Absolute Instinct jc-11 Read online

  Absolute Instinct

  ( Jessica Coran - 11 )

  Robert W. Walker

  Robert W. Walker

  Absolute Instinct

  PROLOGUE

  We know that the complex human brain cradles every conceivable sort of evil and madness, as seen on 9/11. But more specifically for the murder investigators are designs born of a mind imprinted with the seed of Cain: the seed science now knows as the DNA strand forming a predisposition to become Cain.

  — Dr. Jessica Coran, M.E., FBI from the Neuronet Map to murder

  Millbrook, Minnesota

  The boy sat cross-legged, scrawny at a mere forty-eight pounds in seven years, big-headed, awkward, sickly at birth and all his life, and now set on a path to cure himself, to fill out the flesh, to strengthen muscle and tissue, to raise the sunken eyes as in his drawings of himself, but now he had gone too far. Thin and sticklike, his body battled the diseases of his father, evil curses he'd never be rid of. His mother believed it with a certainty after seeing what he'd done to harmless, inoffensive little Squeakums.

  Giles had been in and out of hospitals all his life, but tests always proved inconclusive, and no one could tell Larina Gahran why her son remained only half formed. Giles's body was his enemy-the overactive metabolic rate kept him pinched and angular. He looked like an Eastern European WWII refugee, a survivor of Auschwitz, or one of those dead-eyed children on TV ads about Africa or South America. She fed him and fed him, but Giles's frail body somehow remained malnourished and starved-looking. And now he was seven years old and defying her, not eating any-thing she put in front of him anymore. He was now living on Coca-Cola and junk food filled with sodium and calories but nothing substantive.

  Giles had the demons inside him, fighting for his soul, the demons that had stolen his father's soul before him-the sins of the father shall be visited upon the child-for how many generations? Three, four?

  “Perhaps I should have taken Giles off that respirator when he was born,” she confided to her priest in the confessional. “Perhaps the girl I was… I should not have rushed Giles to the hospital that time when he fell from the apartment window, two stories, breaking his leg, collar bone and his back. All that pain in his back for months afterward had to play havoc with his mind. Perhaps I ought've crushed his skull in, claimed it as part of the fall.”

  “But you didn't, did you? That speaks good of you. Your motherly instincts were absolute, unbreakable, resolute. You are to be-”

  “No, Father, don't misunderstand. This is a small town with small-town cops, but given today's forensic science detectives, like the ones you see on TV, they'd figure out in an instant that it was murder.”

  Now this.

  The boy had killed her cat and had hidden the body in the basement of the old apartment house, stuffed little Squeakums behind the hot-water heater where it now stank of decay and desiccated flesh; dried blood and bile were matted in the dead calico hair. This sent a particularly horrendous odor throughout the building vents. Giles had killed Squeakums, his mother's only pleasure, the jealous little miscreant had murdered poor, innocent Squeakums, his latest outrage.

  A little pleasure ball that never did harm to a single living soul, and now to find Squeakums like this, after thinking her only in the ranks of the lost. The truth hurt; it felt so painfully wretched.

  Larina's eyes filled with tears. She found a box to put the poor creature's remains in, saying, “I'll see you get a proper burial, my sweet little Squeakums. I'll take care of you now.”

  She'd been having nightmares of lost Squeakums out in the dark, lost, cold, alone, and frightened in the grid of the city of Millbrook, Minnesota-a small town some twenty miles from the Twin Cities where she had met Giles's father at Millbrook Memorial, where she had once worked as an admitting nurse.

  Giles's father had charmed her out of her own life. Swept her off her feet. But he turned out to be the Devil incarnate, as attested to by his having been arrested on charges of murder. He'd left her with promises and pregnancy, and then got himself locked up in an insane asylum-a federal facility for the criminally insane.

  She reached in with gloved hands and pulled Squeakums from the corner behind the hot-water heater where she'd been wedged in between the heater and the stone wall. The body was actually warm, she assumed from the warmth of the metal heated by the hot water.

  Then she realized as her eyes and hand simultaneously saw and felt the huge rent in Squeakums's back, a gouged out elongated hole from the base of her little brain to the end of her backside, and the curious lightness of the cat's corpse combined to make Larina look closer at the enormous wound. She put the cat's body in the box she meant to bury it in and placed it on an old desktop below a light she had already switched on. Steeling herself, she again examined the puckered wound that was filled with dried, matted hair thick with blood. She also noted that the cat's skull had been caved in by some sort of blunt object.

  “My God,” she muttered as she peeled back the hardened edges of the long gash down the cat's spine. “My God, he's cut out her backbone, but why? For what possible reason?”

  There could be only one purpose, one obsessive, mad goal as satanic as the intent of the Antichrist himself. “Just like his father,” she said aloud, “just as insane. He's got the same lunatic psychotic gene, the mark of Cain.”

  Then she heard a noise, a strange knocking together of metal balls, a creaking crackle of a noise, followed by a slurping sound, and it was all coming from behind a closed, several-times-painted-over door to a little used storage room.

  So this is where he's been hiding? She took tentative steps toward the door and reached out to take hold of the doorknob. Her hand suddenly froze over it, shaking, unsure, as unsteady as her mind. She stood there for some time, listening to the sounds from behind the faded multicolored door. Giles was in there doing something unspeakable, something evil and horrid. Conjuring up demons? Playing a game, a little harmless game of divination? Or worse? Far worse?

  Her hand continued to hover over the knob as breathing became harder and harder. She knew most certainly she'd be needing her inhaler to get through this but it was upstairs. Should she fling open the door and see something so entirely gross and disgusting as to bring on an asthma attack and be unable to get to her inhaler, should she keel over in one of her fits and become helpless to move or breath, would little sickly Giles rush upstairs for her inhaler doing all in his power to save her? Or would he brain her with a hammer and cut out her spine and take it into the dark storage room and do with it what he might now be doing with Squeakums's?

  She knew she had to find a lawyer, make out a will, and see to it that her own body was cremated to keep it from ever falling into her son's hands.

  Slurp, slurp… more noises from the other side of the door. Little boy sounds of gratification, possibly masturbation. Certainly quenching his thirst as if he had a pitcher of Kool-Aid in there.

  Larina Gahran steeled her resolve and found the strength to grab hold of the doorknob in complete inch-by-inch stealth. She turned it slowly to be imperceptible. So far, she felt absolutely certain that little Giles hadn't the least notion she stood here with her cat in a box, angry as hell.

  She now had the doorknob turned as far as it would go. She need only to snatch it open and dare to look at precisely what her son was. She hesitated again, wishing her inhaler was at hand, feeling the first shivering rumble of an attack in her cells, subtle but wanting to escape and invade her lungs.

  To open or not to open, her mind struggled. She'd come this far, and for Squeakums's sake, and for her own fiery curiosity, she tore the door wide open and stared into the semi-darkness, a weak light from an outside lamppost struggling thro
ugh the grimy windowpane.

  Silhouetted and unaware of his mother, seven-year-old Giles Gahran held the cat's backbone overhead and sucked on its end. A clear yellowy, oily fluid spilled over his lips. With a penknife, he then dug deep into the bone and pulled out chunks of a dried bloodlike substance, the bone marrow, and he consumed this.

  Larina stood watching the thing in the shadows that moved with the clumsiness of a child and the precision of a monster all at once. It grunted, moaned in pleasure, licked its chops, touched itself all over, rattled the bones, shaking them for more fluid, more marrow in a kind of eternal squatting animal dance where Giles, cross-legged with arms raised and hands holding on to the cat's spine appeared in the throes of a bliss that she herself had never known, one at once fascinating and terrifying.

  A squealing board underfoot gave her away and Giles's catlike, penetrating eyes burned through his mother.

  “Get out of here, Mother! Away with you! Now!”

  His voice raged out of control, a gravelly, draconian, motorized metallic thrumming thing fueled by venom. Indeed, a child possessed in need of serious help, a child, possessed of a demon.

  She dropped Squeakums and the makeshift coffin to race upstairs. She was panting, feeling faint, certain she would die here and now, and terrified that Giles would do to her what he'd done to Squeakums-feed on his own mother's spinal fluid and bone marrow.

  Once upstairs and in her kitchen, she fought to maintain control and conscious behavior, tearing into a cupboard for a fresh inhaler and grabbing a knife from the butcher block only to see a larger slit in the block wink back at her.

  Gasping, panting, feeling light-headed, and fearful, she leaned heavily against the island block in the kitchen when she heard his footsteps coming up.

  “Mom? Mom!” he called out. “I know what it must look like,” he calmly spoke as his form materialized from the darkness, “but it's not a bad thing. Just practicing for the day I become a surgeon. You said Father was in medicine. I'm just a curious kid is all.”

  “You fucking killed my cat!”

  “No, no! Poor thing, she got hold of something bad, a neighbor's poison, maybe… Least I think so…” He'd stopped short at the top of the stairs and remained in the doorway to the kitchen, staring at her.

  “St-st-stay the fuck away from me, Giles.”

  “Ahhh, Ma, don't make a big deal of it.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of what you think you saw.”

  “And what… did… I see?” She gasped between each word now.

  “A little kid experimenting, curious about life's all. I think maybe I'll grow up to become a doctor maybe. Or an illustrator for medical books. I just like to know what makes things… and people run, you know?”

  “Is that what I saw? I saw Squeakums's head caved in is what I saw, Giles. You killed my cat!”

  “No way. I just put it out of its misery. It was suffering bad. In pain and suffering, and I did the right thing is all.”

  “And you saw fit to cut out her backbone and-”

  “It's called a dissection, Mom.”

  “-and… and feed on it?”

  “I was curious when I smelled the stuff inside, so I sort of tasted it. You just happened to barge in at the worst time, that's all.”

  “I don't want to ever hear of your doing anything even remotely like this again, do you understand, you little monster? You little bastard… so like your sick father.”

  “Sure, Mom, sure. I'm really not any kind of monster.”

  “Then go to the bathroom where I keep more inhalers and get me another one, now!”

  He made a step toward her and she flinched. “Sure, I'll go get the inhaler.”

  Alone again, Giles's mother feared she might catch his madness, his and his father's. She wondered if she dared try to institutionalize him. She wondered if she could. The worry brought on a new wave of fast gasps for air and a coughing jag at once.

  She thought of the years yet ahead of her with him as her child. She wondered what might become of Giles, wondered again if he would ever contemplate robbing her of life for her spinal column the way he had Squeakums's.

  In the will, she would insist on him never being left alone with her body. She would insist on immediate cremation.

  She got a mental image of him feeding on her bone marrow, his lips and tongue slick with her spinal fluid.

  He had enjoyed it too much with the cat.

  ONE

  One of the many appeals of Minnesota-aside from the lakes-is that if the world ended, you wouldn't hear about it until the next day.

  — Lt. Dkt. Daniel Brannan, Millbrook PD

  Millbrook, Minnesota November 14, 2002

  Louisa Anne Childe closed a dying fist around the blood-soaked charcoal drawing she'd so loved-the impeccable image of her sitting in the park across the street, doing what she loved, feeding the late winter birds. With a trapped breath in her throat, believing it her last, she knew- feared-gasped. Her only hold left on this life-her sketch. Perhaps in the next life, things would be as peaceful as in the black-and-white drawing. Still, birdlike breaths of air fluttered, perched, and then struggled past her lips and into her lungs; and when she felt the dagger rip into her spine, she wished desperately that it had been her last breath.

  Cheated, she felt a wave of anger against God for allowing this murder-her murder. She'd always imagined herself dying peacefully in her sleep. Instead, she would die a fool, a victim of murder, by a cunning killer who had led her down a grim-rose lane with a mere bit of artistry, the sleight of hand of flattery playing no small part. He had been so good for her ego… until now. What would Papa say…? He'd say she was a fool woman, that's what, and that she'd be left with the now-worthless sketch and her own disgrace.

  Disgrace at being found dead at the hand of a man she had invited past her threshold. How stupid was that? How disgraceful her body would present itself. She feared her spirit would hover, witness to the disgrace. The thought of it, the horror of a scene involving paramedics, policemen and women, detectives, coroners… it was simply horrid. She feared being manhandled by those strangers, certain none would look like Basil Rathbone, Clark Gable or George Clooney. She feared strangers seeing her nude form, her clothes ripped from her, her naked body bloated and ugly with the passage of time, as she had no one.

  No one would come looking until the rent was long overdue. Even more painful, the truth: She had literally put herself into an early grave by a murdering con artist. Louisa felt this humiliation above all, even above the pain of the cold giant chasm now being opened down the length of her spine.

  The last earthly words she heard, he whispered in her ear, “You will still sit for me, won't you, Louisa.” It wasn't a question, more a statement. Little wonder he had failed to sign her charcoal drawing.

  Louisa Anne Childe had endured the flesh-separating blade, feeling it course from the nape of her neck and race to the bottom of her spine. When the second cut snaked from the bottom up and up, and finally returned to the nape, Louisa still clutched the drawing. Her killer had seduced her with the enticement of charcoal drawings of her in the park, sitting, feeding birds.

  She now fell into unconsciousness, her fist frozen about her favorite of four sketches.

  By the time the rectangle of flesh was removed from her back, Louisa had died from hemorrhagic shock. She didn't feel a thing when her murderer's gloved hands latched on to her spine with one hand and worked a rib cutter with the other. He cut the twelve thoracic vertebra of the rib cage from their hold on the spinal cord. This finished, twisted wirelike nerves snapped as he tugged and ripped the backbone, but it jammed and held.

  “Godfuckingsonofamotherfuckingbitching bastard!” he erupted and immediately covered his mouth with his gloved hand to silence himself. “Like fighting with a metal snake,” he added as he continued to tug. Finally, the spinal octopus let go and came free, almost sending Giles tumbling over.

  The sketch-artist killer liked the
heft and weight and feel of the bone snake in his hands, freed of all its moorings.

  Strangely supple and beautiful in its shape, the human spine had always fascinated Giles, even as a child. And now he had one in his possession, to have as his own, to do with as he wished, and he had a plan. In the waiting room of a chiropractor's office, in a collection of newspaper clippings favoring the laying-on-of-hands science over pills and surgeries, he had read that every person on the planet had slight individual differences in their spinal development- some quite subtle, others as remarkable and as lurid as those of the Elephant Man. Certainly no two racks were ever exactly alike. So he now held a unique backbone in his hands, Louisa's, dripping with bodily fluids and blood.

  The blood splatters, pools and puddles amounting to a great deal of red, reflected in Giles's delighted eyes as he turned the spinal column in his hands, closely examining it. “A true work of art,” he muttered. “But I can't ever do this again… never.”

  He saw the woman's cat, “Archer” she'd called the little creature. Archer stood on his paws as if they'd turned to arrowheads, prepared to dart or pounce or race off, but his marble-green eyes froze wide at the fear he swallowed in a growl. Staring from behind a doily-covered sofa, Archer's nose went busily atwitter with the odor of blood and what wafts up from an opened body.

  Giles reached a tentative hand out, calling, “Here, kitty, here kitty-kitty!”

  But when he tried to pet Archer, the cat slipped below the sofa and disappeared in one fluid motion. “Don't want nothing to do with me. Smart animal,” Giles muttered. Then he near shouted, “I've yanked out a few cat spines in my day!”

  Giles then turned his attention to the human spine in his left hand, Louisa's gruel-dripping backbone. He laid the spinal column across the dead woman's buttocks. As he busily collected her blood in small, empty honey jars he'd cleaned and brought with him-sample-size jars he'd pocketed from the hotel where he'd been staying the entire time he had staked out Louisa's place, having stalked her from her beloved park bench to her most private corner of the planet. He briefly flashed on Grendel, which he'd read as a child, and how touched he had been by the monster's cave. How cold and unhappy a place it was, and the creature's absolute aloneness-an Adam without an Eve. And so poorly misunderstood, the sad oversized hairy beast, and how very pathetic it all became, his story. How he had no choice but to attack and destroy those men who sat about the warm hearths chomping on their muttonchops and raising their ale glasses and whoring with their women. How he'd see the lights of men in the company of men, and how he must absolutely hate them for their happiness.