by Jack Kilborn
“Which three?”
“Sara Randhurst. Moni Draper. Frank Belgium.”
Forenzi rubbed the stubble on his chin, and his eyes drifted across his laboratory. Besides his patient, and the various pieces of equipment, there was a large, glass apparatus on a stainless steel table, which looked like something out of a mad scientist movie. It was currently distilling a batch of Serum 3.
That serum, Forenzi knew, was going to win him a Nobel Prize.
Some believed that most of humanity’s conflicts, be it person-to-person or country-to-country, were based upon one possessing something the other one wanted. Land. Oil. Water. Food. Religious and political differences were used as excuses to dehumanize the enemy and grab their resources.
But Forenzi knew that this greed was bolstered by another, even more base and powerful emotion.
Fear.
Mankind reeked of fear.
This fear led to distrust, and ultimately to hate.
Being able to conquer fear meant a fresh start for the world.
“Let me know if the situation changes,” he said, then hung up.
Of the three who signed on, Dr. Belgium interested him most. A molecular biologist, he would recognize what Forenzi was doing here. It would be refreshing to talk to someone who could grasp the magnitude of this invention. Who would understand it.
He turned back to his patient, whose eyelids had drooped in sleep. Forenzi yawned sympathetically.
“You’re exhausted, my friend. So am I. We can continue the therapy tomorrow. Sleep well.”
Forenzi left the lab, walking into a hallway that looked more like a tunnel in a coal mine than the basement of a mansion. The floors were crumbling concrete, the walls lined with stacked railroad ties. There were wood ceiling braces every five meters, and Forenzi wouldn’t have doubted the bare 60w bulbs hanging from them were older than he was. As he passed beneath one, it buzzed and flickered.
One of the many ghosts of Butler House, demanding attention.
Forenzi paid it no mind. Instead, he took the hall to a fork, went right, and headed for the veterinary clinic. As he approached, he heard some lone trilling, and recognized it as Gunter’s.
Forenzi’s spirits dipped, and his pace quickened. He entered the clinic through the metal push door and beelined for Gunter’s habitat, which was situated to the right. It was several cubic meters in size, with a window of clear, unbreakable Plexiglas, the interior foliage meant to mimic a Columbian forest, with twisted, dead tree branches and fake plants.
The Panamanian Night Monkey watched his approach while upside down, hanging from a limb. Gunter was large for an A. zolalis, nearly three pounds in weight. His bushy brown fur was mottled with blood, and his enormous red eyes stared at Forenzi dispassionately.
“Gunter… Gunter… what have you done?”
Of course, Forenzi already had the answer to that. Gunter’s two cagemates, capuchins named Laurel and Hardy, were dead on the fake grass in the habitat. They’d been dismembered and eviscerated, their insides strewn across the bathing pond and staining the water pink.
“You just can’t play well with others, can you?” Forenzi shook his head and tsked.
Gunter stared, unmoving.
Aphobic.
Forenzi picked up the clipboard next to the habitat, recorded the event, and then flipped through the previous five months to get an accurate count.
“This makes twenty-eight,” he said. “You’re a regular little monkey serial killer.”
Gunter grunted, as if agreeing.
Forenzi left a note for the morning help to clean the cage, and order more monkeys. Serum 3, for all of its potential, still had some kinks to work out. There was undoubtedly a broad line between fearless and homicidal, but Forenzi hadn’t found it yet.
“I think we’ll lower your dosage,” Gunter said. “Maybe then you’ll be able to make friends.”
Gunter continued to stare, and Forenzi wondered how much the night monkey actually understood. Besides the expected changes to Gunter’s amygdala, the primate’s frontal lobe had also enlarged, increasing his intelligence. Forenzi wondered, half-joking, if one day Gunter would become so smart he’d solve the dosage problem himself.
Gunter dropped from his upside-down perch, startling Forenzi with the sudden movement. Without taking his big eyes off the doctor, he reached for a dismembered capuchin leg and began to gnaw on it.
“Apparently I don’t need to feed you, either,” Forenzi said.
Gunter grunted.
There was a great crash from above, and a small plume of dust drifted downward. Both Gunter and Forenzi stared at the ceiling.
Directly above them was Butler House. At this time of night, it should have been quiet.
But it rarely was.
“I wonder if monkeys have ghosts,” Forenzi mused. “Perhaps your friends Laurel and Hardy will visit you tonight, Gunter. And they probably won’t be pleased with the whole murder-dismemberment-cannibalism debacle. But then, that wouldn’t scare you, would it, Gunter? Nothing scares you at all.”
Forenzi wondered if he should mention Gunter during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, since the animal had been essential to his research.
If so, perhaps the multiple killings should be downplayed. Or left unsaid.
“Goodnight, my friend. And don’t eat so quickly. You’ll choke.”
Forenzi left the lab, turning off the overhead florescent lights so his experiment could dine in the dark.
Chicago, Illinois
Tom
After four hours of troubled sleep, Tom reached for his cell phone next to the bed and hit redial.
It went straight to Roy’s voicemail.
Peering at the nightstand clock, he judged 8am to be late enough to call Roy’s ex-wife. Tom located the number in his address book, and she picked up on the second ring.
“Hi, Gladys. It’s Tom Mankowski.”
“Is Roy with y’all? Fool missed his visitation time with his daughter.”
Hell. Tom went into cop mode. “Does he do that often?”
“Not without calling he don’t. And he didn’t call. She was really upset, Tom. I was, too. I had plans. Tell him we’re both extremely disappointed in him. He hook up with some hoochie mama and lose track of time? Now he’s playing you to smooth things over?”
Hoochie mama? “I don’t know where he is, Gladys.”
“Really? This isn’t a game?” Glady’s voice had shed its ghetto attitude, and Tom sensed the concern.
“Apparently he’s been missing since last week.”
“A week? Oh, Jesus, Tom. I… what do we do?”
“I’m going to look for him, Gladys.”
“Thank you. Please keep me posted, okay?”
“Sure thing. And if you hear from him, please call.”
“I will. What should I tell Rhonda?”
Double hell. Rhonda just turned five. Old enough to wonder where her daddy was.
“I don’t know, Gladys.”
“You think it’s one of his old cases? Or a new one?”
“I don’t know. Did he mention going anywhere to you?”
“No. Nothing. He usually calls the day before he picks up Rhonda, which was supposed to be Wednesday. But he didn’t. His phone goes straight to voicemail.”
“Did he say anything about a haunted house? Or a reality show? Or getting some money?”
“I haven’t heard from him since he took Rhonda to a Cubs game, over two weeks ago. Do you think… do you think he might be…”
Then he heard it. A sniffle.
Gladys was crying.
“You know, Tom, that son of a bitch makes me angrier than anyone I’ve ever met. But if anything has happened to him…”
“I’ll find him, Gladys.”
“Rhonda needs her father.”
“I’ll find him. My love to Rhonda.”
Tom hung up. Listening to women cry was almost as bad as informing next of kin that someone close to them had died.
And Tom had to wonder if that’s what he just did with Gladys.
He found the FedEx invitation and dialed the number, using his land line. A machine picked up, the voice synthetic. One of those text-to-speech generators that just missed sounding human. Futurists called it the uncanny valley. A sense of revulsion that people felt when they experienced something that was almost human, but not quite. It was thought of as a survival mechanism, to help people avoid those who looked or sounded strange. Tom could understand how that worked, on a genetics level, because procreating with those who had some sort of defect meant potentially defective children, and avoiding someone who was odd decreased the chance of getting whatever disease they had. At least that’s how the futurists explained it.
But listening to the voice, Tom realized it could help humans survive in another kind of way. By helping them avoid things that almost looked human, but weren’t.
Things like ghosts.
“Please say or punch in your reservation number, followed by the pound sign.”
Tom used his phone keypad.
“Hello, Tom Mankowski,” the creepy robotic voice said. “You are invited to spend the night at the haunted Butler House in Solidarity, South Carolina, where you will participate in a fear experiment. The house is located on 683 Auburn Road. You are expected to arrive on Saturday, before noon. You can bring whatever items you’d like, including weapons, religious paraphernalia, and ghost detecting equipment. If you take any prescription medication, please bring it along. The experiment will end Sunday at 4pm. Informing others about this experiment will disqualify you from your million dollar participation fee. Polygraphs will be administered to ensure compliance. Have a nice day. We’ll see you soon.”
Tom held the phone, trying to understand the weird feeling that had come over him. The instructions were straightforward and polite, but the call hadn’t left him with warm, fuzzy feelings.
Quite the opposite, he was experiencing something that only happened rarely. like when a perp ducked down an alley, and Tom had to follow. Or the second just before he had to kick in a suspect’s door.
Fear of the unexpected. Also known as dread.
He shook his head, trying to brush off the feeling. But the dread clung there like cobwebs.
Tom startled when the off-hook tone began to beep from the handset.
“If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again. If you need help—”
He hung up.
Tom considered calling Joan, but the two hour time zone difference would have meant waking her up. Instead, he padded over to the shower and turned it on, hot as he could stand it. Then he stared into his bathroom mirror and began to scrape the stubble off his face. His beard, like the hair on his head, was turning prematurely gray. He also needed a haircut.
The mirror began to steam up, and Tom raised his hand to wipe it off, but stopped before his fingers touched the glass.
The fogging had revealed words, handwritten on the mirror.
I’M WATCHING YOU
THE NEXT DAY
Mililani, Hawaii
Josh
Fran was in a bikini, sitting on their porch, stripping and cleaning one of their AR-15 semi-automatic rifles. She had a look of intense concentration on her face as she ran a cleaning rod through the bore. If there was anything sexier than a woman in a bathing suit with a firearm, Josh didn’t know what it was.
He set the lemonade he’d brought for her down on the table, and took a sip of the one he’d kept for himself. It was a perfect Hawaiian day, sunny and hot and smelling like paradise, and the lemonade was cold and sweetened just enough to take the edge off the pucker.
Mathison was perched on the seatback of Fran’s chair watching damselflies. Though Josh had never seen him do it, he had a suspicion that the monkey liked to catch the bugs and eat them.
Mathison chittered when he saw Josh. He hopped down, ran into the house through the dog door, and returned a moment later with his plastic infant cup. He held it out to Josh, who poured in some lemonade. Mathison chirped a thank you, took a drink, then made a face and stuck out his tongue.
“I like it tart,” Josh said.
Mathison set down his cup, ran inside again, and came out with a packet of sugar and a spoon. As the monkey mixed his drink to taste, Fran spoke.
“Are you sure about this?”
“Didn’t we discuss it? I thought we agreed.”
“Can it hurt to discuss it some more?”
“No,” he admitted.
“So are you sure?”
Josh took another sip of lemonade. Mathison did as well, then made a sound like he was throwing up. He put his tiny hands on his own throat to emphasize his displeasure.
“So get more sugar,” Josh told him.
The monkey ran off. He came back a moment later with five more packets.
“You’re going to get diabetes,” Josh said.
Mathison gave him the finger.
“Did Duncan teach him that?” Josh asked his wife.
“What?” She was absorbed in her cleaning.
“Mathison flipped me the bird.”
“No. I think it was South Park.”
“The TV show?”
“Yeah. He has a few DVD box sets.” Fran squirted more solvent on the patch holder.
“You bought South Park DVDs?”
“No. He grabbed them in the store while I was shopping, put them in the cart, and paid me. He also bought The Untouchables. He’s watched it seven times. I think he wants to be Sean Connery.”
Mathison nodded at Josh, then added more sugar.
“And how did the monkey get money?”
“He was doing tricks in front of Walmart with his cup.”
“Huh.” Maybe the monkey had an organ grinder heritage. “How much did you make?”
The capuchin held up three fingers on his right hand, five on his left.
“Thirty-five dollars? Seriously? How long did it take?”
One finger, and five fingers.
“Only fifteen minutes? Fran, that’s a hundred and forty bucks an hour.”
“Josh, can you get back on topic? I asked you if you’re sure.”
Josh sipped more lemonade, then thought about the invitation to Butler House. The whole concept of it, from the way they were approached in the wee morning hours, to the dial-in number with the weird voice, failed to pass the sniff test.
“It’s bullshit,” Josh said. “The military is trying to hoodwink us. Those weren’t feds.”
“I agree.”
Josh settled back in his chair, putting a foot up on the table. Mathison added a fifth sugar packet, took a sip, and gave Josh a thumbs up.
“Brush your teeth when you finish,” Josh said.
The monkey replied in sign language. “Woof ate my toothbrush.”
“The dog ate it? When?”
“A week ago.”
“I watched you brush your teeth last night.”
“That was Fran’s toothbrush.”
Josh frowned. He’d just kissed Fran less than an hour ago.
“What did he say?” Fran asked, looking up from her bore cleaning.
“We need to buy everyone in the house a new toothbrush. Maybe I’ll let Duncan drive. He’s getting his permit next week.”
“And Butler House?”
Josh swirled some tart lemonade around his tongue, then swallowed.
“Fuck Butler House.”
Chicago, IL
Tom
There weren’t any homicides in Tom’s jurisdiction in the last few days—unusual for Chicago—so it gave him time to work on Roy’s disappearance. After arriving at the office and getting his cup of burned coffee, Tom went to his partner’s desk and fired up his computer. While it booted he snooped around, finding nothing of interest.
As expected, Roy didn’t have a computer password. Detectives preferred that, so if anything happened to them in the line of duty, their last actions could be easily traced.
Tom
checked Roy’s email, finding a confirmation for a rental car at the Charleston airport dated last week. He dialed the number and pretended to be Roy, reading off the confirmation number.
“What can we help you with, Mr. Lewis?”
An odd thing to say if the car hadn’t been returned.
“Can you email me all the details from my rental, for tax purposes?”
“Certainly.” The woman repeated Roy’s email addy.
“Also, can you remind me when I returned the car?”
“You returned it last Sunday, at 11:35am. Anything else I can help you with?”
Tom declined and disconnected. Next he called the airline Roy used and said he lost his return flight ticket. Did someone else possibly use it?
“No, Mr. Lewis. That ticket hasn’t been used. Would you like us to book a return flight?”
Again Tom declined, and hung up.
Either Roy had returned the car at the airport, and something happened to him to prevent him from boarding his flight. Or something happened to him earlier, and someone returned his rental car for him to tie up a loose end.
Tom got on the Internet and began calling hospitals in the Charleston area, asking if Roy or any African American John Does fitting his description had been admitted. He also checked the morgues, and Charleston PD.
No luck.
Next he checked Roy’s browsing history, and saw he’d been on the same Butler House site Tom had been on. Roy also had been on the Ghost Smashers website. Tom recalled reading that they’d shot an episode of their TV show at Butler House, but it never aired and the host quit TV immediately afterward. Tom went back to Roy’s email, checking the Sent folder.
Roy had several exchanges with Richard Reiser, the host of the show. The last one ended with Roy asking if they could Skype. Skype was a VoiP—a voice over internet protocol. It allowed two people to talk to one another using computer webcams and headsets. Tom accessed Roy’s Skype account, and sure enough Richard Reiser was listed as a contact. Tom found Roy’s headphones in his top drawer and plugged them into a USB port. Then he video called Reiser.
As it rang, Tom accessed the National Crime Information Center and searched for Dr. Emil Forenzi. He didn’t find any info. Apparently Forenzi didn’t have a criminal record.