The Teratologist

by Ward Parker

  —and Wiley, loyal assistant to the late Benjamin Stockhurst, shuddered violently with pain. And then the pain was replaced by a surge of energy unlike anything he had ever had before.

  And rage, too. Tremendous rage overcame him. He roared with all his might, and then the instructions trickled into his mind like blood.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Follett visited Angelica in his role as a physician, to make sure she didn’t have any health concerns from her confinement and use of Greer’s prosthetic engine. Aside from mild contusions where the limbs had been attached, she was fine. She exhibited some emotional trauma, as was expected, and he hoped she would recover in time. For hours he held her in his arms, whispering soothing words. He refused to take any money from the family for his services.

  He visited additional times to check on her contusions and monitor her emotional condition. She appeared happy, but it was difficult to be sure. By now he could no longer lie to himself that he was coming for solely professional reasons. He wished, desperately, for Angelica to speak to him as Isabel. He needed to tell her that their son was waiting for her.

  “You here again, Doc?” Trudy said when answering the door on the last visit. “Angelica feels fine, but she hasn’t gone away at all since she’s been back. Sorry ‘bout that.”

  In all his visits, Angelica never “went away,” as Trudy called the trance-like state the child entered when she channeled the voices of the dead. Follett feared she might be incapable of doing it anymore. The trauma from her kidnapping may have caused a change in her brain processes, however slight, that might prevent her from ever channeling again.

  * * *

  Follett at first convinced himself that he returned to Florida to escape the notoriety of the trial that had sentenced Greer to the electric chair—pending appeal by his expensive lawyers, of course. He decided to stay indefinitely in order to be near Angelica, to hope for a chance to speak with Isabel, or so he told himself. Finally, he justified his decision to move there on the area’s need of more doctors and went about getting licensed in the state of Florida. He had a house built in West Palm Beach on a nice lot on Lake Worth and set up the ground floor as an office with a room for examinations and light surgery. Once a week he rode his buggy into the poor neighborhoods, offering basic care at no charge.

  But as time went on he could no longer deny the true reason he had stayed in the area.

  He married Diana on a sunny June day with low humidity and a porcelain-blue sky. The wedding was held at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Church in Palm Beach and the reception, at Diana’s father’s home, mingled New Yorkers with the local farmers and fisherman. The New York contingent was small and consisted of his mother, sister, some cousins with children, and a few colleagues. They had avoided excessive finery in their clothing and mingled bravely with the modestly dressed local merchants as well as the roughly hewn frontier families.

  The party ate at tables that had been set up in the back lawn of the house in the shade of an immense mango tree. Follett sat beside Diana, the electricity of his leg touching hers. The feast included local shrimp and oysters, pompano and smoked mackerel, roasted venison, and boiled turtle eggs, while they were serenaded by a string quartet that Follett had hired from Palm Beach. When the sun fell, the reception changed in tone. The hard liquor came out, the classical musicians left, and a few locals produced fiddles and a banjo. As things became rowdier, the guests from Follett’s side politely made their departure and, not long afterwards, Follett and Diana slipped away to the house that Follett had built.

  Later that night, Follett cried in front of Diana. He hadn’t wept at all since the days after he lost Isabel and their child, not even at his father’s death. But after the hours of lovemaking with Diana, of finally letting himself go and riding the warm, wet current of unstoppable desire that both startled and delighted him, his tears began to flow. They were lying naked on the bed in the faint moonlight from the open windows, the sheets and blankets kicked to the floor. His cheek rested between Diana’s firm breasts and her legs were wrapped around his waist. He was staring at her left breast, at the dainty mole near her nipple, and listening to the healthy beat of her heart, when a tear rolled down his cheek. And then another. Soon she must have felt the wetness upon her skin and put her fingers on his cheek, finding the tears there.

  “Why are you crying, my love?”

  Then, despite his efforts to prevent it, a sob wracked his body, followed by more—painful, spasmodic sobs.

  “It’s all right for a man to cry,” she whispered.

  He let himself go and the tears poured out while the sobs eventually weakened and went away. When the tears stopped, he started to rise to get a handkerchief, but she held him down and caressed his back.

  “Were you crying because of her?”

  He rose on his elbows and looked in Diana’s eyes. There was a bit of wetness in them. He hoped she hadn’t misinterpreted his tears.

  “I don’t know why. I think it was a process of ridding myself of the past. Purging myself of the old me, my mistakes and sorrows.”

  “Why must you speak of everything like a doctor?” she said laughing.

  He smiled. “To be honest, I think some of it was also saying a final goodbye to her. But I wasn’t weeping with sadness, Diana; it was with relief and joy. I feel remarkably good right now.”

  She pulled him back down and soon he was feeling even better.

  * * *

  It was late morning and he was sipping his coffee on the porch when he saw the smoke rising across the lake. It clearly wasn’t coming from the Royal Poinciana, which was visible near the water’s edge. It came from further to the east, but it was hard to tell from where exactly as the wind pushed the smoke south over the island. But as the volume of smoke increased it was apparent it wasn’t just a house fire; it had to come from a large structure or from a wildfire. Soon a church bell rang from Palm Beach and before long it was echoed by a nearer bell in West Palm.

  “The Breakers is on fire,” shouted someone in the street near their house.

  Very few newsworthy events happened around here and this was the biggest in years. Follett went inside to tell Diana and get dressed.

  They took the buggy across the bridge to Palm Beach and traveled toward the beach on the county road. The smoke was bearable at first, but soon became thick and searing to the lungs. Follett was about to turn back when the wind shifted and he saw blue sky and ocean ahead. He pushed the horse into a gallop.

  He tied the horse to a tree outside the grounds of The Breakers and they walked onto the property. Soon they were hit by a wall of heat. The front entrance to the hotel was a confusion of smoke and fire wagons so they walked around to the beach side. The summer was the off season and few, if any, guests would be staying at the hotel. But the beach in front of it was filled with onlookers. Workers dashed from inside carrying chairs, rolled carpets and other furnishings, dropping them on the sand. The rescued items looked as if they had washed up on shore from a shipwreck. Follett and Diana walked across the beach. Both wings of the hotel were belching smoke, flames flickering out of the upstairs windows.

  An explosion came from the north end of the hotel and women screamed. Follett flagged down a harried employee who was rushing by.

  “They’re using dynamite to stop the fire from spreading,” the man shouted as he ran off. “It ain’t gonna work.”

  Follett and Diana walked out on the pier for a better vantage point from the ocean. A photographer was capturing the scene, his camera balanced upon the pier railing.

  “Does anyone know what caused it?” Follett asked him.

  “Construction crew, working on an expansion. So they say.”

  “My sister is a maid here,” said a black man standing next to the photographer. “She said it started in one of the cottages. Arson, she told me.”

  “Just another rumor,” the photographer said. “Already heard dozens of them and the fire hasn’t even been burning two hour
s yet.”

  One of the cottages. Follett’s scalp tingled.

  “Are we safe out here?” Diana asked him. “What if the fire spreads to the pier? We’d be trapped out here.”

  “Why don’t you head back to the buggy? I need to check on something, but I’ll be back shortly.”

  She started to protest, but he had already begun jogging down the pier toward the hotel, now almost entirely consumed by the inferno. When he reached the end, he turned right and went up the beach parallel to the hotel. The heat was intense. By now the workers had abandoned their quixotic attempt to save the hotel furnishings and most of the spectators had retreated. He ran on the hard-packed sand just above the reach of the receding tide. To his left was the hotel in its death-agony, flames twisting out of windows and raging along the wooden walls. The rescued chairs in the sand, the lamps, a grandfather clock, furled in smoke and silhouetted by the orange and yellow blaze, seemed surreal.

  When he reached the cottages he saw what was wrong: the first three to the immediate north of the hotel were untouched and the last one, where the Stockhursts had stayed, was fully ablaze. So, most likely, the fire hadn’t spread from the cottage. Someone had torched it and then set fire to the hotel.

  Could it have been William Stockhurst? He certainly had motive, but didn’t seem the type to commit a crime like this. But then Follett realized Stockhurst would have hired someone to do it and the idea seemed more plausible the more he thought about it.

  A roar of rending wood came as the second floor of the cottage collapsed. Follett skirted the property to the north in order to see the front. The firemen had abandoned trying to extinguish the fire but were spraying water from a tank wagon upon the other cottages to save them from leaping embers. Follett approached one of the men who had taken a break and was wiping his soot-stained face with a rag.

  “Excuse me,” Follett said, “do you have any reason to suspect the fire was a work of arson?”

  “I reckon for sure it is.”

  “Do you have any idea who did it?”

  “Not ‘who,’ but ‘what.’ It was some beast that looked like a giant wolf on two legs. I work as a carpenter at the hotel and I happened to be walking by when this cottage went up. I seen the beast with my own two eyes run out of the flames and over to the hotel. Then smoke starts comin’ out of the north wing and you can see the result. I seen it all happen and I’ll put my hand on the Bible and testify it’s the truth but there’s not a single feller who believes me.”

  The cottage was collapsing upon itself within the flames, sending out showers of sparks. They coalesced into a cyclone created by the heat and spun as they rose into the sky and joined the smoke billowing from the hotel.

  Then for an instant, just a blink of an eye, Follett saw red orbs in the cloud of smoke—burning red spheres like eyes looking down at him. He shuddered as a chill enveloped him and felt an intelligent force probing, looking into his mind, forcing itself in.

  Like it had done to Darryl when he was in the Underworld.

  * * *

  Weeks later, the knock came at his office door, a side entrance to the house. As Follett got up from his reading chair in the living room to answer it, he glanced at the clock: 10:30 p.m. He sighed and hoped it wasn’t a serious illness. He went through the office and opened the door. Trudy stood there beneath the electric porch light.

  “Doc, your wife been asking for you.”

  Follett was momentarily stunned.

  “Angel Worm, she started going away again. And then a lady spoke through her and asked for you. I think she your wife.”

  Follett pulled his buggy from the carriage house, harnessed his horse, and hitched her to the buggy.

  “C’mon, Trudy, I’ll give you a ride.”

  She hesitated. He knew it was because people would frown upon her riding beside a white man.

  “I’m a doctor, Trudy. No one will say anything.”

  When they arrived at the Norris house, Angelica was asleep. Follett sat in a chair near her cot.

  “I’m not going to wake her, I’m just going to sit here for a while. If your parents want me to leave, I will.”

  “Don’t you worry, Doc, you can stay as long as you like.”

  Soon Follett was alone with Angelica. A kerosene lantern on a table behind him burned at a low setting, leaving most of the room dark and casting his shadow against the wall above the cot. He stared at it, appraising it as if it were an Eighteenth-Century silhouette portrait.

  What sort of a man was he, really? He did not feel as if he were a good enough doctor; he had failed as a surgeon and his talents as a general practitioner were modest at best. As a researcher he might have promise, though he was specializing in a field that wasn’t yet fully recognized by his profession.

  Was he at least a good man? He didn’t know. He thought he had been a good husband to his first wife but she died trying to give him a child. And now he had a new wife, yet still pined for the one he had lost. That was ignoble.

  Something flickered in his field of vision. For the briefest moment he thought he saw the shadow of a second head beside his.

  Then his wife’s voice came to him, at last.

  “Frank? Are you there, Frank?”

  “Yes, my love. I’m here.”

  “I miss you. I’m so lonely and afraid.”

  “Listen to me, Isabel. I saw our son—a beautiful boy. He is in Heaven now and he waits for you. There’s nothing holding you in that place anymore. You must leave and go to Heaven to be with our son.”

  “You saw him?”

  “Yes, as he would have been. He would have looked just like you.”

  “Is he angry with me?”

  “Absolutely not! He misses you and wants to be with you. You two can be together in a pure state of love, forever, and before you know it I will join you.”

  “But you have married another.”

  He felt a pang of guilt, but didn’t want to lose his connection with Isabel’s spirit.

  “My dear, I will always love you. Please, go to Heaven and join our son.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Just think of our son. Think of love and forget your guilty feelings. You have nothing to feel guilty about, dear. You deserve to be happy forever, so just think of our son and you will be with him. That’s all you have to do.”

  “Yes, I have left these empty rooms. I am flying! I am—”

  That was it. She was gone. Somehow he knew she was in Heaven, and he was deeply relieved and content at last.

  And yet he also felt the loss. He would never hear her voice again, except in his thoughts. He still missed her as much as ever.

  He sighed and stood, looking down at Angelica. She looked at him with innocent eyes before they rolled back in her head and she “went away” again.

  “Hey, Doc! I miss you. Hope we can meet again someday.”

  His heart stopped. It was Darryl’s voice.

  Angelica woke up, looked at him, and smiled, her eyes bright and free of any care at all.

  The End

  Acknowledgments

  I wish to thank Martha and the rest of my family for your love and encouragement, and Zara and my Pandamoon family for your support and guidance. My excellent editors, Saren Richardson, Forrest Driskel, and Rachel Schoenbauer, deserve special shout-outs.

  The Teratologist required a lot of research, and I wish to thank the Flagler Museum, the Palm Beach County Historical Society, and the University of Florida Digital Collections, as well as too many authors of history books about the era to name. I also wish to honor the memory of all the contemporaneous authors from my novel’s time period who helped me get the mood and details right.

  About the Author

  Ward is a Florida native, a partner in an award-winning ad agency, and the author of the Zeke Adams Series of crime thrillers and The Teratologist Series of historical supernatural thrillers, both from Pandamoon Publishing. Connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, or
www.wardparker.com.

  Thank you for purchasing this copy of The Teratologist by Ward Parker. If you enjoyed this book, please let Ward know by posting a review.

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