Zippered Flesh 2: More Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad (34 page)

“That’s the right attitude. Cheers to that!” Byron raised his glass and Cedric followed suit, a strangely blank expression on his face.

“And you?” Cedric asked after drinking.

“Same story, I guess,” Byron answered with a shrug. “Busy all the time. Cell phone in one hand and pager in the other. Hell, I’m on call right now.” He swirled his Scotch. “But don’t tell.” He winked.

“My lips are sealed!”

The waiter came and they ordered, and after a few squalls of chat about sports and the weather, they ate their steaks in relative silence. After indulging in the finest New York strip their money could buy, and another round of single malt, Byron turned the conversation to the topic that had been weighing on his mind for several weeks. “So, that boy Dempsey that I sent to you. What ever became of him?”

Cedric coughed once, then coughed at length. He seemed to have been taken by surprise. “Oh, the war hero,” he said, wiping a golden drop from his lower lip. “Well, that’s a very interesting case.”

“A tragic case,” Byron amended.

“Yes, that kid’s been through some hard circumstances, and he’s facing more, no doubt of that.”

“Did you come to a determination of whether his hallucinations have a real physical basis, or are they mostly PTSD-related?”

“As I said, a very intriguing case. Are you at all familiar with the work of a Dr. Elias Raymond?”

Byron shook his head.

“Of course not, why would you be? Raymond had some unusual theories. He was something of a pioneer in brain science, conducting some strange experiments in Costa Rica way back in the late 1800s. His theories—at least those in his later years—hinged on the idea that with a small modification to the frontal lobe one could glimpse ... well, as he termed it ‘beyond the veil’ or ‘seeing the Great God Pan.’”

“What exactly does that mean?”

“Yes, what is the
veil
? Raymond theorized that we—people—only perceive a small portion of the universe and that with a small alteration to the brain a person would be able to ... possibly peek into other dimensions.”

This time Byron almost choked. “Wait a minute! What you’re saying is that Dempsey is seeing into another dimension?”

Cedric chuckled. Nervously. “No! Not at all. That’s ... ridiculous. What I’m saying is that the incision made by the shrapnel may be causing his hallucinations. And that Dr. Raymond’s experiments—though, er, misguided—may have carried a small grain of truth. Most of our higher brain functions—like sight—take place in the frontal lobe. I think the damage done to our young hero’s brain is giving him what seem to be very real visions. When I say very real, I mean that often he can’t differentiate his hallucinations from reality. He is seeing the Great God Pan.”

Byron drained his Scotch, shaken. “Have you considered removing the shrapnel?”

“No. Much too dangerous. It would be almost impossible to remove it without giving him a stroke, and probably even killing him.”

“Can medications help?”

“Nothing that I know of. I’m working with him closely. As I said, a very
interesting
case. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe something like this.”

“Hell, Cedric, he’s not an experiment!” Byron objected, raising his voice. “He’s been through enough, hasn’t he?”

“Relax, Byron, I’m not saying he’s an experiment.” Cedric looked around the quiet restaurant. “But at this time there’s nothing we can do
but
observe. Observe and experience.”

Chambers said, “So do you think you did the right thing by referring Private Dempsey to Dr. Lindstrom?”

Byron squirmed in the chair while he reflected on the therapist’s question. He was on the verge of an answer that seemed just out of reach. He sighed, then shook his head.

Chambers waited patiently, her expression hard to read.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “It seemed the right choice at the time. At least, it seemed logical. It wasn’t until later that I realized that, although Cedric Lindstrom had been a friend, he wasn’t quite a
trusted
friend. He was was fine to have a few drinks with, while discussing sports and politics. But I realized he wasn’t the kind of friend you shared secrets with.”

“So was Dempsey’s condition a secret?” Chambers tilted her head as if one earring had suddenly gained in weight.

“No. I’m just saying that Cedric Lindstrom was the kind of physician, person, who always looks out for his own interests, first and foremost. You know, the kind of person who will hold you over a barrel if it’ll give him an advantage.”

“And did Dr. Lindstrom have you over a barrel?”

“In a matter of speaking. I had referred Dempsey to him. If he wasn’t one hundred percent trustworthy, then what was I?”

“So did you feel guilty about the referral?”

“I guess so. After I spoke to him, yes, I felt I’d made a mistake.”

“And it was sometime after this meeting with Cedric Lindstrom that you ...” she checked her notes ... “heard from Private Dempsey’s mother?”

“Yeah, a couple of weeks later.”

“And did you immediately connect Lindstrom with Dempsey’s ... disappearance?”

“No! Yes ... maybe. I was simply trying to contact Cedric to see if he’d seen or heard from Dempsey. I thought—”

“When you couldn’t get a hold of Lindstrom, did you suspect a connection?”

“I didn’t suspect anything.” Byron wiped sweat from his brow. “Maybe I did. Maybe I should have ...”

“That was when you went to the Lindstrom’s house?”

“Yes,” Byron whispered, squirming.

The late-morning sun was blinding today. Byron shielded his eyes from its glare as he wound his way to Dr. Cedric Lindstrom’s front door, along the paving stone path that meandered through a carefully manicured lawn dotted with well-designed flower beds. When he reached the carved oak portal, Byron pressed the doorbell. The chime sounded inside, beyond the tiny, polished-wood-surrounded, leaded-glass window. He waited.

He rang the bell again.

Byron had just about given up and was turning to leave, when the door opened a crack.

“Hello?” a hoarse voice came from inside.

“Hello, Cedric? It’s Byron. I didn’t know ... I wasn’t sure. Are you free to talk?”

Cedric Lindstrom stared out at Byron through the security chain as if he were trying to decipher a coded message. His eyes were bloodshot. Byron thought Cedric hadn’t shaved—or slept, or even bathed—for days. There was a rank odor wafting from the open door.

“Byron?” Cedric asked, strange confusion in his tone, as if he’d run his finger down a list until Byron’s name had rung a bell.

“Yes, it’s
me,
Cedric. Can I come in? Can we talk?” Byron stepped closer and looked his old friend in the eye.

Recognition seemed to wash over Cedric’s features. He attempted a smile, but it turned to grimace. His eyes twitched and squinted in the blinding sunlight. “Of course, Byron. Please, come in,” he said. He closed the door and Byron thought he was being rejected, but after disengaging the lock, Lindstrom stepped aside and opened his home to Byron.

“My God, Cedric, you look like complete shit,” Byron said bluntly as he sidled inside past the physician, whose body did carry the smell of sweat and unwashed clothing.

Lindstrom quickly fumbled the chain back into place, slid closed the deadbolt, and turned the lock button on the doorknob. “Can’t be too careful,” he said with a tremor in his voice.

“No, I guess you can’t,” Byron said. He felt a growing discomfort that was part fear for his own safety and part sadness for his friend’s condition. Maybe losing Marcy had been harder on Cedric than he’d let on.

“Can I get you something, a drink?” Lindstrom said as he shuffled away.

“No, I’m fine, but you don’t look fine.”

“It’s no trouble.” Lindstrom seemed to waver on unsteady feet.

“I really don’t have time right now, Cedric. I just stopped by to ask you some questions.”

“Oh, okay.” His eyes unfocused.

“Do you remember the Dempsey boy?”

“Yes,” a smile crossed Lindstrom’s lips. “That’s a very interesting case,” he rambled.

“Have you seen him recently? The boy’s mother says he’s completely disappeared, which isn’t easy in his condition. Have you treated him within the last few days, or ...?”

“Why, yes, I
have
seen him recently, Byron.”

“Thank God! Where?”

Lindstrom’s face screwed up into a half-grimace again. “Well, in fact, he’s downstairs right now.”

“What?”

“He’s here, Byron. Would you like to see him?”

“Yes, very much, Cedric.”

“Okay, follow me,” Lindstrom said, turning away. He barely lifted his feet as he walked. It seemed to Byron that his friend had aged fifty years in the few weeks since they’d last met, before Cedric had accepted the case. “A very
interesting
case,” Cedric murmured again, mostly to himself.

Byron followed Cedric down a flight of carpeted stairs into what had once been a game room. A pool table had been shoved in a corner, while a rank of pinball and old-style arcade machines were jammed in another. One had toppled against the southern wall, broken glass twinkling below its shattered face. The long bar that stretched across the other side of the room had been well-stocked, but ranks of bottles had been swept off the back shelves and rested in various piles of glass on the stained carpeting. They walked past all of this destruction without remark. Lindstrom was lost somewhere in his own mind, and Byron just wanted to find Dempsey and get the hell away. Whatever had happened here, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. For the first time, Byron feared for his own safety.

“Interesting case,” Cedric repeated as he reached a door on the far side of the ruined game room and threw open the door. As they stepped through, Byron noticed the long scratches on the wood panel. This second room was unfinished basement. To their right, a furnace and water heater hulked like alien shapes, pipes and conduit running above them like waving tentacles. The floor was poured concrete, slightly declining to meet the floor drain.

Another scratched door lay beyond. The doctors passed through it also.

By now Byron’s sense of danger had kicked into overdrive, but he needed to see what his friend had done. And then he needed to get out.

Inside this last room—a workroom that had been transformed into a makeshift laboratory—Private Rick Dempsey lay secured to what could only be described as some kind of workbench or operating table. Each of the private’s stumps was securely fastened to the table by thick leather straps. The table itself was propped at a roughly forty–five- degree angle, with Dempsey’s misshapen head in the upper position. Tools hung from pegboard on the walls: wrenches, screwdrivers, clamps, hammers, saws, anything a homeowner could or would use around the house. Interspersed on the wall were surgeon’s tools, some of them askew as if they’d been hastily replaced. On a nearby workbench Dempsey’s prosthetics sat in an obscene flesh-colored pile. A photographer’s floodlight on a tripod stand blazed in Dempsey’s face. The boy seemed to be either sleeping or unconscious. His head lolled forward. A horrific jagged opening in the boy’s cranium drooled a light pink fluid down his face and dripped onto the concrete floor, where it had puddled.

“Jesus, Cedric! What have you done?”

“I’ve told you, it’s a very interesting case, Byron. I needed to experiment further.”

Byron stormed toward the unconscious Dempsey and checked his carotid artery for a pulse. He was alive.

Thank God!

Then he used his thumb to peel open Dempsey’s good eye. The pupil immediately shrank in the glare of the floodlight. The boy’s head jerked away from Byron’s hand. He was awake. His twisted features faced Byron and the doctor flinched, horrified by what he saw.

“Rick,” Byron addressed Dempsey. But before he could formulate a sentence, Lindstrom grabbed Byron’s hand and forced it against the boy’s head.

“You must understand!” he shouted. “You have to
see.
There’s more to this than it looks!”

Pressing Byron’s thumb into the jagged crevice in Dempsey’s skull, Lindstrom’s body checked his colleague’s until he couldn’t gain his balance. Under the pressure, the ruined soldier’s bloodshot eye widened in pain. Pain, and ...