Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts

by Orrin Grey

  The driver, a man about your age, is sitting in a side room with bare walls, his head held in his hands. He looks like he’s about to cry. “I gave it to Carl,” he says, Carl being one of the coroner’s assistants, who has already sworn that he hasn’t received a delivery all day. “We’ve known each other for years. Why would he say I didn’t? Why would he lie?”

  “What’s going to happen to him?” you ask, as you walk back to the car.

  Detective Laughton shakes his head. “Not our problem,” he says. “They’re probably in on it,” with a jerk of his head back to include the coroner, his assistant, and the driver all in one vague motion. “Go home. We’ll worry about it in the morning. It’s not like she’s going to get any deader.”

  ***

  Home is a fifth-floor apartment that looks out over train tracks and a couple of rooftops, but that’s not where you go. Detective Laughton drops you off and you walk down to a little basement theatre called the Orpheus, one of many such theatres to bear the name. You’re seeing a girl named Deidre who sells tickets there, and most nights you find your way down to the theatre and either flirt with her, if she’s not too busy, or else buy a ticket to the show if she is.

  There’s a new act that started just this week. “The Amazing Dr. Mirakle,” a mesmerist. You remember Deidre mentioning it when you round the corner and see the marquee. “He can make a person do just about anything,” she said. “Cluck like a chicken, turn a cartwheel, and they don’t remember a thing about it afterward.”

  When you walk up Deidre looks beautiful, but busy, harried, one strand of her blonde hair come loose and dangling in front of her face, where she keeps blowing it aside as she counts out money and tears off tickets. “I’ll take one,” you say, walking up to the booth.

  “The show’s already started,” she cautions, smiling.

  “That’s all right. This way I’ll be here when you get off.” She looks grateful, tears off a ticket and hands it to you.

  You push through the curtained doorway and into the auditorium. It’s smoky, dim. The stage is small, the setting intimate. More like a big parlor than a theatre. You find a seat near the back, looking down across the backs of people’s heads to the stage where a striking figure stands before the audience. He wears a coat-and-tails, holds a brass-topped cane in his hand. A top hat sits on a stool behind him as he bows and speaks to the audience, obviously having just completed some feat.

  Dr. Mirakle’s face is white, his eyes dark and sunken. His hair grows into a natural widow’s peak, and is swept away from his face to curl slightly at the back. He speaks with a faint Eastern European accent that he disguises well enough to make it almost impossible to place.

  “No doubt you have seen other so-called ‘hypnotists’ perform their chicanery on stage,” he says. “But I assure you that my work is different. I have studied under some of the great minds of Europe, perfecting Herr Mesmer’s theories of animal magnetism. You see no dangling pendulums or spinning boards here, no, but only science!”

  He does a trick or two, and he isn’t lying about the paraphernalia. There’s not a pocket watch or a multi-hued lantern to be found. He simply locks eyes with his volunteer, speaks to them softly, evenly, too quietly to be heard in the audience, then he passes his hands in front of their eyes, down their chests, along their arms, his fingertips barely brushing the fabric of their clothes, and the next thing you know they’re performing according to his commands, answering questions in monotone voices that make their wives or husbands, brothers or sisters gasp.

  To close his act, he calls a man up onto the stage. He looks somber as he makes the passes with his hands. “Herr Mesmer’s work has been relegated to the trade of hypnotists and showmen,” he says, as though talking to himself, but loudly enough that the audience can hear. “But he was more than a hypnotist, yes? He was a scientist. He saw in men the animal essence, and he sought to affect it, to control it. But who can say that he fully understands man?”

  He steps away from his volunteer, a big, broad-shouldered man with sandy hair and beard. “Now you,” he says, obviously speaking to the volunteer now. “What are you?”

  In answer, the man drops to all fours, standing on his feet with the palms of his hands on the stage. He swings his head back and forth, snuffling at the air in a manner you’ve seen before, at the zoo downtown.

  “Ah,” Dr. Mirakle says, “this man, he has some Norse ancestry, perhaps, yes? The Norse, they believe that by wearing an animal’s skin, they can channel that animal’s spirit. They wear the bear’s skin to become fierce like a bear. Barsark, yes? But this man here, he wears no skin, but he is barsark all the same, is he not?”

  At this the man rises back to his full height, his arms extended out and up, and roars out across the auditorium, a terrible, animal sound that no human throat should ever make.

  Deidre said that he could make people quack like a duck, but this isn’t a man being made to roar like a bear. From where you sit you can see the man’s eyes, see the way they gleam when the light strikes them. This man is lost completely. For all intents and purposes, it is a bear who stands up on the stage before you.

  Then Dr. Mirakle snaps his fingers and the illusion—if it was an illusion—is dispersed. The man is just a man again, and slowly, sheepishly he folds his arms back to his sides, his eyes already searching in the crowd for the woman he was sitting beside, the question visible in his gaze, “What did I do?”

  After the show, as the other audience members file out, you think to approach Dr. Mirakle, to ask him a question. He hasn’t retreated backstage like most showmen, but is walking to and fro, picking up items with the help of a big thuggish assistant who looks like he’d be more at home on the docks than on a stage, even a shabby one like the Orpheus.

  You introduce yourself, and Dr. Mirakle smiles, bows slightly, shakes your hand. “A pleasure,” he says. “And what can I do for you?”

  You make yourself meet his gaze, to see if you feel anything unusual. His eyes are dark, surprisingly deeply-set, but up close you can see that they’re just brown. You feel no shiver, no clouding of your mind.

  “I had a question,” you say. “Could a person be…” You stop, searching for the word.

  “Hypnotized is fine,” Dr. Mirakle says. “It is a name used by parlor tricksters, but in reality, it is as good as any.”

  “Hypnotized, then,” you say with a nod, “so that they didn’t remember what they had done, to whom they had spoken, or given an item? Or so that they remembered it falsely?”

  “Certainly,” he says. “I believe that the untapped potential of the human mind is greater than anyone imagines, and that if the mind can be brought into agreement with itself, almost anything can be achieved using only its power.”

  “How could someone find out what had happened during such a period?” you ask.

  Dr. Mirakle shakes his head. “Without finding the one who hypnotized them? It would be impossible.”

  ***

  Detective Laughton turns out to be right, and the next day the heat wave finally breaks and a storm rolls in with driving rain. It’s your day off from the ride-along, and so you sit in your apartment in your old armchair. It’s pleasantly cool, like the underside of a pillow that you flip over in the middle of the night, and there’s a kettle of water on the stove for tea.

  You’re dozing in your chair when the lock on your door rattles. It takes you a moment to rouse yourself, and by then the first blow has already fallen against the door. It’s followed by another, and then the door is crashing open, leaning drunkenly on hinges half-pulled from the wall. In the doorway stands something that you think, for one bleary-eyed second, might be a big man, but no, it’s something else. A beast, its limbs long, its face brutish and square, with thick brows and jutting yellow teeth. Tucked under one of its arms is a folded, rubbery parcel, like a raincoat, that drips water onto the floor as the ape advances on you.

  It covers the ground fast, and you’re still drowsy, but
fortunately the shock galvanizes you and you throw yourself aside as its paw tears the stuffing from your chair. Your first thought is, of course, the door, which still hangs half-open, but the ape is between you and your exit, and its limbs are long and powerful, so you lunge for the kitchenette instead.

  The kettle of water is still on the stove, steam now whistling from its spout. You grab the handle and dash its contents into the ape’s face. It roars and stumbles backward, clawing at its eyes, dropping the rubbery parcel which you can just see beginning to unfold.

  That’s when you run.

  ***

  You call Detective Laughton from a payphone. He meets you outside your building—you wait for him under the grocer’s awning across the street—and you go in together. The rain is still coming down, and your hair is soaked and dripping, you shirt clinging to your shoulders.

  Detective Laughton has his gun out as you climb the stairs, which reassures you. Not because you think the ape will still be there, not by now, but because it means he’s taking you seriously, not just humoring you.

  The door to your apartment hangs open, and beyond it your room has been torn apart. Not ransacked, as a thief might, but absolutely destroyed, as if by an enraged animal.

  The mattress and springs have been hurled from the bed and lie on the floor, wire coils poking out like broken bones. Your chair is snapped in two, your table overturned and split down the middle. One of your kitchen drawers has been hurled at the wall, leaving behind a trail of cutlery.

  The ape, however, is long gone, and you’re not surprised when Detective Laughton questions your neighbors and finds that nobody saw it come or go.

  ***

  You go to stay with Deidre while Detective Laughton attempts to fill out reports, and while you’re there you begin to formulate your theories. You’re still thinking, your mind absent, when Deidre leaves, kissing you on the cheek on her way out the door to work. It’s not until after she’s gone that you recall your night in the theatre, the performance you saw there, and the connections come crashing into place. You rush, hatless, out into the night, hailing a taxi to take you to the theatre, but when you get there the lights are already dim. You see a man in a bowtie who you recognize as the owner closing down the ticket booth. “Deidre didn’t show up tonight,” he says, when you ask him about her, breathless. “And neither did our main attraction. I had to refund tickets, which I haven’t done in fifteen years!”

  But you’re no longer listening. You run down the street, and at another payphone you call Detective Laughton. You tell him to find out where Dr. Mirakle lives, and to pick you up on the way.

  ***

  Though the address of Dr. Mirakle’s basement apartment is 212 1/2 Twelfth, the steps that lead down to it are actually in the brick paved alleyway called Morgue Street, not four blocks from the medical examiner’s office.

  Dr. Mirakle’s real name, as Detective Laughton informs you when he pulls up, is Edward Mirkoval, and he isn’t really a doctor. Detective Laughton also tells you to stay behind him as he knocks on the door.

  You recognize the man who opens it as Dr. Mirakle’s assistant from the show, but you’re taken off guard by the recognition you see in his face. One of his eyes is filmed over, milky white and obviously useless—a detail you don’t remember from the theatre—but the other stares past Detective Laughton and straight at you with a look of such immediate hatred that you stumble back, as if from a palpable blow.

  “Erik,” a familiar voice calls from inside, “who is it? Show them in.”

  Grudgingly, the man who must be Erik steps aside. Detective Laughton steps in past him, and you follow, though for a moment you keep your gaze on Erik’s, as he seems to barely be able to restrain his desire to attack you.

  The one-room apartment looks like it was once a restaurant or a small pub. There are bunk beds like on a sailing ship, a kitchenette, and a heavy wooden table with two chairs. There’s also nothing to support any of your suspicions, except for a heavy trapdoor in the back corner.

  Dr. Mirakle stands in the kitchenette, his white shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows, drying his hands on a kitchen towel. “Ah, my young friend from the theatre,” he says, smiling. If he has something to hide, he’s doing a good job of hiding it. “The one who wished to know about hypnotism, yes? Is there something more I can do for you?”

  “I hope so,” you reply. “May I introduce Detective Laughton?”

  Dr. Mirakle steps forward, reaching out to clasp the detective’s hand, the warm smile never faltering from his lips. “Detective,” he says, as though trying the word out.

  Detective Laughton meets the other man’s gaze and gives his hand a firm shake. “A pleasure,” he says reflexively, taken off guard by the warm greeting.

  “Indeed,” Dr. Mirakle replies, not releasing his hand. “Would you like anything to drink, Detective?”

  “No.”

  “Is your friend here armed, Detective?”

  “No.”

  “Good, then please, give me your gun.”

  You curse yourself, as you feel the vise-like grip of Erik’s arms wrapping around you, pinning your own arms to your sides, forcing you to watch helplessly as Detective Laughton silently, unblinkingly pulls his gun from its holster and hands it to Dr. Mirakle, who in turn trains the barrel on you.

  “Why not just hypnotize me too?” you ask.

  “I tried,” Dr. Mirakle says, his voice regretful. “Some people, they prove resistant. So other measures become necessary.”

  “Where’s Deidre?” you ask, teeth clenched.

  “She’s safe,” Dr. Mirakle says, pacing in front of you, his eyes downcast, his face thoughtful, “but I can see you still don’t comprehend. You think me a killer, perhaps?”

  “And aren’t you?”

  He shakes his head, almost sadly, as though he’s disappointed in you. “To be a killer I must first have killed, and I have harmed no one. Indeed, everything that I have done has been for the good of others. But it will be easier for you, I think, if I show you. Detective, if you would get the door for us?”

  Silently, Detective Laughton obeys, walking robotically across the room and hauling up the trapdoor. Erik lifts you as if you weigh nothing and carries you over to the dank steps that lead down into the sub-basement of the building.

  The room below is enormous, with great stone arches that, you imagine, must once have held barrels of liquor. Now they hold cages with thick iron bars, like the ones used in the circus, all but one of them occupied by pacing beasts; a wolf, a bear, and a sleek black panther.

  You scan the room, looking for Deidre. You’ve seen the serial pictures, you expect to find her chained up to an operating table, or drugged on some altar. Instead, you see a series of wooden racks hung with human skins, their limbs splayed out as if left there to dry. And on the farthest end, identifiable only by the blue dress that still hangs loosely on it, the blonde hair that now dangles like a discarded wig, you recognize Deidre.

  You shriek, spit, strain as hard as you can against Erik’s iron grip. “Please,” Dr. Mirakle says, as your struggles finally cease, as you hang there spent and sweating. “Do not resist further. I would hate to have to shoot you before you can be made to understand. You believe the girl you love is dead now, yes? But I tell you she is not. She is free, freer than she has ever been.”

  “Liar,” you shout, struggling again, kicking your feet against Erik’s shins until he squeezes tighter, until you see lights bursting in front of your vision, and finally darkness claims you.

  ***

  You wake manacled, one wrist encased in a metal clasp, a length of chain connecting you to the wall. Instantly you test it, and Dr. Mirakle stands imperturbably by until you have quieted. “Now,” he says, “if you are quite finished, I will explain to you, in a way that even you must comprehend. Erik, please, a demonstration?”

  Erik steps forward, directly in front of you, and involuntarily you flinch back. But he doesn’t advance. Instea
d, his head tips back and his mouth yawns open, inhumanly wide, the skin around his lips stretching and splitting. And then a dark head pokes out, followed by thick, hairy hands and then a hulking, shaggy body. When it has stepped completely free from its cast-off skin, you recognize the ape from your apartment, its face scarred with burns, one eye milky and useless.

  You feel your mind become suddenly slippery. The sight of Deidre’s skin hung there on the rack was only prelude to this, now, as you realize that all your suppositions were insufficient. You had connected Dr. Mirakle to the ape, yes, to the murders, to the theft of the body, to the mysterious gaps in everyone’s memory. You had imagined him hypnotizing the men to forget, the ape to do his bidding. You had guessed that, by questioning him, you strayed too near the truth. But you had not imagined, could not have imagined, this.

  “Erik was my first success,” Dr. Mirakle is saying. “He has been with me since the beginning. The others are more recent successes.”

  “Successes?” The word seems to catch in your throat, barely manages to leave your mouth as you struggle, feeling the very edges of what it must be like to just give up, to go mad.

  “Man is an impure, contradictory creature,” Dr. Mirakle replies. “The ‘highest animal,’ yes? But he tries at all turns to suppress his animal side, and instead he turns to drugs, to drink. Animals do not suffer from angst. They are not vengeful, spiteful, cruel. Only men are. Only men kill each other to no purpose, and drug themselves to dull the pain of living. And yet, within each man lives a beast, an animal essence, pure and unencumbered by man’s miseries and yearnings. You believe I have killed these people, but I have set them free!”

  As he speaks, you’re struggling with your bonds, working your wrist back and forth almost mechanically, your mind desperately scrabbling to process what you now know. Is it possible? Is one of the animals in those cages really Deidre? Your eyes slide across them, and your gaze catches the glance of the panther, and do you see, in those yellow eyes, some vestige, some spark of the woman you think you might have loved?