; yet when he spoke again, his voice sounded even closer, almost as if he were whispering into my ear. ‘You know us. I can tell. The recognition is there in your mind, if not in your vision.’
He moved even closer and a cold, dry hand wrapped itself around my wrist. I almost dropped the torch.
‘Please don’t be afraid,’ he begged quietly. ‘Not of us, not of us.’
More whispers came from the moving shadows, and then murmurings. More vague shapes began to take on form as they drew closer.
Joseph spoke. ‘You’re here to help us. Now you must understand why.’
The first of those tenebrous forms emerged into the light.
‘Learn to see with generous eyes,’ the old man told me. ‘Don’t fear us. I promise you, there is nothing to fear.’
And so I looked and could barely conceal the revulsion, could scarcely hide the fear.
For although I had already witnessed the initial horror on the bed nearby, it had not prepared me for what was to come.
When I aimed the light at the young man who lurched from the dark, I saw only an innocent face with wide, childlike eyes, the hair long and matted, the jaw small and pointed; but as I let the beam fall on to the body I gasped aloud and once more, nausea slewed around my stomach and saliva moistened my mouth. At first glance I thought he was carrying somebody, a smaller person whose head and shoulders I could not see, a body whose twisted legs hung just below its bearer’s knees. One frail arm dangled by its side.
Then I realized it had no head and there were no shoulders, for the torso emerged – the torso came from – the young man’s chest. The man was host to the twisted thing.
And it appeared to be alive, for it moved – it flinched – and the carrier, whose hands were beneath the parasite’s buttocks, hoisted the shape up as if into a more comfortable position. He held it as a brother might hold a younger sibling.
‘Oh dear God . . .’ I said it as a hush
ed breath.
‘Please . . .’ Joseph had stepped to my side and he squeezed my arm as if to offer comfort – and to give me strength.
Now a woman – no, it was just a girl, from the almost dainty, light-footed way she walked I could tell she was a young girl – loomed into the light. Her long dark hair hung forward around her face and even beneath the loose robe I could tell her figure was slim and, from the way she moved, it was lithe. She watched me over her fingertips, for her fine hands covered most of her face in the way young girls might hide their shyness, and her blue eyes were beautifully large and clear.
‘Cecilia . . .’ Joseph said to her in some secret command, or perhaps, plea.
She glanced his way, and then back at me. She took another step closer and I could not help but notice how pretty her small feet were. She lowered her hands.
Nothing had prepared me for the shock that now gripped me. I should have realized that this young girl with the slight figure and lovely hair would be imperfect in some way, for was she not kept here, apparently locked away in a covert section of the home, and hadn’t her companions already given visual testament to their condition?
As her hands slipped from her face I shuddered, but did not avert my gaze. I forced myself to look, but I could not force my legs to stop their trembling, my heart to stop its pounding.
A hideous excrescence swept down from her lower brow, a sick travesty which replaced the nose for a tusk. It was long, hard, and its colour was grey, dividing her face to reach towards and almost touch her chin. And the mouth. Oh God, the mouth. Its thin lips stretched across her face, each corner almost touching her earlobes in a wretched, demonic grin, a Joker’s grin.
Involuntarily, my hand cupped my own mouth, both in shock and to contain the rising sickness. I wanted to flee from there again and I think it was only shame that prevented me from so doing. It wasn’t their fault, they could not be blamed for their aberrations just as I could not be blamed for mine.
And as the old man gripped my arm, the parade continued, each one of these unfortunates presenting themselves to me, some having to be coaxed, others gently led from the shadows into the light, but most willing to reveal themselves. I recognized some from my dreams, my visions, while others were a new shock, something more to be witnessed, and then accepted. And I did begin to accept, for the mind has a capacity to adapt, to learn and – albeit slowly – to acknowledge. Here, one horror led to another, one malformation led to something as bad or worse, and both my sensitivity and sensibility hardened a little more at each revelation. Still they came: the three-headed boy, two of those heads set close together on broad shoulders, the third on the edge of the collarbone, hanging limp and lifeless, as though ostracized by the others; a girl I remembered having seen among the hauntings of the previous night, a tall pretty young woman, whose face was innocent, but whose upper body did not align with her hips and legs, so that she seemed almost to be walking alongside herself; yet another young female, the legs of this one huge, elephantine, beneath her robe, calves and ankles swelling enormously like overflows of grey, clotted lava; the man who slid across the floor, propelling himself with his arms because his body ended just below his chest, his genitals – or whatever physical arrangement he had for his functions – presumably tucked out of sight beneath him; the man or woman, I couldn’t tell which, whose arms sprouted other arms, whose legs sprouted other legs; the dark-skinned boy with the stunted body and a head so huge and soft it had to be held erect by a companion, the companion a woman whose face had another half-face melded into skull and flesh, so that she appeared to have three eyes, two noses, a small, twisted aperture whose lips denoted it as a mouth set askew on one cheek, while another, blistered mouth was positioned almost as normal above the jaw. They came to me like creatures from a nightmare – as, indeed, they had first come to me – although some still lingered in duskier parts as if afraid to let the light throw its full glow into their imperfect bodies; and I was relieved that these few last ones chose to remain hidden from me, for their shadowy outlines did not encourage closer inspection.
They stood in a semi-circle around me, these . . . these grotesques – I could think of no other word for them . . . and they swayed and moved in the half-light, whispering, holding on to each other for comfort. The stench from them – or was it from the room itself? – was almost as overpowering as their physical aspects, and I continued to fight the sickness that by now seemed to be welling in my chest. I watched them warily, my legs still shaking, the torch in my hand wavering, but I refused to let myself run from their presence. I don’t think it was courage that kept me there; no, it was because I had a deep-seated empathy with these poor wretches. After all, was I so different from them? Wasn’t my own appearance closer in form to theirs rather than my normal fellow man’s? Wasn’t I a freak among freaks?
In an act of bravado, defiance, or just plain curiosity, I raised the thin torch high and shone it over their heads, sweeping its narrow beam along the two rows of beds and cots behind them. It seemed that most were empty, although I could make out vague shapes here and there, which meant the majority of – inmates, internees, patients? – were standing here before me. I didn’t count, but I guessed there were at least thirty of them. All kinds of questions sprang into my mind, but I could only look speechlessly at the little old man by my side.
However, Joseph had one more to show me. Arid skeletal fingers slipped into my hand and with gentle pressure, he led me through the ill-made crowd.
The cot was like all the other beds and cots, narrow in width, iron frames with rounded corners at each end. A single sheet and a flat pillow covered it. A tiny head lay on the pillow, the rest of the body on top of the sheet. I raised the torch to see better.
My mind reeled, the room about me weaved; I heard myself utter a small, startled cry. The hand holding my own became firmer, as if to steady me.
At first I could not be sure if the thing lying on the cot was human, so hairless and veined, so small and slug-like, was its appearance. The grip on my hand tightened even more and, though he did not speak, I thought I heard Joseph’s soothing voice inside my head. Be calm, it said. There is nothing to fear. And somehow, I was calmed.
Even so, I had to will myself to look at the thing on the cot again.
To begin with, I could not distinguish any features that might refer to man, woman, or child; only when I made myself move closer to bend over the little creature did any such marks become apparent. Set in the white blob of a head were two, pink, pupilless eyes that stared sightlessly at the torchlight. The nose was of little consequence, a tiny bump of a thing with a single slit, presumably serving as a nostril, at its centre. The mouth – could it be called a mouth? – was no more than a toothless, lipless aperture that dilated and closed in an irregular rhythm as it took breaths. A shiny drool glistened around its edges. I was reminded of the creature that had lay across the threshold of my front door last night. This was smaller, but in essence the same. And this appeared to be blind, whereas in my vision it was without eyes.
My gaze travelled down from the head to the body, searching for limbs or anything that might give the creature human credibility, some normal definition, but I saw only protuberances at each corner, smooth stumps that occasionally twitched. One such stump near the head (there was no visible neck) had the same kind of tattoo that Joseph bore on his wrist, a blurred line of numbers, and I tried to discern them. 080581, I thought they read.
My search continued its grim journey over the pale swell that was its belly, a riot of veins visible beneath the thin skin, down to the brief appendages that were in place of its legs, to the flaccid hairless growth between them, a skinless penis that lay on a flat and empty scrotum.
At last my nausea refused to be contained: it erupted from me as I turned quickly from the cot, splattering the wood floor, soaking my shoes with slick saliva and vomit. I retched and retched as I had the night before, bringing up all the nastiness that had swilled in my stomac
h, expunging my body of its foulness. What kind of Hell had I stolen my way into? What other horrors dwelt here?
Fortunately for me at that time, I had no way of knowing.
34
Some sat on beds or cots, while others gathered around me, sitting on the floor, or just standing watching me. I rested on one of the few wooden chairs in the dormitory, far away from the mess I had made on the floor, even though its smell was nothing amidst the rancid odour of the room itself. The door was now closed and we talked in darkness save for the subdued glow of the nightlights. I preferred it that way.
Joseph, who had led me to the chair and had himself wiped the slime from my shoes with a rumpled rag, sat three feet away, his ankles crossed, thin, gnarled hands in his lap, his back surprisingly straight for one of his age.
‘The Doctor refers to us as “exceptional departures from the ordinary”,’ he was saying, and I endeavoured to listen to his words, tried to ignore the stink and the creatures who shared the darkness with me. ‘And that is all we are. You must believe me when I tell you that our outer shells govern neither our hearts nor our minds. Least of all do they taint our souls.’
Someone whimpered, another moaned softly, and I could feel, rather than see, movement in the gloom.
‘We used to believe the Doctor was our creator, but Constance has told us this isn’t so.’
‘Constance . . . ?’ I became even more alert at the sound of her name. I flicked on the torch so that I could see his face, and he blinked, raised a hand to protect his eyes. I lowered the beam, but didn’t turn off the torch; a circle of light illuminated the floor between us and reflected a soft, limited radiance on both Joseph and myself. ‘Does Constance take care of you?’
‘She is our friend. Like Sparrow. Constance has told us that Sparrow has gone away for ever.’
Another quiet moan in the darkness.
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