doll little mold porcelain stinker

Transcription

The TOUCHED
©Edison McDaniels 2015.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form without prior
permission of the author.
This novella is a work of fiction designed for the pleasure and enjoyment of you, constant reader.
The events are purely fictitious and not meant to represent any individual, living or dead.
Reviews are the coin of the writer’s world. After reading, please spend a few minutes reviewing
The TOUCHED at Amazon or Goodreads.com.
Please don’t support book theft in any form.
Edition 3, June 2015
Also from the mind of Edison McDaniels
(Available for Kindle at Amazon)
The Civil War Series:
Not One Among Them Whole
An Endless Array of Broken Men
The Matriarch of Ruins (coming soon)
Surgical Thrillers:
Juicing Out
Blade Man
The Weight of Potter’s Field (coming soon)
Others:
The Bottom of the Fifth
Saving King
For
Ellys Preston McDaniels
&
Endyll Princeton McDaniels
Miss you both everyday.
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The TOUCHED by Edison McDaniels
7
One: A Surgeon's Prayer — October 3rd, 1951
Even if Zachary Weed didn’t live another minute, it would be as if he had lived a hundred
years. He was less than half that age, but as he sat down on the bench in the surgeon’s locker
room, he felt the weight of at least a century on his shoulders. He suddenly felt like a very old
man, weary and spent, as if his entire life was behind him and he had but to die.
He had neglected to remove his surgical gown before leaving OR #3 a moment before,
and he realized now for the first time how much blood caked the front of it. He began to shiver,
not quite uncontrollably, and tore at the gown with furious yanks and pulls. Separating himself
from the boy’s blood seemed the most important thing in the world just then.
He flung the bloody shroud into a corner across the room. His head ached and sweat
glistened anew on his forehead. He covered his mouth with his fist and stared at the floor, tried to
hold back the anxiety building within. He would have been thankful for a distraction just then,
anything to take his mind off the scene he’d just witnessed.
That the boy was just eight years old gnawed at him, like a rat chewing his finger to the
bone—the pain bristled and washed over him in waves. His name had been Brian Jesus Collins
—“Call him BJ,” his mother had said that first moment in the office, “that’s what I call him. It
soothes him.” Soothes him?
Weed didn’t want to think about that right now, didn’t want to think about that sweet little
face—oh God, that sweet little dead face—peering up at him. Even now, as he tore the drapes
away over and over again in his mind’s eye, he saw that face laid bare—eyes closed in a death
repose of his making.
Nothing sweet about that.
Zachary Weed finally supposed this was life in all its randomness. He’d done his best,
though—on this day at least—his best hadn’t been good enough. That simple. He could accept
that, not right then of course (right then he’d have accepted a sledgehammer to the head a helluva
lot easier), but later, after he’d spoken to BJ’s mother—
(And just then that rat began gnawing anew at his finger bone as Weed recalled BJ’s
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father had been killed a few months before, hit by a truck while changing a flat. Now his son was
dead too. Poor Mrs. Collins. Wasn’t it just lovely the way the hits they just kept on a coming?)
—he would accept it.
Of this he was certain. He’d been a brain surgeon too long not to realize that.
But he was just as certain there were things about this day he’d never forget. Like Rose’s
screams. Or the blank look on her face—as if it was a mere façade and everything on the other
side of it had been wiped clean. Bloodcurdling, that’s how her face had looked to him. Chilling.
And then there was the ghost, or spirit, or whatever the hell had risen out of the boy. The
thing had hovered briefly, long enough for all of them to see it, long enough to still all their
breathing until you could hear a pin drop. And then Rose had screamed and, well, what? All hell
had broken loose.
Initially, Weed had thought he had a good idea of what the entity was, call it the life
force, or even the soul. He’d read about such things—the soul leaving the body at the time of
death and all that.
But now, in the clarity of cold hindsight, he had doubts.
Grave doubts.
Something terrible had happened in OR #3, something he couldn’t explain—despite the
gift, which at times like this seemed more a burden. As bad as the boy’s death was—and it had
been a hard, disturbing death indeed—it seemed to Weed something more than death had been
present in that room. This thought—later it would become an obsession but just now it was only
a thought—occurred to Weed unbidden. Could there have been something else in that room,
something only Rose, the circulating nurse, had seen? And if so, what was it? What got to her?
What ruined her?
Ruined her?
Yeah, she was ruined all right. Screaming like a banshee, like she’d seen her own death
one moment, Rose Braxton collapsed catatonic in the next instant. He’d left her, not ten minutes
before, lying on a gurney in the hall, her eyes open and staring off into the distance. Vacant,
haunting eyes. Not quite a death repose, but it might as well have been. He’d known Rose for
years, she was as good an operating room nurse as there was. But once the screaming stopped,
her face had seemed a clean slate to him, not one iota of anything he recognized as Rose. He
shivered at the memory.
Sitting in the surgeon’s locker room just then, he couldn’t get her screams out of his head.
Her cries were like nothing he’d ever heard, wild and screeching—the calls of a wounded animal
he couldn’t imagine ever meeting.
Yeah, she was ruined all right. And the boy, BJ, was dead.
Zachary Weed’s head hurt. The day, a long one already, had seemed to lengthen
grotesquely in an instant. He got up and walked to the sink, rinsed his face in cold water, and
moved to his locker. He opened it, and on the back of the door, beneath the small mirror that
framed his image as he stood there, was an 8 x 10 sheet of paper with a typed verse:
†††
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A Surgeon’s Prayer:
Bless these hands that have touched life.
Bless these hands that have ministered to the sick.
Bless these hands that have dealt pain in the name of healing.
Bless these hands that have cut and sewn with compassion.
Bless these hands that have bathed in blood and toiled in sweat that others may live.
Bless these hands that have comforted the dying and held the dead.
Bless these hands, for they are but a humble extension of your hands, Lord and Father.
†††
He changed his clothes, looking conspicuously down at his hands more than once as he
did so.
Not so blessed today, he thought.
He waited a long time for the shivering to stop.
Then he went in search of BJ’s mother, still unable to get Rose’s screams out of his head.
10
11
Two: The Second Crucible, January 12th 1999
“Daddy, watch this!”
Jasmine Weed, little girl that she was, giggled and showed her famous impish grin. The
cool sunlight shone off her face, her cheeks rosy despite the winter day. Abruptly, she stopped
and spun on the tip of one skate and her voice carried across the ice. “See daddy, see, I told ya I
could do it. Even in the cowld. Did you see it daddy?”
Dr. Isaac Weed looked across the blue ice and watched his little girl show off her moves.
She had ever pronounced ‘cold’ as ‘cowld’ and it made him smile as always.
“Yea Jaz! Very nice, beautiful. Be careful!”
She looked waif-like even in her bulky down jacket, which all but eclipsed her. He
cupped his hands to his mouth and blew on them. Winter in Minnesota. The temperature hovered
near zero. His overstuffed down jacket more than sufficed to keep him warm, but it did nothing
for his hands.
“Daddy, Toni showed me how to skate backwards. Do ya wanna see it daddy? Do ya
wanna see me skate backwards? Huh, do ya?” Her words spilled out with a youthful exuberance.
Her voice alternated in pitch and tone, dopplering as she skated back and forth just twenty yards
in front of him.
“Well, eh, I don’t know.”
He feigned a look of confusion, his hands now open to funnel the words out between
them. “Aw, come on, that’s not possible, nobody can skate backwards.”
“Can too!” she said, and slid across the slick surface in a wide circle. Her long black hair
flittered in the wind. The breeze picked up ever so slightly and her scarf hung in the cold air as
well, seemed to chase after her as she turned this way and that. It never quite caught her though.
“Can not!” he hollered back to her.
This was their little game, one they’d played many times. His eyes followed her grace
and beauty as she made another smooth arc across in front of him. Her pink jacket and matching
scarf made a blemish against the white background that was easy to follow.
12
“Can too!” She giggled in that special way only little girls can.
“Can naaaaaaaaaawt!” He drew the word out a long while on his lips, smiling all the
while, though she was too far out now to see it.
“Can TOO!” She launched the words with gusto and pluck, as if simply saying them
made it so.
“Can too!” he said, trying to trick her.
“Can TOO!” she said again, giggling, not falling for his trick. They both laughed as she
skated to him. He collected her up, lifting her small frame until she was looking into his eyes.
“Okay then, you show me what you can do.” His words were soft now, meant only for the
two of them. Her weight in his arms was nothing and everything at the same time. He could have
held her thus forever he thought. He found a spot on her face not covered by the scarf and
pressed his lips to it. Her skin radiated warmth.
“I love you Jaz.”
“I love you too, daddy.”
†††
She lost her footing on her first attempt and sat there, looking towards her father.
“I really can do it,” she said, using her best seven year-old matter of fact voice. She had a
child’s impatience but a daughter’s need for reassurance. His reassurance.
Saturday, father-daughter day they called it around the Weed household. Melanie might
come along with them sometimes, but more often than not it would be just the two of them. Isaac
had precious little time during the week and he tried to make this up to both of them on the
weekends. As always, Melanie would join them later for an early dinner, then maybe a movie.
Whatever, it mattered little to Isaac. Any day he could spend with his daughter was a great day.
Jasmine always brought out the child in Isaac and he loved her for that as much as
anything. Her smile, with a gap where her two front teeth had fallen out a few weeks before, was
etched forever in his mind’s eye. Every time he looked at her he saw an angel, or perhaps a
princess.
He was almost incapable of saying no to her. Indeed, he had not been able to say no on
this day. The two of them had spent the morning at a local children’s museum. On the way home,
as they passed Old Man Meyer’s Pond and she saw the few skaters on the ice, Jasmine had
insisted they stop and play in the snow. Once stopped though, Jasmine had pulled a pair of skates
from the backseat and talked her father into letting her skate the remainder of the morning away.
He wondered if she had planned it that way. It hadn’t taken much for him to give in to his young
executive. Saying no to her would have been like saying no to himself; they were that much a
part of each other.
She was his light, his beacon of hope, his future.
†††
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Isaac watched for several minutes with anxious trepidation as Jasmine fumbled on the
ice, trying to get her legs to work to the commands of her brain. Her coordination failed her
repeatedly. Finally, just as he was about to step out to help her—which had been his first impulse
anyway—her legs found their sense of companionship and she managed a graceful if short nine
or ten feet of skating backwards. He clapped several times.
“You go girl!”
He raised his right fist over his head in a triumphant salute. He screamed again, this time
it was “Yeah! Yeah!” and smiled broadly.
Jasmine beamed ear to ear, apparently satisfied she’d proven to her father it was possible
to skate backwards. She waved to him and turned to skate forwards again, spiraling out in ever
larger circles across Old Man Meyer’s frozen pond. She went further out than before, seemingly
oblivious to the few other skaters enjoying the pond with her in the late morning. Her scarf still
chased her, and the razor sharp edge of the wind still bit her skin, but for all anyone else could
see, life was a fairy tale and she was at its center.
The fairy tale began to unravel a moment later.
†††
“Why, Dr. Weed as I live and breathe.”
He didn’t turn toward the voice, that of a woman, immediately. He watched Jasmine
getting farther out on the ice, thought not too far...
“Not too far princess!” He cupped his hands to his mouth to make his words carry. Only
then did he turn to face the voice, a portly woman he couldn’t place at first.
“Ain’t you the good Dr. Weed?”
“Yes...well, I’m Dr. Weed anyway.”
A tinge of recognition rose somewhere in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t bring it
forward. He sighed.
“You ain’t remembering me, is you?”
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.” He grinned at the woman, a polite upturn of
the corners of his mouth.
“Helen Nelson. You cut on my back last year. Truth is, I was looking to make an
appointment with you. Now guess I won’t need to do that.”
Still grinning, still unable to place her, he looked back over his shoulder and scanned the
ice for Jasmine.
Nothing.
“This here back of mine, it just don’t seem to be getting no better.”
“What the fu—?” He began, then stopped himself. He searched the landscape. No
Jasmine.
“How long you think it’s gonna take?”
He didn’t answer her, didn’t even acknowledge her. He visored his hand to his forehead
and scanned the ice one skater at a time. No Jaz. His heart began to beat faster and his palms
moistened.
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“I lost my job on account I can’t stand longer than about...” The woman rattled on, as if
seated on a chair in Weed’s office.
She wasn’t of course, and he was oblivious to her now, no longer heard her ramblings. He
took a few steps forward and leaped over a small snow bank, all the while scanning the horizon.
Only a dozen or so skaters cruised out there, but she definitely wasn’t one of them. A vague
sense of panic began to conquer him, like the bite of an insect that gradually gnaws at you until
you suddenly realize it’s there, too late. Only this was no insect, it was a dog—a rabid dog at
that. And the damn thing wouldn’t let go.
He rushed forward onto the ice.
†††
Weed’s Frye leather boots slid as they failed to find traction on the smooth ice, but he
didn’t fall. His body surged forward on adrenaline as that rabid dog ripped into him, tearing his
flesh and exposing the glistening white bone underneath.
“Jaz! Jasmine Weed! Jasmine!” The desperate nature of his cries caught the attention of
those nearby. “Answer me girl! Jasmine!”
Now twenty or thirty yards out on the ice, he turned to one of the other skaters, a boy of
about ten.
“I’m looking for a little girl, about this high,” he leveled his hand just above his waist,
“she’s wearing a pink jacket and scarf. You seen her?”
“Sure, I seen her. She was just over there.” The boy pointed farther out on the ice.
Weed was quick to move in the direction indicated. Damn, I only took my eyes off her for
a second...
He saw it then. Just past a small heap of snow, obscured until you were practically upon
it: a hole in the ice.
The hole was only about three feet across, but it might as well have been the fucking
Grand Canyon. It looked for all the world like a gaping mouth—a hungry mouth, he thought—
and he knew instantly she had fallen in. The clarity of what had happened slammed him hard and
urged the rabid dog to tear further into his gut. He wanted to vomit.
“My God.” A low moan escaped him, seemed to turn him inside out. He saw the boy had
followed him. “Get help!”
Weed stopped three or four feet from the edge. His mind ran wild with possibilities—Is
the ice stable? How thick is it? Will it hold me? How deep’s the water? Oh shit. He scanned the
shoreline a hundred yards behind him. The opposite shore lay a hundred more yards in front of
him.
He sucked in a breath of air so cold it chilled his lungs. This ain’t a pond, it’s Old Man
Meyer’s own fucking Lake Erie.
He laid down on his stomach and crawled forward, the cold like a razor against his hands.
The sun glinted off the steely blue-gray ice. He tried to focus his mind, listening for any tell-tale
cracking sounds he imagined might announce he was about to become a floater himself. But
there was too much noise, like every sound he had ever heard now came back at him. A car
15
passing on the nearby road was deafening. The wind rustling through the trees scratched at him,
as if to draw blood from his ears. The sound of the other skaters was a fantastic torture. He heard
the water lapping at the sides of the hole, ice clinking against itself, the ticking of his watch.
Then his own heartbeat: rapid, regular, and rhythmic—a tiny clock within.
Time—how long has it been? Thirty seconds? A minute? Two minutes? How long do I
have? How long does she have?
“Please God—”
“Hey mister!” A child’s voice, not hers.
“Stay back! The ice, it’ll break!”
But the kid was already there, already at his side. “My brother went to call 911.”
911. Good, that’s good. Then he recalled his cell phone sitting on the front seat of his car,
out of harm’s way—of miserably little use to me now.
“Shit,” he said, then “good kid. Stay here.”
Isaac inched closer until his hand, all but numb, passed over the edge of the ice and into
the freezing water. Despite the cold, he was sweating profusely. His hand swam through the cold
water as best it could, clearing away the thin crust of ice on its surface. His movements were
barely effective though, too far to reach. He squirmed forward, belly hugging the ice, inching his
way along to the edge.
His senses strained for any evidence of Jasmine, any evidence the ice would not hold
him, and in that order.
His head was over the edge now and he saw how black the water was. His heart flipflopped in his chest with the knowledge. He reached further underwater with one arm, groping in
the murkiness like a blind fisherman.
Nothing.
How long has it been?
He felt it before he heard it. A slight shift of the ice—a brief overture like the hazy cloud
of rain that moves up the street before a storm. Weed stiffened, he didn’t have time for anything
else, and the full fury of the storm hit. With an unpleasant crunching sound, the side of the hole
gave way and Weed tumbled into the frigid water. The cold struck him full in the face like a
sledge hammer, draining his strength by half or more on the instant.
Worse yet, much worse, he felt the boy flailing at his side and knew he’d been pulled in
as well. It took all his concentration and strength to grab the kid. The boy embraced him, indeed
wouldn’t let go. Weed flailed himself, tried desperately to establish a handhold, some type of
stability. His foot kicked something below and he pushed off of it with enough force to propel
him and the boy to the edge a long two feet away. But once there, try as he might, he didn’t have
enough strength to push the boy out of the water. The pair floated there and Weed felt around as
best he could for Jasmine, using his feet, unwilling to accept she might be gone.
Only then did he see the small patch of red on the edge of the ice opposite him. Blood.
She must have cut herself as she fell.
Reality smacked him hard and he vomited in the water.
A bit later, it could have been five minutes or five hours for all he knew, he looked up to
see a figure crawling toward them across the ice. It moved with deliberate slowness and Weed
realized it was not just a man, but someone pushing a flat-bottomed boat.
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He was all but frozen and his head pounded with a headache. Something thumped his
foot. A tree or maybe a submerged log. Then a sudden realization warmed his frigid brain.
Jasmine?
He shifted the boy to one arm. The child had stopped flailing now as the cold seeped into
his small frame quicker than Isaac’s. He tried with all his might to reach down with his free arm.
His arm might as well have been a frozen steak though. He made the effort all the same and,
largely by chance, his hand caught something. He pulled his arm up slowly, the damp coldness
playing tricks on his muscles all the while. His hand, blue and cadaver stiff, broke the surface
and he saw Jasmine’s pink scarf in it.
She’s down there, right below me.
Isaac nearly dropped the boy in his desperation. He probably would have had not the flatbottomed boat reached him at exactly that moment. The man in the boat took the boy, hauling
him aboard the way you would a large fish. Weed struggled in the water, tugging at the scarf,
which seemed tethered. Somewhere below him, Jasmine was holding on to it. The rescuer
grabbed at Weed but he swore him off,
“My daughter’s down there!” His breath smoked in the cold air.
He tugged harder and felt the thing give way. Isaac looked into the muck, and ever so
gradually, as the body rose the several feet up toward the surface, a face—her face—took form.
A face bone white—is that the color of death?—and frozen in an almost ghost-like apparition
under the glassy, frigid pond water. She had her hands up, as if reaching out for him. A deep gash
ran across the right palm and a tuft of clotted blood trailed from it, suspended delicately in the
icy water.
The black water outlined her as if she had posed for the moment.
Isaac saw it all at that instant. His daughter, only moments before, skating across the ice
in marvelous oblivion, unaware of the danger awaiting her as she came around that snow bank.
She must have seen the hole—the hungry mouth—too late. The lake was like a hungry beast and
it gobbled her up before she had a chance to react. In his mind’s eye, he saw her hand lash
against the jagged edge of the hole (perhaps she had even held desperately to that razor sharp
edge for a few seconds, until the cold numbed her into letting go) then saw the pain on her face,
her contorted muscles locked in their embrace with the chilly waters as if frozen themselves. He
saw her flailing, even heard her cries. Cries directed at him, at daddy:
Daddy! Daddy! It’s so cowld! Help me! Help...
Like some cruel trick of atmospherics, Isaac’s numb mind heard the words now, too late
to help her. Jaz’s terror as he failed to answer her pleas was palpable in his gut as she sank into
the depths toward the black unknown. He felt her suck the cruddy, freezing water into her lungs,
squeezing out the life-giving air and plunging her still closer to the other side. With horrific
clarity, he saw that her eyes were wide open, saw her reach out—reach up—toward the daylight.
Toward life.
Isaac of a sudden reached out as well, grabbing at the face beneath the black water. She
floated there, just past his reach, her life ebbing away. He willed his arm to push forward another
inch. It responded slowly, as if rigor mortis had set in, and the wide-eyed face remained beyond
his grasp. The little girl might as well have been a hundred feet down for all the good he could do
her. Like an agonizing tease from the afterlife, he watched her long black hair run over his stiff
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fingers. They refused his commands to curl up and take hold. He needed her closer and gave
another tug of the scarf.
He gazed on with abject horror as the scarf came away in his hand.
He had the eerie feeling she was watching his face recede into the daylight even as he
watched hers disappear into the inky depths.
“No!”
He let go the scarf and tried to dive after her but got nothing from his frozen muscles. It
was as if Old Man Meyer himself had grabbed her and claimed her as his own.
†††
Half an hour later, Isaac Weed sat in an ambulance, wrapped in a blanket, a futile effort to
banish the chill. A hundred blankets would have done no good. They had yet to bring his
daughter up from the frigid depths. He sat numb in mind and body. He felt he would never be
whole again—
“We’ve got her!”
Weed looked up to see Jasmine’s tiny body being pulled from the water out in the
distance. A surreal scene in a nightmarish play. As the flat-bottom boat was quickly hauled to
shore, he wondered if there was any chance at all she was still alive. The paramedics placed her
body on a litter and carried her to his ambulance. The same bloodless face he’d seen earlier
greeted him, her eyes still open, her frozen expression unchanged as if trapped in time.
He looked into those hollow, distant eyes and searched in vain for some sign she still
lived—that what lay before him was still his little girl and not a corpse.
A paramedic connected the heart monitor with little apparent enthusiasm, perhaps simply
going through the motions. His head jerked in apparent surprise when first one beep and then a
second sounded. The rate was low, not more than three or five a minute, very low indeed. He
groped for the breathing tube to slide down her throat, the first step toward restoring life-giving
oxygen to her.
Isaac heard the beeps and reached an arm out to take his daughter’s hand. Her flesh was
impossibly cold and his heart flip-flopped again.
His mind a blank slate, he closed his eyes and did what he knew he must.
At once he was thrust into darkness, a place never touched by the heat of the sun. Cold
seeped into every part of him without mercy, soaking both mind and body. He choked and his
lungs burned under the touch of such intense cold. The weight of the frozen lake pressed his
chest, his heart laboring and nearly bursting against the icy sludge his blood had become. Before
very long, a few seconds at most, there was no where else to go.
There, in the back of the rescue squad, Isaac Weed was drowning.
Somewhere in the darkness before him, a tiny light appeared and quickly expanded to a
glowing archway. The brightest and warmest light he’d ever known beckoned him from the other
end. As he walked into the phosphorescent tunnel, warmth exploded inside him, his turmoil all
but vanishing. He felt love as he had never known it before, as if he was walking through a field
of spring wheat, the thousands of strands of grass dancing against his body, tickling and
18
electrifying wherever they touched. Both a marvelous and bizarre sensation, one distinctly not of
this earth.
Ahead of him, outlined in a brilliant aura by this brightest of all lights, stood Jasmine. He
called to her but she didn’t answer. She continued toward the light, floating down the tunnel.
In the next instant, the two of them stood in a meadow. Tall grass swayed around them, so
tall Jasmine was intermittently obscured from his view. She was still ahead, now on the crest of a
hill and he down below. He ran but she had moved too, was still beyond his reach. She was just
ahead, standing beside a shallow, bubbling creek that meandered across the prairie and divided
the land. A burst of speed, and suddenly he stood no more than three feet from his little girl.
The stream separated them however, and they were now of two different worlds.
The place was warm, unnaturally so Weed thought later. He held out his hand to Jasmine
and beckoned her back to him. On the other side of the water, Jaz studied him with a pensive
expression. She wore a pink jacket and a scarf to match; the scarf had finally caught up with her
and rested gently at her side. Her face was ruddy and full of color, not the bone-white it had been
back in the black water. She showed neither surprise nor fear, only recognition—the kind of look
one has when they wake up from a bad dream and are relieved to find it was only a dream after
all.
Only this time it wasn’t a dream and Isaac was overcome with a deep sense of
melancholy. She was his baby, alone for the first time, alone in the most fearsome of human
experiences. He wanted to tell her he was sorry, that he’d tried, that it would be okay, that they
would be together again. She reached toward him but their hands never met.
Isaac had the incredible notion, all but inconceivable to him, that they had already
touched for the last time—
Isaac was suddenly falling, as if pushed over the edge of a great cliff. The stream receded
to nothing in an instant and a moment later he was cold again—a biting, bitter cold that stole
from him what little strength he had left.
His soul eviscerated, Isaac realized he was back in the ambulance alongside his
daughter’s body. He began to sob, and to think of Melanie, dear Melanie who had carried their
little girl inside her for nine months, had soothed her through chicken pox at three and the
measles at four, who had gone with her on her first day of kindergarten and again in the first
grade, who cried with her when her rabbit had died and laughed with her over jelly beans and
milk.
How could he possibly tell her Jasmine was gone?
A moment later, he passed out and his hand fell away from Jasmine’s. Or perhaps
Jasmine’s hand fell away from his. Either way, it amounted to the same thing.
They were asunder.
†††
At Minneapolis General Hospital, the doctors and nurses worked on Jasmine for more
than an hour, as if they had the power to bring her back. Isaac, his hope already tainted by his
horrific insight, paid scant attention to their efforts. He had been there, had seen the light, had
19
seen her.
He knew no power on earth could bring Jasmine back to him.
20
Three: The Misery of Seth Oberg
In Bismarck, in the dead of winter, the cars have tails.
Seth Oberg stood at the window and watched the traffic move up and down the street in
front of the hospital as his agile but young mind composed words to match the scene. He found it
odd he hadn’t noticed the vapor trails before. He supposed that standing around and waiting for
death gave him time to see a lot of things he hadn’t noticed before.
Rubbing his forehead, he moved back to his father’s bedside. The nine year-old boy had
another one of his headaches, not one of the really bad ones but bad enough. But he didn’t want
to leave just then, couldn’t leave his father’s side. Even with Aunt Jenny there, it would have
been like running away, like he was a coward. And whatever else he was or might become, Seth
Oberg was no coward.
He held his father’s hand, though he wasn’t sure his father knew it. If he closed his eyes
tightly—and pushed the hollow, mechanical in and out whoosh of the ventilator from of his mind
—Seth could almost see his father’s face as it looked in happier times. He saw that it still had
weight, that the lips were a rosy red color, and that the eyes though melancholy, were not utterly
lost.
The man on the bed before him didn’t look anything like that now, of course.
Homer Oberg’s face was gaunt, like the skin would blow off in a stiff wind. The eyes,
yellow and haunting, were also deep-set and sunken. When open as they were now, they no
longer made contact with anything or anybody. His skin, once ebony black, was now an
unhealthy, thin veil that tore and bled at the slightest touch. His skin hung in great excess over
his bones, as if either it was too big or the bones too small. His belly protruded pregnantly in
front of him, filled with fluid backing up from his failing heart and damaged liver. A tube in his
throat attached him, umbilical-like, to the ventilator at the bedside.
It occurred to Seth his father was nothing more than a dead man breathing.
Seth would have given anything for his father to look at him just then. So much he
wanted to say to him, so much he wanted his father to tell him. About his mother, for instance.
21
His father had rarely spoken of her, would dissolve into a drunken stupor at the mere mention of
her name. He had once collapsed on the street after smelling her perfume on a passing woman.
Seth had been with him that day, had been secretly smelling his mother’s perfume bottle for
months, and he too had recognized the scent. And what of their nights at the movies? Aunt Jenny,
she would do fine taking care of him, always had, but she never much liked movies. Who would
he watch movies with now? Then too, there was the whole issue of heroes.
Seth Oberg was about as large a nine year-old boy as there ever was. His colossal size
made him the joke of the neighborhood, but his father had always called him my hero. He told
Seth repeatedly how his just being alive was special, how he was the chosen one, how he was a
hero in every sense of the word. And when Seth had one of his ever more frequent headaches,
Homer would rub the faint scar on Seth’s forehead by way of lulling the boy to sleep.
“You’re a hero, my boy. My hero,” Homer Oberg would say over and over again by way
of soothing his son.
Suddenly, Seth wanted—needed—to tell his father he was a hero too. This seemed the
most important thing in the world just then and he shook his father’s arm. Homer, as if wanting
to say something himself, turned his head and focused his eyes. He lifted his head off the pillow.
He mouthed something toward Jenny White, something Seth didn’t understand. The old woman
nodded as if in agreement. In the moment that followed, Homer lifted a bony, tobacco stained
finger off the bed and touched Seth’s arm. Homer looked the boy in the eyes then, and Seth had
the peculiar sense his father was sorry—but for what?
It was Homer Oberg’s last act in this world.
†††
In Bismarck, in the dead of winter, the cars have tails. They come out once the sun goes
away for the year, when the ground freezes to concrete, so hard it has to be heated just to dig a
grave. This is when the air gets cold, a slicing, bitter kind of cold that bites uncovered skin and
renders it unrecognizable to its owner in a matter of several minutes. It is the kind of cold that
crystallizes breath and makes it visible. Bismarck in winter is such a place. So in Bismarck, for a
few long months in the dark of the year, the cars have tails.
Four hundred and fifty airline miles away from where Jasmine Weed had drowned in a
not quite frozen pond two years before, Seth Oberg walked north along Burnt Boat Road. It was
a cold January morning and he watched the traffic as it passed him by. As he had a tendency to
do, he began to mumble the few words to a passage he had composed two years before in his
father’s hospital room, a passage he had finally completed at his father’s funeral four days later.
He thought of his father infrequently now, usually when he was especially tired, or maybe when
he had a headache. Thinking of his father always caused him to think of cars with tails. For
whatever reason, the two were entwined as one in his mind. Even more strangely, the idea of cars
with tails somehow soothed the boy.
When he reached the corner of Ninth Street and Burnt Boat Road, he turned left into a
modest trailer park, a rather rundown affair with aging, single wide prefab homes sitting on
broken, decaying blocks of wood and brick. At the front entrance, he passed an old green neon
22
sign with cursive writing and a flickering, short-circuiting ’S.’ Stenson’s Green it read, or rather
was supposed to read. Like most things in the Green, the sign needed work.
Many of the trailers in the Green hadn’t seen paint since before Elvis had left the building
and the rust born of years of harsh North Dakota winters showed through. The absence of a front
porch or carport on any of the homes lent them a naked, barren, thin look—as if all the coal in
the world couldn’t warm them against the chill of the seemingly endless winter. Seth took note of
the usual toys scattered about, an odd assortment of rusty sleds, broken wagons, decapitated
dolls, and partially inflated basketballs. He picked up an old baseball glove lying in the snow,
noting the name Willie S had been burned into the leather. He tossed it back. He didn’t know any
Willie S.
Seth had few friends.
As he walked, he passed the occasional car, its condition no better than the trailers dotting
the narrow, one way road passing through the Green. Few trees softened the barren landscape
that rushed up to meet his eyes and everything was covered by at least several inches of snow or
ice. Everything that is, except the gaudy strings of Christmas lights littering the outsides of the
trailers, which seemed only to emphasize the cheap, tacky look of the place. The lights, tawdry
leftovers from the month before, served as reminders that nothing got done in a timely fashion in
this broken down corner of hell’s little acre.
Seth lived at number nine, in a trailer as unremarkable as any other in the place. Entering
the trailer, he went immediately to the bookcase in the living room and pulled a large book off
one of the shelves. He was a voracious reader and tried to read a book a week, two if it was a
good week and the pain wasn’t so bad.
The pain—Seth’s earliest, most vivid memory: a lightning bolt of pain slashing across his
forehead. The memory was so old, it was devoid of any feeling and he wasn’t certain it had ever
actually happened. Nowadays, his forehead felt fine, it was the rest of his head that ached—
especially since that night shortly after his father’s funeral, the night Jenny White kept a promise
to Homer and told Seth the truth about his birth. At first she had wavered, not sure the time was
right. In the end, it was upon Seth’s insistence that she continued. In retrospect, Seth almost
wished she hadn’t.
It was then the pain had really started in earnest.
†††
Jenny White and Seth sat holding hands at the small dining room table and, as she closed
her eyes and remembered, Seth could almost feel the calendar rolling back nearly ten years. As
he closed his own eyes and focused on her gravelly voice, he had the distinct impression Jenny
White wasn’t so much remembering, but reliving.
It was as if she had been everywhere that night.
†††
23
Anna, the mother Seth will never know, is a big boned woman with the cocoa butter skin
of mixed African and Native American ancestry. She is a proud woman and is married to a proud
black man, Homer Oberg. Homer is an assistant manager of the local Ace hardware store. He
holds an associate’s degree from a nearby junior college. By the time she becomes pregnant with
Seth, they have been married three years and Anna has suffered two miscarriages.
When Anna discovers she is pregnant a third time, she prays about it and vows to carry
the infant until he can survive on his own. She pledges to Homer she will do whatever it takes to
accomplish this task and her mind refuses to admit any possibility of failure in this regard.
Homer will remember this pledge in the middle of Anna’s funeral, as he lays his head upon her
closed casket and weeps inconsolably. He will never forget it and, in the years to come, will
mention it often to Jenny White.
After discovering the baby will be a boy, Homer and Anna paint the infant’s room in
bright, cheerful shades of blue with fluffy clouds and scenes of baseball and football. They buy a
car seat, reupholster a high chair and refurbish an antique crib Anna finds at a garage sale. They
look through books of names, and finally settle on Seth because, as Homer says, it sounds manly
and strong.
Then comes the night of the ballet, the night that changes everything forever.
That glorious but awful evening begins with the sun retiring behind a veil of shimmering
twilight. The couple shower and, with the hot, luxuriant waters cascading down upon them,
entwine as lovers for the first time in perhaps six weeks or two months. The orgasmic embrace is
at the furious urging and persistence of Anna, who feels especially close to her husband on this
night and knows that Homer would never, otherwise, seek such loving solace of her in her
delicate condition. For years afterward, Homer will remember this time together and will wonder
if, even then, Anna somehow knew what the night would bring. Over the years to come, this idea
will act like a water hammer against his sanity—and slowly erode its very foundation.
But on this night he is as sane as he will ever be again. Anna considers the promise of the
life she carries and tells Homer it is a soul in creation. He realizes just how much he loves this
woman, how much he loves their baby. They have a quiet, romantic dinner for three and Homer
presents her with a diamond tennis bracelet that would have taken him another two years to pay
off. He has considered a corsage, but has decided instead upon the bracelet, reasoning she would
rather have a permanent keepsake of their special evening at the ballet. The keepsake will be
buried with her and Homer will never pay it off.
They arrive 20 minutes early for The Nutcracker. Sitting down, they listen to the murmurs
of the crowd and the marvelous but unprepared tunes of the orchestra as it warms up. As the
opening curtain rises, Homer places his hand upon Anna’s child-filled belly. He pokes and feels
the future within kick back, strong and healthy. He smiles, the two kiss, and the curtain rises.
It happens in the middle of Act II, during the dream. It is fast, with no warning
whatsoever. The Arabian dancer is onstage, and her serpentine movements mesmerize the
audience. There is a faint popping sound, a sound nobody actually hears in all probability, then a
whoosh as the small but heavy spot light crashes down from the ceiling above. Seth’s mother is
struck in the head and does not suffer. She dies instantly, or so the coroner will claim later
despite all evidence to the contrary. The bread loaf size light cleaves her head, splits it open
across the top, and explodes its contents in a wide swath around her. Anna’s blood and skull are
24
flung against Homer with such force he is knocked from his seat. The woman on the other side of
Anna screams, a high pitched wail that immediately curdles the stomachs of those within earshot.
When the house lights come on a moment later, they reveal gray and white flecks of brain—
tissue that had previously held Anna’s memories, hopes, and dreams—splayed across the head
and shoulders of a score of strangers.
One of those strangers, a heavyset, older black woman with distinguished gray hair,
manages to remain calm and comforts the others. Her presence is soothing in an oddly familiar
way, as if she is everyone’s grandmother or best friend, and she somehow keeps the macabre
situation from completely unraveling to chaos. The prime individual she comforts is Homer, who
sits on the floor between the seats, at the feet of his wife. He looks at his Anna. Tears flow freely
down his cheeks and mingle with the blood upon them to produce tiny rivulets of pink here and
there. This makes his tears stand out eerily against his black skin. He is dazed and confused but
knows at once she is dead, knows their dreams are gone. On impulse, perhaps he senses
something or maybe he just needs to touch her, he reaches up and feels her belly. He rubs his
hand around in the blood, as if in a trance, as if finger painting on the belly of his dead wife.
It moves.
Not a breath, not inward like the pull of a contracting diaphragm. Not outward either;
there is no broad, diffuse relaxation of the ribs and belly to suggest the movement has been the
last gasp of a dying woman.
It moves again.
A poke, a kick.
Something lives inside the dead woman.
Something that is trying to get out.
Something that needs to get out.
Strangers bring the woman to the aisle and lay her there. The elderly black woman has
her arm around Homer even as he weeps over the pregnant remains of his wife. A tuxedoed
obstetrician—there is a white carnation stuck in his lapel—kneels at Anna’s side. Jenny White
observes how he only briefly looks at Anna’s head. It’s blown apart—almost as if something had
needed to get out instead of in—and it’s apparent to all no amount of attention there will help
her. He focuses his attention on her belly, and must feel impotent the old woman thinks. Jenny
White knows the baby must be born at that moment, but there is nothing that can be done
without a knife. The physician’s hand reaches along the woman’s neck, apparently seeking a
pulse. From the look on his face, and the glance at his watch, it is apparent he can’t find one.
“Three minutes,” he says quietly.
Jenny White knows this is virtually an ultimatum: three minutes before the child within
will be as lost as the mother now is.
It takes seven minutes, the obstetrician has timed it, before the first paramedics finally
arrive to see Homer still clutching his now very dead wife. As they pull him away, they see the
woman’s pregnant belly.
“Please,” he begs, “you must do something...” The tears stream down his cheeks and
hysteria finally overcomes him as he reaches out to touch her belly one last time.
It moves again.
The obstetrician sees it and Jenny White watches as he moves with deliberate speed. He
25
takes a scalpel from the paramedic’s bag and immediately cuts the injured woman from one side
to the other just below her pregnant belly button. In his haste, the doctor plunges the knife
completely through the wall of the uterus and cuts the child’s scalp, leaving an odd mark across
the boy’s forehead that Seth will not easily be able to explain in the future. The womb is thus
torn open and the doctor pulls from it an infant boy—tiny, blue, listless, and bloody. Dead by all
accounts. The paramedics swaddle the newborn in blankets.
Later, at the hospital, people will say it is a miracle the boy survived. Ten minutes by the
watch of the obstetrician they will say, ten minutes during which the child should have died three
times over.
Ten minutes that evolve into a decade of pain and suffering.
†††
The pain. It defined him most days. He couldn’t remember life without a headache,
without a sense his skull might come apart at any moment. At times throbbing, other times more
of a pressure sensation—like a vice squeezing his head to impossible thinness. More and more,
Seth found the simple act of getting through the day near impossible. On such days, he sought
out the company of the one person he could always depend on, Aunt Jenny.
The indomitable Jenny White was a black woman of imposing years. She tended toward
the heavy side, though nothing so big as the monumental proportions Seth himself had attained.
Her thinning, gray hair lent her a quiet look of distinction, and she had a face that shone with the
kind of serious energy only one who has seen the dimmer side of life can muster. Etched into that
same face, as if placed there by the creator himself, were a number of wrinkles that not only
betrayed her age, but suggested additional years the calendar hadn’t yet counted. Life had not
given Jenny White many advantages, but among them were a strong constitution and an
emotional resolve that never seemed to falter or break. Her nose, of clear African descent, was
decidedly large for her face and held a powerful set of eyes apart from each other. Piercing at
times, they told, almost warned, of an intelligence not to be trifled with.
She wasn’t his real aunt, of course.
Jenny White had moved in with Homer Oberg and his son shortly after the boy came
home from the hospital. With her grandmotherly ways, she was a godsend as far as Homer was
concerned, though he never quite figured out exactly how she happened to be there in that
particularly hideous moment of need. Not that he ever gave the problem much thought, Homer’s
thinking days were mostly behind him by then. She was caring, and that was enough for Homer.
The two forged a bond, the weld being Seth. Homer never quite came to terms with his wife’s
horrific death, perhaps no soul on earth could have, and his anguish consumed him like dry grass
burning in a wind storm. His only defense was to drown whatever demons pursued him, and in
this his efforts were laudable, if not legendary—he managed to lose his job, his home, and
finally, his life. If not for Jenny White, he would have lost his son as well. When his health failed
for the last time, Jenny White was the only family the boy had.
Homer had the idea his wife had been chosen as surely as the Madonna had been. The
boy had survived for a reason. Ten minutes. It should have been long enough to kill him three
26
times over, the doctors said. Only it wasn’t, the boy survived, and Homer imagined that the
beasts which tortured him and had so completely destroyed his reason for being in this world
were, at one and the same time, angels that had swept his son under their wings and protected the
boy for that critical ten minutes. Or maybe it was Anna that had looked out for him, channeling
whatever life force remained in her broken and dying body to her womb, living out in earnest her
credo to carry her child until he could survive on his own. Her dying act had been to cradle the
boy in her womb until—by the surgeon’s knife—he’d been born into the world. Either way, the
result was the same: the boy was alive. And he needed to know the how and why of it.
And so Jenny White remembered. As she did so, Seth saw what she saw, felt what she
felt. He didn’t so much hear the words but experienced the story as a participant. She opened her
mouth and what came out filled the very tapestry of his mind. Seth himself had hoped that
knowing the story might somehow help with his pain.
But it didn’t. And as for his father’s demons, they seemed uncomfortably close, as present
as ever.
†††
The headaches fractured the space above Seth’s shoulders into something akin to a cubist
interpretation of the human condition. At times, when the vice-like grip was so great it seemed
his skull was too small to house the brain within, he actually wished for the final twist of that
vice and an end to the misery that was him.
Bad as they were, the headaches were only part of it. Seth had a constant longing, a
feeling as if some part of him had been left out. Maybe a part of him died with his mother, died
in the throes of that terrible agonizing night. If so, he would never be whole. Usually however,
Seth had more a feeling as if a part of him lay out beyond some distant horizon, some indistinct
line he must find and somehow cross if he was ever to rid himself of the misery that was one
with him.
The misery it was to be Seth Oberg.
†††
Seth, his impossibly wide girth and excess poundage offering an almost grotesque
caricature of the human form and condition, worked his way clumsily up the stairs to the door.
He climbed slowly and deliberately, one step at a time, placing his hands on the railing with great
diligence and bracing himself with his arms as he brought his good leg, his right leg, up a step.
Then he would put all of his formidable weight on that good leg and slowly straighten the knee,
straining the ligaments that held bone tenaciously to bone and feeling their desire to rupture like
so many rubber bands pulled too taut. Once fully perched over that good leg, he would lean to
the right and allow the wall to do some of his bidding, as he arched his back and more or less
dragged his stubborn left foot up over the step to join its partner, this maneuver almost tumbling
him backwards at times. Having thus negotiated yet another step, he would pause a moment to
27
catch his breath, every bit as winded as a climber completing the last several hundred feet of
Mount Everest. Usually, he would then rub his forehead, the raised scar that creased the skin
there would burn a moment as his second wind came and he retooled his body for the next bit of
his climb. Finally, he would bend forward at the waist, grab the rail anew, and the whole exercise
would repeat itself all over again. The result was an odd combination of step and drag, step and
drag.
However clumsy it looked, it seemed to work. Seth always made it to the top of the stairs,
to the door. And the door was certainly where he wanted to be...
†††
Seth laid in bed, breathing heavily, as if in the midst of a great workout. The sheets
beneath him were sweat-stained and wrinkled and the room smelled of musk. His pillow lay
crumpled on the floor. Periodically, his arms and legs lifted off the bed in random, vigorous
flinging movements. Occasionally, he grunted or groaned. In a few hours, in the midst of total
body soreness, he might discover he had bit his tongue or soiled his bed with urine. If so, it
wouldn’t be the first time.
Seth was walking again, moving into the land of nothingness. It is a place we all go to
from time to time, if only in our dreams, but—for Seth at least—these trips have become more
frequent over the past few months. More urgent too. This is concerning, because this place exists
only at the fringes of consciousness.
It is the edge of life.
†††
As it had on a dozen occasions before this, the door at the top of the stairs beckoned him,
even demanded he come. First would come the voices, then it became a physical thing felt to the
very core of his being: a great pounding in his head, a wrenching of his inner self that grew ever
more distressful the longer he stayed away. He would become physically ill, his headaches
intensifying to new heights as he tried to resist all of this. The voices would eventually scream
his name over and over again, as if his head were an echo chamber. In the end, this was always a
fight he couldn’t win. Only by going to the door could he quiet the voices; only by opening it
could he lessen the pain.
Standing at the top of the stairs, Seth’s head felt as if it was flattening to paper thinness.
The vice turned as if for the final time—let it be at an end, oh Gawd, at an end—and he reached
for the doorknob with the last of his earthly strength. It turned easily in his hand and his head
abruptly seemed to re-inflate, the voices taunting him dissolved away, and the bubble of pain
above his shoulders burst. Like water sitting on a sidewalk under a hot noonday sun, Seth’s
poundage evaporated into nothingness as he crossed the threshold of the door. Three chins
became one and two thirds of his three hundred pounds disappeared as quickly as one might shed
an unwanted jacket.
28
Once through the door, overweight Seth always became thin Seth. Not just rejuvenated,
but reborn. He became a new Seth, a thinner, more agile Seth. He took great gulps of air and
marveled at the ease with which his thin chest moved back and forth. His fingers, previously
pudgy and stiff as if encased in cardboard, had become nimble and quick. His legs no longer
resembled tree trunks uprooted with each great step, but were now muscular and useful in new
ways. He could run and jump like any other eleven year-old boy. Thin Seth was the child that
overweight Seth had never been and could never be.
He stood in a meadow, the grass more green and more lush than any he might ever have
been able to imagine. There was a peace here, a place for him and him alone. The sky a brilliant
blue. Fluffy clouds rolled across in perfect harmony with the world below. The sun shone and a
preternatural warmth enveloped the place—at once inviting and invigorating. On the instant, he
ran miles through the grass, not a care encumbering his young mind and body. Birds flew in and
out of the woods, and the trees shimmered in the light and rustled in the wind. After a time, it
might have been an hour or five hours—time was different here, not linear like back home—the
sound of water bubbling over rocks attracted him. He came to a shallow creek and laid down
alongside it, beside a ‘Y’ shaped log with a damp underbelly of moss. The sound of the water
played against his ears and his inner being could not have been more soothed. It was ever like
this after he climbed the stairs. He was home once again.
Or almost home anyway. He closed his eyes, thought The cars have tails...
When he opened them again, it was dark. The place still held warmth however, the heat
of the day having lingered. He felt no chill whatsoever. It was a different place in the dark
though, one not familiar to Seth. The trees swayed in the breeze, an eerie dance of ghosts
flittering across the night sky. He hadn’t noticed the full moon before, but he did so now. A lump
grew in his throat. He got to his feet.
The light faded still further and with it the temperature dropped. The woods seemed now
to come alive, to possess a pulse, even a soul.
Impossible.
An owl screeched behind him—whoo...whoo...whoo...—and Seth turned 180 degrees
about, nearly tripping over his own two feet in the process. He heard another screech, it might be
anything he thought but it didn’t sound like anything he was familiar with, and he turned again in
his disoriented way. The place felt off fettle now, no longer his alone. A pair of eyes pierced the
night in front of him, perhaps thirty yards distant. Brilliant red. And eerie.
I’m being watched.
Those eyes seemed to gather all of the available light and send it streaming back at him,
the way a large cat prowling the woodland night might. If that was the case, then it was a cat
from another world—the eyes were too wide set for one thing. For another, he could actually feel
them seeing him. That’s crazy. But as those eyes panned from one part of his body to another, a
queer sense of touch moved with them, like worms squirming under his skin by the hundreds.
As his heart slid up toward his throat, Seth began to chant ever so softly: “In Bismarck in
the dead of winter the cars have tails. They come out once the sun goes away...” The words came
rapid fire, as if pushed together, and he imagined he felt his father’s presence as he recited the
full litany twice. The worms—the eyes as well—died away then. Somewhere in the distance the
owl asked its familiar question again, whoo...whoo...whoo..., and the preternatural warmth of
29
earlier returned. He moved in another complete circle, saw no eyes piercing the night. The queer
sense of the worms crawling over him did not return.
He saw only blackness. Warm, soothing, comfortable—even inviting—blackness.
30
Four: Voyeurs in the ER
Seth Oberg was hungry. For breakfast, he had eaten only three bowls of cereal, two
bananas, two apples, three pieces of toast, a half dozen waffles and a grapefruit sprinkled with a
generous amount of sugar. Lunch was still an hour away and the pangs gripping his belly were
virtually inconsolable. He had only stopped eating the morning meal after his stomach began to
hurt, a pain he had learned, like Pavlov’s dog, to associate with even more discomfort if he
continued eating. But a break of three hours seemed excessive to him, or at least to his stomach,
and every minute that now passed seemed to bring him closer to starvation than to the midday
meal.
At eleven years of age and tipping the scales at just shy of three hundred pounds, he had
done a lot of eating in his time. His bulky frame, wider in circumference than it was tall, carried
nearly thirty pounds for every year of his life, not the ten or so for most children his age. His legs
could modestly be described as tree trunks and even his arms were wider around than the thighs
of most adults. His clothes were custom made for him by his aunt, who spent hours searching
through all that Goodwill and the Salvation Army had to offer, looking for big and portly fits.
Having found these oversized clothes, she would then take them out to their maximum and,
when they still didn’t fit, she would patch them as best she could. She did her best and he never
complained. Complaining was not in his nature.
Seth knew he ate too much, knew his weight was out of control. He knew the other kids
called him ‘Planet Seth.’ But he also knew that, despite all appearances to the contrary, he
couldn’t control his severe hunger pangs any other way.
He had to have food the way other people had to have air. Constantly.
†††
Seth had not always been big. Until the age of five, he was no bigger than his peers. Even
31
so, however, he had felt different. And worse, other kids treated him as though he was different,
maybe recognizing in their innocence something that went unseen by adults. By the time he was
six though, he clearly was different. In the space of a few short months, his weight ballooned and
he became obsessed with food.
The night Jenny White realized the full extent of his obsession was the night before she
went out and bought padlocks for the refrigerator and pantry. She was asleep when an odd noise
startled her awake. The sounds came from the kitchen. The sight which greeted her there would
have been comical had it not been so monstrous. A capped but empty bottle of Heinz Dill
Pickles, lying on its side and drained even of its tart pickle juice, was the first thing she saw as
she came around the corner. A discarded Kraft cheese wrapper sat beside it, an empty Land-OLakes margarine box beside that. Seth’s back was to her and when he turned, he was holding a
drumstick in his mouth, finishing the last of a bucket of cold chicken that had been dinner the
night before. He was surrounded by the evidence of his carnage—several empty bottles of V8, a
plastic bag labeled Dole carrots (more than one? she couldn’t remember), Oscar Mayer bologna
wrappers, an A1 steak sauce bottle, a package of Thomas’ English muffins (Seth didn’t even like
english muffins), a bottle of Smucker’s grape jelly, another of Hershey’s chocolate syrup, and
numerous open Tupperware containers that had previously contained leftovers (though to be
sure, hadn’t the amount of leftover food been steadily diminishing over the preceding few
months?). All of this was empty. He had yet to get to the pantry, but looking at the evidence
before her, she could have no doubt the pantry was next. The door to the refrigerator was ajar and
virtually every edible item in it had been consumed by Seth in his food madness, as if his
stomach had no size limitations whatsoever.
The refrigerator and pantry had remained locked ever since, opened only by Jenny White
at meal time. Seth had an appetite that very nearly matched his girth. He ate everything,
everywhere, all the time.
Food consumed him.
†††
It began in his left foot. He was barely conscious of his foot taking off on its own
adventure before his leg also crept into the act of betrayal. A small tremor at first, then something
more. Seth became aware of an alien sensation creeping steadily up his left side: a lightness of
being, a sense he was no longer in control. He tried to hold his left arm out of the play, but it, too,
leapt off the bed in defiance. As he lifted his head off the pillow, the left corner of his mouth
began to twitch uncontrollably and his head jerked sharply to the left. Just before losing
consciousness—the land of nothingness could not be far away—Seth felt a warmth in his groin
as he lost his water. His entire body was now writhing back and forth violently.
Seth Oberg was having a seizure.
†††
32
“Anyone got a quarter?” Dr. Isaac Weed asked, moving down the wide corridor of
Minneapolis General Hospital. It was the same hospital his grandfather, Zachary Weed, had
practiced in a half century earlier.
The intern flipped the coin to Weed from ten feet away. Weed caught it with the sure
hands of a surgeon and peeled off into the vending alcove. He slipped the quarter into the slot,
followed it with a second from his own pocket, and hit the red button labeled ‘Coca Cola.’
“Ah,” Weed sighed a moment later as the cool soda rushed over his tongue and down his
throat. “The breakfast, lunch, and dinner of surgeons.” It was his sixth coke of the day.
Isaac Weed was a tall man with a long, thin face and high cheekbones. At one time he had
worn a full beard and Jasmine had seen in him a resemblance to Abe Lincoln. Now however,
with Jasmine gone the better part of two years, he’d shaved the whiskers off. He hadn’t been able
to bear looking at what Jaz had looked at everyday. He hadn’t been outside in days either. His
doctor had noted how pale his skin had become and ordered some tests, thinking the surgeon
might be anemic. He wasn’t though, it was just a lack of vitamin D. Vitamin supplements had
been prescribed for him, but Weed didn’t take them. Why bother he thought. That was a frequent
refrain of his.
His eyes had become great dark circles. Always a thin man, he’d lost weight in the two
years since his daughter’s death and now looked too skeletal to be well. He had aged since her
death too, and not well. The general effect was that of a man caught in the midst of some chronic
wasting illness.
In short, he had the worn look of a man who stayed awake nights, never saw the sun, and
rarely ate. When he slept, which was not daily, he paid for it with nightmares.
Although it was now after 8:00 pm, Weed still had an hour or so of work before leaving
for the day. He was sure his team had twice that amount of business to attend on the wards, and
so they moved through the remaining patients as quickly as possible. Once done, Weed said
goodnight, took the final sip of his breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and walked back to his office.
He turned on the radio to catch the tail end of the Timberwolves’ game and glanced at the usual
action list his secretary left on his desk. As he looked at it, the bare hint of a smile appeared on
his face. The Timberwolves were winning for a change.
†††
The first flurries were just beginning to fall against the dark January night as the rescue
squad arrived at the bleak trailer at #9 Stenson’s Green just after 8:00 pm. The lane was tight, so
the driver parked the vehicle in the middle of the narrow street; its red and blue emergency lights
danced in circles off the tacky homes surrounding it. He left the engine running against the cold.
It began to snow harder as the crew of two, a man and a woman, removed the stretcher
from the back of the ambulance. They made their way across a narrow patch of dirt and ice,
perhaps a lawn in the warmth of spring or summer, to the porchless front door. A gently heavyset
elderly black woman greeted them and led them to a small bedroom at the back of the trailer.
They passed a framed picture of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King on the wall in the hallway, the
words I Have a Dream in neat, bold script beneath it, as if lending some element of ethereal hope
33
to the otherwise bleak surroundings.
Though the trailer was bleak, and in stark contrast to the yard outside, the bedroom was
clean and tidy, everything in its place and no dust anywhere. The room was almost completely
filled by a double bed, the mattress resting upon box springs which sat directly on the floor. A
gargantuan figure dominated both the bed and the room. The huge child was lying on his side,
his head propped up on a pillow. His eyes were closed and the bed beneath him wet, as were the
parachute-sized underwear the boy wore. The room itself smelled of lilac, clean and fresh. The
child also wore on a white T-shirt and one sock. The medics quickly pulled on their rubber
gloves and advanced on the boy.
The seizure, the old woman reported it as such though she really had no idea whether or
not it was a true seizure, had stopped before their arrival. During the spell, Jenny White had had
the presence of mind, and strength of body, to turn the large boy on his side after he started
writhing back and forth. She’d briefly considered how he might swallow his tongue, but a
moment’s consideration told her the notion was ridiculous. She made special mention of the fact
the boy never wet the bed under ordinary circumstances.
The paramedic assured her bedwetting happened commonly with this type of thing and
that she should not be embarrassed. The ambulance crew quickly ascertained that the boy was
breathing, that his vitals were stable, and that he had no fever. The young EMT failed three times
before getting an IV in the right arm, the boy flinching only slightly with each stick. He started a
saline drip and the two medics pondered how to get the massive child out of the bed, indeed out
of the trailer, to their ambulance. In the end they called for an additional rescue squad and, with
the added strength, manpower, and ingenuity, they somehow manhandled the unconscious child
to the ambulance outside.
†††
Weed sat in his black Mercedes and popped a cassette into the tape player, the latest
Stephen King novel. He favored history, military history especially, and authors such as Stephen
King, John Gresham, Dean Koontz, and Tom Clancy when he fancied a novel. Listening forty
minutes each way to and from work, five to seven days a week (sometimes several trips a day), it
had taken him just over two years to complete Shelby Foote’s three volume epic chronicle of the
civil war. He used his commuting time to unwind and he looked forward to it. It was as
rejuvenating as the cokes he sipped constantly throughout day. He never did anything remotely
related to work on the drive home in the evening.
As he headed the Mercedes out of the parking garage, he took note of the menacingly
dark sky. He wondered if the forecast called for snow, then answered his own question. Of course
it did. It’s January and there’s always snow in the forecast for Minneapolis in January.
†††
It took just three minutes, fifty less than it took to extricate the morbidly obese child from
34
his home, for the ambulance to arrive at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in Bismarck, ND.
Apparently sleeping and warm, Seth was bundled in back and showed no awareness he’d been
moved across town in the frozen night. They moved him into cubicle 7, Jenny White at his side.
The triage nurse came in, stepped back a moment at the unexpected sight of so large a boy, then
attempted to take his vitals. She had no trouble with heart rate, temperature, and respiration, but
obtaining a blood pressure was out of the question as none of the cuffs would fit around Seth’s
arm or even his lower leg. She apologized, asked a few simple questions, enough to establish the
level of urgency Jenny White thought, then let the aunt know it would be a few minutes before
the doctor would be in.
The first physician that came to the bedside, almost an hour later, was not a pimply-faced
kid, though he wasn’t long past that stage either. Though Jenny White didn’t then know it, he
took three times longer than necessary to accomplish half the work and arrived at the wrong
conclusion. He finally left to report his findings to the senior resident, who arrived at the bedside
another hour after that with fatigue in his eyes, blood on his shoes, and a pen leaking ink in his
pocket. His long white coat looked like it’d been plucked from the laundry chute. The younger
physician, he was in actuality a medical student but had failed to clarify this at first, trailed
behind him. The medical student had no blood on his shoes, his pen was in his hand, and his
short lab coat had been nicely pressed just a few days previously.
“Mrs. Oberg—”
“It’s White, I’m the boy’s aunt.”
“Are you his guardian?” the resident asked.
“I’m his only family if that’s what you mean. We’ve been together for quite some time.
He’s my niece’s child and both she and her husband are with the lord.” Her words, untrue but as
accurate as the occasion called for, were stated with a simplicity and authority that gave them
instant credibility.
“I’m Dr. Starling. I need to ask a few questions.”
“Go ahead. I’ve been taking him to the doctor at the clinic, the one on Burnt Boat Road,
he doesn’t do anything though.” She threw the young doctors a stiff look, as if challenging them
to do similar.
“Why do you take him there?” the resident stole a sideways glance at the med student.
There had been no mention of this in his report earlier.
“His size of course.”
“Yes, of course ma’am. How old is he?”
“Eleven this month.”
“What can you tell me about his size? Has he always been big?” He knew this was not
the primary reason the child was brought in, but the information might be germane nonetheless.
“Until he was five, he was normal size. He started growing in kindergarten, started
growing like you wouldn’t believe. Ate everything in sight. I couldn’t keep food in the
refrigerator, couldn’t keep any food at all in the house. I finally had to bolt the refrigerator—”
“Wow!” the medical student said, apparently forgetting himself. The resident glared at
him.
The old woman ignored the student. “—That’s how it’s been the past two years now. I
lock up the food ’til it’s time to eat. He’s a good child, tries real hard, but sometimes that’s not
35
enough.”
“Yes ma’am. Did the doctors at the free, eh, the clinic on Burnt Boat Road ever say why
he has this condition?”
“They ran some tests, but they were never able to figure it out. After a while, we just
figured it was our cross to bear.” She looked down at the boy, rubbing his arm gently, motherly.
Dr. Starling must have sensed she could go no further with the actual diagnosis than to
say it was their cross to bear. “What’s gone on recently?”
“Headaches, bad like always. Staring spells. And his left leg’s been a little weak lately.
He’s had some difficulty standing on it, trouble getting around. That sort of thing. He don’t
complain much though.”
“Any nausea, vomiting, or weakness?”
The med student squirmed, the realization of all he had missed apparent on his face. “Has
he ever been sick before?” he chimed in, trying too late to redeem himself.
The resident shot a sideways glance at him, obviously more than a little perturbed to have
the flow of his interview disturbed. “Just let her talk.”
“He’s a frail child, I suppose you wouldn’t know it to look at him, but no, not really ever
been sick except for what I already told you,” the aunt said, looking at the med student.
The resident redirected, “What about his arm, any weakness in his left arm?”
“No, just his leg.” She turned her glance back to the resident and her eyes looked directly
into his.
“Okay, what happened tonight, Mrs. White?”
The aunt looked at the resident and knew he was ready to listen. She saw in his eyes that
she had his attention and obliged him. “He was tired, been tired so much lately. Ate the usual
amount for dinner though, four plates of spaghetti, his favorite. We had garlic bread also, he likes
that. A bit later, not much later mind you, he went to lie down. I found him curled on his bed
when I went to check on him after clearing the supper. I sang to him for awhile. Never took my
eyes off him.”
“Yes ma’am, go on please.”
“He was having what you might call a hard sleep. He’s never been one to sleep easy, but
tonight, well,” she paused a moment, “tonight it came real tough. He kept turning side to side,
clinching his eyes, sometimes even reaching out as if he were having a nightmare. I held him real
close, tried to comfort him. He seemed lost elsewhere somehow, even sweated at times. He was
just restless I suppose. My restless boy.” She paused again, long enough for a quick look at Seth.
She wiped her lips with her tongue, then returned her eyes to the resident. “After a time, he
relaxed, seemed to calm down. I just sat there with him. I had uncovered him because of the
sweating. I was about to pull the blanket back up over him when I saw his foot twitching.”
“Which foot?” the resident asked.
“The weak side, I guess. Yes, the left one I’m sure.”
“Okay, then what?”
“Well sir, he started shaking all over.”
“All at once, or did it start gradually?”
She thought a moment. “I’m quite sure it was gradual. Seemed to move up from his foot.
Funny thing though, it seemed to stay on the left side at first, then it was his whole body. He was
36
shaking really hard at one point.” She trembled at this last comment. “Looked for moment like
he was choking so I turned him on his side.”
“You did right, Mrs. White,” the medical student said, then looked at the resident.
“It’s Miss White,” she said, looking at the medical student, “and I know what I done.
After that, he lost his water and soiled himself. And I called an ambulance.”
†††
The first two times his pager chirped, Isaac Weed’s brain incorporated the tones into the
meandering web of his nightmare, something about a black thing with teeth taunting him. The
third time, however, the tones pinged something in that special part of the mind that separates
fact from fiction, fantasy from reality. He struggled for a moment, the sleep not quite willing to
release him. Finally, mostly from habit, he reached for his pager.
Fuck. If that’s the ER, he thought, then no sleep tonight, tired all day tomorrow, and a
blown evening tomorrow night. Of course, he hadn’t been about to get much sleep anyway, had
he? He looked at the number, said “fuck” out loud this time, and reached for his phone.
“Isaac, John Thompson. Ya know, I’ve got a boy here that I think you should see...”
Dr. Weed listened to the story, whatever sleep he’d had in him gone now and his mind
alert. He hung up the phone and reached over to the night stand, searching for his key ring.
Finding it, he punched the ignition switch for his car, straining to hear the faint roar of the
engine. Once heard, he settled back on his pillow for ten more minutes by the clock, then dressed
without turning on the light. He stopped to look at Melanie. As ever when he looked upon his
sleeping wife, he found himself wishing they had a closer relationship. Gotta do something about
that he thought for the hundredth time. He leaned over to kiss her, thought better of it, and
walked out of the bedroom.
As ever these days, he stopped in the alcove outside his bedroom and touched the picture
of Jasmine. He felt a slight pang as he did so, then a sharp twinge of pain flashed through his
head. “Oh no, not tonight,” he said, pausing a moment, willing the pain to pass. For once it did
and he descended the stairs to the kitchen. He grabbed a coke from the refrigerator and glanced
out the window over the sink.
Shit. It was snowing.
†††
The boy in cubicle 6 was no longer stirring. “I’ve called Dr. Weed, one of our
neurosurgeons, and he should be here soon, ya know,” Dr. Thompson said, then thought I
certainly hope so, this kid doesn’t look too good. “How long did you say he’s had a VP shunt?”
“Since he was about four months old,” Caleb’s mother answered, looking at her husband
as if for confirmation. “Back then, his head kept getting bigger and bigger. After the shunt,
everything was fine, been fine since. Well, till now of course.” She wasn’t crying, but her voice
warbled with apparent worry.
37
“Yes ma’am. Sometimes these things just stop working, not always clear why, ya know.
The shunt’s a plastic tube that’s tunneled from the brain to the belly, just under the skin, ya know.
It’s about the size of a wet spaghetti noodle I guess.” They’ve probably heard all of this before,
but can’t hurt to repeat it. “It’s like a hose. It diverts the extra spinal fluid out of the head and
into his belly where it can be absorbed, ya know. It’d be wise to remember that it’s a mechanical
device, a life-saving one to be sure, but mechanical nonetheless. And like all mechanical devices,
it can breakdown, ya know.”
“Is...is this a serious problem?” Caleb’s father asked. He squeezed his wife’s hand so tight
the pink hue of her skin blanched white.
Maybe they hadn’t heard this before, or maybe they just weren’t listening. “Well, it’s
plumbing. And yes, it’s a very serious problem, potentially devastating, ya—”
“Devastating?” The dad looked stricken, like the ground had been pulled out from under
him.
Clearly, they don’t understand. “Life threatening,” Thompson said, for once managing to
quash the ya know he habitually appended to his sentences. When the pair’s facial expressions
still did not indicate understanding, he added, “I’m afraid the buildup of spinal fluid in his head
is what has caused him to sleep. If it’s not relieved soon, well, he might not wake up.”
They seemed to get it then. Caleb’s mother began to sob. “But he played hockey
yesterday. He just had a slight headache after dinner. He went up to his room to lie down. I didn’t
know, oh please, I didn’t know.” She said these words as if pleading her case to the physician
might change things.
She buried her head in her husband’s chest.
“I know. It’s okay babe.” The pair hugged and Dr. Thompson left to give them their
moment.
†††
Shortly after 1:00 am Dr. Weed entered the Minneapolis General ER, a place alive with
the more unpleasant side of humanity’s business even at that ungodly hour. It was a large room,
more or less square, with a central nursing station and cubicles lining the periphery. The cubicles
were separated by curtains so thin a person could follow the shadows on the other side. There
were fifteen or twenty such rooms, some larger than others. Two near the ambulance bay were
separated from the others by real walls, with a large red sign on their respective over-wide doors,
TRAUMA BAY #1 and TRAUMA BAY #2.
A young woman in a pink jumper talked to a couple of cops outside of #1. She might
have been a high school candy striper she was so young looking, except Weed didn’t think the
volunteers prowled the hospital this late. She was almost certainly a student nurse. She was
pretty though, and Weed wasn’t the only one who thought so. The cops were practically
suffocating her with their attention.
Inside trauma bay #1 a crowd had gathered. Respiratory therapists, xray techs, a
phlebotomist. The usual orderly standing in the corner doing nada, ready to offer up chest
compressions if needed. The center of attention was a patient on the gurney, a young man
38
judging from the only part of him visible beyond the wall of white coats and surgical green
scrubs. That arm was young and muscular and an IV punctured the skin at the back of the wrist.
The blood flecked fingers jerked occasionally. A kid of an intern was trying to get a breathing
tube down the patient’s throat and another had squirted a glob of jelly on the belly and was going
to work with the ultrasound, a sort of medical sonar for sounding out breaks in the liver or
spleen. Blood-tinged piss flowed into a bag under the table. The green CRT above the head of the
bed showed the steady but fast pulse as it pinged over the speaker.
Thompson stood off to one side, maybe directing things and maybe not. A person would
have a hard time telling who was in charge in all the confusion. Thompson saw Weed and put a
hand up, a moment that hand said.
“Hey Jo,” Weed said as the charge nurse caught his eye. He nodded toward #1. “What’s
up with that?”
“Snowmobiler. Poor SOB hit a tree.”
Weed shook his head, looked glum. “I never ride those things.”
“Don’t worry doc,” she said, then leaned over and whispered, “he was wearing a helmet.”
“He’ll live?” Weed asked, though he already knew the answer. He had known the answer
the moment he walked in the door. He could smell death, and it wasn’t in the air this morning.
Too bad. It would have been a nice bene to the early wake up.
“And probably wish he hadn’t by the time they get done with him upstairs. He’s busted
all to shit internally,” John Thompson said. “He’ll be taking his dinner through his nose for a few
weeks.”
“Hey John. Morning. What you got for me?”
“Let’s look at the scan.”
They moved down the corridor. The floors and walls of the ER were tiled in black on
green laminate and offered a distinctly antiseptic appearance. A large circular glassed-in nursing
station, it looked rather like a fishbowl with its air of transparency, stood in the center of the
room. One wall of the fishbowl was a huge transparent marker board. The current occupant of
each cubicle, as well as their working diagnosis, was printed on it in a hastily written scrawl.
Weed ran his eyes down the board: ectopic pregnancy, appendicitis, GSW thigh, MI, MI again,
vomiting, FB rectum.
“FB rectum? That what I think it is?”
“Probably. There’s a full moon tonight,” Jo said.
VP shunt was listed on line number 6, beside the name Caleb Garret. Thompson already
had the scan of the kid’s head up on the monitor.
One look at the large black voids occupying the center of the pictures, the center of
Caleb’s head, and therefore the center of Caleb’s brain—and, not incidentally, the center of
Caleb’s universe—and Weed’s heart sank. He made a mental note that the shunt entered the skull
through the right frontal part of the boy’s skull. “You got a spinal needle handy, Jo?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” she said with a smile and handed it over. “He’s in cubicle #6
doc.”
†††
39
In the seventh cubicle of an ER 450 miles and a state away from Isaac Weed and Caleb
Garret, Seth Oberg’s big eyes were open, but there wasn’t yet any awareness behind them. He
was starting to move, purposefully perhaps, though it was difficult to say. His aunt had been
lightly sleeping—there is no other way to sleep as a visitor to the ER—beside him. At his
stirring, she awoke and took his hand in hers.
She looked upon him with tender eyes and said a small prayer for his deliverance.
†††
“I’m Dr. Weed.”
He introduced himself to Caleb’s parents only in passing as he moved to the child’s
bedside without bothering to await a response. It may have seemed a rude gesture to the boy’s
parents, but Weed’s primary concern was the child just then.
“Caleb! Caleb!”
Weed rubbed the kid’s breastbone. He was vigorous about it, not at all timid. A dull ache
appeared in his own head, dissipated momentarily, then recurred worse. Somewhere in the lesser
regions of his psyche, he heard a little girl.
Daddy! Daddy! It’s so cowld! Help me! Help...The words seared—he thought not now,
goddammit. He pushed her out of his head.
When he got no response shouting at the boy, Weed shook Caleb and the boy danced like
a rag doll under his hand. He looked at the child carefully, looking for any hint time was still on
their side. The boy quivered, his arms and legs lifting slightly off the bed in a herky, jerky
movement, and some part of Weed—the bigger part—was comforted. He drew the boy’s lids
back and saw how the eyes stared off in different directions, maybe converging in some world,
but not this one. The lesser part of Isaac Weed rose again in that instant.
Use him. You know you want to. You know you need to.
There was no time.
His head seared and Weed placed his fingertips on the child’s head, feeling and not
feeling the small mound of bone behind the right ear. He closed his eyes and the burn in his own
head parted and, like water tumbling over a cofferdam, an intense wave of pain rushed in to
replace it. A hard, pounding sensation and Weed felt the walls of his skull vibrating outward. He
had a brief moment of lightheadedness followed by nausea, a moment that seemed to go on
forever. He almost collapsed. Agony. He wanted—needed—to scream. For Weed, this was
enough, and he pulled his fingers back. No more than a second or two had passed. He opened his
eyes and stepped away from the boy.
“Nurse!” he yelled.
†††
40
Even as Caleb Garret ceased moving in Weed’s ER, Seth Oberg, a child Isaac Weed had
never heard of, began writhing back and forth anew. It began, as before, with his left foot. When
the shaking was total and his entire body was involved, his eyes rolled back until only the whites
were visible. His mouth opened and a long spittle of drool fell from it. Guttural,
incomprehensible sounds, almost less than human, came out.
“Nurse!” his aunt yelled.
†††
Weed regained his composure.
“I need, I need a bottle of betadine, a 20 cc syringe, and a pack of sponges right now!”
His voice hadn’t wavered in the slightest and the nurse rushed to fulfill the order. He was
bent over Caleb’s head now, feeling the contour along the forehead, then behind the hairline. He
located the raised bump marking the shunt’s position, then the hole in the skull Weed knew had
to be there.
It was vital he find that hole.
“I’m going to have to drain the excess fluid from your son’s head. You might not want to
watch this.”
He didn’t bother looking up, was still feeling the shape of the boy’s head, intuiting the
anatomy of the bones under the skin. In another time and place, his actions might have been
taken for arrogance or a lack of compassion. In this time and place, he simply didn’t have time
for pleasantries. He did stop long enough to express to the boy’s parents how gravely concerned
he was, and that the shunt was clearly not functioning.
“The situation is urgent, critical I’d say.”
Her face ashen, Caleb’s mother asked: “Dr. Thompson said he could die?”
On the word die, an image of Jasmine filled Weed’s view, almost as if she was there in
front of him now, reaching out with hands made bone white by the cold—
It took all his energy to suppress the image, but the more he suppressed it, the worse his
head felt.
“That’s not going to happen,” Weed managed to say, “but I don’t have time to discuss it
just now.” The boy has no time.
“Please, doctor, do whatever you can to save our...”
Weed didn’t hear the end of the comment as the parents were led off. He bent back over
the boy, his hand feeling in his pocket for the needle Jo had given him earlier.
Please, God, don’t let me harm this child.
As Weed talked, the nurse searched through the bedside stand and found everything
except the syringe. She pulled the curtain back and stepped into the seventh cubicle to look for a
syringe there.
†††
41
A state away, the boy in #7 was shaking violently now. Seth’s pupil-less eyes pinged back
and forth, looking everywhere and seeing nothing at the same time. His head turned hard right
and his neck locked in place with his face a taunt mask of paralyzed muscles, a grotesque
grimace that seemed to hint at something even more terrible underneath.
All the while incomprehensible utterances, at once otherworldly and alien, continued
with increasing vigor until they became a rhythmic dirge sounding something like the calls of a
wickedly feral animal repeated over and over again.
“Ativan 1 mg IV stat, and make sure we have a peds ambu bag here!”
Dr. Starling stepped back from Seth’s bed. He felt his usually calm demeanor cracking,
an unpleasant sense that something wasn’t right building within him. He couldn’t quite put his
finger on it, but at the very least there was something disturbing about the boy’s eyes. He tried to
shake it off, tried to tell himself it was nothing more than an overworked mind and a restless
imagination.
He tried to tell himself that, but he didn’t believe it.
†††
In the ER of Minneapolis General Hospital, the parents of Caleb Garrett were led to a
waiting area while Dr. Weed located the hole in their son’s skull that had to be there in order for
the shunt to pass through the bone and out under the skin. Weed looked up at the EKG screen
with the steady beep, beep, beep of the boy’s heart monitor filling the cubicle. The rhythm was
regular, the beat strong.
Weed’s pupils dilated and his teeth clenched hard. His mouth spread wide until he looked
like some devil clown with a sardonic smile. He shook his head back and forth, and his voice
broke. “This boy is an innocent. I will not use him like that.”
He groped for the bottle of betadine soap and poured it over Caleb’s head. Wearing no
gloves, if he’d taken his mind off his goal just to don gloves the boy might have been lost, he
stabilized Caleb’s head with one hand and pressed the tip of the needle against skin with the
other.
Daddy! Daddy!—
The hand with the needle hesitated and a tiny drop of blood trickled across Caleb’s
forehead.
As if no power on Earth could stop him, Isaac Weed smiled stupidly and turned his head
side to side. His sardonic smile became a twisted, menacing scowl. He was alone with the boy in
the curtained space of the cubicle. His place as a surgeon retreated and the lesser part of him
came out big. He cleared his mind of all but the moment, closed his eyes, and held tight the boy’s
head—and life—in his hands.
He had time enough to think please don’t make me do this before the pain once again
rushed over the cofferdam and his skull vibrated. For a long, intense second he wanted to vomit,
then all was serene, like a warm baby’s blanket. A flock of birds chirped peacefully overhead; a
narrow stream flowed beside him. He reached down to the nearly still water, felt the cool liquid,
42
brought it to his face. He rubbed it across his forehead, let it run over his eyes. The place smelled
of wildflowers and he found he was no longer wearing shoes. The warm grass under his feet was
the carpeting of the gods. Overhead, the clouds parted and the brightest, warmest light he’d ever
known descended from the heavens. The light was warm and wonderful.
Can there be anything so rejuvenating in all the world?
He entered a long tunnel then, walked toward the light, the silhouette of a small boy
outlined in brilliant orange and yellow hues before him. And beside the boy, another presence, a
young girl—
“No. This isn’t right!” Weed said.
“V-tach. I think. Oh god.” It was the student nurse, the midnight candy striper from
outside of trauma bay #1. Her voice registered in Weed’s head as if far off, like a foghorn lost on
a misty night.
“We need help in here. Doctor? The boy’s not breathing! Help!”
Weed opened his eyes, saw the candy stripper nurse looking at him. The very rapid beep
beep beep beep of the heart monitor pushed into the center of his awareness like a hard slap in
the face. He found he was covered in sweat. His eyes stung with the salt. He pushed the needle
through the skin, through the hole in the skull. The tip stopped two inches deep in Caleb’s brain.
Caleb barely flinched.
†††
Dr. Starling had witnessed his share of seizures in the few short years he’d been in
medicine. He’d seen numerous people wet themselves in the midst of writhings so tormented that
in another time and place they’d have been branded witches or warlocks; he’d even seen one
poor fellow break his arm in the midst of a violent spasm. But he had never seen anyone roll
their eyes so completely they looked more like egg whites than eyeballs.
Not until just that moment.
But it wasn’t what he was seeing that scared the shit out of him. It was what he was
hearing. In the midst of the seizure, the boy’s guttural chants had devolved into something that
sounded, well, unholy. At first nothing more than noise, now it sounded like key-oak-QUI-ah
mumbled over and over again, till it had form, and rhythm, and just enough definition to make it
less than random. To make it something intelligent.
Impossible. The kid’s having a seizure.
“Key-oak-QUI-ah. Key-oak-QUI-ah. Key-oak-QUI-ah. Key-oak-QUI-ah. Key-oak-QUIah...”
Seth finally lost consciousness, and his flailing movements subsided as the sedative took
effect. His eyes, no longer the pupil-less matter of nightmares, stood motionless.
They’re used up, the doctor thought.
The chanting slowed, then stopped.
“Dilantin load IV, 20 milligrams per kilo,” Dr. Starling ordered. The nurse stepped out
and Starling was about to turn away when the boy’s mouth opened. There was no animation to
his features, just his gaping mouth, which suddenly opened to twice its normal size and barked in
43
a harsh voice “I am the key-oak-QUI-ah.”
“Jesus Christ,” Starling said as he fell back from the bed. But in the next instant the boy’s
mouth was normal and Starling saw it couldn’t have been anything but so a moment before.
Either this boy’s truly possessed, or I’m losing my fucking mind.
“I gotta get this kid outta my ER.”
†††
The jet of straw-colored spinal fluid shot out of the needle and struck Weed in the
shoulder, proof of an abnormally high pressure inside Caleb’s head. The brain surgeon put his
hand over the hub of the needle to slow the loss of the fluid. The rapid beep beep beep beep of
the monitor slowed. Beep, beep, beep.
The candy striper nurse handed Weed a syringe. He placed it over the hub of the needle
and drew off still more of the vital fluid. The boy’s eyes fluttered and opened. It was dramatic
and quick. Weed’s finger touched the boy’s head and Weed closed his eyes. This time he felt mild
pain, a headache actually, but nothing like the pounding he’d sensed earlier. There was no great
light, no other presence to be reckoned with—or welcomed. He opened his eyes and withdrew
the needle.
“That was close,” the candy stripper said, relief apparent in her voice.
“Yes, it was. Child damn near died on me.”
Weed turned to go find the parents, feeling almost rejuvenated, almost born again.
But only almost.
44
Five: The Gift
Isaac Weed came out of the operating room at a little past 4:00 am. He gave the good
news to Caleb’s parents—no more close calls with death, no unexpected bleeding, surgery had
gone well, no obvious infection, they could see him soon, etc. He told them exactly what they
wanted, needed, and hoped to hear—not necessarily what had actually transpired behind the
closed doors of the surgical suite. No harm, no foul if the kid did well in the hours that followed.
Weed retired to his office couch, a large leather affair of the sort often found in law
offices or libraries. If he didn’t shower, he’d be able to get just over two hours sleep before
getting up to do it all over again. And though not enough sleep to repay the debt he’d
accumulated over seven years of training and three years of practice, two hours would serve him
better than none at all. After roughly 1,677 nights on call, including seven years of neurosurgical
residency and three years of practice, he knew exactly how far he could go on a given measure of
sleep.
†††
Isaac Weed was a slim, lanky man, 160 pounds hung over a six foot frame. He tended to
wear Frye leather boots and was endlessly accused of being from Texas as a result, though he’d
never set foot in the lone star state. He had seven pairs of the boots in his bedroom closet, and
another three at his office. He even wore them in the operating room. He wore boots for one
reason and one reason only: They were simple, which meant he didn’t have to think about it.
Weed had black, loose curly hair, a goatee, and a face lightly scarred by a childhood
accident in which he’d kissed the earth falling off his bike. On that long ago day, his best friend
Jerry Allenton had been looking over his shoulder at Melissa Andres, the vixen from down the
street. Their bikes had entangled and they’d gone down hard. In addition to his face, the accident
had cost Isaac the little finger on his left hand, a victim of the spokes in his friend’s wheels. Even
45
so, Isaac had gotten the better end of the deal. Jerry Allenton, whose jaw had been broken in two
places, had taken his meals through a straw for the better part of three months. A year after the
accident he still hadn’t been able to eat a hamburger without grimacing.
The accident had left the young Weed badly shaken. The misery of raw bone rubbing
against raw bone had been a searing agony he would not soon forget. He’d screamed in agony, at
the same time moving his jaw in measured little jerks. The teeth seemed to align though—his
jaw had felt broken but it stilled moved well enough. He felt it with the fingers of his good hand,
the one that hadn’t lost a finger in the spokes, and couldn’t find anything amiss. He screamed
again—he hadn’t moved but the pain seared as if he had—and those present assumed his screams
were for the piece of his little finger now laying in the gutter. They weren’t though, that finger
was a vestigial appendage he’d learn to live without.
It wasn’t until they took Jerry away, breaking the contact between the two boys, that the
pain abruptly ceased, with no aftermath whatsoever. By then however, Isaac had been distracted
by the mutilation of his hand, which of a sudden hurt like a mofo, and he forgot about the pain
that had previously seared his jaw.
He didn’t think of it again until a football game years later caused him to dig up the
memory, like a forensic pathologist exhuming a body in search of clues to some ancient mystery.
The incident with the bike was the first of several that would eventually reveal to him the
legacy of his forefathers. Zachary Weed, his father’s father and a neurosurgeon like himself, had
been in the ground ten years when Isaac was born. As for his own father, Isaac never knew the
man. Never really knew what happened to him. His mother spoke of him not at all, saying just
once that he’d died before Isaac was born and that was all there was to tell.
Despite having never met, the pair had shared their legacy with him and he would come
to understand this over the years, sorting it out on his own without their help. Eventually, he
would learn the legacy had impacted him from his earliest days, from his first conscious thought
that medicine was the only profession he was suited for. He had always wanted to be a healer. He
didn’t know why, but healing was in his bones. He could feel it.
Literally.
†††
The second incident, absent the morbid loss of another of his own appendages though no
less frightening, occurred at the end of a football game in his senior year. With exactly one
minute and three seconds to go in the fourth quarter, his team, the Plymouth Wildcats, was ahead
21-17. The Medina Lions had the ball on the Wildcats’ four yard line, forcing the Wildcats into a
goal line defensive formation if they were to preserve a victory. The Lions’ quarterback chose
that exact moment to pitch the oblong ball to number twenty-one, who took off like a cheetah
around the right end, danced around two potential tacklers with genuine cat-like agility, and
dazzled the assembled crowd with his fleet feet carrying him to a point just outside the far hash
mark and two yards beyond the previous line of scrimmage. There he struck the Tank and his
luck ran out.
The Tank was 278 pounds of pure corn-fed midwestern beef and a more or less
46
immovable object. Number twenty-one struck the Tank head first, the crown of his helmet
ramming into the Tank’s unforgiving upper belly. The Tank belched on impact and number
twenty-one’s neck first shortened then splintered as the bones within telescoped together. His
spinal cord blew apart like an overfilled balloon and #21 instantly became the human equivalent
of meatloaf. By the time Isaac, in his usual position as outside linebacker, knocked the stunned
running back’s feet out from under him, #21 was no longer able to feel it. The lot of them
crashed to the ground, Isaac on the bottom, #21 above him, the Tank and several others on top.
The pain was instant—sharp and jolting in the middle back of his neck, and tiny tendrils
spiraled out in all directions. His arms and legs twinged with electricity and then went limp as a
rag doll. He couldn’t catch his breath and a great emptiness consumed his lower body—a
complete and utter lack of any feeling as if his legs had winked out on the instant. His brain
couldn’t find his legs and he no longer had to piss. Isaac Weed was paralyzed.
In the next instant, as the horror washed over him, he realized he could breathe. He
looked at his hands and saw the left one had come to rest on the bare skin of #21’s clammy
forearm. His own panic eased as he looked into his opponent’s face and saw the horror staring
back. The boy’s face was oddly contorted, his mouth agape, gasping the way a fish out of water
gropes in the air. Only he had an idea it was the lack of air causing the groping in this case. Isaac
flashed back to the bike accident and understood it was number twenty-one who couldn’t
breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t move so much as a fucking toe. Isaac would never forget
those eyes, at once pitiful and beckoning for help—a great, terrible, unbelieving world of
realization captured in them. Isaac saw a tear moving down one cheek...
He had to look at that face for an eternity, probably no more than ten or fifteen seconds,
before a trainer pulled #21 away and turned him on his back. On the instant Isaac’s neck was
supple again, no pain anywhere, ligaments anchoring bone to bone as ever before and one
vertebra gliding easily over another. His perceptions were now only those of his own familiar
body, his senses having retreated inward to appreciate once again the small laceration below his
right knee, the too tight jock strap, the big inhales of his own breathing. He needed to piss,
needed to piss in the worse way imaginable. He looked across to number twenty-one, saw he still
was not moving, not breathing. An overpowering sense of relief engulfed him. I’m okay, he
thought over and over again. “Fuck, I’m okay.”
Then he wet his pants and began to cry.
†††
Isaac Weed got his two hours sleep and then some. He was ten minutes late to rounds,
which was not unusual. Weed was one of those people chronically late for everything. Except the
operating room, for which he was never late. He threw on his white coat, noting as always the
dark ring along the inside of the collar and making yet another mental note to grab a clean one
from home. He found two quarters in his desk drawer for his liquid breakfast and headed to the
ward. Weed hated morning rounds, in fact he hated the morning, period. He was anything but a
morning person.
He walked the hallway twirling a ball point pen in his off hand. His eyes roamed,
47
alternately counting the floor tiles or the cracks in the walls, his mind not yet focused by the
day’s work. Occasionally he passed someone in the hall. Invariably they would offer up a hello,
good morning, or some other equally superficial, uncommitted, and to Weed at least, irritating
morning salutation. He usually muttered a barely audible response to such greetings, his lips
hardly moving. As often as not, the person wouldn’t hear whatever he said. To Weed, it was all
the same. He was not a morning person.
Come evening, he’d walk these same halls and encounter the same people. But then it’d
be different. He’d be winding down instead of gearing up. His mind would be sharp and quick.
He’d ignore the floor tiles in favor of planning tomorrow’s operative approach or reviewing a list
of differential diagnoses. He’d say good evening or some other such greeting to those he crossed
paths with, nodding his head in animated fashion as if to emphasize the moment. Like every one
else, he’d pretend to be interested in the minutiae of each other’s world. Evenings and nights
were his realm, his territory.
He loved the night; it could hide so much, so very much.
But that would be later. Just now it was 7:10 in the morning and he was still trying to
psych himself up, still charging his batteries for the day ahead. Every person he met was
essentially an unwelcome intrusion upon that process and he could not help but be perturbed. His
clinic nurse understood all of this, was maybe the only person who really did, and made
allowances. Others however, with no idea of this necessary daily routine, couldn’t compensate
for it. As a consequence, Weed had a reputation for moodiness.
“Morning folks,” he said, not really wanting to say anything at all. He’d bought a coke on
the way up, his first of the day, and he took a sip.
“Good morning, Dr. Weed,” said the intern, not yet privy to Weed’s routine.
The beginnings of another mundane day. Weed longed for the comforting darkness of the
night.
†††
To say the incident at the high school football game had left the young Weed unsettled
would have been like saying the Great Pyramid of Giza was just another crypt. Had he really felt
the boy’s pain? Lying beneath #21 in the blood, sweat, and dirt of that grassy field, had he really
lived and breathed the boy’s broken neck?
He couldn’t credit it. Except there seemed no other explanation. For weeks afterwards,
Isaac was haunted by an image of #21 in the hospital, perhaps actually in surgery. He lay on a
table, eyes wide open, staring in abject terror at the glistening scalpel as a gloved hand moved it
ever closer to his skin. In his dreams, #21 always screamed, but of course his screams were those
of a cripple. The muscles of his ribs didn’t work anymore after all and he couldn’t ever take a
deep enough breath. His screams were no more than hollow gasps. What he could do was
twiddle the little finger of his left hand. And when that damn scalpel finally cut down on #21’s
neck, that finger was twiddling for all it was worth.
Too bad it was under the drapes where nobody could see it.
Isaac quit the football team, had no choice really. He got physically ill every time he
48
smelled grass, would become faint, would need to piss so badly that the nearest tree or bush
wasn’t close enough. He became something of a recluse during the remainder of his senior year.
He also gave up his seat on the student council, even stopped dating. He avoided crowds and
skipped his senior prom rather than deal with people. He would certainly have skipped his
graduation as well, but his mother had insisted they go.
“Your father would have been proud,” or some bullshit like that. So they went.
Since then Weed had avoided touching people. #21 made him realize how different he
was, how the wrong touch at the wrong time could open Pandora’s Box.
†††
Dr. Weed’s office was large. Two of the walls were shelved in floor to ceiling open
cherrywood bookcases, a matching desk occupied the center of the room. Along one wall a
brown leather couch sometimes doubled as a bed. Above it, Jasmine looked out over the room
from a large oil painting. It hinted both at the young woman she might have become and showed
her as the little girl she had been. She wore a jade green dress with a wide square collar of
creamy satin trimmed in lace. A narrow black ribbon tied in a bow gently lay centered at the top
of the collar. Her long hair, Isaac had always loved that hair, hung freely below her shoulders,
with the front part pulled back from her face and tied up high on the top of her head, where a
barrette of the same creamy lace and black ribbon held it. She was smiling and there was a gap
where her two front teeth had once been and would never be again. But it was her eyes that made
the painting resonate. Even at seven, Jasmine’s eyes had been stunning. Light had seemed always
to glint off of them with unnatural splendor.
The eyes of the girl in the painting, though nothing more than a few gentle brush strokes
on canvas, stared out into the room with a vitality hardly imaginable in most living eyes.
The painting of Jasmine Weed had graced the family’s Christmas cards the month before
her death. Now, two years later, it hung in Isaac’s office like a memorial. Or a reminder.
Sometimes, Isaac looked up to find those eyes staring at him. Or maybe he only imagined it so.
On one corner of his desk was a framed picture of himself and Melanie. The picture
harkened back to better times. In it, Melanie sat behind and slightly above him, her left arm
draped over his left shoulder, his hand embracing hers with a loving touch. She had a wide smile
on her face and wore a bright red sweater that contrasted nicely with the blue denim long sleeve
shirt Isaac wore. The two looked happy—the picture was three years old, a lifetime ago for all
practical purposes.
A large window behind the desk framed a view of a frozen lake. The ice on the lake was
thick enough to drive over and an occasional car could be seen meandering across it. Weed
usually kept the blinds closed in the winter, preferring not to look out over the ice. He didn’t
want to see the skaters.
To the right of the desk, fronting the shelves, were locking glass doors extending from
floor to the ceiling. The glass doors secured Weed’s private books, most of which were on death
and dying, a subject which had all but obsessed him since Jasmine’s death. An Apple laptop also
lay behind the glass.
49
The only other item of interest in the office was a framed portrait of his grandfather
beside the door. Zachary Weed had, by all accounts, been a true genius, though a somewhat
temperamental one. The portrait was in fact a self-portrait, sketched by the same talented hands
that wielded a scalpel so successfully. Zachary Weed’s artistic abilities had been no less than
stunning and it had been his habit to sketch one or two scenes from each operation—a tumor as it
looked just before removal, for instance—as well as provide a detailed and often times lengthy
write up for each case. Over the years he had bound all of these in a series of ledgers. Perhaps the
greatest tragedy of his life, aside from his early death, was that these ledgers had disappeared not
long after his death. As a neurosurgeon himself, Isaac thought those journals would make
immensely interesting reading, but he’d had no luck in finding them.
The self-portrait, a charcoal sketch that seemed to have captured the man in the midst of
great concentration—his head was angled down and rotated slightly to one side, his eyes screwed
tightly shut, and his hands sketched palms down and flat, as if receiving the warmth of a fire—
had baffled Isaac for years. Why would anyone sketch a self-portrait of such stunning detail
showing their eyes closed? Then one day, at the bedside of a gravely injured accident victim,
Isaac had occasion to adopt a similar posture himself.
Later, sitting in his office, he had chanced to look up at that sketch and suddenly realized
what he’d done. He knew then those hands were not receiving warmth, but knowledge.
†††
Seth Oberg, still pudgy beyond his years, awoke in somebody else’s bed. At least that was
the first place his mind went as he wiped the remnants of sleep from it—a mind that felt as
cluttered as he was fat after the drugs of the night before.
Glancing up to his right, he saw a soft silvery-gray creature, a dinosaur from the Jurassic
era of 100 million years ago, smiling down at him. Turning to his left, directly opposite the
cartoonish brute, a pterodactyl swooped down off the ceiling and across time toward the door of
the room, a baby swaddled in diapers draped in its beak as if the stork had lost its job to the
reptilian flyer. Seth half smiled and inventoried his person. He bent his elbow and a mild twinge
interrupted him. Reaching across his body, he felt for the intruder with stubby fingers. He
glanced down and saw a tube coming out of his arm and snaking up over the bedrail—bedrail?—
climbing the air to a pole beside him, where it entered a plastic bag. The bag was full of clear
fluid—water maybe?—and had writing on it, but it was too far away and he was not interested
enough to make the effort to read it.
A clean antiseptic smell tickled his nose and there was just the barest hint of a chill. He
pulled at the thin sheet lying over his torso, noting the absence of any blanket. He moved his legs
and wiggled his toes, each in turn, testing the connection between his brain and body. The
connections worked, though he felt incredibly tired.
“Auntie?” His voice was slightly raspy, unsure in its volume.
“Yes baby, I’m here.” His aunt was instantly at his side, stroking his forehead with a
knobby finger. “How do you feel?”
“Tired.”
50
“Well then you rest, Seth, just rest.”
“Where...what happened?”
“You’re in the hospital, St. Bartholomew’s.” She stroked his forehead, perhaps uncertain
how much information to give him, how much he’d understand. “You had a spell, a seizure.”
“A seizure?” He searched his mind, the wheels turning only reluctantly, like rusty
bearings in need of oil. “What’s that?”
Jenny White tried to explain, tried to give the word meaning. Though above average in
intelligence, Seth was still just a child. “A brain fart,” she said at last.
This time Seth did smile, though he might have choked under other circumstances. His
aunt, this very proper woman, using the word fart. Not like her. For the eleven year old boy
though, the term had meaning. He understood. His brain had momentarily been embarrassed, had
skipped a beat perhaps. “Cool, my brain farted.”
“Are you in pain?”
“No, just tired. Want to sleep.” He turned on his side, once again catching a glimpse of
the dinosaur. He closed his eyes, imaging himself in a place far removed from this world, a place
100 million years in the past...
†††
In this world, very much in the here and now, Weed was finishing clinic. He felt numb as
he reviewed the final xrays of the day, thinking he really didn’t want to be there, though not
really sure where he’d feel any better. He had the blahs, and they had increased exponentially as
the day progressed. His head had begun to hurt as well—it was the beast he thought, though he
might just as well have made it plural and called them the demons. Whatever it was, he knew it
wouldn’t go away with a couple of aspirin.
It never did.
The xrays were normal, as he had known they would be. He really didn’t need the films,
but he supposed it made his patient feel as if something had been done and Weed went along
with the act. A good clinician could make the diagnosis from the history alone better than 80% of
the time, and Weed was a good clinician. At least he was when he wasn’t in the grip of the beast.
At times, Weed hated being a neurosurgeon. Occasionally you got to be the hero, save a
life or something dramatic like that. But more often, he thought, being a neurosurgeon was like
having your teeth drilled—potentially painful, but once numbed up, you guessed you could deal
with whatever came along.
At least until your daughter died
Then what the fuck did it matter? All pain seemed to pale in comparison to what he felt
on some days—the days when there wasn’t a knife in the world sharp enough to cut out the ache
in his heart. Days like today, he thought.
Back in his office, he completed the daily nuisance of signing charts and dictating op
reports, letters, notes on patients, etc. He waded through half the stack of insurance paperwork,
better than usual, before his frustration level wouldn’t let him continue. He tried to read an article
in a medical journal, but his heart wasn’t in it. He checked his watch, it was 6:42 pm, much too
51
early to go home. He pulled the laptop from the glass cabinet.
Immediately, the pounding in his head improved.
As he leaned back in his leather recliner, Weed heard the familiar tones of one computer
talking to another, followed by open static that was abruptly cut off as his laptop captured a spot
on the AOL network.
Connected, the message from AOL read.
Requesting network attention
Once on, he ignored the ubiquitous ad that splashed across his screen ahead of anything
else, as well as the masculine voice informing him You have mail. He moved instead to the chat
rooms, searching their listings for ‘MplsM4M.’ He tried repeatedly to enter the gay chat room,
finally succeeding after two dozen or more tries. He entered the room under the screen name
‘Hungry4Fun’ and felt relieved, felt good.
He typed, anyone looking for fun tonight?
The message flashed out over the airwaves, landing on the screens of the twenty-two
other players in the room at that moment. Several other inane messages came over his computer
as the room’s chatter scrolled down his screen. Hi hungry, one finally said. It was from
‘cum2bigboy’ and was followed a moment later by an instant message appearing in the upper left
corner of his screen.
What’s up? cum2bigboy wrote.
horny, u? hungry replied. Weed simultaneously pulled up cum’s member profile.
A brief pause, presumably cum was checking his profile as well. If so, he would discover
hungry4fun was single, that he liked hunting, fishing, and kinky fun with other like minded guys.
Exactly what kind of kink was not stated.
always ready to play. what are u n2?
As he typed, the demons trampling through his head seemed to retreat and Weed deluded
himself into thinking this was all a harmless activity. He should have known better of course.
Cum’s profile volunteered that he liked s & m, so Weed answered I like rope and leather,
like to tie guys up. It was, of course, a lie.
sounds hot came the electronic reply.
where r u? the profile had no location listed for cum.
Taos
New Mexico? Weed queried.
Yes
Taking only as much time as necessary to tap his finger on the keyboard, Weed closed the
window from cum2bigboy. He had no desire to participate in cyber sex with some faggot all the
way across the country, or anywhere for that matter. He had something else in mind, or more to
the point, the demons prancing around in his head did.
Weed scrolled through the list of players in the room. UcanHurtMe433 caught his fancy.
He looked at the profile. The location listed Bloomington, MN, not far from his office in
downtown Minneapolis. Hurt was single, a salesman.
Hello dude. Weed initiated the contact this time.
cool man, whats haps?
looking for fun
52
what kind of fun?
Weed reviewed the profile on Hurt one more time. He liked golden showers, piss play.
What a fucking pervert Weed thought, wondering how sick you’d have to be to do something
like that. Not that it mattered though. A pervert would do just as well as anyone else he supposed,
then immediately castigated himself for thinking like that. piss, I like to give, hungry4fun lied.
awesome dude! came the immediate reply. got a pic?
Weed could care less what this guy looked like and certainly wasn’t about to send him his
picture. He tried to change the course of the chat. got a place?
sure, was the fast reply once again.
Weed’s heart beat a little faster with reluctant anticipation, available now? his fingers
typed, as if on their own.
yeah, but we have to be quiet.
why? Weed typed, simultaneously dreading the response and filling with relief.
roommate sleeping in next room.
Weed’s heart slowed down now, the air out of his sails once again. No roommates
allowed for what was coming. He begged off, telling ucanhurtme433 that maybe they could get
together another time.
He went through this routine with several other men without finding what he needed. He
wasted 93 minutes online before he concluded that tonight wouldn’t be the night and he was
finally able to pry himself loose from the beast.
53
Six: Melanie's Story
When Isaac Weed walked in the front door of his home it was just after 8:30 pm. Melanie
Weed blandly asked her husband if he was ready to eat and then retreated to the family room as
he munched on cold chicken and rice. It was easier that way, she told herself night after night,
the two of them would not have to strain to make small talk.
Later, the Tonight Show burned on the TV screen in the family room and Melanie
laughed at the monologue. It was her habit to watch Jay Leno each night and later, if there was a
good movie on, she might watch that as well. She liked the old black and white ones, the kind
with Cary Grant or Gary Cooper, the comedies and romances in which everybody lived happily
ever after.
†††
Upstairs, lying alone in bed, Isaac heard the laughter and remembered, with perhaps more
than a tinge of jealousy, a time when it was for him and not Leno; a time when the two of them,
he and Melanie, cajoled and played together freely. Now he lay in his bed, it was rarely their bed
anymore, his eyes open in the dark and his groin burning with an unfulfilled need. It had been a
month since he and Melanie had lain together; a month since it had been their bed and not her
bed or his bed.
A month since she came to bed when he was still awake.
†††
Occasionally, he would awaken during the night and turn to her, but more often than not
she wouldn’t acknowledge his advances, preferring instead to pretend not to notice. Melanie
54
avoided touching this man. The man that lay beside her in the wee hours of the morning, in the
darkness their marriage had become, was not the same man she’d married so many years before.
†††
Isaac was never a ladies man. In college, he was something of an introvert, shy and
awkward. He hadn’t consciously avoided the opposite sex, but hadn’t really known how to deal
with them either. Fortunately for him, Melanie Allen was more outgoing. A freshman student in
the premed biology course he tutored as a senior at Stanford, she enjoyed his quiet but confident
manner; he found her smile and silly way of cocking her head when she talked irresistible. By
the end of the term, she asked him out on a date, tired of waiting for him to come around.
That first date was memorable more for the movie they saw than anything else. The
Rocky Horror Picture Show was sweeping the country as a cult phenomenon and neither one of
them had seen it. They were surprised by the lack of seats in the theater; they watched the movie
from the floor amongst pillows and sleeping bags. Isaac was especially uncomfortable with this.
His first impulse, to turn and run, was quelled only because Melanie stayed. Later he found out
she’d stayed only because he did.
The second date was more memorable, at least for Isaac. The night he lost his virginity.
After dinner and a movie, they returned to Melanie’s dorm. Since her dorm room was off limits
to guys, they chatted for several hours in the stairwell before Melanie finally leaned forward and
gave him a deep, sensuous kiss. She teased him after that, and in the end snuck him into her
room after she discovered her roommate was out for the night. In the illicit, fleeting privacy of a
college dorm room, they explored each other with uncertain and inexperienced hands. Finally,
Melanie reached down and ran her hand along the inside of his thigh, feeling his manhood.
“Feels like you’re pretty excited?” Her voice resonated in that oddly delightful province
of new lovers, somewhere between a question and an exclamation.
“Well, maybe.”
“Its okay, I’m excited too,” she whispered into his ear as she slipped her hand into his
pants and nuzzled her cheek against his.
He hugged her to him, slid his hands down her back and into her pants. As he felt the frill
of her panties, his heart pounded as if for the first time, pumping not blood but molten lava. She
spun away, smiled at him in that peculiar way that only a woman on the prowl can, and pulled
her shirt over her head to reveal a black lace bra cupping her small breasts. In the next few hours,
he discovered that Melanie had just the slightest amount of slut in her, just enough to make it
interesting. She kissed him, her lips caressing his, her tongue slithering into his mouth. He
spilled his seed into his underwear at that point, feverish with heat and shaking uncontrollably as
he did so.
“Oh no mister, you don’t get off that easily. I want you tonight.”
“I...I don’t know what happened.” He was more anxious than he’d ever been in his life.
His breath came in short gasps like a man struggling caught between life and death.
“Of course you do silly. And I bet we can make it happen again.” She flashed that impish
little grin again. Then she took control.
55
And it did happen again, twice more in fact.
†††
Melanie sat in front of the television, experiencing that in-between place that is neither
fully awake nor fully asleep. Each time her eyes closed her head lolled forward until it reached a
sort of tipping point and snapped her back to semi-consciousness. In her more lucid moments,
she wondered if Isaac was asleep yet.
She thought back two years, to a time before the accident, to a time when he was still
gentle, still compassionate, still the man she’d married and loved for over a decade. Jasmine’s
death had changed all of that.
Moody and temperamental, inconsistent in his actions, often distant and aloof—he’d been
none of these things before and was every one of them now. He popped Tylenol like it was
candy. Increasingly, he went out late at night, though she had no idea where. And in the bedroom,
he was more urgent, more insistent than previously. He no longer took his time, was much
rougher, was perhaps more a rapist than a lover.
By far the worst of it though, was the curious—almost insane—sense she felt when they
were alone together. It wasn’t just that he wasn’t the same man she’d married. She had an idea if
that was all there was she could’ve dealt with it. But there was something deeper, something
loathsome. As if another presence was superimposed on their own, as if they were never truly
alone. There was no clarity in it, nothing she could see or hear. Nothing she might have been able
to touch or even smell. But it was there nonetheless. Like the blackness in a shadow. Something
she would never be able to touch.
It scared the hell out of her.
And so, as Leno ended, she flipped through the channels looking for an old movie to
watch, something reminiscent of happier times.
Anything to keep from having to go upstairs.
†††
Planet Seth was climbing the stairs again. Step then drag, step then drag. The voices were
back with a vengeance, so loud a deaf mute would have cried out. He didn’t recognize their
words, but he knew how to quiet them.
He had to return to the land of nothingness.
As he moved up the stairs, a thought occurred to him, or perhaps the voices implanted it
in his mind. He couldn’t tell which, and maybe it didn’t matter anyway he decided.
BEWARE the EYES of the BEAST.
On his last trip through the door at the top of the stairs, a pair of piercing, cat-like eyes
had stared back at him with an otherworldly intensity. Those eyes had crawled over his skin with
the creep of a thousand worms burrowing through him. Remembering this, how the eyes of the
beast had molested him, his head pounded and he was filled with a sickening nausea. His skull
56
became an echo chamber:
BEWARE the EYES of the BEAST. BEWArE the EYESof the BEASt. BeWARethe EyeS
ofthe BeAST.BewARE theEyES oftheBEaST. bEware theeYesofthebEAsT.
The words bounced off the innards of his skull the way faces in a hall of mirrors seem to
go on forever, becoming an infinite stream of words blending one into the next, ever more
distorted, ever more hideous, until nothing remained of them but a din of hellish severity. He had
to get to the door, had to calm the voices, had an overwhelming need to quiet the voices.
An eternity later, he arrived at the door, He opened it, and stepped through the passage
from one world to another. The clanging in his head ceased, three chins became one, and the fat
of years of overeating evaporated from his frame. He became thin Seth again, cachectic and
emaciated relative to Planet Seth, but simply a child of average build to the rest of the world. The
air seemed to thin as well, devoid of all the inharmonious and ugly voices that had zoomed back
and forth through his brain like so much traffic on the LA freeway system.
Thin Seth took in a long, easy breath and listened to the silence a moment. He soaked up
the warmth of the meadow, enjoying the ease with which he now moved.
With as much caution as any other thin eleven year-old boy might muster, Seth ran across
the meadow and into the trees. He ran toward the sound of the water, toward the small clearing
he had found on so many previous occasions.
He ran toward it—toward the beast.
What Seth intended to do when he found the thing was not entirely clear. He wasn’t a
hunter, had no weapons, no visible means of defeating any wild animal whatsoever. But Seth had
an idea the beast was not a wild animal, at least not in the traditional sense. Indeed, he had
doubts as to whether the creature was even of this earth. He had not just sensed the thing
watching him, he’d felt the beast reach out and touch him—molesting him was the term that kept
coming to mind—had actually felt which part of him the thing was seeing at any given instant.
Clearly that was more than just a feeling of being watched, wasn’t it?
He found the small clearing and the familiar Y shaped log. The pristine creek water
bubbled as before. He looked into the woods, in the direction the eyes had come from. He saw
only an uncountable line of trees. He crossed the clearing to the edge of the trees, all the while
searching the ground for tracks or other signs. He didn’t know what those signs might be.
He found nothing at first, but he widened his search and eventually found a single print in
the soft mud on the banks of the creek. Was it otherworldly? He couldn’t say, but he thought it
was definitely weird. The foot was fifteen inches, maybe longer. The muddy impression ended in
three spindly toes arranged in an undulating fashion, like SSS.
The uncomfortable and certain sense he was being watched gripped him. Not the worms
again, this wasn’t a writhing sense of something crawling through the layers of his skin. Rather,
there seemed to be a presence here, something that hadn’t been present even a moment before.
He spun around, half expecting to see the beast in front of him, and was only slightly relieved
when the thing wasn’t there.
He began to chant soto voce: “In Bismarck, in the dead of winter, the cars have tails...”
The familiar refrain comforted him.
He turned his body, moving slowly and methodically until he completed a full circle. As
he moved, his eyes checked out the shadows in the forest around him. The sense of another
57
presence didn’t wane, but the eyes of the beast did not peer back at him either.
“They come out once the sun goes away for the year, when the ground freezes to
concrete, so hard it has to be heated just to dig a grave...”
He crossed out of the clearing and into the trees a few yards. Whatever it was moved with
him, but he could identify no sound that went along with it, no breathing, no snap of twigs under
the weight of his unseen visitor. It only vaguely occurred to him that he was the visitor here, that
whatever was out there called this place home and he was the intruder. He stained his ears,
listening to the flutter of birds overhead, the rustling of trees against the wind.
All the while he whispered to himself: “This is when the air gets cold, a slicing, bitter
kind of cold that bites uncovered skin...”
He became aware of something else for the first time—that which he didn’t hear. No hum
of insects. Not a single mosquito buzzed his ears. No gnats nipped at his face and eyes. Their
absence was suddenly deafening and he stooped to the ground, kneeling on one knee, He dug
furiously in the dirt, searching for anything that would make a liar of his senses.
Nothing.
The preternatural warmth of the place permeated his body. Clouds blew across the sky,
the woods teemed with the chirps of squirrels or other small animals, and birds swooped here
and there, but he couldn’t find a single bug. He thought how he had read somewhere that insects
were the masters of the earth and had been since the dawn of time. Not here though, wherever
here was they appeared to be extinct.
“...and renders it unrecognizable to its owner in a matter of several minutes. It is the kind
of cold—”
Seth abruptly stopped chanting. His logical mind, considerably older than the eleven
years the calendar allotted him, allowed only two possible explanations for the insect dilemma:
either he was dreaming (in which case why with such complete realism except for this single,
very odd exception), or he was no longer on earth. The possibility he was the alien here, the
stranger in a strange land, burst upon his mind like a bomb going off inside his head.
It was then he noticed the small black shape sitting on the ground beside a low row of
thistle bushes—the dry, black carcass of a single dead beetle.
Lost in his thoughts, Seth lost track of the world, whatever world it was, around him. A
hand, pale white and utterly devoid of color, suddenly shot out from behind the thistle bushes
and grabbed his right ankle. It was quick, so quick that even with his new thinness, Seth couldn’t
move fast enough to get out of its way. The hand took firm hold of his ankle and pulled, causing
him to lose balance. He toppled to the ground and into an embrace so cold it seemed his blood
would freeze in his veins. His breath came hard then—in rapid, shallow gasps—like he’d been
running all his life through the darkest night.
But from what?
†††
Planet Seth screamed a bone-rattling, panicked utterance heard down the long corridor all
the way to the nurse’s station. The kind of wail that stops you in the moment and calls you to a
58
atone. The boy trembled not quite uncontrollably and on the monitor his heart rate skyrocketed
beyond 150 beats a minute. Sweat poured from his skin, his eyes opened to a glassy stare, and he
began to buck violently to and fro. A pinkish-white froth erupted from his mouth. He lost his
water and his bowels churned, flooding his underwear with the detritus of life.
Jenny White, ever at his bedside, rose to comfort him immediately. She held him tight,
reciting the Lord’s Prayer while the nurse administered the first of several sedatives. The nurse
herself was pale and shaken. The color had run out of her face the moment she’d heard Seth’s
haunting, alien scream. She looked at Jenny White and the old lady knew without asking that the
nurse had seldom—never?—seen a seizure so violent.
It was as if the boy was...possessed.
59
Seven: The Touching & The Touched
Death was in the air.
Isaac Weed could almost smell it as he waited for the elevator outside the operating room
on the third floor. He had an uncanny sense about these things, something he’d reluctantly honed
in the almost two years since his daughter’s death. As the elevator doors opened, an apparent
mechanical glitch caused them to shudder and close again before he or anyone else could board.
For Weed, this was proof enough.
Somewhere within the massive confines of Minneapolis General Hospital, someone was
about to die.
†††
More so than other buildings, hospitals have a smell. Sometimes it’s a clean smell, like
the caustic and minty odor of antiseptics or the ammonia-like odor of disinfectants. At other
times, the stench is more nauseating, used bedpans waiting to be emptied or soiled beds yet to be
changed. Whatever it is, these odors linger. As Weed exited the stairwell onto the tenth floor, the
smell that caught his attention was none of these. There was a pungency present and its bitter
taste left no doubt as to its origin. Not in Weed’s mind anyway.
The smell of a man dying.
And Weed knew it well.
Almost two years after Jasmine’s death, Weed was a veteran of the death room. Two or
three times a month he would manage to be present when the end was near, stepping discretely
forward as the end actually came. This evening, Weed had returned to the hospital to see a
patient that turned out not to have much of a problem. A wasted trip he thought.
Until he heard the code page overhead. Code Blue. A call for help. Apparently, somebody
had stopped breathing on Ten West. Weed was not a code physician and Ten West was not a
60
neurosurgical ward. Ordinarily, he would have ignored the page and left it to the designated inhouse code team—physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and techs. But on this night he didn’t ignore
the page.
Or, more to the point, he couldn’t ignore the page. It might have been a Jekyll and Hyde
thing, and with the sound of the page—or more accurately the bitter smell of approaching death
—he was more Hyde than Jekyll.
Compelled by some outside force he didn’t understand, he found himself standing on Ten
West a few minutes later. The place was abuzz with commotion, the focal point of which was a
room a few doors down the hall from the nurse’s station. He approached the room with
something more than apprehension and less than shame. He watched a few folks run in and out,
the door propped open. He tried turning away and found himself stepping inside instead, a
reluctant visitor.
There was no doubt it was a death room. The air held the slightest hint of chill and it had
that spoiled, metallic odor—the smell of blood long standing—that he’d come to associate with
death rooms. The odor was acute, he’d arrived in time. The man on the bed was old, certainly
eighty plus, and for this Weed was thankful. Something, it wasn’t quite relief, flushed through
him in that moment. He took up a position in one corner, tried to look nonchalant, and waited.
The others in the room lacked Weed’s preternatural knowledge of the man’s imminent
demise, though as he watched they went about their jobs with a growing sense they’d lose this
battle. They couldn’t smell death—that was Weed’s curse alone—but they were professionals
and they knew when they were beat. After all, medicine is a profession that spends every waking
moment fighting a battle that, ultimately, it cannot win. Nobody gets out of life alive.
For the man in the bed, time had run out.
“Charge 400!” a tired looking woman in a white pantsuit hollered. Weed didn’t recognize
her, but he guessed by her demeanor she must be the physician in charge.
The CPR continued and a nurse punched a red button on the console atop the crash cart.
Weed heard the familiar whine of the defibrillator as the batteries charged.
“400 it is.”
The doctor stepped forward, paddles in hand. At her nod, the orderly leaning over the
man’s chest stopped his compressions and stepped away from the bed. The doctor placed the
paddles on the man’s chest, one over the breastbone and the other a few inches below the left
armpit.
“Clear!” She hesitated long enough for anyone touching the patient to move away.
Ka chuuuuuk! There was a brief, heavy buzz as the paddles discharged and the man’s
body stiffened. It jumped off the bed, as if struggling to get back a life it had lost, then slumped
again.
“Nothing.”
“That’s it then, I’m calling it. Time of death 8:34 pm.” the doctor replaced the paddles
atop the defibrillator. “He’s had enough.”
Weed stepped forward at that moment, quietly placing his hand on the bare skin of the
man’s leg. This went unnoticed as the others fanned from the death room in favor of the living
world in the hallway. Weed could not have left at that moment if his very existence depended on
it. At times like this, he always had a vague notion that it actually did. He had a physical need to
61
be in that place at that moment. A craving that only the death room could satisfy.
“Jasmine?”
Isaac, he was a father now—the surgeon he’d been only a moment before now seemed far
removed, part of another time, another life—had only seconds before the nurses would be back
to attend the deceased. He took a deep breath, cleared his mind of the day’s minutiae, and closed
his eyes. He imagined Jekyll becoming Hyde—or vice versa, he was never certain which it
should be—and there was a sharp pain in his chest. He felt as if the wind had been knocked out
of him, then came the tunnel with its warmth and unnaturally bright light. He followed just
behind the man, followed him through the tunnel, emerging on the other side to a lush green
meadow. The man crossed the small stream, but here Isaac stopped.
He knelt beside the stream and reached out, using four of his five senses to find her. He
wanted to smell her hair, the way it had been the last night when he’d gone into her bedroom and
kissed her goodnight. He needed to touch her warm skin. He longed to hear her voice, with its
childish inflections. Most of all though, he just wanted to see her, had to see her.
Had to see Jasmine.
But he didn’t, not on this day. There was a sense of her though, a presence, something in
the air. He thought, she’s been here. He could feel the warmth of her heart, a dubious perception
mixed as it was with something else.
Cold fear, he suddenly realized.
Isaac had a fleeting image so terrible, he’d have blotted it out if he’d been at all able.
What he saw was a little boy, name of Stephen. He didn’t know how he knew the kid’s name, but
he did. The boy stood across the meadow and stared directly at him. As the pair made eye
contact, Weed immediately regretted it. The grass between them wilted and turned dead brown.
In that moment, he felt the kid’s skin come impossibly alive, felt it teeming with thousands of
worms. The boy’s eyes became pools of black agony that Isaac wanted no part of. An instant
later, those same eyes melted into dust with the rest of him. In the dead grass lay a small skull,
the only hint Stephen had ever been there, indeed had ever existed at all. Isaac saw that the skull
was burnished a brilliant white, polished to a smooth sheen.
As if the flesh had been boiled away.
It was a bad thing to have witnessed, but the worst of it was this: All the while Isaac had
been witnessing this, he knew he was seeing it as if through a little girl’s eyes.
As if through Jasmine’s eyes.
He smelled the noxious odor of her fear.
Her touch defined cold.
Her screams scarred his soul.
“Dr. Weed, sir, can I help you?”
He tumbled back to the here and now as the nurse took his hand and he lost contact with
the body. The floor seemed not quite level and he lost his footing, stumbling as if he had missed
a step that never existed in the first place. He grabbed the bed’s handrail. A cold sweat beaded his
forehead and he his heart raced.
“Dr. Weed—”
“No, no, not at all. I knew him, that’s all.” A lie, he’d done a lot of that lately. He turned,
covering his face with his hand. He didn’t want her, didn’t want anyone, to see the stricken look
62
there. “A friend. He helped me get somewhere once.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yes, of course you are.”
He didn’t look at her. He left the death room, trying his best not to stagger as he moved
down the hall. He felt used up, as if what he’d seen constituted the end of the world. He stumbled
down a flight of stairs to the floor below, exited into the hall, then found a bathroom. He
sequestered himself in a stall, then began to cry. It was a long time before he felt strong enough
to find his car and drive home.
On the way, he tried to remember the medical definition of insanity.
†††
Enraptured by the stories the old lady told, Jenny White listened intently to Grammy’s
tales of life and all its variations and mysteries. To little Jenny, it seemed as if her grandmother
had lived a thousand years and remembered every single one of them. Night after night they
gathered, her cousins and her, either under the leaky porch roof in the summer or beside the big
stone fireplace in the winter.
The old lady held the lot of them spellbound with her tales, spoken in a combination of
rhythmic Gullah and low English. By day, the old woman’s voice was raspy, an old floor mat
covered in dust and cobwebs. Each night she picked it up and dusted it off, then held their rapt
attention with yet another tale from her millennium or more of experiences. In her mind, her
grandmother’s voice became the stuff of legend, with creaks and groans like that of an old and
mysterious house. Just as those noises lent the old house its character, so too with the creaks and
groans of that ancient voice.
Jenny White’s grandmother told many different tales before being called home, but young
Jenny’s favorites were always those that involved The Touching.
“Dey’s people out there,” Grammy began one blustery winter evening, and as she spoke
her right hand rose into the air and she gesticulated somewhere out beyond the frosty window
pane, out toward no where in particular, where the crickets chirped and the spiders spun their
webs in unseen corners. “Few and far between dey is to be sure, but dey’s out there sure nuff.
Dese people is what we used tuh cawl touched.”
Touched. She lingered on that word a moment, as if the sound of it was a fine morsel of
bread to be shared with all present.
The kids sat, eyes big, not bothering hardly to breath. The only sound was the popping
and crackling of the fire as it flickered in its bed of stone. There were five or six young people
there this night, little Jenny included.
“Dere wuz those what said if you wuz touched, you wuz wit the devil. And more than
once wuz the time dey whipped dese folk, tried tuh beat that deevil out of dem.” The fire popped
as if on cue and the children jumped.
“Daint do no good though,” the old lady whispered. Getting louder she said, “daint do no
good cause they daint have no deevil in them. You see, dese people wuz touched not by the
deevil, but by the hand of Gawd almighty hisself!”
63
“Course, they daint know that at first, no sirs. Dey demselves maybe thought dey wuz
crazy or some such like, I suppose.” She took a sip of water, then said, “Until, dat is, the day o’
revelation.”
“What happened then Grammy?” one of the children asked, unable to contain her
curiosity after a long pause.
“For each one, that day o’ revelation was different and yet it waz the same, don’t ya
know.”
“What was this day of revelation?”
She looked at the curious child. Her eyes seemed to massage the babe as she leaned
forward with her answer.
“Wuz the day dey finally knowed dey’s different, truly different, from utter folk. It wuz
the day dey run ‘round shouting Oh Gawd in hebben! On the day o’ revelation, there gift wuz
finally made known to ‘em.”
“And that gift,” a quick glance around the room, “whether dey’s knowed it or not, it wuz
a gift from Gawd. Dat’s how it wuz the same. Course, not all of ‘em saw it that way, not at furst
anyways. And dat’s how it wuz different.”
The room was quiet except for their breathing.
“Some wuz better at unnerstandin’ dere place in dis here world then wuz utters, but dey
all come ‘round in time, or mostly all anyways. Most come to know dere special place in dis
world and did much wit it. A few, a very few, did little, never learnt to focus dere sight and
feelins. Dese ones never learnt to really touch.”
“What is this thing, this touching?” The girl’s face did not yet possess the lines
experience would later chisel there.
“Jenny, girl. Child, what you feel when youse hurt or ill?” The grand storyteller’s gnarled
hands brushed the young girl’s cheek and a distance of perhaps seventy years evaporated
between them.
“Well...if I’m hurt, I feel pain. If sick, I ache.”
“Yes child, dat be correct. Now, what do you mother feel when youse sick or hurt?”
“I guess maybe she feels sick or hurt along with me.”
“Dat right child.” She widened her posture to take in the entire group. “She feel sick or
hurt, but she don’t sperience you pain, not in no body sense anyhows, dough I’s quite sure she
longs for ya. Wit you mother, her pain’s here.” Grammy put her pointer finger to her chest and
tapped it four or five times. “It be in her heart, weh she carries a piece o’ you round wit her.”
“A person what’s been touched, dey feels you pain to there very soul. It’s dere pain too.
Dey becomes ya for as long as dey’s touching ya. Dey suffer as you suffer, hurt as you hurt.
From dat moment, dere ain’t no difference in what duh twos of you feels. Dey feels you pain
here, and here, and here.” Her finger moved from her head to her stomach, then to her thigh and
up to her elbow. She searched the eyes of the young group, perhaps wanted to see if they
understood.
“Dese people, they don’t be seeing the world the ways the rest o’ us do. For as long as
dey’s touching someone else, dey sees duh world trew his eyes. Dey touches duh world trew his
skin and hears duh world trew his ears.”
It was enough for one night. “If youse touched, you lives in a world weh a simple touch
64
can be the difference ‘tween wonder an’ boredom, ‘tween right an’ wrong, ‘tween guilt an’
innocence, even ‘tween life an’ deaf. You has the ability to pull the strings dat flap the butterfly’s
wings.”
She must have known that last line was something beyond the kids’ knowing, but if it had
meaning for them, they’d know it in time.
†††
Jenny White opened her eyes, yawned, and re-entered the present. She’d been sitting in
the soft leather recliner for hours, hardly stirring as she alternated between sleeping and watching
Seth’s chest move up and down. She occasionally tapped her index or middle finger on the bed’s
handrail in nervous harmony to her feelings. An odd behavior for her, she thought, and it amused
her once or twice when she realized she was doing it. She wasn’t a nervous person.
She’d always enjoyed the peace and quiet of the night, finding solace in the many
shadows of the unlit world. On this night, the soft, barely audible sound of air moving in and out
of Seth’s lungs as he slept blended with the solitude of the moment to produce a sense of quiet
serenity. For this, Jenny White was especially thankful.
Out the window, she watched as the glow of the full moon cast an eerie bluish-gray hue
upon the new fallen snow. It was both alluring and calming, accentuating the sense of wellness
she felt in the room. The moon was bold and brilliant against the dark and starry sky, hanging
above the horizon like the face of God peering down upon them from the heavens.
The face of Gawd, her grammy would have said.
Despite the events of the last day or so, Jenny White had no panic within her, and only a
little uneasiness. An as yet minor sense of foreboding. In her time, she’d seen more to loath than
to marvel at, and it would have been an easy thing to have given herself over to some deep seated
antipathy for life.
But that was not her way. She had often prayed to her God for deliverance on nights like
this, nights when the way was not entirely clear to her. Seth Oberg was touched. And not in some
vague esoteric sense, but in the sense her grammy had spoken of so many years ago. Literally
touched by the very hand of God.
Jenny White was not so much convinced of this fact as she was consumed by it. She felt
it in every fiber of her being and with every measure of her soul.
That the boy was touched she’d known from the first moment she’d laid eyes upon his
long dead mother.
†††
At 2:00 am, Seth finally stirred.
“Have to pee.”
“How are you, honey?” Still seated, Jenny White put her hand on Seth’s arm. It took her a
moment to stretch her old legs and stand.
65
“Have to pee,” he said again.
“Okay, I’ll help you.” She positioned the urinal between his legs, taking care to insert his
member so he wouldn’t soil the bed. “Go on child.”
“Finished,” Seth said a bit later, his voice still a faint whisper.
Jenny White took the urinal and set it carefully on the bedside table. She then bent over
and kissed Seth on the forehead. He opened his eyes and gave a weak upturning of the corners of
his mouth, a smile nonetheless. Jenny White thought it the broadest smile she’d ever seen grace
his face.
“I wanna go home.” His voice trembled..
“Baby, I’m here with you. Don’t be afraid, I won’t leave until you do.”
“It doesn’t feel right here.”
“I know, I know, but just get some rest now and we’ll talk about it in the morning.” She
pulled the blanket up around his neck.
“God is here,” Jenny White whispered into his ear, “and so am I.”
†††
Sane or not, Isaac Weed was a man tortured by demons. They came to him in the middle
of the night, in the light of the day, and at all times in between. They arrived without warning,
bursting upon his psyche like a terrorist bomb, which by some measure is exactly what they
were. He might be in clinic working with patients, or perhaps reviewing films. The demons
would suddenly ride up and announce themselves, with all the subtly of the four horsemen of the
apocalypse.
On this particular evening the demons were all over him. He was asleep when it began,
dreaming about the only thing that really mattered to him, which was also the one thing that was
forever out of his reach.
Jasmine.
The little girl had a tendency to come to him in his dreams and he supposed that that was
one of the reasons that he so liked the night. He’d put head to pillow and there she would be:
beautiful and vibrant, his little princess risen once again.
At first the dreams were pleasant reminders of the times they shared. A walk down a
lonely country road made memorable by the way Jasmine chased after the butterflies too
numerous to count; the day at the petting zoo when she somehow dripped ice cream down the
inside front of her blouse, followed by the lamb that went after it; swimming lessons she’d hated
at first but grew to love as her father swam with her.
In these dreams, Jasmine’s skin was always pink and warm, not bone-white and icebox
cold. She exuded enough energy for ten children, not the pale lifeless corpse he and Melanie had
buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery. Her face was always expressive and happy, not stricken with a
fright of unimaginable horror and etched into a stone-like mask of death. Her fingers were
nimble and quick and always searching for more mischief, not stilled by the grip of rigor mortis.
It had been a long time since Isaac had had a dream like that though.
Lately, his dreams were not so much about Jasmine as they were about Jasmine gone. He
66
dreamed of a little girl lost and unable to find her way back. He had repeated visions of Jasmine
alone by the side of the stream, her pink jacket torn and her clothes dripping wet. Blood dripped
from the cut on her hand. She had an unsettled look to her, fear or uncertainty—Isaac could
never decide which.
Her eyes expressed it best, searching to and fro, looking for something...or someone. Her
father maybe. Her father, definitely. This idea tortured him. He had, after all, always been there
for her, always kept her safe. Surely he would do that now, would not leave her alone to fend for
herself, had not...
Abandoned her.
In these dreams, he never came and she just stood waiting. Stood alone in her dripping,
wet clothes. Waiting, he feared, for all eternity.
The last image of her in these dreams was always the same. A montage of beauty twisting
into ugliness, of life spinning into death, then suddenly death in all its gruesomeness rushing up
as if to smack his face. He saw her skin rot, saw the bugs roosting and churning in the fetid stew
that is decay, saw her bones turn to dust. Then, somehow, in the twisted panoply that was his
own private hell, he saw her still standing there, still waiting.
And then the hell would begin all over again.
It was 2:00 am when Isaac screamed and awoke in a cold sweat. He sat bolt upright,
breathing hard like he’d been running all night. His head might as well have been trampled by
one—all—of the four horsemen. He slumped back onto the now cold, sweat stained sheets. He
laid there in the dark for a moment, catching his breath, missing his daughter so much he thought
he’d have killed just to see her one more time.
Where she was at that exact moment?
What she might be doing wherever she was?
The rational part of him knew she wasn’t standing on the side of a stream somewhere
waiting for him. But as a father—now a former father, and that idea had fairly chiseled him to
pieces over the months—he couldn’t part from the sense she was out there somewhere, that she
was lost without him.
It never occurred to him that he was lost without her.
He turned toward Melanie for comfort and found only emptiness under the blankets. He
knew she had almost certainly fallen asleep on the couch downstairs, purposeful or not it seemed
to happen with growing frequency these days. He was alone in the room, except...he wasn’t.
Something was there, the demons he guessed. He got up and made his way through the
darkness to the bathroom, where he ran cool water over his face and popped three aspirins in
hopes of controlling the thunder inside his skull. He knew this was an empty gesture however,
knew there was only one way to purge the demons that trampled through the fields of his mind at
that moment.
He threw on a pair of pants and an old sweatshirt, grabbed a coke from the small
refrigerator beside the Jacuzzi tub, and a moment later was in the garage starting his car. Whether
it was the demons, or a Jekyll and Hyde thing he couldn’t say.
And at that particular moment, he did’t really care.
†††
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Jenny White didn’t go home that night. She closed her eyes again and leaned back in the
leather recliner in Seth’s hospital room just after 3:00 in the morning. She dreamt of a life well
lived, without regrets. It had been a long life, though she really couldn’t say she felt old, just not
so young anymore. She had in fact no idea how old she was, but that was okay since she
supposed the true measure of a life was not chronological. She knew accomplishments couldn’t
be measured by age anymore than weight could be determined with a ruler.
Jenny White’s dreams that night took her back a half century and more, to a time when
the world was much simpler and less encumbered. In those pre-digital days, Jenny White was
still a young woman.
The first time she met the man, Jenny White knew that the stories so eloquently put to
voice by grammy were more than just tales of an eccentric old lady told to entertain a gaggle of
kids on a broken down porch in South Carolina. Speaking with him, she had a sudden moment of
revelation more powerful than anything she’d ever imagined. The image came to her with all the
force of a flash of lightening going sky to ground, and with as much inevitability.
She supposed then and now it was a vision. She had been chosen.
What she saw was a puppeteer, a master of the craft. She saw the puppeteer working the
strings flawlessly, saw that the strings animated the wings of a butterfly with marvelous and
wonderful effect. The puppeteer was the man in whose home she then sat in search of
employment, a young doctor by the name of Zachary Weed, a man literally tortured by his own
abilities in life. Those abilities had nearly destroyed him until she showed up and focused his
unique talents.
Until she provided a lens through which he could and did see the light.
That she was now an old woman, an old black woman at that, were facts that couldn’t be
disputed. But to be old was to be wise, and Jenny White was wise beyond her years, with all the
teachings her skin color had afforded as an added bonus, sort of like getting incentive pay for
life’s little inconveniences. She liked to think of herself as a kind of foundation stone for those
she helped over the years, an anchor point from which all of life’s experiences could be judged
and sorted out.
In reality though, she was more than that. Included among all of the numerous traits,
abilities, and talents that made up her mortal soul, there was one unique gift that somehow
allowed her soul to shine with a warmth and radiance equal to more than the sum of its collective
parts. Jenny White lived not for herself, but for humanity. And if she was not humanity
personified, then she was a lens through which the various rays of humanity could be focused by
those fortunate enough to be able to see them.
Zachary Weed was one of those rare individuals.
†††
Isaac Weed, on the other hand, though touched in every sense of the word, could not have
been more blind if his eyes had been gouged out of their sockets by the claws of the demons
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which seemed now to assault him at every turn. A lens might have helped him once, but that was
before he doomed himself to wander in the darkness forever.
Isaac Weed, the somewhat less fortunate grandson of the illustrious protégée of Jenny
White, spent the night battling the demons as they tore at the cloth of his sanity, fraying the
edges. He drove through the streets of Minneapolis, the landscape frozen in white and layered in
ice. The temperature teetered around zero. He searched in vain for what was needed: a warm
body, preferably one that was unencumbered by relatives and friends. In a city the likes of
Minneapolis in the dead of winter, warm bodies are in distinctly short supply, especially walking
the snow bound streets in the early morning hours of an icy cold night.
But as a neurosurgeon, Weed was nothing if not resourceful in times of crisis. A few
minutes later he was seated behind the cherrywood desk in his office. He had several thousand
dollars worth of neurosurgical texts, but he wasn’t the least bit interested in them at that
particular moment. Instead, with an odd summation of reluctance tilting ever more toward
acceptance, he opened the glass case and pulled out the laptop computer. He still felt as if his
skull was about to split open, as if a meat cleaver dangled above his head, waiting to be felled by
some unseen demonic hand.
“You have mail” confirmed his successful log-on to AOL. He ignored the voice, that was
one voice he could ignore, and went immediately in search of the chat room called “MplsM4M.”
He was admitted to the room on the first click. He quickly noted that thirteen other insomniacs
had also found their way into the gay chat room. He was about to scan the list of those present
when an instant message window popped up first, sparing him the trouble. The title bar at the top
of the window read ‘AtYourService102’.
howdy, what r u n2?
Weed quickly looked up the profile for Service102. He was 47, submissive and lived
alone. There was also some crap about Service102’s build and manhood endowment, the so
called stats, but Weed ignored it. What the hell did he care how endowed the guy was? He
certainly wasn’t looking for sex. For the same reason, he cared not one iota about the man’s age
either. Nonetheless, Weed liked what he saw, decided it looked promising for what he did have in
mind.
For what he had in mind—for what the demons wanted—Service102 would do.
looking for a hot time, he tapped into the keyboard.
The screen fluttered a moment then returned a single word, stats?
6’, 180, 7 cut. muscular build. u got a place?
hot! yeah man, cum over
Weed pictured the sleaze this guy had in mind and it would have sickened him, if not for
the fact the man would never get a chance to do it, not with Weed or anyone else. He almost felt
sorry for him. That was the Jekyll part of him though, and Hyde was in charge now. Hyde and
the demons.
u alone?
yeah man, cum on over
no roommate? Weed had to be certain they wouldn’t be interrupted.
fuck no. u coming over or what?
yeah, give directions. house or apt?
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house, address is 237 powel post rd.
Perfect, just perfect. He jotted the directions down, his handwriting an almost illegible
scrawl. A reluctant scrawl.
Isaac Weed was aroused now, some part of him anyway. In a few minutes he’d satisfy the
demons and life would be worth living again.
Or at least not worth dying for.
70
Eight: The First Crucible—October 3rd, 1951
On a cold day in October, 1951, Zachary Weed’s life came into focus. It happened in OR
#3, in the old wing of Minneapolis General Hospital. Isaac Weed, Zachary’s grandson, wouldn’t
be born for another dozen years or so. By then, both Zachary and his son—Isaac’s father—would
be dead.
†††
In 1951, the neurosurgery ward at Minneapolis General Hospital is a large open
rectangular room with pale cream colored walls and dingy gray floor tiles, all of it scuffed by too
many years of use. Tall windows line each side of the room’s long axis and, on this morning at
least, the risen sun spills in from one side, lending the room a soothing though unbalanced look.
Dr. Zachary Weed sees tiny specks of dust suspended in the golden rays as he enters the room.
Sixteen beds fill the room, eight on either side of the wide central aisle. Dr. Weed stops
by each in turn, briefly arousing its occupant, then unapologetically shining a small flashlight in
their eyes. He asks a few simple questions.
Follow my hand please.
Any double vision?
Do you have a headache this morning?
Can you squeeze my fingers?
The questions are business-like and similar at each bedside. In each case he neglects to
say either good morning or hello; He says please but once at each bedside and always after the
same demand. Weed is not a man to waste time on simple salutations. He thinks them pointless
in the overall scheme of his morning. Time wasters, and time is a commodity he does not have in
abundance. He doesn’t know how he knows this, but he does. It is one of the many
imponderables of his life.
71
On some days he visits as many as twenty patients on morning rounds. Afterwards, while
the day is still young, he retires to his office for an hour to write letters, update his ledgers, and
smoke a cigarette or two. The truth is, he is a chain smoker and limiting himself to just two
cigarettes in the morning before surgery is a matter of discipline. And if nothing else, he is a man
of discipline. Under the same rule, he will also have precisely one cup of coffee just before
entering the operating theater for his first operation of the day.
That operation always begins promptly at 9:00 am. He might have one or two cases
scheduled, depending on their perceived complexity, but he will, unfailingly, be out of surgery by
late afternoon, whereupon he will make rounds again. The day’s second set of rounds are more
involved, with time spent looking for pus, changing dressings, and doing more detailed and
lengthy neuro exams. Twice a week he will hold office hours in the afternoon and see perhaps
thirty patients each time. Most of the patients he cannot help. Not uncommonly, he thinks, these
are the fortunate ones—for the price to be paid by those he can help is made bearable only by the
ghastly alternative of doing nothing.
BJ Collins is an eight year old boy with a large tumor on the right side of his brain. For a
number of reasons, not the least of which is hope, Weed suspects it is not a cancer. He hopes for
a rare benign tumor, one actually outside the brain itself. He believes he can help this boy and his
tests have suggested the boy might potentially be cured with surgery. Now, as Weed crosses the
aisle to the boy’s bed, crosses to the side of the room where the risen sun is brightest, he finds
young BJ wearing a baseball cap with a large ‘B’ over the bill. It is a Brooklyn Dodgers cap.
“The Dodgers and Giants are playing a one-game playoff today, you know!” Whatever
other problems the boy may have, speech is not one of them. “The winner goes to the World
Series!”
“Calm down BJ,” his mother says. She is standing on the left side of his bed. She is
holding his left hand, the one that doesn’t work so well.
“I know BJ,” Dr. Weed says. Did the boy know Weed is a Brooklyn fan? It is perhaps his
one true vice. But for this little boy, Weed might have taken the day off to listen to the game from
home with his own son. Not true, he thinks on the instant, knowing that without this boy there
would have been another in his place. Even so, there is something about this kid. He likes him,
likes his almost infectious zeal. He wishes they’d meant under other circumstances, at a ball
game maybe. “And the answer is no.”
“Oh,” BJ says. He slumps back a moment, then brightens again, “and what’s the
question?” His left shoulder moves up as he says this, apparently he wants to put his hand out to
greet Dr. Weed, but it won’t follow his command to do so. The arm tenses a bit and rises an inch
or two off the bed, but that’s all.
Weed changes course to come around BJ’s bed, to the boy’s right side, the good side. He
shakes his hand emphatically. “No, we can’t postpone the surgery until after the game.” I wish I
had though.
“Shoot. It don’t seem fair.”
“Doesn’t seem fair,” his mother corrects.
“I figured the season would be over by now when we set this up a few weeks ago,” Weed
says. “Figured we’d be able to get the surgery done and then you could sit and listen to the
Dodgers in the World Series. Who knew they were gonna crump like this and need a playoff?”
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“Shoot, I wish we could wait...” His voice trails off but Weed can see there is something
more behind those active eyes. BJ is full of energy, and although he is more or less paralyzed on
the left side, he still moves constantly. Weed has to chuckle to himself; it has taken a brain tumor
to lay this kid up, nothing else could have done it.
“Is there something more?” the surgeon asks, nodding at the kid’s mother.
The boy looks at her, then back at the surgeon. “It’s just that my dad, well, he was a big
Dodger fan when he was alive and I sort of promised that I would follow the team for him.” BJ’s
eyes water almost imperceptibly; his father has been dead only a few months. This is about the
duration of BJ’s problems and as a result, the doctors had thought for months that BJ’s
difficulties were psychological. They had been partially right. His problem is in his head after all.
“Tell you what, champ, we’ll listen to it on the radio in the operating room. How’d that
be?”
“Gee, that’d be great!” BJ smiles widely and perks up. Apparently, it never occurs to him
he’ll still be asleep throughout the game.
†††
“The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!”
The announcer’s exuberant voice bursts from the radio with the intensity of an artery geysering
blood across the room—those assembled in the OR can’t help but notice it. The rest of the world
will too. Russ Hodges’ call at the mic this day will become one of the most famous calls in all of
sports history. “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! Bobby Thompson hits
into the lower deck of the left—”
“Turn that damn thing off.”
Weed puts down the loop cautery and motions his arm toward the radio. “Jesus Christ,”
he says soto voce, thinking of the Goddamn Brooklyn Dodgers. How could the bums have a
virtual lock on first, 13 & 1/2 games up with just 44 games to play a month before the season
ended, and still manage to rise to that particular level of mediocrity that is second place? It
sickens him.
Second place is an untenable position to Zachary Weed. He’s a brain surgeon and second
place is a compromise he can’t afford inside someone’s head, an intolerable concession that can
only bring pain or suffering at best, death or invalidism at worst. Of course, it isn’t he that suffers
in such a case, it’s his patient. And suffer they do he thinks, for however untenable second place
might be in his own mind, it is a plight which visits his—any neurosurgeon’s—operating room
with a certain morbid regularity.
As he stands looking down on BJ’s brain now, Weed is saddened by the Dodgers’ loss
moments before. It breaks his concentration only briefly, interrupts his mantra. Weed seldom
thinks of anything except brain surgery in the OR and he supposes it is this which keeps him at
the top of his game. He knows that in brain surgery, the difference between paralyzed and normal
can be as thin as a scalpel blade—and as likely or not as the talents of the man using it.
It is crucial, he believes, to keep one’s mind in the game at hand.
Dr. Weed steps back from the table and takes a moment to assess the situation. The room
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is hot and the scrubs he wears are soaked through with sweat. They cling to his body. He shakes
his head, has visions of this particular crucible slipping away from him. He looks at the clock.
Nearly six hours have passed since he first incised BJ’s scalp. He turns and the circulating nurse
—her name is Rose and she’s a godsend Weed thinks after all the years they’ve worked together
—towels his forehead and wipes his brow.
“Alright, let’s turn the damn fans on, get some air moving in here.” Although it is cold
outside, an early October snow storm is in the air, inside the air feels stuffy and humid. “I need
some air.”
Rose leaves her seat behind the surgeon just long enough to do as he wishes. Returning to
her position, she looks over Weed’s shoulder, down upon the brain pulsating in front of them.
Weed’s standing rule is for Rose to be within arm’s reach of him at all times. He’s an impatient
man and feels waiting longer than a few seconds for anything in the midst of an operation might
put his patient over the top and into the dead zone.
Or worse.
Worse? In his mind, in the mind of any brain surgeon he is certain, death is not as bad as
it gets—considerably less so in fact. The worst thing that can happen, the absolute worst possible
outcome that can occur, is for his patient to survive at something less than the full measure of the
human experience. Weed knows that if death is second or third place, the vegetative state is last
place. That nebulous condition accords no honor, no dignity; it allows no awareness of self or the
outside world. Such poor souls are forever beyond the joyous taste of the summer’s first ice
cream cone; they will never again make love in the back seat of a car on a warm spring night;
they won’t laugh at the antics of Abbott & Costello or cry over spilt milk. And then there’s this
little piece of homespun fact: their son or daughter won’t quite walk down the aisle without them
when that particular piece of life comes their way. No sir. Instead, they’ll be there on the
sidelines, drooling from their wheelchairs, the only ones unaware of the stink rising from their
soiled diapers.
These vegetables never go away. They stick out like a hole in a condom—they may not
be noticed in the short run, but sooner or later they tend to make their presence felt. In the brain
surgeon’s mind, in the administrative halls of the hospital, and, yes, even to the patient’s own
family, a vegetative patient is a severe liability far worse than a dead one. At the very least, a
dead patient can be mourned and buried. Forgotten with the blessings of time.
Weed isn’t consciously thinking any of this at the moment—it isn’t something he thinks
about consciously anyway. Just now, he contemplates the best way to peel the remaining tumor
off the large vein it adheres to. He has used the loop cautery, an ingenious device that looks like a
wire probe and uses electricity to instantaneously burn tissue and thus stop bleeding even as the
surgeon slices through it, to shrink the size of the tumor. Still, BJ has lost a great deal of blood
and the anesthesiologist, sitting at the foot of the table to give the neurosurgeon access at the
head, is only barely keeping up.
The challenge at the anesthesiologist’s end of the table is to keep BJ viable while Weed,
working on the other side of the drapes, cuts this way and that through the boy’s brain. From the
anesthesiologist’s viewpoint, the surgeon’s job is rather like advancing through a minefield of
flesh and blood. At any moment, a surgeon’s misstep can blast a hole in the patient’s heart rate or
blood pressure. It will then be the anesthesiologist’s job to fill in the resultant crater, to re-level
74
the playing field.
At this precise moment, the gas passers are working frantically to fill one of those craters.
They push blood into BJ as fast as it can be brought from the lab. Unfortunately, this isn’t quite
as fast as Weed is losing it from his side of the curtain. BJ has begun to pale. Through the day,
Weed has carefully passed the cauterizing loop through the tumor, taking a gram here, two grams
there. Every few moments he has stopped to apply pressure in hopes of reducing the bloodletting
long enough for the gas passers to catch up. This vital game of give and take can only go on so
long however, and everyone senses the end is near, one way or another.
Bleeding always stops, as the old adage goes.
Beneath the open windows, the sounds of a city at work race by. Far off in the distance, a
propeller whines; a horn blares continuously down the street. The cacophony of a thousand car
engines compete for attention. All of this is, however, a barely audible din beneath the
mechanical back and forth whoosh of the life-sustaining ventilator. The surgical field, initially
draped in that peculiar sterile greenness that seems the sole province of the medical profession,
has taken on a dull reddish-green hue over the hours as the blood has collected and congealed
upon it. Blood is not designed to come in contact with the air and when it does, the result is a
mostly useless glob of sticky ooze, a morass that can easily churn the stomach and leave last
night’s dinner on the floor.
It helps Weed to think of blood as the enemy, the foot soldiers of an opponent that would
willingly sacrifice its entire army to defeat him, the surgeon. All that enemy needs is a tiny
foothold—a hand that jerks suddenly at the wrong instant; a small tremor of the fingers, barely
perceptible to the naked eye; the cautery lingering too long in one place. Any such mistake will
do. Weed has learned long ago his opponent is not picky; that it will take full advantage of
whatever mistake he may chance to make.
He has learned through experience.
As Weed returns to work, his skilled and practiced hand tugs once too often and too long
at the rubbery tumor running along and within the crucial vein. Suddenly, as the tumor rolls
back, the field is awash in dark red, that irritating color of blood devoid of oxygen that
announces a vein is open and the enemy’s foot soldiers are on the move. BJ’s blood percolates
into the field with a determination and gusto that only a liquid can muster. It doesn’t jet out in a
stream, rather it rolls out across the land like the waters of a burst damn. It covers everything.
The amount of blood is truly phenomenal, but Weed’s response is immediate and equal to
the task He grabs a sponge and pushes it into the opening in the boy’s head. He aims to block the
egress of the foot soldiers. In this he is only partially successful.
“Suction, I need suction,” he says in the peculiar way a surgeon has of addressing
everyone and no one at the same time. Though sweat beads his forehead, his voice is a calm one;
this battlefield is familiar territory.
“I’ve got some bleeding here.”
“He’s tachy,” says one of the gas passers. It is his way of stating that a crater has opened.
He works feverishly to support BJ’s blood pressure and watches as the sleeping boy’s heart rate
skyrockets. Having no more blood to transfuse, he gives salt water instead.
BJ’s circulation, a closed hydraulic system, is beginning to shut down as the vital oil that
primes the system—the blood—pours freely from the surgical opening at the top of his head.
75
This has the effect of lowering the pressure in the lines, the miles of arteries and veins that course
here and there throughout the boy’s body, part of the most intricate plumbing system ever
devised. His body’s natural response is to increase the heart rate, to accelerate the pump—a
protective mechanism that can go only so far before it too fails. The climbing heart rate is thus
ominous, a sign of impending doom.
“I can’t keep up,” the gas passer reports. The crater is growing faster than the doctor can
shovel.
“I know, I know,” Weed says to himself, knowing it is crucial he clear the field of blood,
that he find the hole in the vein.
“Sponge.”
Even in this single word, those in the room can hear his calmness, can sense his
confidence. He is the captain of the ship, and if one plan isn’t working, he knows to switch gears.
If he cannot clear the field, perhaps he can staunch the flow.
The scrub hands him a white cotton cloth, dingy after perhaps a hundred or so washes but
sterile now nonetheless. He thrusts the three inch by three inch material into the wound and
presses it against the vein. It turns blood red in an instant and the bleeding continues.
Weed’s stomach churns. He begins to feel an uneasiness; a queasy sensation moves
through him. It isn’t the sight of the blood that causes this, but rather the amount—and what that
has to mean to BJ. With so much blood on the floor, piled high in a useless conglomeration of
red muck, it seems impossible that enough remains to carry life to the far flung reaches of the
boy’s anatomy. I’m losing the battle.
Blood is life and BJ is bleeding out, moving ever closer to the dead zone.
“Pressure’s falling. 60/30.” The gas passer again, as if he’s calling play by play. He looks
up at the glass bottle hanging over the table. It’s attached to the tube going into the boy’s arm. He
checks the pressure again, this time announces “50/35.” The crater has a bottom and they are
rapidly approaching it.
It’s not the fall that gets you, it’s the sudden stop. Someone once told Weed this as a kid
and he recalls it now as BJ spirals toward the bottom of an impossibly deep chasm. Bullshit, he
thinks, in neurosurgery at least the fall itself can fuck you up pretty good. Too long with a
pressure in this range, call it the dead zone or no man’s land or whatever, and it won’t matter
whether or not BJ ever hits the bottom—the damage will be done either way.
Time is ever shorter.
Fuck, Weed, get this situation under control. In a flash it occurs to him how close he
actually is, or was, to victory over the intruder. That intruder now seems determined to make a
final battle of it. Then Weed has an idea, an extreme measure he realizes. But extreme measures
are all he has left.
Zachary Weed has to have maneuvering room to marshal his forces and thus, while
attempting to hold pressure with one hand, he pushes the index finger of the other into the
adjacent brain. With no more force than it would take to push through a bowl of jello, he scoops
out a finger-size portion of BJ’s brain. He doesn’t bother to watch as it tumbles to the floor.
Instead, he adjusts the pressure on the vein ever so slightly by sliding the sponge into the gap
created by the missing brain. The bleeding abates slightly, enough to allow Weed to regroup.
“Slowing down,” he says, speaking mostly to himself.
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But his foe isn’t done. The brain becomes angry and takes on a grotesque dusky
appearance as blood backs up in the closed vein. It ceases pulsating and begins to swell. The
enemy has called in his artillery and is about to lay waste to the land.
Weed sees this immediately and relaxes his hold on the vein. The blood percolates once
again and a new swath of red highlights the field, trickling down to the floor below. BJ’s brain
relaxes a measure and returns to its rightful place in his skull, as if someone has turned a valve.
Weed recognizes an old foe—the boy will either bleed out or his brain will swell until it can no
longer fit in his head. Either way, death is the equally untenable result. Death or a patch in the
garden.
“Stitch!” Weed hollers. He holds out his right hand without looking up.
On the back table, the scrub quickly searches for and finds the small needle-nose
instrument she needs. Its shape is reminiscent of a pair of scissors, right down to the finger holes,
though in place of cutting blades it has flattened points for holding a tiny, curved needle. She
picks up a delicate C-shaped sliver of metal and, with a deft, practiced motion, passes a thread of
silk through the eye and doubles the thread back on itself. She slaps the instrument into the
surgeon’s hand.
The entire process takes mere seconds.
Weed’s hand grasps the needle holder without putting his fingers in the holes. He palms
the device and quickly brings the business end to bear on the crimson field before him. Once
again he applies pressure to the vein, this time just long enough for his assistant to suck away the
accumulated blood so he can catch a glimpse of what’s there. Weed eyeballs the rip in the vein
and passes the tip of the needle through first one side of it and then the other. The small thread
follows and, in a blur of activity brought into focus by thousands of similar such moments before
it, ties the damn thing. His actions bring the edges of the tear into apposition and the bleeding
diminishes, though only by a skoosh. Again, he thinks.
“Stitch!” He never takes his eye off the spot.
The scrub repeats her frenzied activity on the back table. Weed takes the needle-holder
and this time—unable to afford the blood loss—he visualizes the rip in his mind’s eye and places
the stitch blindly. Weed does this five more times in rapid succession before the rent in the vein
is vanquished. He steps back from the table, slipping slightly in the puddle of blood and clot at
his feet.
Damn, that’s one hell of a lot of blood.
“Mayo scissors.” He holds his hand out once again.
The scrub nurse slaps them into his hand as she had the needle-holder before. He shortens
the silk threads down to the knots. For the first time since the operation began, the bleeding has
stopped. Weed looks up from the field.
His blue eyes are blood red, this time his own blood, with fatigue. There is however, the
faintest hint of a smile behind the surgical mask that frames his eyes. There is satisfaction behind
that smile. He has, he thinks, done a tolerable job.
“How’s he doing?”
The gas passer takes only a moment to render his opinion: the boy is stable from where
he sits. “The bleeding appears controlled and I expect that his vitals will recover momentarily.
BP is 80/50 and rising.” The crater is filling in.
77
Not great, but above the dead zone, Weed thinks. The small area below his belly button
but short of the gonads aches. Weed has been working for hours, boring deeper into the skull
with every passing moment, the challenge looming ever larger and the stakes growing ever
higher. He has worked with a single-mindedness that might only be matched by a bomb disposal
expert, culminating in the most difficult part of operation: the final ten or twenty minutes of
tumor removal. At that moment, the fight was not just against the tumor, but against his own
accumulated wealth of fatigue, boredom, hunger—and the need to piss.
Dr. Weed needs to pee and no amount of mind over matter will forestall it.
Three, four, five minutes pass. Weed resists the urge to cross his legs, allows the
discipline of his training to rule. He realizes the room is chilly now, but feels the cold keeping
him alert, keeping him at the top of his game. Finally, he again turns to the gas passer.
“Stable?”
He knows the word stable is the wrong one—hell, a rock, or a dead person for that
matter, is stable, —but he can think of no better word to convey his concern just then.
“Pressure’s 100/70, heart rate is coming down. Seems to be holding his own, responding
to the fluids.” The battlefield is almost level once again.
The gas passer never uses the word ‘stable’ and perhaps Weed should have considered its
absence telling. But when you gotta go you gotta go and Weed has to go. He turns toward Rose
and she’s instantly at his side, ready to assist. Go old Rose, he thinks.
“I’ll be back in a moment.”
He’s stepped out before. Not hundreds of times, but occasionally. She immediately unties
the straps on his gown as he removes the rubber gloves that fit like a second skin on his hands.
As the gown comes away from his front, the dark red stains on his pants are moot testimony to
the battle most recently fought and won.
As he turns to leave the room, he hesitates and looks around. “Turn off that damn fan,” he
says at last, and walks out.
†††
Weed stands at the urinal, his right hand dealing with the necessary business while he
looks up at the ceiling, sucking against an eye tooth and trying to discern the shapes of the water
marks he sees there. He exhales, slowly and deliberately, pursing his lips slightly. Outside the
window, rain turns to snow. The hour seems later than it should.
Christ, it feels good to piss. Such a simple, soothing act, comfort—
“Dr. Weed to OR 17 stat! Dr. Weed to OR 17 stat!”
The words bring Weed back to reality. He finishes as rapidly as he can, but one can only
piss so fast. He shakes dry, adjusts himself, and ties the drawstring of his pants as he moves into
the hallway.
He doesn’t bother to stop at the sink on the way out.
†††
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Room 3 is not the same calm room he left only moments before—the team, participants
in a hideous drama, are gathered about the bed, BJ at the center of it all. In a later time, say the
late 1960s and after, they would have been pounding his chest with great vigor, their fingers
interlaced and pushing down mightily on his breastbone, counting a cadence: one, two, three,
four, five...one, two, three, four, five... But that is later, this is 1951 and they’ve no such tool at
their disposal. So they stand watching the EKG tracing on the oscilloscope, almost mesmerized.
“What the hell happened?” Weed asks.
“He went into V fib,” the gas passer says. The tracing that was once ordered and
predictable on the monitor is now he a random squiggly line without rhyme or reason. It lacks
the jagged, predictable peaks that is the normal heartbeat. The line is anything but calming.
Zachary Weed’s immediate impulse is to look at the brain, which he notes is not actively
bleeding. It doesn’t pulsate either, not in a normal sense anyway.
It quivers.
Weed is not an individual to sit idly by and watch a situation deteriorate. He tears the
surgical drapes off BJ and looks down at the left side of his chest. The nipple there quivers as
well, though arguably with more vigor than the brain. He places his bare hand below the nipple,
closes his eyes, and clears his mind as if his life depends on his ability to concentrate at that
exact moment.
The room is positively boiling compared to the gathering cold that floods Weed’s body on
the instant. It’s accompanied by an eerie chill, a shivering first in his spine, then his head. Then
there is just darkness—so black it seems every light in the universe has winked out
simultaneously.
Weed hovers in a tunnel, rapidly floating down it toward the only light present anywhere,
the only light that ever matters. This scene—surreal—is absolutely real to Weed. He has been
here before, recognizes it as death in one of its many guises.
But something is wrong.
It is the warmth, Weed realizes. The warmth that should emanate from the light is
missing. There isn’t even coldness present any longer. It’s all gone, replaced by an emptiness. He
feels hollow, almost dead inside. It’s not supposed to be this way. He opens his eyes and is
standing in OR #3 again. No time at all has passed.
“Knife!”
Pulling on a gown, he skips the gloving ritual, takes the scalpel, and makes a deep
incision just below BJ’s left breast, out along a rib. The blade cuts a deep swath through the skin
and muscle, down to and between the bones of the rib cage. Weed makes a mental note. No
bleeding. No fucking bleeding.
Second place, last place.
“Spread those ribs for me. Come on, come on.” His voice is calm but firm. Inside, in that
place where hope and desire collide with reality, reality is asserting itself.
BJ will never know the Giants won.
The assistant puts his hands through the hole in the chest, pulls BJ’s ribs apart. There is
an audible pop as the bones fracture and move. Weed thrusts his hand past those of the assistant,
deep into the rib lined cavity. He grasps the quivering heart in his palm and squeezes. First once,
79
twice, then again and again and again...
A moment later, as the room abruptly warms, they all see it. An eerie blue orb, round and
about the size of a large melon. It rises from BJ, indeed seems to come out of him, casting a spell
of stupendous beauty that draws the assembled eyes of the room to it. Its borders are indistinct,
smeared and out of focus. The orb radiates a soft bluish glow, which some see as more white
than blue. They see it as if looking through mist on a cool autumn morning, though nobody sees
it quite the same way. However, its presence is unequivocal. Nobody in that room—nobody who
comes out better than a vegetable, which is everybody save one—will be able to deny it. As the
resplendent round form moves across the room toward a window, the many pairs of eyes follow
as if yoked like oxen.
Weed, as transfixed by the spectacle before him as anyone else in the room, looks at the
entity. He might have made eye contact with it, if it had had such earthly organs.
“My God,” he says, and his tone is hypnotic. Though barely audible, it carries around the
room.
†††
While Weed and the others are frozen by the spectacle, their eyes riveted upward, one
person in the room has not seen the light. She looks down upon the patient.
Or rather what should have been the patient.
In a moment that changes her forever, a moment after which she will never be fit to
contend with the demands of Dr. Weed or anyone else again, Rose Braxton’s eyes capture the
image of a hideous beast that can only have come from the bowels of hell itself. The sighting
lasts only an instant, a flash bulb in time, but that flash might as well have illuminated the
undead.
The creature has moldy, dark leathery skin, like something buried a hundred years or
more. The face is covered by the drapes and thus she is spared the agony of looking into its eyes,
which she assumes will be open and have to be looking at her, have to be piercing her.
Unfortunately, she does see one of its hands. The digits are shriveled, the bones underneath
showing through between the patches of moldy skin covering them. And although the torso is
certainly something dead, the hand has a vital aura about it, as if it would grab hers if she
allowed it to get anywhere close. She has no intention of doing that. She feels her own skin
crawling and for just a moment she smells the fetid stench of rotting flesh, or maybe the sour
odor of vomit.
And then it’s gone, all of it is gone, and BJ is there again. He is untouched except for the
gaping hole in the left side of his chest and the similar chasm at the top of his head. And he is no
longer among the living.
With the speed and destruction of an assassin’s bullet blowing her skull apart, Rose has a
fleeting realization she has seen the creature from her childhood, the monster that tormented her
kiddie dreams until about the time the gap where her two front teeth fell out filled back in. The
one that torments all our kiddie dreams until we begin to loose our innocence. The thing in the
closet, the monster from under our bed, the blanket monster—the creatures that haunt the rooms
80
and prowl the nights of small children everywhere once the lights go off—some combination of
all of these has suddenly manifested before her in full, horrific fashion.
As a child, perhaps she’d had protection from them, but not now. Now, she is all but
naked, no blankets to cower under until near suffocation forces her to open them a crack.
Her last conscious thought on this earth—her last thought before she buys a patch in the
vegetable garden—is that she’s seen the boogeyman and he’s real.
Rose Braxton begins to utter the last sounds she will ever make. She screams. It is a high
pitched, feral wail that nobody present will ever forget. It’s a scream that sends the heart into
overdrive and makes the skin not crawl, but run, run for all one’s soul is worth; a scream that
fractures the illusion of well-being.
None of them will ever be the same for having heard it.
It is also a scream that won’t stop, at least not until they tranquilize the woman. Months
later, her eyes still blank and empty, her features haunting and nearly as gaunt as the thing she
had seen, and her spot in the garden full of nothing but weeds—broad-leafed, tenacious, ugly
weeds—her body will follow her soul into death and, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Rose
Braxton’s body will be returned to the ground from which it came.
†††
But all of that is yet to be. Just now, as Rose screams, looses her water, and backs into a
corner from which there is no escape, the bluish presence lingers a second or two before
suddenly rising toward the ceiling. It is gone an instant later, disintegrating into the air of the
room as suddenly as it had appeared.
Zachary Weed knows BJ is gone. He sees to Rose’s welfare—there is nothing he can do,
nothing anybody can do—then stumbles to the surgeon’s locker room, unaware at first he is still
wearing the blood-crusted surgeon’s gown.
From that moment on, his life becomes a quest for the blue light—as well as Rose’s
demon.
It will be the death of him.
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82
Nine: Saviors
Zachary Weed was not the first person that Jenny White recognized as possessing the gift.
In her quest to assist humanity, she had helped many over the years.
By 1946 Zachary Weed had already lived more than half of his life, though of course he
couldn’t have known that. In that half a life plus, he had lived more than most do in an entire
lifetime. Much of this was due to his service as a surgeon in the South Pacific during World War
II after an abbreviated internship and residency. But as full as his life had been, he had yet to
awaken to the virtues of his gift. All of that changed in 1946 with the arrival of Jenny White.
Jenny White was an instrument, a glass through which those special enough to have been
chosen, to have been touched by the hand of God she would think, learned to focus their unique
abilities. This was her particular gift, her calling. She had devoted the better part of an eternity to
this endeavor with a single-mindedness that all but obliterated any possibility of happiness in her
own existence. But happiness is a relative term, and, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Jenny White was happy in her work and thus humanity thrived.
†††
Vessel. Webster gives one definition as follows: a person considered as a receptacle or
agent of some quality. As Isaac Weed drove through the streets of Minneapolis, with every spin
of the tires his version Mr. Hyde got closer to the vessel he so desperately craved.
The house he sought was in a part of the city some called Low Town. It was a place
where one could find a dime bag of coke, a whore, or a bullet with equal ease. The house he
eventually found, a dirty and dilapidated structure that might have been held together with
chicken wire and duct tape, was fronted in brick and stucco. The yard, what there was of it, was
snow covered. A broken chimney faced the street a few feet off to one side of the front door.
The place had a driveway and a detached garage. Somebody had shoveled most of the
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snow off the drive, but Weed was careful to park his car down the street. Not too far though, the
night was cold enough to threaten exposed skin and he’d neglected to bring along a heavy jacket.
He braced himself against the bite of the Minnesota night and made his way along the street to
the drive, where he stepped over the oil stains. He stood at the front door of 237 Powel Post
Road a long moment. The porch light was blue, just as Service102 had said it would be.
His head was pounding. Somewhere deep inside, a voice—his own tiny voice as it turned
out—kept saying no, no, no. He didn’t want to do this. You have to do this, a louder voice, Mr.
Hyde’s voice, kept saying. And the more Mr. Hyde spoke, the more Dr. Jekyll—Dr. Weed—
listened.
You want to see her, don’t you?
“Yes.”
You have to see her, don’t you?
“Yes, yes. Oh god, yes.” The tiny voice had changed it’s tune.
The demons touring around inside his head—the Four Horseman, Mr. Hyde, whoever the
hell they were—now hammered at the inner side of his skull. His hand rose to knock, dropped
back again, and rose again. He tapped and the hammering lessened by a degree.
Now that won’t really do, do you think?
He knocked harder, almost pounding.
‘Pervert’ was the first thought that entered Weed’s head when the door opened and a man
clad only in his underwear opened it.
Don’t make me do this...
Except for the lack of clothing, Service102 looked like any other man. This disappointed
Weed. He’d have preferred someone more evil looking, or at least someone he couldn’t identify
with.
Service102 quickly gave the man standing at his front door the once over. He found a
gentleman slightly younger than himself, well built, thin, and rather handsome, though it would
have made little difference had he been short, fat, and grotesque looking—Service102 was not
picky.
“Come in,” he said.
Weed entered, powerless to fight the urges building within him. Perhaps because it was
the only area of the man clothed, he glanced at Service102’s crotch and saw how it bulged. This
Weed could not identify with, though it didn’t make what was about to happen any easier.
“You wanna drink?” Service102 asked.
Weed looked past him, into what looked like the home’s living room, trying to verify they
were indeed alone. It was as if he was on autopilot, as if the demons were doing the thinking
now. “No, thanks.”
“So, what do you like?”
“What?”
“First time, eh?” The man smiled, had probably been in this situation a hundred times
before. “Relax man, I ain’t gonna kill you.” He grinned.
Deep inside Weed, Dr. Jekyll watched as Service102 first pulled his lips into a smile, then
grinned obscenely ear to ear. He licked his lips. To Jekyll’s eye, that grin was lewd and devious,
even deviant. It made what Hyde had in mind...easier. Evil had just entered the room, Jekyll
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thought.
The tension in Weed’s shoulders and arms relaxed. He could do this. It wouldn’t be
pleasant, and it wouldn’t be his choice, but he could do this. Mr. Hyde said as much.
You can do this. You must do this.
“I can.”
“ How’s that? Whad’ya say? You wanna blow job or what?”
“Oh...whatever. Sure, a blowjob then.” It was the Jekyll voice, calm and assured. But
Hyde was animating it now. Animating him.
If Service102 saw the glint in Weed’s eye just then, he didn’t say anything about it. In
fact, the man gave no hint whatsoever he had noticed the change in Weed. Too bad, it was the
last thing that might have saved him.
“Yeah right, ok,” Service102 said. “Maybe you wanna get outta those clothes? Come on
back to the bedroom.” Service102 turned and walked past Weed and into the hall. His hand
brushed Weed’s crotch as he did so.
If Weed still had any doubt about what was coming—about what had to come—it left
him then. Service102 sealed his fate with that quick feel. Weed followed the man down the hall
and into the bedroom. Once in the bedroom, the man turned abruptly and went to his knees. His
hand groped for the zipper of the doctor’s trousers. Weed, Jekyll, Hyde—whoever he was at that
moment—was repulsed and had the man bothered to look up, he’d have seen it in those eyes.
As it was, those eyes scanned the room for an instrument. For a weapon.
There was a large bed in the far corner, a down comforter folded neatly at the foot.
Beside it stood a small night stand, and next to that a large dresser. Sitting on the dresser was a
one foot tall gold statuette of Adonis. Weed stepped casually toward the dresser, the man
following on his knees.
There was an engraving at the base of the statuette, but Weed wasn’t interested in
whatever it said. He picked up Adonis by his head and raised it above his shoulder. It felt
uncomfortably heavy in hand. He hesitated.
Swing it.
Weed couldn’t speak. A gout of air passed his lips. Perhaps Service102 heard it as a
moan.
Swing it.
As Service102 fished in the surgeon’s trousers, Weed—his mind as far removed from the
operating room as it was possible to be—had one last moment of horror when Service102’s eyes
suddenly glanced upward. But even as his mind hesitated, his arm seemed willing. Mr. Hyde
brought the statuette down onto the Service102’s head.
The blow was a solid one—even Weed was surprised with the severity of it—and caught
the kneeling man in his left temple. Weed felt, and heard, a heavy thwack! He saw the man’s
scalp tear, as if the skin had suddenly become too small to accommodate the skull underneath.
The bone itself cracked, like a hard boiled egg struck against the side of a bowl. The outer wall
of the man’s left eye socket disintegrated and Weed saw that the egg had not been so hard boiled
after all as the globe within ruptured. The disemboweled eye melted down the side of the broken
face like the yolk of that same cracked egg.
A small but efficient artery pulsed blood over the lower half of Weed’s Eddie Bauer
85
jacket. The tiny drops of blood spewed in a random pattern, staining red where they hit.
Service102 groaned once, then slumped to the floor with his right hand still caught in Weed’s
trousers. The doctor, arguably still a healer but now an assailant as well, quickly disentangled
himself and his manhood from the man’s sickening grasp.
He stood over him, watching as a pool of blood crept across the floor. The Dr. Jekyll in
him was horrified, but the Mr. Hyde looked on with something more, and less, than studied
indifference. Service102 had simply been the means to an end. Wrong place, wrong time.
Looking closer, Weed saw little flecks of gray matter in the bloody residue. Filthy faggot
degenerate brain tissue he thought, as if trying to convince himself of these facts. It all looks the
same, he mused with clinical detachment. He seemed to have crossed some threshold then, his
mind suddenly clear. The scene was beyond him now, out of his control. He was a bystander
looking in.
Weed dropped the statuette. He bent over the body, careful not to dirty himself with more
of the man’s blood. He closed his eyes, his mind a clean slate. Mr. Hyde and the Four Horseman
receded. Their work was apparently done. He put a hand on Service102’s chest.
A switch flipped, or maybe a door opened, and Weed’s own headache blurred to
something both more and less uncomfortable. The pain in his left temple—Service102’s left
temple—stunned him, as if a hole had been ripped in own skull and boiling oil poured in. At the
same time came something more, something deeper, something wrong. He had a vision of a
hideous black fungus, like pond scum, growing across the man’s soul.
Weed recoiled. Whatever he’d found here, and he had no idea what that might be, it felt
both unexpected—and terrifying. He touched the black crud before him and it broke open,
oozing pus like a popped zit. He had an idea he had to get out of there, had to flee before
whatever diseased spirit was there pulled him in.
Get out of here. It was the Mr. Hyde talking, whispering in his ear. Get out of here while
you still can!
It was odd, that. Hyde telling Jekyll to flee.
Get out of here before whatever diseased spirit pulls you in.
“Get out of here then.” His own voice. Before he could act though, he felt a shudder, a
tiny earthquake perhaps. Unsure what it was, unsure even from where it came, he paused long
enough to intuit it had come from without, not from within. Startled now, he pulled back and
removed himself from the dying man, his senses receding into his own body. He rose from the
floor at the back of the house and ran to the front living room, where he pulled a curtain back
slightly.
The front yard glowed a brilliant orange as flames from the house across the street lit up
the neighborhood.
“Jesus Christ!”
He had to work fast. He had an idea the place would be overrun soon by police and fire
engines in abundance. He didn’t have time to complete what he’d started—which idea seemed
fine with him anyhow. No way he wanted to wade back into that diseased soul. Let him go, he
thought, better to come back another day, find another vessel to ride.
“Sorry Jasmine.”
He had to get out of there, fast and unseen. He glanced around, his mind working the
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problem.
Did I touch anything?
Yes, the statuette.
Anything else?
No, he didn’t think so.
Don’t think so?
Not good enough. he must be sure, must be bold and decisive at that moment. He
stopped, took a deep breath, thought on it.
Yes, he was sure. He had touched nothing but the statuette.
Moving back to the bedroom—he couldn’t seem to move fast enough—Weed retrieved
the Adonis statuette. He ignored the man on the floor, blood oozing from his head wound (like
pus from a popped zit, and the image wouldn’t go away). Weed was careful not to step in the
pooled blood. He slid the statuette into his jacket pocket and left the house through a side door.
He rubbed the fingerprints off the doorknob with a towel, then threw the towel in the trash.
Several gawkers were already milling about on their lawns as he moved up the street to
his car. Don’t be conspicuous by going to the trunk. He opened the driver’s door and placed the
statuette at his feet, on the floorboard of the Mercedes. He started the engine and pulled the car
away from the curb, where he was immediately confronted with a large fire engine rolling down
the street toward him, less than a block away.
†††
Seth Oberg, every bit as large as he had been yesterday and the day before and the day
before that, opened his eyes in the darkness that was a small room in a hospital hundreds of miles
from where Isaac Weed prowled the night. That darkness had an eerie feel to it, as if the night
had eyes and watched the boy.
Seth’s spine tingled as he looked about the gathered night, expecting to see it looking
back. But there was no disembodied pair of eyes here to peer back at him. He drew a deep breath
and let go with a long sigh. Still the haunted night stayed with him.
“Auntie? You there auntie?”
She was there, of course. Had been from the very beginning. Jenny White had heard his
eyes open and felt the rustle of the still air when his eyelids lifted. These were the kinds of things
she’d learned to watch for over the years. She could actually tell if one eye or both had been
opened. In this case it was both.
“Auntie?” he asked again, his voice trailing off. He was lost in the darkness. His hand
went out, searched for her.
“I’m here child.”
She reached out and grabbed his hand without the slightest hesitation or misdirection in
the dark. The sound of bone articulating with bone guided her and she knew where his hand lay
as accurately as if she’d seen it in the light of day.
Seth squeezed her hand. Gripping the frail but warm hand tightly, conversation between
them ceased and the room once again grew quiet...
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Seth, come to me child. Come to me with your mind.
Seth startled, the words crystal clear in his mind. He’d heard nothing. The idea of the
words just suddenly appeared, intruders upon his consciousness, his eyes and ears bypassed. He
felt them with a sense he’d heretofore been unaware of. The words simply...became. It occurred
to him the night was indeed haunted, but this thought was interrupted by yet another intrusion.
Seth, the night isn’t haunted. Come to me with your mind child.
Now he realized the words were not only present, but had feeling and intonation as well.
They felt like...
Auntie?
Yes child. Good, you see the night isn’t haunted.
She spoke to him with her mind. Not exactly talking, more like picturing the words very
quickly and allowing them to be viewed by another. Yet all of the inflections and meanderings of
normal spoken voice accompanied the word pictures.
But how is this possible?
It is the touch child. You have the gift. She moved her bony hand and squeezed Seth’s
hand, as if to emphasize the two of them were, in fact, touching.
Seth, weary and tired, not yet able to control his thoughts and certainly not used to them
being broadcast, drifted back toward slumber. His final thought was there are no insects.
Jenny White had no idea what this cryptic phrase might mean.
†††
After finding his way blocked by a fire engine en route to a cataclysm not of his making,
Isaac Weed was forced to reevaluate his moves and find another way out. Or in. Perhaps, he
thought, salvation lay in an arrival rather than a departure, a simple act of good samaritanism.
He’d simply stopped to assist when he noticed the fire while driving by.
Having thus made up his mind to become a part of the throng that now gathered on the
lawns, he turned the car engine off, pushed the Adonis statuette as far under the seat as it would
go, and slid out of the car. He walked slowly back toward the burning house, half expecting to
find Service102 standing amidst the onlookers, the left side of his skull caved in, the brilliant
orange of the flames reflected in the disemboweled eye melting down his cheek. But both Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde told him that was ridiculous, that he’d left the man laying in a pool of pus—
blood, he corrected...
Blood. He halted suddenly, as if the freezing cold had turned his bones to ice in midflight. He felt a growing sense of uneasiness, had acutely realized something was out of place,
something he should know about, something he did know about. Weed turned the night over in
his mind, tried to peer through the darkness, tried to see what he already knew. In his mind’s eye,
he replayed the scenes with detached—almost clinical—apprehension: Mr. Hyde swinging the
statuette into Service102’s head; the man’s skull caving inward like a piece of rotten fruit; blood
spurting out over the bed and against the wall; the spray of blood that, in the horrid slow motion
of reanimated memories, hit his—
Jacket.
88
The night abruptly dissolved in a blaze of light every bit as bright as the fire before him,
but with considerably more chill.
Too late, Weed realized he had blood on his jacket. Service102’s blood. Incriminating
evidence of the worst kind.
His heart squeezed tight against his spine as he looked first right then left. He was certain
the eyes of every person present were on him now, on his blood splattered jacket. It wasn’t much,
was not even particularly noticeable. But if just one person saw it and brought it to the wrong
person’s attention, then damn!
He thought about removing the jacket, but it was no more than one or two degrees out,
maybe even below zero. Wouldn’t it look suspicious for him to remove his jacket in this cold?
Let alone carrying it around afterwards. Once again, his clinical mind worked the problem,
searching for a reasonable explanation for the blood. He found only two: the murderous date
with Service102 or the act of an experienced physician helping out at the scene of a tragedy.
He chose the latter.
Weed folded his hands across his front, as if bundling against the cold, and watched as
the firemen brought first one, then a second victim out of the burning house across from 237
Powel Post Road. He ran to them, announced himself a doctor come to help, all the while
surveying the victims with his eyes. He appeared to look at them with the calm resolve of a
trauma surgeon, as if trying to decide who could be saved and who could not.
The truth however, was that he looked at them through the simple eyes of a man bent on
self preservation, looking to see which had more blood, which would give him the better
explanation for the blood starting to congeal in little dots on the gray Eddie Bauer jacket he now
wore. He decided quickly and turned to the first victim, a woman of about forty. She had severe
burns over much of her upper body, great swaths of skin missing from her arms, and the
paramedic was having little luck placing an all important IV in her foot.
“I’m a surgeon,” he said, stepping up into the warm ambulance. “Let me help. Give me a
16 gauge needle and I’ll cannulate the femoral vein.”
Despite the bustling activity around him, and the gravity of the situation, Weed presented
the calm façade of a surgeon in control. He was completely Dr. Jekyll now.
The paramedic eyeballed him, hesitating only slightly. Perhaps he was relieved to have
the help, or maybe just too busy to argue. Either way he passed Weed the necessary implements.
He watched him pull the woman’s nightshirt up to her waist, exposing her unclad groin
underneath. No time for modesty here.
Weed found a pulse in the crease of the woman’s groin. He knew the importance of
getting this IV and murmured a brief prayer under his breath. Even the bravest surgeon risks
somebody else’s life, but this time it was his life on the line. It made the situation more real than
it had ever been before.
If he missed, if he hit the vein as the paramedic hoped and not the artery as he needed, the
bleeding would be minimal and there would be scant excuse for another attempt. The paramedic
would be content but sooner or later somebody would ask where all the blood on the doctor’s
jacket came from.
Sooner or later, somebody would find Service102.
Sooner or later, somebody would put two and two together and, well, the electric chair
89
wouldn’t be far behind. When he was done frying, the burnt woman he was now working on
would look like she’d a moderately bad sunburn compared to his fried ass.
Arteries pulsate, veins don’t. Med school, day one. He knew the vein, which carried
blood toward the heart and would thus disseminate any life saving medications delivered through
it rapidly throughout the body, lay just to the inside of the pulsing artery. Nerve, artery, vein,
from outside to inside, he’d learned in freshman anatomy at Stanford Med. He’d finished first in
his class in anatomy, then had used that formula a hundred times as an intern.
But just now he wasn’t interested in the vein, the vein wouldn’t bleed with enough gusto.
He needed the artery, needed its blood to geyser into the air and cover the sins that the night,
with its unfortunate orange glow, could not. But the artery, with its blood moving away from the
heart and toward her foot, would be useless as a lifeline to instill medications that might save the
woman. Med school, third year.
It was pure and simple: Dr. Jekyll would go after the vein; Mr. Hyde the artery. Which
would Main go after?
Weed was not a healer tonight. Tonight he was a phantom, a monster feeding on the souls
of others. The instinct for self preservation was strong and Weed the phantom went after the
artery. As much as a starving vampire, he needed the blood.
Mr. Hyde felt again for the faint pulse of the artery and, feigning incompetence, Weed
punctured the vessel with the faint pulse—his life, not hers, was in the balance here—and was
rewarded with a pulsating stream of crimson red. One, two, three spurts of the red liquid pumped
outward and struck the kneeling doctor in the abdomen, covering the lower half of his jacket.
The paramedic gasped at the apparent mistake and reached to cover the needle, while Hyde
innocently slid a hand along his own jacket to smear the blood stain.
A moment later, as both the paramedic and the surgeon looked on, the woman’s heart
gave out. Stressed by the shock of so much fluid loss and fatigued by more than a billion beats, it
couldn’t find the strength for even one more. Immediately, Weed began chest compressions. The
futile effort lasted only a few minutes however, until the paramedic placed a hand on his
shoulder. Weed turned and saw the medic shake his head no.
“She’s dead,” he said. “You’ve done all you could. Thanks.”
†††
As if praying, Weed remained knelt with his left hand on the dead woman’s chest. As he
did so, the paramedic noticed not only the blood on the man’s jacket, but also the stub of the little
finger on the surgeon’s left hand. It caught his attention all the more because he’d never heard of
a surgeon with a missing finger and wondered for just a moment if the man had told the truth
about his occupation.
With a little more thought, he decided that at the very least the man must be a physician
on account of the way he carried himself. His manner was too calm not to be a doctor, he
decided.
†††
90
It took an almost monumental effort for Weed to clear his mind, but when he did, he was
instantly transported to a place where gravity had no meaning, where night didn’t exist, and the
light was brighter and warmer than any fire had ever been. Down the long tunnel he went,
floating out of body, so light in form he seemed only to exist but not truly to be. Now he was at
the end of the tunnel, and the woman before him glowed with an aura he had not seen before,
possessed an ageless beauty breathtaking to behold.
Standing now on the banks of a small creek, the woman stepped across and into the arms
of a man, equally as handsome as she was beautiful. They were gone a moment later, having not
once looked back.
Isaac sat in the grass and listened to the bubbling brook as the water played over the
pebbles and small rocks strewn in its path. He made no effort to cross the shallow stream, knew
it was not his time. Nonetheless, he felt a warmth here he’d felt nowhere else, a presence.
He’d last seen Jasmine here, beside the still waters that now calmed his soul. He felt her
here still, could almost smell her when he closed his eyes. He couldn’t fathom why his precious
daughter had been taken from him, but here it didn’t seem to matter, here she was all around him.
Here, her essence lingered the way a sweet perfume lingers in the nose long after it has gone
from the room. Here she was not Jasmine, cold and pale and lifeless—but Jaz, vibrant and alive,
out to save the Giant Pandas.
The paramedic’s hand on his shoulder abruptly pulled Weed away from his seat beside
the still waters, away from his contentment, and back into a world where he felt he’d never be
content again.
For the moment though, the hammering in his head stopped.
Mr. Hyde and the Four Horsemen were nowhere to be found.
†††
Seth’s headache had virtually incapacitated him now for almost two full days, growing in
intensity like some evil monster inside him, looming ever larger with the passage of each hour.
He imagined the monster as a fetus, poking, kicking and prodding the inner sanctum of his skull
until there would be nothing left of the brain residing there but pulp—gray but otherwise no
different from remnants at the bottom of a carton of orange juice. He imagined these pulpy
remains seeping out through his ears each night and leaving a crusty remnant on his pillow. He’d
begun to consciously check his pillow each morning for such signs. So far nothing, but you never
knew about such things.
Jenny White and Seth waited in the basement, outside of the room that housed the
magnet, so powerful a small piece of metal in the wrong place could become a lethal weapon as
it flew, in ghostly animation, across the room under the unseen magnetism. The physicians hoped
the MRI would show them a window into the boy’s head, and hopefully a view of any monster
residing there.
Seth was so heavy he just barely squeezed into the MRI tube. So close and cramped was
91
the long tube that he felt the ripples of his breathing as Weed currents bouncing off the tube
above him. He tried to suppress a vision of himself lying in a coffin, a vision that came to him as
soon as the stretcher was pushed into the dark confines of the claustrophobic MRI tunnel. When
Seth was pushed into the depths of the tube, he was at the mercy of his mind in the darkness. The
effect was all too much like being casketed. It didn’t take much for him to carry the illusion still
further. He imagined himself being buried alive—the great whop, whop, whop of the magnet as
it rotated around him morphed into vast shovelfuls of dirt landing on the wood of the casket’s
top.
Seth closed his eyes trying to blot out the vision. It didn’t work though, and he began to
shake uncontrollably, began to cry like a baby, began to scream and claw at the ceiling of the
tube.
“Let me out! Please, let me out!”
A moment later, he was out of the tube and walking up the stairs to the door again. Step,
then drag. Step, then drag. Step, then drag. The climb was interminable and when he finally
reached the door, he pushed against it gently. It opened and a wind as cold as any he’d ever
experienced blew from within, chilling Seth almost to his very soul. He stopped and wiped at the
scar across his forehead with the back of his hand.
Then he stepped through the door, hoping to find greater warmth on the other side.
†††
The technician working the controls of the MRI heard the pleas of the child and knew the
study would be useless, that to continue presently would yield no useful data. It took time to
focus the magnets, as long as seven minutes for some images, and during all that time the boy
had to lie absolutely still. Any movement, even that associated with breathing, degraded the
images.
Breathing could be dealt with by the software, his intense shaking and crying could not.
She didn’t blame him though, she knew the machine had a character all its own. Once
buried in its depths, it wasn’t rare for adults to turn into blithering idiots. For a child as enormous
as Seth, the close confines of the MRI unit were an open invitation to whatever demons resided
within his psyche. After just one picture had been obtained, she terminated the study.
The technician moved to the door and opened it. She nonchalantly walked across the
room to the MRI table and pulled the stretcher containing the boy back and out of the unit. It was
an act she’d performed hundreds of times in the past.
She would never do it again.
Instead, she would very likely never forget the next image she saw and, from that
moment forward, would spend the rest of her life, however short that might be, questioning her
sanity.
If she could question anything at, that is.
†††
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Isaac Weed incised the scalp with a deftness borne more of habit than skill after perhaps
two or three thousand operations. He cut to the bone and carefully turned the flap of skin and
muscle down over the forehead. He did this delicately, so as not to damage the small branch of
the facial nerve found just in front of the ear.
Weed was completely on top of his game this morning. He felt rejuvenated, almost born
again. He was like a man that had broiled ten days in the scorching heat of the desert, his tongue
swollen and black from lack of water, now finally and miraculously revived by a spring of water
so sweet it tasted of honey. Although he slept only an hour after dispatching Service102 and had
done what he could for the woman (he hadn’t killed her, she’d no doubt been beyond saving
from the moment of the explosion he decided), he felt good enough to suppose he’d gotten his
first really good night of rest in more than a month.
The queer hadn’t been found amidst all the commotion of the fire, so far as he knew. He
supposed the body still lay where he’d left it, in the back bedroom of the house at 237 Powel
Post Road. There was no way now he could be connected to the dead man. The killing was a
random one as far as the police would be concerned. Weed had, of course, been careful to
dispose of the statuette, tossing it into the Mississippi river on his way to work.
In retrospect, the only clumsiness about the whole thing had been the blood splatters on
his own jacket. He was proud of the way he had handled even that glitch however. Yes, all things
considered, he felt like a new man. Things had not gone quite the way he’d anticipated, but the
ends were the same regardless of the means. He’d visited Jasmine, had felt her presence, if only
for a moment. And that was what really counted.
God how he missed her.
Weed placed the drill to the skull. A hole, properly placed, could afford access to the
orbit, the anterior fossa, or the middle fossa. These compartments within the skull were the
recesses that cradled the brain in all its majesty, protecting it with a formidable embrace of bone.
To violate the sanctity of the human skull and enter the brain proper, with any hope of returning a
patient to something of their former self, one had to learn the shape and form of these various
nooks and crannies around which the brain arranged itself. To do less was the province of those
who would bludgeon and butcher. And while he might at times seem less, in the controlled and
exacting environment of the operating room, Weed was a surgeon and healer, not a bludgeoner,
certainly not a butcher.
Dr. Weed’s assistant kept up a constant stream of water where man-made metal and Godmade bone collided as the drill spun and bone dust flew into the air around the head, hidden as it
was by the sterile green drapes that allowed Weed to think of his patient more as an anonymous
entity than a living, breathing person.
Opening the skull, for all its awe and mystery, is a surprisingly easy undertaking, no more
difficult than fine woodworking, with all its attention to detail, might be. Both have an assembly
of the requisite tools, and Weed, a frustrated carpenter in his own right, knew how surprisingly
similar they were. He had considered more than once that a skilled cabinet maker might not feel
so out of place in the operating room, except perhaps for the cold sterility that permeates
everything in the surgeon’s version of a workshop.
And, of course, the blood.
93
Once the drill spun through the skull in several places, Weed used a side cutting saw to
connect the holes together, a sort of a living connect-the-dots, and the piece of disarticulated
skull was easily lifted out. He stared down at the surgical field, looking not at the brain, but at the
tough leathery covering that encased it like the amniotic sac surrounding a baby. He carefully cut
through this final barrier to germs and man alike and blood tinged spinal fluid spilled out, the
brain swollen and dusky behind it.
“Urine output?” the surgeon asked.
“1200 cc’s,” came the answer from the other side of the drapes. “Had a hundred of
mannitol at the incision.”
“Okay, good.” Weed turned toward the scrub working beside him. “I’m gonna need a
ventricular catheter and a 10 cc syringe.”
The skull is actually a vault, one designed to exacting specifications. It is a closed box
that does not expand and thus has a fixed volume. Under normal circumstances, this is okay. But
when wounded, the brain swells like any other piece of flesh, except no other piece of flesh is
encased in an unyielding box. As the brain swells, the pressure of it pressing against the skull
increases. At some critical point, the brain will seek a way out of the skull anyway it can. This
herniation is the chief and ever present opponent of the neurosurgeon. Its consequences can be
severe, commonly fatal.
The head Dr. Isaac Weed was now working on held such a wounded brain. An artery deep
within had ruptured, the resultant jet of blood ripping through the surrounding brain tissue and
wreaking havoc on its owner, who was now locked in a life and death struggle with Dr. Isaac
Weed at its center.
†††
When planet Seth passed through the doorway, thin Seth emerged on the other side to a
sickly odor. Rancid, he thought, the faint odor of decaying meat. The meadow, no warmer than
the landing at the top of the stairs had been, seemed darker than normal and it took several
minutes for his eyes to adjust.
He made his way toward the stream in the clearing.
A twig snap and Seth turned his head. Something, a branch perhaps, crashed over the
crown of his head and he crumpled to the ground. He felt blackness overtaking him, felt himself
disappearing into some nameless void that seemed to swallow him whole. For an instant, no
longer, a sick and sour odor assaulted his nose.
With his last instant of vision, a gaunt and emaciated creature with hollow, malevolent
eyes caught the corner of his vision.
Then nothing.
†††
As the middle-aged MRI technician walked across the room she smelled vomit and hoped
94
the boy hadn’t upchucked in her MRI unit. Damn, she thought, thinking of the mess she’d have
to clean up. It was the one part of the job she hated. She pulled the stretcher back and out of the
claustrophobic tube, shivering slightly against the cold that had rather oddly crept into the room.
She thought for a moment, perhaps the amount of time it took her heart to fill with blood
before squeezing it out again, how the stretcher held not the oversized boy she’d placed upon it
only moments before, but rather the broken and shriveled remains of some long dead creature
that might well have been a body exhumed from the grave. During that single heartbeat, the thing
before her—and it was clearly a thing and not a who—was clad in dusky gray, almost black skin,
hideous in its lack of vitality. The decomposing face appeared human, or more to the point,
inhuman.
The skin was drawn taunt over the underlying facial bones and was devoid of a nose, it
having caved-in and left a triangular scaffolding in its stead. The dark eyes were eerily silent,
haunting in their hollowness and squirming with movement—maggots the tech realized too late.
The thing had teeth as black as coal and a slack jaw that gaped open, in the midst of a scream she
imagined.
She rubbed at her arms, feeling the crawl of worms infesting her skin. For a single, long
breath she inhaled a sickly rancid odor. Rotting meat, she thought—no, worse...rotting flesh.
What lay before her—and this came to her mind unbidden—was death at the top of its
game. Gaunt, emaciated, and ugly.
Whatever it was, it was gone as soon as it registered on the technician’s eyeballs, even
before the image went from retina to cerebral cortex. Her reaction was akin to touching a hot
stove and pulling her finger back before feeling the heat. But in this case, the reaction hadn’t
been fast enough, the damage had been done. Her brain had been seared.
She screamed with such piercing effect it sounded as if every shriek of terror that had
ever been heard anywhere had been mere practice.
She thrust her arms into the air, palms out before her, fending off some unseen attacker.
She backed up and knocked an IV pole over. It clattered to the ground with a loud crash but she
was beyond caring. Probably beyond hearing. Her mind, every neuron and fiber, was focused on
the singularly horrific image of the black teethed monster and it was absolutely terrifying. No
other entity, no other thought, no other idea entered her consciousness. It was as if a laser had
burned the gaunt image onto the film of her retina. So completely overwhelmed was her mind, so
overloaded was its vital circuitry, that it simply and completely shut down. A computer
incapacitated by an invading virus.
The former technician slumped to the floor, her breathing and heart beat maintained only
by the automaticity of her lower brainstem, that most primitive part of the brain that functions
something akin to a computer operating system—call it human 1.0—whose only goal is to keep
the organism alive at any cost. Her various bodily orifices opened and the room turned fetid. The
woman, her mind now a barren, post-apocalyptic wasteland, fell back against the wall, her open
eyes empty and unseeing, like a computer screen with nothing more than a cursor blinking ad
infinitum, never again to respond to input.
†††
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Dr. Isaac Weed, surgeon turned murderer turned surgeon again, had stared death in the
face many times over the years. He did so again now as he struggled to dissect out the weak spot
on the blood vessel that, by way of bursting into his patient’s brain, threatened to take the man on
the voyage down the long, bright tunnel and across the creek. The weak spot, an aneurysm, was
not unlike a small blister, though perhaps more raised and sac-like, with a neck supporting a
thinned out dome. It was the dome that had ruptured.
Weed’s goal was to put a clip across the neck, thereby isolating the dome from further
bleeding. The risk of another rupture would be eliminated. This was neurosurgery in its truest
form, brain surgery at its most concentrated. The risk of near certain death should the exposed
aneurysm rupture in the operating room made the danger palpable.
The room was cool, the thermostat at its lowest setting at Weed’s demand, yet the sweat
beaded his forehead as if he operated in a sauna. He peered through the $300,000 surgical
microscope, maneuvering its focus to best see the neck of the aneurysm. The dome was adherent
to the left optic nerve, actually indented it several millimeters, producing a small crater in the
nerve. Despite what must have been several years of constant pulsing against the nerve by the
dome of the aneurysm, the man hadn’t noticed any changes in his vision. But if Weed dallied too
long here, put too much traction on this optic nerve, his patient would never again see out of his
left eye.
In the world of the brain surgeon, this was high priced real estate, not the highest to be
sure, but high enough to get him sweating in an otherwise cold room.
Weed’s hand was rock steady, not as steady as it might have been if he was only playing a
doctor on TV, but truly and remarkably steady nonetheless. To those gathered in the room, his
hands and the tiny instruments they held hardly appeared to move as he dared to push the
aneurysm and its dome to and fro, freeing it from the optic nerve.
Under the microscope of course, the movements appeared as great leaps, the instruments
swooping in and out of the gray valleys over the surface of the brain with great precision. In the
mind of Dr. Weed, each movement was a gigantic leap of faith honed by years of experience. No
Mr. Hyde here. Nor even the reserved Dr. Jekyll. Here he was Dr. Isaac Weed, neurosurgeon,
fully in his element.
As Dr. Weed cleared the final remnants of old blood and damaged useless brain from the
region of the aneurysm dome, his own heart rate rose. He marveled at the moment. No matter
how many times he did this operation, he never failed to think how the next ten minutes would
determine not only his patient’s entire future, but that of his children and his children’s children.
Damn, if Jasmine had lived, it might even have affected her future, he briefly mused. It was the
old sob about a butterfly flapping its wings in China, and in New York a man gets hit by a taxi
cab. Or perhaps he doesn’t.
Bullshit, Weed thought, not really believing in the butterfly. How could he after his
exploits the previous night?
His hand so steady it might have been anchored in concrete, the not so superstitious
surgeon maneuvered the tiny clip over the optic nerve and between the two vessels from which
the aneurysm arose. At the last moment, he held his breath so that even this tiny distraction
would not show up in his movements. He slid the clip up against the aneurysm and down along
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its neck. Resembling a short bobby pin, he allowed the pin to close on itself, pinching the neck.
He toured the surroundings quickly making sure nothing else had been caught in the pin, then
punctured the dome with a small needle. A figment of red dribbled out, like a pale ghost of the
blood that had spurted from the dome previously and started the trouble in the first place.
The monster had been quieted. Apparently, this man’s future, his children’s future, and
his children’s children’s futures would unfold as previously expected.
Weed was every bit a savior.
97
Ten: Of Funerals and Families
At the exact moment the middle-aged MRI technician’s world imploded into nothing,
Jenny White’s world found renewed meaning. The elderly black woman was sitting down the
hall from the magnet room, in a dimly lit alcove with the usual array of outdated magazines,
institutional furniture, and stained carpet. She was mindlessly thumbing through an old issue of
TIME magazine. The magazine was nothing more than a prop though, something to occupy her
hands, the way other people might squeeze a rubber ball or smoke a cigarette.
What really occupied her was the disquieting feeling that had plagued her since the early
morning hours, from when she and Seth had touched. Something had passed between them in
that moment, something disturbing.
There are no insects.
She couldn’t figure the meaning of the odd phrase. Seth had thought the words just before
drifting back to sleep. Or maybe she’d only thought he had. Maybe she’d read them, or
something resembling them. She didn’t think so, but it was possible. Or maybe she’d missed
something entirely.
She had turned that vague but uncomfortable notion over and over in her mind, examined
it from every angle, looking for a fault. She had picked at the thing all morning, squeezed it,
massaged it, rolled it through first one side of her brain and then the other. As the morning had
passed into afternoon, a sense of unease had matured with it, had become more of a foreboding
sentiment. Something about the day was wrong and, try as she might, she couldn’t quite figure
what that something was.
Until the scream.
The high pitched, awful sound lanced through the old woman like a machete. In another
time and place, it might have been the feral call of a wounded animal. But here, in the basement
of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, it was just discernible as human, and that may have been the
most disconcerting thing about it—its familiarity.
It was the kind of sound that, having once heard it, rang in the memory forever, never to
98
be forgotten. Jenny White had certainly never forgotten. She recognized it immediately for what
it was, a disfiguring scar that was still rough and pock-marked even after fifty years.
She had heard it just once before, but the discords of that unholy scream came back to her
like a burnt offering from hell.
†††
Two months after Jasmine died, Isaac Weed reentered the world of the living.
He had kept to himself for virtually every minute of the eight weeks that followed the
frozen agony that was his daughter’s final moment on this earth. He hadn’t uttered a single word
at the funeral or the reception that followed, and had found no consolation in the company of his
wife.
Melanie Weed chose to do her grieving first in the company of her mother and later her
entire family. Her mother arrived only hours after the girl’s death, and the three of them—Isaac,
Melanie, and his mother-in-law—stayed together in that lonely house for one miserable,
intolerable week.
Jasmine’s presence was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. As they moved
through the house, each room was haunted by the ghost child as surely as if she still resided there
—instead of two by six foot plot at St. Mary’s Cemetery. Melanie hadn’t been able to wash the
girl’s worn clothing, either because Jasmine still inhabited them in her familiar odor, or because
that same lingering odor caused Melanie to dissolve into inconsolable sobs.
In the end, it was Melanie’s mother who suggested they leave the haunted home.
Four days after the funeral, the threesome boarded a plane for the one hour flight west to
Bismarck, North Dakota, Melanie’s hometown and still the year-round home of her mother. Isaac
stayed only two days, found the complete absence of anything related to his daughter more
burdensome than her lingering presence at the family’s home on the lake in Stillwater,
Minnesota. His wife needed the respite, not him. As in so many other areas, the two of them had
different needs even in grieving. They couldn’t find strength in each other, not then anyway.
He returned to Stillwater and to the big empty house on the lake alone. He didn’t leave it
for over a month.
When he finally did leave the house, it was to return to Bismarck and to his wife. The two
of them had spoken on the phone, increasingly frequently as it turned out. After almost two
months apart, two months of each healing in their own way, they discovered perhaps there was
something in their togetherness worth preserving.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome onboard Northwest Airlines flight #337 to Bismarck,”
the flight attendant’s voice was barely audible and Weed wondered why it was we could put a
man on the moon but couldn’t produce a decent public address system for airplanes. “My name’s
Lacey Calhoun and I’m the lead flight attendant.”
Isaac Weed didn’t hate flying, he abhorred it. But it was a seven hour drive between
Minneapolis and Bismarck and his wife was in no state to withstand that, so he chanced the brief
one hour trip on Northwest. Weeks earlier, when he’d made this same trip, he’d been too numb
emotionally and psychologically to even realize he was on an airplane, let alone garner any fear
99
or anxiety. Now, however, both were in abundant supply.
He was paralyzed on planes. At first, he’d sit quiet, taking short, measured breaths. He’d
roll a magazine up in his hands and the print would smear as sweat collected on his palms. He’d
tell himself it was alright, that the mechanics had done their job, that the flight controllers were
doing theirs, that the pilots were at the controls and all was well. He’d emphasize there was no
way a baggage handler could have left a latch open—would not the pilots have seen the red light
of such on their instrument panel? He’d think of all the things that could go wrong, would recall
the crash of a jumbo jet in Canada some years earlier after technicians, hell everyone involved,
had forgotten to top off the fuel tanks.
The fucking jet had run out of fuel in midair, had fallen from the sky like a rock. Of
course it had. Nothing special about airplanes, they obey the laws of physics like everything else.
He’d think about that, about how accidents didn’t just happen, how even one break in the chain
of events leading up to that stupendously stupid incident would have averted disaster.
He’d think about how life was so random, so fucking random.
Jasmine was proof of that—you can’t argue that fact, he thought as he sat listening to that
damn flight attendant and her never ending, useless monologue.
“Your seat bottom cushion may be used as a flotation device. Pull up and remove the
cushion. Upon exiting the aircraft...”
He seldom got out of his seat on a plane, as if the act of walking down the aisle might
unbalance the load. The monotonous whine of the engines, the constant whoosh of the air
streaming by the fuselage, the gut dropping sensation as the nose rose or fell at the command of
the pilots, all of these things twisted into an agony of perversion in Weed’s mind.
As the nose of the plane did finally leave the ground, the aircraft angled steeply and Weed
reached for the vomit bag in the seatback in front of him.
Damn he hated flying.
†††
Zachary Weed, Isaac’s grandfather, was only forty-seven years old when he died after a
brief illness. Esophageal cancer. His death was a hard one, his last days and weeks marred by an
increasingly severe difficulty swallowing. He had to spit constantly. The resultant dehydration
was troubling, and the mirror betrayed the gradual emaciation as he struggled to eat.
The worst of his tortures in those final hellish days—the worst by far—was the constant
smell of sour saliva, a fetid odor that might well be the stench of imminent death itself. The
nauseating odor wafted from the ever present cloth—later a bucket as the disease progressed and
twisted around the passage to his stomach like a pair of strangling hands—that he spat into every
minute or two lest he drown in his own spittle. For the once proud surgeon, this was more than
an embarrassment, it was a complete loss of dignity that even his stout mind, especially his stout
mind, was unable to accept. In the end, he hadn’t accepted it.
Zachary Weed committed suicide.
Unable to swallow any longer, he blew his brains out with an old shotgun, taking utmost
care to first cover his head so as not to soil the walls more than absolutely necessary. He was like
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that, neat and organized to the last. With his neurosurgeon’s knowledge of the brain’s anatomy,
the shotgun was a certain death and certain was what he’d apparently wanted at that time. He
might have settled for a smaller gun, a pistol perhaps, but a shotgun was what he had, so a
shotgun was what he used.
Weed chose the day of his death carefully. His most prized possession, a collection of
carefully detailed ledgers that had begun as a chronicle of a brain surgeon’s career and only later
become so much more, needed to be cared for. They could not go just anywhere, they could in
fact go to just one person. Only one person had any hint of their significance. Only one person
possessed the unique ability to care for them and watch over them until such time that they
would become useful.
That person was Jenny White.
Zachary Weed had been more than a healer, he’d been on a quest. As a physician, he
naturally recorded the plight of death and disease as it affected his patients and their lives, but as
with all things in all times, there was more to it than that. His preternatural access to the
disordered lives of so many tortured souls gained him a peek into the human condition as no one
before him had ever recorded. And he used that access to continue the search his ancient
forefathers had begun.
With each opportunity, he entered the death room and accompanied his patients on their
journey to the edge of life itself, a netherworld existing in shadowy parallel to this one. With his
gift of touching, Zachary Weed went repeatedly to that edge—an edge where life and death
intertwine in a macabre embrace—and then returned to record his travels in the ledgers. With
Jenny White as the lens that focused his abilities and opened the way, he was the ultimate voyeur
on more than a few occasions and saw the netherworld for what it was, a sea teeming with death
in all its manifestations. Most of those manifestations, the majority even, were happy and
magnificent. Others were full of poison.
The dark side that every child imagines is hiding in his closet when the lights go out and
the night creeps in is very real.
†††
On a plane en route from Minneapolis to Bismarck to reunite with his wife two months
after the death of their daughter Jasmine, Zachary Weed’s grandson Isaac sat in row 2A, a
window seat in first class one row behind the front bulkhead. He preferred window seats, no one
beside him that might force him to get up. For the first fifteen minutes of the flight, Weed sat
tense and pale, struggling to maintain some dignity. Not that the flight was at all bumpy, not that
that mattered one iota.
Exactly seventeen minutes into the flight, Weed had timed it and knew exactly how long
before touch down and safety, his discomfort was checked by a pungent, somewhat sour odor. It
reminded him of spoiled meat, only that wasn’t quite right he thought. He looked around at the
other passengers. The cabin was full of the usual assortment of bland scalps poking above their
seats. A combination of receding hairlines in the men and fuller heads in the women. Most of the
passengers were reading or sleeping. A few were in conversation with their neighbors. One or
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two had picked up the day’s newspaper and settled into it. A flight attendant was making her way
up the center aisle to the cockpit.
He sniffed for the air again. The sour smell was still there, stronger if anything. Odd that
nobody else had sensed it. He squirmed and this idea bounced around in his head until—
“Ladies and gentleman, this is the captain speaking. It appears we have a medical
emergency. Is there a physician on board that would be willing to help us out?”
The scratchy announcement was clear enough. Weed hesitated, thinking he didn’t want to
leave his seat. He was, first and foremost, a physician though, and if somebody was in trouble...
When nobody else came forward, Weed clicked his call light on.
“I’m a physician.”
“Oh thank God,” the flight attendant said with a look of palpable relief in her eyes.
“Please, follow me.”
They made their way to the middle of the aircraft. Weed’s skin pinked up slightly, the
paleness leaving him as he began to think like a physician. He paused only once, when the plane
dipped slightly as it hit a hole in the smooth air.
An elderly gent, eighty years old if he was a day, sat breathing hard in his seat near the
middle of the aircraft. Weed bent forward, noted the sweat on the man’s brow and the way he
pulled in short, quick gasps trying to fill his lungs. Weed noticed something else too.
The sour odor was strong here. Very pungent.
Weed nodded at the flight attendant. “Do you have any sort of medical kit. And oxygen.”
“Of course, right away.” She moved to the back of the plane. The other passengers
cleared a way for her. Several offered to assist in any way they could.
“I’m a doctor,” Weed said, his voice calm, clinical. “Where’s the pain?”
“Chest, hurts...like a goddamn elephant sitting here.” He indicated a spot just to the left of
his breastbone with his hand.
“Anybody with this man? Anybody know?”
“No, I think he was traveling alone,” a young woman seated in the aisle said. “He was
sitting there fine and then just started doing this.”
“Can’t b-r-e-a-t-h-e.” The gasping man drew the word out, like it might be his last.
Weed took an impression of the man. Thin, though he didn’t have the look of the
chronically ill. His lips and finger tips were blue. The man’s eyes were looking at him, pleading,
maybe begging. They had replaced the man’s voice with an animation of their own. I don’t want
to die, those eyes said.
“Do you smell that?” Weed asked the young woman across the aisle.
“Smell what?”
“Never mind.” He knew then what he should have realized at that first moment. He
hadn’t expected it, that’s all. If he’d been back at Minneapolis General he’d have known straight
away. Here, thirty thousand feet over the countryside, it was the last think he’d expected.
Nobody else on board could smell it because nobody else on board had the gift. Or the insanity,
he thought, thinking that was more to the point.
It was the smell of death.
Kneeling beside the passenger, Weed reached across and slid two fingers over the
stricken man’s adam’s apple and down the groove along the left side of his neck. The pulse there
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was thin, rapid, and irregular. The man’s heart was failing.
The flight attendant returned with the medical kit and the oxygen. Weed placed a mask
over the man’s face and opened the valve on the tank. It might have helped a little, but would
never be enough. The old man’s lips turned a more chalky shade of blue and his breathing eased
a tad. No change in the odor though, a thin, putrid stink of the sort more likely found in a swamp
than an airplane at altitude.
“Oh my god,” Weed said soto voce.
He stood and leaned close in at the attendant’s ear. “Tell the captain we must land
immediately, that this man needs medical attention urgently.”
She fluttered her eyelids at him them headed down the aisle to the cockpit.
The medical kit didn’t have much. A bottle of aspirin, two nitroglycerin tablets, and a lot
of gauze. He placed one of the tablets under the old man’s tongue, hoping its ability to increase
blood flow to the heart would buy the old guy’s ticker a few extra beats. He doubted it though.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. As you may be aware there’s a
medical emergency in progress. I’ve been informed by the physician that it is quite serious. We
are diverting to Fargo and have been cleared to land there. We should be on the ground in fifteen
minutes.”
“Did he say fifteen minutes?” Weed asked.
“Yes,” the woman across the aisle said.
Weed guessed that’d be about ten minutes too late, but said nothing. His demeanor
remained calm, focused, and clinical. “Well then, we should make this man more comfortable.
You gentleman, help me get him out of this chair and onto the floor in the aisle.”
They lifted him gently out of his seat and laid him on his back. His frame, small as it was,
still filled the narrow aisle. A pillow was placed under his head for comfort and Weed elevated
his legs with several folded blankets. The old guy continued to breathe only with great difficulty.
His lips were once again intensely blue, an icy duskiness without any radiance whatsoever. The
old man’s cheeks had lost their color as well. Weed bent close to the man’s chest, the swamp
odor stronger than ever, and Weed wrinkled his nose. He listened as the last beats of that worn
ticker played out with a dull thud against the old geezer’s ribs.
†††
Isaac’s father, Zachary Weed, was eight years old when his own father died. The elder
Weed had been a healer, as had been his father before him back as far as anyone could trace the
family. The cause of the elder Weed’s demise was lost to the ages, but the man Zachary Weed
became remembered vividly the day his father was buried.
They laid the man out in a casket of plain oak and dressed him in a dark, almost black
suit. It was of a style the young Zach couldn’t recall ever having seen his father wear in life.
Someone, the undertaker he supposed, had painted his face in fleshy pink tones to hide the blue
ashen look of death. He remembered it well because the man in the casket had looked mostly like
somebody else, someone’s idea of how the man might have looked in life perhaps, but nothing at
all like how his father had looked.
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To the day of his own death, Zachary Weed remembered standing in the bright sun beside
his mother. She was dressed in the black veil of mourning and would continue to wear black for
years to come. He wore his Sunday best, although it was not Sunday. His arms had grown longer
than those of the suit and stuck out awkwardly at the ends of the sleeves, though this apparently
had not bothered either him or his mother at the time. As the two of them stood there, surrounded
by scores of friends and loved ones—Dr. Weed his father had been a beloved man and an
eminently successful physician—the young Zach had fought to remain stoic. He’d cried that
morning but told himself that was enough.
The preacher, Zach had heard him speak every Sunday for eight years but never with as
much emotion as he mustered on that day, read slowly from a worn and tattered bible. As if the
words were almost too much even for him to bear.
In later years, Zachary Weed the man often thought how amazing it was that one minute
and twenty-eight seconds could have so profound an effect on an entire life. That was the length
of the blackout as reported in the town newspaper the day after his father’s funeral. On that black
day so long ago, as Zach stood in the sun and listened to the choked words of the minister, the
world suddenly stopped and turned on end, indeed flipped entirely upside down. It was midday,
but the sky darkened until the day was as black as the night sans moon. The eight year old boy
was suddenly frightened, certain the sky had somehow broken, maybe the sun had burned out
entirely. He groped in the darkness for his mother’s hand and found it, but then realized it lacked
the delicate feel he was used to. The hand was too large, the fingers more calloused and rough.
This was a masculine hand and he looked up to find its owner.
In the darkness of a solar eclipse at noon on the day of his father’s funeral, his own father
stood beside him and held his hand in the manner of any loving parent, dead or not.
He didn’t remember the figure as ghostly pale like a specter from beyond the grave, nor
did it look like the stranger from the coffin he’d seen earlier. Rather, it was the father he’d known
and loved and played ball with, the man that had disciplined him when he was bad and praised
him when he was good. His smell, it would stay with Zachary Weed the man long after that day,
was of Chesterfield cigarettes, his father’s favorite smoke.
The visitor looked down upon the boy with eyes that bespoke love and warmth. Zach
returned the look, his mind caught somewhere between disbelief and stilled reality. Their eyes
met and the distance between them dissolved to nothing as the boy wrapped his arms around the
vision’s waist and squeezed with every fiber of his being. Standing in the darkness of the midday,
any fear that had been in the boy drained out and Zach had felt a vibrancy come alive within
himself that he’d never feel again.
An awakening it was, though he wouldn’t truly realize that for years to come.
Immediately, as if by some grand telepathy between the boy and the nascent spirit, Zach
understood he was a man now, that he would forever more be Zachary the man and not Zach the
boy. Just eight, he no longer had the luxury of a childhood. He understood it was his place to
carry on the work of his father and of his forefathers, that time was precious and that the measure
of a man was not to be made in years lived but in lives helped.
A man’s worth, the manboy now gathered, was not in how he handled the good times, but
rather how he responded to the bad ones. He realized a rudimentary understanding of the great
circle that was life and that death was nothing to be feared. Death was rather a new beginning,
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one to be respected. His father’s death was not to be mourned, rather his life was to be
celebrated. Then and there, Zach made a promise to himself he’d become a healer in the guise of
his father, an appropriate celebration to a life lived well.
As the boy stood there and hugged the specter that was his father, the father that was that
specter looked down upon his flesh and blood and saw the future, knew his son was strong and
would thrive in his absence. At the same time however, he knew the boy would never truly be
alone, that his blood coursed through this child’s veins and that just as his father and forefathers
had been with him through the years, so he and they would be with this boy through the times to
come.
Key-oak-QUI-ah, he thought, passing on the old and cryptic ways to his son. Key-oakQUI-ah.
The boy Zach, in his last moment before he would forever be Zachary the man, had tears
in his eyes despite the promise made to himself earlier in the day. He felt the sentiment his father
conveyed to him, his very being swaddled at that moment with a sense of security every bit like
the blankets that had swaddled him as a baby. Then he repeated the ancient word—
Key-oak-QUI-ah
—and knew that someday he’d continue the search started so long ago by his forefathers.
The minister had stopped talking as the night intruded upon the day and now began to
speak again as the world righted itself, the darkness abated, and the day slowly became day once
more.
The smell of chesterfield cigarettes gave way to the haughty French perfume his mother
wore and the waist Zach had been hugging so emphatically softened and became that of his
parent still living. Zach had continued his hug even then and his mother had hugged him back.
She had kissed him on the crown of his head, her tears fell into his hair and matted the strands
here and there, and he’d known his life would never be the same again. In the loss of his father,
he’d found new respect for the man and would not mourn. His name was Weed after all and the
Weeds were healers.
Apparently always had been, and perhaps always would be.
†††
The old geezer on the floor of the plane had lost the radiance of life. In its place, his skin
became ashen and blue-gray, as it does when death creeps forward and enters the humble body in
search of the soul. Isaac Weed, the latest in a long line of healers and physicians with the name of
Weed, placed his bare hand to the man’s neck once again, but this time he wasn’t feeling for a
pulse. This time, he wasn’t feeling at all.
He was touching.
As if a switch had flipped, the doctor’s left arm lit up with a searing pain and he felt as if
he was drowning. A crushing weight pressed upon his chest—the old man had been right to call
it an elephant sitting there. He tried to inhale, but the air had thickened impossibly and he had not
strength for the effort. He gasped and the searing pain traveled to his jaw and hung there, like a
dozen toothaches flaring in the left side of his mouth.
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The plane lurched to one side, a temporary spasm but enough to knock the doctor off
balance. Weed fell back and his hand came away from the dying man’s neck. The air was
suddenly light and robust, thin and breathable. Weed inhaled as ever before and withdrew back
into his own self. Opening his eyes, he saw the old geezer’s eyes roll ghoulishly up and back in
his head, the pupils hidden. He drooled from the corner of his mouth and a sickening gurgle
passed from his blue lips. The swamp pungency that had been present throughout began to
dissipate and Weed recognized the approach of death. He replaced his hand, clearing his mind
and touching once again.
The agony and the torment that had been present a moment before were gone, replaced
by a luxurious warmth that enveloped his soul to the core. He no longer felt the bumps of the
plane. He was near blinded by a bright light. An exploding sun would have been dimmer. Then
came the tunnel, not narrow and claustrophobic, but grand and wide and open. He followed the
old man down the passage, the man never looking back, never acknowledging him. He watched
as the old man stepped across the creek and disappeared into the mist beyond, a mysterious and
impenetrable mist somehow inviting at the same time. He came to the creek, a shallow brook
only inches deep, water running over small stones and pebbles with barely enough current to
produce tiny eddies here and there.
Weed had the sense the creek was both impossibly shallow and a great chasm between
worlds.
He didn’t attempt to cross it, somehow knew he couldn’t do so even if he tried. He stood
a moment, savored the serenity that seemed to flow like the waters of some unseen flood all
around him. He put his foot in the stream, he was somehow barefoot he now realized, and the
cool water wrapped his toes and played against his ankle.
A moment later he found himself seated on a large boulder in the middle of a vast
expanse of prairie. The wind rustled though the tall grass and the sun glimmered. In the distance,
he thought he saw a child beside another, larger stream. He squinted in the sunlight, his eyes
struggling to focus to the distant scene. Now he found himself moving, almost floating, across
the grassland toward the child. It was a little girl he saw, her hair floating in the gentle breeze.
She sat beside the creek, appeared to be writing something in the soft dirt. He couldn’t see her
face, she was too distant, but he could feel her presence nonetheless.
Jasmine.
And suddenly he was there, at the spot. The child was gone, though her presence, a
radiance that Weed had not felt since before his daughter had died, lingered. The warm presence
rejuvenated him, as if he had only that moment begun to live again. He folded his arms across his
chest and for one intense instant his daughter was back in his arms and he held her close, never
wanted to let her go. Then he looked down and saw a single word in the sand, the letters
scrawled in the loose hand of a child.
AFRAID
As his brain fought to register the word, the vibrant image of Jasmine in his arms
disintegrated and he was suddenly back on the plane looking down at the lifeless body of the old
geezer. A few minutes before, those eyes had talked to him. I don’t want to die those eyes had
broadcast.
Now they didn’t broadcast a goddamn thing. They’d gone dark, the way a light dies when
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the battery behind it dies.
He made his way back to his seat. As the plane descended through the clouds to the city
of Fargo, Weed couldn’t stop seeing that single word scrawled everywhere before him: on the
back of the seat in front of him; on the bulkhead beside him; even on the face of the flight
attendant as she came to thank him. And always in the tiny, loose hand of a child.
AFRAID
What could it mean? Had she written it? A message for him? Was she the one who was
afraid? Or was he suppose to be afraid? He might have ignored this last thought, but the fact was
that he was afraid, had been afraid from the moment he’d left her beside the creek the day she
died.
The look on her face at that moment had been one of disconsolation and he had been
afraid.
Was still afraid he now realized.
But afraid of what?
†††
After his father’s death, Zachary Weed left his childhood behind and attacked life with a
new found vigor that astounded all those around him. In time, those who had known the elder
Weed occasionally would see the spirit of that figure in the boy and later in the man he became.
Some might even have said he was possessed.
Dr. Zachary Weed served in the Pacific during the war and saw first hand the evil men do.
Later he would understand that the beast had roamed freely on the earth during that time and that
it would have been too dangerous to have shown himself, to have begun the search. After the
war, he returned to Minneapolis and settled down to practice his craft, which he expected would
be brain surgery. But from the day the dark skinned African-American woman arrived in his
office, his craft became something else altogether. Her presence had been compelling, and Weed
had understood immediately she had been sent to him with a purpose.
Key-oak-QUI-ah, she had said, the old word. His father’s word. That had been enough.
In her presence, Zachary Weed felt the charge of a new energy, not unlike that moment so
many years before when the day had prematurely turned to night and he’d hugged his father for
the last time. Key-oak-QUI-ah had been the word then as well and a similar energy had flowed
through him. Only this time the energy flowed not from without (he had supposed then that the
tingling he always felt after that day had somehow come from his father) but from within. It was
as if the presence of the black woman awakened something in him, something both wonderful
and fearsome at the same time. She had touched him in some manner he didn’t understand and
now he would touch others and the sum of it all he wrote in his journals. He was on a quest, her
quest, his father’s quest, the quest of countless forefathers before him.
When Jenny White went to see the good doctor on that afternoon in the Fall of 1946, she
came to him ostensibly as a patient but knew this healer was capable of so much more than
simply repairing mortal flesh and bone. She knew he was capable of peering into the soul. She
knew he was touched by the hand of God.
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She knew all of this because she had known his father, and his father’s father. In fact,
such is the chain of life, it was quite possible she had known all his father’s fathers for a
thousand years or more.
†††
In a hospital not so different from the one Zachary Weed had plied his trade in every bit
of a half century before, the same hideous scream that had reverberated off of the walls of
operating room three then echoed down the corridors now, as if some curious and horrific rip in
time had somehow propagated the dreadful shriek across five decades and into the present.
The sole surviving individual that had heard that terrible sound then, Jenny White became
the only person ever to hear it twice.
The moment the grisly scream reached her ears and banged her brain with the ghastly
twang of remembrance, Jenny White moved with the speed and agility of a woman only a
fraction of her age, whatever that might be, toward the place from which it emanated. Arriving at
the door of the magnet room, she entered to find Seth seated on the MRI table, looking at the
now figment of a woman crumpled on the floor beside the door.
Jenny White took one look at the beleaguered woman, pale and utterly devoid of any
facial expression whatsoever, and knew immediately she was beyond ever seeing anything again.
The old woman put her arms around the boy, that portion of his girth that she could, and turned
his gaze away from the catatonic technician. He numbly responded by embracing her back and
she held him, squeezed him to her until she could feel the strong and healthy beat of his heart
against her oversized breasts. The relentless pounding of the fist-sized muscle was proof enough
for the moment that the boy resided well this side of the edge.
She’d almost lost him, that much was apparent to her. It was also becoming increasingly
clear to Jenny White that if something wasn’t done, this little boy of fantastic size that had seen
so much woe already, that had survived ten minutes in a darkened and otherwise lifeless womb,
that had endured years of pain and agony, this little boy would indeed be lost. And she knew that
if he was lost, he would not simply drop over the edge of life, he would plunge over the jagged,
serrated edge of death.
She knew the eater of souls had found the Key-oak-QUI-ah’s hiding place and it was now
only a matter of time.
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Eleven: The Graveyard
At the back of Stenson’s Green, the banal and decaying trailer park that sprawled over the
better part of a Bismarck city block and might have served as the poster child for urban blight, a
weathered row of storage sheds leaned to and fro. There was one each for the various ill kept
prefabricated homes that seemed more to litter the plot of land at the corner of Ninth Street and
Burnt Boat Road than to actually populate it with the stuff of neighborhoods. The sheds, little
more than shacks, were not heated and the cold northern climate had intruded upon them with ice
brokering an uneasy alliance at every joint, crack, and fracture the structures possessed. The
outbuildings were in no better repair than any of the decrepit trailers that housed their owners,
and most were in considerably worse shape. But the shed with a raised #9 on its door seemed, in
singular comparison to the others, to have weathered well the ravages of frost and the vagaries of
time. And, though most held little more than the overflow that is the accumulated baggage of
life, the ninth shed harbored the particulars of life itself, or very nearly so.
For perhaps the first time in her very long life, a life steeped in truth and dedicated to the
idea that humanity was worth saving, Jenny White broke a promise. On the night following the
day that had seen the essence of death make first contact with her precious charge, the woeful
Seth Oberg, she found she must do exactly what she’d told the child she wouldn’t. When Seth
bedded down for the night, when he put head to pillow and exchanged the sterile reality of his
hospital room for the hopeful dreams of a little boy, Jenny White removed herself from that sick
room and returned to the hovel that was the small trailer at #9 Stenson’s Green. It was the place
that she and Seth had called home for several years and she had need of its comfort just then.
Under the scant light of a crescent moon, an eerie light, obscure and indistinct in its
wanderings, Jenny White took a key from her pocket. As she rolled the small object between the
fingers of her right hand, she didn’t need light to know it would unlock more than just the door to
the shed in front of her. She had retrieved the key only moments before, from a small hole behind
the wall in her bedroom where she’d placed it long ago.
As she stepped to the door of the shed, she couldn’t help but marvel how this long
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awaited day had finally arrived. She inserted the key into the lock and, though it had been years
since the mechanism had turned, it proved to be a stout one and the latch turned with no
hesitation, divine intervention perhaps having spared it from the severe cold that gripped all
around it.
The door swung outward, creaking and groaning as it went, apparently reluctant to yield
the passageway it had protected these several years. Jenny White peered inside, her mind
knowing what she would find but her eyes still awed by the sight of the single item present. A
large black and silver steamer trunk occupied one corner of the small room. She stood a moment,
a look of relief on her storied face though there was no way the trunk couldn’t have been there.
She seemed almost reluctant at first to approach the box, then took the two steps necessary to
bring her face to face with it. She ran her hand over it, remembering the day so many years
before when it had been entrusted to her by the dying Dr. Zachary Weed.
“Protect it with your life,” he’d said, “you will need it someday as surely as you need
sunlight to grow and air to breathe.” His prophetic words were the clearest he’d spoken in
several days, the cancer having tricked and violated his body.
“It shall be with me to the end of my days,” she’d answered, aware that the grave
prediction was all to certainly a warning that dare not be ignored.
“You’re the only one now. I’m so sorry I wasn’t stronger.” His haggard eyes filled with
tears then, a genuine sense of remorse he’d not been able to do more, that he was somehow
departing too soon, leaving the job unfinished.
“The great circle must be completed.” She had tears as well by then, had somehow
known it would be the last time they’d speak, at least in this world.
“The Key-oak-QUI-ah must be found,” he said, struggling to focus against the pain and
urging her to continue the search. “I couldn’t do it, you must. The beast will return.”
And now the moment was upon her. The beast had returned. The eater of souls was back.
Carefully, with the deference she would show a box of the most precious and rare gems—
or old and unstable dynamite—Jenny White lifted the heavy lid of the trunk. She allowed its
weight to bring it back against the wall behind it. Inside, twenty-two leather bound volumes lay
one against the other, each in its place. Each occupied exactly the same spot Jenny White had so
carefully placed them in over thirty years before. No dust had permeated the walls of the trunk
and the ledgers were pristine in their appearance, though the pages had yellowed with age.
One by one, the elderly woman, deceptively frail in appearance, carried the bound
volumes the fifty yards or so from the shack that had been their vault to the modest trailer that
was her home. On her last walk through the frigid cold that night, she somehow managed to find
the strength to carry the trunk itself, the safety deposit box that had so particularly done its job, to
the living room of the little trailer. Tired of body but well rested of mind, she sat at a small table
in one end of the trailer, the dining room in happier times, looking at the ledgers. She hesitated
for a moment at the enormous task before her, trying to decide where to start.
How to begin saving humanity.
†††
110
Isaac Weed, husband, neurosurgeon, savior—murderer—sat across from his wife at the
same small hamlet they had frequented during their several years of courtship in what now
seemed a lifetime ago. Stillwater Inn was a quiet, out of the way spot harkening back to another
era. For them, it was a place of ignited passion.
Located in one of the more picturesque suburbs of St. Paul, Minnesota, the rustic
atmosphere of the restaurant exuded warmth and invited romance. The wooden floors were
surrounded by moose heads and hundreds of other western artifacts. A huge stone fireplace
dominated one end of the dining room, where a booming fire crackled within. The smell of
burning oak hung in the air and joined the aroma of buffalo steaks wafting from the kitchen. In
the background, Nat King Cole’s silky, smooth voice sang Unforgettable. The thinly shrouded
windows looked out on the broken ice of the Mississippi River.
Melanie Weed wore a mid-length black skirt with a slit down the back side. Her breasts
held firm against a hunter-green, cowl neck sweater, which displayed with ease the diamond
pendant Isaac had given her at Jasmine’s birth. Although she was no longer with them, her birth
still filled them with great happiness and no sorrow. Isaac himself wore a pair of brown Land’s
End corduroy pants, the cuffs a perfect one-quarter inch above the bottom edge of the heels of
his penny-loafers.
In surgery, he rarely wore anything other than boots, but tonight he was a husband and,
perhaps, a lover. He had chosen the penny-loafers to emphasize this to Melanie and she hadn’t
failed to notice. A beige crew neck sweater barely revealed the white collared shirt underneath.
Melanie could detect only a hint of the aftershave he wore, a vague but familiar smell that stirred
memories sweeter than the sugar she had spooned into her drink. Neither of them were alcohol
drinkers, so he swilled yet another coke and she sipped iced tea as they talked.
For the first time in many months, they simply enjoyed each other’s company.
After an appetizer of crab stuffed portabella mushrooms, he ordered a blackened buffalo
steak, a specialty of the house. Melanie had the pan-fried trout. For dessert, they shared an
deliciously sweet bowl of fried ice cream. Later, they enjoyed their hot tub, which had sat unused
for over three months. They made love in the hot tub under a light snowfall that singed their
backs each time they rose above the hot, churning water. As the late night turned to early
morning, they made love again, this time on the bedroom floor, sliding across the hard wood and
winding up partially under the bed.
They finally fell asleep in a lover’s embrace of tangled limbs and naked flesh against
naked flesh and Isaac Weed dreamt not of the cold, lifeless Jasmine that night, but once again of
the vibrant, panda saving Jaz.
†††
Seated in her tiny dining room an hour past midnight, Jenny White carefully eyed the
ledgers. Centered on the cover of each, in gold script silhouetted against a black leather
background, were the words
Z. Weed, M.D.
Neurological Surgeon
111
Clinical Notes & Operative Findings, 1951
A different year followed the comma on each book. Each of the ledgers held several
hundred typed pages that had been bound after the fact. In addition, numerous handwritten notes
were inserted between the bound pages, stuffed here and there in the manner of an afterthought.
These loose notes gave the books a busy, cluttered appearance, and they seemed anything but the
work of an organized, calculating mind.
Jenny White perused the books spread out on the table before her, but she knew exactly
where to begin. She reached for the ledger with 1951 on the cover, in sequence the fifth of the
leather bound books.
She opened the volume to page 122. In the upper left corner, occupying just under half
the page, was a hand drawn illustration. A head, drawn upside down to accommodate the unique
vantage point of the neurosurgeon. The drawing was exquisitely detailed and it was clear the
hand that drew it had been a talented one. Rich black and white shades were produced through
nothing more than the cleaver but simple use of a lead pencil. Subtle lines of character here and
there conspired to leave little doubt the figure had been drawn from real life.
The illustration showed the skin turned back and the brain laid bare. An arrow pointed out
a discrete lesion, with the words grayish tumor written below it. Other arrows pointed out skull,
dura, sagittal sinus, frontal lobe, and parietal lobe as well. It was signed:
BC by ZM, 10/3/51
In the upper right corner of the page, scrawled lightly in pencil and made almost invisible
by the fadings of time, was a single word written in all caps, underlined, and followed by three
exclamation points:
“KEY-OAK-QUI-AH!!!”
Down the page, beside and below the illustration, a lengthy typed passage continued for
several pages:
†††
BC, DOB 5/12/43. Dural based tumor, probable meningioma, op 10/3/51.
INTRAOP DEATH!
An interesting but tragic case. Child’s history remarkable for two things: a long period of
progressive headaches & morbid obesity. Ni appreciation of satiety per parents; always hungry.
They had taken the unusual tact of padlocking the refrigerator. By the time I saw him, this 8 yo
boy weighed 302 lbs.
He had vomited a number of times in the several weeks before appearing in my clinic,
usually in the morning, and his vision was failing him by history as well.
On exam, he was, as stated above, morbidly obese. A palpable mass over the right
parietal region, a bony excrescence that had obviously been forming for some time. Mental
abilities normal for his age, might even have been slightly above average, & he had no speech
problems. Cranial nerves unremarkable (except for striking papilledema) & all but blind on
confrontation testing, though he demonstrated remarkable ability to hide this in ADLs. HyperThe TOUCHED by Edison McDaniels
112
reflexia and a Babinski on the left. Left hemiparesis severe enough he could not walk but with
cane, & even then it was difficult. Nor could he use his arm in any meaningful way. Extinction on
double simultaneous stimulation. Opticokinetic nystagmus localizing to the right side.
I thought an air study useful to confirm intracranial shift with what must be a large
tumor. Pneumoencephalogram obtained with some difficulty in this unfortunate child. Seemed to
demonstrate a large mass in the right parietal region. Skull xray showed hyperostosis over the
right parietal region as well, with classic beaten metal appearance otherwise.
I took all of this to indicate a tumor of the right parietal area, likely extrinsic to the brain
and very large as judged by the amount of distortion to the ventricular system. This strongly
suggested a meningioma to me, though this is an unusual tumor to occur in one so young in my
experience. However, I also felt confident that something else must be inflicting further injury
upon this child, such was his severe obesity. An intrinsic tumor most likely, but ??
†††
At this point, handwritten in the margin, was a brief passage: “No other tumor found at
autopsy.” The typed passage continued:
†††
The usual large skin flap was turned, though I brought it well across midline so as to
have adequate access to the sinus. The underlying bone was indeed hyperostotic and overgrown,
removed with some difficulty, chiefly that of blood loss related to the extreme vascularity of the
skull. The gigli saw cut through this very hard bone only with great difficulty and had to be
changed several times for dullness. Underlying dura was very adherent to the bone & the bone
was detached only with great effort and more bleeding. Once the dura was opened, the tumor
aggressively bulged through and was removed with the cautery and finger dissection. The tumor
was quite large, and in several places, was separated from the brain with finger dissection. The
last of it was rather intimately associated with the sinus and, I am afraid, actually insinuated
itself into it.
A great deal of bleeding occurred at the last, bleeding which was only controlled by
occluding the sinus for brief spells. However, this appeared to have been adequately controlled
and the tumor was out. Not long thereafter the child suddenly succumbed for reasons not
immediately apparent to me. Perhaps an air embolus through the open sinus???
Exsanguination? DVT?
†††
Handwritten, at the bottom of the page were the words “Path c/w meningioma.” Next to
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that, also handwritten but in a different hand, was the phrase “God have mercy.”
The old lady turned the page and pulled out a handwritten note that had been inserted
sometime after the incident. It was written in the scraggly, barely legible hand she recognized as
that of Dr. Weed. Even after so many years she had no trouble deciphering the scrawl:
†††
10/3/51 — Unbelievable! The Key-oak-QUI-ah. After so many years of searching, we had
salvation within our grasp. I am humbled by my inability to have protected it, my inability to
have released it from its mortal prison.
This child didn’t die from blood loss or any other mortal injury. Autopsy showed no
evidence of life threatening blood loss or air bubble in the heart. No, I am convinced he did not
so much die as cease living. A retreat. I am not yet certain why, but will continue searching for
the answer.
It is vital we know the answer.
†††
Scrawled just below this, the slightly thicker ink in which it was stroked hinted it had
been added at a later time, was another passage:
†††
One thought. Rose Braxton, my dear nurse and companion in the OR all these years,
collapsed w/ an apparent nervous breakdown even as the Key-oak-QUI-ah was revealing itself to
us. The sudden breakdown of this previously strong woman is most curious and, I think, not
attributable to coincidence.
Could the sight of the beautiful spirit have been too much for her? Perhaps. But what if it
wasn’t, what then? what to make of her sudden screams? And as God is my witness, I shall never
forget the look of abject terror I witnessed in her face. Is there something more here? Was there
something else there, in the room, with us? Something the rest of us failed to see or recognize?
Unfortunately, Rose is entirely beyond any lucid thought as I write this, though I’m
hopeful she may recover to shed some light on this subject.
†††
Jenny White could still picture the middle-aged nurse in her mind. As another
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handwritten note later revealed, though she could clearly remember it herself, Rose Braxton
never recovered and whatever she’d seen or heard or thought, whatever had overtaxed her mind
that day, had gone to the grave with her. Her scream had been the only lasting clue she left
behind and Jenny White had heard it in her dreams for years afterwards. Now, suddenly, the
scream was back and that could mean only one thing—whatever Rose had seen or heard or
thought that day was back too.
The beast was among them.
Jenny White perused the passages again, both the written and the typed. She realized now
the boy’s story—the one Zachary Weed had been operating on that day—might have been Seth’s
story, except for the blindness. The old woman, chilled by the knowledge the beast must be back,
shuddered now. How much more did these two children, separated by fifty years and two worlds,
have in common?
She knew the answer of course. The two were one and the same, at least as far as their
souls were concerned. It was the Key-oak-QUI-ah. She and the doctor had found him once
before, but so had the beast and the Key-oak-QUI-ah had fled rather than turn to face the creature
of the darkness at that particular time and place. The time had not been right.
Was it now?
†††
The Key-oak-QUI-ah, his body aching, rolled over and extended his arms and legs from
the fetal position he’d occupied since his encounter earlier that day with a creature so hideous the
boogeyman himself would have recoiled in fear. Though he briefly opened his eyes and his head
rose slightly off the pillow, the stare was a blank one, not unlike a deer captured in the headlights
of an onrushing truck— paralyzed, unable to move, and oblivious to the danger.
†††
Thin Seth lay in the darkness, his head throbbing from the tree branch that had collided
against the side of it some time before. He felt the familiar scar that marred his forehead, opened
one eye, then the other. He tried to make sense of the shadows, tried to remember. He lay on his
back in a copse of trees so thick he couldn’t see the stars above. His body ached and it seemed to
him he must have lain like that for hours.
He listened but heard nothing beyond the weak rustle of the trees. It was cool, but not
cold. The place smelled of lilac and moss, fresh and inviting, not the rancid odor he recalled. No
insects, he thought, there are no insects, and he knew he was in the place by the stream.
A hand, cold enough to have been made of ice, brushed his leg.
“What is it? Who’s there?” He stopped breathing.
No answer at first, then a single word from out of the dark, “sorry.” It was a timid sound,
possibly distressed. Certainly pleading.
“Who’s there?” This Seth said. He started to get up. The icy hand pressed his chest.
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“No, don’t get up.” Innocence but no authority. A simple plea. “Please.”
He touched the tiny hand. A small child? And it was cold, as cold as anything he’d ever
touched. “Okay, I won’t.”
“I don’t know where it is.” The voice again, and now he realized it was soft, girlish. It
came from behind him.
“It? Don’t know where what is?” He tried to turn over.
“Please, don’t turn over.” Definitely a kid thought Seth, probably a girl.
“Who are you and what is IT? I won’t hurt you.”
The voice chuckled. “You can’t hurt me. Only it can. But don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.”
She pulled her arm away from his chest. “I need your help and I think maybe you need mine.”
If this was a kid, she was a tough one. “My name’s Seth.”
She hesitated a moment before responding. “Jasmine, my name’s Jasmine. But you can
call me Jaz.”
†††
The twelfth of the month. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, Isaac Weed now
measured time by the twelfth of the month. Hours and minutes had little meaning for him beyond
an appointment here or a meeting there. Days and weeks had no meaning whatsoever. All that
mattered was the month. And as far as he was concerned, the month began not with the first, but
the twelfth. The twelfth was Jasmine’s day, the anniversary of her death.
Twenty-four months had passed since the day which remained forever frozen in his
psyche as if it had happened yesterday.
I am the resurrection and the life, the marker at the front gate of St. Mary’s Cemetery
stated in large, bold letters. A cross carved into the granite beside the words, modest yet
contemplative, suggested sanctuary to those who rested in this hallowed place. Isaac certainly
hoped so, his daughter rested here.
As always, he walked past markers bearing the names of dozens of different families.
Names like Wisket, Alcott, Smith, Monkrey, Driuz, Scott, and Larson. Some of the monuments
were unreadable at this time of the year, snow piled high upon them. Occasionally, he would
brush the snow off and lay bare the name chiseled in the stone beneath. He knew the names and
dates of each child laid along the path from the the road where he habitually parked his car, to
the spot on the hill where his daughter lay. There were eight of them, ranging in age from just a
few days to fourteen years. Jasmine had been the last, and he had actually known two of the
other kids.
A little boy named Howard DeLancie had succumbed to leukemia during Weed’s first
month in the hospital. Born June 23, 1995. Died July 21, 1997. Isaac vaguely remembered the
little boy. A valiant fighter he thought, not one to give up easily.
A boy named Stephen Vix had been struck by a car a week before Jasmine had met her
untimely death. Born April 23, 1988. Died January 7, 1999. Each month, when Isaac passed his
marker, he lamented the fact he’d been unable to save the child, who had succumbed to his head
injuries. Had Stephen been wearing a helmet he would no doubt still be playing above ground,
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rather than resting below it now. No second chances, he thought, not even for little ones. Death is
a keeper.
The oldest monument to a child that he passed each month was Brian Jesus Collins. Born
May 12, 1943. Died October 3, 1951. The stone’s engraver had placed a baseball glove and bat
above the name and Weed presumed he must have been called by the nickname BJ, since etched
below the name and dates were the simple words BJ plays in the fields of the Lord now. He knew
nothing of the circumstances of this child’s death, though he felt oddly drawn to the monument
on each trip and would linger several minutes longer here than at the other graves, except of
course for his beloved Jasmine. He thought someday he’d try to find out what had happened to
this child, what had struck him down in the primacy of his youth.
Jasmine Weed. Born July 7, 1991. Died January 12, 1999. The simple stone, taller than it
was wide and etched with a pair of ice skates in one corner, ballet slippers in the other, also held
the passage She plays with the angels. In retrospect, Weed wished he had written “Jaz plays with
the angels” instead. That sounded softer to him and he felt it might evoke sympathy for her fifty
years from now when some other parent walked this way and stopped to take note of the marker.
Maybe he would have it changed he often thought.
It was cold on this twelfth. Colder than it had been two years ago when his life had
crumpled through the ice of Old Man Meyer’s Pond. But it was not as cold as the hole in Weed’s
soul, the one once filled by a beautiful little girl. Her embers still burned there, but he longed for
more.
He longed for the way she would come dashing out of her bedroom and down the stairs
to the music room whenever he put Butterfly Kisses on the CD player. During that first month
after her death, alone in the big empty house by the lake in Stillwater, his wife grieving with her
family in Bismarck, Isaac had played Butterfly Kisses over and over again. He imagined the
pitter-patter of Jasmine’s footsteps leaping down the stairs and around the corner toward his
outstretched arms. Over and over again he had endured the agony of not hearing those footfalls
until he thought the silence itself would kill him, until the temperature in his heart had fallen to
near zero, until he felt as numb as her body must have felt in its final moments submerged in the
murky waters of Old Man Meyer’s Pond.
He longed for the time he’d been sleeping on the couch in his study, exhausted by a night
of surgery, only to awaken with her big brown eyes staring him in the face. “You were sleeping,”
she teased and he answered “no, I was just practicing sleeping.” She laughed hysterically for
twenty minutes after that, lost in a frenzy of giggles and gaggles that only young children can
find. Forever after, that had been a private joke between the two of them whenever she found
him dozing. He wished now he was just practicing sleeping, that he could wake up and this
would all be a dream.
Weed knelt in the snow and was about to say a prayer for Jasmine when he felt his pager
vibrate on his waist. He stood up, lifted his jacket and looked at the number. The ER.
“They’ll have to wait. I haven’t said my prayer yet.”
Not a religious man, but devout in his faith such as it was, he knelt again in the snow
beside his daughter’s headstone, under the tree on a hill that looked out over the mighty
Mississippi River, its raging waters now held fast in the frozen grip of nature.
“Dear Lord,” he began, “bless this angel and give me strength...”
117
Twelve: The Boogeyman is Real
Jenny White was back at Seth’s bedside before morning. As the old woman looked down
upon the face of the Key-oak-QUI-ah, she knew she must do something or watch him slip
beyond her reach, indeed beyond the reach of anyone and everything, forever. The essence of
death, a creature of hideous intent as well as appearance, had already discovered his hiding place
and it was now only a matter of time before the terrible thing returned to attend to unfinished
business.
The boogeyman was real.
†††
“Do you believe in the boogeyman?” Jasmine asked, her voice a soft whisper.
“Of course not, I’m too old for that.”
“Well, you better start, I’ve seen him.”
“Can I turn over now?”
“Okay, but remember what I told you, don’t be scared.” She had explained to him about
the pond, about falling through the ice, had confided to him how she thought she might be...dead.
Thin Seth adjusted his position and turned over, his muscles crying out in disordered pain
as he did so. He turned toward the voice in the darkness, his eyes having adjusted now and able
to make out more than shadows. What he saw nearly took his breath away, would have made him
afraid, very afraid indeed, except for the fact it was just a girl after all.
Jasmine Weed, two years dead, looked as if she’d died only yesterday. Her features were
gaunt and pale to be sure, and her skin white as a sheet, but there was no rotting flesh or moldy
skin. Maggots didn’t roost here. Her eyes were dark hollows, sunken and lost in their sockets.
Her hair, previously flowing and full of beauty, was now streaked with dirt and knotted in places,
but nothing a well placed comb couldn’t fix. Most notable however, was the extreme cold which
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seemed to emanate from her skin, seemed to suck the warmth right out of the air. Though no
frost formed on her, Seth was privately certain she must have ice in her veins.
“Are you cold?” he asked the dead girl.
“Sometimes, but you get used to it. I’m sorry I had to hit you.”
“Had to hit me?” Seth said indignantly.
“It was for your own good. It can’t see you if you close your eyes and remain absolutely
still.” Her words sounded older than she must be and Seth knew that, two years dead, she had
aged ten.
“It?”
“The boogeyman. I told you he’s real.”
“I don’t believe in the boogeyman,” the boy said, but realized himself the words held less
conviction than they had even a moment before.
“Then what was that thing you saw?”
“How do you know I saw anything?”
“Because it came to you, drooling even. It’s drool smells like puke. Did you smell it?”
“Yeah,” he said, “it was sickening.”
“It only drools when it sees what it wants, just before it takes it.” Her face contorted in
pain. A memory.
“What...does it do with it?” Hesitation in his voice, uncertainty. Do I really want to know
the answer?
“Eats it, everything except the skull anyway. Awful sight.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Yeah, once. My friend Stephen. He tried to help me when I first got here. We hung
together for awhile, then...” Her words trailed off and Seth saw the discomfort on her face. Not
fear though. He knew the look of fear and she didn’t have it.
“Where is here?” Seth asked, wondering if this might not all be some weird dream.
Whatever it was, he didn’t think he was dead, if only because he’d come and gone to and from
this place for several months.
“I’m not sure really, someplace short of life I guess.”
“The edge of death,” Seth whispered, and to no one in particular.
“I suppose. Maybe. How do you know that?”
“Just something I heard once.” He’d heard it from Jenny White he now realized.
“What does it mean?”
“My aunt, well, she’s not really my aunt...whatever. She once told me that when life ends,
it’s kind of like falling over the edge. Most people go willingly, know it’s their time and glide on
through.” The gears of his mind turned easily now, recalled the lessons of a lifetime with Jenny
White, only they had not seemed like lessons at the time. “Only some people, when they fall over
the edge of life, they stumble a little and...” His voice trailed off as he looked at the girl,
suddenly certain she was indeed dead and that this was not just a terrible dream, but a very real
nightmare.
“And what?” Jasmine’s eyes were plaintive and seeking, soft despite being sunken. Now
they did seem to possess fear Seth thought. Does she already know what I’m about to say?
He hesitated, didn’t want to take her hope away. “Some people resist falling over the edge
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of life and try to hold on, not wanting to go, but what they are actually holding onto is...is the
edge of death.”
He hugged the dead girl to his chest. Her cold almost took his breath away. “This is not
someplace between life and death Jaz. This is death.”
“Then I’m dead,” she said after a moment’s reflection. The words came slowly, as if
saying them made it so.
“I’m afraid so. This is the edge of death. I’m not sure how I know this, but this is a place
where souls are used up and cease to be.”
They looked at each other, had the same thought at the same time. Jasmine finally put it
to words, “then the boogeyman is...”
“...the eater of souls, the end of all there is,” Seth said, completing the thought.
The boogeyman was very real indeed.
†††
Isaac Weed looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
The surgeon blinked several times, and when the apparition didn’t go away, he almost
cried out in horror. How could this be? Death was supposed to be final. He didn’t believe in
ghosts, yet the proof was right there, right in front of him. He turned away, wondering if the day
of reckoning was upon him.
“Dr Weed? Are you okay sir?”
The nurse would never know how much her words meant at that exact moment. To Weed,
her familiar voice was like a compass pointing to the here and now, to the concrete reality of the
moment. It’s soothing and genuinely interested tone calmed him and his composure returned. He
looked at her.
“I’m fine.”
Two quick words, not even a thank you. Never let them see you sweat. A motto he’d been
taught by a senior general surgery resident when he was just a medical student. The resident had
had a pathologic obsession about toying with nurses and never letting them get the upper hand.
Frankly, Weed never understood the games the guy played, thought him insecure and stupid.
Despite the man though, the advice had proved handy on several occasions and, in and of itself,
was pretty sound counsel. He certainly thought so now. Never let them see you sweat.
He turned back to the gurney. The apparition had not departed.
Had I really thought it would?
He watched as a technician put a needle in one arm of the specter and got blood rather
than some ethereal vapor back in return.
Perhaps not a ghost after all Weed thought, and stepped forward.
†††
Having spent the night absorbed in the life-work of Dr. Zachary Weed, Jenny White spent
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the first hours of the snowy dawn meeting the long dead doctor in her dreams. He was as vibrant
as ever he had been in life and the two of them spoke easily about matters not of this world.
Jenny White found nothing in the ledgers to surprise her. Nonetheless, assimilating the
knowledge they offered was not an easy task and, as she closed her eyes and left this stream of
consciousness for another, more illusory one, a sort of precognition gripped her, a clairvoyance
gained from a night spent with the ledgers of her old friend.
In her dream, she saw the imminent doctor risen, dressed in his finest tweed jacket, the
ever present pipe in his mouth. They sat on the well worn leather sofa in his study, a favorite
place of the man before he had departed this world. A fire warmed them from the corner hearth
that interrupted an otherwise complete sweep of rich mahogany bookcases. He had nothing of
the gaunt, emaciated appearance of his last days, but the more full bodied and well nourished
look of better times. His hairline, thinning, had not yet completely receded and he wore the full
beard of his mature professional days. He was overall, she thought, a distinguished gentleman.
“It—”
“is back,” he said.
“I hate it when you do that,” she said, forgetting for a moment it was her dream and she
could make of him what she may. She shifted in her chair, her subconscious dredging up the
requisite information she already knew but had somehow been unable to pull together before
now. October 3, 1951. She knew the drama of that terrible day, not quite first hand.
That day, when the stupendously beautiful spirit with the blue light had shown itself even
as the hideous essence of death chased in its wake, was replayed for her when she touched the
surgeon later. The event had marked the doctor and its remnants, its signature, would remain
with him forever. It had twisted his link in the chain of life. Jenny White was an expert at reading
such signatures, it was part of her particular gift. She read the chain of life the way most people
read their morning newspaper.
“What do you—”
“make of it?” he said, again interrupting her thoughts in death just as it had been his habit
to do in life. “It is an ancient Indian legend, a myth.”
Jenny White was momentarily surprised, caught off guard at her own answer. Had I
known that? she thought to herself, suddenly certain she had. “What is this legend?” she said
aloud.
“It is the edge of life, the legend of the Key-oak-QUI-ah,” the risen doctor answered.
†††
Isaac Weed stared at the man on the gurney. He’d been brought in forty minutes earlier by
the paramedics, clad only in his underwear. One didn’t have to be a neurosurgeon to see the
obvious trauma to the left side of his head. Dried brain tissue and blood mixed together in a
congealed mat that covered a wide rip in his scalp, partially exposing the broken bone
underneath. The damage extended to the left eye socket, which was grotesquely crushed. His
entire face was distorted and swollen, and something, it wasn’t obvious what at first glance, was
smeared down the left side of it.
121
On second glance, he realized it was the man’s eyeball. It had ruptured, and its contents
looked like so much candle wax melted dripped over his cheek and mouth.
A glance at the heart monitor confirmed the man was alive. A touch confirmed he was
solid, made of flesh and blood and not some nebulous ghostly residue. His victim hadn’t returned
from the grave, he’d never made there in the first place. The healer in Weed—Dr. Jekyll—
wondered how long Service102 could survive. Then, for no reason he could fathom, he felt he
might vomit.
Never let them see you sweat, he reminded himself.
†††
According to legend, life and death are separated by a drop off, a cliff if you like, a very
steep and tall cliff, the long dead physician continued, now reaching up with his right hand to
ignite the pipe in his mouth. As he did so, little tendrils of smoke wafted up between the pair
seated together on the leather couch. At the end of life, every living thing passes over it, dropping
into whatever lies on the other side.
“Dropping into death?” Jenny White asked. Her voice inflected upward as she thought
she pointed out the obvious.
In the guise of the doctor, her mind surprised her again, Usually perhaps, but not always.
You see, the edge of life is also the edge of death.
“They aren’t—”
The same? Oh no, different, very different indeed. The edge of life is said to be a very
hopeful place, a place where souls gather before crossing the stream to enter the promised land.
Yes, now she recalled, a sort of heavenly waiting room. “But what of the edge of death?”
A dark and dreary place that, a place so far removed from hope death itself becomes the
outcome dreamed of by all who venture onto its barren soil. Her mind pictured the good doctor
shuddering, frowning as if to indicate a fate worse than death awaited those unlucky souls
trapped there.
She thought, there’s more, isn’t there?
Very good Ms. White, you remember well. She hadn’t spoken the words to him, but in a
dream perhaps he could hear her thoughts. The edge of death is not a place where one rests
easily. It is stalked by a hideous—
“—a hideous creature with the power to completely destroy any soul that dares venture
there.” Her turn to do the irritating thing, after all it was her dream. She’d heard all of this before,
decades earlier. Then it had only been a legend, it was more than that now, much more. She
recalled that the creature was thought to be the essence of death itself. What was its name?
Her subconscious picked up the question, but the long dead physician answered.
In ancient Indian folklore, the creature is sometimes referred to simply as the essence of
death, at other times by its more picturesque title...the Eater of Souls.
†††
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Christopher LaPorge looked at the various white coats assembled around the naked man
laying on the gurney in the ER’s trauma bay. The medical team had stripped him of his
underwear, the only thing he’d been wearing when the middle-aged paramedic had first laid eyes
him. From the first moment, it was obvious he’d been bludgeoned, and probably with a fairly
heavy object given the damage apparent. Paramedic LaPorge had seen a lot of beatings in his
time, but he thought this the work of a particularly tormented mind.
Jesus Christ, he thought, the man’s eyeball was hanging down the side of his face.
As he watched act II of the performance to save the man’s life, act I having taken place in
the field, he was startled to see a familiar face step forward, then watched as the man
momentarily turned away, apparently aghast at what lay on the bed. At first LaPorge wasn’t sure
who the man was, just certain he somehow knew him. A minute later, when the man reached his
left hand up to draw back the lid of the sole remaining eye in that terribly interrupted face,
LaPorge saw the stub of a finger where his fifth digit should have been.
It was the doctor from the fire, he thought, the one across from the house where he’d just
collected this patient. The man had very likely been laying on the floor of his bedroom even then
the paramedic realized, even during their ministrations on the doomed burnt woman.
An odd coincidence the paramedic thought, all but dismissing it.
†††
The eater of souls, very picturesque indeed, Jenny White thought, wondering how apt a
description it truly was. In her dream the rich smell of tobacco filled the air anew as the risen
doctor puffed away on his pipe. It was a pleasant odor she remembered with fondness.
“What of the edge of life?” she asked herself aloud.
A beautiful place, home to the Key-oak-QUI-ah, the surgeon answered.
“The Key-oak-QUI-ah?”
The right hand of God, according to the legend, he said, removing the pipe from his
mouth and looking into the fire. Or at least it was at one time, before the eater of souls tricked
and imprisoned it in the body of man.
My God, she thought. “And then?”
And then death runs amuck, in the legend anyway.
What happened in the end? she wondered, meaning the conclusion of the legend. But she
knew the answer and didn’t need her own subconscious to fill in that part of the story.
There was no ending of course—it had yet to be written.
†††
As the neurosurgeon finished his preliminary survey of this latest victim of urban
warfare, Weed suppressed any image of Service102 having come back from the dead seeking his
revenge against the man that had vented his skull. His survival had been less a miracle of divine
123
intervention and more a simple summation of torn flesh and spilled blood equating to a life less
than death. The man had lain on the floor of his bedroom for thirty-six hours, his brain shut down
by coma. The only thing that had saved him was dehydration, which had likely prevented the
fatal brain swelling that would have spared the neurosurgeon the twin agonies of enduring his
own angst whilst watching the man’s suffering.
The head CT demonstrated the full extent of that suffering, at least so far as it manifested
itself physically: a brain pounded to pulp immediately under a severely depressed skull fracture;
broken shards of bone driven inward to tear and lacerate the brain underneath; a large clot of
blood over the surface of the remaining good brain. This last threatened to strangle out whatever
life the man still possessed. Clearly, if the man lived, he’d need extensive reconstructive surgery
to restore some semblance of humanity to his face and left orbit.
Just now however, before any thought of consulting a plastic surgeon could be
entertained, the man needed a brain surgeon to save his life.
Dr. Isaac Weed, once the man’s worst nightmare, now became the man’s only hope.
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Thirteen: Never Let Them See You Sweat
“Is he gonna make it doc?” the voice, an irritating nasal twang Weed instantly disliked
even before putting it with a face, came out of nowhere behind him.
Weed turned to face a man barely five feet tall. Looking down slightly he asked, “Sorry,
do I know you?”
“Detective Marks, homicide.” The twang again. The man pulled a badge from a breast
pocket as if imitating a TV detective. “When can I talk to him?”
“I’m not even sure he’s going to live yet.”
The neurosurgeon wondered somewhere in the back of his mind how tall one had to be to
be a cop.
“I need to talk to this man. Just a few minutes, doc.”
“Listen, eh, Detective Marks is it? This man’s in a coma. He has a fractured skull, a
subdural hematoma, and his face looks like something out of a Stephen King novel. Right now,
he’s not talking to anyone. Quite frankly, I don’t know if he’ll ever talk to anyone again. We’re
taking him to the OR now and, in a few hours when we’re done, he might wake up. He might
wake up tomorrow, or he might wake up next month. He may never wake up. It’s just too early to
say.”
“Okay doc, okay.” The short man stood there in the hallway, didn’t seem interested in
leaving just yet.
The stolid look of the detective made Weed uneasy. After a moment or so of the two men
staring at each other, the surgeon said, “You don’t mind if I go and try to save his life now, do
you detective?”
“Not at all doc. Do what you can, I’ll be here when you get out. This man’s very
important to us.”
Had he been just another surgeon about to try to save the life of just another trauma
patient, Weed would have been able to let that last statement go without further comment. But
I’m not just a casual observer in all of this, am I? I put the man here, dammit. Somewhere deep
125
within, very deep I hope, he felt the stirrings of Mr. Hyde. Damn, what a fucked up world.
Never let them see you sweat.
Trying to feign less interest than he actually felt, Weed asked, “what’s so special about
this guy?”
“You’ve heard about the recent killings in the gay community?”
“I vaguely remember hearing something on the radio. What’s that got to do with this
guy?” Weed’s stomach tightened. Do I really want to know the answer?
“Then you know that at least nine gay men have been murdered in the last nine months,
their bodies dumped alongside the highway.” The detective spoke rather matter-of-factly.
“Y e a h,” Weed said slowly, still not wanting to make any connection between those
facts and his patient.
“Well, looks like whoever did it made a mistake this time. When this guy can talk, it may
be the break we need.” That twang was irritating as hell.
“You think there’s a serial killer out there?” Weed’s stomach tightened another notch.
“And you think that killer’s responsible for this guy?”
“I’m thinking the killer was interrupted,” the vertically challenged detective said,
apparently oblivious to the surgeon’s gastronomic problems. “The man’s gay as a $2 bill
according to his neighbors. Guys coming and going at all hours of the night. Always possible that
its not related, but I’ve got a gut about these things. And I’ve learned to go with my gut over the
years, doc.”
“I see.” Weed’s stomach twisted still further, as if around some imaginary wire pulled
taught by the twang in the cop’s voice. He and the detective were eye to eye once again, as if
staring each other down like two twenty-something testosterone-driven junkies. “Well, I’ll do
what I can.”
Later, after everything was said and done, Weed would remember back on this moment
and reflect on how just thirty seconds might have made all the difference in the world. With an
additional thirty seconds he’d have been out of the ER and well on his way to the operating room
before the paramedic ever showed himself. With just another thirty seconds he’d have avoided
the moron and everything that followed. Just thirty seconds he would think later. Just thirty
goddamn seconds.
But the moron didn’t give him those thirty goddamn seconds.
The paramedic from the fire two nights before walked up to the couple just as they were
about to part. Weed recognized him immediately. The surgeon nearly flooded his skivvies.
“Hey doc, how ya doin? Say, I didn’t catch your name the other night.”
“Weed, Isaac Weed.” He tried, unsuccessfully he thought, not to eyeball the paramedic.
Never let them see you sweat. “And you are?”
“Chris LaPorge doc. Paramedic, the other night at the fire. Remember?”
Weed knew exactly who the man was, thought the paramedic’s voice melodious, happy in
a somewhat irritating way, a somewhat moronic way. “Yes, of course, the unfortunate lady. Very
sad that.” He hoped his voice sounded regretful enough, sorry for the woman’s misfortune. He
felt his bowels prairie dogging. In another second or two, he’d flood them. Never let them see
you sweat.
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“Pretty coincidental, eh doc?” the moron said.
Weed’s eyes all but crossed.
“What’s that?” the detective asked in his now familiar nasal twang. “Say, you okay doc?
Looking a little pale.”
LaPorge, the happy go lucky, probably moronic paramedic, told the detective about
Weed’s exploits on the night of the fire, the ones he knew about anyway, ending with the odd
coincidence that his unit had been the one to bring in the man with the skull torn open. “I guess
he was probably laying there the whole time the two of us were working on that old lady, right
across the street from his house, eh doc?”
“Yeah, I...guess so.” He tried to say the words as naturally as he could, but he was afraid
if he opened his mouth too wide, the other end of his gut would open too. “Listen, I gotta get to
the OR.”
“What are the odds, doc?”
The neurosurgeon had turned and begun to walk down the hall, the detective looking at
his backside. Weed stopped, but did not turn around. He fixed his eyes to some distant spot down
the corridor. Never let them see you sweat. “I don’t know, it was just a coincidence that’s all.”
“What doc?”
“Just a coincidence.”
“No doc, I was talking about the guy. What are the odds he’s gonna make it?”
Weed cursed under his breath, felt cold, felt...caught. “I’ll do what I can detective, that’s
all.” He moved off down the hall to the first exit he could find, feeling the eyes of the two men
on his backside the whole way, as if there was already something to see, as if the prairie dog had
gotten loose after all. Never let them see you sweat. The exit, the first one he came to, actually
turned him away from the OR, but he didn’t care. His first stop was going to be the men’s room
anyway.
“Ummm, I don’t think he’s feeling too well, looked a bit swampy around the gills,” the
paramedic said.
“Yeah, maybe,” the detective said, wondering how often coincidences are just that and
nothing more.
†††
Having survived two years of face to face confrontations with a monster more horrid than
anything her imagination might ever have mustered, Jaz had developed a keen sense of how the
creature behaved and where it lurked. She and Seth Oberg moved now through a shadowy nether
forest with only one thing in mind: keep moving. Jaz didn’t know where they were going, but
she knew enough to know they hadn’t gotten there yet.
She knew too that once the thing had smelled the dead, it would track them relentlessly
until it feasted on their souls and regurgitated the spent bones as so much dirt and ash.
“We just have to keep moving,” she said over and over again.
That she was the dead it had smelled left Jaz with no comfort whatsoever.
127
†††
Though it appeared as a great forested meadow to the minds of Jasmine Weed and Seth
Oberg, the space now serving as a momentary refuge to the two lost children was actually a
nebulous bit of cosmic dust that might have appeared as a barn to some, a field of wheat to
others, and was actually a swamp to It.
It was the essence of death and it called this place home as much as any place it ever
occupied. That is not to say it ever occupied any place for long. It preferred to keep moving,
preferred to keep its prey on the run, preferred to stalk the dead in the open and to wear them
ragged until they made a mistake It could tear into. Once found, it played with its victims, feeling
the slimy ooze of their fear as it got closer to them. It had the razor sharp teeth of an alligator, the
strength of an ox, and the temperament of a grizzly. It moved through its wet world like a shark
gliding through water, mostly unseen, making a sound as if it were nothing more than the wind
rustling through the trees. It was the chosen creature, designed by that which designs all things
for one and only one purpose.
It was the perfect killing machine.
The essence of death lurked in a swampy netherworld teeming with the dead and
decaying flotsam of life. It was most at home amongst those that feasted upon carrion. Its mates
were maggots, beetles, bugs and other creatures that preferred the cadaver to the living. Its putrid
world stank of rancid meat and decaying flesh, while mosquitoes and gnats whined about its
small eyes and large ears with an ever present hum that would have driven a lesser creature
insane. It moved easily through the stagnant water, alternately swimming through the foul soup
or crawling along the muddy banks. Always hungry, never satiated, it grabbed whatever rot
floated by in the murky waters of the bayou, crushing the remains in its mighty jaws and
damning its soul, if indeed it had one, to the empty place. But these carcasses, wreaking of foul
humors and infested with pestilence, were just in-between snacks for its real meals. It was a
predator and it preferred to stalk. Its real food, its only real prey, was the human soul.
It was the eater of souls.
The world in which the eater of souls hunted was a netherworld somewhere between that
of the dying and that of the dead. It prowled this loathsome ground, always on the hunt, always
ready to leap. Its prey was the soul, usually those broken and corrupted by the detritus of a sinful
and greedy world. But occasionally a soul of greater merit wandered into its realm.
And then the true battle for eternal life began in earnest.
†††
Jenny White listened intently to the doctors as she stood over the bed holding the obese
child that had been entrusted to her by his father; a child she’d cared for as her own almost from
the very moment his mother had completed, with her dying breath, her sacred vow to carry him
until he could survive on his own. Though ten minutes dead when she delivered him, her vow
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had been carried out in miraculous fashion and Jenny White was not about to let that be for
naught now. She’d been there that tragic night, indeed her presence had not been by chance, and
she’d remained at Seth’s side ever since.
She steeled herself for the coming news, hearing and sensing the conversation was
turning in a direction she dreaded, a direction that could only mean more woe for Seth.
“He seems to be not so much in a coma,” the young doctor was saying, “as in a catatonic
state. He opens his eyes, moves around, but doesn’t respond to us, to any of us.”
Jenny White was well aware of this. The lights are on, but nobody’s home. The boy, so
large it took at least three attendants to turn him every two hours else bedsores would form,
hadn’t spoken a word since the encounter in the magnet room, an encounter that had, as far as
anyone could tell, utterly erased the mind of a middle-aged woman who now lay prostrate two
floors away.
“The bottom line is that we can’t continue to care for him here,” the more senior
physician said. “He needs to be moved to a facility where he can get an MRI of the brain.”
“Where would that be?” Jenny White asked.
“Minneapolis.”
“What about the MRI he had here?” She took the boy’s hand in hers, squeezing the pudgy
fingers in her palm one at a time, as if coaxing him awake.
“He’s too big for the machine here,” the resident said. “We tried once, didn’t get a single
picture we could use, nothing clear anyway. He needs a larger magnet.”
“And they have one in Minneapolis?”
“Yes, Minneapolis General Hospital has a larger unit.” The younger doctor looked across
at the older man, squirming slightly, his face obviously pained.
“I don’t understand,” she said. Her inquisitive eyes now searched from the face of one
doctor to the other, failing in their bid to read them. “What’s wrong?”
The senior doctor finally spoke, “We’ve looked at the single picture that came out of the
MRI done here. The picture’s fuzzy, not very clear at all. We tried several techniques to enhance
the image, but the best we can do is to say something is there. Something out of the ordinary.”
“What kind of something? What exactly do you mean?”
The senior doctor, gray hair and wrinkle lines confirming he had many years of
experience confronting and guiding patients and their families, looked at the boy, perhaps
searching for the words that would help the old woman understand.
“What I mean ma’am, is that Seth has a tumor—” he hesitated, perhaps hearing his own
heartbeat as it measured out tiny moments of time, “—a brain tumor.”
Steeled as she was, the words still struck into her consciousness like a thousand volts of
electricity searing its way into the very center of her universe, that part of all of us where hope
and promise for the future exist in undiminished fashion. The electricity seemed to short out that
promise for a moment and Jenny White’s legs at once found their age.
The old woman wobbled, would have fallen if not for the younger doctor. He held her,
almost hugged her, and the nurse pulled a chair over to the bed. Jenny White sat. For the first
time in many years, she felt not just old, but every bit the ancient woman she truly was.
“Is he dying?” How much time is there? She thought, how long before the beast finds
him?
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“Not right away. Something’s growing in his head,” the experienced man said,
“something that’s wrong and shouldn’t be there. The only way to sort it out, the only way to treat
it appropriately, is to send him to Minneapolis.”
Jenny White looked at the doctor and saw his lips move, but didn’t hear his words. She
didn’t have to. She’d spent years reading the human face and knew it better than the most learned
priest knew the bible. She saw the eyes of the old physician, the lines of crow’s feet pulled
tighter on one side than the other. She saw as well his mouth, with its expressive corner wrinkled
into a furrow on one side. The truth spilled out from that face, spilled as surely as if the old
physician had spoken it in carefully selected words.
The lights are on but nobody’s home.
“Please,” she said, “make the arrangements.”
†††
As he watched the nurse scrub the gash that interrupted the side of his patient’s head, Dr.
Isaac Weed needed a miracle as well, though he didn’t yet know it. The patient, his name was
Charlie Hazlit the surgeon now knew, had survived thirty-six hours with a hole in the side of his
head big enough to put a statuette through, but he would die here and now unless the surgeon
could put a halt to the processes already conspiring to end his life.
Gowned and gloved, the fifth finger of the left hand turned back inside the glove so as to
cover the stump there and not dangle in the way, Weed stepped to the table and took the scalpel
offered by the young scrub tech.
“Incision.”
With no further hesitation he cut the usual large question mark type incision into the
scalp. It began just in front of the left ear and moved up the side of the scalp, wrapped back
above the top of the ear for an inch or so, then continued up the side of the man’s head and
curved forward just shy of reaching the top. The cut ended a half inch in front of the hairline at
the top center of the man’s forehead. The moment the blade touched the skin and began its
movement, tiny rivulets of blood appeared after it and rolled down the fresh green drapes.
As he cut, the Dr. Jekyll in Weed tried not to think of what these same two hands had
done to this same head just over a day before. He tried not to think of the man laying on the floor
of his home, an ever increasing ring of blood pooling out from his fractured head, suffering in
unimaginable agony. He tried not to imagine Mr. Hyde’s hands—his hands—clutching the
statuette and swinging it against the side of the man’s head.
That he was capable of this much wanton destruction was almost beyond his
comprehension. The idea tortured him as he looked down on the surgical field. You are not a
sadist, but a healer. Dr. Jekyll’s voice—his own voice—loud in his ears. Despite all evidence to
the contrary, he was more Dr. Jekyll than Mr. Hyde, or so he told himself.
“Let’s do this,” he said in his own voice—which was, coincidentally, Dr. Jekyll’s voice,
though nobody in that room—Weed included—had any conscious knowledge of Jekyll or Hyde.
“Drill,” he said, sounding as confident as ever, and held his hand out. He put the pneumatic drill
against the bone and held it firm as he depressed the foot switch. It filled with air and began to
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spin and bite at the skull.
The sound of it whirred in his ears, morphing into the arrogant, off-fettle voice of Mr.
Hyde.
Hadn’t the end justified the means? Remember your little girl, after all. It was all about
her, Dr. Remember how she looked when they pulled her out Old Man Meyer’s Pond? Remember
the bone white color of her face? The color of death? Remember how she reached up to you—
reached out to you—from her icy watery grave? Remember her bloody hand? How it must have
snagged on the jagged ice edge as she flailed—
“I remember,” Weed said, and his voice was arrogant and off-fettle and terrible to hear.
But the drill kept churning through his patient’s skull nonetheless.
†††
Just now Jasmine Weed was in the way, at least as far as the eater of souls was concerned.
The creature slithered through its world with definite purpose, sniffing the air and sampling the
putrid waters for any trace of the dead child’s presence. It had toyed with the child for the better
part of two years and now grew weary of the play, had decided it was time to consummate their
relationship, time to end this thing.
Despite this decision that implied the game was of its own doing, the creature reluctantly
sensed otherwise. It was impressed that control might be an illusion; impressed that this child
might almost be equal to the task before her. But only almost, the creature knew, only almost. In
the end, they all went the way of the empty place.
It had a pile of skulls to prove it.
The beast stopped in the midst of the dreary swamp and climbed swiftly onto the roots of
a large mangrove. The roots snaked out from the base of the massive structure like tentacles and
stood down into the muck laden waters from which it apparently drew nourishment. Sitting there
upon its perch, the monster waited in complete silence. Beetles scurried out from under the flesh
of its belly but it seemed not to notice the scavengers. It keyed up its sense of smell and sniffed
the stale air that hung as still as a brick wall. A nest of maggots burrowed out of its back and
feasted on the necrotic tissues there, but the beast still did not move. It waited. It would wait for a
day, a week, a year.
Time had no meaning for this killer.
†††
The drilling complete, Weed used the new hole as an entry point for a lever. He pried out
the great chunk of broken skull that had been driven inward by the same hand just short of two
days earlier.
As he pulled the bone away, the coverings over the underlying brain tore and dark, almost
black blood welled up from beneath.
See what you have wrought. Weed tilted and stretched his neck as Hyde spoke at him.
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The blood that had swam across the surface of Service102’s traumatized brain for the
better part of a day-and-a-half now rolled out and over the surgical drapes. “Entirely expected,
the evil humors have to escape after all.” Jekyll’s words, in Jekyll’s voice.
“What did you say?” the scrub asked.
“Nothing, just pointing out that the old blood has to go somewhere. Scissors.” Weed
extended the tear in the coverings.
He held his hand out. There was no tremor. “Irrigation.”
He flushed the surface of the brain with saline solution, encourage the bloody output. The
brain was dusky, had lost much of its beautiful gray luster to an unfortunate blue-gray hue that
was anything but beautiful to behold. On any other occasion it would simply have saddened Dr.
Weed to see this, but today it made him sick to his stomach. He wondered if he should have spent
more time in the bathroom before the operation.
“Suction.”
The scrub placed the plastic tube in his hand briskly and he proceeded to vacuum away
the old blood as it spilled out. He watched the partially clotted liquid march up the tube and into
the canister just short of the wall outlet. A moment later, the sucker stopped working and he
handed it back to the scrub.
Weed slipped back in his chair, weary from the fight. He was tired, more tired than he had
a right to be he supposed. He looked at his gloved hands, contemplated the blood upon them, and
wondered what all they were truly capable of, wondered if anyone else in the room had hands
capable of such vital breadth. He reached out a gloved finger and stroked the brain gently.
“What have I done?”
“You just aspirated the blood is all,” the scrub said.
Weed looked at her. “I know what the hell I’m doing.”
“Sir, are you okay?”
He turned away from the table. Why did I do it? Why do I ever do it? Why this obsession
with death?
The answer, unspoken and obvious, was Jasmine. She needs me, he thought, or maybe I
need her? The idea sounded crazy even to him, yet he couldn’t shake the sense that Jasmine was
somehow...alive—or, at the very least, not totally dead. She’s trapped he thought, trapped and
I’ve got to get to her...
He was sweating now, and, oh God, he wanted to grab his head, would have grabbed it
had not the discipline of his surgical training took hold. He felt himself starting to
hyperventilate...
He turned back to the table and closed his eyes. He repeated the mantra over and over in
his mind, calming himself, forcing himself to relax and deal with the problem at hand. Jekyll’s
voice came into his head—his own voice. He pushed it out. Then came Mr. Hyde, but he pushed
that out too. He had a patient on the table goddammit. A patient with torn flesh, broken bones,
and a wounded brain, a patient that needed him now. Deal with the patient he told himself, deal
with the immediate problem at hand.
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He opened his eyes and stood, looked around the room more than a little subconsciously.
Had he been about to lose it? Had anyone seen it? Noticed it? The scrub tech had asked if he was
alright. How long ago had that been? Ten seconds? A minute? Five minutes?
He looked at her. She was pre-occupied with the plugged sucker. The circulating nurse
was talking on the phone, something about a transfer he thought he heard her say, but couldn’t be
certain. The anesthesiologist, behind the surgical drapes, was in his usual own little world and
oblivious to things on Weed’s side of the curtain. No, he thought, nobody noticed. Okay, take
care of the problem at hand, deal with the patient.
“I’m okay,” he said, and the scrub looked across the table at him.
Take care of the problem at hand. His own voice.
He was about to follow his advice when he chanced to look upward. The ceiling of the
operating room was a clear glass observation deck for the teaching of medical students, would
could watch from the operation from this overhead perch. The room above Weed’s operating
theater was usually empty, but not today. Today there was a visitor, a short man that Weed
recognized without hesitation, without needing to hear that irritating voice.
The homicide detective, the cop from the hallway. Without really meaning to, and
certainly not wanting to, Weed made eye contact with the man.
Maybe nobody in this room had noticed Weed’s momentary spell, but certainly the
detective had, thought Weed.
But Weed was sweating, couldn’t help it really.
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Fourteen: Working in a Very Small Place
There is a place, a void, a vacant hole in all that is and ever was, a blackness as vast and
deep as the greatest ocean depths, and colder still. Even as this place is full of nothing, it teems
with the discarded souls that are the outcasts of humanity, exiled to this empty place where the
future is the past, the past the future, where matter has no form, and life no animation. Once
caught in this empty place, one’s existence is nevermore.
Indeed, once captured by the eater of souls, it is as if one never existed at all.
†††
As he worked to reclaim the life he’d nearly extinguished not two days before, a
hollowness consumed Weed. He was become a lonely, tired man, with but few friends, and
nobody he could confide in, certainly nobody he could discuss this with. The only person in the
world that had ever taken him at face value, the only person who had given him unconditional
love, was now the one person he couldn’t have. Jasmine was, just this day, two years dead. The
pain was a black hole he couldn’t fill.
Time doesn’t heal all wounds.
After removing the day-old blood from the surface of his victim’s brain, Dr. Weed
entered the brain proper to remove additional clot as well as bloodied and contused gray matter.
Most of Service102’s left frontal lobe had been pulped to a soupy mess by the well-placed blow.
It went up the sucker, the gray chunks just as good in the canister on the wall as in Service102’s
head—better in fact, since in the canister they couldn’t swell and wreak havoc inside the closed
space of Service102’s skull. The elements of his personality, the curious traits that made him a
unique individual, his idiosyncratic nuances and characteristics his friends and loved ones had
undoubtedly come to know as him, now disappeared as a spent soup of bluish-gray effluent into
the plastic sucker tubing. If he survived, there would be a new man to know, the old one no
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longer existed.
Not as completely as if he had gone to the empty place of course, but perhaps not far
from it either.
†††
Detective Marks watched the surgeon work below him, impressed at how quickly the
doctor had the man’s head open. He’d not seen much surgery, no brain surgery at all actually, but
he had supposed it took much longer than this to crack a skull and get at the inner workings. He
watched as the surgeon sat down in his chair and closed his eyes for a second or two. He had
handed something to his assistant and was apparently waiting for it to be handed back the police
officer thought. Or maybe he was just tired, maybe he’d spent the night before out and about.
Maybe the surgeon was a creature of the night, the detective mused, rambling with no
particular goal in mind.
Yet, even as he watched the work below him with a certain morbid fascination and
admired the brain surgeon at work, the same thought continued to drag itself across his
consciousness again and again. The thought had first occurred to him back in the hallway, as
he’d stood eye to eye with the surgeon, as he’d watched more and more color drain from the
man’s face with each word of the paramedic’s story.
What, he wondered, had the surgeon been doing in that particular part of town in the
middle of the night?
‘Pretty coincidental,’ the moronic paramedic (Marks had reached the same conclusion in
this regard as Weed) had said. Maybe, but not likely. Most coincidences are bullshit the detective
thought, man made piles of bullshit to cover up something beneath. Figure out what that
something was, wipe the bullshit away, and the case usually solved itself.
Was it Weed’s habit to drive around in one of the worst parts of town in the middle of the
night? If so, he was a hell of a lot dumber than being a neurosurgeon suggested. If not, and
Marks was willing to bet his badge not, then the good doctor had been looking for something or
someone or maybe he was going somewhere.
Something, someone, somewhere.
The question then became what, who, or where? It was difficult to narrow down which of
the three w’s pertained in this case, but he’d figure it out. He was a patient man and time was on
his side. He would do some checking here and there and the answers would come. Sooner or
later, the answers would come.
†††
With Jaz leading the way, the two refugees, one from life, the other from death, followed
their own meandering path along the outskirts of the forest staying always within earshot of the
stream that was the door to the other side, the exit out of this illusory world and into an
everlasting life. They were careful to stay together and moved quietly, seeking something that
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might best be termed shelter, not so much from the elements, but from It.
“It usually comes in the middle of the night, as the wind rustling in the trees.”
“As the wind?” Thin Seth asked.
“Yes, the wind. One moment all is peace and serenity, the next the world smells of death.
The smell is like that of old meat, spoiled meat I suppose. That’s what you have to tune your
nose to, that’s what’ll give it away.” She stopped and turned to him. “You’ve smelled this haven’t
you?”
He stopped as well. “Yes.”
“Good, never forget that stink. It’ll save your life some day, or your existence at least.”
You sound like the wise old woman of the forest. Seth supposed she was. She’d seen
things and clearly knew things he could only imagine the horror of, things that had aged her
since her death. To have spent two years here was an unimaginable feat. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Survive the boogie—survive...It?”
She started to walk again, ducking to miss a branch. “It has a weakness, only one so far
as I can tell. But is’s a big one, like the heel of Achilles in the stories my mother used to read
me.”
“What’s that?”
“Boredom I think. It seldom kills outright, at least not the first time. It seems to live as
much off the fear it creates as the souls it eats.” She stopped but didn’t turn around, her voice
breaking. “It played with them, Seth, scaring them, increasing their fear until...” She broke into a
sob.
Seth didn’t quite know what to do, so he took her into his arms. He held her for a full five
minutes, thinking something one of his neighbors used to say back in the world, where the edge
was far away: It played with them until they were ripe for the picking.
“That thing ain’t gonna get us. If you can make it two years alone, together we can beat
it.”
They walked on awhile longer, mostly in silence, and Seth wondered if the little girl—it
was difficult for him to think of her as little—ever rested, ever slept. A short while later, just
when he’d concluded the answer must be no, the trail she’d been following through the thick
trees fanned out into a small clearing and a gentle waterfall tumbled over the rocks in front of
them. A rainbow shown in the mist above the falls.
“We can rest here. I call this place Rainbow Falls.”
†††
Jasmine was being kind, for she needed no rest, had long ago conditioned herself to keep
moving as necessary. She’d reconnoitered miles of this vast expanse and knew it well. Well
enough to play the game anyway, and that was all that counted.
As they rested, or rather as Seth rested, Jasmine’s mind remained alert and her ears
listened even as her eyes closed. The sounds of the clearing were small things in her ears. Mostly
it was the trees she heard, listening to the exact manner in which the wind blew through them,
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the way the breeze swished the branches back and forth. She didn’t hear that which she feared
most, the sound that at first appearance would seem to be the wind rustling through the trees.
The mimicry was almost perfect. But only almost. Jasmine had played the game well, had
done her homework. She could tell the difference between It, the hideous creature, and it, the
blowing wind. The difference was subtle and had taken her months to learn, but the simple fact
there was a difference at all allowed a chance. Where there was a chance, there was hope; where
there was hope, there was strength. It was this strength that had propelled the dead girl through
her ordeal.
†††
It hadn’t occurred to Seth the places they passed had names. It was only then, lying on the
ground in the clearing beside Jaz, that he realized they were following a trail of some sort. He
suddenly saw her in a new light. She’d indeed survived two years here, and in order to do so she
must have used every ounce of her being, every neuron of her brain, and every fiber of her soul
to outwit and distance herself from It.
“Where are we going?”
She opened her eyes, looked at him. She was happy to have found him, quietly overjoyed
even. Maybe, in time, he’d be a friend, but just now he was only a companion. Any moment he
might make a mistake that would bring the beast down upon them—and then she’d watch yet
another companion get his skin flayed from his bones. But it was the listening that was the worst.
The screams. She’d rather listen to just about anything else in the world than hear those screams
again.
Hearing those screams was like dying all over again.
And, of course, when the screams stopped, well, so too did her friend’s existence in this
or any world. All except their skull that is. She’d seen how the creature always kept the skull. A
trophy, she imagined, a reminder of its victims.
She didn’t dare think of Seth as a friend, it would be easier this way, easier to forget him
when the time came. And the time would come she was sure. It always came, as certain a thing
as the wind. The beast they faced was very nearly the perfect killing machine she thought, for the
moment ignoring how her very existence two years after death emphasized nearly in the
extreme.
“We’re just trying to keep moving. We just need to keep moving.”
†††
Weed had been operating for over two hours when he first saw the right optic nerve
glisten at him. The left optic nerve was no more and the eye that had been attached to it was gone
now. It had popped free of the skull the moment Adonis kissed the side of the man’s head. It had
ruptured, its contents smeared down the side of Service102’s face in a grotesque caricature of a
face melting. Dr. Weed had completed the removal of that eye, beyond repair as it was, and with
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it he’d divided the useless optic nerve. Its stump now looked back at him, almost mocking him.
Weed had never anticipated he’d have to repair his own damage.
Now the right optic nerve glared up at him through the microscope. The good optic nerve.
A tiny sliver of bone, only slightly larger than a splinter of wood, sat precariously against it,
threatening to impale this last vestige of vision and blind the man forever. Weed noted that the
nerve itself looked pristine. It had none of the tell-tale discoloration of its counterpart, the
stumped one. It had survived the cataclysm intact. Indeed, during his examination of the man
before surgery, the right pupil had reacted normally to light, proof the optic nerve functioned on
at least some primitive level.
Mr. Hyde functioned on some primitive level too.
It occurred to Weed that lifting the nerve to remove the sliver of bone might damage it,
might even blind Service102. He knew this was unlikely if Dr. Jekyll controlled his hands, if
they behaved in the manner of a neurosurgeon and he lifted the nerve delicately with one hand
while he subtracted the bony splinter with the other; afterwards replacing the nerve in its newly
smooth bed. But what if Hyde took over, what if the hands that manipulated the optic nerve were
the same hands that had swung the statuette of Adonis a day earlier? They would be of course—
but what if the mind that controlled them reverted from the healer it was now to the monster it
had been then? It occurred to him that if he blinded this man, he might never be able to identify
the surgeon. He didn’t think he had said more than five or six words to the guy, maybe not even
that many, certainly not many more, and there was no way the man was going to identify him by
the sound of his voice alone.
He hesitated, maybe the longest hesitation of his surgical career, as he looked down upon
the optic nerve through the microscope. It pulsated gently back and forth with the pulse. As a
brain surgeon—as Dr. Jekyll—he knew what to do, but he was a man as well—Mr. Hyde sneered
from some ugly crevice within—and his sense of self-preservation was near overwhelming.
The seconds ticked away on the operating room clock.
In the end, self-preservation won out, but it was Jekyll’s self-preservation of the surgeon
and not Hyde’s self-preservation of the man.
His victim was now his patient and the sanctity of that relationship, at least here and now
in this operating room, was all consuming in Weed’s mind. He pushed Hyde back down into the
crevice he crawled from. The operating room was his church, his cathedral, his sanctuary. He
would let nothing disturb that. He was a healer, a brain surgeon, a man of medicine.
Having thus held the line, he saved the man’s life and began to put the skull back together
as best he could. It would take another hour to throw the last stitch and when he’d done so he’d
look up and notice the overhead observation window was empty. The homicide detective
apparently had better things to do than watch the insignificant goings-on of this particular
operating room. Weed’s stomach would finally untwist and he’d have a coke. He’d walk back to
his office and enjoy a respite from the chaos of this world.
He would arrive just in time to encounter the first vague harangues of the demons from
the next world.
†††
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The detective’s first thought had been drugs. The neurosurgeon wouldn’t be the first doc
to get mixed up in them, not by a long shot. People with easy access to prescription meds often—
more often than the general public liked to think—screwed themselves and got involved in
selling and trafficking drugs. But Weed was a surgeon, not a pharmacist or even an
anesthesiologist, and his access to drugs was probably limited.
A user then? Perhaps the doctor had been out cruising for a fix in the wee hours of that
frigid night. Marks considered this idea as well, but Weed didn’t fit the mold he’d developed
over the years. Sure, anybody could, and did, use drugs, but Weed’s job involved many hours in
the hospital, side by side with numerous other physicians and nurses. Trained professionals.
Surely somebody would have seen something suspicious in this regard if it existed. There was
nothing however.
After leaving the observation deck, Marks made a discrete inquiry at the medical staff
office.
“Been any complaints of an unusual nature against Dr. Weed?”
No, the middle aged woman behind the counter had replied after seeing the badge. She’d
volunteered how she didn’t particularly like the man. “He’s a twit, a demanding twit,” she’d said,
but his record was exemplary. He was temperamental, sometimes incredibly so, but he’d never
so much as been late once to the operating room so far as she knew.
As he turned to leave, the woman had offered one additional piece of information. She
had once overheard a discussion while waiting for a meeting in the doctor’s lounge, a discussion
between several staff physicians. They had all, to a man, mentioned their dislike for the brain
surgeon. This had hardly surprised her, but—and this was the part she’d found especially
interesting and the reason she’d remembered it now, several years after the fact—each also
remarked upon his great surgical skills and, once again to a man, each felt that if they ever
personally needed a brain surgeon, Isaac Weed would be their choice, bedside manner or not.
With that thought still fresh in his mind, the detective checked for a criminal record.
Weed had none, except a few parking tickets. Apparently he had a propensity to park in handicap
spaces. He had nineteen such tickets going back over the last two years, each paid in full
promptly. Marks found this humorous but, once again, it was information he could use. The fine
for each of those tickets was $200. If Weed could come up with $3800 just for parking, it was
unlikely he had a money problem. Money, the detective knew, was often the root of criminal
activity. But in this case, if the surgeon was involved somehow, money was unlikely to be the
motivator.
Weed had no drug record either. In addition, Charlie Hazlit, the injured man, also had no
drug record. No, the homicide man concluded, drugs probably had not played any more part than
money had.
All of this Marks knew before the last stitch went in Hazlit’s head back in Weed’s
operating room. Nonetheless, he refused to accept the coincidence as just that and before the day
was out, he wanted to know everything there was to know about Isaac Weed. After nine months
of looking for a serial killer without a single clue surfacing, the homicide detective thought Weed
looked like grist for the mill.
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†††
Dr. Weed hung up the phone and sagged back in his chair. His head ached once more and
if communing with the burnt lady’s soul had offered him a respite from the demons, it was
apparently over now.
Yes, he was the on-call neurosurgeon for the day and so of course he would take the long
distance call he had told the switchboard operator. She put it through a moment later and he
found himself talking to a young resident physician about some fat kid in Bismarck, North
Dakota. The boy might be in a coma he’d said, or maybe a catatonic state—didn’t he have
enough clinical acumen to know the difference? Weed had wondered—and they could no longer
care for him there. He looked to have something going on in his brain, a tumor his attending
thought. An MRI had seemed to confirm this, though it was only one image. This put the case
squarely in the lap of neurosurgery and not medicine or psych. His size precluded any thought of
him being a pediatric case (you had to see it to believe it the resident said), and then went on to
mention something about needing a better MRI.
Whatever, Weed had heard enough by then, asked a few quick questions to establish a
level of acuity (the case was perhaps urgent but not emergent and the boy was stable) and
accepted the child, provided they could send him down in the morning.
He needed the night to contend with the demons.
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Fifteen: Perception is Flawed Reality
There is fear and there is terror.
Fear enters the heart and creeps the bones. It is that sound in the night that appears to be
more than it really is, that light that flickers at an inopportune moment or the plumbing that burps
unexpectedly. Fear causes the heart to race and the breathing to come in quick, shallow gasps.
Fear plays games with the mind, but generally these are minor and pass with time. But what if
fear does not pass, what if fear is ratcheted up a notch or two? What if reality morphs into what
seems, and what seems twists into what is? At that crucial point, at that moment when the mind
can no longer discern what is from what is not, fear gives way to terror.
Terror bypasses the heart and enters the mind, creeps the soul. Terror grips its victim with
all the tenacity of a bear trap’s steel jaws, crushes the spirit within, and feeds the black
nothingness that somehow lives in each of us just beyond the edge of our consciousness. The tar
of that nothingness boils over and lays bare the illusion of security, opens a Pandora’s box of
hideous insights. And as the mind begins to choke, so too the body. The throat dries to dust and
feels the sting of a thousand flies as every breath becomes agony and every heartbeat a further
step out of this world and into the next. Sphincters weaken and the body churns its wastes out,
perhaps lightening its load for the flight it perceives to come. But then the legs buckle and the
knees falter, the victim falls to the ground and cowers in his own excrement, the world around
him now nothing more than an apparition populated by the creatures of his own imagination.
Reality is perception, but perception is flawed reality. And as reflected through the
distorted mirror of terror, reality can kill.
†††
Justin Weed did not die quickly.
On the evening of his last day on earth—a day during which he’d made frantic love to his
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wife in one of those quick lunchtime ticklers between young lovers who know they’ll have many
more to come—he was stuck late in the freshman cadaver lab at Stanford Med School. A
generation earlier his father, the eminent Zachary Weed, had studied in these same labs.
He came to medicine in the manner of all the Weeds. He was tickled by the same sort of
preternatural knowledge that had tickled Zachary, and, like his father before him, Justin was a
natural healer. He possessed a rare empathy for the sick.
He had discussed this just once with his father, whose premature death two years before
had put an end to any further discussion. They had never been close in any case.
Ill with the cancer that turned his life into a living nightmare (the one act of his father’s
life Justin truly did understand was Zachary Weed’s suicide just a few days after their last talk),
his father had referred to his unusual abilities as ‘being touched by the hand of God himself.’ He
went on to say how this touching was not a gift to be taken lightly, that ‘it should not, could not
be squandered.’ He implored his only child to listen to these words. Justin had given his promise,
though in the days that followed the old man’s suicide it had occurred to Justin the old man had
wanted to say more at the time. He hadn’t though. In the end, he’d taken whatever other thoughts
he had to his grave.
The time was just after one in the morning. The med school’s anatomy lab, aka the
cadaver lab, had just one living soul present. Justin had been at the dissection table for over five
hours. A single overhead light burned in the fixture over his table. The reek of formaldehyde was
strong, caustic enough to water his eyes. His nose burned. The acrid smell permeated his
clothing.
He peeled back the subject’s skin—he had long since ceased thinking of the pickled thing
on the table before him as a person, a necessary evil if one was to avoid nightmares all semester
—and exposed the ribs. He used a pair of snips to cut through the bones of the chest cage, then
carefully lifted them out as a single slab. He lifted out the heart, lungs, intestines, liver, and
spleen in turn. For lack of a better place to set all of this, he piled the now useless organs in a
heap on the cadaver’s legs.
At first glance he looked not unlike a modern day Dr. Frankenstein building a body from
so many spare parts—putting this man together instead of taking him apart.
Justin looked up at the sudden sound of trees rustling. He noted all the windows on this
side of the building were closed, as per university protocol. He supposed they didn’t want the
med students stinking up their precious grounds. Whatever, he shrugged off the little noise and
went back to work.
He was interrupted again a moment later. More wind. He hadn’t felt it, only heard it.
Wind rustling through trees he thought, but of course that couldn’t be right. The walls down here
in the basement had to be a foot thick, maybe two. The building dated to pre-World War II and
those folks had really known how to build ‘em back then. You couldn’t hear a goddamn thing of
the outside. He stopped what he was doing, he had been stooped over the body comparing what
he saw to an illustration in the book, and stretched for a long moment. He glanced around once
more, again finding nothing amiss. How could there be? He was alone here.
He stooped back to the cadaver, which he now realized smelled of spoiled meat and not
like something long dead. More like something recently killed and not well preserved—but of
course that couldn’t be right either. The body was fully infused with preservative, the caustic
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formaldehyde. He sniffed again, and the smell was harsher, more pungent. He thought: The
thing’s turned. Somebody done a fucked up job pickling him. Goddamn. “Time to leave,” he said
soto voce.
There came then a loud howl, the call of a feral animal. The sound confused him, came
from several directions at once. His imagination he told himself, tricks of the mind in the night.
Sure, the setting for such was perfect. The anatomy lab, surrounded by thirty or so bodies. Dead
bodies. Partially dissected dead bodies.
He chuckled uneasily and sniffed the air—the rotting meat smell was thankfully gone—
and stooped back to close up the body.
The pile of disemboweled parts from which one might build a modern Prometheus
was...gone.
Weed froze mid-stoop. His heart pounded inside his own chest cage. He could imagine
sounds, maybe even smells, but could he imagine something wasn’t there? Can one have a
negative visual hallucination? Slowly, he reached out with his hand, praying it would brush up
against the pile and the organs would suddenly appear.
His hand touched the cold, dead, leathery skin of the cadaver’s leg and nothing more.
More rustling—the wind, the fucking wind, and how could that be?—and another howl.
Then a hard thud and Justin tasted bile as the contents of his stomach rose in his throat.
“What the fuck? Who’s there?”
He spun in place, trying to take the room in in its entirety, but the place was empty. Or as
empty as a place with thirty dead bodies ever is. His hand was on his chest now, like a man twice
his age having a heart attack, and his breathing quickened into the gasps of a dying man.
“Jesus Christ, get a grip.” The words echoed through the basement, but there was nobody
to hear them.
The lights flickered. On...off...on...off. In the dark, he seemed the only soul on earth.
The single bulb above the dissection table brightened slowly, like a dimmer switch
working backwards. It whined as it increased to a blinding intensity, then blew with a loud pop
and showered him with glass shards. Only the light of the full moon streaming through the
windows illuminated the tables now. He could see his breath in it as well—the temperature had
dropped to near freezing in seconds.
Fear caressed Justin’s heart and etched into his bones. Like acid it was. With a vague,
hopeful sense this was a sick school prank, he moved for the door. He almost made it.
He reached for the doorknob—it had gone the green patina of aged copper—and realized
the room itself had aged impossibly. Mold, green and slimy and wet, covered the walls in lurid
broken patches. The idea he was standing in a crypt instead of an anatomy lab wasn’t wasted on
him.
He turned the knob—he imagined it breaking off in his hand but it did no such thing—
and pulled. The door opened with a lazy creak and Justin suddenly knew hell was in session.
Reality is perception, but perception is flawed reality.
It was a cadaver. More to the point, it was the cadaver, the one he and two others had
carved up over the preceding weeks. They hadn’t gotten to the legs yet, and the dead thing stood
before him upon these intact parts. But the upper body—its upper body—was a torment of bared
flesh with its innards visible for all to see. Formaldehyde soaked muscles hung in tattered shreds
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from the glistening bones along each arm. Smoke blackened lungs stood out from the
disarticulated slab of ribs, and the unbeating heart sat within. The arteries nonetheless bulged
intermittently with red embalming fluid. It dripped on the floor, where it pooled blood-like.
The thing had clearly found its parts, though they had been put back only haphazardly.
The liver was on the left instead of the right and the intestines were ass backwards, but it was all
there far as Justin could tell. Not that he did any kind of studied inventory, but standing in the
moonlit hallway, he saw everything in lurid detail.
The worst of it though, was the face. Justin and the others had dissected it layer by layer
weeks before and now it stared at him skeletonized and devoid of skin. One eyeball hung against
its cheekbone, dangling off a stretched out optic nerve. Its lower jaw was missing. The med
students had incidentally tossed it in the trash and apparently the thing hadn’t bothered to look
there. The exposed muscles moved in hideous animation as Justin watched, anything but
fascinated.
The cadaver smiled at him, pulling one side of its dissected face upward in a grotesque
sneer that left no doubt as to its intentions.
Justin pissed his pants even as he stepped backwards. He turned to run but had nowhere
to go except into the room full of dissected people, deeper into the crypt that held death with no
hope of redemption. He flailed about the dissection tables—they looked more like morgue slabs
now—for what might have been five minutes or five hours. An eternity anyway. The skinned
bodies reached out and grabbed him as he tore past them.
Like an insect caught in a spider’s web, his movements only pulled him deeper into his
predicament. Finally, he settled back into a corner, the sour smell of vomit heavy over the
pungent odor of formaldehyde as the dead thing dragged itself in his direction.
The beast from hell was out and about.
The eater of souls was hungry.
†††
The eater of souls looked upon the pathetic man-thing standing before it and smiled. It
enjoyed this game, all the more so when the man lost his water and pissed himself. Fear rose off
the man-thing like a bad odor and the creature feasted on it. It had found the hiding place of this
bastard soul, a member of the Weed family line. As the man turned away and directed his
energies at escape, the creature didn’t at first respond except by way of watching.
No escape.
When the man-thing had tired himself out, when he had ripened to the point of pure terror
and nothing less, only then did the creature move forward. It moved slowly, relishing the
moment. It was not often it came into this world, but this trip had been necessary. The soul was a
Weed and that was reason enough. Like all the Weeds before him, this soul had to be destroyed
—before Weed destroyed It.
Such was death, the creature reasoned in whatever passed for a brain in its diseaseriddled head.
In the guise of a dissected cadaver, the eater of souls moved forward, its worm laden eyes
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boring into those of the man-thing, searching out the pathetic soul within.
†††
Justin felt the stab of pain flash into his mind as if liquid metal had been poured through
his eyes.
He tried to avert his gaze from the living cadaver, but it was too late, the thing had
already found his soul and there would be no acquittal. As blackness closed over him, he felt the
writhing of a million maggots against his skin, felt them twisting the flesh from his bones, felt
them removing his soul. He found a voice he’d never known he possessed and screamed as if it
was the last thing he’d ever say, which it was.
A moment later he crumpled to the floor completely wasted, a blank stare betraying the
absence of animation within.
†††
The eater of souls did not rip its victim to shreds or skin him alive and grind his bones to
dust. It had no power to affect living flesh in this world, far removed as this was from its own
swampy realm. But the soul and all it possessed was another matter. The soul was open prey and
it feasted well on this day.
Before the body of the man-thing hit the floor, its soul had been ripped from it, digested,
and sent to the empty place.
†††
The authorities never divulged what they found in that basement hours later when his
fellow students found him. They never divulged that scrub though they might, the green tinge
that stuck to the walls here and there would not come off. They never divulged what became of
the student, though they admitted he’d never be a physician. The school never divulged how
when he was transferred to a discrete, out of the way nursing home, a blank stare still ruined his
face and betrayed the absence of any consciousness within.
As for Justin Weed himself, he’d impregnated his wife during that last frantic lunchtime
tickler, though he didn’t live to see his son brought into this world. His body died a slow death
and succumbed completely a month before Isaac was born.
The creature had intended to wipe the Weed family line from the annals of existence. It
had fallen woefully short, though it had no way of knowing that at the time.
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146
Sixteen: A Coke in the Alcove
They left Rainbow Falls and resumed their trek to nowhere in particular, at least so far as
Seth knew. The day was a warm one, not unpleasantly so, and they moved freely with little
concern. Jasmine listened intently as always.
It usually comes in the night. Now, in the daylight, Jaz was comforted by that knowledge.
“We gotta move faster.” They needed to get wherever nowhere was before nightfall.
“Where are we going?”
“To a place where there are no trees, a place where the sound of a tree rustling in the
wind can have only one meaning.”
A chill went through Seth, and he realized that for all the beauty of this netherworld, life
here was precarious—if it existed at all. He marched on in silence.
They finally left the forest and entered a rocky valley. The number of trees rapidly
diminished to nothing. The stream continued on, gradually descending in elevation as they
themselves remained on more or less level ground. From time to time, they stopped and rested.
Mostly this was for Seth’s benefit; the engine driving Jaz seemed almost superhuman in its lack
of need for any type of sustenance. As the day advanced and the light began to recede, Seth noted
for the first time the lack of a sun in the sky. Where, he wondered, did the light come from.
“I don’t know,” Jaz answered when asked. “It seems to come and go regularly though.
Always a dusk, always a dawn.”
The same light that serves the tunnel. Seth was saddened by the element of resignation he
detected in Jaz’s voice, though surprised by his own sudden knowledge. How do I know that?
They came out of a slight depression, topping a rise. Before them a vast valley appeared.
The vista was nothing short of grand. Seth saw that the stream they had followed meandered
along the floor of the valley, which was several hundred feet below. Not a sudden drop, but a
gradual slope that became steeper as it approached their position on the rise. They stood on the
rim of a vast bowl that splayed out before them. The stream wandered across the bottom of the
bowl.
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“Over there.” Jasmine pointed to an outcropping of rock just a few hundred feet in front
of them. It blended perfectly with the shale around it.
“Turtle rock.”
Seth saw that indeed, with some imagination, the largest rocks formed the head of a turtle
and the remainder its shell. The head of the turtle stuck out from the shell and, as they moved
closer, Seth saw it was not quite sitting on the ground.
“In there,” the dead girl said, pointing ahead as she moved forward. She squeezed into a
hole thin Seth would never have dreamt of passing through as his former, larger self.
With the last remnants of daylight fading to night, the pair squeezed under the face of the
turtle and into a vast chamber Seth had never imagined existed beneath their feet.
“Home,” Jaz said.
They had arrived at nowhere.
†††
The creature sat upon the roots of the mangrove-like tree for hours, though time meant
nothing in its world. It periodically tasted the swamp waters for some trace of the wayward soul
that was, it now knew, a Weed. It had felt the shudder in its world on that day two years before
when the bastard soul had first appeared in its home world, had known immediately the
significance of the event. It couldn’t, however, resist playing with the child, extracting all the
fear she had from within her, terrorizing her to the point of exhaustion.
That had been the plan anyway.
At first, it had seemed to work. She cringed as every other soul had at their first
encounter. It would have had her for sure, except for that other kid—the Vix kid. Stephen Vix
had stepped out between her and the creature, long enough for her to pull off her vanishing trick.
Her vanishing trick.
The creature had made quick work of Stephen Vix, had skinned him whole in one deft
movement of its razor sharp teeth, then extracted his skull and crunched his bones to so much
dirt and ash. The child soul had screamed marvelously. Not as marvelously as most adults of
course, but a tasty morsel nonetheless.
Having once banished Vix’s soul, the girl was no where to be found. The creature had
never known surprise before—an uncomfortable feeling at best, it thought. The girl had
somehow eluded it ever since. Now the game was growing wearisome. The girl was gaining
experience, was beginning to know the essence of what it was.
For the first time ever, the eater of souls was experiencing fear itself.
†††
Isaac Weed sat on a toilet in the bathroom down the hall from his office. Hd didn’t really
need to shit, rather the toilet was about the only place he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed. He
could ignore his pager if it went off (it did and he did) and if anybody came in, there would be
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none of the ridiculous small talk that literally drove him crazy.
He preferred toilets to people.
The voices that had tormented him for months were back, and this time they weren’t just
whispering. As he sat on the porcelain with his pants around his ankles, he held his hands over
his ears. He knew the voices came from within and not without—in this regard at least, he wasn’t
crazy—but covering his ears was all he could do. The voices were pleas he realized, pleas for
help from beyond the grave. Pleas from Jasmine.
Lost and terrified, in some way he didn’t understand Jaz’s pleas had crossed the
boundaries of that other world and spilled over into this one.
Weed was in agony. Never had the demons come back so quickly as they had now. He
knew how to quiet them, how to intrude upon the death of another and cross over himself, if only
for a short time. He had done it successfully a few times, but now things were different. He had
begun to question his own sanity, to think of himself as if not quite a monster, then perhaps very
disturbed.
But what father wouldn’t go to the ends of the earth, or the edge of life, for his own
child?
Late in the day, Weed forced himself to round on his victim/patient. He didn’t fail to
notice the police guard outside the ICU. Inside, Service102 had yet to regain consciousness but
was otherwise doing well. His various numbers checked out okay—blood counts, electrolytes,
clotting factors, the usual numbers that announce a trend toward success or failure every six
hours in the ICU.
When the nurse left the room for a moment, Weed struggled to clear his mind and placed
his hand on Service102’s bare thigh. He closed his eyes.
And immediately regretted it. Instantly nauseous, his entire head seemed to swell to the
point of bursting. It ached, though not the ache of death. Weed was familiar with this and knew
on the instant the man would survive. Whether or not he would ever recover beyond mere
survival remained to be seen.
As he was about to withdraw contact, Weed’s world suddenly darkened. He felt himself
being whisked away against his will. He’d never felt such a strong pull before while touching—
as if caught in the mucky grip of quicksand. He struggled against it, but now he was a bug
circling a drain. The water swirled around him, black and thick and slimy. He sensed something
unspeakable in it. Something he wanted no part of. He twisted violently and tumbled back
against the wall, knocking over an IV pole and a beside table in the process. The pole fell against
his head and he managed to catch the table before it crashed to the floor.
He was picking himself up when the nurse returned.
†††
Isaac Weed was still shaking as he came out of the ICU a few minutes later, only to find
Detective Marks waiting for him. Whether it was a pure coincidence or the cop had been laying
in wait for him, he had no idea. Nonetheless, the two men moved off down the hall together, the
surgeon reluctantly bringing Marks with him. As they walked, the cop shook his hand back and
149
forth and Weed heard the clinking of coins, an irritating distraction he really didn’t need just
then. In fact, the cop was an irritating distraction he didn’t need just then.
“Why the police escort?” Weed used every ounce of his strength to avoid grabbing his
head, the voices not caring about the presence of the homicide detective.
“Protection,” the detective said, his voice still twangy. “We certainly don’t want whoever
did this coming back to finish the job, do we?”
“He’ll make it, I think, though I can’t say when he might wake up.”
“What were you doing there, doc?” the cop abruptly asked.
“Where?” He feigned ignorance, as if he didn’t know exactly what the cop was asking.
“The other night, you know, the fire, the old lady. What were you doing there?”
A pause as the pair took several more steps. “Just driving around, couldn’t sleep. I’m an
insomniac.” He saw the coins in the man’s hand now. Two quarters.
“Pretty bad part of town just to be driving around in, eh doc?”
“My daughter died a couple of years ago. I don’t much worry about those things
anymore.” This statement was true, maybe the first true thing the surgeon had said to the
detective.
The cop knew about Weed’s daughter, and a lot more besides. “Drowning wasn’t it?”
Weed’s face contorted at the painful memory. He still couldn’t talk about Jaz’s death,
especially in such cold terms. The voices in his head twisted—as if an internal vice squeezed—
and Weed felt he had to scream or die. He did neither.
“Yeah.”
“Sorry for your loss, doc. I have two daughters of my own and such a loss probably
would have killed me.” The quarters clinked as he moved his hand back and forth.
Yeah, I’ll bet you are you sonofabitch. Weed stopped in front of a small alcove with a
coke machine. “Anything else, detective?”
Marks hesitated, said, “No, see ya ‘round doc.” He reached up, slotted the two quarters in
the vending machine, and hit the button.
He was walking away by the time the coke dropped into the bin below.
†††
Jenny White sat beside the gargantuan child laying on the bed. She’d been listening
intently for any sign that he was in there, that his body was...occupied. She had tried several
times to communicate with him, to bypass his ears and speak directly to his mind. She hadn’t
been successful.
She had always been able to tell what he was thinking in the past. She could tell what
most people were thinking actually, though not all. Some people seemed to think on a different
wavelength, one she couldn’t pick up. The two doctors she had met with yesterday for instance.
She’d not been able to discern their thoughts. She’d tried, though only reluctantly. It seemed an
invasion of privacy and so she rarely used her gift on strangers. But she’d sense whatever they
had to tell her, it was bad news.
A brain tumor they’d said. Could it get much worse than that?
150
They’d said they weren’t sure of their findings, that more studies needed to be done. It
was then she’d tried to hear their thoughts, to probe their minds for the truth. She’d heard only
white noise though, like static on the radio.
It made her think of the MRI technician, of her face after she screamed. White noise with
nothing behind it.
In the end of course, she’d seen the older doctor’s true thoughts displayed on his face.
Clear as his nose.
Seth was going to die.
And so after they left, after she gave her permission to have him moved to Minneapolis,
she’d listened repeatedly for Seth’s return to his body. Despite not having heard it, or seen it, or
felt it, she had tried all day to make contact with him. Like dialing a phone and getting no
answer. It just rang. Even a busy signal would have comforted, would have implied a presence at
least. But he wasn’t present. Of that she was sure.
The phone just rang and rang and rang.
†††
Thin Seth sat on the rock and stared down into the mirrored surface of the water. It
shimmered like mercury, and for the first time ever he saw himself as thin. He admired his
cheekbones, thinking how he looked gaunt but somehow beautifully gossamer. The water also
reflected a slim chest and somebody else’s chicken legs. His arms were impossibly thin too,
looking as if they would snap twig-like at the slightest provocation. In another time and place, he
would have thought himself half starved—a fat boy stricken with some dread wasting disease.
But just now, in this world lit by the light of the tunnel and stalked by a beast impossibly hideous
to imagine, he was just a boy of normal size.
Jaz lay by his side, her eyes having finally closed. They’d walked another ten minutes in
from the entrance of the cave, had found a large chamber that looked, for lack of a better term,
lived in. The light, though dim, was enough once his eyes adjusted. The place was cool, not
uncomfortably so, and a large pond occupied a goodly part of the room. The smell was that of
lilacs, though Jaz had said she wasn’t sure where the odor came from.
The place was an echo chamber with even the slightest noise. But now it was quiet, so
much so Seth imagined he’d have been able to hear Jaz’s heartbeat if she had had one. He
touched her face. Her skin was impossibly cold. The color was a pale off-white, not unpleasant.
Most folks two years dead probably had lost their skin long ago. He thought about that idea,
thought about death and decay and the show he’d seen on TV about how bugs and beetles and
other insect stuff ate your skin after you died. Then he remembered the forest, just before being
clubbed.
There are no insects.
No insects to feed on a dead girl’s skin. He was glad.
Seth tried to imagine what she’d looked like in life. She would have had flowing black
hair, he thought, and kind eyes without the dark circles that entombed them now. He saw her
with pleasant lips constantly upturned in a smile. Her face would have held a cute impish grin.
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Even now, despite the dirt and blemishes of several years living beyond the grave, he’d seen
hints of that smile from time to time. Although dirt streaked her face and her hair hung unkempt
and ungathered, she was still a girl. That much was obvious.
Just a little girl that had somehow gotten lost.
†††
Jasmine stirred on the hard rock and opened her eyes. They peered up at Seth, almost
pleading in their innocence yet worldly in their content. Would he stay, she wondered. Would he
last or would he make a mistake like all the others and be sent to the empty place?
The first thing she did, aside from opening her eyes, was listen. She concentrated and
listened with all her might, the way a weightlifter lifts with all their strength and leaves nothing
in reserve when the chips are down.
She listened for the sound of the trees, the sound of wind rustling through them, the
sound of the beast among them. She heard only silence.
Next, she put her nose to the test, sniffing for whatever might be out there. Lilacs, the
smell of the flowers overpowering the faint hint of mildew. No odor of vomitus, no rancid meat
or rotting flesh.
The place seemed safe enough for the moment and Jasmine closed her eyes once again,
but this time she did not sleep, did not nap. She’d done so only fitfully for two years now,
somehow sensing when it was and was not okay. Just now, she felt it was not okay.
She did what she always did on those occasions when she thought sleeping wasn’t a good
idea. Laying on the hard rock beside the pond of still water, she conjured an image of her father
and concentrated hard upon it. If he was here, he’d know what to do.
Daddy, I need your help.
†††
Isaac Weed took the coke out of the bin, popped the top, and drank from it like an
alcoholic too long deprived of the spirituous liquor that made life bearable. If the fizzy drink had
a calming effect upon him, it lasted no longer than it took to finish the coke itself.
In the small vending alcove just down the hall from the ICU—an ICU where,
simultaneously, his patient convalesced and his victim slept—Weed leaned back against the coke
machine and the empty aluminum can slipped from his grasp and hit the tiled floor with a
reverberating clink. His elbows flexed and he grabbed his forehead with both hands. He kneaded
and massaged the skin there, as if his head were made of clay and he could simply squeeze and
twist it into something less hideous than he now felt it to be. He gouged what would have been
deep holes in the mortal clay, trying to press his eyes together and reform the image of the
monster within. The clay seemed to cry as tears streamed down his face.
“Daddy?”
Weed’s knees buckled and he crumpled to a seated position. He slowly lifted his face out
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of his hands, unsure of what he’d heard, certain he hadn’t heard her.
“Please daddy, I need you.”
The voice was soft and slightly high-pitched, definitely that of a little girl. She stood in
the corner of the alcove, surrounded by walls on three sides and perhaps ten feet from where he
now sat. At first, she seemed smudged, as if seen through a window pane streaked by rain. Weed
blinked several times, rubbing his eyes in between, trying to clear both his mind and his vision.
Standing before him, looking disheveled and lost, was a little girl. Her eyes were hidden
behind great dark circles, suggesting not just no sleep, but an utter lack of rest ever. The ghostly
pale skin of her face, as white as Weed remembered it from Old Man Meyer’s Pond, was
blemished by dirt and it was clear she’d not washed in a great while. Her hair, once black and
flowing, hung unkempt and ungathered about her shoulders, strands running this way and that,
some matted in the dirt on her face. She held her arms at her side and stood on a pair of legs so
spindly it did not seem possible they could hold her up.
It was her. She was wet, dirty, tired, and pale, but it was Jasmine Weed in the flesh. She
wore the same pink jacket and blue jeans she’d been wearing two years before, when the world
had reached out and grabbed her. The clothes were sopping wet and she looked as cold as it was
possible to be. Her specter glimmered under the florescent lights of the alcove and her form was
vaguely translucent, a sign on the wall behind her visible as if through a mist: Change available
in the cafeteria.
“I need you daddy. Help me, help me please.”
Weed’s brain stumbled trying to hang on to reality. Was this a plea from beyond the
grave? Or a cruel trick of his mind? Whatever it was, it was the most vivid image he’d seen of
her since they’d closed the coffin and lowered her into the frozen ground of St. Mary’s cemetery
almost two years ago this day. He reached a hand out toward her but now, as then, it fell short.
“I’m here, Jaz,” he heard himself say as her image smudged anew and tears once again
lathered his cheeks. He gave in to the moment and let whatever was there, whatever had come
into the alcove, take him.
“You must be strong daddy, please. I need you.”
“But what can I do baby?” His voice broke with sobs. He’d slumped all the way to the
floor by now, but his eyes remained fixed upon her. He dared not look away, lest she be gone.
“You’ve waited so long daddy, wait just a little longer. I need your help.”
Were her lips moving? He didn’t think so, and yet he heard the words, heard them clearly.
The faint image before him just stood there, not moving, not trying to come forward.
“For what Jaz? What am I waiting for?”
“A moment. You’ll know the moment, daddy. I need you and you will know. But you
must stay strong for me. Will you do that?” Her lips were moving he realized, and now her face
contorted into a look that conveyed both sorrow and hope at the same time.
“Yes, yes baby. I miss you so much Jaz.”
He could barely say the words as his voice cracked under the strain of his longing. He
tried to get up, tried to move toward her, but his legs wouldn’t respond. It was as if the icy water
had once again claimed their strength and rendered him helpless to reach her.
“I miss you too daddy.”
“Tell me what’s wrong baby, what is it?”
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But he blinked his eyes and the apparition vanished.
Weed sat beside the coke machine, staring at the corner that had been his daughter just a
moment before. He slowly composed himself and got to his feet, still looking at the corner. Had
she really been there? Had he really seen her? Some part of him wanted to reside with logic and
say no, say that it had been some sort of weird illusion, some fracturing of the mind under stress.
But as he stared at the floor where she’d stood so recently, the greater part of him knew better,
knew she’d been there.
For nearly an hour, as the demons receded, as his headache toned down and his
composure returned, Isaac stood in the vending alcove staring at the place his daughter had
stood.
I need your help, she’d said, asking him to wait just a little longer.
He would wait and he would stay strong for her, he was determined to do that. He had not
been there for her the last time she’d needed his help and the results had been disastrous, had led
to this.
Had led to the puddle of water on the floor in the corner that he watched slowly evaporate
over the better part of an hour.
Wait just a little longer, she’d said.
He wouldn’t have to wait long.
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Seventeen: Unplanned Encounters
When Isaac Weed finally arrived home it was just past 11:00 pm. Jay Leno would be on
soon, but Melanie ignored Jay in favor of her husband. She cooked him a steak, Cajun spices and
onions, and the two of them sat at the dining room table discussing the events of the day, a ritual
they had missed for too long.
She’d decided to return to volunteering in the elementary school library, the same school
in which their daughter had been a student. Isaac welcomed the idea. She was relieved. The old
Isaac would have supported her, but she had been unsure about the distant man her husband had
become. Sitting at the table, chatting with her husband in the easy fashion of bygone days, she
saw a glimpse of the man she’d married. Maybe they would yet be a family again.
For his part, Isaac told her of the trauma patient, the man that had been struck in the head
with something, a brick perhaps. He spared her the more morbid details, but assured her he’d
survive. He also told her of the visits from the police detective and his casual mention of the
murders that had plagued the gay part of the city.
Had she heard anything of this in the news? he asked. She had not.
He left out the issue of a serial killer prowling the city. He also left out the events of the
evening, including most especially the visit from Jasmine in the alcove. After their late dinner,
they moved on to the master bedroom, where they joined together as they had in better times.
†††
The plane touched down at the Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport just minutes
after 10:00 am. The still unresponsive, gigantic child was moved to an ambulance and
subsequently to the Minneapolis General Hospital, where he was admitted by previous
arrangement to the neurosurgery service.
Jenny White was assured by the nurse that the accepting neurosurgeon would see them
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momentarily. Dr. Weed was currently in the OR the nurse offered.
Jenny White hesitated, stunned as if a sudden electrical shock had passed through her.
“Did you say Dr. Weed?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his first name?” She took the young nurse’s hand in hers.
“I’m really not sure. George maybe, or Jonathan. Something like that anyway.”
Not Jonathan but Isaac, Jenny White discovered as she touched the woman. Though she
didn’t know him, indeed had never met the man, as she touched the nurse’s hand Jenny White
knew she had made the correct decision in coming to this place.
The chain of life told her all she needed to know.
†††
Melanie awoke at 4:30, a full half hour before the alarm. Whatever manner of demon
possessed her, she couldn’t resist the scissors on the bedside table. She picked them up and
looked at her sleeping husband, at the cotton briefs around his midsection. She gently slid one
blade of the scissors under the fabric and cut the briefs away. He barely stirred with this, but
when she returned with whipped cream she found him laying on his back instead of the fetal
position he preferred. As the whipped cream swirled around his manhood, the swelling betrayed
the heat there and his arousal was obvious by the time she placed the maraschino cherry on top
of the lengthy concoction. A moment later, that cherry was in her mouth. There was no way Isaac
was going to get any sleep after that, so he gave in and let himself be used by her. Or something
like that. Twice.
After finishing the first time, he hopped in the shower. He was literally attacked while
toweling off and was forced to provide yet a another sample of his love for her right there on the
marble bathroom floor. What foresight, Weed thought now as he proceeded to back out of his
driveway, what foresight he’d had when he built the house with a heated bathroom floor.
So here it was, just after 6:00 in the morning, and he’d already taken two showers. He
was a lucky man. He picked up his cell phone.
“Hey honey.”
“Miss me already, coming back for more?” Melanie asked.
“I wish, gotta go to work just now, but I’ll be home early tonight.” Gotta strike while the
iron’s hot.
“So why the call, big boy?”
Her voice was beyond sexy, was entering licentiousness. If only I didn’t have to operate
this morning... “I wanted to invite you to lunch with me.” Weed halted at a stop sign.
“Oh, a date. What time? I can’t wait.”
“How ‘bout noon, you can pick me up, we’ll go to one of those little deli’s by the lake,
not far from the hospital.” Lost in the moment, Weed didn’t notice the car that pulled up behind
him as he spoke.
They said their goodbyes and hung up. He placed the phone back in its clip, but before he
could press the gas pedal there was a knock on his window. Weed looked up, recognized the man
156
with dread, and rolled the window down.
“What the hell is this, detective?”
“Mornin’ doc,” the cop said. His face cracked into a snide little smile.
The surgeon didn’t say anything, contemplated putting his foot down on the gas pedal.
Marks put his left hand to his cheek and frowned. “You live around here doc?”
“Yeah, a block over that way.” He shuddered at that twangy voice. You know exactly
where I live, you prick.
“Well, what a coincidence, I live just a few blocks over that way.”
“That’s real nice detective, we’ll have to get together some time.” Liar. On the shit the
city pays you, you can’t afford a house within twenty blocks of mine.
“Hope you don’t mind the interruption, I like to get an early start and, what a
coincidence, happened to see your car here and all. Thought maybe I’d stop a moment and chat.”
The twang went on forever, an irritating nasal whine. Weed thought it matched the cop’s
face perfectly. “If you don’t mind detective, I do have surgery this morning.”
“Oh, yeah, of course. Sometimes I get carried away. You ever get carried away doc?”
“What?”
“Eh, never mind.” He looked away for a moment, then put his left hand to his forehead.
“Say, you didn’t ever answer my question the other night.” He took his hand off his forehead and
lowered it slightly, pointing the index finger at the doctor.
“What question was that?” You fuck. Weed’s morning, having begun so promisingly, was
rapidly deteriorating.
“Powell Post Road doc. What were you doing there?”
Weed fidgeted, his thumbs beating time against the steering wheel. Clever, very clever.
You short ass vertically challenged sonofabitch. You like to play games don’t you? You might be
five feet tall, with shoes on. And yet, as I sit here, I have to look up at you. I bet you been sitting
in your call all night waiting for me to come by just so you could stand over me. What bullshit.
“Coincidence my ass,” he said soto voce.
“How’s that doc?”
“Detective, I told you, I was just driving around. I really do need to go now. I’m due in
the OR in 45 minutes.” This was a lie, he wasn’t due in the OR for almost 90 minutes, but he did
have to make rounds beforehand on Service102. Weed still called him that; it seemed easier than
using his name. Hazzlewood was it? or Hazzard? Or something like that. Service102 would
suffice. After all, the man was going to survive, but they were never going to be friends. Weed
had sensed something in the man, something unspeakably dark. There’s evil there... The idea hit
him out of the blue.
“So that’s your answer, just out for a leisurely drive in the worst part of town at two in the
morning? That your story doc?” He was looking down now, staring hard into the surgeon’s eyes,
almost daring the doctor to avert his gaze.
“Not my story, detective. It’s what really happened.” Staring hard back at the detective,
he added “and, if it’s not to your liking, well, who the fuck cares. I certainly don’t. Good day sir.”
The homicide cop stood contemplating the rear end of Weed’s Mercedes as it pulled away
from him.
“I care doc, and right now that’s all that counts.”
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†††
The creature was suddenly alert, every fiber of its being engorged with purpose. It had
sensed something in the water, something that had not been there previously. Amongst the
marvelous cacophony of reeking humors, bits of dead and decaying matter, and toxic vapors, the
beast had isolated a single molecule that was not of its world. The element could have floated
into the stinking effluent from only one direction and in this direction the creature now began to
move.
The eater of souls moved slowly at first, choosing its every step and stroke carefully. It
was alert to its world now and continuously sampled the cruddy water as it went forward, its skin
absorbing the mixture of toxins from the murky bog, looking for more of the trace molecules that
would allow it to refine its search. It found them and, as it moved, the other creatures of the
swamp cleared out of the way, warned by the vile stench that preceded it. The beast was on the
hunt.
The game had begun.
†††
Seth pulled his hand out of the water almost as soon as it entered. Jasmine heard the
splash, more of a tinkle actually but might as well have been a bomb going off as far as she was
concerned. She grabbed his arm.
“What are you doing?!” she screamed too late. “I knew I shouldn’t have brought you
here!”
“What...why...” Seth stammered, not imagining what had suddenly caused the girl to lose
her composure.
“The water, it lives in the water! We have to move. Now!”
“I was just gonna wash my hands.”
“You don’t understand. This creature doesn’t care about your hands.” She stood up, got
right in his face. “This thing shows no mercy. It hasn’t one stick of humanity anywhere in its
body. It does one thing and one thing only. It kills! This creature is the perfect killing machine
and you just provided it with a road map to our location.”
Seth had no response. It was her world after all.
“Follow me and do exactly as I do, and I do mean exactly if you wanna make it out of
here in one piece. We have to get as far away from the water as possible.”
“How much time do we have?” He followed her toward a wall of stone with a rocky
ledge maybe eighteen inches across. The path inclined upward at a steep and awkward angle.
“No telling. A minute, probably less. Just follow me, don’t talk.” She was all ears now,
listening.
They scampered up the narrow incline, Jaz in front and Seth, his thinness now
contributing to his fleetness of foot, behind. It was fifty or sixty feet to the top and halfway up
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Jasmine suddenly stopped and turned to Seth. She heard it then, the faint rustling of trees—only
not. The sound was not quite that of branches rustling in the wind. She’d been wrong she
thought. Her guess of a minute had been too long.
“Hear it?”
He nodded no.
Jaz turned to continue up the incline, but stumbled and lost her footing. She slipped over
the edge and hung there, hugging the rock with her tiny fingers thirty feet above the floor of the
cave.
“Grab my hand, I’ll pull you up.” Seth bent to help her.
“You feel the air? The dampness? It’s here.”
“I don’t see anything.”
The pond erupted volcano-like, the water frothing and churning. The air turned the putrid
stench of rotten eggs.
The force of the creature’s appearance pushed Seth back against the wall. He regained
himself and bent again to help Jaz.
“Give me your hand!”
“No time.” She looked him in the eyes with complete determination. “Listen to me. Press
yourself against the wall. Whatever happens, close your eyes and don’t move. If you so much as
flicker a finger or tense an eyelid, it’ll hear it and find you.”
And then she let go.
†††
The eater of souls crashed through the surface of the pond, showering the rocky shore
with the detritus of the swamp. It took a moment to probe its senses. Yes, this was where the
intrusion had originated. The thing that did not belong in its world had been here.
It swung its ugly head around as if looking about, but it possessed only a rudimentary
pair of eyes—sufficient for its poorly lit world but not here. It was a creature of the water,
preferred the swamp. It could leave the water, and frequently did so, but only for short periods of
time. The water was its element and once out of it, it relied mostly on its hearing, which was
keen but nothing like its sense of smell when in the water. It listened and looked now, reaching
beyond itself for some hint of the intruder.
†††
As Jasmine fell, she tried to put her feet out together, tried to hit the ground on both at the
same time. She miscalculated though, and her left foot struck first. In a flash of agony, the leg
shattered below the knee with a loud ‘thwop’ and she crumpled to the ground. She came close,
very close, to screaming in pain, but somehow found the strength to bite her tongue instead. As
blood dripped from the corner of her mouth, she grimaced hard and closed her eyes, holding the
grotesque facial posture as if paralyzed. Then she thought of Seth up on the ledge, thought of
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butterfly kisses (what were they anyway?), thought of practicing sleeping, of saving the giant
panda, and of Spottie Dottie and the chicken pox. She thought of anything that might take her
away from this particular place and this particular moment.
†††
The first thing it heard was a loud ‘thwop’ maybe fifty feet in front of it, followed by the
sound of bone rubbing against bone. The ‘thwop’, a sharp report that echoed throughout the
chamber and reverberated back and forth between the walls, suggested a wounded animal. The
creature instantly localized the source and the eater of souls moved toward it, anticipating an
easy kill and exuding a peculiar sour odor like that of vomitus.
†††
From his vantage point high above her, Seth saw Jasmine hit the ground and watched as
her leg folded unnaturally. He too heard the sickening ‘thwop,’ but to him the terrible sound
evoked a heartfelt tender mercy and for an instant he considered going after her, but then realized
they would both perish if he did.
Whatever happens, close your eyes and don’t move.
He stepped back and flattened himself against the rock, closing his eyes as tight as he
could. He froze, all but turning to stone himself.
away for the year, when the ground freezes...
Seth chanted to himself and prayed to his God.
†††
The eater of souls, its appetite aroused and its skin pregnant with thousands of maggots
writhing and boring their way outward, moved with surprising speed toward the ‘thwop’ and the
meal it presumed to be there. But in the moment of time it took to move ashore, the target of its
wrath—the little girl lost—vanished, seemingly disintegrating into the air without a trace. The
creature lingered at the spot for several minutes, a rancid, dirty brown drool hanging in thick
rivulets from its mouth. It strained to hear any trace of the girl, but found the room silent except
for the sound of its own slithering along the rocky ground. It sniffed at the air, but here, out of
the water that was its true home, its sense of smell was not a good one and sniffing failed to
reveal her location.
The girl had simply vanished.
†††
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Jasmine, the humid, stinking breath of the creature inches before her face, felt the drops
of putrid saliva drip upon her. She didn’t gag, didn’t cough, didn’t so much as roll her eyes. She
still held the same painful grimace that had contorted her face the moment her left leg broke
beneath her. She didn’t move even as the worms began to bore their way into her skin, or at least
the sensation of such as the beast sought out her location, tried to force her to move in some way
and betray her hiding place.
But it didn’t work, for she didn’t feel the worms or their creeping. Indeed, from the
moment her leg broke, she ceased feeling anything. Her mind had gone away, had taken flight of
this place and she might as well have been a thousand miles away in body as well.
†††
As if it possessed the vocal organs of a banshee, the great beast, the king of a netherworld
that was both the back edge of life and the leading edge of death, released a piercing wail that
was at once both haunting and musical. The sublime song which emanated from its throat was a
lyrical agony of disgust, a deep pain that came from its very core as it realized the tiny girl had
yet again slipped its grasp. The high pitched melodious tones reverberated about the cavern and
echoed throughout numerous other chambers as a beautiful song that was at first soothing to the
mind, then chilling to the soul, and finally painful to the ears as it threatened to rupture the
eardrum. Before the beast’s hideous howl finished, the creature had returned to the water and to
the dead and decaying world it knew best.
†††
Thin Seth grabbed his head and screamed in pain as blood trickled from his left ear. A
violation of all that Jasmine had told him only moments ago—whatever happens, close your eyes
and don’t move—this simple act would have cost him everything even five seconds before. Now
though, the creature had stopped listening and had returned to the pond, which Seth realized he’d
never describe as ‘still’ again. A moment later however, when Seth finally gathered his courage
enough to open his eyes, ‘still’ was an apt description of the cavern.
“Jasmine?You there? You okay? Jasmine? Please be okay...”
†††
The gigantic boy shook violently as the spasms captured first the left side of his body
then the right as well. He bit his tongue and blood trickled from his left ear as his back arched
into an agony of extension until those in the room thought it would snap like a dry twig. His arms
and legs alternately tightened and then loosened as if at the command of some out-of-body
puppet master flailing them this way and that. His eyes, glassy and barren of any consciousness,
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rolled upward in their sockets until only the whites were visible, as if the boy were some pupilless alien from another world.
At that exact moment, with the chaos of the child’s seizure filling the ward with palpable
urgency, Dr. Isaac Weed arrived and, for the first time, met the impossibly large child called Seth
Oberg. Weed quickly directed 8 mg of ativan be drawn up and given in 2 mg increments, then
called for an ambu bag. If the kid stopped breathing he’d use it to force oxygen into his lungs.
The child made guttural noises as his throat tightened and loosened again, but he didn’t
stop breathing. The incomprehensible sounds morphed into near words and Weed, himself
standing near the boy’s head, thought he heard something familiar in the ramblings .
“Spottie Dottie needs help.”
The words, mostly just indistinct grunts, tickled something deep in the brain surgeon. To
him they weren’t unintelligible sounds, but words spoken with haunting clarity. He stared at the
boy, listening to hear the words repeated. They weren’t, and a moment later the child slumped
back against the bed, the seizure over and the boy and his body quiet once again as the sedative
took effect.
“Did anybody catch what he said?” Weed asked the assembled throng, looking for
confirmation.
A respiratory tech said, “just grunts and groans doc.”
Weed wondered if he’d imagined the whole thing, had heard the guttural moans and put
his own spin on them. Perhaps he’d heard the words as Weed the father rather than Weed the
physician. Still, he hadn’t thought of Spottie Dottie in almost two years, not since his two month
sojourn of bereavement in the house that had been haunted by Jasmine’s memory at every turn.
He certainly hadn’t been thinking about Spottie Dottie today. Queer he thought, an odd
thing. He left it alone for the moment but knew he’d come back to it later. He turned to the
elderly black woman standing in the corner, she had apparently been there the whole time, and
introduced himself.
Jenny White responded politely with an outstretched hand, wondering herself who
Spottie Dottie was.
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Eighteen: Spottie Dottie
As she sat across from her husband at a small table in Wight’s Deli, Melanie thought of
the old times. Some years ago, before the drowning, before residency, even before medical
school, she and Isaac had frequently enjoyed lunch at small delis like this one. Wight’s was a
quaint place, only five tables and all of them different from each other, an odd collection that
might have been the end result of a day’s wanderings through a flea market. Yet they somehow
were perfect for the shop, lending it a welcome homespun atmosphere. Weed had discovered the
likable shop shortly after starting at the hospital two blocks down the street. It had become his
favorite.
Wight’s Deli was owned and operated by an older black couple, Donell and Dorothy
Wight, and Dorothy’s mother, Helen. They sold ham and cheese, tuna melts, reubens, BLTs, and
other simple but delicious sandwiches. Along with the sandwich, one could count on good oldfashioned service and talk to rejuvenate the spirit. The sandwiches were served on a variety of
breads, most home baked, and ‘the finest plastic that money can by’, or so Dorothy and Donell
often remarked. The tables themselves were covered with plaid tablecloths and the walls were
plain white with simple pen and ink drawings hung liberally here and there. The drawings were
the work of local artists and each one was a signed original, although not worth all that much
probably.
“So what do you think, babe?”
“This sandwich is like nothing I’ve ever tasted.” She had ordered the reuben, sans
sauerkraut as always. The taste of the corned beef was to die for, or so the locals said and she
now confirmed. It was Melanie’s first visit.
“Told you.” He had a tuna melt, not being a fan of corned beef, and it was every bit as
good.
“Well how is everything folks?” Dorothy said, refilling their water glasses.
“This is wonderful.” Melanie smiled up at the woman with a mouthful of corned beef.
“How do you do it?”
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“Family recipe, my mother taught me. Fact is, she’s the one what made your sandwich.
Eighty-six she is and still works in the kitchen three afternoons a week.”
“Must be a remarkable woman,” Isaac said.
“Yes she is, thank you. How you been, doc? Ain’t seen you in a week or more.”
“Thanks Dorothy, I’ve been okay. This is my wife, Melanie.”
“Well I sure am glad to see you got the love of a good woman at home. To tell you the
truth, I been a little worried about you the last few months.”
“Oh?” Weed said.
“You just been looking tired. The man and I, we thought maybe you been working too
hard.” She had a habit of referring to her husband as the man.
“Well, I’m okay. Melanie here sees to that.”
“If he lets me,” Melanie quickly added. “In the future Dorothy, feel free to tell him if you
think he looks overworked. I’ll do the same at home. Maybe he’ll get the message from one of
us.”
“I think that’s a fine idea and I will,” Dorothy said. “Now is there anything else I can get
you folks?”
“No thanks,” Melanie said.
“Alright, you take your time now, and when you folks are done just come on up to the
counter and we’ll settle up.” She turned and went to deliver water and advice to the next table.
“Nice woman,” Melanie said.
“Yeah.”
“How come you never brought me here before?”
“I don’t know, no time I guess.” They can always hurt you more but they can’t stop the
clock he’d often thought during his days as a resident, when time had been his ally. Now, more
and more, it seemed to be his foe.
“Well, thank you for taking the time today.”
“Say Mel,” he hesitated slightly, “you remember Spottie Dottie?”
She finished chewing the bite of her sandwich, taking perhaps a moment or two longer
that she might otherwise have, “Yeah, how could I ever forget?”
“Something weird happened this morning.” Isaac had stopped eating and was sitting back
in his chair now.
“What was that? And what’s it got to do with Spottie Dottie?”
He told her about Seth Oberg and his enormous girth, about the seizure he’d witnessed
this morning, and, finally, about the words he alone had heard uttered at the end of that violent
spell.
“Nobody else heard any words, just moans. But as God is my witness Mel, I thought he
said it. I thought he said ‘Spottie Dottie needs help.’”
Melanie looked stunned, was at first speechless. She leaned forward in her chair and
spoke softly, apparently not wanting to broadcast her words for the entire establishment to hear.
“Isaac, I thought we were over this. Jaz has been dead for two years, honey.”
“I know babe. Lord knows I know. But I can’t help feeling that she’s out there
somewhere, out there in trouble.”
“Isaac we’ve been over—”
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“She’s out there somewhere, Mel. She’s calling to me, I know it. And if I don’t help her,
nobody will.”
“Isaac, I love you honey, but I can’t help you with this. I can’t keep reliving this thing
over and over again. Jaz is dead, just like that cat we had before she was born, just like your
father. Dead honey. Dead and beyond needing my help or your help or anyone’s help, except
maybe by way of prayer. We can pray for them, but that’s all honey. Please, that’s all.” She wiped
her cheek with her napkin.
“That’s all,” she said again, her face fracturing into a plea of grief.
†††
Isaac Weed remembered the scene like it was yesterday, not three years ago. He’d come
home early, mostly at the Mel’s request. Jasmine was home on spring break, a week off from
school that, at six years old, is supposed to be filled with fun activities and play dates. But not
this time around. Jasmine was sick.
The day had dawned a bright one, not a cloud on the horizon, and he supposed that had
made it all the worse for the poor girl. In her condition, playmates were out of the question even
if she had wanted to have someone over. She had not, of course, hadn’t wanted anyone to see her.
She said she was ugly.
And then Isaac had walked through the door and, as ever, she went to him. This time
however, she stopped short of hugging him. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, eyeballing
her father, gauging his reaction.
“I’m Spottie Dottie,” she announced.
“Indeed you are, but I love you just the same.” He smiled then, that special smile that
fathers everywhere reserve for their precious daughters.
She was covered by roughly two hundred pox marks, each one carefully dabbed and
polished with white calamine lotion, which had since crusted and stood out in stark contrast to
her tanned skin. Spottie Dottie indeed. Twenty or thirty of the lesions were grouped on her face.
“I have chicken pops.”
“Yes you do.” He stifled a laugh but offering her a broad smile. He found a tiny spot
beneath one eye that was pox free and kissed it.
She winced only slightly and walked back to the living room, her legs spread wide to
keep her thighs from rubbing together. Isaac watched his princess, wishing he could take her pain
away.
“Hey Jaz—”
“Spottie. Spottie Dottie, Dad,” she corrected.
“Well, Spottie, you think you got it bad, what about the chickens?”
“What chickens, Dad?”
“The ones that get people pops.”
She laughed at that, then wanted to know if cows got people pops too. He said he guessed
they probably did, whereupon they proceeded to work through roughly half of the animal
kingdom.
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The next day, a Wednesday as he now recalled, was the only day he’d ever called in sick
as a physician. Isaac Weed spent the entire day with his daughter, Miss Spottie Dottie. She
needed his help, she said.
Apparently, she needed his help again now.
†††
Jaz came out of her trance slowly but completely. She had none of the disorientation that
one might expect from those less dead than she was. She knew immediately where she was, that
her leg was broken, and that the creature had been there. Seth had found her laying at the base of
the wall, thirty feet or so below the point on the path where she’d simply let go. As he touched
her, he felt anew how cold she was and wondered when her nightmare would end, when he
would wake up himself.
He’d straightened out her badly twisted left leg. It had been bent at the mid-calf level, as
if she possessed a second knee several inches below the normal one. But he had nothing to splint
the discontinuous bones with and in this lay the quandary. He needed to leave the cave and
collect some tree branches he thought. But he couldn’t leave her here alone, could he? In the end,
he decided he could.
So Jaz awakened alone.
†††
Service102, some twenty-four hours out from the surgery that had very likely saved his
life and two-and-a-half days past the terrible moment that had seen a small gold statuette crash
though his skull and vent his brain to the outside world, remained unconsciousness and
connected to a ventilator in the ICU. The hands that had both swung the statuette and wielded the
scalpel now held nothing more dangerous than a roll of gauze as Weed removed the bandages
that framed the man’s wounds like the veil covering an undiscovered Picasso, a fractured and
discontinuous face beneath. Up until this very moment, Weed had been able to think of the man
as nothing more than an object, an inanimate being that just happened to exude blood and spinal
fluid in his operating room. Now however, as the bandages came away and that hideous Picasso
revealed itself, he was reminded this was a man indeed, and his name was Charlie Hazlit he told
himself.
The line of staples that marked the incision formed an upside down T over the left side of
Hazlit’s head. The original gash had opened just over the eye, where the bone is thick, and
jogged backwards in a jagged streak above the ear and toward the rear of his skull. This line
formed the cross hatch of the T and Weed had laid the T upside down by making a second limb,
his incision, from just in front of the ear upwards and over the top of the head, a little behind the
hairline. This incision was a straight line with no jagged saw tooth edges. The two—one made by
the statuette of Adonis, the other by cold surgical steel—intersected over the temple. It was here
the major damage to the brain had been done.
166
Peeling the last of the bandages off, Weed saw that the skin was healing satisfactorily, but
much cosmetic surgery remained to be done. The bony eye socket, now eerily empty, was still
ugly and misshapen, as if that portion of his face had simply deflated when the skin parted. The
remaining eye was intact and its pupil reacted to light, a good sign but a useless one unless his
patient woke up.
Weed noted the man had a gag reflex. When he pinched Hazlit’s finger, the man grimaced
with wicked, almost sinister effect as the left side of his face pulled back and the right side
remained behind. Likewise, the right arm and leg moved poorly to stimulation, the arm tending
to rotate outward and the leg extending vigorously at the knee and ankle. The left side moved
better, withdrawing appropriately when Weed pinched it. Taken together, these findings
confirmed for the neurosurgeon what he had suspected.
Charlie Hazlit, aka Service102, lay in a coma.
†††
Seth Oberg, for the moment alone in a world not his own, a world he thought he
understood, came out of the darkness of the cave and into the brightness of a day at twilight.
It mostly comes in the night.
He figured he had about one hour, though he wasn’t really sure what he based that
particular figure on.
It lives in the water.
He took a step backwards without thinking. Looking at the stream a hundred feet away,
down the hill, he moved another hundred feet up the hill just to be sure. No way he was going to
make that mistake again.
What Seth was looking for was a small stick, one sturdy enough to be used as a splint to
bind Jaz’s leg. A second stick, somewhat longer and even more sturdy, would be nice as a crutch
he decided. He initially searched the tall grass around the cave entrance, then fanned out into
ever wider circles. Finding nothing he could use, Seth walked to the edge of the woods several
hundred yards distant. The direction was opposite that of the one he and Jaz had approached the
cave entrance from, but he didn’t think that would be a problem as long as he kept Turtle Rock in
view.
He was wrong.
Having reached the woods, he found two nice lengths of wood he could use. He realized
too late the oncoming dusk.
It mostly comes in the night.
“Oh no,” he said, realizing Turtle Rock was gone. In the dusk, and from the reverse
angle, he couldn’t identify the rocky outcrop. “In Bismarck, in the dead of winter, the cars have
tails...” He unconsciously began to chant the words that had been some comfort since his father’s
death.
He was lost and he knew it.
†††
167
Dr. Weed shook his head in disbelief as he looked at the MRI of the large child. It had
been a difficult study; the detail wasn’t perfect, but it was sufficient. There was a tumor, no doubt
about that. A large irregular mass in the center of the boy’s head.
The tumor Dr. Weed saw as he reviewed the MRI of Seth’s brain awed him. In his years
of experience, he’d never seen anything like it. The images suggested the presence of teeth and
hair, as well as bone and various other types of flesh and muscle. Weed could imagine the mass
contained all of the components of a life itself, an evil twin. That twin was a diabolical monster
that had disturbed Seth’s very soul and now meant to vanquish that same soul as surely as a
fungus feasts upon its host and steals from it the necessary stuff of life. As Weed studied the
pictures, he knew this was no symbiotic relationship. The thing that was growing in the deepest
recesses of Seth’s brain was a fully developed and hideously dependent parasite that had to be
removed—before it removed Seth.
†††
Jasmine awakened to a room filled with the deafening roar of silence. As always, she
listened first, listened for the inharmonious sound of the trees rustling.
Nothing. The creature was gone now. She was alone in the cavern.
Her leg ached, a fierce, throbbing pain of the worst sort. At first she could hardly stand it,
but then an idea occurred to her. The pain meant she was still, what, alive?
Am I alive?
She couldn’t answer the question, hadn’t been able to answer the question in all the
months she’d been in that godless place. Not dead, was the best she could do, whatever that
meant.
“Not dead, and you ain’t got me yet, you...you...you son-of-a-stinker.”
Son-of-stinker. She thought of her daddy then. Son-of-a-stinker had been his word, the
one he used whenever he thought she might be listening. She had an idea he had wanted to say
something else, had even heard him say something else a few times. Each time though, her
mother had given her father an evil look, and had sort of nodded her direction. Her father had
corrected himself then. Son-of-a-stinker was what he’d said. It had become their private little
joke.
Once the two of them had been riding in the car when somebody had pulled out in front
of them. Her father had looked at her and hollered “Son-of-a-stinker” as he slapped the steering
wheel with his palm. She’d laughed at that. They both had.
Not too long after, only a few days or weeks before she’d died (oh God how she hated the
sound of that word; it seemed the mental equivalent of stepping in dog poop she thought), little
Joey Baxter had twisted her arm on the school playground. She’d frowned and called him a sonof-a-stinker. That had gotten her five minutes in Miss Appleby’s timeout corner. Later, when
Joey Baxter stuck his tongue out at her, she’d done it again. That had earned her a second
timeout and a note to her parents. All of this had amused her father she thought, who told her to
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keep standing up for herself.
She liked thinking about her daddy. It always helped. Sometimes, if she thought about
him hard enough, it was almost like she could feel him thinking back at her. She liked those
times best.
Where was Seth she wondered. The creature hadn’t gotten him, she’d have felt that loss
just as she had the others. He’d either wondered off on his own, not a good idea, or the creature
had scared him off. Either way, he’d be back, soon in all likelihood since it had to be getting dark
outside. One idea did trouble her though. If he’d wondered off, gone in search of who knew
what, then there’d be trouble. In that particular instance—a cold wave sliced through her
thinking about it—it’d mean he thought he knew this place. He didn’t, the water was proof of
that. It had taken her months to learn how to survive here.
He’d be lost before he realized it.
As much as her leg hurt, loneliness hurt more. She discovered she thought of him as a
friend, and if Seth didn’t return soon, she decided she’d have to go after him.
She’d have to save him from himself.
†††
As soon as she had touched his hand, Jenny White knew Isaac Weed was the answer to
her prayers.
He’s touched, she thought.
Just as surely as all the other Weeds she’d known. She didn’t know how, but she
supposed he must be related to Justin Weed and through him to old neurosurgeon himself, Dr.
Zachary Weed. She’d thought the Weed line dead, had thought it died out with the loss of Justin
all those years ago. Thirty-eight she now calculated in her mind, thirty-eight years exactly.
How old is you Isaac? Could you be Justin’s son? It occurred to her Justin’s wife must
have been pregnant when he died.
“He has a tumor, a growth deep in the brain.” Weed had come to speak with her himself,
by himself.
“I see. A cancer?” Jenny White asked. You have Zachary’s eyes. Do you know that? Of
course not.
“No, I don’t believe so. It’s almost certainly a teratoma, a congenital growth. He—”
“—was born with it. I know what congenital means doctor.” You sound like him too.
“Then perhaps you also know that it can’t stay there.”
“I’m quite certain it’ll need removin’. And I’m just as certain you’re the man for the job.”
Sitting close to him, by the small window in Seth’s hospital room, she could feel the life flowing
through him, strong and torrential like a river bursting its banks. Amazonian. His energy was
undeniable, so strong she almost hadn’t needed to touch him to make the connection.
“If you’re half the brain surgeon your grandfather was, you won’t have a problem.” And
you is.
Weed was only half regarding her, the bigger part of his attention apparently beyond her
and centered on the bed, on the large child laying there. Perhaps he was thinking of Spottie
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Dottie and how the boy could possibly be connected to her.
“What? I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I said, if you’re half the brain surgeon your grandfather was, you won’t have a
problem.” She smiled at him, a warm embrace with her eyes as if they were old friends.
“You knew my grandfather?”
“We had business together, of a sort. He was a good man, maybe the finest I’ve ever
known.” Just like you. You have his talents. All of his talents. She could feel these things, the
same way a person feels the thrum of electricity if they stand to close to a transformer.
“But he died so long ago.”
“Dr. Weed, may I call you Isaac?” —she’d almost said Zachary— “I’m an old woman,
been around a ton longer than you might imagine.”
He nodded. It was a slow, off-fettle sort of gesture, the sort one makes when they aren’t
certain about something. They want to be, but they aren’t. “This is gonna sound ridiculous, but
do I know you?”
She took his hand in hers. “Not really, not yet any way. But I know you. But tell me
something doctor...”
“Yes?”
“Tell me about Spottie Dottie.”
Weed starred at her stroke-like, unable to answer. “How, how do you know that name?
Nobody knows that name. Were you here during the seizure?”
“That’s right. I heard Seth say it to you, during his seizure.”
“Really. I thought maybe I imagined him saying that. But how...”
“The others heard it too, but they weren’t listening. The mind’s a funny thing, hears only
what it’s prepared to hear, Isaac. Receives only what it’s prepared to receive. I expect you know
that, don’t you?”
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Jenny White and I think we can help each other.”
Weed’s face flushed red with warmth, as if the weight of the world had been lifted from
his shoulders. For a moment, the old woman thought he’d drop to his knees.
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Nineteen: Into Perfect Focus
Dr. Isaac Weed, the elderly Jenny White at his side, placed his hand on Seth’s forehead,
directly upon the mark of that horrible night at the ballet so many years past. In so doing, he was
unaware he was touching the only other person that had seen and interacted with his daughter in
the two years since her death.
Closing his eyes, his fingers made contact with Seth’s skin and, as if he’d been struck by
lightening and his consciousness singed beyond endurance, Isaac Weed understood the true
meaning of agony.
†††
Thin Seth stopped in his tracks on the small wooded hill. He had the oddest sense he was
being watched. No, not watched. Probed.
It felt as if his mind had been opened. He had an image—no, more a sensation—of a
vault door being pried open, and someone or something peeking in. It sent eerie little tingles
along his spine that dulled after a moment. In its wake, Seth resumed his walk and that’s when
the real trouble began.
Now he was being watched.
The feel of a thousand tiny little feet—eyeballs, he thought, not feet—scoured his skin.
The sensation was eerie, but unlike a moment before, it was also unpleasant. He had an idea
they’d rub him raw. If he looked down, he’d be bleeding.
It comes in the middle of the night, as the wind rustling in the trees.
Does it watch you first? he wondered. Does it watch your every movement, planning its
strategy, savoring the moment before finally pouncing and taking everything you’ve ever been
and ever would be?
As the wind rustling in the trees...
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He stopped and listened, alert now to whatever sound the night threw his way. The
blackness was particularly still and he didn’t hear so much as a branch swaying in the wind. Yet
he was being watched, of this he was certain. He looked around, turning a full circle as he did so,
his own eyes scouring the countryside as if to disturb the landscape and scare up whatever it
held.
Scrunch!
Leaves under foot, Seth thought, and then who’s foot?
So far as he knew, the only feet walking this world were his, Jasmine’s—and the
creature’s. The steps were not his and Jasmine, her leg bent nearly backwards, probably wasn’t
walking. That didn’t leave many possibilities.
He found a small hollow beneath a line of bushes and fitted himself into it. Hand to his
chest, he felt his fist-sized heart rampaging against his breastbone.
“In Bismarck, in the dead of winter, the cars have tails...” He whispered the words slowly.
Take a deep breath. Slow things down.
“They come out once the sun goes away for the year, when the ground freezes to
concrete, so hard it has to be heated just to dig a grave...”
Scrunch. Vaguely closer now. Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch, scrunch...
“This is when the air gets cold, a slicing, bitter kind of cold that bites uncovered skin and
renders it unrecognizable to its owner in a matter of several minutes...” Seth closed his eyes and
concentrated, the words of his mantra coming quickly now.
As the scrunching continued, the footsteps dissipated into a long swooshing sound.
Something sliding towards him. Or slithering, he allowed. Now he noticed the trees did move,
their leaves did rustle and Seth knew that whatever it was, it was coming right at him. It was
black night and it was coming for him and he could do nothing to stop it.
It comes in the middle of the night, as the wind rustling in the trees.
He tried to push those words out of his head, whispered “It is the kind of cold that
few long months in the dark of the year, the cars have tails.”
His lips barely moved. He felt cold and his throat filled with thick, mucousy saliva. He
began to choke and a sense of panic engulfed him, paralyzing him.
The scrunching resumed again, much louder now, almost deafening in its approached. He
wanted to run, had to run—but couldn’t get his legs to move. “In Bismarck, in the dead of winter,
the cars have—” His body caught in the vise-like grip of fear, Seth’s gut twisted and he vomited.
He had crossed the blurry line between fear and terror.
The footsteps stopped and for a moment Seth thought he’d been spared, but knew better
when he heard the breathing. A deep mechanical ratcheting, cold and hollow, alternating back
and forth in a ceaseless rhythm that seemed more to ignore life rather than support it. The sound
was hauntingly familiar and Seth knew he’d heard it before, but where? A moment later, cringing
in the hollow, he placed it—the sound his father’s breathing had made when the old man,
emaciated beyond his forty years, had briefly been placed on a breathing machine.
The memory of that machine pulling against the old man’s chest, pushing air into those
worn-out pipes and blackened lungs, chilled Seth to his very bones. He’d have wept had he time
to respond to the image in his mind.
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Then and there, as he knelt in a puddle of his own spew, Seth looked up to see the
branches parting. He smelled sour vomit and in the same instant felt himself pulled upward by
his shirt.
He was suddenly looking into the eyes of Frankenstein, the dim light revealing a T
shaped row of staples across the side of the fiend’s head. A single eye, the right one, stared back
at him with a peculiar squint, the way little boys must look when they find a bug and are want to
pull its wings off. The left eye was somehow not there at all he saw, and in its place the face was
grotesquely deformed, almost as if interrupted in the midst of creation, almost as if...
Unfinished, Seth thought, just before he screamed.
†††
As his own head filled with the gluttonous ooze that is pain multiplied to the power of
ten, Dr. Isaac Weed became nauseous. He would have vomited, or at the least lost consciousness,
if not for the elderly woman beside him.
Jenny White, her own eyes closed as if in a trance, sat beside the standing physician and
the child she’d brought to his care. As if a lightening rod gathering the room’s dark energies, she
felt the quivering within the physician and reached out with a single hand, taking his in hers.
She focused all her life force through them, Isaac and the boy. The effect was tumultuous
and miraculous, like turning lead to gold. But Isaac was a neurosurgeon not an alchemist, and as
if some great veil had been pulled aside, the mist of agony, the urge to vomit, even the sense of
blacking out were gone on the instant.
It was as if they’d never been there in the first place.
The neurosurgeon’s view of what lurked in the deepest recesses of the boy’s brain was
suddenly brought into perfect focus, as if some great and unfathomable lens had suddenly been
interspersed between him and all the boy was. Dr. Weed saw the intruder and knew immediately
the boy before him—they called him fat Seth he thought—was in dire trouble, that he was the
very definition of critically ill.
What Weed saw with such clarity was the tumor. It had somehow parlayed itself into an
evil beast of burden, the sum or its parts more than mere flesh could conjure. Indeed, he saw the
collection of cells distorting the center of fat Seth’s brain, their entire biological history laid bare.
They had been there from the beginning, one cell morphing into many over the years. That single
cell had lost its way he supposed, but in so doing had discovered fertile soil and so multiplied
from one cell to two, two to four, four to eight and on ad infinitum until it mushroomed into the
monster of a billion cells plus it was today. The creature, he didn’t surprise himself calling it such
for that’s what it seemed, was a parasite that had stolen the blood and nutrients of the brain
around it. Now it was a bully, beating up on that same brain by virtue of the tremendous size it
had attained.
Weed also saw that given a bit more time, it wouldn’t only push the brain out of its way,
it would begin to invade it, to insinuate itself amidst the very substance of the boy’s nervous
system. With a little more time, it would disperse its tendrils between the myriad of cells that
more rightfully claimed this area as home and then the battle would be impossible to win. The
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battle would be lost with barely a whimper from the boy.
Seth Oberg would die.
Just now however, as Weed looked upon the tumor with the trained eye of a neurosurgeon
focused through the lens that was Jenny White, the resultant clarity gave him a glimpse of a
window of opportunity. The tumor would invade and insinuate itself, ruining Seth’s brain as
surely as meat spoils in the sun. But just now it only occupied space. Just now it was a land mine
waiting to be stepped on. Indeed, a minefield waiting to be trod upon.
Weed’s job was to plot that minefield and remove every last bomb. He would have to do
this working six inches inside the boy’s head through an opening no bigger than a nickel. All the
while he’d be fighting fatigue and his own insecurities, even his own demons.
And though he didn’t yet know it, the fate of a little girl two years dead hung upon the
outcome just as surely as did the life of this boy.
†††
As he screamed, Seth twisted and fell from Frankenstein’s grip. His paralysis broken, the
boy ran with the fleetness of thinness carrying him. The monster followed at first, but quickly
tired of the chase and fell behind. The cold mechanical breathing, intense initially, gradually
faded and finally disappeared altogether. Seth ran until the only thing that could stop him did: the
water. He stood at its edge, not willing to be twice burnt.
“Hey kid! Help me out. I ain’t looking to hurt ya, just wanna ask ya some questions.”
Seth spun around, his heart not yet slowing down. The words were distant and faint, but
carried well enough in the calm night air. He had trouble discerning their direction at first, but
mostly because of the pounding pulse in his ears and the panic in his mind. What the hell was
that thing? Jasmine’s creature?
“Come on kid. I been walking for hours and you the first person I seen.” He was slightly
closer, though still distant.
My God, it’s a person. Then he revised this assessment. A dead person.
The realization of what this place was hit him hard then. A way station, a stopping point
for those poor unfortunates whose life stories summed more to grief and pain than goodness and
love. It’s where they come to be destroyed, to have their souls erased. The thought choked his
brain and his face all but fell apart with distress. Why am I here? He backed against a tree and
clung to it for support.
“Come on kid, help a guy out?”
No, I can’t. No way. He looked up, contemplated the night sky. A star, the brightest he had
ever seen, winked out. When it came back a moment later, Seth was struck with an idea and his
face suddenly came back together again, this time curving into a smile. Quietly, as if he was the
wind itself, he let go of the tree and moved back from the water. He slipped the clearing beside
the water and moved into the forest.
Though he could not then know it, Seth had met the instrument of his salvation.
†††
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Jasmine sat on Turtle Rock, her leg throbbing. In an amazing display of mind over matter,
a display two years in the making, she refused to acknowledge the pain. From time to time this
was not enough and the pain shone through like a burning ember singeing her. Mostly though,
her mind trick had worked. She’d crawled the several hundred yards from the cavern floor to
Turtle Rock under its influence.
She couldn’t see the commotion far off in the woods, but she could hear much of it and
knew Seth had encountered one of them—the things that showed up from time to time. Dead
things she imagined, bags of bones with bedraggled souls and little else. She didn’t care much
for them, had encountered them on rare occasions and they’d always left her with an intense
sense of dread. One of them had even touched her once, cold and slimy—like being licked by a
dead rat. Another reason to avoid the night.
The bags did have one useful function. Teaching. Much of what she’d learned she’d
gleaned from the bags. Watching them flail against the creature had been sickening, but
revealing.
Best I find Seth before they do.
†††
“I’ll find my own goddamn way. Fuck the kid,” said Charlie Hazlit.
Hazlit had no idea where he was or how he’d gotten here. He’d walked for hours, thought
maybe he’d passed the same tree a dozen times. “I’m in hell,” he’d told himself, shouting the
words to the hills. It was enough to drive a man insane.
Then he’d seen the kid across the clearing, had watched him duck into the bushes. He
hadn’t intended the kid any harm, just wanted the answers to a few questions. Now, he thought,
he just might kill the bastard if their paths ever crossed again.
And he’d make damn sure their paths crossed again.
†††
Isaac Weed had never had a more powerful touching in his life. The old woman’s
assistance had cut through the nausea and pain like the sun peaking through clouds. As he broke
contact with the boy and looked down at Jenny White, he imagined her hair had grayed some
over the several minutes just passed. “You okay?”
“I’ll be fine. The touching always takes something out of a person is all. Takes a bit to
catch up after.”
“Thank you.”
“You have your father’s eyes and your grandfather’s touch.” She slumped back in her
chair and closed her eyes again.
Weed smiled and bent down to the old woman’s cheek. He pressed his lips there, kissed
175
her the way he’d have kissed his favorite grandma, if he’d known one.
“You sure you’re alright?” he said.
She sighed deeply without opening her eyes. “Just fine. Not as young as I used to be is
all. I’m ok. Specially so now that you’re here.”
He nodded and turned to leave then stopped. “Thank you,” he said again, but he could see
she was deep asleep already.
Later he went to his office, where he made a detailed drawing of the tumor he’d seen in
his mind’s eye. He then spent several hours engrossed in neurosurgical textbooks, reviewing
surgical approaches to the center of Seth’s head.
This was one crucible he didn’t intend to lose.
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Twenty: The Facts Will Lead Us
Late in the day Weed’s reading was interrupted by the chirping of his pager. He got up
from his desk, retrieved the device from the pocket of his lab coat, and hit the button beside the
liquid crystal display. A moment later he was on the phone to the ICU, answering the 911 call
that appeared in the tiny window.
“Yeah, this is Weed.”
“Ok doctor, just a minute, I’ll see if I can find who paged you,” a polite, young voice
said.
You do that. It occurred to him it didn’t matter how much education you had, the entire
system came to a screeching halt at the hands of some nimrod who might have a GED. After
waiting a very long thirty seconds, he slapped the phone down on the receiver, grabbed his white
coat, and headed off to see for himself what was going on in the ICU.
As he stepped into the hallway outside his office, the PA sputtered.
“Code blue, neurosurgery intensive care unit, room 3621. Code blue, neurosurgery
intensive care unit, room 3621.”
Weed quickened his steps, not quite running.
The ICU was ordered chaos. At least fifteen people had assembled in room 3621,
including the usual cast of nurses, physicians, a pharmacist, respiratory techs, nurse’s aids,
orderlies, and runners. Weed scanned the faces in the crowd and found one he both recognized
and trusted, an experienced ICU nurse.
“Nikki, what’s going on?”
“Not sure just yet. Your patient went into V tach, then flat lined and stopped breathing.”
Charlie Hazlit’s heart had first raced out of control, then stopped.
“A seizure?”
“No sir, not that we saw. He was status quo, stable as a rock.”
“And now?”
“We immediately started chest compressions of course, now he’s got a rhythm, looks like
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sinus tach at about 130 I think.” His heart had restarted, though it was still beating too fast,
probably trying to compensate for something, but what? If Weed could answer that question, and
he already had a very good idea of what that answer would be, he’d know what had happened
and, more importantly, how to fix it.
“How long was he down?” Weed was checking to see if, like a drowning victim,
service102’s brain might have been too long deprived of oxygen.
“Not long at all, less than a minute I’d say. We were right there.”
“Okay, sounds like a good job Nikki. Thank your people for me.”
Weed turned to the senior resident, Troy Ashton, the physician running the code. The
neurosurgeon gave a very quick synopsis of the man’s hospital course and surgery. Finishing
with the words “I doubt it’s anything inside his head. What do you think is going on?”
“Its got to be a PE,” Ashton said after a moment’s thoughtful hesitation.
“I agree.” Weed turned to Nikki. “Nonetheless, we need a stat head CT.”
He took up a position next to service102—
The man’s name is Hazlit, he told himself.
Whatever, he’d been stripped naked by the code team. Quietly, he slipped his hand under
the sheets bunched at the foot of the bed. With a gentleness that had not been present at 237
Powel Post Road, he laid his hand upon the back of the main’s foot and closed his eyes,
concentrated.
Weed felt his chest tighten impossibly, like somebody had cinched a rope around it. The
pain, suffocating, dense, and nearly beyond all ability to bear, seemed to pop his ribs apart.
Bracing himself, he reached out with his mind, touching Hazlit’s head, searching for signs of
new trouble there. He felt nothing, only the stillness of a slight headache. In the last moment, as
he drew his fingers back along the man’s foot, Weed again encountered darkness—a cold
blackness like the ooze accumulated at the bottom of a very deep well. Weed pulled his hand
back and disengaged before it drew him in further.
“Dr. Ashton,” Weed said, “it’s a PE.”
They would still have to get a head CT, of course. Weed could not exactly write in the
chart how he had touched the man and made the diagnosis, but it would undoubtedly prove
superfluous. There was nothing new going on in his head. The problem was a blood clot in the
man’s leg. A piece had broken off and gone to his lungs, a pulmonary embolus. Once there, the
clot of blood had gummed up the works and strained his heart. What remained was a simple
plumbing problem—the clot was clogging the arteries to the lungs. They’d run a few more tests,
institute treatment, and with a little luck, Hazlit would dodge this bullet and live.
Lucky man, Weed thought, a clot that big usually kills you.
As Weed left the ICU, he wondered what unspeakable evil tormented Hazlit’s soul.
Something black and cruddy swam at the bottom of Hazlit’s soul. Whatever it was, it would have
pulled him in with it had he let it. Twice. Each time it had lurked just beyond Weed’s grasp, out
in the mist that bordered the fringes of the human experience. It might be Weed’s imagination—
might be Mr. Hyde expressing himself—but Weed didn’t think so. He wanted, no he needed, to
know what was out there. But he couldn’t do it alone.
What he needed was something to help him focus, something like a lens. Or, and this was
closer to the point, someone like a lens.
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Standing in the alcove with the coke machine, the same one where Jasmine had appeared
the day before, a trace smile crossed Weed’s face.
It was Jenny White he needed.
†††
In the two years since she had died, Jaz had rarely worried over the whereabouts of
another individual. She’d long ago adopted the survivalist instinct of every girl for herself.
But she worried now. As she peered out at the night sky, the slow twinkling of one
incredibly bright star kept capturing her eye and she would go back to it repeatedly, like an old
friend. By her own reckoning, her one true friend, yes she did think of Seth as her true friend
now, had been lost for several hours.
Lying on Turtle Rock, almost hypnotized by the star and her energies mostly consumed
trying to ignore the throbbing in her broken leg, Jasmine at first ignored the tiny figment of a
voice. A moment later, when it spoke again and she heard his name, she sat bolt up, looking this
way and that for its source.
Jaz? You there? Jaz, it’s me, Seth. You there?
“Yeah I’m here. Where are you? I can’t see you.” She squinted her eyes at the darkness.
No Jaz, picture your words in your mind. Concentrate on me and picture what you want
to say in your mind. Don’t speak. Jasmine heard the instructions with crystal clarity, as if Seth
stood right beside her. But as she looked around she saw no Seth. After another moment she
realized she hadn’t heard the words at all. She had felt them.
“What’s hap...” She spoke as she concentrated, disoriented by the issue.
What’s happening? He filled in the gap, having received only part of her thoughts. Don’t
talk Jaz, use all your energy to focus and project your thoughts to me.
Okay, okay. She concentrated. Where are you Seth? She focused on the twinkling star
now, used it as a point to fixate on.
Seth, himself fixating on the same bright star, sat against a tree. I have no idea.
Are you okay?
Yeah, you? How’s your leg?
I’m okay, it hurts, but not too bad. She lied. Why did you leave?
I wanted to find something to help with your leg, a branch or something. He thought she
sounded lonely. It hurt to hear her that way.
Oh, that’s nice. Thanks.
Don’t mention it. Guess I didn’t do so hot, eh?
Whether he was referring to dipping his hand in the water or being lost was unclear. Well,
that depends.
On what?
Well, did you find the branch?
Yeah, two actually, one you can use for a crutch, the other we can tie your leg up with,
make it good and sturdy. He tried to sound reassuring, the way a boy should when faced with a
damsel in distress.
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Then you did alright I guess, for a boy that is.
Seth chuckled, guessing that if her sense of humor was still there things couldn’t be
totally hopeless. Gee, thanks.
Seth?
Yeah?
You shouldn’t be out in the night.
I know. I know that now, he thought, realizing too late that both thoughts went out to Jaz.
Lesson learned I suppose.
Yeah.
Let’s get you home.
What do you mean? Seth asked.
Well, tell me what you see. If we work together, maybe we can get you back here.
Brilliant, he thought, this time guarding his thoughts against unauthorized transmission,
Jaz was full of surprises. He sighed, wiped his brow, and looked up at the star again. You should
see this Jaz, a star as bright as anything I’ve ever seen in my whole life. It’s beautiful.
Kinda like the Star of Bethlehem, isn’t it? She had seen the star on many nights, had had
the same thought many times.
Yeah, now that you mention it, yeah. He hadn’t made the connection before, but it looked
distinctly like the Star of Bethlehem now. In fact, once pointed out, he couldn’t look at it without
noting the resemblance.
That makes it easy.
Uh? Seth said, did I miss something?
Well, just walk toward the star, I’ll be waiting.
Not bad for a girl.
Gee, thanks. Especially one that’s been dead two years Jaz thought but didn’t pass on.
†††
“Nine, nine men.” Detective Dashell Marks stopped talking and took a sip of coffee. He
liked it black, no sugar, no cream. The coffee had begun to cool and would be cold long before
the meeting broke up, but he would drink it anyway. “And all of them apparently gay, though
two hadn’t come out of the closet and one was married.”
The four other cops sitting around the table listened in silence, at least for the moment.
“Heather, what do we know about their race and occupations?”
Detective Heather Joie was almost six feet to Marks’ five foot two and the two had
always made a striking pair because of it. “Six Caucasians, two African-Americans, one
Hispanic. Nine different occupations.” She threw a folder on the table as she spoke; several
papers fanned out from it. “Corporate attorney, insurance investigator, plumber, bicycle
repairman, teacher, store manager, mechanic, artist, bartender. Some professionals, some blue
collar, no apparent pattern except that all were employed. Nothing that will help us here as far as
I can tell.” She leaned back in her chair and regarded Marks.
“Something else Heather?”
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“Just that most could be described as loners.”
“What about the married guy?” one of the other men, a lanky gent, asked. He held a well
worn brown leather cowboy hat in his lap, fingering the brim.
“I was getting to that Cowboy. The married man, Boseman was his name, was apparently
living a dual life, probably for years as far as we can tell. He was careful, his wife didn’t even
know he was AC/DC until the police knocked on her door. Even then, she refused to believe it.”
Marks turned to one of the younger men at the table, “Gay bars?”
“Well boss,” the young man said, “I circulated a few pics but it doesn’t look like any of
these guys frequented them. Boseman probably never went near one in his life. If he did, I sure
as hell can’t find it. The others may have been occasional visitors, but none very frequent. No
hard cores.”
“Am I hearing that Boseman is the anomaly?” Marks took another sip. He thought how
the dead men were so similar, thought that perhaps this one man was the key, perhaps his
anomalous and carefully orchestrated double life held the clue that would prove Weed had killed
him, killed them all.
“He seems to be the exception that makes the rule, doesn’t fit the pattern,” a man named
Pierce said. “Because he had to be so careful, he did none of the things the others did as gay
men.”
“Which means what, Pierce?” Joie asked.
“It means that if this guy was picking his victims based on them being homo, then we
must be missing something,” Pierce said.
“Go on,” Marks said.
“It’s simple. Where else do gays congregate?” Pierce asked.
“That’s good, but it’s deeper than that,” Marks said. He hesitated, sipped the last of his
coffee, then asked the group, “Where do gays congregate that Weed could have had access to
them?”
“Assuming Weed’s not gay?” the young detective asked.
“He’s not, that much we’re certain of. That was one of the first things we checked out. No
evidence for that whatsoever,” Joie said.
“You really think Weed’s the guy?” Pierce said, looking at Marks.
The senior detective paused in his thoughts. Did he really believe Weed was a killer, the
killer? Did he really believe this highly educated man—a healer himself—could be a serial
killer?
“Yeah, I do,” he said, looking at the group as a whole. “At best, he knows who is, but he’s
a loner type himself, wouldn’t have a partner.”
“But he’s a brain surgeon.” The young detective again.
Marks looked at the man, thinking nobody was above reproach and every man has a
breaking point. He knew this from too many years of sifting through society’s sewers. “Heather,
you remember the time we pulled that attorney out of a crack house?”
“Oh yeah. Killed his partner just to get his next fix.”
“And the school teacher?” Marks said.
“Fuck, sick bastard,” Detective Joie said with obvious disgust.
“I don’t remember that one,” Pierce said.
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“Before your time on the squad,” Marks said. “Guy was a high school history teacher, got
teacher of the year or some such bullshit award a year or two before we met him, a real
upstanding guy in the eyes of everyone that knew him.”
“Yeah, except a student named Diane Tafallo. She didn’t think much of him, probably
even less so after he killed her,” Joie said.
“Why’d he do it?” the young detective asked.
“No good reason. Turned out the guy had a thing for teenage girls, she was one of his
students and when she declined his invitation, he canceled it. Canceled her actually,” Joie said.
“Later, we found out that two of his other female students had disappeared in the last state he
taught in.”
“He refused to tell us what happened to them,” Marks said, then looked at the pock
marked young detective across the table from him. “Do I think this guy could be guilty? Yeah, I
do. I’ve never arrested a physician for murder, and certainly not for serial murder. But that
doesn’t mean dick, doesn’t mean I never will, and it certainly doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.”
Marks looked at them all, said, “Gentlemen, and lady, the facts will lead us. They’re
speaking to us right now, we just have to figure out how to listen.”
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Twenty-One: The Chain of Life
Let the facts speak for themselves.
For the next hour and a half, the group of four men and one woman stood before a mockup of the case and regarded the pictures of each known victim of the killer. Each man had been
discovered in a field alongside a well traveled highway, a different highway each time. This
suggested, or seemed to suggest, they’d been dumped after death. Indeed, post-mortem lividity
indicated each man had been killed elsewhere and moved after death. The bodies had all been
found in the morning, the earliest at least two days dead when discovered.
Exactly where the men had been killed was a mystery. The lack of any foreign brush or
grass suggested an indoor scene. The cause of death was varied. In the early cases, it didn’t seem
particularly organized: bludgeoning or strangulation—the killer had planned poorly and
improvised. But the killer had learned from his (none of them had any doubt the killer was male)
first four murders and progressed to guns and knives, though victim number eight was also
bludgeoned. Victim number ten, if indeed Charlie Hazlit was the latest in this morbid line, had
also been bludgeoned, probably with a small solid object.
Why the killer had reverted was unknown. Were these later killings unplanned? Or
perhaps bludgeoning gave him a rush guns and knives had not?
There was no evidence the victims had been sexually molested. Several had been beaten,
or at least had put up a defense. Most, like Hazlit, had probably never seen it coming. Hazlit was
unique though—he had survived. The only survivor.
The group conjectured the killer had somehow been interrupted in his work, probably by
the home exploding across the street. Since it took just four minutes for the first fire engines to
arrive (they had tested this) the killer had likely not been able to escape outright and had had to
assimilate himself into the throng of bystanders that morning. He might simply have walked
away, but then where was his car? It would have been hemmed in by the fire engines and leaving
it behind wouldn’t have been an option. A quick check of the area had showed no cars
unaccounted for that morning. Had the killer parked it on another block, or taken a taxi? Not
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likely, since he would need the vehicle to transfer the body. Plus, the night had been a cold one,
too cold to walk more than a block without risking serious injury to exposed skin. Nonetheless, a
quick check of the taxi companies had confirmed that nobody took a taxi to 237 Powel Post
Road, or anywhere nearby, on the night in question.
No, the killer had not left, not immediately anyway. And he hadn’t waited in the victim’s
home, or gone back to it either for that matter. If he had, he would have found the man still alive
and finished the job. He had waited out the crowd, most likely had walked among them. A cool
—and goddamn ballsy—move. One that would have taken nerves of steel to pull off.
Like those of a brain surgeon, for instance.
But if Weed was the killer, why step forward and make himself obvious? The natural
healing instinct of a trained physician? Not likely, especially if he had just killed somebody, or
thought he had just killed somebody. No, there was a reason for it, something to be gained. An
alibi perhaps, maybe more. If Weed was involved, there had to be a reason. Weed was
methodical and well organized, even under whatever burden had caused him to crack.
At least Marks thought as much.
An image came to the detective then, unbidden but meaningful. The calm, collected Dr.
Jekyll in his dark Victorian vest, frock coat, and pork pie hat. A wide cravat enshrouded the
surgeon’s neck—even as he bent at his waist to minister to the broken and bleeding man before
him. Henry Jekyll was the epitome of cool under pressure.
Like any trained surgeon working on any victim anywhere.
“So, where does that leave us?” Marks finally asked the group.
“Two leads,” Heather Joie said, “the car and the contact.”
“Yep, I like it. If Weed’s using his car to transport dead bodies, forensics ought to be able
to turn up something. What about the contact issue? Where do gay and straight men congregate
together?”
“Maybe he’s not contacting them in person,” the young, pock-mocked detective said.
“How’s that?”
“The phone?” Pierce said.
“The internet,” the young man said. “In college, I had a buddy who was gay, but didn’t
want his folks to find out about it. He used to make contact on AOL. Think about it. It’s perfect.
It’s anonymous, it’s virtually impossible to trace, and—”
“And you can get exactly what you want. Fuck, that’s it.” Marks addressed the entire
group. “Alright folks, trace this down. Find out if each of these guys had access to a computer. If
they did, I want it confiscated. I want to know every electronic dot or dash—”
“Eh, zeros and ones boss.”
“Whatever. I want to know what each of these guys did with their computers. Also, talk
to their friends and find out if they know anything about this. Talk with your contacts in the gay
community, find out how and where gays talk online. Oh, and kid, not bad.”
Not bad at all, Marks thought, trying to remember if he’d ever been in Weed’s office. Did
the doctor have a computer there? He must he thought. After all, the man was a brain surgeon.
†††
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As thin Seth tied the tree branch around Jasmine’s leg, she winced but didn’t cry. She
remained stoic as Seth got her to her feet and the pair made their way into the mouth of Turtle
Rock. Settling a few hundred yards inside, well away from the water, Seth took Jaz in her arms
and held her. They cried softly for the next little bit. Finally, Seth spoke.
“I’ve been thinking, about the creature.”
“And?”
“Well, the way I figure it, you can’t get out of here until you get past that thing.”
“Or it gets me.”
“That’s not gonna happen. I think I know a way to beat it.”
“What’re you talking about? I know how to hide from it, maybe that’s all there is,”
Jasmine said.
“You wanna spend all eternity hiding from that thing? I doubt it.”
“What are you thinking?”
“You ever heard of the legend of the Key-oak-QUI-ah?”
As if the words alone had triggered some program buried deep within the software of her
mind—she was a Weed after all—a series of images flashed into Jasmine’s brain and a motion
picture played out in her head. It was almost as if she saw her life passing before her eyes, only it
wasn’t her life.
She saw the lives of her ancestors, both those that had passed over the edge of life and
those that yet clung to the other side. She saw all the generations that had been, eventually
coming to Zachary Weed, her great-grandfather. At first he was a small child, standing at the
grave of his father before him, her great-great-grandfather. The world around him was dark in the
middle of the day—the sun briefly hidden by the moon she realized—and suddenly she knew all
that Zach knew from that meeting. She saw the older Zachary Weed and how he touched others,
saw how they all touched others.
As if a long dormant fuse of understanding had ignited within her, her great-grandfather’s
insight became hers and on the instant she had perfect knowledge of what the Key-oak-QUI-ah
was, even if Zachary had not understood it completely. She saw her grandfather, Zachary’s son
Justin, standing in that darkened anatomy lab, his soul beyond fear, terrified in a moment of
absolute fright. She knew the creature had taken his soul to the empty place and in that moment
she hated the creature more than she’d ever hated anything in her life. Finally, she saw her own
father, Zachary’s grandson, and knew the agony he’d gone through since her death.
And then she knew what her father knew, that Seth was in a coma and was dying, had
only a vague hope of recovery. That hope lay with her father, who had been powerless to help her
two years ago but now was the only one who could help this boy.
When she opened her eyes, Jasmine Weed was no longer a little girl lost. Like a flower
that had waited two long years to blossom, she had suddenly seen the light and knew great
things, was enlightened beyond any capacity she might have previously considered.
She and Seth both knew they were the last great hope of a humanity gone mad.
†††
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As Isaac Weed headed back to the hospital, it was after 10:00 pm. He hadn’t been paged,
wasn’t even on call. But he was heading back to the hospital for what was arguably the most
important consultation of his career, if not his life. This time however, the consult was not
neurosurgery and he would be the recipient, not the consultant. That distinction would go to
Jenny White.
“I need a favor,” he said, and explained the black ooze that emanated from the depths of
Charlie Hazlit’s soul. “Can you help me find it’s source?”
“Are you sure you want to know?” Jenny White asked.
“I don’t want to know, I have to know. Not sure why, but I have to know.”
Perhaps because I tried to kill him, Weed thought.
Perhaps because he was going to kill you, Jenny White thought.
Their separate notions occurred simultaneously, passing the same ethereal point at the
same nebulous moment but from different directions.
Everyday, across the great spectrum that is the human experience, millions of people
touch millions of others. Most of these touches occur at random, some between complete
strangers and others between friends or loved ones. But it doesn’t matter in the long run, for with
each touch a spark is passed and the people are marked. They are changed henceforth, their
destinies forever altered. Think of the thousands of people that any given individual touches in a
lifetime and imagine each of the touched touching thousands of others in turn. Soon, very soon,
there are no complete strangers and humanity is bound by a single long chain, however kinked
and twisted.
When Isaac Weed touched Service102, he irrevocably altered the life of Charlie Hazlit.
But when the chain of life kinked, it twisted Weed’s destiny as well and left an imprint of
Hazlit’s world upon Weed’s very existence, piling high upon all of the other marks left by all of
the other people Weed had ever touched.
Jenny White was old, but she wasn’t ancient. Her prescient knowledge, a thousand and
more years in the making, came from her ability to read and interpret the chain of life. The first
time Jenny White touched Isaac Weed, she knew immediately he was no stranger, that he was in
fact an intimate friend with a terribly troubled soul. She knew immediately about his childhood
bicycle accident and the lost finger, about his aversion to football, about his relationship with
Melanie, about Spottie Dottie, about Jasmine’s death, and about his singularly horrific ordeal
with Charlie Hazlit.
She knew something else as well. She knew Weed had killed no one, that his gentle soul
held no murder within it. With that first touch, she knew Isaac Weed’s life history better than he
did. And every touch thereafter refined and confirmed her knowledge.
Jenny White could see that Hazlit’s touch had been immense, had left a significant scar
on the surgeon. Hazlit had left a piece of himself behind and Jenny White thus knew that if Weed
had not tried to kill Hazlit, Hazlit would have killed Weed.
Their destinies had not crossed, they had collided.
That much she could tell, but no more. The piece of Hazlit that now clung to Weed like a
fungus didn’t include why that tormented individual had intended to kill the brain surgeon. She
supposed Weed somehow knew Hazlit was still with him, and that Hazlit had meant to do him
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harm. That was why, she supposed, he had to know what demons lay at the bottom of the well
that was Hazlit’s soul. And then she had the thought that had occurred simultaneously with
Weed’s.
Perhaps because he was going to kill you.
“Yes, I’ll help you,” she said.
187
188
Twenty-Two: Into the Belly of the Beast
Seth Oberg had one advantage over Jasmine Weed. Put bluntly, he wasn’t dead. Though
some part of him inhabited the same netherworld as did the young girl, his bones, still this side of
the edge of life, were yet warm, flesh covered and teeming with animation. Jasmine’s remains
had no doubt long since returned to the ground from which they came, though perhaps her
skeleton still remained, devoid of anything save the ash and dust to which it would slowly revert
within the confines of the coffin that was her final resting place.
“You must leave this place, must go back,” Jasmine said, staring off blankly into space,
the realization obviously disquieting to her.
“I know,” Seth said, finding the idea less than comforting himself.
“There’s just no other way.”
Sitting beside her, his arm around her, he squeezed her to him. “I suppose not, still, if we
could just get it—”
“—get it where?” Jasmine leaned out in front of him, facing him, his arm falling away
from her. “That thing is too strong here. For two years it’s stalked me and I’ve barely managed to
avoid becoming another one of its meals. I know its habits, its weaknesses, its haunts. There’s no
way to defeat it in this world, fighting on its own home ground and its terms.” She touched his
face with her finger, tracing it down his cheek. “You have to go back, you’re the only one. You
have to go.”
“Okay then, when the time is right, I go.” He looked back at her, felt the coldness of her
skin warming his heart. “When I do go, I won’t forget you.”
She began to weep softly and said, “my father’s a very good doctor, he’ll do whatever can
be done. If anyone can save you, he can.”
“I like him, he has a gentle touch,” Seth said, smiling.
“I know, he used to hold me and rock me back and forth.” She looked brighter now, had
the appearance of one remembering something with great fondness. “Sometimes we would play
a game, he called it fiddle thinking. The two of us would lay in the grass on a warm summer
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night and stare up at the stars. We’d pick one and imagine a whole world for it, the kind of
creatures that lived there, the color of the sky, how many moons they could see. Sometimes we’d
have one of them visit us and we’d try to explain all the stuff around us to them, the common
everyday stuff like the taste of water or the smell of grass. It was fun. I miss it.”
“I never had anything like that,” Seth said.
“I know, I saw it when you hugged me just then,” she said, sorrow now in her eyes. “I’m
so sorry you never knew your mother. If she was anything like my mom, she was wonderful.”
Seth smiled, said “umm” softly, and looked away. “We have to have a plan Jaz, you
know, so when the time comes.”
“Yeah, I know, but can we just sit and hold each other for a little bit. I want to remember
this.”
“Sure,” he said, “sure.”
†††
The police guard didn’t bother to acknowledge Weed and the woman with him as they
walked by and entered the large ICU. The two of them walked past several rooms before pushing
open the door of the one that housed Charlie Hazlit.
“Terri, can you give us this room please?” The request was an odd one and Terri Case, the
nurse taking care of Charlie Hazlit, wasn’t immediately certain how to interpret it.
“This is a friend of his and she just wants to spend some time with him.” He pointed at
Jenny White. “Please Terri.”
Terri paused. She eyed the elderly black woman and looked over to the middle-aged
white man laying on the bed, perhaps trying to imagine what kind of connection the two could
possibly have. “Okay Dr. Weed, take all the time you need of course. I’ll be right outside.”
“Thanks.”
As the nurse left the room, Weed pulled the bedside curtain around them and dragged a
chair over next to the bed. As she had done while he touched Seth, Jenny White sat beside him.
Standing in the darkened room, Weed noted the unusually bright crescent moon shining through
the window. He followed its dim light down to the bed and directly onto the man’s face. The
head was turned left side down and with some amazement, Weed looked upon what appeared to
be a normal face in profile. A moment’s thought, however, brought the fallacy of this to his
mind’s eye as he pictured the profile with the head turned the other way. He saw then a horribly
distorted face, interrupted from the cheekbone up, a large and disfiguring gap occupying what
formerly had been the left eye and bone around it. For just a second, he recalled the image of the
eyeball hanging there, melting down the side of that awful face. He swallowed and looked away,
covering the face of the patient with a towel from the bedside table. He turned back and was
about to place his hand upon the unfortunate man’s bare neck when Jenny White’s hand took his.
He turned to her.
“Listen,” the tired woman said.
He paused a moment, tilting his head slightly to one side. “All I hear is the ventilator,” he
said.
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“Not that,” she said. “Listen with all you are, not just your ears.”
He did as she asked and when he heard it he was immediately certain what it was. It must
have been there all the time, he thought, in the background, subtle, ignored. The rhythmic
beating of the three hearts rose above the cold, mechanical din of the respirator as it cycled in
and out, the attached bellows moving up and down beside the bed. In contrast to that hollow,
lifeless sound, the cacophony of the three hearts was an animated symphony that played against
the ear with a decidedly pleasing melody. Weed knew that it was only because of her that he
heard it now and he loved her for it.
“This is the sound of hope,” Jenny White said, her voice cracking slightly with the
infirmities of age. “Where there is this sound, there is life, and where there is life, there is hope.”
Weed regarded her a moment, looking pensive. “Thank you,” he said, clasping her hand
gently and listening to the vital drumming with a crystal clarity borne of preternatural hearing.
They stayed there together for several minutes before Weed, his mind as clear as it would ever be
this side of the grave, finally put his hand against the bare skin of the man and closed his eyes.
In all his life, Isaac Weed had never been, and would never be, as ill-prepared for
anything as he was for what happened next.
He ignored the nausea that at once washed over him, as well as the headache that ached
its way into a place somewhere behind his eyes. These he had anticipated. But then came that
uncomfortable darkness, a cold, impenetrable mist. It settled around him like a death shroud,
then seemed to reach out with an invisible hand at his throat. At the same time he felt himself
being sucked deeper into the muck that lay beyond it. He had a sense of falling, every bit as real
as the time he’d fallen into a well as a young child. The same black cruddy mud that had held his
feet to the bottom of that cursed place seemed now to anchor him here. With Jenny White at his
side, the mist suddenly parted and he focused, could see that what held him was not mud at all.
What sucked at him—pulled at his feet like quicksand—was a thick, congealed mess, like the
putrid ooze that settles around a decomposing corpse.
Weed groped in the bilge at the bottom of Service102’s soul, trying to pull the hand from
his throat. Struggling to free himself, he groped in the putrid effluent beside him and reached for
a shiny, smooth stone the size of a small melon. As he rolled it over in his hand, he had the
curious notion it was looking at him. He began to shake, not quite uncontrollably, he realized it
was a skull.
A human skull.
His first impulse was to drop it, but it clung to his hands and wouldn’t fall—as if gravity
didn’t apply in this place. He turned the skull over, his fingers tracing a crack across the top of
the cranium, and saw a large hole at the back. A fatal blow, some version of the doctor’s own
voice (this one was cold, clinical, and analytical) whispered. A hammer maybe, he further
surmised.
Then he did drop the skull and watched as it floated unnaturally on top of the bloody
crud. Though the stuff was no more than an inch or two deep, other bones now began to pop up
all around him and Weed felt the hand at his throat squeeze all the harder. A disarticulated thigh
bone brushed against him and, spinning around, he saw bones everywhere: long, subtly curved
bones that had once been parts of arms and legs; smaller bones he knew must have come from
hands and feet; an entire bony rib cage that would never move against the lungs again; sections
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of spine with three or four or six vertebrae each, the torn spinal cord sticking out at each end like
broken wires ripped from a car’s ignition; lower jaw bones, their teeth still attached as if ready to
chew again; he counted nine pelvises. The bones kept appearing, at first one by one then two by
two and finally by the tens. They made a hideous gloping sound as they broke the surface. There
are 206 bones in the human body he recalled, and suddenly knew there were at least ten times
that many surrounding him.
Weed realized he was standing in the middle of a vast killing field, a wasteland of the not
so dearly departed.
The hand at his throat was suffocating. He wanted out, wanted out at that very instant, but
his feet wouldn’t move.
Get a grip, count the skulls.
And so, with the bloody slime gripping him, he counted. “Two, three...seven,
eight...twelve, thirteen.” Thirteen skulls that he could see. Are there more? He didn’t really want
to know.
Jesus God in heaven, what is this?
The first face appeared. Disembodied, not of this world. It rose out of the rotten soup and
projected in front of him. Then suddenly it was all around him. He closed his eyes but his lids
were no protection against the horrid apparition, the thing seemed to burn a hole directly into his
mind. A large gash marred its forehead, as if the man had been hit by a golf club, or a fireplace
poker perhaps. The face was stained with dried blood and the eyes held a distant, almost
surprised look about them. But the next face wasn’t surprised, no sir not at all.
It was pleading, asking for mercy.
That’s the face of someone who knows what’s coming. The poor sonofabitch. Weed was
crying now. He felt himself slipping—toward what? Insanity?
Memories. These are his fucking memories.
His? Service102 wasn’t a man. He was something subhuman. A ghoul.
More faces now. All around him like in a loony hall of mirrors where all the images are
distorted. Grotesque, like the man himself had been when he’d arrived in the ER laying on that
stretcher looking every bit the part of something from beyond the grave.
Like one of his own victims.
Weed felt the bile rising in his throat. He had to get out. Had to get out before the rot
around him infected him.
The diseased mind of service102 was a pustule on the ass of humanity. Weed’s feet,
anchored in the glutinous blood ooze of the ghoul’s barren, raped soul, might as well have been
anchored in concrete. He didn’t just watch and feel, he lived out the ghoul’s fantasies as the
sonofabitch relived each murder in turn. Except these weren’t fantasies, they were memories.
Each victim fell into the spider’s web, then succumbed to whatever the killer had at hand: a brick
to the head, an electrical cord around the neck, a knife to the chest, a claw hammer...
But it wasn’t over when death came Weed discovered, not by a hideous long shot. Murder
was only a prelude.
The dark place reeked and the sense of putrefaction was overwhelming. Weed tried again
to run, but his muscles had all but calcified. He flailed about, could move no more than a mouse
caught in the paws of a cat.
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The vision continued through the eyes of the killer himself. They laid down as one
alongside each corpse. Only these weren’t the newly dead now—they were cold, too cold for the
warmth of life to have ebbed from them naturally.
They must have been refrigerated.
And with that horrific insight came a vision of a large padlocked icebox hidden in a room
behind a wall in Charlie Hazlit’s basement. Like a coffin it was. As he watched, Hazlit seemed to
be working against him from the other side and wouldn’t let their joint eyes turn away, the coffin
lid rose and he knew that even now, even as the ghoul lay comatose in his hospital room, a
corpse lay curing in his ghastly cooler. And because he’d been unconscious since the brain
surgeon smashed him upside his head, Weed knew the dead body had been there even then, had
been ripening even as Weed swung the statuette of Adonis that cracked the ghoul’s skull and
somehow failed to kill him.
They’re just cadavers.
As if they were just slabs of meat and nothing more. But Hazlit didn’t call them cadavers
—he called them lovers, embraced them and pushed his hardness against them. He kissed each
full on the mouth, a tender, long, erotic kiss. He didn’t kiss them elsewhere though, indeed
seemed wholly unconcerned about elsewhere. Perhaps that would spoil the fantasy for him,
Weed thought, would make the illusion null and void. In a growing state of ecstasy, the ghoul—
Weed now wished he had killed him and given him a one way ticket to hell—pumped his
hardness against the cold flesh of his lovers. He spilled his seed in rapturous, triumphant, twisted
abandonment.
Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Weed recited the Twentythird Psalm as if it would buy him forgiveness.
But forgiveness for what? For having failed to kill the monster? Or for having tried to kill
the twisted sonofabitch in the first place? Or perhaps for witnessing all he was seeing now? Or
maybe for something else entirely?
We’re all fucked, totally fucked.
Before he could go on like that, streaming consciousness here and there, the dark mist
descended again and the picture went out of focus. With indescribable relief, he found he could
move again. He instantly pulled his hand away from the Charlie Hazlit’s neck.
Weed was suddenly standing in a hospital room in the middle of an ICU somewhere. It
took a moment for him to place the scene. The sense of having looked over the gates of hell had
physical weight. He sniffed the air, certain it would contain putrefaction and death, and was
relieved to find nothing more than the usual hospital smell: the sharp odor of astringents and
alcohol. If he strained, he could just make out the faint hint of stale piss. He glanced at the clock.
Something less than two minutes had passed.
“Jesus Christ.”
He stood beside the bed wiping the smear of tears from under his eyes. Hazlit’s respirator
cycled back and forth, filling the room with its shoddy sound. He had the greatest urge to
disconnect the machine, an urge he had to consciously fight. It was another moment before he
realized something wasn’t right. The heartbeats were wrong. Two, instead of three.
Jenny White was seated on the chair beside him. Her eyes were wide open, staring far off
into the distance. Looking off into a place beyond this world. He knew before he touched her she
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was gone.
Jenny White had finally passed over the edge.
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Twenty-Three: Isaac's Epiphany
Jasmine sat upright, seeing the thing in her mind’s eye. “It’s coming.”
“What’s coming, what’re you talking about? Is it the creature?”
“The thing that chased you in the woods. It’s here, just outside.”
“Does it know we’re here?”
“I don’t think so. It’s confused, distracted maybe.”
†††
Isaac Weed looked upon the lifeless body of Jenny White. Her hand had dropped away
from his and he supposed it was at that moment the mist had returned and his vision had
thankfully clouded once again. Now he took hold of her hand anew and closed his eyes.
The scene that unfurled before Weed was a familiar one: the long tunnel, the unnaturally
bright light that seemed simultaneously to be everywhere while emanating from a distant point,
the unearthly warmth that engulfed him to the very innards of his being. He felt but couldn’t see
a pair of loving hands embrace him and a moment later he was on the banks of a shallow stream.
In death, Jenny White had lost none of the years she had possessed in life. She smiled at the
doctor, or at least appeared to, and then lifted her arm to point across the clearing to the woods
beyond. A moment later Weed was there, as if floating over the scene balloon-like.
Below him lay a vast clearing on the edge of a stream, the woods bordering two sides of
it. Jasmine’s spirit was strong here, and she seemed not so much to haunt the area as to inhabit it.
An odd comfort came over Weed. The place was somehow more and less than he had imagined
it. It was, he realized with a cold shudder, too crowded.
Then he saw her running across the clearing beneath him and his heart melted. She was
oblivious to him, but it was clearly Spottie Dottie, covered head to foot with the chicken pops. As
she played she was joined by a second child. It took only a moment for Weed to recognize Seth.
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He was thinner, remarkably thinner actually, but it was Seth without a doubt. An idea came to
him: perhaps, in death, people can be what they want to be—
Seth isn’t dead.
The notion crowded into Weed’s thoughts, pushing all else aside as if it was the only
thing of importance. Indeed, once it had him, it held him vice-like.
And then, too, he understood the reference to Spottie Dottie. Seth was here, dead or not,
with Jasmine. His soul had improbably—impossibly even—crossed the edge and was now
temporarily in her world. But how? He had no certain answer.
He had an idea it had something to do with the coma. He’d heard the survivor tales of
course (it was damn near impossible not to have heard them, not as a doc who dealt with the
brain-injured). Stories told by folks who had awakened from coma with a preternatural
knowledge. Some claimed to have visited heaven, or at least to have had an out of body
experience. A few—a very few—claimed to have seen hell.
One woman described a conversation her family had had over her pending death—not at
her bedside but thirty miles away in her kitchen. She had been unconscious in her hospital bed
the whole time.
An elderly man, who spent six days in a coma after a car accident, awoke knowing the
location of his murdered daughter’s remains—her bones were later discovered encased under a
basement slab forth year after her death. The killer, an itinerant handyman, confessed from his
dead in Shady Acres Rest Home.
Yet another individual, this one a six-year-old boy who awoke from his coma almost a
month after nearly drowning in the family pool, described in detail his impression of and
description of an older half-sister. She had drowned in a similar accident at age eight—three
years before the boy’s birth. The girl’s parents had split after her death and her father had put his
mouth around the business end of a shotgun and pulled the trigger a month later. The boy’s
mother had never spoken of his sister or her prior marriage to her young son.
Were these ravings just the random firings of a disordered brain caught in the maelstrom
of coma? Or might these folks—and countless others—have somehow crossed into a
netherworld simultaneously straddling the edge of life and the edge of death? A world where it
was possible for the living and the dead to mingle?
Oh my god. Seth is with Jasmine. Seth’s in a coma and he’s with Jasmine.
For an instant, no more than the length of time it takes a drop of blood to make a circuit
through the body, Weed smiled.
Charlie Hazlit’s in a coma too.
The issue, he saw it with the razor sharpness of a scalpel, wasn’t Seth or Jasmine. The
issue was Hazlit, the ghoul who currently lay in Weed’s ICU, himself in a coma. If Seth could
cross the edge and make it this far in his coma, then so too could Hazlit in his own coma.
But that ain’t just a possibility, is it? He’s here. Hazlit is here. He’s stalking them.
Weed’s mind began to seize up like an engine low on oil but churning forward
nonetheless. The gears rushed through their work, crashing through the terror and approaching
inexorably that moment when all must stop. Weed couldn’t shut the engine down.
Hazlit’s in a coma and might stay so for weeks...I can kill Hazlit, but won’t that just bring
him right back here? Bring him right back to Jasmine? Of course she’s dead, but that’s the nail
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in the coffin right? He doesn’t just kill his victims.
Weed’s throat filled with bile. He saw himself standing in that hellish killing field with its
bloody soup swirling around him, bones bobbing to the surface here and there, everywhere all at
once. The really chilling thing, and that fucking rusty engine just kept on clanking along—as if it
couldn’t seize no matter what its gears churned up—was what Hazlit did with his victims after
they died.
They aren’t cadavers to him, they’re lovers.
Now the engine zoomed out of control. Weed felt the cadaveric coldness of every one of
Hazlit’s victims against his own skin. He felt the steely hardness of Hazlit’s cock in his own
manhood, felt the same awful ecstasy Hazlit must have felt as the ghoul rubbed himself against
his dead lovers. Weed tried to blot out the image, tried to shut the overburdened engine down,
but he couldn’t. It was more than an image, like some sort of horrible scratch and sniff test, call it
gawk and fuck maybe. Whatever it was, the lurid sense of it inflamed every ounce of flesh in his
body and he tried desperately not to go there, would have given any part of himself to jam the
gears and seize the revving engine.
And when Hazlit came, when his cock spewed its insides across the belly of his cold
lover, Weed’s mind all but exploded as his own tumescence erupted...
And so it could be only one way Weed saw. To prevent the fiend from carrying his
ghoulish perversions into a second world, to prevent it from spending all eternity with his
daughter in a twisted state of cadaveric-induced arousal, the brain surgeon had to get to Seth
Oberg, had to pry loose the consciousness that still existed there. As a protégé of the Jenny White
—and the only apparent friend his daughter had known in the two years of her deathly existence
—the boy was the key.
How? Weed couldn’t answer that question. Perhaps his subconscious had sensed
something on its own when he touched Seth earlier. Perhaps Jenny White had spoken to him
from her place beyond the edge of life, a final insightful footnote after a long and storied life
filled with such moments of insight. Or perhaps he simply understood this from her last words.
This is the sound of hope, she had said, referring to the wondrous drumming of the living heart,
where there is this sound, there is life, and where there is life, there is hope.
Wake him, Weed thought, and he will know how to stop the beast.
†††
Weed had no way of knowing his daughter was being stalked by not one, but two beasts.
And Charlie Hazlit was the more benign of the two.
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Twenty-Four: At Play in the Fields of the Brain
Thin Seth sat in the dimly lit cave with his eyes closed and his head down. He rubbed the
index finger of his left hand back and forth along the scar that lay across his forehead, the one
that marked him as his mother’s child. She must have been a strong woman he often thought. He
prayed for her strength to be with him now. Then he closed his eyes and said his mantra:
away for the year, when the ground freezes to concrete, so hard it has to be heated just to dig a
grave. This is when the air gets cold, a slicing, bitter kind of cold that bites uncovered skin and
renders it unrecognizable to its owner in a matter of several minutes. It is the kind of cold that
few long months in the dark of the year, the cars have tails.
In Bismarck, in the dead of winter, the cars have—
†††
The fiend that had attacked the boy (and was known as Charlie Hazlit back in the world)
had wandered aimlessly for hours after their altercation. Only now did he approach the
outcropping of rocks, briefly considering their shape and musing on their resemblance to the
head of a turtle. He knelt there, more to rest than by any grand design. Since the boy had escaped
his grasp, he hadn’t seen a single soul, dead or otherwise, and he’d grown more than weary of the
place.
It was an ordeal he thought, not knowing where he was or how he had arrived here. A
slog of the worst sort.
Somebody would have to pay. Dearly.
†††
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Jasmine, her mind attuned to the rhythms of her unearthly world, had watched the
wanderings of the field as he came ever closer to their hiding place. She had watched as he
moved in and out of the trees and came finally to the rocks. He’s too close, she thought, then
watched as he discovered that the rocks had an opening, that the turtle had a mouth.
“He’s here,” she said.
“Who’s here? The creature?” Seth’s heart quickened. He stopped mumbling, was
instantly alert.
“Not it, he. He is here.”
“Oh yes, of course,” Seth replied. “Then it has begun.”
†††
Dr. Weed looked at the huge child, finding it almost difficult to believe he was only
eleven years old.
It’s the tumor. It’s pressing on his appetite center. He doesn’t know when he’s full
anymore.
It took six adults to move him onto the operating table.
†††
After taking a moment to regain his composure, a moment that had seemed as heavy as
any he had known this side of Jasmine’s death, Weed had reached across and closed Jenny
White’s eyelids. It was something like a splash of cold water to his face that, and he had been
suddenly up and out of that room, suddenly at the nursing station.
“Call a code, it’s the old woman,” he had said.
Terri Case had looked up from her magazine at that point, had responded instantly, had
run down the hall for the ubiquitous crash cart. The clerk, she had herself been absorbed in a
John Grisham novel, picked up the phone and a moment later the announcement had bellowed
overhead. Weed had known a throng of people would arrive shortly thereafter, had known they
would try only briefly to drive life back into the woman.
Jenny White had seen the infirmities of old age come upon her only slowly, but they
came nonetheless, relentless in their pursuit of her. She died doing what she had always done,
helping others to see their place in the world. Her death had been gloriously quick, painless, and
dignified. Unfortunately for Weed, decorum and etiquette dictated he call a code blue, though
that was as far as the surgeon had been willing to carry the charade. As the hordes of white coats
descended on the ICU, Weed had determined they would not soil her memory with chest
compressions and useless needles. When the first several arrived, they had found Weed himself
kneeling on the floor beside the woman. One of the senior resident physicians had reached down
and felt her neck for a pulse. Finding none, he had pulled out his stethoscope and listened. He
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had pronounced her dead a moment later.
Weed had lingered just long enough to ask Terri Case, the nurse who would shortly be
charged with moving Jenny White’s body to the morgue, to see to it herself and not farm it out to
an aide. She had agreed, though she had never had such a request from a physician before and
had looked at Weed with a quizzical expression, as if to ask who the woman was, or rather had
been.
“She was my friend,” he had said, then after a thoughtful pause, added, “And yours, and
his.” He had pointed at Hazlit then. “I don’t think she ever met a stranger.”
†††
As the fiend moved further into Jasmine and Seth’s cavern, the two heard his steps
echoing down the long tunnel and sat well concealed and well away from where the passage
opened out into their large room. The shimmering pool of water occupying the greater part of the
room was quiet, as if it itself lay in wait.
The fiend paused at the end of the tunnel, looking at how it widened out. For one
eternally long moment, the two thought he might know their plan, that perhaps he had somehow
keyed in to their mental telepathy. They were wrong of course, but were nonetheless tortured by
the wait. Finally, Seth could wait no longer and looked in Jasmine’s direction, seeing her in the
rocks about ten yards away.
We must draw him in. He pictured the words in his mind and Jasmine saw them
immediately.
Okay. She picked up a small rock and flung it into the middle of the water.
The fiend heard the splash and moved into the large chamber in time to see the ripples
disturb the surface of the pond. They moved out in wide, ever diminishing circles.
“Who’s there?” he said.
Jasmine had seen the fiend in her mind for hours, but those were only vague shadows, as
if he moved in the twilight. As the fiend now moved into full view, even in the dim cave light she
gasped at the sight of him.
Frankenstein for sure, she thought.
Frankenstein spun around. Had the sound come from behind or in front of him?
He heard you Jaz, be careful.
Sorry, but seeing him for the first time, I wasn’t prepared that’s all. You said he was
horrid, but...
The room echoed and the visitor couldn’t discern from which direction the sound had
come. He took a step, a single step, and listened as the sound of it reverberated around him in all
directions at once.
Have I ever lied to you? Seth almost shouted.
Of course not. It’s just that he really does look like Frankenstein. Jasmine followed him
with her eyes, not daring to move any other muscle.
Yeah, I told you.
The fiend stared across the cave, as if daring whoever might be present to show
200
themselves. “Who’s there? You’re watching me. I can feel it.”
Frankenstein’s monster, Seth passed to Jasmine.
Yeah, you said that. Still she kept her eyes on him, on the fiend.
No, I mean he doesn’t look like Frankenstein, he looks like Frankenstein’s monster. Seth
watched him now as well.
No answer. The fiend moved, turning a 360, getting the lay of the land perhaps. “Come
out, come out, wherever you are,” he said in a sing-song lyric. “I won’t hurt you.” He picked up
a rock and tossed it into the pond.
What are you talking about Seth? Jaz asked, the conversation somehow calming her.
The sound of the splash reverberated off of the walls as the water rippled once again.
Can’t let him get too close to the water, Seth warned.
I know, I know, she said.
In the book, Frankenstein was the name of the doctor. He doesn’t look like the doctor, Jaz.
As Seth watched the fiend, he willed him to move in a direction away from the water.
He looks like the monster the doctor created, Jasmine thought.
Right, he looks like Frankenstein’s monster, Seth said, as if the fact was obvious.
The fiend was only two steps from the water’s edge now. Seeing himself in the reflection,
his hand went to his face and he bent still closer for a better look.
Seth looked on in horror as the fiend started to do the one thing that he must not do.
Acting fast, or perhaps he was just prepared, he chucked a rock in the general direction of the
fiend and it skittered across the rocky ground at the man’s feet.
Turning, the fiend stepped back several paces and scanned the walls of the cave. “Who’s
there?” he repeated. “Come on, show yourself, I won’t hurt you. Ollie ollie auction free free
free.”
†††
“Scalpel!”
It had taken almost two hours the to get the obese Seth Oberg into the operating room and
under his knife. Two hours from the time he called the OR until the moment he made an incision
was not exactly a record, but Weed was satisfied no time had been wasted.
The sharp blade went through the skin quickly and cleanly, leaving only a thin trail of
blood in its wake. Weed quickly clamped off the skin edges to prevent further unnecessary
bleeding, and then folded the skin back on itself, exposing the glistening white of the living skull
underneath. He drilled several holes in quick succession, then used an electric saw to connect the
dots. As the playing card size piece of skull was lifted from its home and placed in a bowl of
antibiotic liquid, Weed felt the underlying membrane with a gloved finger. Tense, he thought, too
tense. “Hank, can you give a half gram of mannitol per kilo.”
It sounded like a question, though it was anything but. Weed was in his element now and
this was not a request. The captain of a ship is responsible for everything that happens on board,
and so it is with a surgeon in the operating room.
Dr. Hank Greening had just finished dosing a pregnant woman with pain medicine when
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Dr. Weed called. An anesthesiologist, he was on the OB ward and had been looking forward to
communing with his bunk. Instead, here he was, giving mannitol to a giant of a boy.
The mannitol would soon work its particular magic and decrease the pressure within the
boy’s brain, making the surgery easier. In brain surgery, easier is usually synonymous with safer
and so Weed was willing to wait. He walked over to the view boxes and feigned looking at the
imaging studies of the tumor. He needn’t have bothered though, having in his head a precise
image of the evil before him, courtesy of Jenny White and her preternatural knowledge. He
smiled behind his mask, wondering if she was watching from the other side.
†††
At the bottom of the swamp, its skin teeming with filth and vermin, the essence of death
waited. It periodically sampled the waters about it, hungry and ready to move at the slightest hint
of food. Once or twice it reared its ugly head when some large piece of rotting meat or putrid
flesh floated into reach of its powerful jaws, but for the most part it waited for that wayward soul
to enter its deathly domain. It could afford to be patient.
As if connected by unseen strings to every other point in its world, the creature felt the
ripples of a small pond somewhere off in the great distance, first once then again after several
minutes. It considered the information, then filed it away in whatever passed for a brain deep
within its worm infested innards. If nothing else came up after some reasonable amount of time,
it might check out the pond on the off chance something was there.
But it knew something else would come up. Some stupid, self-centered soul would
wander into its life-challenged world.
One always did.
†††
Dr. Weed opened the thin but tough membrane that protected the brain from outsiders
such as himself. The brain on the other side slacked away, not pouncing at him as he had feared it
might. The mannitol had done its job and now he could do his.
He began by gently separating the two halves of the brain, prying them apart with the
finesse of a Swiss watch maker. He worked slowly and carefully under the high powered surgical
microscope. As he worked, a young general surgery resident he had enlisted to assist him in this
middle of the night endeavor stood beside him and peered through the microscope’s second set
of eyepieces. The surgeon’s hands were constantly at work. The room was mostly quiet, except
for the slurping of the sucker as it removed the continuously accumulating blood from the fields
of the brain.
The sound was a persistent suh suh suh. In addition to the blood, a constant, low level run
off of spinal fluid submerged the surgical field. The ‘sucker’ was a curved cylindrical tube about
the diameter of the plastic ink container in a ball point pen. The tube was made of metal and was
attached by a thin flexible hose to the wall, where the vacuum was actually generated. Though a
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mundane device, the tiny vacuum system not only allowed the surgeon to work, it was crucial. In
the background, filtered out of the surgeon’s consciousness, was the gentle hiss of the ventilator
as it pushed the sedating gases through Seth’s lungs. The occasional buzz of the special cautery
unit Weed used to stop bleeding from the many tiny blood vessels nearly completed the melody
of the operating room. The cautery looked like a tiny pair of tweezers and it passed a current
between the tips whenever he activated it with a foot pedal.
As Weed worked, his eyes were keen to find anything that might lead him astray, might
take him off the planned path, there being scant room for exploration inside the skull. Weed was
spectacularly aware of his surroundings at each and every moment in time. As he sunk deeper
millimeter by millimeter into the chasm that lay naturally between the two sides of the brain,
pulling apart its smooth gray walls, a large but delicate pair of vessels came into view and Weed
recognized these at once. He was in the land of the legs now, to damage these vessels might
leave Seth wheelchair bound for the rest of his life. The paired vessels were twins, one serving
each side of the head. They rested upon a glistening white carpet that was the bundle of nerve
fibers through which the two sides of the brain spoke to each other.
Weed paused, leaned back in his chair, and stared up at the observation deck in the ceiling
of OR 17.
The homicide detective stared back at him.
†††
Detective Marks stared down through the glass of the observation window. The guard
outside the ICU had seen the commotion of the code but had by now recognized it as a normal
part of hospital routine. It wasn’t until he discovered an hour or more later that the code had been
called for a woman who died while visiting Hazlit—the man he was protecting in case the would
be killer returned to finish the job—that he had deemed it prudent to notify the detective. Marks
had been sleeping at the time, it was two in the morning, but felt the information important
enough to see what was going on for himself.
Now, as he stood in the observation deck above OR 17, he watched Weed at work. He
was impressed with his calm demeanor. He admired coolness under fire, even if at the same time
he thought the man capable of heinous acts of brutal murder. He had every reason to believe
Weed was a killer and thought he now knew how the ghoulish surgeon had contacted each of his
victims.
“You do have a laptop in your office doctor, and I have one of my men waking up a judge
right now to get a warrant to seize it,” Marks said out loud in a soft, twangy voice.
†††
Christ, what the hell does he want?
Weed bit his lip hard enough to taste blood, then hoped there wasn’t enough blood to
soak through his mask.
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“Never let them see you sweat,” he said soto voce, then silently went into his mantra even
as he looked back down at the surgical field.
†††
Thin Seth wavered slightly as he sat in the shadows, ten yards from Jasmine and perhaps
three times that distance from the fiend. He had developed a headache. It has begun, he thought.
What had begun he supposed was the operation to save his life. In this peculiar land, he
was the ghost, a visitor who didn’t yet have the qualifications to truly be here. Five minutes
before—or maybe it was an hour before, time seemed to have very little meaning in this world
and was not linear as it was in his—he had felt a vague tickle over the top of his scalp, as if
someone was slowly dripping ice water there. The odd sensation was followed by a thumping for
several more minutes, not unlike a woodpecker trying to peck its way into his skull. Now came a
sense of pressure, with a slow, relentless build. Not so bad he couldn’t deal with it, but a
nuisance just the same.
I’ll be leaving soon.
Say hi to him for me, whatever happens, Jasmine passed to him. Please. She felt him
fading, hoped he could hold out long enough.
Of course, and everything’s going to be okay. You’ll see, it’s all going to be fine. It has to
be he thought, but didn’t pass on to her. After that, his headache became a distraction. It became
increasingly difficult for him to concentrate. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to miss his cue.
All hell would break loose if he did.
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Twenty-Five: Scalpel and Monsters
A tiny bleeder Weed had not previously seen pulsed blood as he looked back through the
microscope. The bleeding stained the field dark red and even now was clotting.
“Irrigation.” He stuck his right hand out without looking up from the scope.
The scrub tech passed him a small syringe half full with saline solution. Weed pushed the
plunger slowly, aiming the stream of salt water to best advantage in ridding the scene of
accumulated blood. He transferred the half empty syringe to his left hand.
“Cautery with half by half cottonoid.” He never took his eyes off of the field.
The scrub tech put the tweezer-like device into his hand, the tips closed against a half
inch square piece of white cotton. With the ease and certainty of years of experience, he laid the
cottonoid at the base of the chasm and gently squirted more of the saline into the field. In this
manner, he quickly identified the small bleeding vessel, pinched it between the tips of the
cautery, and cauterized it. No harm, no foul, he thought, seeing it was a small unnamed artery
that was almost certainly redundant. He would repeat this same series of moves tens, even
hundreds of times as his work inside the head progressed.
Weed stared down at the sizable paired arteries and watched them pulsate against the
white carpet beneath them. The tumor was only a quarter inch deep to where he now was. His
work created a cylindrical corridor almost four inches deep on a trajectory to the center of Seth’s
head another two inches beyond his current location. The cylinder tapered from the diameter of a
quarter at the surface to a dime where he looked upon the twin arteries. All of this had been
accomplished without any true injury whatsoever to Seth’s nervous system. He had simply
followed the natural cleavage plane between the two sides of the brain, the logical left and the
abstract right. Up to this moment in the operation, a moment that had taken just seventy-five
minutes to arrive at, the operation had been textbook perfect. Weed had done nothing
irreversible, nothing that the body couldn’t heal of its own accord.
That was about to change.
Weed took a deep breath and resisted the urge to look up at the observation deck. He
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called for a small probe and confidently separated the twin arteries, nudging each several
millimeters to its own side and creating a small working space in-between. A moment later he
picked up the sucker and began to delicately vacuum out the white band of brain tissue between
him and the tumor. The small clumps of the vital computer went up the sucker toward the wall
and the logical left and abstract right halves of Seth’s brain would never be the same again.
Weed was disconnecting the right and left sides of Seth’s brain.
†††
For a moment, thin Seth thought somebody was whispering to him. The words seemed to
come from his left but when he looked, there was nothing. Then he realized the whispering, faint
and incomprehensible at best, came from within, as if a tape was looping endlessly inside his
head. It played a static filled message over and over:
away for In Bismarck, in the dead of winter, the cars have tails. They come out once the sun goes
away for In Bismarck, in the dead of winter, the cars have tails. They come out once the sun goes
away for In Bismarck...
Seth, concentrating on the repeating refrain, didn’t at first notice the hand as it crossed
over his body and tapped his right arm. It nearly pulled him out of his hiding place a moment
later when the hand suddenly grabbed his right wrist and yanked.
A stunned Seth looked down to see the alien hand—he had no idea it was his own—
pulling and tugging at him. He slapped and pushed at it in a effort to rid himself of the thing,
looking all the while like a man in an argument with himself.
“Get off! Get away from me, leave me alone!” He rose to his feet in the commotion.
The fiend startled at the sudden appearance of the boy just thirty yards from him. “So,
you are there. I knew it.” He immediately moved toward the boy.
Jasmine too startled at the sudden commotion. She turned in Seth’s direction and what
she saw ran chills up her spine. Seth’s left hand was pulling at his right one. Except it wasn’t just
pulling. It was cajoling, almost...playing with it, she imagined. The one hand was twisted around
the other in a way she had never seen before.
This isn’t part of the plan. What are you doing, Seth?
But either Seth was no longer listening, or no longer could listen. He kept pulling his
right arm away from his left hand and his left hand kept going back to it, almost attacking. He
looked like a man at war with himself.
That hand’s possessed. It was Jasmine’s last thought message, because even as she
thought the words, she saw the fiend moving toward her friend. What happened next changed
everything forever. She stood up and shouted. “Stop!”
The fiend turned dead in his tracks and showed an ugly grin as he spoke. “Oh I do so love
a party. How many more are you? Come here darling, I ain’t gonna hurt you. I just wanna help.”
There was a whininess to his voice and from where she stood, Jasmine could already
sense the hideously darkness emanating from him. “There’re ten of us.”
Seth visibly jerked from side to side as his alien left hand tried to cajole the right into
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coming with it. Each time he pulled his right hand away from the apparent intruder, the left hand
returned yet again. It was one part comedy, two parts tragedy.
It was a goddamn horror show, one where the host is both the possessor—and the
possessed.
†††
He’s like a half-mad dog, Jasmine thought, expecting Seth might start foaming at the
mouth at any moment.
He’s lost his mind.
She wanted to go to him, but the fiend stood between them. Try as she might, she
couldn’t move. She couldn’t bring herself to bait the darkness present in the monster.
†††
The fiend laughed at Seth. It was a lurid, depraved kind of laughter, gruesome like his
grin. Jasmine watched as that smile spread across his wounded face and immediately thought
how its skin was too small to accommodate the widening mouth.
“I’m thinking there ain’t ten of you, little girl.”
His voice had a sort of rotten lilt to it, the sound a bone makes as it fractures—over and
over again. She wanted to run, wanted to close her eyes and go away as she had with the creature
that had until this very moment been the only thing stalking her in this dead world. But she
couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave her friend to the mercy of that voice. “What do you want?”
The fiend ran his head around from shoulder to shoulder, seemed to consider his
situation. A more rational mind might have asked for help or an explanation—Who are you?
What is this place?—but his was not a rational mind. Before him stood two kids. The older one,
the boy, might be crazy. “I don’t give a goddamn,” he said at first, then added, “What do I want?
I want us to be friends. I can help you.”
She sensed the darkness not just around him, but within him. A void. “If you want to
help, maybe you could get us some water.”
He moved toward the boy.
“Please mister, just a little water.” She moved to block his path.
Seth was doubled over. His right arm was now scratched and bleeding where the left hand
had gripped and twisted it. Whatever was wrong with him, he was fully consumed by it.
The fiend’s grin disappeared, replaced by an angry grimace. He suddenly reached out and
grabbed her wrist. Whatever his intention had been—
“Get out of my way bitch!”
—the moment he touched her arm his face morphed again. Now came a look of surprised
ecstasy.
Jasmine saw the lurid change in the fiend’s face and for one terrible moment, she knew
the worst humanity had to offer was in that chamber with them.
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“You’re so...cold—so deliciously cold. I like it.”
His pecker began to rise.
†††
The brain surgeon continued to suck out tiny pieces of Seth’s brain, working in the deep
chasm between the cerebral hemispheres. The only way to get to the tumor was to remove the
normal brain above it, and in doing so Weed was disrupting the fiber tract that served as a
superhighway between the rational left and abstract right halves of Seth’s brain. Once
disconnected, there was no re-connecting them of course—which meant each half would forever
work independent of the other, with no realization of what the other was about.
Weed couldn’t see this of course, but it was a physiologic certainty of the necessary
anatomic damage he was doing and he knew it. Sorry Seth, but I gotta make a path somewhere
and this is the least hurt I can do. The lesser evil, he thought. The greater evil would have been
to choose a path that left the boy half blind, or paralyzed.
As he moved deeper through the corpus callosum, taking several millimeters at a time
now, the whitish color began to darken and suddenly disappeared altogether, replaced by the
black of night. Spinal fluid welled up into the space under the sucker. Weed had entered the
ventricles, a part of the human body never meant to see the light of day if ever any such place
existed. The surgeon now slid a postage stamp sized piece of cotton into the small opening to
mark its location, then vacuumed out a bit more brain before he was satisfied he had an opening
large enough to work through. The opening was no larger than a dime.
He adjusted the microscope and for the first time, the inner walls of Seth’s third ventricle,
the deepest, most intimate part of his brain, were illuminated. The eyes of the surgeon fell
heavily upon the invader—an irregularly shaped mass of cells that pulsated sharply in the dark
recesses. Weed couldn’t see all of it of course, it was a large tumor and most of it remained
hidden, but what he could see...
The thing stared back at him across four inches of cored out brain. A small flake of tissue,
glistening, bone white in color.
A tooth.
Around it, the vagous, unsettling surface of the tumor conspired through a series of pits,
grooves, and furrows to produce, what seemed to Weed at least, a face. It couldn’t be of course.
It’s just the semblance of a face.
Except that with each beat of Seth’s heart, the thing seemed to grimace.
†††
Marks couldn’t fully appreciate the drama playing out under the microscope, though he
hoped things were going well for the boy patient. Even as he watched Weed operate and was
awed by his abilities, he had privately decided this had to be Weed’s last operation. The man was
too dangerous to allow him to work on unsuspecting patients, skills or no skills.
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He’s a cunning SOB and that makes him all the more dangerous. Got a get him off the
streets.
He still had unanswered questions of course, not the least of which was why. Why would
a well respected, successful, and talented brain surgeon suddenly begin killing people?
Maybe the death of his daughter broke him.
Whatever. It didn’t really matter. Once a wolf tasted human flesh, you had to put it down.
The wolf’s position in the pack, of course, was of no concern.
†††
The alien hand wouldn’t give up. It lunged at Seth, coming at him from his left side with
both speed and strength. It clawed at his right hand, a creature out of nowhere. It never occurred
to him that he and the creature—the clawing hand—were one and the same.
In Seth’s exasperation, he looked up to see a world fractured in a way he’d never seen or
imagined before. It was a cubist montage, with images discontinuous and incomplete. As if his
eyeballs were of shattered glass glued back together—the cracks distorting the streaming light in
various and bizarre ways.
In the one image, confused and jumbled in both time and space, a disheveled little girl
confronted something. That something wasn’t a part of the scene though, missing like a piece
torn from a photograph. The girl, she was vaguely familiar in an off-fettle way, stood or or lay
(he couldn’t tell which) with her mouth open. She might have been saying something. She was
squirming is a desperate sort of way.
Seth felt an ache for her.
In another image—the images ran concurrently, like superimposed motion pictures—a
ghoulish creature moved about with a hideously disturbing face. There was something
fantastically sadistic about the thing. It had a look of hunger, like a wolf who has cornered its
prey. It too looked to be saying something, was struggling with some unseen force.
Seth felt no remorse for this ‘thing.’ In fact, he didn’t seem to have any feelings about this
one at all.
Try as he might, Seth couldn’t fuse the two images together into any sort of coherent
scene. The images, moving pictures really, played out each in their own space without mixing.
Like immiscible oil and water.
It was the girl’s scream that momentarily revived him, pulling him back from the
darkness he’d fallen into. It allowed him to fuse the images for just a fraction of a moment.
But that was long enough.
†††
“Let me go!” Jasmine yelled, the pain of her broken leg reasserting itself as the fiend
kicked her there.
He twisted her arm and she could see the lust in his hellishly twisted face. He turned on
209
the dead girl, apparently forgetting the second of the two kids.
Jasmine screamed hard enough to wake the dead.
Or at least the comatose.
Seth’s purpose in Jasmine’s world momentarily crystallized and Seth moved. He picked
up a rock as he made his way toward the fractured pair. Unable to fuse the images in his vision,
Seth closed his eyes and listened. He heard the lustful breathing of the field and brought the rock
down accordingly, but his alien left hand—still only a part of him in flesh only—grabbed at his
good hand and deflected the blow. It glanced off the fiend’s head, enough to stun but not stop
him altogether.
Blood squirted from a tiny artery over the fiend’s right eye. The thing released Jasmine
and fell back, sagging to the ground. He lingered a moment, then stood on shaky legs.
“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you boy,” he said only half intelligibly.
Seth backed away, concentrating on his right hand, which now controlled the alien left
one. He made his way to the water’s edge, careful not to touch it. His legs still worked together,
though just barely. Not wearing shoes helped, as he was able to feel the rocks beneath his feet,
dry ones at first, damper ones closer to the water’s edge.
The fiend didn’t let him down. As he and Jasmine had anticipated, the ghoul followed the
boy to the water’s edge. But as he followed after Seth, the fiend didn’t bother to stay clear of the
water. When he stopped a moment later, the three stood distantly apart.
Jasmine watched the pond as ripples emanated out into an ever widening pattern.
“Seth! He touched the water! The water! He touched the water!”
†††
Isaac Weed looked up from the microscope. Once located the tumor proved fairly easy to
remove. After thirty minutes, he had more than half of the tumor in a bottle on the side table.
After obliterating the face, he removed not only teeth, but bits of hair, skin, bone, and a large
amount of brownish grunge the pathologist would have a field day with.
A shiver went through Weed. He stopped and looked up, turned away from the
microscope. He was suddenly gripped with a stark picture of his daughter in the hands of Hazlit.
She was screaming and that’s why he had looked up. At first it was a vague, distant cry, barely
audible. Then it was upon him, draped over him like a shroud.
Without a word, Weed pushed away from the table and began to pace back and forth. He
only did this three or four times, but to the others in the room it must have seemed something
was terribly wrong. The young assistant stared into the microscope himself but could see nothing
amiss. He shook his head to indicate such to the scrub tech and circulating nurse.
“Problem Isaac?” Dr. Greening, the anesthesiologist, asked. “Everything’s fine here.”
Weed didn’t answer, lost somewhere as he was between two worlds. His arms were
crossed over his chest and his hands were tightly clinched fists. A profound sense of urgency
came over him and he knew he must hurry, knew he must remove the tumor now. He sat back
down and vacuumed the last bits of tumor from the center of Seth’s head in a furious moment of
intense energy. He picked up the sucker, held his breath, closed his eyes, and visualized the
210
remaining tumor hiding in the crevices of Seth’s brain—Thank you, Jenny White—and in two
minutes the tumor was out.
Only then did he open his eyes and breathe.
†††
“What the hell?”
The detective stood in the empty observation deck as he watched the surgeon pace below
him.
He’s losing it, he’s finally losing it.
Marks gripped the rail alongside the window and his hands blanched white. He feared for
the child’s life at that moment, but there was nothing he could do. He had never felt so impotent
as a cop and stood looking down into the operating room with rapt attention.
Never should have let him go in there...
†††
The creature reacted instantly to the intrusion.
The eater of souls recognized the tiny molecules as traces of food and immediately
unfurled itself from around the dead tree stump at the bottom of the swamp. It sucked in the
putrid waters once more, carefully sorting out the thousands of scents that came with it. Within a
moment, no more, it knew the direction to go and came fully alive.
It wasted no time.
†††
Jasmine hobbled to Seth’s side with her best possible speed, the pain of her broken ankle
now far removed from her consciousness.
Seth seemed inexplicably weak. Worse, and this she saw as she held him close, his
ethereal substance was waning. Seth was dematerializing in her very arms.
Her lips lingered on his forehead and she wrapped her arms around the little bit of him
that remained. She could feel him beside her, but he was so far gone all that remained was a
smear of pale watercolors. The fiend came forward.
“Send him my love,” she said, and closed her eyes. She concentrated, thought of her
father, thought of anywhere but here.
Even as Seth’s ghostly image lingered, Jasmine left the dead world behind, if only in
mind and not body.
†††
211
The fiend came at the two kids huddled together on the rocky floor, his arms outstretched
in front of him and ready to throttle the first one he reached.
Suddenly, the boy’s skin shimmered and became translucent. Presently, his skin
disappeared altogether and the fiend could see the layout of vessels tracking in and around the
kid’s bones and muscles, then just a ghostly remnant of bones, then nothing at all.
The boy was gone.
Charlie Hazlit stopped and backed away, fear having found a new home. “What the
fuck?”
As if a bomb had gone off, the pond behind him suddenly erupted and showered the
cavern with a putrid, misty spray. Jasmine and whatever figment of Seth remained were
drenched, but the girl never moved, never so much as opened an eye. The fiend did though, he
turned toward the water and sealed his fate when he tried to run.
The creature, drawn by the movement as a bug is to light, was instantly upon him and the
fiend felt the writhing of a thousand worms boiling across his skin as the eater of souls bored into
him. His flesh began to creep from his bones in vast expanses, carried off by a carpet of meattearing vermin as the essence of death skinned him alive. He felt the pain of a million shards
prickling him from inside and out and agony knew a new home as well. The fiend, himself
acquainted with the mask of terror in all its guises, now had a lesson in what it meant to be on the
other side of that mask. In too short a time, his desolate soul was no more, was sent to the empty
place.
The creature lingered a moment further beside the wasted carcass of the fiend, turning the
bones to dust and swallowing the skull whole. It would excrete it later to join the thousands of
others piled high in the swamp it called home.
Assuming it made it that far of course.
212
Twenty-Six: Operating Room #17
Isaac Weed looked into the cavernous vault of the ventricle deep inside the head of Seth
Oberg, confirming that every trace of the invader was gone. What stared back at him now was
not the face of some evil twin lodged in residence there, but the glistening gray and white walls
of that most sacred inner sanctum. He knew those walls housed any number of vital functions
within, coordinating in marvelous chemistry the energies that summed eventually to something
greater than the whole of their parts, creating in turn the miraculous life force, indeed the very
soul itself.
As he peered through the lens of the high powered surgical microscope, he gently
irrigated saline into the ventricle, allowing it to fill up before sucking it dry again. He did this
several times and was about to call it quits when still looking through the eyepiece of the
microscope, he saw the first flashes of a curious light, subtle yellow flickers that lit up the lake of
saline like fireflies on a warm summer night. These were followed by more flashes a moment
later, deep blue and fluorescent green twinkles, then a third series, of which fire engine red stood
out in great brilliance. It was as if a switch had flipped and the billions of neurons forming the
intricate web of Seth’s brain had suddenly come out of their dormancy. A brilliant and astounding
fireworks extravaganza painted the peaks and valleys of Seth’s brain in beautiful hues. As Weed
sat there, absorbed in the majesty of it, he had the humble feeling he was seeing God’s hand at
work.
As if he was watching the soul return home.
The show was intense and brief, thirty seconds at most. It left tiny after images on Weed’s
retinas, the kind of spots one sees after glancing at the sun.
†††
Dashell Marks stared down into operating room 17. He had no knowledge of the dramatic
213
light show Weed had just witnessed, but realized the operation was moving toward a conclusion
as he saw the microscope being moved away from the patient.
Good for the boy, he thought.
Heather Joie, his partner of many years, had arrived and she had with her the warrant to
confiscate Weed’s laptop and a second one targeting his Mercedes. They could take them now of
course, while the surgeon operated, but Marks wanted to see the look on Weed’s face as he
presented him with the warrants and confiscated his property. Then he would arrest him.
Won’t be long now.
†††
As the eater of souls surveyed the scene of its most recent carnage, it failed to see the
small girl laying deathly still against the rocks. It did however, see the faint ethereal mist of a
soul no longer there, a ghostly remnant of one who has come and gone. Tasting it through its
eyes, it knew this trail to be a special one.
The Key-oak-QUI-ah. The prince of souls.
Unleashing a haunting wail, the creature suddenly became a mere figment itself. An
instant later it was gone entirely, spinning across the edge of death into the land of the living as it
followed the trail of the one that had gotten away.
Or thought it had.
†††
Dr. Weed held the piece of Seth’s skull in his hand and prepared to screw it in place
before sewing up the large incision in the top of Seth’s head. As he viewed the bone from various
angles, he was abruptly consumed by an intense coldness. Suddenly, as if she had just wandered
in to see what he was doing, Jasmine was standing next to the operating table.
She was recognizable to him despite the slime of mold and decomp covering her. An odor
of putrefaction permeated the room. He felt no comfort in her presence.
Weed screamed.
He stepped back as she reached an arm out to him. The flesh was green and bits of
muscle hung in great putrid swatches from the bones, which themselves had mildewed to a
hideous black. Weed began to hyperventilate and he dropped the piece of Seth’s skull he’d been
holding. The room spun around him.
Weed’s assistant, a young surgery resident, didn’t see the girl. He had problems of his
own though. Standing before him was the pit bull terrier that had attacked him at the age of eight.
The resident had lost an ear in the attack, and the dog had nearly chewed his foot off in the fight.
He hadn’t been able to come within a hundred yards of a dog since, and had no intention of
staying in the same room with one now. In his flight, he turned to run and knocked over an
instrument table. He backed into a corner and cowered as the dog morphed into some hideous
canine caricature with large fangs, eyes of the beast, and thick, bloody drool. The resident closed
214
his eyes against the image and began to utter the Lord’s Prayer.
When the tray of surgical instruments struck the floor, the crash reverberated off the walls
of the operating room. Dr. Greening looked over the sterile drapes partitioning him from the
surgeon and saw a man standing with his back to him on the other side. He was naked, bruised,
and bloodied, and the reek of jet fuel was noxious and strong. A deep gash creased one side of
his back and with each breath it spewed a frothy mixture of blood and air. Greening could see a
lung moving up and down somewhere in the morbid depths of that wound. Without thinking, the
anesthesiologist reached around and groped at the wide scar on his own back. A moment later,
the stranger turned and Dr. Hank Greening stared into the most familiar face he knew—a
younger version of himself, the sole survivor of a plane crash years before...
At the instant Isaac Weed looked up and saw the decayed spirit of his little girl, a sighting
so grotesque he knew it couldn’t be her, every person in the operating room experienced the
same thing, but each in a different, very personal way. As the essence of death stood among
them, each saw the eater of souls embodied in the form of their worst nightmare. Like a fox in a
hen house, it could have its pick of them. It wanted only one however.
It wanted the one that had escaped.
It wanted Seth Oberg.
It wanted the Key-oak-QUI-ah.
†††
The two detectives stood in awe as the room below them descended into chaos. Detective
Joie was mesmerized by the figure of her dead mother. The woman had made her life a living
hell, right up to her death when Joie was thirteen. She was an alcoholic and her abuse over the
years had all but put her daughter in the grave. Worse, the little girl herself had wanted to die.
Now Joie discovered her mother still had the power to torment her. She backed away, looking for
the fetid closet that had been both a prison and a sanctuary back in the old days...
Marks ignored Joie, immersed in his own nightmare. Ten years before, on a camping trip
with his family in northern California, he’d been eyewitness to a sighting of the apelike creature
known variously as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the abominable snowman, and a hundred other names.
That creature had startled him as he walked with his son through the woods. The creature had
stood less than fifty feet in front of the pair. It had bellowed at them, a deeply baleful, awful
sound that Marks had never forgotten. He’d pissed his pants at the sound of it, though he left that
part of the story out whenever he told the story later. Now, as then, the water flowed as the
apelike creature of various names stared up at him and let go that malignant wail once again. Ten
years ago, unarmed, Marks had looked into those malevolent eyes and scooped up his six year
old son as he back peddled and ran back the way he’d come.
But now his son was not with him. And as he looked into the beast’s soulless eyes, he
fingered the .38 caliber police special in its shoulder holster inside his coat. As he pulled the
weapon from its place and leveled it at the creature, he was suddenly blinded by the most eerily
beautiful light he’d ever seen.
215
†††
The creature that was death by another name surveyed the scene around it, looking for the
princely soul that was Seth Oberg. The Key-oak-QUI-ah, having been freed of its earthly
bindings in the form of a tumor that had obscured its vision for too long, now awakened. Called
as if to atone, the Key-oak-QUI-ah didn’t waste a moment in doing so.
Weed and the others were stunned and awed by a marvelous blue ball of light that rose
out of the body lying on the operating table. Some saw it as more white than blue, but the beauty
of it could not be denied and all turned their eyes to it as if they had no choice but to do so. The
intensity was blinding and grew fantastically until all in the room were bathed in its impossibly
warm ambiance. The scrub tech thudded to the floor. The surgery resident, still muttering some
incomprehensible semblance of the Lord’s Prayer, slipped to the floor as well, shielding himself
against the day of reckoning that he knew was upon them.
The little girl beside Weed, a ghoul in every since of the word, morphed under the
influence of the light. Her moldy skin boiled and blistered, then cracked open and released a
festering stew of vermin. A rotten stench filled the room as hundreds of cockroaches, beetles, and
other bugs fell from the creature like fleas abandoning a dead dog. The filthy remains of the
ancient brute, a hideous blend of blackened bones, abscessed gut, and decayed muscle, were
apparent to all now as the creature lost its bid to maintain its multifaceted guise of terror.
The eater of souls, a creature that until this moment had not known true terror, held
surprise in its wide, disturbed eyes. It had a pitiful, emaciated look, as if time had finally caught
up to it and the end was near. Then, in defiance, it lifted a bony arm toward the blue ball, a single
digit on that extremity sticking out and waving back and forth.
“Ah, ah, ah, no you don’t!”
The haunting, lyrical scream of a banshee filled the room and the creature took several
steps back. It collapsed, apparently dying, then rose again as if to defend itself. Instead, it pointed
that same finger to the floor and quickly outlined a complete and perfect circle around itself. A
black void opened beneath it, sucking in first the vermin, then the rotten stench. The beast
teetered as long as it dared, then it too escaped over the edge and into some other existence.
In the aftermath, operating room 17 was ghostly quiet, as still as bones in a coffin buried
a hundred years.
216
Twenty-Seven: Two Years Dead is Enough
Before returning to its rightful place at the right hand of God, the Key-oak-QUI-ah had
one bit of unfinished business to attend to. Returning to the cavern at the edge of life, the entity
gathered up the spirit of the small girl it found huddled on the rocks there. It cocooned her in a
sense of warmth she hadn’t known in two years. It knew what to do with her now, knew what it
had to do with her.
Two years dead was enough.
†††
Marks never knew where the idea came from. He liked to suppose it was just good police
work, but if he truly thought that he was fooling himself. He and Heather Joie had had the same
idea that night so many months ago. After arriving at the hospital separately, the two of them had
watched the mundane surgery going on in OR 17 until, bored silly, they had apparently both
drifted off to sleep. The surgery ended sometime before their sleep did, not by much though, and
the two had gone in search of the brain surgeon. Before finding him though, they both had the
rather stunning revelation that Hazlit’s home still possessed some vital clue they’d missed.
Giving up their quest to find the doctor, they went instead to 237 Powel Post Road. It didn’t take
them long to find the secret room, it was hidden behind a basement wall, and the secrets it told
were ghastly indeed. Hazlit had kept mementos of each fiendish tryst and stored them in this
secret place, never expecting to be attacked himself. As if that were not enough, the body still
lying in the cooler at the back of the room sealed their suspicions. Weed, if he had ever truly
been a suspect, was completely exonerated. Whatever he had been doing in the wrong
neighborhood that awful night, it had had nothing to do with Charlie Hazlit.
Marks and Joie had the somewhat hollow victory of arresting a comatose man. He didn’t
live to stand trial however. Hazlit died without even giving them the satisfaction of regaining
217
consciousness seven weeks after he was arrested.
†††
Isaac Weed looked down at the tombstone of his deceased daughter. In his arms, the three
week old infant opened her eyes wide, as if to get a good look at her sister’s final resting place.
Hope Dottie Weed cooed and smiled.
Standing beside the pair, a much thinner Seth read the inscription, “Jaz plays with the
angels.”
“It sounds nice, it’s a good change,” Melanie said.
“Thanks Honey,” Isaac said.
“I feel like I know her,” Seth said. Almost like I am her.
He’d had a comfortable prescient sense about the Weeds from the first moment he’d met
the doctor upon awakening after his surgery. In the ten months since, the Weeds had gotten to
know him as well. It felt like a perfect match.
“You’re so much alike, it’s uncanny. You two would have been great friends,” Isaac said.
Melanie smiled beside him.
Isaac handed Dottie to Mel and put his arms around the boy, hugging him tightly. He’d
lost over a hundred pounds since that middle of the night surgery that had saved his life. Oddly,
Isaac had almost no memory of that operation beyond making the initial skin incision. It seemed
almost as if he had done everything else in a trance. When he’d finally awakened from that
peculiar sleep, he had found the boy safely tucked away in the ICU, his head sewn up perfectly,
indeed almost too perfectly, or so he would have thought if he was one to believe in such things
as divine intervention. The anesthesiologist, Hank Greening, had retired not long after that
fogged night, had told Isaac that he had only odd, vague recollections about that night as well. In
fact, every person that had been in OR 17 that night felt as if they’d done the case through a fog.
The whole thing would have been truly eerie had Seth not done so well afterwards. It seemed a
miracle.
As if the hand of God had protected Seth that night.
Letting go of Seth, he looked once again upon Jasmine’s grave. A small tear formed in his
eye as he ran his hand through Seth’s hair, his thumb wiping across the boy’s smooth forehead.
In the ten months since the operation, the scar had faded until it was nearly imperceptible.
I’m so lucky, Weed thought, thinking time really does heal all wounds.
“I’ve been touched by the hand of God.”
218
The Civil War Novels
by Edison McDaniels
The Matriarch of Ruins (coming soon)
The Horror Stories
by Edison McDaniels
Juicing Out
Blade Man
†††
“...great pacing and vivid characterization, with a gift for writing convincing dialogue.
Original and unsettling.” —FG Cottam, author of The Colony & The Magdalena Curse
“Engaging, heart-breaking, & absolutely fantastic. A terrific book.” —D. Buxman, a top
1000 reviewer and Amazon Vine Voice
†††
219
It is the summer of 1863 and the greatest battle ever fought on American soil is in full tilt.
Southern Pennsylvania has become one great grinding stone and thousands of men are dead or
dying in its wake. In this tilted landscape, reputations are made, careers are ruined, and men are
driven to the brink in the wake of two armies intent on killing one another. Opportunity is
everywhere...
For the men and officers who fight the battle, it's a kill or be killed world, where salvation
is ever just a bullet away...
For the surgeons laboring over the many wounded, opportunity knocks at the tables,
where the price of a man's life is all too often an arm or a leg. The cost to the surgeons, however,
will be much higher...
For one undertaker in particular, the dead are a canvas and his ability to make a body
reflect the living individual is nothing short of amazing. For Jupiter Jones, the burgeoning dead
themselves are the opportunity...
And finally, for one teenage boy and former slave, alive only because his father had the
courage to bury him when the end came, opportunity comes in the form of the boy with a creel
and only one shoe, who may or may not be a ghost...
It is the summer of 1863 and humanity is under siege. What happens next amid the
carnage and human flotsam will be unholy, unnerving, and all but unbearable, with only one
thing certain: nobody will escape unscathed.
Here, the dead are the lucky ones.
For the living, hell is in session.
And it's the devil's own day.
For these men and their charges, laudable pus will be the least of their worries.
Available today as a Kindle eBook at Amazon.
†††
The Matriarch of Ruins
A widow struggles to keep her family together amid the horror and carnage of the Battle
of Gettysburg. With memories of her dead husband still acute, Purdy Gamble must cope with
losing him all over again as everything they worked so hard to build is threatened when their
220
farm is overrun and turned into a battlefield hospital.
A darkly compelling novel of lost love, moral dilemmas, and psychological trauma amid
the ruins of war.
Coming soon as a Kindle eBook at Amazon.
†††
Juicing Out
On the most difficult night of his life, a surgeon must make the most difficult cut of his
life—or die trying. A 14,000 word novella calculated to keep you in SUSPENSE!
Available now as a Kindle eBook at Amazon.
†††
Blade Man
What if you were driving a desolate North Dakota highway in a hundred year storm, and
the only other car on the road was...wrong? A 16,000 word novella you won’t be able to put
down.
Available now as a Kindle eBook at Amazon.

doll little mold porcelain stinker

Transcription

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