by Jack Kilborn
He winced at the pain—he’d stuck his burned right hand under Cindy’s armpit to pull her, while his less-injured left held the torch. The extra illumination allowed them to move fast, sidestepping obstacles, minding their footing. Unfortunately, it was also like a beacon to those cannibals. From the sounds of it, they had no problems moving quickly in the dark. Tyrone guessed they were less than twenty yards behind them.
Seeing he had no choice, Tyrone ditched the torch, tossing it into a clump of bushes and then tugging Cindy to the immediate left, breaking their current trajectory. Without the light it was like swimming in ink. Tyrone was forced to slow down to a quick walk, moving with one hand in front of him so he didn’t knock himself out on a tree. Gradually his night vision adjusted, and the trees thinned a bit to let occasional moonlight in, and the pair moved at a jog, Cindy in step beside Tyrone.
The figure stood in front of them, so still it almost looked like a tree. But the outline was definitely human, and there was only one, and rather than change directions yet again Tyrone lowered his head and charged.
His aim was good, and he prepared for impact, bunching up his neck and shoulder in a driving tackle.
But then, as if by magic, he was ass over head, flipping through the air, landing on his back so hard it knocked the wind out of him.
Tyrone had heard the term before, and knew what it meant, but he’d never had the wind knocked out of him before. It felt like a car was parked on his chest, and he couldn’t draw a breath, couldn’t make a sound.
This brought instant panic, and he began to flail around. Not at the figure. Just random, spastic movements, as if that could somehow fill him with the oxygen he so desperately craved. Little sparkly motes began to float through his vision. He felt close to passing out.
Then something dropped on his stomach. A person. Miraculously, the pressure forced his diaphragm to work again, and Tyrone wheezed in air like a vacuum. He tried to raise his arms, to defend himself against whoever had thrown him, and then he heard Cindy yell, “Sara!”
“Tyrone?”
It was Sara sitting on him. She was the one who flipped him. Maybe there was more to that judo shit than Tyrone had thought.
“You beat on all yo kids like this, Sara?” he whispered.
She immediately got off him, and Tyrone felt her hand grab his, pulling to help him up. He flinched away, her touch on his raw palm making him swear.
“Are you okay, Tyrone?” Sara asked. She sounded pretty frazzled.
“Hands are messed up, ‘n my pride just took a beatin’, but I’m okay.”
Sara tried again to help him stand, this time lifting by the elbow. When he was vertical, he had to endure a hug. Then Cindy came by and also hugged him, which Tyrone found much easier to endure.
“Girl, I know this ain’t the time, but, damn, if you don’t look good in nothin’ but that bra.”
“Thanks,” Cindy said. “Look, Tyrone, about—”
“Not your fault.” He rubbed his fingertips along the small of her back. “I couldn’t do it neither. That’s why I gave you the gun.”
“You found the gun?” Sara asked.
“I dropped it.”
Tyrone pulled Cindy closer, “It’s not her fault.”
“Where are the others? Are they okay?”
Tyrone and Cindy spent the next few minutes filling Sara in on everything that had happened, eventually asking her where Jack was. Sara, in turn, told them about all she’d been through.
“Mountains of bones?” Tyrone still had his left hand on Cindy’s back. It hurt, but he could deal with it. “How many damn cannibals are on this island?”
“These bones were old. Real old. I think Martin’s legend about there being a civil war prison here may have been right. There were thousands of soldiers missing after the war, soldiers that have never been accounted for. Thirteen thousand men died at the Confederate prison, Andersonville. Six thousand at its Union counterpart, Camp Douglas. It’s possible the Union army also had another, secret prison. A place they’d kept hidden, off the record books, in case the South won the war.”
Tyrone didn’t get it. “Those cannibals move damn fast for bein’ over a hundred years old.”
Sara shook her head. “Those people, the ones after us, they aren’t from the prison. They’re something else.”
“What are they?”
“Martin called this Plincer’s Island, and the name has been nagging at me.” Sara paused, then said, “But I think I finally remembered who he is.”
Laneesha tried to think about Brianna, tried to cling to sanity by picturing her daughter’s sweet little face. But she couldn’t concentrate over the sounds of her own agonized screams.
Georgia couldn’t move. She thought she might be strapped down, but she didn’t feel any straps. In fact, she felt naked. Naked and lying on a cold table.
Lester’s play table? Isn’t that what the crazy doctor called it?
No. That had shackles, and was wooden. This table felt like metal.
She tried to open her eyes and, amazingly, she couldn’t. Nor could she turn her head, clench her fist, or so much as moan. Nothing seemed to work at all.
Georgia remembered Lester holding her tight, then the doctor sticking her with some kind of needle. Must have knocked her out. But she wasn’t knocked out any more. She was awake, and aware, and could feel. But she couldn’t move any of her muscles.
Then, abruptly, light.
It took a moment to focus, and then Georgia found herself staring up at Lester, who was leaning over her. She realized he’d opened her eyelids with his fingers.
“Don’t worry, Georgia girl. It only hurts for a little while.”
She stared hard at Lester, imploring him to stop this, to help her get away. He smiled at her, then brought something in front of her eyes.
His camera.
The flash made Georgia’s pupils painfully constrict. Then Lester stepped back, and Doctor Plincer’s face came into view.
“I can’t express, my dear, how excited I am by the opportunity to try my procedure out on you. I’ve experimented on dozens of people over the last decade. Not nearly enough, considering the importance of my work. Only about ten a year, average. I’m limited, you see. Not many people visit the island. And those that do, well, I usually don’t have the opportunity to work with them. My, failures, I suppose you can call them, are quite hostile toward strangers. And quite hungry too, I’m afraid. I’m an old man, on a fixed income. I really can’t afford to feed so many.”
She felt the doctor’s hand touch her neck, then smooth her hair behind her ear. From deep within the bowels of the prison, Georgia heard screaming.
“Pardon the bluntness,” Dr. Plincer said, “but you really aren’t much to look at. You do have something about you, however. Something extraordinary. You see, most of the people I’ve had the pleasure to experiment on, they’re normal people. I’ve only had one success with a normal person. True, I’ve only had two successes with sadistic personality types, but the overall percentage is much greater.”
Doctor Plincer kept his hand on Georgia’s ear. Then he began to squeeze the lobe. Hard. Digging his nails in. Georgia’s eyes teared up, but she couldn’t flinch away from the pain, not even a millimeter.
“The drug used to paralyze you is called succinocholine. It renders you completely immobile. This is necessary, as I’m working with a very precise area of the brain. If you moved, even slightly, you could end up being lobotomized, or having your language center damaged, or your neuron clusters regressed. That would be a waste. Unfortunately, for you, I have to keep you awake for the procedure. The brain is an amazing organ, and it has many different states of consciousness. For this experiment to be successful, you need to be in a beta wave state. Fully awake.”
He moved in closer, smiling. Georgia could smell his sour body odor.
“I’m using a serum. A special serum. It contains, among other things, pluriopotent stem cells. You’ve heard of stem c
ell research, I’m sure. The bans. The controversy. The ethical dilemma.”
The doctor scratched his chin, and a bit of dried skin flaked off. Georgia felt the crumb land on her lower lip.
“The reason stem cells are so important in research is that they are, in layman’s terms, blank. A stem cell can develop into any sort of cell at all, if properly coerced. Skin cells. Bone cells. Nerve cells. Brain cells.” Plincer shrugged. “Alas, the only continuous and plentiful source for stem cells is unborn babies. Hence the banning and the controversy. But I have an arrangement with a doctor on the mainland, one who specializes in terminating pregnancies. He supplies me with all the stem cells I require.”
Georgia willed herself to move. She had to get away from the maniac. But no matter how hard she tried, how much she concentrated, her muscles refused to obey her commands.
“Lester is right. This is going to hurt. The only way I can inject my experimental serum to the correct area of your brain is through your tear ducts. My colleagues, the fools, didn’t think it could be done. But it can. I’m going to enhance certain portions of your brain. Make them grow larger. With a little bit of luck, you may soon join my other successes.”
Doctor Plincer held something in front of Georgia’s line of vision. A syringe. A big fucking syringe, with the longest needle Georgia had ever seen.
He can’t plunge that into my eye. Dear god sweet jesus oh no he can’t…
“From what I’ve been told, the first injection is the worst.” The doctor smacked his lips. “The five after that aren’t as bad.”
He raised the needle above her eye, leaning in even closer, the point coming down slowly, methodically, until it rested on her tear duct. It was a minor sting, like a piece of grit caught in her eye. But Georgia couldn’t rub it away. She couldn’t even blink.
Then Doctor Plincer shoved.
The pain was preternatural. Blinding. Explosive. Like her eyeball had burst and her brain was boiling and it went on and on and ON…
Plincer extracted the needle, sighed, and used his dirty coat sleeve to wipe away some sweat that had beaded up on his bald head. Georgia’s head still throbbed. Somehow, each thought, each sense, had taken on an almost physical manifestation. Words that she cognated felt like stab wounds, each syllable a twist of a knife. Doctor Plincer’s BO smelled like Georgia’s nose was on fire. His hand on her face was a jumper cable attached to her nerves, roasting her alive. Every single sensation, every single thought, brought agony she couldn’t escape from.
Then her vision turned red.
“Good girl. I’ll give you a lollipop later. Let me suction off some of this blood.”
Dr. Plincer held a tube to her tear duct. It hurt worse than a hornet stinging her eyeball, and the sound made her ache like her teeth were being drilled.
“What you’re feeling now is called synesthesia. It’s when each of our senses mixes up its signals on the way to the brain. It’s how someone taking LSD thinks he can smell the color red, or taste a Led Zeppelin song. But in your case, every sense you experience is activating your pain receptors. And because of that, I’m ashamed to admit I’ve lied to you.”
Doctor Plincer raised another syringe. “These next five injections are going to hurt quite a bit more.”
Tom’s stomach was really making noise now, loud enough for it to be heard above his stomping and crashing through the forest. The smell of cooked meat was intoxicating. The faster he got there, the faster he could stuff his face. Then he could take his meds, go to sleep, and try to enjoy the rest of this mini-vacation before his dumb-ass father sent him to that dumb-ass military academy.
He wasn’t worried about getting in trouble for the gun incident. A large component of his ADHD was an inability to take responsibility for his actions. Tom didn’t feel empathy, or remorse, especially since everything that went wrong in his life was someone else’s fault.
Tom was getting close now, because he saw the flickering orange light of the campfire through the trees. He was so intent on reaching it, and the food, that he didn’t watch his footing and tripped over an exposed tree root. Right into a burr bush.
“Aw…shit.”
The burrs clung to his shirt like little Velcro jelly beans. He got on his knees, fussing to tug them off, then on impulse he reached up and checked his hair.
More burrs.
“God damn it!”
They were stuck good, too. The last time Tom encountered burrs he was a kid, maybe six or seven. The only way to remove them was with a haircut. A drastic haircut that made him look like frickin’ Homer Simpson. He yanked at one stuck in his bangs, pulling until his eyes watered.
Frickin’ great.
Tom didn’t like being laughed at, and he was sure everyone else would think this was the funniest thing ever. It wasn’t even his fault. Stupid root. Stupid burr bush. Stupid Martin and Sara for taking him on this stupid trip. He debated whether he even wanted to go back to camp. Maybe if he went back to the lake, went swimming, the burrs would loosen up.
No. Bad idea. It was too easy to get lost.
He sucked in air through his teeth, seriously annoyed, and decided he would punch anyone who made fun of him. Ten steps later, he was at the campsite.
Except this wasn’t the right campsite. First of all, there were no tents. Second, what he thought was a fire wasn’t really a fire. It was a big patch of glowing orange sticks and what looked like charcoal. And there was some kind of broken swing-set sitting in the middle of the fire.
Tom walked around the fit pit, searching for people. No one was around. But the cooked meat smell was definitely coming from here. In fact, it was coming from that swing-set thingy.
He gave it his full attention. There was some kind of meat roasting there, a large hunk between the metal bars. Maybe half a cow. No, not big enough for a cow. A pig, maybe. Or a big turkey. Hard to tell by looking at it. The meat was really scorched, and there weren’t any features to identify it.
Whatever it was, it smelled awesome. And no one appeared to be nearby, so no one could protest if Tom helped himself. The burrs in his hair were forgotten. Another symptom of ADHD was a severe lack of memory retention, coupled with an ultra-short attention span. Tom had been told this many times, but for some reason it never stuck with him.
He took a quick look around for some sort of barbecue fork or tongs that he could use to grab some of the meat, then figured he could probably just stick his hand between the bars and grab a hunk from the top part. So he did just that.
It was hot, almost too hot to touch. But Tom was quick, and the meat was so tender it fell off the bone. He brought back a nice, long strip, and played hot potato, tossing it from hand to hand, blowing on it. When it was finally cool enough, Tom raised the greasy morsel to his lips.
Hmm. Tastes like chicken.
Damn good, though. Needed some sauce, and some salt, but as far as mystery meat went it sure beat the frickin’ meatloaf Sara cooked every frickin’ Sunday.
Tom licked his fingers clean and reached for seconds.
Sara squatted on her haunches, and she instructed Tyrone and Cindy to do the same. They listened to the night, straining to hear the distinctive sounds of pursuit. The night only offered crickets, and the whistling wind.
Sara had calmed down a bit, but still wished she had a light. If Tyrone hadn’t run into her, Sara knew she would still be standing in that same spot, freaking out. But slipping into the role of responsible adult had forced her to push back her fear of the darkness, at least for the moment. Plus Sara surprised herself by being able to flip Tyrone, even in her semi-catatonic state. Maybe she wasn’t as helpless as she thought.
Her mind once again flitted to Martin and Jack, and she absently touched her chest, missing her son’s weight. She hoped like hell they were both okay.
“So who was Plincer?” Cindy whispered.
The question took Sara back to college, more than a decade ago. “A footnote in abnormal psychology. I learned about him in school
, in an advanced psych class. In the 90s, he made waves as an expert witness in serial killer trials. For the defense. If I remember right, Plincer thought evil was a genetic physical trait.”
Cindy leaned in closer. “You mean like hair color? Or height?”
“Exactly. He believed some people’s brains were different, that they were born that way. If it was their brain that made them evil, it wasn’t really their fault, so they couldn’t be blamed for their crimes.”
Tyrone snorted. “That’s crazy.”
“It’s far out, but it does have some basis in fact. The amygdale, thalamus, hypothalamus, and the cingulate gyrus—these are all parts of the brain responsible for forming emotions. Studies in animals have shown if these parts are damaged or removed, it has radical effects on behavior. They can be made more aggressive, more violent. There have also been cases in humans where injury or aneurism completely changed someone’s personality. I heard of a recent murder trial in Chicago where a brain tumor allegedly contributed to a police officer going on a killing spree.”
Sara also recalled the famous case of Phineas P. Gage. She had written a report on him in school, as had every other aspiring psychologist. Gage was a railroad worker in the 1800s. He was blasting rock and the explosion drove a three foot long iron bar through his head. Incredibly, he survived. He was even coherent, and could speak moments after the accident. But after the bar was removed, Gage’s personality changed dramatically. He’d become more impulsive and violent, prone to risk-taking. Friends said that he was unrecognizable, a completely different person.
This incident proved revolutionary. Science hadn’t previously known that specific regions of the brain effected behavior.
“Whether or not we want to think about it,” Sara continued, “who we are as people is very much tied into a bunch of cells, chemicals, and electrical changes in our brains. Tampering with this delicate balance can turn someone into someone else.”