Authors: Thomas Cater
“You think he was performing unauthorized operations
on mental patients, wards of the state?”
“I don’t know how unauthorized the experiments were. In
fact, I don’t know if there were any experiments. Examining the brain of a deceased
mental patient may have been legal and transplanting eyes seems to be an act of
charity. It may be the finest gift one human being can give another. What he did
may give him many sleepless nights, but I believe he should have been given an award.”
“But what about the lobotomies; all those useless
operations; all those people turned into vegetables.”
“Grier may have been more aggressive than other
surgeons, but who’s to say he wasn’t doing the best he could? In the 50s,
lobotomies became an acceptable procedure and one of the most effective ways to
deal with mental problems, and the treatment is coming back. His death rate may
have been a little higher, but how about his success rate? I think he lost more
sleep over the death of those people than anyone. There have been greater indiscretions.”
“What if the operations weren’t necessary? What if his
patients were only emotionally upset?”
“There is that possibility, but he didn’t have to
operate on marginal cases. There were enough troubled ones to provide him with
an unending supply of brains and eyes.”
“He should have received permission from someone.”
“We don’t know that he didn’t. In all likelihood, he
probably did. Grier was working on the cutting edge. His ideas on transplanting
eyes and psycho-surgery may have seemed strange in the 1930s, but he was
probably the best man for the job.”
“Do you think he was passing himself off as someone he
wasn’t?”
I shrugged and gave an ambiguous nod."We
shouldn’t go fishing for
remote
possibilities.”
She was unwilling to admit defeat.
“Is something wrong?” I asked. “Am I leaning too far to
the left or right?”
“What about Elinore?” She asked. “Did she ever get her
eyes?”
“That’s why I want to read the journals. I want to
know what Grier did the day he arrived until he finished with Elinore. If he helped
her, my theory is correct. If he didn’t, it may have something to do with the
house and why it’s haunted.”
I had to give that theory more thought. “I don’t know
what it has to do with the wall, either. But after last night, I am grateful to
whoever or whatever is watching over me.”
A curious idea inside my mind started working its way
up through a lot of detritus and debris.
“Spirits, Satan’s fist, the battle of Jericho, and the
walls came tumblin’ down.” I shook my head doubtfully.
“There’s got to be a logical answer somewhere. Can I borrow
your phone?”
I pulled a chair up and thumbed through the phone
book.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“The number for the Catholic Church’s rectory,” I
replied. I found the number and dialed. “Is Father Rooney in?”
I was asked to wait, but was assured my call was
needed and appreciated. A few seconds later, Father Mike Rooney spoke.
“Father, this is Charles Case. We met in my motor home.”
“Ah, yes, the ghost buster,” he said. “Having any
luck?”
“Yes, all bad.”
A sudden gust of hearty laughter filled my ear.
“Any more encounters of the weird kind?” He asked with
a wheezing snort.
“A few,” I replied.
“Oh, really,” he said in his Irish accent. “Perhaps
you would like me to perform an exorcism on your vehicle?” and laughed again.
He made no attempt to conceal a strong disliking for my self-appointed mission.
The thought of an exorcism had entered my mind, but I
hadn’t completely lost faith in my primitive investigative techniques. I was
convinced there might be more than just an unwanted spiritual guest wandering
around my house.
“I called to ask you a biblical question. It’s about
the battle of Jericho, the one Joshua fought when the ‘walls came tumbling
down?’ If I remember correctly, didn’t Joshua have his army march around those
walls for a few days blowing on their horns to bring them ‘tumbling’ down?”
“Yes, I believe so,” he replied, “Though the Bible
isn’t my strong suit.”
“My question is ‘what kind of horns did they use?’
Does it say? And did they blow a particular tune, or maybe some kind of a Souza
march, or were they just blowing away?”
There was too much silence on the line. “Hello,
Father Mike, are you still there?”
His reply came like a vindicating tongue of fire. “How
the hell am I supposed to know what kind of horns they used? Do I look like a
rabbi? You think anyone would know the answer to that question? Besides, it
doesn’t have anything to do with blowing horns or marching. It has to do with
obedience and faith, and the power of the Lord to destroy his enemies.”
Who were the enemies of God, the philistines or all
the enemies of Israel? Was god in the destroying, or the life-promoting business?
I suspected he was wrong. Churchmen have been going in the wrong direction for
the past 2,000 years.
“If it doesn’t have anything to do with blowing horns,
then why did he make them march around the wall blowing for days before the
walls finally came tumbling down? Who built that wall? Do you have any idea? Were
they Medians, Manicheans, or maybe Mayans? Have you ever seen an Incan wall?
They’re remarkable feats of engineering. Has anyone ever examined the remnants
of Jericho’s tumbled down walls? Do they even know where it’s at?”
“Jesus, Case, are you some kind of a wide-ranging basket
case? It's bad enough the woods are full of faith healers and evangelists. In
other camps, we got atheists, anarchists, devil worshipers and godless
communists, but you have to combine atheism with some kind of supernatural
stone masonry. I’d like to help you, but the only way I can is if you come in
and go to confession and take the sacrament. You don’t need an exorcism on that
house, and knowing what kind of horn Joshua blew in Jericho isn’t going to help
you. You need to get down on your knees in front of the Virgin and pray.
That’s what you need.”
“Father Mike,” I asked. “What did Christ mean when he
told his apostles that if they did not announce his arrival into Jerusalem, the
very stones of the street would cry out his name? Did he mean that stones possess
spirit, or did he mean that men alone possess souls?
“What are you driving at now?” He asked.
“I read a verse in Genesis which
proclaims, ‘and to every beast of the earth, and to
every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, I gave
a
living soul . . .’
Well, l
ast night
I saw a stone wall drink my blood. It scared the piss out of me, it really
did.”
The priest was reconnoitering. I could hear his breath
capitulating to the power of his oratory.
“Case? What kind of name is that? Irish, Russian,
Hebrew? Never mind, it makes no difference. I like good theological discussions
as much as the next man, but I stay within reason. There is nothing in the good
book that says stones can talk or cry out. I think Christ was speaking ‘parable-bolically’,
or trying to make an elliptical point. As far as a wall drinking blood, I think
your clutch is slipping. Why don’t you go to bed early tonight, stay away from
that house, and come see me first thing tomorrow morning. We’ll talk about this
separation with your wife.”
“How did you know we were separating?”
“I didn’t mean to pry, but Virgil and I had a talk. I
thought you might be exercising undue influence.”
“You’ve got no business sticking your Roman Catholic nose
into my personal affairs.”
“Please, Mr. Case, remember, he was one of my
parishioners long before he became acquainted with you.”
I slammed the receiver down.
“Something wrong?” Connie asked.
I loosed an angry scowl at the phone. “That is one of
many reasons why I have elected to be a heretic.”
She glanced at the phone, a confused look on her face.
“What is heretic?”
“One who opposes church beliefs.”
“So what do you believe?” she said.
“I don’t know what I believe, but I do know what I
don’t believe, and that is the Holy Ghost, the Holy Church, the Communion of
Saints, the forgiveness of sins and life everlasting. I do believe that I am a
child of the universe and I have a right to be here, and so do you. I do not
like the way they manage other people’s lives, or tell them what to believe. They
need to find a life of their own, but that would entail too many commitments.”
“A lot of people need it. Some of us aren’t good at
managing,” she said.
“Personal relationships are just that. What business
is it of his, who I lead astray?”
She was trying to correct an error with a bottle of
white out. “I can tell you’re from out of town,” she said. “Preachers in this
part of the country don’t just preach, they own, manage, extort, confuse,
demand, curse, shame and seek revenge. If you were a ‘
holy roller’ or a speaker in tongues
, you could spend the rest of your life ostracized.
They wouldn’t even let your kids talk to you.”
“That man is a Roman Catholic, a Jesuit, the pride of
the corps. He’s supposed to be an intellectual, capable of freeing the human
mind and spirit from the constraints of prejudice and bigotry, doggerel and
dogma. I demand to be heard by a Jesuit, not a Baptist!”
“What did he say that upset you so?” She asked.
I scooted up on the edge of her desk and a muscle
spasm tied my left leg into a painful knot. I tried to walk and rub it out,
while she looked on.
“The priest told me I should go back to my wife.”
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“A little muscle spasm, that’s all.”
She studied the small plastic bottle of correction fluid.
“Maybe he’s right. Maybe you should…”
It had to be a little difficult for her to say those
words, but there was ease in her manner that aroused my curiosity
“Go back to Myra? That would be the worst possible
thing I could do, even if she wanted me. No, I’ll never go back. She’d rather
see me dead and I think I would prefer it that way, too.”
Connie smiled and straightened up. “I don’t know why
you think she’d feel that way? You seem like a nice guy to me.”
It wasn’t worth thinking about. I knew I was a nice
guy, but something went wrong with our chemistry. I’m not quite sure what or
when. Myra got out of bed one day and started taking apart my dreams, a piece
at a time. She said I was wasting her precious time. She started subverting my
beliefs. Before I knew it, we were screaming at each other instead of talking. I
was in my prime and she kept saying, ‘do you realize in a few years you’re
going to be much older?’ I never heard her say, ‘What are you worried about? You
have your whole life ahead of you.’ I need that. I need action, not a wasting of
my faculties. I need to be told that I’m doing meaningful work.
Connie’s mouth was open slightly and smiling. Some
pretty little flytrap, I thought. “I am a nice guy,” I said calmly, “nice for
someone else, but not for her. She’s happier without me.”
I was silent for a moment and shook my head.
“Sometimes I feel so very old, as if I’ve been knocking around on the planet
for eons. At other times, I feel like a newborn babe and I don’t know the first
thing about life.”
She closed her mouth, smiled, and went back to writing
letters or preparing purchase orders, or whatever administrative assistants do.
I humbly excused my way out of the office and returned to the van.
Chapter Thirty-Six
My eyes were still puffy, but the redness had
vanished and I was suddenly very hungry. I warmed up a can of tomato soup,
drank chocolate milk and ate Ritz crackers. I also found a carrot and some
leftover Christmas cookies. I boiled enough water for three cups of tea and
sacked out on the bed, a journal under my arm.
I could see the sky turning a dull metallic gray
through the van window. It was too early for snow, even in these melancholy hills,
so it had to be clouding up to rain.
I tried to see myself as the lord of the manor in the
Ryder house, but it was an unwilling image. The damned house had ideas of its
own and it was trying to confuse me. I tried to imagine myself in a velvet
smoking jacket and patent leather slippers sitting in front of an open fire
sucking on a corncob pipe, but it didn’t work.
The only image that made its way into my mind was yours
truly with a shovel in my hand digging in the soil and excavating rotting
wooden boxes, dragging them from the earth through tangled weedy patches of
brier to other hillsides, other graves. It was not a pleasant image.
I could not help wondering if it were possible to
raise a child in that house, a child with eyes bright as tracer bullets tangled
in the vines. With all its shadows and specters, the house, or whatever was in
it, seemed to think a child the likely answer to all its problems.