Deficiency

by Andrew Neiderman

  The moment he did so, he felt like a man who had just been freed from a long prison sentence. Never had he experienced such a surge of elation. I'm gigantic, he thought. He did all he could to contain himself and not scream it at the night sky. I really will go on forever.

  He watched the agents in the office behind him talking on the telephone, one on the land phone, one on a cellular, both working diligently to clean up the mess he had left behind. The whole world was working for him. At least for now, he thought as he made his way toward the vehicle he knew belonged to him, to Dr. Garret Stanley.

  Finally, he didn't have to share his identity with any other living thing. It was as if he had thrown off a heavy weight, taken off a shackle. He could breathe easier.

  At least for now, he thought again.

  He didn't like the sound of that.

  There was some threat still looming. It was like a pebble in a shoe. He could feel it and he knew he had to get rid of it.

  What was it?

  He drove off, his forehead a bit bruised, but folded in deep thought as he struggled to determine the answer. It came, right from Will Dennis's lips. All he knew at the moment was it was out there, waiting for him. And once again, he could be the predator.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Terri had her head down on her folded arms. She was at Curt's bedside. He had been sleeping when she entered the room. An hour earlier, she had been with Darlene Stone in the emergency room. Except for emotional trauma and exhaustion, the woman was well enough to go home. Terri arranged for her to have some sedation and told her to just go home and rest. She would talk to her in the morning.

  "Don't we have to speak to the police?" she asked.

  "I'll take care of all that, Darlene. Just rest," Terri told her. Darlene's mother and her mother's live-in boyfriend came to pick her up. Terri did need a half dozen stitches. The bandage made the wound look much more serious than it was. Exhausted herself, she somehow garnered enough energy to go up to see Curt. First, she would assure him she was fine and then she would tell him the story, she thought. Finding him asleep, she made the mistake of lowering her head and closing her eyes.

  A gentle nudge on her shoulder awoke her. For a long moment, she forgot where she was. Then it all came rushing back. She turned and looked up at Will Dennis. Instantly, her heart began to pound.

  "Let's go down the hall and talk," he said. "There's an empty room two doors down."

  She hesitated and gazed at Curt, who was still asleep.

  "I promise. I'll tell you everything now," Dennis said. "Nothing more is going to happen to anyone. It's all right," he added.

  She rose slowly.

  "It's all right? Funny way to describe the events of the day," she told him. He turned and walked to the door. The highway patrolman who had been with the ambulance was standing in the hallway speaking softly with another highway patrolman. The two stopped to look her way.

  "I found your vehicle, Doctor," the patrolman said. "It was in the parking lot here. The keys are in the ignition."

  "Yes, well, it won't start," she said looking at Dennis.

  "Take care of it, will you, Paul?" Will Dennis told the patrolman. He nodded and left with his partner. "Right over here," Dennis said leading her to the empty room.

  She entered behind him and he pulled the one chair out for her to sit. She did so and looked up at him.

  "Let me begin by telling you he's dead," he said.

  "Who? Dr. Stanley or his creation?"

  "His creation. That's the more important matter."

  "That's a matter of debate. In my opinion Dr. Frankenstein was as bad as the monster he created. Do you know what he intended to do to us, Darlene Stone and myself? Do you know why he took us down that dirt road to that deserted tourist house?"

  "I've passed all that on to his superiors," Will Dennis said.

  "His superiors?" She laughed. "That's like telling Hitler what Goebbels did."

  "Whatever. It's out of my hands now and I'm not terribly upset about that." She narrowed her eyes and sat up firmly.

  "Why should I believe anything you say, Will? You lied to me about all this, and if I didn't happen to have Garret Stanley's cell phone, I doubt I would have known."

  "Probably not," he candidly admitted.

  She brought her eyebrows together.

  "What was your involvement here?"

  "I'm sorry. I told you as much as I thought you could know without being in any danger yourself. I didn't know what was going on until late in the situation myself, Terri," he said. "After Kristin Martin died and was diagnosed, I was contacted by people pretty high up the ladder. They told me basically to cooperate with Dr. Stanley, that he was the lead man in this pursuit of this unusual perpetrator. I wasn't given great detail, just that someone very dangerous was on the loose and if the whole story got out, it would create even more havoc in our small community than we already had. I was on a need-toknow basis and prohibited from telling anyone else what I had been told.

  "When you called me about Paula Gilbert that night, I was in a real panic myself and that was when Dr. Stanley was forced to meet directly with me. I told him you didn't know all that much more than I did, but he convinced me he could ask you and any witness or any person in contact with the perpetrator questions that would give him essential information."

  "Why didn't you or someone from your office accompany the madman?" Terri asked.

  "I was hoping not to have to reveal to anyone, even you, what I was told, what I knew, and it was obvious no one else on the outside would be permitted to know anything, be part of any of this. It's very tightly contained.

  "And," he added, looking penitent, "I had no idea how far Garret Stanley would go. He became somewhat of a desperate man after Paula Gilbert's death. I should have realized that. I'm sorry.

  "The bottom line is he has taken care of the situation. It's over."

  "Is it? He'll continue his work, won't he?"

  "That's beyond us, Terri. Believe me, that's beyond our control and if either you or I went public with this, nothing would change except we would both be destroyed professionally. There are forces at work here, very powerful forces. I'm here to apologize to you for what you've been through and to assure you it's over for us. We'll have no more victims in our community. You should go back to your practice. I'll find a way to compensate Darlene Stone, get her a better job, perhaps. In time she'll put it behind her, too."

  "What about the Thorndykes, the Martin relatives, the Gilberts, and who knows how many others?" Terri asked him.

  "It's not in our power to do anything for them, Terri. If I could, I would. Believe me."

  "People are still going to want to know how these women died of gross vitamin deficiencies, Will. You can't cover up what has already been revealed. You can't unring a bell."

  He shrugged.

  "It will be a mystery and as long as it is over, it will be one of those mysteries that drift off in time and is eventually forgotten."

  "And you're satisfied with that?"

  "I have no choice," he said. "And neither do you. If you go public with anything, I won't support you. What are you going to say, Terri, that a secret research organization created a vitamin vampire? Just imagine what you would do to your own and Hyman's reputations. Who would want to go to either of you for medical concerns? They have ways of coloring you in the media. You'll come off being some sort of a kook, like someone who believes extraterrestrials kidnapped her to study her body and then let her free.

  "No," he said shaking his head. "Let it go. Take Curt home. Help him recuperate. Get married and have a wonderful life."

  "Is that what you're going to do, Will? Have a wonderful life?"

  "I'm going to try," he said smiling.

  "You should reread the Tragedy of Dr. Faustus," she said, "unless you never read it. Then read it. You've made a similar deal with the devil, Will. There is no wonderful life after that."

  He stopped smiling.

  "
I've given you my best advice. Do what you think you should," he said. He nodded, turned, and left her sitting there staring after him. As long as there are political animals like that left in charge of the public welfare, we'll never be safe, she concluded, but she also concluded that he was right: there was little she could do about it now.

  She rose slowly. Her head was throbbing and not just from the wound. One thing was for sure, she thought. She and Curt both needed time off. He was awake when she returned to his room.

  "What happened to you?" he asked as soon as he saw the bandage on her head.

  "I'm going to tell you," she said, "but you won't believe me." She sat and took his hand into hers.

  "I'm all ears," he said sitting up.

  "Once upon a time," she began, "mankind decided it had to improve on God's work."

  He didn't drive that far. Refurbished and re-energized, he was now like an overly charged battery. All the immediate events played back as vividly as they had when they occurred. He relived every action and again heard every word spoken. It overwhelmed him and he had to pull off the road. It was too difficult to keep driving.

  He found another motel, much more upscale, and took a room. There was a restaurant attached, one of the chain restaurants he had seen during his travels. He went right to it and ate like someone who had been on a deserted island for weeks. The waitress, a flaming redhead with an ample bosom but hips that reminded him of Mrs. Samuels, was amused by his appetite.

  "How do you stay so slim eating like that?" she asked him.

  "Exercise. I'm a jogger. I'm always in motion," he added, giving her his best smile and turning his shoulders.

  She laughed and went off. He followed the sway of her hips, and thought how wonderful it was to still be alive and in the game, still be meeting challenges, having thirsts and hungers and wanting pleasure.

  What a work of art am I, the quintessential man, the paragon of all things, the perfection of life and the ultimate goal of evolution.

  When he was finished eating, he returned to his room and lay on the bed, gazing dumbly at television. Pictures and words to stave off loneliness, he thought. How pathetic it must be for some, those inferior. It was as though they were truly in God's Waiting Room, and instead of thumbing through magazines, they were watching television. A door would open and they would be beckoned. But not him. God didn't know he existed. He came from another place. As more time passed, it occurred to him that he was waiting to be beckoned. But not by Death. He was waiting for some signal, some urge. He felt good, strong, vibrant, but he had no sense of direction, no urging, no mysterious calling. Based upon past experience, he concluded that if it didn't come soon, he wasn't meant to go anywhere else.

  Perhaps that was also part of this nagging and annoying feeling that returned. Something yet remained that threatened his very existence. Of course, he understood that once they realized that the body he left behind was not his, some sort of pursuit would begin again. He had renewed confidence concerning that hunt. The predator was no longer as capable. He was in far less danger. But something else threatened him. As the immediate past replayed itself again, he centered in on words and narrowed it down to what that tall man had told him. It was about this doctor. He was going to have a bit of time with her. He needed more help.

  He had no confidence in the tall man. He certainly didn't want to leave his fate in that man's hands. Maybe that was why he had no calling, maybe that was why he had to stay.

  "I have unfinished work here," he thought. "In fact," he decided, "I actually have to go back."

  That was something he had never done yet -- retrace his steps, return to anything. It was always a forward motion, always new discoveries. Going back made him nervous, but it had to be done. What he had to do of course was be sure he was in tip-top shape for all this. He had to pay more attention to himself. At the first sign of any weakness, memory lapse, whatever, he had to go out and refuel.

  He closed his eyes. A little rest is good, he thought, and drifted into a deep sleep much faster than he had anticipated. He had a strange dream, not a nightmare as such at the start, but troubling enough to make him uncomfortable. He moaned and turned on the bed. In his dream he saw himself liquefy and flow along until he poured into a river and was carried into a great pool in which there were others like him, streams of people, faces, bodies meandering about, locked in by the shoreline and a dam at the very south end of it all. As he drew closer to that, he saw a very tiny opening through which some flowed before the opening was closed down again.

  It was when it opened once more and it was his turn to go that the dream turned into a nightmare. He started out and then fell forever until he hit a bed of sand into which he gradually seeped and disappeared. This was his grave. He woke with a start, pounding on the bed to keep himself from sinking. He was screaming, too. Finally, he realized it and stopped. His face was coated with sweat. He looked around and realized he had slept through the day. When he sat up, he didn't like the dizzy feeling. It took a moment to settle. Then he went into the shower. As he was drying himself, he gazed into the mirror. There was something different. What was it? He drew closer to the mirror and studied himself. Those were very distinct gray hairs, he realized. And there were lines around his eyes he had never seen before.

  He pulled back from the mirror as he would had he looked through a window at his own death.

  I'm getting old, he thought. That process to mature me -- it's running amok. I'm like a vehicle that's lost its brakes and is going down a steep hill. I need to slow it up. I need whatever fights aging.

  With a new sense of desperation, he dressed and went out into the night. He got into his vehicle and drove. The direction didn't matter. Movement mattered. Concentrate, he told himself. It will come to you. What you have to do will come to you. You don't just need to feed off a healthy woman. You need something more. You need something of youth. You need....

  He slowed down.

  He had pulled into a mall parking lot and three of them were walking toward the movie theater complex. They were laughing and their voices were so full of vibrancy. Three teenage girls. Young girls with young thyroids, their skin soft and healthy, their bones strong, all the juices within them fresh. Go younger, he told himself.

  Simply go younger and you will be all right.

  You can still go on forever, even if it means going younger and younger and younger.

  He parked his car and he waited. Eventually, they would come out and he would follow them and he would find an opportunity.

  Afterward, when he was rejuvenated, he would turn his attention to that bigger problem, that threat he had left behind. Just be patient, he thought. Just be patient and calculating and you won't fail.

  After all, now you had to carry on for more than just yourself. You had to do it for him so that he wouldn't be dead and gone, so that he would never die. That was about all the conscience he possessed and all the remorse he could mine in himself. But it was enough. It gave him more purpose, and when he thought about it, he concluded what was any life if it didn't have reason for its existence?

  His reason happened to be existence itself.

  Like an echo trapped and bouncing back and forth forever, he would go on and on.

  What difference did it make who heard him?

  He heard himself and that was all that mattered.

  "It'll be like a test run for our honeymoon," Terri told Curt when he showed some resistance. "I need the week off and so do you. I don't like the idea of your going back gradually. That prescription was given to you by a doctor without courage. You frightened him. Doctors are afraid of lawyers," she continued and Curt finally threw up his hands in surrender and laughed.

  "Okay, okay. It's Hyman's cabin. We'll live like wild mountain people."

  "Yes, wild in nature with Hyman's big-screen television set, the electric stove, central heating, and downy pillows on the beds, not to mention the full bar and the pool table."

  "I do like
to fish," Curt said.

  "Hyman has the boat for us to use, but I hate putting worms on the hook." He laughed.

  "You can sew up people but you can't put a worm on a hook?"

  "I am trained to end pain and suffering, not initiate it," she replied.

  "Okay, forget fishing. We'll read, take walks, make love, eat, make love, read, make love."

  "I get the idea," she said and kissed him. He touched her bandage.

  "I still think we should go after that guy. Will Dennis doesn't scare me."

  "He doesn't scare me either, but unfortunately, he makes sense," she said. "Let it go, Curt. Let it go."

  Reluctantly, he nodded and backed away.

  "All right, let's start packing."

  "I'll make a list of what we need," she said, suddenly filled with an excitement that revived her. She truly felt like a young girl again and it was wonderful. Perhaps after a week of R and R, she would be restored and be able to put all that had happened behind her.

  The ride up to the cabin was easy. They stopped at a shopping market and bought way more than they needed. She was sure of that. Casting off responsibilities, just letting go of their busy, full everyday lives filled them both with a grand sense of abandon. They could be as silly as they wanted, look as foolish as they wanted.

  Hyman's cabin was really more of a lake house. There were two bedrooms, a den, a nice size living room with a fieldstone fireplace, a dining room, a relatively modern kitchen, three bathrooms, a back porch that faced the lake, and about an acre of surrounding trees. He had his own dock and a small boat with a 15-horsepower outboard. There was a shed behind the house as well. The house itself had a cedar facing and a crawlspace. Television reception came from a satellite dish, and the set was in the den. In front of the fireplace Hyman had a large, thick, and fluffy white shag rug. The remaining flooring was all wood and some stone.

  "Not too shabby," Curt said after inspecting most of it. "How long has he had this?"

  "Ten years or so, I think. It's a nice escape for him because he's close enough if there are any real emergencies, but far enough out of it here to feel isolated and undisturbed. He assures me we'll enjoy the sunsets and the sound of the owls."