On his second read-through, reference to the sauna caught Braylen’s keen eye. He remembered a friend of his—Matthew Wells—had mentioned being paid unusually well to help someone in Sutherland construct a sauna cabin on their property this summer . . . who had it been for? He crinkled his eyebrows and gnawed on his lips until it came to him: Timothy Glass, a notable newcomer to the area.
Didn’t Timothy’s property boarder the field where all the crazies set out?
That, Braylen concluded after a moment of consideration, was enough of a coincidence to warrant exploring further, especially with it bearing relevance to something so significant.
Braylen carefully refolded and pocketed the paper. As it happened, he was well acquainted with Officer Tom Corey from all the manhunts he’d assisted the police with over the years. Braylen decided he would contact Officer Corey about it when he got home.
He started back towards the river. The hope, now, was that he would have two discoveries to report to the officer by the end of the day.
Chapter 9 – Blue Stew
Timothy shook his head, “I left the light above on again, haven’t I?”
He didn’t lower the gun.
The spirit of immature, harmless adventure that Walter had allowed to possess him now abandoned him like a cowardly child. He felt suddenly naked, miles from where anyone might think to look for him, in a hidden room, with a rifle aimed at his thumping chest.
His mouth flapped uselessly a couple times before he managed to say, “Yes.”
Timothy nodded, “I can’t be so cavalier,” he sighed, “but, it’s good to see you again, so soon. The corn was good.”
Walter tried to nod. It came across more like a brief neck cramp.
Timothy looked down. His lips tightened. Looking back up, he asked, “Are you out here alone, Walter?”
Walter was sickeningly aware of how Timothy had still given no indication that he meant to lower his rifle, “Um, no—I mean yes—but my friend knows where I am . . .”
Timothy laughed, and it was the laughter of a man who had serious trouble with humor. “You say that as though you think I mean to kill you, Walter.”
“Well . . . well, why are you still pointing your rifle at me?” His voice trembled through quivering lips.
“Why? Because you are trespassing on obviously private property.”
“I—I’m sorry. I was just fucking around. I thought this was a grow room, like—for pot and shit. I wasn’t even gonna take anything . . . just fucking around . . .” For the first time, Walter’s eyes darted past the rifle and the shadows of the three scars, to the room behind Timothy. He had already taken in enough from his peripheral sight to know that this hidden room was not a grow room for marijuana. His eyes now confirmed this hazy prior conclusion.
Cluttered work tables extended along shoddy plywood walls and intersected throughout the dirt floor space. The tables were covered with things that reminded Walter of a chemistry class he’d taken years ago: There were rounded, plastic containers covered with tiny text, there were cutting boards, and digital scales, and metal bowls, and measuring cups, and propane burners, and more. On a table directly beside Timothy there was a series of beakers and vials interconnected by plastic tubes, some under open flame, all containing liquids of different shades of blue.
Walter couldn’t know what he was looking at, and although he had never seen even a picture of one, he concluded now that this must be a meth lab.
Timothy hadn’t replied. He wore a sour grin that warped the three dark scars along his cheek unpleasantly.
“I promise I won’t tell anyone . . . I don’t give a fuck . . .”
“Don’t worry about a thing, Walter.” It was in no way reassuring to hear this said when it didn’t coincide with the lowering of a rifle that was trained at his chest. “I’m obviously curious, however: what were you doing out in the woods, in the middle of the night?”
His mind had flipped into a defensive state, and in this state Walter’s typical first instinct, when his actions were questioned, was to invent a story. After a flustered second, he realized there was no need for this, and, in fact, flimsy falsehoods could only hurt him.
“I’m just going through some rough times. I had a rough night. I felt like going for a midnight stroll up the river, to clear my mind . . . you know?”
“Clear the mind? Oh, I know exactly what you mean,” Timothy Glass finally dipped the point of the rifle down, though only as far as Walter’s kneecaps. “Life is just one long attempt to clear the mind, isn’t it? The joke of it is, it’s impossible, so long as you’ve got that big old noodle clogging the true you with pointless, endless thoughts and emotions.”
Walter was in no state to follow abstract thought. However, you don’t question a man pointing a gun at you, typically.
“Yeah, that’s true . . .”
“Sometimes I talk to people, Walter. People gossip about you around here. Bad things mostly; well, ‘bad things’ as they see it. Walter, I have a suspicion we may see eye-to-eye on many things.”
“Oh yeah? Like . . . what?” Walter attempted to sound interested and agreeable.
“Life. Like life.”
“Life?”
“Yes, life. It’s a sad and silly diversion from reality, wouldn’t you say?”
“You could say that . . .”
“Yes. Unfortunately, most of us are fooled by a chemical imbalance in our brains to feel that there’s some powerful reason to hold onto it, onto life, even as it punishes us without any mercy.” Walter did not like where this was going at all, though Timothy had now lowered the rifle clear of his body. Timothy went on happily, “So, instead, we’re forced to seek temporary reprieves from life . . . drinking alcohol, popping painkillers, shooting up, or the laundry list of other recreational drugs people have tied to your name, Walter.” Timothy nodded knowingly while Walter began to sweat: Timothy’s final point was looming. “Yes, we’re all trying to escape, but there’s still that dang chemical imbalance that prevents most of us from simply bailing on the sadness and silliness that defines our existences.”
Walter tried desperately to ignore the unavoidable conclusion by picking out something else—anything else—from what Timothy had said. “It’s . . . it’s not like I’m some kind of addict . . . I’ve tried things, that’s all . . .”
“You ‘try things’ because your chemical imbalance is not as severe as it is for some, and you can see what so many others see, yet still fail to act on: Life has no purpose. It is a sorry accident—a self-perpetuating, sorry accident. And you, like so many others, ‘try things’ to get away from it. Unfortunately, the medicine you’ve taken up until now has not been strong enough to fully counteract the disorder that inhibits you from seeking your proper liberation.”
It was becoming, it seemed to Walter, as prudent a time as any to challenge the man with the gun, “You say ‘chemical imbalance’ and ‘disorder’ in place of, I guess, survival instincts or emotional systems? Can you really call these things an ‘imbalance,’ if they’re integral . . .” but he had just collided with the final point, Walter realized as he trailed off miserably.
“. . . Integral ingredients in life?” Timothy supplied easily. “Yes, I can, because life is fundamentally built around a senseless drive towards an imbalance. This basic characteristic of life is not so horrible in, you know, birds and trees and life forms that lack such developed emotional systems, sure. But, for complex, conscious creatures like humans, it is a dismal prerequisite of life to hold us hostage in our bodies, leveraging fear and pain and false hope against us. You know, I have a PhD in biochemistry from Harvard, so I would know.”
Walter realized that his knees had begun to shake. He had no idea how this was going to play out, but there was a very bad feeling in his gut: Timothy Glass was a lunatic with a rifle angling to prove a fatal point.
Timothy smiled. His face had gotten clearer as Walter’s eyesight had acclimated to the contrast of light.
“Walter, remember one of humanities few truths: The only thing to fear is fear itself. The chemicals that have your brow glistening with sweat and your pulse racing right now, those chemicals lie to you. Your brain is a machine of false perception feeding into a useless cycle.”
“Maybe so,” Walter’s voice was small and pleading. “Still, I . . . I just want to go home now, Mister Glass,” he finished with a laugh that might’ve been closer to a whimper.
“You could,” drawled Timothy. “Though, I’d forgotten how cathartic using a fellow man as a sounding board can be for the damned series of tubes in our skulls. I had voiced some of this to former colleagues of mine before, and—if they would indulge me at all,” Timothy spat bitterly, “it would only be to go as far as suggest that I seek professional counseling, and that I’m still grieving over Susie. I don’t talk to any of them anymore.”
Timothy stopped.
“Susie was my wife. Did you hear what happened to her?”
“I . . . yeah, I’m sorry.”
“I was horribly torn up for a time, there’s no denying that. She was the only woman I’ve ever been with . . . the only woman I’ll ever be with,” the first and last trace of human emotion touched Timothy’s tone as he said this. He quickly regained his machine-like cadence, “In the end, I was gifted with the ultimate perspective on life. Susie is better off, now.”
“You might be right,” Walter spoke with forced sympathy. “And I agree about the therapeutic nature of talking things through. But . . . I’m just really tired, Mister Glass. And I’m really sorry I was so immature and broke onto your property like this. If you want, maybe . . . maybe I can come by over the weekend and do some chores, to pay you back?” Walter, if he got out of there alive, could not think of anything more horrible than willingly submitting himself to the company of this madman again—but he was willing to offer anything at that point to get away.
Timothy’s shaded face twisted out of contemplative thought.
Walter pushed, “Trust me, man; I’m the last person you should worry about ratting you out. You run a meth lab; whatever, good for you.”
Timothy’s eyebrows raised and his scars stretched, making Walter cringe.
“A ‘meth lab?’”
Walter nodded, though the assumption, abruptly, did not seem so obvious.
“Walter, oh Walter . . .” Timothy began to nod. It had come to the point of making a final choice, and the final choice was easy. “I could let you leave now, believing that. However, like I already said: I can’t be so cavalier. Plus, I like you Walter. I want to help you.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t . . .” his voice was no more than a faltering whisper.
“Give me some credit, Walter. Meth is not the cure. You know it, I know it. It’s temporary relief, like all the rest. The sum of my life history and my educational background has—by pure dumb chance, truth be told—allowed me to perceive with unprecedented clarity the disorder that afflicts virtually all humans. And my extensive education and my ties to the medical field, they all have enabled me to attempt develop a cure—a true cure—to life.”
Walter was actively trying to avoid connecting the dots; trying to avoid reaching the Hollywood cliché of knowing too much. He broke in stupidly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just let me go home. I don’t care . . . just let me go home . . .”
“Now I must give you some credit, Walter. You’re not this dumb. You already have enough to catch a hint, even if it might take a day to fully develop.” Timothy, now, set the rifle onto the table beside him, though he left one hand on it. “And I really need to thank you for this opportunity, Walter. The chance to talk my way through this is so very cathartic . . . the clarity I’m gaining from stripping all of it down to laymen’s terms is incredibly exhilarating, in fact!”
“I’m just so tired . . . I . . .” Walter was trembling all over now. It was starting to fit together, horribly, even as he still tried to shield himself through forced ignorance.
“And . . . you’re beginning to see it!” Timothy’s eyes lit up madly. “After a long year of full-time research and development, I succeeded. I have created a drug that effectively counteracts the chemical imbalance in our brains, the disorder that forces upon us predictable, broken perspectives. Perspectives that warp the truth of the universe, drawing us like bugs to shining beacons of useless desires like money and power, corralling the strays and the stragglers with senseless barriers of darkness and of fear and of the unknown.
“I alone, Walter, have developed the scientifically-sound cure to human life, which holds with it the promise of true freedom for all of mankind!” As his voice rose, a crazed light flared in Timothy’s eyes.
“It was four months ago that I saw my first indication that I was—finally—honing in on the cure. A lab rat, Jake 12, on the twelfth iteration of the compound, uninhibited by fear and pain, scratched the side of his head down to the bone, and later bled to death. I recreated the success a week later, and over a span of months I arduously studied the results and tweaked the compound as I moved onto guinea pigs, and then real pigs, and sheep, and a few shelter dogs.”
Electric lamps were scattered unsystematically over the work tables—plugged into the same industrial orange cords as the one upstairs—so lighting in the hidden basement was spotty. This helps explain why only now—as his eyes had grown more accustom to the lighting—did Walter notice the large animal cage and, next to it, stacks of smaller ones, all along the furthest, darkest wall. Additionally, the putrid smell of the place, which he had distractedly assumed to be the exposed soil, Walter now realized smelled a whole lot more like animal feces—a scent he was familiar with from dealing with so many farmers at work.
Timothy laughed before going on; Walter shuddered at the sound.
“The effects on the pigs and sheep, while on the developing drug, were less transparent, lacking the natural ability to claw themselves to death like the others. Most just didn’t eat or drink, and allowed themselves to wither away over the course of a week. My solution was to install a moderate-sized propane stove in one corner of their confinement, and set it to high. Like clockwork, every single animal approached the lit burners and promptly dropped their heads into the flames until their brains were medium-rare.”
Walter felt his stomach turn threateningly.
“However, while the theory was sound and the practice held no contradictions, dog and sheep brains are a far cry from the intricate prisons of the human brain.”
It was at this point that Walter acknowledged to himself that all this, without any further chance of doubt, was going in no other direction but the one he had already guessed. The thought of wheeling around and scrambling up the stairs as fast as he could shot through his reeling mind . . . but Timothy’s hand was still resting on the rifle . . .
Timothy went on, “So I—maybe a little too cavalierly—tried a small dosage on myself. And, even on such a small dosage, the experience was everything I could’ve hoped it would be. My acquired intellect no longer had to battle with my inborn, lying instincts over universal truths. I could see with utter lucidity how, for instance, my three-thousand dollar laptop held no more true value than an equally-sized rock in the woods . . . or, how my body was just as worthwhile, to the greater world, as a corpse decaying on the ground, mingling back together with the other elements . . . more valuable, in fact, seeing how humankind represents nothing more than walking prisons: things that have inherent negative value.”
Timothy searched over the table nearest to him briefly, but did not seem to find what he was looking. He went on, “I lost myself in such balanced, perfect perspective. I found a knife. Cutting these three slices into my face was the most wonderful experience of my life,” he ran a finger along the middle scar. “I could practically see, in lines of beautiful white, my essence escaping this horrible cell.”
Timothy stopped there for a moment and shook his head longingly.
Walter, his eyes shifting un
controllably about, now noticed how all the orange power cords seemed to congest around a high shelf in front of him and to his left . . .
Timothy went on, his head still moving back and forth, “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever brought myself to do, stopping after the three cuts . . . but I had remembered that I alone in this physical form have positive value. For I had created, what I then knew to be, the cure to human life. And, ever since then, I have been producing as much of it as fast as I can. I intend to spread this truth all over the Earth.”
Timothy stepped to one side, away from his rifle, and gestured at a series of sealed vials, separate from the beakers and the tubes and the flames on the same table. Inside the vials was an opaque liquid substance, colored baby-blue.
“I call it my Blue Stew.”
Walter stared at the vials, horrified. He said softly, without thinking, “You used that on the five victims the other night . . .”
“Well, as Rufus 5 demonstrated, Blue Stew is still effective when mixed with warm—not boiling—coffee. So, I just needed to lure a few dumb grunts out here through Craigslist with the promise of excessive upfront cash and mindless labor . . . and who doesn’t take coffee before work?” Timothy smiled to himself. “But. I would never say it like that . . . that I used it on them. I gave them the greatest possible gift, the gift of true perspective—blue perspective! They willingly set themselves free, all while seeing the world with more peace and clarity than anyone has before them!”
Mortified, Walter spoke automatically, “‘Peace and clarity’? Those men must’ve been tripping out of their minds—you turned them into deranged, violent psychopaths . . .”
Timothy’s face dropped for a moment.
“Walter, I am disappointed. I hoped someone like you would a least try to understand . . .”
Walter chanced a sideways glance at the nearby shelf that all the power cables appeared to run towards. He could see the black, plastic overhanging edges of what he guessed to be stacks of car batteries . . .
Blue Stew (Second Edition) Page 10