by David Nickle
“I don’t like this place,” he said. “I don’t think Sunderland’s a good person.”
“What do you mean?”
Philip sat up. He frowned, opened his mouth like he was going to say, then stopped. “I think he’s going to try to talk to us by ourselves.”
“That’s what he said he was going to do.”
“He’s not a real doctor. He said so himself.”
Ann nodded. “So?”
Philip looked right at her. “When he talks to you,” he said, “promise me something.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t let him make you take your clothes off.”
“Are you blushing?”
Philip was blushing. He looked away. “Just promise me. He might say it’s part of the tests he’s got to do. He might say something else. But he’s got no business taking your clothes off. So don’t do it.”
“Okay,” she said. “I promise.”
“Thanks.”
“Is that what you’re scared of?”
“Maybe.” He bit his thumbnail. “I don’t know, exactly.”
“Well I’m scared too,” said Ann, and took her brother’s hand. The thumb tip was still damp with spit. “But not of that.”
“I just don’t like him. That’s all.”
They sat waiting for a half an hour by Philip’s watch, before the door cracked open and Dr. Sunderland peeked in. Ann got up, but he shook his head. “You stay here,” he said. “Philip, it’s your turn.”
“How long will it be?” she asked.
“Not long. Why don’t you watch television?”
“It doesn’t work,” said Philip. “No cable.”
Dr. Sunderland frowned. “What? Sure we do. Hold on a second.” He went over to the TV, reached around behind, jiggled something, and turned it on. A music video came up. “Hm. Sir Mix-a-Lot.” He looked at Ann. “Your kind of thing?”
She wrinkled her nose and shook her head.
“Well,” he said, pointing to the remote, “there are plenty of channels to choose from. Take your pick.”
And with that, he and Philip left Ann alone in the room. She started to flip channels.
ii
“Mr. Spock had to have his brain put back in,” she said. “Dr. McCoy didn’t know what he was doing, but Mr. Spock talked him through it.”
Dr. Sunderland grinned and nodded. They had talked about the music videos and the cooking show and now they were on to the Star Trek show.
“That was quite an episode,” he said.
“It was pretty stupid.”
“It wasn’t one of their finest,” he said. “I haven’t seen the old series in years. When I think about it, I prefer Mr. Data to Mr. Spock.”
“They’re both the same. Basically.”
“Basically. That’s true. Each is very alone, even in a crowd. Do you watch a lot of Star Trek?”
“My brother does. So sometimes I do too. Where’s my brother?”
The two of them were alone in the little waiting room. Dr. Sunderland had returned with a clipboard. He was wearing a deep blue fleece jacket, and he’d brought a blanket for Ann, along with her coat.
“He’s with your parents,” he said. His breath made frosty clouds over his chin. “We’ll go see them in a minute.”
Ann pulled her coat tight around her. “Soon,” she said.
“I promise.” Dr. Sunderland made a note on his clip board. “Did you enjoy the news any better?”
“It was all about the war,” said Ann. “What does SCUD stand for?”
“I don’t really know. We can check later. But you didn’t answer my question. You were watching the news for a long time. Did you enjoy it?”
“No.”
“Well I guess nobody really enjoys the news. Was there something about it that interested you?”
“How do you know I was watching the news so much?” Ann looked around. “Is there a camera in here?”
“Yes.”
Ann shivered and drew her knees up to her chest. “And you’ve been watching us the whole time?”
He didn’t answer.
“Is Philip in trouble?”
He shook his head. “Philip is a good boy,” he said. “A good brother. He gave you excellent advice. Do you worry about him?”
“I worry about everybody.”
“Because of the poltergeist?”
“Is that what it is?”
“It’s what your brother called it. In his notes he used the word, and when we spoke just now, he said that’s what he thought was going on. Is it okay for me to call it a poltergeist?”
“If it’s a poltergeist,” said Ann, “that makes it my fault. Philip says poltergeists are made by little girls.”
“No one’s saying anything is your fault. Should I call it something else?”
“Poltergeist is fine, I guess.”
“Okay. Tell me, Ann. What does the poltergeist look like?”
“It doesn’t look like anything.”
“That’s what you wrote in your journal. but everything looks like something.” He put the clipboard down on the coffee table. There was a yellow tablet of paper on it, Ann saw, filled with messy writing. “If you could imagine what it looked like, how would you describe it?”
“A bug.”
“You said that very quickly. Are you sure?”
She closed her eyes and made a show of thinking about it.
“A big bug.”
“So like a spider?”
“Spiders aren’t bugs. They’re—” she shut her eyes tighter and it came to her “—arachnids. Like scorpions.”
“You’re right.” He patted her shoulder. “So it’s an insect?”
“Sure.”
“Would you rather we called it that?”
“The Insect,” she said, and nodded. “Can I go see my family now?”
“Soon,” said Dr. Sunderland. “But first—” he reached over and picked up the water jug “—can you remember what the Insect was doing when this happened?”
The jug had been full, but nothing came out when he tilted it. The water inside was frozen solid.
The video cameras told it better than Ann could—and later, in her new bedroom at the lodge, she’d wonder if things might have turned out differently if she’d been more forthcoming.
There were two cameras. One up near the ceiling behind the TV; the other, over the door with a view of the TV. They watched the tapes back in Dr. Sunderland’s office, on a big TV. First one, then the other.
They showed enough, by themselves, to make the decision easy.
“Three definite manifestations,” said Dr. Sunderland. “At the fifty-seven minute mark, the subject—that’s you Ann—huddled down in the corner. The temperature dropped six degrees according to the thermostat. At fifty-seven fourteen, the channel changed on the TV. Ann, you didn’t move.”
Ann shrugged. What could she say? She was sitting still.
“Did you even notice the temperature change?” asked her father. “It getting colder, I mean?”
“Sure,” said Ann, but she knew that was a lie. “That’s why I scrunched up.”
He nodded, and she could tell by the sad expression on his face he knew it was a lie too.
“And finally at sixty-two oh three,” said Dr. Sunderland.
They’d watched that part twice on each tape to make sure. The event wasn’t very much, Ann thought. But it was enough.
There was Ann, curled up on the couch, watching the NewsWorld channel. They were talking about the war, and showing pictures of what missiles looked like when they shot up into the night sky in that part of the world. Ann rubbed her nose with the palm of her hand then jammed the hand back into her armpit for warmth.
The room darkened for an instant, as though the light had shorted out. Or something had moved in front of it. When th
e light came back, the coffee table was half a metre closer to the couch than it had been.
“It’s not so dark you can’t see,” said Ann’s father. “But I can’t make out what happened there. Can we see it move?”
Using a wheel on the remote control, Dr. Sunderland tracked back and forth on the ceiling camera, and the table jumped back and forth as he did so.
“It did move,” said Ann’s mother. She looked at her bandages almost wonderingly—as though seeing them there for the first time.
“Yeah,” said her father. “It did. I didn’t think these things would be so easy to call up. Right there.”
Dr. Sunderland froze the frame. “You thought you’d have to convince me,” he said with a sympathetic smile. “Because you were sure this . . . phenomenon . . . would only manifest at home, that it would have the good sense to keep hidden here.”
Her father gave a small laugh. “That’s about right. Sorry.”
“Why apologize?” said Dr. Sunderland. “Most of the time, when people worry about that, they’re right to. Because most of the time, they’re not dealing with anything real. Just their own overheated imaginations.”
“But this isn’t imagination.” Their mother folded her bandaged hands in her lap and looked up. Her eyes were wide, and frightened. Later, she would identify this moment as the point where the solidity of what was happening to the family sunk in. Broken glass was nothing, she’d say, compared to the proof of videotape.
“No,” said Dr. Sunderland. “This is real. And as you’ve already learned—” he indicated the bandages with the remote control “—it can be extremely dangerous.”
“So what’s next?”
Dr. Sunderland didn’t speak. He reached over to a book case behind his desk, and pulled out a videotape. It was homemade, but it had one word on its label.
The Lodge.
He swapped tapes in the VCR, and hit Play on the remote.
iii
“This isn’t like the tape said,” said Ann.
“Well it’s winter,” said Philip.
“And how.”
They were standing at the top of a long dock, on a lake much smaller than the Lake House’s. And it was winter all right. They were far north and the lake was solid. Ice fishing huts huddled on it in a lonely village.
There was more snow than Ann had seen before. It smothered the branches of the trees. Deep paths the width of a shovel snaked through it like trenches. The cloud was thick and the hour late, and what sun was left made the snow the colour of a wound.
“I know what you mean,” said Philip, and took Ann’s mittened hand in his own, gave it a squeeze. “It’s not just winter. The video totally oversold this place.”
“I don’t like my room. There’s nothing in it.”
“I think that’s the idea. So you don’t . . . you know, start throwing shit around.”
“Don’t swear.” She looked at Philip with wide eyes, and waggled her other mitten at him, then said in a spooky sing-song: “The Insect doesn’t like swearing!”
Philip smiled and made a little puff of breath out of his nose and looked at her sidelong as she cracked up at her own joke. But she knew he didn’t think it was funny because he let go of her hand.
“Look,” he said, pointing back up the hill to the Lodge. “The innkeeper’s waving at us to come up.”
Ann waved back. “We better go,” she said.
Standing on the long porch in his heavy blue parka, lobster-handed mittens, Dr. Sunderland—the innkeepah as Philip had taken to calling him—grinned and waved again, and headed back inside.
“It’s going to be okay,” said Philip. “It’s two weeks. We’ll all be here. And then—”
Then the Insect will be gone. Ann nodded. That was what Dr. Sunderland had said back at his clinic.
“Ann will undergo a form of behavioural conditioning. Nothing unpleasant. It will be really easy; most of it, she won’t even be aware of—because it’s not conditioning for her. It’s for the Insect. You can all stay and watch over her—in fact, that’s an important part of the process. It will last about two weeks.”
“And then?” asked her mother and Dr. Sunderland leaned back in his chair, folded his hands on his belly, as though he had already finished the job.
“Then the Insect will be gone.”
THE IRON BUTTERFLY
i
Eva’s phone went to voicemail for four days after the fire in Tobago. When Ann made the connection, it was not with her, but with a man who said he was Eva’s nephew—not Ann’s old childhood friend Ryan, which was a relief. Another one. David. He didn’t let her speak with Eva at first. Ann begged, and he still wouldn’t put her on, but explained to her what had happened.
“Eva’s suffered a small stroke,” he said. “She’s all right—recovering nicely here at home. But she’s resting.”
“Can she talk?”
“She can talk. But it’s a bit of work.” It was clear that David was not relishing this conversation.
“Could you tell her it’s Ann?”
“Ann? Sure. I’ll tell her you called. But don’t expect a call back soon. Do you have any other message for her?”
“Sure.” Ann’s mind raced—she needed to tell Eva what had happened—the fire, the manifestations . . . the thing she’d seen happening to Ian Rickhardt. She couldn’t pass that on in a message though. Certainly not through David.
“Tell her to pray for me,” she said, and feeling immediately awful, added: “Tell her I’m praying for her.”
“Sure thing,” said David, and disconnected. Ann switched off her phone and turned back to the bar, where the server had thoughtfully deposited another Caribe for her. She took a deep pull from it, and doing so calculated just how much of a self-centred bitch David must think she was.
“That’s how drowning people must seem when they’re on their own.” she said to no one as she set the half-empty bottle down.
So all on her own, on the beach and in the bar and in their suite, Ann went to work, using all the things that Eva had taught her.
She built a great fortress in her mind; felled forests for thick timbers, quarried a whole range of mountains for the hard stone walls, mined them for the rare ores that made the unbendable steel bars. She made guards this time, from a tribe of hard and watchful men cursed with sleeplessness by the waterfall beneath which they lived. The fortress climbed into the clouds, where winged lynxes circled its highest chambers, watchful lest anyone attempt escape.
Far below, there was a moat filled with smoke and mud and bones. Ann figured she had the place locked down. It would be an escape-proof prison for the Insect . . . if she could ever get the Insect inside it.
If she could find the Insect at all.
Ann made them miss their flight back, by a simple expedient—she refused to wake up. She was in fact so determined about it that Michael later said he had considered calling the hospital.
She would not explain herself, so Michael surmised a theory, that she had been more affected by the fire than anyone had thought, and was having a post-traumatic stress episode. Ann did not disagree, at least not out loud. It wasn’t so far from the truth. She wasn’t asleep when he’d shaken her. What she was, was uncertain.
No, she was worse than uncertain.
She was terrified.
“It’s all right,” Michael said as she curled up tight on the bed. “We’ll miss the flight. You don’t want to fly in this state.”
She didn’t want to fly in this state; not with the Insect at large somewhere around her, somewhere inside her. What if what happened at the beach house happened in the air?
She couldn’t fly.
They couldn’t stay at the resort any longer either. The place was booked solid, and another couple were checking in later in the day. So Michael made a call to Steve on Trinidad and explained their situation. Steve, he said, was
very understanding, and had offered a very generous favour. He had a house in Port-of-Spain in Trinidad, one that he rarely used. If they would like to, they could stay there until Ann felt better. Until Ann felt safe.
They stayed a week.
Ann didn’t call Eva again before they left—it was clear from her one conversation with David that more calls weren’t welcome. But she was not entirely neglectful. She did send her friend emails to her Hotmail address. Two of them.
The first one was perfunctory:
“Dear Eva,
I spoke with your nephew earlier and he told me about your stroke. He said you were doing well but in no shape to talk, so I didn’t push him. Hopefully you can read this? Hopefully you’re feeling better? I’ll see you when I get back, but I don’t know when that will be. I’ve had Insect trouble here. There was a fire. No one got hurt. Well, not badly. But it was very strange. And I am having trouble getting the Insect back into its cage. Don’t worry though. I will keep at it and get it right before I come back.
Can’t wait to see you,
Ann
She wrote her again from Steve’s house in Port-of-Spain, on Sunday. It was more perfunctory.
Dear Eva
Pray for me please. Do your thing. I can’t find it—it could be anywhere.
Ann
And a third one, on Tuesday, the night before they left, before they went out for one final adventure in the city.
Dear Eva
I’m feeling much better. There’s nothing like letting your hair down to get a bit of perspective. I think everything’s all right. I think. Leaving tomorrow.
So you look after you. I’m fine. I’ll see you when we get back.
xox, Ann
ii
The air was still over Piarco as the taxi pulled up to the main terminal building in the pre-dawn. It felt like a blanket; a little suffocating, Ann thought. She didn’t want to think about what it would be like when the sun rose. She was not necessarily feeling better, she decided as Michael hopped out of his side of the taxicab and helped the driver pull their bags from the trunk.
