Bring Me Children

by David Martin

  “Five years ago while I was in the middle of defending myself from Claire’s obscene charges I was blinded when my optic nerves were damaged during the removal of a brain tumor. Do you know what that woman did when she heard about this? She called me and said she was glad I was blind, that God had blinded me but that she wasn’t going to give up until the world knew what I had done to those eighteen children. Can you imagine?”

  Lyon feels like apologizing but Quinndell doesn’t give him a chance.

  “Well at least she has an excuse, she’s insane. But you, Mr. Lyon, what’s your excuse? Coming down here to root around in my affairs without having bothered even to make a few rudimentary inquiries into the substance of Claire’s charges, unaware that Claire has accused other doctors of outlandish atrocities, unaware that she is too mentally unbalanced to hold a job — Mr. Lyon your presence here is a disgrace. I know you won a Pulitzer as a young man but your actions in this case surely qualify you for a prize as the World’s Worst Reporter.”

  Lyon couldn’t agree more. If it were possible for him to melt into a small puddle and then seep back out under those double doors, he would do so immediately.

  “Here’s what happens next, Mr. Lyon. If you mention to anyone else that you’re here investigating me, as you told Sheriff Stone this morning, I will bring legal action against you and your employer. This is not an idle threat I assure you. I have in fact won legal redress against Mrs. Cept but her insane zealotry renders those sanctions quite useless.”

  Lyon can do nothing but continue to stare at Dr. Quinndell, whose too blue glass eyes are opened wide, alarmingly wide.

  “You notice I continue referring to Claire in the present tense. I know of course that she died recently. But she has been such a constant and destructive force in my life that I keep thinking of her as somehow still out there, still harassing me. And in a way she is, causing you to come here, for example.”

  When Quinndell stands he pulls his suit jacket down and adjusts those snowy white French cuffs. Lyon stands too, surprised that he is several inches taller than the doctor, Quinndell’s regal bearing having masked this fact when they first shook hands.

  With nothing to say in his defense, Lyon is happy to let the doctor do all the talking.

  “If my words have been overly harsh, I apologize, but you have no idea what that woman put me through.” Quinndell pauses and then continues in a gentler voice. “I’ve admired your work, Mr. Lyon. I can only listen to you now of course, but I remember seeing you on television, remember being impressed with your civility, your seriousness. So unlike most of your plastic and fawningly superficial colleagues. In fact I’ve even thought that you and I are similar in some ways, that we are both gentlemen in the best and most old-fashioned sense of that word. Also, in spite of the fact that we are meeting now for the first time, you have a face.”

  “A face?”

  “People I meet for the first time, they are of course faceless to me. I have to imagine what they look like. But because I watched you on television before I was blinded, in my mind’s eye you have a face. Which I find wonderfully comforting. You always reminded me of an actor, William Holden. Has anyone else ever commented on the resemblance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then.” The doctor holds out his hand, Lyon hurrying to shake it.

  “I’m sorry.” To his own ears, Lyon sounds pitiful.

  “Nonsense. You were somehow taken in by Claire and she apparently got to you at a very awkward time in your life. I’m guessing that your breakdown while reporting that story about murdered children is what brought you and Claire together. For a man of your dignity to lose control in such a public forum — how I feel for you, Mr. Lyon.”

  Quinndell sounds totally sincere. First he humiliates Lyon and now he’s being so gently sympathetic that Lyon feels as if he might start crying.

  “These hills and forests of ours can be wonderfully rejuvenating. Why don’t you stay in the area and recuperate? Assuming of course that you have been seen by a doctor and have been assured that your emotional problems are not organic in nature. In any case, don’t let it break your spirit. You’ll emerge from this experience more potent than ever. I know, Mr. Lyon, because I underwent a similar crisis and recovery with my blindness. What does not kill us, makes us stronger — yes?”

  “Yes.”

  The doctor works his way around the edge of the desk. “Come, I’ll walk you out.”

  They’re halfway to the double doors when Lyon remembers the frog. “I left something by my chair.”

  “Your briefcase?”

  Lyon is back by the chair he was sitting in, lifting the heavy concrete sculpture into his arms with a grunt before he answers. “No, it’s, uhm, a frog.”

  “A frog?”

  Lyon begins laughing. “Yeah, other reporters bring notebooks and tape recorders with them but the World’s Worst Reporter always carries a frog to interviews.” Saying this and then seeing Dr. Quinndell’s strange astonished expression cracks up Lyon even more.

  “You’re laughing at me?” Quinndell asks. His voice sounds hurt but edged with anger too.

  “No, it’s … it’s just …” But Lyon can’t go on. His laughter has become an attack of laughter — like what happened when he was back in his apartment looking through those newspapers for information on Claire’s death. “I’m … I’m … I …” John Lyon once again having lost control, hugging that goddamn frog and shaking with laughter, feeling terrible that Quinndell thinks he’s being laughed at but unable to explain to the doctor what’s wrong, Lyon laughing too hard to talk.

  Quinndell coolly walks past Lyon and returns to his desk where he touches a button that extinguishes all the lights in the room.

  Being immersed into abrupt darkness prompts Lyon to regain some control but he’s still chuckling, trying to get his breath, the tears of laughter wetting his face. “I’m sorry … I haven’t had any sleep and …”

  Suddenly remembering what the man from the diner said about Quinndell going for your eyes, Lyon wonders exactly where the doctor is. Still behind his desk?

  “Doctor?”

  Silence.

  There’s no laughter left in Lyon now. “Dr. Quinndell, I wasn’t laughing at you.”

  He thinks he hears movement off to his right, well away from the desk. “I’m going now,” Lyon says as he turns and heads for the double doors. He bumps into a chair and then, trying to recover, knocks over a small table.

  “Sorry.”

  Still no answer.

  And although Lyon doesn’t hear any movement in the room, he senses the doctor coming for him, gliding through the blackness, Lyon frightened enough that he leaves the table on the floor and runs for the double doors. Jesus, he’s right behind me.

  Frantically searching for and then turning a doorknob, Lyon gets one of the double doors open and lurches so clumsily out into the hallway that he bumps up against the opposite wall.

  He turns around and stares into the darkness of that room, seeing nothing. No, wait. The doctor is standing there, just out of reach of the hallway’s light, Lyon forced to look hard before he can make him out in the shadows: Quinndell standing there pointing at Lyon, something in the doctor’s hand, a small metal object, a heavy tablespoon, Dr. Quinndell standing there eerily silent and pointing that spoon with uncanny accuracy at Lyon’s face, right at his eyes.

  CHAPTER 19

  Standing in the middle of the center room of Randolph Welby’s shack, Sheriff Mike Stone is surprised by all the books and by how clean everything is. From the stories he’s heard about Welby (hates people, possibly retarded, dangerous if he catches you on his land) and from the outward appearance of the shack, Stone assumed the hermit’s living quarters would be trash-cluttered and filthy. But the place is in fact tidy, the homemade furniture simple but clean, the wide-board pine floors bleached from repeated scrubbings, all those books — how-to books, gardening books, books on survival and dog breeding and baby care — lin
ed up neatly on shelves along every wall. Only the hermit himself lives up to his billing: dressed in clothes that look as if they’ve been salvaged from a rag bin, under five feet tall, less than a hundred pounds, his chinless weathered face indeed gnomish, baby-fine gray hair wildly uncombed, both ears sticking straight out from the sides of his tiny head.

  Trying to get information out of him is a study in frustration, Randolph either refusing to answer or mumbling something so mangled by his speech impediment that Stone can’t understand him.

  “Let’s try yes or no questions,” the sheriff finally tells him. “Did you go over to that rental cabin last night — yes or no?”

  Randolph is standing by the door to the shack’s back room, his hands folded in front of him, staring at the floor — looking like a contrite, albeit ancient, schoolchild. “I bewieve so,” he finally whispers.

  “What? You believe so? Is that what you said? Excellent! Now we’re getting someplace. You heard that John Lyon was staying in that cabin, John Lyon from television, and you went over to speak to him — yes or no?” Stone leans against one of the posts holding up the ceiling.

  “I bewieve so.”

  “Good, good. What did you go over there to speak to him about?”

  He looks up at the sheriff with an anguished expression: Randolph knows the answer but can’t explain it.

  Stone shifts his weight away from the post. “All right, that wasn’t a yes or no question, sorry. Did you go over to talk to the television man about something you found in a cave near here?”

  Randolph returns his gaze to the floor. “I bewieve so.”

  “And what was it you found?” The sheriff unsnaps the strap holding his revolver in its holster. “Come on, Randolph, I know that’s not a yes or no question but surely you can speak a single simple word. What was it you found in that cave?”

  Randolph knew something like this was going to happen. Which is why he wanted that TV man to explain things for him — because now the sheriff is going to be asking other questions, not only about what Randolph found in the cave but about what he did with what he found and then the sheriff will want an answer to the toughest question of all, why did you do it?

  “Talk to me, Randolph. Do you know who sent me out here, who told me it was you peeking in on Lyon? It’s a very important person, someone who can cause you a lot of trouble. Talk to me.”

  Randolph’s mother told him that if he were ever to eat dinner with important people and if Randolph were asked a question, such as would he like some more potatoes or would he care to have his drink freshened, Randolph should not crudely answer yes or no but should say I believe so or I think not. And although Randolph has never gone to dinner with anyone, important or otherwise, the only responses he feels comfortable giving people are those his mother taught him.

  “Okay then, pal, I’m going to take you in and put you in a jail cell overnight, maybe that’ll get you talking.”

  Randolph looks up at him panic-stricken. “I tink not!”

  “Well I think so.”

  When the sheriff takes a step in his direction, Randolph turns toward the door to the back room and beats upon it with tiny fists. The racket causes a baby in there to cry.

  “I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch,” Stone says. “You got your hands on one of those babies!”

  Exactly what Randolph wanted to explain.

  “Let’s take a look.”

  Randolph opens the door to the back room and lets out two dogs, who immediately sit in front of him and stare up at Sheriff Stone. Then Randolph closes the door; the baby’s still crying.

  “Nice-looking dogs,” Stone says, resting his hand on the butt of his pistol and trying to figure out how to play this. He’s heard about Randolph and his dogs of course. “I used to raise Swedish elkhounds but the D.C. weather was murder on them. Looks like some elkhound in your dogs, huh? Norwegian? Except the coloring’s different, the shape of the head.… Actually those look like oversized Karelian bear dogs. Jeez, Randolph, where’d you get ahold of a breed like that?”

  The little hermit remains as silent as the two black and white dogs sitting in front of him.

  “So you and your dogs are going to stop me from getting in that room, right?”

  “I bewieve so.”

  Sheriff Stone doesn’t see any way around it. He could shoot one of the dogs but the other would be on him before he could get a second shot off — and Stone knows that these Karelian bear dogs, developed by Finns and Russians, are pugnacious. Plus, the two dogs guarding Randolph aren’t purebreds, they’ve had other lines mixed in to make them bigger, even more determined.

  Stone is easing toward the shack’s front door. “You know I’ll be back, bring Carl with me and —”

  “I tink not!”

  “Yeah, I realize there’s bad blood between you and Carl but you’re leaving me no choice. We’ll be back with shotguns and we’ll kill every fucking dog you got on the place.”

  Randolph hurries to an opened window, calls and gestures in ways that make no sense to the sheriff, and then turns toward Stone and just stares at him. The two bear dogs are still sitting near the door to the back room and they’re still staring at Stone too.

  “You sic your dogs on me, pal, and the first shot goes right between your eyes.”

  “I tink not.”

  Stone has his pistol out, holding it at his side, managing his fear. “Yeah, well don’t make me prove it.”

  He backs out onto the porch and works his way carefully across the dirt yard, reaching his car just as Randolph and the two dogs come out to stand on the porch and watch him. Stone doesn’t feel truly safe until he’s in the patrol car with the door closed. He puts the pistol on the seat and takes the shotgun from its holder on the dash, pointing the twelve-gauge through the open window. “I could blow you away right now, wouldn’t even have to go get Carl.”

  “I tink not!” Randolph calls from the porch.

  “Yeah, you tink not and you bewieve so — we’ll see what you have to say when I come back.”

  Stone relatches the shotgun, starts the patrol car, and turns around, throwing an arm over the seat back so he can see to reverse out of Randolph’s rutted drive — turning around in that seat to put his face right into the face of the biggest, blackest, most ferocious dog he’s ever seen in his life, a dog that fills the backseat of the patrol car, a dog that makes those two Karelians up on the porch look like toy poodles.

  The fright causes Stone to void a small amount of urine into his underwear — enough for the black dog to smell, inciting him, causing his dark eyes to widen.

  Knowing the importance of making no sudden movements, Stone stays frozen in his turned-around position, wondering if he can get a hand on the pistol before the dog takes off his face. Now even Stone can smell the fear seeping out from his groin, from under his arms, filling the car, causing the dog to whine in anticipation.

  Stone goes for the pistol at the same time Randolph hollers a command from the porch, the black dog lunging as if he’s enraged, not simply attacking Stone but acting as if Stone’s very existence is an offense, as if he has caught Stone in his den, strangling puppies and eating his food, fouling the nest, this man needing death in the worst possible way.

  Hackles up, snarling, the dog snaps four quick bites on the sheriff’s face, tearing flesh, blinding one eye, Stone forgetting about the pistol, screaming and trying simply — desperately, pathetically — to get his hands up to his face, the dog clamping its massive jaws onto the man’s neck, shaking him the way a terrier would a rat, up into the front seat with him now, snapping his spine, the two bear dogs from the porch scrambling through the patrol car’s open windows, all three animals mad for a purchase of flesh, eviscerating the sheriff, ripping out entire muscles from his thighs.

  With the world’s saddest eyes, Randolph Welby watches from the front porch. Then he enters the cabin, goes straight to the back room, picks up the infant girl, and pats her gently until she stops crying.
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  Back on the porch, holding the baby up on his shoulder, Randolph whistles and the three dogs — blood staining their muzzles, blood all the way up their necks — come leaping out of the patrol car’s windows, bounding to their master, sitting at his feet. He turns the baby around in his arms to show her the killers.

  “Doggie,” Randolph says to the wide-eyed girl. “Doggie.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Dazed with humiliation, another migraine grinding inside his skull, John Lyon walks through the ruined commercial district of Hameln, to the county building’s parking lot, to his rental car — opening the door, easing the frog onto the front seat, tossing in the file that Quinndell gave him, and then sliding into the car’s ovenlike interior, driving off, unable to decipher how the air-conditioning lever works, at a loss for where to go or what to do next.

  The sheriff has probably already called the network, saying that Lyon is reporting nonexistent bodies in nonexistent crates, boogeymen at his window. Lyon is sure he no longer has a job. What he’s less sure about is Mason Quinndell. The man seemed so totally reasonable defending himself against Claire Cept’s charges, explaining the reality of the situation — then why that business with the spoon as Lyon was leaving? Does the good doctor hate being laughed at enough to attack someone? But why in hell would you attack someone with a spoon? Maybe it wasn’t a spoon. Maybe Quinndell was pointing a pen at Lyon.