Mark of the Beast

by Adolphus A. Anekwe

  * * *

  At exactly 2:00 P.M. Sunday afternoon there was a knock on the door.

  “Who is it?” Alex asked formally, knowing full well who it was.

  “Alex, it’s me.”

  Opening the front door, Alex smiled and invited Mona in.

  The house was as Mona remembered it. It was the same old country farmhouse sitting on its five-acre lot. There was a horse barn to the west of the house. That barn had been left unattended to since there were no more horses there after Alex’s father’s death six years ago.

  A small stream to the Little Calumet River could be heard running several feet behind the house. Green grassy plains around the stream gave the appearance of an old English country setting near a vineyard. A wooden garage still stood near the end of the stream as it left the lot.

  “Hi, Alex,” Mona smiled.

  “Come in. I made some tuna sandwiches with potato chips. There’s also Pepsi. I hope you like them.”

  “I’m starved.”

  “Come on then,” invited Alex, leading Mona to the kitchen.

  Sitting down at the dining table, looking around, Mona was surprised that Alex had kept the house relatively clean.

  “I haven’t seen you guys in two weeks,” Mona commented.

  Alex just shrugged.

  “So how long has Cathy been gone?” Mona continued to make conversation.

  “Oh, about ten days,” Alex said, scratching his forehead.

  “You haven’t heard from her since?”

  “She told me she’s never gonna come back. As a matter of fact, I got served divorce papers while she was leaving.”

  That doesn’t make any sense, Mona thought. Why would Cathy leave like that without telling anyone? That’s very unlike Cathy …

  But, at the same time, Mona could understand it. She had left a husband, taken the kids, and returned to Hobart.

  “You know that I’m your friend as well as Cathy’s,” Mona said.

  “I know,” answered Alex. “That’s why I’m really happy you’re here, because these past few days have been brutal, and not having too many friends makes it more difficult.”

  Mona placed her hand on Alex’s shoulder to comfort him. Immediately, Alex grabbed the hand on his shoulder and squeezed it, then artfully led Mona to the bedroom.

  Six months after that encounter, Alex married Mona.

  Mona’s children, Misha and Berth, were so disapproving of the union that they refused to stay in Hobart with their mother, choosing instead to live with their grandparents in Valparaiso, Indiana.

  Like a hummingbird in the middle of summer, Mona communicated her love for Alex. Even though Alex’s divorce papers had not been completely finalized, or even shown to her, arrangements were being made for an October wedding.

  A private wedding was planned at the courthouse in Crown Point, Indiana, at the justice of the peace.

  “Are you sure this is what you want to do?” asked Alex for the sixth time in the past two weeks.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Mona said. “Don’t worry about my parents and kids; they will come around.”

  “Do you wanna have kids?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t know! I have two already,” Mona said, guarding her answer, acutely aware of that Alex was sensitive about being childless. “And you know I’m thirty-eight years old, but if you seriously want a child, I’m willing to try.”

  “I can’t wait for you to be my wife.”

  Mona smiled briskly.

  “What are you going to do with the compound?” Mona asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Alex said. “Maybe sell it and move to Chicago. How would that be with you?”

  “Oh please, not Chicago,” Mona said. “Maybe to Munster, at least it’s close to Chicago.”

  “That sounds good,” Alex replied.

  After the wedding, Mona moved in with Alex. During the first six months, they were happy being married.

  Shortly, however, Mona began to notice that all was not well with Alex. For one thing, he would not let her roam, inquire, or tidy up that darn barn.

  He claimed that the barn was for his own private use, and no matter how messy it might be, he knew where everything was. He didn’t want people disturbing anything.

  “That’s fine,” agreed Mona.

  A week after that conversation, Alex came home one day from working at the Johnson Mobile Electric Company. When supper was finished, Alex went to the barn to retrieve a hammer, which he wanted to use to fix the compound gate.

  He noticed that the table to the west corner had been moved slightly and the dust on top of it had been cleaned. He quickly dropped the hammer and went back to the house.

  “Have you been in my barn?” Alex demanded in a menacing voice.

  “What do you mean, your barn? I thought we were married.”

  “Yes, my barn,” Alex reaffirmed. “I told you to stay out of that barn.”

  “I only went in to look for a hammer,” Mona stammered.

  “Didn’t I tell you to leave that barn alone?” Alex demanded.

  “I know you did, but…”

  “Ain’t no buts here. It’s my family’s secret place.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mona said, confused.

  * * *

  That was the beginning of six-months of back-and-forth bickering between them, mostly initiated by Alex, with an eventual apology by Mona.

  Mona, sensing that this marriage was not exactly the way she had envisioned it, initiated routine daily phone communications with her family.

  Soon, she made up with her kids, then with her parents. She would, on occasion, drive to Valparaiso to visit, and would be gone most mornings before going to work at the Super Kmart, where she still worked as a cashier.

  “You seem to be getting a lot closer to your family than this family,” Alex said one day when Mona returned from a trip to Valparaiso.

  “They are my family. I can’t completely ignore them,” Mona replied.

  “So what do we have here, a non-family?” Alex looked at Mona with clenched teeth.

  “You’re my husband. My parents and children are my flesh and blood,” Mona said as a matter of fact.

  Alex didn’t like it and demanded an explanation.

  “There’s nothing to explain. We are husband and wife, and they are my father, mother, and children,” Mona restated.

  “You’re trying to squeeze me out of the picture because I have no children.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “I’m not,” Alex insisted.

  Two days later, Alex asked Mona to drive his Ford Escort to the store for gas and to pick up some toilet paper.

  Mona wanted to drive her own car, but Alex insisted that the Escort needed gasoline and that he had to finish fixing a leak in the kitchen.

  The smell of gasoline warned Mona that something was wrong with his wretched old car. She cranked the engine up anyway, put the car in drive, and then started toward the bend leading to the gate. She approached the sharp bend, halfway between the house and the gate. At the bend, an unprotected deep ravine made winter driving a little treacherous. Alex and Mona were used to the bend, but to a stranger it could be a little dangerous.

  “What happened to the brakes?” asked Mona as the car was cruising toward the bend at a higher speed than normal. She tried again to brake, but to no avail. At the bend, she panicked and lost control, and the car rolled into the ditch. The quickness of the entire incident took Mona by surprise.

  After a temporary loss of consciousness, she woke up to an excruciating pain in her head and blood running down her nose. It appeared she was pinned to the steering wheel, because all attempts to move were very painful and fruitless.

  She heard some noise on the road. Realizing they were Alex’s footsteps, she attempted to scream while coughing.

  “Alex, please help me!”

  There was no response. She felt some drizzling, and the strong smell convinced Mona that gasoline must be leaking. Su
ddenly the entire car was engulfed in flame.

  Mona could have sworn that she saw Alex throw a lighted match at the car. Breathing became difficult for Mona. She could feel and smell her skin burning. That was less painful than the hunger for air.

  Alex ran to the house and called for help. The Hobart Fire Department arrived in approximately seven minutes, extinguished the flames, and pulled Mona’s charred body out from the wreckage. The incident, after a brief investigation, was ruled an accident.

  3

  MONTHS WENT BY, AND Alex met Chrissie at The Red Grape Bar and Grill in the Miller section of Gary, Indiana. Chrissie was a tough gal, Alex surmised.

  She liked Alex’s muscular body a lot. Chrissie worked out at the Curves in Merrillville, Indiana, and had long admired muscular men.

  “Do you work out?” Chrissie asked him.

  “You might say that.” Alex smiled. “I do a lot of physical labor, and in my spare time I lift weights at the Hudson-Campbell Center.”

  “I can’t stand weak-kneed, out-of-shape men,” Chrissie said. “Not for a country girl like me.”

  After six months of dating, Chrissie agreed to marry Alex.

  “I read about what happened with your ex. She drove the car into that ravine and it caught fire, and she died in the blaze?” Chrissie began asking while both were sitting at the dining table one evening.

  “That’s what happened.” Alex did not want to discuss the incident any further.

  “You know I’m always here for you,” said Chrissie matter-of-factly. For months, Alex and Chrissie had argued about the barn. Chrissie soon convinced Alex that she was no stranger to arguments.

  “I’d like to go in the barn and build something, too,” demanded Chrissie. “My parents are from Minnesota, and when I was a child, my dad would let me use the barn all the time.”

  “Not this barn.”

  “Tell me, why not?”

  “Because it’s a special place and it has a lot of family history. It was a family treasure, if you will, passed down to me by my dad.”

  “I don’t buy that for a second,” answered Chrissie. “Barns are not family treasures. Houses, cars, paintings, boats are family treasures. A barn is just a construction farmers use to store hay and do odds-and-ends jobs.”

  “This barn is different.”

  “What makes it so different?”

  “My dad said so.” Alex was getting upset.

  “Do you believe everything your dad told you?” Chrissie asked.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  Six days later, Chrissie’s curiosity reached critical mass and she had to violate Alex’s sacred place. As she entered the barn, Alex sat on a pile of hay, shovel in one hand and hammer in the other.

  “What are you doing here?” Alex wanted to know. “I thought I told you not to come in here.”

  “I couldn’t resist.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat!”

  “I’m not a cat.”

  “Well, do you know what happens to curious cats?”

  “Yeah, they get killed,” replied Chrissie.

  Alex did not count how many times he hit her.

  When Alex finally stopped swinging the hammer, he noticed to his surprise that Chrissie was still breathing.

  He picked up the shovel, and with one heavy swing, finished her off. When the fire department finally put out the fire on the barn, nothing was left.

  Alex denied all knowledge of the fire’s origin. He told Fire Detective Ben Torres that Chrissie must have gone into the barn with a lamp, as there was no electricity in the barn. She must have tripped and fell and set the barn on fire.

  Combing through the barn, Detective Torres noticed a body that had been burned beyond recognition. Forensic analysis confirmed that it was Chrissie, and she might have started the fire, but the fractured skull was a mystery.

  Alex was taken to the Hobart Police Department for questioning, and he, of course, denied ever hitting his wife.

  In the end, Officer Torres decided to take a second look at the barn, a couple of days later. Walking on the grounds, he tripped over a slightly indented, rectangular patch of earth on what was once the barn floor.

  The local newspapers called it “a gruesome discovery.”

  Four bodies were discovered when authorities examined Alex’s barn site: his father; his mother; Sophia Busby, a twenty-four-year-old hitchhiker believed missing ten years ago—a case that had remained unsolved; and Cathy.

  The jury found Alex guilty of murder in all five counts. Alex avoided the death penalty on an insanity plea. He was instead given multiple life sentences at the State Psychiatric Hospital in New Lisbon, Indiana.

  PART

  VI

  1

  ABRAMHOFF ENTERED HIS OFFICE early Monday morning and, for the first time in weeks, exhibited a happy smile. Whatever happened in Orlando must have been good for him, thought Sabrina.

  Abramhoff hardly ever smiled on Mondays.

  Being in a position of authority, and perceiving himself as a person of authority, Abramhoff always maintained a serious look and would only respond when spoken to. He did not generally initiate a conversation.

  “How are you this morning, Sabrina?” Abramhoff inquired with a surprisingly wide smile.

  “Fine, sir,” a flabbergasted Sabrina responded. “Your trip must have yielded a dividend.”

  “Dividend is not the word,” said Abramhoff. “It was a fantastic weekend. I think this is the clarification of my predestination theory, and the proof of that theory is now at my fingertips.”

  “What theory is that, sir?” asked Sabrina.

  “That of predestination.”

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “Not to worry, Dr. Dickerson from San Diego came up with the right mixture of chromatography in order to isolate that HLA gene. We have been after this locus for a while, and we had great difficulty isolating it.”

  Sometimes, Abramhoff talked to Sabrina like he was talking to one of his colleagues. Abramhoff expected most people around him to understand and follow his logic at all times. Dr. Abramhoff believed that, with just a two-year college education, Sabrina tended to have a better understanding of his subject matter than most second-year medical students.

  “So that will make it easy for the project at Kankakee,” Sabrina said.

  “Exactly,” Abramhoff said. “She, Dr. Dickerson that is, not only identified the correct chemical solution but was also able to localize the type of individuals most likely to be positive.”

  “It looks like she’s done her homework,” Sabrina said.

  “She just might have paved the way for simplification of the Kankakee Project.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “I forgot, sir, Dr. Achampi has an appointment for eight thirty a.m.,” Sabrina announced.

  “I know. Bring him in to the conference room.”

  “Come in, Dr. Achampi,” Sabrina said, opening the door.

  “Hi, Sabrina, Dr. Abramhoff is expecting me.”

  “Yes, he is. He asked that you wait for him in the conference room,” Sabrina said, leading Dr. Achampi to the mahogany table and the leather seats in the conference room.

  Dr. Achampi sat at the middle of the large table, admiring the plaques on the wall. Dr. Abramhoff has amassed a lot of plaques and numerous recognition awards in his lifetime, thought Achampi. He particularly admired the recently acquired plaque from the governor congratulating Dr. Abramhoff on his achievement in the field of medical advancements. He remembered the meeting with the governor at the Hilton Hotel.

  “Good morning, Dr. Abramhoff,” Dr. Achampi said, as Dr. Abramhoff walked into the conference room.

  “Good morning to you. How is your dad? He had what … a mild coronary last week?”

  “He’s taking his aspirin and beta blocker, and they seem to be helping.”

  After both fixed their coffees, they picked up their china cups and saucers and headed to
the conference table. Dr. Abramhoff sat at the head.

  “We are now in a position to blow this whole project wide open,” Abramhoff said.

  “We are?” Achampi asked.

  “Yes we are,” Abramhoff said. “Do you know Dr. Dickerson from San Diego?”

  “I’ve heard of her. Isn’t she the one also working on the HLA antigen loci?”

  “That’s her. What do you know of her work?”

  “I read an article she authored in the journal a couple of years ago about the veracity of the HLA B loci and the possibility of its association to deviancy.”

  “That’s just the beginning of her experiment.”

  “It is?”

  “She went further than we did. She presented a paper at the conference, and in that report she specifically linked HLA B66 to criminality.”

  “How did she do that? We’ve been working on that for almost two years now, and we have not been able to isolate a specific position on the B loci.”

  “Well,” Abramhoff explained, “after her presentations, I was able to have dinner with her. She went into a little bit more detail about her experiment. What made the difference is in the gel mixture she used to isolate the HLA loci.”

  “How so?” asked Dr. Achampi.

  “Well, she added a five percent dextrose solution of ethylene benzoic.”

  “Isn’t that the new untested purification solution for DNA extractions?”

  “Yes,” Abramhoff said.

  “Why didn’t we think of that?”

  “Using the new purified solution, she not only did not drop any established HLA B loci, but was able to isolate HLA B66 as the position that identifies criminality.”

  Abramhoff’s jealousy was obvious to Achampi.

  “No kidding,” responded an impressed Achampi.

  “What’s more, she’s already experimented on it.”

  “How did she do that?”

  “She didn’t go into detail, but she was able to use the help of the San Diego Police Department, and she’s shown that the most heinous criminals, like that guy in Hobart—what’s his name? Alex Andalusia—are almost all HLA B66 positive.”

  “Really,” Achampi said, still amazed. “That kind of makes our job a little easier, don’t you think?”