Part 30 (1/2)
Jason Van Hollander
Jason Van Hollander's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Weird Tales, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and other publications. His macabre artwork adorns books published by Arkham House, Golden Gryphon Press, Subterranean Press, PS Publis.h.i.+ng, Tor Books, Night Shade Books, and Ash-Tree Press. He has ill.u.s.trated books and stories by Thomas Ligotti, Fritz Leiber, Ramsey Campbell, William Hope Hodgson, and Clark Ashton Smith. He has won an International Horror Guild Award and two World Fantasy Awards. Jason Van Hollander's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Weird Tales, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and other publications. His macabre artwork adorns books published by Arkham House, Golden Gryphon Press, Subterranean Press, PS Publis.h.i.+ng, Tor Books, Night Shade Books, and Ash-Tree Press. He has ill.u.s.trated books and stories by Thomas Ligotti, Fritz Leiber, Ramsey Campbell, William Hope Hodgson, and Clark Ashton Smith. He has won an International Horror Guild Award and two World Fantasy Awards.
*usie, anguished with the burden of a thousand Unborn, curses the frailty of human life as Doctor Farnell clamps cool fingers around her chin. ”Sip slowly,” urges the physician in a voice devoid of emotion. ”We can add sugar to the next dose.” He lowers the fluted gla.s.s. ”Your sister has been asking about you,” he adds.
Alkaloid bitterness spirals down her gullet. Sitting up is difficult. The single pillow, which is too thin, slips down the headboard of the hospital bed. As the nurse fluffs the pillow Susie licks her lips, sifts through unfamiliar memories. Sister? Sister? Her thoughts are mazy. Her thoughts are mazy. The little one under the earth? The little one under the earth? ”Emeline?” she wonders aloud. ”Didn't she die when she was six?” ”Emeline?” she wonders aloud. ”Didn't she die when she was six?”
Her query floats away unanswered. Doctor Farnell taps her wrists, which she notices are bound with surgical gauze. Even through the miasmas of delirium and the lingering effects of anesthesia the doctor's expression is troubling. Unmanageable anxieties banished her to this Gothic Revival Palace of Moan, whose inmates roam the halls, shuffling in slippers, lost in the folds of ill-fitting stained frocks.
Eventually the nurse explains, ”Tomorrow your sister wants to visit.”
”Lillie Delora? Annie?”
”One of your sisters.”
Susie's bewildered response: ”Which one am I?”
Her unanswerable question drifts beyond the curtains drawn around the bed. A late May breeze, sea-scented, mixes with the acrid scent of carbolic acid that wafts down the women's infirmary of Butler Sanatorium. Other than Susie and the doctor and the portly nurse, the ward is unoccupied. s.h.i.+vering, the dying woman squirms. Her bedclothes and sheets are damp with sweat. Doctor Farnell leans closer, manipulates her eyelids, gawks as if peering deeply into unfathomable pools.
”What about your son-didn't you say he's some sort of astronomer?” asks the physician. ”Surely a star-gazer would want to gaze upon his mother during her convalescence. Surely he intends to visit.”
”He is a poet of the highest order,” Susie hears herself say. ”But he is too frail to visit, too sickly. His appearance . . . he really doesn't like to walk upon the streets.”
”Is there some sort of infirmity?” inquires the doctor.
”He must avoid places where people could stare at him. Illness . . . and the constellations . . . accentuate the deformity. The hideous face”-she pauses to catch her breath-”when the hostform sickens the displaced ident.i.ty surfaces. And the host form dissolves. This is why I'm here, this is what is happening to me.”
A flicker of understanding pa.s.ses between nurse and physician. Exhausted, Susie closes her eyes.
”The fever will break,” F. J. Farnell avers in a medical man's voice that is heartless and rea.s.suring at the same time. ”Depend on it: the surgery was completely successful, the obstruction removed, the biliary colic resolved. Get some rest. Get some sleep. Palliatives will be provided.”
Susie opens her eyes. Her vision is blurred. The nurse seems to be proffering an empty gla.s.s; the edges s.h.i.+mmer. An unconvincing simulation of a smile mars the physician's face as he intones: ”The tincture is efficacious but it clouds the mind. Nurse Grady will try to remember to sugar the next dose.”
”My head aches.” Susie-the unusurped portion-tries to gather her thoughts. ”Everything is collapsing. Years ago my husband collapsed. My child will collapse. How will we manage, how will we fare? Our situation is dire . . . .”
”It's the fever. When it breaks you'll feel better.”
”I will live only to suffer,” Susie whispers as the doctor swirls through the curtains. Her statement is objective, not a contradiction. Human ingenuity is insufficient. The doctor and his medicaments are primitive, the nurse is impertinent, traipsing in and out of the curtained part.i.tion with her sour Sapphic glower.
The dying creature shuts human-seeming eyelids, tests the failing sensorium. Listens to the click-clack of cleats of highb.u.t.ton shoes on floors of tile and marble. Inhales inst.i.tutional odors: green soap, floor-wax, ammonia. Disinfectant.
Nurse Grady returns, brandis.h.i.+ng the fluted gla.s.s. It glistens with opium and water and spiraling granules of sugar that are magically descriptive, nebular, galactic in implication. Flushed, the nurse fidgets, sputters, ”Don't think I'll be forgetting the terrible things you said to me, what you accused me of yesterday!”
”You are the heavyset nurse. The one who bathes me.”
”Accusing me of . . . improprieties. When all I did is what I'm paid to do: a sponge bath for patients that sweat through their gown and dirty themselves.”