“Do something?"
Nancy looked down. “Oh, insult the boy cruelly, pretending to be me. Or else make some foul, boastful confession, pretending it was mine. If you knew how those boys loathed me afterwards ...
“But as I said, it wasn't only mental cruelty or indecent tricks. I remember nights when I'd done something to displease her and I'd gone to bed before her and she'd come in and I'd pretend to be asleep and after a while she'd say—oh, I know, Dr. Ballard, it sounds like something a silly little girl would say, but it didn't sound like that then, with my head under the sheet, pressed into the pillow, and her footsteps moving slowly around the bed—she'd say: ‘I'm thinking of how to punish you.’ And then there'd be a long wait, while I still pretended to be asleep, and then the touch ... oh, Dr. Ballard, her hands! I was so afraid of her hands! But ... what it is, Dr. Ballard?"
“Nothing. Go on."
“There's nothing much more to say. Except that Beth's cruelty and my fear went on until a year ago, when she died suddenly—I suppose you'd say tragically—of a blood clot on the brain. I've often wondered since then whether her hatred of me, so long and cleverly concealed, mightn't have had something to do with it. Apoplexy's what haters die of, isn't it, doctor?"
“I remember leaning over her bed the day she died, lying there paralyzed, with her beautiful face white and stiff as a fish's and one eye bigger than the other. I felt pity for her (you realize, doctor, don't you, that I always loved her?) but just then her hand flopped a little way across the blanket and touched mine, although they said she was completely paralyzed, and her big eye twitched around a little until it was looking almost at me and her lips moved and I thought I heard her say: ‘I'll come back and punish you for this,’ and then I felt her fingers moving, just a little, on my skin, as if they were trying to close on my wrist, and I jerked back with a cry.
“Mother was very angry with me for that. She thought I was just a little selfish, thoughtless girl, afraid of death and unable to repress my fear even for my dying sister's sake. Of course I could never tell her the real reason. I've never really told that to anyone, except you. And now that I've told you I hardly know why I've done it."
She smiled nervously, quite unhumorously.
“Wasn't there something about a dream you had last night?” Dr. Ballard asked softly.
“Oh yes!” The listlessness snapped out of her. “I dreamed I was walking in an old graveyard with gnarly grey trees, and overhead the sky was grey and low and threatening, and everything was weird and dreadful. But somehow I was very happy. But then I felt a faint movement under my feet and I looked down at the grave I was passing and I saw the earth falling away into it. Just a little cone-shaped pit at first, with the dark sandy earth sliding down its sides, and a small black hole at the bottom. I knew I must run away quickly, but I couldn't move an inch. Then the pit grew larger and the earth tumbled down its sides in chunks and the black hole grew. And still I was rooted there. I looked at the gravestone beyond and it said ‘Elizabeth Sawyer, 1926-48.’ Then out of the hole came a hand and arm, only there were just shreds of dark flesh clinging to the bone, and it began to feel around with an awful, snatching swiftness. Then suddenly the earth heaved and opened, and a figure came swiftly hitching itself up out of the hole. And although the flesh was green and shrunken and eaten and the eyes just holes, I recognized Beth—there was still the beautiful reddish hair. And then the ragged hand touched my ankle and instantly closed on it and the other hand came groping upward, higher, higher, and I screamed ... and then I woke up."
Nancy was leaning forward, her eyes fixed on the doctor. Suddenly her hair seemed to bush out, just a trifle. Perhaps it had ‘stood on end.’ At any rate, she said, “Dr. Ballard, I'm frightened."
“I'm sorry if I've made you distress yourself,” he said. The words were more reassuring than the tone of voice. He suddenly took her hand in his and for a few moments they sat there silently. Then she smiled and moved a little and said, “It's gone now. I've been very silly. I don't know why I told you all I did about Beth. It couldn't help you with my ankle."
“No, of course not,” he said after a moment.
“Why did you ask if she was identical?"
He leaned back. His voice became brisker again. “I'll tell you about that right now—and about what the X-ray shows. I think there's a connection. As you probably know, Miss Sawyer, identical twins look so nearly alike because they come from the same gene cell. Before it starts to develop, it splits in two.
Instead of one individual, two develop. That was what happened in the case of you and your sister.” He paused. “But,” he continued, “sometimes, especially if there's a strong tendency to twin births in the family, the splitting doesn't stop there. One of the two cells splits again. The result—triplets. I believe that also happened in your case."
Nancy looked at him puzzledly. “But, then what happened to the third child?"
“The third sister,” he amplified. “There can't be identical boy-and-girl twins or triplets, you know, since sex is determined in the original gene cell. There, Miss Sawyer, we come to my second point. Not all twins develop and are actually born. Some start to develop and then stop."
“What happens to them?"
“Sometimes what there is of them is engulfed in the child that does develop completely—little fragments of a body, bits of this and that, all buried in the flesh of the child that is actually born. I think that happened in your case."
Nancy looked at him oddly. “You mean I have in me bits of another twin sister, a triplet sister, who didn't develop?"
“Exactly."
“And that all this is connected with my ankle?"
“Yes."
“But then how—?"
“Sometimes nothing happens to the engulfed fragments. But sometimes, perhaps many years later, they begin to grow—in a natural way rather than malignantly. There are well-authenticated cases of this happening—as recently as 1890 a Mexican boy in this way ‘gave birth’ to his own twin brother, completely developed though of course dead. There's nothing nearly as extensive as that in your case, but I'm sure there is a pocket of engulfed materials around your ankle and that it recently started to grow, so gradually that you didn't notice it until the growth became so extensive as to be irritating."
Nancy eyed him closely. “What sort of materials? I mean the engulfed fragments."
He hesitated. “I'm not quite sure,” he said. “The X-ray was ... oh, such things are apt to be odd, though harmless stuff—teeth, hair, nails, you never can tell. We'll know better later."
“Could I see the X-ray?"
He hesitated again. “I'm afraid it couldn't mean anything to you. Just a lot of shadows."
“Could there be ... other pockets of fragments?"
“It's not likely. And if there are, it's improbable they'll ever bother you."
There was a pause.
Nancy said, “I don't like it."
“I don't like it,” she repeated. “It's as if Beth had come back. Inside me."
“The fragments have no connection with your dead sister,” Dr. Ballard assured her. “They're not part of Beth, but of a third sister, if you can call such fragments a person."
“But those fragments only began to grow after Beth died. As if Beth's soul ... and was it my original cell that split a second time?—or was it Beth's?—so that it was the fragments of half her cell that I absorbed, so that...” She stopped. “I'm afraid I'm being silly again."
He looked at her for a while, then, with the air of someone snapping to attention, quickly nodded.