Spectacle(96)

She heard footsteps behind her and instinctively closed the box. A white-bearded doctor with glasses muttered a greeting as he passed; a nurse holding bandages trailed him. They turned into Aunt Brigitte’s room.

She leaned against the concrete wall and resumed reading in the hallway.

I was twenty-six when I got the transfusion, and the magic transformed me, made me love life and Paris and God Himself more than ever. After twenty-five years I was ALIVE. The gift bestowed on me was clairvoyance through dreams. It was like a little surprise each day … which of my dreams would I see in real life the next day? Sometimes it was a scene in the park, sometimes it was a meal I enjoyed, sometimes it was a conversation with a stranger. Every day something from my dreams became a piece of my reality.

I gave birth to a dead baby when I was twenty. His diminutive corpse haunted my dreams for five years. I received magic and the haunting stopped.

No. It changed forms.

When there were whispers of CONSEQUENCES, I pitied those who had them, including Augustin. He heals people and takes some of their sickness into himself for a time. I believed myself to be fortunate. I didn’t suffer from any effects.

Until I did.

It happened slowly. I think. Perhaps. I realize now as I write these words these words these WORDS that madness is stealthy and comes like a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5:2). Isn’t that what Saint Paul said or meant or wrote nonetheless?

My dreams became reality and reality became dreams and violence came to me in dreams and then I came to violence when I woke up. BUT I HAD TO BECAUSE I HAD TO. I know what I saw. Babies, innocents. Killed. Being killed. Killers killing innocents. And I tried and tried and tried to save them and I tried I did to save them.

No one believes. No one believes. No one no one no one no one no one no one no one no one no one no one no one no one no one



Then the words became even more nonsensical—they were arbitrary and ill-placed, as if someone who didn’t speak French had taken a list of phrases from a language book and copied them at random. That went on for another couple of pages and then the handwriting became sloppy, too. Soon the letters themselves became meaningless loops and lines and curves. By the fourth page it was utter gibberish.

Another twenty or so pages of senseless writing followed. Then, on the last page, Aunt Brigitte signed her name in large, clear script.

Nathalie lifted her eyes from the papers. Tante had borne a dead child? She realized then that she didn’t know much at all about Aunt Brigitte other than what she saw during asylum visits and what she remembered from childhood. Nathalie would never pretend to comprehend the entirety of Tante’s madness. These words offered a sliver of understanding for Nathalie to perch upon, something authentic in which to root her empathy.

She fanned the pages between her thumb and index finger, marveled and horrified by what they contained.

“That’s probably the last thing she ever wrote,” said Papa, appearing in the doorway. His voice was sad. Nostalgic.

“Maman said you burned them.”

“I intended to,” he said, lowering his voice, “because it was a difficult time for Insightfuls, and I didn’t want any record of Henard’s work in our home. When the time came, I couldn’t do it. Out of respect.”

Nathalie placed the cover on the box. “You told me you took Tante to see Dr. Henard because she’d become melancholy. Is—is this why?” she asked, hugging the box.

Papa nodded. “She’d been ashamed that the child was out of wedlock and was convinced its death in the womb was punishment. The man who fathered the child left her. The sorrow never did.” He gazed over his shoulder, his expression forlorn. “Henard’s magic was going to give her—us—a new path to take. I wanted her to feel alive again.’”

“She did.” Nathalie saw the guilt in his eyes. “She wrote that, Papa. She did feel alive again.”

“For a while,” he said, his smile bittersweet.

She gazed into the room at her aunt, withered beyond her years.

Will that be me? Papa? M. Patenaude? Do we all become you, Tante?

Or were you just unlucky?

If magic and science had never met in Dr. Henard’s laboratory, who might you have been?

“Augustin?” Maman called from inside the room.

They returned to the room. Aunt Brigitte had her eyes closed as the nurse gathered the old dressing. Papa spoke to the doctor, who addressed him in a stiff voice and led him out of the room.

“Maman, Nurse Pelletier said we have to sign a document for this,” Nathalie said, holding up the box. “I’ll show you what’s in it later.”

“You can come with me to do that,” said the nurse. She rolled up one last bandage and motioned for Maman to follow her.

Maman was no sooner over the threshold than Aunt Brigitte sat up. “It was about you, Nathalie. She sought you.”

Nathalie’s heart leapt. “Who? Where?”

“In my dream. You were sleeping under a tree in a park. The woman in black had a bloody knife in one hand and a little glass bottle in the other.”

“Woman in black?” Nathalie felt her chest contract, a bow string pulled back. Was this more madness? Or was this … somehow real?

Aunt Brigitte beckoned her closer. “Her hands were so full of splinters, it hurt her to hold the knife. She stabbed a man on her way to you—near Augustin’s age, splayed on a gray-striped blanket. He was face down so I couldn’t see him. And from here to here,” Aunt Brigitte said, dragging her hands from Nathalie’s elbows to fingertips, “she was soaked in blood.”