Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

“Yes,” Kat said. “Of course I am. Although I must say that this is the best I’ve felt in almost a year.”

“Don’t fire her,” Rideout said. “If you do, I’ll have to take my leave.”

Newsome’s eyes rolled to the Reverend. His brow was knitted in perplexity. His hands now began to knead his hips and thighs, as they always did when his pain medication was overdue.

“She needs an education, praise God’s Holy Name.” Rideout leaned toward Newsome, his own hands clasped behind his back. He reminded Kat of a picture she’d seen once of Washington Irving’s schoolteacher, Ichabod Crane. “She’s had her say. Shall I have mine?”

Newsome was sweating more heavily, but he was smiling again. “Have at her, Rideout. I believe I want to hear this.”

Kat faced him. Those dark, socketed eyes were unsettling, but she met them. “So do I.”

Hands still clasped behind his back, pink skull shining mutedly through his thin hair, long face solemn, Rideout examined her. Then he said: “You’ve never suffered yourself, have you, miss?”

Kat felt an urge to flinch at that, or look away, or both. She suppressed it. “I fell out of a tree when I was eleven and broke my arm.”

Rideout rounded his thin lips and whistled: one tuneless, almost toneless note. “Broke an arm while you were eleven . Yes, that must have been excruciating.”

She flushed. She felt it and hated it but couldn’t stop the heat. “Belittle me all you want. I based what I said on years of experience dealing with pain patients. It is a medical opinion.”

Now he’ll tell me he’s been expelling demons, or little green gods, or whatever they are, since I was in rompers.

But he didn’t.

“I’m sure,” he soothed. “And I’m sure you’re good at what you do. I’m sure you’ve seen your share of fakers and posers. You know their kind. And I know yours, miss, because I’ve seen it many times before. They’re usually not as pretty as you—” Finally a trace of accent, pretty coming out as purty . “—but their condescending attitude toward pain they have never felt themselves, pain they can’t even conceive of, is always the same. They work in sickrooms, they work with patients who are in varying degrees of distress, from mild pain to deepest, searing agony. And after awhile, it all starts to look either overdone or outright fake to them, isn’t that so?”

“That’s not true at all,” Kat said. What was happening to her voice? All at once it was small.

“No? When you bend their legs and they scream at fifteen degrees — or even at ten — don’t you think, first in the back of your mind, then more and more toward the front, that they are lollygagging? Refusing to do the hard work? Perhaps even fishing for sympathy? When you enter the room and their faces go pale, don’t you think, ‘Oh, now I have to deal with this lazy thing again?’ Haven’t you — who once fell from a tree and broke your arm , for the Lord’s sake — become more and more disgusted when they beg to be put back into bed and be given more morphine or whatever?”

“That’s so unfair,” Kat said… but now her voice was little more than a whisper.

“Once upon a time, when you were new at this, you knew agony when you saw it,” Rideout said. “Once upon a time you would have believed in what you are going to see in just a few minutes, because you knew in your heart that malignant outsider god was there. I want you to stay so I can refresh your memory… and the sense of compassion that’s gotten lost somewhere along the way.”

“Some of my patients are whiners,” Kat said, and looked defiantly at Rideout. “I suppose that sounds cruel, but sometimes the truth is cruel. Some are malingerers. If you don’t know that, you’re blind. Or stupid. I don’t think you’re either.”

He bowed as if she had paid him a compliment — which, in a way, she supposed she had. “Of course I know. But now, in your secret heart, you believe all of them are malingerers. You’ve become inured, like a soldier who’s spent too long in battle. Mr. Newsome here has been infested, I tell you, invaded . There’s a demon inside him so strong it has become a god, and I want you to see it when it comes out. It will improve matters for you considerably, I think. Certainly it will change your outlook on pain.” To Newsome: “Can she stay, sir?”

Newsome considered. “If you want her to.”

“And if I choose to leave?” Kat challenged him.

Rideout smiled. “No one will hold you here, Miss Nurse. Like all of God’s creatures, you have free will. I would not ask others to constrain it, or constrain it myself. But I don’t believe you’re a coward, merely calloused. Case-hardened.”

“You’re a fraud,” Kat said. She was furious, on the verge of tears.

“No,” Rideout said, once more speaking gently. “When we leave this room — with you or without you — Mr. Newsome will be relieved of the agony that’s been feeding on him. There will still be pain, but once the agony is gone, he’ll be able to deal with the pain. Perhaps even with your help, miss, once you’ve had the necessary lesson in humility. Do you still intend to leave?”

“I’ll stay,” she said, then said: “Give me the lunchbox.”

“But—” Jensen began.

“Give it over,” Rideout said. “Let her inspect it, by all means. But no more talk. If I am meant to do this, it’s time to begin.”

Jensen gave her the long black lunchbox. Kat opened it. Where a workman’s wife might have packed her husband’s sandwiches and a little Tupperware container of fruit, she saw an empty glass bottle with a wide mouth. Inside the domed lid, held by a wire clamp meant to secure a Thermos, was a green aerosol can. There was nothing else. Kat turned to Rideout. He nodded. She took the aerosol out and looked at the label, nonplussed. “Pepper spray?”

“Pepper spray,” Rideout agreed. “I don’t know if it’s legal in Vermont — probably not would be my guess — but where I come from, most hardware stores stock it.” He turned to Tonya. “You are—?”

“Tonya Marsden. I cook for Mr. Newsome.”

“Very nice to make your acquaintance, ma’am. I need one more thing before we begin. Do you have a baseball bat? Or any sort of club?”

Tonya shook her head. The wind gusted again; once more the lights flickered and the generator burped in its shed behind the house.

“What about a broom?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Fetch it, please.”

Tonya left. There was silence except for the wind. Kat tried to think of something to say and couldn’t. Droplets of clear perspiration were trickling down Newsome’s narrow cheeks, which had also been scarred in the accident. He had rolled and rolled, while the wreckage of the Gulfstream burned in the rain behind him. I never said he wasn’t in pain , she told herself. Just that he could manage it, if he’d only muster half the will he showed during the years he spent building his empire .

But what if she was wrong?

That still doesn’t mean there’s some sort of living tennis ball inside him, sucking his pain the way a vampire sucks blood.

There were no vampires, and no gods of agony… but when the wind blew hard enough to make the big house shiver in its bones, such ideas almost seemed plausible.

Tonya came back with a broom that looked like it had never swept so much as a single pile of floor-dirt into a dustpan. The bristles were bright blue nylon. The handle was painted wood, about four feet long. She held it up doubtfully. “This what you want?”

“I think it will do,” Rideout said, although to Kat he didn’t sound entirely sure. It occurred to her that Newsome might not be the only one in this room who had slipped a few cogs lately. “I think you’d better give it to our sceptical nurse. No offence to you, Mrs. Marsden, but younger folks have quicker reflexes.”