Taking Care of Bertie

Janet Fox

Janet Fox is to be found in numerous major anthologies such as Shadows and Year's Best Fantasy. But a surprising percentage of her work is to be found only in little magazines, stories of enviable merit in Fantasy Macabre, 2AM, Moonbroth, Space & Time, Whispers, Grue, Haunts, and so on. "Screaming to Get Out'' from W. Paul Ganley's Weirdbook, became a Year's Best Horror selection. My choice among many that should have bigger audiences is "Taking Care of Bertie'' from the eleventh issue of Crispin Burnham's Eldritch Tales, a magazine riddled with notable stories.

The place was silent, but it was not a pleasant silence. It was a stifled quiet, a drugged-into-mindless-indifference quiet, the soundlessness of nightmare where patients shuffled down mazelike corridors, somnambulant as zombies, hair matted, wrinkled cotton gowns hanging limp over slumped shoulders.

It was an uneasy quiet, broken now by a sudden outcry, a crash of falling crockery. "Get away from me! You devil, get away!" A fluster of nurses; doctor's voice ordering a tranquilizer in syllables with the ring of a foreign tongue, sobs, hysterical, diminishing until that circling quiet came round again. In restrained tones, two doctors spoke outside the door.

"Stigmata, self-induced, of course, though I must say I've never seen quite this variation before."

"The world is full of a number of things," quoted the other blithely. "That name she kept repeating. I could hardly make it out. What was it, Birdie, Bertie?"

* * *

Behind her the door closed with an authoritative "chunk," and though she'd never been here before, she was at home. She paused, awed for the moment by the small entryway with its terra-cotta tile and darkly oiled wooden paneling. As she walked on into a large living room, dust-powdered indigo drapes filtered the light, leaving the room awash in blue shadow, haunted by the substantial ghosts of sheet-draped furniture. She set down the cracked and peeling plastic suitcase and looked around, a little helplessly, which seemed out of character, even to herself. It seemed she should be shouting-for joy, but the high-ceilinged gloom oppressed her for the moment.

How was it, she asked herself, that someone could be so good at figuring things, could see angles where everybody else saw straight lines, could land on her feet, and come down running, if it came to that -- how did it follow that someone like Eve Mallory suddenly gets word she's inherited an estate from a rich aunt? This time last week she'd have laughed; that wasn't the kind of thing that really happened. That was the kind of thing that stupid people sat around waiting for while the smart ones picked them clean.

She pulled back a sheet and uncovered an immense violet couch, a dust-smell rising around her as she sat down on it. Last week she'd been living in that drafty, roach-infested duplex that Hal had gotten them before his luck and then he, himself, had run out. All the quiet spaciousness around here made her feel uneasy. It might be hard to keep remembering in this place that life was a crap game, with no rules except what you could make up as you went along. Good luck, now, that was almost scary, but she supposed she could learn to live with it.

Though she'd been lolling back on the couch, now she sat upright as a man in a dark suit came in, Cavendish, the lawyer, but she thought he'd make a better undertaker. His white, dry face was set in lines of sad sincerity and his movements were slow and deliberate. He had a way of looking at a person as if he were... measuring.

She crossed her legs, heedless of the slit skirt she wore. "I didn't know you'd be here already," she said.

"I was making arrangements," he said with a small, sour, smile.

"I suppose you brought, uh -- him."

"You do understand the full implications," said Cavendish, "Mrs. Abbott was very fond of Bertie and she wished so strongly that he have good care after her death that she made it a stipulation of the will."

"Sure, I heard all that stuff when the will was read. I still can't quite figure it out, though, why she left it all to me. She didn't even know me."

"Mrs. Abbott had become a recluse in the latter part of her life. You were the closest female relative. She chose you as a replacement for herself, so to speak. Here we are."

A large-bosomed woman in a cook's uniform was coming through the door, and on her shoulder she carried a bundle that shrieked and chattered and writhed, trying to be free of her grip. Before the woman had reached them, the thing managed to twist itself loose and, dropping to the floor like a very large, brown-furred spider and dragging a short length of chain from its collar, darted straight for Mallory. Tiny hands caught in the folds of her skirt, and as Cavendish and the cook fussed, the thing climbed, shrieking madly until it was clinging to her neck. An alien face looked into hers, bright amber eyes, minuscule fangs set among black, rubbery features that reminded her uncomfortably of those of a human being.

She screamed and tried to tear the apparition away from her, but it scratched and clung. Cavendish managed to peel it loose at last, and at the expense of his funereal composure, it hung, panting, against his vest. There was a sodden spot on Mallory's blouse that hadn't been there before, and she was still encompassed in the smell of the beast, an almost rotten smell. She saw that its fur was patchy and graying, here and there the raw pink of an open sore.

"There, there, Bertie old boy," soothed the lawyer. "Really, he wouldn't hurt you. You'll find him very affectionate. He's upset about her death, I expect. Animals are very perceptive."

"Keep hold of it. Don't let it get loose."

The portly lady in the cook's uniform sniffed before speaking. "He seems to have taken a liking to you right away, and that's a lucky thing."

"Mrs. Gibbons has agreed to report to me about whether or not you're upholding the terms of the will. You must care for Bertie as Mrs. Abbott herself would have."

"You mean I have to baby-sit that monkey, every minute?"

"I thought you understood that." He held out the animal and it reached for her with its dry little hands.

Only the part of her that saw the angles kept her from giving the two of them a few choice words. Bertie nestled against her shoulder breathing out a gust of putrid breath. She could feel its ribcage through the thin fur.

"Mrs. Abbott wanted old Bertie to be happy to the end of his life," said Cavendish.

Mallory managed a smile but knew it looked sick. "All right," she agreed silently. "I think that can be arranged. I think I can find a way to take care of Bertie."

Mallory lay back among mounded pillows on a large bed with gray silk sheets. The phone was cradled between shoulder and jaw, and with one hand she languidly fed herself chocolates, with the other she flipped the pages of a fashion magazine. The voice on the phone was painfully sincere; it detailed a long and heart-rending series of events. She listened patiently for several minutes, but her fingernails began to tap a nervous rhythm on the slick magazine pages. "Honey, if you could only spare a few thousand, I know I could get back on my feet, and when I felt like a man again, you and I could -- "

"Flake off, creep," she said distantly into the mouthpiece and slammed down the receiver. Laughing uncontrollably she flopped back against the pillows. "Poor Hal. What a fool." She couldn't imagine why her so-called former friends thought that her little bit of good luck had turned her into a soft touch. It had been easy to get rid of them; they'd never really cared about her in the first place. It was entertaining, though, to hear the song-and-dance they went through trying to cash in on old friendships.

There were footsteps in the hallway and a gentle tapping, "Miss Mallory?"

"Sure, come in." The door opened on the white-clad bulk of Mrs. Gibbons, and a brown blur of motion darted across the floor. Bertie crawled across the bed, seepings from his sores dampening the pale silk. Mallory managed one deep breath before the smelly creature embraced her neck, chattering mindlessly next to her ear.

"It seems that Bertie got himself locked into the linen closet," said the cook, her voice edged with suspicion. "I can't think how."

She had been telling herself that the creature was so old it was bound to keel over any day, but whenever it set eyes on her it had to be near her, as it had done that first day, almost as if it understood what its former owner had tried to do. As its bony body writhed against her, she had a sudden, almost overpowering desire to get it by the neck and to squeeze -- With an effort the part of her that was good at figuring things out took control and she patted the sparse silvery fur. "Old Bertie is all over the house," she said. "How should I know how he gets into these things? He's clumsy and half blind. Almost anything could happen to him."

Mrs. Gibbons sniffed and gave her a direct look, not quite daring to voice any suspicions. The look said that if there were an accident, it had better be plausible.

Thursday was cook's day off, a day with gray skies and a chill in the air. Bertie protested loudly as Mallory tied his chain to a table leg. There were still some servants in the house, but they weren't likely to interfere. She threw some logs into the fireplace. "Perfect day for a fire, Bertie," she said, and then cursed as the match sputtered and went out. It took her some time, but eventually flames jetted from the dry wood. She warmed herself for a moment against the coldness of the large room. She laid the protective screen that was usually in place before the fire over on its back. "Too bad that screen fell, isn't it?" she asked and went over to untie the chain. The monkey climbed happily to her shoulder, but she shivered as she touched that light body, scaly patches of skin showing through the fur, the bones a fragile-framework, the breath flavored with the heavy scent of slow decay. She moved closer to the fire, and Bertie basked in the warmth, eyes shining trustingly up at her. Vaguely, she wondered why it was that she loathed the only thing that had ever seemed to feel a genuine attachment for her.

Her hands tightened on the beast's body, and with a gesture whose violence surprised even her; she thrust him into the flames. Sparks caught in the dry fur and there was an awful, an unforgettable shriek of rage and pain and fear, but in the next moment it was as if a part of the fire itself had broken loose and was leaping up at her. Flames played down long simian arms, framed the almost-human face in a fantastic aura. Fire leaped from fur to cloth as the burning creature gripped her dress. She felt pain as small fangs met in her arm.

She struck at the animal and at the flames; not knowing where one left off and the other began. She thought she felt bones give way beneath her palm as she struck, and she couldn't have said herself what happened, detail by detail, except that when it was over she found herself smothering the last sparks of fire on her clothing and keeping an eye on a small, charred body lying near the hearth wreathed in bluish smoke. Her hands had been burned; she was beginning to feel the first twinges of pain as a wild-eyed maid ran into the room. Mallory knelt by the body. "Oh, poor Bertie," she moaned, one eye on the servant. "I couldn't save you. I tried. I really tried." She wasn't sure what Gibbons and Cavendish would think, but that didn't matter now. She even had burns to prove she'd tried to save the little bastard. Talk about landing on your feet -- nobody did it better. And now she was free.

Restraints kept the patient from harming herself as she moved restlessly on the bed. For some time there was only more of the all-consuming silence in the room. It seemed to seep inward through the cold pale walls of the place. Then with a start, the patient regained consciousness. Her eyes inspected the room minutely; as a nurse came to stand over her, uniform a subdued rustling. Her gaze roved, caught at a point in mid-air as if something were suspended overhead. Despite her training, the nurse looked, too, but of course there was nothing.

"No! Get away! Bertie, you're burning me! Your eyes!"

The words attenuated to a shriek, and the patient convulsed against the straps. On the white skin of her throat appeared sudden red marks, the print of tiny teeth, clear until welling blood effaced the outlines. Another nurse joined the first, helping her to give an injection. As the nurse held the patient's arm, another bite mark appeared on the wrist. "Hard to believe," she said in hushed tones, her face shaken a little from its usual professional calm, "that a person's mind could inflict this."

'She seems to see an imaginary demon of some kind. Personally, I'm just as glad it is inside her head."

When this particular seizure had subsided, the nurses left the room hastily; neither would admit that they did so because after these episodes, the place always reeked with the pungent scent of burning hair.