Midnight Grinding

by Ronald Kelly

  Suddenly, he saw the one who fit the bill. She stood alone beside the open double doors, a shapely girl near his own age, dressed in blue calico trimmed in lace. Her complexion was like creamy alabaster and her long, waist-length hair was of a silky, raven blackness.

  “Hey, fellas…who’s that gal over yonder by the door?” he asked, mesmerized by her beauty.

  “I don’t rightly know,” said Hank Tyler. “Never seen her before. She ain’t one of the Harrison twins, is she?”

  “Naw, both those girls have hair as light as cornsilk,” informed Teddy Dandridge. “That gal looks like she might have a touch of Cherokee in her.”

  “Whoever she is, I’m going over to ask for a dance.” Curtis felt in his pocket for the lucky ear, then started across the spacious barn for the open doorway. Pastor Jones began to call a square dance, his baritone voice rising to the rafters. Most everyone there grabbed a partner and began to shake a leg to the tune of “Turkey in the Straw.”

  Curtis Leman mustered a charming smile and made his way through the milling crowd. The girl noticed his approach, however, and perhaps guessed of his intentions. She quickly ducked through the barn door and disappeared into the darkness beyond.

  “Hey, wait up!” Curtis called out and followed. Stepping out of the warmth and activity of the autumn celebration and into the chill, motionless night was like crossing over into another world. He hesitated at first, thinking maybe he should find another girl from whom to receive his rightly-won kiss. But her dark loveliness haunted him. He continued on through the empty barnyard, past pickup trucks and cars, until he saw a fleeting movement ahead. The girl’s playful laughter ran across the tattered ruins of his father’s cornfield. He watched as a pale flash of calico flitted among the skeletal stalks, then vanished.

  With a nervous grin, Curtis climbed the fence and entered the dark field. He pursued the sound of her footsteps and soft giggles through the maze-like rows, tripping over broken stalks and autumn pumpkins in his haste. A full moon etched the drooping, brown leaves in silver luminance, while the rutted rows of turned earth were swallowed in the shadow of the Smoky Mountains. The high swells of the range had always seemed to cradle Cumberland Valley like a babe nestled in the bosom of a protective mother. But that night, the mountains seemed cold and distant.

  He had reached the center of the forty-acre cornfield, when he stepped into a parallel row and there she was. She stood as pale as a ghost, waiting for him.

  Curtis was again stricken by her beauty, but the tedious hunt had sapped him of most of his bravado. He approached her, forcing the smile now. She did not turn to flee this time. She merely stood and regarded him demurely as he cleared his throat and stepped forward.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you, miss,” Curtis apologized. “I just wanted to talk to you for a spell.” As he grew closer, he marveled at how porcelain-smooth her features were, like the face of an antique china doll. Her eyes were dark and striking despite her apparent bashfulness. For a moment, they appeared as deep and bottomless as the black of her wind-swept hair. But, upon further inspection, they returned to their former hue of soft earthen brown.

  “You did not follow me out here to talk,” she said, almost in a whisper.

  Curtis grinned clumsily and produced the red ear from his pocket. “If you’re not familiar with the tradition…” he began.

  “Oh, but I am…quite familiar,” she told him. She eyed the crimson cob as if it were the jeweled key to some wondrous treasure. “In fact, it was my people who originated the custom, long years before this valley was even settled.”

  The boy’s apprehension eased a little at that assurance. “Then you’ll grant me my kiss?”

  A cloud passed overhead, obscuring the moon, leaving her only in silhouette. “Most certainly, Curtis Leman.”

  He was surprised. “You know my name?” he asked. “I’m sure that I don’t know yours. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you here in the valley before.”

  “Who I am does not really matter. It is what I am that is most important this night.” She extended pale hands to draw him closer. “For you see, I am the maiden…the maiden of the Black Harvest.”

  What do you mean by that? he wanted to ask, but held his tongue. He didn’t want to spoil receiving his intended kiss by asking stupid questions. A lot of the mountain girls were odd sorts, possessing a strange sense of humor that usually went completely over his head. But that didn’t bother him as he started forward and took her dainty hands in his. All that filled his mind was her dark and almost savage beauty. He moved in closer, embracing her, staring deeply into the liquid pits of that strange girl’s eyes. He found none of the shyness she had displayed before. Instead, there flared a sultry flame of total abandonment.

  “Kiss me,” she whispered, her lips lush and irresistible. “You’ve won the right…now claim your prize.”

  Curtis intended to do just that. He swallowed dryly and brought his lips in close proximity to hers. The hoopla of the fall celebration seemed to be a thousand miles away. It was a mere distraction in the wake of this lady’s hypnotic charms.

  When he found her lips icy cold to the touch, Curtis knew something was horribly wrong. He grabbed her slender waist to push her away, but the fullness of her calico dress seemed to crumple, as if the flesh beneath were slipping away. His fingers ripped through rotting cloth and slipped through the empty slots of her exposed ribcage. His knuckles scraped painfully against the pitted hardness of flattened bone, wedging there, denying his escape.

  “Kiss me.” Her lips moved like slivers of dead meat against his own.

  Curtis tried desperately to pull away, but skeletal fingers clutched at him, dragging him nearer. A moan of horror rose in his throat as the lovely face of porcelain white seemed to yellow and crack with a hundred tiny fissures. The skin began to shatter and fall away like broken crockery, revealing stark white bone underneath. The sparkling brown eyes that had once smoldered with desire were now gone. Empty sockets glared at Curtis with an emotion akin to hunger, as the wretched thing pulled him closer.

  Suddenly, he knew the meaning of her cryptic words. When Grandma Leman had fallen sick and passed away the previous year, Grandpa had sat before the hearth and, in a low, trembling voice, had said “The spring has bled into summer and the coming of autumn has brought upon us a black harvest.”

  Curtis had never been able to figure out what Grandpa had meant by that…until now.

  The Black Harvest marked the finality of one’s existence; the crop of youth planted, tended to maturity, and eventually reaped, the same as a field of summer corn or a base of Burley green tobacco. There is a balance between Man and Nature, equilibrium. And when the scales tip too heavily in one direction, compensation must be made.

  “Kissss meeee,” rasped the skeletal wraith. Her bony jaws clutched his lower face in a horrid kiss of eternal love.

  Curtis began to scream wildly, his terror echoing through the hollow of ancient bones and the wind-whipped stalks of the deserted cornfield. But no one heard him. The sound of dancing feet and the rapid-fire staccato of banjo-picking drowned his weakened cries as the maiden lowered him to a bed of withered leaves and began to reap the ripened crop of that darkest of seasons.

  DEAD SKIN

  When I was three years old, I was playing recklessly—as most children do at that age—and pulled on an electrical cord that was draped across the kitchen doorway. One end of that cord was attached to one of those big ol’ silver coffee percolators that were a common fixture in the ’60s. Its contents missed my head by mere inches, but my left arm was scalded. I don’t recall much about what followed, but I do remember my time in the emergency room. I remember that the walls were puke-green in color and that there was a 7-Up machine in the corner. I also remember screaming my head off while a kindly, old doctor gently trimmed the blistered flesh from my tiny arm.

  I sometimes wonder what happened to that dead skin. Did they discard it…or did someone keep it?
/>   Let me go! Let me go!!

  It was strange how those words came to mind as Brandon Doyle held the squirming bundle of newborn life in his latexed hands. As the harsh squalling of the newly-liberated infant rang throughout the delivery room, the disturbing cry that had echoed within his mind’s ear seemed to grow more focused. It seemed to be the whining, frantic voice of a toddler, perhaps three or four years of age. A youngster who was frightened-half out of his wits.

  Let me go!

  The doctor handed the infant to an assisting nurse. He tried to chase the bogus cries from his mind, but they seemed to linger, nagging at the dusty, cobwebbed corners of his subconscious.

  After mother and child had been separated for the time being, Brandon washed up and headed downstairs, still dressed in his jade green scrubs. He caught the elevator just as Nurse McKeon did, which suited him fine. He and the nurse—Janet, as he knew her after professional hours—had become quite an item since he had started his residency at the Atlanta hospital nearly six months before.

  “How did it go with Mrs. Powell tonight?” Janet asked him.

  “I had to perform a Caesarian, but other than that, things went smoothly,” he replied. “She had a nine-pound baby boy. A real screamer, too. The kind that will clean the wax out of your ears.”

  Let me go!

  “Are we still on for Friday night?”

  Brandon seemed distracted for a moment. “Oh yes, of course. Seven o’clock sharp at your place, right?”

  Janet nodded. “You’re in for the best home-cooked meal of your life, Dr. Doyle. I’ll have you know I make the best chicken and dumplings south of the Mason-Dixon. I’ll have it cooking by the time you get there.”

  You stay away from that stove, young man! Stay away or I’ll tan your hide!

  Brandon smiled at her and thought about stealing a kiss, but decided to leave the affection for after hours. “I’ll be looking forward to it, Nurse McKeon.”

  Janet got off at the ICU on the third floor, while Brandon rode on down to the lobby level. It was well after ten o’clock. That day’s visitors and most of the staff had already left. Jasper Ryan, the custodian, shampooed the carpeting in the main waiting room.

  Brandon strolled down empty halls, past the cafeteria, and through doors that were posted STAFF ONLY. Soon he had reached his destination: the doctors’ lounge. Just a quick cup of coffee and then home for a good night’s sleep. At least, that was his intention.

  He wasn’t at all surprised to see Robert Cressler sitting at the corner table with his feet propped in a neighboring chair. Rob was one of the hospital’s top anesthesiologists and was almost constantly on call. Beside him sat an overweight fellow with curly hair and John Lennon glasses.

  “You look beat, my friend,” Brandon said. He took a Styrofoam cup from a dispenser and filled it from the steaming glass pot. As he returned it to the coffee maker’s warming plate, he felt the heat of it prickle the fine hairs of his forearm.

  Oh, God! He’s burnt…

  Rob yawned and stretched to reinforce his colleague’s observation. “You better believe it. One of my busiest days yet. Gall bladder surgery, a thyroid biopsy, and to top it off, a triple bypass.” As Brandon took a seat at the table and began to doctor his java with sugar and cream, Rob introduced the mysterious civilian. “Oh, this is my brother-in-law, Arthur Quinn.”

  Brandon knew the name instantly. “The writer?” He shook the visitor’s hand. “I’ve read your work, Arthur. I really enjoyed that piece you did on the fallacy of cryogenics for American Science.”

  Arthur seemed embarrassed, so much in fact, that he nearly knocked his coffee cup off the edge of the table. It teetered for a precarious moment, then jarred back into stability, sending a miniscule splatter of black coffee onto the linoleum floor.

  It fell off the eye…Oh dear Lord, it just fell plumb off!

  The writer smiled sheepishly. “Thanks. I get on certain kicks. Sometimes it’s robotics, sometimes global warming, sometimes hardcore science fiction. I’ve been working on a book lately…about closet genetics.”

  Closet genetics. Brandon was familiar with the term. It referred to the increasingly common practice of performing genetic experiments on the sly, sometimes out of desperation, due to lack of grant money. Sometimes it was done unethically, behind the backs of hospital administrators who frowned on such research in their midst. It was a subject that bothered Brandon a bit; the very thought of young geniuses working feverishly behind closed doors, unsupervised and challenged with the unknown factors of human life. And, in the process, creating only God knew what.

  “I’ve done most of my main research,” continued Arthur. “All I need now is a good kick-off. An introduction that will knock their socks off.”

  “That’s why I invited him down,” said Rob. “I thought I’d show him Delcambre’s old laboratory.”

  Brandon sipped his coffee and frowned to himself. “Delcambre. Now where have I heard that name before?”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard him mentioned around the hospital from time to time. If not, I’ll fill you in, since you’re the new kid on the block. George Delcambre was a respected and brilliant surgeon here during the ’60s and early ’70s. But there was a dark side to the old boy. He was also the resident mad scientist. He had an unhealthy curiosity about things that most of his colleagues had put out of their minds after leaving med school. He was interested in experimenting with DNA, dominant and recessive chromosomes, and the cause and effect of cellular mutation. Of course, now it’s called genetic research. Back in those days it was considered screwing with nature.”

  Arthur already had his tape recorder going. “Well? Don’t hold anything back, Rob. Tell it all.”

  His brother-in-law laughed and punched the Stop button on the mini-recorder. “Not so fast. I’ll leave all the gruesome details for our visit to Delcambre’s lab.”

  “Where is this laboratory?” asked Brandon, suddenly interested.

  “Down in the basement, across the hall from the morgue. The place is locked up. No one’s been inside for twenty-five years.”

  “So how are we going to get in?” Arthur wanted to know. His journalistic zeal was barely contained.

  “I’ve made arrangements,” said Rob. He drained the last of his coffee and chucked the cup at the wastebasket, but missed. “Old Jasper has every key to every door in this old building. We’ll meet him down there around eleven.”

  “Great!” Arthur seemed more than pleased with the prospect of exploring some genetic pioneer’s forgotten legacy. “How about you, Brandon? Are you going to take the grand tour with us?”

  “I don’t know, guys. I’ve just gotten out of surgery. I’m bushed.”

  “Come on, doctor. Where’s your sense of professional curiosity? Don’t you want to see what your elders were up to while you were running around in short pants and bruised knees?”

  Brandon sat there for a long, bone-weary moment, regarding the two men’s exuberant faces. They were like kids, anxious to go and see what Santa had left them.

  The lounge was silent, except for the coffee maker. It sizzled and sputtered as it strained out a fresh pot.

  He’s burnt! Oh God, he’s burnt real bad!

  With a groan, he complied. “All right. But this better be good.”

  ***

  Old Jasper’s key ring rattled as he searched for the right one. He found a brass one, tarnished green from age. The others slid down the ring, clinking, metal against metal.

  Snip, snip, snip…

  “Ain’t nothing here but a bunch of sick specimens in mason jars,” Jasper complained. “Things a man shouldn’t ever have to lay eyes on, let alone want to see.”

  “We can handle it, Jasper,” Rob told him.

  The janitor smiled thinly around the stem of his pipe. “Well, if you say so, Dr. Cressler. I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

  After jiggling the key in the old lock for a moment, a brittle snap signaled the disengaging of the tumb
lers. Jasper pushed the door open with a scraping of warped wood and a squeal of hinges. He reached in and fumbled for the light switch. The overhead lights—common sixty-watt bulbs, not modern fluorescents—drove away the shadows. The walls were painted pea-soup green, like some of the older operating and examining rooms upstairs.

  Just hold still, young man. Everything is going to be just fine.

  “Have fun, gentlemen,” said Jasper, turning to leave. “I’ll be back down later to lock up.”

  Rob thanked the old man, then turned to his two companions. “Well, my friends, I give you the laboratory of Dr. George T. Delcambre.”

  Tentatively, they stepped inside.

  The laboratory indeed looked as if it hadn’t been used in twenty or thirty years. Cobwebs hung abandoned from the ceiling and laced the contents of the shelves. The furnishings were unremarkable: a roll top desk, filing cabinet, a couple of hospital gurneys. The air reeked of mildew and age…as well as the faint, sweet-sour scent of formaldehyde.

  Arthur went immediately to the roll top desk. He slid back the sectioned covering with some effort. The pigeonholes were all empty, as were the drawers. All that occupied the moldy desk blotter was a wooden rack holding two briar pipes and a framed picture of a man and a woman, both in their late sixties. The black and white photo had nearly faded out; Brandon’s eyes centered on the man. He was tall and gaunt, with snow-white hair and spectacles with lenses as thick as the bottoms of soda bottles.

  Oh, Doctor, please help him! You’ve got to help my baby!

  The writer was about to dig into the filing cabinet, when Rob pulled him aside. “Plenty of time for that, Arthur. Come on over here and let’s check out what the old gentleman left behind.”

  The three walked further into the cramped room. As they began to study the things that floated within dusty jars and beakers, it crossed their minds that perhaps Jasper had been right. Maybe Delcambre had left behind treasures best left buried and forgotten.