Grave Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  Cahil had robbed those graves thirteen years ago not for the whole brain but for a two-inch-long finger-sized sliver of it. Such a piece of tissue could not possibly house all of the cosmic mind or soul of an individual, to act as the funnel for the cosmic river to enter the brain. Besides, why take chances? Consume everything, his own mind consistently told him.

  Still, it was good to know all of Cahil's thoughts on the subject in order to implicate Cahil as the so-called Skull-digger. To this end, Grant Kenyon had used Cahil's beliefs against him. Still, fortified with Cahil's encouraging words, Kenyon logged off, signed off on the computer use with a fake ID and returned the key to the desk.

  It was time to acquire more of the C-mind, the cosmic soul, the most profound excitement, and that awe-inspiring power that his other self required of him and fed on. Promises had been made; a deal between him and his brain had been struck: that if he stepped up his hunting, and Phillip could feed faster, the final prize was realized sooner.

  He asked the desk clerk where he could find some action. The man's confused expression asked, What kind of action? Grant said, “Where're the clubs around here? You know, music, dancing, women?”

  “Oh, well, there are a number of strips.”

  “Can you show me on a map?”

  “Most certainly.”

  Outside Savannah, Georgia 2 A.M., July 8, 2003

  ALL that the completely possessed Dr. Grant Kenyon—as Phillip—wanted was the girl's brain, nothing more. They— the authorities—could have the rest.

  And so Phillip the Cosmic Seeker—as his brain sometimes called itself—would feed.

  He switched on the tensor lamp directed at his fourth victim s cranium. The light blinded her as she struggled for consciousness and blinked in disorientated fervor. He began the operation by shaving the area of the scalp, backing off her hairline. He whispered, “So as to make the cut as clean as possible.”

  She moaned in response, her body somehow aware of him atop her, independently squirming against her restraints there in the back of the van. Next he shaved her eyebrows with a battery-operated shaver followed by a razor. They must come off completely. He didn't want any hairs adhering to the brain when he removed it.

  The Demoral was enough to keep her groggy, but she was coming around, feeling the pressure of the razor against her scalp and eyebrows. More forceful now, she continued to struggle against her bonds a struggle that only excited the Cosmic Seeker. She had no power against the handcuffs around her wrists and ankles, which Phillip had instructed Grant to install in his van—along with the surgical leather strap that held her head in place at the throat and temples.

  He had driven out to Picketville, an area of little population, and parked in a wooded area near the train tracks. No one for a mile or so. No one to hear her struggle or her screams when he chose to take the gag away and click on the handheld rotary bone saw.

  Grant had no trouble performing the operation. After all, it was a procedure he'd performed on cadavers at the morgue. He had studied the pathology books and had been placed in charge of the morgue when old Graham Dobson had died. Since then, four years ago, Grant had opened up and examined some thirty brains, most of which he'd put back, but many he'd consumed. He had become proficient while at Mt. Holyoke Memorial Hospital at opening and closing the cranium in the manner he now performed on the living. It was a procedure he watched closely during his medical training. He recalled the excitement of wanting to know precisely how each incision was made in order to create a large enough frontal window from which to take hold of and remove the brain—to pluck it free of its prison. The medical books, his pathology instructor and the old hospital pathologist had made it look easy, but he had known even after doing it several times now on a living subject that it was never easy or without problem. The brain could be stubbornly anchored, especially in the living.

  He removed the gag and said, “Now, this is just a razor. I just finished shaving your head. Necessary, Winona, before I cut it open.”

  Winona Miller screamed in response. He glanced at the tape recorder set up earlier by Phillip to catch all the sound effects—in order to prove to Grant that he had actually done this hideous deed again.

  “I have to search your brain for answers. I want to share with you all my sight, dear girl, and you will come to know who you really are. I know your soul is in there, inside your head.”

  “What. . . what do you . . . want from me?”

  “Your memory, your DNA and your cosmic mind.”

  “What?”

  “Now, I have to mark where the cuts will go,” he said, replacing the razor with a red marker. The soft kiss of the marker made her tremble even more than the razor had. She started screaming and pleading for her life.

  “I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die. . . .”

  “I don't so much want your life as your brain. It's the only reason we're here, Winona.”

  She screamed in response.

  He breathed in her terror; it made Phillip feel powerful to make her scream. Her screams penetrated the van walls and echoed out into the night, but they were far from anyone who could hear.

  “Time to cut,” he said as he began the incision with the scalpel. Her screams heightened at the scalpel's kiss, which brought the blood. Outside, a train screamed by as if on cue, drowning her out. Then she fainted. He eased back on his knees vulturelike, then he continued with the operation.

  He hadn't known whether he could perform the operation on a living person that first time, back in Richmond, Virginia; but now, with his fourth victim in his complete power, held as she was to the van floor, it certainly presented itself as the thing to do again, to add to his collection. Why he wanted her brain in his hands, or what he might do with it, once he had it removed, he had not known the first time he had severed a living, still-pulsating brain from a person. But now he knew that his own brain wanted them. “Don't you understand, Winona?” he asked. “Your power source will join with mine. I know it's in there somewhere.” He caressed her head, her hair, her brow. “You're never going to be alone. You'll be with the rest of us. We'll all be one. ...” he told her even though she'd swooned into unconsciousness. “Too bad I can't hold it up to your eyes for you to see before your last breath. Maybe then you'd believe me.”

  Phillip had taught Grant well. He was coming to accept what he was. As he worked the handheld, relatively small electric bone cutter, the saw wheel whirred and screeched. The sound lulled him into the thought of how he had entrapped her, using her own childish naiveté against her.

  Grant had been cruising by a residential home in south Georgia when he had spotted Winona getting into a car with a young man. He had followed as she and the boyfriend went to a dance spot called Sandman's. On the dance floor, he got close enough to see it in her eyes, that she was one of them—the virtuous chosen. She smiled at him, and he nodded casually. Having a beer at the bar, he watched and waited, patient and vigilant. He soon realized that the couple was not getting along. When she bolted from the dance floor and her boyfriend followed, so did Phillip.

  The girl and her boyfriend appeared to be in their early twenties as they stood arguing in the dimly lit parking lot.

  He stayed at a safe distance to watch their argument escalate while other couples politely ignored the discord and passed by—the comings and goings of any nightclub. Phillip saw many underage teens playing at being older, and he worried about looking too out of place here, too old for the general clientele.

  Then he saw the girl storm off alone down the street and away from the club, leaving her vulnerable. He watched her boyfriend rush to his car, peel off and go right past her, slowing only to call her a bitch, not stopping.

  Returning to his van, Phillip—or the thing Grant had become—followed her progress. Phillip got into his van and made his way toward his prey.

  She had been drinking heavily at the club. Now she was hitchhiking for a ride home. He closed the distance between th
em, and in a moment he stopped alongside the young woman. “Need a lift?” he asked, smiling wide.

  At first she held back, but then she half stumbled to the window, slurring her words as she spoke. “How far you going down Turnbull Boulevard?”

  “As far as you need me to, darlin'. You came off a pretty bad scene back there at Sandman's.”

  “You saw that?” she asked.

  “Bad scene,” he repeated. “Been there, done that more than I care to say. Guess we all have. But it'll look better to you in the morning. Look, I'd be happy to get you home.”

  She stopped to stare at him intently, studying his features.

  “I'm just a little wasted,” he added, “but not so much I can't drive.”

  He wasn't entirely a stranger to her. “Didn't I see you inside Sandman's?” she asked. “I thought you must work there or maybe own the place.”

  “No, wish I was an owner. I just go there sometimes. So, yeah, you did see me inside. I know I saw you.”

  She looked over his dark van, a look of uncertainty coloring her features. She was pretty, he thought, in a Southern suburban prissy girl way.

  “Come on. I've got the ride and the time and something to help with your pain.”

  “No way. You sound dangerous. Besides, you're too old for me.” “Whoa, that hurt. But maybe a little experience and danger . . . maybe that's what you need about now. Forget that loser. I promise, I'll be nothing but a gentleman—until you get to know me, of course.”

  She hesitated, trying to ponder exactly what that implied. “A gentleman until I get to know you, hmmm . . . Well, it is a long way, and my folks'd kill me if they knew I was out here alone. I thought that jerk was going to come crawling, but that didn't happen.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “The Heights.”

  “Coincidence, so do I. Come on. I won't bite.”

  “You don't sound like you're from around here, and my mother always says never to talk to strangers.”

  “Your mother's right, and so are you. No, I'm from up North. Just moved here to get work.”

  “Where abouts up North?”

  “New Jersey.”

  “What's your name?”

  “Phillip”—he was not lying—”what's yours?”

  “Not sure I should tell you,” she teased. “Listen, Phillip, you got any weed or anything that might cheer a girl up?”

  He nodded and smiled. “You're not one of those undercover narcs now are you, baby?”

  She laughed at this.

  “Sure thing,” he assured her. “Plenty enough for both of us. Plenty.”

  She didn't answer, her mind contemplating him and his offer. She hesitated but placed a hand on the door handle and then cranked it down, opening the door and cursorily checking the cab from the door to be certain everything was normal. She glanced into the dark void of the empty rear. She could not make out anything there but a toolbox and some discarded boxes. “No backseats?” she asked.

  “I have to keep the back for my work, you know—supplies and stuff,” he said.

  “Supplies of what?”

  “Just stuff I have to cart around.” He gave a thought to the concealed .38 below his seat and the sh@egon in the rear. These were for emergency use only.

  “What, like tools? You a mechanic, a carpenter, an electrician, what?”

  “Yeah, an electrician,” he lied.

  “You work with your hands, then.” She gave him a coy smile and he returned it.

  “What's your name?” he asked again.

  “Winona.”

  Mimicking her Georgia accent, he replied, “That's a right pretty name, Wiii-no-naaa.”

  “Why thank you, Mr. Phillips.” Calling him “mister” reinforced her earlier remark that she found him too old for her liking, but she was interested in getting high.

  She got into the van, inspected the door for anything strange, making certain she could open it before she closed it. “With all the weird shit going around in the world today, you can't be too careful.” She relaxed, accepting the ride by getting into the front seat and instantly putting out a hand, asking, “So . . . what've you got to smoke or pop?”

  “Sure . . . sure . . .” He fumbled with a joint, lit it, and dropped it into her lap. While she fought to retrieve the burning thing, her high-pitched voice telegraphing her distress, he suddenly plunged a needle into her forearm, saying, “Meet Mr. Demoral, Winona.”

  At the same instant, her boyfriend's car raced by again, the burning rubber indicating his anger. He'd gone around the block and watched to see how easy a pick up she'd be. At the same instant her boyfriend sped by, Winona raised the mace she'd been clutching to Phillip's eyes, burning him only a little before he tore it away.

  He pulled the door closed and drove off. At a safe distance away from the club as the Demoral began to work its magic, he stopped the van and dragged her back into the rear, handcuffing her into position.

  She pleaded with him not to rape her. He promised that he would not do anything of the kind. “I told you I was a gentleman, a gentleman. I'm only interested in your mind, Winona.”

  He'd remained true to his word as the saw now bit into her scalp. He liked to start at the top and work his way to each side at the ears, run to the base of each ear and then return to the midpoint between the eyes at the eyebrow line. Dr. Grant knew it was the neatest, most efficient way to handle the job with the least amount of bone shrapnel and blood. He didn't particularly care to have blood everywhere.

  Jacksonville, Florida 4:25 A.M., same night

  THE helicopter descended over the gleaming Jacksonville cityscape, its surrounding waters reflecting the buildings, many lit with colorful pink and pale purple lights, turning the skyline into a 'Wizard of Oz setting. The pilot pointed at the police strobe lights below and said that he would put the chopper down as close to the scene as possible. That meant landing atop a small, weedy little plateau of pitted earth along the riverbank, a dusty sandlot for parking near the Venetia Warf. The dirt-and-sand parking lot looked at odds with the surrounding sheen of concrete high-rises, huge bridges and blacktop everywhere else.

  While the new sun played hide-and-seek with the morning clouds, the pilot brought them down. Once the skids had settled and the chopper sat firm, Jessica took her medical bag and rushed out, crouching below the blades. J.T. followed. They then waved off the pilot and made their way to the waiting party of two uniformed people and one man in a gray suit.

  “Dr. Coran, so glad you could come.” Lorena Combs shook Jessica's hand. “I'm Sheriff Lorena Combs, Duval County.” Combs had a gazelle like grace about her, and a firm grip as she next shook J.T.'s outstretched hand. She then introduced the Quantico team to George Sheay, the heavyset chief of police in Jacksonville. The FBI's agent in charge, Henry Cutter, a tall man with a misshapen nose, stepped forward and introduced himself as well, telling them, “You can count on our full involvement and all the help we can offer, Dr. Coran, Dr. Thorpe. Sorry to take you away from home and family.”

  J.T. was a bachelor, and Jessica shrugged Cutter's remark off, even as she gave thought to Richard Sharpe, who'd called from Korea during a stopover on his way to consult on the Beijing extradition case. “Where's the corpse?” Jessica asked.

  Combs indicated the way and escorted Jessica to where the body still lay on the boat. With the onset of morning, traffic on the bridge nearby had increased and motorists were hearing about the victim over radio waves as they passed the wharves. The helicopter landing had also alerted people that something odd was going on at the wharf. A nearby sightseeing tour group chugged off on a river excursion, passengers pointing to the activity at the death boat. Jessica saw that they were surrounded by small businesses catering to weekend fishermen and tourists, but that the body was on a boat along one of the wharves filled with expensive yachts. Amid the yachts squatted the rusty old shrimping vessel. On the other side of a chain-link fence, a second wharf was lined with professional fishing boats an
d shrimp boats. “Community of yachtsmen are pissed off because the shrimp boat dared to dock in their little territory,” Combs mentioned.

  While equipped with motors for maneuverability and chase, some of the relatively small shrimp boats also maintained backup sails. Though most of the rigging, Jessica realized as she approached, was actually nets strung about the boats—in serious need of disentanglement. Most of the shrimpers had already set out for an area where they could go from the St. John's River to the ocean. Those remaining were chugging and sputtering badly while at idle; some were under repair, while the one in question, squatted among a bevy of beautiful yachts, dead silent. This boat was littered with almost as much yellow police caution tape as rigging and netting.

  An elderly, thin-faced man used a sea cap in his hand to punctuate his shouting at stationary police guards on the dock beside his boat. “What in God's creation is taking so long? I shoulda just threw the body back into the St. John's when it come up!”

  “Since the fish population has declined, the shrimpers usually go out twice a day, twilight and dusk,” said Combs in Jessica's ear. “Owner-operator of the boat being held is pissed off that we haven't released his vessel.”

  As Jessica and J.T. walked toward the boat, their shoes slapping the boards, Jessica read the name painted across the wooden rear: Uneven Odds. As she neared the boat, she studied the screeching seagulls all around and overhead, and aside from their footfalls on the boardwalk, she heard a playful sound like melodic chimes. It was the boat's rigging just overhead, the ropes in the wind tapping out a tune over the body, as if playing a hymn for the dead girl.

  Sheriff Lorena Combs said, “Boat captain says he picked her up about a mile north of here. I've got men combing that area for anything unusual, trying to determine exactly where she may have been dumped into the river.”

  “Shot in the dark, huh? Any luck identifying her?” Possibly. We put missing persons on it, and they're bringing over a couple to have a look.”