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

Chapter 22

Arriving back at Sebago, Ryan pulled into the driveway and made his way to the cabin. This time, he left the light over the front door on. As soon as he locked the door behind him, he undressed and showered. The idea of having Theresa's bodily fluids on any part of his body disgusted him, and he felt as though he had become physically contaminated. Throwing his soiled clothes in with the dirty laundry, he turned in for the night, if only for a few hours. He fell asleep, not knowing if he would ever see her again. But if he did, the game would continue, but with a different set of rules -- his.

His dreams were silent, and Ryan woke a few hours later, ready to continue in his makeshift anatomical lab. Approaching the basement door, Ryan detected a hint of foulness in the air, and upon opening it, he was struck by a nauseating stench -- the odor of decay. Cupping a hand over his mouth and nose, he walked quickly down the basement stairs, grabbed the bottle of diluted bleach, and began spraying down the bodies that hung from the ceiling. He also filled the air with a few light spritzes to dampen the smell. But sometimes one can have too much of a good thing, and the smell of so much bleach in the air drove him back upstairs, closing the basement door behind him. He would have to wait, at least, a few hours for the air to clear, then he would get back to work. Until then, he sat at his desk in the living room, reading up on immunology. His time had to be taken up with something constructive. Doing nothing was not something he was good at.

Deciding to take a break, Ryan turned on his laptop and logged in. There were no articles to be seen about 'Digger' and no new leads. Not that he was especially concerned, but out of curiosity, he began looking for anything related, using 'Digger' as a search term. The only thing he could find was one or two articles from a couple of weeks ago. There were no pictures, videos, or police sketches and no witness statements. He continued wandering the internet with no specific goal or direction. But occasionally, Ryan's mind would drift back to the previous night, when he and Theresa launched each other into an unemotional ecstasy. Again, he wondered if he would see her, if he would ever get to play the game by 'his' rules. Ryan wasn't actually hoping to run into her. He felt he was better off without Theresa or any woman like her. Not that Ryan was looking for a relationship. Certainly, one look in the basement would send any woman screaming. They simply would not understand the importance of what he was trying to accomplish.

After a couple of hours in front of his laptop, Ryan concluded it was time to get back to work, and upon entering the basement, he discovered the air had sufficiently cleared, for the most part. But even with the remaining chemical smell wafting in the air, he decided that it wasn't bad enough to keep him from resuming his work. He checked the plastic wrappings that surrounded the bodies for leaks and found none. Sitting down at his dissection table, he moved the overhead light as close to the center as possible. He lined up several specimen jars, examining their contents with a magnifying glass -- a dissected heart, a turned-out vagina -- the cancerous growth from a liver. Ryan had collected many items of interest. But his collection still lacked one thing—the one critical body part that was of the most interest to him. He still wanted a brain. But at this point, he was convinced that any remains he recovered would, essentially, possess a skull full of soup. He sat at the table and reopened a severed hand. While cutting down the middle of each finger, exposing the underlying tendons, Ryan marveled at how simple something could be in its construction and still move with such grace and complexity. While making his examination, it occurred to him that if there was a God, He must be an engineer. His mind wandered as he delicately tinkered with the hand's inner workings. He'd carefully amputated it from the body of the bald man, hanging next to his first specimen. His attention was suddenly pulled away by an idea, one that so engrossed him that the consequences of carrying it out were something that he failed to realize. His curiosity about death quickly evolved into a need. Now, as before, there was no stopping it, and once the idea sunk its claws into Ryan's consciousness, it was only a matter of time before its results would lay in front of him. He needed a brain free of contamination and decomposition, and he realized there was only one way to get it.

Meanwhile, he only had one male corpse and thought it was time to acquire another. He searched the death notices and found a service was scheduled for Sunday at a funeral home on Brighton Avenue. When the day arrived, Ryan drove into Portland and parked nearby. He tried not to be obvious and parked down the street, still keeping the funeral home within sight. The deceased was an elderly man who passed away at a local nursing home. Or, as some prefer to call it, 'a skilled nursing facility'. The funeral announcement listed him as having passed at the age of eighty, and according to his obituary, people were being asked to donate money for stroke research. Ryan was excited at the prospect of acquiring an injured brain and followed several blocks behind the procession. Taken far out of town, he pulled off to the side of the road for a few minutes, so as not to raise suspicions. During that time, he checked the maps of areas outside of Portland. Finding the road traveled by the procession, Ryan was able to determine which the cemetery they were going to. He returned that night with a tarp and tools, and poking through the fresh earth, his copper rod scraped the wooden lid of the newly buried casket. The soil was still loose and allowed for easy work, and by the time three a.m. arrived, Ryan was back in his cabin. By late morning, he was back in his basement, preparing the body for dissection. The body looked as though the man had spent most of his life wandering the woods and mountains. His skin appeared weathered and tough. Certainly, he'd spent the greater part of his life outdoors. But now he was elsewhere, his soul risen to the pinnacle of ethereal existence. Perhaps in that life, he found himself standing on some heavenly mountaintop, an unearthly light surrounding his new form.

But the rest of him lay as a lifeless vehicle, confiscated from hallowed ground by eager hands and curious eyes. As usual, the clothes came off first. An external inspection was next, and there seemed to be no outward signs of disease. Ryan would usually begin by opening the body, making a 'Y' incision, and exposing both the chest and abdominal cavities. But this time, he went straight to the skull. Making the incision around the back of the head, Ryan peeled the scalp down over the face. Just as he had before. Plugging in his hand-held saw, he removed the skull, and as the smoke cleared, he saw the condition of the brain. It had not yet melted into a soupy, decomposed sludge. However, the frontal lobe had collapsed in on itself, leaving a pit deep enough for the collection of fluid. Ryan thought that it may still be salvageable, and if most of it was intact, it could be put in a specimen jar and preserved with alcohol. But when he reached between the skull and brain with a narrow retractor, what was left fell out as a malformed mass, consistent with half-cooked pudding. There was nothing to study, nothing to preserve. Ryan was suddenly sent into a blind rage as he grabbed the mass of melting tissue and aimlessly through it against the wall. Upon meeting the cement, the ball of leftover brain matter exploded, leaving a broad spattering of discolored, viscous material across the wall and floor. Some bounced back, dispersing themselves on Ryan's clothes and face. He turned back to the wooden table and, grabbing the edge nearest him, flipped it upside down. The body, with its skull still exposed, landed hard on the concrete floor, the table landing on top of it. "Son of a bitch!" he yelled. "What do I have to do to get what I fucking want?!"

He wanted a fresh set of organs, largely free of decomposition. But funeral homes are legally obligated to hold a body for at least a day in case the heart begins spontaneously beating. A heart can beat on its own, which often results in emergency hospitalization. The person usually dies anyway, as there is no blood for it to fill with. The organ isn't necessarily alive but acts only by reflex, something that stimulates it into action. Some states require as many as three days of such observation.

Ryan paced in angry frustration. He brought his hands to his face and felt something heavy and thick rub off on them.

"Shit!" he yelled.

Leaving the table, Ryan ran up the basement stairs, disrobed and showered. Being covered with any liquefied organ disgusted him, regardless of the amount. But after showering, he put his soiled clothes in a bag and planned to burn them later. Returning to the basement, he put right the table and dragged the body back upon it. Sprayed down the wall and floor, he made his way back up the stairs, shutting the door behind him to keep the smell of bleach from wafting into the rest of the house. Ryan sat on the couch, trying to think of a way to remedy his situation. He assumed that morgues and funeral homes were wired with security cameras. Then, it occurred to him. He hadn't consciously considered it before, but there it was. It was the only way. A fresh brain had to come from a fresh body, something that had not yet been interred. And there was one more thing. Ryan wanted to hold a living heart and his hands. He believed the heart was the source of life and wanted to experience it firsthand. He had also come to believe that what he was doing was somehow noble -- a grand act of medical research with the added reward of satisfying his deep fascination with death. There was only one question to be answered. Who would sacrifice themselves for something so noble? Only one person came to mind, and she had already taken an interest of sorts. She may not be interested in him personally, but she was intrigued by what she believed -- a medical student on his way to the top, living on Lake Sebago. With the right words, Ryan was certain he could draw her in. Theresa would be his first living specimen.