Whipple's Castle (59 page)

Now the dream came toward him as he pondered helplessly upon its variations. The vision grew behind his eyes, where he couldn't shut it out: a room, an institutional yet temporary room, mustard-walled. The construction of the room is hasty, crude. The windows have multiframed lights, and one doesn't quite match the other because they have been taken from other buildings, even perhaps from houses. The glass is covered by heavy-gauge hardware cloth. Beyond the windows is a high wire fence—electrified, from the evidence of white ceramic insulators. Six strands of barbed wire form an inner fence to keep the electrified one from being touched accidentally—a bit of prevention related almost to benevolence. Or perhaps the barbed wire is to keep back those who would prefer to embrace the current.

On the far side of the fences can be seen the legs of a wooden tower, wet snow blown against the creosoted poles like frosting, dingy and gray. Stairs angle toward the apex of the tower, an ominous black slitted box.

Inside the room it is miserably cold. Chill moisture with the look of grease covers the linoleum floor, upon which stand three strange living creatures resembling praying mantises. Each is as large as a human adult. Vividly green, they move and nod, raising their tubular forearms in an awkward fashion that suggests great, if unlimber, strength. Certain relationships can be discerned; the very largest mantis is of lesser authority than the other two. His (or her) black compound eyes glitter, but with a lesser sheen, and he (or she) stands still near the door while the other two jabber in a strange, glottal language, and gesture over what seems to interest them—a large bathtub which they are filling by means of a red rubber hose connected to a faucet. The mantises don't seem to feel the cold, but they are interested in temperature, for they have several kinds of thermometers, sensory devices connected to wires, tubes, dials, some even suggesting cooking thermometers. One dial records the water in the tub to be 33 degrees Fahrenheit. Room temperature, indicated, is 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Though the damp floor is even puddled in places, the feet of the mantises, encased in the green exoskeleta! chitin, do not seem to be wet.

The mantises speak in voices one does not expect to have the lilt of human speech. One gives what is, however, an obvious order, and the second repeats this order to the third. This one's voice is deeper. Perhaps this one is a male, although in these creatures a deep voice might indicate femaleness, one can't tell. Perhaps they have no separate sexes, and procreate by some other process.

The deep-voiced one nods to the large one by the door, who nods back, turns and goes out.

Immediately comes the terrified scream of a human, and in a moment the largest mantis comes back pulling a small human dressed in a ragged uniform that was once striped gray and blue. Without further ado the mantis forcibly removes the shirt and pants of the uniform. The subject, or Test Person, is revealed to be a human girl child of nine or ten years, the hypogastric region naked of hair, the mammary glands undeveloped. She is weeping, a sound rather like the mewing of kittens, and shivering violently. The papillae of her pale skin are erect, as are the immature teats, and wide areas of a bluish cast attest to her discomfort. Her trembling interests the mantises, and they push her to the center of the room, next to the filled bathtub, in order to examine her more closely. When they touch her she screams frantically, but they are intent upon their observations and take many notes, writing with fountain pens upon paper held in clipboards.

Sometimes words form in her weeping and screaming:
“Ooo-
hoo eeeuw mama arm arm oh oh arm eeow hawn ee mama
maahmaanh!”
Her arms are crossed upon the ridges of her ribs, and her head, covered with short, dirty brown hair, seems to be trying to hide against her thin chest. She is dirtiest around the feet and ankles, and her thighs and trunk are splotched by infected insect bites.

The mantises observe, remark upon her characteristics, then write the data into their records.

“
Oh oh oh aaaee hawn no no anh hah!”
the child cries in panic weakness. The cries, in this room, seem the long echo of all hopelessness, as though the very plaster of the walls has absorbed all the misery it can and is now impervious. At a nod from one mantis, the other takes a metal tube three centimeters in diameter and ten centimeters long, attaches a wire and dial to this tube and swiftly inserts it in the child's anus. The volume and rising tonality of her cries indicate pain. The largest mantis comes forward to prevent her from removing the tube and wire; because she is not cooperative he binds her wrists together in front with strong wire.

The mantises talk and observe. The child cries again and again for her mother.

The largest mantis takes the shivering and struggling child in his sticklike arms and forces her into the bathtub. At the touch of the cold water she screams and kicks her legs, which then have to be bound, knees and ankles, with strong wire. She still cries and struggles, slopping some water on the linoleum floor. The iron-cold room seems to have heard, again and again, every variation of the blat of terror. There is a heavy sense of familiarity.

The high-voiced mantis moves to the edge of the bathtub, not seeming to mind the child's high, fragmented screams, and inserts a metal needle, again with wire attached, several centimeters into the starved flesh of her thigh. Notes are made, and much attention is paid to the clock. The child's screams grow weaker as the long minutes pass. One mantis holds the child's upper arm in his “hand,” seeming to count her pulse. Soon she screams no more. Later her teeth stop chattering. Labial tissue turns grayish-blue, and examination of the eyes reveals the pupils turned up into the head.

One mantis holds a metal spike with a round dial at the end similar to a roast thermometer. At a nod from the pulse watcher he reaches down and with even strength presses the spike through the tough chest skin, between two ribs, into the child's heart. The mantises converse, taking a few more notes before nodding to the largest mantis, who comes forward seeming to be quite familiar with his duties.

The scene shifts, and we are in the deep woods, a mile from the electrified fence and its towers. Colors sharpen; as if the clear call of a bugle had dispelled the weight of despair, the world is clean again. Tall fir trees drip with the melting snow, and several armed men are standing by a cheerful fire, talking in steady, low voices. Resolute, clear-eyed, good-looking men, it is a relief to see them, and to note that in every gesture of these avengers is the strength of right and justice, et cetera, et cetera.

Back in the car on the rainy street, the smile Wood felt upon his own face was as bitter as a snarl. He could not help going back to the little girl, whom they hadn't yet forced into the icy water. She is going to die, and she knows it. A child's terror is close to the skin. All phenomena are brighter, colder, hotter, more lovely or terrifying. She pleads for life. It is to men she pleads. She pleads not to be hurt. But they do it anyway. It is inevitable. It is
inevitable.

 

Peggy found him sitting in his car. She had seen it parked there on her way downtown, and on the way back—she was driving Sally's car—noticed that Wood was still sitting there. She turned around the information booth's little island, parked behind him and went up and tapped on the window. He didn't hear or see her, yet he sat there with his eye wide open. It gave her a bad scare. Finally she opened the door and got in beside him. He seemed to nod.

“Wood?”

He nodded.

“Wood, are you all right?”

“Peggy,” he said in his windy voice.

“Yes, it's me, Wood.” She picked his hand from the seat and put it between her hands. It was cold, cold as meat from the refrigerator.

“Strictly speaking,” he said, “I'm not all right.” He kept his face in profile to her, so she could see only the black cord going across his hair, and not his eye patch. He looked so strong and confident in profile, with his straight nose and square chin. But this was Wood; he
was
strong. She turned in sudden fright and pulled his hand against her, squeezing it, trying to warm it up. “Your hand's so cold! Like ice!”

“I'm not sure what it is,” he said.

“But you're cold,
cold.
We've got to warm you up. You're shivering!”

“I can't seem to drive the car, Peggy.”

“Oh, my God!” she said, thinking of his wounds, of some possible latent damage to his nerves. “I'll get you home. Come on. I've got Sally's car. Can you walk? I'm parked right behind.”

“I just came from home,” he said.

“To Sally's, then. There's a nice fire.”

“I really ought to get this car somewhere.”

“Leave it!” she said. “Leave it!”

“It isn't that I can't drive it, Peggy. I just didn't want to there for a while.”

“I want to get you warm,” she said. If he only knew. She wanted to wait on him. Already she saw him with his shoes off in front of the fire, warm and glowing. She'd make him a hot drink, and she'd sit on the rug at his feet and look up at him. They would talk of things. Forever.

But now she'd have to be a little more practical. She got out of the car, went around to his side and opened the door. “Come on,” she said.

“I've got all those books in the back seat,” he said.

“Give me your keys and I'll put them all in the trunk.”

He handed her the keys, turning his head around to her, since she was now on his blind side.

“You're strong,” he said. “Did you know that, Peggy?”

“Come on, get out,” she said.

The rain had let up a little. He picked up his left leg and put it outside the car, then moved over to stiffen it and lock it. He stood up and looked down at her. His officer's raincoat, with its shoulder straps, and his eye patch made him look rather rakish, like a pirate.

“I'll take care of the books,” she said. “You go get in Sally's car.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, but he took a step to get out of her way and leaned against the car, his hands spread against the wet metal. She quickly put the two armloads of books in his car trunk and locked it. He still leaned against the car.

“I am,” he said slowly, “what you might call ‘inexplicably weak.'”

“Let me help you.” She took his left arm, and they moved toward Sally's car. All he seemed to need was balance.

“You are strong,” he said. “Little Peggy.”

“How do you feel?” she asked. She opened the door for him.

“Now, that's funny.” He sighed as he leaned back against the seat to unlock his leg. “I don't feel weak, exactly. Very peculiar.” As they drove up Bank Street he said, “Very peculiar. I said to myself, ‘Go over and get in Sally's car.' But it was like my muscles didn't speak the same language. They kept asking what the hell
that
meant.”

“But Wood, what could it be? Is it some sort of nerve thing?” She turned into Sally's driveway and stopped next to the veranda steps.

He was looking at the dashboard. “How many times I used to drive Sally around in this antique!”

He was still shivering, and she got him into the house. Sylvia Beaudette took his coat. “Sylvia, how are you?” he said.

“I'm fine, Wood,” Sylvia said with a sad smile. She looked older than she was, with red lines close around her eyes—the look of a person who weeps in private. She seemed to have shriveled since the war, and Peggy had often wondered, knowing the callow over simpleness of the thought, how Sylvia could get herself another husband if she let herself get all red and wrinkled like that.

Sylvia took their raincoats, and Peggy and Wood went into the “comfortable” parlor, where Sally kept the old De Oestris furniture of leather and masculine bulk—furniture from the hunting branch of the family. Sally was here herself, sitting on a straight, armed chair of black wood, with brass lion-claw feet. She was utterly delighted to see Wood, and said so, her twinkly, glaring little blue eyes flashing back and forth between Wood and Peggy.

Then all Sally's vibrations stopped at once, as though she were a clockwork bird suddenly run down, only its jewels glinting. “What's the matter?” she demanded in a resonant alto. Her eyes moved back and forth to see who would give the answer. Wood sat down into the leather sofa and leaned back with a sigh.

“Wood didn't feel good,” Peggy said.

“I've known that for a long time,” Sally said, “and so have you. I mean why are you so upset right now, Peggy Mudd?”

“He was…” Peggy began. But what was he? Immobilized, somehow. “He was sitting in his car, shivering.”

“I was merely sitting down street in my car,” Wood said, obviously trying to be funny. “There I was, minding my own business, when this crazy young girl kidnaps me.” His hollow, breathy voice sounded cold and shivery-still. Sally was not amused, and Peggy turned away from their tense regard of each other, which seemed all at once familial, as though she were excluded. She put another small stick on the fire.

Wood said, contritely, “I should never try to be funny. It's never worked. I was having a chill of some sort.”

“Hmmm,” Sally said. “You mean you're coming down with a cold?”

“I doubt it. If I was I wouldn't bring it to your house.”

“Then what is your trouble? Is it mechanical or psychic? Physical or mental?”

“I'm not sure what it is,” Wood said. “All I know is it's not a cold.”

“I'll get you something hot to drink,” Peggy said.

“Get him a cup of green tea—a mug of it—with white rum in it. Plenty of rum,” Sally said.

“In other words, you've made your diagnosis already,” Wood said.

“I think you're more badly hurt than you try to make out,” Sally said. Peggy was standing in the doorway, about to go out, and they both looked at her, calmly, not with any real surprise that she stood there still. She turned to go. They seemed to hesitate to speak until she left, so she went on to the kitchen and made the tea.