Dr Pocztomski was over an hour late because somebody had thrown themselves in front of his train at Clapham Junction. When he entered the laboratory at St George’s Hospital, he found his assistant pathology technician and two pathology students already waiting for him.
On the bench in front of them stood two portable incubators made of green-and-white plastic. In one was the foetus with the stunted arms and legs that had been cut out of Joya Sanghavi. In the other was the crablike foetus that had tried to penetrate Jenny Gibbons.
Dr Pocztomski had already been sent 3D pictures of both foetuses, as well as read-outs of their latest vital signs, so he knew what to expect. Despite that, he felt his heart beating hard and slow when he saw them lying there in their incubators, still alive, still breathing. Everything he knew about foetal malformation told him that they should never have survived even their first five minutes once they had been expelled from the womb.
‘Have you ever seen anything like these two before, doctor?’ asked his assistant, Firash.
Dr Pocztomski slowly shook his head. ‘Not living, no. Never. And two of them? I would have said the odds against that were millions to one.’
He was tall and stringy, Dr Pocztomski, with fine straw-coloured hair that had receded halfway back from his forehead, a sharply pointed nose and circular spectacles. Firash was a tubby Malay, with a smooth round face and short black hair that stood straight up, as if he had stuck his fingers into an electric socket.
The students were both female – a slim brunette with pouty lips and a ponytail, and a large gingery young woman who reminded Dr Pocztomski of his half-sister, who still lived in Poland. Firash introduced them. ‘This is Melanie – Mel – and this is Sinead.’
Dr Pocztomski carefully lifted the clear plastic lid of the incubator in which Joya’s foetus was lying. It quivered, as if it were having a bad dream, but its eyes remained closed, and it carried on breathing, although each breath was snatched and shallow.
‘Did the AFP give you any background information about these foetuses?’ He was referring to the Assistant Forensic Practitioner from the Met’s laboratories at Lambeth.
‘Only that they were both the result of home terminations. Foetus A appears to be the result of the mother’s deliberate attempt to perform a C-section on herself. Foetus B was manually aborted by the woman’s partner. Apart from that, all they told me was that you were coming to examine them, and to keep them in their incubators until you arrived.’
Dr Pocztomski peered closely into both incubators and then shook his head. ‘I find it almost unbelievable that either foetus has survived. Yes, Foetus A was removed from the mother’s uterus by a crude Caesarean, but Foetus B… its mother claims that it was actively roaming around her flat before forcibly attempting to enter her birth canal. I say “mother”, but if her story is true, which I think is highly unlikely, she was obviously nothing more than a very temporary host from which Foetus B was forcibly extricated.’
‘They did tell me that the young woman who tried to perform a C-section on herself was taken to the emergency room at King’s,’ put in Firash. ‘The latest news is that her condition is serious but not life-threatening.’
‘Well, that’s one relief,’ said Dr Pocztomski. ‘All we have to do now is find out how she became impregnated with a foetus like this. What about the other young woman?’
‘Ms Gibbons? She suffered bruising and shock but was otherwise unharmed.’
‘It’s an extraordinary case. Extraordinary. We need to know where her foetus came from… and why it was attempting to force its way inside her. And of course how both of these foetuses have managed to survive for so long after abortion, considering their extreme malformation.’
‘I’ve taken blood and tissue and DNA samples, as you asked,’ said Firash. ‘I’ve flagged them with the lab as top priority, but we may not get the results until tomorrow or the day after. But here are the ultrasounds.’
Dr Pocztomski took the folder of scans, laid them on the bench and took them out one by one, holding them up and frowning at them intently.
‘I would guess that Foetus A is in about the twelfth week of gestation, while Foetus B has reached about the thirteenth or fourteenth week. Both foetuses have brains, and hearts, and lungs, and livers, even though they’re so catastrophically malformed. They have genitalia too. Foetus A is female while Foetus B is male.’
‘Both their size and their weight are what you would expect from normal foetuses at those stages,’ said Firash. ‘Foetus A is sixty-one millimetres in length and weighs eleven grams. Foetus B is 61 millimetres in length and weighs 13 grams.’
Dr Pocztomski was about to answer him when the bench shuddered, and the raised plastic lid above Joya’s foetus dropped shut.
‘I hope that wasn’t an earthquake,’ said Dr Pocztomski, peering at Firash and the two students over the top of his spectacles. ‘You don’t get earthquakes here in Tooting, do you?’
Firash didn’t have the chance to say anything before the bench shuddered again, and then the whole floor felt as if it were sliding sideways underneath their feet. A row of glass jars fell off the shelf at the back of the laboratory, with three or four of them smashing into the sink. Test tubes rattled in their wooden racks and an anglepoise lamp tilted over sideways like a skeletal bird and clattered onto the floor.
‘It is an earthquake!’ said Dr Pocztomski.
The floor shook again, much more violently, and he had to reach out and grab the handle of the store cupboard next to him to keep his balance. Sinead staggered back against Mel, and the two of them collided with the left-hand wall.
The shaking gradually subsided. As the rattling died away though, the lights began to dim, like flickering candles. There was a row of small windows between the top of the shelving and the ceiling, but these slowly darkened, as if night were falling outside, three hours early, until they were totally black.
‘Firash, what the hell is going on?’ asked Dr Pocztomski, still holding on to the handle in case the floor started shaking again. ‘Is this a power cut, or what?’
‘I’ll go and find out, doctor.’
Firash made his way around the bench to the door, but when he tried to open it, he found that it was stuck fast. He jiggled the handle and tugged at it hard, but it still refused to open.
‘Phone reception,’ Dr Pocztomski told him. ‘They can send maintenance.’
Firash took out his phone and prodded at it, but then he pulled a face. ‘It’s dead, doctor. It’s fully charged, but look.’ He held it up so that Dr Pocztomski could see the black screen.
Dr Pocztomski took out his own phone, but that too was dead. He went over to the wall phone in the corner and picked that up, but when he put the receiver to his ear, all he could hear was a faint swishing crackle, like somebody wading slowly through autumn leaves.
‘No, useless. Try the door again.’
Firash wrenched the door handle again and again, and at the fifth wrench he tore all the screws out, and the handle dropped onto the floor.
‘Well, now we are well and truly trapped,’ said Dr Pocztomski.
Both of the students had brought out their phones, only to find that they were dead too.
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Mel. She was close to tears. ‘What if nobody comes to get us out?’
‘Of course they will,’ Dr Pocztomski reassured her. ‘Even if we have to wait for the cleaners to come around.’
‘But what’s happening? Why has it gone so dark?’
The fluorescent lights in the ceiling blinked and dimmed, and then brightened; but then they dimmed down again.
‘Maybe I should try to kick down the door,’ Firash suggested.
But Dr Pocztomski didn’t answer. He was sure he had seen something stirring in the corner by the sink. Although it was already gloomy in the laboratory, a darker swirl appeared to be forming. He reached across and tugged Firash’s sleeve and said, ‘Look, Firash… there – what is that?’
The darkness clotted together, thicker and thicker, growing taller and wider at the same time, until Dr Pocztomski realised that it was taking on the shape of a human figure. It was dense enough for him to be able to see it, and yet he could also see the shining taps right through it, as well as the faint glitter of broken glass on the draining board.
‘Oh my God, what is it? Oh my God!’ The two students had seen it too, and they were backing away, clinging to each other. Sinead was making a thin keening sound in the back of her throat, and both of them were clearly terrified.
The flickering light took on a sickly green hue and began to grow brighter again, and steadier. Dr Pocztomski could see that the figure appeared to be wearing a cloak, with wide-spreading sleeves, and that it had a tall, pointed hood, like a member of some religious order, or a witch.
Was it real? he asked himself. Or was it some kind of optical illusion? He was hard-headed and relentlessly analytical – both by training and by nature. He was even prepared to believe that this might be a tasteless practical joke that some of the hospital’s students were playing on them, using some computer-generated image.
He was about to challenge the figure, but before he could think what to shout out, a high, grating voice echoed around the laboratory – a woman’s voice, harsh with rage. To his bewilderment, it wasn’t coming from the figure itself, but from Mel. She was almost doubled up, with both her fists clenched. Sinead was staring at her in shock.
‘You will not touch my nestlings! You will not harm them, or I swear that you will suffer as you have never suffered before!’
‘Who are you?’ Dr Pocztomski retorted. He was trying to sound authoritative, but he was aware that his voice sounded off-key.
‘You will not rob them of their future life! God and their mothers turned their backs on them and cast them out, but I never will! They are my nestlings now!’
‘I asked you who you are! Or what you are!’
‘You want to see what life you might have taken away from them, my nestlings? Then behold!’
The hooded figure’s sleeves swooped and furled, as if it were signalling with two large black flags. Dr Pocztomski caught a smell in the draught that it stirred up: the bitter reek of woodsmoke. Over the two incubators the air started to quiver, so that the hooded figure quivered too.
Out of this trembling air, two small images took shape, one hovering over each incubator, although the foetuses were still lying inside them, their breathing quick and shallow as before. They were clearly visible, these figures, but translucent, like two holograms. Dr Pocztomski was eerily reminded of the hologram of Princess Leia in Star Wars.
The image over Joya’s foetus had a grossly swollen head, but underneath the crease of its bulging forehead, it had clear cerulean eyes and a face that was almost cherubic, with rounded cheeks and pouting lips. Its shoulders sloped down sharply from its neck, and its arms were little more than stumps, with tiny nodules for fingers. Its belly was swollen, with a protuberant navel that looked like a complicated knot of twisted twine. Its legs were as stunted as its arms, with tiny underdeveloped toes. Two webs of transparent skin stretched from underneath its arms to the sides of its feet, giving it the appearance of a flying squirrel.
Over Jenny’s foetus, the image had a far smaller head, with a forehead that sloped sharply back, as if it had almost no room inside its skull for a brain. Its eyes were bloodshot and protuberant and looked as if they were about to pop out of their sockets. It had no nose, only gaping triangular holes that exposed its sinuses, and its mouth was dragged downward like a miserable child. Its body resembled a plastic bag half filled with water, and its arms and legs were nothing more than rows of buds, although both its fingers and its toes had sharp hooked claws on them.
‘This is how my nestlings will grow,’ said the woman’s voice, and Dr Pocztomski thought that it sounded more indulgent now, and far less angry. ‘You may not love them, and God may not love them, but I love them, because they are alive. Ugliness may be a curse, but it is not a sin. The moment these nestlings were conceived, their lives began, and I will nourish and protect them, for all of their misfortune. It is not their fault that they will never be beautiful in your eyes, or the eyes of God. They will always be beautiful to me.’
The two images wavered and then slowly faded. The hooded figure remained, its outline slightly blurred, so that Dr Pocztomski became even more convinced that it was formed out of nothing but smoke. It looked like smoke; it smelled like smoke. But how could smoke penetrate this laboratory, and take on a human shape, and create holographic images, and speak through one of his students?
He took a deep breath, and then he said, ‘So, what are you telling me? That I mustn’t touch these two foetuses? What am I supposed to do with them? They’ve been aborted. There’s no way in the world that they can possibly survive.’
Mel was on the point of collapse. Her head was lolling down and her knees were giving way, and Sinead was having to hold her up to prevent her from falling face down onto the floor. Sinead looked over desperately at Dr Pocztomski, but he felt paralysed, as if every joint in his body had locked up.
‘I will take care of my nestlings, as I have been taking care of them before,’ Mel croaked. ‘They are my children. Not yours. Not God’s. Mine.’
There was a moment when Dr Pocztomski felt as if the whole of reality was being twisted out of shape. The laboratory felt as if it were rotating all around him, and he could even see Firash being stretched out impossibly thin. He heard Mel screaming, but this was a piercing scream of pain, not coarse and angry like the hooded figure. He tried to turn around, but as he did so the laboratory was abruptly plunged into total blackness.
‘Fiiirrrr-assshhh!’ he called out, and his voice was dragged out like the soundtrack of a slow-motion film. ‘Fiiirrrr-assshhh wheeere arrrrrre youuuu?’
He was groping his way across the laboratory when there was a deafening bang, and he was hit by the door flying off its hinges. He was knocked sideways against the bench, snapping his glasses in half, and the door clattered down on top of him, one of its broken hinges snagging his cheek.
He heaved the door to one side, and at the same time the lights blinked on. Not green, but normal. Feeling bruised and half stunned, he climbed to his feet, looking around for his glasses. It was then, blurrily, that he saw Firash sitting slumped in the corner by the sink, as if he were drunk. And then he heard Sinead behind the bench, gasping and sobbing.
‘Sinead?’ he said.
He could see that the transparent lids of both incubators had been ripped off, and that both foetuses had gone. But then he heard Sinead sobbing again, and after that, he paid the incubators no more attention. As he came around to the other side of the bench, he found Sinead crouched down beside Mel, and Mel lying on her back on the floor. Mel’s white lab coat was soaked dark, glistening red with blood, and her face was grey with shock.
She was holding up both of her arms, or what was left of them. They had both been torn off at the elbows, exposing the bone. Sinead was trying to wind the tatters of Mel’s sleeve around her upper left arm as a tourniquet, but her hands were slippery with blood and she was in shock too, and finding it hard to make her fingers do what she wanted.
Dr Pocztomski took out his phone and saw that it was working. He jabbed out 999, and then he unbuckled his belt and pulled it out from the loops around his trousers with a sharp snap.
‘Firash!’ he shouted, as he knelt down beside Mel.
‘Yes, yes, doctor. I hear you.’
‘Firash, go to A & E now. I mean now! Mel has been critically injured.’
‘What? How?’
‘Don’t ask, Firash, just go!’
‘Yes, doctor. I’m going. I’m on my way.’
The operator answered, ‘Emergency. Which service?’ and Dr Pocztomski briskly told her what had happened and gave her his location. One way or another, he wanted to make sure that help reached them as quickly as possible. After that, he looped his belt around Mel’s upper right arm and pulled it as tight as he could. Sinead had managed to bind Mel’s torn sleeve around her left arm and tie that tightly, too. Neither tourniquet was perfect, but they would stem the bleeding until the paramedics arrived.
‘Mel, stay with us, darling,’ said Sinead. Mel’s eyelids were fluttering and she didn’t respond. ‘Mel, don’t leave us. Help’s on the way.’
Dr Pocztomski pressed his fingertips against Mel’s neck to feel her pulse. It was weak, which was consistent with her losing blood, but her heart was still steadily beating.
Sinead said, ‘I don’t… I don’t understand what’s happened.’
Dr Pocztomski was looking around now, trying to see if Mel’s severed forearms had been dropped anywhere near, but there was no sign of them, only a spray of blood like a bouquet of roses up the side of the bench, and more squiggly blood spatters on the wall beside the door. Had that hooded figure done this to her? But how? How does a figure made of nothing but smoke wrench off a young woman’s forearms and carry them away? And had it taken away those two deformed foetuses too?
‘I don’t understand what’s happened any more than you,’ he told Sinead. ‘I keep thinking that I’m going to wake up in a moment, and that I’m still at home in bed. But I’m not. I know I’m not. Oh Mother of God, I know I’m not.’