Authors: Thomas Cater
“A séance? Why wasn’t I invited?”
“I didn’t want you to get hurt. Besides, George’s
friends were with us.”
“Were you worried about them getting hurting?”
“I think George got it right when he said ‘they are God’s
children’, and ‘He is not going to let anything happened to them’.”
“I’d say quite a bit has already happened to them.”
Before I could answer, she raised another issue.
“How about you; could you get hurt?”
I shook her concern off. “No, you see, I got this magic
suit: a murdered man’s suit.” The look in her eyes turned haughty. “It’s a suit
that was once worn by a murdered man. It keeps the spirits off balance.”
She rolled her eyes skeptically.
“It’s really very hard to take you serious when you
talk that way. Sometimes I actually think you believe what you say.”
“Let me finish bringing you up to date,” I said. I
told her about the séance, the ring, and about finding the name of the man who
built the wall. “His name is Thanatos. It might be a good idea to check out the
hospital’s files, just to see if he spent some quality time there, or if his name
is on any contracts.”
She wrote the name down on the back of an envelope. I didn’t
talk about my observations, which I was still trying to explain to myself, but reminded
her of a few unresolved problems that had surfaced earlier.
“A thought occurred to me while I was reading Grier’s
file. In the past, when an administrator or a superintendent was hired, did
anyone check his credentials?”
She shrugged. “Nowadays they have search committees. As
a rule, everyone comes highly recommended, or they have political pull. They
may not be skilled technically, but they are usually diplomatic, people who
know how to ‘work the system’, or have a reputation. I don’t suppose it was different
in the past than it is now.”
She thought about her words before concluding. “You do
know that it used to be a political patronage job. People were appointed by the
governor, but someone recommended them, so it is basically for services or
contributions rendered to the party.”
“So even if a man isn’t qualified, he could end up
with the job?”
“It’s possible,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“Just something I read in Grier’s file. It says he’s a
surgeon, a psychiatrist, and an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist. It just
seems silly to me that a man would be so vain. I mean, just being a surgeon
isn’t enough? He has to push for overkill, smother everyone with his
qualifications; do you know what I mean?”
“I see nothing unusual in it. Most of the MDs measure
their worth by how many degrees they hold; it’s all they know and usually it is
more than others.”
“I read the notes on one of his autopsies,” I said.
“It was as if he were doing it for the first time. He really took it seriously,
too seriously. A pro might be less involved.”
I could see she wanted to disagree, but chose not to
throw me too far off the scent.
“What shall I do?” she asked.
“Is it possible to confirm Grier’s credentials, find
out if he did attend those universities? We could say we were researching or compiling
a biography on the man who unofficially performed more lobotomies than anyone
else in the state or country?”
“I don’t see why not. It would make a good research
project.”
She agreed to get a query out about the same time the
quiche arrived.
“I think you are going to like this,” the host said,
inviting a compliment. I agreed with a nod, but did not feel bold enough to
make eye contact. In her challenging eyes, I suspected, lay the truth of every
woman's being.
Chapter Thirty-Three
After lunch, Connie went back to work and I went to
the van. Everything was just as I had left it, unfinished. Grier’s journals did
not appear to offer as much promise now that I had begun to question his
credibility. I had exhausted my patience for wild speculations today.
There were still the Alberichs to contact, now that I
was primed with energy and had time to spare. It seemed appropriate to look
them up. I was also tired of being the ignorant and unadvised nuisance, so I
decided to visit the furnace room on my own without going through official
channels.
I locked the van and entered the building through a
side door. After a few minutes of confusion, I re-oriented myself and began the
long descent down into the furnace room. It was difficult to get around in that
wandering behemoth of an institution. The miles of halls and subterranean
passages serving as conduits for heat, ventilation and pipes did not make it
easier.
I eventually found that long narrow corridor, waited
while my eyes adjusted to the darkness and then proceeded down the ramp. Again
I wondered why a ramp instead of steps? Were they accustomed to rolling gurneys
down to the furnace room? It opened up a new area for speculation, but I didn’t
want to think about it. There were simpler, more acceptable ways for disposing
of unwanted bodies.
I could hear the roar of the furnace and feel the warmth
of its fire before I could see it. It sounded like a stream in full flood
cascading over rocky falls. The light from the flames, glowing through the
vents in the furnace door, lit up the area for thirty feet. There were no
Alberichs however anywhere in sight.
My eyes focused on the mine entrance and the bench
where they hung their coveralls, hard hats and lanterns. The hooks were bare,
while tools appliances appeared to be missing, which could mean they were
inside working. I looked at the small mountain of fuel they had in reserve.
Enough, I thought, to keep the hospital warm and in hot water for weeks. There
was room for more. Man’s abhorrence of a vacuum demanded its filling. I stepped
into the mine entrance and gazed down the dark open shaft. I could see and hear
nothing, only infernal blackness. I listened intently, confident that sound
confined to such narrow parameters would eventually reach the ears of anyone
who listened, but I was wrong. I hear nothing. I walked back to the furnace and
bathed in its heat.
This probably wasn’t such a bad job after all, I
mused. One need never dread the cold chill of winter. This form of heat was far
more penetrating than gas or electric. As my eyes grew accustomed to the
basement’s gloom, I could see the lives of the Alberichs were only slightly
different from my own. A garbage can nearby was overflowing with plastic milk
cartons and empty pizza boxes, soda cans and torn and ragged cellophane bags
containing moldy Fritos and corn chips lay in disarray. There were several
Louis L’Amour western paperbacks spread-eagle, with their spines humped in the
air, on a table close to unmade cots. I could not find a lamp. How those little
gnomes managed to read in this darkness was beyond me. I was groping for a pull
string that possibly attached to a light somewhere, when I heard the clatter of
steel wheels on tracks. I suspected the Alberichs were returning and might not
approve of me nosing through their personal effects.
As I turned back to the tunnel, I confronted the
startling presence of all three Alberichs standing in the tunnel’s mouth,
staring at me with curiously luminous eyes. The lanterns on their hard hats
were glowing so dimly as to be useless. The longer I stared, the less luminous
their eyes became, until finally there was no glow left in them at all. Their
eyes, I suspected, must be bioluminescent like a firefly, or a cat with
reflective cell tissue behind their eyes.
“My name is Charles Case,” I said. I knew I would have
to fake excuses for my presence. “I’m with the Department of Employment
Security. Officials have raised a question as to the suitability of you holding
down these positions. The department may recommend mandatory retirement and
offer this job to a younger man, or men, whichever is the case.”
They looked at each other without speaking; an
inexplicable expression remained on their faces. The mouth of one Alberich
opened and something slithered in and out between his lips.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
It never occurred to me that they might be deaf or
mute, or both. I tried a few foreign words. If they replied, however, I would
not be able to understand.
“We speak English,” one of them replied.
“Good,” I said. “I thought we might be confronting some
insurmountable language barrier.” I received no response, so I took a few
cautious steps forward.
“How long have you gentlemen been employed here?” I
asked.
There was another long drawn-out silence. I could hear
them organizing a response, making calculations.
“A long time,” one said. “Since the beginning,”
another added. “It’s all in the files,” another replied.
I laughed hoarsely. “That is a very long time, ‘since the
beginning’. You mean, since the beginning of the hospital?”
“Since the very beginning,” one replied.
In the darkness, my mind was playing tricks on me. I
could see their eyes sparkling with little slivers of orange and silver light.
“May I ask your names?”
“Quilp,” replied one. “Scratch,” replied another.
“Ballsitch,” said the last one.
“Uh huh,” I replied and wrote their names in my
tablet. “Who is the oldest?”
Again, I confronted a prolonged silence. I longed to
hear something, even if it was the sound of my own voice. “Quilp, are you the eldest?”
“We are all the same age,” he replied.
Good, I had identified one voice, not that there was
much of a difference in one from the other.
“Triplets then,” I said softly. “Do you know the exact
date of your births?”
The orange fires in their eyes suddenly flared
brightly and then quickly died.
“It has been a long time, Mr. Case. We have forgotten
a great deal.”
He was a man after my own heart, good old motor-mouth
Quilp. “Do you remember your age when you started working for the hospital?”
One of them took a step forward. In the dense and shadowy
gloom, many unseen things were occurring. The smell of sulfur was going
straight to my brain, and I may have been hallucinating. When my nose stopped
twitching, the little men were still there, but not in the exact same place.
“A long time ago,” one said. “It’s in the file,”
another said.
“Is that you, Scratch?” I asked of the last voice.
“Ballsitch,” the voice replied.
I decided it was time to see what they knew about the
Ryders and Grier.
“Do any of you remember Dr. Grier?”
For one brief second their eyes appeared to burst into
flame and then just as quickly died out like cold embers. At the same time, the
fire in the furnace roared. I wasn’t sure which had caused the other. Their
oversized heads were wagging back and forth, and they talked in hushed whispers
to each other.
“He was here in the 20s and 30s,” I said. “He
performed many operations on the people upstairs. Do you remember when he
died?”
They stopped moving and stared at me. “He is dead?”
One of them asked. I think it was the chatterbox Quilp.
“Yes, he died in the late 1930s or 40s, about fifty
years ago.”
Their heads started wobbling back and forth anxiously.
“He is dead … for certain?”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s buried in the graveyard on the
Ryder family estate.”
There was more weaving and bobbing, but this time with
an excess of energy I had not realized the Alberichs were capable of
generating.
“So that explains it,” I heard one murmur.
“Explains what?” I exhorted.
“His absence,” another voice replied.
“Yes,” I said, “I suppose it would.”
“And the Nibelung King, has he also passed?”
“The who?”
“The one with the fire in his hair.”
“Fire in his hair? You mean, Samuel, of course you do,
the one with red hair. Yes, he t
o
o has passed.”
“And what of Lorele
i
, has she returned?”
“Lorelei? You mean, Elinore? She’ll return no more,
that’s for sure. She too has passed over.”
The three little guys gathered in a huddle and spoke
in whispers. A minute later, they were squaring off with me and back on the
line of scrimmage.
“They had no eyes,” I heard another say after a brief
silence.
“What? Who? What did you say? Who had no eyes?”
“The ones who came to us; they had no eyes.”
“Ballsitch, is that you?”
“Scratch,” the voice replied. “They had no eyes.”
I was so happy by the fact that I was getting a
response that I nearly forgot how to ask questions.
“Who has no eyes, Scratch?”
“The ones who came to us; they had no eyes.”
“What do you mean the ones who came to us…you?”
I figured he was talking about hospital patients, but
I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. I wanted it spelled out, nice and clear.