by Ward Parker
Breathing heavily, Follett looked both ways down the hall and listened for footfalls. No one was coming.
He went inside the room and turned on the electric light. A naked bulb on the ceiling illuminated a large room filled with orderly rows of suitcases and trunks. At the far end were shelves stacked with lost clothing and bins holding smaller personal objects. The door wouldn’t stay shut, so he grabbed the nearest suitcase and pushed it against the door.
Follett walked along the rows of suitcases, boxes, and trunks. The ones in the back by the shelves appeared to have been there longer, based on their coverings of dust and the way they were more crowded together. The recent ones, with more hope of being claimed, were closer to the door.
At the end of the second row, pushed against the wall apart from the others, was a small trunk or large suitcase wrapped in a canvas tarp. Follett wasted no time before he was sawing with his penknife at the cords that secured the tarp. Once he cut them, he pulled the tarp away revealing a large, black, boxy case of the sort in which travelling salesmen carried their samples.
He caught a musty odor along with a faint hint of moldy cheese.
The case was locked, so he tried the crowbar. The flimsy material of the cheap case didn’t provide good enough leverage for the crowbar, but he eventually found a way to slip it beneath the hasps of the two locks and soon popped them open. He laid the case flat on the floor and crouched beside it. At first he hesitated, then opened it.
A stronger smell of decomposition rose from a blood- and fluid-stained sack. Follett didn’t want to look inside it but his hand holding the penknife mechanically went about its duties as it had when he was a surgeon, slicing through the sack and revealing what was inside.
It was not wild game packed by a careless hunter. It was the desiccated body of an elderly woman.
He continued peeling back the fabric. It was stiff from dried blood. Beetles exposed by the light scurried into openings in the dried-out skin; how beetles had gotten into the trunk Follett had no idea. The body was shrunken in upon itself and almost mummified in appearance. Decomposition was not as advanced as that of the bodies they had found in the mass grave, but it was certainly more than a month progressed—the butyric fermentation stage, if his recollection of medical school reading was correct. It was impossible to tell if the blackened skin had been African or Caucasian, but the curly hair on the skull suggested the woman was black. One arm had been amputated at the elbow and one leg at the hip. The limbs rested at the bottom of the case.
He guessed the woman was more than 60 years old and had been malnourished. Was her kidnapping even reported? How many people grieved for her loss?
Follett glanced around the room in despair. There were at least 50 or 60 suitcases and trunks in here. How many of them contained bodies? His eyes stopped at the wardrobe trunk that looked like Dr. Greer’s. He didn’t care what name was on the tag, he had to look inside.
The trunk stood upright on one end, about five feet tall. It was of more sturdy construction than the sample case he had opened, but the crowbar popped the hasp of the lock easily. He opened the clasps near each end and tried to slide the two sides of the trunk open.
They were surprisingly heavy. Grunting, he inched them open and a smell of fresh blood and feces struck him. He fought the urge to gag and got the trunk opened like a book. The right side was taken up by drawers like a dresser. The left was for hanging clothes and was covered by a fabric flap. He realized his hands were trembling as he reached for the flap and pulled it aside.
James’ bloated face stared out at him. He hung by a cord around his neck tied to the clothes rod. He was clad in a blood-stained undershirt and boxer shorts. Below the shorts, his legs ended abruptly, severed at mid-thigh, the amputation wounds roughly sutured but not bandaged. His arms were tied behind his back at the elbows and one hand was missing. The muscles exhibited signs of rigor mortis and Follett guessed that death had probably occurred within the past 24 hours. Unlike in the cases of the victims they had found, the cause of James’ death was obvious: a bullet hole in his head above the left eye.
He looked at the drawers and sighed. They would have to be examined. He opened the top drawer and gasped despite having braced himself for what he might find. James’ hand and one of his feet were inside. The next held the other foot and a leg below the knee. The one below held a knee and lower thigh below the amputation point. And on it went. The five drawers all contained James’ amputated appendages.
The room started to spin and Follett sat down hard upon the floor. The lifeless face of James stared at him from the trunk. Follett crawled away from it and rubbed his hands atop his trousers and tried to slow his breathing and steady his racing heart. The amount of carnage he had seen in Palm Beach this holiday was fast approaching that in the Philippines, he thought.
He hadn’t decided what he would do before he had already left the room, exited the hotel through the service door and marched around the side of the building toward the rail siding. Perhaps he should have recruited someone to go with him or acquired a pistol but there was no stopping him now. People must be questioned at once about the trunk and Greer’s assistant, Sidney, was the logical first choice—as if there were anything logical at all about this affair.
Night had fallen and no one wandered the hotel grounds. Five private railcars sat behind the hotel and all were dark save one with its lights blazing—Greer’s. Follett had never questioned why Sidney slept in the car instead of in the hotel like the servants of the other guests. It hadn’t seemed important before but tonight suddenly it did.
He approached the car from the side opposite the platform where it was darker and where no one would be watching. He quietly stepped upon the gravel among the cross ties and placed a hand upon the steel undercarriage to steady himself. A child cried inside. Or was it a kitten? No, it was a child. And there was the low clicking of some machine he couldn’t identify.
The ground was lower here than the station platform but he grabbed a railing and managed to pull himself up onto the metal steps that led to the platform at the end of the car. The door to the inside of the car was locked, of course. So he knocked. Sidney’s face appeared in the door’s small window but Follett managed to step aside in time, out of his view. The face disappeared and Follett knocked again. This time, Sidney slid the door open enough to stick his head through and Follett rushed him, pushing him aside and slipping inside.
It didn’t look like any private railcar he had seen, which generally were parlors on wheels. Instead, it resembled a hospital. Steel cabinets painted white lined the walls and fierce work lights shone upon an operating table with a stainless-steel tool bench on wheels beside it.
On the table, covered with a sheet that left his legs exposed, was a Native American boy. He was fast asleep.
“What are you doing here?” Follett said in a hoarse whisper.
“This is the doctor’s mobile laboratory,” Sidney said. “He is such a driven man he must work even when on holiday.”
“What work—what is he doing?”
“Prostheses,” Sidney said with pride. “It is his life’s work. Very admirable work.”
The mechanical clicking Follett had heard from the outside of the carriage was much louder now, coming from behind the closed door of the adjoining compartment. The frustrated, despairing whimpers of a child were unmistakable. He needed to know what was on the other side of the door.
But he was afraid to look. The metallic clicking now sounded more like the banging of small pistons, atop a whirring of tiny gears. Something pounded the floor, sending vibrations to his feet. The rhythmic thumping was like the footsteps of a monster machine. And the crying, the agony of a tortured child, continued.
He didn’t want to see what it was, because he knew somehow that it was horrible and wrong. But he was a man of science and couldn’t suppress the curiosity about what kind of infernal machine this was in the other room.
The pounding and banging g
ot closer. But then the monstrous footsteps receded.
Sidney smiled slightly like a bemused grandparent.
Why was there a child in there and what did it have to do with the machine?
“I’m not supposed to allow anyone to open that door,” Sidney said, “but I know you want to. You’re a doctor, after all.”
Follett grabbed the doorknob, but it was locked.
“Give me the key,” Follett said.
Sidney shook his head, still smiling.
Follett’s hand struck like a rattlesnake, grabbing Sidney’s throat. “Give me the key, I said.”
“Go ahead, open the door for the doctor, Sidney.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
They both looked over to see Greer entering the door at the other end of the car.
“Doctor Follett is a colleague and friend,” he said. “It’s time for the peer-review phase of my work and we might as well begin with him.”
Sidney took a key from his belt and unlocked the door but didn’t open it. Follett looked at him but Sidney averted his eyes, still smiling. Follett hesitated, then grabbed the glass doorknob and opened the door. At first he didn’t see anything except, to his right, rows of wooden prosthetic arms and legs with mechanical attachments hanging from racks on the walls. A cluttered desk, a workbench covered with hardware and unpainted wooded limbs.
But as he stepped into the room the mechanical sounds began again and Follett looked to his left in their direction.
Angelica, the Angel Worm, somehow morphed into a robotic contraption, lurched toward him.
He blinked and tried to comprehend this strange melding of flesh, steel, and wood. The base of his spine tingled at the wrongness of it. Her tiny limbless body was encased in leather straps which attached her to two prosthetic legs and one arm. Nothing like the simple prosthetics available to the world that were little more than aesthetic accessories, these limbs were mechanically alive. Each was covered with flexible metal rods that led to gear mechanisms where the limb joined the torso. From the gear boxes, spinning power belts led to a backpack strapped to Angelica’s back from which puffs of smoke rose. When she turned slightly he saw a small boiler, a flywheel turning and pistons pumping. A harness around her head supported a device held against her chin that she moved with her lower jaw, from which steel cables led to the backpack. This device appeared to control the engine that powered her limbs.
Angelica’s eyes were filled with fear and tears streamed from her eyes along the leather straps that crossed her face. But she appeared to have learned rudimentary control of the machine that propelled her lurching steps around the room. She moved, however, more as if she didn’t know how to stop than with any clear intentions.
It was ingenious and horrifying at the same time.
“Even a child born without limbs can use my invention,” said Greer, who had been standing unnoticed right behind Follett. “Not even any vestigial knowledge of limbs.”
“But what is…”
“It’s a simple, compact steam engine. It burns alcohol. I’ve been experimenting with the new petroleum engines they’re using for motorcars, but petroleum is so much more flammable. Too dangerous to the patient, especially if one were to smoke.”
“How—”
“It only weighs twelve pounds, which, yes, is quite a lot for a small child, but I furnished a brace of sorts that allows the legs to more directly support the weight.”
“No, how long have you been doing this?”
“Prosthetics have been my life’s work,” Greer said, his eyes misty. “But the ‘Greer Self-Propelled Prosthetic System’ has come to fruition over the last five years.”
“And the patients you’ve used in your studies…”
“Mostly the elderly or the feeble-minded. They’re more cooperative than young people.”
“More cooperative. Because you hold them captive.”
Greer’s face darkened. “Come now, Follett, don’t go thinking that way. This is science we’re talking about here and there is no place for sentimentality. I need a dependable, uniform supply of test subjects and there is some risk of mortality involved until my system is perfected. I can’t depend on volunteers, certainly not if they know the risks.”
“What risks?”
“It has not been easy developing a compact steam engine one can wear safely on one’s back. There have been boiler explosions, scaldings, fires. But they are becoming less frequent.”
“The burns on the dead man we found on the beach?”
“Yes,” Greer replied. “A steam engine mishap. Unfortunate, since that particular subject was learning to operate the system quite well. Sidney dumped him overboard rather close to shore and he should have washed up a day earlier. Quite bad timing that you were there at the time, eh?” He smiled. “It was the Stockhurst monster we hoped to incriminate, since he roamed the area at night.”
“Did you put Angelica’s blanket in Darryl’s closet?”
“I did. I took it when we visited her and I was able to slip it into the closet during the reception for Mr. Clemens.”
Follett thought of the operating table in the other room and his stomach clenched.
“Is surgery involved in your work?”
Greer hesitated. “Unavoidably, yes.”
“Unavoidably? What kind of surgery are we talking about?” Follett asked, though he already knew.
“Well, be sensible, Frank. How many people with limbs missing can you expect me to be able to find on a regular basis? With the amputations having occurred at the right part of the limb and at the right lengths to fit my prototypes? I had to be enterprising. Besides, my system would also benefit patients with malformed limbs which I would amputate and replace with prosthetics.”
Follett tried to quell his rising feeling of nausea.
“You abducted able-bodied people and amputated their limbs?”
“Only when necessary. As you see, Angelica here fit my purposes perfectly without surgery.”
“You cut off their limbs to satisfy your selfish needs? How many have died?”
“Frank, hold on for a moment. They are society’s cast-offs: too old, disabled, or drunk to contribute anything. They’re just takers—a burden on the public. Plus, they’re all Negroes, Indians, Chinese, mongrels. Every one of them inferior to white Anglo-Saxons. They’re essentially laboratory test animals, not much different than using dogs. Sure, we love dogs but no one questions the necessity of using them in experiments because of all the benefits that result.”
The horror and anger in Follett kept building and it left him paralyzed with confusion.
“This is madness,” he whispered.
“It has been quite worthwhile, I assure you,” Greer went on. “My system should be perfected soon and ready for a patent and then sales can begin.”
Follett grabbed Greer by his bony shoulder and looked up at the taller man. “Shut up and answer me. How many people have you killed?”
Greer opened his mouth slightly in surprise then frowned. He seemed disappointed that Follett wasn’t appreciating his genius.
“I don’t know offhand. I’ve kept detailed records, of course. Some died of burns, as I mentioned. Some from complications resulting from the amputations. Others were euthanized—you see, we couldn’t in good conscience toss them out into the world with limbs missing and no decent prosthetics, since my system was not yet perfected.”
“And we had to think of security, Doctor,” Sidney said.
“Quite right. In order for my work to continue, I need absolute secrecy. I can’t have tin-horn city marshals harassing me about some missing Negroes and Seminoles.”
“So we have to discard the test subjects when we’re done with them,” said Sidney.
“You kill all of them,” Follett said in a faint voice.
Follett’s wife’s words, the ones that had come through Angel Worm’s mouth, echoed in his mind. She had warned him about a monster.
You will think he is a frien
d.
He had later assumed that she was talking about Darryl, but the true monster was standing next to him in the railcar.
“Sidney,” Greer said. “Remove the mechanism from the child and put her to bed. Frank, please join me for some brandy. I have a proposition to make.”
He led Follett back into the main compartment and gestured away from the brightly lit operating area toward the darker end of the room where Follett had originally forced his way in. There were two leather chairs and a sideboard from which Greer retrieved a brandy bottle and poured two glasses.
“What about him?” Follett gestured to the boy asleep on the operating table.
“He’ll have to wait until I can give him my attention. Sidney found him begging on the street. He’s blind with no prospects. No one will miss him.”
Follett was sitting in the chair before he realized he had sat down. He took his glass and stared at the amber liquid within. Who was Greer, really? The contrast between this urbane, brilliant man and the horror he had caused was jarring, disorienting. What was Follett to do to right these wrongs?
“Frank, I want to offer you co-authorship in the paper I plan to submit to the major medical journals. You can contribute from the angle of treating those born with malformed limbs. With your name on that paper you’ll be famous. And I’ll even consider giving you a share of the corporation that will market my system to hospitals.”
“You’re trying to buy my silence?”
“Not at all. I would like your editorial input and for you to be my sounding board as I prepare to make this public. I’ve been doing this alone for too long.”
“There is no way I can do that.”
“Frank, we’ll be famous. And thousands of amputees and patients with malformed limbs will live better, more productive lives.”
“What about all the people you’ve killed?” Follett stood up. “This is insane—you’re insane. You’re a murderer and a betrayer of our profession. I—I can’t speak to you anymore.”
