Charcot's Genius

by M. C. Soutter

  It’s not a drill, Melissa realized dully. He’s shooting him with something. Shooting my father.

  The Hilti began making a dry, breathy sound, and the tall man tossed it away. He leaned forward and studied Martin critically, as though searching for signs of life. Finding none, he stood up. “It’s okay,” he said, glancing at Melissa. “The one in his carotid did the trick. He’ll be dead in a minute.” He spoke with a curt detachment, as though describing a roof-shingle repair he had just completed.

  Melissa nodded slowly. She glanced at her father, who had stopped moving. Most of his upper body was now dotted with broad, silver nail-heads, like a badly upholstered easy-chair. Under his neck there was a quickly-expanding pool of blood.

  “Okay, Dad,” Melissa said quietly, and turned away. She was surprised to find that she was finally crying.

  “Bye, dad.”

  14

  There followed, then, a moment of calm. Jason was still down on one knee, cradling Lea’s body and making low, guttural noises of grief. He wouldn’t lift his head. Garrett, on the other hand, had finally broken out of his trance. He stepped forward to help Melissa off the ground. She let herself be helped, and avoided looking at her father as Garrett propped her up.

  “Careful,” said Garrett softly. He winced as a fresh wave of pain tore through him.

  When the two of them were stable on one another, they turned their attention to the tall man. He was staring at them. The look in his eyes had reverted to one of sadness. And resignation.

  Melissa brought herself under control. “Who – ” she began.

  “Dr. Nathan Kline,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter.” Kline could see his mistake now. This girl wasn’t his daughter. She wasn’t Alexandra. Because Alexandra had left him. With her mother. Long ago. But the resemblance really was remarkable. And Kline supposed he had done the right thing in any case.

  What was I going to do? A few minutes ago?

  The focus Kline had felt when he stepped out of the Cadillac – it was gone. He couldn’t remember why he had been feeling so aggressive. There was a remnant somewhere in his mind, a vestige of purpose, about destroying all the evidence of the experiment. But that seemed absurd now. He had been ready to kill people – even more people – but why?

  “Tell me about the murder,” he said quietly.

  Melissa paused, reorienting herself. “You mean Professor Carlisle? He was killed sometime last night.”

  “By another teacher, we think,” Garrett added. “A man named Gooding. We tried to shake him down, but there was something weird about that teacher. We couldn’t – ”

  Kline held up a thin, bony hand, cutting Garrett off.

  “It wasn’t the teacher,” Kline said softly. He looked at Garrett. “I’m pretty sure it was you.”

  15

  Melissa and Garrett stared blankly at Kline for a moment. Then Garrett shook his head.

  “You’re pretty sure what?”

  Kline nodded slowly. You heard me, he thought.

  Now even Melissa looked confused. “That’s the most ridiculous – ” She stopped and threw up her hands. “Garrett needed Professor Carlisle. To fix his headaches. And just like the rest of us, he needed him alive.”

  Garrett nodded along.

  “He wouldn’t have had any motive,” Melissa continued, but Kline was already shaking his head.

  He smiled bitterly. “Motive?” Kline glanced down at Martin Hartman’s nail-studded and quickly stiffening body. The blood had finally stopped flowing from the wound in his neck. “This man,” Kline said, “whom I take to be your father, just finished murdering your courageous friend there. Next he tried to murder you, his own flesh and blood.” Kline raised an eyebrow. “What were his motives for these acts, may I ask?”

  Melissa didn’t miss a beat. “He didn’t mean to kill Lea. His target was always me. Plus, my father was crazy, and probably had been for years. Garrett, on the other hand – ”

  “Garrett, on the other hand,” Kline interrupted, “has a massive, temporal lobe carcinoma. Otherwise known as a brain tumor. It’s causing blackouts, seizures, and migraine headaches.” He looked steadily at Garrett. “Right?”

  Garrett frowned. “I don’t know about any temporal lobe thing, but who cares if I’m getting headaches? Everybody gets them now and then.” He spoke through a clenched jaw, doing his best not to let the pain show. “I’m fine.”

  Kline turned to Melissa. “His personality has been unstable, yes? Like a moody child?”

  Melissa didn’t answer, but a look of doubt began creeping over her face. She seemed less sure of herself.

  Garrett rolled his eyes. “We just met,” he said, a little too loudly. He jerked a thumb at Melissa as if she were a stranger who had approached him on a subway platform. “This girl doesn’t know a thing about my personality. Anyway, I’m no idiot. You’d need all sorts of expensive equipment and tests before you could tell if I had something really wrong with my head.”

  “Normally, yes. But remember your brave friend there?” Kline tiled his head at Lea. “She could spot things no one else could, correct? I have similar abilities.”

  “Oh, I see,” Garrett said sarcastically. “You know all the same tricks?”

  Kline shook his head. “Not the same. That girl’s vision was limited – language and facial interpretation only – whereas I see everything. And your symptoms are obvious.”

  “Sounds like a bunch of – ” Garrett squeezed his eyes shut briefly, and a drop of sweat trickled down his temple “ – a bunch of bullshit.”

  Kline nodded as if he had expected as much. “Fine. Then let’s try something else.” He crossed his arms. “Would you like to know why you’re so good with the ladies all of a sudden?”

  Garrett opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again.

  How the fuck could he – ?

  Dr. Kline sighed. “Yes, I can see that, too. Honestly, I’m amazed Carlisle went through with it. My partner was never an ethical man, but this represents a new low for him. He probably suspected what was wrong with you; even a cursory physical exam and a few simple questions would have uncovered all sorts of warning signs. The moral course of action would have been to fly you immediately to the Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston. They’d have given you the necessary tests, and then they’d have started an emergency regimen of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.”

  Dr. Kline looked disgusted. “But instead, Carlisle strapped you into his machine – our machine, actually – and used you as one of his guinea pigs.”

  “You don’t know what you’re – ”

  “Yes, I do. And so did Professor Carlisle. He knew – he knew – that amplifying cerebral activity could have disastrous effects. He knew because of what had happened to me. But he went ahead with it anyway.”

  Melissa’s eyes flickered, as if she had suddenly come to an understanding of something. “Amplifying cerebral… what are you saying? That Carlisle turned up our brains? Like stereo equipment?”

  “Not you.” Kline held up a finger. “With you and the other two – ” He nodded at Jason and Lea. “– Carlisle seems to have employed a more conservative method. He turned your volume down. And for that you should be glad. It’s a safer procedure.”

  Melissa’s eyebrows arched. “Safer? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I can barely stand on my own feet anymore. And Jason’s gone blind and deaf.”

  Kline shrugged. “Carlisle obviously hadn’t yet worked out the precise levels of the new treatment, and he went too far. But your condition will be easy to fix.” He turned to Garrett. “You, my friend, are a different story altogether.”

  “I’m through listening to this crap,” Garrett said. “You’re a psycho.”

  Kline kept talking as if he hadn’t heard. “Carlisle used the old technique with you, unfortunately. He turned your systems way up – particularly your pituitary gland. That’s the region of your brain that controls gonadotropin-releasing hormones. Want to take a g
uess what those do?”

  Garrett didn’t say anything.

  “They make you attractive,” Kline went on. “And persuasive. As if you’ve just doused yourself in the most expensive, most potent, most hypnotic cologne ever made. And, of course – ” Kline leered at Garrett, as if he were describing a pornographic picture. “ – all this makes you very, very sexual.” He turned to Melissa, his face serious again. “Isn’t that so?”

  There was a silence. Then, very slowly, Melissa began to nod.

  “Oh, cut this shit out,” cried Garrett. He put both hands to his head, as if to keep it from falling off the top of his neck. Then he glared at Kline through eyes that were only partly open. “Even if any of this were true, being Don Juan doesn’t make me a murderer. It just makes me lucky.”

  Kline nodded his head sadly. “That might be so, if it weren’t for the tumor. But turning up your pituitary gland only made the seizures worse, and the hormones flooding your system right now are making you aggressive. That’s not good for an epileptic. Plus, there’s a funny thing about patients like you, with your deep temporal lobe tumors. Especially those with heightened metabolic rates.” He waited a beat, then glanced at Melissa, whose expression had turned to one of dread. “Go ahead,” Kline said to her. “Spill it. You’re not protecting him from anything but the truth.” But Melissa wouldn’t open her mouth, so Kline turned back to Garrett. “Patients in your condition have been known to experience prolonged periods of waking forgetfulness.”

  Garrett scoffed. “Uh-huh. The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  Melissa spoke up suddenly. “It means you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re a different person for a few minutes, and you don’t remember it afterwards.”

  Garrett glared at her. “Horseshit. That hasn’t happened – you would have said something.”

  “It did happen,” Melissa snapped back. “And I did say something.” She looked miserable. “I said that you needed to see a doctor. But you couldn’t hear me.”

  “You felt great at first,” Kline prodded. “Didn’t you? About twelve hours after Carlisle’s treatment.”

  Garrett kept his eyes pressed shut. He nodded.

  “But that was because the extra hormones being released into your system were acting as analgesics,” Kline went on. “Which means they were hiding the pain caused by your tumor. So, naturally, after a while they couldn’t keep up. And the headaches started coming back. At that point, like any patient given a taste of morphine, you realized there was only one thing that could make you feel better: another taste.”

  Garrett frowned. His forehead wrinkled in concentration. “I was with that swim team girl… and then, yeah, I started to get another headache. I remember thinking Carlisle’s machine could help me out.” He looked up, staring at the black sky above. His eyes were glassy. “And I remember setting out for his office. But then…”

  “But then you don’t remember,” Dr. Kline finished for him.

  Garrett’s shoulders fell, as if he were finally surrendering to a deep, deep exhaustion. He looked at Kline. Then at Melissa. “Fuck this,” he said.

  Then he ran.

  16

  Melissa had been leaning on Garrett for support, and suddenly he was gone. For the third time that night, she found herself tumbling to the ground. Dr. Kline knelt down and scooped her off the grass in a single, swooping motion.

  Melissa was surprised at his strength.

  “We need to get you fixed,” Kline said. “You and this boy.” He nodded at Jason. “Right now.”

  “What about Garrett?”

  Kline shrugged. “This is triage. Like in an emergency room. You help the patients who can be helped.”

  “But we can’t just abandon him.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I, and I’m not going to go running around campus looking for a patient who’s going to be dead within the hour no matter what I do.”

  “But he’s – ”

  “Would you like to be normal again?”

  That stopped her. “Yes. Very much.”

  Kline nodded again at Jason. “I’m sure your friend here would like that too. Let’s see if we can convince him to leave this unfortunate girl behind.”

  Melissa relented. “Okay. You’re right.”

  At first Jason refused to budge. He had his face pressed to Lea’s forehead, his arms wrapped around her body in an immovable grip. Melissa tried talking to him, but his hearing was now utterly gone. “He’s going nowhere,” she said.

  Kline frowned. “I’m going to leave you on your own for a moment,” he said to Melissa. He helped her sit down, then turned his attention to Jason.

  Melissa was afraid at first that Kline was going to try overpowering the hockey player, but in this she was mistaken. Instead, Kline began pulling gently on Jason’s shoulders in a steady, rocking motion that mimicked the boy’s own movements. Kline rocked with him as though comforting a son.

  Seeming finally to understand, Jason let himself be pulled away.

  Before helping Melissa back on her feet, Kline took a moment to pick up Martin’s dropped gun. Just in case of… anything. They walked the last few yards to Carlisle’s office as quickly as they could, looking like refugees from a war documentary: a tall, gangly man supporting two incapacitated hangers-on, one blind and deaf, one constantly struggling to keep her balance.

  There was no one guarding the door to the office. The officer assigned to the post – officer Green – was still chasing after the little man with the pointy nose, who had killed Jeff Gooding and Security Officer Watts just ten minutes ago. Those two bodies were still there, cooling in the darkness of Carlisle’s office, their sightless eyes looking up at the ceiling.

  They waited, dead and patient, for Kline and his two new friends to arrive.

  17

  Garrett didn’t stop running, even when he was sure they weren’t trying to catch him. The noise and feel of the cold nighttime air rushing past his ears and cheeks was soothing, and he was able to imagine for a second that he hadn’t just been accused of murder.

  That he hadn’t just been told he was going to die.

  He hoped wildly that he would run into Allyson Morrone. Or anyone from the swim team. Because that would set things straight. Allyson wouldn’t be spouting any bullshit about brain tumors or amnesia or gonad-hormones or whatever. She’d want to have sex. And more sex. Like before. And then he could forget about that tall, spooky-looking fucker with the hollow face. Jesus, that guy had been creepy. And the scariest thing was that he had almost started to make sense towards the end there.

  But that’s what really insane people sound like, Garrett reassured himself. They sound like perfectly normal folks, but with a tendency for telling strange stories.

  Very strange stories. Very convincing stories.

  As he ran towards the center of town, his breathing grew labored. Garrett heard the thump-thump-thump of his own heart beating loud in his ears. As if he had been running for hours instead of minutes. Approaching the intersection at Main street, he saw that the light was changing. On the other side of the street, he spotted a girl who might have been Allyson Morrone.

  Oh, please.

  Suddenly it seemed to him that making this light could turn out to be more important than anything.

  I can make it, he thought. And then I’ll be okay. With Allyson.

  His cardiovascular system was already operating at it’s peak, but Garrett Lemke nevertheless requested a burst of speed from his legs. They responded dutifully, and his heart contributed its own surge of support. The blood pressure in his head, already dangerously high due to the growing blockage in his temporal lobe, spiked suddenly. For the last time.

  18

  At 10:16 PM on Saturday the 28th of September, Hanover dispatch received a 911 call from a payphone. The unidentified caller reported a man sprawled out in the intersection of Main and College avenues. No, the caller said, the
man had not been hit by a vehicle. But he was not moving. Traffic was backing up in all directions.

  “What? No, I have not begun CPR. No one has. The guy looks like toast to me, frankly.”

  “Sir, please stay on with me for a moment. Can you tell me if – ”

  But the connection had already been severed, and the line went dead.

  19

  Dr. Kline had not considered what he would do if the locks to his old office had been changed. But the situation did not present itself. Officer Green had unwittingly solved this problem when he dashed through Carlisle’s door – unlocking it in the process – as he tried unsuccessfully to save poor Jeff Gooding from being beaten to death. Officer Green didn’t think to turn the lock back as he left; catching the little man with the pointy nose had seemed more important at the time.

  And so the door opened easily. As if it had been left waiting for them.

  Kline stepped inside first, reached automatically for the light switch, and regretted it. He felt Melissa’s hand go tense on his shoulder. Gooding and Watts lay on opposite sides of the room, sprawled out as if from exhaustion. They might have been simply resting there, except that their injuries were both grotesque and starkly visible. Watts was lying face-down, a deep, blood-caked indentation disfiguring the back of his skull. Gooding’s back was to the far wall, and his face was now barely recognizable. His nose and mouth had been crushed inward, and his forehead still held the concave impression left by some sort of blunt instrument.

  A thick, wooden chair leg, perhaps.

  Jason, alone in his world of darkened silence, witnessed none of this. He had no way of knowing that he was walking through a room that held two dead bodies. Kline and Melissa, meanwhile, both reacted with their own version of carefully studied control. Dr. Kline assumed he was suffering a paranoid episode, and he discounted the dead bodies as either figments of his imagination or, more likely, as simply irrelevant. Melissa, who had detected the stink of death while still 30 meters away from the office, held her breath and looked away.