He stared at the boy and remembered that he liked children.
He tried to remember a note of his training, an iota, a word, but not a syllable or a comma came to him. The truth of it was, he supposed, that it was the room that horrified him. He had requested to work in a different wing of the house, but had been denied.
“The Rosebude Family Psychologist always works from this room.” Nanna McKanda’s voice was warm but firm. “Trust me, I asked to be put in a smaller suite. I’m all alone in this huge suite of rooms. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”
She smiled and led him into the room. “I know that you will be happy with this suite. Miss Moxie picked it for you especially.”
But since that first night, there was something in the room that seemed to whisper to him. It crawled along his flesh like a liquid kiss when he entered. At fist, he attributed it to a smell in the room, or to the position of the curtains. One night, he was convinced that there was someone in the outer room of his suites.
However, when he opened the door, there had had been no one there. He stood in his bedroom looking out into the thick darkness. Shadows moved, as they often did, but nothing came at him.
One morning, as he put his slippers on, the smell of burnt toast came to him, burnt toast. It reminded him of that horrible Canada Post commercial where the woman smells burnt toast and seizures.
Then he thought of the fire. He could almost feel the flames licking their way along the hardwood floor. But when he opened the bedroom door…nothing.
He had learned quickly that if he moved quickly through the sitting room where he saw his patients, and enclosed himself inside of his bedroom, he was mostly fine. But inside the room, something waited for him. He wondered if it hungered for him.
He wondered. Vaguely he reminded himself that he should be paying attention to the boy in front of him. He should try, he really should try to engage with Yhestin, but the room slipped and slurped around him, moving as if on a rinse cycle. There was something in here and it was something that wanted him.
“How does that make you feel?” Donalde said. “What colours do you see?” He asked. He did all he could to get the words out in completely. He could only remain in the room for less than an hour. After that, it took a piece of him.
It took what it wanted of him. It took what was most precious to him. He would miss his memories, if he could remember them.
“Well, I mean, Has is totally fucked up, right? She wants to kill David Hasselhoff cus his name sounds kind of like hers? At the same time, there’s this group of like zombie kids at school that want to recruit her, there’s this mysterious brown haired woman watching Hass’s house, she took Colonel Sanders.”
“Colonel Sanders?” Even though the room was spinning around him and its hot breath was breathing down his neck (he could swear that it wanted to reach into him, to touch him in his most intimate places) he had to ask. “I don’t understand.”
That’s what we call Major Wallace Wallawallawashington. So I think this other lady has him hostage and there’s this whole thing going on with Nanna McKanda and my Dad but I don’t understand it and I think that my mother is sleeping with Has’s dad which is kind of gross cus he smokes so much and I think that the gardener and the butler at Has’ place were totally doing it but they broke up and now the security guard at my place just got picked up by another guy, so something is going on there.”
He paused to take a breath. As he did, his lips seemed to release small bubbles in the air. It seemed to Donalde Pleasanse that one bubble came out for every syllable. Soon the room was filled with thousands of bubbles, all repeating the syllable they were born from. Every word the boy said was repeated a hundred times.
“I mean,” Yhestin continued. “I don’t understand it. Isn’t that too much going on? And how big is this fucking town anyway? It keeps changing sizes. Have you noticed that? And what’s up with the name? Who the fuck name’s a place Kilkades Dare?”
Yhestin stood and the bubbles move around him. “I mean, don’t you think that is a lot for a kid to be dealing with? I mean what the fuck is going on in this town?”
As Yhestin moved towards the good doctor, Donalde watched in horror as the bubbles that had been Yhestin’s words began to pop. When the sound cleared, when all the bubbles had gone, bright fiery fingers glowed along Yhestin. His eyes glowed momentarily red and then the fire was gone in a snap.
When the quiet came, Donalde Pleasanse understood something right then with a moment of startling clarity:
It was not the room.
It was the boy.
“It just makes me so angry.” Yhestin said. He winked at the doctor as he stood. “I get so angry sometimes, I just don’t know what I’ll do.”
Though he said these words with a light air, These words frightened him. As Donalde sat there, for the first time not quaking with fear from the room around him but from the sweet boy in front of him, Donalde truly knew fear.
As Yhestin walked toward the door of the office, he turned and look at the doctor. “You make sure to tell my mother that this talk went well? Okay?”
Donalde could only nod.
“It was good talking with you, Doctor.”
The door closed behind him with a single, soft click.
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