The Innsmouth Syndrome (7 page)

“You’re the woman I saw earlier.  Who?” asked Gary, watching her intently from beneath lowered lids.  “Who’d you want to ask me about?”

Carla gambled.  “Your friend – RamRam.”

Gary immediately turned his face back to the window.  “He’s dead.  Car wreck.”

“I know” replied Carla, scooching a little further up the bed.  “What I want to know is:  why did they kill themselves?”

Gary looked back at her.  His drowsy eyes were glistening as if he was about to cry.  “How’d you know they killed themselves?”

“You don’t seem very surprised at the idea, so maybe the same way that you do.”

Gary passed a hand across his face and spoke without looking at her.  “I know because Ramone told me.  Told me they were going to.  He wouldn’t let me go along with them.”

“Wouldn’t let you – are you saying that he told you what they were planning to do?  Did he say why?”

“Din’t have to say why.”  He looked back at Carla, searching for understanding, and finding it absent became annoyed.  “For fuck’s sake,
look
at me!  Look at any of us!”  His remaining fingers scrunched and twisted the bedsheets as he spoke.  “It’s not so bad for the others - they fucking look forward to it – but it’s not like we get given a choice!  It’s not like we did something wrong, or something to deserve it, or that we’re out there praying for it with the rest of them.  So, maybe we
don’t
want it, maybe we just want to be normal – not a fucking chance.  RamRam –“

He swallowed and looked as though he wanted to stop talking, but the words came flooding out anyway.  “RamRam wanted to take me with them.  Wayne wouldn’t allow it.  He didn’t like me cos of my mom being high-up in the Order, like it was my fault.  Said I’d have to make my own arrangements.  Said maybe I should do my mom in as well.  So we said goodbye and Wayne went and stole the car – and they left me alone.”

Tears leaked down his pockmarked face and he let out an anguished, throaty sigh.  Carla could feel a lump in her own throat.  “Thing is” the boy continued, “I’m not as brave as them.  But I know soon I won’t care enough to do it.  In a few years I’ll be like the rest of them, sick in the head.  So, why put it off?  It’ll only get worse and worse until it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“We can help you!” interrupted Carla.  “Whatever’s wrong we can get you help, people who understand, maybe treatment.  You’ve obviously had a terrible time, losing your friends like that, but it’s not your fault.  You aren’t to blame.  Why don’t you stay here and let us get you the help you need?”

He laughed at that.  “You gonna fix me right up, yeah?  You’re not from `round here, are you doc?  You wanna be careful.”

“
I
want to be careful?  Why?”

“Just watch out for the Order is all.  Just ... don’t get involved.”  He waved a hand, dismissively.  “Leave me alone.”

Carla persisted.  “You keep mentioning `the Order’.  Is that the Order – what is it called ... the Evangelical Order of David?”

Gary gave a derisive little snort.  “Yeah, if you like.”

“I’ve seen their building, down near where I met you.  You said your mother’s a member, right?”

Gary sat forward and grabbed hold of her sleeve.  There was no derision in his voice when he spoke now.  “Stay away from them.  Just keep away, lady!”  His small, black eyes stared into hers.  “Leave Innsmouth alone.  If they think you’re causing trouble, you’ll –“

The door of the room burst open so hard that its handle clattered against the thin partition wall.  Behind it stood a hulking, middle-aged woman, dripping with rain water, her eyes slitted in fury.  Carla rose apprehensively from the bed.

“Mom!” exclaimed Gary, in a strangled voice. 

The woman stared around the room, taking in the surroundings, pausing briefly to evaluate Carla and finally coming to rest on the wretched figure in the bed.  Her lip curled and she strode aggressively towards him.  “Up!”

“Wait, Mrs Taub ...”  Carla laid a hand on the advancing woman’s arm.  The woman came to an instant halt and her head snapped round, the belligerent stare now fixed on Carla’s face.  Carla hurriedly removed her hand with a placatory, surrendering gesture.  “I’m sorry.  Your son has suffered a very serious injury, I don’t think –“

The woman ignored her, turned back to her son.  “Up!”  Gary sat up hurriedly and reached into the bedside cupboard for his shoes.

Carla tried again, moving around, trying to renew eye contact with the woman.  “Look, I really don’t think it’s a very good idea for Gary to leave right now.  There’s still a risk of infection developing and he’s lost a lot of blood, at least let us keep him in overnight and maybe see how he’s doing tomorrow?”

She was close enough to smell the foetor rising from Mrs Taub’s chunky-knit, black jumper.  The wool, impregnated with sweat and cigarette smoke and gobbets of food, had probably smelled better when it was still on the sheep.  Gingerly and reluctantly, Carla risked putting her hand on the hostile woman’s arm once more.

Mrs Taub whirled around, her greasy black hair flailing behind her, and for a second Carla thought she was going to be attacked, but they were interrupted by a lilting, gurgling voice from the direction of the door.  “One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five!”     Carla turned to look, keeping half an eye on the wrathful Mrs Taub. 

A man in a torn yellow raincoat, presumably Gary Taub’s father, was lurching into the room.  He was completely bald, with a large, round belly, and a moon face that petered out in a succession of roly-poly chins.  His expression was blissfully vacant, his eyes seemingly looking in completely different directions.  More peculiar yet was his walk, a stiff-legged, waddling gait that pitched his entire body from side to side, his sandals slapping against oedematous feet with every step.  “Once!” he announced brightly, “I caught a fish alive!”

Carla exhaled slowly.  Perhaps the husband would be more amenable to reason.  He did, at least, look less antagonised than his wife.  She went to meet him at the door.  He beamed at her as she approached.  “Why.  Did.  You let.  It go?”  His voice was thickly rhythmical, like his walk.

Carla chose to ignore the rhetorical question, trying instead to reassure him about his son’s state of comparative health, her voice rising as his attention seemed rapidly to drift.  He resumed his listing progress towards the boy’s bed.  “Because”, he burbled “it bit my finger so!  Ahhhhh!  Which finger did it bite?”  He grabbed Gary’s mutilated hand, eliciting a yelp of pain.  “
This
little finger on.  My.  Right!”  Chortling happily, he began pulling Gary towards the door. 

Knowing better than to resist, Gary shuffled quietly alongside him, and, knowing better now than to stand directly in Mrs Taub’s way, Carla tried one last time to persuade them to stay.  “Look, I’d be happy to address any concerns you have!  We can arrange for you stay here with Gary!  He’s going to need more painkillers, at least let us give you some to take home with you!”

Mrs Taub turned around as they reached the door and jabbed her index finger hard into Carla’s sternum.  “Stay away!” she hissed, staring at Carla for long seconds and then striding off after her husband and son. 

Carla exhaled slowly.  Her heartbeat began to slow as the threat of violence receded.  She was annoyed that it had accelerated at all.  Annoyed to admit that she had been intimidated.  In a hospital as well, an environment she had always regarded as her home turf.  She rejoined Dr Khalil at the nurse’s station.  He had a file in his hands, but over the top of his glasses he was watching the Taubs lumber back down the corridor towards the elevators, Mr Taub’s absurd, wallowing saunter casting spastic shadows on the wall.

“Unbelievable!” said Carla, angrily.  “I can’t believe they’re just swanning out of here with him!  As if we’re interfering by stopping him from sawing off his own fingers!”

“Well,” offered Khalil, putting his file down, “I don’t know about `swanning’.  The swan is a graceful animal, whereas that ...”  He nodded after the family.

“He confirmed it was suicide you know.  The Ramsgates and the girls.  He confirmed that they drove off the road on purpose.  He says he wanted to go with them.  There you go, that’s suicidal ideation!  We can hold him!”

Dr Khalil put up a hand wearily.  “We cannot detain him.  I can tell you now, the hospital will not sanction it.  They have had legal problems with the Innsmouth church before.  It cost them a lot of money.  If we were to detain him, he’d be released with one phone call from their minister.”

Carla rounded on him.  “The
church
?  I’m sorry, do we take medical instruction from them now?  What the hell does it matter what they think?”

“I know, it is unfortunate.  The hospital though is `once bitten, twice shy’.  There was an issue with a termination performed on an Innsmouth girl.  The church got her to retract her consent, claimed it was done without her permission, made all kinds of noise about sectarian persecution – they are aggressively litigious in their dealings with outsiders.  The hospital now prefers to leave them alone.”

“Oh, this is ridiculous” fumed Carla.  “Which church, anyway?  That warehouse near where we went this morning?  The Evangelical Order of David?  That one?”

Khalil nodded.  “Yes, the EOD runs the old part of Innsmouth to a large extent.  There was an attempt, a few years ago, to use them as a liaison.  The church penetrates the community there in a way that officialdom has never managed.  We thought we could use them to collect information on health problems in the congregation, provide us with an idea of the levels of social need in the town.”

“They refused to play ball?”

“Oh no.  They agreed readily, but then they just reported back to us that everyone was fine.  No-one had any symptoms of respiratory disease, everyone had central heating.  There was no drug use, no psychiatric problems,  no poverty and no crime.  After a few weeks it was abandoned.  They had just seen another opportunity to keep us outsiders at arm’s length.”

“Hmm.”  Carla pondered for a few moments.  “The Taub boy had a lot to say about that church.  He even hinted that they were in some way responsible for his condition.  And the other kids.  He seemed afraid of them.  I think that tomorrow I’ll have to go and have a look, talk to whoever’s in charge.”

“They won’t talk to you” said Khalil, quickly.  “It might be better to tread a little carefully.”

“Oh, they’ll talk to me” Carla assured him.  “I’m a federal employee.  If they’re as keen on avoiding publicity as you say they are, it would be better for them to talk to me than have me come back with a posse of doctors and police.”  Privately she doubted that she would be able to raise a posse like that.  Her boss considered this a punitive assignment, to be wrapped up quickly and without fuss.  The threat of action might get her somewhere though.  She got up to leave.

“Well, I wish you luck, Dr Edwards.  I would come with you, but tomorrow I must work here.  If I can be of any other assistance ...”

“I’ll be fine.  You keep on looking for congenital defects in the birth records.  I’ll see if I can find anything that links our cases to the EOD.  Since they seem to be the only people who know anything about what happens in Innsmouth anyway.”

*****

She regretted that parting shot later.  It was a little unfair.  Khalil was, after all, the one who had alerted the CDC in the first place.  Or the EPA, at least.  It had irritated her though, to see how reluctant he became in the face of the Evangelical Order of David and their enthusiasm for litigation.