“How long have you been there?” asked Andrew.
“Long enough to see,” said Jason. He swallowed and shut his eyes a moment. “Where’s the rest of her?”
“Why don’t you sit down,” said Andrew. “Look away. Let me see to this—”
Jason held up his hand. He opened his eyes and stared hard at Andrew.
“No sir. You think I’m upset like a girl or a baby or someone from a city, because there’s an awful thing here. Well, I ain’t. I’ve seen awful things already and this is another one. You think we should start looking for the rest of her? Can’t be far.”
Andrew drew a breath. This boy had depths to him—he was no baby or girl or city person, that was true. “Yes,” he said. “I think we should. And I’ve got an idea.”
“You need a hand walking?”
“No,” said Andrew. “I better get used to doing that on my own.”
Jason stepped aside. “I’m here if you need it, Doctor.”
Andrew smiled as he started across the room. “Someone raised you well,” he said, and pointed to a door at the far end of the room. “Fetch a lamp, then. We’ll check here.”
The door led to the closest thing one could find to a cellar to this place. The nurses called it the root cellar, because it was cool and tight, and probably could keep a good store of potatoes and carrots until winter if that was what the place was for.
But there wasn’t room in this cellar and anyway, the shelves here were full of things you wouldn’t want next to your supper.
“What’s the smell in here?”
“Formaldehyde,” said Andrew.
“Smells like pickle juice,” said Jason.
“You must be used to some awful pickles to say that,” said Andrew. “But it works the same as pickle juice—preserves things that left to themselves might rot away. Come on down, bring the candle.”
Jason brought the candle down the steps. The space in here had been dug out of the ground and lined with fieldstone and timber. The ceiling was a low, whitewashed arch. Air circulation was bad in here, and the few times Andrew had been down before, he’d always had the uneasy sense that he was about to suffocate.
“Sure are a lot of jars here,” said Jason.
“This is where the hospital keeps its specimens,” said Andrew. “Someone’s foot gets amputated—we pull out some kidney stones—even if we cut out an appendix. It all goes here in a jar.”
“Every time?”
“Not every time.” Andrew squinted at a line of jars filled with stones of various sizes. Thin sheets of effluvia drifted in the yellowish liquid. “But when there’s something remarkable about it. Something worth writing down. Then yes, we keep it.”
Jason looked hard at the jars. “Should be a lot of jars like that around here. They’re labelled and everything. What’re we looking for?”
“Not kidney stones from M. Cunningham,” said Andrew.
“Nor a testicle from L. Wharton,” said Jason. “A testicle! He can’t be too happy with how his life’s carrying on.”
Andrew chuckled. “I remember that one. I think he’s happy enough these days. See how big it is?”
Jason looked closer. “I thought that was just the magnifyin’ effect of the glass.”
“Oh no. In fact, it looks like it has contracted since the surgery.”
Jason whistled. “How’d a fellow walk, dragging something like that between his legs?”
“I wondered that too. And so I removed it.”
Jason was quiet a moment, considering this. He pulled the candle back.
“What’s the matter, son? Too much for one night?”
Jason didn’t answer, and when the candle drew farther away Andrew turned.
“Jason? Are you all right?”
The candle was glowing at the far end of the little cellar, making a silhouette of Jason, and illuminating a high shelf that was filled with big glass jars.
“Doctor,” said Jason, “I think I found Maryanne Leonard. Or the rest of her. You need a hand coming over here?”
Andrew made it over on his own but Jason did most of the work moving the jars out into the autopsy where the light was better. There were eight of them that were labelled M. Leonard, and each one was big—a good half-gallon. Andrew was doing all right walking, but with one good arm and a limp, he was sure he’d drop every one of them. So Jason hauled them out and arranged them for inspection.
The jars were all labelled with the name of the particular organ that was inside. It was a good thing—because whoever had removed them had done an inept job. The intestine and stomach were both badly perforated, one of the kidneys was almost liquefied, and the liver…
Andrew leaned in close to examine the liver. Its surface looked as though someone had drawn a table fork across it—or in some spots, a spoon, scooping parts away like custard. Jason leaned in beside him.
“What happened to that?” he asked. Andrew looked where he was pointing—into the jar that was labelled Uterus.
At first, Andrew took it on faith that this was what he was looking at, because Maryanne Leonard’s uterus was a ruin. Andrew could see where the rip was, but there were also cuts, radiating out from it. Other parts had holes of a variety of sizes, like a slice of Swiss cheese. The fallopian tubes and ovaries were kinked and ragged, as though they’d been gnawed by rats.
And there were… other things.
They looked like tiny pustules, attached to the inner lining of the uterus. They were each perfectly round, whitish, not more than a sixteenth of an inch in diameter. There might have been hundreds.
“Look at those.”
“What are they?”
“One way to find out,” said Andrew. “Let’s have a look. Could you unscrew the jar, Jason?”
“This is going to smell worse.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Jason wrinkled his nose, took the jar in the crook of his elbow and twisted the top off.
Andrew found a set of forceps and a steel tray, and when Jason set the jar back down he reached inside and carefully pulled the organ out.
“A uterus. That’s the same as a womb.”
“Very good.” Andrew unfolded it onto the tray as well as he could, using only his left hand. “Jason, could you bring a light near? Thank you.”
Jason took the candle near and set it on the table beside the organ, while Andrew brought a magnifying glass to bear on the problem.
“Tiny people did this,” said Jason.
Andrew was only half-listening, so he nodded. He prodded the pustules with the end of a needle. They were attached all right—and they were hard.
“Tiny people,” repeated Jason. “From the quarantine. That’s what I saw there—never seen anything like it before. But they had sharp teeth and I bet they did this. I know it.”
At that, Andrew sat up and looked at Jason. “Jason,” he said levelly, “we don’t know anything. We’ve both seen things—and we’ve seen the same thing in one case. So it gives it some credence, this idea that some little cousin of Mister Juke did all this. But we don’t know. Not yet.” He sat back. “Unless, there’s some story about what happened in that quarantine you haven’t told me.”
“Those things in there—they looked like folks. Small folks but that weren’t all. The one I saw up close had pretty sharp teeth and a hungry way about it. It went after my—” he hesitated, and reddened “—my privates. Think if it were smaller—younger—it couldn’t cut a hole in a woman’s insides? Chew it? Looking for food?”
“That’s good, Jason. You are asking questions. And they’re good ones too.” Andrew looked back through the magnifying glass, focused it on a cluster of the pustules.
“Thank you,” said Jason. “And what’re you going to do about those questions?”