Nurse Newton leaned over him and examined the dressings on his ear. ‘I’m a nurse, Mr Willy-ams. I’m paid to take care of people, not to make judgments about their mental health. Mind you, I might think differently about you in my spare time.’
Martin winced as she turned his head to one side. ‘Did you ever hear about a little boy called Boofuls?’ he asked her. ‘He was a child star, back in the thirties.’
Nurse Newton stared at him in surprise. ‘Why, what makes you ask that?’
‘I just wanted to know, that’s all.’
‘Well, of
course
I heard about Boofuls. Everybody knows about Boofuls here at the Sisters of Mercy.’
Martin tried to sit up, but Nurse Newton pushed him back down again. ‘You stay put. You’re not well enough to start hopping around.’
‘But what’s so special about the Sisters of Mercy? How come everybody
here
knows about Boofuls?’
Nurse Newton took out his thermometer and frowned at it. ‘There’s a kind of spooky story about him, that’s why. They brought his grandmother here, the evening she killed him.’
‘That’s right. I mean –
I
know that, because I’ve been making a special study of Boofuls. But how come
you
know that, too?’
Nurse Newton smiled. ‘It’s because of the spooky story, that’s why. They tell it to all the nurses and the interns. Usually at the Christmas party, you know, at midnight, when it’s all dark and there’s just candles.’
Martin said, ‘I thought I knew everything about Boofuls that it was possible to know. But I never heard any stories connected with the Sisters of Mercy.’
Nurse Newton lifted her head and half closed her eyes, and said, ‘What was that song? “
Surrr … wannee Song! Suwannee Song! You can
blow
your flute and you can
bang
your drum and you can
march
along!
” That always used to make me cry when I was a child.’
Martin nodded. ‘He was amazing, that little boy.’
‘But spooky,’ Nurse Newton added, lifting one finger.
‘Can you tell me about it?’ Martin asked her.
She winked. ‘You’ve been having nightmares about him. Do you think I should?’
‘Nurse – listen – I’m the world’s expert on Boofuls. If there’s something about Boofuls that I don’t know –!’
Nurse Newton shook the mercury back down her thermometer with three decisive flicks of her wrist. ‘Well …’ she confessed, ‘don’t tell any of the hospital administrators that I told you this. I might get myself into big trouble. The board don’t want the paying patients getting hysterical; and, believe me, if you told this story to some of the banana trucks on this floor, they would. Get hysterical, I mean.’
She jotted a note on Martin’s chart and then sniffed and shook her head. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, that’s what my mamma always used to tell me. Someone who’s dead can’t defend themselves.’
‘Supposing I take you to dinner,’ Martin coaxed her.
Nurse Newton whacked the side of her thigh in hilarity. ‘
You
– take
me
for dinner! With all those bandages on your face? Talk about the Invisible Man meets Winifred Atwell! Besides, I’d
eat
you for dinner!’
‘Supposing I arrange for you to meet Mr T, in person,’ said Martin much more subtly. ‘I write for the
A-Team
. You could meet him in person. I don’t know – lunch, dinner. Maybe a little dancing later.’
Nurse Newton stared at him narrowly. ‘You could do that?’
‘Of course I could do that! I’ve known him for years. Mr T and I, we’re like this!’ and he held up two intertwined fingers.
‘You’re not fooling?’
‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’
‘You shouldn’t say that. Nobody should hope to die. But could you do that? Me and Mr T?’
Martin nodded. ‘You and Mr T. Just say the word.’
Nurse Newton glanced over her shoulder, almost as though she expected the hospital governors to be standing right behind her. ‘Well,’ she said quietly, ‘I wasn’t even born when this happened, don’t you forget, so no smart remarks.’
‘It was 1939,’ said Martin. ‘August 1939.’
Nurse Newton nodded. ‘Some of the older staff can still remember it. Dr Rice remembers it, he was an intern in those days; and Sister Boniface remembers it, too. Like I say, they used to tell us all about it at the Christmas party. I guess it was just a ghost story. But they used to sound so serious, you couldn’t help believing it, you know? And they made us all promise not to say nothing to nobody, never. Maybe they were worried about libel or something.’
Martin said, ‘I don’t think you have to worry about libel. You can’t libel the dead, and Boofuls has been dead for a very long time.’
The nurse shrugged. ‘Hmh, that didn’t seem to make too much difference. His being dead, I mean.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Martin.
‘Oh, come on, now,’ said Nurse Newton. ‘It’s nothing but a story, really. Every hospital has its spooky stories. There’s a lot of stress in hospitals. Lot of
death
, too.’
‘Story or not, I’d like to hear it.’
Nurse Newton went over to the door, listened for a moment, and then closed it tight. She came tippy-toeing back over to the bed. ‘It was just after Boofuls was found dead,’ she whispered. ‘The police had cut his grandmother down – you know she tried to hang herself? – and brought her here. They thought she was dead, and Dr Rice said they should have let her die, because her neck was broken, and her throat was so bruised and swollen that she could barely speak. But she was still alive; and I guess they thought they might have a million-in-one chance of saving her.’
She hesitated and smiled. ‘Boofuls, of course – they took him straight to the mortuary. There was nothing else that anyone could do. Can you imagine trying to sew him all back together? Dr Rice said he was chopped up into two hundred and eleven separate pieces. The coroner had to count them all; and there were still bits of him they couldn’t even find. Dr Rice said that it was a joke for months in the hospital commissary – anytime somebody found a bone in their pork chop, they’d pick it up on the end of their fork and say, “Hello, piece number two hundred and twelve!” Well, you know what doctors are. Doctors have the sickest sense of humor of anybody.’
‘Boofuls’ grandmother didn’t say anything before she died?’ asked Martin. ‘I mean – the police say that she didn’t, but maybe one of the nurses heard her.’
Nurse Newton shook her head. ‘She died pretty soon after they brought her into the hospital; that’s what Sister Boniface said, and she was sitting beside her when she died. I don’t think she said anything at all, except she called out a couple of times for Boofuls.’
‘So what’s this spooky story?’ asked Martin.
‘Listen, mister – three nurses and two doctors all saw Boofuls walking around the hospital that night calling for his grandma. “
Grandma! Grandma! Where are you?
”’
‘What do you mean –
after
he was supposed to be dead? After he was chopped up into two hundred eleven pieces?’
Nurse Newton nodded. ‘That’s what’s so spooky. Isn’t that spooky?’
Martin considered it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s spooky. But didn’t any of them report it? Didn’t they tell the newspapers, or the police, or the hospital authorities?’
‘Would you?’ asked Nurse Newton.
Martin patted his bandages. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I guess not.’
Nurse Newton leaned forward and plumped up Martin’s pillows. ‘Of course, what was spookiest of all was that every time one of the nurses or the doctors caught sight of him, they’d go after him – you know, imagining that he was a real boy – but every time they got to where he was at, they realized that he wasn’t there at all. What they could see was just a reflection in one of the mirrors at the end of the corridors.’
This time, Martin sat bolt upright. ‘They saw Boofuls in the
mirrors
?’
‘Hey, now, calm down,’ Nurse Newton urged him. ‘You don’t want to go getting yourself so waxed up. You’ll split your stitches.’
‘They saw Boofuls in the mirrors – nowhere else?’
‘Well, that’s right, that’s what Dr Rice says; and he was one of the doctors who saw it. But you’re not supposed to know about this. It’s just one of those little bits of hospital history, you know? Like, Ripley’s Believe It or Not.’
Martin swung his legs out of bed. ‘I have to talk to this Dr Rice. Can you find him for me?’
‘Come on, honky, this is the middle of the night. Dr Rice is at home, getting his ugly-sleep. And you need yours, too. Now, you just get yourself back in that bed before I do you a physical injury they’ll
never
be able to stitch together.’
Martin’s heart was racing. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’ll get back into bed on one condition – that as soon as Dr Rice gets here in the morning, he comes in to see me. Now, is that a promise?’
‘Mr Willy-ams, I can’t promise anything like that.’
‘Then so help me God, I’ll scream. I’ll scream so loud that the whole goddamned hospital will wake up.’
‘My goodness, Felicity-Ann!’ said Nurse Newton. ‘Aren’t you the fierce person? But all right, I’ll go right down to Dr Rice’s office now, and I’ll leave him a message. He doesn’t come in till eleven o’clock, he only does consultancy these days. But I’ll do my best to get him up here right away.’
‘Nurse Newton, you’re an angel.’
Nurse Newton forced him back onto the pillow. ‘I am not an angel, Mr Willy-ams. I am a
nurse
.’
Martin dozed for the rest of the night. His nightmares rushed through his head like a carousel that had broken away from its moorings; dark and urgent, wild and clamorous, the carnival rides of the mind.
He dreamed that he was running down a long sliding corridor; and at the very end of the corridor stood Boofuls, smiling and innocent. As he approached, however, Boofuls’ head began to revolve on his neck, slowly at first, with a low grating noise, then faster and faster, until it began to spray out blood. A fine drizzle of gore.
Martin shouted out, and woke up; or thought he had woken up. He sat up in bed, listening. He could hear someone whispering outside the door of his hospital room. ‘
Pickle-di-pickle-di-pickle-di-pickle
.’
He stayed where he was, listening, sweating. Then he climbed out of bed and glided toward the door with his hand outstretched. ‘
Pickle-nearest-the-wind
,’ giggled the voice outside in the corridor.
Slowly, fearfully, he turned the handle and opened the door. There was nobody there; only the black, echoing corridor, only the distant whooping of sirens. Tragedy never sleeps, knives never sleep. ‘
Martin
,’ whispered the tiny wee voice. ‘
Come on, Martin, don’t be afraid. Why are you afraid, Martin?
’
He stepped out into the corridor. At the very far end, he saw Boofuls. Small and smiling, sweet as candy, sugar-dandy, but in some peculiar way more dwarflike and crunched up than he had appeared in the mirror in Martin’s sitting room. Boofuls looked white; so white that his face could have been poured out of alabaster.
‘
Are you afraid, Martin?
’ he whispered. His voice and his lips didn’t seem to synchronize, like a badly dubbed film. He stretched out his arms, a young messiah. ‘
You don’t have to be afraid of anything
.’
It was then that Martin realized that Boofuls wasn’t standing on the floor at all, but was suspended halfway between the floor and the ceiling. Martin’s hair prickled in fear, but something compelled him to start running toward Boofuls, to catch him, to prove at last that he was nothing more than a memory.
Boofuls laughed as Martin waded toward him through the treacle of his nightmare. A sweet, high laugh that echoed and reechoed until it sounded like thousands of pairs of clashing scissors. Martin reached the end of the corridor at last, and reached out to Boofuls to snatch him down from his invisible crucifix. But – with a cold and bruising collision – he came up against a sheet of frigid plate glass. Boofuls laughed at him. He was nothing more than an image in a mirror – a reflection of a boy who was long dead.
Martin struck out wildly, shouting and kicking and thrashing his arms. ‘Boofuls! Boofuls! For God’s sake, Boofuls!’
Dr Ewart Rice poured himself another cup of lemon tea. The late morning sunshine played softly through the rising steam and across the olive-green leather of his desk. There was such quiet in his office, and such tranquillity in his manner, that Martin felt almost as if he had found a sanctuary, and this was its priest.
‘You’re sure you won’t have another cup?’ Dr Rice asked him. He was a thin, drawn man, with a beak of a nose and furiously tangled white eyebrows. He wore a brown tweed suit, and a very clean soft shirt in tattersall check. There was the faintest lilt of Scottishness in his accent; a great precision in the way he pronounced his words.
‘We tell the story for amusement, of course,’ he explained, tapping his spoon on the side of his teacup. ‘But I suppose, in a way, we also tell it as a ritual of faith. Because, it
did
happen, you know. We
did
see Boofuls, all five of us. We all decided that it would be worse than useless to tell the newspapers or the police. At the very least, we would have been laughed at. At the very worst, we might have ruined our careers. But it was real enough, don’t you know, the first and last time that any of us had seen what you might describe as a ghost, and that was why we embroidered it into a hospital legend.’