“I don’t want any trouble, mister. My name’s Ed Nanreit. My uncle is Kane Nanreit. Do you know him?”
“I know Kane,” said the bear-man. “Everybody knows Kane. But how do I know you’re who you says you are?”
“Hulk, it’s me, Dr. Wilson,” Torrie said as she walked out of the shadows and stood next to Ed. “I’ll vouch for him. He really is Kane’s nephew.”
“That’s good enough for me, Doc,” Hulk said, backing down in the process, “but I ain’t seen Kane in more’n a week.”
“Uncle Kane’s at Ivory Rock Clinic,” Ed said. “I’m not here to find him. Actually, I’m looking for someone named Tazz. He’s a friend of Uncle Kane’s. Do you know him?”
“I’m Tazz,” said one of the men on the other side of the campfire. He wasn’t what Ed was expecting. He was probably in his sixties from the looks of his face, but he looked like he was strong enough to put Hulk down without even working up a sweat. “What do you want with me?”
“I was hoping you could give me some information,” Ed said as he started walking around the campfire towards Tazz. Torrie stayed right next to him. Her fearlessness seemed to have abandoned her.
“That depends,” Tazz said. “I ain’t in the habit of givin’ out information for free even if you are one of Kane’s relations.”
Ed reached into the plastic bag he’d brought from the convenience store and pulled out one of the bottles. “Would this help to loosen your lips?”
Tazz smiled and eyed the bag Ed held in his hands, knowing that it wasn’t empty. “That would help, but it wouldn’t be none too polite of me to start drinkin’ in front of my friends when they’re just as parched as me.”
“Tell you what,” Ed said as he handed the bag of wine to Tazz. “I’ll let you distribute this as you see fit.”
“Now, that sounds like a hellava deal to me! Shit, for that sort of bribe, I’ll tell ya all the top secret shit I learned when I was in the military.”
“Tazz,” said the man sitting next to him, “you didn’t learn any top secret shit in the military. You was a grunt, same as me.”
“I didn’t say that I knew any top secret shit,” Tazz replied, “only that I’d tell him the top secret shit that I did know.” Then he started howling in laughter as if this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard in his life.
Ed couldn’t help himself and chuckled along with Tazz. “It doesn’t matter because I’m not looking for top secret information anyway.”
“Kane used to have a nephew that would come around and visit years ago,” Tazz said as he took a swig out of one of the bottles. He’d already passed the others around. “His nephew was a little squirt though. Couldn’t have been ten years old. He’d sit around and listen to old Kane tell one whopper after another for hours at a time. That wasn’t you, was it?”
“Guilty as charged,” Ed said. “I’m Uncle Kane’s only nephew.”
“Then it’s nice to make your acquaintance again,” Tazz said and slapped Ed on the back. “You probably don’t remember me, but I bought you a sody-pop one day when you skinned your knee. That was my booze money, but you seemed like you needed it more than me that day. You was ballin’ so bad and Kane wasn’t nowhere to be found. Course, as soon as you got a taste of that sody-pop, you quit blubberin’ like it was morphine or sumthin’.”
“No, I don’t remember that,” Ed said, looking a little embarrassed, especially when he glanced over towards Torrie. “If you remember that, then you must’ve lived on Edge Key for a long time—and I’d guess that you have a pretty good memory too.”
“I’ve been livin’ here since the late fifties, I’d guess,” Tazz said. “Hell, Kane’s one of the few who’ve lived here longer than me and, unlike old Kane, my noodle still works just fine,” he said with a smile.
Ed smiled back at the noodle reference. Tazz apparently knew Uncle Kane pretty well.
“So, what brings ya over to this neck of the woods with your little lady here in tow?” Tazz asked. “I’m sure you didn’t come over here to listen to me embarrass you with stories about cryin’ your eyes out over a little scrape on the knee.”
“No, that’s not why I’m here,” Ed said. “The truth is, I’m a reporter. I think I might’ve stumbled onto a pretty big story and I was hoping you might have some information that’ll help me with my investigation.”
“Kane told me his nephew grew up to be some big time reporter for a fancy newspaper,” Tazz said. “If ya want the truth, I don’t really like reporters all that much. I just want to live my life here in peace without nobody botherin’ me. I think everybody else here feels the same way, son. If you weren’t Kane’s nephew, I’d probably have Hulk over there return you to where ya came from.”
“I promise that I’ll respect your privacy, Tazz,” Ed said. “I would never use anyone’s name in a story unless I had their permission first.” Not only was that a lie, but it directly contradicted the journalistic principles that Manifesto Veritas was based on. Ed didn’t think that Tazz read his paper too often though, so he decided to risk the pretense. “Besides, the information that I’m looking for isn’t the type of information where I need to quote a source. I’m really looking more for what I guess you’d call background information. It’s the type of information that only an old-timer like my Uncle Kane would know because he’s lived here for so long.
“That’s where you come in, Tazz. I was talking to Uncle Kane and he told me a couple of stories that I was hoping you might have some additional information on. It was Uncle Kane who suggested that I talk to you and I don’t think he would’ve given me your name if it would inconvenience you in any way.”
“I guess I could at least hear you out, especially since you’re Kane’s only relations,” Tazz said as he took another swig from the bottle. “I owe you that much for the hooch. So, let’s hear it.”
“Thanks, Tazz,” Ed said. “There’re two things that he told me about and I guess I’d just like you to tell me as much as you know about both of them. The first involves the clinic back in the sixties. From what Uncle Kane told me, Dr. Austin and Nurse Trish were involved in some weird experiments back then. I’d like you to tell me what you can about them.
“The second thing, which might be related to the first thing, involves this legend he told me about a creature who hunts the homeless and feeds off their life-force. If you know anything at all about either of these things, please tell me all you can. It would be a big help.”
Tazz didn’t say anything at first. He just stared into the fire like he was thinking. Nobody else said anything either, but they all looked around at each other nervously. Then, Tazz took a big gulp of the wine before he began to talk.
“There are certain things that weren’t meant to be discussed after dark. If you talk about them, you run the risk of awakening the demons who guard their secrets and alerting them to your presence. It can be dangerous. They’ll hunt you down and find you.
“I don’t know what you think you’ve discovered here, but I would suggest that you forget about it. It ain’t worth your life, and it ain’t worth my life neither. Too much has probably already been said tonight and I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ else. I think it’s time for you and your little lady to leave. Get out of these woods and don’t come back—ever—if you know what’s good for you.”
When Tazz finished speaking, he stood up, poured what was left in his bottle into the fire and walked off into the woods in the opposite direction that Torrie and Ed had arrived from. Ed suddenly felt very unwelcome here. He took Tazz’s cue and Torrie and he returned to his car the same way they came. Neither of them said a word during the walk back to the car or the ride home. They were both too scared.
CHAPTER 17
“We experience moments absolutely free from worry. These brief respites are called panic.”
—Cullen Hightower
Tazz walked off into the woods because he wanted to be alone. He needed to think. That nephew of Kane’s had made Tazz
think of some things that he hadn’t thought about in years. They were things that he’d tried to forget; things that he’d thought he had forgotten. Now the nightmare was all back, having returned like the winter residents of Vagrant-ville.
Tazz had heard about the woman who was found dead at Ivory Rock earlier that day. It was a small island and something like that was hard to keep a lid on. He tried to make himself believe that she died a normal death, but he knew deep in his gut that the way she died was anything but normal even though nobody had said how she died. Tazz had been feeling uneasy for the past few days and now he knew why. It was back. He sensed it. It had come home.
Tazz had never known exactly what it was, but he did know that when Kane told his nephew the story about the creature who feeds on a person’s life-force, Kane was describing it. He also knew that it had something to do with what went on in the clinic back in the sixties.
Tazz had never told anyone, not even Kane, but he’d spent some time as a resident in the clinic around 1962. Tazz had only been half kidding when he told Kane’s nephew that he could talk about top secret things during his military days. Tazz did work as a common grunt in the military . . . until he was recruited to be an operative by the C.I.A. in the mid-fifties. Nobody outside of the C.I.A. knew this.
Tazz worked as a spy in the Soviet Union, but not for very long. Unfortunately, he was captured by the KGB and spent about six months in a cell that was barely big enough for him to sit up in. He was returned to the United States during a covert prisoner swap, but he was never the same after that. Tazz had developed an acute case of claustrophobia that made it impossible for him to function in the real world. That’s why he’d chosen to live on the streets—out in the open.
Dr. Austin and Nurse Trish came by one day, way back when, and they started talking. Tazz was promised that he could overcome his fear and live a normal life. All he had to do was allow Dr. Austin and Nurse Trish to treat him.
Tazz didn’t have a full recollection of what happened during his stay in the clinic, but he remembered enough. He remembered praying for death to take him away from the terror he experienced there. He remembered the day he escaped. He remembered other vague images, but it was as if most of his memory had been erased during the time he was a resident. The memories would usually only return in detail in the form of nightmares, which he tried his best to block out and forget. But some of those memories did survive.
Tazz decided to write down everything he could remember about the clinic—and everything he knew about Kane’s creature. Maybe if he gave this information to Kane’s nephew, everything could finally be exposed and the nightmare would end for everybody. Tazz went back to his homemade shelter in the alley and began to write. He wrote for what seemed like hours to him. By the time he’d finished writing and hidden what he’d written in his special place that only a few trusted people knew about, it was a little after three in the morning. He finished just in time.
“Hello, Tazz,” someone said from the shadows of the alley.
Tazz couldn’t make out his face while sitting in his wooden “house,” especially with the dim light of the candle he had as a light source. “Who’s there?” Tazz asked, but he knew the answer to the question.
“Don’t you remember me, Tazz? Granted, it’s been a long time, but I would’ve thought that I was unforgettable.”
Tazz had been terrified when he first heard the voice, but the more the man spoke, the more relaxed Tazz became. “Yeah, I remember you,” Tazz said.
“Still here after all these years? I thought you conquered all your fears long ago . . . but, then again, you did leave before your therapy was finished.”
“Leave. Yesss.”
“I probably should’ve come after you a long time ago, but I didn’t think it was necessary. Now, I know I was wrong.”
“Wrooong.”
“I’m here to help people, but that can only happen if no one knows about me. You had a visitor tonight, didn’t you, Tazz?”
“Visitor. Yesss.”
“That’s okay. That’s something else I should’ve taken care of a long time ago, but what’s done is done. But there’s still the matter of you, Tazz. You still have fears, don’t you?”
“Fear. Yesss.”
“Then let’s take care of that first. The only way to conquer your fear is to face it head on. Just let it flow, Tazz. Just let it flow.”
“Flooowww.”
“Just tell me, Tazz. What scares you? WHAT SCARES YOU?!”
CHAPTER 18
“When you dream, you dialogue with aspects of yourself that normally are not with you in the daytime and you discover that you know a great deal more than you thought you did.”
—Toni Cade Bambara
“A dream is an answer to a question we haven't yet learned how to ask.”
—Fox Mulder
“It’s okay, Eddie. It was just a dream,” Torrie said to Ed as she put her arms around him and rubbed his back. Ed was still breathing hard, having just escaped the alley again, but he was calming down. “It’s three sixteen in the morning, honey. Lie back down and go back to sleep.”
“I’m gonna go downstairs and get a glass of water,” Ed said, hoping she’d fall back asleep before he came back. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep.
“Was it the same dream?” she asked.
“It’s always the same.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’ve already told you about it. I don’t know what else I could say. Go back to sleep. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes,” he said as he kissed her cheek and got out of bed.
Torrie didn’t argue. She was still exhausted from the previous day’s excitement. Ed walked downstairs with Archie in hot pursuit. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he knew trying to sleep was pointless. Usually, he’d just flick on the tube, but he didn’t want to keep Torrie awake. Fortunately, his computer was downstairs, so he decided to do some research.
Ed began by reviewing the articles he’d saved from his research the other night. He read the article from Poway, California again. Then, he read the article from Perry, Oklahoma he’d saved. By the time he was finished skimming through various articles, he’d found over sixty articles from all over the country describing a corpse with the same basic features as The Crash Test Maven—and none of the articles were from Edge Key. It made Ed wonder how many other bodies were out there that never made it to press because the deceased was some derelict that nobody cared about. There could be hundreds . . . or thousands.
Okay, so I’ve got proof that there’s some kind of pattern here. What now?
Ed punched Dr. Austin’s name into the computer, but got nothing on the Dr. Austin of Edge Key. Same with Nurse Trish. That was odd. Usually, he could always find an article or two about someone, especially when they were as well known in the community as Dr. Austin—or even Nurse Trish. There should’ve at least been something about them running the clinic back in the sixties. It was as if everything ever written about them had been erased. Ed couldn’t even find anything about either of their medical licenses. The internet site would only refer him to a page that required access to a restricted site.
Ed emailed a request to the research division of Manifesto Veritas to conduct a search for anything that could be found on either a Dr. Steven Austin or a Trish Stratigias, R.N. of Edge Key, Florida, with particular attention to any criminal or medical board inquiries. He also requested a search on any information relating to the Ivory Rock Clinic in Edge Key, including any information about its operations prior to the clinic being renamed Ivory Rock. The people who worked in the research department of his paper were excellent at ferreting out information on anyone or anything, especially information from certain sources that were supposed to have been sealed or confidential.
By the time Ed finished with his research, the sun was rising. Ed walked to the kitchen and began a search for the coffee and coffee filters. Archie had gone back
to bed soon after she realized that Ed didn’t come downstairs to feed her, but his search through Torrie’s cabinets brought her back down rather quickly. Torrie followed within a couple of minutes.
“What’re you looking for?” Torrie said as she stretched with one hand and rubbed her eyes with the other.
“Morning, beautiful. Where do you keep your coffee?”
“What time is it?”
“It’s a little before six,” Ed said, still searching for the coffee.
“Come back to bed. I don’t have to get up for another forty-five minutes or so.”
“I can’t get back to sleep.”
“Who said anything about sleep,” Torrie said as she grabbed his hand and led him back upstairs.
After Torrie left for work, Ed sat down on the couch with Archie and turned on the morning news. Besides visiting Uncle Kane, he couldn’t think of anything that he needed to get done. It would probably take his research department a few days before they’d get back to him with anything and they’d only received his request a few hours ago. Besides, the research department only worked during normal business hours, so, in reality, they’d actually received his request within the last hour. He was also waiting for Edge Key’s finest to call him back about the files he’d requested to be copied. When that happened, he could fax the information to one of the doctors that the paper kept on a retainer to get a possible medical opinion on the causes of death.
Thinking of the doctor gave Ed an idea. He grabbed the phone book and turned to the blue, government pages until he found what he was looking for. Ed dialed the number of the county medical examiner on the chance that the woman who died at Ivory Rock had been taken there.
“Hello,” Ed said to the woman who answered the phone. “I’m a reporter and I’m following up on woman who I believe was brought in there yesterday from Ivory Rock Clinic.”
“I’m sorry, mister, but I wouldn’t have any information on nothing like that. If you want, I could transfer you to one of the medical examiners. You’ll probably just get a voice mail, but if you leave a detailed message, someone will get back to you. Well, that’s what they’re supposed to do anyway. The doctors ain’t always the best about returning calls, I’m sorry to say. Would you like me to transfer you?”
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