Bring Me Children

by David Martin

  After a short silence Mary hears a stream of liquid splashing on the tombstone, finally understanding why the doctor got her out of bed to drive him to the cemetery at this time of night.

  “You see,” he says, talking without interrupting the stream of urine, “Claire and I were alike in that we both believed. Doing this would be pointless unless we both were believers.”

  Mary is surprised that after a year with Dr. Quinndell she still has the capacity to be shocked.

  “I assume you have a flashlight.”

  “Yes,” she replies softly.

  “Good, you won’t want to miss this next part.” He’s undoing his belt. “Lefthand pocket of my jacket please.”

  She reaches into that pocket and finds a nearly depleted roll of toilet paper.

  The doctor is holding out his hand.

  “Scented,” he says, putting the small roll to his nose. “Interesting concept, don’t you think — scented toilet tissue. I mean, what’s the thinking behind it?”

  When he drops his trousers, Mary asks, “May I wait in the car?”

  “Mary Aurora squeamish?” He laughs — and then turns quickly angry. “Go on, get out of here, this is between Claire and me. It has to do with the power of symbol, which you’re incapable of appreciating. Go on!”

  Returning to the car, Mary hears Quinndell humming show tunes. She never sees the figure in white step from behind a large tombstone to watch the doctor defiling Claire Cept’s grave.

  CHAPTER 6

  On Sunday evening, July 1, one week after crying on national television and four days after witnessing the woman kill herself, John Lyon arrives at a cabin he has rented eighteen miles into the mountains outside the town of Hameln, West Virginia. He has driven thirteen hours straight through to get here and what Lyon wants most from life right now is a hot shower and cold drink.

  Before getting out of the rental car, however, he checks his face in the rearview mirror. It’s habit more than vanity, Lyon’s appearance being one of the commodities he has on sale to the public. He assesses his face, therefore, in a coldly analytical manner, usually satisfied with what he sees, with the ways the years have tugged and creased and settled his face to create a look of placid strength that plays well on a medium as cool as television. It’s a good face, square and strong-jawed, looking exactly its age, fifty years, no more, no less. But Lyon’s professional eye now recognizes a weariness in his face that has been caused by something more than thirteen hours of driving — a haunted quality that wasn’t there a week ago.

  He sits a while longer in the car. Lyon feels thick and bloated, like a dog that’s been castrated in its advancing years and has forgone the chasing of small mammals in favor of sitting by the fire. How long has he been like this, without direction, mentally sitting by the fire? Years.

  Although stiff and sore from all those hours of driving, he is still reluctant to get out of the car. Lyon doubts the wisdom of being here. But what was the alternative?

  The morning after the woman killed herself, Lyon went out for the papers to search for news of her death. In the rain and confusion of the previous evening, the cabbie had not recognized him but Lyon didn’t know this as he sat in his kitchen flipping through pages of newsprint, his fingers inky and the newspapers lying in heaps and tents on the floor all around him. He expected at any moment to come across his name and photograph.

  ‘Crying’ Newscaster Flees Scene of Fatal Accident

  There was something pathetically funny about being holed up in his apartment furiously checking through the newspapers for word of the “crime,” like some character from a Hitchcock movie, the normal man caught in a web of abnormal circumstances. Lyon began laughing.

  He reached down and gathered up an armful of newspapers and threw them wildly into the air, laughing harder and harder until the laughter slipped out from under his control, escalating into something close to hysteria, Lyon standing there in his kitchen laughing until he was heaving for breath, tears wetting his face.

  Then he started crying. The strength of the emotion invested in the laughter did not diminish, it was simply somehow transferred instantly and totally into weeping until he collapsed at his kitchen table and — just like Sunday afternoon, just like Wednesday evening in the rain — sobbed.

  Then the migraine arrived with crippling effect, Lyon walking bent over to his bedroom where he lay down with a wet cloth across his eyes. His friend Tommy Door used to have an occasional migraine. Lyon appreciated now how Tommy must have suffered.

  As he lay there in pain Lyon wondered whom he might call. No name came to mind. Maybe an old girlfriend, a colleague from the network. What would he say, how exactly would he open the conversation? “Hello, this is John. John Lyon.” And he could just imagine how this person would react to such a call, face twisted into an expression of mockery, an index finger making circular motions by the ear — then later telling people about the call and agreeing with them that, yeah, we always suspected John Lyon was a little too tightly wound for his own good.

  He finally gets out of the rental car and stretches, looking up at the surrounding hills. The rectangular log cabin he has rented is in a valley clearing of less than an acre, a heavily forested ridgeline completely encircling the valley or, as they call it here in West Virginia, the “holler.” And Lyon does indeed feel as if he is standing in the hollow of a large hand, protected.

  Waving away wasps that seem to be lazily lost in the final hour of this day’s heat and light, Lyon goes around to the trunk and takes out a box of supplies which he carries toward the cabin.

  Her name was Claire Cept. She was sixty-two, born in New Orleans but lived the majority of her years in West Virginia, working as a registered nurse. The envelope she had so carefully placed in Lyon’s jacket contained copies of official documents (transcripts from hearings, depositions from witnesses), various theories and speculations (some typewritten, some in her own hand), and one master list of the names and dates of birth — and death — for eighteen children under the age of one who died in a ten-year period while under the care of Dr. Mason Quinndell of Hameln, West Virginia.

  Lyon places the box of supplies on the cabin’s porch and returns to the car for his suitcases. He feels a vague need to hurry — to get settled in the cabin before the light is gone from this valley.

  Reading through Claire Cept’s material several times, Lyon eventually pieced together her story:

  While working at a county hospital near Hameln, she became suspicious when Dr. Quinndell twice refused to allow mothers to see the bodies of their infants who had died after being brought to the hospital with high fevers. In the second incident, Claire went looking for the infant’s body herself but was told it had already been moved to a funeral home. Claire called there and was informed that no body had been picked up from the hospital that evening. By the following day, however, everyone’s story had changed, the director of the funeral home insisting that the infant’s body had indeed been picked up the previous evening and then telling Nurse Cept that she most certainly could not come over and view the body.

  Checking hospital records, Claire discovered that in the previous year five infants had died just hours after being admitted to the hospital by Dr. Quinndell. Two of those five babies were from indigent families, the other three the infants of unwed teenage girls.

  Although the rural county hospital was a closed society, reluctant to acknowledge grisly accusations against one of its prominent physicians, Claire was so insistent that a hearing was finally held. Charges and countercharges were exchanged between Nurse Cept and Dr. Quinndell, the upshot being that the doctor was exonerated and the nurse was fired.

  She continued investigating on her own, eventually coming up with that list of eighteen infants she accuses Quinndell of murdering over a decade that began fifteen years ago and apparently came to an end five years ago when Claire Cept went public with her accusations. The woman spent those past five years, the last five years of her l
ife, in a crusade to bring Quinndell to justice.

  One of the most remarkable items in Claire’s envelope was a typewritten account of a telephone call that Claire claimed Quinndell made to her just last year, a call during which Quinndell admitted that he had indeed killed those babies, had in fact butchered them. According to Claire’s notes, she asked Quinndell why he was confessing this to her and Quinndell replied, “Because you have to stop me before I do it again.” At the bottom of the account of this telephone call, Claire wrote a note to John Lyon: “Now it’s up to you to stop him. You have to open those graves, Mr. Lyon. The babies are lying there in the ground waiting to indict Quinndell.”

  Lifting his two suitcases out of the trunk, Lyon sees the little white box Claire Cept gave him right before she killed herself. He brought it along with him at the last minute, after his suitcases had been packed. He doesn’t believe the box has any power, of course, but he couldn’t see any harm in having it with him.

  After digging it out of his trashbasket late that night, he found the box contained a carelessly molded wax figure. The arms and legs were only short stumps, and the face was coarsely outlined, two thumbprints for the eyes. The figure was identified with cutout letters, the Qs obviously referring to this Dr. Quinndell.

  Spooky shit. When Lyon first opened the envelope containing Claire’s notes and files, for example, some white crystals fell out onto his lap. The stuff looked like common table salt but Lyon wasn’t about to taste it to find out. He has to keep all this to himself because if he starts talking about voodoo, the network really would be convinced he’s gone off his nut.

  He takes the two suitcases to the porch and then returns for the white box. On one level Lyon is able to step back and see how untenable his position is, but on another level — deeper or more basic, more primitive — everything that has happened to him this past week seems now to be loaded with great seriousness, with a portent that he finds intriguing but also terrifying.

  Standing on the porch he searches through his pockets for the cabin’s keys, which he was given — along with a packet of information — when he signed the rental form at a Hameln hardware store. Lyon had arranged for the rental by telephone, using information contained in Claire Cept’s envelope. Another of her handwritten notes to Lyon urged him to stay at this cabin and not in the town of Hameln itself because “Quinndell owns nearly everything and everyone in the entire town.” Lyon noticed that nowhere in Claire’s notes did she refer to Quinndell as doctor.

  He pauses after unlocking the cabin’s door, thinking he might actually be able to pull it off. If Claire’s accusations against Quinndell are true, if the doctor really is a baby killer, if Lyon is the one to break the story. The possibilities making him smile.

  He loses that smile, however, when he realizes how this goddamn business has made him a ghoul. If people at the network hear a plane has crashed at Kennedy, they’re excited, happy, pumped. Then when the second report comes in, saying that the plane simply skidded off the end of a runway, no loss of life, they’re visibly disappointed. And now here I am speculating on how I might use baby murders to revive my career. Hell, I fired my agent for suggesting something like this.

  Lyon steps into the cabin and finds the light switch but when he flips it up, nothing happens. With the box of supplies under one arm, he makes an immediate left through a doorway and into the living room. The lights there don’t work either. On the other side of the living room is the cabin’s single, small bedroom and even tinier bathroom — none of the lights in those rooms work either.

  The cabin’s interior — clean, the furniture cheap but cheerful — is already too dark for reading so Lyon carries the box of supplies back out to the porch where he goes through his packet of information and finds a note saying that the electricity will be turned on before noon Monday, July 2. Tomorrow.

  Further reading reveals that the cabin’s water is supplied by an electric pump and heated by an electric heater, meaning no shower tonight. No ice for his drink. Lyon stands on the porch feeling the frustration tangle knots in his stomach.

  The box of supplies still under one arm, Lyon manages to pick up both suitcases before he goes back inside, turning right this time to enter the darkened kitchen, immediately stumbling over something, barking both shins, cursing, nearly falling on his face.

  Lyon drops everything and bends down to rub his shins. A big crate has been left right in the middle of the goddamn kitchen, Lyon angry enough that he could kick it.

  He finds an oil lamp on one of the counters and lights it, seeing that the crate is six feet long, three feet wide, two feet deep, painted white, and wrapped both lengthways and around its width with colored string tied in elaborate knots.

  He rushes out to the porch, finds the little box that Claire gave him, and brings it into the kitchen.

  “Jesus.”

  Lyon stands there for the longest time.

  “Jesus.”

  If Claire Cept somehow arranged for this big crate to be delivered here, what has she placed inside for Lyon to find? Documents? A life-size paraffin doll? He isn’t sure he wants to find out.

  And the longer he stares at the crate, the more afraid he becomes, afraid in ways he knows are irrational — afraid because the kerosene lamp’s yellow light lends an eeriness to the kitchen, afraid because he is a city dweller totally isolated out here in these mountains, afraid because it is nighttime and he has no one to turn to. There’s no phone in the cabin but if there was, who would he call? Tommy Door is dead. So are Lyon’s parents. He hasn’t seen his sister in nearly seven years and wouldn’t recognize his niece and two nephews if he met them on the street. People at the network are his colleagues, not his friends. There’s no woman in his life, hasn’t been for over a year. He fired his agent. Who then?

  The thing to do is leave.

  But go where? Back to Manhattan? Make an appointment with a psychiatrist? Call the police?

  And yet a portion of Lyon’s mind is urging him to get down on the floor, unwrap that string, and open the crate. Go on, you know you’re going to do it, do it now.

  He’s sweating, excited, afraid, pumped.

  Lyon drops to his knees, placing the kerosene lamp on the floor next to the crate. He tugs on one of the knots, finding that it pulls loose easily. Then another one. Then another. He freezes, feeling like someone in a movie audience, watching a horror film, except he is the one up on the screen, and he’s shouting warnings at himself, Don’t do it, Don’t do it, but of course it’s too late for warnings; Lyon is opening the box.

  He holds the lamp high in one hand, his other hand opening the lid slowly, half expecting something to jump out at him, then finally seeing by the flame’s yellow glow that the crate contains a woman’s body.

  CHAPTER 7

  Back from the cemetery, Dr. Quinndell has been sitting at his desk for more than an hour, tapping his long fingers, feeling oddly at a loss now that his enemy is dead, her grave defiled. The doctor is in the mood for … something. He could of course summon Mary from bed again and harass her, but Quinndell has grown weary of those games. He has one final torment in store for Mary, all in due time.

  Quinndell picks up the telephone and punches in the number for the county jail. Carl, the deputy, is on duty.

  “Hey, Doc, what can I do you for?”

  “Mr. Gigli is lonely for a new friend, Carl.”

  The deputy chuckles. “Good old Mr. Gigli.”

  “I seem to remember that you mentioned you might have a likely candidate.”

  “Sure do, Doc. Henry Robarts, forty-three, white male, no fixed address, no family that he admits to. I been holding him for you.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I didn’t run a sheet on him so nobody knows we got him, but he’s a yardbird all right, right down to the jailhouse tattoos.”

  “But the question is, is he disposable?”

  “Say what?”

  “Is he wanted by any law enforcement agency, is a
n ex-wife after him for child support, does he have an elderly mother who’s waiting for her precious Henry to visit?”

  “Not that I know of. Got him talking just like you always said, Doc, and he didn’t mention any family or friends. Far as I can tell he’s drifter, shit bum, white trash — through and through.”

  “A perfect friend for Mr. Gigli.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me again how Henry came to your attention.”

  “Caught him stealing tools from Martin’s barn out there by the highway. Says he’s looking for work, they all say that, but you know how it is, he was just passing through, stealing stuff small enough to fit in his pockets, then he sells it at some filling station down the road, gets enough money for a meal. Strictly smalltime.”

  “Does he wear glasses?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well then by all means do bring Henry over for a visit. You know the routine, Deputy.”

  “Sure do, Doc.”

  Forty-five minutes later Henry Robarts is on an examining table in a small windowless room in the back of Dr. Quinndell’s house. Henry’s wrists and ankles are strapped to the table; a rope is around his neck and knotted under the table to keep his head down. Henry allowed the deputy to secure him in this fashion because the deputy told him there’d be forty bucks in it for him: forty dollars to allow some local doctor to examine him.

  Henry figures the doctor is queer. He’s had shit like this happen to him before. In prison of course, but also in his travels. He’ll be hitching a ride and some cheap-suited businessman will pick him up and they’ll get talking and the guy will give him a look, embarrassment and lust all mixed up together, and the guy will mention how he’s going to be stopping for the night soon and maybe Henry — you said your name was Henry, right? — would like a bed for the night too. Then in exchange for a room and a meal and maybe twenty bucks or whatever Henry can hit him up for, the guy gets to suck Henry’s dick. That’s the weird part. It’s not like prison. On the outside, they want to suck your dick — and pay you for it too.