by Tom Abrahams
The MP stepped back another step and kept both hands on the weapon as he lowered it toward the floor. His finger eased off the trigger.
The patient banged his head against the table again, this time leaving a marked indention in the stainless headrest. Bang. Bang. Bang. Each successive thrust backward into the table was more aggressive than the one before.
Starling shifted, turning his shoulders and head to Gibson. His face was pale, almost gray with fear. “He must be hurting himself,” he said, his voicing arcing an octave upward. “What is happening?”
“Just wait,” said Gibson. “Just watch.”
Starling pointed to the biometric monitor to their right. “His pulse. It’s too high. He’ll have a stroke.”
“Just wait.”
The thrashing intensified. The patient’s hips swung wildly from side to side. Blood oozed from underneath the restraints at his wrists and dripped to the floor. The bright red splatter seemed to glow against the alabaster-colored concrete. It drew Gibson’s attention away from the deafening convulsions on the table. Drip. Drip. Drip. Gibson could faintly hear Starling grumbling his concerns, but he wasn’t listening. Drip. Drip. Drip.
The blood is the key, isn’t it? What is happening to his blood?
Then the guinea pig spoke.
It was more of a growl than anything else, but his words were clear and discernible. He was still thrashing back and forth and up and down, but he lifted his head forward. His chin almost touched his chest and he looked straight at Gibson, as if he knew, as if he’d been coherent this whole time.
His voice was guttural and thick with phlegm. “What did you do to me?” His voice was low at first, like an idling engine. Then he spoke again, more loudly. Spit flew from his swelling lips, and Gibson could see his teeth for the first time. They were somehow different, smaller and razor like. Together his top row of teeth resembled a serrated knife edge.
“What did you do to me?” he bellowed, his eyes still set on Gibson. “I’m on fire,” he screamed. “I’m burning from the inside. What. Did. You. Do?”
He arched his back again and shuddered as if a bolt of lightning was coursing through his body. He wailed in agony. He whipped his head back and forth, spraying a froth across the room, and cried out one more time before his body went limp and he exhaled. His lungs rattled. The biometric display flashed an error. The rooms were silent.
Starling was the first to speak. “Is he dead?”
Gibson didn’t respond. He was watching the blood drip to the floor. He was paying attention to the man’s fingertips.
“Is he dead?” Starling pressed.
The fingers were still. The MPs were shaking. Gibson could hear them sucking in too much oxygen.
Starling again. With more desperation. “Did we kill him?”
Gibson held up his finger, silently asking for a moment. He keyed the mic. “Slow your breathing, gentlemen. In and out slowly. In and out. You’re going to deplete your air supply. In and out.”
He looked at the blood. It wasn’t red anymore. Not really. It was something else. Not red. Not quite red.
Starling put his hand on Gibson’s shoulder. “Is he—”
A finger twitched on the patient’s right hand. A second twitch. A third.
“He’s not dead,” whispered Gibson through his mask. “He’s changing.”
The entire hand was twitching. No. It was morphing. The knuckles seemed to distend and pop as his fingers curled into claws. His feet arched and extended. The pads of his heels shifted backward, and his toes elongated into what looked more like talons than digits.
His back arched again, but this time his hips dislocated and realigned themselves at his pelvis. His shoulders and elbows cracked and slipped into unnatural-looking positions. His brow drew forward, intensifying the depth of his eyes. His lips were swollen into a sucker, and his cheeks were drawn thin. And his skin. His skin was almost translucent. It was losing its pigmentation by the second. Veins bulged at his biceps, across his forehead, and along his neck.
He was no longer human. He was superhuman. When he stopped convulsing and his morphology appeared complete, he leaned to one side and roared as he freed his right arm from the restraint. An instant later his left arm was free.
Before the MPs could react, he’d used his claws to tear through all four leg restraints. In one swift movement he twisted his body and jumped from the table. Perhaps sensing the tension of the intravenous line, he looked down at his hand and pulled out the IV. Then he threw back his head and wailed.
The MP who’d drawn his weapon was the first victim. Without a command from Gibson, he managed two shots at the attacking monster before a pair of swipes exsanguinated the poor soldier. As his half-suited body melted to a heap on the floor, the second MP emptied his .45 into the beast. It did nothing.
The animal looked down at the tight pattern of wounds in its chest and dug a finger into one of the wounds, fishing out a mangled round. It held the bullet between its thumb and forefinger and studied it before it flicked it at the MP and pounced. In a single miraculous leap it had crossed half the distance of the lab and tore the man open like a Christmas present.
Then it turned its sights on the glass window. The beast crouched low and jumped at the glass, slamming into it. It screamed as it connected with the window, its body smearing its discolored blood on the glass.
“He wants to kill us,” cried Starling. “What did we do? What did we do? What did we create?” He dropped to his knees, crying and praying for forgiveness.
Gibson, on the other hand, was unfazed. He stood at attention at the window as the monster repeatedly smashed itself into the four-inch-thick bulletproof glass. Again and again it reared back and exploded into the window. Its eyes never left Gibson.
“I think we failed,” Gibson said calmly.
“You think?” Starling cackled amidst a Hail Mary. “Really, Major? Really?”
“We failed because this, I think, is no better than Burn Bright,” he said. “He’s not a fearless death machine we can control. He’s just…”
“He’s a monster,” said Starling, still on his knees. “He’s an abomination. We’ve killed three men today. Three men!”
The beast was tiring. It had lost a lot of blood. Its attempts at breaking through the glass were increasingly weaker.
Gibson sighed. “This is a disappointment,” he said dispassionately. “A very big disappointment. Clearly the hormonal theory was incorrect.”
The major stepped across Starling to the bank of monitors. Next to the biometric display was a key and an encased green button. Gibson turned and looked at the flailing monster one more time before turning the key, flipping open the case, and depressing the green button.
As he did, a thin, tea-stained mist appeared at the ceiling of the BSL-4 operating room. The mist thickened and billowed, swimming down the walls until it reached the floor. Within thirty seconds the mist had filled the room. The monster, lost in the fog, was invisible.
Gibson checked his watch. Two minutes later he turned the key to its initial position and the mist thinned before vacuums on the walls of the operating room had sucked away the last tendrils of it. The monster was flat on its back on the floor. Its arms and legs were splayed at grotesque angles. Blood pooled from underneath its body, leeching across the floor.
“Get up, Dr. Starling,” he said to the blubbering scientist. He offered Starling a hand. “We have work to do. We need to know what went wrong so that when we get another live subject, we can fix the anomalies.”
Starling looked up at Gibson through his mask. His eyes were swollen and red. His face was soaked with tears and sweat and snot. “What?”
“Help me grab the body. We need somebody to perform an autopsy on this thing,” he said. “The faster, the better.”
— 17 —
Hòa Bình, Vietnam
April 20, 1980
Jimmy Linh and Uncle Due stood in front of a thatched hut, waiting for someone to ans
wer. They’d called out a greeting. Linh heard shuffling inside. The residents were home.
Linh’s hands were on his hips. “They’ll come,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “Just wait.”
They’d arrived at the house after others in the village had pointed them there. The people living in that house would be the ones to interview. They could talk about the White Ghost. They knew the terror it caused as well as anyone. That was what everyone told them.
Besides, it was getting late, and none of the villagers wanted to stand outside listening to the familiar, bone-chilling call of the Ma Trang. None of them had uttered the name during the conversations. It was bad luck, they’d reminded Linh and his uncle. Very bad luck.
Linh waited patiently several steps from the door. Uncle Due was tired of waiting.
“I’ll knock,” he said. “Step aside.” Due huffed and stomped to the door. He pounded on it with the side of his fist.
“What do you want?” called a woman’s voice from the inside. “Who are you?”
The woman’s Vietnamese was a dialect with which Linh was less familiar. His face must have betrayed his inability to translate. Due rolled his eyes at his nephew.
He spoke slowly in his native tongue. “We are here to talk about the Ma Trang,” said Due, throwing caution to the wind. “We know the White Ghost has hurt your family.”
The door cracked open and a small woman looked up through the thin opening. “You said the name,” she said. “You shouldn’t do that. You need to go.”
Due stepped forward. “We just have a few questions,” he said. “My nephew came a very long way to speak with you.”
The woman looked past Due to Linh. Her eyes scanned him up and down. She pursed her lips. “How long will this take? You cannot stay.”
Due turned to Linh. “How long will this take?”
“Ten minutes,” said Linh. “No more than ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes,” said Due.
The woman eyed both men and pulled the door wide. “Come in,” she said. “Ten minutes.”
Unlike most of the other homes in the area, the woman’s home was not on stilts. It was on a wooden platform that extended beyond the frame of the house and served as a porch. Linh followed his uncle and stepped from that porch into the dim interior of the home. The familiar smell of incense hit him immediately as he cleared the threshold.
In the corner of the open room was an altar, a trio of bamboo sticks smoldering at its center. Two children were cross-legged at the altar, their heads bowed in prayer. Neither of them acknowledged the visitors until the woman called them.
“Come here,” she said. “These men want to talk about something.”
The children pushed themselves to their feet and quietly shuffled to the center of the room. Both were wide-eyed. The boy was taller than the girl, but Linh figured they were the same age. It was something about the way they carried themselves. They almost seemed to be two halves of a whole.
“Yes, Grandmother,” said the boy. “What do they want?”
“They want to talk about the howl we heard,” she said. “They have questions about your parents.”
Due whispered the translation into Linh’s ear. Linh nodded and spoke directly to the boy as he pulled the cassette recorder from his bag. He pressed record and held it in front of him.
“My name is Jimmy Linh. What’s your name?”
Due started to translate, but the boy stopped him.
“I understand the question,” he said. “My name is Chi Dinh. This is my sister, Lan. We are twins. This is my grandmother.”
“Tell me about your parents,” said Linh.
The boy nodded at Linh’s recorder. “Tell me about what you have in your hand. Are you taking pictures?”
“No,” said Linh. “This records your voice. That way, when I write my story, I make sure I get all of your words right.”
The boy reached out his hands, cupping them. “Please let me hold it.”
Linh didn’t hesitate. Anything to make the child feel at ease. He knelt down and handed the boy the recorder. He pointed out the internal microphone. “That’s what hears you when you speak.”
The boy pulled it to his mouth and blew air through his lips, making a motorboat sound against the recorder. His eyes brightened and he smiled. “Can I hear it?”
“Of course,” said Linh. He showed the boy which buttons to use to stop the recording, to rewind, and then to play.
The boy held the device to his ear and then to his sister’s. Their faces glowed with wonder. They giggled and laughed. The boy kept replaying the motorboat sound over and over. Several minutes passed before he handed back the device.
“Thank you,” he said. His sister echoed the gratitude.
“Of course,” said Linh, bowing to the children. “May we talk about your parents?”
The children’s joy vaporized and they nodded in unison. A wave of guilt washed over Linh. He took a deep breath and pressed record.
“People in your village tell me both of your parents are gone,” he said softly. “I am very sorry.”
The boy tried to smile. It didn’t stick. “My father was taken first,” he said. He then relayed the gruesome details of the attack, at least what he knew of it.
Linh looked at the grandmother and then back to the children. “And you don’t think it was a land mine?”
The boy shook his head. “No,” he said. “Land mines don’t strip bones clean. I’ve seen people hurt by land mines. Everything looks like it exploded because it did. My father didn’t explode.”
“And your mother?”
“She was washing clothes,” said the boy. “It attacked her there.”
“Mother fought back,” said the girl, tears welling in her eyes. “She tried to live.”
Linh offered a weak, crooked smile. “I’m sure she did.”
“I know she did,” said the girl. From underneath her shirt, she pulled out a leather necklace. On the end of the necklace was a long curved ornament. It resembled a tooth or a claw. She held it with her fingers.
“What is that?” Linh asked.
“It was the monster’s,” said the boy. “It belonged to the White Ghost.”
The boy’s grandmother flashed him an angry glare. “You should not say the name. You know not to say its name.”
Due translated the grandmother’s admonition for Linh. “We should go,” he added.
Linh shook his head. “Not yet.” He turned back to the girl. “May I hold it, please?”
The girl looked at her brother. He nodded. She pulled the leather loop from around her neck and over her head and handed it to Linh. Linh handed her the recorder.
Linh gripped the necklace like a bag of loot, holding it in front of his face, watching the claw or tooth swing back and forth. “What is it?”
“A claw,” said the girl.
Linh took the claw in one hand and weighed it in his palm. It was heavy but not dense. He took it between his fingers and held it up to get a closer look. It was a claw. Linh could see thin layers of keratin, like a stack of thick fingernails fused on top of one another. It wasn’t bone, though it resembled the color and striation of a horn. It was sharp, with barely visible serrations on its underside. At its base, the pearly-colored claw turned black. The darker color was dried blood.
“May I take a picture of this?” asked Linh.
The girl nodded and Linh looped the necklace over her head. He took back his recorder and tucked it under his arm as he fished through his satchel for his camera. He pulled out the camera and draped its strap over his neck. The camera was a Nikon FTN 35mm camera and loaded with Kodak Tri-X low light 400 ASA film. He’d borrowed it from a photographer at the paper.
“Before I take the picture,” he said, “I do have a couple more questions.”
“You’ve stayed longer than ten minutes,” said the grandmother. “You should be going now.”
Due translated. Linh nodded. “Three more questions. Th
at’s all. I promise.”
The grandmother frowned but relented. Linh thanked her. Due grumbled.
“When was the last time you saw the—it?”
The boy’s eyebrows furrowed with confusion. He shook his head. “Nobody sees it until it’s too late,” he said. “I’ve never seen it. I’ve heard it.”
“I’ve heard it too,” said his sister. “We heard it today. This morning.”
“I heard it too,” said Linh. “It’s frightening. How often do you hear it?”
The boy shrugged. “It comes and goes. Sometimes we don’t hear it for weeks or months. Sometimes we hear it every day.”
“When we hear it,” the girl added, “people disappear.”
“How many people have disappeared?”
“Too many,” said the boy. “I can’t count them. As long as I’ve been alive, we’ve feared it. I don’t remember a time without it.”
“Is there anything else you’d like to say?” asked Linh. In his short career, he’d learned that last open-ended question was the best thing he could ask. It often provided the best responses, giving the interview subject the best opportunity to mention something important about which Linh hadn’t thought to ask.
“No,” said the boy. The girl shook her head.
Linh nodded. “Thank y—”
“I have something to add,” said the grandmother. “There’s something I’d like to say.”
Linh smiled at Due’s translation and told the woman to offer her testimony. “Please,” he said, “whatever you’d like to add.”
“What Chi Dinh tells you is not true.”
Linh stepped back. “What?”
The grandmother stepped toward the reporter. She lowered her voice and spoke slowly. “The boy is wrong. Somebody has seen the monster and lived.”
The boy shook, hushed in disbelief. “Who, Grandmother? Who saw the monster?”
The woman took a deep breath and sighed. She folded her arms across her chest. She swallowed and opened her mouth to speak before closing it again. Her chin began to tremble. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.
“It was me,” she said. “I looked into its eyes. It looked into mine.”