Scary Creek

by Thomas Cater

  “’Fraid not.”

  When we reached the van, Dr. Cavell made a sound of approval.

  “Very nice.” he added.

  “I like it,” I said, feeling once more the pride of ownership, though not so intently.

  “What did this set you back, about thirty thousand?”

  “Thirty-five," I said, "not including taxes and interest.”

  He rolled his eyes and whistled softly.

  “I only paid twenty-seven for my house, but that was 15 years ago,” he said.

  “Times change,” I concluded.

  “Indeed they do,” he replied, beginning to show some weariness with the small talk.

  Inside the van, I eased the skeletal bones from the sheet.

  “Jesus,” he hissed, and took a long hard look at the skull. “I thought you said you found it in the ground. This thing has never been in the ground.”

  My face and the back of my neck reddened.

  “I lied, but not intentionally. It was in the ground, but it was also in a coffin, or a wooden box, a box that looks like a coffin,” I said. “Do you know what it is?”

  He looked the bones over, his eyes picking it apart a section at a time.

  “I know it’s a primate.”

  I thought as much, but I was hoping for more in the way of details. “It looks a little strange for your average primate, wouldn’t you say?”

  “There are several species of ape on this planet,” he said. “Some are big and some are small. Who are you?” he asked.

  I repeated my name and he shook my hand again as if I were a candidate receiving some kind of award, and then he returned to the skeleton.

  “I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, but I’d say this is probably a species of baboon, maybe a mandrill. A very big mandrill, maybe a mutant, or crossed with something else, though I don’t know what.”

  “A mandrill?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “It could be a very large one.”

  He told me what he knew about mandrills from West Africa, which wasn’t much.

  “Mandrills are not my area of expertise; they’re different than other baboons, bigger, and a lot more ferocious. Beautiful red and blue faces, with color coordinated asses to match. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures,” he said.

  I was sure I had too, but couldn’t remember where or when.

  “So where did you really get this thing?” he asked.

  I mentioned the graveyard in the back of the house. He shrugged away any ominous implications.

  “I find nothing inconsistent in that.”

  “I was having a problem with it,” I said.

  “The world is full of eccentrics,” he replied. “I know a doctor who just spent $1,500 dollars for a coffin and a brass marker to bury his wife’s cat. I attended the animal’s funeral. He’s turned the grave into a shrine.”

  “Yes, but a baboon!” I insisted.

  He smiled and turned his attention to the skeleton.

  “I’ve heard stories about these things,” he said. “Their intelligence is grossly underrated. They’ve been known to take over the care and feeding of human infants, and they know how to ambush prey and predators. They’re very clever animals.”

  He took a skeletal arm in one hand and examined it.

  “It’s in good shape; very healthy when it died. It had excellent care. Look at the shape of these bones, and that skull!”

  “You can tell that from its bones?”

  “Just like everything else, Mr. Case. If you eat well, your body shows it. This animal ate well.”

  I wasn’t comfortable knowing the baboon had eaten well, not knowing who or what it may have eaten. Nor was I willing to accept the idea of it being a pet, especially if it were a wild one.

  “Are they carnivores?” I asked.

  “Look at those teeth, what do you think?”

  I didn’t want to think about it.

  “You said they were mean? Could it have been a pet?”

  “It’s possible,” he said, “but you can domesticate anything. They domesticate orangutans in Sumatra. We shouldn’t ignore the possibility it may have escaped from a road show and died as a result of climatic changes. In any case, it’s been dead a long time.”

  “How long would you say?” I asked.

  “Maybe 40 or 50 years; it looks like someone cleaned and boiled the flesh from the bones.”

  I believe its departure was effected -- not for the glory of science -- but for its hide, talons, flesh and bones, or for charms and fetishes, or so I thought.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked. “You dissatisfied with my diagnosis?”

  I wanted to share the insight I’d gained with someone unrelated to recent events. If more people were advised, their doubt or disbelief might serve to weaken the spirits’ hold. To mention that was asking for trouble, so I equivocated on the facts.

  “I’ve been researching the life of a ‘visually impaired’ girl who once lived in the house. The pet idea doesn’t fit.”

  I told him Elinore feared something that wandered through the house. I explained my suspicions, and what part I believed the animal may have performed in the frightening drama.

  He rubbed his chin. “This may not be important, maybe a bit of a coincidence, but if that baboon came from West Africa, it could very well have been a temple baboon. They are revered in Ethiopia and naturally assume the duties of temple guards. They are also incredibly dangerous to would-be temple robbers. On the other hand, they are completely docile toward worshipers. They reportedly have eyesight keen enough to detect a man’s motives, to look into the souls of men and know if they are good or evil. Some say they can see through stone walls and their eyes never close when they sleep.”

  “See through stone walls?”

  Dr. Cavell nodded. “I don’t believe it, either, but I’ve learned to keep an open mind when it comes to animals. Most of the time, the wildest claims turn out to be true.”

  He smiled again and continued.

  “Wouldn’t it be strange if your young lady had managed to acquire the first ‘seeing-eye baboon in the history of medical science?” He said laughing.

  A seeing-eye baboon? The thought had never occurred to me. In 1922, it probably made more sense than trying to train a dog for the job.

  I wanted to laugh aloud, a seeing-eye baboon! That is all it is. Grier was well ahead of his time. He could have outdistanced Michelangelo given a little more time and effort.

  “A seeing-eye baboon!” I shouted. “That sounds like a real possibility.”

  Dr. Cavell agreed with a nod and took pride in his suggestion.

  “Now that I think about it, it is a good idea. They are far more intelligent than dogs, strong maternal instincts, maybe more willful and less obedient than dogs, but still, it’s possible.”

  I liked the idea even though I had forgotten the other strange manifestations I had encountered in the house.

  “Dr. Cavell, I want to thank you; you’ve taken a load off my shoulders.”

  “It was bothering you that much?” he said, with a bit of a Jewish accent.

  “Yes, it was, it was giving me nightmares.”

  “What are you going to do now?” He asked in a voice that demanded action.

  “The bones are yours if you want them, but only temporarily. Later I want to put them back where they belong.”

  “It would make a fine specimen,” he said. “I would like to examine it a little more carefully.”

  He took the skull in his hand and the skullcap fell off.

  “That’s strange,” he said. “You say this skeleton was in a coffin?” I nodded. “Was the seal broken?”

  I told him the box was intact when I found it, but shattered when it fell over.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m curious to know why someone removed the skull cap. The marks on the inside look like the work of a surgical tool.”

  “Brain or eye surgery?” I asked. He squinted into the skull cavity. �
��I don’t know.” He looked it over closely, appearing to sniff it with his nose.

  “Someone had to remove this, and there must have been a good reason for it.”

  I thought I knew why, but I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to destroy the seeing-eye baboon theory. I wrapped the sheet around the skeleton and turned it over to Cavell.

  “It’s all yours,” I said. “Take care of it. Now that I know what it is, or was, I don’t want anything to happen to it.”

  We carried the skeleton to the basement.

  “I’ll have the department mail you a receipt,” he said.

  I scribbled my address “general delivery, Vandalia,” and started to leave.

  “Before I forget, have you ever heard of a Dr. Grier? He was the superintendent at the state hospital in Vandalia about 70 years ago.”

  “Does that have anything to do with your research?” He asked.

  “Some,” I replied.

  He turned the name over in his mind, sensed nothing was forthcoming and shook his head.

  “Not my department. I suggest you contact Joanne Zimmerly, the head of psychiatry, and not bad looking, either. She might be able to help.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I gathered up the sheet and left him standing alone by the side of the skeleton. I felt a little nostalgia leaving those old bones, as if I were leaving an old friend.

  The girl at the library had unearthed three books for me. She said it was all she could find that contained the information I needed. I began to wonder what happened to the tons of material she had mentioned.

  The books were all reference materials, one from the West Virginia historical file: Treatment of Mental Disorders, Past and Present, by Tyrone Massey. It was a very old book, published in the 1880s and reprinted in the 1920s. The other book was more recent: Eye Surgery, by Leo Bell, published in 1974, with a brief three-page history of eye surgery. She also delivered a book on color blindness. The last book was a slim document on the early history of the Vandalia State Hospital by Michael Snowden. It was 64 pages and contained a number of reproduced ancient black and white pictures taken before and after the wall.

  I found a table where the light was good and began to read. In the event something memorable surfaced, I opened my notebook.

  There were several pages devoted to pictures of superintendents and administrators, but I already had pictures of Ryder and Grier. Most of the book was devoted to statistical information on the number of patients committed each year, how many were released, numbers and types of cases, kinds of treatment and the economic impact the hospital made on the county and state, which was extensive.

  Grier’s qualifications were reiterated in his one-half page biography. He was born in southern Illinois, which came as a surprise. My instincts would have led me to suspect some middle European city. I wondered who Mike Snowden was and how much information he had left ignored or discarded from that accommodating little brochure.

  I was shocked to learn that eye or corneal transplanting was a comparatively recent phenomenon. The first eye bank, established in 1945, put Grier in a very special category. He may have impressed his peers as a modern day Frankenstein, but what he was doing or thinking of doing was only just technically out of his grasp, but not theoretically.

  Lobotomies or trephining, I was also fascinated to discover, had been going on for centuries. Skulls found in Central and South American ruins bore the telltale marks of frontal brain surgery, and a branch of medical research was trying to convince the learned community that lobotomies were a common medical technique practiced in ancient Egypt 5,000 years ago.

  Apparently, the operation outgrew its usefulness 10-15 years after its official application in the United States. The cure turned out to be worse than the illness. Many lobotomized individuals began to manifest more disorders after treatment than they had before treatment. Over the long run, it made little difference in the mental health of the patient. It all came to an abrupt halt in the 1960s.

  I tried to find statistics that revealed mortality rates or reviewed dangers implicit in the surgical procedure. The mortality rate nationally, I discovered, was less than 3.0 percent, but at Vandalia in the early days, it looked more like 30 percent.

  Color blindness, I discovered, was still an irresolvable mystery to the medical community. There were trichromats, who were slightly colorblind, and dichromats who were fully colorblind and hundreds of variations in between.

  No one really knew what a dichromat saw in place of color; only that brown was a very popular concept among them. Red often appeared as black and many colorful things between the red to blue scale often appeared as white ... or ghostly. Words referencing color held little in the way of meaning.

  Scientists believed the problem had to do with pigments called rhodopin and iodopsin in the rods and cones, which enabled the cones to respond to light and produce ‘color’ nerve signals. Others thought it had to do with fluid in the eyeballs, or in the ability of the optic system to discriminate codes. In any case, there were no solutions, no cures.

  The seeing-eye baboon theory also began to lose some of its glitter and recede into the dark hole of medical history. How many Ethiopians would have had the patience to train a wild, ferocious baboon before finally eating it, or it eating them? I gave the books back to the librarian, thanked her and returned to the van.

  The Grier paper was still on my mind. I called Joanne Zimmerly’s office from a phone on the street. A secretary said she was lecturing, but would return soon. She always stopped at the office before leaving for the day.

  “I would like to see her,” I said.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, but it is urgent that I see her.”

  “Ms. Zimmerly is a very busy woman. She doesn’t usually see people without an appointment.”

  “I want to ask her a few questions about a colleague.”

  “Ms. Zimmerly would not be inclined to reveal confidential information about a colleague.”

  “This colleague has been dead for more than 60 years.”

  “If you want to take a chance, you can come by, but I can’t promise you anything; she is very busy.”

  I walked to her office slowly. I disliked going where I was not welcome. Zimmerly sounded as if she had conditioned her secretary to be as inhuman as possible to discourage personal contact with … common dolts.

  When I entered the office, a lovely young woman with a friendly smile behaved in a charming way and greeted me.

  “Yes?” She said pleasantly, as if she didn’t know who I was even though I knew she knew.

  “I called a few minutes ago,” I said. “I would like to see Ms. Zimmerly.”

  “Ms. Zimmerly is out at the moment,” she said, smiling. “Would you care to make an appointment?”

  I told her I was only in town for a few hours and would wait for Zimmerly’s return. She noticed my discomfort, but did not take advantage of it. I would not enjoy coming here with a real problem, or greeted by that therapeutically annihilating smile.

  “Please be seated,” she replied.

  I found a seat in the corner near a rack filled with stacks of journals, psychiatric abstracts, the Wilson Quarterly, two copies of Ladies Home Journal and several back issues of Psychology Today. From my hasty assessment of journals, I knew why most mental patients were incurable. Psychiatrists did not want them healthy. There was no future, fun or fortune in good mental health.

  Before I could get too deeply into an article, the phone rang. The secretary listened for a minute, occasionally making brief eye contact and then said, “There is a gentleman to see you, and his name is Charles Case.” She listened intently to the voice and then covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

  “Would you care to state the reason for your visit?”

  I approached her desk waving the thin sheaf of papers.

  “I have a paper written by Dr. Ezekiel Grier, a psychiatrist. I would like to share it with M
s. Zimmerly and discuss some of his conclusions.”

  She repeated my statement over the phone.

  “Is Dr. Grier still practicing in the state?” she asked.

  “Dr. Grier has been dead for sixty years,” I replied.

  Again, she repeated my words over the phone.

  “You can go in, Mr. Case; Dr. Zimmerly will see you now.”

  I looked at the door, confused.

  “I thought she was out?”

  “She has a private entrance,” she replied.

  Dr. Zimmerly was sitting, no, crouching behind her desk. It was larger than Connie’s and had more expensive knick-knacks and plaques. She, however, was not discovering much pleasure in her totems, though she might have if someone taught her how to laugh.

  She was trying to avoid looking forty, but not succeeding. She had a pore-less creamy white complexion, which made tiny imperfections leap off her skin. There was a smooth severity to her straight blonde hair, and her eyes seemed to radiate little warmth or enthusiasm. There was something about her eyes that tended to ignore those they confronted.

  “My name is Charles Case,” I said, offering a hand.

  I could see it was a useless gesture. She leaned forward and gave it a cautious yank, almost as if she were handling something distasteful.

  “I’m sorry about all the formality, Mr. Case, but my secretary has a tendency to be overprotective. She thinks I am easy prey for neurotics. If I didn’t know better, I would say she is paranoid schizophrenic.”

  I expected a smile, or something, but nothing happened.

  “And you know better?” I asked and wished I hadn’t.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” she replied. “Do you question my credentials?”

  I flushed with embarrassment. She saw my confusion and quietly allowed her dignity to re-center.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Case?”

  I could see there was little room in this woman’s life for small talk, so I made straight for the point.

  “Have you ever heard of Dr. Grier?” I asked, boldly moving a step closer to her desk. “He was the resident psychiatrist at the state hospital in Vandalia in the 1920s and 30s.”

  “The name has a familiar ring to it,” she said, jotting it down on a pad. “Is there some other reason why I should know about him?”