The Magdalena Curse

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Authors: F.G. Cottam

BOOK: The Magdalena Curse
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For Haydn, Alison, Emmeline and Joseph. With love.
I would like to thank John and his staff at the Riverside Cafe on Queen’s Promenade for alleviating writerly solitude with their unfailing warmth and good cheer. Not to mention world class cappuccino.
In his bedroom on the floor above her, she heard the boy shift in his sleep and murmur or sigh to himself. She looked up at the thick beams and rough plaster of the low sitting-room ceiling. The boy’s room, small and once a cosy refuge for him, was over to the right. She had become very alert to sound in the night. The boy’s torment had made her so. She looked at her watch and saw that it was close to one in the morning. She got up and poked at the embers of the dying fire, then returned to the armchair and made a shawl again of her blanket, around her shoulders. She made a pillow of the cushion at her back. There was no more noise from above. She could hear the sound of wood greying into ash in the hearth before which she sat. It was a trickle, infinitely faint. She could hear her own heart. That was a steady, rhythmic thump. She could hear the wind soft on the slope of heather outside, harsher through the branches of the yew tree beyond the kitchen door. So sensitive to noise had she become, that she could no longer bear to light the room at night with the scented candles she had packed before coming here. The hiss of wax and the guttering of wicks were sounds she could no longer comfortably endure.
She smiled to herself, huddling under her blanket. She was probably as alert to sound as all his military training had made the owner of this house. He was away, had left two days ago, pursuing the most urgent mission of his life. He was retired now. He had retired a full colonel but had done so early. He was still relatively young, still fit, a formidable man.
But she did not think that any of his dangerous skills would help him very much in trying to save the son he loved. She very much hoped, in this, that she was wrong.
She looked at the little table next to where she sat. Her laptop lay open on the table. She left it there, she thought sometimes, simply to remind herself of who and what she was. There were two lines of italics centred on the screen. They emerged white out of the blackness surrounding them.
This computer is the property of Dr Elizabeth Bancroft
. That much, she knew. That much, she was certain of. But the last few days, lived in this high and remote place, had left her sure about very little else.
She thought about picking the laptop up and searching the internet again to establish what more she could about the symptoms manifested by the poor child upstairs whose father had entrusted him to her care. But after the most recent episode, she knew she would merely be going through the motions. That event, witnessing it, had finally put paid to all her high-flown theories. There had been various theories. They had ranged from food intolerance, to delayed shock and deferred grief, to the effect of over-exposure to violent video games. She had entertained all of them to varying degrees. And in their way, in their elegance and plausibility, they had entertained her. But they had proven to be nothing to do with what was happening to the boy.
It was what doctors did, wasn’t it? It was not dissembling and it wasn’t avoidance. It was diagnostic discipline. Without an effective diagnosis, you could not treat illness effectively and therefore you were useless to your patient. She had looked for a rational explanation as to what was wrong with the child, compelled by instinct and professional habit, and if she was really honest also by professional pride. But now her instinct was strongly at odds with her discipline. It had been since the events in the boy’s bedroom, the night that
provoked his father’s departure. Since then, for two days, she had been in turmoil over it. She realised how deluded and complaisant she had been before. She was not complaisant now. She wanted to call the boy’s father, ask him what progress he was making. But he might answer, hoping for comfort from home, for encouraging news. And she could offer none. Remote from the last person left in the world whom he loved, Elizabeth did not want to make matters any worse for him.
She looked around the room. It was lit by a desk lamp sharing the table with her laptop and a standard lamp over against the wall next to the door that led to the stairs. There was no noticeable light from her feeble log fire. The walls were of exposed brick between supporting beams and the floor was flagged in stone. The windows were uneven in size and latticed with lead and looked gratifyingly sturdy. The house had been here since the fifteenth century and the room reflected the fact. There were rugs on the floor. The furniture was old and plain and of a piece with the building that housed it. They had brought no artefacts with them, Mark Hunter and his ten-year-old boy, Adam. They had brought no pictures or keepsakes to remind them of Mark’s dead wife and daughter, the mother and sister lost to his son. There was nothing on display, anyway. She assumed it was all locked away in their hearts.
 
‘Call me Mark,’ he had said, extending his hand on her first visit here, after the early episodes of Adam’s affliction. She had arrived in the morning, at 7 a.m., at the beginning of her working day. She was aware of course of the concern he felt for his son. That had been obvious from his tone of voice when he reached her at the surgery. But meeting him, she had seen something else. She did not think of herself as an intuitive woman. Here, she did not need to be. She was
familiar with the story. Everyone in the locality had heard about the tragedy. And when she met him, she saw more than worry over the nightmares afflicting the boy. Her first impression was of how handsome a man Mark Hunter was. But grief marked him. He wore his loss as starkly as a shadow cast in strong sunlight.
Adam was asleep when first she saw him. He was lying on his back. His head rested on his pillow and his face was raised to the milky morning light. It was unlined of course and framed by wavy blond hair worn long. She knew that children were often seductive little creatures in repose, their features innocent of mischief while they slept. But he was not merely cute. Adam Hunter was extraordinary. There was no other word adequate to describe him than the one that came into her mind. He was neither cute nor angelic nor exotic. He was simply the most beautiful boy Elizabeth had ever seen.
‘Fine-featured,’ Mark Hunter said, from behind her, reading her thoughts. ‘He’s fortunate in that he takes after his mother in his looks. But he’s been a tormented little soul these past couple of weeks.’ He edged past her and reached for his son, brushing the hair away from Adam’s forehead where the damp of perspiration had stuck it in strands. He did this tenderly. And then he stooped and kissed his son there.
Elizabeth had put her doctor’s bag on the bed. She opened it with a click that was Mark Hunter’s cue to leave her with her patient. He took the hint. ‘I’ll see you downstairs, doctor,’ he said.
‘Please call me Elizabeth. He’s sleeping deeply. I won’t wake him just to ask questions. If he wakes of his own accord, I’ll interrogate very gently.’
‘Do what you must.’
‘I’ll examine him. I’ll take his temperature and gauge his
blood pressure. I will need to speak to the child. We may require a referral and can’t refer without a thorough examination, which means an assessment of his emotional state.’
‘I’m gratified you have the time.’
Elizabeth looked at her watch. She lifted Adam’s wrist, feeling for his pulse. She smiled at his father. ‘I don’t,’ she said.
Adam’s room had a view through its single window of the heather descending in green and purple swathes down the hill. At the bottom of the hill, the stream glimmered in the morning mist she had climbed out of on the drive up there. She looked around the room, impressed by how much his father had done in making it a den for his boy. She supposed he had been mostly away at his various clandestine wars until the deaths of his wife and daughter. She guessed it had been pretty much his wife’s job entirely to carry out the domestic commitments. But it was his now, and in the fabric and furnishings of the child’s room, in its posters and shelves of books and toys, it had been thoughtfully accomplished.
After the examination, while she waited for the child to wake, he made her tea.
‘How long have you been keeping him out of school?’
‘Just for these last few days. It’s caught up with him. He hasn’t the concentration.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You must have other house calls to make.’
‘Let’s give him twenty minutes. If he doesn’t stir in that time I’ll come back tomorrow.’
‘How does he seem to you?’
‘He’s slightly underweight. He’s perhaps very slightly anaemic. His pulse is rapid for a sleeping ten-year-old. But generally he is healthy.’
Mark Hunter looked at her. His hair was greying. He had blue eyes. Their pale clarity belied the things she supposed they must have seen in a bloody career.
‘When did it start?’
‘The nightmares began about three weeks ago. At least, that’s when he started to complain about them, to fear his room and his bed. It would get to eight o’clock and the approach of bedtime and I’d see the trepidation on his face. But it began before then. I’d heard him mumbling before that, Adam talking to himself.’
‘It’s normal for children to talk to themselves.’
‘Not to argue with themselves it isn’t, doctor. Not to indulge in ferocious debate.’
She thought it interesting that he reverted to the formality of her title when he felt his judgement challenged. ‘He has a computer in his room.’
‘Equipped with a firewall and all the other safeguards you’d expect. You’ve seen the pictures stuck up on his walls. He likes Manchester United and listens to Girls Aloud.’
‘No monsters, then.’
‘No monsters.’
‘At least, no monsters to your knowledge.’
Hunter frowned. He sipped tea.
‘After the accident, did Adam sleep with you?’
‘For a while he did, yes. And it was as much for my comfort as for his. But crying one another to sleep each night was not healthy for either of us. That stopped when we moved here.’
‘Abruptly?’
‘You will not think this a case of separation anxiety when my son wakes, doctor,’ he said.
She framed another question in her mind. She felt she was gaining valuable insights. But the question never got asked. There was a keening cry from above. It was a sound of such abject terror that it caused the hairs to rise and prickle coldly on the back of Elizabeth’s neck.
Mark Hunter was on his feet. ‘I’ll introduce you and then
leave you with him. The dreams scare him but he wakes from them lucid and with only a vague conscious memory of what he dreamed of. But they leave something for a few hours. They leave a residue.’
‘They leave a what?’
‘You will see.’
‘Dad?’ The voice from above them was plaintive.
Mark hesitated.
‘What?’ Elizabeth asked.
He looked at her and the look was hard. ‘Please remember your promise to question my son gently.’
It was cold when he left her with Adam. The boy sat up in his striped pyjamas, pale and alert. It felt so cold to her in his room that she was surprised she could not see his breath when he exhaled. She extended a hand to the radiator. The metal was hot under her fingers. And the window was open only a fraction. Outside, it was a mild November morning. It was warmer out than in and that made no sense. She smiled at Adam and he tried to smile back as she poured him a glass of water from the carafe on his bedside table. She looked at the posters on the walls. His team posed confident and grinning for their formal start-of-season photograph, various players grinning and triumphant, parading trophies in grainier, blown-up shots placed around it.
‘Is Rooney your favourite player?’
‘Paul Scholes,’ he said. His voice was shaky. He tried to smile again. He could not will away the desperation in his face.
‘What did you dream about, Adam?’
He raised his glass between both hands and drank. ‘I don’t remember. It was a cold place, I think. I think there was snow and ice. I think there were big icicles there, pointed in the cold. But there were no people or buildings or cars or anything.’
‘Was it scary?’
He looked down at the glass in his hands. ‘It’s always scary,’ he said.
She opened her bag, reached for her thermometer. He had not been running a fever before the dream. But in the chilly room, in its aftermath, she would have bet money he was running a fever now.
She was with Adam for twenty minutes. It was long enough with a ten-year-old child. She did not want to exhaust him. He was getting a lot of sleep, but little apparent rest. When she had said goodbye to him, his father walked her across the gravel spread outside his house to the stand of conifers where she had parked her car on the bony, hilltop earth.
‘He speaks fluent Russian, Mark. I’m impressed. It’s an unusual accomplishment in a child. He must be very bright. How long has he been studying the language?’
Mark bit his lip and looked at the ground. ‘He doesn’t speak a word of Russian, Elizabeth. In a few hours, he won’t remember a single syllable.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s what I told you about. It’s the residue the dreams leave. After a few hours, it vanishes like dew.’
‘How can that be?’
‘The dreams belong to someone else. My son is possessed by them.’

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