The Best New Horror 2 (8 page)

“There but for the grace of God go you, Anne. Don’t look now. It’s not nice.”

Anne closed her eyes but the vision of the park and the tables and the sloped pathways stayed inside her eyes. She could hear the wind on the pond.

“Damn you, Mother,” she said. “Damn you, Phillip.”

She sat for another twenty minutes.

When she crossed the parking lot again, her eyes in the sun and her hands in her pockets, her muscles were steeled and her face carried a tight, professional smile.

Janet Warren welcomed Anne into the center at ten-fifty six, barely mentioning the tardiness. She took Anne into her office, and, as assistant administrator, explained the functions of the center. She gave Anne a brief summary of the students with whom Anne would work, then led her off to the west wing.

Anne entered Michael’s room after Janet gave an obligatory tap on the door. Michael grunted and Anne walked in, still holding her coat, which Janet had offered to take, clutched tightly to her stomach.

“Michael,” said Janet to the man on the bed. “This is Miss Zaccaria, the lady I said would be coming to help us out.”

Michael propped up on his elbow, straightening himself, patting his blanket down about the urinary bag as if it were an egg in an Easter basket. He gave Anne a wide grin.

“Well, if it ain’t my dream lady come to see me in the flesh!” he crowed. “Are you real or just a vision of delight?”

Anne licked her lips and looked back at Janet Warren. “Thank you, Mrs Warren. I’ll be fine now. I’ll let you know if we need anything.”

“Hell, I know what I need,” said Michael. “And she’s standing right in front of me.”

Janet nodded, her motion seeming to be both acknowledgment of what Anne had said and a sisterly confirmation of what she had come to do. Janet turned and left the room.

“Come on,” said Michael, and Anne looked back at him.

“Come on? What do you mean?” There was only a small comfort in her professional ability at conversation. It wasn’t enough to overcome her discomfort at seeing the physical form of Michael before her. He was legless, with hipbones flattened into a shovel-shaped protrusion. The thin blanket emphasized rather than hid his lower deformity. He was missing his right arm to the elbow, and there was no left arm at all. A steel hook clipped the air in cadence with the blinking of Michael’s eyes.

“Come on and tell me. You ain’t really no shrink, are you? I was expecting some shriveled up old bitch. You really is my dream lady, ain’t you?”

Anne focused on Michael’s face and took a slow breath. “No, sorry,” she said. “I’m from Associated Psychological. I’m a clinical social worker.”

Michael grappled with a button and pressed it with the point of his hook. The bed rolled toward Anne. She held her position.

“No, you ain’t. I dreamed about you last night. Dreamed I still had my parts and you was eating them nice as you please.”

Anne’s face went instantly hot. She could have kicked herself for not being ready for anything. “I was told you’ve had a rough time these
past months,” she said. “Not getting along with the other students like you used to do. I’d like to help.”

“Sure. Just sit on my face for a few hours.”

Anne glanced at the withered body, then back at his face. Of all the students she would be working with through the volunteer-outreach program, Michael was the most disabled. “Is that all you think about, Michael? Sex?”

“When it comes to sex,” he said. “All I can
do
is think.” He laughed out loud and wheeled closer. “You like me?”

“I don’t know you yet. I hope we’ll like each other.”

“Why you here? We got shrinks. Two of them. You on’ field trip?”

“Field trip?”

“You know, like them school kids. Sometimes the local schools bring in the their junior high kids. Show them around. Let them take little look-sees. Tell them if they are bad enough and dive into shallow lakes or don’t wear their seat belts, God’ll make them just like us.”

Anne cleared her throat, and loosened her coat from her waist. “First of all, I’m here on a volunteer program. Until the new center is finished down state, there will continue to be more students than can be properly provided for. The center called on our association to help out temporarily. You are a student with whom I’ve been asked to work.”

“Student.” Michael spit out the word. “I’m thirty one and I’m called a goddam student.”

“Second,” Anne said. “I’m not on a field trip. I’m not here to stare. I’m here to help.”

Michael shook his head, then eased off his elbow to a prone position. “So who else is on your list besides me?”

Anne opened the folded paper Janet had given her. “Randy Carter, Julia Powell, Cora Grant . . .”

“Cora’ll drive you ape-shit. She lost half her brain in some gun accident.”

“. . . and Ardie Whitesell. I might like Cora, Michael. Don’t forget, I don’t know her yet, either.”

Michael sighed. “I don’t need no shrink. What the fuck’s your name?”

“Miss Zaccaria.”

“Yeah, well, I’m okay. I don’t need no shrink. Don’t need one any more than old roomie over there.” Michael tilted his head on his pillow, indicating a curtained corner of the room.

“Roomie?”

“Roommate. He don’t need no shrink, neither. I don’t ’cause I got things all figured out in this world. Nothing a little nookie can’t cure.” Michael looked at Anne and winked. “And roomie over there, he don’t
need one ’cause he’s in some kind of damn coma. Not much fun to have around, you know.”

Anne frowned, only then aware of the mechanical sounds softly emanating from the corner. The drawn curtain was stiff and white, hanging from the ceiling-high rod like a starched shroud. “What’s wrong with your roommate?”

“Hell, what ain’t wrong? Come over here.” With a hissing of his arm, Michael rose again and clutched the bed switch, tapping buttons in a short series, and the bed spun around. The legless man rolled to the curtain. Anne followed.

Michael shifted onto his right side and took the curtain in his hook. “Stephen’s been here longer’n me. He ain’t on no shrink’s list.” Michael pulled the curtain back.

It was not registering what was before her that allowed her to focus on it as long as she did. There were machines there, a good number of them, crowded around a tiny bed like rumbling and humming steel wolves about a lone prey. Aluminum racks stood on clawed feet, heavy bags of various colored liquids hanging from them, oozing their contents into thin, clear tubes. A portable heart monitor beeped. Behind it, a utility sink held to the wall, various antiseptics and lotions and balms cluttering the shelf above. The rails of the bed were pulled up to full height. At one end of the mattress was a thin blanket, folded back and tucked down. And at the other end, a thin pillow. And Stephen.

Anne’s coat and paper dropped to the floor. “Oh my dear God.”

“Weird, huh? I call him Head Honcho. I think he must be some doctor’s experiment, you know, keeping him alive and all. Don’t it beat all?”

On the pillow was a head, with black curled hair. Attached to the head, a neck, and below that a small piece of naked, ragged chest, barely large enough to house a heart and single lung. The chest heaved and shuddered, wires pulsing like obscene fishermen’s lines. That was all there was of Stephen.

Anne’s heart constricted painfully. She stepped backward.

“Nurses don’t like him. Can’t stand to touch him, ’though they shave him every three days. Doctor checks him nearly every day. Head Honcho don’t do nothing but breathe. He ain’t much but at least he don’t complain about my music.” Michael looked at Anne.

Anne turned away. Her stomach clenched, throwing fouled bile into her throat.

“Hey, you leaving?”

“I need to see the others,” she managed. And she went out of the west wing to the faculty restroom, where she lost her control and her lunch.

It was three days before Anne could bring herself to visit the center again. The AP partners were asking her for her volunteer hours chart, and as the newest member of the firm, she couldn’t shrug it off. And so she returned. Her pulse was heavy in her neck and the muscles of her back were tight, but she decided she would not allow herself more than passing acknowledgment of them.

She talked with Cora in the art room. Cora had little to say, but seemed pleased with the attention Anne gave her painting. Randy was in the recreation hall with Ardie, playing a heated game of billiards, wheeling about the table with teeth gritted and chins hovering over cue sticks. Anne told them she’d visit later, after the match. Julia was shopping with her daughter, and Michael was in the pool on a red inner tube.

“Hey, Miss Zaccaria!” he called when he saw Anne peering through the water-steamed glass of the door. “Want to come in for a swim? I’m faster in the water. Bet I could catch you in a split second. What do you say?”

Anne pushed the door open and felt the onslaught of chlorine-heated mist. She did not go any closer to the pool. “I never learned to swim, Michael. Besides, I’m not exactly dressed for swimming.”

“I don’t want you
dressed
for swimming. What fun would that be?”

Anne wiped moisture from her forehead. “How long do you plan to swim? I thought we could visit outside. The day’s turned out pretty fair. It’s not as cold as it has been.”

“I’m finished now, ain’t I, Cindy?”

The pool-side attendant, who had been watching Michael spin around on his tube, shrugged. “If you say so.” She pulled Michael’s wheeled bed from the wall and moved it to the pool steps. “Get over to the side so I can get you out.”

“Hey, Miss Zaccaria, do me a favor. My blue jacket is in my room. It’s one of those Member’s Only things. Anyway, I’m not real crazy about wind, even when it’s warm. Would you get the jacket for me? Door’s unlocked.”

Anne’s head was nodding as she thought, ‘Oh, Christ, yes, I mind.’ “No problem,” she said. She left the pool, telling herself the curtain was drawn.

They would always keep the curtain drawn.

Michael’s door was indeed unlocked. The students of the center kept valuables in a communal vault, and the staff moved about the floor
frequently, so chances of theft were slim. Anne went into the room, expecting the jacket to be in plain sight, prepared to lift it coolly and leave with her self esteem in tact.

But she did not see the jacket.

She checked Michael’s small dresser, behind the straight-backed chair for visitors, in the plastic laundry basket beside the vacant spot where Michael’s bed rested at night. It was not there.

Anne looked at the curtained corner. Certainly the jacket would not be behind the curtain. There was no reason to go there, no reason to look.

She walked to the curtain and edged over to the hemmed corner of the heavy material. ‘It’s not over there,’ she thought. Her hands began to sweat. She could not swallow.

She pulled the curtain back slowly. And let her gaze move to the bed.

Again, it was a flash image that recorded itself on her startled retinas before she looked away. The head was in the same place, eyes closed, dark hair in flat curls. The neck. The breathing, scarred half-chest. Anne stared at the sink, counting, rubbing thumbs against index fingers, calming herself. She would look for Michael’s jacket. There was a chair like that on Michael’s side, and a laundry basket, although this one held no clothes, only white towels and washcloths. By the wall beside the sink was a pile of clothing, and Anne stepped closer to search through it. There were shirts, mostly, several pairs of shorts and underwear. And a blue jacket. Anne picked it up. She looked back at the small bed.

And the eyes in the head were open, and they were looking at her.

Anne’s fingers clenched, driving nails into her palms. She blinked, and glanced back at the pile of clothes, pretending she hadn’t seen the eyes. Chills raced tattoos up her shoulders, and adrenalin spoke loudly in her veins. ‘Leave now.’

Her hands shook as they pawed through the clothes on the floor, acting as though she had more to find. ‘Calm down. And leave.’

But the voice made her stop.

“I didn’t mean to stare,” it said.

Anne flinched, and slowly stood straight. She looked at the bed.

The eyes were still open, still watching her.

Her own mouth opened before she had a chance to stop it, and she said, “I was looking for Michael’s jacket.” ‘Leave now!’ cried the adrenalin. ‘That thing did not say anything. It can’t talk. It’s comatose. It’s brain dead. Leave
now
!’

The eyes blinked, and Anne saw the muscles on the neck contract in a swallowing reflex. “Yes,” it said. And the eyes closed. The whole ragged body seemed to shudder and shrink. It had gone to sleep again.

The jacket worked in Anne’s fingers. Michael was in the pool, waiting for her. ‘It’s brain dead, Anne. Get hold of yourself.’ “Stephen?” she whispered.

But it did not open its eyes, nor move, and Anne took the jacket down to the pool where Michael was fuming about on his bed, spinning circles around the yawning attendant.

“So I store my stuff on Stephen’s side of the room, ’cause he don’t complain none. And when I get visitors they don’t think I’m a slob. Nurses don’t care. I get the stuff from over there into my laundry basket when it’s really dirty.”

Anne was in Michael’s visitor’s chair. He was on his side, his gaze alternating between her, his hook, and the curtain.

“He’s never complained to you?”

Michael chuckled shallowly. “You serious? He’s in a coma, I told you already. Listen to this, if you don’t believe me.” Michael reached for the sleek black cassette player on the night stand beside the bed. He pushed the switch, and an instant blast of heavy rock shattered the air. Above the shrieking guitars and pounding percussion, Anne could hear the sudden, angry calls from the neighboring students.

“Go, look, quick,” Michael shouted over the music. “Go see before those damned nurses get here.”

Anne shook her head, smiling tightly, brushing off the suggestion.

Michael would have none of it. “Shit, just go on and look at Dead-Head Honcho.”

“I don’t think it’s my place to bother him.”

“Get on now, the nurses are coming. I hear them damn squeaking shoes down the hall!”