Best New Horror 29

by Stephen Jones

  His hands moved again, remnant fingers heading for his chest, stumps reaching to scratch whatever lay beneath his blue patient’s smock. Broward grimaced, baring his beautifully white false teeth as he forced his arms to his sides, his hands turned inwards like claws.

  “So…so all that talking and hypnotising and the new drugs, they aren’t working?” asked McIndoe.

  “Nope,” replied Broward. “It’s itching fierce. But I can hold It off, Mac. I can hold It off until Halloween. And in the sphere…nothing to scratch with. It’ll be okay. My great-great-granma, she carried It for more than a hundred years, I reckon. I’ve been okay more ’en fifty years, haven’t I?”

  His voice was pleading, eyes wet.

  “Yeah, yeah,” mumbled McIndoe. He gripped Broward’s shoulder, offering him support. There wasn’t much muscle there, it was all bone. The old man wasn’t much more than skin and bone.

  “You’re a good man,” mumbled Broward. “Hell, you’re like family to me…”

  His voice tapered off as he said that, and he suddenly looked at McIndoe as if seeming him in a new light.

  “Family…” he whispered.

  “Yeah, we’ve known each other long enough,” said McIndoe. “Hell, I’ve known you longer than almost anyone.”

  He tried to smile, but inside McIndoe felt cold, and old, and frightened. He’d already arranged to be rostered off over Halloween. There was nothing he could do. If he helped Broward get in the sphere, Doctor Orando would just let him out and McIndoe would lose his job, and if he lost his job he lost the house, and he was raising three grandchildren, still four years to get the youngest through high school. There was nothing he could do.

  “Shit,” said McIndoe bitterly.

  “What?” asked Broward. He’d rallied, was standing straighter, taking sips of his water. “Don’t worry about what I said…I can hold It off. I can. Don’t you worry, Mac. I’ll get in that sphere, hold It off another seventeen years! I’ll beat my great-great-granma yet!”

  “Yeah,” said McIndoe. He tried to smile at the near-centenarian being impossibly brave, and failed. “Yeah. Keep up the good work.”

  He walked away, leaving the old man sipping his water. While he waited for the orderly on the other side to open the door, McIndoe glanced back. Broward was holding the cup between the palms of his hands. The stubs of his fingers were twitching, curling and uncurling.

  Making scratching motions in the air.

  McIndoe fled, heart hammering, all the way back to his special refuge, the cleaning cupboard on level two of the oldest building. He took the Scotch from behind the loose bricks and took four swallows in quick succession, following it up with a gargle of mint-flavoured mouthwash, also from a bottle hidden behind the bricks.

  The Day Before Halloween

  “Mister Kenneth. I got to talk to you.”

  “What is it, McIndoe?”

  “Broward. He has got to go in the sphere tomorrow.”

  Kenneth slid out from behind his desk and went to the door, looking to make sure Doctor Orando was not in sight. He shut the door and returned to his desk.

  “You’ve got to help him get in the sphere,” repeated McIndoe.

  Kenneth fumbled with a pencil, picked it up, drew some doodles on his desk blotter.

  “The boss made it clear he’s not to go in that thing,” he said. “Broward is restrained in Ward Three, and heavily sedated.”

  “He’s still trying to scratch though, isn’t he?” asked McIndoe. “Should be out deeper than deep, and he’s still trying to scratch that itch, right?”

  “Uh, yes,” said Kenneth. He swallowed several times. “Look…look, McIndoe, were you here in 1966?”

  “Yep,” said McIndoe. “Nineteen years old, invalided out of the army—I took some shrapnel at Ia Drang—and looking for steady work. It was this or the Down’s bakery. I should’ve gone with the bakery.”

  “Doctor Gutierrez, the old administrator…she left specific instructions for her successor, confirming what you said about Broward going into the sphere. Kind of odd…a personal letter, as well as the file instruction…she underlined a lot of it.”

  “She was the best person I ever knew,” said McIndoe. “She worked out what would help people, made it happen. Not someone you expect to find in charge, well, you know what we got here. No one wants to know what happens to the people who come here. They get written off, whether they’re murderers or just plain don’t fit in.”

  “But Broward is a murderer,” said Kenneth. “Isn’t he? His file isn’t clear on that point. He was committed for something to do with that place in Wickshaw, but its records went when it burned down in ’49. A lot of people died in the fire, and he was implicated in those deaths. Murder by arson. But was he already a murderer?”

  “They burned it themselves,” said McIndoe. He was staring over Kenneth’s shoulder, looking back, seeing something long past. “Broward said they thought he was inside, that’s why they did it. But he’d already got out.”

  “Who burned it?” asked Kenneth. He was doodling faster now, strange, grinning faces with lots of teeth, which he hastily drew over, scribbling heavy, thick lines.

  “The staff who were left,” said McIndoe. “Least, that’s what Broward told me. I looked it up too, you know. Back in the day. They blamed him for the fire, but he didn’t do that.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He scratched an itch,” said McIndoe. “And you can’t let him. He has to go in the sphere.”

  Kenneth drew a straight line on the paper, then underlined it, three times.

  “We can’t,” he said slowly. “Orando will be here. She wants to observe him. But…”

  He hesitated, pencil stabbing down in a sharp, black dot.

  “But, you know…tonight, maybe. He’s an old man. He might die…with a little bit of—”

  “No!” exclaimed McIndoe. “No! Don’t you think anyone thought of that before? He’s thought of it before. We can’t kill him. He can’t kill himself. And I think…I think he can’t even die.”

  “Why…why not?”

  McIndoe didn’t answer at once. Kenneth stared at the older man, the pencil broken in his hand. He hadn’t even noticed his hands clenching, snapping it in two.

  “He wants to scratch that itch…he needs to scratch it,” said McIndoe. “There’s something inside him. Something that grows real slow, irritating the flesh, getting itchier and itchier. And when it gets to seventeen years old, it’s just unbearable and he’s got to scratch away and on Halloween it’s…I don’t know…ripe…”

  “What?” asked Kenneth. “What?”

  “He has to scratch that itch, he has to scratch all the way through skin and all,” whispered McIndoe. “So it can come out.”

  Kenneth stared, still not understanding.

  “But he must be able to die, and if we—”

  “You don’t get it!” snapped McIndoe. “If he dies, where does whatever is inside him go?”

  The two men sat in silence for a long, long minute. Finally Kenneth stood up and dropped the broken halves of the pencil in the trash bin by his desk.

  “I…I can’t go against Orando,” said Kenneth. “I need this job.”

  “Yeah, so do I,” said McIndoe. “But you’re young, you can get another—”

  “I didn’t just fail my medical degree,” interrupted Kenneth. “I was struck off. Stealing drugs. I’m lucky not to be in jail. Orando’s a friend of my dad’s, she said she’d give me a chance.”

  “If we don’t do anything…people will die.”

  “Yeah, well, not me,” said Kenneth. He wiped his eyes. “I’m calling in sick. You do whatever you got to do, old man. I’m not going to be here.”

  “I’m not working tomorrow,” said McIndoe. “None of the old crew are. And I reckon some of the young ones too, they’ve felt the vibe. Lot of people’ll be sick tomorrow.”

  “What about the ones that come in?”

  “Shit, I don’t know!” ex
ploded McIndoe. “Some of the staff at Wickshaw survived. Some of them. I mean, they’ll have a chance. The inmates in the newer buildings, they might be all right.”

  “Maybe it’s nothing,” said Kenneth. “We’re just scaring ourselves. Projection. Lot of crazy people here, right?”

  “Sure,” said McIndoe bitterly. “But I’m not working tomorrow, and I bet you’re still calling in sick.”

  “Yeah,” said Kenneth. “I am sick. I got to go home now.”

  Halloween

  “This is really very interesting,” said Dr. Orando. “I’ve never seen anything like it. There is nothing in his records to indicate how he could be so resistant to anaesthesia.”

  “No ma’am,” replied the nurse, even though Orando had really been talking to herself. “Uh, he broke a strap before, ma’am. That’s not supposed to be possible. We’ve got six tight on him now and he’s still moving against them.”

  “Hysterical strength,” said Orando. She tilted the video camera on its tripod down a little, making sure it captured Broward’s wriggling movements under the restraints. His arms were rippling like a snake pinned down by a shovel at the head, and the stubs of his fingers were trying to tear at the sides of the bed.

  Scratching, Orando realised. Broward was trying to reach his chest. That was the target for his scratching. His own heart.

  “Nurse, I’d like you to cut the patient’s robe down from the neck to reveal the sternum, please.”

  “Doctor? Cut his robe?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said. This psychosomatic scratching is so developed I am wondering if it’s capable of producing a physical effect. I saw some signs of a rash yesterday. A reddening of the skin, though it was transient. I want to see if it has developed further.”

  The nurse nodded, picked up a pair of scissors and approached the bed. As he did so, Broward’s struggles intensified. The IV tube in his arm shivered, constant small movements of Broward’s arm making it vibrate. The restraining straps creaked and groaned, the clips screeching as they were slid back and forth against the metal frame of the bed.

  The nurse got the scissors in position and started to cut, but he’d hardly slit a few inches when the fire alarm went off, a siren out in the corridor echoed by many others throughout the three buildings. A quick, strobing whoop-whoop-whoop.

  All the lights went out. When the red-framed emergency lighting came flickering back, the nurse was by the door. He’d dropped the scissors in his hasty retreat.

  “Go to your fire station in the main ward,” snapped Orando. She snatched up the phone by the bed and dialled the hospital control centre. No one answered, after six rings she hung up and redialled, stabbing the buttons with her penlight. This time her call was answered by a breathy, clearly discomforted guard. There should have been two on duty but a lot of the staff had called in sick that day, something Orando was going to investigate. Probably people wanting time off to be with their kids for Halloween, but they were going to have to pay for it out of their regular holiday entitlements when they got back tomorrow.

  “This is Orando. What’s going on?”

  “Uh, two heat detector trips in Building Three and the mains power and CCTV is out across the complex, which is weird because they should be independent…I can’t see what’s going on,” gasped the guard. “The board says all the inter-building automatic fire doors are closed and City Fire and the police have been automatically notified. I was just…uh…now there’s another detector trip, also in Building Three—”

  “Make an announcement, Building Three is to be evacuated according to the plan, all other buildings to lockdown, staff to their fire emergency positions,” said Orando. “Get the closest orderly in to help you go through the checklist and then get them to call in all the off-duty staff. Patients are to be corralled on the south lawn as per the contingency. I’m on my way over.”

  She put the phone down and looked back at Broward, eyes running over the monitors to make sure he was still stable. He continued to writhe against the restraints, the clanging of the buckles a counterpoint to the whoop-whoop of the fire siren. For a moment, Orando considered whether she should order this building evacuated too, but with the automatic fire doors closed and the relatively new sprinkler system in Building Three she considered there would be time enough to evaluate whether that was necessary, and it would be far better to keep everyone inside if they were not actually at risk from fire or smoke.

  Certainly, she considered that Broward should not be moved while he was still being infused with anaesthetics and, though he seemed stable enough, intervention might be required which could not be done on the lawn.

  “I will be back shortly, Mister Broward,” she said. Orando often spoke to patients, even ones apparently far more deeply sedated than the old man jerking and struggling on the hospital bed in front of her. “Remember. You are not itchy. You do not need to scratch. Relax. Let yourself fall into a deep, healing sleep. All is—”

  At that moment one of the straps broke, just broke, with a sound like a gunshot. Orando flinched, but calmed herself. She approached the bed, glancing over at the video camera to be sure it was recording what was happening. Broward had got one arm free and his mangled hand had gone instantly to his chest, stubby remnant fingers digging deep into his flesh.

  Orando blinked. There was an odd, fuzzy glint of red under those desper-ately scratching fingers. A reflection from the emergency lighting, no doubt.

  She came closer, careful to keep to the end of the bed, out of reach of that scratching, scrabbling hand. Orando had worked with the dangerously insane for many years and would not risk getting too close. But she had never had such a fascinating patient, and she couldn’t help but lean forward…the fuzzy, red glint was clearer now, almost as if a kind of tendril of suspended desert-red dust was rising between the mutilated joints of the man’s hand…

  Orando didn’t realise she’d been holding her breath, in the excitement of observing a case that would give her not only a great leap in her professional career but probably a popular non-fiction book as well.

  She breathed in.

  A few moments later, her fingers twitched. Unlike Broward, her fingers were long and she had nails. Sensibly-varnished, well-trimmed nails. But nails, nevertheless.

  There was an itch on her chest. A really, annoying, deep-seated itch along her sternum. She started to scratch, just with one hand. But the itch could not be assuaged.

  “Help,” groaned Orando. Broward was forgotten. There was only the itch. “I need…I need help!”

  She ran out of the room. Scratching with both hands, nails digging deep into her own flesh, long streaks of blood spreading across her blouse, the pearls in her necklace washed red before her frantic scrabbling broke the string and they fell, to go rolling across the floor.

  A puff of ochre dust went with Orando, twining in and out of her mouth and nose with every inhalation and exhalation, as she ran sobbing and scratching, out to the lawn where all the patients and staff from Building Three were beginning to gather…

  Three minutes later, McIndoe appeared out of breath and trembling in Broward’s room. He was not in his orderly’s uniform. The hood of his tracksuit was up, pulled over an unusually long-billed cap, completely hiding his face. He had a bag of tools in his left hand, the end of the kitchen blowtorch he’d used to spoof the fire detectors just visible.

  He stopped when he saw Broward sitting up on the bed, all the straps broken or undone, trailing by the sides. The old inmate was hunched over, cradling himself.

  Broward’s stubby, remnant fingers were finally still. Not twitching, not scratching. At rest.

  But they were red, the old man’s hands were red, soaked to the wrists with his own blood.

  McIndoe froze in the doorway. The fire alarm was still whooping, rising and falling, but in the moments between its wails he realised the sound he’d unconsciously been hearing for a few minutes was now identifiable.

  Screaming.

 
Screams, coming from outside the double-glazed security windows, coming from the lawn between the buildings. The designated evacuation area.

  There was often screaming in the hospital, but this was different. McIndoe had never heard such screams, never heard so many people screaming, all at once.

  “I couldn’t…” muttered Broward. “I couldn’t hold it in. Seventeen years, and It knows, It knows. Halloween.”

  He looked up at McIndoe, his gaze older and more defeated than anyone’s the attendant had ever seen.

  “The itch…the itch…I just had to scratch.”

  “What…what is It?” asked McIndoe. He didn’t even really know what he was saying, what good it would do to know. He’d hated himself for staying away, and he hated himself for coming back and trying to do something, and most of all he hated himself for being too late. He should have got Broward into the sphere earlier, no matter what it took.

  “I don’t know,” whispered Broward. “I’ve never known. Something ancient, something terrible. People knew it before, but we’ve forgotten. All Hallow’s Eve. Old Scratch. You’ll see. I’m sorry, McIndoe. I’m sorry, sorry…”

  “You tried,” said McIndoe. “Hell, whatever’s happening isn’t your fault.”

  “Not that,” whispered Broward. “I’m sorry for you. It will be back here soon.”

  “Yeah,” said McIndoe. He shrugged wearily, knowing that this time he’d irretrievably fucked everything up. His life insurance was paid. The grandkids would make it, maybe they’d even do better without him along to try and guide them. “Don’t worry. Like I said, you tried. I saw that, every time. You fought. I’m almost seventy, I could drop dead any moment. Not your fault.”

  “It comes back when it’s had enough. Looking to be reborn again, to hide and grow,” whispered Broward. “It likes a familiar place. Familiar. It was called that, sometimes. In my family…”

  He leaned over as if in great pain and when he straightened up, there was a pair of sharp surgical scissors clutched between his palms, stubby fingers folded over to keep it tight. “I’m so sorry, McIndoe, but I…I can’t do it any more. It has to go to family, and you’re the closest I got. The itch…oh, the itch—”