Night Journey (5 page)

Cheryl nodded. “He came from Muscatine, Iowa where he owned a radio station. He was the youngest of ten kids and he had three goals. He wanted to be rich—he wanted to be famous—and he wanted to be a doctor. Well, he got rich by inventing something called a
Tangley Calliaphone
. It’s an instrument sort of like a calliope, but it was smaller and it operated off air pressure instead of steam. Anyway, he made a lot of money from it and he became famous by talking on his radio station for hours and hours about how he had discovered the cure for cancer. Prior to that, he’d been a mentalist in a Vaudeville act.”

“How did he find the time to do medical research with all his other enterprises?” asked Jonathan.

“That’s just it,” replied Cheryl. “He never went to med school, so he just skipped that part of his formal education. He only made it through sixth grade. Anyway, he opened up a clinic where he took in over a hundred cancer patients. And he called himself Dr. Baker, with absolutely no training and no degree. His name was Norman Baker.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t Norman Bates?” Allen interjected.

“No, not Norman Bates,” Cheryl laughed. “Same personality type, maybe.”

Cheryl regained control of the laughing group and continued. “Now the Feds were after him because he’d published a book and some pamphlets that actually stated he could cure cancer no matter how bad you had it. He gave people a written guarantee. He said if it wasn’t too far advanced he could cure them in two weeks. If it was a little worse, maybe four weeks. Worst case scenario, he’d say
‘Give me three months and I’ll have you cured and going home.’
”

“Quack, quack.” Allen held his nose and made a face.

Cheryl grinned and continued. “Well, of course thousands of desperate people were flocking to his hospital. We’re talking about the thirties. They didn’t have many options. They’d try anything. The American Medical Association was trying to shut him down, but he did have licensed physicians on staff, so that made his hospital legal. He told them he was just the administrator. So they waited for him to make a mistake—and he did.”

“How horrible.” Barbara shivered and snuggled up to Jonathan.

“He held a public demonstration one day in a Muscatine city park. Thirty-two thousand people showed up to watch him perform surgery on a gentleman who had brain cancer. They put this guy up on a platform and had Dr. Baker’s surgeon open up his skull. Then Baker waltzed up there with all his fanfare and poured his miracle cure directly on this guy’s brain—watermelon seed, carbolic acid, and mineral water—real brain washing. Sewed him up, called him cured, and sent him home.”

“Did that
really
happen?” Emma could no longer hide her skepticism. Something about this story nagged at her, but she refused to acknowledge its truth. She was fighting not to believe.

“Oh, yes. After the tour I can show you the pictures and newspaper article,” Cheryl replied. “Baker was a master at deception, but he messed up. He craved publicity, so he invited the newspaper there and they published the article. So after this stunt, the authorities filed charges against him, shut down his radio station, and issued a warrant for his arrest. He high-tailed it and ran, with his clinic still operating. He went to Laredo, Texas and crossed the border into Mexico where he opened up another radio station and started it all over again.”

“Couldn’t the authorities get him there?” asked Zan

“No, that’s why he went there. But pretty soon they managed to shut his hospital down in Iowa, so his staff called him in Mexico and asked him what to do with his patients. So he crossed back across the border and started looking for a place. That’s when he came across Eureka Springs and heard about all the healing water they were supposed to have. He found the Crescent, which was all boarded up, and bought it for $40,000.” Cheryl pursed her lips and glanced around the room. “Doesn’t that make you sick? It cost almost $300,000 to build in 1886 and he got it for practically nothing. He spent another $50,000 tearing out the balconies and putting in those ugly concrete porches. And he painted the whole place bright colors, mainly purple.”

Emma frowned, remembering her earlier reaction to the lobby. How had she known about the purple paint? And when Cheryl mentioned the machine guns in the penthouse, a distinct picture of where they’d hung had formed in her mind. Her certainty that she’d figured everything out began to crack.

“When the Baker Hospital opened here in Eureka, he made sure he was the only one who checked in the patients,” Cheryl continued. “He wanted total control. He would ask
‘Where are you from? Who’s your family? Is anybody visiting you while you’re here? How far advanced is your disease?’ All of those questions were logical and things he would need to know. But somewhere in the interview he would slip in ‘You know, during your treatment you may need some cash. So where’s your bank account? How much do you have in it?’”

“Surely no one gave him that sort of information?” remarked the middle-aged man.

“This was the thirties. He was their doctor who was gonna save their lives. Nobody had ever heard of identity theft back then,” replied Cheryl. “He only did this to people who fell into a certain group. He had a lot of wealthy widows who came here for treatment, and some of them didn’t have any close living relatives near Eureka Springs.

“Get the picture? Let’s pretend I have a Great Aunt Joan who’s a patient at the Baker Cancer Hospital. I don’t really know her, but she has a fortune and I’m her closest living relative. So her lawyers send me a letter and tell me she’s in the hospital and while she’s there she puts me in control of her money. When Baker finds this out during the interview, he gets her to sign three letters to the effect
feeling better, love it here, send more money
. And he’d stuff them into a file in case she died, for future use.”

“Now the nurses we’ve seen on the second and third floors are simply repeating things that happened over and over. If someone died in his or her room, Baker’s nurse would lock the remains in during the day and then move it out at night. His staff couldn’t move them during the day because Baker had given the patient a written cure guarantee.”

“Surely somebody saw what was going on and would tell?” asked Emma. How could something like this have gone on without detection? She felt her blood pressure rise just thinking about it. Such a terrible, terrible thing. Somebody needed to do something.

“We used to wonder how they got the bodies out, since the elevator doesn’t go to the basement...excuse me, management prefers we call it
garden level
. But we discovered that originally it did go down there—and they always did this
body shuffling
late at night, when patients were sleeping and the rest of the staff was gone.

“Now there have always been rumors of secret tunnels and passageways, but we never could find them—until they started renovating the building and knocking down walls—supposedly, they found human skeletons hidden inside some of the walls. That’s when they discovered the secret trap door and escape hatch leading from Baker’s office on the first floor. It had a ladder that went right up to what is now room 203. They found another hidden passageway in the North Penthouse going down to the fourth floor, but I understand it’s never been explored because of structural instability due to fire damage. Who knows what might be in there now?”

Emma stiffened and her eyes widened as she realized the penthouse was directly above her and Zan’s room. Terror suddenly gripped her and she clutched at her palpitating chest. Zan sensed her fear and tightened his embrace.

“You okay?” he whispered in Emma’s ear. She nodded and patted his encircling arms, grateful for their comforting strength. She fought to regain her composure.

“I heard a rumor that there was an underground tunnel,” the middle-aged man interrupted. “They said he had little safe paths hidden everywhere, so he could escape when the Feds came to arrest him.”

“That’s right. And that’s why he had the machine guns. But nobody knew where the passages were until a few years ago when they put in a new telephone system. They found a tunnel adjacent to the elevator that runs to the west and on out into the woods. Okay. Is everybody ready? Time to go.” Cheryl unlocked a door and led the small group through a dimly lit hallway.

A frisson of apprehension coursed up Emma’s spine and she clutched Zan’s arm. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to go in there. He pulled her close as they trudged through the narrow channel. They passed the hotel’s huge laundry room before stopping in front of a plain looking door at the farthest end of the building.

Cheryl entered first, yanking on an overhead light chain and motioning for the group to gather around. The room was a hodgepodge of paint cans, tools, and various objects. A cluttered metal table with a built-in sink lined one wall. An old battered freezer case was built into the wall; its door was tightly padlocked.

Emma felt as if her breath was cut off when she saw the room. Icy fear twisted around her heart and a cold knot formed in her stomach. She clenched her hands until she felt her nails digging into her palms. She held her breath and waited. She knew what was coming.

Cheryl’s eyes gleamed brightly as she surveyed the group. She leaned nonchalantly against a cabinet and said, “Welcome to the morgue.”

Emma scanned the room with apprehension as an eerie hush settled like a shroud over the small group of explorers. Shadowy forms quivered on the bare stone walls, waxing and waning in the harsh glow of a naked swinging light bulb. The room smelled of dust, mildew, and stale varnish.

The muffled sound of thunder, followed by pelting rain on the window casements reverberated throughout the hotel’s underbelly. A tomblike chill penetrated the fabric of Emma’s jacket; she shuddered and moved closer to Zan. She breathed in the dank air, trying not to dwell on the sensory overload.

“Where’re all the dead bodies?” The young boy’s innocent question shattered the tension; the adults laughed, transforming the tour’s somber mood.

“Oh, honey. It’s not a morgue anymore,” said Cheryl. “It’s the hotel’s maintenance room now.” She flipped a switch and the room was flooded in bright fluorescent light.

“Oh,” he replied. He lowered his eyes and smiled shyly. “I thought there’d be a bunch of tables and freezers and stuff like on
CSI
.”

Cheryl laughed and pointed to the farthest corner. An ancient wooden door built into the wall rose from floor to ceiling. “Well, there are a couple of artifacts here that prove it was the hospital morgue. That’s a refrigeration unit and I understand it’s original to the Crescent.

“They had freezers in the 1800’s? I would have thought they’d only have ice boxes,” remarked Phoebe.

“I’m sure the technology was different back then. But remember, the hotel was built with electricity and in 1886 that was a miraculous thing. There’s a dumbwaiter out there in the laundry that goes up to the kitchen, so we think the hotel used this freezer down here.”

“Why’s it padlocked?” asked Allen.

“Because it’s not used anymore and we don’t want silly people crawling into it and getting locked up,” said Cheryl. “But Baker used it.”

The young boy gasped and pointed, “Did he put the bodies in there?”

“You got it,” answered Cheryl. “Remember my Aunt Joan? Well, of course she didn’t make it. So they brought her down here and stuck her in the fridge. Baker pulled her file and found those letters.
Feeling better; send more money
. He remembered me and hoped I wouldn’t come here to check on her. So he sent the first letter and I sent the money.”

“What a scam artist.” Zan shook his head in disgust.

“Um hm. He mails those letters out for a couple more months. But now he has a two-month-old body he’s got to do something with. So he sends out a regret letter saying
‘We’ve done everything we can. Would you like us to make the arrangements for you?’
Sure, I say. What a relief not to have to deal with that. Here’s a bunch of her money for the burial and I get to keep what’s left over. Very convenient. So to keep the body count down and to make sure all this stays hidden, he would take her corpse out and put it in the incinerator.”

“Ohmigod,” exclaimed Phoebe. “Is that what that huge smoke stack is at the end of the building?”

“No,” replied Cheryl. “Everybody thinks it is. It’s just the boiler room for the hotel. The incinerator doesn’t even exist anymore. After they caught Baker, the people in the city were so horrified they came here and tore the incinerator apart. They actually talked about tearing the hotel down, too.”

“The angry villagers—armed with torches intent on burning the monster—march on Castle Frankenstein.” Allen lowered his voice dramatically, then executed an evil laugh. “Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

“Hush.” Phoebe snickered and slapped the back of Allen’s head.

Cheryl smiled and continued, “After they destroyed the incinerator, people actually found human bones in the ashes. I know a woman who saved a skeletal hand she found in there. Now
that’s
weird.”

“Euwww!” several people remarked in unison. The group laughed, but Emma couldn’t join them. Her sadness was too deep and personal, but she didn’t understand why. As if sensing something wrong, Zan held her close and gave her little reassuring pats.

“Okay. Now the room in the back is where they took the bodies before they transferred them to the funeral homes—the ones they didn’t cremate. Undertakers did a thriving business during that time. We only have one mortician now, but when Baker was here there were eight.” Cheryl pointed to a small room filled with broken furniture and assorted junk.

The group wandered around for several moments, speaking in hushed tones as they tried to imagine the macabre activities that had taken place in the basement. Emma managed to calm herself, but a sudden impulse compelled her when she noticed Allen and Phoebe leaning against a steel table. She pointed to it and asked, “What is that?”

“That’s the last of Dr. Baker’s autopsy tables,” replied Cheryl.

“Ack!” Allen shrieked and jumped away just as a violent bolt of lightning flashed outside, followed by a clap of thunder.

Jonathan joined the laughter at his son’s antics and asked, “So what happened to Baker?”

“The Feds finally gathered enough evidence to indict him on mail fraud for sending fake guarantees. He was tried and convicted in January of 1940, and the hospital was shut down. He served four years in the penitentiary at Leavenworth, and was fined four thousand dollars.”

“Is he still alive?” asked the boy.

“Oh, no,” said Cheryl. “After he was released from prison he bought a yacht and lived off the coast of Florida until 1958. He died of liver cancer.”

“That’s ironic,” said Zan. “He couldn’t even cure himself.”

Cheryl shook her head. “Nope. They say he was a quack who never cured anybody.”

“Are a lot of his patients buried here in town?” asked Jonathan. “For instance, is Theodora’s grave in Eureka Springs?”

“There are a lot of people from the hospital buried in the city cemetery,” said Cheryl. “But we’ve never found any record of Theodora. We don’t really know anything about her. She may have been one of the ones who ended up in the incinerator.”

A tear escaped and traveled down Emma’s cheek. Zan reached over and wiped it gently with the back of his hand. She closed her eyes and nestled back against his chest. Weariness overwhelmed her. What in the world was wrong with her? It was ridiculous to be affected like this by a bunch of silly stories.

Cheryl reached inside the door of a small pantry-like room and flipped a switch. Above the door a sign read
Parts Room
. Dim light bathed the shelf-lined interior. Buckets, paint cans, and shop supplies cluttered the floor and shelves. “Now
this
is called the Parts Room—for more reasons than one. It was kept sealed and locked until 1985. I’m told that when they opened it they found dozens of jars full of human organs preserved in formaldehyde.”

Gasps of disbelief echoed through the crowd.

“Where are they now?” asked the man in the Hard Rock tee-shirt.

“Nobody knows,” answered Cheryl. “They sat on those shelves for forty-five years because people were afraid to touch them—afraid they’d get cancer. But when the building was for sale in ’85, someone decided those jars wouldn’t look too pretty to prospective buyers and moved them. We’ve been trying to find out what happened to them for years.”

“How did they keep something like that secret for so long?” asked the man.

“We have a theory. We think there must have been a guard posted down here and they kept this room heavily secured. There’s somebody in this room we think must have been a watchman. When we first started doing these tours he would get very perturbed and start materializing.”

“Is he here now?” asked the boy, his voice quivering.

“I’m not sure,” said Cheryl. “He doesn’t show himself much anymore. But when
TAPS Ghost Hunters
filmed here they actually caught his image on thermal photography—a tall man wearing a billed cap, right there in front of that locker with the stenciled numbers.”

“His name was Andy.” Emma opened her eyes when she noticed the silence. Everyone stared at her. A chill worked its way down the length of her body.

“What did you mean?” asked Zan. “Who’s Andy?”

Emma blinked and tried to clear her mind. Now why did she say that? “I don’t know. It just came out.”

The fluorescent lights suddenly dimmed, the incandescent bulb flickered and popped, and then the room was plunged into darkness. Chaos ensued as the entire group screamed. Cheryl found a flashlight and the frightened people scurried toward the light and huddled together. As if on cue, a loud clap of thunder roared outside, contributing to the confusion. Emma clung to Zan in shock as Cheryl worked to regain control of the frightened group.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” Cheryl fanned her face with her hand. “I think Andy’s just feeling kinda mischievous tonight. But don’t worry, he won’t hurt anybody. It
is
nice to know his name now.”

Emma’s head swam. She looked around the darkened room in confusion. What had just happened? Had the storm caused the lights to blow? Or had it been the result of some force beyond her understanding? How could she have known the name of some alleged guard who was now a ghost?

Zan appeared to be in shock. The young boy began to whimper and he clung to his likewise-frightened grandparents. Jonathan attempted to console a visibly shaken Barbara. Allen and Phoebe hugged each other and giggled. Even Cheryl seemed stunned.

Seconds later, the frightened people streamed out the door. Cheryl aimed the light down the hall and waited until the last tour guest had passed before she followed. Nobody lingered to thank her or add to the tip jar. “Well, I guess it’s about time to end the tour anyway. Hope ya’ll had a good time. Thanks for coming.”

Emma held tight to Zan’s hand as they trailed behind the mass exodus. Her heart raced from the adrenaline rush, but slowly calmed at the sight of lights blazing in the laundry room. The clatter of rushing footsteps in the narrow hallway gradually abated as the group distanced themselves from the morgue; within moments they began to laugh and talk about their experience.

“Goodness, gracious. I’ve never been so glad to get away from a place in my life. I’m never coming down to this basement again,” Barbara exclaimed when the carpeted staircase came in sight.

“But all you gals have appointments at the beauty parlor tomorrow.” Allen pointed to The New Moon Spa sign across from the stairs.

“If you don’t want to come back down here again we can find another salon in town somewhere.” Jonathan patted his wife’s arm.

“I’ll have to see how I feel in the morning.” Barbara shuddered and began climbing.

When they reached the first floor, the couple and their sobbing grandson headed for the lobby door. The Fuller party gathered around the elevator. Emma flinched when a loud clap of thunder fractured the silence. The elevator door squeaked open and they climbed inside.

“Sounds like it’s raining cats and dogs out there,” said Zan. “That family’s gonna get wet.”

“Yeah, glad we don’t have to go out in it,” remarked Allen. “Well, that was fun. So do you guys want to go up to Dr. Baker’s Lounge for a little while? I think they’ve got some guy singing and playing guitar tonight. I could use a good, stiff drink after that ghost tour.”

“Honey, you know I can’t drink right now,” said Phoebe.

“Not me, I’m exhausted,” said Barbara.

Jonathan nodded in agreement, holding the elevator door open for his wife when they reached their floor. “We’ll see you all in the morning. Good night.”

“G’night Dad, Mom,” Allen embraced Jonathan and Barbara.

“What do you want to do?” Zan turned to Emma.

“I think I’m ready to call it a night,” she replied.