“In situ?” I asked.
“Where they stand. Then the dissection proceeds. They usually go from the back, except where certain case specific findings may warrant a variation. Every death is a little different, especially when there is a lot of trauma involved. So if the body is mangled, you have to adjust. Go with the flow.”
“Doesn't that make you sick to your stomach? I'm getting nauseated just imagining it.”
Ricky laughed, “No, man. I mean, maybe at first. But then it's like your not even cutting on a person. It's just a thing. An object. A piece of meat.”
A thing.
An object.
A piece . . . of meat.
That's what we all are once we die. Kind of a depressing reality. Even as our body is cooling, we are nothing more than a mound of flesh, numbered and catalogued by some lonely morticians who might or might not touch you inappropriately. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
“Anyway, all of those organs are removed, in groups, so that they can study the functional relationships. The human body is fascinating. But it's not really that complex, once you take apart a few of them. So then we study the brain, in position. Once the notes are made, and all of this is being videoed, of course—”
“Of course.” My stomach was crawling around near my neck, tickling me with bile.
“ . . . then we free the brain attachments and remove the whole thing. You can, depending on the cause of death, remove the spinal cord, too. Just depends.”
“And that's that,” I added, standing from the chair, feeling something strange.
Ricky looked up at me, “No, Jack. Then we study the external and cut surface of each and every organ. We look at its vascular structures, including arteries . . . ”
And as he's talking I see something in the back corner of the room start to grow from the shadow of a small metal table. It's actually darker than the shadow of the table, cast by the florescent overhead lights. It's about four feet tall, slightly bent at the waist, with stubby little arms and long curled fingers.
“ . . . lymphatics, fascial or fibrous tissue, and nerves . . . ”
This thing starts to creep towards the wall where all of the cadavers are resting. Where each body has its own metal bed. This dark thing . . . it's searching for something specific. It wants for something. And this shadow, it definitely has form. It's three-dimensional.
“ . . . specimens are taken for culture, chemical analysis, and other—” and Ricky's words trail off as he looks at me looking at something behind him. “What are you looking at, Jack?”
My eyes glance over at Ricky briefly, and then back to the shadow that has now made his way to the far side of the body farm. I whisper, “No . . . nothing . . . I think I'm just tired, and . . .” And even as I'm speaking I realize that my words don't make sense. My mumbling has only made Ricky that much more apprehensive.
“If I turn around, will I see anything?” he asks with a whisper.
I half shrugged, my eyes still watching the shadow do its inspection. It was crawling in and out of the different body drawers, I suppose to give the cadavers a firsthand inspection.
Ricky turned slowly, as if he might spook whatever it is I was looking at. And as he turned, I noticed another one stalk past us, paying us no mind. It headed toward the body that the first one was taking interest in.
Ricky squinted, looking in the general direction I had been. “Where is it?”
“They,” I whispered as silently as I could. “There's a couple of them, now. They are taking a keen interest in one of the bodies on the right. Second column, third body up.”
“I don't see anything,” Ricky said.
“That's because you're sane. And I'm turning into a lunatic.”
“You're lucky,” he said reverently, as if he would have traded anything in the world to have my eyes at that moment.
I can't imagine anything less lucky than this. This is something that will ruin whatever life I have to live. Hell, it might be the reason I'm messed-up to begin with. How do I know I wasn't some ghost hunter? Some paranormal investigator? A misguided priest performing exorcisms?
And even though he couldn't see them—three of them, now—he felt something. Maybe he just felt my terror radiating outward. There was no doubt in his mind that there were things going on around us that science and med school couldn't explain. And so the two of us, Ricky and I, just stood there watching. I realized that I was shaking, too. Not a Todd Steele reaction, I know.
And we stood there, as if time had stopped.
Just him and me . . . and these little spooks.
Two things.
Two objects.
Two pieces of warm meat.
And in as calm a voice as I could muster, I said, “I'm not lucky, Ricky . . . I'm cursed.
Chapter 5
McDonald's, North Dallas . . .
We hadn't spoken much since the whole, spooky little shadow creatures incident. I wasn't sure if he thought I was losing my mind, or if I was really seeing something that he couldn't. Ricky waited until I said the spooks were gone before he walked towards the body. I pointed out the correct cadaver, not wanting to get anywhere near it. I wasn't so much scared, as bothered by the fact that I was fully wake when I saw them.
Before, since that first time after I woke-up, they only came as I was in those delirious calm stages that come before you fall asleep, and just as you awaken. Those moments where time and space and life don't matter. Those elongated seconds where you can kind of hear your environment, but you don't have the physical prowess to interact with it.
Like being paralyzed.
Like being a semi-responsive vegetable.
A computer, in sleep mode.
So it was time to get some food. I needed to eat warm things with lots of taste and cholesterol. We ended up at McDonald's.
Ricky turns to me, handing me those small ketchup packets that are marked 'Fancy', and he's chewing so much of his cheeseburger that his cheeks are puffed out like a blowfish. He says, “Let's assume that you see what you claim to have seen.” He let the words linger.
I nodded as I squeezed a line of fancy ketchup near my burger. We were sitting on the hood of his black SUV, our legs dangling far above the hot pavement. I can't even imagine how much money it costs to fill this thing up. I suspect that Ricky has money coming in from other places, and I don't dare ask about it.
“Why, then, do you think they were interested in a dead traffic cop?”
The body they had been looking at, that particular corpse had belonged to a Dallas Police Officer who had been working faithfully as a traffic cop for six years. When he was giving some poor schmuck a ticket, a moving van had clipped him from behind. Officer John Farlow was pretty much dead on contact. One second he's scribbling down a traffic infraction, the next second the lights go out . . . forever.
So, in answer to the question, I have no earthly idea what the spooks might want with him. I ate more fries, wondering if there was anything on this planet that rivaled the McDonald's fry in the sheer amount of pleasure they bestow, compared to the time it takes to get your hands on them. No matter where in the world you go, Ronald has a bag full of hot fries, just waiting for you. If there's a heaven—a concept I'm just now starting to contemplate—they probably have a McDonald's at the corner.
My mouth full, my hands kind of greasy, I say, “Maybe he was a bad cop?”
Ricky took another bite of his second burger. He had purchased three. Don't even ask me how a skinny guy like him eats that many burgers. It doesn't make sense that he can even fit all that in his stomach. I should be able to see the outline of at least one of those burgers in his belly.
“Do you see them often? I mean, more than before?” Ricky asked casually as if we were discussing the weather.
I swallowed, cleared my throat, and took a sip of Dr. Pepper and something flashed in front of my eyes that I hadn't remembered until just that moment. “Whoa!”
“What?” he sa
id, turning towards me, his mouth hanging open a bit.
I told him that I just saw something. A memory that I hadn't known about. He was quiet, letting me make sense of it. And it started to come back. It was gooey, as if I was watching a grainy video of the event. A taped image, copied a thousand times. Each time getting darker and more twisted.
But it was me.
Chapter 6
Post-accident, Day 1.
Recovery room, 9:36 am . . .
The first flashes of light, they startled me. They shook me, and I began to shiver. I knew nothing. I was a blank sheet. An empty book with no title, no beginning, no ending. Nothing.
All around me were bright, blurry lights. I couldn't hear anything, but I felt like something was missing. Something important. It was my heartbeat . . . there wasn't one.
People—doctors I guess—were racing around me, doing all sorts of important, medical things. There were needles, and paddles, and yelling, but I didn't feel any of that. I felt something else. Like somebody was tugging on me. And right in front of my face, these dark masses were looming. Like someone was sitting on my chest.
My mind couldn't make sense of it. Something was draped in front of me, blocking my vision. And the doctors and nurses, they didn't seem to pay it any mind. Something was sitting on my chest and they didn't even notice.
And then I realized that I was paralyzed. I couldn't breathe. I had no control over my body. I didn't have any sensation in my fingers or toes. Just this pressure on my chest. This crushing.
A truck sitting on my ribcage.
Like a million pounds of ice-cold metal flattening the life out of me.
And then it began to come into focus, these dark heavy things. They were moving around purposefully. They had long, thin arms and hunched, thick bodies. They might have been built of smoke. The absence of light. As my eyes struggled to figure out where I was, my mind was scrambling to understand what was happening to me.
Who am I? didn't even come into the equation, yet.
These big cold things on my chest, they started to carve at my sternum. They had some sharp things in their hands. Large knifes, maybe. Each knife seemed to have two blades, side by side, both of them tearing into my torso. Cutting and cutting and cutting. And there was no blood. Just the repeated stabs.
They just kept on doing this. And the nurses and doctors, they didn't care in the least. Like this was something that happens normally. Like they couldn't even see me being ripped apart.
Strangely, I didn't feel much. The stabs of these knives were cold, and they came so fast in succession, one right after the next, that I didn't have time to feel the pain. Slice after slice, they cut deeper.
And then, without warning, they began tugging at me; tugging at my insides. Pulling me inside out. They yanked, and I felt myself being ripped free of my body, an inch at a time. I watched as I was pulled away from my eyes. Watching from inside my body, looking at the inside of my face disappear. I'm seeing the parts of my body that only myDallas blood, and morticians, ever get to see.
I saw my head, my teeth and nose . . . all of it from the inside. And I fell, down my spine, towards my chest. And then, somehow, I could see the bright lights of the room again. Above this giant opening in my chest, I saw four long, clawed hands reaching for me. Trying to free me from the constraints of my body. No eyes, no voices, just sharp claws and long, bony fingers.
Those arms and fingers, they were like the appendages of insects—thin until their joints, where they thickened briefly, until the next joint. Like the arms of spiders, were each thin sharp finger. And they wanted me. They wanted to remove me from this body. And just as I felt myself being tugged away . . .
. . . it all suddenly stopped. And I fell back into my body, crashing into my head. And my eyes were rolling dizzily. And my head hurt in a way I will never be able to comprehend. Sounds started coming back.
Beeping.
Some woman barking muffled orders that my mind couldn't interpret.
This pain in my head that felt like being kicked a thousand times by a horse. And as the tears poured from my eyes, and my throat began to feel choked and constrained, I could see that they were gone. Those beings that had been sitting on my chest, cutting at me. They were gone. Their spider arms, and their knives, and their sharp fingers, all of it was gone.
And the first thing I did was look at my chest. I couldn't turn my head, but my eyes were free to move. And my chest . . . it was . . . it was fine. Nothing at all.
No gaping wound.
No giant gash.
My body wasn't turned inside out.
A young woman with dark hair and the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen—I think—wiped my face with a cool towel. And she smiled, “You're going to be just fine. Just try and relax, okay.”
Her accent was distinctly Southern. And the only thing that I knew for sure, was that I knew absolutely nothing. I had no starting point. No moorings. No frame of reference.
“Can you tell me your name, sir?” she said, her face soft and tanned. She continued to wipe my forehead and cheeks with the cool cloth.
“Do you remember your name?” she insisted in such a wonderfully sweet voice.
I tried to say, no, but the blackness overcame me before the words made their way to the surface. And as I faded off, I knew something was wrong. Things were not balanced. For reasons I may never be able to explain, I knew that there were doors open to me that should not be. My body had made a call to some other place, but it never hung up.
I was still connected to this place that I shouldn't be. And that line, it wasn't dead. It wasn't empty. On the other end of the line . . . things were listening.
McDonald's.
Moments later...
When I finished telling Ricky about this, he didn't have much to say. Nothing constructive, anyway.
“You're either some kind of psychic phenomenon,” he said as he finished his burger, “ . . . or you're as crazy as a shithouse rat in a rubber factory.” He shrugged. “Six in one hand, half dozen in the other.”
Thanks for the vote of confidence, buddy.
Twenty minutes later I was lying down, staring up at the bumpy landscape of the ceiling in my apartment. Like looking at the moon from an orbiter. I'm seeing the way satellites might see. And the whole time I'm floating above this strange terra, this other tingly feeling vibrates through me.
I'm half hoping they wouldn't show up. But kind of hoping that they will. I'm not a spook junkie, or anything like that. But the adrenaline I feel pulsing through my body when they're creeping and crawling around . . .
There's nothing like it that I've experienced. But then, I'm not quite five-months-old, yet. So I have a lot of growing up to do.
Chapter 7
Dallas Public Library.
Thursday morning, 8:11 am . . .
I decided that I needed to do some research on this odd book of mine. The book that still didn't make any sense. I swear, if Ricky and this Ms. Josephine are messing with me, I'm gonna take a hostage.
Anyway, Ricky has this bright idea to go to the public library and let the real research begin. I've been to the tiny room that the hospital calls a library, but this was completely different. The Dallas Public Library is the real deal. There must be about a million books in this place. Ricky, wisely, put a plastic bag around the book, and headed over to the 'Help/Information' desk.
A tall, gaunt man who looked like his skin was as thin as plastic wrap peered over his thick glasses. His eyes were huge in the lenses—which looked thick enough to see the surface of Mars. His big bulging eyes blinked a couple of times, and you could almost hear them.
Blink-blink.
“We have a rare book, here,” Ricky says, lifting the plastic bag onto the oatmeal colored counter top. The counter and the man with the big eyes, they were both the same color. He could be a chameleon.
The man used his right index finger to push his glasses back to his eyes. He leaned in, and with a long, alm
ost English accent he said, “And I presume that this is the volume to which you are referring.” He sounded smart. That accent, his glasses, it all made him look like I imagine a very intelligent person would look.
Ricky glanced at me, and then pulled the book out of the plastic bag. He laid it down in front of the library guy.
“Oh, how rude of me,” the man said, “ . . . my name is Rupert.”
“I'm Rick Chamberlain the third,” Ricky said, and turned to introduce me.
“I'm, uh, Jack. Jack Pagan.”
“Cheers gentlemen,” he said, dipping his head a few times. Very respectful, this Rupert. His tongue briefly raced across his lips. He was either hungry, anxious, or testing the air like snakes and lizards do. “Now . . . where, pray tell, did you acquire this?”
I told him that there was a death in the family and that it was left to me. I wanted to have it translated, but could not pin down the language. Ricky helped me fill in gaps here and there. And maybe Rupert bought it. From the look on his face he was much more interested in the book, and its interesting cover and bindings, than in our account of how we got it.
He ran his fingers delicately over the cover. “This is very old, you know.” He leaned down, squinting his planetoid eyes. “Is there . . . why yes . . . there is something here. A symbol perhaps.”
Rupert lifted the book up, staring at it from different angles. “One moment, gentlemen,” he said, reaching down into a drawer to find something. He brought up a magnifying glass. One of those that has a small light on the bottom side to illuminate what your studying. He gave the book's dark brown cover a closer inspection as he talked from the side of his mouth.
See Jack Die (Part 1 in the Paranormal Series) (See Jack Die Series) Page 4
