Authors: John Norman
I managed to seize Giacomo and wrest the dagger from him.
“What is going on!” cried Dr. Hill.
Doctor Roberts helped me to thrust the tearful, hysterical Giacomo to the side of the room, back, away from his nephew.
I held the flat of the dagger blade down with my foot, and, with my hand, pulling upward, snapped the metal from the handle.
“Uncle, uncle!” cried Brunetto, “what is happening?” He held out his hands wildly, as though dazzled, and suddenly hurled into a new dimension of experience. “Is this seeing?” he cried. “It is so strange!” Nurse Henry rushed to him and put her arms about him. He seemed, instantly, to know her, and to welcome her sheltering presence. “Margaret, Margaret!” he whispered.
Then Brunetto's voice changed again, and it seemed eerie, flat, cold, malevolent. “I will have more light,” he said. He thrust Miss Henry to the side and she fell bewildered, stumbling, against the side of the wall. He went to the window, seized the cords and drew up the blinds, and the light of the bright September afternoon flooded the room.
After the darkness I think that all of us had to shield our eyes briefly from its intensity.
We were aware of Brunetto at the window, a dark figure silhouetted in the frame, against the light, turning about, facing us.
He seemed taller, somehow.
“Do not meet his eyes!” cried Giacomo.
“Nonsense!” cried Dr. Hill, angrily.
Giacomo was fumbling in his pocket and he drew forth, on a leather string, an amulet, which he held before him. It was the first such amulet I had seen, for at that time I had not inquired into certain arcane, troubling matters.
As Giacomo was disarmed, and an old man, we did not impede his progress toward his nephew.
He stood before the figure at the window holding the amulet up before him.
The figure at the window regarded it, imperturbably.
“Where is Brunetto?” said Giacomo.
“Do not fear,” said the figure. “He is safe.”
“The amulet! The amulet!” said Giacomo, holding it up before the patient.
It seemed then that Brunetto smiled, a small, pitying smile. “Oh, yes,” he said, “magic, wonderful, defensive magic! Oh, fear, fear! What quaint beliefs you have. Such things are inefficacious, of course, though we find it a sensible precaution to act as though they were, to withdraw from them, and such. That leads you to believe that you can protect yourselves. That belief is very useful for us. Otherwise you might hunt us down with method and without mercy. They make our lives easier. Too, we welcome that you shun us, for that protects those of whom we make use. By all means, keep your distance. Give us our freedom, dear Giacomo, sweet, deluded fool, give us our solitude, our place, our territory.”
“Brunetto, Brunetto!” wept Giacomo, calling out to his nephew.
I had with me a pair of dark glasses. Usually I used them, when needed, for driving, and kept them in the glove compartment of the car, but this morning, given the brightness of the day, and the walk from the garage to the hospital, I had them with me. As the light in the room seemed unnaturally bright, it being a cloudless, intensely sunny day outside, and the afternoon light was streaming in mercilessly through the wide, double window, I retrieved the glasses from their case, in my inside, left jacket pocket, and put them on. This was, you understand, in order to be more comfortable in the bright room, but I suspect, on some level, my action was motivated less by a rational concern to reduce glare, particularly under the circumstances, than to protect myself from something fearful, the nature of which I did not understand, but had begun to suspect. It was perhaps a matter of ancient instinct, insight or intuition. Or perhaps it was in response to Giacomo's plea not to look into the eyes of Brunetto. What might lie in such eyes? How foolish I felt, but this emotion did not long linger.
“Brunetto,” said Dr. Roberts, obviously upset himself, “stop this foolishness! You are obviously the victim of some sort of superstitious syndrome, some sort of temporary disassociation. Come down to the office. I'll lead you there. I'll help you. You can use some sedation. You can rest for a while. Later, we can conduct some tests. Afterwards, with a little friendly talking to, about this and that, we'll all be the same again.”
Dr. Hill stepped back, and to the side. What was going on was clearly not within the area of his expertise.
Giacomo had fallen back and was leaning against a wall, his head in his hands. The leather string of the amulet was still wrapped about this fist, the amulet dangling from it.
“Brunetto,” whispered Miss Henry, frightened, pleadingly. She held her left wrist, which had probably been bruised when she had fallen against the wall.
“Who are you?” asked the patient.
“Don't you know me!” she cried.
“I am Dr. Roberts,” said my colleague.
“Yes,” said the patient. “I know your voice. You are he who caused me great pain. Because of you I lived twice through the burning of my eyes.”
He then seized my colleague by the shoulders in what seemed an unbreakable grip. It was almost as though Roberts had been rendered unspeakably helpless, hypnotically paralyzed.
“Do not meet his eyes!” cried Giacomo.
Dr. Roberts screamed, a horrifying, wailing noise, and, released, reeled backward, holding his hands over his eyes.
“Stop whatever you are doing!” I cried.
Brunetto suddenly turned toward the flowers. He put out his hands, unsteadily. “Flowers!” he cried. “Music, there! So beautiful!”
I hurried to Dr. Roberts and tore his hands away from his face. Then I released his hands. Where his eyes had been there were now only two black, sightless, steaming holes.
I looked up to see the patient, with a movement of his right hand, brush the vase of blue flowers from the stand, and it shattered on the tiled floor, a welter of petals, stalks, water, and broken glass.
Miss Henry was on her knees, in the water, glass and flowers, weeping.
He then went and stood before Dr. Hill.
“Mr. Silone,” said Dr. Hill.
“I will let you live,” said he, “for it is you who released me.”
“Brunetto!” gasped Dr. Hill, shaken.
“But you will live only as I please,” he said.
“You're mad!” cried Dr. Hill. “What have you done to Dr. Roberts!”
“We are solitary, my kind,” said the figure. “Each is an enemy to the other. We are territorial, save in the moment of mating. I will not risk my being in contest with my brethren. You will not release another. Look into my eyes!”
“Don't” I screamed.
But I fear it was too late, as Dr. Hill seemed to collapse at the feet of the figure who loomed over him. Dr. Hill clutched tiny, shriveled fingers to his heart, and stared glassily at the floor, and blood ran from his nose and mouth.
“The knife! The knife!” wept Giacomo.
I broke it,” I said. “It's useless!”
I felt my shoulders seized, and I was turned to face Brunetto. I sensed something, an emanation, or radiation, or vapor, or something that was like such things, and I tried ineffectually to extricate myself from that grip.
I felt myself shaken and I clenched my eyes closed, and then I was thrown to the floor, stunned.
“It is only psychological suggestion,” I told myself as I lay on the floor. “It is to be resisted.”
“Brunetto, no!” cried Giacomo.
I saw the white, starched nurse's cap crumpled at the side of the bed.
The door to the hospital room closed.
Miss Henry lay on her belly amidst the glass and flowers. In one hand, bleeding from a cut, she clutched a bloom. “I love him,” she wept.
Dr. Roberts was moaning, and Dr. Hill lay on the floor, bleeding.
I had heard a cry outside the door, for the commotion within the room must have attracted attention. I struggled to my feet, but did not press the bulb to signal the nurse's station. I feared bringing innocent people into the ambit of whatever force had within these antiseptic precincts been inadvertently unleashed, that force which had herein wreaked such havoc.
I found my dark glasses, which had been flung from my face, as I had been shaken in the hands of the patient. The lenses were smoked, and cracked, the temples half melted.
I looked to where Miss Henry lay. Her uniform was wet and blackened, and torn. One shoe was gone. Apparently, as her hair was terribly disarranged, and the barrette gone, she had been controlled by means of it, dragged to the side of the bed, and there put to the floor. He had probably there lifted her to her hands and knees, and held her in place, helplessly to him, by the waist, her arms thusly unable to fend him away. She was now on her stomach, trembling. She pressed her lips, the lipstick smeared about the left side of her face, to the grasped blossom, a rose, and kissed it. “I love him,” she wept. “I love him!”
“Uncle! Uncle!” I heard, from outside the room, a weird, piteous cry.
“It is Brunetto!” cried Giacomo. He rose unsteadily to his feet, and staggered toward the door.
“Beware!” I cried.
“No, no!” he said. “It is Brunetto, Brunetto!”
I rose to my feet, half falling. I could not let Giacomo face whatever terrors might lie outside in the hall.
I opened the door, and outside, in a strangely contorted position, lay an orderly. He had doubtless come toward the room to investigate, to help. Nurses, doctors, and even some patients, were in the hall, but muchly aligned along its sides, clearing a path for Brunetto and Giacomo. The elder Silone was leading Brunetto down the hall, away. Their passage was not contested.
“Wait!” I called.
But Brunetto, guided by his uncle, had disappeared through an exit, one leading to the stairwell.
I sank down for a moment in the hall. I was trembling, gasping. It seemed I could not move. One of the young residents now hurried to the orderly. He removed his stethoscope from the man's chest. “He's dead,” he said.
I held to the wall and stumbled after Brunetto and Giacomo. I was sure that whatever madness had seized the young man must now be passed. I made my way as best I could, drunkenly, to the exit through which they had left the corridor.
I looked upward.
In a moment I had come to the roof. I pressed aside the heavy metal door, and felt the wind whipping across the roof, and saw the skyline in the distance, the river, the marshes, the harbor.
“Stop!” I cried to Brunetto.
Giacomo, tears in his eyes, looking toward his nephew, held my arm. “No,” he said. “No, doctor, no.”
Brunetto stood some yards away, at the edge of the roof. I feared if I approached him more closely, he might fall.
“It is best,” whispered Giacomo, against the fresh September wind moving across the roof. “It is his wish.”
“Brunetto!” I called.
“He needed help to get to the roof,” said Giacomo. “He has not yet learned to see.”
Brunetto stood at the edge of the roof, looking out over the city. We do not know how much he saw, or what he understood of what he saw. But he must have sensed that there was spread before him a vast and wonderful world. I should like to think he felt that, that he knew that.
Suddenly Brunetto seemed to struggle at the edge of the roof. He twisted, and was half bent over, as though in pain. “You will not kill me!” we heard. “You cannot kill me!”
“Do not interfere!” said Giacomo.
Then he cried to his nephew. “You are strong! Your father was strong! You can kill it! Kill it!”
“No!” we heard, an angry, protesting cry.
“Margaret! Margaret!” cried Brunetto.
And then as I cried out in dismay, he leapt from the roof.
I thought I heard, in his descent, a long, drawn out, wild, protesting, trailing cry, “No!”
“It is over,” said Giacomo, weeping.
We went to the edge of the roof and could make out the body, far below. There was already a small crowd gathered.
How small everything looked from that height.
Without speaking I left the roof, to go below, to assist as I could, if need be. Giacomo followed.
In a few minutes I knelt beside the body.
A crowd had gathered by now.
Nothing, it seemed, could have survived that fall. There was little doubt that Brunetto was dead. Every bone in his body must have been broken, and some of them, ribs, and a femur, protruded from the body. The head was crushed. The sidewalk and body were bloody.
Brunetto was dead.
I wondered if whatever had been within him, or had come and gone within him, was dead.
“You cannot kill me,” it had said.
“Back, back, boy!” cried a man, trying to restrain a large, stocky Rottweiler on its leash. It was a large, dark, spotted, ugly brute.
Its tongue was lolling.
“Disgusting!” said a woman.
“He won't hurt anything!” said the fellow. “He won't bite. He is quite tame!”
The dog, of course, carries in its heritage the legend of the pack, the memory of the wolf, the feral response to blood.
“Get it away!” I said.
But the dog had turned about and pulled free of the collar and rushed on the bloody body. It was snarling, and biting, and lapping at the blood. It would have been dangerous to attempt to restrain it, without the leash or collar.
“Come, boy!” said its owner, and took it about the shoulders, to pull it from the body, but, to his horror, the beast spun about and tore at his throat, leaving a terrifying gash at the side of the neck, and the fellow reeled backward, blood streaming between his fingers. If those fangs had been a hand's breadth more centered the jugular would have been torn open. In that moment, doubtless from the mauling of the body, the eyes opened, and I thought I saw a tiny, malevolent smile transfuse the features of that battered, torn, empty wreck that had once been the house of a human being.
It seemed to me I heard, in a soft whisper, “You cannot kill me.”