by Ward Parker
The professor knelt down and pulled various bones from the pile, examining them closely: femurs, tibias, ribs.
“This is incredible,” he said.
“Sir, can you tell if they’re contemporary or historical?” DeBerry asked.
“These here at the surface appear to be fairly recent,” the professor said. “I’d need to do a more thorough study to confirm their age. But these bones…well, I don’t know how to say this.”
“What, sir?”
“These bones are not human. They’re not of any species I’ve ever seen.”
Chapter Twelve
The men standing before the Indian mound were skeptical—angry, even—about the professor’s claim. All except for Follett.
“You mean they’re ape bones or something?” DeBerry asked.
“No, no. Anyone can tell simian bones from human. I don’t know what these are. The thickness and bow shape to this femur reminds me of one from a Neanderthal, but it’s much greater in length. And, of course, these bones are contemporary. I admit I’m absolutely flabbergasted.”
“I don’t understand,” DeBerry said.
“If this were one individual, I’d say he was a genetic freak. But I’ve only been here for a short time and I’ve counted the bones of several individuals of different sizes, genders, and ages, but with the same bone structure. They can’t all have the exact same genetic mutations unless they’re a separate species or sub-species.”
“We need to find a skull,” Follett said.
“Then bring your shovels, Gentlemen, and help me here.”
As they dug into the mound, it became clear that the bones they had found had somehow shifted randomly to the surface. Deeper down their shovels uncovered orderly rows of skeletons arranged as if in a mass grave. Each was intact and included its skull. And all of the skulls had similar deformities, such as extended, lupine-like jaws and bony protuberances on the anterior regions of the cranium.
“There have been rumors about creatures,” Jones said.
“The skunk ape? Yes, I’ve heard them,” said DeBerry. “Nobody who claimed to see one ever had any proof of it.”
“Why the mass grave?” Clemens said. “Was there a massacre?”
“Hunters wouldn’t have buried them intact without taking trophies,” Jones said.
Follett climbed into the pit, shuddering as his right foot sank into the sand and pressed upon the bones of a still-buried corpse. He surveyed the remains. In the part of the grave they had uncovered were twelve corpses laid out orderly in two rows, with an unknown number still buried. He noted the wider pelvises of the females and the taller stature of the males. There were even some children mixed in. The bones certainly weren’t ancient; there were traces of leathery sinew and hair clinging to them. They had probably been buried around a year or a little longer. He studied the skeletons closely, trying to limit how much he touched them. He found no indications of trauma: no bullet damage, no unhealed breaks, no spear, ax, or blunt-object injuries.
“I don’t see any signs that they died violent deaths,” Follett said. “They may have died of disease, an epidemic of some sort.”
“There was a cholera outbreak in this area a few years back,” the sheriff said. “Among humans, I mean.”
“Perhaps among these creatures as well,” said Follett. “And those who survived to bury them could still be living here.”
* * *
The concept of humanoid, but non-human, species triggered a long-repressed memory of Follett’s. Devastated and adrift after Isabel’s death in 1898, Follett had rashly volunteered his services to the War Department as a contract surgeon. At the time, thousands of men were volunteering to fight the Spanish in Cuba. However, by the time Follett had signed up, been trained and assigned to a unit, the war in Cuba was over. He found himself shipped to Manila, the Philippines, where he also missed fighting the defeated Spanish but instead faced a growing Filipino insurrection against the American occupation forces.
One day he traveled with Simms, his orderly, in one of the hospital’s few wagons. Simms drove the team of two retired artillery horses down to Manila’s harbor through streets teeming with activity despite the baking heat. Chinese coolies hurried by carrying immense loads on their heads. Shopkeepers peered warily from their storefronts as if they expected the insurgent army to march by at any moment. The occasional Spaniard civilian or Jesuit priest darted in and out of doorways. Distant artillery boomed randomly and seemingly half-heartedly.
He could sense the mix of relief, anxiety, and anger in the conquered city. The wealthy citizens were pleased that it had been the Americans who took the city instead of the Filipino army, while the majority of the populace resented the Americans’ betrayal of their former allies, taking the capital and denying the people’s own army entry into their city. Follett kept his eyes on windows and rooftops looking for snipers.
This was in February of 1899, right before the Second Battle of Manila, before the city was swept by fire and General Luna’s insane attempt to drive the Americans from it.
Follett’s mission was to acquire much-needed medical supplies. The divisional hospital was out of quinine, low on ether, short on bandages, and dangerously lacking in other critical items. Then the rumors swept through the hospital that an American tycoon had come halfway around the globe in his private yacht to bring donated supplies. The man’s name was Benjamin Stockhurst. Follett recalled the name as one of the imperialists who bribed senators and pushed President McKinley to lead America into the war with Spain and then, after Cuba fell, lobbied for the passage of the Treaty of Paris in 1898, giving the Philippines to the U.S.
How kind of him to bring some bandages to the troops he sent into this hellhole.
The harbor was surprisingly quiet. At one end a freighter was moored at the quay, its boom swinging out and lowering nets filled with crates to a mob of Army wagons and stevedores. A Navy cutter patrolled just past the harbor mouth, its funnel belching smoke. But the rest of the port had little activity, probably because the siege had ended so recently. Then he saw the small ship that was bigger than any yacht he had ever imagined. It was long and sleek, painted white with a large red cross on the hull amidships. The two-deck superstructure was decorated with teak paneling and brass fixtures. A small amount of smoke seeped from two squat funnels aft. The rigging was all aflutter with American flags and pennants. This must be the one.
A squad of regulars in their blue uniforms lounged on the pier guarding the gangway. They formed up when the wagon pulled in front of them. A scrawny, deeply tanned sergeant stepped forward.
“What y’all want?”
“I’m Lieutenant Follett, surgeon. I’m supposed to pick up supplies sent by Mr. Stockhurst for the hospital.”
“You with a volunteer unit?”
“Tenth Pennsylvania.”
“I figure the regular army could make better use of them supplies.”
“That’s the whole point. The regular army has been neglecting the volunteer regiments and that’s why Mr. Stockhurst is showering us with his generosity. We’re treating both regulars and volunteers at the hospital anyway.”
“You don’t say?”
“So may we come aboard to get the supplies?”
“No one told me nothing about any supplies. Our orders are to keep anyone from getting on this ship.”
“Sergeant, could you kindly ask the ship’s captain if he’ll send the supplies out to us?”
The soldier squinted at the doctor and then turned to one of his men.
“Smithy, go tell someone on the boat that there’s a doctor here asking for supplies.”
The tall youth trotted up the gangway and spoke to a deckhand who was lurking at the rail.
“I tol’ ‘em and they said for the doctor to wait,” he reported when he returned.
“You heard him. Now why don’t y’all move over there by that storehouse so the horses can get some shade?”
“Ornery buggers,” said Si
mms, rolling a cigarette while they waited by the storehouse. Simms was a little monkey of a man whose size caused him to be rejected by the infantry. “What’s it their business guarding a private yacht?”
Follett didn’t feel like talking. But it was moments like this, the endless hours of waiting inevitable in army life, that were dangerous for him. He volunteered for the war to get away from himself, to purge the selfishness inside him, to pay penance for whatever he had done to deserve losing his wife and child. But during these long periods of tedium he had nothing but his own thoughts to churn over. He was trapped inside himself, forced to relive memories and put himself through the torture of “what if’s.”
Many of the soldiers had photos of their sweethearts or wives that they would furtively stare at to boost their spirits or imagine a connection with their loved ones so many thousands of miles away. Follett had brought no photos of Isabel, only memories.
About three hours later, crew members finally deposited half a dozen wooden boxes in the back of the wagon—quinine, iodine, bandages, ether, strychnine, and laudanum. Follett and Simms were ordered by the sergeant to keep the wagon by the storehouse even though it meant the crew had to walk an extra fifty yards with the boxes on their shoulders. It was a pathetically small cargo for a yacht this big to have carried such a long distance. There must be other cargo on board.
And that’s what set Follett wondering about the armed guards and lack of activity on the ship’s decks. It was as if they were waiting for something. Nightfall, perhaps?
After they had secured their cargo, Follett told Simms to circle the wagon as close to the ship as possible when they turned around to leave the port.
“My pleasure, Doctor. Maybe I’ll accidentally run over one of them bugger’s feet.”
Simms flicked the reins and steered the horses on a slow arc away from the storehouse and toward the ship. The soldiers watched them warily and then formed a line as the wagon got closer.
“The exit is that way,” the sergeant shouted, pointing to his left. “Git away from here.”
But they kept rolling toward them at a casual, carefree pace.
“What are you doing? Git away!”
When the wagon looked as if it were on a collision course with the troops, Simms steered it to the right, away from the squad but still toward the ship at an angle.
“Move away now or be shot. I’m warnin’ you!”
A crack of a rifle behind them and Follett jumped in his seat. It was just a warning shot, but Simms yanked the horses hard to the right and spurred them into a canter away from the ship.
But the gunshot roused some attention from the ship’s crew. A few men leaned over the railings and faces appeared in the portholes along the hull.
And just as the wagon began its turn, Follett caught the eyes of someone staring from the nearest porthole. And a shiver went through him.
The face was that of a monster, covered in fur with yellow-tinged eyes and long, protruding fangs.
Now, years later, Follett put it together: Darryl Stockhurst looked a lot like that monster.
Chapter Thirteen
The poacher, Horace Yardley, had been locked in a cell in the calaboose while the circuit court judge decided whether West Palm Beach or Dade County would prosecute him. Follett suspected that DeBerry and the other authorities wouldn’t bother to inform him of any developments in the case, so he had paid a junior clerk of one of the town’s few lawyers to be his eyes and ears. One morning while Follett and Clemens had breakfast, the young man brought news they didn’t want to hear.
“Warden Jones contacted the game warden in Monroe County,” said the young man, who wore an ill-fitted suit with bicycling clamps around his trouser ankles. “The warden down there had a run-in with Yardley in the Ten Thousand Islands a little over a week ago, which means he wasn’t here when the man on the beach was killed.”
“But he was here when Angelica was taken,” Follett said defensively. “And the Bishop’s daughter.”
“Yes,” Clemens said as if he were speaking to a child, “but that would mean there is more than one murderer.”
“He could maintain camps in both locations and travel back and forth. Maybe the game warden’s timing is off and he saw Yardley just before or after killing the boy.”
“Even if he took the train, a lot of difficult travel is required on both ends of the journey.”
The young man cleared his throat and said, “Unfortunately, the warden believes Yardley lived down there for the past two seasons as well, when other people disappeared up here. His encampments were searched with no evidence of any missing persons.”
“I still stand behind my theory,” Follett said.
“That he’s a commuter?” Clemens said.
“Deranged murderers are not logical people. And we know he’s a murderer of prostitutes, because Darryl read his thoughts.”
The young man stared at him as if he were a lunatic.
“Besides,” Follett said, “nothing we’ve heard today completely rules him out.”
“Granted, but I find no comfort in that,” Clemens said, relighting his cigar.
Follett was deflated. When they unearthed the bones at the poacher’s camp it had seemed such a tidy solution to all the disappearances. Once they learned the bones were not human, that solution began falling apart, especially since it now appeared that Yardley was not the sole killer—assuming he had killed any of the victims at all. Most important to Follett, there were no clues to where Angelica was or if she were even alive.
He spent the rest of the day in a depression. He walked along the beach but found no charm in the ocean. He made no note of the bright, cloudless sky. He avoided other guests and the meals he ate by himself had no flavor. He tried to read but couldn’t concentrate and the book lay open in his lap with pages unturned. He allowed himself one brandy as a nightcap and then went to bed early, lying awake for seemingly hours.
All he could think about in his darkened room was that he had failed Isabel and left her trapped in that purgatory state alone.
* * *
He feels her at night, during feverish dreams, when somehow her warmth fills the loneliness of his bed, when the mound of spare pillows and quilt next to him are shaped like her lying there on her side. And she reaches out to lightly stroke his face like she did when she’d wake and didn’t know he was awake too. When he would respond by touching her face and running his hand down her neck and chest and brushing her nipples, she would reply in kind. She touches him tonight the way she used to, grazing her fingernails across his pectoral muscles and through the hair that runs down his abdomen and then down further still until her hand is grasping his awakening cock. When he rolls atop her and their flesh becomes one and the sensual delight is topped only by the joy of being with her, then—at that exact height of happiness—the nagging sand grain of reality gets in his eye. But he ignores it and continues his slow thrusting into her as her hips rise to meet his while the dream changes and they are in a different bed in a different room and he tries to keep her with him. The dream changes again and it is Diana that he makes love to and he is excited about this but then she, too, is gone and he’s lying in his hotel bed and in the pale darkness he stares at the lump of pillows and quilt that has the curves of a woman. He grieves that Isabel is not there and aches from the emptiness inside him, even as sleep overcomes him again.
* * *
At some point in the pre-dawn hours he had another, very different dream of her. At first it seemed too real to be a dream. He was lying there awake, he thought, when the transom window above the door opened with a squeak. He looked up and saw the face of Isabel in the window looking in at him, silhouetted by the light of the hallway outside his room. His first thought was how could she be eight feet above the ground? Was she standing on a stepladder? Then her face abruptly disappeared.
Isabel, he called out, or thought he did.
In the wall beside him came the scratching and skittering
of rats, but only in the space beside his bed, as if they knew where he lay.
They were squeaking, or was it whimpering? And then whispering: Frank, help me, Frank!
Isabel?
Help me, Frank. I’m buried alive—I cannot breathe.
Where are you?
It’s dark and too tight to breathe and the inside of my coffin is rough. It pierces me with splinters.
The coffin he had bought her had been luxurious and plush. She was not in that coffin.
The scratching resumed in the wall near his head.
You are nearby, she said. Please help me.
She was trapped within the wall, he finally realized. He knocked gently where the scratching was.
And something knocked back.
He was out of the bed, pounding upon the wall.
I’ll get you out, my love.
Hurry! I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I’m in agony.
He pounded frantically upon the wall. He couldn’t get his mind to concentrate and think of tools he might use to crack through the plaster and the wall boards. He simply pounded like a panicked child.
Oh, Isabel, please, please, hang on.
The floral wallpaper began to bubble and a huge blister formed in one place, growing as if it were filling with fluid. And as it grew it resembled a face, and then that face resembled Isabel’s—
And his eyes snapped open as he lay upon the rumpled, sweat-soaked sheets, his heart pounding.
It was a dream. Thank God, it was a dream.
A knock came at his door and his heart raced again.
“Doc Follett? You okay?” called a male voice.
Follett rolled out of bed and went to the door, opening it a crack. It was Chico, the elderly black valet who had reportedly worked in Flagler’s hotels forever.
“Yes, I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
“The folks in the next room said you were banging on their wall.”
