Digger - The Doctor Will See You Now by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 14

Upon returning to his apartment, Ryan referred back to the ad in the newspaper. Finding the phone number of the owner, he expressed his interest and asked for an appointment in order to see the cabin’s interior. This would be the decision-maker, and if he liked what he saw, he’d arrange for an inspection. Ryan would make an offer only if there were no structural issues. Two weeks later, the inspector’s report arrived by registered mail. He spent hours reading it, pouring over each paragraph, examining every detail. He had a degree in pre-med, but inspection reports and contracts were beyond his understanding. It was time to see an attorney.

Comparatively, four thousand dollars would normally be a lot of money for almost anyone, but this was a drop in the bucket for Ryan. If he didn’t want to find himself on the dirty end of a bad deal, an attorney was absolutely necessary. Calling the first real estate attorney in the book, Ryan was surprised when the appointment was scheduled for within the week. He presented his situation and paid the four-thousand-dollar retainer fee. He also provided the inspection report. Within the next week, Ryan got a call from the attorney’s office, and with the exception of a few details, the cabin was in more than acceptable condition. So an offer of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars was made. His attorney strongly suggested that he handle any negotiations that might come up. Ryan agreed. It would be one less thing to have to worry about. The attorney knew where the property was, and it had been bought and sold many times by people like Ryan, looking for a place of solitude. But for them, the lake held more sway than the woods, and they eventually left.

With the purchase price agreed upon, a contract was drawn up, and Ryan applied for a mortgage. His application was accepted at a rate he was comfortable with, and four weeks later he attended the closing. Everything went smoothly as Ryan signed his signature more times than he could count. But after all this, his attorney handed him the house keys and congratulated him on the purchase of his first home. He considered paying for it outright, but his attorney convinced him it was much more practical to make payments in order to build credit. He would also be able to take advantage of tax credits every year.

The next day, Ryan began packing. His possessions were few, and moving took only a day. However, there was the issue of furniture. Except for the refrigerator and stove, the cabin was empty, and going to the cheapest furniture store in Portland, he picked up everything he needed. Living room, dining room, and bedroom sets. The kitchen would remain sparse, as he didn’t plan on doing a great deal of cooking. He wanted to buy only what he needed, and only that which he could easily take with him when he returned to UNE.

Everything had been delivered the next day. The deliveryman knew a bit about the area and was easily able to find the house. But the work was just beginning, and Ryan had to learn how to be a handyman overnight. There were issues of how to deal with insects, plumbing, painting, and roofing. The roof was tall. Not only would it allow snow to slide off easily, but the attic would allow for plenty of storage should he need it. Ryan found himself there several times, checking the insulation and the structure of the roof. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but he assumed that if there was something wrong, it would be obvious. Yet, there was something different about the house. It had a poured-concrete cellar. And its floor and walls were flawless. Most cabins built in these locations didn’t have cellars. They may be on a concrete slab, but other than that there were too many roots and rocks.

After two or three weeks of cleaning and placing mousetraps, Ryan was finally able to settle in. It was early May, and the weather was already warming up. Ryan was spending hours every day studying, reading and writing notes. His goal was not simply to commit information to memory, but to understand it, to be able to think it through and recall it at a moment’s notice. But there was still a problem. It was the same problem he was having before, when he was still a student. He consulted the Internet, viewing pictures and videos of autopsies. Again, he found that the arrangement of anatomical structures had a tendency to be unique from one person to the next, and the images in his books still seemed cartoonish. What he found on the Internet was somewhat helpful, but his fascination with death had begun to, once again, raise its head. Ryan’s attention would occasionally waver from the images and videos he used to make sense of the book’s illustrations to less informative police photographs of accident scenes and bombings. These presented the human body as merely objects of tragedy and representations of the evil that people are truly capable of. He would download the images, zooming in on eviscerated organs and traumatic amputations -- joints pulled apart, skull fragments littering the pavement of hot Middle Eastern streets -- and blood. The overwhelming element of each image was blood. It covered everything, like heavy splatters of paint. Clothes, exposed flesh, asphalt and crumpled metal. Ryan’s fascination only deepened with each image he saw. On a well-known video site, he was able to view acts of terrorism, executions and suicides. Hours would go by as he sat late into the night -- picture after picture, video after video. But this was not enough. Organs were mangled and disheveled. Limbs were twisted, penetrated by shattered bones, and separated joints. The bodies he was spending so much time examining had been traumatized beyond anything that appeared human, and in order to make an in-depth study of anatomy, a multitude of reference points are needed.

Ryan spent another frustrating week trying to make sense of the gruesome images, unsuccessfully comparing them to the illustrations in his textbooks. This issue needed to be resolved. But, until he could come up with a solution, Ryan went to his other books. He read and memorized different disease processes, both organic and toxicological. But somewhere along the way, the nightmares began. He remembered when it first occurred as a student at UNE and assumed it was the product of stress, a one-time event. Now, they seemed to be constant. His sleeping mind would suddenly be disrupted as he opened his eyes to a dark, narrow place. His first sensation was a bone-chilling cold as he found himself lying on a large metal surface. The silence was suddenly broken by the sound of something mechanical. It seemed to go on forever, carrying with it a slight echo. In Ryan’s dreaming mind, it represented something sinister and foreboding. A bright shaft of light suddenly appeared at his feet and made its way up to his face, covering him completely. Attempting to shield his eyes, Ryan found himself unable to move and exposed to the cold light, he discovered his body to be completely unclothed. Once the light-blinding effect had subsided, Ryan found to his horror that he was lying on a cold stainless steel anatomy table at the UNE lab. Incapable of moving, he attempted to look down his naked body, only to see two figures standing on each side. The light glowed behind them, transforming them into cold, impersonal shapes devoid of detail. Ryan was quickly struck with panic as he felt a pair of hands wander into his body. He felt the cold edges of instruments cutting and snipping bits of connective tissue, organs being separated from blood vessels, nerves being teased away from muscle. Then, a voice whispered into his mind.

“What’s it like to die?”

Ryan was catapulted back into the world of wakefulness. His body ran with rivulets of cold sweat. His hands trembled with an overwhelming feeling of having been invaded by some black, formless parasite -- the carrier of mindless insanity, the stealer of hope and faith. Eventually, its repetition would leave his soul blinded to everything but an underlying, desperate need for control. To gain back what had been taken from him so many years before by someone who cared little, if anything, about anyone -- someone who, in their own misery, inflicted pain on others. Not for the pleasure of it, but perhaps because of something they were missing, something that had been stolen from them as well. Or maybe they had simply entered the world without the capacity to feel the pain of others. Either way, Ryan did not concern himself with the mechanism of this horrific specter but only in how to temper what Morpheus himself seemed to take such pleasure in forging, as if for sport.