Twig

by wildbow

  “Come on,” Gordon said. “Let’s get you looked after.”

  I nodded.

  “Saw them,” I murmured, as he helped me limp on.

  “Where?”

  “Inside. Three boys. I can give Jamie partial descriptions.”

  “Three boys,” Gordon mused. “That’s not good.”

  “Poisonings are usually done by women,” Helen said, as she joined us. “Meaning we’re dealing with four.”

  “At least,” I agreed.

  Previous Next

  Taking Root 1.5

  I watched as Jamie used a pen to sketch out a rough image.

  “Head was narrower. Taller than wide,” I commented.

  “Most heads are.”

  “That looks round. Also, he didn’t look sinister, but he didn’t look interested either. It was cold.”

  “Like Helen sometimes looks?”

  I considered. “No.”

  “You, then. On a bad day, after an appointment?”

  “I don’t know what I look like after an appointment. They don’t usually let me have access to reflective surfaces, and I’m not usually gawking at myself, either.”

  Jamie leaned back in his chair, and his head bumped my chest, where I was leaning over the back of the chair.

  He remained where he was, looking up at me. “You had a look in your eyes like all the joy had gone out of the world.”

  “Depressed?”

  “No,” Jamie said. “Um…”

  He turned a page in his notebook.

  On the fresh page, he began to sketch. He was using a fountain pen that flowed fairly freely, but his hand moved with some speed and dexterity. It was interesting to see, because Jamie wasn’t a strong artist. He made my eyes too small, the position slightly wrong, paused, then went back, expanding, making the top of the eye into my eyebrows, and drawing my eyes at a larger size. It was a rough sketch, and it was a sketch that showed my face in heavy shadow, the lines noticeable, thick.

  At first I took it for a caricature, exaggerating my features, but Jamie wasn’t good enough to do that. The hair was drawn in messy, framing it all, and the lines marked my cheeks as being more gaunt, with thin cross-hatching for the shadows in the recesses, I realized that it wasn’t a recent picture, that my eyes were larger in proportion to the rest because it was a picture of me, years younger.

  Near the beginning.

  Drawing from memory, rather than talent.

  I leaned forward, and it was as though I were looking into a mirror cast in paper. My eyes were narrow, my lips thin and slightly parted, and all the features of my face and ears were fine to the point of being sharp.

  Jamie was already putting down notes below and to the side of the image. I glanced at the first.

  Drawn for a discussion with Sly, during the Case of the Bad Seeds.

  “Case of the bad seeds,” I commented idly.

  “Placeholder,” he said. He was already going on to write more. Normally I wouldn’t have been able to resist reading over his shoulder, but I found I couldn’t keep my eyes off the image for long. The eyes were just scratches of black ink, almost hidden in the shadows that had been etched around them, but they took up much of the focus.

  “This was… that time I had to do two appointments, back to back?” I asked. Only time my cheeks would have been that hollow.

  Jamie didn’t respond, but his pen moved, indicating a line he’d just jotted down. He tapped his fountain pen against paper, leaving three blotchy dots in the margin.

  From memory: Sly in the Tower, after he ran away. Before he recovered from one month’s appointment, he had to do the next.

  Reading the line, I suddenly felt excruciatingly uncomfortable, and the hour-old bruises from my encounter with Ed weren’t why. Feeling so restless I couldn’t bear it, I turned away from Jamie, his chair, and his book, and I paced across our little dorm room. Two beds each with a chest at the foot, one desk, and one bedside table between the beds with drawers for us to share. Mothmont was fancy, but not so fancy that we each got a palace. Real estate mattered, if nothing else.

  “We didn’t think we’d get you back,” Jamie murmured. “We suspected you were lost.”

  “That’s not it,” I said, forcing my voice to sound different from how I felt. I worried I didn’t sell it very well. “No. It’s not like Helen is, and it’s not like that, okay? That’s not the look they had.”

  “Okay,” Jamie said, sounding very normal, placid, and very calm.

  Though I didn’t like it, I was finding the conversation helped me to clarify my interpretation. “They weren’t lost. There was emotion there. They were human, but they weren’t nice humans.”

  “You’re not a nice human sometimes,” Jamie remarked.

  I shot him a look.

  “Only saying, Sly, only saying.”

  “I looked at them, and I knew they were the sorts who’d stick their parents with something sharp and then light up the family home. Or try to drop a piece of masonry on someone they didn’t like.”

  “You’d—”

  I narrowed my eyes, making the look darker and more intense.

  He seemed to give up, pulling his hands away from the page, slumping back. “Yeah, Sy. Got it. But if you can’t tell me how they looked all murderous, I’m not sure I can draw it. I’m not sure I can draw them in the first place.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Don’t fret about it.”

  “Think you’d recognize them if you saw them?”

  “If I saw them? No. They were standing in shadow. If I talked to them, maybe.”

  “There are one thousand, two hundred students at Mothmont, give or take, ranging from year one to year twelve. It’s going to take you an awful long time to talk to them all.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I was still on the far side of the room. Three sets of my uniform had been provided, alongside a little cloak and hood for the rain and an umbrella, all stacked neatly on the chest at the end of the bed. My bedside drawer had a new comb, bottle of toothwash, washcloth, and a new set of books.

  Nothing that was mine. I didn’t like it. The office back at the hedge with the grille on the windows and the bookcase blocking the door had felt less like a cell than this.

  There, I’d been free to be me. Here, I was being made to conform, just like some of the fruit I’d seen grown at the Academy, placed inside molds that would shape their growth. Fruit shaped like certain animals, or like human faces.

  Were our murder-children in that same situation?

  I frowned. “I’m thinking…”

  “Yeah?” Jamie twisted in his seat, elbow over the back of the chair.

  “Why here?” I asked.

  “Resources are available, on multiple fronts. You’ve got access to children, you’ve got access to tools and starter labs. Maybe things go missing, maybe it gets put back at the end of the day?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “One way or another, something is going on with their heads. Either they’re being made to do something they normally wouldn’t, or they’re not them, and something more nefarious is going on.”

  “Nefarious?”

  “There are parasites that induce suicidal behavior in the host as part of the life cycle.”

  “Sure. Transoplasma Felidae. Feverish behavior and a compulsion to drown oneself. Weaponized version was Transoplasma Necis, but that saw reams of people biting off their own tongues to choke on the tongue or aspirating the blood. Well known enough.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. Maybe the students we’re talking about have a parasite in their heads, something that’s making them act funny. Maybe we’re dealing with the parasites and not the children themselves.”

  Jamie seemed to consider a moment. “Raises questions.”

  “You ask, I try to justify.”

  “Why do they care about us?”

  “They’re complex. Pre-set instructions.”

  Jamie shook his head. “I don’t buy that someone capable of that would
be here and not at the Academy, making a fortune.”

  “Then they’re paranoid. Like they’re rabid, they’re wary of everything.”

  “Why us?”

  I started to come up with an explanation, then dismissed it. Felt weak, like too much of a reach. “What if it made them suggestible? Broke down the walls in their heads, left them open to receiving instruction? Get access to the children, slip them something that leaves them open to being influenced.”

  “We’d see it in their behavior,” Jamie said.

  “What? That they’d be willing to take orders? Follow the rest of the sheep? We’re in a school, Jamie,” I said.

  “Point.”

  “A highbrow school. Look, I’m not sold on the parasite idea. But we’ve got an awful lot of children here, ones that might be more vulnerable to whatever, or of an age where some symptoms might be easier to hide. Maybe the fact that we’re all fitting into some cookie cutter archetype is an advantage for our puppeteer in the background. If their little experiments feel disoriented? Have lost memories? If their behavior is a little outside the norm? All our ‘bad seed’ has to do is imitate their peers.”

  Jamie was nodding, already thinking the idea through, rounding it out, “If they act too far out of line, then the faculty steps in, gets them to shape up. If that fails…”

  “What happens when someone futzes up and doesn’t look like they’re going to straighten out?”

  “Detention,” Jamie said. “Or a talk with the headmistress. You don’t think she’s the one doing it?”

  I rolled my head to one side, then the other. “I talked to the woman. I didn’t get that sense out of her.”

  “Why?”

  I gave Jamie an annoyed look.

  “It’s good to think about why,” Jamie said, his voice quiet but not meek. “You have a good sense of things, but it’s important to identify the details that are feeding into that sense. You see little details, and your brain picks them up and puts them into storage, while your conscious mind doesn’t register them. Prey animals use that low-level awareness a lot, figuring out that a predator could be nearby, and we still have traces of that prey thinking.”

  “I don’t see myself as a prey animal,” I said, smiling.

  “The idea is sound, Sy. We all use that sense to some extent, but you’re a little better than most. You can train it, but training it starts with being aware. Think about your surroundings, pay attention to the details, and—”

  A knock sounded at the door.

  “You two decent in there?” Gordon asked, voice muffled by the intervening door.

  “Am I ever decent?” I asked.

  The door opened. But it wasn’t just Gordon, which surprised me. He was accompanied by a boy, narrow in build, with thick eyebrows and wiry black hair cut a finger’s width from his head. It didn’t look like one of the boys that would be in Gordon’s cadre.

  “We ran into each other at the door,” Gordon said.

  “I know him,” Jamie said. “Book trade?”

  “Yeah,” the boy said. He held out two dime novels. “Read them?”

  Jamie glanced at the novels, “Yes. But it’s fine. I’ll trade.”

  He opened a drawer in the desk, pulling out five more dime novels. “Doll Man and the song of the moon?”

  “Read it.”

  “Doll man and the revenge of the swarm queen?”

  “That’s out?” The boy stuck out his hand. Jamie dutifully handed over the book, no more than a hundred pages.

  “I liked this one,” Jamie said. “But you might want to wait until there’s more material.”

  “What’s that?” the boy asked.

  “Huh?” Jamie asked.

  I turned, and I started to cross the room, before I saw Gordon moving in the same direction. He was faster, and he was closer. I deferred to him.

  Before Jamie was able to process just what had grabbed the boy’s attention, Gordon touched the cover of Jamie’s notebook and flipped it over. It slapped closed and slid a bit across the desk.

  Jamie put a hand out to stop it.

  “That’s Jamie’s journal,” Gordon said. “You don’t read someone’s journal, pal.”

  “Oh,” the boy said. He turned a little pink. “Didn’t know, sorry Jamie.”

  “It’s okay,” Jamie said.

  “That picture was something. Scary, if I can say so,” the boy said, turning to look at me. “That was you?”

  “You don’t comment on someone’s journal if you happen to get a look at it, either,” Gordon said, his voice firm.

  The boy’s face turned even pinker.

  “Mickey,” Jamie said, offering a bit of relief where I would have pressed the advantage. “Take a look.”

  Jamie held the other three little novels so they fanned out. A lady in white and a rat crawling out of the darkness, a man with a bird mask, and a handsome young man with a dog accompanying him through a forest.

  “What’s that last one?” Mickey asked.

  Jamie pulled it away before Mickey could grab it. “When we stopped by the Academy last weekend, you see anyone go off in a very small group?”

  “Very small?”

  “More than three, less than ten.”

  “Uh. Some special students got instruction with professors, or got to sit in on classes. Top of certain classes, or something. But they were alone.”

  “Yeah,” Jamie said.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, thanks anyway,” Jamie said. He put the books down, then handed over the one Mickey had expressed interest in. “Barber John and the dark forest monster.”

  “Keen.”

  Gordon stepped out of the way while the boy headed back to the hallway. He closed the door behind him, and stood with his back to it. “Asking questions like that can draw attention.”

  “I’m very careful about who I ask,” Jamie said.

  “Okay,” Gordon said. He seemed to take that at face value. He didn’t mention Jamie’s lapse about the book.

  Gordon and I wouldn’t go after Jamie for that any more than any of the others would come after me for my behavior after an appointment. We had our strengths, and we had our individual weak points. If everything was working as it should, we covered the weak points and highlighted the strengths.

  That meant accepting that sometimes Jamie had enough stuff in his head that he was a little slower to get things rolling when surprised.

  If I’d been on the ball, I would have reminded Jamie, but my head hurt.

  “It’s time for dinner,” Gordon said. “Thought I’d check in.”

  “Still alive,” I said. “No surprise murders.”

  Gordon’s expression didn’t twitch. “What do you think?”

  “We were thinking maybe the structure of the school is being used to shape or correct behavior where it might go off rails,” Jamie said. I cleared my throat, and Jamie amended his statement to say, “Sy thought so. It makes some sense.”

  “Something to watch out for?” Gordon asked.

  “Quirks in behavior, students pushing the limit and getting pushed back in line by the group,” I said. “And it might be worth seeing who is in charge of correcting the students when they get too problematic.”

  Gordon nodded. “Our mad doctor or doctors act the role of the murderer, the children are the murder weapon, and that weapon needs to be kept controlled and concealed. The school is a setting for it. That still leaves questions. Who, how, why.”

  “Who is the murderer, how are they doing this with the students, and why are they doing it? What’s the motive?” Jamie asked.

  “How, also, are they giving orders?” Gordon asked. “The students here got orders to kill us. When? What form did it take?”

  “Food for thought,” I said. I perked up. “Speaking of food…”

  “That was contrived,” Gordon said.

  “Brain feels sluggish, and I haven’t had an actual meal in…” I counted on my fingers, then paused, stuck.
“When did we eat, before the snake charmer?”

  Gordon blinked. “At that point, I think the question is academic. Have you had water?”

  “I had some water, yeah,” I said.

  He frowned. “If you hadn’t, I’d wonder how you were still standing. Let’s slap a feedbag on that face of yours, Sy. And you wonder why you’re short.”

  I grabbed the comb from the bedside table and hucked it at his head. He caught it, which didn’t surprise me.

  We collected ourselves, getting our things. Jamie picked up his notebook, tucking it under one arm. The pen was capped and slipped into a breast pocket. Gordon was all set up, and all I needed was a bit of protection from any rain.

  The school was arranged into a square, with the yard in the middle. The front entrance sat at the southern wall with the front office, infirmary and other administrative rooms. The west and east sides of the square had classrooms. The more interesting area was the northern end, furthest from the entrance. Here, we had the dorms, boys at the west corner, girls at the east. The two sides of the dorms were separated by the teacher’s quarters and washrooms on the upper floors, and a spacious dining room on the lower floor. I supposed the idea was that it made mingling harder.

  The dorms were ordered by year, with the older students on the upper floors, and being right in the upper-middle of the range of ages, we were left to make our way down on our way to the dining room.

  My eyes searched the crowd, looking for a familiar face or feature. I’d told Jamie I wasn’t sure if I could place them, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Kids milled around us.

  “Ed was asking about you, before your little tussle under the tree,” Gordon commented. Keeping the conversation to stuff we could talk about freely.

  “Tussle?”

  “I’m trying to phrase it so I don’t hurt your feelings, Sy,” Gordon said, sounding as condescending as he was able. “Because if I was honest, I’d have to say you didn’t just embarrass yourself. You embarrassed all of us.”

  I jabbed him. He took it without flinching.

  “I’m guessing that, following your usual pattern, you’re going to get in trouble, ostensibly to see how the justice system of Mothmont operates?” Gordon asked.

  The question could be taken two ways. Anyone hearing would think I was a troublemaker, which wasn’t wrong, but he was asking if I’d see which faces or individuals might be tied to the correction of errant students. Or errant ‘bad seeds’, as the case went.