The Innsmouth Syndrome (6 page)

Carla picked her way warily through the wreckage of the wall that had abutted the road, and trotted gingerly through the debris field beyond.  It was only when she reached the far corner that she noticed the child.

He was squatting by a pile of bricks with his arms wrapped around his knees, facing the vandalised wall and rocking slowly on his haunches.  His face was hidden beneath the hood of a parka.  A seam on the back of the coat had torn, as had the knee of his grey trousers. The sole of one of his scuffed and muddy trainers was coming away too.  With a large and grubby bandage dressing his left hand, he looked like a poster child for inner city deprivation.  He didn’t acknowledge Carla at all.

She tried to get his attention.  “Hello?  Are you alright there?” 

The boy stopped rocking, but remained visibly tense, ready to spring up.  “Look, why don’t you come under this bit of roof, out of the rain?  You’ll get soaked.”

The boy gave a violent shudder, then leapt to his feet.  Something fell from his hand, hitting the concrete floor with a metallic clatter, and then he was sprinting away, the loose sole of his trainer slapping like an applauding sealion with each step he took. 

Carla called after him – “Wait, you don’t have to” – but before she could finish the sentence he had reached the road and disappeared around a corner, his footsteps lost in the wind and the rain.

Carla rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh.  Apparently, Innsmouth folk learned their mistrust of strangers at a young age.  What he thought she might do to him that would be worse than sitting, alone, in a ruined building during a cloudburst, she couldn’t imagine.

Her eye was caught by a dull, oblong object on the ground where the boy had been sitting.  What had he dropped?  She squinted, trying to identify it through the curtain of water dripping from the edge of the ceiling above her.  Some piece of debris?  A metal fixture of some kind?  In the end she decided that she was sufficiently intrigued to justify a few seconds more exposure to the elements, and hurried reluctantly across to the spot, intending to pick the thing up and examine it once safely back under the roof.  Face screwed up against the rain, she reached for it – and froze.

It was a boxcutter.  Next to it was a severed finger.  Small.  A child’s finger. 

Carla instinctively drew back and looked around.  There was no sign of anybody else in the area.  She looked again at the finger.  Detached just above the knuckle, it looked pale and bloodless now.  The dust beneath it had been churned into gory sludge by the pounding rain. 

Shocked and repulsed, Carla nonetheless crouched down and moved to pick it up.  At the last moment, she changed her mind and picked up the knife instead, wanting to confirm her worst suspicions.  Her hand shook with apprehension and cold as she slid the blade out.  It was coated in fresh blood which the rain immediately began to rinse away.  Carla closed her eyes and retracted the blade.  The boy had done this to himself.

Without further hesitation she picked up the finger, wincing slightly.  It was cold, and slightly shrivelled from the loss of blood.  Carla turned it over in her hand.  Most of the nail seemed to be missing.  All that remained was a small crescent overgrown by long, fleshy cuticles.  On the other side the fingerprint friction ridges seemed unnaturally deep, the whorls and striations almost frill-like. 

The finger flexed easily as she examined it.  Too easily, like a stick of pepperoni.  Feeling queasy, she examined the stump end.  It had been a clean cut, straight through.  The bone protruded slightly where the bleeding flesh had contracted, but it was too thin, even for a child’s finger.  Instead, the spindly phalange was surrounded by a thick layer of shiny, fibrous cartilage. 

Carla looked away.  Dr Khalil’s alarming words about atavism echoed in her mind.  The only cartilage in the finger should be a light sheen at the joints, not replacement for healthy bone like this.  Not like this at all.

Standing up, she wondered what to do.  The boy must have lost a lot of blood, was probably in shock.  She ought to inform the police.

Her eye was arrested by the graffiti the boy had been staring at.  The entire wall was daubed black and red, with layer upon crudely-scrawled layer of tags, slurs, abstract pictures and obscure, teenage hieroglyphics.  Here, an ovoid, bow-legged man with a shark’s mouth and fin, and prominent erection.  There, a mermaid with tentacle arms and a lamprey’s scolex for a mouth.  The unknown artist had labelled these gruesome figures “Cthulhu fthaghn!” in dripping red letters.  Some later critic had scored through this in black, adding “FUCK CTHULHU” for clarity. 

The aquatic theme continued through the other pictures.  A stick man with the barbed tail of a manta ray snipping the heads off two rudimentary women, using giant, crustacean claws.  A bloated female figure, head covered with dangling photophores, surrounded by kneeling fishmen with  “Ia Ia!” written in the speech bubbles coming from their mouths.

The same hand that had written “FUCK CTHULHU” had defaced some of these designs as well, finishing with “FUCK ALL U FREEKS” in letters a foot tall.  Someone had retorted with “NO FUCK U RAMRAM” and a string of incomprehensible runic symbols.

It took Carla a few seconds to make the connection.  RAMRAM.  Ramone Ramsgate!  He must have hung out here.  There was a good chance the others did too.  She stared at the deformed finger, images from the autopsies floating to the front of her mind.  Maybe the other Innsmouth kids would be able to tell her whether the crash had been a suicide.  And why.     

*****

It was still raining four hours later, when she arrived at Rowley hospital.  She had managed to fasten a sheet of plastic over the broken window of the Honda, but it had come loose almost as soon as she set off.  Dr Khalil was waiting for her on the medical admissions ward.  He greeted her warmly as she peeled off her wet gloves.

“Dr Edwards.  You look frozen.  Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Yes!” exclaimed Carla, gratefully.  “Tea, coffee, anything!  Is he here?”

Khalil led the way through to a small kitchen area behind the receptionist’s desk.  “He is.  After you called, the police found him unconscious in the street.  He was given an emergency transfusion, but they have been unable to do any more for him.”

“Why?  I gave the finger to the police.  Were they able to reattach it?”

“The finger was ... badly disfigured.  I doubt it would have been possible.  It is speculative in any case.  The parents would not allow more intervention than necessary to stabilise the boy.”  His tone was almost apologetic.

“What?  Really?”

“Indeed.  They are on their way here now.  The police are bringing them.  I think they will take him home.”

“Can they do that?   Is he well enough to leave?”

“There are arguments for keeping him here, certainly, but not against his will.  The child protection services do not wish to pursue the case.”

“He cut off his own finger!  Surely that points to some kind of intervention!” 

Khalil shrugged.  “He says it was an accident, playing with knives.”

“Bullshit!  Accident, my foot.”  She moved closer to him, dropping her voice to an urgent whisper.  “Did you see the finger?  It was deformed.  Hardly any skeletal tissue in it, missing a proper nail, overgrown with cartilage ... did you see it?”

Dr Khalil spooned instant coffee into hospital mugs, not looking at her.  “Yes, I saw it.  I agree.  It was most strange.  Like the others, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would!” agreed Carla, earnestly.  “Have you looked the boy over?  Has he had a full physical?”

“He does have other injuries consistent with a pattern of self harm.  Also with ... the abberations we have seen elsewhere.”

“Like what?” asked Carla, taking a cup of steaming black coffee from him and warming her hands with it.

“His other hand, for instance, shows fresh wounds between three of the fingers.”  Khalil turned back to her and held his own hand up to illustrate.  “It is as if he has cut between them.” – drawing the index finger of his right hand between the second and third fingers of his left, then between the third and fourth – “You remember the syndactyly we saw in the Ramsgate boy?”

“You mean, as if he cut through – ugh, as if he cut them apart?  Jesus.”

“That is not all.  There is – forgive me, but there is only a wound where one of his nipples should be.  He has very bad abrasions on his legs, as if he has scrubbed them obsessively, until they are raw and scarred.  Part of his earlobe is missing.  A large part.  And he has burns all over, quite deep.  Perhaps a soldering iron or similar implement?  Either this boy is very careless and accident prone, or he is hurting himself very savagely.”

“Well then, surely CPS can step in, have him taken away, hospitalised, put in care, anything!”

“I am afraid it is not so.  There is no suggestion that the parents are hurting him.  As long as they agree to take him to talk to a psychiatrist, the social worker thinks to move him would do more harm than good.”

“Well, the parents may not be the ones doing the cutting but they clearly aren’t doing a very good job of stopping it!”  Carla massaged her forehead in frustration.  “How long have we got until they arrive?”

“The parents?  Probably twenty minutes.  Half an hour maybe.”

“If he’s awake, I’d like to talk to him before they get here.”

Khalil nodded.  “I’m sure that can be arranged.  Come.”

He led the way into the ward and held a muttered conversation with the nurse in charge before beckoning Carla forward and ushering her towards the door of the boy’s room.

“His name is Gary.  Gary Taub.  Good luck!”

He knocked on the door and opened it for her without waiting for a response.  Carla exhaled deeply and walked past him into the room. 

Gary Taub was staring out of the rain-sprayed window, and did not turn to look at her as she entered.  He looked very small in the big hospital bed, his arms spindly and emaciated against the crisply-turned sheets.  Carla automatically made a mental note: `possible eating disorder’.  It would at least fit with his history of presumed self-harm.

“Hello, Gary” she ventured, looking for a response.  He ignored her.  She waited a few seconds and tried again.  “My name’s Carla.  Is it OK if I sit down?” 

The boy sighed pointedly and slowly turned his head to look at her.  “Who are you?” he wanted to know.  “Social worker?”

“No” replied Carla, gingerly taking a seat on the edge of the bed.  “I’m a Doctor.  Doctor Edwards.  Do you mind if I ask you a few questions before your parents get here?”

Gary winced in annoyance.  “I already told the other doctor everything.  I was messin’ around with a blade, got a bit careless.  No big deal.”

Carla decided to play it casual too.  “Uh huh.  So I hear.  I was actually hoping to ask you about someone else though.”

That got his attention.  He focussed his eyes on her properly for the first time.  He looked tired.  Exhausted, actually.  The skin of his face was spattered with constellations of angry-looking blackheads – not too unusual in a teenager, Carla reminded herself.  However, further down, on his throat, were what looked like self-inflicted wounds.  Parallel scars, three on each side of his neck.  Old, but badly healed by the look of them.  Beneath them bulged visibly swollen lymph nodes.  Did he have an infection?  Or were they the result of excessive vomiting?  Bulimia?