The Devil's Staircase

by Helen FitzGerald

  The sheet of paper oozed out of the machine. I could see the shadow of her ghost-writing as traces of it appeared line by line through the other side.

  ‘She wanted you to read it afterwards, after you’ve got the result,’ Dad said.

  I wanted to yell: ‘Don’t give me this dead woman’s letter, it’s fucked up!’ I wanted to yell: ‘No! This has nothing to do with the spinning coin. I’ve just escaped from a psychopath!’

  But the whole page had landed face down in the paper holder. Dad waited for me to say something, but I didn’t. ‘Bronny?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Are you okay?

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too . . . I’m going to ring the hospital now.’ ‘Call us straight after.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I hung up and looked at Mum’s letter. She’d wanted me to read it after the result. Dad wasn’t supposed to give it to me till then. But here it was, words from my dead Mum, the person I’d thought about each hour, each day, who’d left me alone to endure a terrible wait. I’d been waiting ever since. I’d done enough of it.

  I took the letter from the machine and read it.

  Hey Winster,

  I’m sitting on the veranda watching you ride your trike up and down. We’ve just worked out together that you’re going to be four in 79½ days! You have curly hair and a huge toothy smile.

  I’m the petrol-station keeper and when you stopped to fill up, I grabbed your happy chunky cheeks and kissed you.

  I’m not with you now, am I? I’m not there to help you with this. I’m so sorry.

  I was eighteen. My Mum took me because Dad wasn’t feeling well. I remember how it felt to this day. The before and after, and you know I’m not sure if before was better than after. Was it? I was devastated. But then it felt as if I’d been given a new set of legs. You learn to walk again – different, but again.

  Was it wrong for me to fall in love with your father? I hadn’t planned on it, but when he walked me home from the Chocolate Association Ball there was nothing either of us could do about it.

  Was it wrong getting pregnant that first time? Seeing Ursula’s bright eyes smile at me (I was sure of it) long before they were supposed to be able to?

  And having you?

  . . . Sorry about that, you fell off your trike and I had to put a Band-Aid on your knee. You’re riding even faster now. I do hope you never lose that wild spirit of yours.

  I’d thought about doing a video, but then I imagined you watching it over and over, rewinding and fast forwarding, and I didn’t like the idea of you doing that. So I’m writing this instead so that you can feel me with you when it’s time. I’m with you, my little girl. I’m with you. And it’s going to be okay.

  I am a lucky person. Blessed. I love you.

  Forever your Mummy

  XXXXXXX

  I folded the letter and put it in my pocket. Then I googled the hospital, and dialled the number.

  ‘He’s not in yet . . .’ the nurse said.

  I read out the digits on the Porchester telephone, replaced the handset, and turned off the computer. Dr Gibbons would ring me back in an hour.

  In an hour, the twenty-cent piece would land.

  38

  Room 1, Celia’s room, was at the end of the second floor, just beside the fire escape. It was the Intensive Care Unit, lined with seven rooms on each side, with a nurse’s station in the centre. No police guarded Celia because the perpetrator was behind bars and there was nothing to worry about. There was only one other patient on the entire floor so it was quiet and empty except for the occasional phone-answering and drip-checking of one beefy nurse.

  The beefy nurse wore a uniform a size too small. As a result, the button at the front of her hefty bosom was permanently undone. The patient in room 12 had the privilege of seeing down and into her GG bra as she bent over him to change his dirty hospital gown. It wasn’t only the greying bra that made the patient unlucky, but the gush of air that wafted from it, a stale bosom smell the recovering heart attack patient had never smelt before, and which made him wonder if his ticker might just go again. She adjusted his fresh white gown, smiled, and left him to try and sleep.

  It wasn’t long since Greg had left the hospital. He’d dithered about, coming in and out, in and out, afraid to go, and in the end the counsellor from floor seven had practically pushed him into the lift.

  ‘Promise you’ll ring!’ Greg said, as the counsellor pressed the lift button behind the nurse’s station.

  ‘Promise,’ the beefy nurse and the tall counsellor said in unison, watching the lift doors close behind Greg’s large unkempt hair.

  ‘Tea?’ Beefy asked Tall.

  ‘Home,’ the lanky counsellor said, taking the stairs, which she always did to avoid awkward patient-client lift silence – or worse – chat.

  The nurse drank her tea in peace, flicking through Heat magazine, taking special interest in a story about breast reduction. She put her magazine down when she heard a whimper coming from room 1.

  Celia had opened her eyes. It had been so long since she’d opened them to anything pleasant – the ceiling of her happy bedroom, the faces of her happy sons, the direct light of a happy sun – that she assumed it was either a dream or death. Each time she’d woken recently, there had been a moment of unawareness, where she did not know where she was, and then the smell and the pain had brought the reality to her, that she was a tied, dying sexual plaything.

  There was a large nurse standing over her. Was she imagining her, as she had imagined Greg so often over the last five weeks? She’d conjured her husband’s kind eyes and loving smile, imagined the gentle comfort of his hand on hers, the smooth deep sound of his lovely Scottish voice. She managed to smile at the face of the nurse. She moaned a soft, happy moan; still thinking this was not real.

  ‘I’m going to ring the doctor, and Greg. I’ll get him and the boys. They’ll be here any minute. Oh my goodness!’

  The nurse ran out of the room to ring several phone numbers.

  The beefy nurse did not return, but after a while a doctor did, dressed in surgical mask and gown. Still unsure as to whether she was awake or indeed alive, Celia looked down to check herself. She saw white sheets. She lifted the top sheet with her bandaged hand and saw her bandaged body. She felt her face with her hand, covered in cloth except for eyes, nose and mouth. Then she looked up at the doctor again. This was real. She had made it.

  Things came into focus better. The room was filled with flowers and cards. The window had a view of the city. The floor was clean and bright, except for the unconscious nurse lying in the doorway.

  ‘You almost had a lucky escape, didn’t you?’ the man said.

  39

  After the initial scare of being arrested and questioned, he was allowed to leave the police station, free to go. He smiled as he walked out of Paddington Green, sure he had it all sorted. Kill her before she talked, then head off. He’d found a car and bought a ticket and just had this one thing to do before leaving for a fresh start. He felt so confident and relaxed that he took his time walking up to the second floor. But somewhere between ground and first he remembered the blood and sperm. She may have been wiped or washed a little, but he was probably in every frigging nook – nose-blood from when she’d kicked him, sperm from the many times he’d ejaculated on or in her. Shit. He was usually so thorough – took care to clean things up – and even though they’d taken his fingerprints and DNA, he felt confident that the two dead ones in the cling-film would reveal nothing. But he’d had no time to do that with this one, what with Bronwyn finding her the way she had.

  He realised the woman would lead the police to him alive or dead. And even though he’d found a car and bought a ticket, they’d track him down eventually, put in all their resources, because they would have more than enough evidence.

  He thought on his feet, sneaking into a vacant operating theatre on the first floor for some materia
ls, then heading back up to IT.

  It was the nurse’s fault, questioning him like that.

  ‘Doctor?’ she’d said, hanging up the phone at her nurse’s station and waddling up behind him. ‘That was quick! Excuse me, isn’t it wonderful, Doctor!’

  He excused her all right, with a wallop that sent her impossible cleavage to the floor.

  He moved the nurse inside and shut the door to room 1 carefully, marvelling at his ex, whose eyes were open but staring blankly, as if she didn’t believe she was seeing anything at all. It had been over for a long time, he thought, as he placed a layer of thick surgical tape on her swollen mouth, which he then covered with a cloth mouth guard. Encouraging her to stand up with a scalpel to the eye, he ripped the drips from her arms, put her in a wheelchair, and pressed the down button of the lift, with the scalpel firmly pressed against the back of her neck.

  When the doors opened, there was a young nurse in the lift. His heart stopped for a moment, realising he looked odd with his surgical mask on. Also, his patient was wriggling in her chair, but he wheeled it inside and said: ‘Yes, I know, the painkillers will kick in soon,’ while making an incision in Celia’s neck that was big enough to stop the wriggling.

  ‘Poor thing,’ he said to the young nurse through his cloth mask. ‘She’s been like this for hours.’

  He said cheerio on the ground floor before heading down to the car park. It was quiet, and he had parked out of sight of the security cameras, so he felt fairly confident that no one had seen him bundle her into the boot and smash her over the head with the jack.

  Problem was, once in the car, he had no idea where to take her. She was dead, or near as, he was sure of it. He just had to find somewhere to clean her up, then he could leave as planned.

  He found himself driving to Queensway Terrace, which was a stupid thing to do – what was he thinking? But he didn’t know where else to go. He parked down the road from the Royal and the squat and watched the activity around the crime scene. He almost felt proud, looking on as swarms of detectives and forensic specialists scoured the site.

  There was a bang. Was it coming from the boot? Jesus, surely not. This one was unbelievable. She just would not get the hint. Not like that dirty rat who’d given up the ghost still reasonably fresh, or Jeanie with her surfer’s chick shark tooth who decided to die early on. He hadn’t killed them, hadn’t needed to, they’d just stopped breathing after a while, bless.

  It was coming from the boot.

  ‘Think!’ he said to himself. ‘What is wrong with you? Make a decision. Jesus Christ. All I need is a place to tidy up.’

  He put the key in the ignition and turned it, but then seemed unable to remember what to do next. He pushed the brake instead of the clutch, put the gear in reverse instead of first. Held the key for so long the engine flooded. He was losing his mind. It was the stress, probably.

  Was that his phone ringing?

  40

  The adults in the room had stood up slowly as Greg held the phone in silence. The children had stood up too, clinging onto the loose clothing of a nearby adult.

  ‘She’s awake!’ Greg yelled.

  There was screaming and hugging and jumping about, eyes and mouths suddenly relaxed, muscles unknotted. Tears became happy tears.

  Keys and boys’ trinkets were grabbed, cars gotten into, and one or two of Celia’s family may have laughed, for the first time in five weeks.

  The drive was only five minutes, but it seemed to take hours. Getting the boys buckled in, turning the key, waiting for a red Fiat to turn right at Queensway, stopping at three sets of traffic lights.

  Greg’s car was first to arrive. It zoomed into the underground car park, driving over a jack that someone had left lying in the middle of the concrete, and bumped back down to earth. He swerved into a space, undid his seatbelt, opened the back door, undid the boys’ seatbelts, shut the doors, and ran.

  Who arrived first? Who was faster? The little boys, striding up the stairs to the second floor with their drawings and Dr Who cards? Greg, running behind them, laughing? The parents and the brother and sister-in-law, pressing the button on the lift too many times? It was hard to know, because they all remembered seeing the same thing at exactly the same time: a doctor whose tardy response to the news of Celia’s wakening may have saved his life, a confused nurse in the doorway of room 1 . . .

  . . .and an empty bed.

  41

  After giving the telephone number to the hospital, I shivered. It was ice-cold, and the creaking-ship noise that I’d heard downstairs seemed to be getting louder. When I exhaled, the air in front of me fogged. I opened the double doors and grabbed one of the white towels I’d used earlier. I wrapped it around me and walked across to the stairs, and down towards the sauna. I had to get warm. But the closer I got to the sauna, the louder the creaking noise became, and I found myself acting like one of those idiots in the movies who go towards said terrifying noise, instead of running as fast as they can away from it.

  It was coming from the cleaning cupboard downstairs. I got some keys out of the metal cupboard and tried a few before finding the right one. I pushed the door slowly, tip-toed into the small dark cupboard, walked past the schmeissing sticks, cleaning fluids and rat poisons, and stopped in front of a deafening boiler labelled ‘showers’. I switched the ‘off’ button and the creaking stopped. Thank God, I thought as I exhaled.

  When I turned around, Hamish was standing in front of me.

  I screamed, of course, not just once, but twice. An instantreaction-high-pitched scream, then an I’m-not-ready-to-stop-screaming-yet one.

  After Hamish had calmed me down, he laughed and said he’d be asking me for the dry cleaning bill. It was such a relief seeing Hamish. He said and did all the right things.

  ‘Let’s have something to eat,’ he said, putting his arm around me and leading me back upstairs.

  He had brought bread and peanut butter, my favourite, which he set out on the desk as I tried to get warm with three towels or so.

  The guy was a nutcase, or so Hamish said, with a huge list of previous. He’d been deported, breached probation, failed to appear at court – and so on and so on.

  ‘Hamish, it’s not just Pete. There’s something I need to tell you.

  ‘What is it darlin’?’

  ‘The phone’s about to ring.’ I said, telling him who was going to ring and why.

  He stopped spreading the peanut butter and held me tightly. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here.’

  The phone felt like it had rung inside me. I gasped. After years of thinking about this moment, it had come. Our embrace froze. We moved away from each other, took a deep breath, then walked hand in hand towards the reception area. It was Dr Gibbons with the test results.

  The wave of terror he unleashed pelted into me full blast. I let go of Hamish’s hand. He spoke for a while, longer than I thought he would, and I sat facing the back wall listening, just taking it all in. He was a kind man, always had been.

  ‘Are you there?’ he asked, because I hadn’t said anything for a while.

  ‘Um . . .’ I couldn’t answer the lovely doctor, because I wasn’t really sure if I was there, or anywhere. I stood up to check if I was, to look at myself in the mirror opposite reception, to touch my face and watch my reflection as some kind of proof that I was in this place, that I had just heard what I had heard. I turned around and faced the mirror. But it was too dark, I couldn’t see anything. I stared at the darkness for a moment, then said: ‘Yes, I’m here. I’m fine, thanks. No, I’m not alone. Yes, I will. Bye Doctor. Thanks,’ and hung up.

  Then noises came from me that I didn’t know I could make. They weren’t happy ones. I had the Huntington’s gene. I was going to die a horrible death, like Mum had. I was going to get clumsy. Shit, I had already gotten clumsy. I had tripped over on the pavement, banged my head on the fridge. And this is what it would be like from now on. I would wonder if a paper cut meant it had started, if a forgotten
phone number meant it had. And maybe it had, already. I was going to lose control of my body, make weird angry movements that scared people away. I was going to forget things and choke and die. I was never going to love someone properly, or have kids. When the time came, Ursula would be married or camping in Katherine Gorge. Dad would be old or dead and I’d die alone, with no one loving me, no one holding my hand. Please bring back the not knowing. Please bring back the not knowing.

  I fell to my knees and banged my fists against the marble. I screamed and yelled and moaned and wriggled on the floor like a half-squished ant. ‘NO!’ I didn’t want to die. I wished I’d never phoned. I should never have phoned. Not knowing was better than knowing this terrible thing was in me, part of me, ahead of me. It was so fucking unfair! Why me? All the things people say, I said through my yells, meaning them as much as people always mean them. It’s so unfair. I was just eighteen. I’d had a shitty, pointless life so far, and it was only going to get even more shitty and more pointless. Why fucking me?

  Hamish gathered me in his arms on the floor and held me as I screamed. I think I kept going for a long, long time, but eventually the yelling and crying became sobbing, shuddering, softer somehow.

  I had cried in bed with Pete, but not enough to make up for the years I hadn’t, just enough to disturb the stones in my stomach a little. Now I could feel them rubbing and eroding and melting completely, balls of Maltesers in a hot steaming pot. I remembered the tone of Mum’s letter: she sounded happy, said she was lucky. She’d kissed my chubby cheeks.

  I saw the letter on the bench at reception, made my way towards it and re-read it, touching the words with my fingers, taking in what Mum was trying to tell me – that it would be okay, that she was with me, that she loved me.

  ‘Learn to walk again,’ I read.