The pattern

The pattern

I come home earlier than usual, and take a deep breath before entering the house. I can already smell dinner, lasagna I think. She peers out the kitchen door when she hears the door open.

“Honey, you startled me, how come you’re home so early?”

“Darling”, I kiss her, but take care to keep mi lips closed. “There was an incident  in the office, they dismissed us early.”

She frowns one of her that’s-interesting-but-I-have-something-in-the-oven frowns, and starts turning away.

“What happened? Is everyone ok?”

She opens the oven door and the scent fills the room.

“No,  it’s Pat…”

She leaves the lasagna on top of the stove to cool it, takes of her gloves and turns to look at me, I can see real concern in her eyes.

“Honey, what happened?”

My throat clenches… I turn to the fridge, to get a beer. I open the door and take on from the door, almost instinctively, but as the door starts to close I see half a pomegranate on one of our sons dishes, the Winnie the Pooh one. The bottle slides from my hand and crashes on the floor. The door closes automatically.

“Oh honey…”

I turn towards her, that primal fear of being reprimanded flashes through my mind, but disappears, the moment I see her face.

“What happened? Sit down. Tell me what happened.”

She pulls me to the table, and sits down besides me, and as I start talking, I can’t even recognize my own voice, for there’s something in it that wasn’t there before: fear.

“You remember I told you about Pat’s project, the one he talked me into joining?”

“The children’s skulls” She shudders.

“Something like that, children’s skulls before losing their baby teeth. We were studying what happens to the holes left by the second row of teeth.”

“You make them sound as sharks.”

I realize she has never seen it, not even a picture. She’s never felt that first wave of nausea, the first time you see the pattern, the holes… I hope she never does. I start to show a forced smile, but think better of it.

“Lately, Pat seemed more nervous than usual. God knows he always was jumpy, but this was different, it was as if he feared the world. He stopped having lunch with us in the garden. “Sunflowers.” That’s all he said when we asked him why. A week ago he started sleeping in his office, he wouldn’t leave. And then two days ago, when we came in, we found he’d taken some things out of the lab, and left them in the halls. Said he didn’t want them inside, the sponge with which we washed the skulls… Tom’s fractal poster, hell he even took out my fern fossil… Anyways, we came in this morning and the lab was closed off. Security wouldn’t let us in, and no one would tell us what was happening.”

I take a moment before continuing, tell myself to get it over with. She waves her hand over my head distractedly.

“Just a bug baby. So what happened next?”

“Jerry came in, said he needed to talk to our team, something had happened. We went to his office upstairs, and the first thing I noticed was he’d taken down the beehive poster. You know, one of those motivational things, “bee yourself” or something like that, it was on the floor facing the wall. Struck me as weird, but hey, maybe he was changing it for a whale or something, I don’t even get those things… anyways, we sat down and he said, “Guys, something happened to Pat”. And I asked where he was, and was he ok… And he says “He’s in the lab… but… well, he’s not exactly ok.”

She’s looking at me with real concern now, I must have started to cry without realizing it, cause she takes a napkin from de table and cleans my eyes; the frown’s back on her face, but now there’s real concern in those creases.

“He turns his computer screen toward us, and we can see the security video’s frames filling it up. He moves the pointer over the one on the top right corner and clicks, and the image, which now fills the whole screen, and there’s Pat alright. Walking from side to side, scratching his head, muttering something we can’t hear, and then he stands still, and that’s when we see it. Tom gasps besides me, and I can hear Gretchen trying to swallow… or gag, I can’t even tell. My own skin prickles, I feel like scratching my whole body, but control myself. And I hear myself asking “What is it?” but there’s no answer. And I look at Jerry and he’s staring at his table as if he’d seen a ghost. I tell you Stella I’ve never seen such terror in a man’s eyes, he takes his letter opener and starts scratching at his desk, and I don’t even know what’s happening, and Gretchen is saying “Get them, there’s so many, so many… can’t we fill them up? Don’t touch it!!!” And then she slaps my hand, the one that was on top of the desk, and then she actually does gag, and runs to the trash bin. But she stops when she looks at it, and turns to Jerry with reproach in her eyes. It’s one of those metal things, you know, one of those meshed trash cans. And I look at my hand and realize I had actually been scratching with my own nails the little holes on the wood.”

She’s still looking at me, but now there’s something more in her eyes, fear I think, and even revulsion.

“I looked back at the screen, and realize Pat is looking at the camera inside the lab, it’s as he knew we’re watching him, and it looks as if he’s pleading, asking for help, but then he moves his hand towards the camera, and I can see his skin clearly… and honey… you remember that time we took Henry to the aquarium, and we saw those things stuck to the glass, and you said they were like something out of a horror movie?”

She pushes her chair back and walks toward the sink. She leans over it, and her voice is not much more than a whisper.

“The lampreys… those were the one’s with the teeth right? The ones with rows of teeth, stuck to the glass. Henry said they looked like the food disposer on the kitchen sink.”

She looks down at the sink and turns sharply. But she avoids looking at me. She’s quiet, so I start talking again.

“Well honey, his fingers looked like that… they looked as if something had eaten at the tips, and then there were red boils on his hands, one after another, like fish eggs… like caviar, all over his hands.”

She walks towards the oven, and stares at the lasagna.

“And his face… oh honey, there’s holes in his face, holes with little round squirming things inside, and they’re symmetric, you know? There’s a pattern, and I can’t look anymore, and Tom keeps mumbling to himself, and Jerry’s filing the desk with the letter opener, and I …”

She picks up the tray with the lasagna. She’s still facing the wall, and just to the right of her legs, I can see my own reflection on the oven’s door. And my hairline, it looks like there are bubbles in it. Immobile bubbles. And I rub my eyes, but it feels as if my eyelids have been eaten away. 

She turns towards me, and the lasagna is in her hands, and I can see the burnt cheese on top, the holes in it, the pattern, the goddamned pattern. And I look at her face and there are tears in her eyes, but her mouth looks twisted, as if she were about to be sick, and she swings the lasagna plate towards my head.

I have just a couple of seconds left to think, but I can’t even talk, all I can do is gasp, cause I see something in the corner of her mouth, and it could be a cold sore, or a hole, the first of…