Fire Spirit (15 page)

After a few minutes, the door to Doctor Feldstein's consulting room opened and Doctor Beech came in. She was mid-thirties, with a mass of brunette curls, and a heart-shaped face. She was wearing a tight black skirt and a gray silk blouse that was open at least two more buttons than Ruth would have worn it, but unlike Ruth she had very small breasts and she wasn't even wearing a bra.

‘Zelda, this is Amelia. You remember we were talking about the bright young lady with WS? This is her, and this is her mother, Ruth.'

‘Hey, I'm
so
pleased to know you,' said Doctor Beech. ‘You work for the Fire Department, don't you, Ruth? I was reading about you in the
Trib
the other day. Such a fascinating job that must be.'

‘Very dull, most of the time,' Ruth told her. ‘Most of the time it's insurance fraud, especially these days. Bankrupt restaurateurs leaving the gas on, or realtors dropping lighted cigarettes into wastebaskets.'

‘Our local dry-cleaner burned out last week,' said Doctor Beech. ‘Sparkleen, on Home Avenue? I lost two dresses and my favorite white sweater. You didn't investigate that one, did you?'

‘I shouldn't tell you this, but the Sparkleen fire was arson,' Ruth told her. ‘The owner splashed perc around, but perc vapors never ignite spontaneously, so I knew at once that it was deliberate.'

‘In that case, I shall definitely sue,' Doctor Beech smiled. ‘And you can be my expert witness.'

Doctor Feldstein said, ‘Amelia here has been having some worries, haven't you, Amelia?'

‘OK,' said Doctor Beech. ‘Why don't you sit down and tell me about them? You don't mind your mom being here, do you, or Doctor Feldstein?'

Amelia shook her head. She sat on the tapestry couch beside the window, holding an embroidered cushion on her lap, and Doctor Beech sat down next to her.

Doctor Beech said, ‘So . . . what have you been worried about, Amelia?'

Amelia hesitated for a moment, and then she said, very quietly, ‘People coming through.'

‘I see. What people?'

‘They come from downstairs. They didn't realize before now that they could come back through, but now they do.'

‘When you say “downstairs”, is that downstairs at your house?'

‘No.' Amelia thought for a moment, and then she said, ‘Actually, it's more like
underneath
than downstairs.'

‘Underneath where? Underneath
here
? Underneath this floor?'

‘Underneath everywhere. They had to go there but now they've found a way to come back up.'

‘Do you know who they are? Have you seen them?'

‘I've seen one of them. He's a boy. He was standing outside our house yesterday and the day before and he wears a black T-shirt and red jeans and he's creepy. I call him the Creepy Kid because he's so creepy.'

‘I've seen him too,' Ruth put in. ‘I saw him on Tuesday on South McCann Street, when I was attending that fire there, and I saw him on both occasions outside of our house. He wasn't doing anything. He was just standing there, staring.'

‘So he's a real kid, this Creepy Kid?'

‘Yes,' said Ruth. ‘Except that each time I tried to confront him to ask him what he was doing there, he vanished. Like, totally without trace. I even took a photograph of him on South McCann Street – at least I
thought
I took a photograph of him – but he didn't appear in it.'

Doctor Beech turned back to Amelia. ‘So the Creepy Kid is the only one of these people you've actually seen? You haven't seen any of the others?'

Amelia shook her head again.

‘OK . . . but if you haven't seen them, how do you know for sure that they're there?'

‘Because I
know
they are. Because I can feel them, and I can
hear
them.'

‘What kind of feeling do they give you? Can you describe it?'

Amelia closed her eyes for a moment. Then she slowly rubbed her upper arms, and said, ‘Some of them are rough.'

‘I see. What do you mean by rough? They act rough?'

‘No, not really. They push each other. They're all trying to get through, like when people go to a ball game and they're all trying to get to the best seats first. But their
skin
is rough. It's all dry and flaky.'

‘Can you think why that is? Do they have some kind of skin disease?'

‘I don't think so. I don't know. I can just feel it.'

Doctor Beech sat and looked at Amelia for a few moments, with a faint frown on her face, thinking. Then she said, ‘You told me that only some of them are rough. Are there any others who aren't rough?'

Amelia nodded. ‘Lots of them. They're more like dust than people. And they whisper.
Whisper-whisper-whisper.
It's like they're all whispering together. It's like sand, when the wind blows it.'

‘Like sand, when the wind blows it,' Doctor Beech repeated, as if she were trying to understand what Amelia meant. Then, ‘How long would you say you've been having these feelings?'

‘Not very long. Only since Tuesday. Mom had to go to that fire on South McCann Street, and when Uncle Jack called her I just felt like she shouldn't go. I mean I really,
really
felt like she shouldn't go.'

‘Why did you feel like that? Can you explain it?'

‘Because they'd find out who she was, and I didn't want them to.'

‘You thought they might be some kind of threat?'

‘I don't know. Yes. They scare me. I don't know what they're trying to do, but I know that it's something terrible.'

‘And since Tuesday? How many times have you had the feelings since then?'

‘Two or three times a day. More. But I always know in the back of my mind that they're coming, all the time.'

Doctor Beech took hold of Amelia's hands and gave her a reassuring smile. ‘I think we can find a way to help you,' she said. Then she turned to Ruth. ‘You may not agree to this, and if you have any qualms about it at all, please say so. But I met a young man at a psychiatric seminar in Chicago last fall, and he had experienced some strikingly similar feelings to your Amelia. “Men and women are coming through from underneath,” that's what he said.'

‘Really? He used those exact words?'

Doctor Beech nodded. ‘Not only that, but he spoke of a boy who kept watching his house. He seemed very rational, this young man – very sincere – but I'm afraid to say that I dismissed him as some kind of oddball at the time. You get a whole lot of
very
strange people at those seminars, especially at the fringe meetings. People who believe that plants have a consciousness, people who think that Down's Syndrome sufferers can communicate with aliens. But now I've talked to Amelia . . . well, unless you're dead set against it, I really would like to get in touch with this young man and see if he can help her to understand exactly
why
she's experiencing this particular anxiety.'

Ruth said, ‘I'm not at all sure. I mean, when you say young, how old is he? And what exactly did he tell you about this “coming through from underneath” thing? I don't want to make Ammy's condition any worse. Does he think that –
what
? – it's all some kind of delusion? Or does he believe that it's real?'

Doctor Beech shrugged. ‘To tell you the truth, I only spoke to him for five minutes. Like I say, I thought at first that he was just another oddball. But he said that he'd written a book about it. I can't remember what the title was, The Nine Circles of Something. Wait just a moment. I have his name and his number in my diary.'

While Doctor Beech went back to her office, Ruth looked across at Doctor Feldstein. ‘What do
you
think, Doctor?' she asked him. ‘I don't want anybody telling Ammy that these people are all real, if they're not. She has enough problems already, doesn't she?'

Doctor Feldstein held up both hands. ‘Ruth – I totally understand your concern. But Zelda Beech is a highly responsible psychiatrist. She would never do anything that put any of her patients under unnecessary stress, or jeopardize their mental stability. Besides, I wouldn't let her upset Amelia, you know that. Amelia's my special girl, aren't you, Amelia?'

‘But if this man is having the same kind of delusions—'

‘We don't know for sure that they
are
delusions, do we? You just said that you saw at least one of them for yourself. What did Amelia call him? The Creepy Kid. Maybe this fellow can shed some light on whatever it is that's making Amelia feel so anxious. I don't see that there's any harm in your getting together and comparing symptoms. And let's face it – Amelia may be disadvantaged in many ways, but she's not easily fooled, is she? People who are congenitally incapable of telling lies always know when other people are speaking with forked tongues.'

Doctor Beech came back with her diary. ‘Here it is: Martin Watchman, six-six-seven-four West Byron Street, Chicago. And his telephone number, too.'

Ruth went over and sat on the couch next to Amelia. ‘I think this is your choice, Amelia. Do you want to meet a man who thinks that people are coming through from underneath, just like you do?'

Doctor Beech said, ‘You don't have to, Amelia. I'm not putting any pressure on you. But I do think that if you two meet, and talk over your anxieties, it might enable me to see your condition from another point of view. Give it another dimension, so to speak, like a CT scan.'

Amelia thought for a long while, and then she said, ‘Does Martin Watchman have William's?'

‘No, he doesn't.'

‘He won't think I'm strange, will he?'

‘Of course not, because you're not strange. You're just distinctive.'

Amelia looked down at the cushion on her lap. It was embroidered with the words
Always Be True
. Outside, there was another rumble of thunder, closer this time, and the rain suddenly began to beat against the consulting-room window like a plague of locusts.

It was raining harder in Bon Air Park, too, and because of that, the park was deserted. No dog-walkers, no children playing on the swing-sets, no police patrolmen, no park attendants. Only an old black Buick Riviera with a sagging suspension, and the Spirit of Kokomo senior citizens' bus, hidden amongst the trees.

The laughing man walked slowly up the aisle of the bus, and tossed a filthy hospital gown at each passenger.

‘You want to know where these came from?' he asked them. ‘Saint Bartholomew's, Barrettstown, where they send dribbling, babbling, incontinent geriatrics to spend their last miserable days, not knowing whether it's night or day, not recognizing any of their loved ones, not even knowing who
they
are, themselves.'

He pushed his mask into Mrs Tiplady's face, and said, ‘Do you remember who
you
are, old lady? Or has it all melted away?'

Mrs Tiplady lifted up her blood-caked face in defiance. ‘You go screw yourself, buster. I know who
I
am. How about you? At least I'm not so chickenshit that I have to hide my identity behind some stupid carnival mask.'

The laughing man hesitated for almost a quarter of a minute, breathing noisily in and out behind his mask. Then he punched Mrs Tiplady in the face again, and fresh blood burst out of her nostrils.

The laughing man looked at each of the bus passengers in turn.

‘Anyone else want to get uppity? I truly don't mind. I enjoy it.'

He waited, and when nobody spoke up he said, ‘These gowns we've just handed out to you, these are what you wear when you lose the last vestige of being human. These are what you wear when your brain has left the building, and all that's left is a zombie. Well, you know what happens in those zombie movies, don't you? They tear each other to pieces. That's what they do. They tear each other to pieces with their bare hands.'

He paced up and down the aisle with a jumpy, excited strut. He drummed black leather fingers on the luggage rack rail, and every now and then he let out a little ‘yip, wow!'

Each time he passed, the elderly passengers turned fearfully away, and Mr Carradine even raised his scarf up over his face and put his eyeglasses on top of it, so that he resembled the invisible man.

‘Now then,' said the laughing man, lifting his index fingers and spinning around on his heels, as if he were line-dancing. ‘What you have to do now is take off all of your clothes and put on these gowns. You want to look authentically doolally, don't you?'

Miss Elwood said, ‘You're asking us to
undress
? You mean here, now, in this bus?'

‘You got it, ma'am. And as quick as you like.'

‘I will not!' Miss Elwood protested. ‘I am seventy-three years old and I have never undressed in public, ever!'

‘In that case, you shriveled old crone, you have probably been doing the public a very great favor for all of these years,' said the laughing man, leaning over her so that his white papier mâché nose was almost touching hers. ‘But today you're going to do what I tell you to do, and that means get bare-ass naked, and it means here, and now, and it means quick.'

‘I would rather
die
!' Miss Elwood spat at him.

‘You would? Okaly-doky-do, your choice.'

With that, he gripped her head and twisted it sharply to the right, so that her neck snapped. He did it with no hesitation whatsoever, so that although Miss Elwood's fellow passengers all heard the distinctive crackle of her upper vertebrae being broken apart, only Mr Kaminsky saw what happened, because he was sitting right behind her. The rest of them didn't realize that she had been killed until her head dropped sideways on to her shoulder and she toppled on to the floor, all arms and legs, like a marionette with the strings cut. There were gasps and cries of ‘Alice!
No
!'