The Heirloom Read online

  Sara was already ripping up his sheets to bandage his wounds. She said flatly, ‘Call an ambulance. That’s all.’

  I pushed my way through to our bedroom and picked up the phone. While I was dialling the emergency number, David came into the room and stood watching me.

  I looked at him. ‘Take the chair,’ I said, without emotion. ‘Stow it in the back of your car and take it.’

  ‘Ricky –’ he began.

  ‘Take it!’ I raged at him.

  He hesitated; then lifted his hand in one of those discreet English waves, and left. I didn’t hear his Rolls-Royce leave because I was too busy giving instructions to the ambulance service.

  I went back to Jonathan’s room. Sara had bandaged him up as best she could, but he seemed to have gone into shock, his eyes rolled up into his head, his little fingers clutching the bedspread as if he were afraid of falling.

  ‘I told David to take the chair and get the hell out,’ I said, quietly.

  Sara didn’t answer. She was kneeling beside the bed, her dress splattered in blood, stroking Jonathan’s left hand over and over and over again, as if she thought he would die if she ever stopped.

  ‘It was the axe, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘That was what David meant about regretting it.’

  Sara looked up at me but didn’t say anything at all. I didn’t know if she was really blaming me for what had happened or not. But she didn’t need to act so damned remote. I already felt as if I had struck Jonathan myself, and in a weird way I had.

  I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I was so damned tired and so damned scared that I didn’t know what to do. Yesterday morning, the most complicated problem in our family life had been choosing whether to go to Sea World or the Wild-Animal Park for our Sunday-afternoon trip. Now it seemed as if my family and my life were falling apart – shaken and shaken at the foundations by a wantonly destructive force that had come into our lives from nowhere at all.

  I heard Jonathan whimper. Then I heard the sound of the ambulance siren whooping and scribbling up the driveway; and if nothing else, I knew that help was on the way.

  They took him into intensive care at the Holy Sisters of Mercy Hospital in San Diego; and while Sara and I sat outside in the waiting-room, exhausted and frayed and scarcely speaking to each other, Jonathan lay white and silent on his bed, the left side of his face heavily bandaged, a nasogastric tube taped to his right nostril, and electrode leads in his arms.

  Out of the waiting-room window, I could see for miles over Mission Bay, with its tall white yachts and its patches of lagoon-blue water. Far to the left, the silvery jets were landing at San Diego airport, and beyond that I could just make out the curved tracery of the Coronado bridge. It was five in the afternoon, and the heat was beginning to die. A river of cars poured northwards on the freeway, their windows catching the sun.

  ‘He’s going to be scarred,’ said Sara, flatly.

  I looked at her. ‘A little,’ I replied. ‘He can have most of the mark eradicated by surgery.’

  ‘It will still be there.’

  I wasn’t going to argue with her. Whatever I said, it was going to be wrong. I leaned on the window-sill and watched the sun gradually sink towards the sea.

  The waiting-room door opened and a doctor came in, carrying a clipboard. He was small, like a gopher, and his white coat seemed to be three sizes too large for him. He smelled of aftershave and medical alcohol.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Delatolla?’

  ‘That’s right. Do you have any news of Jonathan?’

  ‘Well… please sit down…’

  ‘I’d rather stand, thank you,’ I told him.

  ‘Okay, have it your way. But the news I have for you is kind of mixed.’

  ‘Mixed?’

  ‘Part excellent, and part not-so-excellent. The excellent part is that the wound is clean, and we’ve been able to close it very successfully. There hasn’t been any substantial loss of blood, although we’ve given him a pint to help him keep his strength up.’

  ‘What’s the not-so-excellent part?’ asked Sara, in a wavering voice.

  ‘The not-so-excellent part is that Jonathan appears to have gone into deep shock. Much deeper than we’d normally expect, even with a severe facial injury.’

  ‘You mean he’s in a coma?’ I asked.

  The doctor nodded. ‘It’s not altogether uncommon with head injuries, but we’re surprised that his coma is so deep. There was no apparent damage to the brain tissues, and all his vital signs are normal. Even his breathing is normal, whereas a comatose patient usually breathes in a noticeably stertorous manner.’

  ‘Do you think he’s going to stay in a coma for long?’ I wanted to know.

  The doctor made a moue. ‘It’s impossible to say at this moment in time. We’re continuing to monitor his reflexes and his respiration, and we don’t have any indications yet that he’s in any imminent danger of vital failure, but we’re going to have to make several thorough tests before we can determine exactly what’s wrong.’

  ‘When you say “vital failure”,’ put in Sara, ‘does that mean death?’

  The doctor held his clipboard tight against his chest. ‘Not one hundred per cent,’ he said, keeping his eyes averted. ‘We do have means of resuscitation, depending on the cause of vital failure. But you mustn’t get ahead of the game, Mrs Delatolla. Your son’s healthy, and in fine general condition, and what he needs most of all is two supportive, optimistic parents who can really help him to pull through.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sara, softly.

  The doctor left us, and we sat in the waiting-room as the light died and the fluorescent tubes flickered on. The stream of cars on Interstate 5 became a thick flow of red corpuscles through the dark body of the night.

  Sara came up behind me and leaned her cheek against my shoulder. I could see our faces reflected in the window, and the reflection reminded me strangely of one of our wedding photographs. Instead of the gaudy flowers of Sara’s garden in Pasadena, however, the background was as black as Monday night, and that was all.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sara, ‘I know it wasn’t your fault. I know you were only trying to protect us.’

  ‘David did warn me,’ I said. My throat felt dry.

  ‘He didn’t tell you what might happen. You couldn’t have guessed. I’m sorry I’ve been so mean about it.’

  I put my arm around her and held her close. ‘I can understand how you felt.’

  She touched my lips with her fingertips. ‘Angry, more than anything,’ she whispered.

  ‘Did they ask you how it happened?’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘I told them he was playing with your axe. He hit himself by mistake.’

  I looked at her closely. ‘You said that? Even when you felt that it was all my fault?’

  ‘What was I going to tell them? That you were trying to chop up a chair in the garden, and chopped up your son instead? This thing’s brought us enough misery without having the police involved, or our neighbours thinking we’re child-killers.’

  ‘I guess you’re right. Thanks for being so sane.’ I kissed her, and then I asked, ‘Do you want some coffee? There’s a machine down the hall.’

  ‘Tea, if they have it. Black, no sugar.’

  I dug around in the pockets of my jeans and came up with three quarters and a nickel. Then I opened the waiting-room door and walked along the corridor on squeaking sneakers until I reached the coffee machine. There was a choice of coffee, hot chocolate, minestrone soup, or out of order. I dropped in a quarter and pressed the button for coffee.

  As I stood waiting for the plastic cup to fill up, I saw a small white figure pass across the end of the corridor. By the time I’d focused, it had gone. But somehow I had the disturbing feeling that it was Jonathan. I didn’t quite know why, any more than I can explain why an earth tremor always feels exactly like an earth tremor, and nothing else, but my conviction was so sudden and so strong that I started walking fast along the corridor, and then running, and b
y the time I reached the corner I was pelting along at full tilt.

  I collided with a Mexican woman wheeling a trolley of fresh laundry, but then I was running again, my sneakers slapping loudly on the floor, my vision a jumble of doors, walls, fluorescent ceiling-lights.

  I caught sight of him right at the very end of the corridor as he turned the next corner. I only glimpsed the back of his tousled hair, and his white operating robe, but now I was sure. I yelled out, ‘Jonathan! Jonathan, stop!’ and a black nursing sister popped her head out of an office door and stared at me in amazement.

  At the next corner, I stopped, gasping for breath. Jonathan had only been walking, and yet he seemed to have vanished down a 200-foot corridor without a trace. I started to jog along the shiny waxed tiles, glancing to left and right whenever I passed an open door, and peeping quickly into every window that wasn’t covered by drapes. A whey-faced old lady scowled back at me from her bed, and I found myself giving her a foolish grin by way of apology.

  Soon, I came to the very end of the corridor. There was nothing there but a window which looked out over the hospital parking lot, and a pair of grey-painted doors marked ‘Emergency Exit’. I sat on the window-ledge for a moment, trying to catch my breath.

  Then, I heard it. The snick sound of a closing door. If I’d been running, I never would have picked it up. But now it echoed along the polished corridor with tell-tale clarity.

  Softly, cautiously, I retraced my steps. Somewhere in the distance, a paging bell chimed bing-bong, and the faint garbled voice of the hospital receptionist came down the corridor like the voice of an official guide in the Carlsbad Caverns. Bored, remote, and unreal.

  I reached the door marked Laundry, 812. I hesitated, and stood staring at it for a long time. A small unsettled sensation in the back of my mind kept telling me, this is it, this is where your son’s biding. And then I suddenly remembered the Mexican woman I had run into further back down the corridor. She had been pushing a trolley of fresh laundry, which must have come from here, and if any door along this corridor had been left ajar, it was most likely to be this one.

  I peered in through the circular window, but it was too dark inside to make anything out. I tried the handle, and the door came open straight away.

  ‘Jonathan?’ I queried.

  There was no answer. I pushed the door open a little further, and the light from the corridor angled across the floor and showed me five rows of shelves, each one neatly and tightly stacked with sheets and pillow-slips.

  ‘Jonathan, are you in there?’ I called, louder this time. I don’t know why I was being so cautious. He was, after all, only my six-year-old son. But there was something about the way he had vanished so quickly along the corridor that made me feel apprehensive. That, and the fact that he was supposed to be lying in intensive care, in a coma.

  I opened the door wide, until it touched the shelves of laundry right behind it. The laundry-room was only five feet square, and unless Jonathan was squeezed right into the angle of the door, or lying on one of the shelves I couldn’t see, he wasn’t inside it. And yet…

  A deep, sensitive radar told me that somebody was close.

  I listened. At first I couldn’t hear anything, because the hospital public address system was ‘paging Dr Oliver, please…paging Dr Oliver…’ But then I heard the breathing. Slow, gentle, and measured. The breathing of somebody who is trying to keep as quiet as they possibly can.

  ‘Jonathan,’ I said again.

  I groped sideways and found the light switch. I switched it on, and a fluorescent panel flickered for a second and then popped into life.

  ‘Jonathan, I can hear you,’ I said. ‘If you’re in there someplace, you have to come out.’

  Then suddenly I was gripped by the realisation that the breathing I could hear wasn’t coming from the shelves, or from behind the door. It was coming from directly above me! I jerked my head up and what I saw made me freeze with terror.

  Lying on the ceiling in a white surgical gown was the diminutive figure of a six-year-old boy. His arms were spread wide as if he were flying, or crucified. But his face wasn’t Jonathan’s face. It was the wooden smiling head of the man-serpent from the mahogany chair, chipped down its left cheek, but alive now, and staring at me with malevolent satisfaction. The vipers that grew from his scalp were slowly waving and undulating, like seaweed on a sullen wave.

  ‘It’s you,’ I managed to choke out. My larynx felt as if it was being squeezed in a cider-press.

  ‘It will always be me,’ smiled the man-serpent. His eyes were blank and grained with wood, but his eyelids rolled over them when he blinked as if they were real eyes. ‘Until you accept what I have to give you, it will always be me.’

  ‘You hurt my son,’ I told him.

  ‘Every time you hurt me, you will always inflict pain on yourself or your family,’ the man-serpent said. His voice was husky and echoing, and didn’t seem to be synchronised with his lips. It was like talking to some kind of frightening ventriloquist’s dummy.

  ‘Then what can I do to get rid of you?’ I asked.

  ‘You will never get rid of me. Not until you accept what I have to give you.’

  ‘What about Henry Grant? Did he accept what you were offering?’

  ‘Henry Grant would rather have died. So, he did.’

  ‘And what about me?’

  ‘You would rather survive. For your own sake, and for the sake of your wife and son.’

  ‘And my dog? What harm did he do you?’

  Up above me, the man-serpent dreamily grinned. He didn’t appear to be fastened to the ceiling, or even touching it. Instead, he was floating horizontally an inch or two below it. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but there he was, two feet above my head. I could have reached up and touched him.

  ‘Your dog was your familiar. I, too, need a familiar – and mine is the trilobite. It can only come to life through the sacrifice of my owner’s closest animal companion, and that is exactly what happened. My trilobite is as faithful to me as your dog was to you. More venomous, perhaps. But faithful.’

  Gradually, jerkily, the fluorescent light in the laundry-room was beginning to dim.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘supposing I reject your offer? Supposing I tell you to go to hell?’

  ‘You cannot,’ whispered the man-serpent.

  ‘But supposing I do? Supposing I won’t do anything you want me to? Supposing I break you to pieces?’

  ‘You saw what happened before.’

  ‘Then I shall call a priest, God damn you, and I shall have you exorcised. I shall have all the strongest spells of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, all bound around you until you choke.’

  The laundry-room was almost dark now. All I could see of the figure on the ceiling was the whiteness of its robes and a blueish luminosity around its eyes and its jaws.

  ‘I repudiate you,’ I said, as forcefully as I could. ‘I repudiate everything you are, and everything you’ve done, and everything you ever plan to do.’

  There was a moment of utter tension. It was like the moment before the first flash of lightning in an electric storm, when everything goes silent. Then there was a consuming roar, and the whole laundry-room burst into flames. I was thrown back against the other side of the corridor, my hands and face scorched, and I twisted my ankle.

  Through the open door, I saw sheets and towels blazing furiously, and fragments of charred linen whirling up to the ceiling. It was like a furnace in there, and the flames were already licking around the door frame and scorching the paint on the corridor wall.

  I limped painfully along to the nearest fire-bell, and smashed the glass with my knuckle.

  5

  Explorings

  We stayed at the Holy Sisters of Mercy all night, dozing uncomfortably on the foam-cushioned sofas in the waiting-room. I told Sara what had happened in the laundry-room, but nobody else. As far as the doctors and nurses were concerned, I had been taking a stroll along the c
orridor to stretch my legs when I had smelled something burning. They thought I was a minor hero – losing half of my right eyebrow in an attempt to close the laundry-room door and stop the fire from spreading.

  They didn’t realise that what had burned that night was my whole future happiness, my last hope that it was possible for my family to escape from the damning influence of that terrible chair.

  In the morning, as we sipped scalding coffee and ate two unappetising lemon Danishes, Dr Gopher came in with his clipboard and sat down opposite us, hiking up the leg of his pants to reveal a wrinkled maroon sock.

  ‘I’m happy to tell you that Jonathan’s condition is stable,’ he said. ‘The wound’s healing well, and apart from the fact that he’s still unconscious, all his reflexes are fine. He’s responding to all of the external stimuli to which any healthy but comatose person could be expected to respond. We’re still keeping a very attentive eye on him, of course, but we have an expectation that he may come out of the coma later today.’

  Sara let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘I don’t want to raise your hopes prematurely,’ Dr Gopher added quickly, raising one of his fingers. ‘You may have to accept the fact that he won’t come around for two or three days. But, on the whole, we’re more optimistic than pessimistic.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ I said. ‘My wife’s going to stay here for the rest of the morning, just in case he comes round sooner. I’m going off to get us a change of clothes.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry you had to sleep here,’ said Dr Gopher. ‘Usually, we have a couple of rooms free for parents to stay, but we’re pretty full at the moment. Kawasaki disease, burns, broken limbs. It’s vacation time, of course. Always our busiest time on the pediatric floor.’

  ‘I just want to thank you for everything you’ve done,’ I told him.

  ‘Well, that’s appreciated,’ said Dr Gopher, ‘but I ought to be thanking you. If you hadn’t spotted that fire, there wouldn’t have been any pediatric wing left to get busy.’