by Ronald Kelly
“Thank God.”
“Doc?” came a weak voice from behind them.
Mitchell stood and turned toward the bed. Kyle was awake. He lay there, hooked up to IVs and monitors, looking pale. The flesh around his eyes appeared dark and shadowy, almost bruised.
“Good morning, little buddy,” said the doctor. “How are you feeling today?”
“Weaker than water,” said the boy with a sigh. “Better than yesterday, I guess.”
The physician did a short examination; checking his vital signs, pupil dilation, and breathing. He laid the flat of his palm on the boy’s mid-section for a long moment. The boy flinched. “Still tender?”
“A little,” admitted Kyle.
Doctor Mitchell sat on the edge of the bed and smiled at the ten-year-old. “I don’t want to upset you, Kyle, but someone from the police department will be stopping by later on to talk to you. About what happened in the industrial park.”
Kyle shrugged his shoulders weakly. “I don’t really remember much of anything. It’s all pretty
hazy.”
The doctor was thoughtful for a moment. “Kyle… could you tell me about the man in the camper? This ‘Mr. Mack’? Can you describe him to me?”
A haunted look shown in the boy’s sunken eyes. “He just looked like a harmless old man,” he told the doctor. “Almost bald, a white beard, glasses.” Then Kyle’s voice lowered a bit, almost fearfully. “But that wasn’t his real face.”
Abruptly, a crash came from the adjoining bathroom. They turned their eyes to see a middle-aged black woman in green scrubs standing in the doorway. Her eyes were wide. Startled.
“Hi, Sophie,” said Mitchell. “I didn’t know you were in there.”
“I was cleaning,” she said.
“Everything okay?”
“Yes, sir. I just dropped something that’s all.” She stared not at the doctor, but at the boy in the bed. Then she turned and went back to work.
Doctor Mitchell smiled at his patient. “You rest up, Kyle, and I’ll check in on you later.”
“Okay,” agreed Kyle.
The doctor stood up and started toward the door.
“Uh, Doc? How’s Jimmy doing?”
Mitchell wondered if his smile looked too forced and false. He hoped not. “We’ll talk about Jimmy later.” Then he left before the boy could ask any further questions.
As he left the fourth floor pediatric ward and started back to his office, Doctor Mitchell mulled over Kyle Sadler’s condition in his mind. The boy was terribly weak and anemic, but that wasn’t what concerned him. It was the tests that had him worried. Particularly the CAT scan they had done yesterday afternoon.
He hadn’t exactly told Betty Sadler the entire truth. Kyle had been abused, but not sexually. Rather, the tests had shown that the boy had been mistreated in other, more subtle ways.
For lack of a better term, Mitchell referred to it as anatomical molestation. The natural position of several of Kyle’s internal organs had been altered. The boy’s liver had swapped places with his stomach, and his kidneys were positioned at the front of his abdominal cavity, rather than the rear. The pancreas was completely missing and, in its place, was a strange organ that shouldn’t have even been there… but one that served the exact same function. Mitchell had not done exploratory surgery on the boy, but he knew how the organ looked; pear-shaped and pale purple, almost lavender in color. He also knew that the cellular tissue was unlike any known to man. Living tissue that was totally alien to modern medicine.
He knew that for a fact, because Kyle wasn’t the first child to be admitted into his care. Three others – a boy and two girls – had suffered similar fates during the past two months. And all possessed that strange, new organ where their pancreas once was.
Another thing that concerned Mitchell was the matter of Jimmy Jackson. He hadn’t told Kyle, but his best friend was missing. When Kyle had been discovered alongside his bike in the vacant lot, he had been found alone.
* * * *
That evening, as she cleaned the big windows of the hospital lobby, Sophie Taylor stared into the rainy twilight beyond the panes. Her hands trembled nervously as she worked.
“Sophie?”
She turned at the sound of the man’s voice and found Phillip Mitchell standing behind her, dressed in his street clothes. At first, she could only stare at him.
“Sophie… are you alright?” he asked, concerned. “You seemed upset this afternoon… in Kyle
Sadler’s room.”
She wanted so badly to tell him, but, instead, she lied. “I’m okay, Dr. Mitchell. It’s just this business with the children. It has me spooked, that’s all.”
The doctor nodded. “I know how you feel,” he said.
No, she thought. You couldn’t possibly know.
“Well, good night, Sophie,” said Doctor Mitchell. Then he left the lobby and sprinted through the rain toward his car.
She watched as he pulled out of the parking lot and into the traffic. You should have told him, she thought. Absently, she pressed the palm of her hand against her belly, just below the diaphragm and felt the steady thrum-thrum-thrum of a pulse where none should have been.
Sophie had taught herself to ignore it, but it had grown stronger since the children were admitted.
It had happened a long time ago, back in Alabama. It was 1974. She had been nine years old. She was walking home from the store when a man pulled up in his camper… a Winnebago, she believed it was. Balding, white beard, eyeglasses. He had been black, though, not white.”But that wasn’t his real face, the boy in Room 439 had said.
He had asked her if she liked monster movies. Of course, she had said yes. Her and her sister went to the picture show every Saturday and saw all those spooky movies that came out. After it was over, they found her in a creekbed, nearly dead. Folks thought that she’d had a seizure or something. She never told them about him. She didn’t know why. They would have probably thought she was crazy if she had.
Sophie tried to drive the awful memories from her thoughts as she worked. Frightened, she peered through the rain-speckled window. At the far end of the parking lot, a few spaces from her own car, was a camper. Not a Winnebago, but one of those big fine travel coaches. It was black with gray trim.
An eerie feeling overtook her. It’s probably just some family visiting a patient, she told herself. Sometimes kinfolk from out of state would show up in campers, to avoid paying for a hotel.
The pulse in her abdomen grew stronger. Thrum, thrum, thrum. She nearly doubled over as it began to quicken.
What’s the matter with me? she wondered. At first she was sure that she was having a heart attack. But this had nothing at all to do with her heart.
THRUM, THRUM, THRUM!
The ding of the elevator sounded across the lobby behind her and she turned.
Sophie caught a fleeting glimpse of a lab coat, with the trace of a Hawaiian shirt between the lapels. Red with parrots and palms.
Then the doors closed and the elevator began to climb steadily toward the fourth floor.
THE PEDDLER’S JOURNEY
“Tell us, Grandpa!”
Chester McCorkendale shared his little brother’s enthusiasm. “Yeah, come on, Grandpa,” he urged, sitting on the threadbare rug before the hearth. “Tell us the story about the Ghostly Peddler!”
Grandpa eyed the boys with ancient eyes and smiled. He took a puff on the brier pipe he clutched in yellowed dentures and let the blue smoke roll from his nostrils like dragon’s breath. “Ah, you boys have heard that old tale every Christmas Eve since you were knee-high to a grasshopper.”
“But we want to hear it again,” David demanded. “It’s like a… you know, whaddaya call it?”
“Tradition,” his big brother told him. “Come on, Grandpa. Nobody tells it like you do.”
Grandpa McCorkendale chuckled and leaned back in his hickory wood rocker, causing it to creak dryly. He glanced around the cramped main room of the cabin.
The crackling fire cast a warm, orange glow over the walls papered with newsprint, the stones of the hearth, and the long, dangling stockings that drooped from the mantle; stockings that had been darned by their Ma a half dozen times or so. Yes, this was the place to tell the old story again, and most certainly the time.
Grandpa couldn’t help but string them along a bit further, though. “Are you sure you want ghost stories and not “The Night Before Christmas” or the birth of Jesus? I’ll just go filling your head full of haints and horrors, and you boys’ll never get to sleep tonight.”
“Are you gonna tell it or what?” snapped David, rolling his eyes.
Chester elbowed his brother sharply. He didn’t want David to cross the fine line between childish pestering and disrespecting an elder. That was one thing Grandpa, no matter how patient he was, would not tolerate. There was no need to go fishing for a hide-tanning… especially on Christmas Eve.
Grandpa’s eyes sparkled. “All right. I won’t leave you waiting any longer. Your Ma and Pa’s done gone to bed, and you’d best get nestled beneath the quilts yourself.” He grinned around the stem of his pipe. “Besides, if Ol’ Saint Nick can’t make it this year, ‘cause of this dadblamed Depression and all, then the Ghostly Peddler might just show up, bearing gifts.”
The very thought of the mountain ghost standing before their hearth sent a delicious chill shivering through their bones. They lay on their bellies on the horsehair rug, their chins planted in their palms, waiting for the storyteller to begin.
Grandpa puffed on his pipe a moment more, staring almost dreamily into the blue haze of tobacco smoke. “They say it happened in the winter of 1869. The cannons that echoed violently down in the valley during the War Betwixt the States had scarcely been silent four years when the old man showed up at the township of Maryville. He was an Irishman, burly and quick with a smile and a joke, his hair and whiskers the color of rusty door hinges. No one knew the feller’s name, just knew that he toted a pack upon his back full of medicines and notions, and some wooden toys he’d whittled with a sharp blade and a steady hand. There was no general store in Maryville at the time, just a way station that doubled as a tavern and inn. The Peddler, as folks called him, showed up that late December, brimming with songs and stories and a belly big enough to hold his share of beer and bourbon when the menfolk of the village were generous enough to buy him a round or two.”
Grandpa paused and eyed his two grandsons. “Now, I ain’t boring you, am I? You’re not feeling too sleepy to go on, are you?”
“No, sir!” the boys chimed in together.
The elderly man nodded and went on. “Well, it was nigh on to Christmas Eve, when the Peddler heard tell of a child up in these Tennessee mountains. The boy had fallen beneath a logging wagon and his leg had been shattered, broken in three places. The old peddler was a man of great heart and he felt compassion for the crippled boy. He also learned that the family was hard-hit with poverty. They were dirt-floor poor with scarcely two nickels to rub together.”
“So what’d he do, Grandpa?” asked David, although he had heard the story many times before.
“Well, what he did was get out his whittling knife and a slab of white oak and he went to work. The crowd at the tavern grew silent as they watched him carve the most skillfully-crafted figure of a running stallion that they ever did seen. It was common knowledge that the lame boy on the mountain was a lover of horses, although he and his family had none to call their own. So the Peddler carved this here toy horse out of wood. Lordy Mercy, they said the little stallion looked so life-like that it might have galloped across the tabletop with oaken hooves, if the old man had possessed the magic to breathe such life into it.
“Well now, the folks there in the tavern tried to talk the Peddler out of it, but he got it in his head that he should take that toy to the crippled child that very night. It had snowed the majority of the day and it was awful cold outside. But no matter how much they argued with him, the Peddler’s heart proved much bigger than his common sense. He bundled up, lifted his pack, and ventured out into the frigid darkness. Having gotten the directions to the boy’s cabin from the barkeep, he began his long, dark journey into the foothills, and then onward toward the lofty peaks of the Appalachians.”
A German clock on the stone mantelpiece chimed the hour of nine. “Are you sure you young’uns ain’t hankering to get to bed? You’ve had a busy day and you look plumb tuckered out.”
“No, sir!” they said, their eyes wide with anticipation. “Please, go on.”
Grandpa drew on his pipe again. “Very well… but here is where the spooky part comes along. You see, that peddler got as far as Gimble’s Gap and was suddenly trapped in the worse snowstorm the mountains had seen in a month of Sundays. The blizzard was so cold and icy, and its wind so blustery, that the Peddler couldn’t see three feet in front of him. But still he had it in his mind to visit the boy that very night and he trudged onward, through the driving flurries and deep drifts. Somewhere along the way, he lost his way. He could have turned back right then and there, and probably made it to the tavern alive. But the Peddler was a stubborn feller and he continued his night’s journey through the icy darkness with that wooden horse clutched in one gloved hand. But the struggle of stepping through the high drifts and the force of the winter wind pushing against him took its toll. It wore him plumb out and slowed him down considerably.”
“But he never got there, did he, Grandpa?” asked Chester, although he already knew the answer.
“No, grandson, he never did. His journey up the mountain was in vain. Some of the men from the tavern grew concerned and the following morning, after the blizzard had subsided, they took off up the mountain, looking for him. On about the afternoon of Christmas Day, they found him, frozen to the trunk of a deadfall. They said he was a gruesome sight to behold! His clothing was icy and as hard as stone. His curly red beard was now snowy white, his rosy face was pale and blue, and even his eyeballs were covered over with frost. The old man was dead, having grown exhausted from his treacherous journey and frozen to death on the trunk of that fallen sycamore.”
Grandpa’s eyes narrowed a bit, a peculiar look crossing his wrinkled face. “However, there was one strange thing they noticed before they pried his carcass from the log and carried him back down the mountain. The hand that had clutched the wooden horse was empty now… and in the snow, leading away from the dead body of its creator, were the prints of tiny hooves.”
Chester and David shuddered in wondrous fright. “So that was the end of the tale?”
“No, by George!” proclaimed Grandpa. “For, you see, every Christmas Eve, the Ghostly Peddler roams the hills and hollows of these here mountains, in search of that wooden horse. The spirit of that stubborn Irishman still has it in his mind to find that wandering pony and give it to its rightful owner… that crippled boy from long years past. But as he makes that lonesome journey, his benevolence still rings as clear as a church bell. He leaves toys, carved by his ghostly hand, in the stockings of the young’uns of these Tennessee mountains, if only for the chance to warm his frozen bones by their midnight fire.”
The boys grinned at one another. “Do you think the Peddler will leave us something tonight?” asked David hopefully.
Grandpa tamped out the dregs of his pipe, laid it on the arm of his rocking chair, and stood up. His joints popped as he stretched. “I wouldn’t doubt you boys finding a play-pretty in your stockings come daybreak. But he ain’t gonna come with you up and about. Best dress for bed and snuggle beneath those covers. He oughta be roaming the mountains on around midnight, looking for that wooden stallion.”
Both boys hopped up from the floor, eager to get to sleep. “Goodnight, Grandpa,” they said, heading for their parents room and the little bed they shared there.
“Goodnight, boys,” he said, heading for the third room of the cabin and his own bed. “And a very Merry Christmas to you both.”
Before long, they had settled into the
comfort of feather mattress, beneath toasty patchwork quilts, and drifted into their separate slumbers. The mountain cabin grew still and quiet. The only sounds to be heard were the crackling of the fire in the hearth and the lonesome howling of a winter wind outside the frosted windowpanes.
A little before midnight, Chester crept from his bed, careful not to rouse his sleeping brother. The story of the Ghostly Peddler was fresh and alive in his mind. Knowing that he really oughtn’t to do it, he left the bedroom and snuck across the main room, past the hearth. He took up sentry behind his grandfather’s high-backed rocker, tucked, unseen, in the shadows just behind.
Chester waited for what seemed to be a very long time. He did not feel the least bit sleepy, though. He crouched there, watching intently, his ears straining for the least little sound. Once or twice, he thought he heard something scamper across the roughly-hewn boards of the plank floor, but knew that it was probably the mouse that had taken up residence there in the cold months prior to Christmas; the rodent who had helped itself to their cornmeal and winter cheese, much to Ma’s displeasure.
Finally, the clock chimed the hour of twelve. Chester sat there in breathless anticipation, listening, watching through the pickets of the old rocking chair. He heard a noise in the cabin… the mouse again, he first thought. But, no, it seemed to originate from something a mite larger than a mouse; more like a muskrat or a chipmunk, perhaps. And the tiny footfalls were odd, too. They sounded more like small clopping, than the skittering of sharply-nailed animal feet upon the floorboards.
For several minutes, Chester sat there. He listened intently, but could hear nothing else. Then, abruptly and without warning, the cabin door burst open. A gust of icy wind, laden with snowflakes as big as goose feathers, blew inside, causing the flames of the hearth to gutter and snap. Then, with the winter’s draft, appeared a broad form. He stepped into the cabin and, just as suddenly as before, the pine door closed shut.
Chester’s heart thundered in his young chest. There, standing in the center of the main room, was a burly man dressed in icy rags. His broad face was pale blue in color and his hair and beard were covered with frost and jagged icicles. It was the man’s eyes that terrified the boy, though. They looked about the room, the orbs frozen and coated with a thin sheen of ice, the pupils barely visible.
