He picked up a folder, leaned back in his chair, and began reading. Holly Monroe. Age sixteen. Perfect health. Perfect. So healthy she positively glowed. But like the others, Holly had suddenly fallen into – he tapped his pencil on the desk – what appeared to be deep depression. Loss of appetite, fear, brooding, sudden anxiety followed by depressive ideas that shifted rapidly. With the exception of painful delusions, all the kids suffered the classic symptoms of melancholia. Acute depression.
But why? And why so many at almost the same time?
He had no ready answer.
He opened another folder. Glenn Laurens. Same symptoms. Identical. Just like the others. Matt, Sheri, Ross. Five, probably six kids. All right, he mused, let’s see if we can find the common denominator.
He worked for twenty minutes before he thought he’d found it. He leaned back once again and smiled ruefully. All right, he thought. I have it. But now what in the hell do I do with it? I’m a G.P, not a shrink.
He wrote: All six in the upper five percent of their class. IQs between 130 and 140.
He again consulted the notes he’d made over the past few weeks. Do the kids belong, jointly, to any social club? No. Parents belong to local country club. That’s it. Nothing there. Kids attend church on a regular basis. Drink some, but not to excess.
The teenagers had all sworn they did not use any form of dope. Jerry believed them. Blood and urine samples he’d sent off for testing, including the tests from the lab in Jeff City, were all negative. Not even the minutest trace of dope found.
Jerry had, at that time, written: Dead end!
He now wrote: I should refer them to Doctor Maryruth Benning at the Mental Health Unit, but from parents’ reaction to suggestion, that is not going to happen. Old stigmas still persist. When will people ever learn?
Five, probably six, healthy, intelligent, well-adjusted young people in the space of thirty days, all showing the same symptoms? In a town of less than four thousand.
He tossed his pencil on the desk. “It doesn’t add up. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
He walked to the reception area in response to a knock on the office door. Mrs. Bishop and son. Jerry showed them in, saying it was perfectly all right for them to come on a Saturday afternoon. No, she wasn’t disturbing the doctor. Jerry politely but firmly told the mother he wanted to speak to her son alone . . . alone, Mrs. Bishop. Thank you.
Jerry told the young man to remove his shirt. He checked heart, lungs, blood pressure; all the usual things. Van was as healthy a specimen as Jerry had ever seen. The young man was a tackle on the football team. He looked like a walking phone booth with arms – huge and good-looking. He had clear skin, totally free of youthful blemishes.
“How’s your sex life, Van?”
The boy was startled, but after a moment, he managed a very wan grin. “O.K., Doc,” he admitted.
“Yeah,” Jerry returned the grin. “You experiencing any burning sensation when you urinate, Van?”
“I ain’t got the clap, Doc.”
“All right. You’d know if you did. You date Gayl, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jerry thought the ‘sir’ sounded awfully greasy. He chose to ignore it. “Everything all right between you two?”
“Fine.” He then shocked Jerry by bluntly stating: “She’s got some fine pussy, Doc. You want me to ask her to offer a little bit of it to you?”
Jerry sat and stared at the boy. He couldn’t think of thing to say.
Then the boy started to weep. No great gulps or blubbering – just silent tears rolling from his eyes, splashing down his face.
His eyes. There it was! The eyes.
All the kids had that same vacant look in their eyes. Jerry had not noticed it prior to this. But there it was. Suddenly, unexpectedly, scenes from old horror movies jumped into Jerry’s brain. Jerry shook them off impatiently. Totally unprofessional nonsense.
But try as he might, Jerry could not shake his feeling of horror.
Jerry waited, a noncommittal expression on his face, until Van got his emotions under control. The boy offered no explanation for his sudden tears. Jerry placed a box of tissues in front of Van and waited until he had wiped his face and blown his nose.
Van lifted his eyes to Jerry. Jerry had to fight to keep from backing away.
The boy’s eyes were lifeless. Dead.
“You like the class they’ve put us in?” Marc asked.
“It’s O.K.,” Heather replied. “Better than being bored. What I don’t like is a lot of kids looking at me like I’m some kind of mental giant. You know what I mean?”
“I sure do. But I guess we’d better get used to it. Probably going to be this way for the rest of our lives. What’s your IQ?”
“One fifty-four. Yours?”
“One fifty-two. We’re not supposed to know it, you know?”
She laughed. “Yeah. But I sneaked a peek at mine. You?”
“Same.” He sighed. “But I know what you mean. It’s kind of a drag.”
“I know. You going to take summer classes this year?”
Marc shook his head vigorously. “No way! I asked Dad to let me out of jail for this summer. You?”
“The folks let me slide this summer, too.” They stopped in front of Heather’s home. “I’ll see you in about forty-five minutes,” she said.
“O.K. How far did that lady say it was to the dig site?”
“ ’Bout three miles.”
“Easy ride. This summer is going to be fun.”
That was one way of looking at it.
3
“Talk to me, Van,” Jerry urged. “Tell me anything out of the ordinary that’s happened to you during the past, oh, say three months.”
The boy looked at Jerry, a vacant expression on his face and in his eyes. Dumb! The doctor thought. But how is that possible? The boy is very intelligent; his grades in school are excellent.
“Nothin’, Doc.”
“I see. And you’re sure everything is O.K. between you and Gayl?”
“Far as I know.” The young man began picking his nose. He inspected the results of his probing as if he had discovered treasure. He flipped it aside and scratched his crotch, then absent-mindedly lifted his leg and farted.
Animal reactions, Jerry thought. Ghildlike. This fine, intelligent young man is, or has been, reduced to the basics. But how, and why? What is happening here?
Jerry reviewed in his mind what Mrs. Bishop had told him over the phone. She had detected subtle changes in her son over the past few months. But this past Sunday night, his behavior had become very erratic.
“Van, did you have a date with Gayl last Saturday night?”
“Huh?”
“Did you have a date with Gayl last Saturday night?”
“Uh ... yeah.”
“Where did you go?”
“Ah ... to Sikeston to the movies.”
“Is that all?”
“I guess we got a couple of burgers after the movie.”
“And?”
“Went to see the light like we always do.”
Jerry stared at him. “You went to see the what?”
Van stared back at him. When he spoke, there was impatience in his voice. “The light, man. The light out by the railroad tracks. All the kids go out there to see it.”
Jerry wasn’t from this section of the state. He had been born and reared in the northern part and had no knowledge of any light – other than the one developed by Mr. Edison.
“I ... I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Van. What about this light? Tell me about it.”
Van suddenly shook his head and then stuck his thumb in his mouth. Despite himself, Jerry thought the boy looked more like an idiot than a child. “I gotta go do number one,” Van blurted.
Doctor Jerry Baldwin suddenly experienced unexpected and very cold fear. The sensation was crawling around the base of his spine, its slimy, snakelike tentacles slithering around and touching the pit of
his stomach.
What I am sensing is ... Evil, Jerry thought. But why am I experiencing any of these emotions? Why, damn it, why?
When he trusted his voice not to betray his inner feelings, Jerry pointed to a closed door. “The bathroom is in there, Van.”
Van wriggled in his chair. “I gotta poo, too,” he announced. His voice was very childlike.
“That’s all right, Van.”
When the bathroom door closed, Jerry jerked up the telephone and punched out Doctor Maryruth Benning’s home number. She answered on the second ring.
“Maryruth? Jerry Baldwin. Listen. Get over to my office just as fast as you can. I’ve got a real problem here and I need a professional witness. If you get any speeding tickets, I’ll pay them. Hurry, Maryruth-hurry !”
He hung up the phone, thinking: Thank God for small towns. She should be here in three or four minutes.
Maryruth was walking through Jerry’s front door just as Van was pulling up his trousers and flushing the toilet. Van’s mother was in the restroom just off the waiting room and did not hear Maryruth enter the building. Maryruth walked into Jerry’s office just as Van stepped out of the restroom. She noticed the young man’s vacant eyes and his childlike expression and movements. She froze when the teenager began speaking.
“I made a good poo,” Van said. “But you’re gonna be mad with Van ’cause he used a whole roll of paper.”
“That’s all right, Van,” Jerry said. “I’m not mad. You know Doctor Benning, don’t you?”
Van’s eyes shifted to the woman standing in the doorway. He stuck a thumb into his mouth and hung his head. The scene would have been funny were it not for the deadly seriousness of the situation. The great hulking teenager looked pitiful.
“Sure, we know each other,” Maryruth said, stepping into the room and leaving the door slightly ajar. “How are you, Van?”
Van shuffled his feet on the carpet and mumbled his greetings.
“How do you feel, Van?” she asked.
Huge rivers of tears rolled from the boy’s eyes, to splash on his bare chest. “I want my mommie!” he said.
“She’s right outside, Van,” Jerry said. “First tell me about this light you went to see. How often do you see this light?”
“Can’t, can’t!” the boy cried.
His voice had changed into that of a small child.
“Easy, Van,” Jerry cautioned. “It’s all right. No one is going to hurt you.”
“Mommie!” he screamed. “I want my mommie.”
Mrs. Bishop ran down the hall and threw open the door, hitting Maryruth in the back, and propelling her across the room. She collided with Van. He glared at the woman and then spoke in a language neither doctor had ever heard. The voice coming from the young man’s throat did not sound as though it belonged to him. It was hollow and eerie sounding, as if it had traveled a great distance.
Van picked up Maryruth effortlessly and threw her against a wall. She bounced off the wall and slumped to the floor, stunned, but not unconscious.
“Van!” his mother screamed. “What have they done to you?”
Van howled like a mad animal, the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunched in fury and massive strength. Spittle oozed from both corners of his mouth. He balled his big hands into fists and advanced on Jerry. He was roaring angrily, speaking in that strange language. The teenager’s eyes were wild-looking.
Mrs. Bishop reached out to touch her son and the boy hit her, knocking her to the floor. Her jaw was red from the clublike blow. Her eyes rolled back. She was out cold.
Van looked at Jerry and began speaking calmly, but in a language Jerry could not understand. The teenager held up his balled fists and his smile was ugly and evil.
Jerry had boxed all through high school and into college as a middleweight. He’d had twenty-five fights as a professional during the two and a half years between college and med school. He had never been any serious threat to Dick Tiger, Gene Fullmer, or Nino Benvenuti, but he’d been ranked and had made enough money to finish med school, with some left over. And he could punch with the fury of a Tasmanian Devil. Twenty-four of his twenty-five fights he won by knockouts. Jerry had picked up a few pounds since those days, but he still exercised daily and was in excellent shape for his age.
Van lunged toward Jerry and took a wild, roundhouse swing at the doctor. Jerry ducked it, planted both feet on the carpet, and said, “O.K., sucker. Juvenile or not, you’re going down for the count.”
Jerry then decked the teenager with a combination left and right to the jaw. Van’s two hundred and twenty pounds hit the deck.
Maryruth looked on, horrified, as the doctor decked the teenager. She struggled to her knees. “Jerry, my God! He’s just a boy.”
Jerry exploded. “Boy, my ass! He’s got a full football scholarship to MU as part of their front four. Jesus Christ, Maryruth! What did you want me to do, send him roses?”
Jerry checked Mrs. Bishop. She was breathing normally and her pulse was strong. He left her where she was.
Maryruth got to her feet and leaned against Jerry. She shook her head. “You’re right, of course,” she apologized. “I’m sorry. You did the only thing you could do.”
“You O.K.?” Jerry asked. “Anything broken?”
“I’m all right. Just shaky. Good Lord, Jerry. What’s going on here?”
Jerry smiled and rubbed his knuckles against his legs. “I was rather hoping you could tell me, Maryruth.”
“You have any Fiorinal?”
His laugh was genuine. “I expect I could manage a few.”
Van moaned. He twitched and sat up on the floor. Jerry got set to belt him again. Van looked around him. His eyes appeared normal. He looked at Doctor Baldwin.
“Doctor Baldwin, what happened?” He looked at his mother. “Mother!”
“She’s all right,” Jerry told him. “You tossed Doctor Benning across the room and then hit your mother. You took a swing at me and I decked you.”
“You decked me?” Van asked, sitting on the floor looking up the doctor.
Jerry shook off his urge to resort to a sarcastic remark and said, “How do you feel, Van?”
“I ... well, crazylike, Doc. I mean . . . I don’t remember what’s been happening .. . in here. Does that make any sense?”
Jerry was still irritated by the boy’s probably unintentional slur on his ability to handle himself. “No, it doesn’t,” he said shortly.
“Jerry,” Maryruth spoke softly. She was bathing Mrs. Bishop’s face with a damp cloth. “Ease off, huh?”
Jerry sighed, knowing she was right. “Sorry, Van,” he apologized. “It’s been a rather trying day all the way around.” He held out his hand and helped the young man to his feet. But he did derive some satisfaction from the bruises on the boy’s jaw – both sides of it. He gave Van his shirt and watched the young man slip it on as he gazed worriedly at his mother.
Mrs. Bishop moaned and Maryruth helped her to her feet and into a chair. “Give her a couple of Fiorinal, will you, Jerry?”
Bottle in hand, Jerry gave everybody two pills and took two himself.
“You hit me, son,” Mrs. Bishop said.
“Mother, I don’t remember it. Honest, I really don’t.”
“Mrs. Bishop,” Jerry said, pointing to a room off his office. “Why don’t you go in there and lie down for a few moments. As a matter of fact, I insist that you do.” - “All right, Doctor.”
“I’ll help her,” Maryruth said.
“Sit down, Van,” Jerry said. “Let’s talk.”
Jerry waited until Maryruth was back in the room, and then, looking at Van, he quietly told the young man of his behavior.
The boy sat listening, numbed by shock. His surprise was genuine, both doctors concluded. He could not fake it that well. “Jesus, Doc,” Van spoke. “I don’t remember any of this. I swear I don’t. This is ... this is a nightmare.”
Maryruth sat across the room, quietly taking notes.
“Tell me about this light, Van,” Jerry said. “We were talking about it, remember?”
Van shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t. But you have to be speakin’ of the light out by the tracks. Is that the one?”
“That’s it.”
“Well, it’s been around this part of Missouri for ’bout a hundred years, I guess.” He jerked his thumb in a vague northeast direction. “My grandfather took my grandmother up to see the light when they were dating. And that was ... oh, I don’t know . . . a long time ago.”
Jerry and Maryruth exchanged quick glances; no more than a shifting of the eyes. A silent message passed between them: The boy had really told them nothing of substance concerning the matter of the light.
Both doctors wondered if that had been deliberate on Van’s part.
“My jaw hurts, Doc,” Van complained.
Jerry hid a smile. He thought: It should hurt. Eighteen years ago I knocked out Hurricane Hancock in the second round with that combination. “I don’t believe it’s broken, Van. But I did give you a pretty fair combination. Check back with me Monday and I’ll have another look. If it starts to swell over the weekend, call me. Right now, though, tell us more about the light.”
“The what, Doc?” Confusion was clearly evident on the teenager’s face.
Maryruth minutely shook her head at Jerry; a silent message to leave it alone.
“We’ll keep what happened here today between us, Van.” Jerry let his original question drop. “I don’t think you want it to get around town that you attacked your mother and Doctor Benning, and I had to slug you.”
“God, no, Doc! I don’t even remember doing all that.”
After carefully checking on Mrs. Bishop, Jerry allowed mother and son to go home. He sat behind his desk, Maryruth facing him. He told her about Van and the other young people, told her about Van’s offer of Gayl.
Maryruth lifted an eyebrow at that. “Thanks for sending them to see me, Jerry,” she said, her reply containing a bit of sarcasm.
“I did suggest it, Maryruth. But as usual, the parents nixed the idea. You know I’m on your side in matters such as these.”
Sweet Dreams Page 3
