Spawn (28 page)

“I did as you said,” he croaked, looking at the other two creatures. God, they were much larger now, he thought, and he recoiled slightly, whimpering. He gripped the rent in his arm, his fingers brushing against the hardened skin of the freshly healed scabs elsewhere on his forearm. Blood from the most recent cut was seeping through his fingers.

The voices were chattering once more, accusatory this time.

“I didn’t kill Gordon,” Harold gasped. I didn’t kill my brother.”

The voices grew louder until finally, Harold shrieked. It was a cry which came from deep within him. As he looked down at the foetus, it seemed to metamorphosise, its shape changing, its features altering until it was his baby brother lying beside him. After all those years, Gordon was here in this dank, dark place. Harold began to sob uncontrollably as he reached out to pick up the small body. It felt so soft and jellied, as if his rough fingers would go right through the skin, but he lifted it nonetheless, holding the body to his chest, gazing into its face.

“Gordon,” he whispered, tears rolling down his cheeks.

The accusations were there once again, whispered words of contempt from inside his head.

“I didn’t kill him,” he screamed. “It was an accident.” Harold lifted its head, feeling how slack the neck was. Its chest was moving but only slightly and he could no longer hear the rasping, guttural breathing. Harold bent forward to kiss the thin lips and, as he did so, the face seemed, in his mind’s eye, to alter shape again until it was no longer his baby brother he held but the familiar form of the bloated foetus. He found his lips pressed to cold, wet flesh. He felt and tasted the blood, his blood. The pus stuck to his lips in oozing gobs and Harold shrieked once more, trying to wipe the vile substance from his mouth. He fell backwards, the body of the creature falling from his arms. Harold gagged as the obscene mixture of blood and pus clogged on his tongue. He rolled onto his side and retched until there was nothing left in his stomach.

When the spasms had finally passed, he hauled himself up on one elbow, his head spinning. He wiped the tears from his cheeks and gazed down at the dying foetus, the bitter aftertaste of his vomit still strong in his mouth.

“Oh God,” he murmured.

He felt weak, barely able to support himself as he tried to stand. He managed it with effort, reaching for a filthy handkerchief which he pulled from his trouser pocket. He pressed it to the wound on his arm and held it firmly until the worst of the bleeding had stopped.

“I’ll always do my best,” he gasped, looking down at the foetal monstrosities. “I promise.”

Harold took a step backwards. In the darkness of the room he almost stumbled over some of the other debris. The floor was smeared with excrement and dried blood. It smelt like an open sewer. The pungent odour of decaying, putrescent flesh was also noticeable. He dropped to his knees, exhausted by his sleepless night and also by the mental strain which he had been under for so long. He lay on the blanket but he dare not sleep. If he did, the dreams would come and he could not stand that. How he wished he had the tablets they used to give him, with those he never dreamed. There were no spectres waiting in his subconscious then, nothing to crawl out during sleeping hours to torment his mind. But the dreams
had
returned now. So vividly at times that it was almost impossible to separate imagination from reality. He glanced across at the foetuses and shivered, pulling the blanket tighter around him.

The voices, now that little bit quieter, still hissed inside his head.

Maggie Ford washed her hands quickly and dried them on the sterilized towel before pulling on the surgical gloves. With her hair pinned up beneath her white cap she made her way hurriedly into the operating room where the unconscious body of a young woman lay on the table. Around her stood nurses and the anaesthetist who was checking his equipment. He already had his mask on and Maggie followed suit a moment later, crossing to her patient.

“What have we got?” said Maggie, looking down at the young woman whose smock had been opened to reveal her body. Her pubic hair had been hurriedly shaved and the area looked raw and angry but it was the blood seeping from the woman’s vagina which disturbed Maggie most of all. There was a prominent bulge around the left hand side of the patient’s abdomen, the skin shining beneath the lights of the operating theatre. It looked as if it were being stretched from inside.

“Suspected ectopic pregnancy,” Maggie was told by a nurse standing close by. “The woman’s name is Judith Myers, they rushed her in about ten minutes ago. She collapsed at work.”

Maggie frowned. She inhaled and took a closer look at the bulge in Judith Myers abdomen. It seemed to be pulsating.

The doctor wasted no time, realizing that the woman’s life could be lost or saved in a matter of minutes. She set to work, something nagging at the back of her mind. She had heard the name Myers before, recently too.

The initial incision was made and Maggie worked as fast as she was able until she finally exposed the bulging Fallopian tube. There were audible gasps about the theatre.

“My God,” she muttered. “It’s a long way advanced isn’t it?” She took the instruments that were handed to her, a bead of perspiration popping onto her forehead. The bulge was very large and, impossibly seemed to be moving even as she watched it. The blip on the nearby oscilloscope dipped violently, the rhythmic high-pitched sound fluctuating alarmingly once or twice. A nurse checked Judith Myers’s blood pressure.

“Her blood pressure is falling,” she said, anxiously.

Maggie held the scalpel in one hand, realizing what she must do but her hands suddenly seemed leaden, her gaze riveted to that pulsing protruberance which was stretching her patient’s Fallopian tube practically to bursting point.

Harold huddled in one corner of the room watching the foetuses. They lay still, only the almost imperceptible rise and fall of their chests signalling that they were still alive. But, as he watched, he saw the veins on their bulbous heads swell and throb and their eyes gradually darken until they seemed to be glowing with some mysterious black light that filled the room, drifting like smoke all around them. Their bodies began to shake.

The blip on the oscilloscope was still diving wildly, the sound occasionally shutting down for brief seconds. Maggie swallowed hard, noting that the membranous covering of the bulging Fallopian tube was actually beginning to tear. She heard muttered words around her as she worked to cut the tube free. She called for a swab, alarmed at the amount of blood which seemed to be forming in the abdominal cavity. It was lifted, dripping crimson, from the danger area to be replaced a second later by another. Then another.

A second split appeared in the thin wall of the Fallopian tube, the membrane tearing like overstretched fabric.

“We’re losing her, doctor,” someone called and Maggie looked up to see that the oscilloscope pattern had almost levelled out.

Harold opened his mouth in a silent scream as the entire room seemed to fill with a deafening roar. He clapped both hands to his ears but the sound continued. It was inside his head, it was all around him, filling the room until it seemed the walls must explode outwards. The foetuses continued to shudder violently, the veins on their bodies now turning purple, their eyes glowing red like pools of boiling blood.

Maggie recoiled as the large bulge in Judith Myers’s Fallopian tube seemed first to contract and then erupt. There was a fountain of blood, pus and pieces of human tissue as the internal organ literally exploded showering those nearby with viscera. A young nurse fainted. The anaesthetist leapt from his seat and dashed across to Maggie’s side. Both of them turned to see that the oscilloscope blip had stopped bobbing and bouncing, it just ran in an uninterrupted straight line now, its mournful note filling the operating room. Maggie worked to remove the ruptured tube, trying in vain to save her patient’s life. There was blood everywhere, even on the large light above the operating table. Maggie herself wiped some from her face, gazing down almost in disbelief at the damage before her. The young nurse was being helped to her feet and supported out of the theatre.

While another nurse checked the patient’s blood pressure for one last time, Maggie herself listened for any sign of heartbeat. There was none. She pulled a penlight from her smock pocket and shone it into the woman’s eyes. There was no pupillary reaction.

Judith Myers was dead.

Maggie untied her mask and turned to the nearest nurse.

“Fetch a porter,” she said. “I want an autopsy done immediately.”

Maggie, her smock and face spattered with blood, made her way back to the wash-room, her movements almost mechanical. She knew what she had just seen but she did not believe it. The ectopic pregnancy had been too far advanced. If her guess was correct, Judith Myers would have had to have been at least five months pregnant for her Fallopian tube to be in that condition. Myers. Judith Myers. Again she felt that nagging at the back of her mind. She knew that name from somewhere.

She pulled off her blood-stained gloves and tossed them into the bin, washing her hands beneath the swiftly flowing water from the tap.

The realization hit her with the force of a steam-hammer and, for long seconds she stood still. Thoughts tumbled through her mind and she exhaled deeply. She finished washing and pulled her white coat back on, heading out into the corridor. Before she took a trip down to the pathology lab, she intended visiting the records department. She had just remembered where she’d heard the name Judith Myers.

It took the clerk in the records office less than five minutes to find the file on Judith Myers. Maggie took the file gratefully and walked across to the desk on the other side of the room. There she sat down and flipped the folder open.

NAME: Judith Myers. DATE OF BIRTH: 14/3/57.

REASON FOR ADMISSION: Clinical Abortion

Maggie scanned the rest of the sheet, her eyes straying to the date of admission. She looked at it again. Could there have been some mistake? She doubted it. She herself had performed the abortion. She looked yet again at the admission date. Finally, clutching the file to her chest she got to her feet. She asked the clerk if she could take the file with her, promising to return it in an hour or so. Maggie left the records office and headed towards the pathology labs.

It took Ronald Potter less than an hour to complete the autopsy on Judith Myers. Maggie sat in his office drinking coffee until the chief pathologist finally joined her. He sat down heavily in his chair and ran a hand through his false hair, careful not to dislodge the toupée.

“Well?” Maggie said.

Potter sniffed.

“Well, Doctor Ford, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that it was an ectopic pregnancy. She died of massive internal bleeding.”

“Did you examine the Fallopian tube itself?” Maggie wanted to know.

Potter stroked his chin thoughtfully.

“Yes I did.” His tone was heavy, troubled even.

“What caused the rupture to be so. . .” she struggled for the word, “so violent?”

“Well, the curious thing is, I don’t know,” said the pathologist, colouring slightly. “The size and nature of the Fallopian rupture would indicate that she was carrying a foetus of over six months which as we both know is clinically impossible. But there’s something else puzzling.” He paused. “My examination showed no sign of a foetus, any embryonic life or even an egg. There was nothing in her Fallopian tube to cause a rupture of that size. In fact there was nothing in there, full stop.”

“So you’re saying that she died of a condition that was not pathological,” said Maggie.

“That’s correct. There was no evidence of any fertilized life-form in the Fallopian tube. It’s almost as if the swelling and the subsequent rupture were. . .” He grinned humourlessly.

“Were what?” Maggie demanded.

“It’s as if they were psychosomatically induced. There is
no
trace of foetus, embryo or egg in that woman’s Fallopian tube.” The pathologist exhaled deeply and traced a line across his forehead with one index finger.

“Well, I found something too,” said Maggie, holding up the file. “How old did you say the foetus would have to be to cause a Fallopian rupture of that size?”

“Six months, at least,” said Potter.

‘Judith Myers underwent a clinical abortion in this hospital less than six weeks ago.”

“That’s impossible,” said the pathologist, reaching for the file as if he doubted the truth of Maggie’s words. He scanned the admission sheet, his brow wrinkling. “There must be some mistake.”

“That’s what I thought,” she confessed. “But, as you can see from the notes, I did the operation myself.”

Potter sat back in his chair and shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“A woman has an abortion six weeks ago,” said Maggie. “Then dies of a Fallopian rupture that could only have been caused by the lodging of a foetus at least six months old in her tube and yet you find no trace of any foetus. Not even an egg.”

Both of them stared at each other not knowing what to say. The silence in the office was heavy, like a weight pressing down on them and Maggie was not the only one to feel spidery fingers of fear plucking at the back of her neck.

PC Stuart Reed brought the Panda car to a halt outside the gate which led into the farmyard. The gate, like the fence it was attached to, was rotting. Pieces of broken, splintered wood jutting out like a series of compound fractures from the untended surround.

The farm buildings themselves looked dark and dirty in the mid-morning sunshine and the slight breeze moved the weather vane atop the barn, causing it to squeak loudly like a trapped mouse.

“Why the bloody hell do we have to check this place again?” groaned Constable Charlton. “I mean we’ve already been out here twice and there was no sign of Harvey.”