Authors: Geoffrey Girard
Cain's Blood (12 page)
June 5 — . . . What is broken when one can bring himself to kill
another? MALES are responsible for the blood and violence of
every culture, every country, every age. And serial murder
is the masculine zenith of this same gender-based lust for
dominance and execution. It is the asocial equivalent of our
philosophy, mathematics, music, et al. To wit: There is no female
Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.
June 5 — . . . In violence, we forget who we are. The men and
women who passed me today who looked me in the eye who
know nothing of what I truly am. Veritas Lux Mea. Since the
Renaissance, God’s Death, we have presumed to elucidate
violence through Science. Before, when I was T., they presumed
anthropometry could reveal the mark. Rapists were blonde,
pedophiles had long left feet murderers were homely with
smaller foreheads, etc. This was scientific fact. Absurd? Any
more than claims of possession by Satan or other primitive
gods? Any more absurd than our pursuit of the Cain gene?
XP11.23-11.4 Do we only need to look there? No. I am still
marked. NOW ART THOU CURSED FROM THE EARTH. In violence,
we remember who we are.
It had to be the hair. It was a little too short. Too clean. everything
else was perfect.
The body positioned two-thirds of the way across the bed, on its
left side. The shoulders were flattened to the mattress. head turned
to the left cheek. Legs spread. The left thigh at a perfect right angle
to her trunk. The other at an obtuse angle. One breast under the head,
the other under her right foot. Liver between the feet. Intestines on the
right side of the body. Spleen on the left. The flaps he’d removed from
her abdomen and thighs were on the bedside table.
The Thing on the Bed.
Like in the pictures. Like in the dreams.
Jacobson dragged the kukri knife gently along her forehead.
Do I
cut again?
he’d already hacked off her ears and nose.
Do I rip some more?
Slashed away her lips and down over the chin. her eyebrows and lids,
her cheeks. Picture perfect. She’d lived for almost two minutes while
he’d cut her. hemorrhaging slowly, painfully, from a deep slash across
her throat that went down to her spine. The carotid artery filling her
rent windpipe and then flooding her lungs as he continued his work.
he’d started next on her abdomen. Then her face.
Was this the moment
I did wrong?
Perhaps he was supposed to start with the face. he simply
did not know this detail, forensics in 1888 not being what they were
today.
Jacobson closed his eyes and leaned back, letting the vulgar smells
of the tiny room fill his nose. he could suddenly feel the warmth of the
blood on his face as something wet trailed down his left forearm, and
his mind chased after the promising sensation.
his very first memory, his first recollection of childhood, of being,
began with a dream. he’d been four or five at the time. he’d woken,
screamed for his parents, found he’d wet the bed like a baby. he hadn’t
been able to stop crying. his father had spanked him that night. The
dream returned later. he didn’t recall exactly when, but it had. A month
later, a year. he’d screamed and wet his bed again, but he did not call
out for his parents this time. he made sure his terrified sobs were as
quiet as possible, and only his bedroom’s darkness was there to comfort
him. Boy became man, and still the dream came. Once, or twice, or ten
times a year. he no longer screamed or cried anymore. he simply woke
up, methodically cleaned himself.
In the dream, he is in a small, dark room. There is a fire in one corner and a bed in the other. And, there is something on the bed. Something evil. he’d always known that part, felt it. That the thing on the
bed wants him closer. Wants to fuck him, consume, destroy.
Completely.
That it wants
INSIDE
him. he also knew that it was much stronger
than he was. That he would ultimately surrender to its wishes. he could
not—not ever—win.
As the years passed, the Thing on the Bed became more detailed.
In his teens, he learned that it was a woman. Soaked in blood. ripped
open. That it was still alive. years later, it spread its misshapen legs
wider and thrust its hips lewdly at him. It burbled blood from its missing lower jaw. In time, it
spoke
to him. In his twenties, he stood over it.
he held a blade.
There were other dreams. Other women. each became more familiar over time. But none had ever returned as much as the first. These
eventually became fantasies he carried into the waking world. Girls
he saw at school, some of the women he worked with, a stranger in a
bookstore. he could picture them on the “dream bed,” ripped open and
waiting for him. Sex proved unspeakable. he could not ejaculate unless
he imagined pushing into the Thing on the Bed. When a much younger
man, he’d dated only two women because of this. he’d asked the last if
she would play out a silly fantasy with him: tie her up, pretend to cut
her.
It had not gone well.
he’d avoided women thereafter and focused on what he hoped was
his true passion: Science. But while his career as a geneticist flourished,
he closed his eyes to the darkness each and every night, knowing that he
was an aberration. Monster. until . . .
until that day. May 22, 1990. During a conference in Baltimore, a
colleague had been reading a book, and, curious, Jacobson had picked
up the paperback. Straightaway, everything made sense.
Everything.
right there, in black and white, on page 176.
The Thing on the Bed.
It was real. She was real. The woman in his dreams.
Mary Jane kelly. Murdered on friday, November 9, 1888.
he spent the next hours reading the book from cover to cover.
Then again. And again.
Jack the Ripper: Memoirs of the World’s First Serial Killer.
he was—needless to say—unsurprised that one of the many suspects was named Tumblety. An old family name, and old family gossip.
his mother’s biological and ne’er-do-well father. Long since lost and
banished to time and rumor. But time and rumor meant nothing to
genetics.
What else,
Jacobson had marveled,
is passed on through RNA and
amino acid sequences?
his research and efforts refocused, the geneticist studied the offspring of killers, and then the killers themselves, eventually creating
their clones.
Searching for the root of evil.
But not to cure. Simply to understand. Appreciate. enlighten.
To find the basest traits of our forebears absolves us.
he’d waited more than twenty years to unearth Tumblety’s DNA
and confirm their genomic link. Twenty years to explore alternatives,
cures, but ultimately assenting, verifying, to the fact that our lifeblood,
our physical quintessence, is inescapable.
Now if he could only finish what was started. reach the same release his own blood had once known. Mary Jane kelly’s singular blooddrenched murder had somehow ended the ripper’s career. Over the
years, Jacobson had studied every report he could find, knew the crime
scene details and images as well as he knew his own face. The very same
molecular fabric of his own body, his own mind, the very blood pumping through his veins, had been there in 1888.
Then, and now. The Thing on the Bed. They were the same.
he looked back down at the bed. The fire’s shadows cast unevenly
over the mutilated shape there. he sighed. No. She was not the one.
Not yet. But there was still time.
Please, God . . .
he would simply have to try again. he gently traced the blade
sideways across the skin on her thigh, cleared away a thin trail between
pools of blood.
Placed the note card there.
he Senators were playing some team called the erie Seawolves.
The ballpark was mostly full, five thousand plus, and
Castillo had substituted their seats to the very edge of the
Monday-night crowd. Jeff sat quietly beside him, watching the field
could still be amazed by a baseball game.
A couple batters in, the kid jumped up from his seat, said he needed
to hit the bathroom, and Castillo was fine with that. he needed some
time to think alone anyway. he’d spent the morning adding more red
dots to his “Murder Map,” and the lines still ran in a hundred different
directions. Soon he’d have to pick one of them to follow. So he needed
something.
Anything
. even if from a man half crazy.
The call from Ox had come early morning. Castillo had said they
were in Pennsylvania, and Ox had suggested the Senators game as a
place to meet. Castillo still had no idea where the guy had called from.
Simply said he’d be there.
Castillo watched Jeff working back through the crowd to their seats.
hopefully, the mysterious man would materialize as promised. The
guy’s whole demeanor had definitely changed after Castillo had mentioned SharDhara. Maybe he’d finally get some answers.
Ox materialized at the bottom of the third inning.
he was a black man no taller than the boy, with rounded gold
glasses, a slender goatee, and a shaved head beneath a new red Senators
baseball cap. he wore a matching silk pants suit of burgundy, a pair of
large Chinese-style gold fish embroidered in crimson across the shirt.
he hugged Castillo warmly, then shook Jeff’s hand. “Marvelous night
for baseball,” he said to him. “Marvelous.”
“Covert as ever, I see,” Castillo said, eyeing the outfit.
Ox sat, crossed a leg, studied the ballpark. “Covert enough,” he
grinned. “No one’s looking at me. Who we rooting for?”
“
Everyone’s
looking at you,” Castillo said. “What’s SharDhara?”
Ox cocked his head. “Subtle as ever, yourself, I see. Maybe I never
heard about any such thing.”
“Maybe.” Now Castillo smiled. “And maybe you drove nine hundred miles just to tell me that. Or to see the Seawolves?”
“Maybe I drove
eleven
hundred miles to see an old friend.” Ox rose
his hand for the beer vendor. “What’d you contact
me
for anyway?”
“you know something about everything.”
“hell I do. you want one?”
“No.” Castillo waited while Ox paid for his beer. During the exchange Ox’s face had gone blank in thought. No emotion, no response
as he focused on the game below.
“That bad?” Castillo asked.
“first you tell me what you into.”
“Can’t,” Castillo shook his head. “Sorry.”
Jeff had stopped watching the game to study the two men. Ox’s eyes
were narrowed some, a tinge of irritation. “A taste, then,” the man said.
“Make sure you and I are on the same page, is all. I don’t want any unspecified nastiness coming upon me and my family. understood?”
“fair enough,” Castillo replied, leaning in. “A private company
is doing shitty things for our former bosses. horrible shitty. Involves
experiments. kids. Civilian deaths. And someplace or someone named
SharDhara. No clue what that means, but I can tell when people are
bullshitting me, which they are on this topic. And it got your black ass
down here in a hurry.”
“So it did. That’s a fair taste.” Ox kept looking at Jeff. “you one of
‘the kids,’ I suppose.”
The boy looked at Castillo, who nodded it was Ok to reply. “I am,
sir,” he said.
“you don’t seem too surprised by any of this,” Castillo noted.
“Nothing’s surprised me since I was four. I notice, conversely,
you
still are.”
“Surprised?” Castillo leaned back in his chair. “I admit I am.”
“Why I love you, Castillo.” Ox looked across him to Jeff again.
“This’s a man still believes in good guys and bad guys.”
“I’ve worked some ‘morally questionable’ operations in my day. I
know lines have to be crossed sometimes.”
“‘Lines crossed’?” Ox snickered, then sipped his beer. “you know
your history, boy?” he’d kept his eyes trained on Jeff, but Castillo knew
he was still talking to him. “know the Nazis?”
“Sure,” Jeff replied.
“Sure, sure. Nazis famous for killing millions and conducting lethal experiments on humans, right? famous for being evil? And these
uNITeD STATeS Of AMerICA”—as he spoke, his voice lowered,
sotto voce,
then rose into the thunderous boom of an Alabama preacher—
“got rid of the evil Nazis. Problem is, at the exact same time, the u.S.A.
was
also
conducting lethal experiments on humans.”
Jeff and Castillo shared a knowing look.
“Still is,” Jeff said.
Ox winked. “Still is, baby. Still is.” he turned and watched the next
batter. “Let me tell you two a story. Dr. Cornelius P. rhoads, American
scientist, puts cancer cells into a bunch of people, who, surprise, die.
his subjects are dirt-poor Puerto ricans, so no one gives a shit, right?
Sorry,” he added, “just being honest. uncle Sammy invaded Puerto rico
in 1898. It’s now 1931. A Puerto rican politician named, ahhh, Pedro
Campos gets hold of some letters in which rhoads brags about killing
these people, and ’ole Pedro goes to the press. Puerto rican and American. Guess what they do.
Nada,
baby. Instead, our Pedro is promptly arrested for being a ‘terrorist’ and spends the next
twenty years
in a Puerto
rican jail, where he’s declared insane and
this
country now uses
him
as a
subject for radiation experiments. Irony squared, yes? Want more? During this exact same time, rhoads, the fine doctor who’d purposely killed
a dozen people and then bragged about it, is promoted to run the u.S.
Army Biological Warfare Department. The American Association for
Cancer research even names an award on his behalf. That’s the punishment for a dozen murders. More? Dr. rhoads
personally
arranged for the
radiation experiments to be conducted on Pedro Campos. rhoads later
wrote, ‘All physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of their unfortunate subjects.’ research it yourself sometime online. Some days it’s
almost funny. See, before you can truly appreciate SharDhara, you gotta
know your history, gentlemen.”
“Why I contacted you,” Castillo said.
Ox sighed, shook his head. “Alright, look, man. . . . The Department
of Defense recently admitted, despite a dozen different treaties banning
research and development of biological agents, it
still
operated biological-agent research facilities . . . more than
one hundred
sites across the
nation. Including two dozen major universities. All them bitches making
something
. When the Manhattan Project scientists finished the world’s
first atom bomb, they started a second project: Injecting plutonium
directly into hundreds of American men, women, and children. Their
mission was to study the effects of exposure to atomic weapons. Their
very first test subject was a civilian who’d
simply had a car accident near
the lab.
Ten years later, these same scientists were dropping lightbulbs
filled with
Bacillus subtilis
in the New york subway system, to see how
effective biological weapons would work on a large population. Within
four days, a million New yorkers were infected.”
“What’s
Bacillus subtilis
?” Jeff asked.
Perfect,
Castillo thought.
Exactly the kind of exchange that could get Ox
going back in the field.
If Ox really truly knew anything that could help,
it’d work its way out soon.
“Common flu bug. No biggie. Practice, brother. They love to
practice
. Ten years later, the Senate confirmed that more than two hundred
populated areas in America were deliberately contaminated with biological agents between ’49 and ’69. San fran, D.C., key West, Minneapolis, St. Louis.
Everywhere,
man. The CIA had forty
different
universities
and drug companies working on this. More ancient history, but you’ll
connect the dots easy enough. Then on to Mk-uLTrA: Covert drug
tests secretly given to military personnel, mental patients, whores, and
the general public to study if psychotic drugs were a potential weapon.
LSD, heroin, morphine, mescaline, Mary Jane, whatever. keeping
brothers high 24/7 for weeks to see what would happen.” he looked at
Jeff. “They teach you anything about Tuskegee in school?”
“I don’t go to school. I . . . but, yes, I know what Tuskegee is.”
Ox tilted his head, curious. “Ok, Private, what you know about it?”
“Scientists got a bunch of poor farmers, African-Americans, in the
South and give them fake treatments for some disease. They could have
cured them, but let more than a hundred die to see what’d happen.”
Ox nodded in approval. “Not bad. how you know that?”
“My dad’s a scientist.”
Ox looked at Castillo, who held up his hands in surrender.
“his dad’s most definitely a scientist,” Castillo confirmed. he
watched Ox trying to make heads or tails of the boy’s role.
Maybe should
have left Jeff waiting in the car.
But maybe he secretly hoped Ox would
figure it out. ALL of it. Because at present his only confidant in the
world was the teenaged clone of Jeffrey Dahmer.
“Well,” Ox said, “it wasn’t any old scientists. It was the u.S. Public
health Service, and they infected hundreds in Guatemala also, most
of them institutionalized mental patients, with gonorrhea and syphilis
without their knowledge or permission. The infected were even encouraged to pass the disease onto others as part of the study. And today,
white people have the balls to laugh when black folk claim the government is secretly sterilizing the brothas through fast-food chicken franchises.”
Castillo shook his head.
Was it possible . . . ?
“We could do this all day, man, but you get the point. Take your
pick. Project Artichoke. Project Paperclip. Third Chance. Qk-hilltop.
Project Derby hat. Chatter. Camelot. Montauk. Mk-SeArCh. MkNAOMI. Mk-OfTeN.” he’d put his beer down between his feet and
was marking them off on his fingers faster than Jeff could count. Castillo had heard the list before, a part of the man’s go-to script, but he
listened to it quite differently this time. knowing that “Project Cain” or
“CAIN XP11” could be somewhere someday in the roll made the others real for the first time. “Project 112. Project ShAD. DTC Test 69-12.
h.r. 15090. Big Tom. fearless Johnny. The Philadelphia experiment.
Program f . . . have fun brushing your teeth tonight, son. . . . Operation Whitecoat. Ancient history, I know. Need something more current? More relevant? Ok. how ’bout chemtrails. Or hAArP. Or Plum
Island. Or SharDhara. . . . But we won’t find out the real truth about
those until years from now, when it’s finally been declassified. When
someone’s too damn old to worry about being silenced and finally talks.
When it’s old news. When there’s worse things to think about. Memories are short, man. Agent Orange, who gives a shit? That’s Woodstock,
man. Ancient history. Gulf War syndrome? Again, who gives a shit?
Twenty years ago already. DX111. fuck, brother.” he turned directly
to Castillo. “how ’bout all the stuff they tried on us. Pyridostigmine
bromide, NAPP pills, organophosphate pesticides, depleted uranium,
khamisiyah. We had
this
talk before, you and I.”
“We have,” Castillo agreed. The battlefields and soldiers of his career
had
been crammed with experimental drugs and materials.
“Volunteer army, who gives a shit, right? Bury our shit another ten
years and it’ll sound like we’re bitching about mustard gas at MeuseArgonne. It wasn’t until 1995 that we learned four hundred Americans
had been injected with plutonium to see what would happen. There was
an apology. Always is. The u.S. apologized for the experimentations on
Pedro Campos in 1994. Apologized for the LSD tests in 1995. Apologized for Tuskegee in 1997. Apologized for Guatemala in 2010. how
long before they apologize for what they done to us, man?”
“Or us?” Jeff said.
Ox looked at the boy. “you’ll be dead first, little man.”
“hey, dude.” Castillo’s whole body tensed. “Come on. Give us a
break.”
Ox held up his hands in apology. “Sorry, sorry. But listen, both of
you now. you remember Mk-uLTrA, the LSD tests. Check it: Dr.
frank Olson was the acting chief of the Special Operations Division
during the whole project. Man knows the experiments are, what’d you
call it, ‘morally questionable’ and so he up and quits. Maybe plans to go
to the
New York Times
or Mike Wallace or some shit, right? Thing is, a
few days later it’s reported Olson’s committed suicide by jumping out a
thirteenth-story window. That there’d been LSD in his system. ’Course,
his family does not believe ANy of this and fights for the truth for the
next forty years.”
Castillo could only think of the late Dr. Chatterjee, DSTI’s most
recent suicide.
Ox continued. “When Good Guy Olson’s body was finally exhumed in 1994, the medical examiner termed the death a ‘homicide’
and pointed to cranial injuries that indicated Olson had been knocked
unconscious
before
he exited the window. Of course, the united States
apologized for that too and then paid his family $750,000. you understand yet? What they’re willing to do? These fucking people. you think
a dozen, a hundred, kids matter to these guys?”
“I don’t,” Castillo agreed. “So tell me about SharDhara.”
“Secondhand info, brother. All I got.”
“I’ll take it.”
“hollyman. SfC hollyman. Met him through a guy I knew down
at the VAMC in Miami. It was hinted hollyman, who’d spent some
time at the hospital, might be a guy I wanted to talk to. Total nutball
was the official consensus, but my buddy knew my ideas on what a total
nutball is can be different than other peoples’, so . . . I track this guy
down. Company B, Second Battalion, 7th. Took awhile but we eventually get talking. Or drinking. I don’t know, you know how it goes.
Anyhow, eventually he comes around to SharDhara. Like that’s all he’s
been wanting to talk about the whole time anyway, you know. Dancing
around it, ‘classified’ blah blah, all those rounds and war stories, waiting
to get to SharDhara. he dropped with a small team in ’08. Six guys escorting a couple spooks straight out of Langley. real Black Ops bullshit.
SharDhara was a village, typical backwoods shithole. Taliban mostly.
Sub commander, maybe twenty fighters. Local IeD depot. hollyman
figures it’s a standard hit and go, right. Blow the IeDs, maybe pop the
sub commander and then outsy. Then he’s ordered to pull on the old
NBC.”
“Like a hazmat suit,” Castillo explained for Jeff. “
N
uclear
B
iological
C
hemical. for possible WMDs like sarin or mustard gas. But that’s
not what this was . . .”
Ox shook his head. “hollyman said the village was, and I quote, ‘All
fucked to holy hell.’”
“how?” Castillo and Jeff exchanged looks again.
“everyone dead,” Ox replied. “
Everyone
. Whole damn village. Bodies shredded by a hundred bullets, folk hacked to bits. Missing limbs.
ripped apart. Bitten. Men and women raped. They couldn’t make sense
of it. Some kinda Taliban reprisal, they thought, but the Taliban were
as dead as the villagers. kids dead with knives, what looked like selfinflicted wounds. found one survivor. An old crazy woman they found
in one of the huts. he said she was eating the dead. Just sitting on the
floor, eating the bodies that surrounded her.”