Deathwatch - Final Read online

  “Stay back, Johnny,” the undertaker warned, his hand pistoning backwards to halt his son. “The man is mad,” he said.

  “I know what it looks like,” I said helplessly. All of us were drawn to gaze at the girls’ slight bodies, nude and seemingly hacked apart, lying on the table.

  “They wanted to be…together again…I didn’t want to do it. I started to—but I didn’t, and I was just now…now closing them up. Finishing. It took longer than I thought. I didn’t want them badly scarred if I could help it, you see.”

  I gestured with the scalpel waving it slowly over them. I turned and tried to smile. The muscles in my face felt all wrong, hitching this way and that—as if I were leering, maybe. I was aware of the dried blood smearing my cheeks. “Mr. Madison,” I began—

  “I think she’s dead,” Johnny said, pointing at Eleanor.

  “Go get Eberhardt,” the undertaker said to his son. “Now! Tell him to bring his bag, have his wife send for the ambulance.”

  The boy rushed from the room.

  “Get away from that table,” Madison said.

  I sat down, hard, in Andrew’s chair, there was nothing to do but stare at my own gloved and bloodied hands.

  Epilogue

  There is not much to do in this place; there is very little to see. They say that isolation is good for the imagination—I do not find it so. Or perhaps, it’s because I never had one—or the one I had was insufficiently developed, bogged down by liquor and guilt.

  Looking back now, I suppose it was the failure of my imagination that led to my downfall. If I’d been able to accept Regina in the guise of my beloved Abby, I might have lived out my days happy. Crazy, perhaps…but undoubtedly content. And would it have mattered in that household where no one ever came?

  And if I’d been willing to accept the situation, I’d be with her. She was right in the end—it doesn’t matter if you call her Abby or Regina.

  Instead, I tried to hold on to sanity, save the girl, do right by her. Now I have nothing. Except the pulsing walls of my own brain. In this place (and let me assure you the Doctor—Doctor Williams—is both bright and knowing) I’m called a madman. Locked away, my dinner comes cut up on a tray divided into neat two inch square spaces on the Bakelite: potatoes, peas, cubes of meat (no knives for me, haha) apple cobbler.

  The staff is small and overworked; it’s easier for them to dress me in rubber pants. A snip of a girl who has yet to see her nineteenth year shaves me weekly.

  I was a trained surgeon and mad. Now I am being rehabilitated toward sanity. I can sing all of the Ivory soap flake jingle from the radio. I string beads, name the colors—blue, yellow, green, clear, red.

  ***

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  The doctor had a Viennese beard.

  My head was shaved like a convict’s.

  I lay on the railed bed, my wrists and legs restrained with thick leather straps. His face was close to mine. I smelled his lunch—cheese, boiled beef and red wine.

  “Andrew, Dr. Saunders…” I began.

  “No,” he corrected, moving into stride. “That was never proven—to a certainty. His fingerprints were on the syringe. He might, after all, have committed suicide. Despondent, perhaps, on discovering the tutor he hired raped both and impregnated one of his daughters.” His hands were clasped behind his back, he paused thoughtfully. “Saunders was a genius after all—that surgery proved it. Brilliant men are subject to fits of depression.”

  “He was a drunk,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “He indulged, certainly,” Doctor Williams nodded crisply. “But the fact is—he wasn’t incapacitated, he wasn’t a dipsomaniac,” he sniffed. “Never could have held himself together for that operation, otherwise.” He leaned over the bed.

  “On the other hand, Mister Granville, you amputated a young girl’s leg. You tortured her, then tried to cover up the crime of rape by performing a quack surgery. What did you think? That no would suspect you of fucking freaks?” He glared at me.

  “It wasn’t like that.” I stared at the ceiling. One crack looked like a broken champagne glass, the goblet halved and jagged over the straight stem.

  “Bit of a dipsomaniac yourself—they found you drunk, bottles strewn about Dr. Saunders’ office.”

  “I drank, yes.” I squinted, angled my head right. Now the crack was a pig’s head and snout, stuck on a stick.

  “Do you remember trying to reattach them?”

  “Vaguely,” I lied.

  “I have it on the best authority you also tried to induce an abortion in Abigail Saunders.”

  “Andrew did the same to Regina,” I muttered. The doctor, warmed to his subject, seemed not to hear. Regina had her revenge against Andrew at last, I thought.

  “And further, you attempted some half-assed version of curettage on Eleanor Saunders—perforating her uterus in the process. You let that girl bleed to death, and she was not even pregnant.” “

  “Ewing Eberhardt saw—”

  He shouted me down. “Eberhardt admitted he couldn’t tell one twin from the other! They found your semen! You terrorized those children by raping them repeatedly. You cut off Ellie’s leg when she tried to run away! Abby told us how you forced them to pretend they were still attached when the coroner came!” He stopped, put his face close to mine. His brown eyes glittered. “That is what the evidence showed, that is what the judge ruled. That is why you’re here. I would make an effort to remember it, Mr. Granville. The sooner you remember, the better. Understand?”

  I understood that one ghost can spawn another, that Andrew had been there at the end, that I was the actor in a reprise, playing out a tragic scene for the second time. Ruth had tried to warn me. Regina and Andrew. Spirits stuffed with evil, condemned to the same dull round for eternity.

  Except, it wasn’t their hell—it was mine.

  ***

  I saw her once years ago, it was February, 1894; and it was only a quick glance through the mesh on the window. Fool that I was, I actually tried to rub the misty condensation from the glass behind the wirework.

  Her carriage was parked in the oval just beyond the grounds. She was coming through the tall verdigris gate, her tiny hands muffed in brown sealskin, a long cape. Even at that distance I could see she was full blown, big with the child. The living proof of my madness brought directly to the doctor’s own doorstep.

  There was someone with her—a man, mincing his steps to match her pace. I believe it was Gabriel. I don’t know.

  Her skin was pale, but rouged at the cheeks by the wind and cold. The reddish curls peeked from under the heavy hood. She looked like an angel. “Abby, Abby,” I called.

  A bride, a girl.

  “Abby! Please,” I shouted.

  She looked up at me, green eyes lit with seductive mirth. Lips parted in a half smile to show she approved of my keeping her secret. The blue-eyed girl that was Abby was gone forever.

  No one remembers the color of a freak’s eyes—they are too busy not looking at the confusion of arms and legs and the crude fabric tent that serves the joined body as a covering.

  The man that I thought might be Gabriel kept his face down. I was certain his eyes were gray, and the smell of Sherry hung round his narrow mouth. But Regina winked at me, then lifted her skirts daintily and began to climb the front porch steps. She had escaped, as Ruth said she might, at last.

  Groaning, I tapped the glass, then banged at it with the flat of my hand until they led me away.

  Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane

  -June 10, 1933.

  The Sheila Na Gig

  “Hey! You! Goddamn brute!”

  Tom Smith woke shivering inside the ship’s belly. He’d been dreaming that Pitcher, his fat calico had been sitting on his chest and breathing mice and dust smells into his face, the old tom’s claws kneading the boy’s thin ribs. Now, he sat up dreamily, only half aware that the rough brown hop sack he was using as a blanket was no longer
scratching the tender skin under his throat. The narrow, smelly hold was lit by a rough nub of candle, and what he saw was that his erstwhile bunkmate, Jack Cahill, had one arm cocked back, the second of a pair of heavy cracked brogans in hand and ready to aim.

  He followed Jack’s steady gaze: the filament of a thin translucent whisker peeked from a jagged hole in the planking that was only the size of a six pence.

  “Bastard! Jack shrieked, and hurled the boot at the rat. There was the sharp sound of shoeleather striking wood, followed by a muffled squeal and the sound of scrabbling feet.

  Jack smiled, showing brownish teeth.

  “Sorry for the rah-hoo, laddie, but he was on your chest—large as life. Christ, I hate ’em.”

  Tom nodded, uncertain what to say. Terrible as his life had been back in county Meath, rats were certainly more than he was used to—but then, so was Jack.

  “I always heard rats’ll suck a baby’s breath,” Tom said cautiously.

  “Don’t mind what your old Gran said, lad.” Jack lay back, his spade of a chin turned upward. “Just think: New York the day after next. Europe’s a dead whore, but America’s a virgin twitch,” Jack winked. “An’ they say her very cunt runs with gold.”

  That word, Tom thought, flinching. He made himself push away the mental image of his father’s scrawled writing, the crumpled parchment page spattered with ink and blood. Out loud he said, “My father said I might make a new start.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Jack said, turning on his stomach abruptly and punching up the north end of his rag bundle to make a sort of pillow.

  But of course Jack didn’t really know what he’d been through. The cruel things Granny Rose had done to him, to Delia and Ellen; and if he’d retaliated it wasn’t his fault, Tom thought. He’d been driven to it. In his mind’s eye, he saw Granny’s little paring knife skating toward him, the curved blade glinting. In the semi-dark, he lightly skimmed his fingers over his manhood. It was intact. Relief flooded through him.

  For a brief instant Tom saw the fire—the whitewashed cottage burning with a fierce flame like a cotton ball soaked in oil, his grandmother’s wicked staring eyes draining from the sockets like rotten grapes. He shut this picture out of his mind, too.

  “Half of Ireland must be on this ship,” Jack said.

  It wasn’t anything Tom’s own mother hadn’t said the last ten or more years. He thought of the lean decade on the farm his father had optimistically christened “Pink Cloud.” Forty acres, most of it bog, but the old man been hopeful, hard working back then—or so his Mother said. Optimism my arsehole, his granny Rose taunted Cedric.

  “My Dad always said there’s big money to be made when a country like the U.S. is on the brink of war,” Jack said. “Opportunity and time for any man with gumption to turn his life around.” His hands were locked behind his head, he was gazing at the low ceiling of the hold, his lean body swaying—just perceptibly—with the slow rock of the waves slapping the boat.

  “Mine too.” Why had he said that? Cedric barely knew Ireland was out of Druid times. Didn’t Tom have three dead brothers named Patrick buried in the family plot?

  “I’ll be forty come spring.” Jack sat up, felt in his pack for the gin bottle and uncorked it. He took a swig, and held it toward Tom.

  Tom sipped out of politeness and handed it back. He was aware of the older man’s graying beard stubble, the smell of sweat coming off his body. Part of his fifteen year old mind admired Jack’s spunk; part was terrified. Only the worst failure of a man would have flashed a pitiful pound note or two and bribed the steward—as he himself had done, twelve days earlier—for passage on a ship.

  “You can always remake your life, lad—no matter what it’s been, and that’s God’s own truth,” he said popping the cork back on.

  Tom agreed. But on the whole, he was glad when the older man blew out the light and the hold was plunged into darkness.

  But the dreams, the hideous memories of the last three years took him—a lonely friendless boy—down deeper, anyway.

  ***

  “They made Brigantia a saint.”

  Tom looked up from the bench where he was polishing his brother Bob’s boots. His grandmother had a wild, faraway look in her brown eyes. She was huddled near the fireplace with a bowl of milk and bread in her lap.

  “The stupid Irish, they made Brigantia a saint!” Rose Smith said again.

  Tom knew she might go on with this—or another equally meaningless phrase—for hours. He skinned the bristle brush against the leather instep and gave out a sigh.

  “Tom,” Cedric said. “Show some respect for the aged.” He rustled in the drift of manuscript pages—most of them halved scraps—that covered his desk. “What does it matter if she prattles a bit? She can’t help it.”

  “Right.” He left off shoe blacking and got up. But it did matter, Tom thought, because his father was spouting a lie. Cedric urging tolerance of his grandmother had nothing to do with respect and everything to do with his own motives. Rose was said—not by the family, but by the local farmers and their wives—to be a hag, a witch. Cedric liked to hear her talk because in some way, Tom knew, his father secretly believed she would come out of her mania and empower his failed writing, set right the wreck of his life.

  He’s just waiting for a chair to fly across the room so he can put it in his bloody book. Tom didn’t know if Cedric felt his mother leant atmosphere or just spurred a flagging imagination, and he didn’t care. What he did care about was the way the snarly-haired old woman gave him the flits.

  Tom glanced at her. Her head was canted sideways, her wrinkled mouth, dripping milk. She was staring at him; then her tongue flicked out and she licked the warm milk from the corner of her mouth. She began to chuckle lightly.

  Tom went to the window; he wanted out. His mother, the practical one who scratched a living for them all, was a speck in the distance beyond the bog, off in the north field. He could see the flash of her spade, digging turf. His swarm of cousins, his older brother and his younger sister were doing chores. Auntie May had gone to the cattle market to sell or trade what she could.

  Too ill for work, then too weak to go marketing; Tom heard his mother’s voice in his head and clenched his fist in frustration. He might have gone to the fair himself, but his mother put a stop to it. Last week he’d gotten a nasty kick when he was milking one of the cows. His shoulder had ached, and he begged off chores. His mother had agreed he could rest and he and his cousin, Ellen, had sneaked out to play in the woods whenever they could. Then this morning when he was readying the wagon, his mother had hauled him by the shirt collar back into the house.

  “You can sit by the fire and mend harness, black the family’s boots,” Noreen said. “And the windows need washing-it’s the very thing to take the stiffness out of an aching joint.” These days, it seemed all her high good humor had been sucked up by the endless work of the farm. Her black moods had worsened, too, he thought, since Rose moved in.

  “The pot goddess made humans out of clay.” The old woman shoveled a handful of soggy brown bread in her mouth and held it there a while.

  His father lit a pipe. It began to rain.

  At least he hadn’t already washed the windows, Tom thought.

  “Wash windows,” Rose sang.

  Was she repeating what his mother told him, or saying his own thought out loud? She stared at him with bright bird-y eyes.

  “I’m going to the kitchen,” Tom said.

  “Right, lad.” Half the day was gone, and Cedric was just fitting the nib to his pen.

  Tom took the bootblack kit with him, moving toward the low door that always swung shut unless it was propped with a brick.

  “Ellen’s there. In the kitchen.”

  He turned. He was sure the old woman had said it, but she appeared to be watching the fire. His father was absorbed, absently stroking his silk vest with the flat of his hand.

  “Did you say something?”

  “Hmm? What?�
� Cecil said.

  “Never mind.” Tom said.

  “Get on with the chores. You know better than to disturb my concentration.” The pen scratched across his paper.

  “Ellen,” Rose whispered softly at him. Her lips were twisted in a grin; she twined the two gnarled fingers on her right hand and rocked her bony wrist back and forth, back and forth, signaling Tom.

  Tom found himself watching the slow rhythmic motion as if he were hypnotized.

  “You and Ellen,” she breathed. “You can light fires with the mind.” She tapped her temple, laughing at him soundlessly.

  “Loony,” he hissed back. Then he felt a faint ripple of fear and fled toward the kitchen.

  ***

  He smelled potatoes, carrots and salt pork simmering in the stew pot. The big brown bowls were filled with rising bread dough. Ellen’s sleeves were turned back, and she had a smudge of flour across her forehead where she’d pushed her hair out of her face with the back of her hand. Just now, Tom saw, she was spooning jam into small triangles of dough. It was one of his favorite sweets, but she didn’t always have time to make it for him.

  “Quince?” He put the tip of his finger into the crock.

  “Currant,” she said, rapping his hand lightly with the back of the spoon. “Go on with you, your mother will have my eyes if I don’t get it all done,” Ellen smiled.

  “Let me help, then.”

  “Are you going to cook now,” she raised one blonde brow humorously at him, but went on scraping jelly onto the dough shapes.

  “I can stir—” He pointed at the cookpot.

  “It doesn’t want much turning.”

  “I’ll sweep out for you—”

  “And send the dust into the food,” she laughed. “You sweep at the end of the day.”

  “Well you haven’t got that much to do, or you wouldn’t be making the crescent tarts. Let’s go for a walk or play a game of cards.” Tom pulled a chair over to the long unvarnished table where she was working and sat.

  “Haven’t I? Your mother left a list as long as your arm.” She began pinching the edges of the pastries. “I only did these for you because I felt sorry for you. I know you wanted to go market.”