John Halkin - Squelch

‘I’m afraid the lower part of her face is — well, really rather horrifying,’ she explained as they walked over there. ‘But if I can turn down the sheet carefully, you won’t have to look at it.’

‘Yes.’ Oh, why did she feel so nervous?

Jameela folded back the sheet just far enough to reveal the upper section of the dead woman’s face. Like a yashmak, Ginny thought as she gazed at her. The dark, lifeless eyes — partly open — returned her stare as though making fun of her.

Oh yes, that was Mrs Kinley all right. Ginny recognised her even from the eyes alone. Well, this was her return visit. Too late, but at least she’d made the effort.

Unexpectedly, Jameela’s bleeper sounded.

Ginny was startled. The sound was not so high-pitched as the squealing of those moths, yet it reminded her of them: those same moths which had brought her and Mrs Kinley together in the first place.

‘Excuse me a moment,’ Jameela said apologetically. ‘I must find a phone. Shan’t be a second.’

Left by herself, Ginny faced those challenging eyes again. Perhaps a mere visit was not enough, not under the circumstances. Perhaps she should — kiss her? She took a deep breath. Isn’t that what people did? She leaned over the half-concealed face, still uncertain, yet feeling she should do something more.

A gesture of some kind.

A kiss, then. On the forehead. Then she could draw the blue sheet over those eyes again with a clear conscience and go to rejoin Jameela who was using the wall telephone near the entrance.

Accidentally she must have brushed against the sheet as she bent down. It slipped, uncovering the entire face and throat. Most of the lower lip was missing, together with part of both cheeks and the soft flesh under the chin. White patches of jawbone were visible through the wounds, and there was no sign of a tongue.

The shock at this horrifying sight sent a spasm of revulsion jarring through her whole being, followed by a heartfelt cry of pity.

‘Oh, you poor thing!’ Ginny’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, I hope you didn’t suffer too much! I should have listened to you.’

‘This is what we wanted to avoid.’ Jameela reappeared at her shoulder, reprimanding her sharply. ‘Come on now. Let’s go.’

‘It wasn’t deliberate!’ Ginny straightened up. There was an edge to her own voice too. ‘But now I’ve seen it, I want to know where else they attacked her.’

‘Then you must ask your brother-in-law.’

‘I’m asking you, Jameela. It’s not idle curiosity. These caterpillars will attack again. We’ve got to know what we’re fighting against.’

Jameela softened her approach, as if humouring a fractious patient. ‘Please, Ginny, don’t make things awkward for me,’ she coaxed, taking her arm in an attempt to lead her away from the body. ‘I’ve got to get back. I’m on duty. Can’t we leave Mrs Kinley in peace now? You’ve paid your respects.’

‘Peace?’ A slight movement beneath the sheet caught her eye. She pointed to it. ‘Is that what you call peace?’

It was no more than a faint ripple in one of me folds in the material. If Ginny had not turned to face the doctor she might not have noticed it at all.

‘Well, doctor ?’

Jameela took a step back and an expression of disgust crossed her face.

‘I shall report this to the registrar,’ she said, obviously upset. ‘They’ve had rats once before in this mortuary, but we were told they’d cleared it up. Apart from anything else, it’s a health hazard.’

‘Rats?’ There was another movement, as if the corpse were flexing its thumb under the blue shroud. ‘That’s too small for a rat.’

Before Jameela was able to stop her, Ginny had peeled back the sheet. Naked on the slab, Mrs Kinley’s body was a pitiful object. The upper sections of her legs, her groin and abdomen were pitted with deep red craters of raw flesh where the caterpillars must have eaten into her. One was still there, emerging slowly from a wound an inch or two above her navel.

Swallowing hard, Ginny somehow managed not to be sick. Jameela clung to her, exclaiming something in her own language which sounded like a prayer. Her eyes were wide with horror as she stared at it weaving malevolently this way and that.

‘That’s what they look like?’ The fear in her voice was undisguised.

‘They’ve been feeding on her!’ Ginny cried out harshly, breaking loose from her grip. ‘Don’t you see? Like so much carrion!’

Her words echoed through the mortuary and the sound must have disturbed the porter who had opened up for them, because he put his head round the door.

‘Everything okay in there?’

‘No.’ Jameela spoke coldly, her emotions now tightly under control again. ‘Take a look at this.’

‘If anything’s wrong it’s not my responsibility,’ the man grumbled, ambling past the slabs towards them just the same. ‘Not the mortuary. That’s not one o’ my duties.’

He reached them just as the caterpillar decided to make another effort to heave itself out. Under the hard strip lighting the bright green of its long hairs seemed exceptionally brilliant.

‘Jesus!’ the man swore, taken aback. ‘That’s not good, is it? Never seen anything like that before. Them rats was more’n I could stomach, but they only nibbled at the feet. What d’you think it is?’

‘It’s a caterpillar,’ Ginny told him. As if it wasn’t only too obvious!

‘Rum sort o’ caterpillar, doin’ that.’

‘Don’t touch it!’

He had stretched out his hand, but he jerked it back rapidly at the note of panic in her voice.

The caterpillar was moving again, bunching up its body, then pushing forward over the dead woman’s skin. It seemed oddly sluggish, Ginny thought as she remembered the one which had investigated her stomach — God, was it only yesterday? So alert, that one had seemed, but this was dopy in comparison.

Or dying, perhaps.

‘There’s something wrong with it,’ she said.

‘Eaten too much!’ The ghost of a smile passed over the porter’s face and it made him look even more like Boris Karloff in those old black-and-white movies. ‘See the size of ’im?’

Slowly it lowered itself on to the slab and without pausing crawled towards the edge. The porter was right about its size. It must be eight inches long, she estimated; in diameter it matched one of those new pound coins that everyone hated. As they watched, it seemed to flow headfirst over the edge, its body rippling lazily.

‘We can’t let it get away,’ Jameela commented, matter-of-factly. Her keen eyes were following its every move. ‘Who knows where it would turn up next. Have we nothing to put it in, if we can catch it?’

‘Nothing in here,’ said the porter. ‘No more than a waiting room, this place, till the undertakers come an’ collect what’s theirs. Even this one wouldn’t be here if the town had its own morgue. Still, the caterpillar’s no problem.’

Before Ginny realised what he intended to do, he had whipped a Bic ball-point out of his breast pocket and stood poised over the caterpillar which by now was half-way down one of the slab supports. He gave it a smart tap with the pen. It dropped limply to the floor, not even curling up as she might have expected, and he brought his heel down on top of it to grind it to death. A green smear spread around the edges of his shoe.

‘Right, that’s your caterpillar!’ Ginny recognised the tone of the self-satisfied male who had once more demonstrated his sex’s superiority over the mere female. ‘Now if you ladies have finished in here, I’ll just make the deceased decent again, and I can lock up.’

‘Someone had better clean the floor,’ Jameela pointed out with a glance at the squashed remains. She wrinkled her nose with distaste.