David Nickle - The Caretakers

“You were here earliest,” she said. “While the others were sleeping, you were awake and about.” She set the tablet on its back, so it lit the curtains, the ceiling. “Of all of them, even Mr. Allen… you arrived first.”

Miss Erish looked down at the light. It seemed to grow brighter as she did so—as though the sensor had noted some competing glow, and automatically tuned the illumination higher.

“Oh dear,” said Miss Erish. “Oh dear, oh damn.”

Her voice sounded raw. It seemed to Evelyn as though she were crying. Evelyn’s thumbs hovered over the screen of her phone, and the little keyboard there. She felt as though she ought to respond to her daughter, but she could not take her eyes from Miss Erish, who trembled.

“What do you think about Miss Retson? She pursued little Miss Wilson very swiftly. As though she were very worried… very worried. Might she… Might it be love ? No. That cannot be. I shall send her a message. Instruct her—” Miss Erish’s fingers clacked furiously against the glass of her tablet. “Oh damn, damn.”

Evelyn set her phone down. She reached her arms toward Miss Erish, slid forward on the bed, and Miss Erish joined Evelyn there. Miss Erish felt cool and brittle beneath her blouse, and left to her own inclinations, Evelyn would have recoiled at the inhuman touch of her.

They sat like that for some time, listening to the wind outside as it howled across the highway, along the river—somehow growing colder themselves, in one another’s embrace.

David Nickle is the author of the novels The ’Geisters, Rasputin’s Bastards, and Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, and co-author of The Claus Effect, with Karl Schroeder. His stories are collected in Knife Fight and Other Struggles, and Monstrous Affections. He is co-editor with Madeline Ashby of Licence Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond. He lives in Toronto, Canada, where he works as a journalist covering municipal politics. You can sign up for email updates here.

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Copyright © 2016 by David Nickle

Art copyright © 2016 by Greg Ruth

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