2:27 A.M.
A Women of the Thibodeaux Clan Novel
by Stephen James Price
SmashwordsDigital Edition
First Digital Edition
Copyright © Stephen James Price, 2011
All Right Reserved
Cover design and eBook Creation by Book Looks Design
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the permission of the author. All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My sincere gratitude to Scott Nicholson, my friend and mentor these many years.
A Special thanks to Neal Hock and Goldie Browning for their editing talents.
I’d also like to thank the real members of Women of the Thibodeaux Clan. Although the clan is fictitious, many of the members and happenings in this book are fashioned after real people. You know who you are.
For Peggy. She knows why. Or by now, she should.
Foreword
This story is a work of fiction, but it is based upon real people and true events. Dr. Norman Baker, Dr. J. L. Statler, Harry L. Fisher, Dr. Bellows, Dr. Beatty, and the Baker Cancer Hospitals are well documented in history. Okay, maybe not well documented, but easy enough to find for those of us who were willing to dig a little. The large number of deaths attributed to the hospitals is also well documented from the number of death certificates presented at Norman Baker’s fraud trial in 1939. Most everything else has file folders full of what I will call “campfire documentation” and has been told and retold a thousand times in the form of one ghost story or another.
After a trip to the Crescent Hotel in historical Eureka Springs, Arkansas, my wife, Peggy, suggested that I write a biography about Dr. Baker and the many horrors that he had performed during his tenure there. Research for the biography led to many interesting discoveries about Dr. Baker, but I didn’t believe I had enough factual data to do the book justice. Depression-era history is often very difficult to find.
The following story began its life at the Crescent Hotel. Parts of it were actually written in room 202 and in Dr. Baker’s penthouse rooms, now called the North Penthouse. Several chapters stemmed from simple ideas that were formed in the basement area that had once housed the morgue, freezer, and incinerator. Touching the autopsy table did not allow any ghosts to take temporary possession of my typing fingers, but it did lead my imagination down a similarly possessed path.
Other chapters were developed from ideas that were born in the tiny old elevator or while sitting in the Grand Crystal Ballroom.
Walking through the lobby of the Crescent Hotel and listening more closely than most people do, I can almost hear the Calliophone music coming from the lobby of the Baker Cancer Hospital.
If you make it to the end of this story and you find yourself curious enough to ask additional questions about Dr. Baker or the country’s most haunted hotel, I suggest a trip to the Crescent Hotel. The staff is always happy to answer any questions about Dr. Baker and the macabre stories surrounding him. Don’t forget to take the ghost tour. Maybe you will meet Michael in room 218 or Theodora in room 419. As I write this, room 419 is directly below me, and I can hear banging and bumping going on right now. Maybe Theodora’s ghost isn’t happy to be included in such a story … or maybe the maid is simply hitting the furniture with a vacuum cleaner.
Thank you for walking this path with me.
Stephen James Price
Writing from the North Penthouse of the Crescent Hotel
July, 2011
PROLOGUE
Sunday, September 9, 2007.
2:24 a.m.
Michael Saunders stared into the dragon’s glowing eyes. Sweat beaded on his brow and trickled down his cheek. He felt his left eye forming a tic. He had to remain still, perfectly still. One blink and he’d lose.
Minutes passed and he felt the fog begin to set in. He couldn’t hold on much longer. Twenty-four Norcosall at once. Enough to dull the pain in his heavily bandaged hand … but would it take away the pain of losing Maggie? He prayed for blessed release.
His mind began to drift and he almost forgot what he’d been doing. He slowly turned the glass figurine over until the tiny dragon’s head faced away from him. He breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God, the staring contest wasn’t real. But those damned red eyes through the clear glass seemed to gaze right into his soul. Unnerving.
Maggie. He thought about the first time they’d both seen the dragon and how fascinated she had been with it. She was the first to notice its mysterious eyes.
“I don’t remember the old man painting these little black dots in the middle of its eyes when he made it,” she said. “The eyes look so real. They seem to … follow me.”
Michael had made some joke about it, but Maggie was oblivious to everything but her new prized possession. He remembered her fascination with it. He remembered how much she loved it. He remembered … everything.
Tears rolled down his cheeks, but he couldn’t break the battle of wills with her favorite figurine. The quietness of the house had only amplified the steady pounding beneath the bandages on his wrist. The sound in his ears and throbbing in his hand seemed to give the dragon a heartbeat of its own.
“You know, don’t you?” Michael asked the dragon, his voice slurring and his vision growing dim. “You know. I can see it in your eyes.”
He used his free hand to wipe away the tears on his face as he continued to stare at the all-knowing piece of glass.
Michael couldn’t force himself to look away, so he pushed himself up from the kitchen table, knocking the chair backwards as he stood. A sudden rush of dizziness made him grab the table. He squeezed the dragon tightly; the point of its tail poked through the bandage, biting into the stitches in his wrist. He cried out and threw the dragon across the room.
He winced when he heard it break against the wall and clatter to the floor. Dear God, what had he done? Maggie would be so upset.
He looked down at the empty pill bottle lying on the table in front of him and wondered how long it would take before the pills finally did their work—when he could just go to sleep forever.
The light caught one of the tiny red eyes of the shattered dragon and he saw it staring at him again. Would the damned thing not leave him alone?
Each time his heartbeat, the pain in his wrist coursed through his entire body.
“I’ll kill you this time!” Michael shouted, stumbling toward the broken pieces of glass. He made three lurches before the dizziness returned with full force, causing him to fall to his knees. He caught a glimpse of the glowing red eye one last time before the darkness enveloped him completely.
~*~
Michael awoke with a pain in his stomach like none he’d ever experienced. He curled into the fetal position as the pain intensified. Turning his head, he vomited, over and over. A mass of partially digested, green pain pills floated ominously in the vomit.
Michael tried to get up on his hands and knees, but the pain became so intense that he fell back to the floor, unable to think of anything but making it stop. He forgot about everything else; the dragon, Maggie, even suicide.
With the next bout, he was fully awake. Lying in his own piss and vomit, he squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the pain to come back.
It did not return.
After several minutes, he rolled onto his side and pushed himself to a sitting position.
He saw movement from the corner of his eye. Turning his head too quickly, the nausea returned, forcing him to close his eyes again and fight back the bile rushing into his throat.
Something touched his sleeve. Michael opened his eyes and jumped backwards.
“What the …?” His voice was barely more than a whisper.
A shadowy figure floated toward him and hovered for a second before placing the remnants of the small glass dragon at his feet.
“It broke,” Michael managed to say, his voice sounding like that of a small child. He stared at the broken dragon. Once again, it stared back.
“I’m here,” the dark shape said in a voice that was all too familiar.
“But you’re …” Michael couldn’t say it. “I must be dreaming.”
The hovering mass of shadows slowly morphed into the shape of Maggie. But she was dead! For a moment, his heart soared. The floating Maggie-shape looked like the healthy Maggie, the pre-cancer Maggie.
“The pills.” Michael looked down at the lump of green pills melting in his vomit. “I tried—”
“You must live!” the Maggie-shape shouted. “I’m not done. I still need you.”
Her eyes suddenly turned black, and she dissipated into a wisp of smoke.
Michael shook his head, trying to scatter the remnants of what certainly must have been a pain pill–induced hallucination. Pushing himself onto his hands and knees, he saw the dragon on the floor directly in front of him.
It was unbroken, but that didn’t surprise him as much as its eyes.
They were now jet-black.
Chapter 1
Monday, August 9, 2010
2:27 A.M.!
Michael Saunders jumped out of bed and stared at the old Sony alarm clock on the night table. He held his stomach with both hands and waited for his gut-fires to subside. All of the windows in the bedroom began rattling at once.
“Maggie! Maggie, wake up!” For a second, he couldn’t understand why she didn’t answer him, but it was only a brief second — and then the answer became more painful than any of his past gut-fires. Maggie couldn’t answer him. She’d been dead for nearly three years. Even though he’d never been able to say it out loud, she was dead just the same. Her ashes were in an urn on the mantel in the den.
No, Maggie would not be answering him tonight.
His stomach knotted up again, making him bend at the waist. “This can’t be happening,” he cried as he dropped to his knees. The rattling of the windows grew louder, and the lamp in the corner fell over. Everything on the night table and dresser tops began to vibrate and jump around. He heard glass breaking somewhere in the darkness.
His hands were shaking badly, but he somehow managed to pry them from his stomach and lift them to his head. He closed his eyes and focused on the rattling windows as he pressed his index fingers into his temples.
He could actually feel the intense power of the mind-pulse surging from his body. He concentrated all of his thoughts on drawing it back. He slowly pulled the energy back into himself until all of the rattling stopped. Sometimes doing that caused him to have a nosebleed or a headache, but those were better than the alternative.
He opened his eyes and blinked slowly several times. He tried to chase away the fear, or at least push it to the back of his mind. The fear was as stubborn as it was strong, and it was in no hurry to leave. It hadn’t eaten in a while, and tonight it smelled the scent of a fresh kill. He looked at the clock again.
4:16 a.m.!
4:16 a.m.
4:16 a.m.?
“Can it really be 4:16?” he whispered. 4:16 was a far cry from 2:27. That time scared the living hell out of him. It’d always been the exact time his gut-fires started and had haunted him nearly every night for the first two years after Maggie’s death. The same time he thought the clock read when he first woke up. That seemed like it was hours ago. In reality, slightly less than a minute had passed, but that was in reality, and tonight, reality was a very hard sleeper.
4:17 a.m. slowly brought a sense of relief. It also brought the realization that the pain in his stomach was not the crippling pain of his past. It was not the pain he had often feared would return over the past eight months. That pain was always tied to 2:27 a.m. This was different. He hadn’t thrown up or pissed himself, like he did during several of his past gut-fire episodes. This pain wasn’t nearly as intense.
He thought he might be able to blame this one on too many Blazin’ Hot chicken wings from Wings-N-Things Bar and Grill. He’d gone there with some of the guys from work that afternoon. He should have known better; hot wings always had an adverse effect on him. This pain could probably be cured with a quick trip to the bathroom and a giant swig of that pink stuff.
4:18 a.m. found his hands still shaking badly enough that he dropped two cigarettes from the pack of Marlboro Reds before he was finally able to clutch one between his fingers. He squeezed too hard and crushed it a little. It was slightly bent, about an inch past the filter, giving the shaking of the tip an exaggerated look as the flame from his red disposable BIC brought it to life. He inhaled deeply, and was briefly glad that he had lost the willpower battle again for the umpteenth time. The taste of the smoke hit the back of his throat and it was a hundred times more soothing than chomping on a piece of Nicorette gum.
It was 4:22 a.m. before his heart rate downshifted from about a hundred and sixty beats per minute to ninety some-odd beats, and his breathing slowed to a more normal rate. He’d been breathing so rapidly, it took less than a minute to inhale the first cigarette, which he quickly used to light the next one. He rarely used anything other than a red BIC lighter, but these were special circumstances and they required special actions. He would be sure to light the next four or five of them with one of the red lighters. Michael didn’t consider himself a chain-smoker, since he almost never smoked more than a pack a day, but he knew from experience that one pack, even a full pack, wouldn’t last him through the next few hours.
By 4:30 a.m. the sweat from his hair had stopped running down the nape of his neck. The digital temperature readout on the thermostat correctly displayed a cool sixty-eight degrees, but his wet hair and damp T-shirt would have made a compelling argument that it was closer to ninety.
“Isn’t it supposed to feel colder when you come face-to-face with a ghost?” he mumbled to himself. His ghost wasn’t one of the howling ectoplasmic apparitions he had seen in all of those awful B-rated horror movies Maggie had coerced — make that convinced — him to watch night after night, but it was just as scary. He hadn’t seen Vincent Price, Bela Lugosi, Jason Voorhees, or Freddy Krueger in nearly three years, but they were ingrained in his memory.
Fifteen years of almost nightly horror movies had taught him a few things. Never pick up a hitchhiker wearing a hockey mask or an old tattered red-and-olive-green sweater. Never leave the killer’s weapon of choice within his reach, even after you’ve pumped six or eight bullets into his ass. Never have sex in a parked car, in the middle of the woods, at midnight. And best of all, it always got colder when you were visited by a ghost.
He caught himself rubbing the long, jagged scar on the inside of his left wrist. It had become an involuntary habit that told the world when he was excited or uncomfortable. It was the type of telltale body language that would easily give away a straight flush in any poker tournament.
He looked at the clock again and noticed the little red alarm light was still glowing. He had about an hour and a half before it was scheduled to jolt him awake for work. Experience had taught him that sleep would be impossible, so he punched the buttons on the remote control and leaned back against the headboard to watch TV.
If he were lucky, he would find some goofy comedy or sappy love story that would help ease his tense muscles, and his aching mind. Maybe even an infomercial on the Pocket Fisherman, or Ginsu knives: “But wait … There’s more! They’re not sold in any store!” Except, of course, at the drugstore on the corner that had all of the “AS SEEN ON THE BOOB TUBE” products lining its shelves. Anything but a slasher movie with blood gushing out of all of the young campers’ necks.
Even though the horror-movie producers of today were smart enough to lock in the male eighteen-to-ninety-eight demographic by supplying more than their fair share of gratuitous nudity, he would still quickly turn the channel if he encountered one. Not even a glimpse of that Jennifer Love Somebody-or-Another in the shower, soaping up her ample rack just before she got cut up with a chain saw, would change his mind. He simply would never watch a horror movie again.
He stopped looking when he came across an old black-and-white favorite. For over fifty years, Lucy had made America laugh as she had “some ’splainin’ to do” to Ricky, but Michael watched her with a tear in his eye. Not even Lucy’s hijinks could make him stop missing Maggie tonight.
Chapter 2
Friday, April 20, 2007
10:17 a.m.
Maggie Saunders was busy checking off each detail from her “To Do” list. She had almost everything packed. Michael had one small suitcase, if an old gym bag could even be called a suitcase, full of clothes, and the personals he would need for their long weekend. In contrast, Maggie had three matching suitcases and a small travel bag. Each was slightly beyond full of the essentials every well-groomed-woman-of-thirty-six-who-looked-thirty-but-wanted-to-look-twenty-six would need for the weekend.
She was so excited that she could hardly wait for Michael to get back from the store and start packing the SUV. It was nearly a four-hour drive. Why would her inconsiderate husband need to run to the local mini-mart for a pack of cigarettes when so much was left to be done?
Michael seemed less than excited about the long trip, but this was all his fault, she reminded herself. He bought her that book on famous haunted places the Christmas before last. He knew her addiction to horror movies and the supernatural. How could he expect her not to want — make that need — to go?
Hell, he’s damned lucky that cute, muscular vampire from one of my TV shows doesn’t move in next door. I never really liked the daylight that much anyway! she thought with a smile on her face.
Michael didn’t show much enthusiasm about going on this long weekend until this past January. They had cozied up on the couch to watch the weekly Ghost Detective show. That episode just happened to be about the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Her book ranked it as one of the most haunted hotels in North America. It also just happened to be the closest haunt of any substance to where they lived.
“Honey, let’s go to that hotel this weekend,” she said, as she laid her head on his shoulder.
“We can’t go this weekend. You know I have a deadline for the printer-interface software I’ve been working on.”
She lifted her head and looked at him. “Well, what about next weekend, or the weekend after that? My book on haunted places has a lot about the Crescent Hotel. It’s supposed to be haunted by quite a few different ghosts. I’ve never been anywhere that was haunted. You know I love that stuff.”
“Maggie, I really don’t want to spend a whole weekend chasing ghosts around some old, broken-down hotel. It’s probably really commercialized, anyway. I bet the people working there dress up like the Ghost Busters or something. I can see it now. ‘Rooms without ghosts — seventy-five dollars a night. Rooms with your own personalized ghost — two-fifty. Enter at your own risk.’” He laughed when he said this, but his sarcasm was still evident.
Most wives have ways to convince their husbands to do things that they don’t really want to do. Maggie Saunders was no exception. Their cozying turned to cuddling. The cuddling heated up a bit, and by the time the ghost detectives admitted that they were unable to debunk the evidence they had gathered during their visit to the Crescent Hotel, Michael badly needed a cigarette. At that point, he would have painted the house naked if Maggie had suggested it. Thank God for TiVo, because the last twenty minutes of the show were a blur to both of them. Maggie replayed the end of the show while Michael was in the shower.
The next morning, Michael made reservations with the Crescent Hotel, and he actually smiled and laughed with the hotel clerk on the telephone.
“I have good news and bad news,” he said when he hung up the phone.
“Give me the good news first,” Maggie said, hoping she could manipulate him into changing the bad news if he were able.
“We are booked for three nights in room 202. The most haunted room in the hotel, according to those ghost finders on TV,” Michael said, rather proudly. Before the news had time to register, he said, “The bad news is that we have to wait till the end of April because this room has a long waiting list for a weekend stay. We can get in sooner if you want another room, but I figured you’d want to stay in the room your book talks about so much.”
Maggie was disappointed about having to wait three months, but the thrill of getting room 202 made up for it.
The time passed quickly, and now they were just four hours away from her very first visit to a real haunted house. Four hours and a pack of cigarettes away.
“Damn that man! Where on earth is he?” she hissed. “If only he would listen to me, and quit that nasty habit.”
She heard the truck pull into the driveway just as she finished checking off the last item on her list. She was very close to adding one more item when she heard the car door slam shut. “Kick Michael’s ass for making me wait!” would not make this list, but she was certain it would have a place on one of her lists in the very near future.
“Sorry it took so long, honey,” he said as he walked into the bedroom. “I needed a lighter, and the little store didn’t have a red one. I had to go all the way to Glenwood to get it.”
Maggie didn’t want to smile; she wanted to be mad. She didn’t want to smile, but she couldn’t help herself. “Help me get these bags in the Yukon and I’ll forgive you,” she said, trying to hide her grin.
Chapter 3
Friday, August 20, 1937
3:45 p.m.
Dr. Norman Baker led the small group of people around the perimeter of the four-story building. He talked and moved his arms around in an animated fashion as the group walked silently behind him.
Although not quite five feet six inches tall, Norman Baker held himself as if he were a giant among mere mortal men. Even his manner of dress suggested royalty. He always wore a white linen suit, heavily starched lavender shirt, and a colorful silk necktie that screamed “Hey, look at me!” to everyone he encountered. He called the color of his current tie orchid.
Even though it was almost ninety degrees, Dr. Baker didn’t appear to be sweating. The other members of the group weren’t as lucky.
“As you can see, the work on the new concrete verandas is nearly finished,” he told them as he pointed to the upper floors. “They replaced the old wooden ones that were there since the place was built over fifty years ago.”
Dr. Baker thought the elegantly carved wooden balconies made the building look too much like a hotel. His concrete replacements portrayed the building as more of an official medical campus, and besides, the old ones wouldn’t have been strong enough to hold his patients’ beds when they would be rolled outside to partake of the healthy mountain air.
As they rounded the corner, they saw several masons mixing cement. The ground around the mixers was covered with puddles of water and patches of mud. Dr. Baker made a wide arc around the workers and took the group into the parking lot in front of the building.
“This new section will house the procedure room and our new operating room,” Dr. Baker said, pointing to the long rock wall the men were building.
“I heard someone say that the morgue will be in there, too,” one of the young men said.
Dr. Baker spun around and glared at him. “We have no need for a morgue here, young man. Most doctors tell their patients that there is nothing that will help them. They tell them to go home to die.” Dr. Baker looked around the group. “Those same patients come here to be cured of their disease. They come here to live.”
When he was satisfied that the group agreed with him, he turned back and looked at the masons. He was anxious to see the progress of the new addition, but the ground condition stopped him from getting any closer. He didn’t want to soil his patent-leather shoes. After all, they were imported from Italy and were very expensive.
Surveying the front of the building, he thought, My own private castle in the sky. Not bad for a self-proclaimed doctor without a high-school education. No, not bad at all.
“I’m so excited,” one of the young women said to no one in particular. “My mother and my grandmother both worked at the Crescent Hotel, and now I’ll be working here, too.”
“Young lady,” Dr. Baker said, biting down hard on his cigar. “This is no longer the Crescent Hotel. This is a very modern and state-of-the-art cancer hospital.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Baker.” Her voice was low and shaky as she stared at the ground.
Dr. Baker’s frown turned into a smile as his eyes took in her womanly curves. She looked up long enough to notice his eyes roaming over her body. Blushing, she looked down at the ground again.
“Our sign will go over the entrance there,” he said as he switched his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. The new sign had been delivered earlier in the week. He could almost envision it hanging over the door.
CANCER CURABLE BAKER HOSPITAL, EUREKA SPRINGS, ARKANSAS.
He led the group up the steps and into the lobby. He glanced at his own reflection in the glass door. His short white hair was perfect, as usual, so he straightened his tie. After all, appearances were everything in his business--the business of selling.
“They just finished painting in here, so be careful not to touch the woodwork,” he warned them. “I picked out the color scheme myself.”
The once-white walls were now painted lavender, and the stained hardwood trim and overhead beams were all painted orange, red, black and yellow. It certainly didn’t much resemble the luxurious hotel it had been for nearly half a century.
“That’s it for the tour of the grounds,” Dr. Baker said. “Before I have Nurse Duggan take you to the upper floors, does anyone have any questions for me?”
“Dr. Baker, how many patients will we be able to house?” one of the young men asked.
“We’ll have a few private rooms, but most will be doubled, so we figure we can comfortably have about two hundred and fifty at any given time.”
“Two-fifty, now that’s impressive,” the young man commented.
Dr. Baker threw his shoulders back and pushed out his chest. “Two hundred and fifty beds full of people being cured of cancer after their regular doctors told them to go home and die. You’re looking at history in the making, my young friends. The Baker Cancer Cure has saved thousands of lives in our hospitals in Iowa and Mexico, and they’re half this size. Imagine what can be done in a hospital as grand as this one.”
“Tell us more about the cure, Dr. Baker.” The cute young woman blushed again as he turned and smiled at her.
“Well, my dear. The ingredients are top secret, of course, but my elixir has been proven to cure all internal, as well as external, cancers.” He pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers and leaned back on his heels. “If the cancer’s caught in the earlier stages, I can perform the miracles that modern science has been trying to find for centuries. Virtually all of the cancers in their later stages can also be cured,” he said, as he pushed his chest out again.
Just then, an elderly man in a long white overcoat walked up to the group. “Excuse me, Dr. Baker. Can I have a moment of your time?”
“Certainly, Dr. Statler.” Dr. Baker turned back to the group and said, “I’d like you all to meet Dr. Statler, our senior medical advisor. You all can learn a lot from this man.”
The members of the group each introduced themselves to Dr. Statler before the two senior doctors walked to the front door.
“Feel free to look around until Nurse Duggan comes down for you, but remember to mind the new paint. I’ll meet with each of you individually before the week’s out,” Dr. Baker told them, smiling broadly as he looked at the shapely blonde.
“What’s up, old man?” Norman Baker asked as he closed the door behind them.
“I just wanted to let you know that the hospital in Iowa has been vacated. We have just over sixty patients coming down in a group of Pullmans as we speak,” Dr. Statler reported. “The patients from Mexico will be coming at the end of the week.”
“Great. We’ll have to get the staff jumping, then. Is it possible to have everything ready for them before the weekend’s out?”
“I don’t see why not. Did you fill all of the remaining staff positions?”
“That group you just met was the last of them. They start this afternoon,” Dr. Baker said.
“I’d like to start training that pretty little blonde myself.”
“You read my mind, old man. I can think of a few things she could be doing that won’t entail emptying any bedpans,” Dr. Baker said, laughing.
“Does anyone from this group have any actual medical training?”
“The tall one with the bushy mustache. His father was a medic in France during the Great War. Does that count?”
“With those qualifications, he’ll be a floor manager in less than a month.”
Both men laughed.
“Have you seen the work they’re doing on our new operating room?” Dr. Baker asked as they walked in front of the building.
“We’re gonna have an operating room?”
“Didn’t I tell you that, old man? I don’t want to do our work in the morgue anymore. Too damned risky. We need a place of our own. A place with a door that has a lock on it. I don’t want another incident like the one in Mexico last month.”
“You didn’t tell me about anything happening in Mexico.” Dr. Statler looked nervous.
“It must’ve slipped my mind,” Dr. Baker told him. “Nothing to worry about. It’s taken care of. One of the night-shift nurses walked into the morgue in the middle of an operation. I was replacing the tumorous leg of one patient with the healthy leg of a woman who died earlier that day.”
“What did she do?” Dr. Statler asked after a brief silence.
“She screamed and fainted,” Dr. Baker said. “We buried her with the one-legged body that evening.”
Dr. Statler looked relieved. “Was the operation a success, otherwise?”
“No. We had to bury the transplant recipient less than a week later.”
“I’m sure you’ll have more success in your own operating room.”
“We’re also expanding the room that has the giant walk-in freezer.” Dr. Baker pointed to the construction in front of them. “We’ll use it for the morgue.”
“Is that for the incinerator?” Dr. Statler asked, pointing to the chimney that another group of masons was working on.
“It’s supposed to be installed next week. They’re shipping it in from Memphis.”
“That’ll make things much easier than it was in the other hospitals.”
“You know it, old man,” Dr. Baker said. “Much easier to dispose of the bodies.”
Chapter 4
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
1:43 a.m.
It took less time for Michael to realize that it was not 2:27 a.m. than it did the past two nights, although he was certain it was when he first woke up. This time, the windows stopped rattling on their own.
It had been a while since he’d had one of those episodes, as the company headshrinker called them. Now he’d had them three nights in a row
He sat down on his side of the bed. His side of the bed, he thought. After nearly three years of sleeping alone, it seemed strange that he still had a side of his own, but this would be an argument he would have to have with himself at another time.
He began to use the rationalization methods the shrink had suggested during one of the many fifty-minute-long Madman Michael sessions, as he only half-jokingly called them. These sessions had fit nicely between 3:00 p.m. and 3:50 p.m., almost every Thursday until about eight months ago.
While in no way an obsessive-compulsive like his late wife, Maggie, Michael had become fixated on time. Not on all time, as often days or weeks would go by with him barely noticing, but he was fixated on one minute of time — one very special moment in time.
There were fourteen hundred and forty minutes in any given day. Some days seemed a hell of a lot longer than that, but Michael had done the math a number of times, and it always came up to fourteen hundred and forty minutes in each and every day.
Those fourteen hundred and forty minutes were broken down into many categories. “Lunch Time” took sixty of them. Okay, sometimes it took ninety, but he worked late enough to justify that. “Shower Time,” “Weekly Staff Meeting Time,” “Smoke Break Time,” “Nap Time,” “Sleep Time.” Any given day — hell, every day — was made up of many of these time categories.
Why should one minute out of every day be so hard to face?
2:27 a.m. was the one minute of each day that had the ability to scare the living hell out of him. It was the one minute of each day that was almost always his last thought before he finally drifted off to sleep.
2:27 a.m. was the time he both hated and feared so much that for over a year he wouldn’t go to sleep until after it came and went.
2:27 a.m. was the exact time that Maggie had screamed her last scream and collapsed in his arms as he held her tightly and waited for the duty nurse with the funny foreign accent to respond to the call button.
Even though he couldn’t say it out loud, 2:27 a.m. was the real time of death of his beloved wife from pancreatic cancer. It was also the exact time his stomach always felt like it was on fire in the same place that Maggie hurt so badly the night she died. It was just 2:27 a.m. Not September 8, 2007. Not Saturday. Not trash day on Euclid Avenue. It was 2:27 a.m.
Michael took one more drag from his cigarette, then snuffed it out in the ashtray next to the clock radio. He could almost hear Maggie reminding him to make sure the cherry was out completely so he didn’t start a fire. He could almost hear her. He could almost … almost …
Sadness now filled the voids in his mind that the fear had left behind. It wasn’t 2:27 a.m. Michael’s stomach was not swollen and on fire. He was not afraid. What he was …, was alone.
These were the really bad times. He could fight off the fear. He could fight off the superstition. He could fight off almost anything but the sadness. The sadness brought it all back. He didn’t think of Maggie’s flower garden, now overrun with crabgrass and weeds. He didn’t think of her wizard- and dragon-figurine collection, even though those damned little things seemed to be everywhere he looked.
He thought about the first time her stomach was on fire. He thought about the long weekend in the haunted hotel that she had practically begged him to take her to. He thought about the look on her face when she woke him up screaming. He had actually thought a ghost had come to visit them that night. It had been sometime after two o’clock in the morning. He didn’t remember looking at the clock, but he was certain he knew exactly what time it had been.
That first scream … That first sign of her cancer … The beginning of the end had been at 2:27 a.m. He was more certain of that than anything else in his life.
Chapter 5
Tuesday, September 7, 1937
4:59 a.m.
Maria Johnson moaned and woke up confused. This wasn’t the room where she had spent the past five months. The smells were mostly the same, but all of the shadows were different. Her pain was now affecting her mind, as well as her body. It took her a minute to realize where she was. She was in the new hospital in Arkansas. She had arrived here from the Baker Institute in Iowa in a bus full of other patients in similar conditions. That had been just over a week ago, but to her it seemed like an eternity had passed.
Her room was cooler than it had been the past few nights, but the pain coursing through her stomach had caused her to sweat through the sheets again. It had been over five months since Dr. Baker had promised to cure her pancreatic cancer. He had even given her a written guarantee that he could have her completely cured and cancer-free in six months or less. The medicines that the staff doctors pumped into her each day were having no effect. Her pain was getting worse with each passing hour, and she had lost so much weight over the last month.
She lay in bed crying softly to herself and prayed for the pain to subside. Sometime during the night, her entire body went numb, and she was able to drift back to sleep.
Tuesday, September 7, 1937.
8:37 a.m.
Maria woke up with a burning knot in her stomach as the floor nurse flung open the curtain in her room and let the sunlight chase away the strange shadows that she had puzzled over just hours before.
“Nurse Mitchell, I need to see Dr. Baker,” Maria whined. “The pain in my stomach is getting so much worse. It’s almost to a point where I think I may go insane.”
“I’ll let him know that you’re asking for him, Mrs. Johnson,” the stern nurse told her as she headed for the door.
“That’s what you said yesterday, and the day before. I’ve only seen him once since I got here, and that was just for a moment.”
“Dr. Baker is a very busy man, Mrs. Johnson. Running a state-of-the-art cancer hospital takes a lot of time and effort. He relies on his staff of doctors and nurses to administer his treatments and make sure his patients are well cared for. As I told you, I will tell him you’re asking for him.”
As the nurse quickly made her exit, Maria’s stomach cramped up again. She vomited on herself and passed out from the pain.
Maria woke up three hours later to find her breakfast tray by her bedside and the vomit still covering her chin and bedclothes. The smell of the cold plate of greasy scrambled eggs, dry toast, and cold black coffee was almost as nauseating to her as the acrid smell of her own vomit.
Dr. Burnell had just entered the room for her daily treatment.
Seven needles were placed into her at different points on her body. She was swollen, bruised, and sore from past treatments, and knew what to expect but she still winced in pain with the insertion of each needle. The needles had to stay in place until all of the brownish medicine was fed into her body. She closed her emerald-green eyes and tried to think about a better time. She thought of a time when she was a child and she was surrounded by her family. As the youngest of seven children, she was almost never alone. Now it was fifty-some-odd years later; she had outlived a husband, her only daughter was almost grown, and she felt nothing but alone.
Dr. Burnell administered her treatment without saying a word, and he showed no signs of noticing the vomit on her bedclothes.
During the next few hours, Maria went in and out of consciousness several more times but mercifully was able to stay asleep for the majority of the day.
Wednesday, September 8, 1937.
2:27 a.m.
Maria Johnson came fully awake and sat straight up in bed. This was a task she had been unable to accomplish, by herself, for more than three weeks. Her body felt very cold, but she also felt pain-free. She reached to her stomach with both hands, amazed that it didn’t hurt anymore. For a brief second, she actually believed that the Baker Cancer Cure had worked its promised miracles on her.
And then she knew. There were no angels calling and no bright lights to lead her, but she knew just the same.
She closed her eyes and summoned the words in a language she hadn’t used in many, many years. It was the language that her family had spoken in Lousiana when she had been Maria Robichaud and wore ribbons in her hair. It was the language of her people — the language of the Women of the Thibodeaux Clan.
Her voice was loud, clear, and strong. Her voice was young again. She spoke in an odd Cajun dialect as she recited the curse. It would have loosely translated as, “All who see as I have seen will feel what I have felt.”
A rush of energy pulsed out of her body. It was so powerful that the entire building began to shake and all of the windows rattled. The energy pulse was so powerful that it was felt for over fifty miles in all directions and was mistakenly labeled as an earthquake in all of the major newspapers the following morning. Although it seemed like an eternity, the entire quake lasted only about three seconds.
At the exact instant the shaking stopped, Maria closed her eyes and fell back onto the bed.
Maria Johnson was dead.
Her body would not be discovered for another six hours, and no death certificate would ever be filed with a cause or an exact time of death. If one had been issued, it would have listed the cause as pancreatic cancer and the date and time as September 8, 1937, 2:27 a.m.
Chapter 6
Thursday, August 12, 2010
9:20 a.m.
Michael closed his office door at precisely twenty minutes past nine in the morning. He wanted to ensure that Dr. Lumas’s secretary would be in so he wouldn’t have to make more than one phone call. It was hard enough to make the one, let alone have to actually call someone else for help a second time.
His “old school” was showing again, as Maggie had often reminded him back in the day when he actually thought he ruled his castle. Michael Saunders was thirty-nine years old. He was brought up in a household where men did not cry. Men did not say “I’m sorry.” Men never went to the doctor, even when they were bleeding from the ass. Real men did not ask for directions, and they did not ask for help. His generation of men watched the evening news religiously, voted in all of the major elections, and still thought of the word fuck as a necessary means of profanity, not just another way to add substance or color to a sentence. He was “Old School” and proud of it.
He dialed Dr. Lumas’s number from memory. This alone would be cause for concern in the next He-Man-club meeting. He smiled a little when he thought of Dr. Lumas. The name was spelled differently but sounded exactly the same as the name of the little bald shrink who chased that guy in the bad Captain Kirk mask through Illinois in a dozen or so of those Halloween movies. Michael had seen them all, but there were so many of them, and the plots often intertwined with the story lines from the Jason and Freddy movies, that he got confused trying to figure out who killed which half-naked teenage couple in which movie. To add insult to injury, Michael was also the first name of the psycho killer: Michael Myers. It was the same name as that goofy Saturday Night Live guy who was making all of those movies now. Now we have definitely come full circle, he thought as the phone rang on the other end. We have gone from Dr. Loomis to Captain Kirk to Jason Voorhees to Freddy Kruger to Michael Myers to Austin Powers in the course of four rings of the telephone. Six degrees of separation! Groovy! Yeah, baby!
“I watch way too damned much television,” he said aloud, just as Dr. Lumas’s secretary answered the telephone.
Michael made an appointment with Dr. Lumas for the following day at two in the afternoon. Michael was a creature of habit, and he half-hoped that nothing would be available before next Thursday afternoon at three o’clock., but was more relieved to get in for another Madman Michael session a few days earlier.
Three years ago, he had fought the doctor’s attempt to get inside of his head for the first few sessions, but after just three or four visits, it just seemed easier to be honest and get things off his chest.
At first he didn’t even want to be there. Maggie had been … been gone for just over three months when his boss, Mr. Polizi, called him into his office.
“Please sit down, Michael.”
Michael chose the chair closest to the door. As he sat down, Mr. Shearer, the Human Resources Manager came into the room. He picked up the chair next to Michael and carried it to Mr. Polizi’s side of the desk. The battle lines were now clearly defined.
“Michael, I’ve asked Mr. Shearer, from Human Resources, to join us this morning.”
“Okay,” Michael said as he shifted a little in his chair.
“We are here to talk about your drinking, Mr. Saunders,” Mr. Shearer told him, with an underlying tone of disgust. Marty Shearer stood barely five feet tall and had the worst case of “Little Man’s Disease” Michael had ever encountered. At six feet four inches tall and the software company’s most successful programmer for the past six years, Michael guessed he was near the top of the tiny man’s list of people to make look smaller so he could feel bigger.
“My drinking?” Michael was confused. He began to rub the scar on his left wrist. That piece of body language did not go unnoticed by Mr. Shearer.
“Yes, Michael. Your drinking has started to affect your work, as well as your appearance. Your clothes are wrinkled and you look like you haven’t shaved in three days. That’s not exactly an image we want to portray here,” Mr. Polizi told him.
“We know you have been through a tragedy. We all have the utmost sympathy for your loss. That’s why we’re here today. We don’t want to lose you. Mr. Polizi raves about your work,” Mr. Shearer said. “We want you to go into an AA program for your drinking, and we would like you to talk to the company psychologist once a week for a while.”
“You want me to see a shrink?” Michael asked. Apparently, the week he took off from work after Maggie’s death didn’t have the company’s desired effect. Now, three months later, the statute of limitations on his grief had more than expired.
“We don’t want to fire you, but if you don’t agree to take the help we’re offering, we’ll have no choice.”
Michael was in no condition to look for another job at that time. “Okay. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.” As an afterthought, he added “Thank you,” as the two men stood up on the other side of the desk, signaling the end of the meeting.
He stood up and shook their outstretched hands as he fought back the urge to twist Mr. Polizi’s head off and beat Mr. Shearer to death with it before it stopped smiling. He could actually visualize that one crooked tooth, which was slightly darker than all of the others, tearing small slices of flesh off Shearer’s face and outstretched hands. Defensive wounds — that is what the crime-scene boys would call them.
As Michael turned to leave, he pushed outward with his mind. The mind-pulse waves that he propelled made everything on Mr. Polizi’s desk start to vibrate. The ornate silver picture frame containing a posed portrait of the Polizi family suddenly shot off the desk. Michael heard glass breaking as the picture exploded on the floor. He hoped that it landed facedown so that Silvia, the elderly cleaning lady whose left shoe had a one-inch lift on it, wouldn’t have to look at it while she cleaned up the shards of glass. The ugly little Polizi children had teeth as bad as their father’s. Silvia should not have to be subjected to that. He tried to hide his smile as he closed the office door behind him and sulked back to his desk.
Michael wasn’t the drunk they all thought he was. He wasn’t suicidal, despite the rumors that had surfaced around the proverbial watercooler when he returned from Maggie’s funeral with his left wrist bandaged suspiciously in that white hospital gauze. He wasn’t suffering from acute postmortem depression that Dr. Lumas had immediately pegged him for, either.
The problem was plain and simple. He was just too damned tired to function. For the last 103 days, Michael had been living on whatever sleep he could manage to catch between about three and six in the morning. He simply could not be asleep when the clock struck 2:27 a.m. He had tried to sleep through it the first few days after Maggie’s death, but the intense stomach pains woke him each night at exactly the same time. Nothing helped him stay asleep, and nothing calmed the stomach pains that lasted about five minutes each night. They were so severe that he unconsciously named them gut-fires.
He had tried every over-the-counter sleep aid and even raided Maggie’s prescription stuff from her side of the medicine cabinet. He had bottles of that pink stuff and rolls of Rolaids and TUMS all over the house. Nothing worked and nothing helped. Fearing the worst, he even broke down and went to the doctor. After a barrage of tests, they were unable to find anything wrong with him. Michael did not tell the doctors at the hospital that the pain only occurred at 2:27 a.m., so they only looked for any physical problems. He was already beginning to fear that his problems were more mental than physical.
He quickly learned that the only way to avoid the burning pain in his stomach every night was to be awake when the clock struck 2:27 a.m. This discovery came completely by accident. One Friday night, about three weeks after the funeral, he woke up at about a quarter after two. He lay in bed, watching the clock, and waited for the pain to start. 2:27 came but the gut-fires did not. The following night, he stayed up on purpose. Again, 2:27 came and went with no ill effects. He fell asleep watching TV on Sunday night and woke up with the pain so intense that he actually pissed himself before it was over.
The witching hour may have started at midnight in most cultures, but for Michael Saunders it began promptly at 2:27 a.m.
Chapter 7
Wednesday, September 8, 1937
9:12 a.m.
Dr. Norman Baker sat in his office, deep in thought. He was thinking about those bastards at the AMA and their decade-long crusade against him. The American Medical Association, or American Meat-Cutters Association as he referred to it, was the cause of his leaving Iowa and moving to Mexico. That made them indirectly responsible for him finding this place-- his own private Castle in the Air. At least he did have them to thank for that.
Hell, he thought, if I ever meet the editor of the Journal of the AMA, I will shake his hand and thank him. Thank him and then spit in his eye for the trash he keeps writing about me,
Three sharp knocks on his office door brought him abruptly back to reality.
“You may enter,” he called out stiffly.
J. L. Statler poked his head in the door. Dr. Statler had been Baker’s senior medical advisor for the last few years. He’d been Chief of Staff at the Baker Institute in Muscatine, Iowa, and even leased the hospital and kept things going during Dr. Baker’s exile to Mexico. Statler was one of the few people Norman Baker trusted.
“What can I do for you this morning, old man?” Dr. Baker asked as he loosened up a bit. He took another quick swallow from the glass of Sodium-Bicarb. It was his third glass since the earthquake had awoken him early this morning, and it did little to cure his stomachache.
“Sorry to be bothering you so early, but we had our first passing last night.”
“Who?” was all Norman Baker asked. He didn’t show any emotion at all. Although this was the first passing in Eureka Springs, the cancer hospitals in Iowa and Mexico had experienced quite a few.
“Maria Johnson in room 202. They found her this morning. She passed sometime during the night.”
“Keep her door closed and keep everyone out of there until I read her file. I will let you know how to proceed shortly.”
Dr. Statler nodded and closed the door.
Norman Baker got up from his imported leather chair and walked across the room to a row of mahogany filing cabinets. He opened the drawer marked “J/K” and sifted through the files for a few seconds until he came up with a file labeled Johnson, Maria.
NAME: Maria Johnson
CLASS: 3A
DATE: April 9, 1937
ADDRESS: 1055 Sebastian Lane
St. Louis, Missouri
MARITAL STATUS: Widowed
NEXT OF KIN:Margaret Johnson, daughter, age: 16
CONTACT: David Kine, grandnephew
1281 Beechnut Street, Tampa, Florida
DIAGNOSIS:Pancreatic cancer
Diagnosed by Dr. A. Abraham, St. Louis
OUTLOOK:Patient was diagnosed by her doctor with advanced pancreatic cancer. Inoperable. Told that there was nothing that could be done.
SUMMARY: Mrs. Johnson met with staff after receiving requested information through mail. She was accepted for treatment and checked into hospital on April 11, 1937. Will undergo needle treatment.
Was advised to allow next of kin to control her finances during her stay here. Next of kin is a minor child, so financial control was given to her grandnephew.
NOTES:
4/12/37 — Harry sent standard medical power of attorney and financial letter to next of kin. Copy attached.
4/23/37 — Received funds for three months in private room with laundry services. Bank draft for $660.00. No personal letter accompanied bank draft.
7/1/37—Sent letter to next of kin requesting funds for three additional months and advised of special dietary requirements and costs involved. Copy attached.
7/11/37— Received funds for 3 months in private room with laundry services. Bank draft for $725.00. No personal letter accompanied bank draft.
Dr. Baker read her file and then checked the Visitor Log and Incoming and Outgoing Mail Log attachments to the file. He smiled when he noted that her daughter had been her only visitor. “We won’t be seeing young Margaret around her anytime soon,” he said aloud.
He told his secretary to call a meeting with Dr. Statler, R.A. Bellows, and Harry Fisher for one o’clock that afternoon.
Wednesday, September 8, 1937
1:03 p.m.
Norman Baker walked into the room and looked at the three men sitting in front of the unique six-sectioned desk. He had six separate businesses and had this desk custom-made so that each section of the desk was used for a different business. He sat in the center of the six-sided wooden semicircle and simply had to turn his chair from section to section to address different matters from different businesses. The unusual shape of the desk seemed to fit right in with the lavender-colored room and the orange, red, black, and yellow beams skirting its high ceiling. Today, he faced the section that dealt with the business of the Baker Hospital. This caused the three men to have to shift their seats a little in order for them to all be in front of him, but he didn’t seem to notice.