The Fourth Bear Read online

  “Hmm,” said Charlie, half to himself, “I think I need a doctor who’ll give me a year to live.”

  “Do you like it here?” asked Jack to Ashley. They were leaning on the car but still keeping a close lookout on the front of the house.

  “Here, in this street?”

  “No, Ashley, this planet.”

  “Most agreeable,” replied Ashley happily. “The filing is excellent, the sitcoms top-notch and the bureaucracy to die for. But far and away the best feature is your digital mobile phone networks. We can taste the binary data stream in the air. It gives your cities a favorably congenial atmosphere—to you, something like the bouquet of a fine wine.”

  Mary was beginning to get a bit uncomfortable inside the closet, and she looked at her watch with increasing frequency, willing the hands to move faster so they could all go home. She shifted to get more comfortable, the door swung shut, and there was a soft click.

  “Blast!” she muttered as she gently pushed at the door. It was no good. It was shut fast.

  “Jack,” came Mary’s embarrassed voice over the walkie-talkie, “I’ve just locked myself in the closet and I can’t see the kitchen anymore. Can we abort?”

  Jack looked around. The street was empty and quiet. He had said they’d go to midnight, and he liked to be good to his word.

  “No,” he said to Mary over the radio as he walked through the garden gate.

  “Sir,” came Gretel’s voice over the airwaves, “it’s just a thought, but my mother told me never to hide in closets in case…I was locked in.”

  Jack looked around again. It had been quiet before, but now it seemed somehow even quieter. There was no distant hum of traffic, nothing. It was as though Cautionary Valley were suddenly an island, cast adrift from the rest of Reading and the world. He’d felt it before in the same place twenty-five years earlier. He shivered with the onset of a cold breeze, and his breath showed in the night air.

  He brought the radio to his mouth and whispered, “He’s here.”

  He signaled to Ashley to stay put, ran in a circuitous route to the front door and entered the house. When he opened the kitchen door, he stopped short, as there was a small conflagration on the kitchen table. The matches Conrad had been playing with had caught fire with an impossibly bright flame and were now rapidly burning a path up the table to where the boy sat, rooted to the spot with fear. They’d thought of this, and Jack killed the fire with a handy extinguisher, opened the closet door to let Mary out, then barked to Conrad, “The thumb—back in!”

  In his panic the boy had stopped sucking his thumb, but now he obediently did as he was told. No sooner was the thumb in when the back door was flung violently open, and before Jack and Mary could even blink, a wild-eyed figure in crimson trousers leaped in brandishing a giant pair of gold scissors. With expert precision the tips of the scissors closed around Conrad’s thumb, and the Scissor-man would doubtless have snipped it off and been gone again in a flash if Jack hadn’t shouted, “HOLD IT!”

  The Scissor-man froze. His bloodshot eyes darted toward Jack with a mixture of fear and insanity. He looked gaunt and pale, with an untidy shock of nicotine-stained hair; a tailor’s tape measure hung from the pocket of his bottle green jacket.

  “DCI Spratt,” continued Jack as he held up his ID, “Nursery Crime Division. You’re under arrest. Step away from the thumb.”

  The Scissor-man glared at Jack, then at the thumb, then at Mary. His eyes twitched, and his long, bony fingers clasped the outsize scissors even more firmly. Jack could see that the tips of the scissors were clasped around Conrad’s thumb; the flesh was white where the blades held it tight. Even the slightest pressure would take it off.

  “I’m not kidding,” said Jack slowly in his best authoritarian voice. “Drop the scissors. We can plea-bargain this down to possession of an offensive weapon.”

  “Snip!” snarled the Scissor-man, a wild grin on his lips revealing several rotten teeth. “Snip-snap! The thumbs are off—alas, alack!”

  He tensed, ready to cut.

  “Cut that thumb off and you’re doing serious time,” said Jack, hoping against hope that the others would initiate phase two without him. They should know what was going on; his finger had been pressed tightly on the “transmit” button since the Scissor-man had so dramatically entered the kitchen. “Put down the scissors and we can talk.”

  In reply the Scissor-man made a wild snip in Jack’s direction, then returned the scissors to clasp Conrad’s thumb. The whole movement took less than a second, and Jack didn’t know what the madman had done until he saw that his tie had been neatly severed and was lying on the floor at his feet. If it came to a fight, they were in trouble. But at that moment, as Conrad’s continued relationship with his thumb was looking at its most precarious, the floodlights came on in the front garden and Jack breathed a sigh of relief. The Scissor-man screamed in rage and shock. On the lawn outside were six more children, all waving at him with their thumbs in their mouths.

  Jack and Mary didn’t waste a moment. With the Scissor-man momentarily distracted, Mary jammed her walkie-talkie in the jaws of the scissors as Jack pushed Conrad out into the hallway. The Scissor-man glared at Mary, gave an unintelligible cry and severed the radio in two with a metallic snick before bounding out the front door—and straight into a pit covered with a sheet of painted brown paper in the front garden. In a vain attempt to save himself, he had let go of his precious scissors, which flew through the air in a graceful arc before embedding themselves in a tree.

  As the Scissor-man snarled and snapped and whined in the pit, jumping up and trying to scrabble out, Mary and Jack ran into the front garden at the same time as the neighbors appeared to take their children home. It had been an excellent plan and, unlike many other excellent NCD plans, it had worked.

  “Have we missed something?” asked Baker as he and Gretel appeared from the back garden, where they had seen the grand sum of precisely nothing. Jack nodded toward the pit, where the Great Long Red-Legg’d Scissor-man cursed at them in the most loathsome language imaginable.

  “He looks kind of puny without the scissors, doesn’t he?” said Jack as they all stared down at him. “I’ll toss you for who gets to put the cuffs on.”

  Just then the Scissor-man stopped yelling and screaming, as he had suddenly noticed a small, accidentally self-inflicted cut on his hand.

  “Snip!” he said to himself in dismay. “Cut myself—bad—wrong!”

  “How apt,” murmured Jack. “Mr. Red-Legg’d Scissor-man…you’re nicked.”

  3. St. Cerebellum’s

  Most outdated secure hospital: St. Cerebellum’s, Reading. This woefully inadequate and outdated institution was constructed in 1831 and was considered modern for its day. With separate wards for unmarried mothers, milk allergies, unwanted relatives and the genuinely disturbed, St. Cerebellum’s once boasted a proud record of ill-conceived experimental treatment, with curious-onlooker receipts that surpassed even Bedlam’s. But the glory days are long over, and the crumbling ruin is now an anachronistic stain on Reading’s otherwise fine record of psychiatric treatment.

  —The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records, 2004 edition

  Dr. Alan Mandible led the group of suited consultants along the peeling corridors of St. Cerebellum’s, Reading’s premier secure hospital for the criminally insane. While perhaps not the newest, cleanest or driest, it did contain the most interesting patients. There are not many secure hospitals that can boast someone who thought he was Napoleon, but St. Cerebellum’s could field three—not to mention a handful of serial killers whose names inexplicably yet conveniently rhymed with their crimes. Notorious cannibal “Peter the Eater” was incarcerated here, as were “Sasha the Slasher” and “Mr. Browner the Serial Drowner.” But the undisputed king of rhyme-inspired serial murder was Isle of Man resident Maximilian Marx, who went under the uniquely tongue-twisting epithet “Mad Max Marx, the Masked Manxman Axman.” Deirdre Blott tried to top Max’s clear superiority by
changing her name so as to become “Nutty Nora Newsome, the Knife-Wielding Weird Widow from Waddersdon,” but no one was impressed, and she was ostracized by the other patients for being such a terrible show-off.

  “We have funding to demolish the old nuthouse, Dr. Maxilla,” explained Dr. Mandible earnestly, catching sight of the Japanese delegate’s obvious distaste at the moldering fabric of the building, and adding quickly, “I’m sorry, when I said ‘nuthouse,’ I actually meant ‘secure hospital.’”

  “It’s an easy mistake to make,” replied Dr. Maxilla cheerfully. “I often refer to my patients as ‘the loons.’”

  Dr. Mandible smiled. They understood each other perfectly.

  There were five delegates following Dr. Mandible’s brisk pace down the corridors, each hailing from a different nation. They were visiting St. Cerebellum’s as part of an international exchange of ideas concerning the treatment of the dangerously criminally insane; Dr. Mandible himself had attended Professor Frank Strait’s specialist hospital in Ohio and would visit Dr. Maxilla’s clinic in Kobe at the end of the year.

  “I understand that one of your consultants was caught conducting unethical experiments,” said the French delegate, Dr. Vômer. “Such as grafting a kitten’s head onto a haddock.”

  “Dr. Quatt? I barely knew her,” replied Mandible hurriedly, “and her experiments were conducted without the knowledge or approval of the hospital governors or even of QuangTech, who own the hospital.”

  “Oh!” said Vômer, who had once himself dabbled in the ethically gray area of grafting things onto other things for no apparent purpose. “Her work was much admired in Toulouse, where such experiments are permitted for gastronomic research.”

  Mandible sighed. “I wish our own medical council were as broad-minded. She was one of St. Cerebellum’s most celebrated perverters of the natural order. But, alas, she died earlier this year.”

  “A great loss,” said Vômer sadly. “I was hoping to speak to her—was it unexpected?”

  “She was hit on the head with a shovel and then crushed by a falling beanstalk while being carried to safety by a bizarre genetic experiment gone horribly wrong,” replied Mandible thoughtfully, “so I think it’s safe to say it was unexpected—but what she would have wanted nonetheless.”

  “And her experiments?”

  “Disposed of.”

  “Even the monkey’s brain kept alive in a jar?” queried Dr. Maxilla, his voice tinged with disappointment.

  “I’m afraid so. I mean, mercifully so. Ah! Security.”

  He was glad to be able to change the subject. They had reached a steel gate with a guard behind it, who was reading a copy of The Toad and looking bored.

  “I’m afraid you must leave all sharp objects and personal possessions behind,” intoned Dr. Mandible. “To take notes I will supply you with presoftened crayons and notepads of damp tissue paper bound with moldy wool.”

  There was a sudden hush. The delegates looked at one another nervously.

  Dr. Maxilla gave voice to their collective thoughts. “Doctor, are you proposing that we are to wander amid your inmates…unprotected?”

  The other doctors nodded in agreement and started to mutter among themselves. Dr. Mandible held up his hands in a conciliatory manner and smiled benignly.

  “Here at St. Cerebellum’s we are trying to help the repeatedly violent offender by increasing hospital security to a maximum but reducing individual security to a minimum. The patients are allowed to wander relatively freely within the confines of the hospital’s outdoor compound.”

  “You mean, that is to say, we are likely to face—I mean, without bars—HIM?”

  Mandible smiled again. “It is a radical treatment, I grant you, but we are more than happy with the results, and I assure you that you will come to no harm. The patient to whom you refer is one of our greatest successes, and although he is transported from place to place within the hospital using the methods recommended by law—in his case with straitjacket and bite mask—it is unnecessary, for he has renounced violence and freely accepted his loss of liberty as a just punishment for his crimes.”

  Even though no name had been spoken, they all knew whom he was talking about. The patient in question was the star attraction of the hospital and the only reason any of them had bothered to visit Dr. Mandible and his otherwise dull hospital in the first place. Even though St. Cerebellum’s secure wing was home to nine serial killers, three poisoners, one cannibal and an arsonist or two, only one of them had continued to command front-page status since his capture twenty years before. His name alone would cause a shiver to run down the spine of anyone who had even the slightest association with him.

  Dr. Mandible smiled at them, but they did not smile back. Even the most committed of them had never had merely fresh air between them and their most dangerous patients.

  “Did he really pull men’s arms from their sockets?” asked Dr. Maxilla, a slight tremor in his voice.

  “Not at all,” replied Mandible. “He pulled anyone’s arms from their sockets. He was never gender-exclusive and always the most egalitarian of psychotics—anything with a pulse was fair game for slaughter. He once saved the life of someone simply so he could kill him in a more imaginative fashion.”

  “So the story about the guinea pigs and the kebab skewer is true?”

  “All the stories are true,” replied Mandible, gesturing for them to follow, “except the one where he showed mercy to a little old lady. It wasn’t mercy at all—he had a dentist’s appointment and was in a hurry.”

  He led them through the steel gate, on the other side of which three burly orderlies were waiting to escort them. They walked down a short corridor and blinked as they stepped into a large outdoor area surrounded by a high wall. The compound was laid out as a spacious garden, and they could see patients tending small areas of their own. Dr. Mandible led them down a concrete path to a beefy, neckless bull of a man who was weeding a vegetable patch.

  “Hello, Martin,” said Dr. Mandible calmly.

  “Hello, Doc,” said the man cheerily. “Carrots will be good this year.”

  “Splendid!” replied Dr. Mandible, patting the patient amiably on the shoulder and passing on.

  “Martin Gooch,” whispered Mandible. “Frustrated film director. Went mad and slaughtered a producer with an ax, then killed anyone who reminded him of the producer, and after that anyone at all. Spent the first three years of his treatment in solitary because of his violent disposition. After six years of origami therapy we reclassified him from Category B, ‘dangerously insane,’ to Category D, ‘functionally bonkers.’”

  They nodded their heads agreeably and scribbled some notes with their soft wax crayons. Then they moved on, and Dr. Mandible introduced them to several other mass murderers, poisoners and pony stranglers, but it was obvious from their feeling of anticipation that these patients, while all remarkable examples of rehabilitation, were mere sideshows to the one patient of St. Cerebellum’s that made the rest seem petty shoplifters by comparison.

  Dr. Mandible read the looks on their faces, sensed their impatience and led them over to a small bed of rosebushes, each one sporting a dazzling selection of blooms. The delegates gathered behind Mandible as they approached, yet not even the orderlies felt they had much to worry about. The patient, despite the outrageous and often perverse violence of his crimes, hadn’t lifted a finger against any of them during his two-decade stay at the hospital. The mellow figure snipping at the roses seemed somehow divorced from the savagery of his sadistic crimes. But it didn’t help him. Liberty, in his case, could never be an option.

  The patient in question had his back to the small group. He was dressed in pale blue denim trousers and jacket with ST. CEREBELLUM’S stenciled on the back. The figure busied himself with his roses and was stooped over a bloom, carefully trimming the plant with a pair of blunted plastic scissors firmly attached by a heavy chain to three anvils on the ground. He seemed not to be aware of their presence, so D
r. Mandible gave a polite cough. The figure stood up to his full height and turned slowly to face them. A faint whiff of ginger moved with him, and Dr. Maxilla took a sharp intake of breath. Professor Palatine covered her mouth with her hand and uttered a small cry. The others all took a nervous step back, apart from Dr. Vômer, who took three.

  However many photos you see or however much news footage you watch of the Gingerbreadman, nothing can quite prepare you for seeing him in all his baked glory. He was a dark brown color the shade of mahogany and seven feet tall, with weighty limbs and a large head. His jacket was open, revealing several large pinkicing buttons that ran down his chest. He had glacé cherries the size of grapefruits for eyes and a dollop of red icing for a nose. His mouth was two slivers of licorice, the corners of which rose into a smile as soon as he saw them.

  “Alan!” said the Gingerbreadman with a deep yet friendly tone. “What a delightful happenstance! And most timely, too. See here, I have bred a new rose, which in honor of your work to cure me of my criminal tendencies I take great pleasure in naming after you. Behold, ‘Mandible’s Triumph’!”

  He offered the bloom to Mandible in his three-fingered gingerbread hand, and the doctor accepted it gratefully. It was a flower that had blue, white and red petals on the same bloom.

  “Thank you very much,” said Mandible as the Gingerbreadman gave a small bow and let out another whiff of ginger. “It’s magnificent!” He turned to the delegates. “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the Gingerbreadman, veteran of St. Cerebellum’s and one of our model patients.”

  They relaxed slightly at the Gingerbreadman’s apparent congeniality and stared at him as his glacé-cherry eyes darted eagerly among their faces. He recognized Frank Strait immediately.

  “Professor Strait?” he asked as he took a step closer. “I read your book on obsessional neurosis with great interest.”