The Man Who Would Not Die

by Thomas Page

  “Not a soul.”

  Stepansky checked the other rooms, the linen closets, the stairwells, windows, and locked doors. Everything down here was sealed up like a tomb. It was impossible for that man to be hiding in here.

  Stepansky pulled out his gun and raced down to the desk to answer his phone. All he heard in the earpiece was a groan of shorted circuitry. He called Dutton at the main desk and barely managed to speak with him through the noise.

  Dutton listened to Stepansky’s voice shouting through the static and said calmly, “All right, George, start looking. He’s in here somewhere.” He hung up and sat down.

  “Who’s in here?” demanded Bernice.

  Dutton patted her hand and answered the phone again. It was Jones on the second floor.

  “Jones, Stepansky just called me. He said a blond man in a blue blazer is walking round the clinic.”

  Jones let out a long, quavering breath. “Well, that fits just dandy because there’s some kind of goddamned poltergeist up here who’s just smashed all the drug phials. Who’s going to say it? You or me?”

  “You say it.”

  “Okay, all right. Straight shit, Dutton. Forrester is not in arrest. Forrester is dead. He is dead and walking round this place.”

  “Thanks, Jones. I appreciate that.”

  “Everytime he dies in the LS, the machine brings him back by starting his heart again. He can’t stay away from his body, the machine sucks him right back into it . . .”

  Dutton slammed the telephone down, swallowed several times, and tried to read the data on the desk console. “Bernice, do you want to go home?”

  The hefty nurse said, “No, sir. I guess I wouldn’t miss this for anything.” All but concealed in the fat of her neck was a crucifix on a thin gold chain. Dutton was about to comment on it when all hell broke loose in the ward.

  Along the ceiling, all the blinking neons exploded and burst gaseous fragments and slivers of glass onto the floor. The doors flapped open and shut like frenetically beating wings and from the walls and floor came a thunderous, grating pounding.

  Bernice closed her eyes and clutched Dutton’s hand. The doors became still. In the gloomy ward, the freezing air condensed their breaths to steam clouds. The only steady burning lights were those colored ones on the console which confirmed that nothing moved in the body of Daniel Forrester, not a muscle twitch, not a fading electrical arc, not a single synaptic gap in any nerve, nothing but bacteria colonies hunted down and exterminated by the system.

  A soft-drink can rolled off Bernice’s desk and clattered to the floor. Dutton said, “Relax, it’s just a power surge. The LS is overloading the fuses. Do you understand? We’ll have to rewire everything if we’re going to keep that thing.”

  Bernice said, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil . . .”

  “Bernice, will you cut that crap out?”

  The doors at the end of the hall blew open. From Branch’s office they heard furniture overturning.

  “No, sir,” paused Bernice. “. . . for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Her fingers tightened round his.

  “Stop it,” roared Dutton.

  Bernice stopped. Her grip loosened and she seemed to relax, looking with fixed fascination at the doors leading to the ward. Dutton followed her gaze through the strobing lights.

  In the left circular window of the ward door, the face of Daniel Forrester was looking out at them.

  Dutton pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes, rubbed hard, then looked again. His retinas swam with colored patterns as his eyes readjusted to the gloom.

  The face was gone. The ward was empty.

  “I’ve got the jumps, Bernice.”

  “No, sir,” she replied. “He’s walking around in there.”

  “No, he isn’t.”

  “Yes, sir, he is. I can hear him.”

  Dutton heard the thin sound of shoes on the isolation ward floor, the click of leather soles on linoleum. Somebody was indeed in the ward and whoever it was had no business there. He took a deep breath and hoisted his chest. Then, with more determination than he felt, Dutton strode toward the doors.

  Bernice pleaded, “Sir? Please don’t.”

  Like an outlaw barging into a western saloon, Dutton flung open the hall doors. “Nobody in the hall, Bernice.”

  “He’s in the room, sir.”

  Dutton looked in the room. From out of the capsule shone the vertical shaft of ultraviolet light, creating an unearthly, sickish glow from the walls. Dutton crept through the room looking carefully in the corners and behind the console, all the shadow pools and cabinets where someone could be hiding. The window curtains were limp and still. Dutton looked in at the capsule, shielding the light from his eyes. Forrester’s body swam in the ultraviolet. He and Lawrence Dutton were the only ones in here.

  Hoping Bernice could hear him, Dutton laughed, “Shit! I’ve got the dry DTs, Bernice. All clear. The dirty bird has up and . . .”

  Dutton spoke while turning toward the door. His words drowned in his throat.

  From out of the shadowy corner by the door walked Daniel Forrester, his shoes clicking smartly on the floor, his blue coat clean and impeccably pressed, the creases in his tailored slacks sharp as ax blades, his handsome face distorted with terrifying fury. He walked with purposeful firm strides past Dutton, who was paralyzed with awe.

  Daniel Forrester gripped the LS capsule in both arms, pulled its one-half-ton weight clean off the floor, ripping up the linoleum panels in a splattering burst of severed electrical cables and heavy-duty bolts, and lifted it up high into the air over his head. The cords of his flushed neck stood out so strongly they popped the buttons of his collar, and he raised the capsule to the height of his arms until it blocked the feeble illumination of the fluorescent light. The clear canopy splintered open and from out of it slimed the fluid base in a cascade of blood, drugs, and sparking circuit boards slopping over his clothes and onto the floor. The carcass inside it flopped halfway out in a tangle of IVs torn from bloodless skin that lacerated the flesh so deeply, Dutton could see bones in one of the arms which dangled in a viney curtain of thin hoses in front of Forrester’s face. All Dutton could think was That’s an eight-hundred-thousand dollar machine you’ve just wrecked, buster, you have no right.

  Half obscured by the dangling arms of his own body and the gushing fluids from the capsule, Daniel Forrester’s eyes latched with impossible power on Dutton’s, holding the doctor rooted to the floor with sheer hatred as Dutton realized Forrester was going to kill him by crushing him to death with the LS. Daniel Forrester threw the thousand-pound machine at Dutton’s head. The doctor did not feel the bone-crushing impact. He had fainted dead away before it touched him.

  “Will you relax? He’s got the constitution of a mastodon.”

  “Sir, I really don’t like his blood pressure.”

  “He’s breathing fine, Bernice, and his body temperature is supposed to be down, that’s what shock does to you.”

  Dutton felt a needle slide into his arm. His head hurt, which was not surprising, it having been squashed like a grape by the LS. Oh, well, fractured pelvis, multiple contusions, lots of little bitty bone fragments sticking in his dumb brain . . .

  “Lawrence.” A hand slapped his cheek. Downright impertinent—couldn’t Branch see he was a quadriplegic? The whole team must be in here. Scripture to follow shortly, plus platitudes. “Lawrence, open your eyes.”

  Dutton had no choice. He opened his eyes. The light was agonizing. A sharp pain gripped his Achilles tendon and he jerked his leg up.

  Jones said, “I just pinched you, Dutton. Move your fingers.”

  Dutton moved his fingers and toes while the doctors expertly circled his neck for broken vertebrae. Finding none, the three of them folded him upright to a sitting po
sition.

  Dutton was amazed at how fast they’d cleaned up the ward. The lights were on and the LS was securely bolted to the floor, the scanners passing back and forth over the body. The canopy was intact, the wiring all nicely sealed tight. Dazed, he looked for signs of damage. Where were the holes in the floor from the mountings? Why wasn’t it wet with fluid? On the console, the heartbeat line marched gaily across the graph.

  Dutton swallowed down a vomitous retch and asked, “Where did he go?”

  “Who?”

  “Forrester. Didn’t you see him?”

  Bernice said firmly, “We all heard him.”

  In the doorway stood Stepansky the guard. “I came running, you better believe. It sounded like the mountain was falling on top of us.”

  Dutton could not get over it. The room was sterile, neat, and undamaged, the floor waxed to a gleam under the lights. The LS was shiny and black with that liquid slick sheen that is the one aesthetic pleasure of plastic.

  Jones face was before him, eyes hard as agate. “Dutton. Tell us what happened.”

  “It’s pretty simple. Daniel Forrester picked the LS out of the floor and killed me with it. He picked it up with his hands and threw it at me. That’s what happened.”

  “You saw him do this?”

  “I saw him all right.” Not feeling like getting to his feet, Dutton rested his head in his hands. “However, I’ve probably come completely unwrapped.”

  Bernice said tightly, “The noises stopped at the exact second his heart started again.”

  “I don’t suppose Forrester had a brother or something,” mused Branch. “Somebody conceivably could be snooping round here trying to get the body back to his family . . .”

  “Sir,” said Dutton, “anybody who can pick that capsule up doesn’t have to snoop.”

  “I sympathize with you, Lawrence, but I am attempting to find the simplest logical explanation.”

  Jones said, “The simplest logical explanation is that Dutton saw a ghost. Twin brothers stealing bodies is a complicated explanation.”

  They helped Dutton to his feet. Within minutes he was lying on his back on Branch’s office sofa with an ice pack on his head.

  Jones dashed up to the second floor where the drug closets had been torn up. Everything was spotless and neat. The destruction up here had been a hallucination as it had been with Dutton. Jones returned to Branch’s office, where Branch was looking beseechingly at Dutton, hoping for some indication that his favorite doctor in the clinic was either mistaken, drugged, delirious, or just plain nuts. He said, “Why?”

  Since Dutton could not answer, Jones did. “Forrester had several pieces of unfinished business before he died. I believe Jameson was one. And from what Dutton just said, I think he wants that machine destroyed. He wants us to pull the plug and leave him in peace and if we don’t. . . . Take it as a warning.” Jones pulled at his nose. “The details are unusual but all in all it’s your standard visitation. Ghosts appear when they have a particular reason.”

  Branch said, “Jones, his heart has stopped many times. If you say he’s actually dying and being brought back to life why hasn’t he appeared before tonight?”

  Dutton said, “Maybe he goes to heaven.”

  In all seriousness, Jones objected. “I don’t think so, I think he does what any self-respecting ghost does and heads for home. Ghosts haunt houses, sir. They go back to their homes or families or wherever they were happiest in life. Except, of course, for those little unfinished tasks like us.”

  “Jones, Branch is right,” Dutton grumped. “He took his damned time about coming to see us.”

  “Oh, I don’t think the dead have any sense of time at all. Nor space. None of the landmarks of creation we perceive exists for them. Don’t expect him to behave logically. He’ll come back for us when the urge hits him. Dutton, exactly what did he look like? Was he realistic and all?”

  Dutton’s mind was stuck on that towering, enraged figure. “It was just like you said, he looks like anybody else. So did the capsule being dumped on me, just like it really happened.”

  “Oh, it really happened, Dutton,” Jones reassured him. “There’s all kinds of realities and the senses can only handle one at a time.”

  “But the machine was untouched,” Branch protested. “Obviously it was all in Lawrence’s mind.”

  “Yes, sir, Dutton’s mind did say ‘ghost’ and his brain translated some kind of stimuli into an LS being dropped on him. But it, Dr. Branch, the thing itself, the apparition, came from outside of his head.”

  “What was it?”

  “God knows. I have a few theories. He isn’t very substantial at all. He can’t touch us, not really, he can only appear to do so.”

  “He can scare us to death,” murmured Dutton.

  Jones thought out loud. “He can go anywhere in the world he wants instantly, he can get into any structure, he can’t be hurt or damaged. But I think there are some things he can’t do.”

  “Such as what?”

  “He can’t read minds. And he can’t find us unless he knows where we are. Think about it, he has to search like any mortal. I think he can be fooled, too.”

  Branch turned in his creaking swivel chair toward Dutton. “Lawrence, all along you’ve had doubts about the machine. You’ve envisioned what Forrester must be suffering in it. His brain is congealed—if you shone a light in one ear it would come out the other. His personality is completely disintegrated. If you were in court, could you honestly say what you saw was not a hallucination caused by stress?”

  “A good lawyer could cut me to dog food,” Dutton admitted. “But everyone else heard him. Besides, if I was hallucinating, I would have expected him to speak, not attack me.”

  Branch slapped his palm on the table and exhaled. Why me, God?

  Jones shifted his weight in his chair. “I have an idea.”

  Dutton said, “I don’t like it.”

  “You haven’t even heard it yet.”

  “I don’t have to. You’re going to capture a ghost like half the human race has wanted to do. You’re going to put him in a bottle.”

  “Do you think I’m superstitious, Dutton?”

  “No, you’re rational and scientific. That’s worse.”

  “How can I resist? How can you resist? I can find out all the places he’s ever lived in his life and see if any of them are in existence. He’s got to go somewhere when he’s in arrest.”

  “Jones,” said Dutton. “Take my word for it, you don’t want to see him. Besides, if you’re right, he’ll come looking for us again soon enough. Personally I’ll be glad when he’s in Denver.”

  “What are the chances the move to Denver will kill him?”

  Dutton said, “Being as he’s familiar with the condition, I doubt he’ll mind that.”

  Jones spread his hands like a teacher faced with ignorant children. “I’m not getting through to you. If he dies permanently, maybe we’ll never be rid of him. He’ll hunt us forever.”

  Dutton thought over that nasty angle and decided he did not like it at all. “You just said he wants the plug pulled. If that happens, why hang around anymore? There have got to be more interesting places in heaven than the Clayton clinic.”

  “Well, I did say he might have several bits of unfinished business, didn’t I? It’s the way he behaved toward you that bothers me. Like you said, he didn’t talk, he attacked. Dutton, did you ever say or do anything to him that could provoke his hatred?”

  “Never . . .” Except for that one knife-sharp memory that struck Dutton as he spoke. The image of Forrester’s look of hate in the lodge that night came back to him. Christ, all he’d done was talk to her. “Except for this girl, maybe.” He told them about the night in the lodge.

  Jones’s saturnine face grew long and mournful. “Dutton, wars have been fought over that kind of
thing.”

  “She wasn’t Helen of Troy.”

  “He’s distilled emotion, Dutton, and jealousy—however unjustified—is the most primal emotion there is. What was she like?”

  “She was a girl. She had arms and legs and hair. There were lots of single women there. I mean, the idea that he’s running round now is weird enough. To go after me because of thirty seconds with a girl is lunacy. He could have had dozens of women up there. Damn, Jones, wouldn’t you think he’d have better things to do?”

  “Well, we don’t know where the dead go or what they do. Maybe heaven’s not all clouds and stars and angels, maybe it’s boring, like Cleveland or something.”

  Dutton wanted to laugh but could not. For all of Jones’s balder­dash, it was clear that Forrester had cast a pall over their lives.

  “Destiny,” said Branch, “appears to have launched us on a collision course with this fellow.”

  “He wants us all,” agreed Jones, “for sticking him in the machine, and Dutton in particular for snatching his girl. He can only handle one thought at a time. He won’t come after us in any organized fashion, only when the mood hits him. But he’ll never quit. We’ve made ourselves a really unpleasant enemy and we’ve got to keep him alive in that machine till we figure out what to do with him.”

  Kate’s editor did not believe in ghosts. More important, she was not very receptive to the idea of Kate changing her article at the last moment. “You’re so good at sensuality,” Lorraine mourned on the phone. “Keep your feet on the ground, Kate.”

  Kate stroked her cat while thinking of a few delicate replies. “It’s just a thought, Lorraine, not a decision. I thought I’d bounce it off you.”

  “It doesn’t bounce, it goes splat. Ghosts have been done to death, no pun intended.”

  “So has sensuality,” Kate replied. “Look, here’s the deal. This town is three hours up the coast. I’ll run up, take some shots, see if I get haunted, then come back. If I have anything, I’ll pitch you again, if I don’t, I’ll grovel at your feet in apology.”