Dead Willow (17 page)

Davis held the syringe gingerly between a thumb and forefinger and tried to contemplate the long, dark tunnel leading down into oblivion.

He could not see it without a magnifying glass, but he knew that it was there. How something as slender as a human hair could have a perfect hole running through it was more than he could wrap his nineteenth century brain around, but that did not stop him from piercing the stopper of the small glass vial and drawing clear liquid into its narrow plastic cylinder.

It seemed like only yesterday when he would inject them with morphine by ramming a needle as big as a plumber’s pipe into their arms. Now it was ketamine, and they barely felt the prick before they drifted away in a euphoric haze. After all, there was no need to be barbaric about this.

The years had marched on and so had the technology. Davis had to scramble to keep up. He had been born in the days of the industrial, he had lived through the age of the analog, and now he was  swimming in the deep of the digital.

Most of the time, it felt like he was just treading water.

Eunice was wrong; he had not adjusted effortlessly. It had been a struggle ever since he had stepped out of the soil. He would often retreat to the familiar feel of an axe handle in his hands as he chopped logs for a fire, or the aroma of tobacco smoke wafting from a clay pipe in order to feel comfortable in his own skin. These were the few touchstones he was allowed these days.

He was mindful of the tiny marks along the side of the syringe. 50 ml. He knew not to introduce more than that into the soil; that much could be absorbed without damage. He placed the cap over the needle and laid the syringe down carefully.

Davis ran the tips of his fingers over the slick, glossy surface of the infirmary’s counter. The feeling was alien to him. This was not marble; it was not glass. It had no substance that he could identify, and the world was covered in it. Machines mixed wood chips and resin and squirted out a cabinet or a table top. Slap on a shiny veneer and no one was the wiser.

The doctor had insisted on the counter tops. She had explained that it would be easier to keep clean and would present a more ‘professional atmosphere’ to her patients. He often thought that the doctor had adapted to this age a bit too easily.

Perhaps the next one would be more inclined to reminisce.

Davis opened one of the artificial cabinets and reached his hand into the back. Out came a tall bottle of tempting liquid. Every Paladin knew that Doctor Crispin kept a bottle of liquor in the infirmary for special occasions, like days when the sun rose in the east and set in the west. Colonel Davis was responsible for his clan, and he turned a blind eye to this minor indiscretion as long as the cardinal rule was observed:

One never went into the soil intoxicated.

There were always a few every decade or so who would slip passed the Paladin with a pint in their breeches, convinced that a little libation would intensify the experience.

Aidan
Tibbs had been the first to be ejected from the soil. The moment that first drop of moonshine had seeped down into the ground, Aidan had become a projectile headed out of the cemetery. He might have broken his neck, had the spikes on top of the tall iron fence not broken his fall.

His body had been left impaled for three days as an admonition against the evils of drink.

Seth Hardin was the last to be spewed out of
Weeping Gardens
for dribbling
Southern Comfort
down his chin during the joining of the summer solstice. There were only a few dozen gravestones in the cemetery back then, but Seth’s head had managed to find one on his way down. His brains had leaked out and had been gobbled up by the soil. It was Adele Perkins’ headstone. People never looked at her quite the same from then on. Willow Tree was superstitious like that.

The soil was particular about what it ingested, and it was to the benefit of everyone in Willow Tree not to upset its stomach.

Davis turned the bottle in his rough hands, imagining the smooth burn on the way down, and the spreading warmth in his gut. Then, he tugged up on his sleeve and rubbed a hand along the coarse veins in his wrist. The skin was dry and ashy. The scales would come soon. A few days. He placed the bottle back on the shelf and closed the cabinet.

“Don’t abstain on my account,” croaked a woman’s voice.

Colonel Davis looked around at Doctor Crispin coming out of the shadows and he let the cabinet door click into place. So cat-like for one so close to death, he thought.

“Not my time,” he replied solemnly.

The Doctor gazed at the syringe setting on the counter next to the vial of ketamine.

“Is it
my
time?” she asked, swaying unsteadily.

Davis took the syringe and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He then returned the vial to its drawer, turned the key and put the key in his waistcoat.

“From the looks of you, I would say any moment now.”

She seemed to take this in stride. “Then, I suppose all your troubles will be over.”

Davis smile sardonically as he moved around to the front of the counter.

“You think too highly of yourself, Miss Crispin. Trouble follows me like the plagues of Egypt.”

Doctor Crispin shuffled into the light and pulled back the hood of her cape.

“And, what plague is this?”

She was nearly unrecognizable at this point. The hard, scaly flesh covering her face was cracked, oozing blood and yellow fluid that dripped down and stained her frilly tan blouse. Her eyes were covered with cataracts, and he was amazed that she had made it to her office. She cradled her hands  in front of her, and Davis thought it odd that she was not wearing gloves. He doubted her stiffened fingers could bend easily. Perhaps it was too painful. Out of respect, he averted his gaze.

“This is a plague of your own making.”

“I did not ban myself from the soil!” she snapped, her voice breaking. Trembling, she advanced on Davis. “At first, I assumed it was her! But, then I remembered, she does not command the Paladin, does she?”

Davis met her accusing glare head on. “No, she does not.”

“What gives you the right to decide my fate?”

The Colonel took a threatening step forward.

“My love for this town gives me the right!” he boomed, setting the Doctor back on her heels.

Her eyes grew wide. “Do you think I love this town any less than you?” she rasped.

“I think your love for this town is destructive.”

Davis could tell he had pierced her heart, but he could not feel for her now. It was too late for that. He could see that she was befuddled, either by his words or by the blood poison that must certainly be in her brain by now. Davis inched forward.

“What did you think would happen when your reporter exposed our family,
your
family as the freaks we would be to them? Did you really believe that you would fit in amongst them? Would they welcome you into their polite society after you happily showed them your arms and your legs?”

Doctor Crispin gazed upon her wretched skin, but Davis doubted she could see anymore. The red behind her milky eyes was a sign that the poison was causing her brain to bleed.

“Your desire to know the truth of the tree will lead to our destruction. You think yourself a scientist, but science has no place in Willow Tree. Science would poke us with needles and probe us with microscopes, and for what? So that this depraved world of seven billion could live forever? Would that be your legacy, Doctor?”

She was obviously struggling to form her thoughts. Her foaming lips quivered with incoherent sounds. Her hands fumbled, knotting the fingers together. She stepped toward Davis, but her ankle twisted and she went down, catching herself on the back of a chair. Davis reached out and helped her to sit. Whatever was going to take place would happen here in this wooden seat in her own infirmary. There was a certain … equilibrium at work here, he thought. He stood behind her and laid his hands gently on her frail shoulders.

Doctor Crispin took a deep, ragged breath and forced the words out.

“I … want … understand.” Her words were the sounds of the fluid in her lungs.

“You will,” he assured her.

He turned her head around until the crunch of bone
echoed in the room.

Davis could hear the stirring movement of a waltz from the antique phonograph echoing down the halls of
Justice Mansion
. The council had presented Eunice with the machine on the twenty-five year anniversary of the Willow Tree Festival. It was the one piece of technology that she had managed to master.

He got a familiar knot in the center of his chest. He knew that when he opened the doors she would be dancing … alone. She always danced at the end. She also did not sleep, which was fortuitous. By the time he had finished at the reclamation center, the hour was late and there was much to do before the dawn.

He was not able to ascertain how much the Doctor knew, and therefore, how much Miss Granger knew, and whom she may have told. It seemed that Colonel Davis was destined to make her acquaintance, and it was certain to be an eventful meeting.

The Doctor had been wrong.

The answers were not in their cells. They would not be discovered by drawing their blood or dissecting their brains or blasting their essence into atoms. The notion that the tree knew the secrets of the universe and had somehow infused those secrets into their flesh and bone was, in his estimation, laughable.

The tree was a survivor, nothing more.

Willow Tree had survived because the tree had survived. It could not do otherwise. It was like a virus in that way, hanging its hat on whatever door it entered. The virus had topped the food chain on more worlds than were known. It was ruthless and efficient … and it had found a perfect home in man.

And, like so may other viruses, it would decimate its home before it moved on to another.

Eunice had lit this fuse and, if it went up, it could signal the next step in human evolution.

Darwin would have been so proud.

But, the tree could no more reveal the infinite to mankind than it could heal the sick and the dying or bring peace to a troubled world. What it could bring to the world was an unquenchable craving for more life. And, if they came to believe that the life was in the flesh …

How long before they turned on each other in a vain attempt to harvest a life that was not there? How long would their neighbor’s blood drip from their teeth before they realized that the tree had moved onto the next community, the next country, the next continent? How long before this world was not enough? What then?

Willow Tree would never thrive, for too much time was wasted on getting the life, rather than living the life.

It was not like Davis to wax philosophical. Must be getting close to that time of the month, he thought.

As he lay his hand on the brass handle of the council hall door, Davis paused to consider the Eunice on the other side. He could hear her feet gliding and tapping across the wooden floor in time to the strings and woodwinds. This was not the Eunice who presided over the Willow Tree council, or the Eunice who was taskmaster of the
Rusty Gate
inn … or the Eunice who had watched stoically as Crystal Ambrose had burned alive with a baby in her arms. This was a Eunice lost in the fields of her youth, listening to music for the first time in her life … before the years … before the tree. It was a Eunice he had never known.

Davis knew that Eunice had gone around him, sending her people to sow the branches in sister cemeteries. He could not be sure how many or where, and he knew that if he did asked her, she would not remember.

It was quite possible that she had not been the one to send them.

There it was, that connection to the tree. He did not pretend to understand it. But each incarnation had inched a little closer to the last. Eunice’s connection to the tree was stronger, but it was also more volatile, and more unpredictable. Yesterday was the only thing that was certain.

Davis pressed lightly on the door latch until it gave way under his thumb. He eased the door open and a sliver of light poked through the crack. In that light was Eunice, twirling and bowing, her skirt lifted in her hand. Her eyes were closed and her free hand directed some long ago concert that she had attended, quite possibly with
him
.

He pulled the door open until he could pass through, and a short blast of cool air passed through with him. The air stung Eunice on the cheek, and her eyes popped open. When she caught sight of Davis, her face lit up like a child on Christmas morning.

“Darling! I’ve been waiting on you all evening,” she scolded him, offering her hand. “Come, dance with me!”

Her loving invitation was salt in his wounds. It was not Davis she saw with those bright eyes. It was never Davis. But, he would not despoil her joy for the sake of his own fragile ego.

“Apologies, Mada- … my dear.” He closed the door behind him. “It has been a long, difficult day.”