Doc Mortis

by Barry Hutchison

  His curly hair was still more or less red, but it was streaked by a dark, oil-like fluid, and thick with plaster dust. His comically oversized clown shoes were now a good few sizes too small. Thick, ape-like toes burst from the ends, the nails yellow and misshapen.

  Only his nose was completely unchanged. The red ball of foam remained perched in the centre of his face. It was exactly as it had been, although now, when compared to the rest of him, it looked tiny.

  He loped slowly round in a circle, ogre-like arms hanging down, white knuckles scraping across the floor. The vile, leering grin was still fixed to his face, although his eyes contained no shred of mirth. They searched the room, sweeping left and right until they finally settled on the desk.

  One pace, two; the floor trembled and the desk flipped into the air. I kicked backwards across the lino, trying desperately to get away. But my progress became slow when my heels started slipping in a puddle of spilled chemicals.

  With one hand he caught me by both ankles, his fingers making it all the way round with room to spare. His arm twitched and the world lurched and I screamed as I whistled through the air.

  His other hand caught my arms as they were flung above my head. I stopped sharply, his grip now tight on my ankles and my wrists. My stomach flipped like an acrobat as he jerked both hands towards the ceiling, pulling me with them.

  ‘Should’ve killed me,’ he chanted. ‘You should’ve killed me, like I asked!’

  I opened my mouth to apologise, to try to reason with him, but the darkness rushed past me as he swung both arms down towards the hard floor, and all I could do was close my mouth and screw shut my eyes and brace myself for the end.

  I hit something soft. Well, no, not exactly soft, but softer than solid ground. Two more hands grabbed for me round the shoulders – smaller, this time, but equally as rough.

  A scuffle followed, with both sets of hands pulling and hauling at me until I was sure they’d rip me in two. Finally, the smaller hands let me go. From the corner of my eye I saw a blurry dark shape hurl itself at the towering mass of angry clown. Wobblebottom gave a roar of shock, then dumped me once again in a heap on the floor.

  ‘Killlll yooooou!’ the clown-beast hissed, circling to face his attacker. ‘Killll yooooou!’

  A voice like gravel at the bottom of a deep, dark pit replied.

  ‘Good luck.’

  I uncrumpled myself into a sitting position, barely able to believe my ears. ‘Mumbles?’ I gasped. ‘Is that... But I saw them take you. How did you get away?’

  He half turned to look at me, his face fuzzy in the darkness, his almost bald head poking out above the raised collar of his overcoat. ‘Violently,’ he said. ‘Now go. I’ll take care of him.’

  ‘What?’ I asked, confused. ‘But... why?’

  He scowled at me. ‘You saved me. I save you. We’re even.’

  ‘Even?’ I spluttered, the imminent threat of Wobble-bottom momentarily forgotten. ‘You hunted me down and tried to kill me!’

  ‘You sent me here.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Even.’

  And then there was no time to argue. Wobblebottom swung his wrecking-ball fist, Mr Mumbles ducked under it, and the two of them were lost to the gloom. The force of their battle trembled the walls around me as I scrambled for the closest set of doors and tumbled on through.

  I heard the music as soon as I entered the next corridor. It came from somewhere up ahead, scratchy and stuttering, like an old vinyl record that had seen better days.

  The singer’s voice was so posh it was almost funny, like a character in a TV show from the 1940s. The backing music was all brass and woodwind, far too grand and booming for the words they accompanied.

  If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise,

  If you go down to the woods today, you’d better go in disguise.

  Even from a distance, it was clear the song was being blasted out at loud volume, deliberately drawing me in. It was a trap. It had to be a trap. And, much as I hated to admit it, it was going to work.

  I followed the song along the corridors, through two choruses, another verse and a shaking instrumental. Something had happened to the record, though. It was playing at half-speed, every word and syllable dragged out twice as long as they should’ve been, the singer’s voice now a low, rumbling drone.

  If you go down to the woods today, you’d better not go alone.

  The song reached its final chorus just as I reached the final door. The music was deafening here. It made the door vibrate as I pressed my hand against the wood.

  With a deep breath, I pushed on the door. It opened with a creak and the volume of the music within physically shoved me backwards.

  It’s lovely down in the woods today, but safer to stay at home.

  For every bear that ever there was,

  Will gather there for certain because...

  The record stopped with a horrible screech. A lone voice in the darkness took its place.

  ‘Today’s the day the teddy bears have their piiiicnic.’

  Eight lights, hanging from the ceiling in two rows of four, snapped on, flooding the room with a cold fluorescent glow.

  ‘Well, well, well. Patient Three-Nine-Six-Two. The real boy returns. I knew you would.’

  I blinked, recoiling from the sudden glare. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I really didn’t like what they saw.

  Six tubes stood like pillars in the centre of the room, half metal, half glass. They were identical to the ones I’d seen in the Gallery, but these were filled with a thick orange gloop. The glass part of one of the tubes was cracked, a bullet-sized hole punched through the front of it. Inside, something that was once a baby floated silently, its thumb in its mouth, tiny forefinger hooked over its button nose. No wonder the corridors had all looked familiar.

  Between the two rows of tubes stood Doc. I.C. was on his knees beside him, his head lolling down, chin touching his chest. It was only Doc’s grip on the neck of his T-shirt that kept the boy from falling over.

  ‘What have you done to him?’ I demanded, starting forward.

  ‘Ah-ah-ah!’ warned Doc. He held a scalpel up for me to see, then placed it against the small patch of I.C.’s throat that was exposed. ‘No closer, or I slice, yes?’

  I stopped immediately. Doc pressed more purposefully with the blade, easing off only when I took a pace back towards the wall.

  ‘Good boy. Very good,’ he said, but he didn’t completely pull the scalpel away. ‘I see that you are understanding now, I think.’

  ‘Understanding what?’

  ‘Understanding that I am not someone to be messed around with. Understanding that you should take me seriously.’

  I nodded, watching the knife at I.C.’s throat. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Good boy. Clever boy.’ He looked me up and down slowly. The tip of his tongue brushed across his fish-like lips. ‘I would very much like to cut you, clever boy. I think, once we were to begin, you would like it too.’

  ‘Tempting... but no,’ I told him. ‘Thanks all the same. Now give it up. You’ve lost.’

  He cackled. ‘Lost? But how can I have lost when I hold the winning hand?’ He jerked I.C. so the kid’s head flopped backwards, then shifted his grip to catch him by the hair. There wasn’t even a flicker on I.C.’s face that said he’d felt any of it.

  ‘Don’t fret,’ Doc said, seeing the concern on my face, ‘he is unharmed. Sedated, but unharmed. For the moment. How long he stays that way is up to you.

  ‘Step closer and he dies. Pull your disappearing act and he dies. Disobey my wishes and he dies. You are understanding this, yes?’

  I grimaced, not liking the way this was going. ‘What do you want?’

  He smiled at me with his yellow teeth, and didn’t answer for a long time. When he did, it was with another question. ‘Do you really have to ask?’

  I lowered my head, looked down at the floor, then across to I.C., wh
o still wasn’t stirring. Why had I come back here? Why had I put myself in such danger? I didn’t know the kid. I didn’t owe him anything.

  No, that wasn’t true. He’d saved me from being sliced up. He’d been doing a fine job of staying safe until he’d released me from that operating table, and then I’d brought the porters to his door. Everything that had happened to him since then had happened because he’d helped me, because I’d convinced him to help me. I did owe him something. I owed him everything. I owed him this.

  ‘What will you do to me?’ I asked, biting the inside of my cheek to keep my voice from wavering.

  Doc’s eyes shimmered as he peered at me over the top of his little round glasses. His answer came as a soft giggle of excitement that turned my stomach and made my flesh crawl. ‘Anything,’ he said. ‘Anything I want.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  MISTAKES OF THE PAST

  Ididn’t reply straight away. Doc didn’t speak either, and for a long time there was absolute quiet, as if the world were holding its breath, waiting on my answer.

  ‘You’ll let him go?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘How do I know that?’

  ‘Trust me,’ he said with a smirk. ‘I’m a doctor.’

  ‘That’s not enough. I don’t trust you.’

  His face contorted in rage and he pressed the scalpel blade against I.C.’s throat until a thin trickle of blood appeared. ‘I think you are not in a position to bargain, yes?’ he seethed, flecks of foam forming at the corners of his mouth. ‘I say “trust me”, then you must trust me, or I kill the boy anyway.’

  ‘OK, OK!’ I said, holding my hands up. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll do it.’

  The rage fell from his face like a mask. The blade at I.C.’s throat withdrew half a centimetre or so.

  ‘Noble boy. So very noble,’ Doc said. ‘It will be an honour to operate on you. To make you even better than you already are.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I snapped. ‘How do we do this?’

  Doc nodded to a spot about four metres in front of him. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Go there. Slowly.’

  I did as he ordered, walking steadily over to the place he’d indicated, my hands raised so he could see I wasn’t up to anything.

  And the worst thing was, I wasn’t up to anything. This wasn’t part of some cunning scheme. I didn’t have a plan. I was trading myself for I.C. What would happen after that, I had no idea, unless I could come up with something very clever, very soon.

  I stopped where he’d told me to, right by the glass tube I’d bumped my back against earlier. I remembered the feeling of terror that had gripped me then. Shards of broken snooker cue lay scattered around my feet, a physical reminder of my panicked reaction. That fear had been real, but now it felt like the memory of some long-ago happier time – a time I’d go back to in an instant, if it meant not being stood here in this one.

  ‘Here I am. Now let the kid go.’

  ‘Well, well, well, he still thinks I am foolish, it seems.’ His face darkened. ‘If I let him go now, you will attack me, I think.’

  I nodded my head. There was no point lying to him. Not now. ‘Yep.’

  He seemed surprised by that. ‘Such honesty is refreshing. Others would be trying to wriggle out, to deceive me, but you do not. Why?’

  My shoulders sagged. I hung my head, looking down at the floor around my feet. I made a big show of looking up at him, to disguise my slight shift to the left as I picked my spot.

  ‘Because I don’t care what happens to me any more,’ I said. ‘I just want the kid to be OK.’ I thought about Mum, Nan and Marion. About Ameena – even about Billy, and the torture he’d endured at the hands of Caddie and Raggy Maggie.

  And I thought about Mr Mumbles. God help me, I thought about Mr Mumbles. ‘I’ve hurt a lot of people. By accident, mostly, but I’ve hurt them. Whatever you do to me...’ I looked down again. ‘I probably deserve it.’

  Doc was looking at me in disbelief. But then his grip tightened on I.C.’s hair and his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  Keeping my hands raised, I lowered one knee, then the other, to the floor.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded.

  Something very clever, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud.

  ‘I don’t trust myself,’ I told him. ‘Even now, I’m looking for a chance to jump you.’

  ‘Try it and the boy dies!’

  ‘I know, I know!’ I said quickly. ‘So I’m making sure I don’t. I’m taking away any opportunity. I’m removing the risk.’

  I put both hands out before me, assuming the press-up position, but with my knees touching the floor. ‘I’m going to lie down,’ I explained. ‘Face first. If you put your foot on my back, I won’t be able to get up. I’ll be at your mercy.’

  ‘At... at my mercy,’ he repeated, with growing excitement.

  ‘That’s right. Then you can let I.C. go.’

  There was silence while Doc considered this. From his point of view, it must’ve seemed too good to be true. I hoped it didn’t.

  I lay face down on the floor, my hands trapped beneath my stomach. He made no attempt to stop me.

  It was almost a full minute before I felt his foot on my back. He ground his heel down, pressing it between my shoulder-blades, shooting a dull pain the length of my spine.

  ‘OK,’ I grimaced. ‘You’ve got me, now let him go.’

  ‘I shall,’ he replied. ‘For the moment.’

  ‘What? What do you mean? That wasn’t the deal.’

  ‘That wasn’t the deal,’ he mocked. ‘No, it wasn’t, you are correct. But guess what. The deal is off. How could I admit one patient without admitting the other? It would be unfair. You are both of you sick, diseased. But I will help you. I will help you both.’

  I heard a soft thud as I.C. was allowed to flop limply to the floor. Doc’s fingers caught me by the hair. He yanked my head up and brought his down so his mouth was close by my ear. ‘And afterwards, once I have made you better, you will thank me. You will be so grateful, I think, that you will kiss my feet.’

  He reflected on this for a moment. ‘Of course, that is if I leave you with a mouth. I have not decided what I will do with you yet. We will find this out together, yes?’

  ‘You said you’d let him go,’ I croaked. ‘You said I could trust you.’

  He sniggered softly. ‘I lied.’

  I turned my left foot sideways and pressed the toe of the right against the floor. ‘Guess what,’ I said. ‘So did I.’

  He was fat, but he was short, so not too heavy. He was crouching over me, half balanced on one leg, too confident in his own victory to worry about being careful now. My sudden turn made his foot slip from my back, but he kept hold of my hair and I hissed with pain as it twisted in his grip.

  For an old man, he was fast. He drew back with the scalpel before he’d fully registered what was happening. The blade had just begun to swing back down when I jammed a broken shard of snooker cue deep into his thigh.

  His scream was shrill and child-like, and it bounced from wall to wall. He stumbled backwards, his free hand clutching his leg.

  ‘What’s up, Doc?’ I asked, smiling grimly at my own joke.

  He either didn’t hear me or couldn’t pull himself together enough to answer. A patch of dark red was spreading across his trousers where the cue handle was still jutting out. He was staring at the broken piece of stick as if it was some never-before-seen alien artefact, but he was making no attempt to pull it out.

  Still screeching, he raised his head to look at me, his eyes wide with shock. He found me standing in front of him, just out of arm’s reach.

  ‘Y-you... V-vot have you done? Vot have you done? I vould have made you better! I vould have made you great!’

  ‘What, like you did to them?’ I asked, gesturing to the tubes around us.

  ‘No, not like these failures!’ He spat the word out, as if unable to stand the taste. ‘Like the vuns in the Gallery. Like my masterpie
ces.’

  ‘Failures? That’s not very nice.’ I took a step forward. He swiped at me with the scalpel, but I caught his wrist and knocked the blade from his hand. It clattered away across the floor.

  ‘I told you something earlier,’ I said. Still holding his wrist, I took a step forward, forcing him to hobble back. I kept advancing as I spoke. ‘I told you that I’ve hurt a lot of people. A lot of people. Most of them – all of them, really – by accident. I never really meant to hurt anyone. Unlike you.’

  He tried to yank his hand free, but I held it tighter and continued to push him back.

  ‘I’ve made a lot of mistakes,’ I confessed. ‘But you know what? I’m facing up to them.’

  I stopped walking, and he stopped too. I released my grip on his wrist then raised my eyes, looking past him. ‘Maybe it’s time you faced up to yours.’

  He turned slowly, his head first, then the rest of him. Inside the glass tube, the baby opened its eyes. The knot of grey tentacles beneath its bulging belly uncoiled, and its face lost all shred of innocence.

  ‘N-no,’ Doc whimpered, as twelve tentacles stretched out, exposing twelve deadly claws. They snapped forward like tightly wound elastic, shattering the already weakened glass and spraying Doc’s blood-soaked apron with sticky orange fluid.

  He tried to scream again, but the sound was smothered by the heaving mass of tentacles across his face. They tangled round his head and his throat, tiny claws digging deep into his neck and scalp.

  Doc’s body convulsed and spasmed as he fought for air. His hands grabbed for the baby, but more tentacles wrapped round his wrists, clamping them together.

  The part of the creature that still looked human fell forward on to the floor. It raised itself up on unsteady arms, then turned its head towards me. Its face wrinkled into a gummy smile, showing off its two bottom teeth. Then, with its prize still thrashing for all he was worth, the baby crawled off through the swing doors, and out into the darkness of the corridor beyond.

  I watched the doors as they swung back and forth, and kept watching until they had settled back in place and all was silent once again.