The Floating Corpse

by James Walker

  Another of the girls let out a short scream and instantly they were all squealing like a pen full of hungry piglets. Then, to cap off their commotion, the rest of the passengers rushed to that side, causing the small ferry to tilt slightly to port.

  Above us, a man stepped out from the wheelhouse and snapped a spyglass open. He scanned the area she pointed to then closed it shut in disgust.

  “That’s a mooring, you damn fools! Now you people get back to your places!” He glared at the crowd until they sheepishly went back to their original positions. Then he pointed a finger at the group of indignant looking women. “You lot! Stop making a ruckus on my boat or I’ll take you back-and leave you!” With that, he stepped back into the wheelhouse.

  “Funny to find Captain Bligh on the Had-Lyme Ferry!” I joked.

  William barked a short laugh. “Captain Burke is really quite a pleasant person, He simply brooks no nonsense on his boat.” as he shook his head in disgust. “Look at these sap-heads! They are right back at it.”

  It was true. Most folks had drifted back to their original positions but they still all scanned the river’s surface. It was obvious enough to me as an outsider, that they believed something was in their river. “When did the River Monster rumors start?”

  “I am not quite sure of when,” William answered. “I was too busy to hear about it until the entire town was in its thrall. But I can tell you who started it. Catherine’s brother, Marquis. He has been regaling anyone he sees, and drinking for free on the tale of how he saw a mysterious shape in the water as he was heading back to his dock one evening. Something big and fearsome bumped his boat a few times until he managed to navigate away from it. He tells it well but offers no tangible proof. So, now, every shadow, every shape in the dimming light, is a monster-looking for prey! Observe these people carefully, Frohman. It is a classic example of mass hysteria. The kind of thing that will either scatter them like sheep with a wolf in the fold, or mold them into a destructive force or the kind that tries to burn the world or lynches a man from the nearest tree.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Uncle Will.” I said looking around at the backs of the passengers. “I think people look for the Monster for the same reason they come to see you at the theater. People, even the happiest, always want just a little more. A little more excitement. A little mystery.” I cast an eye at him, “Even a bit of melodrama. The unknown can be a powerful aphrodisiac!”

  William looked surprised for a moment, then a sad smile crept across his chin and I thought I saw a tear welling in one eye. I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I looked away towards the approaching dock.. It was a few moments before he spoke again.

  “Forgive this spate of sentimentality, Frohman.” He said softly, “I remember when you took your first steps and now, I see an intelligent, worldly adult man next to me. Perhaps I have no right to say this, yet I am extremely proud of the way you turned out.”

  I knew I would cry if I looked at him, so I just nodded and mumbled, “My father and YOU were the very best teachers a young buck like me could have. You have my sincere thanks Uncle Will.”

  Thankfully, our dramatics ended when the crew started walking in front of our bikes in preparation for docking. William placed his hand on my shoulder and broke the mood, saying, “When did you become such the sage?”

  I shrugged, “I guess I got more out of all that college than varsity letters, duels, and hang-overs!”

  We laughed and hopped on our bikes to ready ourselves for disembarking.

  As the crowd started to move forward, in readiness to depart, a few people came up and engaged William. He was polite and charming at first, but when a third person asked him if he had seen anything on the river from his home’s vantage, he slapped his helmet on, snapped his googles into place, and then started his engine.

  After that, as anyone approached, he pulled back on the throttle to get a respectable engine roar. People tried to holler over the noise so I joined in and soon our two engines were dueling for decibels.

  As soon as the rope was dropped over the ramp, William kicked the Indian into gear and he moved off the ferry. I followed so quickly my front tire nearly left the ground. I caught him when he slowed to turn onto Main Street. He motioned for me to keep my speed down as when headed up the main though fare.

  Chester was a nice little town. Typical of the kind of towns you found along the coast, the street, though not paved were solid packed from centuries of use and easy on the tires. At one time, the shops and stores, with the exception of a few, had started out as homes. As the population grew and got more affluent, people started building bigger homes on more property. The ones I saw up the side streets leading away from town looked spacious and well kept. I wasn’t surprised- This town had probably been here since this land was first settled by white men.

  I felt as if I already knew Chester, since I had read its description in my father’s journals. To my left was a grassy strip that ran from the ferry landing, along the river and up to Main Street. Smack in the middle was a large, aging gazebo. Then both sides of the street were lined with businesses.

  One that stood out was a larger building that had a row of oversized windows facing the street. Inside I could see a few men standing at a bar, behind a hand full of tables, set for food service. This would be the infamous ‘Inn’ my father described. As we already had eaten lunch, and my uncle wasn’t about to agree to an afternoon pick-me-up, I decided to try and make my way there at some point in this visit.

  We were about half-way up the main drag, when William pulled his over in front of a Victorian style house and killed the engine. I pulled up alongside him, right under a sign that had two parts. The top read ‘John Nelson, MD’, the bottom, ‘Thomas Blum, MD’. William wasted no time, shedding his riding gear and walking up the steps to the door. I tossed my stuff on the seat of my bike and followed.

  The foyer was small, with a staircase that led upstairs, roped off with a red cord and a ‘private’ sign hanging from its middle. A long hallway ran in front of us, but William opened the first door on our right, and we walked into what must have been the parlor in its residential time.

  Now, it was the Doctor’s waiting room with a reception desk which was unoccupied for the moment, sat right inside the door to the left. There was a low wooden barrier with a gate dividing the room and the rest of the walls were lined with chairs that were occupied by patients. Most of them knew my uncle and gave him greetings. In return, William walked along the perimeter, shaking hands and listening to their various ailments with compassion. The man knew how to work a room.

  A door in the rear of the room opened, and a pert young woman dressed in traditional nurse’s garb, hustled out. She set a file on the desk then picked another one from a pile. “Mr. Brown?” she called out.

  A large negro man, middle aged, got up carefully from his seat and limped over to the gate. As he walked in front of us, William asked, “Your gout again, Jimmy?”

  The man winced and said, “Feels like a weasel chewing on my toes!”

  William patted him on the back. “I’m sure Doctor Nelson can help.”

  He shrugged, “Most likely he will tell me the same thing ole Doc Blum did. No mo’ whiskey. No mo’ sugar. No mo’ greasy food. Ain’t any reason to get out of bed without those three!”

  William was about to reply when the Nurse said loudly swinging open the gate, “Come along, Mr. Brown. The doctor’s waiting.”

  The man sighed and began to limp along. As the nurse turned to follow him in, William called out to her, “Excuse me, Miss?”

  She turned to face him, a cold look on her face. “NURSE. Miss is the girl that comes in and cleans.”

  William flashed the NURSE his best smile. “Good afternoon. I do not believe we have met. Allow me to introduce myself, I am William Gillette, and this is my colleague…”

  “I know who you are, Mr. Gillette. Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, I…”

  “Unless i
t’s a dire emergency, you’ll just have to take a seat and wait. As you can see, Doctor Nelson has a busy afternoon!”

  Avoiding a reply, she turned her backs on us and began to head towards the back.

  Looking to see William’s reaction, I noticed a diploma from a nursing school on the wall next to the desk. I could see my Uncle was starting to look vexed, so I called out loudly, “Excuse me, are they paying you to be the bouncer too? We’re not finished here!”

  That froze her in her tracks. She turned slowly to face us, cross eyed and flushed with anger. She stomped over to us and opened her mouth to give us the rough side of her tongue, but William held a finger up, just inches from her, and said in a firm voice, “We are not here to see Dr. Nelson. Our business is with Doctor Blum.”

  That let a little of the steam out of her as she replied defiantly, “Well...he’s busy too! Most likely for the rest of the afternoon.” She glared at me, “Official police business, if you must know!”

  As luck would have it, the door behind the desk swung open, and the elderly Doctor Blum came strolling in. Without a glance in our direction, he called out, “Ernestine! Bring my tea when you get a chance.”

  “Make sure it’s hot, Nurse!” I dead panned- just to tweak her for treating my Uncle so shabbily.

  She glared at me, but Doctor Blum noticed us before she could retort.

  “Hullo, William. Thought I might see you earlier. Just as well, I only just finished.

  Come back to my office.”

  William stepped forward to open the gate but couldn’t because the Nurse was still standing in front of it, glaring at me.

  “Excuse me, Nurse. We have some OFFICAL POLICE business with the doctor.”

  She stepped back, still throwing daggers with her eyes as we passed through to the inner sanctum.

  I gave her my best smile, “Remember… Hot Tea!”

  The doctor led us down the long hallway to the back of the house, and then, through a mostly unused kitchen. On the opposite wall there was a door, obviously new to the house, which the doctor tried to open but found it locked.

  “Damnation! We’ll have to go back around the other way. The keys are in my office!”

  He headed back out the way we came, and William and I followed. I was starting to wonder about this codger when William spoke.

  “It was quite kind of you to give Doctor Nelson your office.”

  “And look where it got me!” Blum groused as he went through a doorway to a short hallway. Taking a left, we stepped past a few doors until we came to the open one at the end of the hall. Stepping through, he added, “Any further back, I’d be in the garden shed!”

  “And I see you have a new girl. What happened with Susan?”

  “She’s not my girl,” He said as he tossed his papers onto an already messy desk.” She’s John’s, though she will steer my last few remaining patients back here to the north forty. As for Susan…well, she left me last-early September if I remember correctly.

  I don’t know what the devil got into her, she just up and quit on me! Claimed she was going to wait for the husband to come home in the spring. Moved back into her folk’s house since them both passed last year, and in with that crack pot ‘Marine Engineer’ brother of hers. Though, I hear he high-tailed it off to work on another of his so-called inventions! More of those clothes to work under water, I’ll wager. Bunch of nonsense!”

  William shook his head and asked, “What else did the gossiper’s say?” There was a slight mocking edge to the question. Uncle Will never had much good to say about gossiping.

  “That she’s turned into a mean- spirited recluse over the winter which doesn’t surprise me a bit. She always was a bossy, narrow-minded wretch!”

  He laughed, “Could you imagine the two of us back here, whiling away the hours? I could hardly stand her ways when she was in the other room! There’d have been another murder to investigate, I tell you!

  “But I’m rambling. Make yourselves at home. I don’t have any appointments this afternoon.”

  It was a bit cramped, but it was a pleasant room, with great windows along the wall and a set of French doors that led to a back porch. I assumed that it had started its life as a dining room since it was long and narrow, and I could see where a chandelier once hung and now replaced with an overhead electric light. There was a single bookcase, with a fair- sized desk in front of it, and with two chairs for patients. The opposite wall had a curtain that separated it from the rest of the room, where he must have examined his patients. From the faint, dank death odor in the room I knew the body was behind that cloth.

  The doctor turned to us, “Put your things there,” gesturing to a hat rack and chair in the corner.

  “So, Dr. Blum,” William said as he deposited his hat and gloves, “How is semi-retirement treating you so far?”

  “About the same as you William. Now I have the time to do all the things I’ve wanted to when I retired and I can’t fit them all in!”

  “So true!” William said with a chuckle. “When I am focused on a production, my mind is organized and relaxed. But without that stimulus, well, life has a way of pulling your attention in all directions!”

  “Or, in your case- death,” Blum countered. “Now, I can tell you everything I know about that child, but I’m sure you’re going to want a look see for yourself. Am I right?”

  William nodded. “I am sure you are aware of the utter confidence I have of your professional opinion, Doctor, yet a prior examination may help me focus any questions I may have.”

  He sighed, “As you wish, William, but I must warn you-it’s not a pretty sight!”

  I supposed it was just nerves, but I blurted out, “Have you ever seen any pretty corpses?”

  That set the old sawbones back on his heels, but he recovered quickly and gave me a smile. “You are Charles’s boy-no doubt about it.”

  I regretted my flippancy as soon as he pulled the curtain open. On a clean sheeted gurney, looking miniscule on the seven foot table lay a dissected baby. Quickly I looked away from the gruesome sight, focusing instead on a side table where the baby’s clothes and wrappings were piled. Most of that was a depressing filthy gray, except for a pair of knitted booties that stood out with their deep dark red coloring. It was hard to imagine such well-crafted footwear gracing what looked like a butchered piglet on the big table.

  She was surgically split from throat to belly button and the skin of her torso was peeled back. What lay in the cavity looked like dried sausage and chum. The fingers and toes were blackened and looked like burnt match sticks that were stuck on rotting turkey legs.

  The tiny face, with its distorted features, looked as it did when we found her. Now that she was bare, I saw some moss growing at the base of her neck and her skull was wildly distorted. It stuck up in three peaks with a coating of hair on each. Queasy but still curious, I stepped around William’s back to get a better look at the top of her head.

  My stomach fluttered and my mouth began to fill with my previous meal, partially digested, when I saw that the doctor had cut a large X in the top of her head and peeled her skull back like a banana to expose the brain.

  William, not seeing my pale face, pointed out, like I wanted a lesson, “As you can see Frohman, there is no need to saw into a newborn’s bony skull to open it up. The three bones that make up the skull have not yet, and will not for some months, fuse together. This allows the brain to grow without constriction.”

  Uncle Will bent in for a closer look and I was about to coat the top of my boots, and his, with my stomach’s contents, when the doctor came to my rescue.

  “Collin!” he said jovially, “Why don’t we let William get a closer look.” He put an arm around me and gently pulled me away from the table. “Come on over to my desk for a moment. I was a great admirer of your father.”

  I was still a little numb, but my stomach stopped churning as I sank down into one of the chairs across the desk from him. As soon as he settled into his sea
t, he opened a top drawer of his desk and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. He rummaged around some more and pulled out two glasses, which he held up with a question in his eye, “I hope the apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree?”

  I laughed, “Thank you. I’ll have them both. Find yourself another glass and join me.”

  He chuckled as he poured the two shots and handed me one. “Afraid you’ll have to settle for a refill, I only have two.”

  We saluted each other and downed them neatly. Pouring us another, he said, “I am sorry to hear of your family’s troubles, Collin. First your father and then your brother. Must have been hard on all of you. Your poor mother! Tending to a comatose patient is extremely taxing.”

  I shrugged. “We had two around the clock nurses to take care of my brother. “Mom’s a strong old gal. She keeps busy. My sister and her child take up a lot of her time and my younger brother is still in school ‘til the end of this year.” Then a thought struck me, “How did you know about Michael?”

  “Oh! Well…” he stammered, looking a bit sheepish, “William had me make a few calls to some friends of mine in the city who specialize in paralysis.”

  “Which I assumed would be kept in confidentiality, Doctor!” William said sharply, suddenly appearing next to me. He took the other chair and crossed his legs, “I would hope for more discretion from a man of medicine.”

  I reached over and patted his arm, wanting to shield the doctor from his ire. “Forget it, Uncle Will. Thank you. I appreciate your efforts on Mike’s behalf.”

  He seemed mollified and the doctor quickly changed the subject. “Well, William? Any deductions on the death of the tiny baby?”

  William frowned a bit, “Not really, Doctor. I admit I could glean little from the body, though I will maintain the child was alive when abandoned.”

  Blum slapped the desktop, “And you would be right. I’m certain of that also.”

  Then Doctor Blum clasped his hands and leaned forward on his desk. In a somber voice, he gave his report.