“Who? Who killed your son?”
“Who? You don't know?” He was beginning to sound like a madman.
“No, I don't know.”
“Then ... you're not supposed to be down here.”
“What?”
“You have come to give blood?”
“No.”
“Always a good thing if you come here, to give blood.”
“Doctor Cooper?”
“Who is it you're talking to, Cooper?” came another voice out of the bleakness. Up stepped a long, lithe fellow with a pair of menacing eyes that were enough to send Cooper through the double doors of the morgue where most of the noise was coming from. Stroud recognized some of the sounds: hideous laughter, a machinelike sucking noise, a water hose. The air was thick with the smell of blood as it pummeled out through the big doors when Cooper rushed through.
“Who're you?” demanded the tall physician before Stroud now.
“Me? I'm a friend of Doctor Banaker's.”
“Friend? I'm Dolph Banaker, Doctor Banaker's son.”
“Oh, yes, he's told me about you,” lied Stroud.
“This area is off limits to all but Banaker people,” he said firmly. “From what I see...” He let it hang, as if he wished to say more. “...you don't have clearance to be down here.”
“I meant to find the lobby and got down here by mistake.”
“You lost your way on the stairs?”
“The elevator brought me down.”
“Impossible. The elevators used by staff come down here. None of the others do.”
“I tell you, I just got off the elevator.”
Dolph shook his head at Stroud as if he were a blithering idiot. Then he did a remarkable thing. He took hold of Stroud and stared into his eyes, sending an electriclike charge through him, attempting some sort of hypnosis. Stroud sensed danger and knew what was happening to an extent. Somehow he felt a resistance to Dolph, a repugnance. Something about the young man smelled bad, smelled of decay. Stroud's mind fought his in a tug-of-war there in the corridor, a war for control.
“Dolph!” It was Pamela's voice that broke the spell. “I see you've met Doctor Stroud. I have been searching for him. Your father is consulting with Doctor Stroud on a case. We must hurry, Doctor Stroud. I can't imagine how you became so lost. Please, follow me.”
Dolph Banaker watched them disappear into the stairwell. A story up, she said, “How did you get down here?”
“No one seems to know.”
“You must get out of this sector unseen. Doctor Banaker is not going to like this if he hears, and he will.”
At the door to the lobby he turned to face her. “Will you be all right?”
“Of course.”
“Your job, I mean.”
“Intact ... don't worry. They can't do any more to me than they already have.”
“Where can I reach you later?”
“I'll call you.” She kissed him passionately, saying into his ear, “I've never thrown myself at a man like this before. It's just something ... something about you ... I ... I need ... your strength ... your power.”
He kissed her in return and she then pulled herself away, rushing up to the next floor.
With that he stepped out into the lobby, grateful for the light streaming in from outside. It was so strong that some people milling about disappeared in it, fading into the glare. He rushed for the exit and went through the revolving door, his own head spinning with the experience.
Still he had not seen the boy.
Still the image of laughter and frolic in the morgue disturbed him.
-8-
Another night passed and Stroud was beginning to believe all the mystery of his seizure-induced vision, the turmoil and hell of the missing boy and the bones--all that had come before now, including the passion between Pamela Carr and himself--had been imaginings born of a fevered brain. Pamela hadn't contacted him. And as for the incredible incidents of the past few days, Andover acted as if nothing had happened. The story was dropped from the papers after the boy was found, nothing said about the bones. People here went about their business as if it had all been perfectly normal and the outcome just as expected, and yet it could not be so. Abraham Stroud had too much faith in himself these days, despite his tormented cranium, to relinquish the ideas set in motion by that first night when the boneyard was discovered. And he for one was not about to forget the condition of those bones and what Dr. Magaffey had said about the bone marrow.
He could not simply dismiss it from his mind.
He telephoned Dr. Louis P. Cage in Chicago. He'd sent the bones to Cage. Cage couldn't possibly have any answers for him, yet, but he wanted to impress upon his old friend that this was no ordinary cache of archeological artifacts, that these bones might have something to do with a series of strange disappearances in the community. Dr. Cage was one of the foremost authorities on bones, an archeologist and anatomist, he'd done a great deal of work for the CPD in reconstructing features over skulls in order to identify the previously unidentifiable victims of homicides.
Cage came on line the moment he learned it was Stroud. “Stroud, you get tired of reading GQ? How's the easy life down in southern Ill? Come on, out with the truth! You're bored outa your friggin' brain and you want to go to Iraq with me, screw the war over there, right?”
“Cage, did you get that package I sent two days ago, UPS?”
“What package?”
“Look around. A box filled with bones from me with a letter of explanation.”
“Hey, we open it as it comes in, Abe, you know that.”
“Then you didn't get it?”
“Nada.”
He blew out a long gush of air. “I'll call you back.”
“Abe!”
He hung up and telephoned Sheriff Briggs. Finding him out, he talked to the deputy, a man named Stanley Kisner. Kisner looked around and found the box in back, came back on, and said, “Musta got mislaid.”
“Goddamnit, Deputy, that package is important!”
“Got some of them bones in it, right?”
“Yeah, right. Now, you hold it there and I'll come get it myself.”
“No need to come all the way in for it. I'll ride it out to your place, Mr. ahhh, Doctor Stroud. My patrol starts in ten minutes and I'll be up that way.”
“I want it sent out to Chicago, not sent to me!”
“Oh, ho, I'm sorry. Can't read ... sorry. I see that now.”
“Just hold it there. I'll pick it up and get it to UPS personally.”
“Hell, I know those guys and I can get it rushed for you. Take it by there myself, Doctor Stroud.”
“I can't trust you to do that, Deputy.”
“You sure can, sir.” He hung up.
“Damn it!”
Earlier, he'd stopped in at the Meyers place to ask after the boy, wondering aloud why the dog was never found.
Mrs. Meyers visibly shivered at the words as he neared her. But Mrs. Meyers wouldn't allow him past the threshold. She wasn't out and out rude about it, but she made it clear that she didn't want the boy disturbed. She put it rather oddly, however, and it stuck in Stroud's mind.
“No one's welcome here for now, Doctor Stroud. 'Preciate what you done, but no one's welcome.”
It reminded him of Mrs. Carroll's protectiveness with Joey a couple of nights before. But there was something else here, something Mrs. Meyers's frail gray eyes revealed, something to do with terror. He was reminded of scenes in old movies in which one family was cut from the wagon train due to the fact their wagon carried diphtheria or smallpox. It appeared to Stroud that no one but himself had come by the house to offer help with the boy, until he saw Dr. Magaffey's old battered vehicle come over the rise.
“I'll just talk to Doctor Magaffey,” he said to Mrs. Meyers who promptly disappeared inside the ranch home.
Magaffey got out of his car clattering the doors, struggling with his bag. “You're looking in on the boy, Stroud?” he s
aid.
“Would if I could, but--”
“Ahhhhhh, parents have closed in 'round him so tight they're chokin' him off from everything, good and bad.”
“Meaning you and Banaker, in that order?”
“Well, Mr. Meyers asked me to come out. Told his wife to expect me. Says the boy's ... I don't know ... acting strange, yet.”
“Something's happened to him.”
“He's gone through a difficult time.”
“People tend to deny and deny and sometimes it just makes it worse, doesn't it? It's as if none of it has happened, for a while, and then it crashes down on you again. I know.”
“Hard won experience. Got to let the Meyerses take it as it comes; they've got to learn it for themselves, son.”
“And as for the still missing Cooper boy, not a peep.”
“Life goes on like the rushing river it is ... like the Spoon, Stroud, not stopping for man or God. Hell, you should know that.”
“Why do you say that?”
He looked incredulously at Stroud. “By God, you're old enough and smart enough to know.”
“I'd like a look at the boy.”
“Sure, come ahead. I'll get you past Mrs. Meyers.”
“She and her husband suddenly began to treat me like the enemy, for some damned reason.”
“Single man, taking an interest in a young boy, what do you expect?” He laughed at his own remarks as they made their way up the steps and into the house. Mrs. Meyers stared at Stroud, her features agitated and she did not relax when Dr. Magaffey said, “It's all right Mrs. Meyers. No one's going to take your boy from you. I give you my promise. Do you have any coffee?”
She hesitated but finally started away, saying she'd make some.
Stroud followed Magaffey into the boy's room, a foul stench filling his nostrils as it passed from the doorway into the rest of the house. “What the hell is that?”
“Dressing needs changing,” said Magaffey.
“Dressing? I wasn't aware the boy was injured.”
“A might bit. Something wild out there got at him, scratched a hole in his chest, neck and arms. Looked like he was dragged; skin abrasions over a good part of his body.”
“Christ, maybe he ought to have been left in the hospital.”
“Oh, he's healing fine. No doubt of that. You know how boys are. Bounce right back, 'cept for this mind thing. Look at 'im.”
Stroud did just that. Timmy was a round, little roly-poly boy who had lost a lot of weight quickly, his skin hanging loose on his jowls. He was sitting upright in bed, but Stroud got the distinct impression it was a position he'd been placed in. It was very dark in the room.
“Turn on a light, will you, Stroud?”
Stroud did so, twisting a button on a lamp with a Batman motif. The sudden light didn't even make Timmy squint. He just stared ahead of him as if he saw something clear across the room that commanded all of his attention.
“Anybody ask him any questions about what happened to him?” asked Stroud.
“Sure, everybody has, but he won't speak.”
“How long will he be like this, Magaffey?”
“No way to know.” Magaffey gently began the work of replacing the bandages. Stroud saw that one of them was wrapped completely around the boy's neck. Magaffey took each off very carefully, slowly and with care not to cause any pain, replacing them as he went. Magaffey was right, much of the stench from the wounds was filling the room. The skin under the bandages had been filleted in great streaks where the wounds appeared in three separate but uniform gashes on each of the boy's sides, as if he'd been lifted up on meat hooks. The lines were too perfect, too neat to be caused by anything in nature, unless the boy had happened onto a bear or a panther, and unless the animal swiped at each of his sides at exactly the same spot and with exactly the same intensity.
For a moment, Stroud imagined a man capable of such horror, using some sort of pulley device to rip in an upward movement, the deeper part of the gash being at the lowest point of entry. Magaffey, being both an M.D. and an M.E., must surely have seen the same thing that Stroud saw.
“What do you make of these wounds?”
“Forest animal got at the boy.”
“Sure, sure, Doc.”
“Bit him in the throat,” said Magaffey, undoing the throat bandage. “Boy's lucky to be alive. I figure he went limp on the ... the--”
“Bear?”
“Bear, yeah, and it took him for dead.”
The boy was pallid, near white, skin tinged by yellow and a few splotches of blue-white. “Lost a lot of blood, gashes like that ... and still he found his way out. Some kinda kid.”
“Miracle he survived.”
Stroud wasn't sure he believed in miracles, however. He himself had lived when he was within the tight vise of death. He'd gone while lying out there on the battlefield, spirit lifting off the corpse, looking down at the carcass amid all the others, about to rush away toward an intense laser beam of light pinpointed at the end of an enormous cavern. He started toward that light when something blocked his way. Something tugging insistently, tearing him from the direction he'd taken. A medic had intervened; end of miracle.
Magaffey revealed the neck wound and it was startlingly small, yet it still gleamed with droplets of blood. “Can't for the life of me stop this bleeding here.”
The blood obscured the wound. Stroud inched in closer for a look. Magaffey sponged and for an instant it stood clear: two deep puncture marks had cut a jagged, unclean trail near the jugular, close enough in fact that a layman might believe the jugular had been severed, in which case the boy would've bled to death.
“Have you measured these puncture marks, Doctor Magaffey?”
“I have.”
“Well?”
Magaffey had the instruments for such measurements, but they were typically used on a corpse. “Nearly three millimeters deep.”
“Christ.”
“Like I said, a bear. Only a bear or a panther has incisors long enough to've inflicted this wound.”
“Teethmarks?”
“Most assuredly fangs, yes. Curvature of the wound points to a set of real choppers.”
“And not a trace of the dog?”
“None. Dog likely sacrificed itself so the boy might save himself. Ought to find that dog and bury him proper.”
“Yeah ... yeah.”
For a moment Stroud's eyes locked onto the boy's and he did a tug-of-war with the staring, bug-eyes, but the boy was having none of it. Stroud wondered how he could keep his eyes open for so long without so much as a blink when Magaffey suddenly sprayed eyewash into each. The boy didn't flinch or move a muscle, not so much as an eyelid. The eyewash followed a tear down Timmy's cheek until Magaffey wiped it away.
“Must've been horrible for the boy,” said Magaffey.
The new bandages on the wounds along with Magaffey's own time-honored poultice, the unusual odor of fetid flesh, and whatever Magaffey had concocted to place on the wounds took on new strength. Stroud's eyes watered from it.
“What the hell've you got on that wound, Doc?”
“Herbs, some old provincial medicine ... nothing like Oliver Banaker would apply, I'll guarantee.”
“You're sure you're doing the right thing, Doc? Taking him outa the Institute and--?”
“Hold on, there. The parents pulled 'im from there, not me.”
“At your urging, I'm sure. Could go bad for you if the boy doesn't, you know, get better.”
Magaffey threw the bundle of used bandages stained with pus into a wastepaper basket he'd brought in with him. He stampeded his things together, and just before he was about to make for the other room, he said, “Come over to the window here, Stroud. Pull back the drapes.”
Stroud frowned but did as instructed. He realized only now why it was so dark in the room. The windows in the boy's room had been boarded over, nailed down, and as Magaffey replaced the drapes, he told Stroud that the parents were having bars install
ed.
“To keep the boy in?”
“You tell me, Mr. Know-it-all.” Magaffey stormed from the room, insulted.
Stroud took a final glance at the boy, the bars, the condition of the room, and he inhaled the last of the foul air before he rushed out after Martin Magaffey. Magaffey knew more than he was saying, much more. He halted the old black doctor at his beat up car.
“We searched all over that area for the boy and could not find him,” he said.
“Found a boneyard instead,” said Magaffey. “Peculiar one at that.”
“The boy's'd been playing among the bones earlier, Doctor.”
“So Mr. Carroll informs me.”
“Then how'd he get so damned far on foot? It doesn't make sense, doesn't add up.”
“So, your arithmetic's getting better, Doctor Stroud. Twin Bluffs is a piece from there. Not too bloody far from your old place.”
“You got in to see the boy, despite the fact Banaker had him ... had him...”
“Under close guard.”
“I was going to say intensive care.”
“I got lucky,” he replied.
Had help, Stroud's mind told him, but who? Pamela Carr, someone else at the Institute?”
“You convinced Timmy's parents to take him out of there.”
“I might've.”
“You got them thinking the Institute was no place for him. That you could take much better care of him here, at home.”
“Are you a clairvoyant, Stroud?”
“You forget, I was a detective.”
“Detectives read minds?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, the Meyers are good folk, and frankly, they were feeling a bit betrayed by Banaker. Strange thing to feel betrayed by a man you put all your trust into. I think Oliver plain lost them all by himself when he refused to allow the parents near the boy.”
Stroud nodded. “I can understand why they'd become upset with the man.”
“I told the father about the boy's physical condition,” continued Magaffey, his head shaking with the memory. “Didn't want to upset the lady any more'n necessary, but Meyers, he told her and they made the decision to bring him home. Simple as that.”
Vampire Dreams (Bloodscreams #1) Page 8