Best New Horror #26

Steve Rasnic Tem THE NIGHT DOCTOR

ELAINE SAID THE walk would be good for them both. “We don’t get enough meaningful exercise these days. Besides, we might meet some of the new neighbours.” Sam couldn’t really argue with that, but he couldn’t bring himself to agree, so he nodded, grunted. Although his arthritis was worse than ever, as if his limbs were grinding themselves into immobility, it hurt whether he moved them or not, so why not move?

He would have preferred waiting until they were more comfortable in the neighbourhood—they’d been there less than a week. Until he had seen a few friendly faces, until he could be sure of their intentions. People here kept their curtains open most of the time. He supposed that was meant to convince passers-by of their trusting nature, but he didn’t like it. Someday you might see something you didn’t want to see. You might misinterpret something. Since they’d moved in he’d glanced into those other windows from time to time—and seen shiny spots back in the darkness, floating lights with no apparent source, oddly shaped shadows he could not quite identify and didn’t want to think about. He was quite happy not knowing the worst about other people’s lives. He could barely tolerate the worst about his own.

Not that he had justification for much complaint. He’d always known the worst was somewhere just out of reach, so it shouldn’t have affected him. Like most people, he supposed. Human beings had a natural sense for it, the worst that was just beyond the limits of their own lives. The worst that was still to come.

What with one minor annoyance or another—finding pants that didn’t make him look fat, determining what pair of shoes might hurt his feet the least, deciding on the correct degree of layering that wouldn’t make him wish he’d worn something else as the day wore on—they didn’t leave the new house until almost 11:00. Sam worried about getting his lunch on time. If he didn’t get his lunch on time his body felt off the rest of the day.

“I’ll buy you some crackers at the drug store if you need them,” she said. “Don’t fret about it.”

“Crackers? What kind of meal is that? You’re always saying I should eat healthier.”

“For heaven’s sake, Sam, let it go. Crackers to tide you over. Wheat, something like that. A lot of small meals are better for you anyway. That’s the way the cave people ate—they grazed all the time.”

“Cave people,” he repeated, as if reading some absurd road sign. He didn’t say anything more. He didn’t want to whine like Bryan, thirty-four years old and he still whined like a little boy. They’d done something terribly wrong for Bryan to be that way, but Sam still had no idea what it was. Parenting was a mystery, like diet, like exercise, like how to still keep feeling good about yourself in this world.

Sam felt uncomfortable most of the time. Physically, certainly. And as much as it annoyed him to think about it, emotionally as well. A walking mass of illogic, and that was no way to be.

After they left the house they turned onto the long lane that meandered through the neighbourhood. When he realised how long the street was, and how far away they were from the tiny mall—not so bad if you were driving, but Sam had stopped driving two years ago—he felt on the verge of tears. Just like some kind of toddler. Humiliating.

As they were starting out a large black bird landed in the street beside him. It threw its head back, shuddering, something struggling in its mouth. Sam glanced at his wife to see if she had noticed this. But her eyes were fixed forward, and he decided not to mention it. He twisted his head around to look at the bird. Still there. Was it a crow? It looked too big to be a blackbird. In fact it might be the biggest bird he’d ever seen up close. Its beak was so sharp. It could take your eyes out and there was nothing you could do about it, it would happen so quickly. Just like they were grapes.

His knees were hurting already. There were tears in his eyes, but at least they weren’t yet running down his cheeks. Birds didn’t cry. He should be like the birds.

He wasn’t sure how it had come to this—he’d always been such an optimist. And he’d always been healthy—no, it was too late in life to exaggerate, relatively healthy. But relatively healthy still meant you could drop dead at any time. So he walked around sore much of the time, each step like a needle in his heels and a crumbling in his knees, and attempted to think about everything but death.

They passed another older couple. Elaine would have said “elderly” but Sam hated that word. Elaine smiled at them and said hello. The couple nodded and said hello back. They had already passed the couple when Sam managed to speak his delayed “nice day!” The man said “oh, yes,” awkwardly turning his head to Sam in order to be polite, but staggering a little, almost falling off the kerb. Sam could feel the warmth flooding his face. He’d caused that distraction, and the resulting stumble.

“We should have introduced ourselves,” Elaine said a few minutes later. “They may have been neighbours.” Sam hoped the couple didn’t recognise him the next time they met. “Sam, did you hear me?”

“Of course I heard you, you’re right here.”

“Then why didn’t you say something?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know it needed answering, I guess.”

“I don’t talk just to hear myself.”

“Maybe they’re not neighbours. Maybe they’re just passing through, taking a walk. They might live several blocks away—they look pretty healthy. They could probably walk that far.”

“Uh huh,” she said, her head down, walking a little faster. It hurt to try to keep up with her. Too late. That’s what she would have said if he asked her what was wrong, so he didn’t. She deserved better—he didn’t understand how he’d gotten so fuzzy-headed. There was probably a pill for that, something to erase a certain percentage of your thoughts, clear out some space so you could pay better attention to the people you loved. So much for the benefits of exercise. Sam was feeling worse and worse.

By the time they reached the drug store Sam was ravenous. He sat on the padded bench and devoured two packets of crackers while Elaine got her many prescriptions. He’d already filled his last week before they moved. The lady across from him frowned. He looked around—he was spraying cracker crumbs everywhere. He didn’t know what to do—he couldn’t very well get down on his hands and knees right there in the store and sweep them up. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see either the lady or the crumbs and continued to eat.

When he was small his mother would drag him all over town on her errands. She took him along even if he was sick, but that was just what you had to do when you were a single mother. The worse he felt the more clothing she put on him; he supposed it was meant as a kind of protection. Sometimes he’d get so hot his head would swim. She’d sit him down somewhere in a chair, or in the shopping cart, or even in some out-of-the-way corner of the floor and let him nap. He’d dream he was a bug in a cocoon, waiting to be someone else. That night she’d reward him with a long bath before he went to bed.

“Sleep is what you need,” she’d say, stroking his forehead. “Go to sleep and let the night doctor take care of you.”

Over the years he’d tried to make some sense out of it. Plentiful sleep, of course, was bound to help, to lower stress, to permit the body to bring its own healing. However it worked, he almost always felt better the next day. He didn’t even have to wait until the day arrived, he could take a nap in the middle of the day, and then the night doctor could come. The night doctor didn’t necessarily require night, he simply required that you be asleep so that he could properly do his business on you. All that was needed was that it be night-time inside your head.

Had he really believed that the night doctor was an actual person? He’d never believed in magic, exactly—a person or a thing had to act, had to do something. So as a child he’d believed in Santa Claus because he was a person, sort of, this larger-than-life thing, an agency. He didn’t believe in the Easter Bunny because he knew a kid who had a rabbit who’d smelled and bitten him once.

It had been oddly reassuring, and yet not reassuring at all. Because if Santa were a person, then he was fallible. He could be late, or if you moved he might not find your house. The same with the night doctor. And he had had proof—he’d once visited his grandparents for two weeks and he’d been sick the whole time. The night doctor obviously couldn’t find him.

It had all been a great cause for anxiety. The fact that no one but his mother ever talked about the night doctor had only made it worse—he’d never even seen a picture of the man. Or woman, or whatever.

“Sam, darling? Are you ready to go?”

He blinked. Elaine was looking down at him, smiling. Had he overslept? Suddenly he felt lost, outside his body and not quite knowing the way back in.

“I fell…” He yawned. “I fell asleep waiting. Sorry.”

“You must have needed it,” she said, helping him to his feet. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Maybe I’ve pushed you too hard today.”

“Exercise is good for me. I don’t get enough,” he said, moving slowly with her arm in his as they rocked their way down the aisle, Elaine’s bag full of pill bottles rattling at her hip. He willed the blood to flow; his feet were numb. By the time they got out of the store they were better, he could feel them tingling. He supposed the day would eventually come when they didn’t get better, when they didn’t start tingling but remained as dead as fallen logs. But not today, thank God. Not today.

It was strangely dim outside, and Sam wondered if they could have been there at the pharmacy all day. How long had he been asleep? Then he realised it was simply the clouds rolling in, and he hoped they could get home before it rained. He never liked getting rained on, not even as a child. He usually got sick afterwards. There must have been something in the rain, not just water.

They were at the highest point in the road, the remainder of the neighbourhood receding gradually below them. Had they really climbed such a hill? Maybe they were lost—they didn’t know the neighbourhood well. They could wander for hours and not find their way back. Sam gazed around in a futile search for recognisable landmarks. But he had no landmarks in his memory for their new home.

From here they had a clear view of the afternoon sky. The clouds were heavy, laden—it might begin raining at any moment. The dark shapes of birds were darting in and out between the banks of clouds as if knitting them together. Sam thought of the giant bird he’d seen earlier and wondered if these were more of the same. They appeared to be rising up from the roofs of the neighbourhood where they’d been resting, rushing up to join the others as if in collusion.

Then he saw that larger dark shape depart an upstairs window of one of the houses, climbing onto the sill like a suicide, but leaping up instead of down, rising with a swirl of its long dark coat, the bag trailing from the skinny fingers of one hand, more claws than fingers, as the figure attempted to blend in with those other flying shapes.

Sam couldn’t be sure, they were too far away, but that figure seemed so very familiar. As if sensing Sam’s attention the head of the thing turned back an instant over its shoulder, large eyes staring, narrow face so pale and long as a blade.

Although he didn’t intend to, Sam sat down on the sidewalk then, his knees giving way. Elaine yelled in alarm as he almost dragged her down with him. He heard the panic in her voice as she screamed for someone to help them. But there was nothing he could do, as he was too busy elsewhere. Sixteen years old and walking home in the dark from the movie with his friends. He’d just left them to turn in to his own front walk, the darkness denser now because of the trees that used to shade their lawn.

His mother had been ill for several weeks, keeping to her bed except to feed him his meals and prepare his lunch for school. At times like these he’d think a father would have been useful, for her if not for him, because she had to do everything, and Sam was very aware he did not appreciate her nearly enough. But a father had never been more than a story as far as he was concerned, a few photographs that might not actually have been the man. How could he know for sure?

As he was walking up the sidewalk he felt a change in the air. It wasn’t a smell, although he felt it in his nose. It was more like a heaviness had entered the space around him, a pressure increasing in his ears, his nose, his skull, and a strong sense of vertigo as if he were looking down from a very high place.

He glanced up, cowering, feeling as if the sky were about to slide down on top of him. His mother’s bedroom window was open, her twin pale curtains reaching outside the frame to the night beyond like a frantic signal. Something membranous and black flapped. He could hear her moaning from where he stood, or thought he could.

Sam ran into the house and up the stairs. He came to her door and stopped because he was afraid. He thought he should knock—she would be furious if he went inside without knocking, but that didn’t apply in this case, did it? Even the memory made him feel ashamed, and he could hear Elaine’s voice somewhere above him attempting to offer some comfort.

He eased open the door even as the figure crouched over his mother was mucking about with her bare torso, taking something from her, sliding some spidery thing that struggled and screamed soundlessly out of her side and into his leathery dark bag. Sam cried out and the night doctor turned his head slightly to look at him with those cold pale eyes, those wet globes glistening yellow from the dim light in the hall, and that oh so elongated face which made no sense, the lower bit coming down into a kind of open snout, the upper half curved into a kind of bony blade. Before Sam could say anything else the night doctor had slid off the bed and through the window into the night and wind with a flap flap flap and a drawn-out sigh.

For days she seemed better, and Sam had begun to think the creature had simply removed the thing that had done her harm. And then his mother took a turn for the worse. And then she was gone.

And next he woke up an old man again, in the bedroom he shared with the wife who took care of him now, who’d been taking care of him since the first day they’d met back in college. The bed stand was covered with his pills, or hers, he couldn’t really tell anymore. He could barely remember the names of the pills. Not because he couldn’t, but because he didn’t want to be that interested.

“Sam, you scared me half to death.”

He shifted his head around and saw Elaine’s grey face there floating within the darkened chair, propped up by a pillow under the back of her head. The rest of the room was so deeply in shadow he wondered if his eyes were going, then saw the dark in the window and realised it was night. The window was open, the curtains stirring, beginning to flap. He held his breath and twisted his head, trying to examine the room. Things stirred there beyond his ability to actually see them, and he tried to blame it on the wind and his anxiety. “How long have you been sitting there?” he asked, trying not to search the room anymore.

“A few hours. You missed dinner. Do you want something?”

“I don’t know.” Was he hungry? He made himself sit up in bed. His right leg hurt—he recognised the feeling. He must have been asleep for a while, his right leg pinched beneath his left. “I really missed dinner?”

“It’s been about six hours. I decided to let you sleep. Sam, do you remember anything? I thought you’d had a heart attack at first, the way you just collapsed, like you’d been hit on top of the head or something.”

“I just…just had a moment I guess. What, did I black out? How did you get me home?”

“That couple came by, the one we ran into earlier? The Hernandezes. You don’t remember? Apparently they live only three houses down. He ran back to their house and pulled his car around, they helped you into the seat, and after we got here he helped me get you into bed. I kept wanting to call the doctor but you insisted you were okay, that you just needed to rest, but that you didn’t want to fall asleep.”

Sam did remember some of this, but it was like an imperfectly recalled dream. He couldn’t explain the lapse, which was disturbing. But he’d been distracted, hadn’t he? It seemed he hadn’t thought about his mother’s death in years. “But you still let me sleep?”

“I couldn’t keep you awake if I tried! You were so tired you could barely lift your head.”

So he had slept. He couldn’t stop himself from searching the room with his eyes again, straining himself, his chest beginning to hurt. He was being a whiny thing. He was going to make himself sick. It would be an open invitation for the doctor to slip in and meddle with his insides. He made himself stop, even though promising details were resolving out of the dark as his eyes adjusted.

“Sounds pretty embarrassing. I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.” Maybe he was better, maybe the doctor had already done his work. He could only hope it didn’t cost him too dearly. “Did they, the Hernandezes, did they say anything?”

“Just how concerned they were. Janet and Felix. I told Felix you take blood pressure medication and he wondered if the dosage might be wrong. I’ll call Doctor Castro tomorrow and tell him what happened.”

You don’t know what happened, he thought, but left it unsaid. “Of course. But this is all backwards. You should be the one resting. I’m putting all this extra stress on you.” He glanced at the sea of medicines on her side of the bed. There were new bottles, he thought, the ones from today.

“I’m fine. We’re not our illnesses, Sam. That’s what you always say, remember? We’re much more than that.”

He couldn’t quite interpret her tone. Had there been resentment in the way she’d quoted him? “I could use a ham sandwich, I think,” he said.

“Fine.” She got up and started toward the door, then stopped, smiled. “And if you’re better tomorrow, I’ve invited them over for dinner.”

“What?”

“Janet and Felix. The Hernandezes. They’ll be our first dinner guests.”

After she closed the door behind her he glanced at the shadowed incomprehensibility of the room and rolled over, turned his back to it. He’d allow himself to be healed or taken, and at the moment he wasn’t sure he cared which. He waited a long time, but nothing occurred.

He did feel better when he woke up the next day, although tired and a bit on edge. The room felt empty, however. He could hear Elaine in the next room running the vacuum cleaner. When the noise stopped he heard her singing. It had been a while since he’d heard her singing. He smelled disinfectant, furniture polish. He glanced around—all their medicine bottles were gone.

“Elaine!”

She came running, out of breath. She grabbed the footboard and leaned over. “Are you…okay?” She wheezed, paused, then asked more steadily, “are you still ill?”

“No, no, I’m fine. You shouldn’t have run, honey. Where are all the medicines?”

“The Hernandezes may want to see the house, and it hasn’t had a really good cleaning yet.”

“But the medicines?”

“I put the over the counter stuff in our respective bathroom cabinets, depending on who uses what the most. The prescriptions, and the supplements—since we don’t take the same—are in a box in each bathroom closet. But I took out a week’s worth of dosages and put them into two of those weekly pill organisers—his and hers. I even split the ones that needed it into quarters and halves.”

“But why? Do you want them to believe we’re the super healthy older couple or something?”

“No, but I don’t want them to think the opposite, either. And it was just too much—I started to realise that as I tidied up. It needed to be handled—we’re both lucky we didn’t grab the wrong pills one day, or even overdose. It looked—I don’t know—it didn’t make us look like sick people so much as crazy people.”

In the bathroom Sam found the pill dispenser (blue, hers was probably pink) and took his daily dose. He pulled off his T-shirt and examined his pale torso. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, some kind of markings. Cuts or worn places, incisions or maybe even bite or chew marks. There was nothing definitive, but when had he gotten so pale? He looked almost slug-like in parts.

Elaine cleaned well into the afternoon, then she started cooking. Sam didn’t like the dark half-moons under her eyes. He stepped in with the cleaning, although he suspected he didn’t do it well, scrubbing obsessively in some areas and neglecting others. Before dinner he did a final sweep, jammed some random flowers from the back yard into a vase, and set the table. By this point he desperately didn’t want to interact with anyone new, but he understood they were fully committed now.

From the time the Hernandezes arrived the evening became a blur for him. They seemed like perfectly nice people but he didn’t understand a thing they were talking about.

It seemed that Felix Hernandez had just acquired a new car, one of those boxy affairs with a small body and high ceiling. He used it to drive to the golf course, another habit newly acquired. Janet Hernandez talked endlessly about their son, an apparently always well-meaning young man who could not hold a job. Elaine commiserated and shared stories about Bryan which Sam was sure he had heard nothing about. A fall from a tree? When had that happened? Could Elaine possibly be making these things up in order to have something to share with the new neighbours?

They sat down girl-boy-girl-boy about an L-shaped portion of the dinner table, with Sam at the top of the L’s stem and Elaine at the end of the L’s arm. Sam wasn’t sure how this had happened, but it seemed to have been Felix’s idea.

Janet Hernandez was sitting next to Sam. He hadn’t realised before how tall she was—at least her torso was tall. She also seemed to have an unusually large head, although that might have been an illusion because her forehead was quite high, and white hair showered down the back of the skull to float just above her shoulders. She leaned forward over her food somewhat, as if afraid it might escape the plate. And she trembled slightly. He noticed because she was sitting right beside him. The profile of her face practically vibrated.

Sam was thinking then that the Hernandezes were older than them by a few years. He looked down the table, but his view of Felix was completely blocked. He tried to catch Elaine’s eye, but she was leaning over slightly, probably talking to Felix.

Suddenly Janet leaned back, her face pale, her expression puzzled. Felix seemed blurry and out of focus on the other side, but then Sam determined that something between Felix and Janet was making him difficult to see, something smearing the air, as if Sam’s vision had suddenly gone greasy.

The night doctor appeared to unfold from inside that black leathery coat of his, his shoulders going up like axe blades. He turned one globular eye Sam’s way. He tilted his elongated head slightly as if inviting Sam to protest. Sitting this closely, Sam could see small finger-shaped bits of flesh down around the end of the doctor’s snout. They stirred slightly. Some appeared corrupted by some sort of skin cancer.

Sam felt suddenly ill, his head slipping sideways. The night doctor disappeared, and Sam now had a clear view of Felix, who appeared to be in shock. Elaine was shaking the man’s shoulder in concern, saying his name. Then Sam moved his head again, and the night doctor was back in focus. Sam experimented, moving his head this way and that. He could see the doctor only at certain angles, the rest of the time the figure disappearing completely.

Suddenly Felix coughed explosively and a pale chunk of chewed-up food—at first Sam was convinced it was some damaged organ—bounced off the table and onto the floor. Sam thought he heard the cat scramble for it, then remembered they hadn’t had a cat in years.

Felix was laughing, tears rolling down his cheeks. Elaine was laughing as well, but Sam recognised it as the laugh she made when she was under great stress. Any minute now she would sob. Janet was pushing something around her plate with her fork. Sam saw that it was another piece of what had just come out of Felix’s mouth.

A sidelong glance brought the night doctor into focus again. He sat still and erect, as if listening, or at least sensing, things Sam couldn’t even begin to imagine. The night doctor’s skin was soft and translucent, slightly yellow. Sam thought he could see the sharp skeleton underneath, like a gathering of blades fashioned from bone and then covered in this somewhat transparent epidermal goop.

They all sat that way an uncomfortable period of time. Felix quietly shared his recent health issues with Elaine. Elaine shared things back, but with less detail. Janet continued to move things about her plate with her fork, but ate nothing. Sam watched them all. He wondered if he was the only one aware of the fifth presence at the dinner table—he was pretty sure he was.

Periodically the night doctor stroked the leather bag he wore hanging from his shoulder. It squirmed in various directions, as if containing more than one captive.

Felix was taken to the hospital a few days later. Sam and Elaine watched as Janet rode off with a young man Sam assumed was their son. They never saw any of them again.

For several weeks Elaine became increasingly frenetic. She cleaned the house constantly, and reorganised the medicine cabinets more than a few times. Sometimes Sam would wake up in the middle of the night and find the bed empty. He’d go downstairs and discover her at the table quietly drinking coffee or taking down notes. Usually the night doctor sat there with her.

Often she would work herself into exhaustion and sleep late the following morning. He would come downstairs by himself and find the night doctor already waiting for him, standing in a corner or staring out the window.

It dragged on this way for months. One night Elaine woke him up in the middle of the night, her pale face hanging over him. He gently lay his hand on her wet face—she’d been crying. “I don’t want to leave you by yourself,” she whispered hoarsely.

He glanced past her, his eyes scanning the room, finding the tall quiet figure with the large eyes and the too-narrow face, the squirming bag. “You won’t be,” Sam replied.