The Bog

by Talbot, Michael

  And then he froze in midword as the shadow moved about them. And he screamed.

  “Dr. Macauley!” Brad called after him, but it was of no use. David just kept running until he reached the Volvo and got in, leaving the younger man standing in the halo of a parking-lot light and watching the lazy flutterings of an errant moth.

  Melanie took her first sight of her son as well as anyone might have expected her to, and it broke her heart when he looked at her with the same vacant stare that he had first offered David. Tuck was still quite weak from his accident and slept a great deal, but over the course of the next several days his motor skills improved with such remarkable rapidity that he was feeding himself and walking around as if nothing had happened. His mental condition, however, did not improve, and he would occasionally scrutinize his favorite toys as if they were the most cryptic objects he had ever seen. He also continued to attempt to speak, and when he did so, would stammer incoherently with such a desperate longing to be understood that it never failed to unnerve them and send them from the room to conceal their tears. Try as they might to maintain an optimistic facade in front of Tuck, their own grief and disappointment soon seemed to become apparent to him, and he himself sunk into despair as if he too were tortured by the disabled brain that now entrapped him.

  To assist them in their fight against the unrelenting gloom that now encompassed them, nature saw fit to batter the valley with a torrential rain, and it was after two days of this, when David could not fathom what else could possibly befall them, that they received a telephone call. Katy answered it, and after the caller had apparently identified himself, she laid the phone down and started up the stairs.

  “Katy,” David called after her. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Dr. Grosley,” she returned.

  “Well, let your mother sleep. I’ll take the call,” David said, starting toward the telephone.

  “No,” Katy returned. “Dr. Grosley asked especially to speak to her. He said it was important.”

  David hesitated, still wondering if it would be best if he took the call, but then gave in. “All right,” he said, motioning his daughter on.

  Katy roused her mother and a minute later Melanie came groggily down the steps in her nightgown. “Hello? Oh, hello, Dr. Grosley... Yes. Well, I suppose so.” David stood in the doorway listening in to the call and watching Melanie’s expression with interest.

  Suddenly Melanie went deathly white. “No!” she gasped. And then she fainted, the phone tumbling out of her hand and rattling against the floor.

  “Hello? Hello?” came Dr. Grosley’s muted voice from the receiver as David quickly knelt down by his wife to check her. He picked up the dangling telephone.

  “Dr. Grosley, this is Mr. Macauley. It appears that my wife has passed out.”

  “Oh, dear,” Dr. Grosley returned. “I do hope she wasn’t hurt?”

  David continued to examine his wife as he spoke. “No, I don’t think so. I think she just fainted.”

  “I see. Perhaps she was just overcome by the news I gave her.”

  “Why?” David said worriedly. “What did you tell her?”

  There was a pause before Dr. Grosley’s voice once again sounded at the other end of the line. “Well, good news, I hope. Some of the results of the tests I ran on her just came back. It appears that she’s pregnant. The two of you are going to have another baby.”

  David allowed the information to sink in and repeated it several times before he finally hung up. He might have been happy, were it not for the situation they were in and the fact that Melanie had taken the news even more disconsolately than he. Behind him Mrs. Comfrey had apparently been listening in, and she ran up excitedly.

  “A baby!” she rejoiced. “The missus is going to have a baby! What a godsend. Praise be, that’s what this house needs.” She wrung her hands together excitedly and then stooped and assisted David in lifting Melanie into a chair. “I’ll get Mrs. Macauley a cup of clear tea,” she said then, scurrying off.

  Katy looked at her father with concern. “I think there’s some smelling salts in the upstairs cabinet.”

  “Thanks, Katy,” David returned, ascending the stairs in leaps and bounds to get them. It took him only a moment to find them, but when he returned he found that not only had Mrs. Comfrey already brewed the tea, but had apparently poured the hot mixture down Melanie’s throat.

  “What did you do?” he demanded as Melanie coughed and sputtered several drops of it on herself.

  “It’s to revive her,” Mrs. Comfrey returned, deadpan.

  “But you might have choked her,” David said. He uncapped the smelling salts and passed them beneath Melanie’s nose. She stirred, her eyelids fluttering, but still she did not come to.

  “That’s funny,” David said, passing the smelling salts beneath his own nose to see if they were still good, and the sharp scent nearly caused him to topple backward. The vial was definitely still potent. He wafted it once again beneath Melanie’s nose, and again she stirred, pulling away from the pungent smell, but she remained unconscious. Growing increasingly worried, he lifted her up into his arms. “Help me get her upstairs,” he said.

  “Yes, good idea,” Mrs. Comfrey returned, going up ahead of him. “I’ll see that the bed’s turned down.”

  He arrived upstairs and placed Melanie between the sheets.

  Mrs. Comfrey retrieved a cold, wet washcloth and placed it on Melanie’s brow. She looked up at David. “I don’t think you need to worry. Having a baby does funny things to a woman, you know. She was probably just overcome by the news because of all the things that have happened lately. She’ll come to.”

  Then, on seeing the tension in David’s face, Mrs. Comfrey’s expression became more concerned. “Mr. Macauley, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, I’d say you could use a good stiff drink.”

  Surprised by Mrs. Comfrey’s sudden display of considerateness, David pushed his hair back off his forehead. “I suppose I could at that.”

  “Well, why don’t you go on downstairs and have one I’ll see to Mrs. Macauley and I’ll call you as soon as she comes to,” Mrs. Comfrey returned.

  David smiled, touched by the thought, and nodded. As he passed Tuck’s room he looked in and saw that he was fast asleep. He went downstairs and poured himself a double shot of Dewars’ and downed it in three gulps. Still disturbed by Melanie’s apparent horror over her pregnancy and his inability to revive her with the smelling salts, he started to pace. Outside the thunder cracked. The lightning flashed, and a moment later the thunder sounded again, and suddenly he got the most peculiar idea. It had been drifting around in the back of his mind for some time, something he had noticed before and had not paid enough attention to, and now, for the first time, he thought he was beginning to understand.

  He grabbed his raincoat and put on his rubbers, and then shouted up from the bottom of the stairs, “Mrs Comfrey, I’m going out for a drive. I’ll be back in about half an hour.”

  “Okay, Mr. Macauley,” Mrs. Comfrey called back.

  He went outside and got into the Volvo. It was raining so hard that even with the headlights on and the windshield wipers turned up to their top speed he could barely see a thing, and no sooner had he started to bad out of the driveway than he pulled the car neatly into a rut. Gingerly he pressed down the accelerator and heard the irksome whine of one of the wheels spinning uselessly in the mud. He rocked the car, regulating his action 01 the accelerator to its best advantage, but still the Volvo remained thoroughly stuck. Cursing, he got out and examined the damage, and saw that the car had sunk into the mud almost up to its bumper. Pulling his raincoat more tightly around him, he slammed the door and started off on foot.

  Because of the rain, it took him longer than usual to reach the camp, and once there he was pleased to find that at least the portable lighting system still worked. After flicking them on he looked around the tent at the shrouded bodies on their various tables. Then he looked at the body of the Roman woman, s
till resting in her empty tub just as he had left her. He walked across the room and looked down at the strange concavity left on her abdomen by the weight of the peat. He wondered again at this peculiarity, which he had first noticed just moments before Tuck’s accident.

  She was such a perfect specimen, and such an important find historically that he had hoped he could perform the most modern procedures upon her, X rays and ultrasound scans, before resorting to the more crude methods at his disposal. But given the specialness of the circumstances he had no choice. Taking a scalpel in his hands, he carefully cut through her blouse, trying to injure its structure and pattern as little as possible, and then lifted it away. He gazed down at her naked body, the shriveled breasts and the puffy belly, elongated and tobacco brown. And then, taking a deep breath, he began to cut.

  Outside, the rain continued to hit the fabric of the tent with such force that it sounded like a thousand little fingers snapping against the canvas, and the lightning flashed again. David continued with his ghoulish task and noticed that, as he had expected, the woman’s flesh was still so tough that he was going to have to cut a perfect oval to be able to open her up enough to see inside. As if he were coring an apple, he moved the scalpel slowly around until he had completed a full circle. Then, taking hold of the neat skullcap of skin, he lifted it out as the thunder pealed once again.

  Although he had been half expecting it, the sight that now met his eyes still caused his blood to run cold and a tingling darkness to move up his spine. Perhaps it was because it was the final proof of the antiquity of Grenville’s power. Or perhaps it was because the evil that he was up against was now recorded so tangibly before him, and in a form that was easy for him to understand, to touch, and actually examine with his own hands. Whatever the case, what he saw frightened David, made him realize that he was in a fight for more than just his mortal soul, more than anything that he had yet experienced, for he now knew the Roman woman’s secret, why Grenville had not allowed Julia to kill her, and why she had ultimately been driven to take her own life. She had been pregnant, and the child that she had carried was not a human child.

  He looked down at the grotesque and leathery thing still slumbering in her womb, at its tiny but elongated fore and middle fingers, at its large and pointed ears, like dried bat wings plastered and curled on either side of its head, at its small, round mouth already lined with razor-sharp teeth, and its closed but massive eyes. Like everything that had been interred in the bog, the fetus had undergone a dark metamorphosis, had been preserved and mummified by its many centuries of burial in the peat, until it now looked unreal, more like a movie prop than something that had once been alive. But David knew that it had been alive. And he knew what manner of creature it would have grown into had it been allowed to mature.

  As it continued to rain outside, a storm of thoughts passed through his mind. He realized that somewhere along the line, Julia, in some guise, had managed to either seduce or rape Melanie and that she had been too frightened or ashamed to tell him. Although he hoped it wasn’t true, he suspected that the child she now carried was the same as the hideous thing before him. Melanie was aware of this fact, or at least thought it possible, and perhaps that was why she had fainted upon hearing she was pregnant. A wave of revulsion passed through David at this realization, but he suppressed it, knowing that he had to persevere until he had further pieced together all the facts that now confronted him.

  If he was correct in his assumptions, perhaps that was why Grenville had not simply killed them and taken their children. It was probably never their children that he really wanted. As David thought back he recalled that one of the first questions Grenville had asked him was whether they had children and intended to have more. Certainly from this, Grenville could have determined that Melanie was a young and fertile woman, still capable of childbearing. This had perhaps been his plan all along.

  As David continued in his mad race of thoughts he realized that this was probably why Grenville had sought so hard to court his favor, to win David over to his side. No doubt Grenville had been quite displeased when the Roman woman had, instead of giving birth to another minion for him, taken her own life. If and when the time came that Melanie discovered the true nature of her pregnancy, it would have been most useful to Grenville to have David as an ally, to help him prevent an incident like the Roman woman’s suicide from occurring again.

  With this thought came one final realization. David recalled the red welt on Melanie’s arm and how similar it had seemed to the needle mark on Tuck’s arm where the doctors had taken blood to test for hepatitis. What if the mark had not been a bee sting left by Julia? What if Grenville was secretly closely monitoring all of Melanie’s bodily functions and already knew that she was pregnant? Given that he had not won David’s favor, and that both David and apparently Melanie knew the true parentage of the child she was carrying, to prevent Melanie from doing something similar to what the Roman woman had done, Grenville had only one recourse. He would have to control Melanie completely, and to do that he would have to take her into his safekeeping.

  The lightning flashed again and David looked out into the darkness. He knew Grenville well enough by now to know that he would not waste a second in accomplishing his task, and with David out of the house and a good distance away it was a perfect time for him to make his move. Suddenly overcome by terror, David looked one last time at the unspeakable thing on the table before him, and then ran out into the storm.

  Lying in her bed, Melanie knew something was wrong. She was completely conscious, and yet it took every ounce of strength she had to move. She remembered the telephone call from Dr. Grosley, and she remembered realizing that it meant that now she was going to have to tell David about her encounter with that... that thing. She recalled also that she had fainted, and she had a dim perception of a hot liquid being poured down her throat No, forced, and that she had almost choked. But beyond that, until this moment, everything had been darkness. Even opening her eyes was a Herculean task, and when she finally succeeded she looked around the room. First, she noticed that it was empty. And then she noticed that the rain was still beating briskly against the pane. And then she noticed that the hall light was on and she could hear singing.

  It was a familiar voice and she recognized it immediately. As soon as she did, Mrs. Comfrey came padding softly into the room. In her hand she carried a cup of tea.

  “Oh, you’re awake,” she said with surprise. “Well, I’ve brought you another cup of clear tea. Here,” she said, lifting Melanie’s head up to face the cup. “Drink it down. You’ll feel better.”

  Instantly she started to pour the hot liquid into Melanie’s mouth, and Melanie struggled to push it away. “Mrs. Comfrey, please. Can’t you just set it by the bed and I’ll drink it myself?” And then, as soon as she had said it, she realized that this was what had happened to her before, and suddenly it occurred to her, from Mrs. Comfrey’s forcefulness, from the strange lethargy that now gripped her body, that she was being drugged.

  Mrs. Comfrey looked at her disbelievingly. “Are you sure if I just leave it that you’ll drink it?”

  Trying to be as convincing as possible, Melanie returned, “Yes, of course I will.”

  Mrs. Comfrey remained dubious. “You promise?” Melanie found her eyes trying to close again and she struggled to hold them open. “Yes, I promise.”

  “Well, I guess that’s all right then. I’ll just go get ready.”

  “Ready?” Melanie repeated. “Ready for what?”

  “To go out,” Mrs. Comfrey returned and looked slightly shocked as if she felt that it should be completely obvious to Melanie what she was talking about.

  Melanie tilted her head and looked once again out the window. “But it’s raining,” she managed to say. But when she returned her head to its original position she saw only Mrs. Comfrey’s back as she ambled out into the hall. For several minutes Melanie just lay motionless, wondering if she was imagining things, and staring
at the window and then at the cup of tea.

  Out in the hall she could hear Mrs. Comfrey walking up and down, cupboard doors opening and closing, and then she heard the unmistakable sound of water running, lots of it. Finally, mustering all of her strength, she used her arms as a pivot and swung herself out of bed. Sluggishly, she put on her slippers, and then, almost as an afterthought, she took the cup of tea and dumped it out the window. Slipping on her robe, she inched her way out into the hall. As she reached the door she heard the water stop and then a clunk and a plunk.

  Was she dreaming? No, she wasn’t dreaming. She could feel the wood of the doorframe too distinctly beneath her hand. And besides, everything—the chill atmosphere of the house because of the rain, the agonizing lassitude of her muscles—it was all too real. She heard a sudden splash of water, as of one liquid being poured into another. Her curiosity aroused, she crept down the hall. It wasn’t until she was halfway down the corridor that she realized the light was on in the bathroom, and the door was ajar. And the sound was coming from in there.

  For some reason it struck her as all very odd, and although she wasn’t quite sure why, it seemed prudent to her to muster as much stealth as possible. Slowly, she approached the bathroom door, and when she was finally just an inch away, she leaned forward and looked inside.

  To her slight embarrassment she discovered that the sounds were only Mrs. Comfrey taking a bath, and she was just about to politely withdraw when the smell hit her full in the face. It was a mind-bogglingly ghastly smell, the same horrible stench of decay that had drifted through the house for weeks, only a thousand times more potent, and madly Melanie looked about the bathroom for its source. Mrs. Comfrey seemed not aware of it at all, and continued to sit in the bathtub facing away from Melanie as she languidly lifted tumbler after tumbler of water and poured them over her back. Mystified, Melanie was about to pull away when she noticed something else. She blinked several times for she found it difficult to believe, but here and there it looked as if tiny chunks of Mrs. Comfrey’s abdomen were actually starting to break away and were dangling in the flow of water, as if, were it not for forces unknown, she were in danger of simply falling into pieces. Baffled, Melanie continued to scrutinize Mrs. Comfrey’s naked torso, and then she saw. In the base of Mrs. Comfrey’s spine, as neatly as if they had been shot into a cadaver, were two bullet holes surrounded by a corpselike aureole of gray.