Authors: Thomas Cater
“Ah, yes: my failed doctoral thesis. Did you read it?
What do you think?”
“I was impressed,” I said. “That’s why I’m calling.
What do you remember about the Alberichs?”
“Ah, the little guys in the basement. I tried to do a
paper on them, but I couldn’t get it off the ground. They wouldn’t cooperate
and everyone said it was unlikely that such a trio could actually exist. I could
not get my advisor to pass on it, so I had to go with something else. Have you
seen them lately?”
“I saw them a few days ago,” I said. “Did they ever
confide any strange bits of information to you? Did you hear about unusual
activities occurring at the hospital, such as experiments conducted on patients,
while you were researching your paper? Did you ever discover anything to
suggest things weren’t as proper at Vandalia in the old days as they should
have been?”
There was a prolonged silence at the other end of the
line.
“Who are you?”
We went through the name and explanation again and
this time I added more.
“I’m working on a paper of my own. It’s about one of
Grier’s patients. You remember him, don’t you? A resident psychiatrist in the 20s
and 30s. I think he was doing some advanced experiments, things ahead of his
time, like eye transplants and neurosurgery.”
“Eye transplants?”
“Yeah, I think he was ahead of his time.”
“Eye transplants? That place is a mental hospital. Why
would he be doing eye transplants?”
“I don’t know he actually did any, but he was doing tests
that were related.”
“If that’s true, then you know more than I do. I can’t
help you, I’m sorry.”
“One more question about the Alberichs,” I said. “Did
you ever give them an intelligence test? Do you know if they were exceptional?”
“I gave them a basic test to determine whether or not
they were
above or below the average
, but not to measure their intelligence. From what I
remember, they had
terrible
recall.
They
could never give me a correct time or date.
I
can’t say how qualitatively
their minds
were
, but I do know
their recall
was
bad
.”
“Be
low
average?”
“I don’t know what average is,” he said, beginning to
sound more like a psychologist, “but I would say
'not good
'.”
“If I asked them about their
own p
ast
or personal history
, would they be able to recall?”
“I don’t
know
how much they could remember. I would say, a little,
” he replied.
I begged for one more question.
“Th
at strange
longevity
disease they have, how do you
suppose they
contracted it
? Is it genetic, something in their diet, or did
something unusual happen to them?”
Again,
there was
a long silence.
“I didn’t know they had a disease, maybe a rare
genetic disorder, such as Ellis-Van Creveld, but they’d be dead by now if that
were the case. I thought they were
just
growing old gracefully. There are gerontologists who
say that life expectancy may double within a few dozen years. It has something
to do with the T-Cells in the thymus and the pituitary gland, and the fact that
human cells replicate at least fifty times before they die. The secret is not
to make them replicate more, but slower. There is also a theory
that claims
a
death hormone
is
manufactured by the body
to insure
we
don’t live forever. No one knows what triggers it. It is the same kind of
chemical signal, which occurs in the lives of pacific salmon. Their pituitary
glands swell and send out all kinds of freaky hormones that rush them through
sexual maturity to old age in two weeks. The same process in a human life takes
forty years. But to answer your question, the answer is in the DNA, and in the
thymus and in a few thousand other biological or chemical coincidences.”
“I was looking for a simple, easy to understand
answer.”
“You’ll never find it, but if you do, let me know,” he
said.
“I got a few more questions, if you’ve got the time,”
I said, “and then I’m through. How old are the Alberich’s?”
“I got the impression that no one knew
their age with any certainty, or how
old they were when admitted. People
tend t
o believe their
parents dropped them off because they were strange
little dwarfs
.
From my calculations, if their parents dropped them off when they were a few
years old in the early 1900s, they should be close to eighty or ninety. How old
do they look to you?”
“A well-preserved 40 to 50,” I replied.
“My thoughts exactly, but I suspect they are older,
but I have no way to prove it. There is something about the texture of their
skin that seems to be ... old, like the patina on a piece of antique furniture;
it couldn’t get that way except through time.”
“That doesn’t sound too scientific,” I said.
“That’s what my advisor said and why I didn’t do a paper
on them; too incredible. Did you ever try to get one of those little guys out
of the basement? It’s impossible. It is almost as if they would disintegrate if
touched by sunlight.”
“Like vampires or ghouls,” I said, and wished I
hadn’t.
“Yeah,” he said nervously, “like vampires.”
I thought about the wall and squeezed in another
question.
“What do you know about the wall?”
“What wall?”
“The wall around the hospital,” I said.
“I don’t know anything about it. Why, what is there to
know?”
“I think it does something to the atmosphere,” I said.
“Yes, it does,” he replied. “It makes it what it is, a
mental hospital instead of a country club.”
“A wall is like a fist,” I said, quoting the
stonemason. “Like a fist holding on to things, and it won’t let go.”
There was a moment of thoughtful silence on the line
and then he asked, “What do you think it’s hanging on to?”
“Souls,” I said, allowing some internal mechanism to
respond. “Souls.” The more I said it, the better it sounded.
“I heard you the first time,” he replied. I heard him
turn up the music. “Are you a believer in spiritual things, such as souls, or
heaven and hell, Mr. Case?”
“Yes and no. I was raised a Catholic, but converted to
sophistry. I read somewhere once that even the pope doesn’t believe in heaven
or hell, so he has a lot more riding on it than I do.”
“So what do we need souls for?” he asked.
“So we can show each other a little compassion,” I
said.
“So what’s all the bullshit about a wall hanging on to
souls?”
“It’s there to keep something or someone in or out. I
prefer to believe it’s there to keep things in -- not physical things -- but
mental things that hold the mind hostage, things that are left over after the
body dies; things that don’t know what to do or where to go after the body
slips below the waves.”
He didn’t answer straight away. I think he was worried
about something.
“Ah, what the hell; you’re probably right, Case. If
it’s any comfort to you, I know how you feel. There were times, just a few
times, when I felt like tearing that wall down. I thought it was taking root
inside me.”
It was my turn to think about his words. I wondered
how sensitized he was to things that were happening in the chemical and
spiritual world and might still be imprinting on our genes.
“Have you spent a lot of time in the hospital?” He
asked.
I detected a change of tone in his voice. He was open,
exposed, and almost confessional.
“No, not that much time, but I know that wall is…an
enemy of some kind, and I don’t know how to explain it.”
I was echoing George’s sentiments, and I was glad to
hear them spoken aloud.
“I think you’re right, but I don’t know how to help
you,” he said. “There are different worlds surrounding us, and every mind is a
different bridge to those worlds. It’s almost impossible for two people to
cross the same bridge at the same time. Do you know what I mean?”
“How would you like to get together and talk about it?
Maybe we can find the answers in a few ales,” I said.
“Not this time,” he replied. “I’ll be up with my
project all night. No one can get any work done around here during the day, not
while I’m experimenting.”
*
Snowden’s project inspired me to follow up on an
experiment of my own. Before I left Morgantown, I took the RV to an auto
electric shop and had the mechanics install twin diesel horns in the van and bump
the power as high as it would go. I also told them to configure two external
speakers with the maximum amount of wattage and amps to reach at least 100 to
200 decibels, all the van could handle without tearing blasting the paint off.
I may not have been able to call down lightning and thunder, but I could surely
raise a few gnarly decibels of sound. Enough, I hoped, to wake the dead.
Chapter Forty
I drove back to Vandalia in a storm of thoughts so
deep and silent I missed the exit ramp, which was sobering.
I doubled-back on the interstate and cruised down
Route 33. A burger joint just off the road advertised two for the price of one.
I was hungry, but felt I could hold out for a ‘Quick Stop’ grocery store. I was
in the mood for a jar of peaches packed in sweet heavy syrup.
I thought about the discussions with Snowden and
Cavell’s comments and observations; although plausible at the time, they seemed
to be losing merit rapidly. The possibility of a “seeing-eye” baboon grew more
outrageous as I thought about it. I also reflected on my encounter with Joanne
Zimmerly; she was wrapped too tight for my preference.
I kept running up against a stonewall, no pun
intended. It prevented me from gaining access to the Ryder property and the
past. I wondered if Samuel knew what he let himself in for when he hired
Nicodemus Thanatos to ‘wall’ in his corner of the universe.
As I re-entered Upshyre County, I could feel what
George Thacker felt on his first visit: the threatening grip of Satan’s hand upon
his mind and heart.
He was right;
t
he county needed liberating. Whatever was strangling
it, it had crawled into the minds and hearts of the locals and was sleeping
with them, hardening their arteries and the visions of who they were and what
they were supposed to be. It was a condition found on battlegrounds of inner
cities and ghettos, but not by houses shaded by 150-year-old maple trees.
The po
wers that
gathered in darkness were quietly conducting an asSamuelt on one insignificant
stronghold of viable faith. I may have blasphemed on a number of occasions, but
I was not going to stand by and watch a clean-cut all-around old-age retirement
community go down without a fight.
I drove directly to Virgil’s house. His wagon was in
the drive and his wife’s jeep sat at the curb. I parked behind the wagon. They
had finished dinner and were washing dishes, sharing a brief interlude of
domestic bliss in an otherwise crass and commercial day.
I sat at the table, accepted the offer of coffee and
sipped sparingly.
“Busy day,” I said forcing a smile, but nothing worked
now that our business was approaching an end.
“Any progress?” Virgil asked, but his interest was cool
and indifferent.
“I think so, but it’s not easy to demonstrate,” I
said. “I may be stuck, but I can’t be sure.”
He took a sheet of paper from the phone bench and
passed it to me.
“Maybe this will put you back on the scent.”
It was a single phone number and the name ‘Harmon’.
“Someone called and asked for you. Said you were inquiring
about Frank Harmon?”
It wasn’t a smoking gun, but it was better than
nothing. I borrowed the phone and dialed.
“Charles Case,” I said. “You called about Frank
Harmon?”
“Frank Harmon was my uncle,” the voice replied, “my
daddy’s older brother. He worked in the Elanville mine in the 20s just before
it closed. I got a picture of him if you’d care to see it,” he said.
“Thank you, Mr….”
“Harmon, Louis Harmon. My granddaughter said you
called. I’ve been gone most of the day, cuttin’ fire wood, and shopping’ at Wal-Mart.
It’s gettin’ close to that time of year, you know. The frost is on the
pumpkin.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but suspected it had to
do with the fact that fall was in the air and winter weather was threatening.