Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

Bill was encouraged. He was making contact. She had calmed down noticeably. She seemed to be hearing, listening. He raise two arms to her and stretched out beckoning fingers and in a strong, hopeful voice offered her the sanctuary she seemed to be seeking.

“This way, Ivy! Come! It’s Daddy! Come !”

Even as he spoke, the waxen pallor of her feverish checks increased until she looked like a corpse with living eyes.

“ Ivy! THIS WAY, IVY! COME! IT’S DADDY !” His voice rose with fierce excitement. His fingers clutched at her nightgown.

At his touch, she drew back sharply as if struck and spun about toward the window, seeking escape, her voice rising in pitch and hysteria, “Daddydaddy daddydaddy daddydaddy …, ” her two hands slamming against the frosted glass in desperation and panic, then pulling away with a terrible scream of pain, “Hothothothot hothothothot HOTHOTHOTHOTHOT” over and over, holding up her hands before her tearful, anguished eyes, studying the burned and blistering flesh.

Seeing the awful redness of his child’s hands deepen and a blister begin to form on the middle finger of her left hand, Bill feared he would collapse and faint. This wasn’t possible, wasn’t reasonable. The glass was cold, frosted over.… Somehow he managed to raise himself to his feet and stood like an automaton, hovering helplessly above the weeping form of his darling child, who was rocking back and forth on her knees, softly crooning, “Daddy, daddy, daddy, hothothothot …, ” licking the scorched fingers of her hands, the high, melodious whimpers and sobs commingling with the sharp hiss of the radiator directly behind her.

The radiator!

Bill’s eyes widened with suppressed excitement as the simple, factual, logical culprit stood before him, beneath the window, its scalding cast-iron panels releasing jets of steam through a nozzle designed to relieve the awful pressure of its boiling interior.

“Oh, God—her hands!” Janice’s stark voice came from the doorway, causing Bill to jump and spin about. She stood in the doorway, backlit by the hall light, staring down at Ivy, rocking pitifully back and forth in a paroxysm of sobs and lamentations, “Daddydaddydaddy hothothothot …, ” licking and sucking her burned fingers.

“What happened?” Janice gasped, taking a step into the room.

“The radiator—she fell against it and burned her fingers.”

Janice began to sway unsteadily. Bill reached out and held her. “Have we got something in the house?”

“There’s … there’s some ointment in the kitchen cabinet.”

“Stay with her. I’ll get it.” Bill gently forced Janice to sit on the edge of the bed and started to leave. At the door he turned.

“What about Kaplan?”

“He’s coming.…” The voice was dull, lackluster.

Bill left the room, closing the door.

Expressionless, Janice could only sit and watch the moaning, weeping, rocking bundle of misery across the room, the pink tongue licking furiously at the welting fingers, the squealing voice intoning, “Daddydaddy daddydaddy.…”

Ivy! Dear God! It was Ivy! Her Ivy! Her baby! Alone, abandoned, hurting! Needing! Locked in the steel vault of her nightmare. Unable to get out. Struggling to survive—to stay alive till help came. Help? What help? What combination was there to open the door—to release her from her terrible bondage? For Ivy, there was none. No combination. None. For Ivy, none. But!

“Audrey! Audrey Rose! Come!”

The voice was soft, barely a whisper. Gentle. Humble. Begging.

“… daddydaddy daddydaddy daddyhothothothot.…”

“Audrey Rose! I’m here, Audrey!”

Inviting. Entreating. Insisting.

“… hothothothot daddydaddy daddydaddy.…”

“AUDREY ROSE! COME!”

Strident. Compelling. Commanding.

“… daddydaddydaddy hothothothot daddydaddy.…”

But the door remained shut.

“I’ll look in tomorrow; meanwhile, keep using the cold compresses to reduce the fever and keep her hands outside the covers. Those burns are nasty, and even the light pressure of a blanket might irritate them. Let her stay in your bed where you can keep an eye on her. The Nembutal suppository should make her sleep through the rest of the night. By the way, Bill, if I were you, I’d get in touch with that psychiatric clinic first thing in the morning. They helped her once, I recall.”

Lying there, inert, folded into the trembling form of her child, Janice heard the doctor’s words.

The quarter moon forced a wan path through the Venetian blinds onto the flushed and quivering face lying on the pillow next to her. Caught in the twilight of her own sedated brain, Janice tried to penetrate beyond the flesh life of the lovely face, beyond the glazed, half-open eyes, the two windows, the pair of light and air holes, that must surely lead into the dungeon where the restless soul of Audrey Rose, bound as with a seven-fold chain, lay captive and alert.

“Dead?” It was not so much a question as a shocked reiteration.

“Yes, I’m sorry.” The voice coming through the telephone belonged to Dr. Benjamin Schanzer, director of the Park East Psychiatric Clinic—a name totally unfamiliar to Bill. “Dr. Vassar passed away more than two years ago.”

“Oh.…” Bill paused, redirected his thoughts. “My daughter was a patient of Dr. Vassar’s … about seven years ago.”

“I see.”

Bill found himself groping. “She had a problem and … Dr. Vassar helped her. The problem seems to have returned.”

“Let me see … that would be in 1967 … a bit before my time, I’m afraid.”

“Yes, I believe a doctor … Wyman was director of the clinic then.”

“Dr. Wyman is still a practicing member of the clinic. Why don’t I put you through to his office?”

“Thank you.”

“Not at all.”

Bill was seated in his own office. It was just after nine o’clock, and the floor was still deserted. Abby wouldn’t arrive until nine fifteen. Don usually dragged himself in around ten. Bill was the early bird this morning and with reason. There was a lot to do and fewer than five hours in which to do it; a lot of loose ends to tie up before takeoff time. That, plus another reason, one that he hated thinking about. For the first time in their marriage he had felt the overwhelming need to escape this morning. Immature, irrational, inconsiderate, cruel—the fact remained that he had to get away.

Ivy’s tears had awakened him; normal tears, a natural reaction to the pain in her hands. As usual, she remembered nothing of the nightmare and was willing to accept Bill’s explanation of the accident with only one question.

“If I burned them on the radiator, going to the bathroom, how come I didn’t wake up?”

“Because we put ointment on quickly, and burns only hurt later on.”

“Oh, yes,” she remembered. “Like when I got sunburned on the beach last summer.” Though terribly hurt and feverish, she still managed to bring a smile to her lips, a smile of acceptance, of a willingness to start the day off on a positive, hopeful note.

Janice, however, awakened into a vacuum.

Mute, unresponsive, unapproachable, she went through her morning chores as if she were a wind-up toy. Neither Ivy’s complaints nor her gentle probings seemed to get through to Janice.

“Sorry to have kept you so long.” Dr. Schanzer’s voice came back on the line. “It seems Dr. Wyman won’t be coming in for the rest of the week. But Dr. Perez, who was interning here at the time, may have some memory of the case.”

“Well, may I speak to Dr. Perez?”