Wanting to get this over with, I tugged the cover away...
...and stared in horror at the freakish sight laying on the rags before me. It was beyond believability. Yet here it was, in my presence, much too real to renounce.
The female creature's legs were spread eagled. A pool of blood and substance tided from the vaginal canal.
A gnarled claw protruded crookedly, wriggling like a worm out of earth.
"
Help Cerpdas,
" Fenal begged, gently stroking the rotting strands of hair on her pear-shaped head.
Help.
So I set to work, trying not to think about what I was actually going to do because now was not the time for me to doubt my abilities or ask myself questions. All I could do was remain strong—and sane—and convince myself that this was just another patient, a woman in need of an emergency c-section (something I've never done, mind you), and not whatever else she might be.
I retrieved a scalpel from the bag, placed it on the burlap bag. I doused the creature's abdomen with alcohol, then with a topical painkiller. Taking a deep breath, I wished the whole scene away, wondering if perhaps this might be a dream, but knew wholeheartedly that this time I wouldn't be waking up in my bed with just blood on my hands.
I took the scalpel and slowly cut her open. Brown blood spilled from the wound, tiding down the sides of her gaunt torso. A tiny hand poked free from the split, tossing a spray of blood into my face. I used my forearm to wipe it free of my eyes, only to see a second hand emerge, five bony fingers replete with yellow claws flexing in the free world for the very first time. I hesitated in touching the thing, but Fenal barked
help...help...
over and over again, so I closed my eyes and reached into the open cavity, grabbed the bawling creature—I felt the tug of the protruding leg slipping back inside—and plucked it free of the womb.
Arms outstretched, I held it out before me. I opened my eyes and beheld the hairy demonlike beast, all swollen and doused like any human baby might be, eyes open and peering about with stunning alertness. Its toothless mouth choked out a garbled mess of fluids, which I sucked free with a plunger. I turned and handed the bawling infant to a waiting Isolate, which in turn hurried it away into a darkened corner of the room.
I faced the mother. Its eyes glowed weakly, as if mustering the strength to thank me for what I'd just done. I cleansed her wounds and crudely stitched them back up, then buried all her injuries under a thick layer of bandages. I fed her a dose of penicillin and acquiesced myself to the fact that this was all I could do.
Once the task had been completed, I staggered up and backed away against the dirt wall in the shelter, the back of my head pressed against a pulpy patch of fungi. In the soft glow of the flames I observed the others in the room with me: perhaps a dozen Isolates, all silently scrutinizing me, their glowing eyes now full of questions. One being, horribly deformed, separated itself from the horde and writhed across the room, its leg dangling helplessly behind it. It confronted me, tracing a finger through a damaged gnarl of skin on its thigh.
Another leaped from the group, pushed aside the fiend in front of me and grasped my arm, tears flowing from one golden eye. The other hung shriveled and lifeless from the socket like a pendulum, the miraculous gold converted to a stone cold gray.
Fenal leaped forward, intercepted. "
Pentaff! Blahtah!
" The Isolates scrambled away. He then gazed at me, his golden eyes glowing with admiration. "Savior," it said.
Savior?
Oh my God...
Dizzied, I stumbled from the room back out into the large antechamber. The creatures immediately rushed forward, groped me with broken bones and mangled limbs, mouths dripping fetid with disease, their wails echoing in helpless pain, desperate for my aid. Jesus, it was all too clear now, my purpose. My role in the grand scheme of the Isolates. I could see it on their suffering faces, the clear desperation that I would be the one to nurse them all back to health, give them a chance to thrive as they once did, just as Neil Farris had for thirty years. Just as the doctor that lived at 17 Harlan Road before him had.
Savior...
Calloused hands groped me. Monstrous cries filled my head. My breath escaped me.
Overwhelmed, a wave of darkness consumed me, and I collapsed, gratefully succumbing to its grasp.
I
woke up.
It had taken me some time to realize that I'd actually survived the night. When I tried to move, a crippling numbness seized my body, forcing me to speculate that I'd been laying face-down for an indeterminate amount of time. I was also deaf and blind, and all I could really do was lay there and try to catch my breath, which kept a sufficient distance from me despite my slow but successful attempt to gain of control of it. Soon thereafter my senses returned to me. A breeze tickled my skin, the earth soft and grassy beneath my palms and face. The distant calls of songbirds stirred me even further from my slumber. Eventually I found the will to open my eyes and found myself surrounded by an early morning darkness, fading starlight and the soft shuck of the moon tossing slight shadows across my surroundings. Here was enough evidence to make me believe that perhaps I'd survived—been spared—the night after all.
When I regained full control of my breathing, I tried to stand, anticipating my head to swim. Oh it did, and it sent me careening across the short sprawl of lawn in the backyard. The presence of my office windows brought reality back to me in a very hard thrust, and made me realize what I needed to do with them as soon as humanly possible (the image of the steel doors Neil Farris had installed, which I hastily took down, came to me; my next step would be an even more drastic yet necessary move). I slid crookedly along the side of the house, then entered into the waiting room through the unlocked door. I wondered if any of the Isolates had come here to help themselves to my belongings while I'd visited their dwelling. I didn't see any mud tracked on the carpet, leading me to assume that they hadn't, but I wouldn't put the feat past them.
I felt my way across the lightless waiting room, through the hallway, and then into the kitchen where I blindly shuffled to the table. I fumbled for the ball-chain cord to the chandelier, grasped the air a number of times before finally locating it. I yanked it. The room fell into rude light. It attacked my eyes like lasers. When my sights finally cleared I found a cellophane-covered dish filled with Thanksgiving dinner leftovers sitting on the table.
I should've been happy about it. But I wasn't. A shudder ran through me instead, and a million paranoid thoughts assaulted my mind. Like,
what if the food was poisoned?
Or,
Is this some kind of trick?
I told myself that no act of kindness could be trusted, even a seemingly generous gesture on the part of my wife who'd apparently made this last-ditch attempt to save our marriage. I sat down at the table, thought about eating the food but just stared at it. Believe me, I wanted to eat it, but I was scared to...plus it didn't call out to me. Not at all. Along with my soul, my appetite had also stayed behind in the domain of the Isolates. I stood up and took a drink of water from the sink then closed the light and staggered to the living room couch where I curled up into a fetal ball and waited out the rest of the night.
I
must've fallen asleep at some point. Sometime later, something had come out of the darkness and touched up against my dangling hand. I heard a dreamlike voice call out to me. I screamed in a panic, eyes and mouth fully opened. Jessica was there, surrounded by the morning light, eyelids fluttering out of sudden terror. She screamed and fell back in a defensive twist then landed on her back. In a flash she righted herself like a cat and raced from the room, crying hysterically.
Christine hurtled in, dropping her pocketbook which had been draped around her shoulder. She looked sick. Eyes dark and puffy, skin sallow, no makeup. A thicket of her hair escaped the bun on her head, obscuring her angry face. "Are you fucking crazy?" she yelled.
Her words burned through me like acid. She screamed something else but her voice was like mud on my mind. Gibberish.
Jesus
, I thought,
if she only knew.
I stood up on achy legs and limped away, shoulders hunched as if expecting her next move. By the time I reached the steps, she had gone back into the kitchen and returned with the plate of food she'd brought home for me. She ran forward and threw it at me. Her intentions were good but her aim was bad. The plate shattered against the front door. Most of the food ended up strewn about the living room in a storm of cold chunks, although some pieces hit me in the chest. Fearing another attack, I turned and raced up the stairs to the landing, stopped, turned and looked downstairs, eyes stinging from sudden tears. The sounds of Christine sobbing and Jessica crying could be heard, and it damn near killed me to hear my daughter in such distress. I covered my ears with my palms, then spun away from the top of the steps and ran down the hall. The bathroom door was open and I banged my knee against the jamb at about the same time I heard the front door slam shut. Pain barked up into me from the point of contact. I bit my tongue and grabbed my knee, then moved inside and looked into the mirror and nearly leaped at what I was saw. Mud. On my face, in my hair. On my clothes. Jesus, I looked like a fucking monster. Quickly I peeled off my filthy clothes and slid into the shower where I sat for an hour or more, washing away the disease of the night and trying hard to rinse my mind of its memories. When I realized it wasn't going to work, that the events of the night would stay with me for an eternity, I screamed until my vocal chords bled and cried until my tears dried up.
Eventually I crawled out of the shower—the water had turned cold by now—barely able to lift my tender legs over the tub. A towel wet from Christine's earlier shower hung limply on the bath-hook. I used it to dry off, smelling the soft feminine aroma she'd left behind in the cottony fabric. Gooseflesh hurdled across my skin, and at one point I put the towel in my mouth, trying to taste the pleasures of my past.
Dear God, how I wanted that past back again.
So badly.
The beautiful, glorious past.
Half an hour later I was dressed in fresh clothes, my mind brimming with the determination to retrieve everything I'd lost.
There was only one way to do it, I knew.
I'd have to fight this damn thing to the very bitter end.
T
he living room had retained a bit of an odor. Kind of like, well, Thanksgiving dinner. I did my best to clean away the mess of hurled food. It'd been nearly impossible to get everything up (I'd made up my mind not to tackle the wall beneath the steps which had a surreal art-like spattering of mashed potatoes and cranberries on it). But the bigger pieces of turkey, stuffing, and yams all ended up in the trash.
Eventually my body called out for sustenance. My stomach loudly protested its emptiness with lion-like growls, so I quenched it with a bagel, banana, and instant coffee—the most food I'd consumed in one sitting for at least a week. As I sat at the kitchen table, I planned out my first task, which wouldn't be an easy one. I decided it prudent to secure the house from any possible intrusion. Every window, every door, would have to be completely shuttered, now that I knew what was
really
out there. I didn't want one single night to pass without being sure my family would be fully protected. Then, once this was completed, which would take me most of the day, I'd consider making some plans for a means of escape from Ashborough's limits.
I'd have to be smart about it. No rushed exits.
Fuck the 'law' and its battalion.
I peeked out the window.
A man walked by.
Shit.
I hadn't considered at all as to whether I'd had any appointments.
Apparently, I did. And here he was, Mister Punctuality, showing up at exactly nine-thirty on the dot.
I stood from the kitchen table, peeked into the small mirrored backsplash set above the stove and saw a wretched beast of a man peer back at me (what did I expect?) then moved through the connecting hall into the waiting room. Here on the loveseat sat a rather slight, ordinary-looking man of perhaps forty. His legs were crossed, hands on his knees, near-bald head resting back against the upholstery. As I approached him he gazed up at me, smiling congenially beneath a few days worth of facial hair. He stood to shake my hand. His grip was weak and cold.
"Hello Doctor Cayle, nice to finally meet you. I've heard so much about you."
"And you are?"
He hesitated for a moment, perhaps wondering why I hadn't known his name, after all it was most likely inked in my appointment book. Or was it? He ran a nervous hand through his thinning hair, eyes narrowed and head cocked, giving off a sense of sudden perplexity. "Sam. Sam Huxtable. I didn't have an appointment."
Given another minute I might have simply gone through all the motions Sam Huxtable expected. The smile, the trading of pleasantries, the silent stroll into my office to proceed with the examination; he'd come for some medically-sought motive, and had yearned to be treated. But I acted with the arrogance and supposition of a man in the throes of paranoia—a man riddled with ultra-high levels of anxiety along with the will and sudden strength to survive the elements. I couldn't help it. I instantly had to take my frustrations out on somebody. And that somebody had become Sam Huxtable.