by Thomas Cater
“He is notoriously famous for the number of lobotomies he performed at the state hospital,” I replied.
She nodded confidently. “Yes, I know who you’re talking about, but I’m not familiar with any of the particulars.”
“I have a paper he wrote in the 1930s,” I said, offering the script. She took it from my hand and opened it. “I’ve been trying to find information about a disease he describes in the paper. It is called “Geonlinger’s Disease.”
Dr. Zimmerly’s eyes registered a blank. She spun in her chair to the reference library behind her, pulled out a book and ran a finger down a page. One quarter of the way down, she stopped and frowned. Slammed the book and pushed it to one side.
“What are you trying to pull, Mr. Case? There is no such disease.”
I turned a few pages of the paper on the desk in front of her and pointed to the title. She made a quick evaluation of everything about the paper from its texture to its date and then re-read the title.
“Alberichs? Where have I heard that name before?” she asked. Her eyes were glaring and hostile.
I shrugged, unwilling to confide too much at one time.
“I’ve been told that a local psychologist followed up on Grier’s work with the Alberichs in the mid-seventies; his name may have been Snowden.”
She made another rapid turn in the chair, removed another reference book from the shelf and followed her finger through and down a page.
“There’s nothing here about them, either. They should be here if it was a legitimate study, unless it was some undergraduate survey,” she said with a sneer.
“Maybe the paper was published in something other than a psychiatric or psychological journal,” I suggested.
She slammed the second book and jammed it back into the vacant slot on the shelf.
“Just exactly what is it that you want from me, Mr. Case?”
I tried holding myself together, to look and feel more confident, but it was difficult.
“I would like you to read this paper and comment on it. I want to know if it is a good paper, or is it just weak, sloppy, incomplete theorizing, or is it someone’s idea of a joke.”
She shook her head nervously. “What is this, some kind of a test? Are you trying to make a fool of me?”
Her upper lip was quivering. I felt as if I were in real danger.
“Not at all, I just need a little help. That paper makes some very unusual claims.”
“Are you a former student of this university, Mr. Case?” I shook my head. “Are you a member of the staff or faculty?” I continued to respond in the negative.
“I’m a taxpayer,” I said, “or soon will be. I’m contributing to salaries here.”
“Are you aware of the penalty for removing documents from this university or any other designated office or study center?”
“I didn’t take anything from this university,” I said growing more hostile than fearful.
“You did remove this document from the state hospital, didn’t you?”
I couldn’t escape her disabling tongue. I think she could smell the fear on me and see it in my eyes, and she loved it. Soon, I feared, it might be necessary to prostrate and prevaricate my way to freedom.
“On the contrary, I was prepared to donate these papers to the library. I found them in a box in a house I recently purchased in Vandalia among other personal effects belonging to Dr. Grier.”
She thumbed quickly through the pages of the document, staring at them, desperately anxious to absorb their curious contents.
“From your reading, what do you think Geonlinger’s disease is?” she asked.
“It is the exact opposite of progeria,” I replied.
“Progeria?” she replied, irascibly. “That’s not a mental illness.”
“I didn’t say it was, but whatever it is, it was enough of an interest to Dr. Grier to write a paper on it.”
She threw the paper on the desk and toward me.
“He was out of his field. I can’t help you, Mr. Case. It’s not my field, either, thank God. I wouldn’t have the barest bones of an idea on how to help you. Go find some internal organ specialist or check the geriatrics department. I’ve never heard of that damned disease and I don’t ever want to hear of it again. Now will you please take your paper and get out of my office?”
I scooped the paper off her desk and headed for the door, perhaps a little too slowly.
“Get out!” She screamed in a final gesture. I escaped into the receptionist’s office. There was a smirk on her lips as I walked swiftly passed her desk. She never unfolded her hands.
“I tried to warn you,” she said.
“Is she always like that? “ I asked.
“Not always,” the receptionist replied. “Sometimes she’s worse. You got her on a good day.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
There was another person in Morgantown I was anxious to find: Michael Snowden, the author of the little historical tract on Vandalia State Hospital. I walked to the nearest phone booth, checked the listings and found his number. I figured a call at this time of day would be a waste of time, but I had more of that than anything else. The phone rang but no one answered. I decided to call the psychology department and see if he was on the payroll.
“Psych two,” the laid-back voice replied. I would have been disappointed had it sounded any other way.
“Is Mike Snowden still on staff?” I asked, not sure if he’d ever been anything but a student.
“Not anymore.”
“Do you know where he works?”
Questions were asked and I was told to hold for Dr. Wilson. A few seconds later Wilson answered. After a few preliminary comments, he suggested I try Snowden’s office and volunteered a number.
I tried the office, a mental health agency. It took three intermediaries and a few minutes to get him on the phone. When he answered the music in the background was deafening. I tried to communicate but was ready to hang up when the noise suddenly abated.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I’m working on an experiment,” he said.
“Why so noisy? I thought experiments were conducted in quiet, relatively antiseptic laboratories?”
“This experiment is intended to aggravate, to see how varying decibels of external noise affect one’s ability to perform physically and mentally.”
“I thought you were a clinical psychologist,” I said.
“No, I handle the technical and financial end of the operation. I make sure everyone is doing their job as efficient and as cost effective as possible. I keep track of the mileage, and make sure the crazies get their money’s worth in care and coddling, and they aren’t being used as dodge balls.”
“You aren’t a counselor?”
“No, never have been. The real money is in conducting meaningless experimental projects that affirm what is already known, but make it sound more decisive. I hate to listen to people’s problems. Is that why you called? You want to talk to a counselor?”
“I want to ask you about the book you did on Vandalia State Hospital a dozen or so years ago.”
“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 p
rolonged 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.”
“Below 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 past 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.
“That 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 to 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, whic
h 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; the 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 powers 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.
