The Monster of Anders Island

By Quill Rabbit

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PART TWO

“I’ve put together a special diet that I believe will alleviate your stomach problems.”

The doctor sat a tray of fish and veggies on the bed in front of Martin, who was shivering under the blankets. His skin was clammy and slick with mucus, his throat parched no matter how much he drank. Forcing a smile, Martin nodded.

“Thank you,” he croaked.

The change in diet did help significantly, and for another few nights Martin was able to sleep almost soundly except for his coughing fits. One morning, when he went to change the sweat-infused sheets, he noticed a few patches of hair mixed in with the skin flakes that he’d started shedding. It reduced him to tears.

“It’s all part of the process,” Doctor Schuyler insisted, rubbing him on the back through her gloves.

To distract himself from his bizarre illness, Martin would close his eyes and imagine stepping out the front door as Marina, a beautiful young woman whom nobody would mistake for a man ever again. He’d think about getting to walk through the town with Pauletta and nobody would whisper about them. Pauletta. She didn’t know, and the thought of telling her made Martin nervous enough to bite his nails, though they were getting thick and sharp.

Things reached a breaking point when he took a bite of fish and felt a tooth nudge out of place. Martin screamed and spat out his food, a sharp tooth falling with the rest of the mush onto the plate. His gums were bleeding, and he covered his mouth as it ran down his dressing gown and onto the bed sheets.

What in God’s name was wrong with him?!

The bleeding stopped before he made it to the doctor’s lab. She had him lie down on the operating table and took some blood, studied his mouth and eyes, and mumbled to herself while scanning her notes for minutes on end.

In morbid curiosity, Martin pressed his tongue against each of the remaining teeth in turn. Most of them were a little loose. It made him sick to his stomach. His vision was swimming.

“I think I understand what happened.”

Martin was afraid to speak in case he threw up.

“By studying the changes to your skin, hair, and… teeth, I’m fairly confident that some of the DNA I used in developing my serum is having an adverse effect on you that I could not have predicted. You are taking on some fish-like properties, though I can’t say for sure what the extent of it really is.”

“Oh God…”

“I doubt He could comprehend what I’ve done. No, this is something new.”

Martin sobbed and buried his head in his hands.

 “It’s not fair,” he croaked. “I wanted this; I wanted this so bad. What happens if this doesn’t go away? What if I’m a freak forever? It’s bad enough to have to be a man!”

“No, no.” Doctor Schuyler didn’t look up from her notes. “I can fix this. I can fix this.” Finally, she took a deep breath and walked over to him, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Marina!”

His sobs stopped at once.

“I will fix this, I promise.” Her eyes were hard, but they gave him an anchor to latch onto. “There is nobody who knows more about human transmutation than me.”

Slowly, trembling, Martin nodded.

She knew what she was doing. Of course Doctor Schuyler could fix this! She was a professional! Ormand may have doubted science, but not Martin.

“Thank you,” he rasped.

Doctor Schuyler took her hands away. Martin took deep breaths, but his whole body was still trembling. Still, there was light at the end of the valley; this shadow would not be over him forever.

In the morning, after taking his medication, Martin made sure that he could stand without needing support and borrowed a heavy cloak from the doctor. He did not tell the doctor that he was going out. It was important for Martin to stay in her good graces, and so long as he made it back safely, she didn’t need to know that he was off to see Pauletta.

It took well over an hour to get to the pastor’s home simply because he had to stop several times to catch his breath and rest his legs. There was pain in his joints that he didn’t used to have. He was sweating some kind of mucus but couldn’t open his cloak for fresh air out of fear he’d be mistaken for a plaguebearer.

When he got there, Martin stayed back and circled the home a few times to be sure that Ormand really was gone before approaching the back door swiftly. He knocked and turned away so that Pauletta wouldn’t see his face. She opened the door just a peep.

“Pauletta, it’s me.”

“Martin? Get inside.”

She ushered him into the parlor, but he didn’t take off his hood.

“What’s going on, Martin? You said that the doctor was helping you with something? Are you okay? You’re so pale.”

She reached out a hand to touch his clammy face only for him to pull away.

“Yeah, Doctor Schuyler is… We’re working on something together. She gave me a serum that’s supposed to help… I’ll explain later. It’s just been having some side effects and I wanted to see a friendly face.”

“Side effects?! Martin, you look like death itself! What do you mean: you’ll explain later?! Whatever is going on, how can you trust that woman if she did this to you? I know my father is set in his ways and it hurts you, but maybe he was right about her interfering in God’s domain. She can’t be more trustworthy just because my father dislikes her.” Her face was red. “Tell me what’s really going on. I will help you however I can, I promise.”

Martin’s throat was dry and his tongue heavy. Pauletta deserved to know the truth; she’d stuck with him when everyone else had turned against him. It had brought her no end of grief from her father, and she was the subject of a lot of gossip. He was a bad friend for not confiding in her more.

But what if this was a step too far for her to accept?

It would be so much easier for him to just show up as a woman when it was all over. Probably easier for her to understand too, once she saw the final results. He needed proof that it was possible for him to be a woman before anyone would fully embrace him as one. The hard part would be over soon.

“I’m fine.”

She scoffed and turned away.

“Really, I am,” he insisted before a coughing fit overtook him. “The doctor is treating me and most of the symptoms have sto–”

“Listen to yourself, Martin! I hardly recognize you! I don’t care if she’s a doctor, you aren’t thinking clearly about this! There is nothing in the world worth so much that you should put yourself through this. Is she paying you? Is that it? I can give you money if you need it that badly!”

“No, she’s not paying me!” Martin was just grateful Doctor Schuyler hadn’t asked him to pay her. “I promise it will make sense when it’s all over–”

“It doesn’t make sense now! How can I believe that–”

The door opened and both of them froze with wide eyes. Oramnd stood there, face red and swollen. His beady little eyes were fixed on Martin. All of God’s wrath lived in that gaze.

“You Godless heathen!” Ormand cried, marching forward. Pauletta tried to get between them, but her father pushed her away. “You come into my house to spread your filth and disease?! I will not stand here and let you infect my daughter with your sin!”

He grabbed Martin by the collar and dragged him out of the room. Martin flailed, scratching at his face and drawing blood. Ormand didn’t seem to notice and continued to pull Martin through the house.

“Father! Stop! Let him go!”

“Silence!” Ormand threw Martin at the front door, where he bounced off, and turned to face Pauletta. “You are a disgraceful daughter, going behind my back to fraternize with the enemy of God! You invited homosexuality into my house! I had feared that you were corrupted when you resisted my attempts to find you a good husband, but I did not imagine you would betray me so utterly!”

He turned around and kicked Martin in the ribs. Something cracked and Martin gasped in pain, another tooth falling out. Martin wheezed, trying to get back up onto his feet, but Ormand grabbed him once again and swung open the door before pushing Martin outside.

“If I ever see you around my house again, I will see you hanged!”

The door slammed and Martin scrambled to his feet, running for a few seconds before stumbling and needing to catch himself. Out of breath, lungs burning, he did not stop running until he was out of sight of the house entirely. Only then did he fall to the ground and start sobbing.

Nobody came to check on him, for which Martin was grateful. How could he even explain what was going on? More likely than not, anybody who did find him would be under orders from Ormand to kill Martin on sight.

When he’d run himself dry of tears, Martin struggled to his feet and wiped his face clean. He would show them who he really was. Their faith would mean nothing in the face of hard science.

He was able to hide his excursion from Doctor Schuyler and spent the next day recovering in bed. He felt like he had even less energy than before, barely able to even move to the chair while the doctor changed the goopy sheets. Breathing was getting difficult, and his eyes grew blurry if he tried to read anything.

Each new day brought a new symptom. His teeth continued to fall out, but he could feel new ones growing in, shaper ones. Wiping off the mucus that covered his body pulled away skin to reveal orange and white scales beneath. His hair fell out in larger and larger chunks until Doctor Schuyler simply lopped it all off. He cried for the next two weeks as the skin on his ears grew black and shriveled, his tongue became long and thin, and webbed barbs began to tear through his skin.

Things were not only getting worse, but getting worse faster than before. He spent hours staring up at the canopy of the bed and pleading with God to help Doctor Schuyler find a cure. She had to be trying her hardest; she could see what was happening to him.

I want to stop the experiment,” he rasped out one day as she was spoon-feeding him. “Just take it away. I want to go back to how I was. It was better than this.”

The doctor lowered the spoon and did not answer him right away. Her expression was blank.

Finally, she said, “I worry that, should we stop now, your body will be caught in a non-viable halfway state between forms. Half of your cells have been converted, but half are still human. Your body wouldn’t be able to simply revert the changes without help and, in all likelihood, you would die.”

Martin whined as his vision blurred.

Doctor Schuyler placed her hand on his, saying, “I’m certain that I can fix this, Marina. You just have to trust me.”

He didn’t want to be confined to the shadows for the rest of his life and spoken of only in whispers as something to avoid, but he really didn’t want to die.

“Okay,” he croaked.

Doctor Schuyler nodded and smiled softly.

“I’m going into town for a little bit to collect groceries,” she said. “If you need me, I won’t be back until later tonight. Do you think that you’ll be alright until then?”

“I think so.”

When she was done feeding him, the doctor took the tray and left. Martin listened to her steps fade away, then forced himself into a sitting position. It took minutes longer than it should have, but he accomplished it.

He had to hold onto the banister to stay standing as he made his way to the stairs. Each step required a deep breath and made his head spin when he was done. How much time did Martin have, anyway? If Doctor Schuyler took the carriage, she could be in town and back before he made it to bed.

Finally, Martin found himself on the ground floor and trudging to the lab. The light through the windows burned his eyes and forced him to look down as he stumbled to the table with all of Doctor Schuyler’s notes. Her handwriting was atrocious and it took him a little bit to figure out what anything said. Most of it was simply records of the changes he was going through and the alterations she’d been making to the serum.

One note to herself, scribbled on a sheet documenting days and the results of his blood tests, stood out.

“Speeding up faster than anticipated. Finished version doable in a month, maybe less? Request prisoners for test subjects.”

Martin was no scientist, but he understood arithmetic and nothing here told him that Doctor Schuyler was doing anything but making the transformation faster.

The sound of footsteps sank his heart.

When Martin turned around, Doctor Schuyler was standing at the doorway with a syringe in hand.

“I have my groceries delivered.”.

Martin lunged, but his legs turned to jelly and gave out beneath him. He sprawled to the ground and heard a sharp crack as his nose broke and vision went white. There was a jab in his neck, and he flailed with his claws, tearing through something. When he could see again, Martin’s vision was swimming and there was blood on the floor.

Doctor Schuyler stepped away and cursed at the rip in her pants where a chunk of skin had been gouged from her leg. She dropped the syringe and ran over to the medical equipment, limping and grunting in pain. Though his vision was blurry and fading fast, Martin propped himself up by his arms and managed to rise, swaying, to his feet.

The doctor glanced back at him with shock before he fell to the ground and everything went dark. Martin thought that he heard her mumble something about a stronger dose, and then the sound of blood in his ears took even that away. After a few moments, the pain itself faded.

 

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“Please wait for me,” Pauletta told the carriage driver as she stood out.

She’d never been to the old Anders house before now. It had been empty since she was a young child and off-limits for discussion. The outer shell of the building was rotting away and several broken windows had been boarded up. It was nauseating to look at.

The door was soft and bloated from rain water. Having to knock on it made her wrinkle her nose and gag. Pauletta wrapped her arms around herself and slouched a little, glancing around the dead garden around her and over her shoulder to make sure the carriage was still there.

It was a good minute before the door opened to reveal a slightly older woman with bags under her eyes. She looked Pauletta up and down like she was a piece of meat. Pauletta cringed under the glare.

“Can I help you?”

“Are you Doctor Schuyler?”

“I am.”

Pauletta took a deep breath and puffed out her chest.

“I want to see Martin.”

“Martin?”

“Yes, Martin! He told me that you were working on an experiment together and he was staying with you! I demand to know what you’re doing with him! Why does he look so sickly?!”

Doctor Schuyler smiled slowly.

“I see. Martin is too ill to see anybody right now.”

“But–”

“I apologize for letting him run off like he did. In his feverish state, he’s not remembering things correctly. You see, Martin came to me when he realized that he was experiencing symptoms, though sadly it’s nothing I’ve ever seen before. I’ve been using my time to search for a treatment and have a few promising leads.”

There was something about the doctor’s eyes that made Pauletta sweat a little. She couldn’t find any life in them. It was how demons had appeared to her in childhood nightmares.

With a gulp, she said, “I don’t know anything about medicine, but–”

“Well, I do. I am a doctor, young lady. I know that concept may seem foreign to you, but you can trust me as much as any man.”

Pauletta nodded. She was being ridiculous. Demons didn’t walk the Earth with men.

“He’s going to be okay, right?”

The doctor’s smile faded.

“I will be honest with you, Miss: Martin was already in a bad state when he first arrived at my door. I am doing my best, but medicine isn’t magic. There is a very good chance that he won’t make it. I haven’t given up hope, but there’s only so much I can do.”

Pauletta’s chest hurt. She nodded, wiping away the tears that were making it hard to see.

“Please tell him I came,” she said. “I want him to know that I haven’t forgotten about him.”

“I will.”

She walked away, and when Doctor Schuyler closed the door, Pauletta was still crying.

 

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Doctor Schuyler locked the door and walked slowly up the staircase, humming softly to herself. Opening the door to Marina’s room, she was hit with the overwhelming force of rotting skin and had to cover her mouth to avoid throwing up.

Marina was chained to the bed, unable to move and barely able to open her eyes. Doctor Schuyler stood before her bed and clapped her hands together. Her test subject stirred and became barely aware of her presence.

“I fear that we have to clear up a little misunderstanding, Marina. I don’t harbor any ill will toward you, not even after you betrayed my trust to look at my notes. That’s not why I’m doing this. That must be a cold comfort to you, but I swear that you will thank me when this is over and everyone sees what I’ve accomplished.”