The terrain grew steeper. Jennie continued to slide, frantically grabbing at small saplings, clawing her hands into to the mud trying to stop her freefall. Finally, the forest thinned, and she heard the trickle of water. An instant later, her descent stopped abruptly when she landed butt-first in a small creek.
The water was an icy shock, bubbling, opaque, running over her legs and feet. She sat disoriented for a moment, trying to figure out what had just happened. She climbed out and sat on a rock to catch her breath. She regained her wits as the churning waters swirled past, just beyond her muddy shoes.
That could’ve gone better.
Catching her breath, she looked around.
She was in a narrow gully. The ground was wet and lush, the rocks and trees covered in green moss. Directly ahead, a stone path led to a small building. Its walls were also covered in the green moss and brown water dripped from the rusted metal roof. It was ominously silent.
Jennie stood and advanced toward the building, checking her footing as she went. Everything was so quiet here. Still, she sensed a
presence.
After just a few yards, the woods opened up completely and she realized where she was. The imposing fortress stood just fifty feet in front of her.
Harbor View.
“Bingo.”
P
hillip Baxter looked at Margaret Melvin and winced. She had aged at least ten years in the past twenty-four hours and the deep circles around her eyes made her look like a raccoon. Having gathered all the residents together in the assembly room, Baxter was ready to begin their yearly ritual, which included the ‘treatment' for everyone, as well as himself and Margaret. First, he needed to prepare the mixture.
“Get everyone into position, Margaret. We are already behind schedule, thanks to that moron of a sheriff.”
Margaret nodded, her neck as stiff as a wooden Indian. She seemed to be aging before Baxter’s eyes and he realized this was the longest they had gone without the treatment. He had to hurry.
Picking up the stone chalice from the makeshift alter, he quickly mixed the herb with a large canister of blood. He gazed down at the sticky concoction, the metallic smell of the blood wafting around his nostrils. He inhaled deeply and smiled.
It won’t be long now
, he thought.
A commotion outside the room caught his attention and he wheeled around just in time to see Paul Grant come busting through the door. Grant started to speak, but suddenly stopped mid-sentence when Margaret Melvin came up behind him and cracked a metal pipe across his skull. Grant fell to the floor like a string-less marionette.
Baxter managed a smile. “Well done, Margaret. Get him on the gurney.”
J
ennie Bradford found herself in the bowels of Harbor View. She could hear voices above her and what sounded like chanting. Water dripped around her and splattered onto the stone floor leaving small pools that reflected her flashlight beam like a lighthouse beacon. As she traversed the long corridors following the sound, seeking its origin, she felt like she was in a cheap horror flick. Several rats scampered across the floor and cool musty air flowed all around her. She nearly dropped the flashlight in her attempt at side-stepping the vermin. For all of her bravado earlier with Paul,
this
place definitely gave her the creeps.
The voices were nearer now. Jennie paused and cocked her head to one side to listen. She moved forward, using only the sound of the voices as her guide. She’d tried to find Paul, but had no luck locating him inside or out.
Where the hell was he?
Turning right and taking a stone staircase, she continued to follow the sound of the chanting. Finally, following a stone corridor, she came to a room that looked peculiarly modern, despite the rest of the hall’s medieval architecture. A light glowed from under the door and the voices grew louder.
Then, unmistakably, she heard the voice of the bitch herself, Margaret Melvin.
Somehow, though,
she sounded different.
P
aul Grant awoke securely fastened to a steel autopsy table. When he tried to move, it was as if his body wasn’t receiving the commands from his brain.
Fear gripped him.
With great difficulty, he managed to open his eyelids, but even that took a great deal of concentration. As his eyes came into focus, he saw someone standing over him
. Baxter!
“Paul. Welcome back.”
Paul tried to speak, but nothing came out.
“Don’t bother trying to talk,” Baxter said. “The curare I gave you is quite potent. Mrs. Melvin, put in his IV, please.”
Paul glanced over and watched as Melvin inserted a large bore needle into his forearm. He didn’t feel anything. He could just see the trickle of blood ooze from the puncture.
“Don’t worry, Paul, you won’t feel a thing. Too bad you figured out what harbor View was all about. I was beginning to like you. Puzzled? Allow me to explain, I think you deserve that much. You see, in 1930, I was dying of cancer. I was fifty-three at the time, much too young to die, I’m sure you’ll agree. I had studied Amazon plant life while on a fellowship at Harvard and I became fascinated with the healing properties of many of the plants.” Baxter paused as he filled a large syringe with a clear fluid.
“Anyway, I learned of a tribe of natives, the Yohagi. I’m sure, by now, you’re familiar with them. At any rate, I learned they had used cavender root for years to heal malaria and other maladies. Unfortunately, they were very secretive about it. With great difficulty, however, I was able to find a Curadera, that’s a high priest of jungle medicine, like the one you met. He was kind enough to include me in one of his healing ceremonies. After mixing the herb with blood, he had me ingest it, much to my dislike at the time. But when I awoke, it had totally regenerated the cells in my body, eliminating the cancer in the process. The only catch was that the blood had to be human. No problem for the Yohagi. Self-sacrifice is considered an honor in their culture. When I found out the effects only lasted for a year... well, you can see my dilemma. Unfortunately, fresh human blood is a precious commodity around here. Getting the amount we need, and the immediate freshness required, precluded using blood banks. And harvesting the herb is very expensive. So, I set up Harbor View. The elite rich get eternal life, and I get all their assets, plus my own immortality.
The only catch, Paul, is I have to have a human sacrifice every twelve months. And the donor has to have O blood type, just like you. For some crazy reason, that’s the only type that reacts with the herb to produce the desired results. That’s where you, and all the other nurses before you, come in. I only pick the one with the right blood type and no family ties. No one to miss you, you see. And they’re a lot easier to come by than you may think. Why, just look how eager you were.”
Baxter laughed and walked over to a sink counter. “Mrs. Melvin, start the extractor. You see, Paul, as you know, the human body has about four to five liters of blood. I’ve found if I extract all of it and mix it with my allotment of herb, I have just enough to treat all the residents here at Harbor View. So your career choice has paid off, more than you ever expected. You’re dedicated to saving lives. Now you’re saving fifty at one time.”
Margaret Melvin held a long metal tube that connected to a glass container by way of another clear plastic tube that ran to a small pump sitting on the counter. Paul recognized it as a mortician’s embalming extractor, used to drain the blood prior to injecting embalming fluid. She connected the tube to his IV line and flipped a switch on the pump.
Paul heard a rushing sound, then felt a pulling sensation at his IV site. The clear fluid that had been running into his arm suddenly stopped and the IV line instantly became red.
My blood!
Paul could only watch helplessly as his blood began to fill the glass container. He could feel the blood literally being sucked out of him. As the container continued to fill, Paul felt his life ebbing away. He felt faint and blackness ensued.
W
hen the door flew open, Margaret Melvin knocked the glass canister to the floor sending glass and blood in every direction. Baxter turned and grabbed the counter as if the floor had moved beneath him.
“Turn that thing off now,” Jennie yelled. She was holding a gun that looked big enough to kill an elephant. The color had drained from Melvin’s face and she stood frozen. Melvin finally reached over and turned the switch off.
“You don’t understand,” Baxter pleaded. “If we don’t have the treatment in the next few minutes, we’re all doomed.”
“That’s your problem,” Jennie said. “You should have been dead a long time ago, Dorian Gray.”
Jennie pulled a small flask from her pocket and placed it against Paul’s lips. He struggled to sip it, finally managing to swallow a few drops.
“It will counteract what he gave you,” Jennie said. “That’s right, Baxter, I learned something about jungle medicine, too. From the same guy who taught you.”
* * *
A few minutes later, Paul began to get the feeling back in his extremities. He swallowed hard and tried to speak.
“Are you all right?” Jennie asked.
Paul nodded.
Baxter and Melvin hadn’t moved, but now Baxter said. “What are you going to do, just let us die?”
Baxter made a sudden move to his right and pulled an alarm on the wall.
Margaret cried, “For God’s sake, do something, Charles.”
“Shut up, wench,” Baxter screamed.
“I’ll do it myself, then.” Melvin grabbed a bone saw from the counter and stepped over to Paul. “Come on, Jennie. I’ll saw your little Paul here an extra hole in his head, bitch.”
There was a sudden commotion and when it stopped, Baxter lay on the floor bleeding profusely from his neck. Melvin looked up in shock to see Jennie holding the metal extractor tube in her hand.
Margaret Melvin dropped the saw to the floor and clawed at her throat as if she was choking. There was a puzzled look in her eyes. Then her hand moved up to her face. Her skin seemed to be withering. In an instant it was cracked and yellow.
“What’s happening?” she pleaded. She grabbed at her hair and a clump fell loose in her claw-like hand. She stared at the clump in horror. “Tell me what’s happening!” she wailed.
The wrinkles on her face were spreading like cracks in a drying mudflat.
“Something that should have happened a long time ago, you bitch. Welcome to eternity,” Jennie spat out.
Melvin’s eyes sunk deep in their sockets and her limbs withered to sticks until she could no longer support her weight. Her body shrank in on itself and she fell forward in a heap of bones, a plume of dust rising out her now-vacant clothes as they hit the ground.
“Holy shit!”
Jennie said.
I
n the next few minutes, Paul and Jennie raced through the halls of Harbor View with no thought in mind other than to just get out of this House of Horrors. As they sprinted toward the front door, stunned residents staggered like zombies, in disbelief of their condition. Paul watched as one resident after another turned gray, then dry, then just crumbled like old mud pies left in the sun too long.
When they were clear of the building, Paul grabbed Jennie’s arm. “Hey, you can stop running now. It’s over.”
A
newspaper sat on the front seat of Paul Grant’s truck. The front page story had made headlines around the world.
Prominent Doctor Dead in Dorian Gray Scheme
By Kirstin Firth
World Times
Prominent Vermont physician, Phillip Baxter, who supposedly inherited anupscale nursing facility from his family twenty-five years ago, turned out to be the original owner, Charles Baxter who was recorded as deceased in 1933. It appears Baxter stumbled onto a veritable fountain of youth that would permanently reverse the aging process using rare herbs from the Amazon rain forest. Unfortunately, there was a sinister side to the whole affair. Baxter reportedly killed as many as fifty people over the last five decades to provide his facility with the fresh blood needed to carry out the so-called “Fountain Ritual.” Baxter was found out when nurse Paul Grant...
Paul tossed the paper behind the seat and opened the door for Jennie. She climbed in and smiled.
“You ready for this?” she asked.
“I’ve never been more ready for anything in my life.”
“I would never have believed in a million years you wanted to take flying lessons,” Jennie said.
“Well, just remember, you still have to induct me into The Mile High Club.”
Jennie reached across and squeezed Paul’s hand. “I’d like that.”