Kalligar’s Wish

by Karen Goldrick

They thought it would be safer to lock Hugo up for the night. Nevertheless, the next morning there was another body. Lucy Brody, only 22, plenty of subcutaneous fat and the apple of her daddy’s eye. One of the day girls, serving her time in the laundry until she wed the coal driver’s son.

There were no marks on her body. No sign of a struggle. No telltale fear in her face. Just a pink rosebud planted between her lips. They buried her quickly, fearful of retaliation, and pondered the problem before Them.

it was only since Hugo had been incarcerated: starving, mute, and with no recollection of himself, that the deaths had started. They only knew he was Hugo from the letter in his back pocket. He seemed youngish, maybe thirty, maybe less. His hair was short, and quite grey. he was clean shaven, and to their mild interest stayed that way. his beard never grew. His skin held an uneasy green pallor. Malnutrition, They said.

He caused no trouble. he did as he was told. Ate well. Toileted on time. Slept in the dormitory with the other afflicted men. He made no sound. He had no violent tendencies. NO grotesque bodily manifestations. Hugo simply stared. Sometimes his pupils were so wide as to make his eyes seem like a black void. Some times his pupils mere slits in his strange jaundiced iris.

The first body turned up one month later. The dunny driver;’s son. A distant cousin to the coal driver. Lying as if in sleep behind the cannery row. A small black pebble in his mouth. Perhaps a fortnight later They found one of the patients. Then another relative of the coal driver. All with artifacts from the garden in their mouth. All peaceful. None with external wounds or violence.

And so They began to suspect Hugo. Why? there was no evidence. No witness. just isolation, fear, superstition , and long desolate looks with those pale desperate eyes. So, They locked him up for the night. Locked him in the basement of the men’s block. Behind bars and sandstone, on a night when the moonshadow reflected off the wings of fruit bats as they brushed past. They locked the door and They hung up the key. But the next day They found Lucy. They covered her with a white sheet , released him, and walked him back to the dorm. From her room above the ministry, Kalliga watched.

Kalliga was too tall. She was also too thin and too pale. Thinness could be disguised beneath layers of petticoats and padded underclothes. Paleness could be covered with rosy pink rouge. But there was no hiding tallness.

Her grandmother had left her, on her tenth birthday, at the door of the asylum. There was a note pinned to her pinafore, with her name, birthdate, and the name of her mother. They supposed her mother to be a patient, but no-one of that name could be found.

Even at ten Kalliga was tall. The day girls laughed and called her a bean-pole. Little boys were scared, and hid under their mother’s skirts. They saw that she could never live outside, so They taught her to work in the laundry amongst the stained sheet sand grimy underclothes. Being tall, she could lift the lids off the boilers where no-one else could. She could hang the sheets from the iron rafters on wet days. Being tall, she could command some little authority from the patients who were sound enough to help.

By the time she was sixteen, Kalliga was seven feet tall. She padded her skirts and painted her face. She coiled her long, dun coloured hair into a bun. She stooped so she could hear and understand Them. They found she could look into the first story dorms unaided, so they gave her more work. They made her a guard. Sort of a guard. She had to patrol the verandahs and check on the sleeping dormatories. The night nurses could be put back onto day duties and funds would be saved.

Every night Kalliga put on her cloak, straightened her knees, back and shoulders, and watched the sleeping shadows in the flickering light. That was when she first saw Hugo, before the dead, before They locked him up.

He was awake. Every night. He did not sleep. His yellow eyes attracted and reflected the light.

They brightened as Kalliga walked past. They dulled when the moon escaped behind clouds. They never closed.

Kalliga was tall and Hugo was quiet and each week another body was found. Unmarked. Unafraid. Waiting: on then grass, near the water tower, under the HaHa wall. Waiting with lips parted and a surprise inside. Waiting to tell Them who had done this. But They could not hear. So They grew afraid of Hugo's quiet and and his yellow eyes, and they locked him up.

Kalliga lived in the women’s block, on the forth floor, accessed only by a clumsy steel and wood staircase. Hugo was locked under the men’s block, dark and damp and home to some rats. No moonshadow gathered on the peat moss floor.

Each night they locked him away. Each morning he waited, awake, for his release. But still, each week, another body was found.

The day girls were escorted too and from the coach stop by the ,local constabulary. Most of the permanent staff left, and were replaced, and left again. The doctors stayed away, preferring to reside in their hospitals and house call bags. The other patients huddled, afraid, or didn’t know, or didn’t care.

Kalliga sometimes remembered that she wasn’t a patient. That she was she. That she could maybe even leave. But then she’d forget and tend the laundry and patrol the verandahs and paint her face and pad her clothes. At night , in her room, she was alone again or still, and so alone in her head that the voice would stutter and hiccup and be completely still. So she’d wait for another to come along. Eventually amidst the stuttering and hiccupping and stillness she heard his voice — mute and jaundiced — and of a language she didn’t recognise. Didn’t recognise, but knew it was he, knew by the gentle pressure she felt as some part of her even now resisted him. He’d push until he felt her give way, and then he was in and it was his voice she heard and slowly, gradually, the other voices went away, and Hugo was the only voice.

Hugo was mute and his eyes were bright. They sought hers when he passed, restrained, in the archway adjoining the women’s and men’s dining halls. His yellow eyes sought hers, but she looked up, and her tallness allowed her to see over the steel rafters to the horizontal shutters of the vents.

Allowed her to see the small brown spiders on the shutters, and the flies they had caught. She looked up and away until They moved him on.

Sometimes Kalliga thought about telling Them. She was not a patient. She was just there. But if she did, if she told them of the nameless soulless beings that had been her constant companion since her change of life. If she told them, she may be accused.

So Kalliga said nothing and smiled with lost eyes and slouched through her washing and con tinued her spying. One night Hugo sought her out. One night when the wind rubbed the tin roof and hurtled leaves across the courtyard. One night when the starts in the sky stared down through her window.

This same night, Lisa Potter planned to meet in secret behind Cavanagh’s House. meet in secret and declare her love for the Stableman’s son.

Kalliga felt Hugo — felt the pressure, the push, felt him surge in and push her aside. then, from her room with the curtains drawn she saw. Kalliga saw Lisa as she hurried from Oak to Peppermint to Jacaranda and on to another Oak. Lisa was cold, and she wore no coat. Her fat fingers found little comfort rubbing the goosebumps on her arms. She failed to notice the clouds hurtling across the sky, late for their gathering for the nightly rainfall. She stood behind Cavanagh’s Cottage and huffed and stamped and turned and chewed fingernails.

The stableman’s son was not there. The starts went out. Kalliga eyes floated in the darkness to where poor Lisa stood. Kalliga saw Lisa, but he would not let her scream. Lisa turned in greeting, but faltered when she saw not whom she had expected. Faltered as she contemplated what was not even human or real before her. Then Lisa found her fear and Hugo grabbed on to it. Grabbed it as it ran out of Lisa’s mouth, her eyes, her ears and her bladder. he grabbed her fear and gorged on it, until, limp and white and utterly spent, Lisa collapsed on a pile of leaves. Then Kalliga saw, as if from herself, a small purple jacaranda flower placed inside the blackened lips. It was this that the stableman’s son found, not five minutes hence.

Hugo left Kalliga. But Kalliga did not forget. She remembered with clarity that forced her to wash the dirt from her fingernails.

Kalliga saw him the next day. Saw him in the dining hall flanked by Them. Saw him, and accused him to his face and his eyes.

“You,” she said.

“I,” he replied. And all the hall fell silent to hear his rasping hiss.

Kalliga knew then she could say no more. They would never believe, even though They suspected. Hugo knew as his mind brushed hers that she would never tell.

“Tonight,” whispered the memory. “Tonight the pot boy. And tomorrow ... tomorrow ... maybe the laundry maid.”