Then I saw the world go haywire.
It happened so quickly I barely had time to focus, my eyes flash-blind and blurry, and I blinked and blinked because I couldn't believe what I was seeing: The ancient iron of the trestle turning all rubbery under Stains like a Salvador Dali nightmare.
Then the walkway dipped and flexed and stretched down into the darkness of the gorge like taffy, and Stains went with it, screaming all the way, his voice drowned by the sound of a gargantuan metal spring uncoiling.
The bridge finally snapped and Stains landed hard on a slag heap.
I made my way over to edge of the gorge and looked down. I could see Stains lying semi-conscious down there, half buried in the metal mush, and I saw something else that pressed down on my heart and made my blood vibrate in my veins and made my phantom fingers tingle, and even as the sounds of Zander and his men were approaching behind me on the poison winds, I kept staring at that horrible still-life down in the rotting shadows.
My right hand was down there, all pale and pink, still attached to Stains's arm, still gripping the Walther PPK.
It took three days for the boys and girls in the fifth precinct to sort out the whole mess. I was on Zander's shit-list for meddling; but considering my personal interests, I don't think he really blamed me.
At the end of week, they moved Stains to the federal clinic in Eastminster for the transplant.
I showed up early on Friday morning for the big show, and they ran me through the pre-op procedures. They prepped my stump, got me dressed in surgical robes, started drips, and made me wait forever in a sterile green-tiled room in the bowels of the building. It was well into the afternoon when I finally buzzed for the nurse. Her face flickered across the screen above me, and I told her I was tired of waiting and I wanted to know just where the hell they were keeping my hand.
She told me the other patient was still with the clinic psychologist, and there would be a slight delay.
"What delay?" I asked.
"I'm not sure, sir. Would you like me to call the psychologist?"
"What the hell's going on?" I felt a strange twinge, something feathery on my phantom fingers.
"Sir, it'll just be a few more minutes —"
"This guy's a goddamn thief, he stole my hand, and you've got him seeing a shrink?"
"Sir, if you'd just —"
"I want to know what the hell's going on!"
She sighed, her image flickering for a moment, and then she said, "Look, I'm not supposed to do this, but I think under the circumstances... "
She reached down and flipped a switch, and the picture on the screen changed.
The new image was of another room, a stark little lounge in another wing of the building. A table in the center, a couple of chairs, the Venetian blinds drawn. Stains was sitting at the table, dressed in hospital robes. Standing behind him were the shrink and a couple of armed guards.
Across the table sat a little girl in a cotton jumper and pigtails. She was Stains's little girl; I had seen pictures of her on the web-news. She couldn't have been more than six years old, and she was clutching a little stuffed turtle with one hand, holding her daddy's hand with the other.
Her daddy's hot hand.
My hand.
I gazed at the screen, my throat drying up, filling with sawdust, my eyes welling, elephants standing on my chest. It was as though I was a ghost caught in some other dimension watching my shadow-self, and I felt the moist warmth of the child's touch on my phantom fingers, and I watched the screen, transfixed, as the millionaire held his daughter's delicate little hand one last time.
And then it occurred to me: This was why Stains had gone to all the trouble.
To hold his little girl's hand just once.
To feel her touch.
I stared at the screen for as long as I could tolerate the intimacy, memorizing every movement, every gesture, every quiet exchange between the child and the man, and I realized it was my hand that was doing the holding, my hand, God help me, it was my own flesh and blood in there. When I finally looked away I was fighting the tears. "Nurse!" My voice was like metal tearing apart. "Nurse! Nurse!"
The screen flickered, and the nurse's placid face came back on. "What is it?"
"Changed my mind."
"Pardon me?"
"The operation," I said. "I changed my mind, I don't want to go through with it."
There was a beat of silence. "You what?"
"I said I don't want to do the transplant anymore, is that all right with you?"
There was more silence, and then the nurse finally shook her head. "I'll get Doctor Burgess on the line, he'll want to know about this right away."
The screen went black.
I turned away and let the tears come.
Lately the nights seem to have grown more silent in my little cubicle. The ticking of the air filters above me, the distant muffled drone of the city outside my windows, and the slow, steady pulse of my own heart are the only sounds. I prefer it this way. I haven't seen Porsche for weeks. Haven't been in the mood for that noise for a while now. Got too much thinking to do. I read a lot. Started a diary last week, but I forget to write in it sometimes. Mostly I just lay on my contour couch and stare at the Hepa filters embedded in the ceiling, clocking endlessly in the darkness, silent sentinels tirelessly guarding against some lethal strain of mush floating into my space.
Funny thing is, I've never been this happy, going through the motions each day, playing detective, then coming home each night, alone.
So much quiet time.
I can feel her touch every few days. It's fading now, but it's still there. It'll always be there. That warm, moist, powdery touch against my ghost-fingers. The sweet, delicate hand of a little girl nestled in my own phantom palm. She'll always be there.
Always.
VI. NOVELLAS
"Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real."
- Tupac Shakur
THE BUTCHER'S KINGDOM
* A STORY *
Excerpted from:
"ALAN PINKERTON'S GUIDE TO GOOD AND EVIL"
A CONTINUING SERIES
CONTAINING NUMEROUS EXAMPLES
OF HUMAN AND INHUMAN EVIL
AND THE APPREHENSION THEREOF
AS TOLD TO
J. R. BONANSINGA
From the Secret Files
of
A. PINKERTON
A TECHNICAL NOTE: Much what follows was extrapolated from a series of dictations made on an Edison wax phonograph machine by a Mr. A.L. Fricke, retired administrative manager for the late and fabled crime fighter, Allan Pinkerton. The recordings were made between July 12th and the 17th, 1899, at the Pinkerton mansion on the west side of Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Fricke, a Cook County sheriff's deputy during the events related here, supplied invaluable insights into Mr. Pinkerton's unorthodox and colorful methods. For legal purposes, this is a work of "embellishment," and all those prone to skepticism should be mindful of the old saw
CAVEAT EMPTOR.
- JRB
PROLOGUE
"FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GLEN"
"The city... does not care at all. It is not conscious. The passing of so small an organism as that of a man or a woman is nothing to it."
- Theodore Dreiser,
Sister Carrie
Near Chicago, Illinois
1848
Vengeance came from the southwest that Spring. It came from the vast sea of shadows that comprised the wooded marsh beyond the stockyards. Like a wraith in the night, silent and implacable, a force of nature creeping through the mist, weaving through twisted skeletons of black oak and sycamore, it came with a singular purpose.
As it neared the outskirts of the primeval town — the wheezing, smoking, stinking source of all injustice and pain – Vengeance paused and crouched on a crown of granite overlooking the desecrated land. Visible in the distance were the greasy canals, gleaming in the moonlight, cut through the sacred ground like bloody wounds. Hellish tendrils of wo
od smoke and bone dust rose into the dirty night sky as far as Vengeance could see. Low, scorched buildings stretched beyond the horizon, pulsating with sacrilegious commerce. Vengeance lifted its face to the black heavens and let out a howl. Its minions joined in with an infernal chorus.
The hour had finally come. After eighteen years of embryonic pain in the wilderness, it was time to bring Death to this parasite they called a town.
Time to come home.
1.
"THE DISCOVERY OF THE BLOOD MORAINE"
The Stockyard Territories
39th and The Road to Widow Brown's
On that moonless Tuesday evening on the 3rd of March, Big Sean O'Haloran was out on 39th Street, working by the light of a gas lamp in the Ashland packing house, when he heard something odd just beneath the chorus of shrieking. Alas... a fellow who works in the stockyards quickly becomes inured to the constant, shrill, metallic music of the abattoir — the screaming of hogs on-the-hook — and O'Haloran was no exception. At first he thought his ears were playing tricks. He reckoned he had imagined the incongruous noise, and simply shrugged his broad shoulders and went back to the business of thrusting his greasy blade into the girth of another pig.
Blood bubbled and oozed down his arm, flecked his leather apron. Steam rose from the swine's innards. O'Haloran peeled back the rind, then sent another one on its way to its maker (and the next station in the slaughterhouse).
The cycle seemed endless. They would come through the opening on the east wall, where the horse-powered Hereford wheel lazily turned, squeaking on its rusty fulcrum, lifting pigs off the mud floor of the holding pen. Still shivering in their death throes, convulsing and keening like clarions, they were washed, skinned, and prepped by the two other men who lurked in the sputtering shadows. At that point O'Haloran would slit their necks and coax the guts out of them into foaming troughs at his feet, before moving on to the next one, and the next, and the next. The process continued unabated, from dawn until midnight, six days a week, transforming hogs into cutlets, tallow, bacon, lantern fuel, chops, sweet meats, head cheese, and all manner of household soaps. Like the owner, Old Man Ashland, used to say through his crooked, brown teeth, "When we're done with 'em, boys, there's nothin' left but the squeal!"
But on that night, as the big blood-stained Regulator clock over the door ticked toward the bewitching hour, and the killing wheel finally creaked to a stop, the butcher found himself alone in the packing house once again. As usual he was the last one out, the designated clean-up man, and that's exactly what he was doing when he heard the noise again. He was mopping the blood down the chute when he heard the distant, garbled cries coming from outside, somewhere in the darkness. He paused. Over the trickling and dripping, as well as the ringing of his ears, he heard the faint echo of a scream. Not a pig's scream. Lower and strangled with phlegm and terror.
A decidedly human scream.
At first O'Haloran looked around for Casey or Old Boxhead Bryant or Lockjaw Eddie, somebody to talk to, but the place was deserted — nothing looking back at him but the shadows and the spirits of a million dead hogs. Somewhere in the night, the hideous scream rang out again, weaker this time, dwindling. This was followed by a long eldritch howling noise.
A wolf.
O'Haloran ran out the east doorway at a full clip with his butcher knife still gripped in his blood-slimy hand. Had there been an eye witness at that point, the testimony would have been something to behold. This massive-boned Irishman, clad in a blood-soaked apron, clutching a twelve-inch pig sticker, hurling across an empty mud pen toward a pitch black stand of elms, from which the ghostly sounds of howling were now emanating... it was a scene worthy of a Penny Dreadful.
In previous months there had been wee-hour attacks in these woods, many of them involving packing house men on their way to and from work. Wolves. Coyotes. Wild dogs. One man from the Drover Stockyards got his fool leg bit off, but there didn't seem to be much of an answer. Chicago officials were calling for calm. They were chalking it all up to the typical 'growing pangs' of a healthy young frontier town.
Chicago was nearly 20,000 souls now, and the new plank roads were stretching as far west as the Des Plaines River. The Galena-Chicago railroad was being laid, and the new canal connecting the Mississippi with the Great Lakes was pretty near ready to open its locks for business. On top of all this, there was a Great Famine going on in Ireland, as well as a war raging in Mexico, all of it sending scores of displaced immigrants per day into this promising new township. With this kind of growth chewing its way through the surrounding swamps and forests, it was no wonder there was disease and filth and crime and poverty and graft and misery... not to mention the occasional wolf attack.
But on that fateful evening, as Big Sean O'Haloran plunged into the woods along Western Road, his apron steaming in the chill of the night, his heavy breath puffing in plumes of vapor, the big Irishman was thinking only of that horrible gurgling screaming sound being swallowed by that howl. He raised his knife as the darkness swallowed him. His skin crawled as he fought his way through the brambles, then began to ascend a gentle slope. He could barely see his blood-stained hand before his face.
He reached a clearing and paused there, breathing hard, standing in six inches of muck.
What happened next — what the butcher saw — was beyond the average person's comprehension.
O'Haloran's description of what lay off in the bosom of that rock-strewn valley before him, barely visible in the gloom of night, was oft repeated in official transcripts. It was doubted by skeptics, and found its way into sensational accounts as far west as Philadelphia and New York.
The profusion of blood alone would turn a stout stomach, and O'Haloran had to put his hand to his mouth as he gaped down at the carnage. He began to shake. Nothing in his experience as a meat packer had prepared him for the grisly sight which lay in that lonely moraine of stone and weeds. At last, with very little warning, the big Irishman — manipulator of entrails, sticker of pigs — turned away and wretched up a stomach full of pork stew, now hours old and vaporous in the cruel chill.
2.
"A HIGHLY IRREGULAR PROPOSAL"
8 March – 8:51 PM
A lone figure appeared out of the darkness, and stepped into the flickering pool of gaslight that illuminated the Rice Theater's Randolph Street entrance. Over the last few days, Chicago's weather had turned exceedingly raw, even for March, and this particular evening, thus far, had been no exception. A chill mist swirled around the figure as he paused and reached inside his woolen county-issue coat for proper identification. Within the folds of his raised collar, his face remained obscured in shadow as he rooted out his Cook County deputy star.
He entered the theater's narrow vestibule, stomping his muddy boots to bring some feeling back into his feet. The air was warm and fetid in the lobby, and a muffled voice could be heard behind the inner doors. The voice sounded oddly androgynous — neither male nor female — and also frail and defeated, as though it were giving a eulogy.
"Evenin', Lassie," the figure said in a hushed burr, nodding at the young lady behind the brass bars of the box office window, holding his tin star in plain view. The Scot was a stocky young man in his late twenties with a bullish head, thick neck and bushy beard. With each movement he seemed to lean forward slightly like a staunch redwood that had grown that way over years of gale winds. "Official business," he informed the lady. "County sheriff's department."
"Oh dear," exclaimed the mousy woman behind the window. She wore a plain, navy blue skirt and a blouse with leg-o-mutton sleeves — very little trim, a plain high neck with a single ruffled collar — all of which set off the homely cast of her pale face and beady eyes.
"No reason to be alarmed, Lass," he whispered. "Ye hardly'll know I'm here."
"Of course, sir, of course... please," she said, motioning to the inner doors. It was somewhat of a rarity, in this young town, to see a young woman in a hoop skirt working the window in an establishment suc
h as this. Women were more commonly seen employed as seamstresses or line workers down at the new McCormick Reaper Works on North Water. But this theater was new to the mores of Chicago, and the young lady was the niece of the owner, John B. Rice.
Formerly of Buffalo, New York, the Rice family had opened their little sanctuary of culture here only eighteen months earlier, with a comedy called The Four Sisters, in which famed thespian Louisa Lane Drew, matriarch of the Barrymore acting dynasty, played all the title roles. The play had transfixed the denizens of this hardscrabble prairie town, and the theater had immediately thrived. Over subsequent weeks Mr. Rice diversified his offerings, bringing in an eclectic cross section of celebrated performers, artists and thinkers to regale the public. General Sam Houston, P.T. Barnum, Charles Dickens, and Louis Pasteur all trod the boards at the Rice. Johannes Brahms played his lullabies here for a full week. Christian Doppler discussed his famous effect. Mary Shelley recited tales of manmade monsters. J.M.W. Turner revealed inner landscapes. Robert Bunsen introduced fascinating new laboratory apparatus, and Ralph Waldo Emerson made audiences weep. But it was not until tonight — and its featured speaker — that any single attraction caught the attention of the Scotsman.
The burly little man slipped inside the auditorium. He was instantly engulfed in the oily odors of paraffin and kerosene from the stage lights. He stood there for a moment in the darkness at the rear, letting his eyes adjust.
The theater was nearly full, the backs of five hundred groomed, dandified heads silhouetted by the footlights, held rapt by the solitary gentleman on stage, his curious sing-song drifting out over the gallery: "Ah broken is the golden bowl, the spirit flown forever! Let the bell toll! — a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river... "
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